analysis and optimization of thermal issues in high-performance vlsi This paper provides an overview of various thermal issues in high-performance VLSI with especial attention to their implications for performance and reliability. More specifically, it examines the impact of thermal effects on both interconnect design and electromigration reliability and discusses their impact on the allowable current density limits. Furthermore, it also discusses how thermal and reliability constrained current density limits may conflict with those obtained through purely performance based criterion. Additionally, it is shown that chip level thermal effects can have a significant impact on large-scale circuit optimization techniques, including the clock-skew minimization scheme, and can influence other physical design problem formulations. Finally, high-current interconnect design rules for ESD and I/O circuits are also examined.

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

physical design
attention
influence
conflict
reliability
analysis
performance
design
interconnect
paper
rules
scheme
circuits

clock skew
optimality
large-scale
high-performance
effect
minimal


broadcast federation: an application-layer broadcast internetwork Researchers and commercial developers have proposed several protocols to enable efficient multi-point communication both at the IP layer and at the application or overlay layer. However, no single protocol has made enough headway in terms of deployment for it to span the entire Internet. In fact, we believe that none of the existing multicast or broadcast protocols will become the sole dominant Internet broadcasting technology any time in the near future. Instead, we expect islands of non-interoperable broadcast connectivity. To address this, we propose an architecture that enables the composition of different broadcast protocol, to provide an end-to-end broadcast service. We call this architecture the Broadcast Federation . In this paper, we describe the architecture along with a prototype implementation and preliminary results from the prototype.

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


New tendencies in subjective video quality evaluation This paper provides an overview of the new tendencies in the subjective assessment of the quality of video for Multimedia applications. New subjective assessment methods are here described together with the description of the new general approaches. Some motivations of these new approaches are also here provided.

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


Discovery of Latent Subcommunities in a Blog's Readership The blogosphere has grown to be a mainstream forum of social interaction as well as a commercially attractive source of information and influence. Tools are needed to better understand how communities that adhere to individual blogs are constituted in order to facilitate new personal, socially-focused browsing paradigms, and understand how blog content is consumed, which is of interest to blog authors, big media, and search. We present a novel approach to blog subcommunity characterization by modeling individual blog readers using mixtures of an extension to the LDA family that jointly models phrases and time, Ngram Topic over Time (NTOT), and cluster with a number of similarity measures using Affinity Propagation. We experiment with two datasets: a small set of blogs whose authors provide feedback, and a set of popular, highly commented blogs, which provide indicators of algorithm scalability and interpretability without prior knowledge of a given blog. The results offer useful insight to the blog authors about their commenting community, and are observed to offer an integrated perspective on the topics of discussion and members engaged in those discussions for unfamiliar blogs. Our approach also holds promise as a component of solutions to related problems, such as online entity resolution and role discovery.

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

algorithms
human factors
experimentation
topic models
web communities


Programmable RF photonic phase shifters based on FD-OP for optically controlled beamforming Multiple photonic phase shifters with low PN (phase noise) are achieved simultaneously. The phase shifter with low amplitude variation of <2.5dB is achieved. The phase shifter with phase deviation of <2 at 15GHz is achieved. The beam forming network can scan arbitrary beam angles because all the phase shifters have continuous phase control.

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

fourier-domain optical processor
microwave photonic phase shifter


Developing tools as plug-ins: TOPI 2011 special issue editorial Our knowledge of how to solve software engineering problems is increasingly being encapsulated in tools. These tools are at their strongest when they operate in a pre-existing integrated development environment (IDE). This approach allows integration with existing elements such as compilers, debuggers, profilers, visualizers, and numerous other development and, often, runtime tools. Tools and environments to increase software quality and productivity have always been an important aspect of software engineering. A plug-in is a modern way for incrementally adding new tools into existing environments. However, building tools as plug-ins can be challenging. How do they interact with the core environment? How do they interact with one another - especially since each developer may choose a different set of plug-ins? How can we share tools across different, and future, core development environments?

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

tools
development environments
software engineering


ON CLASSIFICATION WITH MISSING DATA USING ROUGH-NEURO-FUZZY SYSTEMS The paper presents a new approach to fuzzy classification in the case of missing data. Rough-fuzzy sets are incorporated into logical type neuro-fuzzy structures and a rough-neuro-fuzzy classifier is derived. Theorems which allow determining the structure of the rough-neuro-fuzzy classifier are given. Several experiments illustrating the performance of the rough-neuro-fuzzy classifier working in the case of missing features are described.

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

fuzzy sets
rough sets
neuro-fuzzy architectures


Cooperative Spectrum Sensing using Kalman Filter based Adaptive Fuzzy System for Cognitive Radio Networks Spectrum sensing is an important functionality for cognitive users to look for spectrum holes before taking transmission in dynamic spectrum access model. Unlike previous works that assume perfect knowledge of the SNR of the signal received from the primary user, in this paper we consider a realistic case where the SNR of the primary user's signal is unknown to both fusion center and cognitive radio terminals. A Kalman filter based adaptive Takagi and Sugeno's fuzzy system is designed to make the global spectrum sensing decision based on the observed energies from cognitive users. With the capacity of adapting system parameters, the fusion center can make a global sensing decision reliably without any requirement of channel state information, prior knowledge and prior probabilities of the primary user's signal. Numerical results prove that the sensing performance of the proposed scheme outperforms the performance of the equal gain combination based scheme, and matches the performance of the optimal soft combination scheme.

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

cooperative spectrum sensing
kalman filter
adaptive fuzzy system


force feedback and student reasoning The primary purpose of this case study was to examine whether force feedback within a computer simulation had an effect on reasoning by fifth grade students about concepts of gravity, mass, force, and motion. This study used a computer-based paddleball simulation with guided inquiry as the primary stimulus. The experimental group used the simulation with visual and force feedback; the control group used the simulation with visual feedback only. Work with the simulation was found to increase students' understanding of key concepts. Those in the experimental group performed better than those in the control group, particularly with regard to the effects of increased gravitational force.

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

haptic feedback
vorce feedback
science education
elementary education


The stalemate of cable digital switchover: A study of competition effects and deregulation This paper addresses the phenomenon of delayed cable digitization in Taiwan. IPTV influences positively the digitization of cable service after it acquires numerous customers. Overbuild of the equivalent-size rivalry increases digital cable adoption. The installed cable base also increases its digital penetration.

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

overbuilds
intra-platform competition
inter-platform competition
franchise


Human action detection via boosted local motion histograms This paper presents a novel learning method for human action detection in video sequences. The detecting problem is not limited in controlled settings like stationary background or invariant illumination, but studied in real scenarios. Spatio-temporal volume analysis for actions is adopted to solve the problem. To develop effective representation while remaining resistant to background motions, only motion information is exploited to define suitable descriptors for action volumes. On the other hand, action models are learned by using boosting techniques to select discriminative features for efficient classification. This paper also shows how the proposed method enables learning efficient action detectors, and validates them on publicly available datasets.

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

action retrieving
activity analysis
video understanding
visual surveillance


An automated methodology for performing time synchronous averaging of a gearbox signal without speed sensor In this paper we extend a sensorless algorithm proposed by Bonnardot et al. for angular resampling of the acceleration signal of a gearbox submitted to limited speed fluctuation. The previous algorithm estimates the shaft angular position by narrow-band demodulation of one harmonic of the mesh frequency. The harmonic was chosen by trial and error. This paper proposes a solution to select automatically the mesh harmonic used for the shaft angular position estimation. To do so it evaluates the local signal-to-noise ratio associated to the mesh harmonic and deduces the associated low-pass filtering effect on the time synchronous average (TSA) of the signal. Results are compared with the TSA obtained when using a tachometer on an industrial gearbox used for wastewater treatment. The proposed methodology requires only the knowledge of an approximate value of the running speed and the number of teeth of the gears. It forms an automated scheme which can prove useful for real-time diagnostic applications based on TSA where speed measurement is not possible or not advisable due to difficult environmental conditions.

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

time synchronous averaging without speed sensor


Reconstructing building mass models from UAV images A novel framework for automatic reconstruction of large scale urban scenes from UAV images. An object level point cloud segmentation algorithm and a roof extraction algorithm based on a regularized Markov random field formulation. An effective contour refinement method based on pivot point detection.

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

urban reconstruction
aerial images
graph cut


trends in onset detection Onset detection is the basis for several high-level musical processing tasks such as Beat Tracking, Chord Estimation or Music Genre Classification. In this paper, the complete process that leads from the "raw signal" to onset detection is described. The most important onset detection methods are reviewed, explained and organized in categories, according to the properties of their reduction functions: time domain reduction functions, spectral domain reduction functions, probabilistic reduction functions, pitch-based onset detection techniques and data-driven reduction functions. We also discuss the applications of onset detection to Human-Computer Interaction, more properly on the change of paradigm provided by the new Music Visualization and Browsing methods.

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

rhythm analysis
music information retrieval


Multicore challenges and benefits for high performance scientific computing Until recently, performance gains in processors were achieved largely by improvements in clock speeds and instruction level parallelism. Thus, applications could obtain performance increases with relatively minor changes by upgrading to the latest generation of computing hardware. Currently, however, processor performance improvements are realized by using multicore technology and hardware support for multiple threads within each core, and taking full advantage of this technology to improve the performance of applications requires exposure of extreme levels of software parallelism. We will here discuss the architecture of parallel computers constructed from many multicore chips as well as techniques for managing the complexity of programming such computers, including the hybrid message-passing/multi-threading programming model. We will illustrate these ideas with a hybrid distributed memory matrix multiply and a quantum chemistry algorithm for energy computation using Moller-Plesset perturbation theory.

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

hybrid programming model
multi-threading
message-passing
matrix multiplay


A linear algorithm for compact box-drawings of trees In a box-drawing of a rooted tree, each node is drawn by a rectangular box of prescribed size, no two boxes overlap each other, all boxes corresponding to siblings of the tree have the same x-coordinate at their left sides, and a parent node is drawn at a given distance apart from its first child. A box drawing of a tree is compact if it attains the minimum possible rectangular area enclosing the drawing. We give a linear-time algorithm for finding a compact box-drawing of a tree. A known algorithm does not always find a compact box-drawing and takes time O(n(2)) if a tree has n nodes. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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 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

graph drawing
tree drawing
box-drawing
compact drawing


Evaluation of the use of spectral and textural information by an evolutionary algorithm for multi-spectral imagery classification Considerably research has been conducted on automated and semi-automated techniques that incorporate image textural information into the decision process as an alternative to improve the information extraction from images while reducing time and cost. The challenge is the selection of the appropriate texture operators and the parameters to address a specific problem given the large set of available texture operators. In this study we evaluate the optimization characteristic of an evolutionary framework to evolve solutions combining spectral and textural information in non-linear mathematical equations to improve multi-spectral image classification. Twelve convolution-type texture operators were selected and divided into three groups. The application of these texture operators to a multi-spectral satellite image resulted into three new images (one for each of the texture operator groups considered). These images were used to evaluate the classification of features with similar spectral characteristics but with distinct textural pattern. Classification of these images using a standard image classification algorithm with and without the aid of the evolutionary framework have shown that the process aided by the evolutionary framework yield higher accuracy values in two out of three cases. The optimization characteristic of the evolutionary framework indicates its potential use as a data mining engine to reduce image dimensionality as the system improved accuracy values with reduced number of channels. In addition, the evolutionary framework reduces the time needed to develop custom solutions incorporating textural information, especially when the relation between the features being investigated and the image textural information is not fully understood.

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

genetic programming
remote sensing
image texture
evolutionary computation


Evaluating heuristics for tabletop user segmentation based on simultaneous interaction Differentiating users can enhance context-awareness adaptation on tabletops. Our algorithm for user segmentation is based on simultaneous manipulations. Our approach does not rely on additional hardware besides the tabletop. Three heuristic versions of the algorithm have been compared. The heuristic involving more knowledge on control distances outperforms the rest.

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


An empirical evaluation on dimensionality reduction schemes for dissimilarity-based classifications ? This paper presents an empirical evaluation on the methods of reducing the dimensionality of dissimilarity spaces for optimizing dissimilarity-based classifications (DBCs). One problem of DBCs is the high dimensionality of the dissimilarity spaces. To address this problem, two kinds of solutions have been proposed in the literature: prototype selection (PS) based methods and dimension reduction (DR) based methods. Although PS-based and DR-based methods have been explored separately by many researchers, not much analysis has been done on the study of comparing the two. Therefore, this paper aims to find a suitable method for optimizing DBCs by a comparative study. Our empirical evaluation, obtained with the two approaches for an artificial and three real-life benchmark databases, demonstrates that DR-based methods, such as principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) based methods, generally improve the classification accuracies more than PS-based methods. Especially, the experimental results demonstrate that PCA is more useful for the well-represented data sets, while LDA is more helpful for the small sample size problems.

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 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

dimensionality reduction schemes
linear discriminant analysis

dissimilarity-based classifications
prototype selection methods


An extension of Sugeno integral In this paper, we extend the concept of Sugeno fuzzy integral from nonnegative fuzzy measurable functions to extended real-valued fuzzy measurable functions and discuss the lost genuine properties for this extension; several necessary and sufficient conditions of absolute (S)-integrability for extended real-valued fuzzy measurable functions are given. Moreover, the space (S(mu), rho(.,.)) of all fuzzy measurable functions will be proved to be a pseudo-metric space under a necessary and sufficient condition. Finally, as an application of this extension the Pettis integral will be established for this kind of fuzzy integral. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier B.V.

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

fuzzy measure
(s)fuzzy integral
absolute (s)integrability
fuzzy measurable function
pseudo-metric space


Mining data with random forests: A survey and results of new tests Random forests (RF) has become a popular technique for classification, prediction, studying variable importance, variable selection, and outlier detection. There are numerous application examples of RF in a variety of fields. Several large scale comparisons including RF have been performed. There are numerous articles, where variable importance evaluations based on the variable importance measures available from RF are used for data exploration and understanding. Apart from the literature survey in RF area, this paper also presents results of new tests regarding variable rankings based on RF variable importance measures. We studied experimentally the consistency and generality of such rankings. Results of the studies indicate that there is no evidence supporting the belief in generality of such rankings. A high variance of variable importance evaluations was observed in the case of small number of trees and small data sets.

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

random forests
variable importance
variable selection


Multi-view stereo reconstruction of dense shape and complex appearance We address the problem of estimating the three-dimensional shape and complex appearance of a scene from a calibrated set of views under fixed illumination. Our approach relies on a rank condition that must be satisfied when the scene exhibits "specular + diffuse" reflectance characteristics. This constraint is used to define a cost functional for the discrepancy between the measured images and those generated by the estimate of the scene, rather than attempting to match image-to-image directly. Minimizing such a functional yields the optimal estimate of the shape of the scene, represented by a dense surface, as well as its radiance, represented by four functions defined on such a surface. These can be used to generate novel views that capture the non-Lambertian appearance of the scene.

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

image-based modeling and rendering
multi-view stereo
non-lambertian reflection
3-d shape reconstruction
variational methods
level set methods
appearance models


A ROUGH SET APPROACH TO REASONING UNDER UNCERTAINTY Reasoning with uncertain information is a problem of key importance when dealing with information about the real world. Obtaining the precise numbers required by many uncertainty handling formalisms can be a problem. The theory of rough sets makes it possible to handle uncertainty without the need for precise numbers, and so has some advantages in such situations. This paper presents an introduction to various forms of reasoning under uncertainty that are based on rough sets. In particular, a number of sets of numerical and symbolic truth values which may be used to augment propositional logic are developed, and a semantics for these values is provided based upon the notion of possible worlds. Methods of combining the truth values are developed so that they may be propagated when augmented logic formulae are combined, and their use is demonstrated in theorem proving.

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

rough sets
uncertainty
propositional logic


multi-level locking with deadlock avoidance The existence of multiple levels of resources in data base systems presents a problem when resources must be shared among contending users. For example, some users may be interested in an entire file while others are only interested in one or a few records of the file. Intention locks have previously been introduced to permit multiple levels of locking in conjunction with deadlock detection methods[1,2]. These intention locks can be view as housekeeping entries to record the pattern of usage of resources. When viewed in this way, no new locking modes need be exposed to a system user. Further, the basic idea behind intention locks can then be directly applied to systems which use deadlock avoidance methods[3,4].

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


On the nonlinear difference equation system xn+1=A+yn?m/xn x n + 1 = A + y n ? m / x n , yn+1=A+xn?m/yn y n + 1 = A + x n ? m / y n In this paper, we study the boundedness, persistence, and global asymptotic stability of positive solutions of the system of two difference equations

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

difference equation system
boundedness
persistence
global asymptotic stability


Computational modeling of oligonucleotide positional densities for human promoter prediction ? The gene promoter region controls transcriptional initiation of a gene, which is the most important step in gene regulation. In-silico detection of promoter region in genomic sequences has a number of applications in gene discovery and understanding gene expression regulation. However, computational prediction of eukaryotic poly-II promoters has remained a difficult task. This paper introduces a novel statistical technique for detecting promoter regions in long genomic sequences. A number of existing techniques analyze the occurrence frequencies of oligonucleotides in promoter sequences as compared to other genomic regions. In contrast, the present work studies the positional densities of oligonucleotides in promoter sequences. The analysis does not require any non-promoter sequence dataset or any model of the background oligonucleotide content of the genome. The statistical model learnt from a dataset of promoter sequences automatically recognizes a number of transcription factor binding sites simultaneously with their occurrence positions relative to the transcription start site. Based on this model, a continuous nave Bayes classifier is developed for the detection of human promoters and transcription start sites in genomic sequences. The present study extends the scope of statistical models in general promoter modeling and prediction. Promoter sequence features learnt by the model correlate well with known biological facts. Results of human transcription start site prediction compare favorably with existing 2nd generation promoter prediction tools.

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

bayesian networks
regulatory region prediction


Adaptive polygonization of implicit surfaces We present an algorithm for polygonizing closed implicit surfaces, which produces meshes adapted to the local curvature of the surface. Our method is similar to, but not based on, Marching Triangles, in that we start from a point on the surface and develop a mesh from that point using a surface-tracking approach. However, our approach works by managing fronts, or sets of points on the border of the current polygonization. Fronts can subdivide to form new fronts or merge if they become adjacent. In a marked departure from previous approaches, our meshes approximate the surface through heuristics relying on curvature. Furthermore, our method works completely on-the-fly, resolving cracks as it proceeds, without the need for any post-remeshing step to correct failures. We have tested the algorithm with three different representations of implicit surfaces, variational, analytical and MPU, using non-trivial data sets, yielding results that illustrate the flexibility and scalability of our technique. Performance comparisons with variants of Marching Cubes show that our approach is capable of good accuracy and meshing quality without sacrificing computing resources. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Embedded intelligence for fast QoS-based vertical handoff in heterogeneous wireless access networks One of the most important aspects of the modern communications deals with the access to wireless networks by mobile devices, looking for a good quality of service under the users preferences. Nevertheless, a mobile terminal can discover more than one network of different technology along its trajectory in heterogeneous scenarios, being capable of connecting to other wireless access points according to their quality of service values. This is the case of the vertical handoff decision phase, present in many sceneries such as 3G-LTE access networks. In this context, an efficient resource management of different networks (a good selection of weights for their quality of service parameters) constitutes an optimization problem, where several heuristic methods using simple rules try to find the best available network. Nevertheless, the characteristics of the current mobile devices advise to use fast and efficient algorithms to provide solutions near to real-time. These constraints have moved us to develop intelligent algorithms that avoid the slow and massive computations associated with direct search techniques, so reducing the computation time. In this paper we propose an evolutionary algorithm capable of computing rapidly in embedded processors, improving the performance of other algorithms designed in order to solve this optimization problem.

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


Synaptic equalization by anti-STDP Experimental evidence has shown that in some neuron types, such as hippocampal CA1 neurons, distally generated excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) are scaled up in amplitude compared to more proximally generated EPSPs such that EPSP magnitudes at the soma are approximately equal regardless of the dendritic location of origin. Using an equivalent cable model neuron, we show that a particular form of spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) called anti-STDP is capable of achieving this synaptic equalization. Anti-STDP equalizes synapses through the equalization of synaptic efficacies. We show this result for both a passive dendritic cable and for a cable containing a dendritic spike-initiation zone.

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

synaptic efficacy
spike-timing dependent plasticity
dendritic attenuation


Controllability and modularity of complex networks Two primary properties of complex networks, controllability and modularity not only are closely related to each other, but also play an important role in understanding the networks characteristics. In this paper, we discuss an elastic model to enhance the control of undirected networks and study the controllability of random networks with built-in gradually varied modularity as well as real-world networks to elaborate the correlation between the networks controllability and modularity. The results show that it is easier to control the networks with stronger modularity than that of weaker modularity, and the networks with larger size communities probably need more driver nodes to control than that of smaller size communities when we fix both the number of nodes and the number of links of the networks. In addition, the robustness analysis indicates that the model enhances the resistance of networks against link failure. This work shows that the controllability of complex networks is highly associated with the networks degree distribution as well as the networks modularity, which gives a new insight into the understanding of controllability and modularity of complex networks.

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


SAGE: String-overlap Assembly of GEnomes De novo genome assembly of next-generation sequencing data is one of the most important current problems in bioinformatics, essential in many biological applications. In spite of significant amount of work in this area, better solutions are still very much needed.

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


Graph classes and the complexity of the graph orientation minimizing the maximum weighted outdegree ? Given an undirected graph with edge weights, we are asked to find an orientation, that is, an assignment of a direction to each edge, so as to minimize the weighted maximum outdegree in the resulted directed graph. The problem is called MMO, and is a restricted variant of the well-known minimum makespan problem. As in previous studies, it is shown that MMO is in P P for trees, weak NP NP -hard for planar bipartite graphs, and strong NP NP -hard for general graphs. There are still gaps between those graph classes. The objective of this paper is to show tighter thresholds of complexity: We show that MMO is (i) in P P for cactus graphs, (ii) weakly NP NP -hard for outerplanar graphs, and also (iii)strongly NP NP -hard for graphs which are both planar and bipartite. This implies the NP NP -hardness for P4 P 4 -bipartite, diamond-free or house-free graphs, each of which is a superclass of cactus. We also show (iv)the NP NP -hardness for seriesparallel graphs and multi-outerplanar graphs, and (v)present a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm for graphs with bounded treewidth.

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

minmax optimization
np np -hardness np np np np np
(outer)planar
(p4 p 4 -)bipartite p4 p 4 p4 p 4 p 4


A screening model for simulating DNAPL flow and transport in porous media: theoretical development In the last two decades there has been an increased awareness of the contamination of groundwater due to the presence of denser-than-water nonaqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs). Numerous theoretical, experimental and numerical investigations have been conducted to study the various processes that impact aquifer contamination. These studies have provided us with greater insight into the individual processes and the complex nature of the problem. In spite of this progress, there still exists a need within the environmental community for a simple tool that will allow us to analyze a DNAPL contamination scenario from free-product release to transport of soluble constituents to downgradient receptor wells. Such a model may be useful in source term characterization for DNAPL releases to groundwater. The objective of this manuscript is to present the conceptual model and formulate the equations and modules which are utilized in this screening model. Three hypothetical releases are simulated and the results discussed to demonstrate the application and usefulness of this model. Due to its simplicity and ease of use, this screening model will be useful to industry, regulatory agencies and educators for estimating the impact of a DNAPL release on an aquifer.

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


Using Human Visual System modeling for bio-inspired low level image processing An efficient modeling of the processing occurring at retina level and in the V1 visual cortex has been proposed in [1]and[2]. The aim of the paper is to show the advantages of using such a modeling in order to develop efficient and fast bio-inspired modules for low level image processing. At the retina level, a spatio-temporal filtering ensures accurate structuring of video data (noise and illumination variation removal, static and dynamic contour enhancement). In the V1 cortex, a frequency and orientation based analysis is performed. The combined use of retina and V1 cortex modeling allows the development of low level image processing modules for contour enhancement, for moving contour extraction, for motion analysis and for motion event detection. Each module is described and its performances are evaluated. The retina model has been integrated into a real-time C/C++ optimized program which is also presented in this paper with the derived computer vision tools.

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

retina model
low level image processing
motion analysis

v1 cortex model
real-time processing
contour analysis
preprocessing
texture and structure enhancement
local adaptation


New general integral operator For ?i,?i ? i , ? i positive real numbers for all i=1,,n i = 1 , , n , we introduce a new integral operator of analytic functions I ? i , ? i ( f 1 , , f n ) ( z ) defined by I ? i , ? i ( f 1 , , f n ) ( z ) = ? 0 z ? i = 1 n ( f i ? ( t ) ) ? i ( f i ( t ) t ) ? i d t . In this paper, we obtain sufficient conditions for this operator to be in the class N(?) N ( ? ) . Furthermore, we determine the order of convexity of I ? i , ? i ( f 1 , , f n ) ( z ) .

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

analytic and univalent functions
starlike and convex functions


Exact computation of bivariate projection depth and the Stahel-Donoho estimator The idea of data depth provides a new and promising methodology for multivariate non-parametric analysis Nevertheless the computation of data depth and the depth function his remained as a very challenging problem which has hindered the methodology from becoming more prevailing in practice The same is true for the powerful Stahel-Donoho (S-D) estimator Here we present an exact algorithm for the computation of the bivariate projection depth (PD) of data points and consequently of the S-D estimator (C) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reserved

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


Multi-objective optimization in dynamics of the structures with nonlinear behavior: Contributions of the metamodels Multi-objective optimization is a tool for help of making decision in structural design in a pre-project or project phase. The procedures frequently employed in optimization require several reanalyses which are essential to calculate the generalized cost functions. But, the complexity of the especially nonlinear models and associated modeling makes these reanalyses long and sometimes impossible for reasons of calculation cost. To overcome these difficulties, in this paper we propose a strategy of multi-objective optimization where the parameters of design are deterministic. The objective of this strategy is to treat complex structures whose finite element model (FEM) is of large size in the presence of localised nonlinearities. It is based mainly on two steps, which are the calculation of the functions objectives and the search for the optimal design solutions. In the first step, we proposed two levels of FEM model reduction. The first level consists in reducing the modified model by a robust dynamic condensation method followed by an iterative procedure allowing to approach the stationary solution of the systems with several degrees of freedom (dof) subjected to harmonic excitations. It can lead to a fast prediction of the nonlinear responses in time or frequency domain. The second level of reduction consists in exploiting an original metamodel named adaptive response surface method (ARSM) or by modified response surface method (RSM). The second step of optimization consists in seeking the optimal solutions by an evolutionary algorithm of type nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA). This multi-objective optimization strategy enables us to find the full set of the optimal solutions at lower cost. The interest of methodology suggested and its performances are highlighted through examples of numerical simulation.

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

optimization
metamodel
genetic algorithm

multi-objective
karhunenlove method
robust condensation
localized nonlinearities


LOT: A Defense Against IP Spoofing and Flooding Attacks We present LOT, a lightweight plug and play secure tunneling protocol deployed at network gateways. Two communicating gateways, A and B, running LOT would automatically detect each other and establish an efficient tunnel, securing communication between them. LOT tunnels allow A to discard spoofed packets that specify source addresses in B's network and vice versa. This helps to mitigate many attacks, including DNS poisoning, network scans, and most notably (Distributed) Denial of Service (DoS). LOT tunnels provide several additional defenses against DoS attacks. Specifically, since packets received from LOT-protected networks cannot be spoofed, LOT gateways implement quotas, identifying and blocking packet floods from specific networks. Furthermore, a receiving LOT gateway (e. g., B) can send the quota assigned to each tunnel to the peer gateway (A), which can then enforce near-source quotas, reducing waste and congestion by filtering excessive traffic before it leaves the source network. Similarly, LOT tunnels facilitate near-source filtering, where the sending gateway discards packets based on filtering rules defined by the destination gateway. LOT gateways also implement an intergateway congestion detection mechanism, allowing sending gateways to detect when their packets get dropped before reaching the destination gateway and to perform appropriate near-source filtering to block the congesting traffic; this helps against DoS attacks on the backbone connecting the two gateways. LOT is practical: it is easy to manage (plug and play, requires no coordination between gateways), deployed incrementally at edge gateways (not at hosts and core routers), and has negligible overhead in terms of bandwidth and processing, as we validate experimentally. LOT storage requirements are also modest.

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 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


reward allotment in an event-driven hybrid learning classifier system for online soccer games This paper describes our study into the concept of using rewards in a classifier system applied to the acquisition of decision-making algorithms for agents in a soccer game. Our aim is to respond to the changing environment of video gaming that has resulted from the growth of the Internet, and to provide bug-free programs in a short time. We have already proposed a bucket brigade algorithm (a reinforcement learning method for classifiers) and a procedure for choosing what to learn depending on the frequency of events with the aim of facilitating real-time learning while a game is in progress. We have also proposed a hybrid system configuration that combines existing algorithm strategies with a classifier system, and we have reported on the effectiveness of this hybrid system. In this paper, we report on the results of performing reinforcement learning with different reward values assigned to reflect differences in the roles performed by forward, midfielder and defense players, and we describe the results obtained when learning is performed with different combinations of success rewards for various type of play such as dribbling and passing. In 200 matches played against an existing soccer game incorporating an algorithm devised by humans, a better win ratio and better convergence were observed compared with the case where learning was performed with no roles assigned to all of the in-game agents.

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

event-driven
video-game
real-time learning
learning classifier systems


Capacity efficiency and restorability of path protection and rerouting in WDM networks subject to dual failures Resilient optical networks are predominately designed to protect against single failures of fiber links. But in larger networks, operators also see dual failures. As the capacity was planned for single failures, disconnections can occur by dual failures even if enough topological connectivity is provided. In our approach the design of the network minimizes the average loss caused by dual failures, while single failures are still fully survived. High dual failure restorability is the primary aim, capacity is optimized in a second step. For WDM networks with full wavelength conversion, we formulate mixed integer linear programming models for dedicated path protection, shared (backup) path protection, and path rerouting with and without stub-release. For larger problem instances in path rerouting, we propose two heuristics. Computational results indicate that the connectivity is of much more importance for high restorability values than the overall protection capacity. Shared protection has similar restorability levels as dedicated protection while the capacity is comparable to rerouting. Rerouting surpasses the protection mechanisms in restorability and comes close to 100% dual failure survivability. Compared to single failure planning, both shared path protection and rerouting need significantly more capacity in dual failure planning.

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


?-Hydroxybutyrate (GHB), ?-Butyrolactone (GBL), and 1,4-Butanediol (1,4-BD) Reduce the Volume of Cerebral Infarction in Rodent Transient Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion ?-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), an endogenous organic acid catabolite of ?-aminobutyric acid (GABA), has been shown to have tissue-protective effects in various organs, including the brain. We examined the potential neuroprotective effect of GHB and its chemical precursors, ?-butyrolactone (GBL) and 1,4-butanediol (1,4-BD), in the rodent ischemic stroke model by intraluminal filament middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats underwent transient left-sided MCAO and received intraperitoneal treatment with 300 mg/kg of GHB, GBL, 1,4-BD, or control vehicle given at 30 min before, as well as 180 and 360 min after the onset of ischemia. Infarct volumes were determined 24 h after MCAO. In transient MCAO, the mean volume of infarction for control rats was 464.4 17.9 cu.mm versus 273.6 53.1, 233.3 44.7, and 275.4 39.9 cu.mm for rats treated with 1,4-BD (P < 0.05), GBL (P < 0.05), and GHB (P < 0.05), respectively. We conclude that GHB, GBL, and 1,4-BD protect against rat focal cerebral ischemia from transient MCAO

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

?-hydroxybutyric acid (ghb)
?-butyrolactone (gbl)
4-butanediol (1
4-bd)
transient focal cerebral ischemia
middle cerebral artery occlusion (mcao)


privacy, cost, and availability tradeoffs in decentralized osns Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become enormously popular. However, two aspects of many current OSNs have important implications with regards to privacy: their centralized nature and their acquisition of rights to users' data. Recent work has proposed decentralized OSNs as more privacy-preserving alternatives to the prevailing OSN model. We present three schemes for decentralized OSNs. In all three, each user stores his own personal data in his own machine, which we term a Virtual Individual Server (VIS). VISs self-organize into peer-to-peer overlay networks, one overlay per social group with which the VIS owner wishes to share information. The schemes differ in where VISs and data reside: (a) on a virtualized utility computing infrastructure in the cloud, (b) on desktop machines augmented with socially-informed data replication, and (c) on desktop machines during normal operation, with failover to a standby virtual machine in the cloud when the primary VIS becomes unavailable. We focus on tradeoffs between these schemes in the areas of privacy, cost, and availability.

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

privacy
utility computing
online social networks
replication


from remote media immersion to distributed immersive performance We present the architecture, technology and experimental applications of a real-time, multi-site, interactive and collaborative environment called Distributed Immersive Performance (DIP). The objective of DIP is to develop the technology for live, interactive musical performances in which the participants - subsets of musicians, the conductor and the audience - are in different physical locations and are interconnected by very high fidelity multichannel audio and video links. DIP is a specific realization of broader immersive technology - the creation of the complete aural and visual ambience that places a person or a group of people in a virtual space where they can experience events occurring at a remote site or communicate naturally regardless of their location. The DIP experimental system has interaction sites and servers in different locations on the USC campus and at several partners, including the New World Symphony of Miami Beach, FL. The sites have different types of equipment to test the effects of video and audio fidelity on the ease of use and functionality for different applications. Many sites have high-definition (HD) video or digital video (DV) quality images projected onto wide screen wall displays completely integrated with an immersive audio reproduction system for a seamless, fully three-dimensional aural environment with the correct spatial sound localization for participants. The system is capable of storage and playback of the many streams of synchronized audio and video data (immersidata), and utilizes novel protocols for the low-latency, seamless, synchronized real-time delivery of immersidata over local area networks and wide-area networks such as Internet2. We discuss several recent interactive experiments using the system and many technical challenges common to the DIP scenario and a broader range of applications. These challenges include: (1). low latency continuous media (CM) stream transmission, synchronization and data loss management; (2). low latency, real-time video and multichannel immersive audio acquisition and rendering; (3). real-time continuous media stream recording, storage, playback; (4). human factors studies: psychophysical, perceptual, artistic, performance evaluation; (5). robust integration of all these technical areas into a seamless presentation to the participants.

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

remote collaboration
music performance
information interfaces and presentation
real-time interaction


Fabrication of nano-scaled patterns on ceramic thin films and silicon substrates by soft ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography Soft ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography is a cost-effective and versatile technique for the transfer of nano-scaled patterns to various surfaces. Here, we report on the fabrication of sub-micron square pillar arrays in epitaxial Ba0.7Sr0.3TiO3 ceramic films, using a combination of nanoimprint lithography and inductively coupled plasma etching techniques. Based on a similar approach we have also succeeded in preparing positive (direct) and negative (inverse) replicas of silicon master molds. Such a generic process could find application in various materials.

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

photonic crystals
ferroelectric materials


InteGrade: object-oriented Grid middleware leveraging the idle computing power of desktop machines Grid computing technology improves the computing experiences at organizations by effectively integrating distributed computing resources. However, just a small fraction of currently available Grid infrastructures focuses on reutilization of existing commodity computing resources. This paper introduces InteGrade, a novel object-oriented middleware Grid infrastructure that focuses on leveraging the idle computing power of shared desktop machines. Its features include support for a wide range of parallel applications and mechanisms to assure that the owners of shared resources do not perceive any loss in the quality of service. A prototype implementation is under construction and the current version is available for download. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

distributed object systems
corba
usage pattern analysis


Image thinning using pulse coupled neural network PCNN-pulse coupled neural network, based on the phenomena of synchronous pulse bursts in the animal visual cortex, is different from traditional artificial neural networks. This paper first introduces a new approach for binary image thinning by using the pulse parallel transmission characteristic of PCNN. The thinning result obtains when pulses emitted by background meet. The criterion of pulse meeting and the criterion of thinning completion are proposed. The computer simulation results of applying the method to thin binary image are present. Comparisons of skeleton structure and execution time with results from other thinning methods are present too. The PCNN skeleton retains more information of original binary image, such as the size of a quadrate, than the result from Zhang and Suen method. The procedure is faster than Arcelli et al. thinning method when the image resolution is from 600 to1800 dpi. Combining with PCNN restoration algorithm (namely PCNN noise-reducing algorithm), the skeletons of the objects in a noisy binary image can be obtained with the accuracy. This paper also expands the application field of PCNN.

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


Particle swarm optimization with crazy particles for nonconvex economic dispatch The paper presents an effective evolutionary method for economic power dispatch. The idea is to allocate power demand to the on-line power generators in such a manner that the cost of operation is minimized. Conventional methods assume quadratic or piecewise quadratic cost curves of power generators but modern generating units have non-linearities which make this assumption inaccurate. Evolutionary optimization methods such as genetic algorithms (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are free from convexity assumptions and succeed in achieving near global solutions due to their excellent parallel search capability. But these methods usually tend to converge prematurely to a local minimum solution, particularly when the search space is irregular. To tackle this problem crazy particles are introduced and their velocities are randomized to maintain momentum in the search and avoid saturation. The performance of the PSO with crazy particles has been tested on two model test systems, compared with GA and classical PSO and found to be superior.

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

crazy particles
particle swarm optimization

constriction factor
nonconvex economic dispatch (nced)
prohibited operating zones (poz)
ramp-rate limits
time-varying inertial weight (tviw)
valve-point loading effect


RFID-enabled item-level retail pricing A major advantage that online retailers possess that their brick-and-mortar counterparts do not is their ability to continually vary item price. Given the competition among these retailers, it is increasingly becoming a necessity for brick-and-mortar retailers to develop a coherent and profitable pricing strategy. Recent advances in RFID technology can be beneficially utilized in this context. We develop a knowledge-based adaptive learning framework for item-level dynamic pricing in retail stores. Specifically, we consider retail stores that issue membership cards that the members may use to receive promotions and other benefits. Instantaneous snapshots of customers in the store and their characteristics are used to dynamically vary retail store item-level prices. Using simulation, we illustrate the dynamic of the proposed framework. Preliminary results confirm the beneficial aspects of such a framework for item-level dynamic pricing in a retail store environment.

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

item-level information
knowledge-based learning system
item-level pricing
edlp
hi-lo


Enhanced POD projection basis with application to shape optimization of car engine intake port In this paper we present a rigorous method for the construction of enhanced Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) projection bases for the development of efficient Reduced Order Models (ROM). The resulting ROMs are seen to exactly interpolate global quantities by design, such as the objective function(s) and nonlinear constraints involved in the optimization problem, thus narrowing the search space by limiting the number of constraints that need to be explicitly included in the statement of the optimization problem. We decompose the basis into two subsets of orthogonal vectors, one for the representation of constraints and the other one, in a complementary space, for the minimization of the projection errors. An explicit algorithm is presented for the case of linear objective functions. The proposed method is then implemented within a bi-level ROM and is illustrated with an application to the multi-objective shape optimization of a car engine intake port for two competing objectives: CO2 emissions and engine power. We show that optimization using the proposed method produces Pareto dominant and realistic solutions for the flow fields within the combustion chamber, providing further insight into the flow properties.

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

proper orthogonal decomposition
intake port
optimization


Robust design of LV/LP low-distortion CMOS rail-to-rail input stages Two robust CMOS rail-to-rail OpAmp input stages are presented for low voltage (less than or equal to 3 V) applications. The robust input stages are implemented using two recently reported universal approaches to achieve constant transconductance. Transconductance control circuit is also introduced to compensate for K-p, K-n mismatch of PMOS and NMOS differential pairs in the input stage. The input stages are designed for operation in the strong inversion and have a rail-to-rail common mode input voltage range. Compared with an OpAmp with simple complementary input pairs, a two stage rail-to-rail OpAmp design example exhibits lower total harmonic distortion (THD) levels over the entire common mode input voltage range.

B 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 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

rail-to-rail
constant-g(m) input stage
maximum current selecting circuit
transconductance equalizer bias circuit


A class of possibilistic portfolio selection model with interval coefficients and its application Because of the existence of non-stochastic factors in stock markets, several possibilistic portfolio selection models have been proposed, where the expected return rates of securities are considered as fuzzy variables with possibilistic distributions. This paper deals with a possibilistic portfolio selection model with interval center values. By using modality approach and goal attainment approach, it is converted into a nonlinear goal programming problem. Moreover, a genetic algorithm is designed to obtain a satisfactory solution to the possibilistic portfolio selection model under complicated constraints. Finally, a numerical example based on real world data is also provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the genetic algorithm.

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

portfolio selection
interval coefficients
modality approach
goal programming
genetic algorithm


PluralisMAC: a generic multi-MAC framework for heterogeneous, multiservice wireless networks, applied to smart containers Developing energy-efficient MAC protocols for lightweight wireless systems has been a challenging task for decades because of the specific requirements of various applications and the varying environments in which wireless systems are deployed. Many MAC protocols for wireless networks have been proposed, often custom-made for a specific application. It is clear that one MAC does not fit all the requirements. So, how should a MAC layer deal with an application that has several modes (each with different requirements) or with the deployment of another application during the lifetime of the system? Especially in a mobile wireless system, like Smart Monitoring of Containers, we cannot know in advance the application state (empty container versus stuffed container). Dynamic switching between different energy-efficient MAC strategies is needed. Our architecture, called PluralisMAC, contains a generic multi-MAC framework and a generic neighbour monitoring and filtering framework. To validate the real-world feasibility of our architecture, we have implemented it in TinyOS and have done experiments on the TMote Sky nodes in the w-iLab.t testbed. Experimental results show that dynamic switching between MAC strategies is possible with minimal receive chain overhead, while meeting the various application requirements (reliability and low-energy consumption).

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

wireless networks
mac
framework
dynamic switching
testbed

multi-mac
neighbour management
smart container monitoring


Transmission loss prediction of silencers by using combined boundary element method and point collocation approach A technique that combines the boundary element method (BEM) and the point collocation approach is proposed to calculate the transmission loss (TL) of silencers in the absence of mean flow and temperature gradient. A long silencer is first divided into several substructures for analysis purposes. The point collocation approach is applied to produce the impedance matrices of any long substructure that has an axially uniform cross section to produce its impedance matrix. On the other hand, the direct mixed-body BEM is used to produce the impedance matrices of any irregular sections. The point collocation approach employs a modal expansion of the cross-sectional modes extracted by the 2D finite element method (FEM), and then matches the sound pressures and particle velocities at the collocation points on both ends to calculate the impedance matrix. All the substructure impedance matrices are then combined to form the resultant impedance matrix of the whole silencer for TL computation. Several test cases are presented to valid the combined technique and to demonstrate its computational efficiency.

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

silencers
transmission loss
boundary element method
point collocation approach


Convection Problems in Anisotropic Porous Media with Nonhomogeneous Porosity and Thermal Diffusivity Convection problem in anisotropic and inhomogeneous porous media has been analysed. In particular, the effect of variable permeability and thermal diffusivity with respect to the vertical direction, has been studied. Linear and nonlinear stability analysis of the conduction solution have been performed.

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


Hybrid model to detect zero quantized DCT coefficients in H.264 In H.264 coding, there are a large number of discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients of the prediction residue which are quantized to zeros. Therefore, it is desired to design a method which can early detect zero quantized DCT coefficients (ZQDCT) before implementing DCT and quantization (Q) and thus reduce redundant computations for H.264 coding. To achieve this, a hybrid model is proposed in this paper in order to predict ZQDCT coefficients. First, the Gaussian distribution is applied to study the integer DCT coefficients in H.264 and hence an adaptive scheme with multiple thresholds is derived to realize different types of DCT and Q implementations. Then the adaptive scheme is further optimized by considering a more efficient condition to sufficiently detect all-zero DCT blocks. As a result, a hybrid model is developed. Compared with other methods in the literature, the proposed hybrid model is able to detect more ZQDCT coefficients and hence reduce more computations for H.264 encoding. It is shown by experimental results that the proposed hybrid model can achieve the best performance in reducing computations and obtain almost the same rate-distortion (R-D) performance as the original encoder in the H.264 reference software JM9.5.

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

gaussian distribution
integer dct
quantization


Multi-level quasi-Newton coupling algorithms for the partitioned simulation of fluidstructure interaction In partitioned fluidstructure interaction simulations, the flow equations and the structural equations are solved separately. Coupling iterations between the flow calculation and the structural calculation can be used to enforce the equilibrium conditions on the fluidstructure interface. Low wave number Fourier modes of the difference between the correct interface displacement and the interface displacement during GaussSeidel coupling iterations are typically unstable for strongly coupled problems with a DirichletNeumann decomposition. Using interface quasi-Newton iterations with an approximation for the inverse of the Jacobian from a least-squares model (IQN-ILS), these unstable modes are automatically detected and stabilized. As the unstable modes have a low wave number and can hence be resolved on coarser grids, the new multi-level IQN-ILS (ML-IQN-ILS) technique first constructs the approximation for the inverse of the Jacobian on coarser grid levels and then uses it and improves it further on the original, finest grid level. This multi-level approach reduces the number of coupling iterations on the finest grid level and can also be applied to the interface block quasi-Newton (IBQN-LS) technique. One-dimensional and three-dimensional numerical results demonstrate that this new class of multi-level quasi-Newton coupling techniques can reduce the duration of a partitioned fluidstructure interaction simulation.

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


A Fast Block Matching Technique Using a Gradual Voting Strategy In this letter, a novel technique for fast block matching using a new matching criterion is proposed The matching speed and image quality are controlled by the one control parameter called matching region ratio An efficient matching scheme with a gradual voting strategy is also proposed This scheme can greatly boost the matching speed The proposed technique is fast and applicable even in the presence of speckle noise or partial occlusion.

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


The local mass transfer coefficient in spherical film flow by the moving finite element method A mathematical model has been developed for a differential wetted sphere contactor in which a gas-liquid reaction occurs. The mathematical model given by the parabolic non-linear partial differential equation was solved numerically by the moving finite element method (MFEM) using the Lagrange polynomial approximations of arbitrary degree in each of the finite elements, which the interior nodes optimised as in the orthogonal collocation method. A new approach attaining the local physical mass transfer coefficient near the gas-liquid interface has been demonstrated. The novelty of that approach is that the spherical liquid film exerts a bounding influence on the rate of absorption. The validity of the concept as well as the quantitative predictability of the theoretical analysis is demonstrated by experimentation on the carbon dioxide-water system. Direct comparisons of the local physical mass transfer coefficient obtained with the MFEM and the asymptotic analytical solutions from the literature are presented here. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

mass transfer
moving finite element method


Central mechanisms for force and motion-Towards computational synthesis of human movement Anatomical, physiological and experimental research on the human body can be supplemented by computational synthesis of the human body for all movement: routine daily activities, sports, dancing, and artistic and exploratory involvements. The synthesis requires thorough knowledge about all subsystems of the human body and their interactions, and allows for integration of known knowledge in working modules. It also affords confirmation and/or verification of scientific hypotheses about workings of the central nervous system (CNS). A simple step in this direction is explored here for controlling the forces of constraint. It requires co-activation of agonist-antagonist musculature. The desired trajectories of motion and the force of contact have to be provided by the CNS. The spinal control involves projection onto a muscular subset that induces the force of contact. The projection of force in the sensory motor cortex is implemented via a well-defined neural population unit, and is executed in the spinal cord by a standard integral controller requiring input from tendon organs. The sensory motor cortex structure is extended to the case for directing motion via two neural population units with vision input and spindle efferents. Digital computer simulations show the feasibility of the system. The formulation is modular and can be extended to multi-link limbs, robot and humanoid systems with many pairs of actuators or muscles. It can be expanded to include reticular activating structures and learning. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

whole body movement
co-activation
force control
gradient computation


Global ?-stability of complex-valued delayed neural networks with leakage delay ? In this paper, the global ?-stability is investigated for the complex-valued neural networks with leakage time delay and unbounded time-varying delays. The activation functions considered are no longer required to be derivable. By constructing appropriate LyapunovKrasovskii functionals and taking advantage of the free weighting matrix method, several sufficient and delay-dependent criteria are established to ensure the global ?-stability of the complex-valued neural networks, which can be easily checked by the Matlab Toolbox. Finally, three numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results.

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

complex-valued neural networks
global ?-stability
time-varying delays
matrix inequality


Bootstrap method to evaluate tightness of clusters with application to the Korean standard occlusion study Dental arch form is an important part of dental orthodontic practice. Distance-based clustering methods are often used to find standard arch forms. In particular, S-J. Lee, S. I. Lee, J. Lim, H-J. Park, and T. Wheeler [Method to classify human dental arch form, Am. J. Orthod. Dentofacial Orthop. (2010), to appear] propose a L-1-type distance which is invariant to the location-shift and the rotational transformation. Despite the popularity of the distance-based methods, little attention is given to the choice of the distance which has a great influence on final clusters. We have three goals in this paper. First, we study the properties of the L-1-type distance by Lee et al. (2010). Second, we propose a bootstrap-based procedure to evaluate quantitatively how good the clusters are. Finally, we apply the bootstrap procedure to the Korean standard occlusion study and compare the existing distance-based clustering methods in previous literature.

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

reliability of clusters
dental arch forms
distance-based clustering
mis-clustering error rate


Measures of statistical dispersion based on Shannon and Fisher information concepts We propose and discuss two information-based measures of statistical dispersion of positive continuous random variables: the entropy-based dispersion and Fisher information-based dispersion. Although standard deviation is the most frequently employed dispersion measure, we show, that it is not well suited to quantify some aspects that are often expected intuitively, such as the degree of randomness. The proposed dispersion measures are not entirely independent, though each describes the quality of probability distribution from a different point of view. We discuss relationships between the measures, describe their extremal values and illustrate their properties on the Pareto, the lognormal and the lognormal mixture distributions. Application possibilities are also mentioned.

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

statistical dispersion
fisher information


On redundancies in systems of fuzzy/linguistic IFTHEN rules under perception-based logical deduction inference ? In this study, we formally investigate how to determine fuzzy/linguistic IFTHEN rules that are redundant in linguistic descriptions (systems of IFTHEN rules). We present a formal definition of redundancy and show that seemingly redundant rules can in fact be indispensable. These results apply to IFTHEN rules that use evaluative expressions (e.g., small and very big) and the inference method called perception-based logical deduction. However, they are also valid for inference systems with compatible design choices. We also describe an algorithm for the automatic detection and removal of redundant rules. Finally, we present an example of a linguistic description that is learned automatically from data and reduced using our algorithm.

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

fuzzy ifthen rules
perception-based logical deduction


Building outsourcing relationships across the global community: the UPSMotorola experience The United Parcel Service (UPS)Motorola case study revolves around two major areas of information technology (IT) management: IT as a competitive tool and global outsourcing of IT projects. It provides an opportunity to become familiar with the decisions and actions taken by UPS to assure their competitive advantage in the turbulent courier services industry. In the IT outsourcing area, the case addresses managerial and technical issues associated with outsourcing IT projects across the global community. The case presents the specific factors that made this outsourcing project successful and discusses the development of the outsourcing relationships between UPS and Motorola (Israel), from initial negotiations to the creation of a strategic alliance between the two companies. A major point in this case is the gradual development of trust between the two sides, trust that led the two firms from being committed to a contract to becoming strategic partners.

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

united parcel service
motorola
competitive advantage
outsourcing


Sensitivity analysis of scheduling algorithms ? We are interested in this work in studying the performances of static scheduling policies in presence of on-line disturbances. In the general case, the sensitivity of the schedules, i.e., the degradation of the performance of the solution due to the disturbances, is linear in the magnitude of the perturbation. Our main result within this paper is to show that in some scheduling contexts, namely the case of independent tasks, the sensitivity can be guaranteed not to exceed the square root of the magnitude of the perturbation.

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

scheduling
sensitivity analysis
independent tasks

performance guarantee
on-line disturbances
makespan and flowtime criteria


QoS-based remote control of networked control systems via profibus token passing protocol This paper focuses on a quality-of-service (QoS)based remote control scheme for networked control systems via the Prolibus token passing protocol. Typically, token passing experiences random network delay due to uncertainties in token circulation, but the protocol has in-built upper and lower bounds of network delay. Thus, to ensure the control performance of networked control systems via the Prolibus token passing protocol, the network delay should be maintained below the allowable delay level. As the network delay is affected by protocol parameters, such as target rotation time, we present here an algorithm for selection of target rotation time using a genetic algorithm to ensure QoS of control information. We also discuss the performance of the QoS-based remote control scheme under conditions of controlled network delay. To evaluate its feasibility, a networked control system for a feedback control system using a servo motor was implemented on a Profibus-FMS network.

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

genetic algorithm
network delay
networked control system
profibus token passing protocol
qos


Do students need teacher's initiation in online collaborative learning? As more and more people use computers to complete their work and solve problems in the workplace, computing education is emphasized for students of all levels and disciplines in Taiwan. However, the computing education in Taiwan can hardly be recognized as effective and satisfactory. Many inappropriate examples that lack context are used in teaching and textbooks that may result in employees with low competence and insufficient ability for collaborative working. Students who grow up in this learning context usually lack the ability to seek information and solve problems by themselves. In this regard, the author redesigned a course and adopted online collaborative learning with initiation to establish the essential knowledge for students' collaboration in the initial stage of a course. This study conducted an experiment that included 169 undergraduates from three class sections - the first two from an academic university (Case 1, n = 68; Case 2, n = 68) and the last one from a university of science and technology (Case 3, n = 33) - taught by the same teacher under the same course name and the same course website. The results show that students who received online collaborative learning with initiation had higher grades than those without. The author further discusses the implications for teachers, schools, and scholars who plan to provide online courses for their students, particularly computing courses. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

cooperative/collaborative learning
pedagogical issues
teaching/learning strategies
distance education and telelearning
learning communities


Hybridizing VNS and path-relinking on a particle swarm framework to minimize total flowtime This paper presents a new hybridization of VNS and path-relinking on a particle swarm framework for the Permutational Flowshop Scheduling Problem with total flowtime criterion. The operators of the proposed particle swarm are based on path-relinking and variable neighborhood search methods. The performance of the new approach was tested on the benchmark suit of Taillard, and five novel solutions for the benchmark suit are reported. The results were compared against results obtained using methods from literature. Statistical analysis favors the new particle swarm approach over the other methods tested.

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


Consumer search and retailer strategies in the presence of online music sharing Advances in online technologies and bandwidth availability have opened new vistas for online distribution of digital goods, but potential benefits for consumers are juxtaposed against challenges for retailers. Here, we investigate one type of digital experience good-music-whose market environment includes the very real presence of online piracy. Although arguments abound for and against online distribution of such digital goods, little research exists in this area. We develop a model of consumer search for such an experience good, and study different emerging market environments for retailers, where consumers can pirate music online. Retailer cost to publishers is modeled using a variety of licensing schemas. Survey results, together with data from online sharing networks, are utilized to validate a key assumption. Finally, computational analysis is used to develop insights that cannot be obtained analytically. Our results indicate that decreasing piracy is not necessarily equivalent to increasing profit, and online selling strategies can provide additional profits for a traditional retailer even in the presence of piracy. We show that leading strategies for business in such goods should include pricing options, provision of efficient search tools, and new licensing structures.

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

digital experience goods
license
online channels
sampling


The energy level statistics of Hamiltonian systems between integrability and chaos: The semiclassical limit During the past decade or so there has been growing theoretical, numerical and experimental support for the Bohigas-Giannoni-Schmit conjecture (1984) on the applicability of the random matrix theories statistics (GOE, GUE) in the classically ergodic quantal Hamiltonian systems. In the classically integrable systems the spectral fluctuations of the corresponding quantal Hamiltonians are well described by the Poissonian statistics. In the present paper we discuss the statistical properties of energy spectra of generic Hamiltonians in the transition region between integrability and ergodicity (KAM systems). We present statistically highly significant evidence for the fractional power law level repulsion (in the non-semiclassical limit, or near semiclassical limit), which is quite well fitted by the Brody distribution. This is now understood and explained theoretically. However, at sufficiently large level spacings, say S > 1, the Berry-Robnik formulae (1984) for the level spacing distribution are found to be adequate. Moreover, higher in the (far-) semiclassical limit (which we are not yet able to reach in billiards but only in the quantized compactified standard map) we are able to demonstrate clearly that the Berry-Robnik (1984) level statistics as a semiclassical theory is the asymptotically exact theory.

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

quantum chaos
generic hamiltonian systems