automatic adaptation of proper noun dictionaries through cooperation of machine learning and probabilistic methods The recognition of Proper Nouns (PNs) is considered an important task in the area of Information Retrieval and Extraction. However the high performance of most existing PN classifiers heavily depends upon the availability of large dictionaries of domain-specific Proper Nouns, and a certain amount of manual work for rule writing or manual tagging. Though it is not a heavy requirement to rely on some existing PN dictionary (often these resources are available on the web), its coverage of a domain corpus may be rather low, in absence of manual updating. In this paper we propose a technique for the automatic updating of an PN Dictionary through the cooperation of an inductive and a probabilistic classifier. In our experiments we show that, whenever an existing PN Dictionary allows the identification of 50\% of the proper nouns within a corpus, our technique allows, without additional manual effort, the successful recognition of about 90\% of the remaining 50\%.

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

text data mining
information extraction
natural language processing for ir
machine learning and ir


Decoupled control of grid connected inverter with dynamic online grid impedance measurements for micro grid applications A Decoupled control of grid connected inverter using dynamic grid impedance for a micro-grid application is presented. Varying network configuration of micro-grid due to renewable sources makes the line impedance to vary during the operation. The mismatch between the actual and the decoupling impedances cause transients during step change in power references. In this paper the impedance for decoupling is obtained and updated in the control loop dynamically by measuring it online. A perfect decoupling with independency in inverters active and reactive power control is achieved without any transients.

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

current control of inverter
synchronous reference frame
dq decoupling
grid impedance measurement


Design and synthesis of type-III mimetics of omega-conotoxin GVIA Our interest lies in the rational design and synthesis of type-III mimetics of protein and polypeptide structure and function. Our approach involves interactive design of conformationally defined molecular scaffolds that project certain functional groups in a way that mimics the projection of important binding residues as determined in the parent structure. These design principles are discussed and applied to the structurally defined polypeptide, omega-conotoxin GVIA, which blocks voltage-gated, neuronal N-type calcium channels. These ion channels represent therapeutic targets for the development of new analgesics that can treat chronic pain. It is shown how a discontinuous, 3-residue pharmacophore of GVIA can be mimicked by different molecular scaffolds. It is illustrated how such 1(st) generation leads must necessarily be weak and that optimisability must therefore be built-in during the design process.

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

omega-conotoxin gvia
ion channel blockers
n-type calcium channel
peptidomimetics
proteinomimetics


recommending experts using communication history In distributed software development the communication is inefficient because of geographical and temporal distances, affecting the team's performance and awareness. The low level of awareness makes hard the task of finding the expert of a piece of source code, delaying the implementation whenever a developer needs help. To identify and to recommend the people with right knowledge to people in trouble during the implementation can improve the collaboration and awareness of the team because it can reduce the waiting time for an answer, since the expert can be contacted directly. In this paper we propose recommender system for expert location with the aim to reduce delays of finding the right person whenever somebody needs assistance during coding. Our approach uses the communication history of the project (the developer's mailing list) in addition to usual source code history. We also present results which show the practical potential of our approach.

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

expert recommender system
global software engineering
knowledge management


An optimization algorithm for multimodal functions inspired by collective animal behavior Interest in multimodal function optimization is expanding rapidly as real-world optimization problems often demand locating multiple optima within a search space. This article presents a new multimodal optimization algorithm named as the collective animal behavior. Animal groups, such as schools of fish, flocks of birds, swarms of locusts, and herds of wildebeest, exhibit a variety of behaviors including swarming about a food source, milling around a central location, or migrating over large distances in aligned groups. These collective behaviors are often advantageous to groups, allowing them to increase their harvesting efficiency to follow better migration routes, to improve their aerodynamic, and to avoid predation. In the proposed algorithm, searcher agents are a group of animals which interact with each other based on the biologic laws of collective motion. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is capable of finding global and local optima of benchmark multimodal optimization problems with a higher efficiency in comparison with other methods reported in the literature.

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

metaheuristic algorithms
evolutionary algorithms
bio-inspired algorithms


Algorithms for wireless sensor networks This paper reviews some of the recent advances in the development of algorithms for wireless sensor networks. We focus on sensor deployment and coverage, routing, and sensor fusion.

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

wireless sensor networks
algorithms
routing
coverage
fusion


A simple model for TCP loss recovery performance over wireless networks There have been a lot of approaches to evaluate and predict transmission control protocol (TCP) performance in a numerical way. Especially, under the recent advance in wireless transmission technology, the issue of TCP performance over wireless links has come to surface. It is because TCP responds to all packet losses by invoking congestion control and avoidance algorithms, resulting in degraded end-to-end performance in wireless and lossy systems. By several previous works, although it has been already proved that overall TCP performance is largely dependent on its loss recovery performance, there have been few works to try to analyze TCP loss recovery performance with thoroughness. In this paper, therefore, we focus on analyzing TCP's loss recovery performance and have developed a simple model that facilitates to capture the TCP sender's behaviors during loss recovery period. Based on the developed model, we can derive the conditions that packet losses may be recovered without retransmission timeout (RTO). Especially, we have found that TCP Reno can retransmit three packet losses by fast retransmits in a specific situation. In addition, we have proved that successive three packet losses and more than four packet losses in a window always invoke RTO easily, which is not considered or approximated in the previous works. Through probabilistic works with the conditions derived, the loss recovery performance of TCP Reno can be quantified in terms of the number of packet losses in a window.

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

fast retransmit probability
model validation and analysis
non-congestion packet loss
transmission control protocol (tcp)


sharex3d, a scientific collaborative 3d viewer over http In scientific visualization data are becoming more and more complex and implies cooperative effort for their post-processing analysis as well as high performance processing resources. Moreover experts are frequently geographically distributed and existing post-processing tools do not provide high performance capability with collaborative features. To solve this limitation, a prospective action has been recently initiated in the frame of the ANR SCOS project, with the development of a web based post-processing framework called V3D. SCOS/V3D is based on two innovating concepts: the sharing of the processing results via the transfer of a X3D data file corresponding to the final virtual reality scene and communications based on HTTP to by-pass standard proxies and firewalls limitations. To test this approach, a proof of concept prototype, called shareX3D, has been developed, especially focusing on the events notification, with an implementation of the long polling technique. The architecture of ShareX3D and first tests are presented and discussed.

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

x3d
postprocessing
scientific visualization


just in time indexing for up to the second search E-commerce and intranet search systems require newly arriving content to be indexed and made available for search within minutes or hours of arrival. Applications such as file system and email search demand even faster turnaround from search systems, requiring new content to become available for search almost instantaneously. However, incrementally updating inverted indices, which are the predominant datastructure used in search engines, is an expensive operation that most systems avoid performing at high rates. We present JiTI, a Just-in-Time Indexing component that allows searching over incoming content (nearly) as soon as that content reaches the system. JiTI's main idea is to invest less in the preprocessing of arriving data, at the expense of a tolerable latency in query response time. It is designed for deployment in search systems that maintain a large main index and that rebuild smaller stop-press indices once or twice an hour. JiTI augments such systems with instant retrieval capabilities over content arriving in between the stop-press builds. A main design point is for JiTI to demand few computational resources, in particular RAM and I/O. Our experiments consisted of injecting several documents and queries per second concurrently into the system over half-hour long periods. We believe that there are search applications for which the combination of the workloads we experimented with and the response times we measured present a viable solution to a pressing problem.

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


APPLYING CEGAR TO THE PETRI NET STATE EQUATION We propose a reachability verification technique that combines the Petri net state equation (a linear algebraic overapproximation of the set of reachable states) with the concept of counterexample guided abstraction refinement. In essence, we replace the search through the set of reachable states by a search through the space of solutions of the state equation. We demonstrate the excellent performance of the technique on several real-world examples. The technique is particularly useful in those cases where the reachability query yields a negative result: While state space based techniques need to fully expand the state space in this case, our technique often terminates promptly. In addition, we can derive some diagnostic information in case of unreachability while state space methods can only provide witness paths in the case of reachability.

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

reachability problem
integer programming
structure analysis
partial order reduction


Effective I/O scheme based on RTP for multimedia communication systems The prime standard for audio/video transport in IP networks is the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), and it is targeted at useful services for the transport of real-time multimedia data. RTP was originally designed for use in multicast conferences, using the lightweight sessions model. RTP (in particular, the data part) is so tightly coupled to the application that a number of people have developed libraries that implement RTP. However, little is known about the RTP overheads between user area and kernel area within operating system. Actually, unnecessary copying between user area and kernel area lowers the system efficiency. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of Enhanced Multimedia Input/Output Scheme based on LINUX. We brought focus to the crossover architecture supporting RTP. Our contributions are able to be summarized into two components: 1) Enhanced Input/Output (EIO) scheme based on LINUX improves the transmission speed by reducing the overheads generated from data copy and context switch between user area and kernel area. And this enables server-based system to transport multimedia data more efficiently. 2) Furthermore, Enhanced Input/Output scheme with RTP (EIORTP) scheme supports efficient multimedia data transmission architecture. The two schemes improve the performance of massive multimedia data transmission.

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


Language and emotions: Emotional SapirWhorf hypothesis An emotional version of SapirWhorf hypothesis suggests that differences in language emotionalities influence differences among cultures no less than conceptual differences. Conceptual contents of languages and cultures to significant extent are determined by words and their semantic differences; these could be borrowed among languages and exchanged among cultures. Emotional differences, as suggested in the paper, are related to grammar and mostly cannot be borrowed. The paper considers conceptual and emotional mechanisms of language along with their role in the mind and cultural evolution. Language evolution from primordial undifferentiated animal cries is discussed: while conceptual contents increase, emotional reduced. Neural mechanisms of these processes are suggested as well as their mathematical models: the knowledge instinct, the dual model connecting language and cognition, neural modeling fields. Mathematical results are related to cognitive science, linguistics, and psychology. Experimental evidence and theoretical arguments are discussed. Dynamics of the hierarchyheterarchy of human minds and cultures is formulated using mean-field approach and approximate equations are obtained. The knowledge instinct operating in the mind heterarchy leads to mechanisms of differentiation and synthesis determining ontological development and cultural evolution. These mathematical models identify three types of cultures: conceptual pragmatic cultures in which emotionality of language is reduced and differentiation overtakes synthesis resulting in fast evolution at the price of uncertainty of values, self doubts, and internal crises; traditionalemotional cultures where differentiation lags behind synthesis, resulting in cultural stability at the price of stagnation; and multi-cultural societies combining fast cultural evolution and stability. Unsolved problems and future theoretical and experimental directions are discussed.

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

language
cognition
emotions
knowledge instinct
mind
heterarchy


Architecture models to facilitate communication of clinical information This is an account of the development and use of a context model for facilitating the communication of clinical information. Its function is to articulate the principle of context with in a reference architecture for the Electronic Health Care Record (EHCR). The work required a re-examination of established models of communication, the purpose being to use them to support an architecture that could be reasonably expected to accommodate future, a nd by definition unforeseeable, developments in EHCR communication, The Context Model is built upon seven recognized constituents of communication, These constituents, although having their origin in the engineering of signal communication, have been found to be useful for explication both in the verbal and textual communication of narratives between people. The electronic health care record architecture supported by the model is the European prestandard ENV13606-1.

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


Problem dependent generalized prewavelets In this paper, we present a new approach to construct robust multilevel algorithms for elliptic differential equations. The multilevel algorithms consist of multiplicative subspace corrections in spaces spanned by problem dependent generalized prewavelets. These generalized prewavelets are constructed by a local orthogonalization of hierarchical basis functions with respect to a so-called local coarse-grid space. Numerical results show that the local orthogonalization leads to a smaller constant in strengthened Cauchy-Schwarz inequality than the original hierarchical basis functions. This holds also for several equations with discontinuous coefficients. Thus, the corresponding multilevel algorithm is a fast and robust iterative solver.

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 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


Geometrical channel model for vehicle-to-vehicle systems In ITS impairments tend to be more severe as, in some scenarios, transmitterreceiver relative motion is larger than in cellular systems. This renders in larger Doppler shifts. Also, the scattering scenarios changes continuously and dispersers and reflector tend to lay along traffic roads. In this paper, Doppler shift is characterized in an ITS environment for line of sight and randomly located scatterers. Impact of vehicle speed and lane separation and transmitterreceiver distances are considered in terms of the overall Doppler probability density function (pdf) mixture. Asymmetric behavior with respect to mobile speed is also reported. Doppler spread for a scenario of several scatterers is introduced and shown to be in close agreement to real measurements.

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

v2v communication
intelligent transportation system (its)


Knowledge sharing in virtual communities: an e-business perspective Thanks to availability of the Internet, virtual communities are proliferating at an unprecedented rate. In-depth understanding of virtual community dynamics can help us to address critical organizational and information systems issues such as communities-of-practice, virtual collaboration, and knowledge management. In this article, we develop a virtual community activity framework, integrating community knowledge sharing activity into business activities in the form of an e-business model. We examine how the level of community knowledge sharing activity leads to virtual community outcomes and whether such community outcomes are related to loyalty toward the virtual community service provider. Based on a field survey of 77 virtual communities currently operating in Freechal.com, one of Korea's largest Internet community service providers, we found that the level of community knowledge sharing activity is related to virtual community outcomes and such outcomes are significantly associated with loyalty to the virtual community service provider. These results imply that the level of community knowledge sharing activity may be a proper proxy for the state of health of a virtual community. Implications of the findings and future virtual community research directions are discussed.

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

knowledge management
virtual community
knowledge sharing activity


a fast and reliable decoding scheme with prior-hash bits in distributed video coding Distributed video coding (DVC) has attracted increasing research efforts due to its low-complexity encoding requirements and its applications in wireless video sensor networks for monitoring. This paper proposes a modified Prior-Hash-Based Side-Information Search for decoding Scheme in DVC. LDPC is introduced to produce the syndromes to realize DVC. And a hash-based side-information search scheme is proposed to get the most possible side information before syndrome decoding, named the Prior-Hash bits scheme. The proposed scheme not only reduces the bits of hash in the encoder, but also greatly decreases the computation complexity and delay in the decoder. Simulation results illustrate the performance of PSNR and the complexity advantages of the proposed scheme compared with the original PRISM [1] scheme.

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


Cluster synchronization for directed complex dynamical networks via pinning control This paper investigates the cluster synchronization problem of a class of general complex dynamical networks under pinning control scheme. The network topology is assumed to be directed and weakly connected. The pinning controllers are designed according to the nodes property respectively, that is, the inter-act nodes and the intra-act nodes. Some simple control criteria are proposed to guarantee that the nodes synchronize with one another in the same cluster, but no synchronization appears among the different clusters. Furthermore, an adaptive pinning control approach is developed. Numerical example is also provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis.

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

cluster synchronization
directed complex dynamical networks
pinning control


Multimedia data mining: state of the art and challenges Advances in multimedia data acquisition and storage technology have led to the growth of very large multimedia databases. Analyzing this huge amount of multimedia data to discover useful knowledge is a challenging problem. This challenge has opened the opportunity for research in Multimedia Data Mining (MDM). Multimedia data mining can be defined as the process of finding interesting patterns from media data such as audio, video, image and text that are not ordinarily accessible by basic queries and associated results. The motivation for doing MDM is to use the discovered patterns to improve decision making. MDM has therefore attracted significant research efforts in developing methods and tools to organize, manage, search and perform domain specific tasks for data from domains such as surveillance, meetings, broadcast news, sports, archives, movies, medical data, as well as personal and online media collections. This paper presents a survey on the problems and solutions in Multimedia Data Mining, approached from the following angles: feature extraction, transformation and representation techniques, data mining techniques, and current multimedia data mining systems in various application domains. We discuss main aspects of feature extraction, transformation and representation techniques. These aspects are: level of feature extraction, feature fusion, features synchronization, feature correlation discovery and accurate representation of multimedia data. Comparison of MDM techniques with state of the art video processing, audio processing and image processing techniques is also provided. Similarly, we compare MDM techniques with the state of the art data mining techniques involving clustering, classification, sequence pattern mining, association rule mining and visualization. We review current multimedia data mining systems in detail, grouping them according to problem formulations and approaches. The review includes supervised and unsupervised discovery of events and actions from one or more continuous sequences. We also do a detailed analysis to understand what has been achieved and what are the remaining gaps where future research efforts could be focussed. We then conclude this survey with a look at open research directions.

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

probabilistic temporal multimedia data mining


Image Registration Under Illumination Variations Using Region-Based Confidence Weighted M-Estimators We present an image registration model for image sets with arbitrarily shaped local illumination variations between images. Any nongeometric variations tend to degrade the geometric registration precision and impact subsequent processing. Traditional image registration approaches do not typically account for changes and movement of light sources, which result in interimage illumination differences with arbitrary shape. In addition, these approaches typically use a least-square estimator that is sensitive to outliers, where interimage illumination variations are often large enough to act as outliers. In this paper, we propose an image registration approach that compensates for arbitrarily shaped interimage illumination variations, which are processed using robust M-estimators tuned to that region. Each M-estimator for each illumination region has a distinct cost function by which small and large interimage residuals are unevenly penalized. Since the segmentation of the interimage illumination variations may not be perfect, a segmentation confidence weighting is also imposed to reduce the negative effect of mis-segmentation around illumination region boundaries. The proposed approach is cast in an iterative coarse-to-fine framework, which allows a convergence rate similar to competing intensity-based image registration approaches. The overall proposed approach is presented in a general framework, but experimental results use the bisquare M-estimator with region segmentation confidence weighting. A nearly tenfold improvement in subpixel registration precision is seen with the proposed technique when convergence is attained, as compared with competing techniques using both simulated and real data sets with interimage illumination variations.

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

image registration
segmentation confidence weighting


Identity: the paradoxical nature of organizational closure Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of organizational closure as developed by Stafford Beer in his viable systems model, defined as System 5. Design/methodology/approach - The author refers to his experiences of multi-stakeholder platforms and confronts them with the original texts of Stafford Beer. He takes the stance of a reflective practitioner. Findings - The identity function, defined as organizational closure, only can be embodied at the boundary of a system, defined by an observer. Identities are not essential characteristics but changing attributions by different observers. Multiple identities are the norm. Practical implications - The author develops the required characteristics of representatives participating in the organizational closure or System 5 activities. Originality/value - The author gives an alternative way of thinking about identity different from the mainstream essentialist way of defining identity. He explores the consequences of this way of thinking for governance and governing bodies. He clarifies in this way the fundamental tension between participative and representative democracy.

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

cybernetics
organizational analysis
systems analysis


Construction of regular and irregular LDPC codes: Geometry decomposition and masking Two algebraic methods for systematic construction of structured regular and irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with girth of at least six and good minimum distances are presented. These two methods are based on geometry decomposition and a masking technique. Numerical result; show that the codes constructed by these methods perform close to the Shannon limit and as well as random-like LDPC codes. Furthermore, they have low error floors and their iterative decoding converges very fast. The masking technique greatly simplifies the random-like construction of irregular LDPC codes designed on the basis of the degree distributions of their code graphs.

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

degree distribution
euclidean geometry
permutation matrix


Identifying mapping relationships between functions and technologies with association rule mining It is common that manufacturers strive to develop a diverse range of customised products at low costs and on time. A key to achieving this objective lies in design technologies which provide solution principles to deliver various product functions and help achieve efficiency and effectiveness in component design and production. With the focus on design, most of the studies do not address the selection of appropriate technologies and the determination of corresponding details (e. g. technology attribute values). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to address this. In this work, we propose an approach based on association rule mining to identify mapping relationships between functions and technologies. These mapping relationships not only enable companies to reuse proven knowledge about functions and technologies but also help them to effectively decide on technologies and details. A case study using a family of microlithography machines is presented to demonstrate how the mapping relationships can be identified given large volumes of function-and technology-related data and how these relationships help select technologies and determine details.

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 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

product family development
technology selection
generic rules


Hardware/software co-design of run-time schedulers for real-time systems We present the SERRA Run-Time Scheduler Synthesis and Analysis Tool which automatically generates a run-time scheduler from a heterogeneous system-level specification in both Verilog HDL and C. Part of the run-time scheduler is implemented in hardware, which allows the scheduler to be predictable in being able to meet hard real-time constraints, while part is implemented in software, thus supporting features typical of software schedulers. SERRA's real-time analysis generates a priority assignment for the software tasks in the mixed hardware-software system. The tasks in hardware and software have precedence constraints, resource constraints, relative timing constraints, and a rate constraint. A heuristic scheduling algorithm assigns the static priorities such that a hard real-time rate constraint can be predictably met. SERRA supports the specification of critical regions in software, thus providing the same functionality as semaphores. We describe the task control /data-flow extraction, synthesis of the control portion of the run-time scheduler in hardware, real-time analysis and priority scheduler template. We also show how our approach fits into an overall tool flow and target architecture. Finally, we conclude with a sample application of the novel run-time scheduler synthesis and analysis tool to a robotics design example.

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

hardware/software co-design
run-time scheduler
system synthesis
real-time systems


Combating bioterrorism with personal computers Using personal computers in a grid is permitting the in silico screening of millions of molecules to seek out potential inhibitors of agents that pose bioterror threats. Current projects are targeting anthrax and smallpox, but the approach has many attractions for investigating any known protein target and its inhibition.

O B O B I O B I 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

personal computers
bioterrorism
in silico screening


An OPF based approach for assessing the minimal reactive power support for generators in deregulated power systems Reactive power support is an important ancillary service for secure and reliable operation in power markets. It has recently been recognized that the reactive power support for a generator has two components: one for supporting its own real power transmission and the other for supplying reactive demand, improving system security, and controlling system voltage; and that only the second part should receive financial compensation in competitive power markets. This makes the problem of separating these two components a new focus of current research. An OPF based reactive power optimization model along with a power flow tracing based method is proposed in this paper to tackle this problem. The methodology is tested on four test systems. Detailed analysis of the results of the 39-bus test system is reported.

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

reactive power ancillary service
transmission open access


Using a GPU-CPU architecture to speed up a GA-based real-time system for trading the stock market The use of mechanical trading systems allows managing a huge amount of data related to the factors affecting investment performance (macroeconomic variables, company information, industrial indicators, market variables, etc.) while avoiding the psychological reactions of traders when they invest in financial markets. When trading is executed in an intra-daily frequency instead a daily frequency, mechanical trading systems needs to be supported by very powerful engines since the amount of data to deal with grow while the response time required to support trades gets shorter. Numerous studies document the use of genetic algorithms (GAs) as the engine driving mechanical trading systems. The empirical insights provided in this paper demonstrate that the combine use of GA together with a GPU-CPU architecture speeds up enormously the power and search capacity of the GA for this kind of financial applications. Moreover, the parallelization allows us to implement and test previous GA approximations. Regarding the investment results, we can report 870% of profit for the S&P 500 companies in a 10-year time period (19962006), when the average profit of the S&P 500 in the same period was 273%.

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


Distributed topology control algorithm based on one- and two-hop neighbors' information for ad hoc networks In this paper, we present a topology control algorithm for ad hoc networks. By considering the weight of the links, each node orders its one-hop neighbors in an ordered list and then the ordered lists are exchanged between the neighbors. This information enables the nodes to compute their transmission radius on the basis of its one- and two-hop neighbors' information. We demonstrate that compared to the best known algorithms, the degree and transmission radius of the nodes in the topology produced by the proposed algorithm are smaller. In addition to Euclidean graphs, the algorithm works correctly on general weighted graphs. Also an extension of our algorithm is proposed which adapts its topology to network changes. Finally, we use the four metrics, node degree, transmission radius, the power stretch factor and, packet loss ratio to measure the performance improvements of the presented algorithms through simulations. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Analysis of Dyadic Approximation Error for Hybrid Video Codecs With Integer Transforms In this paper, we present an analysis of the dyadic approximation error introduced by the integerization of transform coding in H. 264/AVC-like codecs. We derive the analytical formulations for dyadic approximation error and nonorthogonality error. We further classify the dyadic approximation error into a "system error" and a "nonflat error," and proposed two models for them. We found that the "nonflat error" has a substantial impact on video quality if the number of shifting bits at decoder side (DQ_BITS) is small. We also give a theoretical justification on why scaling factors at encoder side are better to be adapted to the rescaling factors at decoder side in H. 264/AVC-like codecs.

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

discrete cosine transform (dct)
error analysis
integer transform
video coding


Introduction to Aging, Cancer, and Age-related Diseases A rising tide of chronic age-dependent diseases, co-morbidities, and geriatric syndromesa veritable Silver Tsunamiwill soon present serious challenges for North America, Europe, Japan, and other industrialized nations. Meanwhile, a growing number of scientists, led by biogerontologists, maintain that the key to blunting the societal impact of large-scale decline and disability among older populations lies with better understanding and potential manipulation of biological mechanisms of aging itself. Well-characterized interventions that slow aging and extend health and vigor in animal models may be forerunners of technologies that preserve additional years of healthy productive life in humans. What will it take to validate these momentous insights from biogerontology and their potential applications for human populations? What are the points of resistance for key opinion leaders and policy makers? And how can biogerontologists make common cause with those outside the discipline to inform larger and more politically powerful audiences?

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


PET: Probabilistic Estimating Tree for Large-Scale RFID Estimation Estimating the number of RFID tags in the region of interest is an important task in many RFID applications. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for efficiently estimating the approximate number of RFID tags. Compared with existing approaches, the proposed Probabilistic Estimating Tree (PET) protocol achieves O(log log n) estimation efficiency, which remarkably reduces the estimation time while meeting the accuracy requirement. PET also largely reduces the computation and memory overhead at RFID tags. As a result, we are able to apply PET with passive RFID tags and provide scalable and inexpensive solutions for large-scale RFID systems. We validate the efficacy and effectiveness of PET through theoretical analysis as well as extensive simulations. Our results suggest that PET outperforms existing approaches in terms of estimation accuracy, efficiency, and overhead.

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


approaches to specification-based testing Current software testing practices focus, almost exclusively, on the implementation, despite widely acknowledged benefits of testing based on software specifications. We propose approaches to specification-based testing by extending a wide variety of implementation-based testing techniques to be applicable to formal specification languages. We demonstrate these approaches for the Anna and Larch specification languages.

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

implementation
demonstrate
software
formal specification

software testing
practical
test
specification language
language


Three-dimensional vortex simulation of unsteady flow in hydraulic turbines On the basis of the Helmholtz decomposition, a grid-free numerical scheme is provided for the solution of unsteady flow in hydraulic turbines. The Lagrangian vortex method is utilized to evaluate the convection and stretch of the vorticity, and the BEM is used to solve the Neumann problem to define the potential flow. The no-slip boundary condition is satisfied by generating vortex sticks at the solid surface. A semi-analytical regularization technique is applied to evaluate the singular boundary surface integrals of the potential velocity and its gradients accurately. The fast multipole method was extended to evaluate the velocity and velocity gradients induced by the discretized vortex blobs in the Lagrangian vortex method. The successful simulation for the unsteady flow through a hydraulic turbine's runner has manifested the effectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright (c) 2011 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 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 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

boundary element method
unsteady vortical flow
hydraulic turbine


The connection between regularization operators and support vector kernels In this paper a correspondence is derived between regularization operators used in regularization networks and support vector kernels. We prove that the Green's Functions associated with regularization operators are suitable support vector kernels with equivalent regularization properties. Moreover, the paper provides an analysis of currently used support vector kernels in the view of regularization theory and corresponding operators associated with the classes of both polynomial kernels and translation invariant kernels. The latter are also analyzed on periodical domains. As a by-product we show that a large number of radial basis functions, namely conditionally positive definite functions, may be used as support vector kernels.

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

support vector machines
mercer kernel
ridge regression
green's functions


design for supporting the multimedia emergency voip using pstn and ip network Internet is rapidly increased, and various services are deployed over internet. It is an important issue to support emergency service in VoIP, because many users want to use the emergency service similar to the service in PSTN network. VoIP terminals which can create audio, video, and image data are able to send multimedia data to emergency agent. But the current VoIP service cannot provide multimedia data to emergency agent, because emergency calls have to flow through PSTN network. If emergency agent has got some video as well as audio data for emergency call, it will be very helpful to rescue somebody in danger. In this paper, we will consider new network model to provide multimedia data to PSAP in emergency call.

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


Structure in idea sketching behaviour This paper describes a study designed to investigate the structure of idea sketches, here defined as the initial free-hand drawn externalisations produced by a designer of envisioned or partially envisioned entities. In the study, participants were asked to sketch freely from memory a number of chairs and to design a chair. The results obtained from analyzing the drawing process provide clear evidence for structure in idea sketching behaviour which is largely explained by reference to either volumetrical or functional cognitive models of the recalled or designed objects. This suggests that there is an intimate relationship between the cognitive and perceptual processes that are brought to bear on the recall and design tasks and idea sketching. It is concluded that the detailed study of sketching behaviour may provide a fruitful approach to understanding the relationship between cognition, the sketch, and sketching.

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

computer supported design
conceptual design
creativity
design cognition
perception


Mind change efficient learning This paper studies efficient learning with respect to mind changes. Our starting point is the idea that a learner that is efficient with respect to mind changes minimizes mind changes not only globally in the entire learning problem, but also locally in subproblems after receiving some evidence. Formalizing this idea leads to the notion of strong mind change optiniality. We characterize the structure of language classes that can be identified with at most alpha mind changes by some learner (not necessarily effective): a language class L is identifiable with a mind changes iff the accumulation order of L is at most alpha. Accumulation order is a classic concept from point-set topology. We show that accumulation order is related to other established notions of structural complexity, such as thickness and intrinsic complexity. To aid the construction of learning algorithms, we show that the characteristic property of strongly mind change optimal learners is that they output conjectures (languages) with maximal accumulation order. We illustrate the theory by describing strongly mind change optimal learners for various problems such as identifying linear subspaces, one-variable patterns, and fixed-length patterns. (C) 2006 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O 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 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

inductive inference
mind change complexity


Solvability of systems of polynomial congruences modulo a large prime We consider the following polynomial congruences problem: given a prime p, and a set of polynomials f(1),..., f(m) is an element of F-p[x(1),..., x(n)] of total degree at most d, solve the system f(1) = ... = f(m) = 0 for solution(s) in F-p(n). We give a randomized algorithm for the decision version of this problem. For a fixed number of variables, the sequential version of the algorithm has expected time complexity polynomial in d, m and log p; the parallel version has expected time complexity polylogarithmic in d, m and p, using a number of processors, polynomial in d, m and log p. The only point which prevents the algorithm from being deterministic is the lack of a deterministic polynomial time algorithm for factoring univariate polynomials over F-p.

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

polynomial congruence
algebraic set
finite field


Fast MAP-based multiframe super-re solution image reconstruction Super-resolution image reconstruction produces a high-resolution image from a set of shifted, blurred, and decimated versions thereof. Previously published papers have not addressed the computational complexity of this ill-conditioned large scale problem adequately. In this paper, the computational complexity of MAP-based multiframe super-resolution algorithms is studied, and a new fast algorithm, as well as methods for parallel image reconstruction is also presented. The proposed fast algorithm splits the multiple input low-resolution images into several subsets according to their translation relations, and then applies normal MAP algorithm to each subset, the reconstructed images are processed subsequently at a successive level until the desired resolution is achieved. Experiment results are also provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed techniques. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

map
computational complexity
image reconstruction


A machine cell formation algorithm for simultaneously minimising machine workload imbalances and inter-cell part movements This paper considers a multi-objective machine cell problem, in which part types have several alternative part routings and the expected annual demand of each part type is known. This problem is characterised as optimally determining part type (routing) sets and corresponding machine cells such that total inter-cell part movements and total machine workload imbalances are simultaneously minimised. Due to the complexity of the problem, a two-stage heuristic algorithm is proposed, and computational experiments were conducted to verify the performance of the algorithm.

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

machine workload imbalances
alternative part routings

machine cell formation problem
multi-objective function
inter-cell part movements
two-stage heuristic algorithm


A supply chain of things: The EAGLET ontology for highly visible supply chains Recently, technological developments, such as radio frequency identification (RFID), have facilitated the identification of individual things and information sharing regarding their behavior throughout the supply chain. Such developments have generated the capabilities of a highly visible supply chain (HVSC): a supply chain where the location of arbitrary individual things can be determined at any point in time by all appropriate supply chain partners, made possible by an Internet of Things for the supply chain, referred to as a Supply Chain of Things. A critical component of a Supply Chain of Things is an ontology to facilitate the visibility and interoperability of things along the supply chain. As a result, the objective of this paper is to define an ontology that leverages the availability of an individual thing's (object) identification information within the context of a standard set of economic phenomena that support multiple views in a range of data architectures. Our design science approach begins with a set of ontological primitives and gradually defines structuring principles that provide guidance for the design of supply chain systems that are characterized by increased visibility and interoperability and which facilitate management of and collaborative decision making about supply chain activities. The EAGLET ontology is named after its five primitives: Event, AGent, Location, Equipment, and Thing. The following are some of its unique characteristics: location and equipment are recognized as ontological primitives, and creating and destroying of containment structures is explicitly modeled; the economic phenomena underlying the supply chain are defined from an independent view, as opposed to a trading-partner view; the supply chain is defined from three different perspectives: the physical flow, the chain of custody, and the chain of ownership; event sequences that resemble the economic scripts underlying the supply chain are defined.

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

eaglet ontology
internet of things
supply chain of things

individual object identification
traceability


Dynamic core affinity for high-performance file upload on Hadoop Distributed File System We analyze the impact of core affinity on both network and disk I/O performance. Both parallelism and locality are important for tasks that access disk and network. We suggest a novel approach to dynamically decide the core affinity of HDFS threads. Our dynamic core affinity improves the file upload throughput more than 30%.

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


Design of logical topologies: A linear formulation or wavelength-routed optical networks with no wavelength changers We consider the problem of constructing logical topologies over a wavelength-routed optical network with no wavelength changers. We present a general linear formulation which considers routing traffic demands, and routing and assigning wavelengths to lightpaths, as a combined optimization problem. The formulation also takes into account the maximum number of hops a lightpath is permitted to take, multiple logical links in the logical topology, multiple physical links in the physical topology, and symmetry/asymmetry restrictions in designing logical topologies. The objective is to minimize congestion, We show by examples how equality and inequality logical degree constraints have a bearing on congestion. We prove that, under certain renditions, having equality degree constraints with multiple edges allowed in the design of logical topologies does not affect congestion. This helps in reducing the dimensionality of the search space and hence speeds up the search for an optimal solution of the linear formulation. We solve the linear formulation for small examples and show the tradeoff between congestion, number of wavelengths available and the maximum number of hops a lightpath is allowed to take. For large networks, we solve the linear formulation by relaxing the integer constraints. We develop topology design algorithms for large networks based on rounding the solutions obtained by solving the relaxed problem, Since the whole problem is linearizable, the solution obtained by relaxation of the integer constraints yields a lower bound on congestion. This is useful in comparing the efficiency of our heuristic algorithms. Following Bienstock and Gunluk, 1995, we introduce a cutting plane which helps in obtaining better lower bounds on congestion and also enables us to reduce the previously obtained upper bounds on congestion.

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

all-optical networks
linear program
network planning


towards bipartite graph data management Bipartite graphs are widely used to model social networks and web data. However bipartite graph data management (BGDM for short) is not fully studied. Without appropriate indexing structures, query and analysis operations on bipartite graphs are not efficient. In this paper, we raise the issues of BGDM and present architecture of BGDM. Then we propose a logic graph structure (i.e., star) for indexing bipartite graph to improve common operations efficiently. Furthermore, we propose a star-based block structure to store bipartite graphs and the relevant query algorithm. The star-based method may avoid loading the whole block for vertex queries using Bloom filter. Finally, our experiments show that the block design is effective and feasible for vertex query algorithm.

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


Enabling educational collaboration - a new shared reality Educational collaborations enabled by enhanced computer graphics, high-performance networks, and virtual reality technologies enable new and exciting educational opportunities. As these virtual reality tools and interactive technologies find their way naturally from the research lab to the classroom, students distantly located from each other can learn together in a "shared reality". (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


A new hybrid approach for dynamic continuous optimization problems A new hybrid approach for dynamic optimization problems with continuous search spaces is presented. The proposed approach hybridizes efficient features of the particle swarm optimization in tracking dynamic changes with a new evolutionary procedure. In the proposed dynamic hybrid PSO (DHPSO) algorithm, the swarm size is varied in a self-regulatory manner. Inspired from the microbial life, the particles can reproduce infants and the old ones die. The infants are especially reproduced by high potential particles and located near the local optimum points, using the quadratic interpolation method. The algorithm is adapted to perform in continuous search spaces, utilizing continuous movement of the particles and using Euclidian norm to define the neighborhood in the reproduction procedure. The performance of the new proposed approach is tested against various benchmark problems and compared with those of some other heuristic optimization algorithms. In this regard, different types of dynamic environments including periodic, linear and random changes are taken with different performance metrics such as real-time error, offline performance and offline error. The results indicate a desirable better efficiency of the new algorithm over the existing ones.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 optimization
particle swarm optimization
quadratic interpolation
reproduction


Design of a flexible and robust gateway to collect sensor data in intermittent power environments The development of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) gateway is challenging for sites where limited infrastructures lead to frequent power shortages and network unreliability. In this paper, we present a low-power, low-cost 802.15.4 and 802.11 compatible solution which uses open source software to meet local conditions. Using the SunSPOT motes on a system which is mostly platform independent, our system is based on the Fox embedded Linux board and equipped with a USB flash drive and a USB WiFi adapter. The system can be solar powered, and the results of a solar system design are presented. All the hardware components are available off-the-shelf and are easy to assemble. We conclude that our system is preferred for applications in remote areas, where a stable power supply and a reliable network infrastructure are lacking. Furthermore, it can be used to extend the range of WSNs by layering a network of long-range motes above islands of low-range motes.

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


Fuzzy bang-bang relay control of a single-axis active magnetic bearing system Active magnetic bearings (AMB) are presently being utilized in various classes of rotating machinery. Although the rotor-AMB systems are open loop unstable, they are easily stabilized using feedback control schemes of which the PID controller is the most commonly used. The PID controller is however only effective at the vicinity of the rotor's equilibrium position where the dynamics of the rotor-AMB system is linearized. Significant deviation of the rotor's motion from this equilibrium position may occur due to large imbalance forces. In this situation, the nonlinearity in AMBs, which arises from the relationship between the electromagnetic force, coil current and air gap, may render the PID controller ineffective. For the control of nonlinear systems, artificial intelligence techniques such as fuzzy and hybrid techniques are effective. In this paper, a new fuzzy controller is proposed for the control of a single-axis AMB system. This controller is based on the bang-bang scheme, which is an old but effective technique to control nonlinear systems in optimal time. The performance of the proposed integrated fuzzy bang-bang relay controller (FBBRC) was found to be superior to that of the optimized PD controller and the conventional fuzzy logic controller. Comparison of the FBBRC with the fuzzy logic controller cascaded with a hard limiter (FBBC) relay revealed almost equal performance. High frequency chattering was however observed in the steady-state response of the FBBC. Such chattering is known to cause instability and distortion in the amplifiers that are used to supply current to the magnetic bearing actuators. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Temporary and permanent market risks: Some further evidence We study the time-series behavior of portfolio and market specific dividend-growth rates' and discount rates' components of total market risk (CAPM beta). Employing a VAR(1)-GARCH(1,1) methodology and a set of US 20 single-sorted book-to-market and size portfolios from 1928 to, 2001, we show that the decomposition of the single-factor beta delivers stable systematic risk measures and increases considerably the cross-sectional variation of the estimated betas across size and value portfolios. This feature may prove valuable in asset-pricing and calculations of the cost of equity capital. (c) 2007 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 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

cash-flow risk
discount-rate risk
var-garch
bekk
value/size premium


Extracting REST resource models from procedure-oriented service interfaces We propose a technique for extracting REST resource models from procedural services. The proposed approach is highly automated, implementation-agnostic and efficient. We demonstrate the approach through a real-world case study. We evaluate the approach using 70 publicly available service interfaces. Results indicated significant productivity benefits, high efficiency and accuracy.

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

software reengineering
service oriented architectures


ASEP/MD: A program for the calculation of solvent effects combining QM/MM methods and the mean field approximation ASEP/MD is a computer program designed to implement the Averaged Solvent Electrostatic Potential/Molecular Dynamics (ASEP/MD) method developed by our group. It can be used for the study of solvent effects and properties of molecules in their liquid state or in solution. It is written in the FORTRAN90 programming language, and should be easy to follow, understand, maintain and modify. Given the nature of the ASEP/MD method, external programs are needed for the quantum calculations and molecular dynamics simulations. The present version of ASEP/MD includes interface routines for the GAUSSIAN package, HONDO, and MOLDY, but adding support for other programs is straightforward. This article describes the program and its usage.

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

solvent effects
mean field approximation


Color reduction and estimation of the number of dominant colors by using a self-growing and self-organized neural gas A new method for color reduction in a digital image is proposed, which is based on the development of a new neural network classifier and on a new method for Estimation of the Most Important Classes (EMIC). The proposed neural network combines the features of the well-known Growing Neural Gas (GNG) and the Kohonen Self-Organized Feature Map (KSOFM) neural networks. We call the new neural network Self-Growing and Self-Organized Neural Gas (SGONG). This combination produces a new neural network with outstanding features. The proposed technique utilizes the GNG mechanism of growing the neural lattice and the KSOFM leaning adaptation mechanism. Besides, introducing a number of criteria that have an effect on inserting or removing neurons, it is able to automatically define the number of the created neurons and their topology. Moreover, applying the EMIC method, the produced classes can be filtered and the most important classes can be found. The combination of SGONG and EMIC results in retaining the isolated and significant colors with the minimum number of color classes. The above techniques are able to be fed by both color and spatial features. For this reason a similarity function is used for vector comparison. The method is applicable to any type of color images and it can accommodate any type of color space.

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

self-organized
color quantization
segmentation


MEDiSN: Medical Emergency Detection in Sensor Networks Staff shortages and an increasingly aging population are straining the ability of emergency departments to provide high quality care. At the same time, there is a growing concern about hospitals' ability to provide effective care during disaster events. For these reasons, tools that automate patient monitoring have the potential to greatly improve efficiency and quality of health care. Towards this goal, we have developed MEDiSN, a wireless sensor network for monitoring patients' physiological data in hospitals and during disaster events. MEDiSN comprises Physiological Monitors (PMs), which are custom-built, patient-worn motes that sample, encrypt, and sign physiological data and Relay Points (RPs) that self-organize into a multi-hop wireless backbone for carrying physiological data. Moreover, MEDiSN includes a back-end server that persistently stores medical data and presents them to authenticated GUI clients. The combination of MEDiSN's two-tier architecture and optimized rate control protocols allows it to address the compound challenge of reliably delivering large volumes of data while meeting the application's QoS requirements. Results from extensive simulations, testbed experiments, and multiple pilot hospital deployments show that MEDiSN can scale from tens to at least five hundred PMs, effectively protect application packets from congestive and corruptive losses, and deliver medically actionable data.

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

design
experimentation
performance
medical sensor networks
wireless physiological monitoring


A three-tier framework for intruder information sharing in sensor networks ? In sensor networks, an intruder (i.e., compromised node) identified and isolated in one place can be relocated and/or duplicated to other places to continue attacks; hence, detection and isolation of the same intruder or its clones may have to be conducted repeatedly, wasting scarce network resources. Therefore, once an intruder is identified, it should be known to all innocent nodes such that the intruder or its clones can be recognized when appearing elsewhere. However, secure, efficient and scalable sharing of intruder information remains a challenging and unsolved problem. To address this problem, we propose a three-tier framework, consisting of a verifiable intruder reporting (VIR) scheme, a quorum-based caching (QBC) scheme for efficiently propagating intruder reports to the whole network, and a collaborative Bloom Filter (CBF) scheme for handling intruder information locally. Extensive analysis and evaluations are also conducted to verify the efficiency and scalability of the proposed framework.

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 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

intruder information sharing
bloom filter


reverse engineering technique to enhance software engineering education This poster presents our experience incorporating reverse engineering techniques on software engineering education to enhance the productivity of students' team projects. In this approach, the students were provided with an existing working software by the instructor. They were asked to evaluate the software, use the knowledge from the software's behavior and the application domain to define the task scenarios that reflect the interaction pattern and the services that the system provides to its environment. Consequently, the extracted patterns were used to develop the architectural design of the software system and rebuild a modified version of the software.

B I O O O B I 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

software engineering
reverse engineering


Intra-subject elastic registration of 3D ultrasound images 3D registration of ultrasound images is an important and fast-growing research area with various medical applications, such as image-guided radiotherapy and surgery. However, this registration process remains extremely challenging due to the deformation of soft tissue and the existence of speckles in these images. This paper presents a technique for intra-subject, intra-modality elastic registration of 3D ultrasound images. Using the general concept of attribute vectors, we define the corresponding voxels in the fixed and moving images. Our method does not require presegmentation and does not employ any numerical optimization procedure. As the computational requirements are minimal, the method has potential use in real-time applications. The technique is implemented and tested on 3D ultrasound images of human liver, captured by a 3D ultrasound transducer. The results show that the method is sufficiently accurate and robust even in cases where artifacts such as shadows exist in the ultrasound data.

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

image registration
soft-tissue deformation
attribute vector


composable code generation for distributed giotto We present a compositional approach to the implementation of hard real-time software running on a distributed platform. We explain how several code suppliers, coordinated by a system integrator, can independently generate different parts of the distributed software. The task structure, interaction, and timing is specified as a Giotto program. Each supplier is given a part of the Giotto program and a timing interface, from which the supplier generates task and scheduling code. The integrator then checks, individually for each supplier, in pseudo-polynomial time, if the supplied code meets its timing specification. If all checks succeed, then the supplied software parts are guaranteed to work together and implement the original Giotto program. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated by a prototype implementation.

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


Toward a cybernetic psychology Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to review the relationship between cybernetics and psychology. Design/methodology/approach - The paradigms of cybernetics are reviewed and then applied to psychology. Findings - Applying the paradigms of cybernetics to psychology provides a conceptually coherent account of what is a psychological individual. Originality/value - It is of value to bring conceptual coherence to the discipline of psychology, which, thus far in its history, has lacked it.

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

first-order cybernetics
second-order cybernetics


Green element calculations of nonlinear heat conduction with a time-dependent fundamental solution Calculations of nonlinear transient heat conduction are carried out with a Green element formulation that incorporates the time-dependent Green's function derived from the diffusion differential operator. This formulation is different from the one that uses the logarithmic fundamental solution, and offers another viable approach at solving nonlinear heat transfer problems. Applying the formulation in 2D spatial domains, the integral equation arising from applying the singular integral theory is implemented from element to element with linear interpolation in space and time for the temperature field. The nonlinear discretized equations are solved by the Picard and NewtonRaphson algorithms with good convergence being achieved for all thermo-elastic relations examined, and the latter algorithm exhibiting slightly better convergence characteristics. Comparison of the current Green element formulation with the previous one that uses the logarithmic Green's function indicates that comparable accuracy are achievable from both formulations with the latter having an edge in terms of simplicity of formulation.

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

boundary element
transient nonlinear heat conduction
linearization scheme


Designing desirability in an augmentative and alternative communication device This paper discusses work carried in the context of a study addressing the design and development of a wearable communication aid for people who are illiterate and cannot speak. People with such disabilities often depend on electronic augmentative and alternative communication devices for interpersonal communication. A central theme of the paper, however, is that such products, and products intended for people with disabilities more generally, have characteristics that inadequately attend to users needsin particular many devices pay insufficient regard to the psychological and sociological impact the devices have upon their users. The paper briefly discusses an empirical case study targeted to design and develop the Portland Communication Aid (PCA). The process of establishing user requirements, and in particular the notion of designer-facilitated participatory design, is discussed. The resulting prototype of the PCA is briefly explained along with a discussion of the importance of product semantics in the design of assistive technology.

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

augmentative and alternative communication (aac)


Robust Performance Analysis of a Load Torque Observer for PMSM Using Singular Perturbation Theory This paper examines the robust performance of a load torque observer for the position control of a surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) under parameter uncertainties. The load torque observer has been widely employed to compensate for unknown slow-varying disturbances without explicit analysis on the robustness against parameter uncertainties. By using the singular perturbation theory this paper presents an analysis on the robust performance of the load torque observer based on the reduced-order estimator. As the observer poles are placed sufficiently left of the complex plane, the feedforward compensation with estimation can recover nominal system performance without parameter uncertainties and load torque disturbance. An example shows the performance of the load torque observer.

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

load torque observer
pmsm
singular perturbation theory


Fault tolerance and QoS scheduling using CAN in mobile social cloud computing The performance of mobile devices including smart phones and laptops is steadily rising as prices plummet sharply. So, mobile devices are changing from being a mere interface for requesting services to becoming computing resources for providing and sharing services due to immeasurably improved performance.

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


Unified approach to coefficient-based regularized regression In this paper, we consider the coefficient-based regularized least-squares regression problem with the l(q)-regularizer (1 <= q <= 2) and data dependent hypothesis spaces. Algorithms in data dependent hypothesis spaces perform well with the property of flexibility. We conduct a unified error analysis by a stepping stone technique. An empirical covering number technique is also employed in our study to improve sample error. Comparing with existing results, we make a few improvements: First, we obtain a significantly sharper learning rate that can be arbitrarily close to O(m(-1)) under reasonable conditions, which is regarded as the best learning rate in learning theory. Second, our results cover the case q = 1, which is novel. Finally, our results hold under very general conditions.(C) 2011 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 B I I I 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

coefficient-based regularization scheme
l(q)-regularizer
l(2)-empirical covering number
learning rates


an approach to the analysis and design of multiagent systems based on interaction frames This paper introduces InFFrA, a novel method for the analysis and design of multiagent systems that is based on the notions of interaction frames and framing. We lay out a conceptual framework for viewing multiagent systems (MAS) as societies consisting of socially intelligent agents that record and organise their interaction experience so as to use it strategically in future interactions. We also provide criteria for the class of MAS InFFrA is suited for. The benefits of our approach are that it helps to understand and develop socially intelligent agents as well as to identify shortcomings of existing MAS. The method is evaluated through the analysis of an opponent classification heuristic that is used to optimise strategic behaviour in multiagent games, and interesting issues for future research are discussed.

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

sociologically grounded methods
social reasoning architectures
theories of agency and autonomy
social order
control & norms


A tensile damage model for rocks: Application to blast induced damage assessment In this paper, an experimental methodology is presented using digital image techniques to assess the internal microcracks and to quantify the rock damage within rock cores. The second part of the work is devoted to the numerical estimation of the tensile blast induced damage evolution law. The set up methodology is then applied to a set of limestone cores which were sampled before and after a real field blast round. The image analysis algorithm which was developed during the present work is based on a segmentation technique that uses a particular thresholding. Petrographic parameters, such as crack number, orientation, extension, centroid position were computed as a first step aiming at a fine characterization of the cracked medium. The most important estimated parameter is the specific crack area which is defined as the ratio between the crack area and the total image area. This parameter was taken as the rock internal damage. A dynamic tensile damage ordinary partial differential equation is numerically solved and calibrated with the obtained data in order to derive a general blast induced damage evaluation law within the muckpile blocks. The application of the numerical algorithm to cores coming from sampled blocks before and after real field blasts allowed the estimation of damage parameter and dynamic stress evolution histories as well as an estimation of the microfracturing activation and growth energies used during the blast.

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

dynamic fracture
blasting
numerical model
matlab


Parkinsons disease classification using gait characteristics and wavelet-based feature extraction This paper proposes a method to classify idiopathic PD patients and healthy controls using both the gait characteristics of idiopathic PD patients and wavelet-based feature extraction. Using the characteristics of idiopathic PD patients who shuffle their feet while they are walking, we implemented the following three preprocessing methods: (i) we used the difference between two signals that each represented the sum of eight sensor outputs from one foot; (ii) we used the difference between the maximum and minimum records among the vertical ground reaction force outputs from the eight sensors under the left foot; and (iii) we used method (i) again, but on the signals each obtained from one foot by method (ii). After thus conducting the three preprocessing tasks, we created approximation coefficients and detail coefficients using wavelet transforms (WTs). Then, we extracted 40 features from these coefficients by using statistical approaches, including frequency distributions and their variabilities. Using the 40 features as inputs to the neural network with weighted fuzzy membership functions (NEWFM), we compared the performances of the three abovementioned methods. When idiopathic PD patients and healthy controls were classified using the NEWFM, theaccuracy, specificity, and sensitivity of the results were, respectively, as follows: 74.32%, 81.63%, and 73.77% by method (i); 75.18%, 74.67%, and 75.24% by method (ii); or 77.33%, 65.48%, and 81.10% by method (iii).

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

parkinsons disease
gait
wavelet transforms
feature extraction


Identifying next relevant variables for segmentation by using feature selection approaches This paper aims at identifying next relevant variables for segmentation. Different feature selection techniques are discussed and applied. The performance is assessed using four evaluation metrics for clustering. A new approach is proposed and compared with other candidates. A real application with data from the concert industry is reported in detail.

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

filter methods
customer segmentation
business analytics


Development and evaluation of a constrained optimization model for traffic signal plan transition In advanced traffic signal control systems, plan transition is the process of switching from one timing plan to another to accommodate changes in traffic demand. In traditional coordinated system operation, whether plans are set by time of day or by traffic responsive plan selection, traffic flow can be severely disrupted by the sudden changes in traffic signal timing. Although various transition methods have been developed and refined, existing transition methods are not based on optimizing operational measures of effectiveness during plan transition periods. As the first step in remedying this situation, this paper presents a non-linear mathematical model that provides constrained delay minimization through incremental and simultaneous adjustments in offset and cycle length during plan transitions. According to the simulation results, currently used transition methods tend to assign an excessive amount of green time to the main street, resulting in additional side street delay without performance improvement for the total transportation network. By contrast, the proposed transition method showed measurable improvement in delay performance under a broad range of traffic and geometric conditions.

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

traffic control
control optimization
genetic algorithms


Edge-Preserving Texture Suppression Filter Based on Joint Filtering Schemes Obtaining a texture-smoothing and edge-preserving filtered output is significant to image decomposition. Although the edge and the texture have salient difference in human vision, automatically distinguishing them is a difficult task, for they have similar intensity difference or gradient response. The state-of-the-art edge-preserving smoothing (EPS) based decomposition approaches are hard to obtain a satisfactory result. We propose a novel edge-preserving texture suppression filter, exploiting the joint bilateral filter as a bridge to achieve the purpose of both properties of texture-smoothing and edge-preserving. We develop the iterative asymmetric sampling and the local linear model to produce the degenerative image to suppress the texture, and apply the edge correction operator to achieve edge-preserving. An efficient accelerating implementation is introduced to improve the performance of filtering response. The experiments demonstrate that our filter produces satisfactory outputs with both properties of texture-smoothing and edge-preserving, while compared with the results of other popular EPS approaches in signal, visual and time analysis. Finally, we extend our filter to a variety of image processing applications.

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

degenerative scheme
edge preserving
image smoothing
oscillation