cache-aware partitioning of multi-dimensional iteration spaces The need for high performance per watt has led to development of multi-core systems such as the Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the Intel quad-core Kentsfield processor. Maximal exploitation of the hardware parallelism supported by such systems necessitates the development of concurrent software. This, in part, entails automatic parallelization of programs and efficient mapping of the parallelized program onto the different cores. The latter affects the load balance between the different cores which in turn has a direct impact on performance. In light of the fact that, parallel loops, such as a parallel DO loop in Fortran, account for a large percentage of the total execution time, we focus on the problem of how to efficiently partition the iteration space of (possibly) nested perfect/non-perfect parallel loops. In this regard, one of the key aspects is how to efficiently capture the cache behavior as the cache subsystem is often the main performance bottleneck in multi-core systems. In this paper, we present a novel profile-guided compiler technique for cache-aware scheduling of iteration spaces of such loops. Specifically, we propose a technique for iteration space scheduling which captures the effect of variation in the number of cache misses across the iteration space. Subsequently, we propose a general approach to capture the variation of both the number of cache misses and computation across the iteration space. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach on a dedicated 4-way Intel Xeon based multiprocessor using several kernels from the industry-standard SPEC CPU2000 and CPU2006 benchmarks achieving speedups upto 62.5\%.

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

partitioning
iteration space
parallel loops


Two-stage report generation in long-reach EPON for enhanced delay performance Long-reach passive optical networks (LR-PONs), as a part of the next generation PON technologies, aim at combining the capacity of metro and access networks so that the telecommunication network topology is simplified and the operational cost is reduced. However, in order to eliminate the delay performance degradation introduced by long propagation distance, LR-PONs call for bandwidth distribution schemes that are different than the existing schemes for conventional PONs. In this paper, we propose a new bandwidth distribution approach which employs a two-stage buffering mechanism at the ONUs and adopts the reduced delay advantage of multi-thread polling. REPORT generator at an ONU generates the requests by using an adaptive burst assembly process. According to the proposed scheme, ONUs maintain time threshold and size threshold values for the upstream input queues. Upon receipt of a GATE message, each ONU runs an adaptive burst assembly procedure to set the appropriate time and size thresholds and determines the bandwidth request of the REPORT message. We evaluate our proposed bandwidth distribution scheme by simulations for the ONU-OLT distances of 20 km and 100 km. The simulation results confirm that consolidation of multi-thread polling and two-stage buffering enhances the delay performance of long-reach EPON (LR-EPON). Furthermore, under heavy loads, the proposed scheme leads to high utilization of the upstream channel. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 bandwidth allocation
long-reach epon
multi-process polling


Modelling and multi-parametric control for delivery of anaesthetic agents This article presents model predictive controllers (MPCs) and multi-parametric model-based controllers for delivery of anaesthetic agents. The MPC can take into account constraints on drug delivery rates and state of the patient but requires solving an optimization problem at regular time intervals. The multi-parametric controller has all the advantages of the MPC and does not require repetitive solution of optimization problem for its implementation. This is achieved by obtaining the optimal drug delivery rates as a set of explicit functions of the state of the patient. The derivation of the controllers relies on using detailed models of the system. A compartmental model for the delivery of three drugs for anaesthesia is developed. The key feature of this model is that mean arterial pressure, cardiac output and unconsciousness of the patient can be simultaneously regulated. This is achieved by using three drugs: dopamine (DP), sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and isoflurane. A number of dynamic simulation experiments are carried out for the validation of the model. The model is then used for the design of model predictive and multi-parametric controllers, and the performance of the controllers is analyzed.

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

compartmental model
delivery of anaesthetic agents

model predictive control
multi-parametric control


Automatic segmentation algorithm for the extraction of lumen region and boundary from endoscopic images A new segmentation algorithm for lumen region detection and boundary extraction from gastro-intestinal (GI) images is presented. The proposed algorithm consists of two steps. First, a preliminary region of interest (ROI) representing the GI lumen is segmented by an adaptive progressive thresholding (APT) technique. Then, an adaptive filter, the Iris filter, is applied to the ROI to determine the actual region. It has been observed that the combined APT-iris filter technique can enhance and detect the unclear boundaries in the lumen region of GI images and thus produces a more accurate lumen region, compared with the existing techniques. Experiments are carried out to determine the maximum error on the extracted boundary with respect to an expert-annotated boundary technique. Investigations show that, based on the experimental results obtained from 50 endoscopic images, the maximum error is reduced by up to 72 pixels for a 256 x 256 image representation compared with other existing techniques. In addition, a new boundary extraction algorithm, based on a heuristic search on the neighbourhood pixels, is employed to obtain a connected single pixel width outer boundary using two preferential sequence windows. Experimental results are also presented to justify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

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

endoscopic images
progressive thresholding
iris filter
heuristic search
region detection
boundary extraction


Basic aspects of phase changes under high pressure Some substances of technological importance reveal phase change phenomena in the pressure and temperature range typically applied in biotechnology and food processing. For example, media with high molar volumes like edible oils and fats undergo liquidsolid phase transition at pressure increases up to several hundred megapascals. This article is concerned with theoretical considerations of the line of coexistence of solid and liquid phases in the pressure and temperature domain that corresponds to the phase boundary as a function of temperature and pressure. A universal model equation based on the equilibrium thermodynamics allowing prediction of the phase transition line of homogeneous media with high molar volume is presented. Approximate solutions of the model equation are discussed, which allow the phase boundary of substances with high molar volume to be described by a linear relation at least sequentially. The methods of experimental determination of the phase boundary under high pressure are presented and an attempt is made to validate the theoretical model with respect to the experimental data.

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

phase boundary
phase change
edible oils
high pressure


A tool for aggregation with words The need of computing with words has become an important topic in many areas dealing with vague information. The aim of this paper is to present different tools which support computing with words. Especially, we are concerned with the weighted aggregation of linguistic term sets, whose results are just the words themselves without using the fuzzy numbers that represent the semantics of their linguistic terms. We propose a new aggregation operator, referred to as the symbolic weighted median that computes the most representative element from an ordered collection of weighted linguistic terms. This operator aggregates the linguistic labels such that its result is expressed in terms of the initial linguistic term set though is modified by using dedicated tools called the generalized symbolic modifiers. One advantage of this proposal is that the expression domain does not change: we increase or decrease the granularity only where it becomes necessary. Additionally this new operator exhibits several interesting mathematical properties.

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

linguistic tools
decision making
median aggregation operator
weighted information


A real-time pressure estimation algorithm for closed-loop combustion control The cylinder pressure is arguably the most important variable characterizing the combustion process in internal combustion engines. In light of the recent advances in combustion technologies and in engine control, the use of cylinder pressure is now frequently considered as a feedback signal for closed-loop combustion control algorithms. In order to generate an accurate pressure trace for real-time combustion control and diagnostics, the output of the in-cylinder pressure transducer must be conditioned with signal processing methods to mitigate the well-known issues of offset and noise. While several techniques have been proposed for processing the cylinder pressure signal with limited computational burden, most of the available methods still require one to apply low-pass filters or moving average windows in order to mitigate the noise. This ultimately limits the opportunity of exploiting the in-cylinder pressure feedback for a cycle-by-cycle control of the combustion process. To this extent, this paper presents an estimation algorithm that extracts the pressure signal from the in-cylinder sensor in real-time, allowing for estimating the 50% burn rate location and IMEP on a cycle-by-cycle basis. The proposed approach relies on a model-based estimation algorithm whose starting point is a crank-angle based engine combustion model that predicts the in-cylinder pressure from the definition of a burn rate function. Linear parameter varying (LPV) techniques are then used to expand the region of estimation to cover the engine operating map, as well as allowing for real-time cylinder estimation during transients. The estimator is tested on the experimental data collected on an engine dynamometer as well as on a high-fidelity engine simulator. The results obtained show the effectiveness of the estimator in reconstructing the cylinder pressure on a crank-angle basis and in rejecting measurement noise and modeling errors, with considerably low computation effort.

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

extended kalman filter
linear parameter varying systems
genetic algorithms


Three-dimensional analysis of complex branching vessels in confocal microscopy images The characteristic of confocal microscopy (CM) vascular data is that it contains many tiny vessels with branching and complex structure. In this work, an automated method for quantitative analysis and reconstruction of cerebral vessels from CM images is presented in which the extracted centerline of the vessels plays the key role. To assess the efficiency and accuracy of different centerline extraction methods, a comparison among three fully automated approaches is given. The centerline extraction methods studied in this work are a snake model, a path planning approach, and a distance transform-based method. To evaluate the accuracy of the quantitative parameters of vessels such as length and diameter, we apply the method to synthetic data. These results indicate that the snake model and the path planning method are more accurate in extracting the quantitative parameters. The efficiency of the approach in clinical applications is then confirmed by applying the method to real CM images. All three methods investigated in this work are accurate enough to correctly distinguish between normal and stroke brain data, while the snake model is the fastest for clinical applications. In addition, three-dimensional visualization, reconstruction, and characterization of CM vascular images of rat brains are presented.

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

centerline extraction
snake model
path planning
confocal microscopy


Mapping condition-dependent regulation of metabolism in yeast through genome-scale modeling The genome-scale metabolic model of Saccharomyces cerevisiae , first presented in 2003, was the first genome-scale network reconstruction for a eukaryotic organism. Since then continuous efforts have been made in order to improve and expand the yeast metabolic network.

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

genome-scale metabolic model
integrated analysis
transcriptionally controlled reactions


Editorial Security is of ultimate importance to the global communication and information networks. Both academia and industry have seen the importance of the R&D activities in security and communication networks, and a great deal of resources has been invested by both governments and private sectors around the world to enhance the security of global information and communication networks, which virtually cover all regions of the world. Therefore, the timely launch of Security and Communications Networks is of great interest to the world community. In this inaugural issue, worldwide experts contribute their papers, covering various important research areas in security. Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

biometrics
authentication
wireless sensor network
next generation mobile network
dos attack
voip traffic
quantum key distribution network
key management
survivable network
massive online game


Optimizing the Software Architecture for Extensibility in Hard Real-Time Distributed Systems We consider a set of control tasks that must be executed on distributed platforms so that end-to-end latencies are within deadlines. We investigate how to allocate tasks to nodes, pack signals to messages, allocate messages to buses, and assign priorities to tasks and messages, so that the design is extensible and robust with respect to changes in task requirements. We adopt a notion of extensibility metric that measures how much the execution times of tasks can be increased without violating end-to-end deadlines. We optimize the task and message design with respect to this metric by adopting a mathematical programming front-end followed by postprocessing heuristics. The proposed algorithm as applied to industrial strength test cases shows its effectiveness in optimizing extensibility and a marked improvement in running time with respect to an approach based on randomized optimization.

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

design space exploration
distributed system
platform-based design
real-time


multiobjective network design for realistic traffic models Network topology design problems find application in several reallife scenarios. However, most designs in the past either optimize for a single criterion like delay or assume simplistic traffic models like Poisson. Such assumptions make the solutions inapplicable in the practical world.In this paper, we formulate and solve a multiobjective network topology design problem for a realistic Internet traffic model which is assumed to be self similar. We optimize for the average packet delivery delay and network layout cost to construct realistic network topologies. We present a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) to obtain the diverse near-optimal network topologies. For fair comparison, we design a multiobjective deterministic heuristic based on branch exchange -- we call the heuristic Pareto Branch Exchange (PBE). We empirically show that the MOEA used performs well for real networks of various sizes, and generated topologies are quite different with significantly larger delays for the self similar traffic model.

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 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

optimization methods
heuristics
self-similar traffic
genetic algorithm
pareto front
multiobjective optimization
combinatorial optimization


perceptually-supported image editing of text and graphics This extended abstract reprises our UIST '03 paper on "Perceptually-Supported Image Editing of Text and Graphics." We introduce a novel image editing program, called ScanScribe , that emphasizes easy selection and manipulation of material found in informal, casual documents such as sketches, handwritten notes, whiteboard images, screen snapshots, and scanned documents.

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

graphics paper informal text image scanscribe material manipulation

platform
tool
object
interfaces
imaging
group
occlusion
model
scan
evaluation
lighting
user
image processing
pointing device
select
user test
research
structure
method
wypiwyg
transparency
recognition
rendering
prototype
edit
sketching
proven
rough document
lattice grouping
logic
perceptual document editing
bitmap image
algorithm
foreground/background
laboratory
documentation
snapshot
image analysis.
update


transforming trace information in architectural documents into re-usable and effective traceability links Architectural analysis processes, such as the Architecture Trade-off and Analysis Method (ATAM), utilize a scenario based approach to evaluate the extent to which an architectural solution meets a potentially competing set of quality goals. The resulting architectural documents contain a rich set of trace relationships between quality goals, decisions, and architectural elements. Unfortunately this information is not readily accessible for supporting tasks other than initial architectural assessments. In this paper we describe a technique and supporting tools for extracting and generating traceability links from the architectural documents. A specialized Traceability Information Model is used to guide the user through the task of establishing traceability links from design decisions to the architectural elements in which the decision is realized. The retrieved and generated traceability links can then be used to support a far broader set of activities including visualization of design rationale and architectural preservation. We evaluate our approach using a case study of the NASA Crew Exploration Vehicle.

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

traceability
architectural preservation
design rationale


using many-core architectural templates for fpga-based computing (abstract only) Truly unleashing the computing potential of FPGAs, as well as widening their applicability, demands alleviating cumbersome HDL programming and relieving laborious manual optimization. Towards this end, we propose a Many-core Approach to Reconfigurable Computing (MARC) that enables efficient high-performance computing for applications expressed with imperative programming languages such as C/C++ without constructing FPGA computing machines from scratch when targeting various applications within the same or similar problem domains. A MARC system achieves high computing performance by leveraging a many-core architectural template, sophisticated logic synthesizing techniques, and state-of-art compiler optimization technology. In addition, MARC exploits abundant special FPGA resources such as distributed block memories and DSP blocks to implement complete single-chip high efficiency many-core microarchitectures. The key benefits of MARC include (i) allowing programmers to easily express parallelism through a high-level programming language, (ii) supporting coarse-grain multithreading and dataflow-style fine-grain threading while permitting bit-level resource control, and (iii) greatly reducing the effort required to re-purpose the hardware system for different algorithms or different applications.

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


The removal of nanoparticles from sub-micron trenches using megasonics The removal of nanoparticles form patterned wafers is one of the main challenges facing the semiconductor industry. In this paper, the removal of 100 and 200nm polystyrene latex (PSL) particles from silicon trenches was investigated. Red fluorescent PSL particles were utilized in the cleaning experiments and were counted using fluorescent microscopy. All the experiments were conducted in a single wafer megasonic tank using deionized water (DI). Trenches were fabricated with widths varying from 200nm to 2?m and with an aspect ratio of one. Results show that removal of particles from larger trenches is faster compared to smaller trenches and that megasonics power is more important in the removal process than cleaning time.

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

effect of power on particle removal from trenches

effect of time on particle removal from trenches


influence of different system abstractions on the performance analysis of distributed real-time systems System level performance analysis plays a fundamental role in the design process of real-time embedded systems. Several different approaches have been presented so far to address the problem of accurate performance analysis of distributed embedded systems in early design stages. The existing formal analysis methods are based on essentially different concepts of abstraction. However, the influence of these different models on the accuracy of the system analysis is widely unknown, as a direct comparison of performance analysis methods has not been considered so far. We define a set of benchmarks aimed at the evaluation of performance analysis techniques for distributed systems. We apply different analysis methods to the benchmarks and compare the results obtained in terms of accuracy and analysis times, highlighting the specific effects of the various abstractions. We also point out several pitfalls for the analysis accuracy of single approaches and investigate the reasons for pessimistic performance predictions.

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


iTravel: A recommender system in mobile peer-to-peer environment Recommender systems in mobile tourism have attracted considerable interest during the past decade. However, most existing recommender systems in mobile tourism fail to exploit information, evaluations or ratings provided by other tourists of similar interests. In this research, we propose to facilitate attraction recommendation task by exploring other tourists ratings on their visited attractions. The proposed approach employs mobile peer-to-peer communications for exchanging ratings via their mobile devices. A cost-effective travel recommender systemiTravelthus is developed to provide tourists with on-tour attraction recommendation. We propose three data exchange methods that allow users to effectively exchange their ratings toward visited attractions. Simulated experiments are performed to evaluate the proposed data exchange methods and a user study is conducted to validate the usability of the proposed iTravel system.

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

mobile peer-to-peer network
travel information system
mobile commerce


Formal models of appraisal: Theory, specification, and computational model Cognitive appraisal theories (CATs) explain human emotions as a result of the subjective evaluation of events that occur in the environment. Recently, arguments have been put forward that discuss the need for formal descriptions in order to further advance the field of cognitive appraisal theory. Formal descriptions can provide detailed predictions and help to integrate different CATs by providing clear identification of the differences and similarities between theories. A computational model of emotion that is based on a CAT also needs formal descriptions specifying the theory on which it is based. In this paper we propose a formal notation for the declarative semantics of the structure of appraisal. We claim that this formalism facilitates both integration of appraisal theories as well as the design and evaluation of computational models of emotion based on an appraisal theory. To support these claims we show how our formalism can be used in both ways: first we integrate two appraisal theories; second, we use this formal integrated model as basis for a computational model after identifying what declarative information is missing in the formal model. Finally, we embed the computational model in an emotional agent, and show how the formal specification helps to evaluate the computational model.

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

cognitive appraisal theory
emotion
formalism

affective computing
computational modeling
theory analysis


Storage Coding for Wear Leveling in Flash Memories Flash memory is a nonvolatile computer memory comprised of blocks of cells, wherein each cell is implemented as either NAND or NOR floating gate. NAND flash is currently the most widely used type of flash memory. In a NAND flash memory, every block of cells consists of numerous pages; rewriting even a single page requires the whole block to be erased and reprogrammed. Block erasures determine both the longevity and the efficiency of a flash memory. Therefore, when data in a NAND flash memory are reorganized, minimizing the total number of block erasures required to achieve the desired data movement is an important goal. This leads to the flash data movement problem studied in this paper. We show that coding can significantly reduce the number of block erasures required for data movement, and present several optimal or nearly optimal data-movement algorithms based upon ideas from coding theory and combinatorics. In particular, we show that the sorting-based (noncoding) schemes require O(n log n) erasures to move data among n blocks, whereas coding-based schemes require only O(n) erasures. Furthermore, coding-based schemes use only one auxiliary block, which is the best possible and achieve a good balance between the number of erasures in each of the n + 1 blocks.

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

coding theory
combinatorics
flash memory
wear leveling


Shortcomings of low-cost imaging systems for viewing computed radiographs Objective: To assess potential advantages of a new PC-based viewing tool featuring image post-processing for viewing computed radiographs on low-cost hardware (PC) with a common display card and color monitor, and to evaluate the effect of using color versus monochrome monitors. Materials and Methods: Computed radiographs of a statistical phantom were viewed on a PC, with and without post-processing (spatial frequency and contrast processing), employing a monochrome or a color monitor. Findings were compared with the viewing on a radiological Workstation and evaluated with ROC analysis. Results: Image post-processing improved the perception of low-contrast details significantly irrespective of the monitor used. No significant difference in perception was observed between monochrome and color monitors. The review at the radiological Workstation was superior to the review done using the PC with image processing. Conclusion: Lower quality hardware (graphic card and monitor) used in low cost PCs negatively affects perception of low-contrast details in computed radiographs. In this situation, it is highly recommended to use spatial frequency and contrast processing. No significant quality gain has been observed for the high-end monochrome monitor compared to the color display. However, the color monitor was affected stronger by high ambient illumination.

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


M. H. Newman's typability algorithm for lambda-calculus This article is essentially an extended review with historical comments. It looks at an algorithm published in 1943 by M. H. A. Newman, which decides whether a lambda-calculus term is typable without actually computing its principal type. Newmans algorithm seems to have been completely neglected by the type-theorists who invented their own rather different typability algorithms over 15 years later.

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 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


The Type Discipline of Behavioral Separation We introduce the concept of behavioral separation as a general principle for disciplining interference in higher-order imperative concurrent programs, and present a type-based approach that systematically develops the concept in the context of an ML-like language extended with concurrency and synchronization primitives. Behavioral separation builds on notions originally introduced for behavioral type systems and separation logics, but shifts the focus from the separation of static program state properties towards the separation of dynamic usage behaviors of runtime values. Behavioral separation types specify how values may be safely used by client code, and can enforce fine-grained interference control disciplines while preserving compositionality, information hiding, and flexibility. We illustrate how our type system, even if based on a small set of general primitives, is already able to tackle fairly challenging program idioms, involving aliasing at various types, concurrency with first-class threads, manipulation of linked data structures, behavioral borrowing, and invariant-based separation.

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

behavioral types
higher order programming


A relative map approach to SLAM based on shift and rotation invariants This paper presents a solution to the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) problem in the stochastic map framework based on the concept of the relative map. The idea consists in introducing a map state, which only contains relative quantities among the features invariant under shift and rotation. The estimation of this relative state is carried out through an Extended Kalman Filter. The shift and rotation invariance of the state allows us to significantly reduce the computational burden. In particular, the computational requirement is independent of the number of features. Furthermore, since the estimation process is local, it is not affected by the linearization introduced by the EKF. The cases of point features and corner features are considered. Furthermore, in the case of corners, it is considered a realistic case of an indoor environment containing structures consisting of several corners. Finally, since a relative map contains dependent elements, the information coming from all the constraints which express the elements dependency, is exploited. For this, an approximated solution with low computational requirement is proposed. Its limitation arises at the loop closure since it cannot exploit the information in this case. This is discussed in depth for the case of point features. Experimental results carried out on a real platform in our laboratory and by using the Victoria park dataset show the performance of the approach.

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


a framework for enforcing application policies in database systems As database systems have grown in terms of scale and complexity, administration tasks have become increasingly difficult and time consuming. A scarcity of skilled database professionals has meant that human costs have begun to dominate the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a database system. Database vendors are under immense pressure to provide solutions that make their products easy to administer in areas such as problem diagnostics, monitoring, query tuning, access control and system configuration. To address this issue, we have built a framework that allows control over many administration operations via the use of policies. Users can uniformly define, manage and enforce policies to affect disparate aspects of the system. In our framework, policies are declarative constructs that are comprised of type, scope, condition and action. Policy groups cover query monitoring and tuning, query prioritization, system configuration, access control, report generation, etc. Policy scope defines the domain over which policies apply. Policy actions are performed if certain conditions are true. This framework has been fully integrated into DB2 for z/OS V9. Using detailed system performance evaluations, we report that enforcement of policies is largely a function of data-collection granularity. Under the setting for normal monitoring with minimal report, the overhead on system performance is very low (0.1\%).

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


Circuit and EM Modeling of Wideband High Power VHF/UHF Combiners Design of wideband high power VHF/UHF combiners requires developing accurate equivalent circuit models. These high power combining structures generally use nonplanar lines and ferrite cores to enhance their power handling capabilities. For optimum and accurate design, part of these equivalent models should be based on full wave EM analysis. In this article, we present such detailed analysis and give examples for wideband isolating and nonisolating power combiners, along with a novel flux canceling circuitry that has been developed to potentially improve the intermodulation distortion performance of these power combiners. Good agreement between measured and simulated results has been successfully demonstrated for both designs with over 30-450 MHz bandwidth and less than half decibel insertion loss. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. lot J RF and Microwave CAE 19: 481-491, 2009.

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

vhf/uhf combiner
coaxial baluns
magnetic core


A combined DEMFEM numerical method for Shot Peening parameter optimisation A novel combined DEMFEM method for Shot Peening optimisation is presented. The model provides a rapid method to investigate the effect of the peening parameters. A new algorithm was implemented accounting for impact dependent coefficients of restitution. The minimum area required in the analyses to obtain true residual stresses was determined.

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

shot peening
residual stresses
optimisation

discrete element method
finite element method
numerical simulation


IPOG/IPOG-D: efficient test generation for multi-way combinatorial testing This paper presents two strategies for multi-way testing (i.e. t-way testing with t>2). The first strategy generalizes an existing strategy, called in-parameter-order, from pairwise testing to multi-way testing. This strategy requires all multi-way combinations to be explicitly enumerated. When the number of multi-way combinations is large, however, explicit enumeration can be prohibitive in terms of both the space for storing these combinations and the time needed to enumerate them. To alleviate this problem, the second strategy combines the first strategy with a recursive construction procedure to reduce the number of multi-way combinations that have to be enumerated. Both strategies are deterministic, i.e. they always produce the same test set for the same system configuration. This paper reports a multi-way testing tool called FireEye, and provides an analytic and experimental evaluation of the two strategies. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

interaction testing
multi-way testing
software testing


StreamFlex: High-throughput stream programming in Java The stream programming paradigm aims to expose coarse-grained parallelism in applications that must process continuous sequences of events. The appeal of stream programming comes from its conceptual simplicity. A program is a collection of independent filters which communicate by the means of uni-directional data channels. This model lends itself naturally to concurrent and efficient implementations on modern multiprocessors. As the output behavior of filters is determined by the state of their input channels, stream programs have fewer opportunities for the errors (such as data races and deadlocks) that plague shared memory concurrent programming. This paper introduces STREAMFLEX, an extension to Java which marries streams with objects and thus enables to combine, in the same Java virtual machine, stream processing code with traditional object-oriented components. STREAMFLEX targets high-throughput low-latency applications with stringent quality-of-service requirements. To achieve these goals, it must, at the same time, extend and restrict Java. To allow for program optimization and provide latency guarantees, the STREAMFLEX compiler restricts Java by imposing a stricter typing discipline on filters. On the other hand, STREAMFLEX extends the Java virtual machine with real-time capabilities, transactional memory and type-safe region-based allocation. The result is a rich and expressive language that can be implemented efficiently.

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

languages
experimentation.
real-time systems
memory management
ownership types


Data-scaling problems in neural-network training In the present paper, data-scaling problems in feedforward neural-network training are discussed. These problems appear when the experimental data to be learned vary across a wide interval, and when, after the data has been scaled, a part of the information in the data is lost. To solve these problems, a parametric output function of the neurons is proposed here. It allows the data-scaling region to be increased by the introduction of two new parameters. During the process of backpropagation learning, the relative square error is minimized. In this way, the loss of information is avoided, since the modified neural network can be trained to account equally for the biggest and the smallest values in the training data set. Two examples of neural-network models of biotechnological processes are presented. A comparison with the classical feedforward neural-network models is made. Different approaches used in training with the new parameters are discussed.

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

relative square error
biotechnological processes

feedforward neural networks
data scaling
error backpropagation method


Minimizing makespan on an m-machine re-entrant flowshop This paper focuses on an m-machine re-entrant flowshop scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing makespan. In the re-entrant flowshop considered here, routes of all jobs are identical as in ordinary flowshops, but the jobs must be processed multiple times on the machines. We present heuristic algorithms, which are modified from well-known existing algorithms for the general m-machine flowshop, problem or newly developed in this research. For evaluation of the performance of the algorithms, computational experiments are performed on randomly generated test problems and results are reported. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Developing and validating a citizen-centric typology for smart city services A typological framework for classifying smart city services is proposed. This typology is based on the citizen centric view derived from marketing literature. Four identified dimensions are mode, purpose, service authority and delivery. Automate-Informative-Transformative (technology), Hedonic-Utilitarian (purpose). Voluntary-Mandatory (service authority) and Passive-Interactive (delivery mode).

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

intelligent city
ubiquitous city
city services
citizen-centricity
service typology


A finite automata approach to modeling the cross product of interconnection networks This paper describes a modeling technique, finite state automata (FA) model, for the cross product of interconnection networks. The primary purpose of the proposed modeling technique is to provide a mechanism for developing efficient routing and novel embedding algorithms, which we refer to as node-independent algorithms, for product networks. In contrast to the current embedding algorithms which are node dependent (their output is a set of adjacent node labels which forms the desired topology), the embedding algorithms developed in this paper are rule-based. That is, they generate a set of rules (input sequences to the FA model of the network) which can be used by any node for mapping a desired topology into the network. Furthermore, a new interconnection topology, called Ring Connected Cycles (RCC), is introduced. The main objective of introducing RCC networks is to illustrate the use of the FA model to develop node-independent embedding as well as routing algorithms. In addition, to demonstrate the generality of the proposed technique, FA models of several popular interconnection networks (such as n-cubes and la-star graphs) are presented. The RCC networks are proposed in this paper as a possible communication network for parallel multicomputers or as an alternative to the ring topology for local area networks. An RCC network can execute grid, mesh and ring algorithms as efficiently as the grid, mesh, and ring networks. It is shown in Section 6 that this significant amount of computational versatility offered by RCC networks comes at no additional VLSI area cost over the same size ring, grid, or mesh networks. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

automata model
cross product networks
graph embedding


Polyphonic Music Transcription by Nonnegative Matrix Factorization with Harmonicity and Temporality Criteria Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is widely used for music transcription because of its efficiency. However, the conventional NMF-based music transcription algorithm often causes harmonic confusion errors or time split-up errors, because the NMF decomposes the time-frequency data according to the activated frequency in its time. To solve these problems, we proposed an NMF with temporal continuity and harmonicity constraints. The temporal continuity constraint prevented the time split-up of the continuous time components, and the harmonicity constraint helped to bind the fundamental with harmonic frequencies by reducing the additional octave error. The transcription performance of the proposed algorithm was compared with that of the conventional algorithms, which showed that the proposed method helped to reduce additional false errors and increased the overall transcription performance.

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

harmonicity constraint
polyphonic music transcription

non-negative matrix factorization
temporality constraint


Generalized vector version of Minty's lemma and applications In this paper, we consider a generalized vector version of Minty's lemma, and then show the existence of solutions to generalized vector variational-type inequality problems for set-valued mappings as an application. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

generalized vector version of minty's lemma


CDMA with power control and sequence design: The capacity region with and without multidimensional signaling We consider the symbol-synchronous code-division multiple-access (CDMA) channel in which every user is assigned a rate at which arbitrarily reliable transmission in the Shannon sense is to be guaranteed. For an overloaded system in which the number of active users exceeds the available processing gain, we optimally design the users' signature sequences and a power-control policy to minimize the required sum-power (i.e., sum of the users' powers) while meeting the rate-tuple constraint with a (joint) maximum-likelihood receiver. This result is extended to find the power-constrained capacity region of the system; this is the set of all achievable rate-tuples over all signature sequences and power-control policies whose sum-power is constrained. Furthermore, it is shown that this capacity region may be substantially and maximally expanded in those regions where there are oversized users whose rate requirements are relatively large compared to those of the other users; this is accomplished by allowing for the flexibility of multidimensional signaling in the sense of a user simultaneously transmitting several different scalar symbols, each modulated by its own signature sequence. From the viewpoint of resource efficiency, this means that a multicarrier approach is essential in systems that support multiple classes of users. Finally, we also address the dual problem of determining the region of valid power-control policies subject to a sum-capacity constraint on the system.

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

capacity region
power control
sequence design

code-division multiple access (cdma)
decision-feedback receiver
maximum-likelihood receiver
multicarrier cdma
power region
welch bound


Building electronic trading infrastructures: A public or private responsibility? In this article we analyze the creation of electronic trading infrastructures using electronic data interchange standards and associated technologies. We compare the genesis and evolution of such infrastructures in Denmark, Finland, and Hong Kong. This article analyzes 8 specific attempts to build trading infrastructures in these 3 countries. The article probes how these initiatives support the building efforts by analyzing them with a 2-D framework. The framework distinguishes between the strategic intent of the initiative and the type of initiator. In each case, the dynamics of the initiative and its success are examined. The analysis shows that the building of trading infrastructures can take place through multiple paths-called patterns in this study-and it can be pulled or pushed by multiple forces. As a result, this article draws conclusions on how each pattern can help in building the infrastructure. The analysis demonstrates that the trading infrastructure in Hong Kong has largely emerged through grassroot bricolage. In Finland and Denmark, in contrast, public institutions or state-owned monopolies have played a critical role. On a theoretical level, this study calls for the need to expand the scope of analysis beyond individual adopting organizations when analyzing electronic trading infrastructures, and shows that there is also a need to probe industries and public institutions when studying electronic infrastructure development.

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

electronic infrastructure
hong kong
denmark
finland

international trading
electronic data interchange (edi)
diffusion
institutional theory
field study


?-STOCK, a powerful tool of thermohydromechanical behaviour and damage modelling of unsaturated porous media A brief review of the basic points of a suction-based heat, moisture transfer and skeleton deformation equations for an unsaturated medium is presented. The main issues such as: two temperature-dependent state surfaces of void ratio and degree of saturation which are used to present the coupling effects of temperature, moisture content and deformation of skeleton; the new thermoelastoplastic constitutive law, etc. are briefly mentioned. The BubnovGalerkin integral form of field equations has been developed as the basis of spatial and temporal discretized matrix form. The single-step integration in time is described. The numerical solution algorithm of the finite element package, ?-STOCK, is presented. Some application cases are presented and discussed to show the strong ability of presented model and the prepared numerical package.

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

thermohydromechanical behaviour
damage modelling

unsaturated soil
finite element method
elastoplastic behaviour
multiphase porous media


Singularity analysis of a 3DOF parallel manipulator using infinite constraint plane method In this article a novel geometrical method is presented to obtain singular points of a parallel manipulator. First, the constrained plain method (CPM) and some of its application in parallel mechanism is introduced. Given the definition of constraint plane (CP) and infinite constraint plane (ICP) the dependency conditions of constraints is achieved with the use of a new theorem based on the Ceva geometrical theorem. Another theorem is used to achieve the direction of angular velocity of a body having three ICPs. Finally, as an example, using these two theorems, singularities of the 3UPS_PU mechanism are obtained. This method is completely geometrical, involving no complex or massive calculations and yields the answer quickly. In the previous methods based on the Grassmann geometry, the mechanism needs to be statically analyzed at first, so that the Inverse Jacobian matrix is achieved, and then the Plucker-vector is derived. It usually needs exhaustive search of the workspace using an accurate analytical model of the mechanism kinematics and may lead to plenty of conditions remained to be pondered in order to obtain the singularity conditions.

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


NV-Heaps: Making Persistent Objects Fast and Safe with Next-Generation, Non-Volatile Memories Persistent, user-defined objects present an attractive abstraction for working with non-volatile program state. However, the slow speed of persistent storage (i.e., disk) has restricted their design and limited their performance. Fast, byte-addressable, non-volatile technologies, such as phase change memory, will remove this constraint and allow programmers to build high-performance, persistent data structures in non-volatile storage that is almost as fast as DRAM. Creating these data structures requires a system that is lightweight enough to expose the performance of the underlying memories but also ensures safety in the presence of application and system failures by avoiding familiar bugs such as dangling pointers, multiple free()s, and locking errors. In addition, the system must prevent new types of hard-to-find pointer safety bugs that only arise with persistent objects. These bugs are especially dangerous since any corruption they cause will be permanent. We have implemented a lightweight, high-performance persistent object system called NV-heaps that provides transactional semantics while preventing these errors and providing a model for persistence that is easy to use and reason about. We implement search trees, hash tables, sparse graphs, and arrays using NV-heaps, BerkeleyDB, and Stasis. Our results show that NV-heap performance scales with thread count and that data structures implemented using NV-heaps out-perform BerkeleyDB and Stasis implementations by 32x and 244x, respectively, by avoiding the operating system and minimizing other software overheads. We also quantify the cost of enforcing the safety guarantees that NV-heaps provide and measure the costs of NV-heap primitive operations.

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

design
performance
persistent objects
pointer safety

reliability
non-volatile heap
phase-change memory
spin-torque transfer memory
acid transactions
memory management
transactional memory


CONGRUENCE DISTRIBUTIVITY IMPLIES BOUNDED WIDTH We show that a constraint language with compatible Jonsson terms (or, equivalently, associated with an algebra generating a congruence distributive variety) defines a constraint satisfaction problem solvable by the local consistency checking algorithm.

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

constraint satisfaction problem
bounded width
local consistency
congruence distributive variety
jonsson terms


inference and minimization of hidden markov chains A hidden Markov chain (hmc) is a finite ergodic Markov chain in which each of the states is labelled 0 or 1. As the Markov chain moves through a random trajectory, the hmc emits a 0 or a 1 at each times step according to the label of the state just entered. The inference problem is to construct a mechanism which will emit 0's and 1's and which is equivalent to a given hmc in the sense of having identical long-term behavior. We define the inference problem in a learning setting in which an algorithm can query an oracle for the long-term probability of any binary string. We prove that inference is hard: any algorithm for inference must make exponentially many oracle calls. Our method is information-theoretic and does not depend on separation assumptions for any complexity classes. We show that the related discrimination problem is also hard, but that on a nontrivial subclass of hmc's there is a randomized algorithm for discrimination. Finally, we give a polynomial-time algorithm for reducing a hidden Markov chain to its minimal form, and from this there follows a new algorithm for equivalence of hmc's.

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

label method inference oracle behavior probability complexity learning algorithm minimal query

polynomial
trajectories
timing
randomization
informal
strings
randomized algorithm
class


Scheduling of a multi-product batch process in the chemical industry We present an example of a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model for the scheduling of a multi-product batch process occurring in the chemical industry. The batch process considered is organized in several stages. Various final products are produced out of a single feedstock by a number of chemical processes. The major scheduling objective is to minimize the makespan, i.e., to complete the required production operations within the shortest possible time. The complexity of the scheduling problem is determined by such factors as variable batch sizes, shared intermediates, flexible proportions of output goods, blending processes, sequence and usage dependent cleaning operations, finite intermediate storage, cyclical material flows, and no-wait production for certain types of products. Due to the fact that computational times are prohibitive for problems of realistic size, we developed various LP-based heuristics. The heuristics proposed are applied to relaxations of the original multi-period MILP model. Thus, computational results are obtained a magnitude faster. Furthermore, near-optimal solutions are made possible for larger problems within seasonable computational time. In order to evaluate the applicability of the heuristics, a number of numerical experiments were performed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

B 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 B I O O O O 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


the cosima prototype for multi-objective bargaining Multi-objective bargaining is a challenging business model for B2C or B2B Internet applications. Our visual bargaining agent COSIMA builds on cooperative database technology like Preference SQL or Preference XPATH, which can efficiently implement \linebreak[4] multi-dimensional search engines with a Pareto-optimality semantics to find best alternative offers. COSIMA is a smart avatar with dynamically generated speech output. We have implemented several well-known bargaining strategies for a sample e-shop, where the customer can bargain on more attributes than just the price. The life-like appearance of COSIMA is supported by randomizing her bargaining tactics and by expressing visual emotions during bargaining. She can also learn and adapt dynamically to various bargaining preferences of the customers. The COSIMA prototype is carefully engineered by means of component-ware and IT-standards including SQL, XML and Java. This makes it scalable even to very large e-shop databases. Measurements show that this advanced user interface of COSIMA requires only a small overhead of a few seconds, including the bidding process. Thus real-time performance using state-of-the art software components and hardware is feasible. A preliminary user feedback has been very encouraging. COSIMA gave her debut to a large professional audience at the computer fair CeBIT 2002.

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


a colour display unit for a 21-channel eeg-monitor A system for the simultaneous display of several functions of one or two variables has been developed. One-variable functions are represented by their graphs, while two-variable functions are displayed by means of contour maps, with a light intensity proportional to the displayed value. By assigning a fixed colour to each contour map, it is possible to superimpose different maps without losing charity. The display unit is connected with a microprocessor system, which allows the real-time calculation and display of time-changing functions. The primary application of the system is the representation of the distribution of the spectral contents of EEG (electro-encephalographic) signals on the surface of the head.

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

real-time display
digital plotting
interpolation
electro-encephalography
graphical characters
parallel microprocessors


game design from the lens of a student The efficacy of games-based instruction in computer science education ultimately depends on the student experience. As there remains a continued emphasis on the use of games in computer science education, there is a need for a deeper exploration on the impact of the structure of game design and development courses on computer science student's overall experience. Though current research reflects the benefits of games within computer science courses, there is limited research that depicts the voice of the students. Student's insight is both necessary and relevant both to researchers and educators if games are to be sought to further the agenda of increasing participation in computer science education. This paper describes a game design course from the lens of six graduate students; it explores some of their challenges and their gratifications.

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


Junction detection in handwritten documents and its application to writer identification This paper describes a simple and efficient junction detection method in handwritten documents. The proposed junction detection method yields a junction feature in a general manner. The proposed junction features and Junclets were applied to writer identification and junction retrieval.

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

junction detection
writer identification
junclets


A unified approach for hierarchical adaptive tesselation of surfaces This paper introduces a unified and general tesselation algorithm for parametric and implicit surfaces. The algorithm produces a hierarchical mesh that is adapted to the surface geometry and has a multiresolution and progressive structure. This representation can be exploited with advantages in several applications.

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

adapted meshes
geometric modeling
multiresolution representations
parametric surfaces
polygonization
surface approximation


Rendezvous-based collaboration between autonomous entities: centric versus associative Rendezvous-based synchronization of concurrent autonomous entities is typically described in centric form distributed among the entities. An alternative associative form is also rendezvous-based but shared between entities. This abstraction from collaboration is a descriptive unit and makes synchronization of entities simple and implicit. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

abstraction
collaboration
autonomous entities


Onboard monocular pedestrian detection by combining spatio-temporal hog with structure from motion algorithm In this paper, we brought out a novel pedestrian detection framework for the advanced driver assistance system of mobile platform under the normal urban street environment. Different from the conventional systems that focus on the pedestrian detection at near distance by interfusing multiple sensors (such as radar, laser and infrared camera), our system has achieved the pedestrian detection at all (near, middle and long) distance on a normally driven vehicle (140km/h) with monocular camera under the street scenes. Since pedestrians typically exhibit not only their human-like shape but also the unique human movements generated by their legs and arms, we use the spatio-temporal histogram of oriented gradient (STHOG) to describe the pedestrian appearance and motion features. The shape and movement of a pedestrian will be described by a unique feature produced by concatenating the spatial and temporal histograms. A STHOG detector trained by the AdaBoost algorithm will be applied to the images stabilized by the structure from motion (SfM) algorithm with geometric ground constraint. The main contributions of this work include: (1) ground constraint with monocular camera to reduce the computational cost and false alarms; (2) preprocessing by stabilizing the successive images captured from mobile camera with the SfM algorithm; (3) long-distance (maximum 100m) pedestrian detection at various velocities (140km/h). Through the extensive experiments under different city scenes, the effectiveness of our algorithm has been proved.

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

pedestrian detection
structure from motion

spatio-temporal hog
onboard monocular camera


Spatially-resolved metabolic cooperativity within dense bacterial colonies The exchange of metabolites and the reprogramming of metabolism in response to shifting microenvironmental conditions can drive subpopulations of cells within colonies toward divergent behaviors. Understanding the interactions of these subpopulationstheir potential for competition as well as cooperationrequires both a metabolic model capable of accounting for a wide range of environmental conditions, and a detailed dynamic description of the cells shared extracellular space.

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

flux balance analysis
reaction-diffusion modeling
crossfeeding
colony modeling


multi objective higher order mutation testing with gp Mutation testing is a powerful software engineering technique for fault finding. It works by injecting known faults (mutations) into software and seeing if the test suite finds them. It remains very expensive and the few valuable traditional mutants that resemble real faults are mixed in with many others that denote unrealistic faults. The expense and lack of realism inhibit industrial uptake of mutation testing. Genetic programming searches the space of complex faults to find realistic higher order mutants. Despite the much larger search space, we have found mutants composed of multiple changes to the C source code that challenge the tester and which cannot be represented in the first order space.

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

higher order mutation
genetic programming
mutation testing

tcas
triangle
pareto optimality
schedule


Energy-efficient cache node placement using genetic algorithm in wireless sensor networks Wireless sensor network (WSN) applications are required to report events and service queries with minimum delay and minimal energy consumption. The network lifetime of a WSN can be extended if the amount of communication in the network is reduced. We can achieve this by caching useful data closer to the requesting node. Caching successfully reduces data access latency and also the number of packet transmissions in the network, thereby increasing network lifetime. However, the important aspect of caching schemes is to identify nodes that can implement caching decisions and also place such cache nodes in a way that they can provide services to as many sensor nodes as possible in their vicinity. This has led to the study of optimal deployment of these cache nodes in a WSN. We carried out experiments to demonstrate the use of a multi-objective genetic algorithm (GA) for cache node placement in a WSN. In this paper, GA optimization aims to increase two parameters: sensors per cache in charge and field coverage. We also show that the GA successfully helps in selecting sensor nodes to implement caching and request forwarding decisions. Finally, we run the Scaled Power Community Index Cooperative Caching scheme (scaPCICC) on the optimized network and compare the delay and total number of overhead messages in the network. We conclude that by reducing the number of messages in the network and reducing the data access latency, the energy consumption of the network is reduced and network lifetime is increased. The experiments were run on MATLAB and ns2.

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

wireless sensor network
deployment
genetic algorithm
cache
network lifetime


Skin Model Shapes: A new paradigm shift for geometric variations modelling in mechanical engineering ? We explain the core concept and fundamentals of Skin Model Shapes. Skin Model Shapes are Skin Model representatives from a simulation perspective. Approaches for the Skin Model Shape generation in discrete geometry are highlighted. Overview over applications for Skin Model Shapes in mechanical engineering is given.

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

geometric variations management
computer aided tolerancing
geometric product specification
shape modelling
shape representation


A communication-aware framework for parallel spatially explicit agent-based models Parallel spatially explicit agent-based models (SE-ABM) exploit high-performance and parallel computing to simulate spatial dynamics of complex geographic systems. The integration of parallel SE-ABM with CyberGIS could facilitate straightforward access to massive computational resources and geographic information systems to support pre- and post-simulation analysis and visualization. However, to benefit from CyberGIS integration, parallel SE-ABM must overcome the challenge of communication management for orchestrating many processor cores in parallel computing environments. This paper examines and addresses this challenge by describing a generic framework for the management of inter-processor communication to enable parallel SE-ABM to scale to high-performance parallel computers. The framework synthesizes four interrelated components: agent grouping, rectilinear domain decomposition, a communication-aware load-balancing strategy, and entity proxies. The results of a series of computational experiments based on a template agent-based model demonstrate that parallel computational efficiency diminishes as inter-processor communication increases, particularly when scaling a fixed-size model to thousands of processor cores. Therefore, effective communication management is crucial. The communication framework is shown to efficiently scale up to 2048 cores, demonstrating its ability to effectively scale to thousands of processor cores to support the simulation of billions of agents. In a simulated scenario, the communication-aware load-balancer reduced both overall simulation time and communication percentage improving overall computational efficiency. By examining and addressing inter-processor communication challenges, this research enables parallel SE-ABM to efficiently use high-performance computing resources, which reduces the barriers for synergistic integration with CyberGIS.

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

agent-based modeling
high performance computing
parallel communication


Creating probabilistic databases from duplicated data A major source of uncertainty in databases is the presence of duplicate items, i.e., records that refer to the same real-world entity. However, accurate deduplication is a difficult task and imperfect data cleaning may result in loss of valuable information. A reasonable alternative approach is to keep duplicates when the correct cleaning strategy is not certain, and utilize an efficient probabilistic query-answering technique to return query results along with probabilities of each answer being correct. In this paper, we present a flexible modular framework for scalably creating a probabilistic database out of a dirty relation of duplicated data and overview the challenges raised in utilizing this framework for large relations of string data. We study the problem of associating probabilities with duplicates that are detected using state-of-the-art scalable approximate join methods. We argue that standard thresholding techniques are not sufficiently robust for this task, and propose new clustering algorithms suitable for inferring duplicates and their associated probabilities. We show that the inferred probabilities accurately reflect the error in duplicate records.

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


Centroidal Voronoi diagrams for isotropic surface remeshing ? This paper proposes a new method for isotropic remeshing of triangulated surface meshes. Given a triangulated surface mesh to be resampled and a user-specified density function defined over it, we first distribute the desired number of samples by generalizing error diffusion, commonly used in image halftoning, to work directly on mesh triangles and feature edges. We then use the resulting sampling as an initial configuration for building a weighted centroidal Voronoi diagram in a conformal parameter space, where the specified density function is used for weighting. We finally create the mesh by lifting the corresponding constrained Delaunay triangulation from parameter space. A precise control over the sampling is obtained through a flexible design of the density function, the latter being possibly low-pass filtered to obtain a smoother gradation. We demonstrate the versatility of our approach through various remeshing examples.

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

error diffusion
centroidal voronoi diagram
constrained delaunay triangulation

surface sampling
parameterization
optimal cutting
polygonal schema


A MAP approach for joint motion estimation, segmentation, and super resolution Super resolution image reconstruction allows the recovery of a high-resolution (HR) image from several low-resolution images that are noisy, blurred, and down sampled. In this paper, we present a joint formulation for a complex super-resolution problem in which the scenes contain multiple independently moving objects. This formulation is built upon the maximum a posteriori (MAP) framework, which judiciously combines motion estimation, segmentation, and super resolution together. A cyclic coordinate descent optimization procedure is used to solve the MAP formulation, in which the motion fields, segmentation fields, and HR images are found in an alternate manner given the two others, respectively. Specifically, the gradient-based methods are employed to solve the HR image and motion fields, and an iterated conditional mode optimization method to obtain the segmentation fields. The proposed algorithm has been tested using a synthetic image sequence, the "Mobile and Calendar" sequence, and the original "Motorcycle and Car" sequence. The experiment results and error analyses verify the efficacy of this algorithm.

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

motion estimation
segmentation
super resolution

joint estimation
maximum a posteriori (map)


Multicore curve-based cryptoprocessor with reconfigurable modular arithmetic logic units over GF (2(n)) This paper presents a reconfigurable curve-based cryptoprocessor that accelerates scalar multiplication of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and HyperElliptic Curve Cryptography (HECC) of genus 2 over GF(2(n)). By allocating alpha copies of processing cores that embed reconfigurable Modular Arithmetic Logic Units (MALUs) over GFd(2(n)), the scalar multiplication of ECC/HECC can be accelerated by exploiting Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP). The supported field size can be arbitrary up to alpha(n + 1) - 1. The superscaling feature is facilitated by defining a single instruction that can be used for all field operations and point/divisor operations. In addition, the cryptoprocessor is fully programmable and it can handle various curve parameters and arbitrary irreducible polynomials. The cost, performance, and security trade-offs are thoroughly discussed for different hardware configurations and software programs. The synthesis results with a 0.13-mu m CMOS technology show that the proposed reconfigurable cryptoprocessor runs at 292 MHz, whereas the field sizes can be supported up to 587 bits. The compact and fastest configuration of our design is also synthesized with a fixed field size and irreducible polynomial. The results show that the scalar multiplication of ECC over GF(2(163)) and HECC over GF(2(83)) can be performed in 29 and 63 mu s, respectively.

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

multiprocessor systems
processor architectures
reconfigurable hardware
arithmetic and logic units
public key cryptosystems


The reconfigurable ring of processors: Fine-grain tree-structured computations We study fine-grain computation on the Reconfigurable Ring of Processors (RRP), a parallel architecture whose processing elements (PEs) are interconnected via a multiline reconfigurable bus, each of whose lines has one-packet width and can be configured, independently of other lines, to establish an arbitrary PE-to-PE connection. We present a ''cooperative'' message-passing protocol that will, in the presence of suitable implementation technology, endow an RRP with message latency that is logarithmic in the number of PEs a message passes over in transit. Our study focuses on the computational consequences of such latency in such an architecture. Our main results prove that: 1) an N-PE RRP can execute a sweep up or down an N-leaf complete binary tree in time proportional to log iv log log N; 2) a broad range of N-PE architectures, including N-PE RRPs, require time proportional to log N log log N to perform such a sweep.

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

dynamically reconfigurable parallel architectures


Interactive modelling for natural resource management We present a modelling approach to rapidly assess the effect of management decisions on ecological problems and demonstrate its use in fishery management. Each stage of the approach is controlled by a Graphical User Interface which allows a team of non-expert modellers to compare the outcomes of multiple model simulations and to decide what further simulation is needed. A distinguishing feature of the method is that it allows the goal of the management strategies to arise as a result of the interaction between the user and the model, rather than being defined a priori, as well as to change during the process in response to the information and the insight such modelling may provide. We envisage that a management team, rather than a single user, may also employ the method as an avenue for communication, in order to discuss the potentially conflicting aspects of different model outcomes along the path to finding workable compromises. We discuss an application of the approach to the sustainable management of a recreational fishery in a marine park in Western Australia.

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

interactive modelling
natural resource management
graphical user interface

optimisation
inverse modelling
participatory modelling


Reinforcement Learning: Psychologische und neurobiologische Aspekte Mathematische Modelle von neurobiologisch und psychologisch inspirierten Lernparadigmen gelten als Schlsseltechnologie fr Problemstellungen, die anhand klassischer Programmierung schwer zu lsen sind. Reinforcement Learning ist in diesem Zusammenhang eines dieser Paradigmen, welches mittlerweile recht erfolgreich in der Praxis eingesetzt wird (u.a. in der Robotik), um Verhalten durch Versuch und Irrtum zu erlernen. In diesem Artikel mchte ich etwas nher auf die in Zusammenhang stehenden neurobiologischen und psychologischen Aspekte eingehen, welche das Vorbild einer Vielzahl mathematischer Modelle sind. Gesamtheitlich betrachtet ist Reinforcement Learning nicht ausschlielich fr Lernen im Gehirn von Menschen und Tieren verantwortlich. Stattdessen findet ein groartiges Zusammenspiel mehrerer Paradigmen aus unterschiedlichen Hirnarealen statt, bei welchem auch Supervised- und Unsupervised Learning beteiligt sind.

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


Ranking of units on the DEA frontier with common weights Conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) assists decision makers in distinguishing between efficient and inefficient decision-making units (DMUs) in a homogeneous group. However, DEA does not provide more information about the efficient DMUs. This research proposes a methodology to determine one common set of weights for the performance indices of only DEA efficient DMUs. Then, these DMUs are ranked according to the efficiency score weighted by the common set of weights. For the decision maker, this ranking is based on the optimization of the group's efficiency.

B 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 B O O O O O O O O O


International trends in health science librarianship Part 9: the UK Scotland and Wales This is the 9th in a series of articles exploring international trends in health science librarianship. The previous article in this series looked at Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In this issue the focus is Scotland and Wales. There will be three or four more articles this year tracking trends in the Far East, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.

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

case studies
great britain (gb)
library and information professionals
national health service (nhs)
national strategies


Identification of a scaled-model riser dynamics through a combined computer vision and adaptive Kalman filter approach A projective geometry computer vision method maps object space into image space. Image coordinates were obtained through a mathematical morphology base algorithm. A compliant mechanism and a Lagrangian formulation was employed to model the riser. A Kalman filter used image coordinates to identify riser dynamics and a forcing term.

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

shaping filter
non-linear adaptive kalman filter
compliant mechanisms


Optimal randomizer efficiency in the bounded-storage model In the bounded-storage model for information-theoretically secure encryption and key-agreement one can prove the security of a cipher based on the sole assumption that the adversary's storage capacity is bounded, say by s bits, even if her computational power is unlimited. Assume that a random t-bit string R is either publicly available (e.g., the signal of a deep-space radio source) or broadcast by one of the legitimate parties. If s ns), or the adversary was assumed to be able to store only s actual bits of R rather than arbitrary s bits of information about R, or the adversary received a non-negligible amount of information about X. In this paper we prove the first non-restricted security result in the bounded-storage model: K is short, X is very long, and t needs to be only moderately larger than s + n. In fact, s/t can be-arbitrarily close to 1 and hence the storage bound is essentially optimal. The security can be proved also if R is not uniformly random, provided that the min-entropy of R is sufficiently greater than s.

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

bounded-storage model
unconditional security
one-time pad
information theory
min-entropy


Numerical simulation of interfacial flows by smoothed particle hydrodynamics An implementation of the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method is presented to treat two-dimensional interfacial flows, that is, flow fields with different fluids separated by sharp interfaces. Test cases are presented to show that the present formulation remains stable for low density ratios. In particular, results are compared with those obtained by other solution techniques, showing a good agreement. The classical dam-break problem is studied by the present two-phase approach and the effects of density-ratio variations are discussed. The role of air entrapment on loads is discussed. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

interface flows
multi-phase flows
fluid-structure interactions
impact flows
air-cushion effect