Implicit solution of the material transport in Stokes flow simulation: Toward thermal convection simulation surrounded by free surface We present implicit time integration schemes suitable for modeling free surface Stokes flow dynamics with marker in cell (MIC) based spatial discretization. Our target is for example thermal convection surrounded by deformable surface boundaries to simulate the long term planetary formation process. The numerical system becomes stiff when the dynamical balancing time scale for the increasing/decreasing load by surface deformation is very short compared with the time scale associated with thermal convection. Any explicit time integration scheme will require very small time steps; otherwise, serious numerical oscillation (spurious solutions) will occur. The implicit time integration scheme possesses a wider stability region than the explicit method; therefore, it is suitable for stiff problems. To investigate an efficient solution method for the stiff Stokes flow system, we apply first (backward Euler (BE)) and second order (trapezoidal method (TR) and trapezoidal rulebackward difference formula (TR-BDF2)) accurate implicit methods for the MIC solution scheme. The introduction of implicit time integration schemes results in nonlinear systems of equations. We utilize a Jacobian free Newton Krylov (JFNK) based Newton framework to solve the resulting nonlinear equations. In this work we also investigate two efficient implicit solution strategies to reduce the computational cost when solving stiff nonlinear systems. The two methods differ in how the advective term in the material transport evolution equation is treated. We refer to the method that employs Lagrangian update as fully implicit (Imp), whilst the method that employs Eulerian update is referred to as semi-implicit (SImp). Using a finite difference (FD) method, we have performed a series of numerical experiments which clarify the accuracy of solutions and trade-off between the computational cost associated with the nonlinear solver and time step size. In comparison with the general explicit Euler method, the second order accurate Imp methods reduce total computational cost successfully through the utilization of a large time step without sacrificing accuracy and stability. Moreover, the proposed SImp method is effective in reducing the computational cost associated with evaluating the nonlinear residual while obtaining a solution similar to the Imp method.

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

stokes flow
free surface
implicit time integration
jfnk


Cognitive model exploration and optimization: a new challenge for computational science Parameter space exploration is a common problem tackled on large-scale computational resources. The most common technique, a full combinatorial mesh, is robust but scales poorly to the computational demands of complex models with higher dimensional spaces. Such models are routinely found in the modeling and simulation community. To alleviate the computational requirements, I have implemented two parallelized intelligent search and exploration algorithms: one based on adaptive mesh refinement and the other on regression trees. These algorithms were chosen because there is a dual interest in approaches that allow searching a parameter space for optimal values, as well as exploring the overall space in general. Both intelligent algorithms reduce computational costs at some expense to the quality of results, yet the regression tree approach was orders of magnitude faster than the other methodologies.

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

adaptive mesh
exploration
searching
parameter space

predictive analytics
volunteer computing
high performance computing


Joint optimization of X control chart and preventive maintenance policies: A discrete-time Markov chain approach We developed a model for the joint optimization of process control and maintenance. Information from the control charts is used to facilitate maintenance decisions. Process control and maintenance procedures are inter-dependent. Potential cost savings can be obtained from joint SPC and maintenance policies.

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

statistical process control
markov processes


Missing values: how many can they be to preserve classification reliability? Using five medical datasets we detected the influence of missing values on true positive rates and classification accuracy. We randomly marked more and more values as missing and tested their effects on classification accuracy. The classifications were performed with nearest neighbour searching when none, 10, 20, 30% or more values were missing. We also used discriminant analysis and na < ve Bayesian method for the classification. We discovered that for a two-class dataset, despite as high as 20-30% missing values, almost as good results as with no missing value could still be produced. If there are more than two classes, over 10-20% missing values are probably too many, at least for small classes with relatively few cases. The more classes and the more classes of different sizes, a classification task is the more sensitive to missing values. On the other hand, when values are missing on the basis of actual distributions affected by some selection or non-random cause and not fully random, classification can tolerate even high numbers of missing values for some datasets.

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

missing values
classification
nearest neighbour searching

medical data
distance measures
imputation


An adaptive waveform coding algorithm and its application in speech coding This paper proposes a novel waveform coding algorithm based on the forward adaptive technique with the goal to provide the overreaching of the signal to quantization noise ratio achievable by the coding solution designed according to G.711 standard. The novel algorithm performs frame-by-frame analysis of the input signal, according to which one of the two compandors, the restricted or the unrestricted one, is selected for the particular frame procession. The basic concept of the proposed algorithm is to enable a more preferable selection of the restricted compandor than the unrestricted one, since, in such a manner, an increase of the signal to quantization noise ratio can be provided. Since both the theoretical and the simulation results, which are obtained for the assumed input speech signal, indicate the performance improvement over the G.711 standard along with approximately 1 bit/sample compression, one can expect that the proposed algorithm will be effective in coding of signals, that as well as speech signals follow Laplacian distribution and have the time varying characteristics.

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

forward adaptive technique
waveform coding algorithm


Generalized Stosszahlansatz and associated H-theorem in nonextensive statistical mechanics Nonextensive statistical mechanics based on the maximum Tsallis entropy principle and its physical backgrounds are summarized. The Boltzmann equation with a generalized form of Stosszahlansatz and the associated H-theorem are proposed and analyzed in order to examine if relaxation of a nonextensive system to the maximum Tsallis entropy state can be kinetically described. (c) 2006 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

nonextensive statistical mechanics
generalized stosszahlansatz


Decentralised adaptive robust control of uncertain large-scale interconnected systems with multiple time-varying delays The problem of decentralised adaptive robust stabilisation is considered for a class of uncertain large-scale time-delay interconnected dynamical systems. It is assumed that the upper bounds of the uncertainties, interconnection terms and external disturbances are unknown, and that the time-varying delays are any nonnegative continuous and bounded functions, and do not require that their derivatives have to be less than one. For such a class of uncertain large-scale time-delay interconnected systems, a new method is presented whereby a class of continuous memoryless decentralised local adaptive robust state feedback controllers is proposed. It is also shown that the solutions of uncertain large-scale time-delay interconnected systems can be guaranteed to be uniformly exponentially convergent towards a ball which can be as small as desired. In addition, since the proposed decentralised local adaptive robust state feedback controllers are completely independent of time delays, the results obtained in this article may also be applicable to a class of large-scale interconnected dynamical systems with uncertain time delays. Finally, a numerical example is given to demonstrate the validity of the results.

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

decentralised control
large-scale systems
uncertainty
time-varying delay
adaptive control
uniform boundedness
exponential convergence


On Parallel Graph Rewriting Systems In this paper we introduce a new theoretical paradigm, called PGR systems, which can be used to model in a discrete manner some natural phenomena occurring in-vivo/in-vitro environments. PGR systems make use of graphs to describe the spatial structure of space of individuals, while the system dynamics caused by the movement/interaction of individuals is captured by the parallel applications of some graph rewriting rules. In this frame, an illustrative example is studied and based on it, an eloquent comparison between the abstract rewriting machines and PGR systems is done. Several further ideas to overcome the global computational effort needed for simulations, but still maintaining the overall ability for modeling are finally proposed.

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

parallel multiset processing
abstract rewriting systems
p systems


Empirical evaluation of user models and user-adapted systems Empirical evaluations are needed to determine which users are helped or hindered by user-adapted interaction in user modeling systems. A review of past UMUAI articles reveals insufficient empirical evaluations, but an encouraging upward trend. Rules of thumb for experimental design, useful tests for covariates, and common threats to experimental validity are presented. Reporting standards including effect size and power are proposed.

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

empirical evaluation
experimental design
effect size
power

covariant variables
treatment magnitude
sensitivity


Robust shape control of beams with load uncertainties by optimally placed piezo actuators The shape of a laminated beam is controlled by an optimally placed piezo actuator so as to minimize its maximum deflection. The locations and magnitudes of the external loads are not known a priori and belong to a specified load uncertainty domain. The optimal actuator location is obtained for any load combinations and locations which are determined so as to produce the maximum deflection corresponding to the worst case of loading. In this sense, loading uncertainties lead to an anti-optimization problem which is coupled to the optimization problem via the design parameter and loading. The resulting coupled problems are solved simultaneously to compute the optimal actuator location and the least favourable loading condition. Multiple load cases are also considered. Numerical results are given to assess the effect of load uncertainty and actuator length on the actuator location and the design efficiency which is defined with respect to the corresponding uncontrolled beam.

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


The COIL data mediator definition language Modern persistent applications typically run on top of numerous (often hundreds) of distributed, heterogeneous databases, Integrating data from various data sources in order to provide uniform, homogeneous, and consistent access to the data from the underlying data sources while preserving the integrity and autonomy of preexisting data sources is a huge problem, especially in evolving environments, The main issue that a global information sharing system has to address is heterogeneity on all levels of the participating data sources: the data might be stored in heterogeneous data sources, using different data models and access/middleware technologies, Another major type of heterogeneity that has to be addressed by a global information sharing system is due to differences in the semantics of the data from the data source participating in the integration process, In particular, the resolution of potential conflicts due to structural and semantic heterogeneity of the integrated data is an essential part of the integration process performed by a data integration environment. The COIL data mediator definition language supports the definition of the integration process and its semantics on a high level of abstraction, The language provides powerful language components which can be used to resolve potential conflicts due to structural and semantic heterogeneity, and to define the integration process in general, The semantics of a specific integration process are defined in a COIL data mediator definition (COIL program), The COIL compiler uses those specifications expressed in the COIL language to generate a standard Java object which captures the semantics of the integration process defined in the COIL mediator definition, The generated Java object is called a COIL data mediator, In general, a COIL data mediator is a user-defined, customized object/component which can be used like any other normal object in the Java development environment, A COIL data mediator presents a well-defined interface which may be used to access and configure the mediator at runtime, Therefore it is possible to change the data mediator's behavior and the semantics of the integration process in general at runtime, We present a detailed description of the COIL data mediator definition language and its language components, along with a detailed discussion of how COIL data mediators are used to overcome different heterogeneity problems. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

data source integration and evolution
interoperability
high-level integration semantics


Low-dose computed tomography via spatially adaptive MonteCarlo reconstruction Low-dose computed tomography (CT) reduces radiation exposure but decreases signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and diagnostic capabilities. Noise compensation can improve SNR so low-dose CT can provide valuable information for diagnosis without risking patient radiation exposure. In this study, a novel noise-compensated CT reconstruction method that uses spatially adaptive MonteCarlo sampling to produce noise-compensated reconstructions is investigated. By adapting to local noise statistics, a non-parametric estimation of the noise-free image is computed that successfully handles non-stationary noise found in low-dose CT images. Using phantom and real low-dose CT images, effective noise suppression is shown to be accomplished while maintaining structures and details.

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

low-dose computed tomography
image processing
biomedical imaging
image reconstruction


Gaze tracking for region of interest coding in JPEG 2000 Current image coding systems such as JPEG are far away from the capability of the human perceptual system in that the encoding may not maximise the reconstruction quality of image contents. Humans are often concerned with the interpretability of the image and thus enhanced reconstruction quality in image contents would facilitate improved recognition performance. This paper addresses this issue by incorporating characteristics of the human perceptual system into an image coding system. This is achieved by analysing the spatial and temporal characteristics of the human visual attention system as recorded from an eye-tracking device at the encoding end. Human visual attention mechanisms direct the viewer's eye movements around the image to provide a sequence of fixations, which are analysed, clustered and classified into regions of interest (ROI). These ROIs are used to selectively encode and prioritise regions such that an improved image content recognition performance can be achieved.

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 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

eye tracking
importance map
region of interest (roi)


Performance Analysis of Complex CDMA Using Complex Chaotic Spreading Sequence with Constant Power A performance of the complex chaotic spreading sequences with constant power is investigated in a chip-synchronous complex CDMA with a complex scrambling. We estimate a signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) and a bit error rate (BER). An exact invariant measure of the complex chaotic spreading sequence can be obtained. Therefore, the SIR can be calculated analytically. The result can be used as one of the criteria for evaluating the performance of the complex CDMA using the chaotic spreading sequences.

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 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

chaos
complex code division multiple access


Modelisation of thin cracks with varying conductivity in eddy-current testing In the ideal crack model (negligible thickness and an impenetrable barrier to electric current) in eddy-current testing frame, the field-flaw is equivalent to a current dipole layer on its surface. This dipole density is the solution of an integral equation with a hyperstrong kernel This model has shown its efficiency, as wed the computing accuracy, as for the CPU time. Furthermore, the case of a current leakage across crack was considered by introducing an equivalent conductivity of the crack. This paper aims at simulating a local varying conductivity. In particular, we focus on a constant piecewise conductivity. In this last case, because of the presence of the hypersingular kernel in the equation, the numerical scheme using the ideal case has to be modified.

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

simulation
integral equations
eddy currents


Impact of action unit detection in automatic emotion recognition In this paper, we investigate the interest of action unit (AU) detection for automatic emotion recognition. We propose and compare two emotion detectors: the first works directly on a high-dimensional feature space and the second projects facial image in the low-dimensional space of AU intensities before recognizing emotion. In both approaches, facial images are coded by local Gabor binary pattern (LGBP) histogram differences. These features reduce the sensitivity to subject identity by computing differences between two LGBP histograms: one computed on an expressive image and the other synthesized and approaching the one we would compute on a neutral face of the same subject. As classifiers, we test support vector machines with different kernels. A new kernel is proposed, the histogram difference intersection kernel that increases classification performances. This kernel is well suited when exploiting the proposed histogram differences. Thorough experiments on three challenging databases (respectively, the Cohn-Kanade, MMI and Bosphorus databases) show the accuracy of our AU and emotion detectors. They lead to significant conclusions on three critical issues: (1) the interest of combining different training databases labeled by different AU coders, (2) the influence of each AU according to its type and detection accuracy on emotion recognition and (3) the sensitivity to identity variations.

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

local gabor binary pattern histogram
support vector machine
histogram intersection kernel


Relaxed Controls for Nonlinear Fractional Impulsive Evolution Equations In this paper, we study optimal relaxed controls and relaxation of nonlinear fractional impulsive evolution equations. Firstly, existence of piecewise continuous mild solutions for the original fractional impulsive control system is presented. Secondly, fractional impulsive relaxed control system is constructed by using a regular countably additive measure and making the original control system convexified. Thirdly, optimal relaxed controls and relaxation theorems are obtained. Finally, application to initial-boundary value problem of fractional impulsive parabolic control system is considered.

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


how hard is halfspace range searching? We investigate the complexity of halfspace range searching : Given n points in d -space, build a data structure that allows us to determine efficiently how many points lie in a query halfspace. We establish a tradeoff between the storage m and the worst-case query time t in the Fredman/Yao arithmetic model of computation. We show that t must be at least on the order of ( n /log n ) 1-(( d -1)/( d ( d +1)) m 1/ d. To our knowledge, this is the first nontrivial lower bound for halfspace range searching. Although the bound is unlikely to be optimal, it falls reasonably close to the recent O ( n (log m / n ) d +1 / m 1/ d ) upper bound established by Matousˇek. We also show that it is possible to devise a sequence of n inserts and halfspace range queries that require a total time of n 2-&thgr;(1/ d ). Our results imply nontrivial lower bounds for spherical range searching in any fixed dimension. For example they show that, with linear storage, circular range queries in the plane require &OHgr;( n 1/3 ) time (modulo a logarithmic factor).

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

lower bound
order
range queries
factor
space
log
storage
complexity
knowledge
sequence
query
model of computation

point
examples
optimality
data structures
case
timing


negotiation teams in multiagent systems In this paper, I present my ongoing research on agent-based negotiation teams. An agent-based negotiation team is a group of two or more agents with their own and possibly conflicting goals that join together as a single negotiation party because they share a common goal that is related to the negotiation. Our research goal is to provide agent-based solutions for problems which may need negotiation teams.

B I 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


Laudatio to professor D. Luc Massart (1941-2005), educator, organizer, and scientists The intention of this laudatio is to portray how the educational, organizational, and scientific achievements of Professor D. Luc Massart affected the life and work of his contemporaries and will influence that of the next generations of scientists and professionals. Our perspective, therefore, is more toward the future than the past. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

chemometrics
intelligent laboratory
education
organization
science


A method to construct flat maps of the brain's surface and its application This paper describes a surface flattening technique, which has been developed in particular to obtain a complete view of the cortical surface of the brain. However, the method is able to produce an overall planar view of any anatomical or real-life object, provided it is topologically compatible with the sphere (i.e. genus 0). It computes the shading of the original surface for rays casted from a nearby surrounding surface and unfolds this surface in a 2D plane, without introducing major distortions. The flat image consisting of the mapped shading results has the advantage that the sulci (i.e. the grooves characterizing the superficial brain geometry) of the cortical surface of the brain can be followed in their entirety, which facilitates the study and the recognition of their patterns. The new visualization method is integrated into a versatile medical image analysis environment. A first study to assess its usefulness has been accomplished and is also reported in this paper.

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


Outline of initial design of the structured hypertext transfer protocol This paper presents an introduction to the initial design of the Structured Hypertext Transfer Protocol (STTP), a compatible extension to the HTTP. It includes a new message set for the control of resource transmission, and the Structured Hypertext Markup Language (STML) for describing the structural information of Web pages. Experimental tests show that STTP can be significantly faster than HTTP, with the improvement of transmission time being around 70% to 400% and the same magnitude of packet savings, which is among the best performance improvement ever reported. The paper discusses the basic idea and-major design considerations of these components, as well as a few important issues in developing STTP servers and clients.

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

http
performance
hypertext
resource transmission


request generation for a peer-based pvr Capacity planning, as well as protocol design and storage system design for video distribution systems are dependent on an understanding of the anticipated workload. Previous studies have focused on aggregate statistics of video popularity over time, and only recently has work been done which analyzes user behaviour variability over time. We are interested in a video storage/distribution system that uses peer resources to help content providers distribute video content to nodes in a network over long periods of time. Such a system is intended to operate on local principles of utility associated with each peer. More than ever, a workload model based on long-term user behaviour is required. In particular, it is unclear how request patterns driven by local utility can be shaped to match expected large-scale aggregate request characteristics such as a Zipf-distribution for overall popularity. In this paper, we describe early work in developing a workload generator for a Peer-based PVR (Personal Video Recorder) system to demonstrate some of these challenges.

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

simulation
caching
request generator
p2p


From omnidirectional images to hierarchical localization We propose a new vision-based method for global robot localization using an omnidirectional camera. Topological and metric localization information are combined in an efficient, hierarchical process, with each step being more complex and accurate than the previous one but evaluating fewer images. This allows us to work with large reference image sets in a reasonable amount of time. Simultaneously, thanks to the use of I D three-view geometry, accurate metric localization can be achieved based on just a small number of nearby reference images. Owing to the wide baseline features used, the method deals well with illumination changes and occlusions, while keeping the computational load small. The simplicity of the radial line features used speeds up the process without affecting the accuracy too much. We show experiments with two omnidirectional image data sets to evaluate the performance of the method and compare the results using the proposed radial lines with results from state-of-the-art wide-baseline matching techniques. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

topological plus metric localization
hierarchical methods
radial line matching


Hi4D-ADSIP 3-D dynamic facial articulation database ? The face is an important medium used by humans to communicate, and facial articulation also reflects a person's emotional and awareness states, cognitive activity, personality or wellbeing. With the advances in 3-D imaging technology and ever increasing computing power, automatic analysis of facial articulation using 3-D sequences is becoming viable. This paper describes Hi4D-ADSIP a comprehensive 3-D dynamic facial articulation database, containing scans with high spatial and temporal resolution. The database is designed not only to facilitate studies on facial expression analysis, but also to aid research into clinical diagnosis of facial dysfunctions. The database currently contains 3360 facial sequences captured from 80 healthy volunteers (control subjects) of various age, gender and ethnicity. The database has been validated using psychophysical experiments used to formally evaluate the accuracy of the recorded expressions. The results of baseline automatic facial expression recognition methods using Eigen- and Fisher-faces are also presented alongside some initial results obtained for clinical cases. This database is believed to be one of the most comprehensive repositories of facial 3-D dynamic articulations to date. The extension of this database is currently under construction aiming at building a comprehensive repository of representative facial dysfunctions exhibited by patients with stroke, Bell's palsy and Parkinson's disease.

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

facial articulation database
expression recognition
facial
dysfunctions


Technostress aus einer neurobiologischen Perspektive Trotz des positiven Einflusses von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) auf einer Individual-, Organisations- und Gesellschaftsebene (z.B. verbesserter Zugang zu Informationen, erhhte Effizienz und Produktivitt) zeigen sowohl die wissenschaftliche Forschung als auch Einzelberichte aus der Praxis, dass die Mensch-Computer-Interaktion zu betrchtlichen Stresswahrnehmungen bei Benutzern fhren kann. Diese Art von Stress wird als Technostress bezeichnet. Eine Analyse der Fachliteratur zeigt, dass die meisten Studien bislang Fragebgen verwendet haben, um die Eigenschaften, Ursachen und Auswirkungen von Technostress zu untersuchen. Trotz des Erkenntniswerts dieser vielen Fragebogenstudien nehmen wir eine andere konzeptionelle Perspektive ein, nmlich jene der Neurobiologie. Wir berichten ber ein Laborexperiment, indem wir die Auswirkungen eines Systemabsturzes auf die Vernderungen im Kortisolspiegel von Benutzern untersuchten Kortisol ist ein bedeutendes Stresshormon im menschlichen Krper. Die Ergebnisse unserer Studie zeigen, dass der Kortisolspiegel signifikant ansteigt, wenn ein System bei Ausfhrung einer Mensch-Computer-Interaktionsaufgabe abstrzt. Auf Basis dieses Ergebnisses ergeben sich bedeutende Implikationen fr Forschung, Entwicklung und Management von IKT, und nicht zuletzt auch fr die Gesundheitspolitik. Wir besttigen den Erkenntniswert eines Forschungsansatzes, der bislang in IKT-Disziplinen weitgehend vernachlssigt wurde (insbesondere in der Wirtschaftsinformatik sowie in der Information-Systems-Disziplin(IS)). Wir argumentieren im Beitrag, dass die zuknftige Forschung im Bereich der Mensch-Computer-Interaktion die neurobiologische Perspektive als erkenntnisfrdernden komplementren Ansatz zu den traditionellen Konzepten betrachten sollte.

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


EulerLagrange coupling with damping effects: Application to slamming problems During a high velocity impact of a structure on a nearly incompressible fluid, impulse loads with high-pressure peaks occur. This physical phenomenon called slamming is a concern in shipbuilding industry because of the possibility of hull damage. Shipbuilding companies have carried out several studies on slamming modeling using FEM software with added mass techniques to represent fluid effects. In the added mass method inertia effects of the fluid are not taken into account and are only valid when the deadrise angle is small. This paper presents the prediction of the local high pressure load on a rigid wedge impacting a free surface, where the fluid is represented by solving NavierStokes equations with an Eulerian or ALE formulation. The fluidstructure interaction is simulated using a coupling algorithm; the fluid is treated on a fixed or moving mesh using an ALE formulation and the structure on a deformable mesh using a Lagrangian formulation. A new coupling algorithm is developed in the paper. The coupling algorithm computes the coupling forces at the fluidstructure interface. These forces are added to the fluid and structure nodal forces, where fluid and structure are solved using an explicit finite element formulation. Predicting the local pressure peak on the structure requires an accurate fluidstructure interaction algorithm. The EulerLagrange coupling algorithm presented in this paper uses a penalty based formulation similar to penalty contact in Lagrangian analyses. Both penalty coupling and penalty contact can generate high frequency oscillations due to the nearly incompressible nature of the fluid. In this paper, a damping force based on the relative velocity of the fluid and the structure is introduced to smooth out non-physical high frequency oscillations induced by the penalty springs in the coupling algorithm.

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

fluidstructure interaction
eulerlagrange coupling
ale formulation
slamming


Better bounds for online scheduling We study a classical problem in online scheduling. A sequence of jobs must be scheduled on m identical parallel machines. As each job arrives, its processing time is known. The goal is to minimize the makespan. Bartal et al. [J. Comput. System Sci., 51 (1995), pp. 359-366] gave a deterministic online algorithm that is 1.986-competitive. Karger, Phillips, and Torng [J. Algorithms, 20 (1996), pp. 400-430] generalized the algorithm and proved an upper bound of 1.945. The best lower bound currently known on the competitive ratio that can be achieved by deterministic online algorithms is equal to 1.837. In this paper we present an improved deterministic online scheduling algorithm that is 1.923-competitive; for all m greater than or equal to 2. The algorithm is based on a new scheduling strategy, i.e., it is not a generalization of the approach by Bartal et al. Also, the algorithm has a simple structure. Furthermore, we develop a better lower bound. We prove that, for general m, no deterministic online scheduling algorithm can be better than 1.852-competitive.

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

makespan minimization
competitive analysis


Partial redundancy elimination for access expressions by speculative code motion We present a new memory access optimization for Java to perform aggressive code motion for speculatively optimizing memory accesses by applying partial redundancy elimination (PRE) techniques. First, to reduce as many barriers as possible and to enhance code motion, we perform alias analysis to identify all the regions in which each object reference is not aliased. Secondly, we find all the possible barriers. Finally, we perform code motions in three steps. For the first step, we apply a non-speculative PRE algorithm to move load instructions and their following instructions in the backwards direction of the control flow graph. For the second step, we apply a speculative PRE algorithm to move some of them aggressively before the conditional branches. For the third step, we apply our modified version of a non-speculative PRE algorithm to move store instructions in the forward direction of the control flow graph and to even move some of them after the merge points. We implemented our new algorithm in our production-level Java just-in-time compiler. Our experimental results show that our speculative algorithm improves the average (maximum) performance by 13.1% (90.7%) for jBYTEmark and 1.4% (4.4%) for SPECjvm98 over the fastest algorithm previously described, while it increases the average (maximum) compilation time by 0.9% (2.9%) for both benchmark suites. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

java
partial redundancy elimination
alias analysis
memory access


The effect of flow rate, accelerometer location and temperature in acoustic chemometrics on liquid flow: Spectral changes and robustness of the prediction models Prediction of chemical composition of flowing liquids using passive acoustic measurements and multivariate regression (acoustic chemometrics) has been reported as a promising in-line measurement method. However, the passive acoustic measurement results are also affected directly or indirectly by other factors than composition of the liquid, i.e. physical conditions of the flow and equipment/pipe properties. The present study focuses on the effects of flow rate, accelerometer location and temperature on the acoustic spectra and prediction of composition of liquids. The studied liquids were two-component mixtures of sucrose and water, and three-component mixtures of ethanol, sucrose and water. Multivariate models were estimated using both local and global calibration on full spectra, and augmented frequency and amplitude matrices derived from full spectra. Flow rate and accelerometer location had the most pronounced effect on acoustic spectra and prediction results from recalibrated local models. Temperature had a minor effect on the acoustic spectra and prediction results. The prediction error for determination of ethanol, sucrose and water increased with increasing flow rate. Changes in flow rate resulted in considerable spectral variations, causing the resultant local calibration model to perform poorly predicting the new samples taken at other flow conditions. Global models performed well on prediction of liquid composition at all studied flow and temperature levels. The global models, however, needed higher number of PLS factors and led to higher prediction errors compared to local models. Using the augmented frequency and amplitude matrices in PLS/ PPLS global regression models led to higher prediction errors compared to full spectra models. However, the augmented frequency and amplitude models were more parsimonious (4-6 PLS factors) compared to the full spectra models (10-12 PLS factors). (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

acoustic chemometrics
liquid flow
local calibration
global calibration
accelerometer


Qualitative analysis of matrix splitting methods Qualitative properties of matrix splitting methods for linear systems with tridiagonal and block tridiagonal Stieltjes-Toeplitz matrices are studied. Two particular splittings, the so-called symmetric tridiagonal splittings and the bidiagonal splittings, are considered, and conditions for qualitative properties like nonnegativity and shape preservation are shown for them. Special attention is paid to their close relation to the well-known splitting techniques like regular and weak regular splitting methods. Extensions to block tridiagonal matrices are given, and their relation to algebraic representations of domain decomposition methods is discussed. The paper is concluded with illustrative numerical experiments. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

matrix splitting methods
qualitative analysis
domain decomposition

stieltjes-toeplitz matrices
regular and weak regular splittings
sor method


Low-Rank Matrix Recovery From Errors and Erasures This paper considers the recovery of a low-rank matrix from an observed version that simultaneously contains both 1) erasures, most entries are not observed, and 2) errors, values at a constant fraction of (unknown) locations are arbitrarily corrupted. We provide a new unified performance guarantee on when minimizing nuclear norm plus norm succeeds in exact recovery. Our result allows for the simultaneous presence of random and deterministic components in both the error and erasure patterns. By specializing this one single result in different ways, we recover (up to poly-log factors) as corollaries all the existing results in exact matrix completion, and exact sparse and low-rank matrix decomposition. Our unified result also provides the first guarantees for 1) recovery when we observe a vanishing fraction of entries of a corrupted matrix, and 2) deterministic matrix completion.

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

low-rank
robustness
sparsity
statistical learning


Energy minimum theorem based on AGA, Lyapunov and force field for CADD techniques This paper employs the energy minimum to enhance drug docking efficiency in a computer aided drug design (CADD) system. The energy minimum application is used to enhance CADD docking performance. The proposed method is discussed in three aspects, adaptive genetic algorithms (AGA), Lyapunov stability theorem and molecular force field. As in previous researches, docking is the crucial component in drug development. The number of docking sites affects the drug docking speed. Reducing the scope of the geometric search is the key task. This paper proposes AGA to improve geometric molecular docking search efficiency. The Lyapunov stability theorem forwards the stability state identification. Protein folding intention generally finds the most appropriate stability state when the thermodynamic and molecular mechanical free energy has reached the lowest point. The AMBER force field simulation is used to discover the molecular statistical mechanics in a drug-ligand. AGA was found better in terms of processing the geometric graphic search operation. The AGA and Lyapunov algorithms were utilized to sieve out the global energy minimum approach from the numerous, raw docking sites.

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

computer aided drug design
protein folding
lyapunov


Bounds on the capacity of constrained two-dimensional codes Bounds on the capacity of constrained two-dimensional (2-D) codes are presented. The bounds of Calkin and Wilf apply to first-order symmetric constraints. The bounds are generalized in a weaker form to higher order and nonsymmetric constraints. Results are given for constraints specified by run-length limits or a minimum distance between pixels of a given value.

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

constrained codes
entropy
two-dimensional (2-d) codes
2-d fields


Adaptive Web QoS controller based on online system identification using quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization Web quality of service (QoS) control can effectively prevent a Web Server from becoming overloaded. This paper presents an adaptive controller for Web QoS, which dynamically adjusts parameters of the proportional-integral (PI) controller according to the changes of the Web server model. Different from the existing methods based on the off-line system identification, the adaptive Web QoS controller is implemented based on the online system identification through a quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (QPSO) algorithm and a mutated version of QPSO (MuQPSO). The proposed approach for online system identification by QPSO and MuQPSO shows better performance than genetic algorithms and the particle swarm optimization algorithm on the simulation tests. Then, the performance of the adaptive controller for Web QoS is tested in three experiments and compared with that of fixed PI controller. Experimental results show that the adaptive control employing online system identification by QPSO and MuQPSO algorithms is able to control the Web server resource more effectively in case of overload and, thus, improves the Web QoS.

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

particle swarm optimization
web qos
adaptive control


a schema language for coordinating construction and composition of partial behavior descriptions We report on a schema language for coordinating the construction and composition of partial behavior descriptions. The language is a frontend to the semantical and implementation framework of action machines , which allows to encode behaviors of software artifacts in a language-agnostic manner, supporting both state-based and interaction-based description styles, as well as partial descriptions by means of symbolic representations. Our approach is currently being incorporated into an advanced model-based specification and testing environment at Microsoft Research.

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

partial behaviors
model composition
model-based testing


achieving out-of-order performance with almost in-order complexity There is still much performance to be gained by out-of-order processors with wider issue widths. However, traditional methods of increasing issue width do not scale; that is, they drastically increase design complexity and power requirements. This paper introduces the braid, a compile-time identified entity that enables the execution core to scale to wider widths by exploiting the small fanout and short lifetime of values produced by the program. Braid processing requires identification by the compiler, minor extensions to the ISA, and support by the microarchitecture. The result from processing braids is performance within 9\% of a very aggressive conventional out-of-order microarchitecture with almost the complexity of an in-order implementation.

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

requirements lifetime values scale performance design identification implementation support power complexity core paper microarchitecture

processor order method process compilation extensibility timing


Integrated engineering environments for large complex products An introduction is given to the Engineering Design Centre at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, along with a brief explanation of the main focus towards large made-to-order products. Three key areas of research at the Centre, which have evolved as a result of collaboration with industrial partners from Various sectors of industry, are identified as (1) decision support and optimisation, (2) design for lifecycle, and (3) design integration and co-ordination. A summary of the unique features of large made-to-order products is then presented, which includes the need for integration and co-ordination technologies. Thus, an overview of the existing integration and coordination technologies is presented followed by a brief explanation of research in these areas at the Engineering Design Centre. A more detailed description is then presented regarding the co-ordination aspect of research being conducted at the Engineering Design Centre, in collaboration with the CAD Centre at the University of Strathclyde. Concurrent Engineering is acknowledged as a strategy for improving the design process, however design cc-ordination is viewed as a principal requirement for its successful implementation. That is, design co-ordination is proposed as being the key to a mechanism that is able to maximise and realise any potential opportunity of concurrency. Thus, an agent-oriented approach to cc-ordination is presented, which incorporates various types of agents responsible for managing their respective activities. The cc-ordinated approach, which is implemented within the Design Go-ordination System, includes features such as resource management and monitoring, dynamic scheduling, activity direction, task enactment, and information management. An application of the Design Co-ordination System, in conjunction with a robust concept exploration tool, shows that the computational design analysis involved in evaluating many design concepts can be performed more efficiently through a cc-ordinated approach.

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

large made-to-order products
co-ordination


Open-loop and closed-loop experimental on-line identification of a three-mass electromechanical system System identification has long been of prime interest in industrial applications. The purpose of the current contribution is to present experimental on-line identification of a three-mass electromechanical system in digital input-output model. Studies are carried out by formulating the mathematical model of the plant using differential equations, and discrete-time identification using on-line plant input-output data. The theory and computer-based parameter identification method is described. Steady-state and transient behaviour of the system is investigated to define characteristics of the system. Recursive least squares method is used to estimate the unknown parameters of the system that match input-output behaviour of the real electromechanical system. Discrete-time data for parameter identification are obtained experimentally carrying out on a PM-DC motor set-up. Direct identification method is used in closed-loop identification. Root-mean-square error criterion is used for model validation. Results obtained in open-loop and closed-loop identification are presented which show variations in the system parameters. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

on-line plant identification
dc motors
recursive estimation
prediction error
least-squares
three-mass system


Dynamic crack analysis in piezoelectric solids with non-linear electrical and mechanical boundary conditions by a time-domain BEM This paper presents advanced transient dynamic crack analysis in two-dimensional (2D), homogeneous and linear piezoelectric solids using non-linear mechanical and electrical crack-face boundary conditions. Stationary cracks in infinite and finite piezoelectric solids subjected to impact loadings are considered. For this purpose a time-domain boundary element method (TDBEM) is developed. A Galerkin-method is implemented for the spatial discretization, while a collocation method is applied for the temporal discretization. An explicit time-stepping scheme is obtained to compute the unknown boundary data including the generalized crack-opening-displacements (CODs) numerically. An iterative solution algorithm is developed to consider the non-linear semi-permeable electrical crack-face boundary conditions. Furthermore, an additional iteration scheme for crack-face contact analysis is implemented at time-steps when a physically meaningless crack-face intersection occurs. Several numerical examples are presented and discussed to show the effects of the electrical crack-face boundary conditions on the dynamic intensity factors.

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

piezoelectric solids
contact analysis
dynamic crack analysis


smart cooking support system based on interaction reproducing model This paper presents a novel idea for a smart cooking support system. The system is controlled by an Interaction Reproducing Model (IRM) that adjusts the system output to reproduce ideal interactions between the system and the users, and appropriate advice is provided at the appropriate time. This mechanism is based on the idea that simulation of past interactions between human test subjects and the IRM give the IRM-based support system the ability to provide good supports to the current user. Within this framework, we developed a prototype cooking support system and conducted preliminary experiments. The results show that the system provides supports appropriate to the user's skill level.

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


Risk-constrained self-scheduling of a fuel and emission constrained power producer using rolling window procedure This work addresses a relevant methodology for self-scheduling of a price-taker fuel and emission constrained power producer in day-ahead correlated energy, spinning reserve and fuel markets to achieve a trade-off between the expected profit and the risk versus different risk levels based on Markowitzs seminal work in the area of portfolio selection. Here, a set of uncertainties including price forecasting errors and available fuel uncertainty are considered. The latter uncertainty arises because of uncertainties in being called for reserve deployment in the spinning reserve market and availability of power plant. To tackle the price forecasting errors, variances of energy, spinning reserve and fuel prices along with their covariances which are due to markets correlation are taken into account using relevant historical data. In order to tackle available fuel uncertainty, a framework for self-scheduling referred to as rolling window is proposed. This risk-constrained self-scheduling framework is therefore formulated and solved as a mixed-integer non-linear programming problem. Furthermore, numerical results for a case study are discussed.

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

electricity market
fuel and emission constraints
self-scheduling (ss)
emission allowance


Geodesic curvature preservation in surface flattening through constrained global optimization In this paper, two methods for generating a planar development of a three-dimensional (3D) surface are proposed. The first method is based on the solution of a global optimization problem without constraints taking into consideration the geodesic curvature of the surface isoparametric curves. The second method is based on the solution of a global optimization problem subject to constraints which are used to control the local accuracy in the derived planar development. Contrarily to previous approaches the proposed second method does not depend on the surface parameterization, since the formed energy function and the proposed constraints are based only on the triangulation of the object surface. Several experiments illustrate that when the 3D surface is approximated with satisfying accuracy, modifications in the triangulation do not have any significant influence to the result of the proposed method. The proposed second method can be used without any modifications with trimmed surfaces, while the generated planar developments can also be used for minimally distorted texture mapping. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed second method is illustrated through an indicative application in shoe designing.

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

constraints
optimization
texture mapping


Feature weighted naive Bayes algorithm for information retrieval of enterprise systems Automated information retrieval is critical for enterprise information systems to acquire knowledge from the vast amount of data sets. One challenge in information retrieval is text classification. Current practices rely heavily on the classical naive Bayes algorithm due to its simplicity and robustness. However, results from this algorithm are not always satisfactory. In this article, the limitations of the naive Bayes algorithm are discussed, and it is found that the assumption on the independence of terms is the main reason for an unsatisfactory classification in many real-world applications. To overcome the limitations, the dependent factors are considered by integrating a term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) weighting algorithm in the naive Bayes classification. Moreover, the TF-IDF algorithm itself is improved so that both frequencies and distribution information are taken into consideration. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, two simulation experiments were conducted, and the comparisons with other classification methods have shown that the proposed method has outperformed other existing algorithms in terms of precision and index recall rate.

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

information retrieval
text classification

term frequency-inverse document frequency (tf-idf)


an algorithm for optimal comma free codes with isomorphism rejection A general algorithm for finding optimal comma-free codes and deriving upper bounds on the minimum redundancy of comma-free codes that implements the idea of isomorphism rejection is presented, together with tables with bounds on the minimum redundancy computed by using this algorithm.

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

comma-free codes
code synchronization
applied computing


MaxVaR with non-Gaussian distributed returns ? The common fallacy in risk measurement throughout a long investment horizon is to handle only the terminal risk. This pathology affects Value-at-Risk, hence a recent contribution in the literature has proposed the concept of within-horizon risk as a solution to the problem. The quantification of this type of risk leads to the so called MaxVaR measure, but the assumption of Gaussian distributed returns biases this model. This study analyzes the consequences of non-Gaussian returns to the MaxVaR inference. An example of application to long-term risk management is provided.

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

risk measures
jump-diffusion model
inflation factor
margin account
monte carlo simulation


QoS-adaptive bandwidth scheduling in continuous media streaming In this paper, we present a QoS-adaptive admission control and resource scheduling framework for continuous media (CM) servers. The framework consists of two parts. One is a reserve-based admission control mechanism in which new streams, arriving during periods of congestion, are offered lower QoS, instead of being blocked. The other part is a scheduler for continuous media with dynamic resource allocation to achieve higher utilization than non-dynamic schedulers by effectively sharing available resources among contending streams and by reclamation which is a scheduler-initiated negotiation to reallocate resources among streams to improve overall QoS. This soft-QoS framework recognizes that CM applications can generally tolerate certain variations on QoS parameters; that is, it exploits the findings about human tolerance to degradation in quality of multimedia streams. Using our policy, we could increase the number of simultaneously running clients that could be supported and could ensure a good response ratio and better resource utilization under heavy traffic requirements. Our admission control and scheduling strategy provides three principle advantages over conventional mechanisms. First, it guarantees better total system utilization. Second, it provides better disk utilization and larger admission ratio for input CM streams, which is a major advantage. Third, it still presents acceptable play-out qualities compared to the conventional greedy admission control algorithm.

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

admission control
resource scheduling
continuous media streaming


Research on quality performance conceptual design based on SPEA2+ ? In order to solve the multi-objective performance optimal problems, SPEA2+ is used to realize the performance design of injection molding machine. The optimization objectives are constructed to maximize mould control power, maximize injection quantity and minimize injection power. The mathematical model is found to optimize the problem. A solution is extracted to eliminate the imprecise nature of preference through the Pareto optimal set based on fuzzy set theory. Compared with NSGA-II and SPEA2, SPEA2+ could acquire the Pareto front with better distribution and smaller distance with the optimum solutions. Finally, the case illustration of HTG1000X3Y injection molding machine is taken as an example to demonstrate that such method is effective and practical. Effective references could be provided to decision makers for objectives tradeoff at the performance conceptual design stage of injection molding machine.

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

conceptual design
injection molding machine

multi-objective optimal
spea2+
product performance


A knowledge-driven probabilistic framework for the prediction of protein-protein interaction networks This study applied a knowledge-driven data integration framework for the inference of protein-protein interactions (PPI). Evidence from diverse genomic features is integrated using a knowledge-driven Bayesian network (KD-BN). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves may not be the optimal assessment method to evaluate a classifier's performance in PPI prediction as the majority of the area under the curve (AUC) may not represent biologically meaningful results. It may be of benefit to interpret the AUC of a partial ROC curve whereby biologically interesting results are represented. Therefore, the novel application of the assessment method referred to as the partial ROC has been employed in this study to assess predictive performance of PPI predictions along with calculating the True positive/false positive rate and true positive/positive rate. By incorporating domain knowledge into the construction of the KD-BN, we demonstrate improvement in predictive performance compared with previous studies based upon the Naive Bayesian approach. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

protein-protein interaction networks
machine and statistical learning
"omic" datasets
functional genomics
computational systems biology


Ontologies for supporting engineering design optimization This paper presents an optimization ontology and its implementation into a prototype computational knowledge-based tool dubbed ONTOP (ontology for optimization). Salient feature. of ONTOP include a knowledge base that incorporates both standardized optimization terminology, formal method definitions, and often unrecorded optimization details, such as any idealizations and assumptions that may be made when creating an optimization model, as well as the model developer's rationale and justification behind these zation model, as well as the model developer idealizations and assumptions. ONTOP was developed using Protege, a Java-based, free. open-source ontology development environment created by Stanford University. Two engineering design optimization case studies are presented. The first case study consists of the optimization of a structural beam element and demonstrates ONTOP's ability to ad dress the variations in an optimal solution that may arise when different techniques and approaches are used. A second case study, a more complex design problem that deals with the optimization of an impeller of a pediatric left ventricular heart assist device, demonstrates the wealth of knowledge ONTOP is able to capture. Together these test beds help illustrate the potential value of an ontology in representing application-specific knowledge while facilitating both the sharing and exchanging of this knowledge in engineering design optimization.

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


Cross-Layer Customization for Rapid and Low-Cost Task Preemption in Multitasked Embedded Systems Preemptive multitasking is widely used in many low-cost and real-time embedded applications for its superior hardware utilization. The frequent and asynchronous context switches, however, require the preservation and restoration of the task state, thus resulting in a large number of memory transfer instructions. As a consequence, task responsiveness and application throughput can be significantly deteriorated. To address this problem we propose a cross-layer customization framework which through the close cooperation of compiler, OS, and hardware architecture achieves rapid and low-cost task switch. Application information extracted during compile-time regarding state liveness is exploited in order to preserve a minimal amount of task state on task preemption. We introduce two complementary techniques to implement the application-aware state preservation. The first technique utilizes compiler-generated custom routines which preserve/restore an extremely small live context at judiciously selected points in the application code. The second technique requires more sophisticated hardware support. It employs an OS-controlled register file mapping to achieve a rapid context switch. By mapping a small fraction of the register file in a single clock cycle, a context switch is achieved requiring no memory transfers for the majority of cases to preserve/restore the live state. The effect of aggressively replicated register files, where each task is given its own replica, is achieved with the hardware cost of only adding from 25% to 50% extra physical registers. Through the utilization of these novel mechanisms, a significant improvement on task response time is achieved as the context-switch cost is minimized.

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

algorithms design experimentation performance


sub-structural niching in estimation of distribution algorithms We propose a sub-structural niching method that fully exploits the problem decomposition capability of linkage-learning methods such as the estimation distribution algorithms and concentrate on maintaining diversity at the sub-structural level. The proposed method consists of three key components: (1) Problem decomposition and sub-structure identification, (2) sub-structure fitness estimation, and (3) sub-structural niche preservation. The sub-structural niching method is compared to restricted tournament selection (RTS)---a niching method used in hierarchical Bayesian optimization algorithm---with special emphasis on sustained preservation of multiple global solutions of a class of boundedly-difficult, additively-separable multimodal problems. The results show that sub-structural niching successfully maintains multiple global optima over large number of generations and does so with significantly less population than RTS. Additionally, the market share of each of the niche is much closer to the expected level in sub-structural niching when compared to RTS.

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

niching
estimation of distribution algorithms
multimodal
fitness estimation

probabilistic models
genetic algorithms
multiobjective
fitness approximation
building blocks
ecga


A linguistic decision model for promotion mix management solved with genetic algorithms Promotion activities are those marketing tools that have a fast and direct impact in the target market. Due to this fact, the selection of such activities is an important decision. This contribution attempts to devise a decision process for this problem in conditions of uncertainty, supplying a linguistic decision model for evaluating the satisfaction of the objectives by the potential solutions. The process uses a genetic algorithm to find a good solution in promotion selection, such that it will both accomplish the communication objectives of the company and minimise the invested amount. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

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

promotion mix
linguistic decision model
genetic algorithms


Programming and coordinating Grid environments and applications The heterogeneous and dynamic nature of Grid environments place new demands on models and paradigms for parallel programming. In this work we discuss how ALua, a programming system based on a dual programming language model, can help the programmer to develop applications for this environment, monitoring the state of resources and controlling the application so that it adapts to changes in this state. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

distributed systems
parallel applications
grid computing
interpreted languages
event-driven communication
middleware
coordination
dynamic adaptation


On the use of dimensioned measures of error to evaluate the performance of spatial interpolators Spatial cross-validation and average-error statistics are examined with respect to their abilities to evaluate alternate spatial interpolation methods. A simple crossvalidation methodology is described, and the relative abilities of three, dimensioned error statistics - the root-mean-square error (RMSE), the mean absolute error (MAE), and the mean bias error (MBE) - to describe average interpolator performance are examined. To illustrate our points, climatologically averaged weather-station temperatures were obtained from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), Version 2, and then alternately interpolated spatially (gridded) using two spatial-interpolation procedures. Substantial differences in the performance of our two spatial interpolators are evident in maps of the cross-validation error fields, in the average-error statistics, as well as in estimated land-surface-average air temperatures that differ by more than 2 degrees C. The RMSE and its square, the mean-square error (MSE), are of particular interest, because they are the most widely reported average-error measures, and they tend to be misleading. It (RMSE) is an inappropriate measure of average error because it is a function of three characteristics of a set of errors, rather than of one (the average error). Our findings indicate that MAE and MBE are natural measures of average error and that (unlike RMSE) they are unambiguous.

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


Parallel asynchronous global search and the nested optimization scheme In this paper, a parallel asynchronous information algorithm for solving multidimensional Lipschitz global optimization problems, where times for evaluating the objective function can be different from point to point, is proposed. This method uses the nested optimization scheme and a new parallel asynchronous global optimization method for solving core univariate subproblems generated by the nested scheme. The properties of the scheme related to parallel computations are investigated. Global convergence conditions for the new method and theoretical conditions of speed up, which can be reached by using asynchronous parallelization in comparison with the pure sequential case, are established. Numerical experiments comparing sequential, synchronous, and asynchronous algorithms are also reported.

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

global optimization
nested optimization
convergence
speed up


Impact of IT-supported clinical pathways on medical staff satisfaction. A prospective longitudinal cohort study Clinical pathways (CPs) have been evaluated with regard to process optimization, economic effects, quality of care, patient satisfaction and staff satisfaction. IT- (information technology) supported CPs, integrated within the HIS (hospital information system), have been implemented in our department in 2004 for the first time world-wide. Herein, we describe the effect of this new concept on medical staff satisfaction. A prospective anonymous and voluntary survey with standardized questionnaires was performed annually from 2006 until 2009 evaluating staff satisfaction concerning CPs. Questions comprised satisfaction with the software, staff's attitude towards CPs and the impact of CPs on work-related processes. Within the observation period the term clinical pathways became more common among doctors and nurses. Knowledge of the aims of CPs increased significantly in nursing staff (43.474.5%), whereas doctor's knowledge was on a constant high level. Standardization, process facilitation and cost effectiveness were the most claimed goals of CPs. Comprehensibility of the single steps within CPs was on a constant high level over the observation period. Generally, graphical layout and usability of CPs ranged on a very high satisfaction level. Acceptability of IT-supported CPs is independent from staffs computer knowledge. Staff satisfaction with IT-supported CPs needs to take into account the job characteristics of the different professional groups. IT-supported CPs are leading to a high staff satisfaction, the aims of CPs are widely understood by medical employees. IT-supported CPs may ameliorate staff satisfaction and thereby enhance workflow efficiencies.

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

clinical pathways
staff satisfaction
quality of care

it-support
treatment standards
clinical professionals


Solution to the covering problem This work is motivated by recent investigations that reveal the intractability of the covering problem. Current methods for solving this problem lack an explicit procedure. Therefore, they are of limited value. This work presents the steps for solving such problems using a novel algorithm. The search performance is better than that achieved in other works. Some numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the performance and to compare it with the performance of other methods. The proposed algorithm can be utilized to solve fuzzy relation equations that exhibit the zero-or-greatest property.

O O O B I 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

combinatorial problem
minimal covering
fuzzy relation equation
minimal solution


Investigating the effect of soil models on deformations caused by braced excavations through an inverse-analysis technique In this study, a series of inverse-analysis numerical experiments was performed to investigate the effect of soil models on the deformations caused by excavation by using the finite element method. The nonlinear optimization technique that was incorporated into the finite element code was used for the inverse-analysis numerical experiments. Three soil models (the hyperbolic model, pseudo-plasticity model, and modified pseudo-plasticity model) were employed in the intended numerical experiments on a well-documented excavation case history. The results indicate that wall deflection due to excavation can be accurately back-figured by each of the three soil models, while the ground surface settlement can be reasonably optimized only by the pseudo-plasticity model and the modified pseudo-plasticity model. Importantly, the modified pseudo-plasticity model can yield more reasonable simulations when the wall deflection and the ground surface settlement are simultaneously back-figured. The results show that selection of an adequate soil model that is capable of adequately describing the stressstrain-strength characteristics of the soils is essentially crucial when predicting the excavation-induced ground response.

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

finite element method
optimization
excavation
soil model


A variant of the SOM algorithm and its interpretation in the viewpoint of social influence and learning The conventional self-organizing feature map (SOM) algorithm is usually interpreted as a computational model, which can capture main features of computational maps in the brain. In this paper, we present a variant of the SOM algorithm called the SOM-based optimization (SOMO) algorithm. The development of the SOMO algorithm was motivated by exploring the possibility of applying the SOM algorithm in continuous optimization problems. Through the self-organizing process, good solutions to an optimization problem can be simultaneously explored and exploited by the SOMO algorithm. In our opinion, the SOMO algorithm not only can be regarded as a biologically inspired computational model but also may be regarded as a new approach to a model of social influence and social learning. Several simulations are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization algorithm.

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

self-organizing feature map (som)
evolutionary computing
genetic algorithm (ga)


Contribution of 3D technologies to the analysis of form in late palaeolithic rock carvings: The case of the Roc-aux-Sorciers rock-shelter (Angles-sur-lAnglin, France) We examine the contribution of 3D technologies in the study of a Magdalenian carved frieze (recording, analysis, modelling). 3D technologies as tools for stylistic analysis (morphometry and volumetry, comparisons of form). 3D comparisons of form question the issue of authorship. 3D technologies to help precise and model the successive rock art assemblages of the wall stratigraphy.

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


Local search genetic algorithms for the job shop scheduling problem In previous work, we developed three deadlock removal strategies for the job shop scheduling problem (JSSP) and proposed a hybridized genetic algorithm for it. While the genetic algorithm (GA) gave promising results, its performance depended greatly on the choice of deadlock removal strategies employed. This paper introduces a genetic algorithm based scheduling scheme that is deadlock free. This is achieved through the choice of chromosome representation and genetic operators. We propose an efficient solution representation for the JSSP in which the job task ordering constraints are easily encoded. Furthermore, a problem specific crossover operator that ensures solutions generated through genetic evolution are all feasible is also proposed. Hence, both checking of the constraints and repair mechanism can be avoided, thus resulting in increased efficiency. A mutation-like operator geared towards local search is also proposed which further improves the solution quality. Lastly, a hybrid strategy using the genetic algorithm reinforced with a tabu search is developed. An empirical study is carried out to test the proposed strategies.

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

genetic algorithms
local search
tabu search
job shop scheduling


smooth traffic flow with a cooperative car navigation system With maturation of ubiquitous computing technology, it has become feasible to design new systems to improve our urban life. In this paper, we introduce a new application for car navigation in a city. Every car navigation system in operation today has the current position of the vehicle, the destination, and the currently chosen route to the destination. If vehicles in a city could share this information, they could use traffic information to globally plan semi-optimal routes for each vehicle. Thus, we propose a cooperative car navigation system with route information sharing (RIS). In the RIS system, each vehicle transmits route information (current position, destination, and route to the destination) to a route information server, which estimates future traffic congestion using this information and feeds its estimate back to each vehicle. Each vehicle uses the estimation to re-plan their route. This cycle is then repeated. Our multiagent simulation confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed RIS system. The average travel time of drivers using the RIS system is substantially shorter than the time of drivers who chose shortest distance or simple shortest time estimates. Moreover, as the number of RIS users increases, the total amount of traffic congestion in the city decreases.

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information sharing
car navigation
traffic congestion


A set packing model for the ground holding problem in congested networks Air traffic flow management (ATFM) consists of several activities performed by control authorities in order to reduce delays due to traffic congestion. Ground holding decisions restrict certain flights from tacking off at the scheduled departure time if congestion is expected at the destination airport. They are motivated by the fact that it is safer to hold an aircraft on the ground than in the air. Several integer linear programming models have been proposed to efficiently solve the ground holding problem (GHP). In this paper we investigate a set packing formulation of the GHP and design a branch-and-cut algorithm to solve the problem in high congestion scenarios, i.e., when lack of capacity induces flights cancellation. The constraint generation is carried out by heuristically solving the separation problem associated with a large class of rank inequalities. This procedure exploits the special structure of the GHP's intersection graphs. The computational results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other algorithms in which flight cancellation has been allowed.

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 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

integer programming
stable set
air traffic management


The use of pervasive sensing for behaviour profiling a survey With the maturity of sensing and pervasive computing techniques, extensive research is being carried out in using different sensing techniques for understanding human behaviour. An introduction to key modalities of pervasive sensing is presented. Behaviour modelling is then highlighted with a focus on probabilistic models. The survey discusses discriminative approaches as well as relevant work on behaviour pattern clustering and variability. The influence of interacting with people and objects in the environment is also discussed. Finally, challenges and new research opportunities are highlighted.

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behaviour
pervasive sensing
probabilistic models


Broadband magic-Ts with the use of coupled-line directional couplers and left-handed transmission line sections The problem of broadband magic-T realization with the use of coupled-line directional couplers and left-handed (LH) transmission-line sections has been comprehensively investigated. Broadband amplitude characteristics of the proposed networks are ensured with the use of coupled-line couplers, whereas the required phase characteristics have been achieved by the appropriate selection of right- and left-handed transmission line sections. To analyze the properties of the proposed networks, a model of an ideal left-handed transmission line has been utilized. The presented concept has been verified by two designs of broadband magic-Ts operating in 2.53.5 GHz and 0.82.3 GHz, respectively. The obtained results proved that the proposed magic-T networks allows one to obtain broadband amplitude and phase responses together with its compact structure. 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:513521, 2014.

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3-db directional couplers
magic-t networks
bandwidth improvement
coupled-line sections
left-handed transmission lines
metamaterials