EEMC: An energy-efficient multi-level clustering algorithm for large-scale wireless sensor networks Wireless sensor networks can be used to collect environmental data from the interested area using multi-hop communication. As sensor networks have limited and non-rechargeable energy resources, energy efficiency is a very important issue in designing the topology, which affects the lifetime of sensor networks greatly. In this paper, the energy consumption is modeled and compared under the flat scheme and the clustering scheme, respectively. Motivated by the analysis, we propose an energy-efficient multi-level clustering algorithm called EEMC, which is designed to achieve minimum energy consumption in sensor networks. The cluster head election scheme is also considered in EEMC. EEMC terminates in O(loglogN) iterations given N nodes. When the path loss exponent is 2, EEMC also achieves minimum latency. We focus on the case where sink node is remotely located and sensor nodes are stationary. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm is effective in prolonging the network lifetime of a large-scale network, as well as low latency and moderate overhead across the network.

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

wireless sensor networks (wsns)
multi-level
energy-efficient


A real-time vision module for interactive perceptual agents Interactive robotics demands real-time visual information about the environment. Real-time vision processing, however, places a heavy load on the robot's limited resources, which must accommodate multiple other processes running simultaneously. This paper describes a vision module capable of providing real-time information from ten or more operators while maintaining at least a 20-Hz frame rate and leaving sufficient processor time for a robot's other capabilities. The vision module uses a probabilistic scheduling algorithm to ensure both timely information flow and a fast frame capture. In addition, it tightly integrates the vision operators with control of a pan-tilt-zoom camera. The vision module makes its information available to other modules in the robot architecture through a shared memory structure. The information provided by the vision module includes the operator information along with a time stamp indicating information relevance. Because of this design, our robots are able to react in a timely manner to a wide variety of visual events.

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

real-time vision
optical character recognition
face detection


incremental and hierarchical hilbert order edge equation polygon rasterizatione A rasterization algorithm must efficiently generate pixel fragments from geometric descriptions of primitives. In order to accomplish per-pixel shading, shading parameters must also be interpolated across the primitive in a perspective-correct manner. If some of these parameters are to be interpreted in later stages of the pipeline directly or indirectly as texture coordinates, then translating spatial and parametric coherence into temporal coherence will improve texture cache performance. Finally, if framebuffer access is also organized around cached blocks, then organizing rasterization so fragments are generated in block-sequential order will maximize framebuffer cache performance. Hilbert-order rasterization accomplishes these goals, and also permits efficient incremental evaluation of edge and interpolation equations.

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

spatial
cache
order
goals
performance
parametric
pipeline
polygon
access
algorithm
temporal coherence
evaluation
interpolation
coherence
incremental

fragmentation coordination organization hierarchic efficiency blocking


Fuzzy mathematical programming applied to multi-level programming problems An alternative multi-level programming technique based on fuzzy mathematical programming (FMP) is developed which gives better solutions than that proposed by Shih et al. (Comput. Oper. Res. 23(1) (1996) 73). The method uses the objectives in a sequential order of the hierarchy interactively and takes into account the desire of the DM at each stage. The technique is equally applicable to linear/nonlinear multi-level (say P levels) programming problems (MLPPs). Scope and purpose In this paper, we propose an alternative FMP method for a linear/nonlinear MLPP of maximization- and minimization-type objectives which gives better optimal solutions.

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

hierarchical systems
membership functions
satisfactory solution


Efficient FPGA implementation of DWT and modified SPIHT for lossless image compression ? In this paper, we present an implementation of the image compression technique set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) in programmable hardware. The lifting based Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) architecture has been selected for exploiting the correlation among the image pixels. In addition, we provide a study on what storage elements are required for the wavelet coefficients. A modified SPIHT (Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees) algorithm is presented for encoding the wavelet coefficients. The modifications include a simplification of coefficient scanning process, use of a 1-D addressing method instead of the original 2-D arrangement for wavelet coefficients and a fixed memory allocation for the data lists instead of the dynamic allocation required in the original SPIHT. The proposed algorithm has been illustrated on both the 2-D Lena image and a 3-D MRI data set and is found to achieve appreciable compression with a high peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR).

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 B I O O O O O O O O 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 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

medical image compression
lifting scheme


routability driven floorplanner with buffer block planning In traditional floorplanners, area minimization is an important issue. However, due to the recent advances in VLSI technology, the number of transistors in a design are increasing rapidly and so are their switching speeds. This has increased the importance of interconnect delay and routability in the overall performance of a circuit. We should consider interconnect planning, buffer planning and routability as early as possible. In this paper, we study and implement a routability-driven floorplanner with congestion estimation and buffer planning. Our method is based on a simulated annealing approach that is divided into two phases: the area optimization phase and the congestion optimization phase. In the area optimization phase, modules are roughly placed according to the total area and wirelength. In the congestion optimization phase, a floorplan will be evaluated by its area, wirelength, congestion and routability. We assume that every buffer should be inserted at a flexible interval from each other for long enough wires and probabilistic analysis is performed to compute the congestion information taken into accounts the constraints in buffer locations. Our approach is able to reduce the average number of wires at the congested areas and allow more feasible insertions of buffers to satisfy the delay constraints without having much penalty in increasing the area of the floorplan.

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

probabilistic analysis
performance
design
delay
simulated annealing
paper
buffers
method
interval
interconnect
congestion

estimates plan computation flexibility account constraint floorplanning informal minimal technologies locatability optimality module switch blocking circuits


A hybrid post-processing system for offline handwritten Chinese script recognition In the recognition of offline handwritten Chinese scripts, contextual post-processing plays a vital role in improving accuracy. In this paper, we systematically analyze the key factors that have an impact on the performance of contextual post-processing: statistical language models (LMs), candidate confidence, candidate set size, and search strategy. We then present a hybrid post-processing system, which integrates various kinds of information available. Next, we investigate seven LMs, four estimation methods of candidate confidence and different size of candidate set, and illustrate their influence on the performance of contextual post-processing in detail. Experimental results justify that the performance of the LMs are affected by training corpora size, smoothing method, and model pruning, and that lower perplexity correlates with a high accuracy. Comparing different estimation methods of candidate confidence shows that, it is vital to the contextual post-processing. We also show that allowing the correct characters to be captured in a limited number of candidates is extremely important for obtaining good post-processing performance. By adopting the hybrid post-processing, we can obtain high accuracy while paying attention to post-processing speed and memory space at the same time. It is shown that the average recognition accuracy of three Chinese scripts (about 66,000 characters in total) can reach 97.65%, which means 87% error correction rate in comparison with the 81.58% average accuracy before post-processing. In the end, we give some proposals for choosing a proper post-processing method for real script recognition tasks.

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

perplexity
candidate confidence
candidate set size

chinese character recognition
contextual post-processing
statistical language model


The mobile agent paradigm meets digital document technology: Designing for autonomous media collection Mobile agents have emerged as a new paradigm for computing and are proving to be more flexible and dynamic than the average client in the client-server model. In the mobile agent model the program is sent to, and runs on, the remote machine, thereby operating closer to and more interactively with the remote document resource. While for the most part industry is currently cautious, research laboratories have embraced the concept and effective prototypes have emerged. AgentSys is one such mobile agent system developed by the Agent Group at the Multimedia Information Research Laboratory [26]. This prototype implements the protocols (AgenTask, AgenTransact, AgenTransfer) necessary to allow agents to autonomously roam around a network of digital resources, collect information intermittently, and return to the user with results. While both network bandwidth and user search time can be reduced using the mobile agent paradigm, such a system requires protocols at the agent language, ontology, transfer, and application levels. This paper proposes: (i) an agent-stack to enable a mobile agent system, (ii) the agent protocols necessary for agent-digital document interaction, (iii) a profound new way of thinking of documents within the mobile agent paradigm, and (iv) solutions to critical issues in mobile agent transfer and task specification as they relate to autonomous digital document collection. This includes both the transfer of multimedia mobile agent cargo and novel techniques for the specification of agent behavior within the document task. A brief quantitative analysis of the Web surfing paradigm versus the mobile agent paradigm is included to justify claims of network traffic savings using agents.

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

communication protocol
electronic documents
mobile agent behavior


Enhanced DBA to Provide QoS to Coexistent EPON and 10G-EPON Networks The evolution of the Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) to the enhanced 10G-EPON standard looks poised to maintain its position as the leading fiber to the home technology worldwide. Fair bandwidth allocation will be a challenge in the near future in plants where 1G and 10G customer premises equipment coexists. In this paper we propose a distributed algorithm, distributed dynamic scheduling for EPON (DDSPON), to dynamically allocate the bandwidth requested by the user equipment with quality of service (QoS) constraints. The proposed algorithm is scalable and simple to re-configure, which facilitates a smoother transition from legacy 1G to 10G networks. By using the DDSPON, enhanced optical network units (ONUs) will take full advantage of the 10 Gb/s rate while legacy 1G ONUs maintain their service level agreement; as a result, the individual performance is maximized for both groups of ONUs. We also present an analytical model to evaluate the algorithm performance in a coexistent 1G/10G network. Finally, we also illustrate the enhancement of the DDSPON to provision the QoS to different services under the DiffServ architecture. Analysis and simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanisms.

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


Detecting critical nodes in sparse graphs Identifying critical nodes in a graph is important to understand the structural characteristics and the connectivity properties of the network. In this paper, we focus on detecting critical nodes, or nodes whose deletion results in the minimum pair-wise connectivity among the remaining nodes. This problem, known as the critical node problem has applications in several fields including biomedicine, telecommunications, and military strategic planning. We show that the recognition version of the problem is NP NP -complete and derive a mathematical formulation based on integer linear programming. In addition, we propose a heuristic for the problem which exploits the combinatorial structure of the graph. The heuristic is then enhanced by the application of a local improvement method. A computational study is presented in which we apply the integer programming formulation and the heuristic to real and randomly generated data sets. For all instances tested, the heuristic is able to efficiently provide optimal solutions in a fraction of the time required by a commercial software package.

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

critical node detection
heuristics
np-complete
combinatorial optimization


Low Cost Hardware Implementation of Logarithm Approximation A low cost, high-speed architecture for the computation of the binary logarithm is proposed. It is based on the Mitchell approximation with two correction stages: a piecewise linear interpolation with power-of-two slopes and truncated mantissa, and a LUT-based correction stage that correct the piecewise interpolation error. The architecture has been implemented in an FPGA device and the results are compared with other low cost architectures requiring less area and achieving high-speed.

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

mitchell's error correction
piecewise linear approximation


Reliability of a flow network subject to budget constraints The system capacity of a deterministic flow network is the maximum flow from the source to the destination. In a single-commodity stochastic-flow network (branches all have several possible capacities, and may fail), the system reliability, the probability that the maximum flow is larger than or equal to a given demand, is an important performance index to measure the quality level of a network. In a two-commodity stochastic-flow network, different types of commodities are transmitted through the same network simultaneously, and compete for the capacities. We concentrate on the reliability problem for such a network subject to the budget constraint. This paper defines firstly the system capacity as a pattern. We propose a performance index, the probability that the system capacity is less than or equal to a given pattern subject to the budget constraint, to evaluate the system performance. A simple algorithm based on minimal cuts is proposed to generate all maximal vectors meeting the demand and budget constraints. The performance index can then be computed in terms of all such maximal vectors.

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

budget
minimal cuts
performance index
reliability


Rescue

of

Dying

Neurons

by

(R)-Deprenyl

in

the

MPTP-Mouse

Model

of

Parkinson's

Disease

Does

Not

Include

Restoration

of

Neostriatal

Dopamine

Chronic

to

administration

of

the

selective,

potent,

and

irreversible

monoamine

oxidase

B

inhibitor

(R)-deprenyl

has

been

shown

to

increase

the

tyrosine

hydroxylase

immunoreactivity

in

the

substantia

nigra

of

mice

that

had

been

treated

three

days

earlier

with

a

neurotoxic

dose

of

the

parkinsonian-inducing

agent

1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine

(MPTP).

This

reported

rescuing

of

lesioned

nigrostriatal

cell

bodies

by

(R)-deprenyl

prompted

us

to

investigate

if

this

(R)-deprenyl

treatment

also

could

restore

neostriatal

dopamine

levels

that

are

depleted

by

MPTP.

The

results

of

these

experiments

show

that

long

term

or

weeks)

treatment

with

(R)-deprenyl

beginning

three

days

post

MPTP

administration

did

not

result

in

restoration

of

depleted

neostriatal

dopamine

levels

in

mice.

We

conclude

that,

although

(R)-deprenyl

may

rescue

MPTP-injured

nigrostriatal

neurons,

it

does

not

lead

to

functional

recovery

of

these

neurons

as

measured

by

the

restoration

of

neostriatal

dopamine

levels.

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

(r)-deprenyl
neuroprotection
c57bl/6 mouse
regeneration
spontaneous recovery
parkinson's disease
neuronal rescue


Strong cliques and equistability of EPT graphs ? In this paper, we characterize the equistable graphs within the class of EPT graphs, the edge-intersection graphs of paths in a tree. This result generalizes a previously known characterization of equistable line graphs. Our approach is based on the combinatorial features of triangle graphs and general partition graphs. We also show that, in EPT graphs, testing whether a given clique is strong is co-NP-complete. We obtain this hardness result by first showing hardness of the problem of determining whether a given graph has a maximal matching disjoint from a given edge cut. As a positive result, we prove that the problem of testing whether a given clique is strong is polynomial in the class of local EPT graphs, which are defined as the edge intersection graphs of paths in a star and are known to coincide with the line graphs of multigraphs.

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

equistable graph
ept graph
triangle graph
general partition graph
triangle condition
strong clique


Polynomial regression interval-valued fuzzy systems In recent years, the type-2 fuzzy sets theory has been used to model and minimize the effects of uncertainties in rule-base fuzzy logic system (FLS). In order to make the type-2 FLS reasonable and reliable, a new simple and novel statistical method to decide interval-valued fuzzy membership functions and probability type reduce reasoning method for the interval-valued FLS are developed. We have implemented the proposed non-linear (polynomial regression) statistical interval-valued type-2 FLS to perform smart washing machine control. The results show that our quadratic statistical method is more robust to design a reliable type-2 FLS and also can be extend to polynomial model.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 interval-valued fuzzy reasoning


Dynamics of an impulsive diffusive ecological model with distributed delay and additive Allee effect In this paper, we proposed and investigated a model on the process of periodic harvesting and diffusion at different fixed moments using an impulsive differential equation with distributed delay and additive Allee effect. In this model, prey species was restricted to a single patch, and predator species will diffuse between two patches. By using the theories of impulsive equations, small amplitude perturbation skills and comparison techniques, we obtained the sufficient conditions ensuring the global asymptotical stability of the prey-eradication periodic solution and permanence of the system. Finally, some numerical simulations are carried out to consolidate the analytical findings.

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

distributed delay
additive allee effect
permanence

impulsive diffusion
impulsive harvesting
extinction


Relational antecedents of information flow integration for supply chain coordination A new model of competition, where competition is among supply chain networks rather than individual firms, is transforming traditional market-based buyer-supplier relations to one of competition among cooperative sets. In order to integrate and realize performance gains from participating in cooperative supply networks, the importance of information sharing across the supply chain has been emphasized in different literature streams. In this study, we examine the relational antecedents of this critical aspect of supply chain integration-that is, information flow integration. Our objective is to investigate the relationship between relational orientation of the focal firm, as characterized by (1) long-term orientation of its supply chain relationships, (2) asset specificity, and (3) interaction routines and the information flow integration between a firm and its supply chain partners. A research model was developed and data were collected from 110 supply chain and logistics managers in manufacturing and retail organizations. Our results suggest that tangible and intangible resources invested in supply chain relationships enable the integration of information flows with supply chain partners. Specifically, formal and informal interaction routines that take time and effort to develop enable integration of informational flows across a firm's supply chain. Investments in relation-specific assets and long-term orientation in relationships enable the development of these interaction routines.

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

information flow integration
information sharing
relational orientation
supply chain relationships


A flexible multicomputer algorithm for elementary matrix operations In the present study we introduce and test a new flexible multicomputer (FM) algorithm for matrix calculations on a distributed memory computer. The FM-algorithm also performs matrix addition, subtraction, and scalar multiplication on both dense and sparse matrices. The FM-algorithm was designed to meet the need for a high-performance flexible software tool for implementing different parallel optimization algorithms. Special consideration has been taken to ensure the usability and portability of the algorithm. A preliminary flexibility test is conducted on an IBM SP2 (Cactus) machine. On the principal level, we will compare the FM-algorithm with another high-performance algorithm SUMMA and look at an improvement of SUMMA by combining it with the STRASSEN algorithm. On the empirical level, we will compare a chained version of the FM-algorithm with the parallel ScaLAPACK code in a set of huge matrix multiplications on a Gray T3E machine. Our results demonstrate that the FM-algorithm performs as well as the parallel ScaLAPACK code for dense matrices. FM is fully scalable for large, sparse matrices. The FM-algorithm is efficient with respect to sequential matrix multiplication. In contrast to ScaLAPACK, the fully scalable FM-algorithm is independent of mesh structure. Arbitrarily large matrices can be processed with a single processor.

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

flexible parallel matrix computations
sparse matrix structure


Learning the kernel with hyperkernels This paper addresses the problem of choosing a kernel suitable for estimation with a support vector machine, hence further automating machine learning. This goal is achieved by defining a reproducing kernel Hilbert space on the space of kernels itself. Such a formulation leads to a statistical estimation problem similar to the problem of minimizing a regularized risk functional. We state the equivalent representer theorem for the choice of kernels and present a semidefinite programming formulation of the resulting optimization problem. Several recipes for constructing hyperkernels are provided, as well as the details of common machine learning problems. Experimental results for classification, regression and novelty detection on UCI data show the feasibility of our approach.

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

learning the kernel
representer theorem
semidefinite programming

capacity control
kernel methods
support vector machines


A tabu search heuristic for preventive maintenance scheduling In this paper, we present a tabu search based heuristic, PM_TABU, for the preventive maintenance (PM) scheduling problem. The PM scheduling problem aims to maximize the total priority of the scheduled tasks subject to resource availability constraints. The heuristic involves three basic moves - adding a PM task to the current schedule, dropping a task from the schedule and swapping craft-combinations assigned to a task. The heuristic also incorporates the probabilistic intensification and diversification feature introduced by Rochat and Taillard (J. Heuristics, 1 (1995) 147). We have tested our heuristic on 60 problems used by Gopalakrishnan, Ahire and Miller (Manag. Sci., 43 (1997) 827) in their study. PM_TABU reduces the average optimality gap for the test problems from 2.26 (obtained from Gopalakrishnan et ai,, Manag. Sci., 43 (1997) 827) to 0.60%. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

preventive maintenance
scheduling
heuristics
tabu search


On systems of algebraic equations with parametric exponents II We deal with ideals generated by polynomials with parametric exponents, and discuss certain stability of forms of Grobner bases of those ideals. Based on the author's previous work, we investigate techniques by "slack variables" and succeed in obtaining further useful notions and new techniques using elimination ideals and ring homomorphisms. We also apply those techniques to cases, where a single parameter appears only on a single variable as its exponent, with help of univariate GCD computation of polynomials with parametric exponent. Moreover, as the original method for GCD computation could not handle some subcase and so it was not complete, we complete the method by adding a concrete procedure for handling the subcase.

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

ideals with parametric exponents
grobner basis


Examining social tagging behaviour and the construction of an online folksonomy from the perspectives of cultural capital and social capital This study explores the relationships between cultural and social capital and online social tagging behaviour in Delicious.com, a social bookmarking web site that offers social tagging functionalities. Based on Bourdieu's conception of cultural and social capital, an online questionnaire was developed to measure Delicious users' capital possession and its influences on social tagging behavioural tendencies. The study findings showed that the offline/online cultural capital and offline social capital affected information organization-oriented tagging; offline/online social capital affected social oriented-tagging; offline/online cultural capital and offline/online social capital both affected strategic tagging; offline/online social capital affected tagging imitation. Based on the findings, we made inferences on the user roles and the power structure of a social tagging folksonomy community.

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

cultural capital
folksonomy
social capital
social tagging


Unification of scheduling, binding, and retiming to reduce power consumption under timings and resources constraints Scheduling and binding are two tasks found in high-level synthesis of hardware as well as in compiling software. These tasks are realized on graphs that are models of the hardware or of the software to be compiled to run on a specific processor. Scheduling, focuses on determining the start execution time of each node in the graph. Binding is the task of assigning each node in the graph to a specific computational element. Realize binding before or after scheduling can exclude generating high-quality designs (hardware or binary code). The latter statement is true in particular in the era of design for low power. Do not combine scheduling and binding can lead to designs with high switching activities and hence to high power consumption. To the best of our knowledge, there is no approach at this moment that addresses the problem of unifying scheduling and binding with an exact algorithm to produce designs with reduced power consumption. Known approaches to that problem are heuristics. That problem is NP-hard in general, since it is the composition of two NP-hard problems. Also, it has not yet been formulated in the literature. The problem becomes more complex when one has to deal with cyclic graphs and/or there are constraints to be met such as timings. For cyclic graphs, one has to integrate retiming in the unification of scheduling and binding. We propose a mathematical formulation to that problem. We extend this formulation to solve the problem of combining modulo scheduling, binding, and retiming under timings and resources constraints while reducing power consumption due to switching activities. The proposed approach is tested using known benchmarks. Based on obtained numerical results, this approach is able to reduce power consumption by 33.24% on average, with an average of 33.83 s as a run time.

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

binding
power consumption
retiming
scheduling
switching activities

cmos
combinational digital designs
sequential digital designs
timing constraints


Health information seeking in the information society This article is the second student contribution to the Dissertations into Practice feature. It reports on a study that investigated the everyday health information-seeking practices of a small group of the general public and the implications for information-seeking theory and health information provision. The first student article, about the implementation of radio frequency identification (RFID) in a hospital library, was very different, and the two articles illustrate the broad spectrum of possible subjects for the Dissertations into Practice feature. This study was conducted in summer 2011 by Abir Mukherjee for his MSc dissertation in the Library and Information Sciences programme at City University London. Further information and copies of the full dissertation may be obtained from Abir Mukherjee or David Bawden.

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

health information needs
health literacy
information retrieval
information sources
information-seeking behaviour


Computer simulation of the skin reflectance spectra The reflectance spectra of the human skin in visible and near-infrared (NIR) spectral region have been calculated using the Monte Carlo technique, and the specular and internal reflection on the medium surface is taken into account. Skin is represented as a complex inhomogeneous multi-layered highly scattering and absorbing medium. The model takes into account variations in spatial distribution of blood, index of blood oxygen saturation, volume fraction of water and chromophores content. The simulation of the skin tissues optical properties and skin reflectance spectra are discussed. Comparison of the results of simulation and in vivo experimental results are given.

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

skin reflectance spectra
monte carlo
skin tissues optical properties


beyond traditional program slicing Traditional program slices are based on variables and statements. Slices consist of statements that potentially affect (or are affected by) the value of a particular variable at a given statement. Two assumptions are implicit in this definition: 1) that variables and statements are concepts of the programming language in which the program is written, and 2) that slices consist solely of statements.Generalised slicing is an extension of traditional slicing where variables are replaced by arbitrary named program entities and statements by arbitrary program constructs. A model of generalised slicing is presented that allows the essence of any slicing tool to be reduced to a node marking process operating on a program syntax tree. Slicing tools can thus be implemented in a straight-forward way using tree-based techniques such as attribute grammars.A variety of useful program decompositions are shown to be instances of generalised slicing including: call graph generation, interface extraction, slicing of object-oriented inheritance hierarchies and slices based on type dependences. Examples are also given of how slicing can enhance understanding of formal compiler specifications and aid the creation of subset language specifications.

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

value
tree
generation
examples
affect
definition
tool
program slicing
hierarchies
model
inheritance
extraction
language
process
graph
tools

understandability
forward
concept
interfaces
extensibility
slice
object-oriented
attribute grammars
variability
dependencies
formalism
operability
compilation
programming language


A fast neural network simulator for state transition analysis This paper describes an efficient simulator for state transition analysis of multivalued continuous-time neural networks, where the multivalued transfer function of neuron is regarded as a stepwise constant one. Use of stepwise constant method enables to analyse the state transition of the network without solving explicitly the differential equations. This method also enables to select the optimal timestep in numerical integration. The proposed method is implemented on the simulator and applied to the general neural network analysis. Furthermore, this is compared with the conventional simulators. Finally, it is shown that our simulator is drastically faster and more practical than the conventional simulators.

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

stepwise constant method
state transition analysis


One-way hash functions with changeable parameters In this paper, four new algorithms for improvements of MD5 and SHA-Keyed/Unkeyed MD5 and Keyed/Unkeyed SHA are proposed. We change the mode of fixed retrieval of the parameters to that of dynamic retrieval of the parameters by applying a mapping between the index phrase and the parameter table. As shown in the experimental result, with 1% degradation of performance, comparing to the original algorithms, dynamic retrieval of parameters can be achieved. We believe that the security can be increased under the improvements.

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

one-way hash functions
keyed/unkeyed md5
keyed/unkeyed sha


SYMMETRIES OF RANDOM DISCRETE COPULAS In this paper we analyze some properties of the discrete copulas in terms of permutations. We observe the connection between discrete copulas and the empirical copulas, and then we analyze a statistic that indicates when the discrete copula is symmetric and obtain its main statistical properties under independence. The results obtained are useful in designing a nonparametric test for symmetry of copulas.

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 B I O O 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


Estimate for Heinz Inequality in the Small Dilatation of Harmonic Quasiconformal Mappings Let w(z) be a harmonic K-quasiconformal self-mapping of the unit disk satisfying w(0) = 0, then Heinz inequality can be improved as vertical bar w(z)(0)vertical bar(2) + vertical bar w((z) over bar)(0)vertical bar(2) >= max {M(K), 27/4 pi(2)}, where M(K) is a strictly decreasing function of K. Moreover, if K is an element of [1, 1.03], the previous corresponding results in [3] are improved.

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

harmonic mapping
quasiconformal mapping
harmonic quasi-invariant measure
schwarz lemma


Reliability and heterogeneity of railway services Reliability is one of the key factors in transportation, both for passengers and for cargo. This paper examines reliability in public railway systems. Reliability of railway services is a complex matter, since there are many causes for disruptions and at least as many causes for delays to spread around in space and time. One way to increase the reliability is to reduce the propagation of delays due to the interdependencies between trains. In this paper we attempt to decrease these interdependencies by reducing the running time differences per track section and by thus creating more homogeneous timetables. We also introduce two heuristic measures, that can be used to evaluate the homogeneity of a timetable. Because of the complexity of railway systems, we use network wide simulation for the analysis of the alternative timetables. We report on both theoretical and practical cases. Besides a comparison of different timetables, also general timetabling principles are deduced.

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

transportation reliability heterogeneity simulation


Multiobjective optimal load flow based on ideal distance minimization in 3D space In this paper, three objectives of Multiobjective Optimal Load Flow (MOLF) problem cost of generation, system transmission loss and pollution are considered. The MOLF problem is formulated as a multiobjective optimization problem using weighting method and a number of noninferior solutions are generated in 3D space. The optimal power system operation is attained by Ideal Distance Minimization method. This method employs the concept of an Ideal Point (IP) to scalarize the problems having multiple objectives and it minimizes the Euclidean distance between IP and the set of noninferior solutions. This method has been applied to three IEEE standard systems.

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

multiobjective optimal load flow
ideal distance minimization
3d space


Multiple UAV Coalitions for a Search and Prosecute Mission Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to carry resources in support of search and prosecute operations. Often to completely prosecute a target, UAVs may have to simultaneously attack the target with various resources with different capacities. However, the UAVs are capable of carrying only limited resources in small quantities, hence, a group of UAVs (coalition) needs to be assigned that satisfies the target resource requirement. The assigned coalition must be such that it minimizes the target prosecution delay and the size of the coalition. The problem of forming coalitions is computationally intensive due to the combinatorial nature of the problem, but for real-time applications computationally cheap solutions are required. In this paper, we propose decentralized sub-optimal (polynomial time) and decentralized optimal coalition formation algorithms that generate coalitions for a single target with low computational complexity. We compare the performance of the proposed algorithms to that of a global optimal solution for which we need to solve a centralized combinatorial optimization problem. This problem is computationally intensive because the solution has to (a) provide a coalition for each target, (b) design a sequence in which targets need to be prosecuted, and (c) take into account reduction of UAV resources with usage. To solve this problem we use the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique. Through simulations, we study the performance of the proposed algorithms in terms of mission performance, complexity of the algorithms and the time taken to form the coalition. The simulation results show that the solution provided by the proposed algorithms is close to the global optimal solution and requires far less computational resources.

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

coalition formation
particle swarm optimization


Efficient semantic search on DHT overlays Distributed hash tables (DHTs) excel at exact-match lookups, but they do not directly support complex queries such as semantic search that is based on content. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to efficient semantic search on DHT overlays. The basic idea is to place indexes of semantically close files into same peer nodes with high probability by exploiting information retrieval algorithms and locality sensitive hashing. A query for retrieving semantically close files is answered with high recall by consulting only a small number (e.g., 10-20) of nodes that stores the indexes of the files semantically close to the query. Our approach adds only index information to peer nodes, imposing only a small storage overhead. Via detailed simulations, we show that our approach achieves high recall for queries at very low cost, i.e., the number of nodes visited for a query is about 10-20, independent of the overlay size. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

peer-to-peer
vector space model
semantic indexing
semantic locating
top term


Bayesian analysis of band-broadening models used in high performance liquid chromatography Extensive studies into band-broadening of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) data have seen numerous models being proposed to account for the underlying physical and chemical processes responsible for the broadening. The experimental analysis of these models requires high quality data, i.e. duplicated data sets (similar to 3) which have a low noise level (less than or similar to 3%), and a large number of data points (and greater than or similar to 20). Given the many models and the number of parameters which define them, it is sometimes difficult to determine the most plausible model for a particular data set and instrumental settings. Bayesian analysis is proposed as an alternative to orthodox statistical techniques for quantifying the parameter values in the band-broadening models, as well as testing the statistical plausibility of competing models, which enables the models to be ranked in an ordered manner. Systematic studies using simulation data have demonstrated that Bayesian analysis consistently predicts the correct model for data with up to similar to 6% noise level, while the conventional statistical approaches, including the weighted sum of square residuals (WSSR), Akaikes Information Criterion (AIC) and Schwartz Information Criterion (SIC), produce inconsistencies. Bayesian analysis is also applied to experimental HPLC band-broadened data obtained in the separation of propylparaben. The probability density functions (pdfs) for the parameters and the a posteriori probabilities for all competing models are determined from the data. Recommendations arising from the studies regarding the data collection and analysis are made. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All fights reserved.

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

bayesian analysis
high performance liquid chromatography

model selection
marginalised likelihood
integrated likelihood
evidence


Proactive search enabled context-sensitive knowledge supply situated in computer-aided engineering Processing complex and non-routine tasks, engineers face frequent knowledge shortage. While an expert system requires much effort to develop and a general search engine is blamed for passiveness in meeting peoples knowledge demand, we propose in this paper a context-sensitive knowledge supply method which aims at meeting users unuttered knowledge need bred in computer-aided engineering (CAE) tasks. To this end, concepts involved in a task are extracted and used for perceiving various problematic situations which may occur; and keyword-based search and text parsing techniques are combined to retrieve possible remedies from unstructured knowledge carriers. The proposed method is tested in situation of finite element analysis (FEA), a typical CAE task, where novice engineers receive sentential knowledge recommendations extracted from webpage. Experiment results show that context-sensitive knowledge supply can increase an engineers knowledge about the current task and make the individual more prepared for future challenges.

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

knowledge reuse
context-sensitive
problematic situation
computer-aided engineering


inclusion dependencies and their interaction with functional dependencies Inclusion dependencies, or INDs (which can say, for example, that every manager is an employee) are studied, including their interaction with functional dependencies, or FDs. A simple complete axiomatization for INDs is presented, and the decision problem for INDs is shown to be PSPACE-complete. (The decision problem for INDs is the problem of determining whether or not ? logically implies ?, given a set ? of INDs and a single IND ?). It is shown that finite implication (implication over databases with a finite number of tuples) is the same as unrestricted implications for INDs, although finite implication and unrestricted implication are distinct for FDs and INDs taken together. It is shown that, although there are simple complete axiomatizations for FDs alone and for INDs alone, there is no complete axiomatization for FDs and INDs taken together, in which every rule is k-ary for some fixed k (and in particular, there is no finite complete axiomatization.) This is true whether we consider finite implication or unrestricted implication, and is true even if no relation scheme has more than three attributes. The nonexistence of a k-ary complete axiomatization for FDs and INDs taken together is proven by giving a condition which is necessary and sufficient in general for the existence of a k-ary complete axiomatization.

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

interaction
dependencies
inclusion
proven
complete axiomatization
general
attributes
relation
scheme

examples
inclusion dependency
pspace-complete
relational database
functional dependency
database
management
completeness


feedback-directed thread scheduling with memory considerations This paper describes a novel approach to generate an optimized schedule to run threads on distributed shared memory (DSM) systems. The approach relies upon a binary instrumentation tool to automatically acquire the memory sharingrelationship between user-level threads by analyzing their memory trace. We introduce the concept of Affinity Graph to model the relationship. Expensive I/O for large trace files is completely eliminated by using an online graph creation scheme. We apply the technique of hierarchical graph partitioning and thread reordering to the affinity graph to determine an optimal thread schedule. We have performed experiments on an SGI Altix system. The experimental results show that our approach is able to reduce the totalexecution time by 10\% to 38\% for a variety of applications through the maximization of the data reuse within a single processor, minimization of the data sharing between processors, and a good load balance.

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

distributed shared memory
affinity graph

shared-memory programming
scientific applications


A Novel Caries Risk Test A diagnostic test is particularly beneficial if it reveals the level of susceptibility prior to onset of a disease process. In the case of childhood caries, such a diagnostic test affords the opportunity for preventive measures to be implemented before caries begins. Salivary glycoproteins contain a wealth of individually specific oligosaccharide motifs. Depending on microbial compatibilities and individual genotypes, the glycoproteins that form the pellicle coating of teeth may provide attachment sites that foster colonization leading to cariogenesis. Alternatively, certain oligosaccharides, when present in nonpellicle glycoproteins, can interact with planktonic bacteria and lower their ability to interact with the tooth surface. We have found that in young adults the ratio of the two classes of oligosaccharides present in resting saliva exhibits a strong correlation with caries history (DF

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

saliva
oligosaccharides
glycoproteins
caries history

dental caries risk test
prediction
children
lectins
mucin
dft
tooth groups


Compression of time series by extracting major extrema We formalise the notion of important extrema of a time series, that is, its major minima and maxima; analyse the basic mathematical properties of important extrema; and apply these results to the problem of time-series compression. First, we define the numeric importance levels of extrema in a series, and present algorithms for identifying major extrema and computing their importances. Then, we give a procedure for fast lossy compression of a time series at a given rate, by extracting its most important minima and maxima, and discarding the other points.

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

time series
lossy compression
major minima and maxima


New approximate dynamic programming algorithms for large-scale undiscounted Markov decision processes and their application to optimize a production and distribution system We propose new approximate dynamic programming algorithms. These algorithms can solve large-scale undiscounted Markov decision processes. Optimal control problems for production systems with 35, 973, 840 states were solved. The kanban, base stock, CONWIP, hybrid and extended kanban systems are considered. We show numerical comparisons between optimal controls and optimized pull controls.

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

jit-based production and distribution system


TSD based framework for mining the induction rules The paper presents a natural algorithm which is based on alligator's egg incubation technique. Theoretical analysis of proposed algorithm is given based on statistical learning theory. Proposed algorithm is also compared with other state of art techniques. Testing accuracy of proposed algorithm is worked out for nine datasets. ROC analysis and non-parametric test are also conducted.

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

natural computing
alligator's egg incubation
temperature dependent sex determination
data classification


System identification of steam pressure in a fire-tube boiler A mathematical model that describes the dynamic behaviour of the steam pressure inside a fire-tube boiler has been obtained by using system identification techniques, due to the complexity of the first-principles-model ling of this process. A complete system identification procedure has been carried out, from experimental design to model validation using a laboratory-scale boiler and then ratified in an industrial-scale boiler. In both cases, the identified model is characterized by a second order linear ARMAX structure and time delay which describes with very high precision the steam pressure variation process. This model will be used for model-based control and prediction applications. The reported results show that system identification and model-based control have important roles to play in the management and intelligent use of available energetic resources. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

steam pressure variation mathematical dynamic model


A study on industrial robotic manipulator model using model based predictive controls In this study, a single input single output (SISO) neural generalized predictive control (NGPC) was applied to a six joint robotic manipulator. The SISO generalized predictive control (GPC) was also used for comparison. Modeling of the dynamics of the robotic manipulator was made by using the Lagrange-Euler equations. The cubic trajectory principle is used for position reference and velocity reference trajectories. A simulation program was prepared by using Delphi 6.0. All computations for manipulator dynamics model, GPC-SISO, and NGPC-SISO were done on PC with 1.6 GHz Centrino CPUs by using this program. The parameter estimation algorithm used in the GPC-SISO is Recursive Least Squares. The minimization algorithm used in the NGPC-SISO is Newton-Raphson. According to the simulation results, the results of the NGPC-SISO algorithm were better than those of the GPC-SISO algorithm.

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 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

robotic manipulator control
neural generalized predictive control
trajectory planning


topic (query) selection for ir evaluation The need for evaluating large amounts of topics (queries) makes IR evaluation an uneasy task. In this paper, we study a topic selection problem for IR evaluation. The selection criterion is based on the overall difficulty of the chosen set, as well as the uncertainty of the final IR metric applied to the systems. Our preliminary experiments demonstrate that our approach helps to identify a set of topics that provides confident estimates of systems' performance while keeping the requirement of the query difficulty.

O O O O O 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


GraphClus, a MATLAB program for cluster analysis using graph theory ? Cluster analysis is used in numerous scientific disciplines. A method of cluster analysis based on graph theory is discussed and a MATLAB code for its implementation is presented. The algorithm is based on the number of variables that are similar between samples. By changing the similarity criterion in a stepwise fashion, a hierarchical group structure develops, and can be displayed by a dendrogram. Three indexes describe the homogeneity of a given variable in a group, the heterogeneity of that variable between two groups, and the usefulness of that variable in distinguishing two groups. The algorithm is applied to both a synthetic dataset and a set of trace element analyses of lavas from Mount Etna in order to compare GraphClus to other cluster analysis algorithms.

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


Lifetime maximized data gathering in wireless sensor networks using limited-order distributed source coding This paper addresses the problem of efficient data gathering in wireless sensor networks with a complexity constrained data gathering node. Due to the complexity constraint, the data gathering node employs an asymmetric DSC that (de)compresses the data of a given node exploiting its dependency with a limited number of other nodes. This is characterized in a DSC rate allocation structure that is referred to as limited-order DSC. Within this structure, we investigate the problem of rate allocation for the nodes to maximize the network lifetime. To this end, an algorithm is proposed that is proven optimal with polynomial complexity in terms of number of network nodes. Numerical results demonstrate that the algorithm, even with limited complexity, allows for exploiting most of the achievable compression gain.

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

data gathering
distributed source coding

wireless sensor network
slepianwolf coding


Two-dimensional display for multivariate data using all principle components embedding chemical information by regular polygon approach (RPA) Regular polygon approach (RPA) is a new methodology proposed in this study to visualize the multivariate data points in two-dimensional space. The proposed approach is excerpted from the phase diagram which is widely utilized in various fields of science. The proposed approach is considered as a modification of the principal component analysis (PCA) display method. However, in RPA all principal components carrying chemically meaningful information might be fully utilized in the visualization process. The data are displayed in an (n + 1)-side regular polygon where n is the number of principal components embedding chemical information. The proposed method has been applied on 11 real chemical data sets and some of them could not be visualized successfully by the conventional PCA method. The obtained results have indicated that RPA might be exploited in a case of failure of the conventional PCA technique in displaying the data successfully. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

display data in a polygon
two-dimensional visualization
modification of pca


The merging of two gaseous bubbles with an application to underwater explosions A numerical study of two gaseous bubbles merging into a single coalesced bubble as in underwater explosions is investigated in this paper. This explosive phenomenon is modeled using a boundary integral method. Two configurations, which are in-phase and out-of-phase explosions, are simulated and compared with available experimental results. The thickness of the liquid film between the two bubbles determines our coalescence criterion. Bubble shapes and periods of oscillation are predicted well, compared to those of the experiments. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

bubbles
coalescence
boundary integral method


FCANN: A new approach for extraction and representation of knowledge from ANN trained via Formal Concept Analysis Nowadays, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are being widely used in the representation of different systems and physics processes. Once trained, the networks are capable of dealing with operational conditions not seen during the training process, keeping tolerable errors in their responses. However, humans cannot assimilate the knowledge kept by those networks, since such implicit knowledge is difficult to be extracted. In this work, Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is being used in order to extract and represent knowledge from previously trained ANN. The new FCANN approach permits to obtain a complete canonical base, non-redundant and with minimum implications, which qualitatively describes the process being studied. The approach proposed has a sequence of steps such as the generation of a synthetic dataset. The variation of data number per parameter and the discretization interval number are adjustment factors to obtain more representative rules without the necessity of retraining the network. The FCANN method is not a classifier itself as other methods for rule extraction; this approach can be used to describe and understand the relationship among the process parameters through implication rules. Comparisons of FCANN with C4.5 and TREPAN algorithms are made to show its features and efficacy. Applications of the FCANN method for real world problems are presented as case studies.

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 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

rule extraction from neural networks
machine learning


Fuzzy semi-orders: The case of t-norms without zero divisors For crisp relations the concept of a semi-order can be stated in a number of equivalent ways. When trying to extend this concept to the fuzzy setting, we observe that the (generalized) definitions fail to be equivalent. In this contribution, we discuss which is the most natural definition of a fuzzy semi-order, and study the hierarchy among the alternative definitions, in particular when using a t-norm without zero divisors. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

semi-order
ferrers property semitransitivity
fuzzy relation
additive fuzzy preference structure
t-norm without zero divisors


An Ontology to Model e-portfolio and Social Relationship in Web 2.0 Informal Learning Environments Web 2.0 applications and the increasingly use of social networks have been creating new informal learning opportunities. Students interact and collaborate using new learning environments which are structurally different from traditional e-learning environments. In these informal unstructured learning contexts the boundaries between the learning contexts and social spheres disappear, and the definition of the students competences appears more and more important. In this paper we propose a semantic web approach in order to create the basis for a software platform to model learner profiles. In particular we propose to extend the FOAF ontology, used to describe people and their personal relationships, with an ontology related to the IMS Learning Portfolio used to model students' competencies. This ontology could be a fundamental layer for a new Web 2.0 learning environment in which students' informal learning activities carried out in social networks can be managed and evaluated.

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

semantic web
social networks
informal learning


Sliding mode controller for linear systems with mismatched time-varying uncertainties A new design approach of a sliding mode controller for linear systems with mismatched time-varying uncertainties is presented in this paper. The coefficient matrix of the sliding function can be designed to satisfy a new matching condition provided time-varying uncertainties are bounded. It is shown that the system is invariant on the sliding surface. It is also shown that the stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed. Moreover, the chattering around the sliding surface in the sliding mode control can be reduced by the proposed design approach. Simulation results are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed sliding mode controller.

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


Canonical forms of fuzzy truthoods by meta-theory based upon modal logic In this paper, we redefine, with the meta-theory based on modal logic, the operations between fuzzy sets of verity, i.e., fuzzy sets of truthood. With this new approach, we can unify the different formulas for the operations AND, OR and NOT between the fuzzy sets of verity, i.e., truthood. The operations between the fuzzy sets of verity become sensitive to the logic value true or false that agents, persons, sensors, assign to the worlds (contexts). The operations are also sensitive to the difference of the worlds and time of synchronisation. It should be pointed out that when we use the logic operations as AND, OR and NOT, we generally assume that the worlds are the same and change their truth-value at the same time. But it is known that there are cases where this synchronic situation and identity is not always valid. That is, there exist transformations that change one world for one proposition to another world for another proposition. In conclusion, the linguistic AND, OR, NOT operations become dependent on the particular truth-value of a world, on the synchronisation and on the worlds assigned to the two propositions via transformations. Thus all of these possible changes in the structure of the worlds, in the modal logic, cause the gradation of the linguistic operations, e.g., AND, OR, and NOT. An individual world (person, agent, sensor, ) assigns to an atomic sentence either a true or false value and uses the classical two value logic operations of AND, OR, NOT. That is the crisp true or false responses (assignments) of worlds generate gradation of truthood value. The uncertainty in a fuzzy set is represented with sets of worlds in a conflict situation, i.e., the same proposition may be true in one world and false in another. Consonant or dissonant relations between sets of worlds that depends on the synchronisation and/or transformation of worlds cause the generation of gradation by the linguistic operations AND OR and NOT. That is, the linguistic operations change for different concrete situations (set of worlds) caused by the generation of a representation in each world, where the descriptive set membership assignment D may be two or infinite valued but the verity assignment V is two-valued in a particular world representation. Whereas membership values of the fuzzy set of truth verifications associated with the set of worlds are in [0,1]. Furthermore, the combination of fuzzy membership values generates a Type II fuzzy set that is captured by FDCF and FCCF formulas. In this paper, we show that there exist a deeper connection between the set membership assignment and the verity assignment of truthood by modal logic with suitable extensions.

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

canonical forms fuzzy formulas truthoods transformation

modal-logic meta-theory disjunctive conjunctive synchronous


A new algorithm for product image search based on salient edge characterization Visually assisted product image search has gained increasing popularity because of its capability to greatly improve end users' e-commerce shopping experiences. Different from general-purpose content-based image retrieval (CBIR) applications, the specific goal of product image search is to retrieve and rank relevant products from a large-scale product database to visually assist a user's online shopping experience. In this paper, we explore the problem of product image search through salient edge characterization and analysis, for which we propose a novel image search method coupled with an interactive user region-of-interest indication function. Given a product image, the proposed approach first extracts an edge map, based on which contour curves are further extracted. We then segment the extracted contours into fragments according to the detected contour corners. After that, a set of salient edge elements is extracted from each product image. Based on salient edge elements matching and similarity evaluation, the method derives a new pairwise image similarity estimate. Using the new image similarity, we can then retrieve product images. To evaluate the performance of our algorithm, we conducted 120 sessions of querying experiments on a data set comprised of around 13k product images collected from multiple, real-world e-commerce websites. We compared the performance of the proposed method with that of a bag-of-words method (Philbin, Chum, Isard, Sivic, & Zisserman, 2008) and a Pyramid Histogram of Orientated Gradients (PHOG) method (Bosch, Zisserman, & Munoz, 2007). Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method improves the performance of example-based product image retrieval.

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


ERK and Calcium in Activation of HIF-1 HIF-1 (hypoxia-inducible factor-1) is the main transcription factor responsible for increased gene expression in hypoxia. The oxygen-dependent regulation of HIF-1 activity occurs at multiple levels in vivo. The mechanisms regulating HIF-1? protein expression have been most extensively analyzed, but the ones modulating HIF-1 transcriptional activity remain unclear. Changes in the phosphorylation and/or redox status of HIF-1? certainly play a role. Here, we show that ionomycin could activate HIF-1 transcriptional activity in a way that is additive to the effect of hypoxia without affecting HIF-1? protein level and HIF-1 DNA binding capacity. In addition, a calmodulin dominant-negative mutant as well as BAPTA, an intracellular calcium chelator, inhibited the hypoxia-induced HIF-1 activation. These results indicate that elevated calcium in hypoxia could participate in HIF-1 activation. PD98059, an inhibitor of the ERK pathway, but not KN-93, an inhibitor of calmodulin kinases II and IV, also blocked HIF-1 activation by hypoxia and by ionomycin. Altogether, these results suggest that calcium and calmodulin would act upstream of ERK in the hypoxia signal transduction pathway leading to enhanced HIF-1 transcriptional activity.

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


A Robust Mobile Video Streaming in Heterogeneous Emerging Wireless Systems With the rapid development of heterogeneous emerging wireless technologies and numerous types of mobile devices, the need to support robust mobile video streaming based on the seamless handover in Future Internet is growing. To support the seamless handover, several IP-based mobility management protocols such as Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6), fast handover for the MIPv6 (FMIPv6), Hierarchical MIPv6 (HMIPv6) and Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) were developed. However, MIPv6 depreciates the Quality-of-Service (QoS) and FMIPv6 is not robust for the video services in heterogeneous emerging wireless networks when the Mobile Node (MN) may move to another visited network in contrast with its anticipation. In Future Internet, the possibility of mobile video service failure is more increased because mobile users consisting of multiple wireless network interfaces (WNICs) can frequently change the access networks according to their mobility in heterogeneous wireless access networks such as 3Generation (3G), Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) and Bluetooth co-existed. And in this environment, seamless mobility is coupled according to user preferences, enabling mobile users to be "Always Best Connected" (ABC) so that Quality of Experience is optimised and maintained. Even though HMIPv6 and PMIPv6 are proposed for the location management, handover latency enhancement, they still have limit of local mobility region. In this paper, we propose a robust mobile video streaming in Heterogeneous Emerging Wireless Systems. In the proposed scheme, the MN selects the best -according to an appropriate metric-wireless technology for a robust video streaming service among all wireless technologies by reducing the handover latency and initiation time when handover may fail. Through performance evaluation, we show that our scheme provides more robust mechanism than other schemes.

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


A disruption recovery model for a single stage production-inventory system This paper presents a newly developed disruption recovery model for a single stage production and inventory system, where the production is disrupted for a given period of time during the production up time. The model is categorized as a constrained non-linear optimization program which we have solved using an efficient heuristic developed in this paper. The model was also solved using an evolutionary algorithm and a comparison of the results from both methods was performed. The heuristic was able to accurately solve the model with significantly less time compared to the evolutionary algorithm. It can be shown that the optimal recovery schedule is dependent on the shortage cost parameters, as well as the extent of the disruption. The proposed model offers a potentially useful tool to help manufacturers decide on the optimal recovery plan in real time whenever the production system experiences a sudden disruption.

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

economic production quantity
production- inventory system


better planning via tasking as a team Do you find your story estimation sessions taking too much time away from development? Do you have stories that go over their estimates by a significant amount or turn into multiple stories? Then this session is for you. In this session we will look at various methods to improve tasking by better leveraging the team as a whole to strive toward more clearly defined and more granular stories. We will address common pitfalls such as stories that are really epics, overly vague stories as well as how to identify good stories and improve the definition of done for your stories.

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

agile teams
scrum
xp
story development
agile development


A Random Digit Search (RDS) Method for Sampling of Blogs and Other User-Generated Content Blogs are arguably the most popular genre of user-generated content (UGC), which make blogs a gold mine for social science research. However, existing research on blogs has suffered from nonprobability samples collected either manually or by computerized crawling based on random walks method. The current article presents a probability sampling method for blogs, called random digit search (RDS), that is modified from the popular "random digit dialing" (RDD) method used in telephone surveys. The RDS method was tested in a study of Sina Blog, a popular blog service provider (BSP) in China. The results show that, while "random walks" sampling tends to oversample popular/active blogs, probability samples generated by RDS yield consistent and precise estimates of population parameters. Although the RDS takes advantage of the numeric identification (ID) system used on Sina Blog, the general principles may be applicable to other BSPs and many other genres of UGC.

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


The Unification and Assessment of Multi-Objective Clustering Results of Categorical Datasets with H-Confidence Metric Multi objective clustering is one focused area of multi objective optimization. Multi objective optimization attracted many researchers in several areas over a decade. Utilizing multi objective clustering mainly considers multiple objectives simultaneously and results with several natural clustering solutions. Obtained result set suggests different point of views for solving the clustering problem. This paper assumes all potential solutions belong to different experts and in overall; ensemble of solutions finally has been utilized for finding the final natural clustering. We have tested on categorical datasets and compared them against single objective clustering result in terms of purity and distance measure of k-modes clustering. Our clustering results have been assessed to find the most natural clustering. Our results get hold of existing classes decided by human experts.

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

multi-objective clustering
nsga-ii
h-confidence


Cylindrical FDTD grid-compatible Greens functions Cylindrical grid-compatible discrete Greens functions (DGFs), derived from the first principles of the FDTD-discretized Maxwells equations, are the topic of this work. These functions enable the hybridization between differential and integral equation based numerical methods. The DGF replicates the FDTD solutions, as opposed to an outright discretization of the continuous Greens function (CGF). The cylindrical formulation is attractive since it is inherently axially symmetric, such that it fits the description of a point source.

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

finite difference time domain (fdtd)
cylindrical coordinates


Towards an accurate performance modeling of parallel sparse factorization We present a simulation-based performance model to analyze a parallel sparse LU factorization algorithm on modern cached-based, high-end parallel architectures. We consider supernodal right-looking parallel factorization on a bi-dimensional grid of processors, that uses static pivoting. Our model characterizes the algorithmic behavior by taking into account the underlying processor speed, memory system performance, as well as the interconnect speed. The model is validated using the implementation in the SuperLU_DIST linear system solver, the sparse matrices from real application, and an IBM POWER3 parallel machine. Our modeling methodology can be adapted to study performance of other types of sparse factorizations, such as Cholesky or QR, and on different parallel machines.

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

parallel sparse factorization
performance modeling


SPARQL graph pattern rewriting for OWL-DL inference queries This paper focuses on the issue of OWL-DL ontology queries implemented in SPARQL. Currently, ontology repositories construct inference ontology models, and match SPARQL queries to the models, to derive inference results. Because an inference model uses much more storage space than the original model, and cannot be reused as inference requirements vary, this method is not suitable for large-scale deployment. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a novel method that passes rewritten SPARQL queries to the original ontology model, to retrieve inference results. We define OWL-DL inference rules and apply them to rewriting Graph Patterns in queries. The paper classifies the inference rules and discusses how these rules affect query rewriting. To illustrate the advantages of our proposal, we present a prototype system based on Jena, and address query optimization, to eliminate the disadvantages of augmented query sentences. We perform a set of query tests and compare the results with related works. The results show that the proposed method results in significantly improved query efficiency, without compromising completeness or soundness.

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


GrADSolve - a grid-based RPC system for parallel computing with application-level scheduling Although some existing Remote Procedure Call (RPC) systems provide support for remote invocation of parallel applications, these RPC systems lack powerful scheduling methodologies for the dynamic selection of resources for the execution of parallel applications. Some RPC systems support parallel execution of software routines with simple modes of parallelism. Some RPC systems statically choose the configuration of resources for parallel execution even before the parallel routines are invoked remotely by the end user. These policies of the existing systems prevent them from being used for remotely solving computationally intensive parallel applications over dynamic computational Grid environments. In this paper, we discuss a RPC system called GrADSolve that supports execution of parallel applications over Grid resources. In GrADSolve, the resources used for the execution of parallel application are chosen dynamically based on the load characteristics of the resources and the characteristics of the application. Application-level scheduling is employed for taking into account both the application and resource properties. GrADSolve also stages the user's data to the end resources based on the data distribution used by the end application. Finally, GrADSolve allows the users to store execution traces for problem solving and use the traces for subsequent solutions. Experiments are presented to prove that GrADSolve's data staging mechanisms can significantly reduce the overhead associated with data movement in current RPC systems. Results are also presented to demonstrate the usefulness of utilizing the execution traces maintained by GrADSolve for problem solving. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

rpc
grid
gradsolve
data staging
execution traces


CP and IP approaches to cancer radiotherapy delivery optimization We consider the problem of decomposing an integer matrix into a positively weighted sum of binary matrices that have the consecutive-ones property. This problem is well-known and of practical relevance. It has an important application in cancer radiation therapy treatment planning: the sequencing of multileaf collimators to deliver a given radiation intensity matrix, representing (a component of) the treatment plan. Two criteria characterise the efficacy of a decomposition: the beam-on time (the length of time the radiation source is switched on during the treatment), and the cardinality (the number of machine set-ups required to deliver the planned treatment). Minimising the former is known to be easy. However finding a decomposition of minimal cardinality is NP-hard. Progress so far has largely been restricted to heuristic algorithms, mostly using linear programming, integer programming and combinatorial enumerative methods as the solving approaches. We present a novel model, with corresponding constraint programming and integer programming formulations. We compare these computationally with previous formulations, and we show that constraint programming performs very well by comparison.

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

modelling
symmetry-breaking
search
intensity-modulated radiation therapy
multileaf collimator leaf sequencing