Candidate motion vectors for error concealment of video signals The performance of conventional error concealment (EC) is significantly affected by the method of selecting candidate motion vectors (MVs). In order to obtain more robust EC results, this letter proposes a new and efficient way to choose candidate MVs. The proposed approach systematically utilizes available neighboring MVs by exploiting a well-known spatiotemporal correlation of block MVs. Through extensive simulations with H.263, this letter demonstrates that the proposed candidate MVs provide superior concealed video quality in comparison to the best results of other existing techniques.

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

candidate motion vector
h.263
boundary matching errors


Program Control Language: a programming language for adaptive distributed applications Many distributed applications must meet stringent performance requirements even when the performance characteristics of the underlying systems and networks vary significantly at runtime. Runtime adaptation can be used to tolerate such changes, but sophisticated adaptive distributed programs can be extremely challenging to design, implement and debug. This paper proposes a language called Program Control Language (PCL) that provides a novel means of specifying adaptations in distributed applications. PCL is based on an abstract, global representation of a distributed program (a static task graph), which enables a programmer to reason about and to describe a wide range of application-specific adaptation strategies at a high level, using a few key mechanisms. PCL provides simple high-level syntax for local and remote adaptation operations, local and remote performance monitoring (and aggregation), and for performing adaptations synchronously or asynchronously with respect to the execution of the application process initiating the adaptation. The global task graph representation enables remote performance metrics and adaptation operations to be specified in simple global terms by any process, and the compiler and runtime system automatically perform the communication and synchronization required for the remote operations. The paper describes the conceptual adaptation framework, the PCL language, and our implementation of the PCL compiler and runtime system. The paper uses three adaptative applications examples to illustrate the capabilities and benefits of PCL, and to show experimentally that the performance overheads of using PCL for implementing an adaptive application are negligible. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

adaptive
distributed
program control language
runtime system
task graph

computational grid
parallel computing
performance metric


computing curricula 2005: the overview report In 2001, the ACM and the IEEE-CS published Computing Curricula 2001 which contains curriculum recommendations for undergraduate programs in computer science. That report also called for additional discipline-specific volumes for each of computer engineering, information systems, and software engineering. In addition, it called for an Overview Volume to provide a synthesis of the various volumes. The Computing Curricula 2004 Task Force undertook the job of fulfilling the latter charge. The purpose of this session is to present the recently completed work of that Task Force, now known as Computing Curricula 2005 (CC2005), and to generate discussion among, and feedback from SIGCSE members about ongoing and future work.

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

information systems curriculum
software engineering curriculum
comparison of curriculum
computer engineering curriculum
information technology curriculum
computer science curriculum


A movie recommendation algorithm based on genre correlations Since the late 20th century, the number of Internet users has increased dramatically, as has the number of Web searches performed on a daily basis and the amount of information available. A huge amount of new information is transferred to the Web on a daily basis. However, not all data are reliable and valuable, which implies that it may become more and more difficult to obtain satisfactory results from Web searches. We often iterate searches several times to find what we are looking for. To solve this problem, researchers have suggested the use of recommendation systems. Instead of searching for the same information several times, a recommendation system proposes relevant information. In the Web 2.0 era, recommendation systems often rely on collaborative filtering by users. In general, a collaborative filtering approach based on user information such as gender, location, or preference is effective. However, the traditional approach can fail due to the cold-start problem or the sparsity problem, because initial user information is required for this approach to be effective. Recently, several attempts have been made to tackle these collaborative filtering problems. One such attempt used category correlations of contents. For instance, a movie has genre information provided by movie experts and directors. This category information is more reliable than user ratings. Moreover, newly created content always has category information, allowing avoidance of the cold-start problem. In this study, we consider a movie recommendation system and improve the previous algorithms based on genre correlations to correct its shortcomings. We also test the modified algorithm and analyze the results with respect to two characteristics of genre correlations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 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

recommendation algorithm
sparsity problem


A synfire chain in layered coincidence detectors with random synaptic delays In this paper we analyze a synfire chain in a spiking neuron network. We also employ a coincidence-detector model showing the characteristics of temporal information processing more directly than the integrate-and-fire (I&F) model often discussed in the literature. There are two sources of randomness in a feed-forward network, however, only randomness in input spikes has attracted the attention of researchers and the randomness in synaptic delays has largely been ignored. Theoretical analyses of the synfire chain in I&F neurons without randomness in synaptic delays have shown that the dynamics of pulse packets can be viewed as a shift of the membrane potential distribution made by random noise input spikes. We introduce jittered synaptic delays instead of random noise inputs in a network of coincidence detectors and show that the network has almost the same dynamics as that of the I&F neurons. The distribution of the output spikes can be approximately described by an ordinary differential equation useful in understanding the dynamics of the pulse packets.

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

temporal coding
synchronous firing
coincidence detector
synaptic delay
stable propagation


Design and Analysis of Adaptive Receiver Transmission Protocols for Receiver Blocking Problem in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks Due to the lack of a centralized coordinator for wireless resource allocation, the design of medium access control (MAC) protocols is considered crucial for throughput enhancement in the wireless ad hoc networks. The receiver blocking problem, which has not been studied in most of the MAC protocol design, can lead to severe degradation on the throughput performance. In this paper, the multiple receiver transmission (MRT) and the fast NAV truncation (FNT) mechanisms are proposed to alleviate the receiver blocking problem without the adoption of additional control channels. The adaptive receiver transmission (ART) scheme is proposed to further enhance the throughput performance with dynamic adjustment of the selected receivers. Analytical model is also derived to validate the effectiveness of the proposed ART protocol. Simulations are performed to evaluate and compare the proposed three protocols with existing MAC schemes. It can be observed that the proposed ART protocol outperforms the other schemes by both alleviating the receiver blocking problem and enhancing the throughput performance for the wireless multihop ad hoc networks.

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

medium access control
receiver blocking problem

wireless ad hoc network
performance analysis


Diet and esophageal disease The following, from the 12th OESO World Conference: Cancers of the Esophagus, includes commentaries on macronutrients, dietary patterns, and risk of adenocarcinoma in Barrett's esophagus; micronutrients, trace elements, and risk of Barrett's esophagus and esophageal adenocarcinoma; the role of mate consumption in the development of squamous cell carcinoma; the relationship between energy excess and development of esophageal adenocarcinoma; and the nutritional management of the esophageal cancer patient.

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

macronutrients
micronutrients
mate
esophageal adenocarcinoma
oeso


Applications of rough sets to ?-hyperideals in left almost ?-semihypergroups The relations between rough sets and algebraic systems have been already considered by many mathematicians. This article concerns the relationship between rough sets and left almost ?-semihypergroups. In this article, using Pawlak idea, the properties of lower and upper approximations of sub LA-?-semihypergroup (respectively ?-hyperideal, bi-?-hyperideal and interior ?-hyperideal) are investigated.

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 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

la-?-semihypergroups
?-hyperideals
rough ?-hyperideals


Constructions of Factorizable Multilevel Hadamard Matrices Factorization of Hadamard matrices can provide fast algorithm and facilitate efficient hardware realization. In this letter, constructions of factorizable multilevel Hadamard matrices, which can be considered as special case of unitary matrices, are inverstigated. In particular, a class of ternary Hadamard matrices, together with its application, is presented.

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


Neural network based switching control of AC-AC converter with DC-AC inverter for voltage sags, harmonics and EMI reduction using hybrid filter topology A neural network based AC-AC voltage restorer is designed for voltage sags and PWM type active power filter with compound trap passive filter as a new hybrid filter are simultaneously used for voltage harmonics compensation and electromagnetic interference (EMI) reduction. First objective is to apply the neural network based switching control technique for the AC-AC voltage restorer to reduce time delays during the switching conditions and switching losses. The aim of the IGBTs used in the AC-AC voltage restorer is to test and to find the best switching frequency-power combination in the steps of the simulation. Thus, the proposed AC-AC voltage restorer has important advantages such as fast switching response, simplicity and more intelligent structure, better output waveform. The transient condition of the AC-AC voltage restorer is improved via the neural network based control technique. The second objective is the proposed strategy for elimination of voltage harmonics using PWM type DC-AC inverter part of the system as an active power filter. The last objective of the system is EMI reduction with using hybrid filter and voltage restorer together. Three problems which are voltage sags, harmonics and EMI are solved with the proposed system simultaneously. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

switching control
voltage harmonics
emi reduction
hybrid filter

neural networks
ac-ac converter
voltage sag


Effects of substrate characteristics on bone cell response to the mechanical environment The effect of substrate characteristics on primary human bone cell response to mechanical loading was investigated in this study. The substrates comprised organic and inorganic materials with a range of hydrophilic and hydrophobic features. Substrate surface topography varied from smooth to particulate to porous. It was found that hydrophilic substrates such as borosilicate glass facilitated bone cell adhesion, in contrast to hydrophobic substrates such as poly(L-lactic acid), in which clumps of cells grew unevenly across the substrate surface. All primary bone cells cultured in the various collagen-coated substrates were responsive to mechanical stimulation. The study showed that, at a low strain level of 1000 mustrain, mechanical stimulation enhanced bone cell differentiation rather than proliferation. Coating the substrates with collagen type I enhanced cell adhesion and promoted an elongated cell morphology, indicating that the presence of specific binding sites on a substrate may be more important than its hydrophilic properties, regardless of the substrate topography.

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

substrate
bone cells
adhesion
mechanical loading


Development of three-dimensional aiming point guidance law A new aiming point guidance (APG) law in 3-dimensional space is derived analytically. The guidance law is capable of guiding the missile (interceptor) to a straight collision course with respect to the target. The missile turning rate command proportional to the error angle between the current missile heading and the predicted aim point is calculated based on the predicted target position. Performance of the APG law is numerically evaluated and compared with the proportional navigation guidance (PNG) law. The result of numerical simulation shows that the APG law is superior to the PNG law in terms of miss distance, time of interception and final stage missile turning rate demand.

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

missile
guidance
proportional navigation


effects of head-mounted and scene-oriented video systems on remote collaboration on physical tasks This study assessed the value of two video configurations-a head-mounted camera with eye tracking capability and a scene camera providing a view of the work environment-on remote collaboration on physical (3D) tasks. Pairs of participants performed five robot construction tasks in five media conditions: side-by-side, audio-only, head-mounted camera, scene camera, and scene plus head cameras. Task completion times were shortest in the side-by-side condition, and shorter with the scene camera than in the audio-only condition. Participants rated their work quality highest when side-by-side, intermediate with the scene camera, and worst in the audio-only and head-camera conditions. Similarly, helpers' self-rated ability to assist workers and pairs' communication efficiency were highest in the side-by-side condition, but significantly higher with the scene camera than in the audio-only condition. The results demonstrate the value of a shared view of the work environment for remote collaboration on physical tasks.

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


Integrating fuzzy multicriteria analysis and uncertainty evaluation in life cycle assessment The interpretation phase of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies is often hampered by the number and the heterogeneity of impact assessment results as well as by the uncertainties arising from data, models and practitioners choices. While decision-aiding methods have proven to support this key LCA phase, the inclusion of uncertainty evaluations in these methods is still a new topic in the LCA community. The fuzzy multicriteria method NAIADE [Munda G., 1995. Multicriteria Evaluation in a Fuzzy Environment. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.] has already been used in several LCA case studies and its framework is well suited for the consideration of uncertainty evaluations as well. This paper proposes a modified version of NAIADE, which conforms to the LCA requirements and to the type of uncertainties to be addressed, with an application example. The discussion of the rankings obtained showed how the integration of uncertainty results could help focusing on critical LCA issues and could be coupled with dominance, contribution and gravity analysis for the interpretation of LCA results, especially when the rankings are not fully consistent. This could support engineers and scientists working in LCA discipline as well as managers and decision-makers faced with decision-making problems based on LCA.

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

multicriteria analysis
naiade
life cycle assessment
lca


Experiences with an interoperable data acquisition platform for multi-centric research networks based on HL7 CDA Objectives: Today's increasing specialization of medicine necessitates the integration of telematic platforms for cross-institutional cooperation. In order to leverage the strengths of each cooperating institution a centralized unified storage using shared electronic patient records (EPRs) as well as secured remote data entry capabilities for supporting collaborative clinical research and care is essential. The objective of this project was to develop and introduce into routine use such a shored remote data entry (RDE) platform for the German multicentric Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) network. Methods: An existing telematic application was extended by a remote data entry (RDE) module enabling the storage of structured data and pedigrees. HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) was chosen as a suitable standardized storage format that provides flexibility and future interoperability. Flexible data entry forms adaptable to distinct medical domains were implemented using XML-based technologies. Results: A flexible and comprehensive EPR/RDE platform was successfully implemented in the German EB network. A set of specific data entry forms was created to fully cover the network's documentation needs. The platform has been in productive use since 2005. Conclusions: Standardized documentation by using HL7 CDA to store the medical research data as an EPR can contribute to high interoperability and an easier integration of heterogeneous health care information systems. Existing XMIL technologies offer a high degree of flexibility and adaptability to distinct medical domains. The ongoing development of standards (e.g. HL7 CDA R2) and interfaces (CDA/CDISC bridge) could further improve semantic and syntactic interoperability.

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

electronic data capture
documentation system
xml


Iterative disaggregation for a class of lumpable discrete-time stochastic automata networks Stochastic automata networks (SANs) have been developed and used in the last 15 years as a modeling formalism for large systems that can be decomposed into loosely connected components. In this work, we concentrate on the not so much emphasized discrete-time SANs. First, we remodel and extend an SAN that arises in wireless communications. Second, for an SAN with functional transitions, we derive conditions for a special case of ordinary lumpability in which aggregation is done automaton by automaton. Finally, for this class of lumpable discrete-time SANs we devise an efficient aggregation-iterative disaggregation algorithm and demonstrate its performance on the SAN model of interest. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

ordinary lumpability
iterative disaggregation

wireless asynchronous transfer mode system


Color image compression using quantization, thresholding, and edge detection techniques all based on the moment-preserving principle ? A new approach to color image compression with high compression ratios and good quality of reconstructed images using quantization, thresholding, and edge detection all based on the moment-preserving principle is proposed. An input image with 24 bits per pixel is quantized into 8 bits per pixel using a new color quantization method based on the moment-preserving principle. The quantized image is then divided into n n non-overlapping square blocks. Two representative colors for each block are computed by moment-preserving thresholding. A bit-map is then generated, consisting of 0s and 1s indicating whether the block pixels are assigned to the first color or the second according to the Euclidean distance measure. A moment-based edge detector is performed further on the bit-map of each non-uniform block. The two parameters l and ? of a line edge with the equation of x cos ? + y sin ? = l are obtained. The image is finally coded with a codebook of a 256-color palette; a 1-bit indicator for each block which specifies whether the block is uniform or not; an 8-bit color index for a uniform block, or two 8-bit color indices, a 3-bit index for ?, and a 2-bit or 3-bit index for l for a non-uniform block. An average compression ratio of 22.49 or 33.32 can be obtained for 4 4 or 5 5 image blocks, respectively. Experimental results show the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed approach for color image compression.

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

color image compression
color quantization


Decision and stress: cognition and e-accessibility in the information workplace Cognitive abilities and disabilities are increasingly important in todays information-based workplace, particularly in relation to the accessibility of advanced information society technologies. As this paper discusses, new technologies can create problems for human decision making, stress levels, general cognition and e-accessibility. Yet it is not easy to identify possible new e-accessibility solutions to these problems. This is where theories of cognitive aspects of e-accessibility could be useful to generate solutions to these problems of HCI in general and of accessibility in particular. The purpose of this paper is to report a new generative theory (called Simplex 2), provide validating evidence for it from two meta-analyses and demonstrate a proof of concept through the application of Simplex to the solution of HCI problems. Two qualitative meta-analyses are reported for two different samples (N 1=90 and N 2=100) of relevant and contemporary conference papers. Whilst a few more concepts were identified, only nine cognitive concepts emerged from both analyses, validating the predictions of Simplex, which is also used for cognitive user modeling. Given the sample sizes and the successful replication, it is clear that these nine factors feature prominently in current research and practice in universal access and inclusive design. Further support for the value of this theory is found in a consideration of the requirements of older adult users and from studies of cognitive overload and augmentation. Uses of Simplex include the evaluation of existing systems, assessment of user requirements, system development in combination with models of task, context of use and technology platform and through the concepts of cognitive augmentation and overload to identify future opportunities for new, accessible, cognitive solutions. A proof of concept of Simplex is demonstrated by the treatment of HCI accessibility problems and as a generative theory for the development of new solutions.

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

cognition models workplace overload augmentation


Model detection for functional polynomial regression A functional polynomial regression model which includes the functional linear model and functional quadratic model as two special cases is considered. In functional polynomial regression, one must balance the costs and benefits of using more parameters in the model. The method of model detection to determine which orders of the polynomial are significant in functional polynomial regression is developed. The proposed methods can identify the true model consistently and have good prediction performances. Numerical studies clearly confirm our theories.

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

functional principal components
adaptive group lasso
consistency


Static and dynamic consistent perturbation analysis for nonlinear inextensible planar frames A numerical-perturbation method for analyzing nonlinear planar frames is illustrated. The displacement fields are obtained by asymptotic integration of the field equations. Calculations are rearranged in a way they can be made by a computer. Modeling is carried out in the context of the mixed formulation of elasticity. The semi-analytical results are in excellent agreement with FEM analyses.

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

inextensible beam
planar frame
nonlinear statics
nonlinear dynamics
perturbation methods


Model for biological communication in a nanofabricated cell-mimic driven by stochastic resonance Cells offer natural examples of highly efficient networks of nanomachines. Accordingly, both intracellular and intercellular communication mechanisms in nature are looked to as a source of inspiration and instruction for engineered nanocommunication. Harnessing biological functionality in this manner requires an interdisciplinary approach that integrates systems biology, synthetic biology, and nanofabrication. Here, we present a model system that exemplifies the synergism between these realms of research. We propose a synthetic gene network for operation in a nanofabricated cell mimic array that propagates a biomolecular signal over long distances using the phenomenon of stochastic resonance. Our system consists of a bacterial quorum sensing signal molecule, a bistable genetic switch triggered by this signal, and an array of nanofabricated cell mimic wells that contain the genetic system. An optimal level of noise in the system helps to propagate a time-varying AHL signal over long distances through the array of mimics. This noise level is determined both by the system volume and by the parameters of the genetic network. Our proposed genetically driven stochastic resonance system serves as a testbed for exploring the potential harnessing of gene expression noise to aid in the transmission of a time-varying molecular signal.

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

stochastic resonance
synthetic biology
noise
quorum sensing
cell mimic


Fault-tolerant Newton-Raphson and Goldschmidt dividers using time shared TMR Iterative division algorithms based on multiplication are popular because they are fast and may utilize an already existing hardware multiplier. Two popular methods based on multiplication are Newton-Raphson and Goldschmidt's algorithm. To achieve concurrent error correction, Time Shared Triple Modular Redundancy (TSTMR) may be applied to both kinds of dividers. The hardware multiplier is divided into thirds, and the rest of the divider logic replicated around each part, to provide three independent dividers. While this reduces the size of the fault-tolerant dividers over that of traditional TMR, latency may be increased. However, both division algorithms can be modified to use lower precision multiplications during the early iterations. This saves multiply cycles and, hence, produces a faster divider.

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

fault-tolerant arithmetic
newton-raphson division
goldschmidt division


A study of immunity based on Penna aging model This paper describes an evolutionary model based on sexual Penna model and shape space model with infection and immunity. Each individual is represented by Penna model with an immune system. In order to study how the infection and immunity influence the survival process, we modify the Verhulst factor. Then, we present the results of our simulations, and discuss the evolution of population and the effect of immunity respectively. In addition, we study the effect of the memory of the immune system and the effect of vaccination under different conditions.

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

penna model
population
infection
immunity


An adaptive watermarking scheme for e-government document images This paper proposes an adaptive watermarking scheme for e-government document images. The adaptive scheme combines the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and the singular value decomposition (SVD) using luminance masking. As a core of masking model in the human visual system (HVS), luminance masking is implemented to improve noise sensitivity. Genetic algorithm (GA), subsequently, is employed for the optimization of the scaling factor of the masking. Involving a number of steps, the scheme proposed through this study begins by calculating the mask of the host image using luminance masking. It is then continued by transforming the mask on each area into all frequencies domain. The watermark image, following this, is embedded by modifying the singular values of DCT-transformed host image with singular values of mask coefficient of host image and the control parameter of DCT-transformed watermark image using Genetic Algorithm (GA). The use of both the singular values and the control parameter respectively, in this case, is not only to improve the sensitivity of the watermark performance but also to avoid the false positive problem. The watermark image, afterwards, is extracted from the distorted images. The experiment results show the improved adaptive performance of the proposed scheme is in resistant to several types of attacks in comparison with the previous schemes; the adaptive performance refers to the adaptive parameter of the luminance masking functioned to improve the performance or robustness of an image from any attacks.

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

adaptive
watermarking
luminance masking
human visual system


SELECTIVE HARMONIC ELIMINATION NON-SYMMETRICAL BIPOLAR PULSE WIDTH MODULATION TECHNIQUE: ANALYSIS AND EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION Selective harmonic elimination pulse width modulation (SHE-PWM) techniques offer a tight control of the harmonic spectrum of a given voltage waveform generated by a power electronic converter along with a low number of switching transitions. These optimal switching transitions can be calculated through Fourier theory, and for a number of years quarter-wave and half-wave symmetries have been assumed when formulating the problem. It is shown recently that symmetry requirements can be relaxed as a constraint. This changes the way the problem is formulated and different solutions can be found without a compromise. This paper reports solutions to the switching transitions of a bipolar SHE-PWM when both the quarter- and half-wave symmetries are abolished. Selected simulation and experimental results are reported to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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

selective harmonic elimination
modulation technique


avoiding interferences in wlan 802.11b for partially overlapped channels Radio spectrum is limited resource in wireless mobile communication system. However, efficient use of available channels has been shown to improve the system performance. Most of the channels in various technologies are known to have partial overlap. Due to the interference effects the use of such partially overlapped channels is avoided. The use of partially overlapped channel is not always harmful. This paper presents the solutions how to avoid interferences which occur due to partially overlap. This helps to use the maximum radio spectrum.

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

channel interference
wireless network
non-overlapped channels


Stability of Slotted Aloha with Selfish Users under Delay Constraint Most game-theoretic works of Aloha have emphasized investigating Nash equilibria according to the system state represented by the number of network users and their decisions. In contrast, we focus on the possible change of nodes' utility state represented by delay constraint and decreasing utility over time. These foregone changes of nodes' state are more likely to instigate selfish behaviors in networking environments. For such environment, in this paper, we propose a repeated Bayesian slotted Aloha game model to analyze the selfish behavior of impatient users. We prove the existence of Nash equilibrium mathematically and empirically. The proposed model enables any type of transmission probability sequence to achieve Nash equilibrium without degrading its optimal throughput. Those Nash equilibria can be used as a solution concept to thwart the selfish behaviors of nodes and ensure the system stability.

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

slotted aloha
stability
nash equilibrium
delay constraint


Deconstructing gamification: evaluating the effectiveness of continuous measurement, virtual rewards, and social comparison for promoting physical activity Game design elements are often implemented in persuasive systems aimed to promote physical activity, a process called gamification. Gamification is believed to motivate users to become more active, and is commonly implemented in commercial products. However, relatively few studies rigorously evaluated the effectiveness of gamification, and they yielded contradicting findings. We set out to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual rewards and social comparisontwo game elements prevalent in persuasive systems. We developed a research prototype, called StepByStep, aimed to promote routine walking. We created different versions of StepByStep, implemented as an application on Android-based mobile devices, and compared their effectiveness in two field studies. Study 1 showed that a quantified version of the applicationoffering continuous measurement of walking time, a daily goal, and real-time feedback on progress toward this goalfacilitated reflection on activity and significantly increased walking time over baseline level. Study 2 showed that gamified versions offering virtual rewards and social comparison were only as effective as the quantified version. Thus, we advise designers to facilitate reflection on meaningful aspects of physical activity by developing novel ubiquitous measures. Furthermore, our findings highlight the importance of systematic comparisons between quantified and gamified elements for better understanding their motivational affordances.

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

gamification
social comparison
physical activity

persuasive technology
behavior change
virtual reward


Optimal

classifiers

with

minimum

expected

error

within

a

Bayesian

framework

Part

II:

Properties

and

performance

analysis

In

part

I

of

this

two-part

study,

we

introduced

a

new

optimal

Bayesian

classification

methodology

that

utilizes

the

same

modeling

framework

proposed

in

Bayesian

minimum-mean-square

error

(MMSE)

error

estimation.

Optimal

Bayesian

classification

thus

completes

a

Bayesian

theory

of

classification,

where

both

the

classifier

error

and

our

estimate

of

the

error

may

be

simultaneously

optimized

and

studied

probabilistically

within

the

assumed

model.

Having

developed

optimal

Bayesian

classifiers

in

discrete

and

Gaussian

models

in

part

I,

here

we

explore

properties

of

optimal

Bayesian

classifiers,

in

particular,

invariance

to

invertible

transformations,

convergence

to

the

Bayes

classifier,

and

a

connection

to

Bayesian

robust

classifiers.

We

also

explicitly

derive

optimal

Bayesian

classifiers

with

non-informative

priors,

and

explore

relationships

to

linear

and

quadratic

discriminant

analysis

(LDA

and

QDA),

which

may

be

viewed

as

plug-in

rules

under

Gaussian

modeling

assumptions.

Finally,

we

present

several

simulations

addressing

the

robustness

of

optimal

Bayesian

classifiers

to

false

modeling

assumptions.

Companion

website:

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

bayesian estimation
genomics
minimum mean-square estimation
small samples


KISS: Stochastic Packet Inspection Classifier for UDP Traffic This paper proposes KISS, a novel Internet classification engine. Motivated by the expected raise of UDP traffic, which stems from the momentum of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) streaming applications, we propose a novel classification framework that leverages on statistical characterization of payload. Statistical signatures are derived by the means of a Chi-Square (chi(2))-like test, which extracts the protocol "format," but ignores the protocol "semantic" and "synchronization" rules. The signatures feed a decision process based either on the geometric distance among samples, or on Support Vector Machines. KISS is very accurate, and its signatures are intrinsically robust to packet sampling, reordering, and flow asymmetry, so that it can be used on almost any network. KISS is tested in different scenarios, considering traditional client-server protocols, VoIP, and both traditional and new P2P Internet applications. Results are astonishing. The average True Positive percentage is 99.6%, with the worst case equal to 98.1,% while results are almost perfect when dealing with new P2P streaming applications.

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

supervised learning algorithms
traffic classification


Wireless LAN Security Management with Location Detection Capability in Hospitals Objectives: In medical institutions, unauthorized access points and terminals obstruct the stable operation of a large-scale wireless local area network (LAN) system. By establishing a real-time monitoring method to detect such unauthorized wireless devices, we can improve the efficiency of security management. Methods: We detected unauthorized wireless devices by using a centralized wireless LAN system and a location detection system at 370 access points at the University of Tokyo Hospital. By storing the detected radio signal strength and location information in a database, we evaluated the risk level from the detection history. We also evaluated the location detection performance in our hospital ward using Wi-Fi tags. Results: The presence of electric waves outside the hospital and those emitted from portable game machines with wireless communication capability was confirmed from the detection result. The location detection performance showed an error margin of approximately 4 m in detection accuracy and approximately 5% in false detection. Therefore, it was effective to consider the radio signal strength as both an index of likelihood at the detection location and an index for the level of risk. Conclusions: We determined the location of wireless devices with high accuracy by filtering the detection results on the basis of radio signal strength and detection history. Results of this study showed that it would be effective to use the developed location database containing radio signal strength and detection history for security management of wireless LAN systems and more general-purpose location detection applications.

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

wireless lan
security management
location detection


The maximum congested cut problem and its robust counterpart: Exact and approximation algorithms for the single and the multicommodity case We study an optimization problem which can be interesting in several network applications, especially in telecommunication. Given a capacitated directed network G in which a flow, related to a certain commodity, has to be sent from a given set of origins to a given set of destinations, we want to compute a maximum congested cut, i.e., a cut (S, T) of G which maximizes the ratio between the net demand of T and the capacity of the cut. We will show that a maximum congested cut can be computed in polynomial time by formulating the problem as a special maximum mean-weight cut problem, and solving it by Newton's method for linear fractional combinatorial optimization (Radzik, Complexity in Numerical Optimization, World Scientific, Singapore, 1993). The introduced formulation will be extended to the case in which the flow demands vary in a polyhedron D, and a cut has to be determined which maximizes the congestion with respect to the flow demands in D, addressing a robust version of the problem. We will prove that the robust maximum congested cut problem is coNP-Hard. Special cases solvable in polynomial time as well as approximation algorithms for some relevant hard cases will be proposed. The specialization of the proposed approaches to the well-studied class of Hose models (Duffield et al., Proc., Conf Appl Technol Architect Protocol Comp Comm 29 (1999), 95-108) will be discussed. Then, in the second part of the paper, we will investigate the case in which k commodities are given, and a maximum congested cut has to be computed in such a multicommodity flow context. This problem is NP-Hard. Some algorithmic considerations will be formulated in order to approximate the maximum congested cut in multicommodity networks, also addressing the robust version of the problem. A consequence of the stated results is a polynomial time algorithm for the sparsest cut problem in undirected graphs, for the special case in which k is O(log n), and an O(k/log n)-approximation algorithm for the general case, where n denotes the cardinality of the node set. Furthermore, a new heuristic approach for the directed sparsest cut problem will be suggested. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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


The joint model of the logistic model and linear random effect model - An application to predict orthostatic hypertension for subacute stroke patients Stroke is a common acute neurologic and disabling disease. Orthostatic hypertension (OH) is one of the catastrophic cardiovascular conditions. If a stroke patient has OH, he/she has higher chance to fall or syncope during the following courses of treatment. This can result in possible bone fracture and the burden of medical cost therefore increases. How to early diagnose OH is clinically important. However, there is no obvious time-saving method for clinical evaluation except to check the postural blood pressure. This paper uses clinical data to identify potential clinical factors that are associated with OH. The data include repeatedly observed blood pressure, and the patient's basic characteristics and clinical symptoms. A traditional logistic regression is not appropriate for such data. The paper modifies the two-stage model proposed by Tsiatis et al. (1995) and the joint model proposed by Wulfsohn and Tsiatis (1997) to take into account of a sequence of repeated measures to predict OH. The large sample properties of estimators of modified models are derived. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to evaluate the accuracy of these estimators. A case study is presented. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

joint model
logistic regression
random effect model
stroke


Dynamic game with perfect and complete information based dynamic channel assignment The nodes in Ad Hoc networks compete for channels when communicating, with the features of no center and self-organization. In traditional channel assignment strategy of MAC layer, nodes do not consider the demands to channel resources of other nodes, which hinders improving the network performance. Practically, in the network based on competitive MAC protocol, each node tries to maximize its payoff, while this interferes with the behavior of other nodes at the same time. Game theory is an effective tool to solve problems of distributed resources, which can be used effectively in channel assignment. In this paper, we propose a new protocol, namely, DGPCI-DCA (Dynamic Game with Perfect and Complete Information based Dynamic Channel Assignment). When all the nodes are rational and greedy, each node selects channels dynamically by backward induction according to strategies of other nodes, thus Nash equilibrium can finally be achieved. Experiments show that the network performance is effectively improved, i.e., the throughput and saturation throughput can be increased, and the packet loss rate and network delay can be reduced.

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

dynamic game with perfect and complete information


A novel hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm with crossover operator for numerical optimization Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is one of the most recently introduced swarm intelligence algorithms which inspired by the foraging behavior of honey bee swarms. It has been widely used in numerical and engineering optimization problems. This paper presents a hybrid artificial bee colony (HABC) model to improve the canonical ABC algorithm. The main idea of HABC is to enhance the information exchange between bees by introducing the crossover operator of genetic algorithm to ABC. With suitable crossover operation, valuable information is fully utilized and it is expected that the algorithm can converge faster and more accurate. Eight versions of HABC algorithm combined by different selection and crossover methods under the model were proposed and tested on several benchmark functions. Then, the settings of the new parameter crossover rate for two well performed HABC versions are tested to verify their best values. Finally, four rotated functions and four shifted functions are used to test the performance of the two algorithms on complex functions and asymmetric functions. Experiment results showed that these two versions of HABC algorithm offer significant improvement over the original ABC and are superior to other two state of the art algorithms on some functions.

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

artificial bee colony
crossover operator
crossover rate


Practical flow table aggregation in SDN ? In OpenFlow-driven SDN, flow tables are TCAM-hungry; commodity switches suffer from limited concrete flow table size. One method for coping with the limitations is to use aggregation schemes to reduce the number of flow entries required to express the same forwarding semantics. Unfortunately, the aggregation of rules would retard table updates and lengthen the updating duration, during which, the data plane is inconsistent with the control plane. Forwarding errors such as Reachability Failures, Forwarding Loops, Traffic Isolation and Leakage are prone to occur. Since network updates take place frequently in practice, the aggregation scheme must be efficient and effective. In this paper, we proposed FFTA (Fast Flow Table Aggregation) and its online companion, iFFTA (incremental FFTA), to make practical flow table aggregation. FFTA is an offline solution performing snapshot aggregation of non-prefix rules by (1) splitting them into prefix-permutable partitions in an aggregation-aware manner, and (2) applying optimal prefix-based aggregation techniques, respectively. When some original rules are updated, iFFTA is triggered to incorporate the update immediately by leveraging the order-independence relationship and structure information of rules. To the best of our knowledge, iFFTA is the first online aggregation scheme for non-prefix rules. We employed public available prefix rules as well as synthetic non-prefix rules generated with real parameters to evaluate their performances. Extensive experiments demonstrated that FFTA significantly outperforms prior art on both efficiency and effectiveness, while iFFTA greatly simplifies the update of aggregated rules with an acceptable loss of compression ratio. Accordingly, users could make a combination use of FFTA and iFFTA in practice: call iFFTA usually and recall FFTA once the switch is running out of concrete flow table space.

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


Quantal synaptic failures improve performance in a sequence learning model of hippocampal CA3 Quantal synaptic failures are random, independent events in which the arrival of an action potential fails to release transmitter. Although quantal failures destroy information, there exist conditions where such failures enhance learning by a neural network model of the hippocampus. In particular, we show how the appropriate failure rate can allow the model to learn the hippocampally dependent task of transverse patterning. Usefully, since lowered activity levels produce higher memory capacity, synaptic failures lead to robust performance at lowered activity levels. Thus, the synaptic failure mechanism is another example of a random fluctuation that improves neural network computations.

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


Tracking control for nonholonomic mobile robots: Integrating the analog neural network into the backstepping technique This paper proposes an improved learning algorithm of analog compound orthogonal networks and a novel tracking control approach for nonholonomic mobile robots by integrating the neural network into the backstepping technique. The adaptive control is derived from continuously tuning parameters using the analog neural network in the backstepping control law. The proposed control approach for the mobile robot has the properties to quickly drive the position error to zero and to indicate better smooth movement in the tracking control process. These features are due to continuous online learning and adaptive capability of analog neural networks. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control approach is effective and has better control performance.

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

analog neural network
backstepping technique
tracking control

nonholonomic mobile robot
chebyshev orthogonal polynomials
sigmoid function
continuously learning algorithm


Reconstruction of surgical instruments in virtual surgery system To ensure the realism of the visual effects, the 3D reconstruction of surgical instruments has become an important research topic in virtual surgery systems. In this paper, we propose a method for obtaining the model of the surgical instruments from point cloud data. The point cloud data are first triangulated using the Delaunay algorithm, and then the triangular mesh is simplified and smoothed for optimization. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we have reconstructed a scalpel model with experimental results show that the reconstructed model of surgical instruments can not only keep the geometric characteristics of the original model, but also improve the real-time property for the simulation.

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 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

delaunay triangulation
mesh optimization
vtk


a multi-task learning formulation for predicting disease progression Alzheimer's Disease (AD), the most common type of dementia, is a severe neurodegenerative disorder. Identifying markers that can track the progress of the disease has recently received increasing attentions in AD research. A definitive diagnosis of AD requires autopsy confirmation, thus many clinical/cognitive measures including Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale cognitive subscale (ADAS-Cog) have been designed to evaluate the cognitive status of the patients and used as important criteria for clinical diagnosis of probable AD. In this paper, we propose a multi-task learning formulation for predicting the disease progression measured by the cognitive scores and selecting markers predictive of the progression. Specifically, we formulate the prediction problem as a multi-task regression problem by considering the prediction at each time point as a task. We capture the intrinsic relatedness among different tasks by a temporal group Lasso regularizer. The regularizer consists of two components including an L2,1-norm penalty on the regression weight vectors, which ensures that a small subset of features will be selected for the regression models at all time points, and a temporal smoothness term which ensures a small deviation between two regression models at successive time points. We have performed extensive evaluations using various types of data at the baseline from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database for predicting the future MMSE and ADAS-Cog scores. Our experimental studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for capturing the progression trend and the cross-sectional group differences of AD severity. Results also show that most markers selected by the proposed algorithm are consistent with findings from existing cross-sectional studies.

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

alzheimer's disease
multi-task learning
stability selection
cognitive score


Comparative study of moment based parameterization for morphological texture description The two principal morphological texture descriptors, granulometry and morphological covariance, rely on the common principle of successive filtering of an image using a variety of structuring elements, from which feature vectors are subsequently computed. A crucial stage of their computation is the numerical characterization or parameterization of each of the filtered images. In this regard, the zero-th statistical moment is the traditional measure, while the use of higher order moments has also been reported. In this paper, we present the results of a comparative study, concentrating on the potential of various statistical moments for the task of parameterization, while additionally investigating the contribution of Fourier transform moments. The experiments are conducted with focus on texture description effectiveness and on noise robustness, using publicly available texture collections: Outex, CUReT and KTH-TIPS2b, where it is shown that the combination of moments leads to superior classification performance even at high noise levels.

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

morphological covariance
granulometry
parameterization
statistical moments
fourier transform
noise robustness


program

for

with

nonzero

fermion

masses

A

computer

program

for

calculating

cross-sections

of

any

four

fermion

final

state

of

e+e?-annihilation

at

high

energy

and

the

corresponding

bremsstrahlung

reaction

that

is

possible

in

the

framework

of

the

Standard

Model

is

presented.

As

the

fermion

masses

are

arbitrary,

the

cross-sections

for

channels

that

do

not

contain

e+

and/or

e?

in

the

final

state

can

be

computed

without

any

collinear

cut,

the

on-shell

top

quark

production

can

be

studied

and

the

Higgs

boson

exchange

can

be

incorporated

in

a

consistent

way.

The

program

can

be

used

as

a

Monte

Carlo

generator

of

unweighted

events

as

well.

Title

of

Version:

(February

Catalogue

identifier:

ADTQ

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queen's

University

of

Belfast,

N.Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Computers:

all

Operating

systems:

Unix/Linux

Programming

language

used:FORTRAN

CPC

Program

Library

subprograms

used:RANLUX,

ACPR

RANLUX

random

number

generator

Memory

required

to

execute

with

typical

data:

Mb

No.

of

bits

in

a

word:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar

gzip

file

Nature

of

physical

problem:

Description

of

all

fermions

and

corresponding

bremsstrahlung

reactions

that

are

possible

in

the

Standard

Model

(SM)

to

lowest

order

and

with

nonzero

fermion

masses

at

center

of

mass

energies

typical

for

next

generation

linear

colliders.

Such

reactions

are

relevant,

typically,

for

W-pair

or

intermediate

mass

Higgs

boson

production

and

decay.

Method

of

solution:

Matrix

elements

are

calculated

with

the

helicity

amplitude

method.

The

phase

space

integration

is

performed

numerically

utilizing

a

multi-channel

Monte

Carlo

method.

Restrictions

on

complexity

of

the

problem:

No

higher

order

effects

are

taken

into

account,

except

for

assuming

the

fine

structure

constant

and

the

strong

coupling

at

the

appropriate

scale

and

partial

summation

of

those

one

particle

irreducible

loop

corrections

which

are

inducing

the

(fixed)

finite

widths

of

unstable

particles.

Typical

running

time:

The

running

time

depends

strongly

on

a

selected

channel

and

desired

precision

of

the

result.

The

results

of

the

appended

test

run

have

been

obtained

on

a

PentiumIII

processor

with

the

use

of

Absoft

compiler

in

about

minutes.

In

order

to

obtain

a

precision

level

below

one

per

mile

a

few

million

calls

to

the

integrand

are

required.

This

results

in

less

than

one

hour

running

time

for

the

fastest

channel

and

more

than

hours

running

time

for

the

slowest

channel

e+e??e+e?e+e?.

However,

the

typical

running

time

for

channels

that

are

relevant

for

the

W-pair

or

Higgs

boson

production

is

several

hours.

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

sm
bremsstrahlung
nonzero fermion masses

e+e? annihilation
lowest order four fermion reactions


Subset selection in multiple linear regression with heavy tailed error distribution Many subset selection methods in a multiple linear regression context such as Mallow's C p -statistic are based on the Least squares (LS) estimator of regression coefficients. Whenever the distribution of the error variable is non-normal or heavy tailed, the LS estimator is known to perform 'poorly' and hence a method based on this estimator obviously selects a wrong subset. In this article, we propose a new criterion called N p -criterion for subset selection in a multiple linear regression model whenever the distribution of error variable is heavy tailed. The new criterion is based on the nonparametric estimator of regression coefficients. The method is illustrated with examples simulated from a class of distributions such as laplace, Slash and mixture of normal distributions and it is demonstrated that in all these cases, it selects proper subsets while the classical subset selection methods such as C p -statistic fail to do so. Further, it is shown that the proposed method is also useful whenever the data contains an influential or outlier observation.

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

multiple linear regression
subset selection
nonparametric estimator
outlier


The Generalized Minimum Spanning Tree Problem: Polyhedral analysis and branch-and-cut algorithm This article presents a branch-and-cut algorithm for the Generalized Minimum Spanning Tree Problem (GMSTP). Given an undirected graph whose vertex set is partitioned into clusters, the GMSTP consists of determining a minimum-cost tree including exactly one vertex per cluster. Applications of the GMSTP are encountered in telecommunications. An integer linear programming formulation is presented and new classes of valid inequalities are developed, several of which are proved to be facet-defining. A branch-and-cut algorithm and a tabu search heuristic are developed. Extensive computational experiments show that instances involving up to 160 or 200 vertices can be solved to optimality, depending on whether edge costs are Euclidean or random. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

O B I I I O B I O O O O O O O O O O O B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O 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 minimum spanning tree
telecommunications
polyhedral analysis
tabu search heuristic


Sentiment cascades in the 15M movement Recent grassroots movements have suggested that online social networks might play a key role in their organization, as adherents have a fast, many-to-many, communication channel to help coordinate their mobilization. The structure and dynamics of the networks constructed from the digital traces of protesters have been analyzed to some extent recently. However, less effort has been devoted to the analysis of the semantic content of messages exchanged during the protest. Using the data obtained from a microblogging service during the brewing and active phases of the 15M movement in Spain, we perform the first large scale test of theories on collective emotions and social interaction in collective actions. Our findings show that activity and information cascades in the movement are larger in the presence of negative collective emotions and when users express themselves in terms related to social content. At the level of individual participants, our results show that their social integration in the movement, as measured through social network metrics, increases with their level of engagement and of expression of negativity. Our findings show that non-rational factors play a role in the formation and activity of social movements through online media, having important consequences for viral spreading.

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


Secure Computation of the Median (and Other Elements of Specified Ranks) We consider the problem of securely computing the kth-ranked element of the union of two or more large, confidential data sets. This is a fundamental question motivated by many practical contexts. For example, two competitive companies may wish to compute the median salary of their combined employee populations without revealing to each other the exact salaries of their employees. While protocols do exist for computing the kth-ranked element, they require time that is at least linear in the sum of the sizes of their combined inputs. This paper investigates two-party and multi-party protocols for both the semi-honest and malicious cases. In the two-party setting, we prove that the problem can be solved in a number of rounds that is logarithmic in k, where each round requires communication and computation cost that is linear in b, the number of bits needed to describe each element of the input data. In the multi-party setting, we prove that the number of rounds is linear in b, where each round has overhead proportional to b multiplied by the number of parties. The multi-party protocol can be used in the two-party case. The overhead introduced by our protocols closely match the communication complexity lower bound. Our protocols can handle a malicious adversary via simple consistency checks.

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

secure function evaluation
secure multi-party computation
kth-ranked element
semi-honest adversary


Automatic versus manual model differentiation to compute sensitivities and solve non-linear inverse problems Emerging tools for automatic differentiation (AD) of computer programs should be of great benefit for the implementation of many derivative-based numerical methods such as those used for inverse modeling. The Odyssee software, one such tool for Fortran 77 codes, has been tested on a sample model that solves a 2D non-linear diffusion-type equation. Odyssee offers both the forward and the reverse differentiation modes, that produce the tangent and the cotangent models, respectively. The two modes have been implemented on the sample application. A comparison is made with a manually-produced differentiated code for this model (MD), obtained by solving the adjoint equations associated with the model's discrete state equations. Following a presentation of the methods and tools and of their relative advantages and drawbacks, the performances of the codes produced by the manual and automatic methods are compared, in terms of accuracy and of computing efficiency (CPU and memory needs). The perturbation method (finite-difference approximation of derivatives) is also used as a reference. Based on the test of Taylor, the accuracy of the two AD modes proves to be excellent and as high as machine precision permits, a good indication of Odyssee's capability to produce error-free codes. In comparison, the manually-produced derivatives (MD) sometimes appear to be slightly biased, which is likely due to the fact that a theoretical model (state equations) and a practical model (computer program) do not exactly coincide, while the accuracy of the perturbation method is very uncertain. The MD code largely outperforms all other methods in computing efficiency, a subject of current research for the improvement of AD tools. Yet these tools can already be of considerable help for the computer implementation of many numerical methods, avoiding the tedious task of hand-coding the differentiation of complex algorithms. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

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

code differentiation
optimization
adjoint state
data assimilation
sensitivity analysis


Multimodal epistemic ?ukasiewicz logics with application in immune system We offer a new logic, a multimodal epistemic ?ukasiewicz logic, which is an extension of the infinitely valued ?ukasiewicz logic, the language of the logic is an extended by unary connectives that are interpreted as modal operators (knowledge operators). We propose the use such a logic in studying immune system. A relational system is developed as a semantic of this logic. The relational systems represent the immune system which in its turn is a part of relational biology.

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

agent
many-valued logic
epistemic logic
kripke model


S-3: A Spectral and Spatial Measure of Local Perceived Sharpness in Natural Images This paper presents an algorithm designed to measure the local perceived sharpness in an image. Our method utilizes both spectral and spatial properties of the image: For each block, we measure the slope of the magnitude spectrum and the total spatial variation. These measures are then adjusted to account for visual perception, and then, the adjusted measures are combined via a weighted geometric mean. The resulting measure, i.e., S-3 (spectral and spatial sharpness), yields a perceived sharpness map in which greater values denote perceptually sharper regions. This map can be collapsed into a single index, which quantifies the overall perceived sharpness of the whole image. We demonstrate the utility of the S-3 measure for within-image and across-image sharpness prediction, no-reference image quality assessment of blurred images, and monotonic estimation of the standard deviation of the impulse response used in Gaussian blurring. We further evaluate the accuracy of in local sharpness estimation by comparing S-3 maps to sharpness maps generated by human subjects. We show that S-3 can generate sharpness maps, which are highly correlated with the human-subject maps.

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

blur
human visual system (hvs)
natural scenes
spectral slope
total variation (tv)


quality adaptation for congestion controlled video playback over the internet Streaming audio and video applications are becoming increasingly popular on the Internet, and the lack of effective congestion control in such applications is now a cause for significant concern. The problem is one of adapting the compression without requiring video-servers to re-encode the data, and fitting the resulting stream into the rapidly varying available bandwidth. At the same time, rapid fluctuations in quality will be disturbing to the users and should be avoided.In this paper we present a mechanism for using layered video in the context of unicast congestion control. This quality adaptation mechanism adds and drops layers of the video stream to perform long-term coarse-grain adaptation, while using a TCP-friendly congestion control mechanism to react to congestion on very short timescales. The mismatches between the two timescales are absorbed using buffering at the receiver. We present an efficient-scheme for the distribution of buffering among the active layers. Our scheme allows the server to trade short-term improvement for long-term smoothing of quality. We discuss the issues involved in implementing and tuning such a mechanism, and present our simulation results.

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

applications
video
quality
simulation
context
congestion control
paper
audio
users
data
bandwidth
tuning
internet
server
compression
congestion
scheme

activation
fit
streams
efficiency
timing
buffers
video stream
adapt
layer
smooth
distributed
effect
encode


vector field based shape deformations We present an approach to define shape deformations by constructing and interactively modifying C 1 continuous time-dependent divergence-free vector fields. The deformation is obtained by a path line integration of the mesh vertices. This way, the deformation is volume-preserving, free of (local and global) self-intersections, feature preserving, smoothness preserving, and local. Different modeling metaphors support the approach which is able to modify the vector field on-the-fly according to the user input. The approach works at interactive frame rates for moderate mesh sizes, and the numerical integration preserves the volume with a high accuracy.

O 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


NKG2D and Natural Cytotoxicity Receptors Are Involved in Natural Killer Cell Interaction with Self-Antigen Presenting Cells and Stromal Cells It is thought that human natural killer (NK) lymphocytes should not damage self-tissues due to the inhibiting signal initiated by the engagement of one or another inhibitory receptor superfamily (IRS) members with self-human histocompatibility antigen (HLA)-I. During viral infection, the low expression of self-HLA-I on infected-cells leads to a reduction of the inhibiting signal and thus NK cells kill self-cells (missing self-hypothesis). Here, we have analyzed human NK cell interaction with self-cells as antigen-presenting cells (APC) or stromal cells isolated from bone marrow or skin. Despite the expression of high levels of HLA-I, APC and stromal cells are killed by interleukin (IL)-2-activated NK cells upon lymphocyte function antigen (LFA)1(intracellular adhesion molecule) (ICAM)1 interaction. The natural cytotoxicity receptors NKp30 and NKp46 are responsible for the delivery of lethal hit to APC, whereas NKG2D-activating receptor, the ligand of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-related molecule MICA, and the UL16-binding protein are involved in stromal cell killing. These events are dependent on the activation of phosphoinositol 3-kinase and consequent release of perforins and granzymes. Both bone marrow stromal cells and skin fibroblasts inhibit T cell proliferation to alloantigen or triggering through CD3/T cell receptor complex. Importantly, NK cells can revert this veto effect. Altogether, these findings support the notion that NK cells can recognize self-cells possibly affecting both APC function and interaction between lymphocytes and microenvironment leading to autoreactivity

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

stromal cells
nkg2d
natural cytotoxicity receptors

natural killer cells
mesenchymal stem cells
skin fibroblast
antigen-presenting cells


The unbiased black-box complexity of partition is polynomial Unbiased black-box complexity was introduced as a refined complexity model for random-ized search heuristics (Lehre and Witt (2012) [24]). For several problems, this notion avoids the unrealistically low complexity results given by the classical model of Droste et al. (2006) [10]. We show that for some problems the unbiased black-box complexity remains artificially small. More precisely, for two different formulations of an NP NP -hard subclass of the well-known Partition problem, we give mutation-only unbiased black-box algorithms having complexity O(nlog?n) O ( n log ? n ) . This indicates that also the unary unbiased black-box complexity does not give a complete picture of the true difficulty of this problem for randomized search heuristics.

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

heuristic search
run time analysis
evolutionary computation


Ubiquitous conceptual design of a ubiquitous application: A textile SME case study for real time manufacturing monitoring An index to evaluate the ubiquitous level of product-service systems was proposed. A framework integrating methods and tools supported the conceptual design stage. HardwareSoftware were integrated through a Ubiquitous Design Support Environment. An industrial implementation allowed the evaluation of a Ubiquitous service.

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

ubiquitous conceptual design
ubiquitous design support environment

ubiquitous technologies
artifact and service combination
fuzzy inference system


Chlorcast (c): a methodology for developing decision-making tools for chlorine disinfection control Managers of drinking water supply systems are increasingly preoccupied with changes that may occur in the quality of water from the time it leaves the treatment plant until it reaches the consumer's tap. Modeling the quality of water in a distribution system and more particularly the evolution of residual chlorine may constitute an interesting means for more efficient management. This article presents the Chlorcast(C) methodology which provides the guidelines on building a decision-making tool, based on the use of artificial neural networks, for chlorination control in the final disinfecting phase. Two examples will demonstrate the ability of this method to represent the dynamics of the evolution of residual chlorine by making it possible to forecast residual chlorine in the City of Sainte-Foy's drinking water tank and distribution system. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

residual chlorine
drinking water
modeling

distribution systems
water quality
neural network


The effect of solutal undercooling on double-diffusive convection and macrosegregation during binary alloy solidification: a numerical investigation In this paper, we present a macroscopic numerical model that is capable of capturing the interaction between the double-diffusive convective field and a localized fluid flow on account of solutal undercooling during non-equilibrium solidification of binary alloys. The model is essentially based on a fixed-grid enthalpy based control volume approach. In the present model, microscopic features pertaining to nonequilibrium effects on account of solutal undercooling are incorporated through the formulation of a modified partition-coefficient. The effective partition-coefficient is numerically modelled by means of a number of macroscopically observable parameters related to the solidifying domain. This feature has made the present treatment different from micro-macro modelling of alloy solidification, which involves certain parameters that may not be macroscopically resolvable. Numerical simulations are performed for the case of two-dimensional transient solidification of Pb-Sn alloys (both hypoeutectic and hypereutectic) in a rectangular cavity, employing the present model. The simulation results are also compared with the corresponding experimental results quoted in the literature, and the agreement is excellent. From the results, it can be concluded that non-equilibrium effects on account of solutal undercooling result in a more enhanced macrosegregation. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

macroscopic
solutal undercooling
macrosegregation

double-diffusive convection
modification of partition-coefficient


A flabellate overlay network for multi-attribute search Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology provides a popular way of distributing resources, sharing, and locating in a large-scale distributed environment. However, most of the current existing P2P systems only support queries over a single resource attribute, such as file name. The current multiple resource attribute search methods often encounter high maintenance cost and lack of resilience to the highly dynamic environment of P2P networks. In this paper, we propose a Flabellate overlAy Network (FAN), a scalable and structured underlying P2P overlay supporting resource queries over multi-dimensional attributes. In FAN, the resources are mapped into a multi-dimensional Cartesian space based on the consistent hash values of the resource attributes. The mapping space is divided into non-overlapping and continuous subspaces based on the peers distance. This paper presents strategies for managing the extended adjacent subspaces, which is crucial to network maintenance and resource search in FAN. The algorithms of a basic resource search and range query over FAN are also presented in this paper. To alleviate the load of the hot nodes, a virtual replica network (VRN) consisting of the nodes with the same replicates is proposed for replicating popular resources adaptively. The queries can be forwarded from the heavily loaded nodes to the lightly loaded ones through VRN. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that FAN has a higher routing efficiency and lower network maintenance cost over the existing multi-attribute search methods. Also, VRN efficiently balances the network load and reduces the querying delay in FAN while invoking a relatively low overhead.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

peer-to-peer network
multi-attribute search
file replication


Digital mammography: A world without film? Objectives: eDiaMoND is a next generation Internet ("Grid") multidisciplinary research project funded by the UK e-Science Programme with the following objectives; the development of a next generation Internet enabled prototype to demonstrate the potential benefits of a national infrastructure to support digital mammography; the exploration of potential benefits for digital mammography systems, with particular emphasis being placed on selected applications, namely, screening, training, computer-aided detection and appropriate support for epidemiological studies. Methods: EDiaMoND has worked in conjunction with selected clinical partners to enable the collection of valuable mammography information and the design of applications based upon extensive requirements gathering exercises. The clinical partners validated both the immediate needs and assisted with defining future needs of such an architecture to support the UK Health Service. Results: The project has succeeded in invoking the interest of clinical partners and representatives of the UK NHS Breast Screening Programme in our vision of a world without film, albeit a long way off. The project has also succeeded in identifying the barriers to adopting this approach with the current limitations within the NHS, and has developed a blueprint for working towards this strategy. Conclusions. A UK national digital mammography archive has the potential to provide major benefits for the UK. For example, such an archive could: ensure that previous mammograms are always available, and could link up seamlessly the screening, assessment and symptomatic clinics; it could provide a huge teaching and training resource; it could be a huge resource for epidemiological studies.

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

digital mammography
nhs breast screening programme


Integrated biometric verification system using soft computing approach Among various biometric verification systems, fingerprint verification is one of the most reliable and widely accepted. One essential part of fingerprint verification is the minutiae extraction system. Most existing minutiae extraction methods require image preprocessing or post processing resulting in additional complex computation and time. Hence, direct gray-scale minutiae extraction approach on the image is preferred. One of these approaches is the use of Fuzzy Neural Network (FNN) as a recognition system to detect the presence of minutiae pattern. Currently, the development of FNN as a tool of recognition has shown a promising prospect. Some researchers have proposed several types of FNN. In particular, a Generic Self Organizing Fuzzy Neural Network (GENSOFNN) has been shown to excel in comparison with other FNN. Therefore, a new approach to perform direct gray-scale minutiae extraction based on GENSOFNN is proposed in this paper. Experimental results show the potential of using GENSOFNN for real-time point of sale (POS) terminal for verification.

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

biometric verification
fingerprint verification
fuzzy neural network
minutiae