low overhead program monitoring and profiling Program instrumentation, inserted either before or during execution, is rapidly becoming a necessary component of many systems. Instrumentation is commonly used to collect information for many diverse analysis applications, such as detecting program invariants, dynamic slicing and alias analysis, software security checking, and computer architecture modeling. Because instrumentation typically has a high run-time overhead, techniques are needed to mitigate the overheads. This paper describes "instrumentation optimizations" that reduce the overhead of profiling for program analysis. Our approach applies transformations to the instrumentation code that reduce the (1) number of instrumentation points executed, (2) cost of instrumentation probes, and (3) cost of instrumentation payload, while maintaining the semantics of the original instrumentation. We present the transformations and apply them for program profiling and computer architecture modeling. We evaluate the optimizations and show that the optimizations improve profiling performance by 1.26-2.63x and architecture modeling performance by 2-3.3x.

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

profiling
applications
analysis
performance
collect
paper
software security
component
systems
code
dynamic
architecture
cost

point
probe
instrumentation optimization
invariance
computation
program analysis
timing
instrument
slice
model
informal
evaluation
alias analysis
semantic
dynamic binary translation
optimality
dynamic instrumentation
monitor


Group organization system for software engineering group learning with genetic algorithm The group organization used for group learning in a knowledge intensive domain like software development affects educational achievement. This paper proposes a group organization system for software engineering education done through group learning. The organizational problem itself is defined and why a genetic Algorithm (GA) is an appropriate means of solving this problem is explained. This system is a Web application developed with open source software and runs on all open source software platform. Based oil the group organization data collected from actual classes, we generated various group organizations by using different strategy parameter values. We then gave a questionnaire to actual students asking them which solution produced the fairest group organization. The replies received revealed that the candidate solution that set greater weight on leadership capability and system analysis capabilitly was the fairest.

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

group organization
software engineering education
genetic algorithm
group learning


Spatial energy balancing through proactive multipath routing in wireless multihop networks In this paper, we investigate the use of proactive multipath routing to achieve energy-efficient operation of ad hoe wireless networks. The focus is on optimizing tradeoffs; between the energy cost of spreading traffic and the improved spatial balance of energy burdens. We propose a simple scheme for multipath routing based on spatial relationships among nodes. Then, combining stochastic geometric and queueing models, we develop a continuum model for such networks, permitting an evaluation of different types of scenarios, i.e., with and without energy replenishing and storage capabilities. We propose a parameterized family of energy balancing strategies and study the spatial distributions of energy burdens based on their associated second-order statistics. Our analysis and simulations show the fundamental importance of the tradeoff explored in this paper, and how its optimization depends on the relative values of the energy reserves/storage, replenishing rates, and network load characteristics. For example, one of our results shows that the degree of spreading should roughly scale as the square root of the bits (.) meters load offered by a session. Simulation results confirm that proactive multipath routing decreases the probability of energy depletion by orders of magnitude versus that of a shortest path routing scheme when the initial energy reserve is high.

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

gaussian random field
m/gi/i queue
sensor networks
shot-noise process
stochastic geometry


An estimation of distribution algorithm for minimizing the total flowtime in permutation flowshop scheduling problems In this work we propose an estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) as a new tool aiming at minimizing the total flowtime in permutation flowshop scheduling problems. A variable neighbourhood search is added to the algorithm as an improvement procedure after creating a new offspring. The experiments show that our approach outperforms all existing techniques employed for the problem and can provide new upper bounds.

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

estimation of distribution algorithm
variable neighbourhood search
scheduling
permutation flowshop
flowtime


Four Constructions of Highly Symmetric Tetravalent Graphs Given a connected, dart-transitive, cubic graph, constructions of its Hexagonal Capping and its Dart Graph are considered. In each case, the result is a tetravalent graph which inherits symmetry from the original graph and is a covering of the line graph.Similar constructions are then applied to a map (a cellular embedding of a graph in a surface) giving tetravalent coverings of the medial graph. For each construction, conditions on the graph or the map to make the constructed graph dart-transitive, semisymmetric or -transitive are considered.

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


an error-resilient cell-based distributed index for location-based wireless broadcast services Air indexing techniques have been developed for energy efficient query processing of mobile clients(MCs) in the wireless data broadcast. In the air indexing for spatial data, previous studies have involved various problems, long broadcast cycle by large index size and unnecessary data listening by the query processing based on coordinates, which are mapped on space-filling curves from the real coordinates of data instances. In this paper, Cell-based Distributed Spatial Index(called CEDI) is proposed for wireless broadcast services. CEDI is very compact in size by keeping pointers of the groups of data instances instead of the pointer of each data instance. CEDI has distributed structure and supports multiple search paths by the replication of the pointers of data groups. CEDI does not have unnecessary data instances in the result due to processing queries based on the real coordinates of data instances. Therefore CEDI is very efficient for energy and has reduced access time to desired data. Moveover, CEDI has the robustness for link-error in error-prone wireless transmission environments. For the performance evaluation, simulation experiments using a real dataset and a uniform distribution dataset under various link-error probabilities are conducted. Experimental results show that CEDI outperforms the existing scheme in the energy efficiency and data access time. In particular, CEDI is much more resilient to link-errors.

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 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


Boosted multi-task learning In this paper we propose a novel algorithm for multi-task learning with boosted decision trees. We learn several different learning tasks with a joint model, explicitly addressing their commonalities through shared parameters and their differences with task-specific ones. This enables implicit data sharing and regularization. Our algorithm is derived using the relationship between a"" (1)-regularization and boosting. We evaluate our learning method on web-search ranking data sets from several countries. Here, multi-task learning is particularly helpful as data sets from different countries vary largely in size because of the cost of editorial judgments. Further, the proposed method obtains state-of-the-art results on a publicly available multi-task dataset. Our experiments validate that learning various tasks jointly can lead to significant improvements in performance with surprising reliability.

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 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


automatic alignment of large-scale aerial rasters to road-maps This paper introduces a practical approach to register large-scale GIS imagery to a database of road vectors automatically. The proposed approach breaks the global alignment problem into a set of localized domains (tiles). Within each tile, the displacement between imagery and vectors is approximated by a translation. Finally, a global thin-plate-spline warp based on these local approximations is applied to register the imagery to the vector data. The critical step in this approach is a fully automatic algorithm to compute the best imagery-to-vectors translation within a tile. The proposed algorithm performs vector-guided extraction of road features, aggregates features obtained in the neighborhood of multiple vectors, and then estimates the best translation through a least-squares optimization applied to a selected subset of the aggregated features. It also computes a confidence value for each processed image tile, so that a human operator can easily find out the places where the automatic approach has encountered difficulties, if necessary. The algorithm has been tested on hundreds of production satellite images of different countries. It has correctly registered over 80 percent of the imagery, and consistently reported low confidence values for the rest.

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

road detection
automatic conflation
image registration


An improved approximation algorithm for capacitated multicast routings in networks Let G = (V, E) be a connected graph such that each edge e is an element of E is weighted by nonnegative real w(e). Let s be a vertex designated as a source, k be a positive integer, and S subset of V be a set of terminals. The capacitated multicast tree routing problem (CMTR) asks to find a partition {Z(1), Z(2), . . . , Z(l)} of S and a set {T-1, T-2, . . . , T-l} of trees of G such that Z(i) consists of at most k terminals and each Ti spans Z(i) boolean OR {s}. The objective is to minimize Sigma(l)(i=1) w(T-i), where w(T-i) denotes the sum of weights of all edges in T-i. In this paper, we propose a (3/2 + (4/3)rho)-approximation algorithm to the CMTR, where rho is the best achievable approximation ratio for the Steiner tree problem. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

graph algorithm
multicast routing problem
network optimization
tree cover


Concept Location Using Formal Concept Analysis and Information Retrieval The article addresses the problem of concept location in source code by proposing an approach that combines Formal Concept Analysis and Information Retrieval. In the proposed approach, Latent Semantic Indexing, an advanced Information Retrieval approach, is used to map textual descriptions of software features or bug reports to relevant parts of the source code, presented as a ranked list of source code elements. Given the ranked list, the approach selects the most relevant attributes from the best ranked documents, clusters the results, and presents them as a concept lattice, generated using Formal Concept Analysis. The approach is evaluated through a large case study on concept location in the source code on six open-source systems, using several hundred features and bugs. The empirical study focuses on the analysis of various configurations of the generated concept lattices and the results indicate that our approach is effective in organizing different concepts and their relationships present in the subset of the search results. In consequence, the proposed concept location method has been shown to outperform a standalone Information Retrieval based concept location technique by reducing the number of irrelevant search results across all the systems and lattice configurations evaluated, potentially reducing the programmers' effort during software maintenance tasks involving concept location.

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

concept location
information retrieval
formal concept analysis

documentation
design
feature identification
program comprehension
software evolution and maintenance


Bayesian analysis of the stochastic conditional duration model A Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo methodology is developed for estimating the stochastic conditional duration model. The conditional mean of durations between trades is modelled as a latent stochastic process, with the conditional distribution of durations having positive support. Regressors are included in the model for the latent process in order to allow additional variables to impact on durations. The sampling scheme employed is a hybrid of the Gibbs and Metropolis-Hastings algorithms, with the latent vector sampled in blocks. Candidate draws for the latent process are generated by applying a Kalman filtering and smoothing algorithm to a linear Gaussian approximation of the non-Gaussian state space representation of the model. Monte Carlo sampling experiments demonstrate that the Bayesian method performs better overall than an alternative quasi-maximum likelihood approach. The methodology is illustrated using Australian intraday stock market data, with Bayes factors used to discriminate between different distributional assumptions for durations.

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

transaction data
latent variable model
non-gaussian state space model
kalman filter and simulation smoother


FESCIM: Fair, Efficient, and Secure Cooperation Incentive Mechanism for Multihop Cellular Networks In multihop cellular networks, the mobile nodes usually relay others' packets for enhancing the network performance and deployment. However, selfish nodes usually do not cooperate but make use of the cooperative nodes to relay their packets, which has a negative effect on the network fairness and performance. In this paper, we propose a fair and efficient incentive mechanism to stimulate the node cooperation. Our mechanism applies a fair charging policy by charging the source and destination nodes when both of them benefit from the communication. To implement this charging policy efficiently, hashing operations are used in the ACK packets to reduce the number of public-key-cryptography operations. Moreover, reducing the overhead of the payment checks is essential for the efficient implementation of the incentive mechanism due to the large number of payment transactions. Instead of generating a check per message, a small-size check can be generated per route, and a check submission scheme is proposed to reduce the number of submitted checks and protect against collusion attacks. Extensive analysis and simulations demonstrate that our mechanism can secure the payment and significantly reduce the checks' overhead, and the fair charging policy can be implemented almost computationally free by using hashing operations.

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

network-level security and protection
wireless communication
payment schemes
hybrid systems


towards a theory of natural language interfaces to databases The need for Natural Language Interfaces to databases (NLIs) has become increasingly acute as more and more people access information through their web browsers, PDAs, and cell phones. Yet NLIs are only usable if they map natural language questions to SQL queries correctly . As Schneiderman and Norman have argued, people are unwilling to trade reliable and predictable user interfaces for intelligent but unreliable ones. In this paper, we introduce a theoretical framework for reliable NLIs, which is the foundation for the fully implemented Precise NLI. We prove that, for a broad class of semantically tractable natural language questions, Precise is guaranteed to map each question to the corresponding SQL query. We report on experiments testing Precise on several hundred questions drawn from user studies over three benchmark databases. We find that over 80\% of the questions are semantically tractable questions, which Precise answers correctly. Precise automatically recognizes the 20\% of questions that it cannot handle, and requests a paraphrase. Finally, we show that Precise compares favorably with Mooney's learning NLI and with Microsoft's English Query product

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

framework
product
benchmark
sql
theory
queries
interfaces
learning
paper
access
user studies
query
class
natural language

cell phone
database
usability
test
intelligence
reliability
user interface
web browser
experience
informal
predict
natural language interface


Information systems orientation and business use of the Internet: An empirical study A research model based on the concept of a strategic grid was developed to examine the relationship between the role of information systems (IS) and organizational use of the Internet to achieve business competitiveness. A survey questionnaire was sent to 650 companies in Singapore, and 225 usable responses were obtained. The results indicated that firms with a more strategic view of IS make the most use of the Internet to achieve business competitiveness (in terms of the customer-ta-business, intrabusiness, and business-to-business dimensions). In particular, achieving market responsiveness (construct within the customer-to-business dimension) was the most significant differentiating variable in the extent of Internet usage among organizations in which IS plays different roles. Although other performance measures are important in designing an Internet strategy, this suggests that market responsiveness should receive special emphasis, since the Internet's global nature enhances access to new markets.

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

electronic commerce strategy
information systems strategy


On the relationship of local projection stabilization to other stabilized methods for one-dimensional advectiondiffusion equations We consider the one-level approach of the local projection stabilization (LPS) for solving a singularly perturbed advectiondiffusion two-point boundary value problem. Eliminating the enrichments we end up with the differentiated residual method (DRM) which coincides for piecewise linears with the streamline upwind PetrovGalerkin (SUPG) method and for piecewise polynomials of degree r?2 r ? 2 with the variational multiscale method (VMS). Furthermore, we show that in certain cases the stabilization parameter can be chosen in such a way that the piecewise linear part of the solution becomes nodal exact. In this way, we obtain explicit formulas for the stabilization parameter depending on the local meshsize, the polynomial degree r of the approximation space, and the data of the problem. Finally, we discuss the behaviour of different modes of the discrete solution when varying the stabilization parameter.

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


dynamic class loading in the java virtual machine Class loaders are a powerful mechanism for dynamically loading software components on the Java platform. They are unusual in supporting all of the following features: laziness, type-safe linkage, user-defined extensibility , and multiple communicating namespaces .We present the notion of class loaders and demonstrate some of their interesting uses. In addition, we discuss how to maintain type safety in the presence of user-defined dynamic class loading.

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

presence
demonstrate
platform
virtual machine
type safety
dynamic
class

communication
feature
software component
user
maintainability


An object oriented approach to constructing recursive descent parsers We discuss a technique to construct a recursive descent parser for a context free language using concepts found in object oriented design and implementation. A motivation for the technique is given. The technique is then introduced with snippets of a Smalltalk implementation. Some advantages and disadvantages of the technique are examined. Finally some areas of possible future work are discussed.

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

recursive descent parser
object oriented
smalltalk

context free grammar
greibach normal form
design patterns


Impact of active thermal management on power electronics design Power electronic system design is typically constrained by the thermal limitation so by the overall losses and the peak current. To stay within the maximum current, reached only during transients, the system is typically overrated. Active thermal management is used to control the maximum temperature and the temperature swing to reduce failures that are mostly caused by them. In this paper it is proposed to use the active thermal management to reduce the switching losses or to move them to less stressed devices, during transients, such as a module can reach an higher current, without violating thermal constraints, and the need of overdesign can be reduced. Hence an optimal and cost effective design of power electronics system is achieved.

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 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


towards context-based dynamic video adaptation Nowadays, many devices with different characteristics can be used to access a multimedia content. Some of these characteristics, like memory capacity and screen resolution, turn restricted the access to this content. Researchers have been working in automatically adapting the system, in according with the device capabilities. However, most of this works only consider the network condition, such as bandwidth and packet loss, offering services in a static way. This work presents an alternative for video adaptation. Using a Neural Network we analyze data, suchas devices capabilities, user's preferences or network condition, in order to obtain the most adequate coder's input parameters that will adapt content matching devices' restrictions or users' needs.

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


performance evaluation of a hybrid adaptive service discovery protocol for next generation heterogeneous vehicular networks (hvns) Recently, vehicle networks are gaining lots of interest from the research community. In order to provide efficient and pervasive road communication, Heterogeneous Vehicular Networks (HVN) are considered as a promising solution. HVNs have unique characteristics and face challenging problems. Consequently, it is hard to use the traditional mechanisms and protocols in this type of networks. service discovery is a very challenging problem for HVNs based applications. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, very little work has been done to deal with the service discovery problem in HVNs. Due to the heterogeneity of the vehicular network and the high mobility and density of vehicles, traditional discovery techniques do not perform well. To solve this problem, we first propose a new architecture for Next Generation Heterogeneous Vehicular Networks, then we propose a novel class of service discovery protocol that permits to vehicles to discover services through the heterogeneous wireless network. Our hybrid proposed technique combines both proactive and reactive discovery approaches. It is also adaptive because it adapts to the vehicular network conditions in order to permit efficient discovery in terms of low overhead, and high success rate. We present extensive simulation results to evaluate the performance of our scheme.

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


customizing aose methodologies by reusing aose features Future large-scale software development projects will require engineering support for a diverse range of software quality attributes, such as privacy and openness. It is not feasible to create one monolithic methodology to support all possible quality attributes. Instead, we expect AOSE methodologies to be created and reused in a modular way. A modular approach enables developers to build custom project-specific methodologies from AOSE features in the same way applications are built from reusable off-the-shelf components.In this paper, we provide a conceptual framework for creating and reusing modular methodologies. This conceptual framework is based on the concept of an AOSE feature, which performs one or more development activities, such as analysis, and addresses one or more quality attributes, such as privacy. An AOSE feature encapsulates software engineering techniques, models, supporting CASE tools and development knowledge such as design patterns.We illustrate the applicability of our approach by modularizing four existing methodologies, Prometheus, ROADMAP, CaseLP and the conventional OO approach, into AOSE features.

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

modular methodology
agent oriented software engineering


framework for research on detection classifiers Detection of patterns in images with classifiers is currently one of the most important research topics in computer vision. Many practical applications such as face detection exist and recent work even suggests that any specialized detectors (e.g. corner-point detectors) can be approximated by very fast detection classifiers. In this paper, we analyze the requirements on tools which are needed when experimenting with detection classifiers and we present a general framework which was created to fulfill these requirements. This framework offers high performance for training, high variability, elegant handling of configuration and it is able to meet all the requirements which arise when experimenting with almost all possible kinds of detection classifiers. The framework offers good testing support, full supporting infrastructure and some useful training algorithms and features. We offer this framework for research and educational purposes and we hope it will allow lower initial investments when experimenting with detection classifiers.

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

waldboost
cascade of classifiers
classifier evaluation
face detection
classification
image processing
corner points
adaboost


Clustering with r-regular graphs In this paper, we present a novel graph-based clustering method, where we decompose a (neighborhood) graph into (disjoint) r-regular graphs followed by further refinement through optimizing the normalized cluster utility. We solve the r-regular graph decomposition using a linear programming. However, this simple decomposition suffers from inconsistent edges if clusters are not well separated. We optimize the normalized cluster utility in order to eliminate inconsistent edges or to merge similar clusters into a group within the principle of minimal K-cut. The method is especially useful in the presence of noise and outliers. Moreover, the method detects the number of clusters within a pre-specified range. Numerical experiments with synthetic and UCI data sets, confirm the useful behavior of the method. (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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

b-matching
graph-based clustering
regular graphs


FNDS: a dialogue-based system for accessing digested financial news ? Electronic financial news available on the Internet contains a wealth of information useful for business decision-making. However, as this information is both qualitative and existent in huge volumes, it is very inefficient to digest manually. This paper presents a prototype system called FNDS, which automatically digests financial news by extracting important information from the articles and using this information to fill in pre-defined templates. A unique feature of FNDS is that users can access the extracted information through an interactive dialogue-based interface. This has the advantage that if users do not know exactly what information is required, the system will provide feedback to help them to formulate the information requirement incrementally.

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 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

information extraction
dialogue processing


Residual as Linear Sum of Matrix Determinants in Multiway Contingency Tables A Pearson residual is defined as a residual between an observed value and expected one of each cell in a contingency table, which measures the degree of statistical dependence of two attribute-value pairs corresponding to the cell. This paper shows that this residual is decomposed into a linear sum of determinants of 2 x 2 subtables, which means that the geometrical nature of the residuals can be viewed from grasmmanian algebra.

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 O O O O O O O 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

multiway contingency table
information granules


A Remotely Accessible and Configurable Electronics Laboratory Implementation by Using LabVIEW In this article, selected applications from the experiments included in undergraduate Electronics and Computer Education curriculum are transformed into remotely accessible and configurable manner. The experiment user interfaces and publishing over the internet is developed in LabVIEW. These experiments are suitable for online conduction where students are either in-class or laboratory on-campus and/or at home. In this work, four different remotely configurable experiment modules are designed and implemented. Remotely configurable facility in a predefined range is performed by using switches activated by DO terminals of a data acquisition card through a web-based application. In this way, students can select the desired experiment from the ones stored on the PCB, adjust the voltage applied to the input terminal of the circuit and change the circuit elements values by using telepresence methodology. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 18: 709-720, 2010; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20276

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

remote lab
electronics education
instrument control
gpib interface


Cellular Model of Room Evacuation Based on Occupancy and Movement Prediction: Comparison with Experimental Study A simple experiment of non-panic evacuation of single room with one exit was organized and analyzed from the microscopic point of view. The rule-based CA based on Floor-Field model is presented to support the experiment. Several ideas of decision-making allowing the individual to choose an occupied cell are implemented to reflect observed behavior in the congestion cluster in front of the bottleneck. The velocity of pedestrians is represented by the updating frequency of individuals. Model parameters were calibrated to match the observations of the leaving-the-room experiment.

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

evacuation model
floor-field
occupation and movement prediction
egress experiment
shape of pedestrian cloud
time scale calibration


A tabu search algorithm for the multi-period inspector scheduling problem This paper introduces a multi-period inspector scheduling problem (MPISP), which is a new variant of the multi-trip vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). In the MPISP, each inspector is scheduled to perform a route in a given multi-period planning horizon. At the end of each period, each inspector is not required to return to the depot but has to stay at one of the vertices for recuperation. If the remaining time of the current period is insufficient for an inspector to travel from his/her current vertex A to a certain vertex B, he/she can choose either waiting at vertex A until the start of the next period or traveling to a vertex C that is closer to vertex B. Therefore, the shortest transit time between any vertex pair is affected by the length of the period and the departure time. We first describe an approach of computing the shortest transit time between any pair of vertices with an arbitrary departure time. To solve the MPISP, we then propose several local search operators adapted from classical operators for the VRPTW and integrate them into a tabu search framework. In addition, we present a constrained knapsack model that is able to produce an upper bound for the problem. Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of our algorithm with extensive experiments based on a set of test instances. Our computational results indicate that our approach generates high-quality solutions.

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

tabu search
routing
inspector scheduling problem


DETONATION CLASSIFICATION FROM ACOUSTIC SIGNATURE WITH THE RESTRICTED BOLTZMANN MACHINE We compare the recently proposed Discriminative Restricted Boltzmann Machine (DRBM) to the classical Support Vector Machine (SVM) on a challenging classification task consisting in identifying weapon classes from audio signals. The three weapon classes considered in this work (mortar, rocket, and rocket-propelled grenade), are difficult to reliably classify with standard techniques because they tend to have similar acoustic signatures. In addition, specificities of the data available in this study make it challenging to rigorously compare classifiers, and we address methodological issues arising from this situation. Experiments show good classification accuracy that could make these techniques suitable for fielding on autonomous devices. DRBMs appear to yield better accuracy than SVMs, and are less sensitive to the choice of signal preprocessing and model hyperparameters. This last property is especially appealing in such a task where the lack of data makes model validation difficult.

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

discriminative restricted boltzmann machine


Efficient estimation of multidimensional regression model using multilayer perceptrons This work concerns the estimation of multidimensional non-linear regression models using multilayer perceptrons (MLPs). The main problem with such models is that we need to know the covariance matrix of the noise to get an optimal estimator. However, we show in this paper that if we choose as the cost function the logarithm of the determinant of the empirical error covariance matrix, then we get an asymptotically optimal estimator. Moreover, under suitable assumptions, we show that this cost function leads to a very simple asymptotic law for testing the number of parameters of an identifiable MLP. Numerical experiments confirm the theoretical results.

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

non-linear regression
multivariate regression
asymptotic normality


A polynomial space construction of tree-like models for logics with local chains of modal connectives The LA-logics ("logics with Local Agreement") are polymodal logics defined semantically such that at any world of a model, the sets of successors for the different accessibility relations can be linearly ordered and the accessibility relations are equivalence relations. In a previous work, we have shown that every LA-logic defined with a finite set of modal indices has an NP-complete satisfiability problem. In this paper, we introduce a class of LA-logics with a countably infinite set of modal indices and we show that the satisfiability problem is PSPACE-complete for every logic of such a class. The upper bound is shown by exhibiting a tree structure of the models. This allows us to establish a surprising correspondence between the modal depth of formulae and the number of occurrences of distinct modal connectives. More importantly, as a consequence, we can show the PSPACE-completeness of Gargov's logic DALLA and Nakamura's logic LGM restricted to modal indices that are rational numbers, for which the computational complexity characterization has been open until now. These logics are known to belong to the class of information logics and fuzzy modal logics, respectively. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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 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

computational complexity
local agreement


Interacting Wakes of Two Normal Flat Plates An investigation based on phase averaging of LDA signals The flow around two bluff bodies in tandem is an interesting phenomenon whose nature strongly depends on the distance between the bodies. In this work oil smoke visualizations of the flow around two normal flat plates in tandem configuration are compared with phase averaged Laser Doppler Anemometry measurements of the flow field for a full period. Phase averaging is exploited to resolve the mean time evolution of the flow and the signal from a single constant temperature hot wire probe is employed as phasing reference. The flow-field information obtained from visualizations agrees well with quantitative indications provided by measures, and the comparison allows to precisely understand what information can be extracted from simple visualizations. As a result, new insight in flow mechanism is obtained from the analysis of the flow data showing that, for the analyzed plate distance, the gap between the two plates behaves substantially as a cavity while the vortex formation process takes place in the wake region behind the aft plate.

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

bluff bodies
laser doppler anemometry
phase averaging


Multiple strategy stochastic iteration for architectural walkthroughs Architectural walkthroughs require fast rendering algorithms and also physically accurate results. This paper introduces a global illumination method that combines several strategies to meet these contradicting criteria. The methods include parallel and perspective ray-bundle shooting and ray shooting. Each method is designed to randomly approximate the effect of the light transport operator. Parallel ray-bundle tracing transfers the radiance of all points parallel to a randomly selected global direction, with perspective ray-bundles we can shoot the radiance of a single patch in all directions, and ray shooting transfers the radiance of a randomly selected point at a randomly selected direction. These strategies have complementary features since each of them is effective in different illumination conditions. In each step of the proposed iterative algorithm the applied strategy is selected randomly according to the properties of the current radiance distribution. The formal framework of the combination is the stochastic iteration. Although the algorithm is view dependent, a rough approximation of the radiance function is stored in object-space, which allows fast animations at reasonable storage requirements and also speeds up Monte-Carlo simulations. The method is also suited for interactive walkthrough animation in glossy scenes since when the viewpoint changes, the object-space radiance values remain valid and the image quickly adapts to the new situation.

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

global illumination
stochastic iteration

finite-element techniques
monte-carlo methods


A general software system for Markov decision processes in herd management applications A general software system for construction, editing and optimization of Markov decision processes ranging from traditional models and hierarchical Markov processes to multi-level hierarchical processes is presented. The software is designed to be multipurpose, to meet the needs of students and young scientists for demonstration of methods and concepts as well as the needs of a professional user, building real world models. A short description of the system is given and its facilities are illustrated through a sow model defined as a three-level hierarchical Markov process combining decisions on two time scales. Emphasis is put on modeling devices that may simplify the structure or speed up the calculations, which in real world models are of vast dimensions.

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

dynamic programming
markov decision process
java java


A note on distances between intuitionistic fuzzy sets and/or interval-valued fuzzy sets based on the Hausdorff metric In this note, we point out some errors to Lemma 4 in Grzegorzewski [Distances between intuitionistic fuzzy sets and/or interval-valued fuzzy sets based on the Hausdorff metric, Fuzzy Sets and Systems 148, 319-328] by counterexamples. We find that the inequalities of Euclidean distances and normalized Euclidean distances for intuitionistic fuzzy sets are not valid. (C) 2007 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

euclidean distance
intuitionistic fuzzy set


Financial performance analysis of Ontario (Canada) Credit Unions: An application of DEA in the regulatory environment Models are developed to detect weaknesses in Credit Unions in Ontario, Canada, so that potential financial failures can be predicted. Four data envelopment analysis (DEA) models are presented and compared with the equity to asset ratio, and with the government regulator's extensively modified Z-score model. The equity/asset ratio is shown to provide as good a prediction of failure as any of the other models, and is not improved upon by the much more complex Z-score model. The best DEA model provides results comparable to the equity/asset ratio when a slack adjusted efficiency score is used to measure efficiency, particularly for Credit Unions with larger asset sizes. However, DEA also provides indications of where opportunities lie for improvements by weak units by providing specific information, relevant to managers. Hence, for each Credit Union, comparison is made with a peer group of efficient entities that the inefficient institution's management can emulate to improve their performance.

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

data envelopment analysis
failure
efficiency


FPGA PLB architecture evaluation and area optimization techniques using Boolean satisfiability This paper presents a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) logic synthesis technique based upon Boolean satisfiability. This paper shows how to map any Boolean function into an arbitrary programmable logic block (PLB) architecture without any custom decomposition techniques. The authors illustrate several useful applications of this technique by showing how this technique can be used for architecture evaluation and area optimization. When evaluating the FPGA architecture, the authors focus on the basic building block of the FPGA, which they refer to as PLB. In order to illustrate the flexibility of their evaluation framework, several unrelated PLB architectures are evaluated in an automated fashion. Furthermore, the authors show that using their technique is able to reduce FPGA resource usage by 27% on average in common subcircuits found in digital design.

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

boolean satisfiability (sat)
field-programmable gate array (fpga)
quantified sat (qsat)
resynthesis


Pulse wave propagation in a large number of coupled bistable oscillators A simple model of inductor-coupled bistable oscillators is shown to exhibit pulse wave propagation. We demonstrate numerically that there exists a pulse wave which propagates with a constant speed in comparatively wide parameter region. In particular, the propagating pulse wave can be observed in non-uniform lattice with noise. The propagating pulse wave can be observed for comparatively strong coupling case, and for weak coupling case no propagating pulse wave can be observed (propagation failure). We also demonstrate various interaction phenomena between two pulses.

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

bistable oscillators
propagation failure

inductor coupling
pulse propagation/interaction phenomena
non-uniform lattice


A Coding Algorithm for Constant Weight Vectors: A Geometric Approach Based on Dissections We present a novel technique for encoding and decoding constant weight binary vectors that uses a geometric interpretation of the codebook. Our technique is based on embedding the codebook in a Euclidean space of dimension equal to the weight of the code. The encoder and decoder mappings are then interpreted as a bijection between a certain hyper-rectangle and a polytope in this Euclidean space. An inductive dissection algorithm is developed for constructing such a bijection. We prove that the algorithm is correct and then analyze its complexity. The complexity depends on the weight of the vector, rather than on the block length as in other algorithms. This approach is advantageous when the weight is smaller than the square root of the block length.

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 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

constant weight codes
encoding algorithms
polyhedral dissections
bijections
dehn invariant


Bankruptcy visualization and prediction using neural networks: A study of U.S. commercial banks We combine multilayer perceptrons and self-organizing maps for bankruptcy prediction. We calculate the probability of distress up to three years before bankruptcy occurs. We develop a tool to assess bank risk in the short, medium and long term. Our model outperforms traditional models of bankruptcy prediction. Distressed banks are concentrated in real estate loans and have more provisions.

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

financial crisis
multilayer perceptron
self-organizing maps


On a grading system for beef marbling ? This paper presents an automatic grading system for beef marbling which is composed of discriminant threshold selection method and run length processing. From the experimental results, it has been confirmed that the proposed system enables high quality grading of beef marbling, and robust region segmentation of the actual beef rib-eye image into lean and fat regions.

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