Glucocorticoid Hyper- and Hypofunction It is now well documented that both increased and decreased stress responses can profoundly affect cognition and behavior. This mini review presents possible neural mechanisms subserving stress effects on memory and aggression, particularly focusing on glucocorticoid (GC) hyper- and hypofunction. First, uncontrollable stress impedes hippocampal memory and long-term potentiation (LTP). Because the hippocampus is important for the stability of long-term memory and because LTP has qualities desirable of an information storage mechanism, it has been hypothesized that stress-induced alterations in LTP contribute to memory impairments. Recent evidence suggests a neuralendocrine network comprising amygdala, prefrontal cortex (PFC), and glucocorticoids may be involved in regulating stress effects on hippocampal mnemonic functioning. Second, antisocial aggressiveness correlates with chronically decreased glucocorticoid production, and this condition leads in rats to behavioralautonomic deficits reminiscent of the human disorder. Glucocorticoid deficiency-induced antisocial aggressiveness results from functional changes in the PFC, medial and central amygdala, and altered serotonin and substance P neurotransmissions. Accordingly, a neurobiological understanding of how stress and glucocorticoid deficiency alter brain, cognition, and behavior is an important challenge facing modern neuroscience with broad implications for individual and social well-being

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

memory
aggression
hippocampus
amygdala
prefrontal cortex

learning
corticosterone
synaptic plasticity


information technology education and employment for women in kenya Sub-Saharan Africa women have historically assumed the roles of housewife and subsistence farmer. However, with the global growth of information and communications technologies (ICT) and digital divide interventions, women are enrolling in university programs which prepare them for employment in the formal workforce. In this paper, we present a study in which we interviewed 32 women enrolled in an ICT program at a Kenyan university. The interviews examined the women's responses to the program as well as the women's experiences in seeking and securing ICT-related employment. Our findings indicate that women were highly optimistic, embracing ICT as a practical mechanism for achieving entre into the labor force and empowering women. However they perceive significant structural barriers, such as gender discrimination in hiring practices, organization's inability to recognize their mix of technical and business competencies, and national ICT policies which did not support the growth in the technology sector.

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 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


Structuring the Verification of Heap-Manipulating Programs Most systems based on separation logic consider only restricted forms of implication or non-separating conjunction, as full support for these connectives requires a non-trivial notion of variable context, inherited from the logic of bunched implications (BI). We show that in an expressive type theory such as Coq, one can avoid the intricacies of BI, and support full separation logic very efficiently, using the native structuring primitives of the type theory. Our proposal uses reflection to enable equational reasoning about heaps, and Hoare triples with binary postconditions to further facilitate it. We apply these ideas to Hoare Type Theory, to obtain a new proof technique for verification of higher-order imperative programs that is general, extendable, and supports very short proofs, even without significant use of automation by tactics. We demonstrate the usability of the technique by verifying the fast congruence closure algorithm of Nieuwenhuis and Oliveras, employed in the state-of-the-art Barcelogic SAT solver.

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 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 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 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

verification
type theory
separation logic


Spatial Recurrences for Pedestrian Classification In this work, a framework is proposed for pedestrian classification based on spatial recurrences in the form of recurrence plots. This representation is more general and potentially more discriminative than a histogram of co-occurrences, since the correlation information between different spatial locations is maintained rather than just summarized into histograms. Recurrences are defined over states that encode some visual information at spatial locations over a grid. The framework is general in that it accommodates states of arbitrary nature, any similarity distance between pairs of states, arbitrary grids, and varying degree of recurrence summarization. As revealed experimentally, the resulting descriptor is competitive to recent approaches and compares favourably to an state-of-the-art co-occurrence-based descriptor under several occlusion conditions, and in related problems such as pedestrian view recognition, in particular under stringent quantization conditions. One interesting additional finding is that splitting the recurrent information into multiple recurrence plots turns out to be more discriminative than condensing it into fewer plots.

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

pedestrian detection
pedestrian characterization
co-occurrences
visual descriptors


A reputation system for electronic negotiations In this paper we first present a system architecture enabling market participants to carry out bilateral and multi-attributive electronic negotiations with each other. Since this system uses open and anonymous communication networks, market participants have to cope with much higher mount of uncertainty about the quality of products and the trustworthiness of other participants. Therefore, we present a reputation system, which facilitates trust building among business partners who interact in an ad-hoc manner with each other. The system enables market participants to rate the business performance of their partners as well as the quality of offered goods. These ratings are the basis for evaluating the trustworthiness of market participants and the quality of their goods. The ratings are aggregated using the concept of Web of Trust. This approach leads to robustness of the proposed system against malicious behavior aiming at manipulating the reputation of market participants.

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


pure e-learning course in information security We describe key elements and contents of an e-learning course on practical information security that deals with awareness and skills required in daily life. We have had good results in reaching the learning goals and in low resource consuming nature from a teacher's point of view. From a student's point of view the course has been laborious but very instructive and meaningful. We outline also the opportunities of using such a course to contribute to work for information security awareness and usability studies.

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


Adaptive scheduling strategy optimizer for parallel rolling bearing simulation Rolling bearing simulations are very computationally intensive and need to utilize the potential of parallel computing. The load distribution over the processors in a rolling bearing simulation is very dynamic. In this paper we present the Adaptive Scheduling Strategy Optimizer (ASSO) for scheduling parallel simulations. The result of this is that the application can automatically select a near optimal scheduling strategy (with respect to the available scheduling strategies). The ASSO is used daily in real bearing simulations.

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


An illuminative example of nonlinear identification The parameter identification of a nonlinear system is often difficult to handle. Through the study of a particular nonlinear system with a limit cycle, corresponding to a biological system with an endogenous rhythm, we show that it is useful to take into account additional algebraic or geometric features of the system to achieve parameter identification.

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

identification
nonlinear system
limit cycle
biological system
endogenous rhythm


formative evaluation of a didactic software for acquiring problem solving abilities using prolog Informatics has permeated the educational environments at all levels. In Italian primary schools Informatics teachers present the computer and how it works rather than the programming languages. At present, there is a deep debate about the use of programming languages and, in particular, logic programming in the primary school. On the basis of these premises, the paper presents a didactic software, named KidsPro, addressed to pupils attending fifth-grade of primary school. It aims at improving the user problem solving abilities using Prolog. In order to build an effective and efficient software the User-Centred Design approach was used and the paper presents the results of the formative evaluation performed. The results of this pilot study will be used in the further implementation of the software.

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 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 O O


Robust stability criterion for Markovian jump systems with nonlinear perturbations and mode-dependent time delays In this paper, the problem of delay-dependent stability of a class of uncertain Markovian jump systems with mode-dependent interval time-varying delay and nonlinear perturbations is considered using Lyapunov-Krasovskii (LK) functional approach. In the proposed stability analysis, by exploiting a candidate LK functional and by imposing tighter bounding on the cross-terms using minimal number of slack matrix variables, a less conservative delay-dependent stability criterion is presented in linear matrix inequality framework. The effectiveness of the proposed stability criterion over some of the recently reported results is demonstrated through standard numerical examples.

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

delay-dependent stochastic stability
lyapunov-krasovskii functional
linear matrix inequalities


Decomposition of sparse graphs into two forests, one having bounded maximum degree Let G be a graph. The maximum average degree of G, written Mad(G), is the largest average degree among the subgraphs of G. It was proved in Montassier et al. (2010) [11] that, for any integer k >= 0, every simple graph with maximum average degree less than m(k) = 4(k+1)(k+3)/k(2)+6k+6 admits an edge-partition into a forest and a subgraph with maximum degree at most k; furthermore, when k <= 3 both subgraphs can be required to be forests. In this note, we extend this result proving that, for k = 4, 5, every simple graph with maximum average degree less than m(k) admits an edge-partition into two forests, one having maximum degree at most k (i.e. every graph with maximum average degree less than 70/23 (resp. 192/61) admits an edge-partition into two forests, one having maximum degree at most 4 (resp. 5)). (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

combinatorial problems
forest with bounded degree
discharging procedure
global rules


structured translation for cross-language information retrieval The paper introduces a query translation model that reflects the structure of the cross-language information retrieval task. The model is based on a structured bilingual dictionary in which the translations of each term are clustered into groups with distinct meanings. Query translation is modeled as a two-stage process, with the system first determining the intended meaning of a query term and then selecting translations appropriate to that meaning that might appear in the document collection. An implementation of structured translation based on automatic dictionary clustering is described and evaluated by using Chinese queries to retrieve English documents. Structured translation achieved an average precision that was statistically indistinguishable from Pirkola's technique for very short queries, but Pirkola's technique outperformed structured translation on long queries. The paper concludes with some observations on future work to improve retrieval effectiveness and on other potential uses of structured translation in interactive cross-language retrieval applications.

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

task applications model paper translation structure implementation retrieval process queries future query

precise
dictionaries
collect
cross language information retrieval
group
select
interaction
observability
systems
language
mean
documentation
effect
cluster


Change patterns and change support features - Enhancing flexibility in process-aware information systems Companies increasingly adopt process-aware information systems (PAISs), which offer promising perspectives for more flexible enterprise computing. The emergence of different process support paradigms and the lack of methods for comparing existing approaches enabling PAIS changes have made the selection of adequate process management technology difficult. This paper suggests a set of 18 change patterns and seven change support features to foster the systematic comparison of existing process management technology in respect to process change support. While the proposed patterns are all based on empirical evidence from several large case studies, the suggested change support features constitute typical functionalities provided by flexible PAISs. Based on the proposed change patterns and features, we provide a detailed analysis and evaluation of selected approaches from both academia and industry. The presented work will not only facilitate the selection of technologies for realizing flexible PAISs, but can also be used as a reference for implementing flexible PAISs. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

workflow management
process-aware information systems
process flexibility


A dynamic-clustering reactive routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks The clustering is a key routing method for large-scale wireless sensor networks, which effective extends the lifetime and the expansibility of network. In this paper, a node model is defined based on the structure and transmission principle of neuron, and a dynamic-clustering reactive routing algorithm is proposed. Once the event emergences, the cluster head is dynamic selected in the incident region according to the residual energy. The data collected by the cluster head is sent back to the Sink along the network backbone. Two kinds of accumulation ways are designed to increase the efficiency of data collection. Meanwhile through the fluctuation of action-threshold, the cluster head can trace the changing speed of incident; the nodes outside the incident region use this fluctuation to send data periodically. Finally, the simulation results verify that the DCRR algorithm extends the networks lifetime considerably and adapts to the change of network scale. The analysis shows that DCRR has more prominent advantages under low and middle load.

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

dynamic-clustering
wireless sensor network
threshold


A control theoretic approach to energy-efficient pipelined computation in MPSoCs In this work, we describe a control theoretic approach to dynamic voltage/frequency scaling (DVFS) in a pipelined MPSoC architecture with soft real-time constraints, aimed at minimizing energy consumption with throughput guarantees. Theoretical analysis and experiments carried out on a cycle-accurate, energy-aware, and multiprocessor simulation platform are provided. We give a dynamic model of the system behavior which allows to synthesize linear and nonlinear feedback control schemes for the run-time adjustment of the core frequencies. We study the characteristics of the proposed techniques in both transient and steady-state conditions. Finally, we compare the proposed feedback approaches and local DVFS policies from an energy consumption viewpoint.

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

theory
experimentation
design
parallel systems
feedback-control techniques


Descriptional complexity of multi-parallel grammars This paper studies the descriptional complexity of multi-parallel grammars with respect to the number of nonterminals and selectors, and the length of these selectors. As a result, it proves that every recursively enumerable language is generated by a multi-parallel grammar with no more than seven nonterminals and four selectors of length five. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

formal languages
multi-parallel grammars


augmented reality as means for creating shared understanding The motivation for the work presented in this paper comes primarily from user experience of video-conferencing (v-c) settings in real-life collaboration. The design issues in this context focus on making such settings interactive enough to support natural communication and collaboration. The initial assumption is that users in an interactive v-c setting should be able to navigate the remote space in order to establish clear reference by pointing to people and objects in it. Clear reference to parts of the context in which conversations take place (that is, deictic reference) is an important factor in effective commu-nication. With this aim, we enhanced the videoconferencing system with the ability to visualize abstract representations of pointers and investigated pointing gesture as a tool for collaborative referring. We thus designed a prototype that combines the communicative function of pointing gesture with a hybrid representation of real video and virtual objects (pointers) that identify particular parts of it. A game controller was employed for pointing and Augmented Reality (AR) for visualizing the referent in live video stream. Usability tests were run on two versions of the prototype using five common types of joint task. Evidence based on data from video recording, questionnaire, and interview, shows effectiveness of the system in mediating the communicative function of pointing. Test users adapted to the context of interpretation quickly. Feedback was provided for enhancing visualization and pointing technique. The method successfully captured relevant visuo-gestural and linguistic aspects of communication to inform design.

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

communication
videoconferencing
pointing
shared understanding
communicative function
deictic reference

remote collaboration
interface design
common ground


Placing Regenerators in Optical Networks to Satisfy Multiple Sets of Requests The placement of regenerators in optical networks has become an active area of research during the last few years. Given a set of lightpaths in a network G and a positive integer d, regenerators must be placed in such a way that in any lightpath there are no more than d hops without meeting a regenerator. The cost function we consider is given by the total number of regenerators placed at the nodes, which we believe to be a more accurate estimation of the real cost of the network than the number of locations considered in the work of Flammini et al. (IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw., vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 498-511, Apr. 2011). Furthermore, in our model we assume that we are given a finite set of p possible traffic patterns (each given by a set of lightpaths), and our objective is to place the minimum number of regenerators at the nodes so that each of the traffic patterns is satisfied. While this problem can be easily solved when d = 1 or p = 1, we prove that for any fixed d, p >= 2, it does not admit a PTAS, even if G has maximum degree at most 3 and the lightpaths have length O(d). We complement this hardness result with a constant-factor approximation algorithm with ratio ln(d . p). We then study the case where G is a path, proving that the problem is polynomial-time solvable for two particular families of instances. Finally, we generalize our model in two natural directions, which allows us to capture the model of Flammini et al. as a particular case, and we settle some questions that were left open therein.

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

approximation algorithms
hardness of approximation
overprovisioning


Numerical analysis of a reaction-diffusion-convection system This paper is concerned with the numerical analysis of the behavior of a homogeneous tubular reactor in which a cubic autocatalytic reaction is coupled to diffusion and convection transport. The set of one-dimensional partial differential equations describing the reaction-diffusion-convection system is analyzed using different, standard reduction techniques (finite difference, orthogonal collocation, and finite element methods) within the framework of the method of lines. Both steady state and dynamic behaviors of the system are considered. Special high-resolution finite difference methods such as essentially non oscillatory (ENO) and total variation diminishing (TVD) are applied to the convectively dominant case. The calculation results that special highs resolution schemes such as ENO are essential to track efficiently steep moving fronts exhibited by the strongly convective problems. The strengths and limitations of the different numerical schemes considered are examined and discussed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science 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 B O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

reaction-diffusion-convection
mathematical modeling
dynamic simulation
model reduction
nonlinear dynamics


an architecture for interactive knowledge based systems Knowledge-based systems (KBS) have been developed to help people to execute knowledge-intensive tasks. Some shortcomings are identified in the use of KBS, since they don't take into account both the user's profile and the organization's constraints that limit his/her actions, and to the lack of integration of the aspects of human-computer interaction in KBS's development process. This work presents a proposal of architecture for KBS i which are systems that interact with users and that adapt to their characteristics and environment during its use. The main feature of the architecture is the derivation of dialog patterns that facilitates the development of adaptive KBS i , from the specification of the expert reasoning process represented by means of PSM (Problem-Solving Methods).

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

sistemas baseados em conhecimento
&atilde
intera&ccedil
arquitetura de software
o humano-computador


Fuzzy interpolative reasoning based on the ratio of fuzziness of rough-fuzzy sets In this paper, we propose a method to construct a polygonal rough-fuzzy set from a set of polygonal fuzzy sets representing the aggregation of multiple experts opinions and propose a new fuzzy interpolative reasoning method for sparse fuzzy rule-based systems based on the ratio of fuzziness of the constructed polygonal rough-fuzzy sets, where the values of the antecedent variables and the consequence variable appearing in the fuzzy rules are represented by the constructed polygonal rough-fuzzy sets. The proposed fuzzy interpolative reasoning method can overcome the drawbacks of the existing method due to the fact that it can deal with fuzzy interpolative reasoning using polygonal rough-fuzzy sets and it gets more reasonable fuzzy interpolative reasoning results than the existing method.

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

fuzzy interpolative reasoning
ratio of fuzziness

degrees of fuzziness
rough-fuzzy sets
piecewise fuzzy entropy


unicode for multilingual representation in digital libraries from the indian perspective One of the main issues in digital data sharing is tackling multi-lingual resources. Paper presents the problems of representation of Indian languages on Internet. It covers the efforts so far undertaken for multilingual data representation in India. It examines the applicability and advantages of adopting Unicode.

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

unicode implementation
multilingual retrieval


Cloud-based parallel solution for estimating statistical significance of megabyte-scale DNA sequences Confidence in a pairwise local sequence alignment is a fundamental problem in bioinformatics. For huge DNA sequences, this problem is highly compute-intensive because it involves evaluating hundreds of local alignments to construct an empirical score distribution. Recent parallel solutions support only kilobyte-scale sequence sizes and/or are based on sophisticated infrastructures that are not available for most of the research labs. This paper presents an efficient parallel solution for evaluating the statistical significance for a pair of huge DNA sequences using cloud infrastructures. This solution can receive requests from various researchers via web-portal and allocate resources according to their demand. In this way, the benefits of cloud-based services can be achieved. The fundamental innovation of this research work is proposing an efficient solution that utilizes both shared and distributed memory architectures via cloud technology to enhance the performance of evaluating the statistical significance for pair of DNA sequences. Therefore, the restriction on the sequence sizes is released to be in megabyte-scale, which was not supported before for the statistical significance problem. The performance evaluation of the proposed solution was carried out on Microsoft's cloud and compared with the existing parallel solutions. The results show that the processing speed outperforms the recent cluster solutions that target the same problem. In addition, the performance metrics exhibit linear behavior for the addressed number of instances. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

cloud computing
megabyte-scale dna sequence
statistical significance estimation
multi-core architectures


ALAS-KA: A learning analytics extension for better understanding the learning process in the Khan Academy platform ALAS-KA is a tool that extends the learning analytics features of the Khan Academy platform. ALAS-KA includes new visualizations for the entire class and individual students of more than 20 new learning indicators. ALAS-KA helps teachers to make decision supported by the high level information provided. ALAS-KA enables students to gain awareness of their learning process for self-reflection. ALAS-KA can be used by the course instructors to detect class tendencies and learner models.

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

architectures
decision making
data processing


Dynamical estimation of neuron and network properties II: path integral Monte Carlo methods Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) models of neuronal membrane dynamics consist of a set of nonlinear differential equations that describe the time-varying conductance of various ion channels. Using observations of voltage alone we show how to estimate the unknown parameters and unobserved state variables of an HH model in the expected circumstance that the measurements are noisy, the model has errors, and the state of the neuron is not known when observations commence. The joint probability distribution of the observed membrane voltage and the unobserved state variables and parameters of these models is a path integral through the model state space. The solution to this integral allows estimation of the parameters and thus a characterization of many biological properties of interest, including channel complement and density, that give rise to a neuron's electrophysiological behavior. This paper describes a method for directly evaluating the path integral using a Monte Carlo numerical approach. This provides estimates not only of the expected values of model parameters but also of their posterior uncertainty. Using test data simulated from neuronal models comprising several common channels, we show that short (< 50 ms) intracellular recordings from neurons stimulated with a complex time-varying current yield accurate and precise estimates of the model parameters as well as accurate predictions of the future behavior of the neuron. We also show that this method is robust to errors in model specification, supporting model development for biological preparations in which the channel expression and other biophysical properties of the neurons are not fully known.

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

data assimilation
neuronal dynamics
ion channel properties
markov chain monte carlo


INDUSCON 2010 The following papers constitute a selection among the best papers presented at the Ninth IEEE/IAS International Conference on Industry Applications (INDUSCON) held in Sao Paulo from 8(th) to 10(th) of November, 2010. This event gathered a significant number of people from academia and industry interested in applications of Electrical and Electronic engineering to industry.

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

industry applications
electrical and electronic engineering


Visualizing structural geology: From Excel to Google Earth ? An Excel workbook (S2K) converts structural field data into KML documents ? The KML documents allow intuitive visualizing of planes and lines in virtual globes ? KML documents files draw on a library of Collada models to represent lanes and lines.

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


efficient and provably secure ciphers for storage device block level encryption Block ciphers generally have fixed and relatively small input length. Thus they are often used in some mode of operations (e.g., ECB, CBC, CFB, and CTR) that enables the encryption of longer messages. Unfortunately, all these modes of operation reveal some information on their inputs or on relationships between different inputs. As an example, in the CBC mode, encrypting two messages with an identical prefix will result in identical initial blocks in the ciphertexts. Due to the well-known birthday attack and the small input length, the CBC mode becomes less secure as the number of data blocks to be encrypted increases. This leads to a challenging task, namely to design schemes for storage device block or sector level data encryption that are efficient and do not have the disadvantages mentioned above. In this paper, we propose an efficient cipher whose data/cipher blocks can be specified flexibly to match the length of a block unit for current and foreseeable future storage devices. We show that our encryption scheme is provably secure under the assumption that the underlying one-way hash function is a random function.

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

storage device encryption
symmetric cipher


Leakage power analysis and reduction during behavioral synthesis This paper presents a high-level leakage power analysis and reduction algorithm. The algorithm uses device-level models for leakage to precharacterize a given register-transfer level module library. This is used to estimate the power consumption of a circuit due to leakage. The algorithm can also identify and extract the frequently idle modules in the datapath, which may be targeted for low-leakage optimization. Leakage optimization is based on the use of dual threshold voltage (V-T) technology. The algorithm prioritizes modules giving a high-level synthesis system an indication of where most gains for leakage reduction may be found. We tested our algorithm using a number of benchmarks from various sources. We ran a series of experiments by integrating our algorithm into a low-power high-level synthesis system. In addition to reducing the power consumption due to switching activity, our algorithm provides the high-level synthesis system with the ability to detect and reduce leakage power consumption, hence, further reducing total power consumption. This is shown over a number of technology generations. The trend in these generations indicates that leakage becomes the dominant component of power at smaller feature size and lower supply voltages. Results show that using a dual-V-T library during high-level synthesis can reduce leakage power by an average of 58% for the different technology generations. Total power can he reduced by an average of 15.0%-45.0% for 0.18-0.07 mum technologies, respectively. The contribution of leakage power to overall power consumption ranges from 22.6% to 56.2%. Our approach reduced these values to 11.7%-26.9%.

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

high-level synthesis
power analysis
power optimization


A grey-based rough approximation model for interval data processing ? A new rough set model for interval data named grey-rough set is proposed in this paper. Information system in the real world are quite complicated. Most of information tables record not only categorical data but also numerical data including a range of interval data. The grey lattice operation in grey system theory is one of the operations for interval data that modifies endpoints non-arithmetically, and which is useful for interval data processing. The grey-rough approximation is based on an interval coincidence relation and an interval inclusion relation instead of an equivalence relation and an indiscernibility relation in Pawlaks model. Numerical examples and four fields of practical examples, decision-making, information retrieval, knowledge discovery and kansei engineering are shown. The advantages of the proposal include: extending a treatable value compared with classical rough set for non-deterministic information systems, providing a maximum solution and minimum solution both in upper and lower approximations, and not only providing mathematical support to SQL but also functions for further extension in the future.

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

grey lattice operation
information systems
interval data

rough sets
upper approximation
lower approximation
uncertainty
certainty
possibility
grey systems


A Relational Approach to Functional Decomposition of Logic Circuits Functional decomposition of Boolean functions has a profound influence on all quality aspects of cost-effectively implementing modern digital systems and data-mining. The relational databases are multivalued tables, which include any truth tables of logic functions as special cases. In this article, we propose a relational database approach to the decomposition of logic circuits. The relational algebra consists of a set of well-defined algebraic operations that can be performed on multivalued tables. Our approach shows that the functional decomposition of logic circuits is similar to the normalization of relational databases; they are governed by the same concepts of functional dependency (FD) and multivalued dependency (MVD). The completeness of relational algebra demonstrated by our approach to functional decomposition reveals that the relational database is a fundamental computation model, the same as the Boolean logic circuit.

O O O 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 O O O O 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 O O

theory
algorithms
partition
relational data model
functional dependency (fd)
multivalued dependency (mvd)


Proposal of ontology for environmental impact assessment: An application with knowledge mobilization Environmental impact assessment (EIA) analyses the effects of human activity, ecosystem integrity and the quality of the environmental services that can be provided by them. This analysis must be done prior to project execution in order to have a preventive nature. The application of new technologies in EIA needs an adequate structure of the knowledge, so a lot of problems appear because depending of the country, different terminologies are used. This paper describes a proposal of ontology for EIA to establish a conceptual framework and the building process. In addition, we have developed a friendly web interface in order to provide easy access to the knowledge and the possibility to suggest changes in the ontology to environmental experts. The objectives are gathering and providing the EIA terminology and facilitating structuring and the development of EIA methodologies. Finally, the paper describes how the ontology can be used in EIA applications with knowledge mobilization. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

eia
environmental impact
ontology
knowledge mobilization


A vortex level set method for the two-way coupling of an incompressible fluid with colliding rigid bodies We present a vortex method for the simulation of the interaction of an incompressible flow with rigid bodies. The method is based on a penalization technique where the system is considered as a single flow, subject to the NavierStokes equation with a penalization term that enforces continuity at the solidfluid interface and rigid motion inside the solid. Level set functions are used to capture interfaces, compute rigid motions inside the solid bodies and model collisions between bodies. A vortex in cell algorithm is built on this method. Numerical comparisons with existing 3D methods on problems of sedimentation and collision of spheres are provided to illustrate the capabilities of the method.

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

incompressible flow
vortex method
level set method

fluidsolid interaction
penalization method


The Most Likely Path on Series-Parallel Networks In this article, we present a stochastic shortest path problem that we refer to as the Most Likely Path Problem (MLPP). We demonstrate that optimal solutions to the MLPP are not composed of optimal subpaths, which limits the computational tractability of exact solution methods. On series-parallel networks, we produce analytical bounds for the MLPP's optimality indices, the probabilities of given paths in the network being shortest, and compute these bounds efficiently via numerical integration. These bounds can also be used independently of the MLPP to gain further understanding for paths of interest that are identified by other stochastic shortest path frameworks, e. g., robust shortest paths or expected shortest paths. Additionally, we present a heuristic method that uses dynamic programming and ordinal optimization to identify an MLP on series-parallel networks. Our computational study shows our bounds to be tight in a majority of test networks and shows our heuristic to be both efficient and highly accurate for identifying an MLP in all test networks. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 58(1), 68-80 2011

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 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

optimization under uncertainty
series-parallel
probability bounds


The success of a management information system in health care A case study from Finland The purpose of this article is to describe perspectives on information availability and information use among users of a management information system in one specialized health care organization. The management information system (MIS) is defined as the information system that provides management with information about financial and operational aspects of hospital management. The material for this qualitative case study was gathered by semi-structured interviews. The interviewees were purposefully selected from one specialized health care organization. The organization has developed its management information system in recent years. Altogether 13 front-line, middle and top-level managers were interviewed. The two themes discussed were information availability and information use. The data were analyzed using inductive content analysis using ATLAS.ti computer program. The main category usage of management information system consisted of four sub-categories: (1) system quality, (2) information quality, (3) use and user satisfaction and (4) development of information culture. There were many organizational and cultural aspects which influence the use of MIS in addition to factors concerning system usability and users. The connection between information culture and information use was recognized and the managers proposed numerous ways to increase the use of information in management work. The implementation and use of management information system did not seem to be planned as an essential tool in strategic information management in the health care organization studied.

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

management information systems
information management


Direct observation of Ni decorated dislocation loops within As+-implanted silicon and arsenic clustering in Ni silicide contact The redistribution of arsenic and nickel during the reaction of Ni thin films with arsenic doped Si(100) substrates is studied by a combination of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atom-probe tomography (APT) and in situ X-ray diffraction (XRD). Ni was observed at the edges of a pseudo-hexagonal dislocation loop within As+-implanted (001)Si wafers, after recrystallisation of preamorphised Si and deposition of 100nm Ni. After an additional heat treatment at 280C, the same concentration profiles were found with a maximum of ?10% Ni at the edges of the dislocation loops, suggesting Cottrell atmospheres. In situ XRD showed the formation of a transient phase forming isolated grains at the ?-Ni2Si/Si interface. Clusters containing 10% of As are present only in the transient phase. The presence of As clusters in silicide used for contact on devices might have significant influences on devices properties.

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

thin films
dislocation
cottrell atmospheres

implantation
preamorphisation
nickel silicide
diffusion
segregation
atom probe tomography


Tree-width in Algebraic Complexity The paper surveys some of the author's work studying the algorithmic importance of the tree-width notion in algebraic frameworks. Two approaches are described. The first gives an algorithmic meta-theorem for certain logically characterized properties within the Blum-Shub-Smale BSS model of computation over the reals. The second reports on recent joint work with P. Koiran relating Boolean complexity and Valiant's approach to study families of polynomial systems over infinite fields and their complexity. We define particular families of polynomials via bounding the tree-width of suitably attached graphs and study the expressive power of the resulting families. The work described here is partially co-authored with and partially very much influenced by previous work of Janos A. Makowsky.

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

tree-width
real number computations
descriptive complexity
valiant's model


FIRST: a flexible and interactive resampling tool for CFD simulation data We introduce a flexible, variable resolution tool for interactive resampling of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation data on versatile grids. The tool and coupled algorithm afford users precise control of glyph placement during vector field visualization via six interactive degrees of freedom. Other important characteristics of this method include: (1) an algorithm that resamples any unstructured grid onto any structured grid, (2) handles changes to underlying topology and geometry, (3) handles unstructured grids with holes and discontinuities, (4) does not rely on any pre-processing of the data, and (5) processes large numbers of unstructured grid cells efficiently. We believe this tool to be a valuable asset in the engineer's pursuit of understanding and visualizing the underlying flow field in CFD simulation results.

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

interactive resampling
cfd simulation data
vector field visualization

interaction techniques
applications
engineering
graphics data structures
data types


haptic user interface design for students with visual impairments Many students with visual impairments (VIs) study in public schools instead of special education programs. They should have equal opportunities of learning in competitive educational environments with the most appropriate assistive technology. Yet, today's assistive technology is less likely to support students with VIs in learning visually complex science concepts (e.g., heat and temperature). There is a need of a new means to facilitate their understanding. Haptic technology is considered a useful tool of effectively obtaining information because it enables students with VIs to directly interact with virtual objects and also access sensory cues to feel the objects' various characteristics. This paper aims to explore the haptic user interfaces (UIs) that help students easily understand the concepts of heat and temperature. Archival research and participatory design with teachers were performed to develop haptic UIs and educational contents. Archival research resulted in 44 misconceptions related to heat and temperature. A multimodal interaction was recommended to contribute to user's successful interacting with haptic UIs.

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


Dynamics of a liquid plug in a capillary duct powered by vapor explosion A theoretical model of liquid plug dynamics powered by vapor explosion in a capillary duct has been proposed in order to provide guidance for designing a fluid propulsion device. The model can evaluate performance parameters such as the amount of useful work, efficiency of energy conversion, generated vapor volume and displacement volume rate of liquid. For example, the efficiency of energy conversion for water under atmospheric pressure and room temperature is calculated at 2.8%. The prediction of the vapor volume agrees well with existing experimental result. The prediction of the displacement volume rate also agrees well with the experimental result and suggests the existence of optimum heat flux at which the displacement volume rate is maximum.

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


ripple flooding in wireless sensor networks Flooding is a fundamental operation to support route discovery and time synchronization in wireless sensor networks. A simple flooding causes the broadcast storm problem and leads to long latency to complete the broadcast. This paper presents the Ripple flooding scheme (RFS) for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The proposed scheme improves the convergence speed of flooding by using a synchronized packet rebroadcasting instead of using a CSMA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access) MAC based packet rebroadcasting. We analyse the multipath delay spread feasibility on a receiver for the packets from multiple senders. The theoretical upper bound of packet loss rate (PLR) is less than 13\%. The experimental result shows the same as the PLR of the theoretical analysis. We implement the RFS on the sensor node with the MSP430 microcontroller and the CC2420 transceiver and evaluate the major performance metrics including the convergence time and the reliability in various network scales and densities. The convergence time is at least 3.5 times faster than the CSMA MAC based flooding in the dense network environments. The transmission reliability of the RFS is slightly better than the reliability of the CSMA MAC based flooding because of the implicit overhearing scheme provided by the RFS.

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

sensor networks
flooding
broadcast
convergence time


Optimizing cyclic join view maintenance over distributed data sources Materialized views defined over distributed data sources are critical for many applications to ensure efficient access, reliable performance, and high availability. Materialized views need to be maintained upon source updates since stale view extents may not serve well or may even mislead user applications. Thus, view maintenance performance is one of the keys to the success of these applications. In this work, we investigate two maintenance strategies, extended batching and view graph transformation, for maintaining general join views where join conditions may exist between any pairs of data sources possibly with cycles. Many choices are available for maintaining cyclic join views. We thus propose a cost-driven view maintenance framework which generates optimized maintenance plans tuned to the environmental settings. The proposed framework has been implemented in the TxnWrap system. Experimental studies illustrate that our proposed optimization techniques significantly improve the view maintenance performance in a distributed environment.

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

materialized view maintenance
view maintenance optimization
distributed query optimization
grouping maintenance


Spatio-spectral heterogeneity analysis using EO-1 Hyperion imagery How does observed spatial structure change as a function of spectral wavelength and resolution? The fine spectral resolution data of a Hyperion image acquired over agricultural research fields in eastern Nebraska, USA, were analyzed using variography to characterize spatial patterns within each wavelength-specific image. The geospatial analysis was repeated simulating Landsat TM/ETM+ bands from the Hyperion data. Significant changes in spatio-spectral heterogeneity were observed across the red edge. The total amount of spatial variability is closely correlated to the contrast in brightness of objects within the scene. The spatial dependence in an image is also influenced by differential brightness, but to a lesser extent. Increasing bandwidth may blur spatial structure that occurs at finer spectral resolution, resulting in the loss of spatial structure that may relate to significant features within the scene.

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

hyperspectral imagery
semivariogram analysis
spatio-spectral heterogeneity


efficient extraction and analysis of preprocessor-based variability The C Preprocessor (CPP) is the tool of choice for the implementation of variability in many large-scale configurable software projects. Linux, probably the most-configurable piece of software ever, employs more than 10,000 preprocessor variables for this purpose. However, this de-facto variability tends to be "hidden in the code"; which on the long term leads to variability defects, such as dead code or inconsistencies with respect to the intended (modeled) variability of the software. This calls for tool support for the efficient extraction of (and reasoning over) CPP-based variability. We suggest a novel approach to extract CPP-based variability. Our tool transforms CPP-based variability in O(n) complexity into a propositional formula that "mimics" all valid effects of conditional compilation and can be analyzed with standard SAT or BDD packages. Our evaluation results demonstrate the scalability and practicability of the approach. A dead-block-analysis on the complete Linux source tree takes less than 30 minutes; we thereby have revealed 60 dead blocks, 2 of which meanwhile have been confirmed as new (and long-lasting) bugs; the rest is still under investigation.

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

variability
conditional compilation
linux


A new view to ring theory via soft union rings, ideals and bi-ideals In this paper, by defining soft intersectionunion product, we make a new approach to the classical ring theory via soft set theory, with the concept of soft union rings, ideals and bi-ideals. Moreover, we characterize regular, regular duo, intra-regular and strongly regular rings by soft union rings and ideals.

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

soft set
soft intersectionunion product
regular rings

soft union left (right
two-sided) ideal
soft union bi-ideal


Model of a hybrid processor executing C++ with additional quantum functions Provide a VHDL simulation model of a hybrid quantum/classical processor. Provide a processor capable of executing classical and quantum programs. Provide an assembler to interpret both classical and quantum assembly instructions. Provide C++ libraries to develop quantum algorithms within classical programs. Test the whole framework to show it can implement quantum algorithms correctly.

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

quantum alu
quantum c++
quantum computer
quantum processor
quantum programming language


Distributed algorithm for efficient construction and maintenance of connected k-hop dominating sets in mobile ad hoc networks A k-hop dominating set is a subset of nodes such that each node that is not in the set can be reached within k hops from at least one node in the set. A connected k-hop dominating set can be used for disseminating topology update packets or route request packets, in which the flooding search space is reduced to the set, resulting in significant flooding overhead reduction in broadcast-related applications. In mobile ad hoc networks, a connected k-hop dominating set may become disconnected due to node mobility or switch-off, which necessitates the reformation of the k-hop dominating set. In this paper, we identify a sufficient condition that guarantees the connectivity of the virtual backbone. The condition can be verified in a distributed manner by the node only having the link information of its neighbors. (Unless specified otherwise, the term "neighbor" denotes a "1-hop neighbor." The link information of neighbors can be obtained by 2-hop neighbor information or 1-hop neighbor positions [ 4], [ 16].) With the help of this condition, we propose a distributed algorithm for efficiently constructing and maintaining connected k-hop dominating sets in mobile ad hoc networks. Simulations show that our connected k-hop dominating set is small and stable and needs little maintenance overhead in the Random-Walk Mobility and Gauss-Markov Mobility Models.

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

algorithm/protocol design and analysis
mobile ad hoc network
network topology
localized communication
routing protocols


Modelling and analysis of strategies in the design of WSAN coordination systems During the past five years, considerable research has been reported on the design of various coordination systems for Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks (WSANs). Though the coordination mechanism taxonomy was presented, there has been no work published for the performance comparison among these different strategies or protocols quantitatively. In this paper, we attempt to address this challenge. The contribution of this paper is as follows: (i) an approach for the performance comparison among different strategies of sensoractor coordination in WSANs is proposed; (ii) analytical models to abstract the system characteristics and operation for each kind of solutions are developed; (iii) the performance of each individual strategy under various conditions is analysed; (vi) the performance among three typical strategies is compared. The results may be helpful for the users to understand the advantage of each strategy over others under a certain condition.

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

sensoractor coordination
wireless sensor and actor networks


Message length adaptive LDPC codes LDPC codes achieve better performance and lower decoding complexity than turbo codes, with a major drawback of high encoding complexity. The encoder generator matrix is derived from the inverse of portion of parity check matrix. If the message length is changed, the structure of parity check matrix is modified and hence, the generator matrix must be re-computed. This increases the encoding complexity as the computation of matrix inverse is time and resource consuming operation. In this paper, we consider the encoding problem for LDPC codes as the complexity of encoding is essentially quadratic with respect to the block length. Using an efficient encoding method proposed by Richardson and Urbanke, we propose a systematic procedure to construct parity check matrix and generator matrix such that with change in message length, the re-computation for constructing generator matrix is avoided. The presented design uses fixed sub-matrices to construct a semi-random parity check matrix. The resultant design will reduce the pre-computation time of converting parity check matrix to generator matrix. The reported encoder reduces encoding time without the loss of coding gain and Bit Error Rate (BER) performance.

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

error correction coding
low-density parity check codes
permutation matrix


Accurate finite element method for atomic calculations based on density functional theory and Hartree-Fock method An accurate finite element method is developed for atomic calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) within local density approximation (LDA) and Hartree-Fock (HF) method. The radial wave functions are expanded by cubic Hermite spline functions on a uniform mesh for x = root r, and all the associated integrals are analytically evaluated in conjunction with fitting procedures of the Hartree and the exchange-correlation potentials to the same cubic Hermite spline functions using a set of recurrence formulas. The total energy of atoms systematically converges from above, and the error algebraically decays as the mesh spacing decreases. When the mesh spacing d is taken to be 0.025/root Z bohr(1/2). the total energy for an atom of atomic number Z can be calculated within error of 10(-7) hartree for both the LDA and HF methods. The equal applicability of the method to OFT and the HF method with a similar degree of high accuracy enables the method to be a reliable platform for development of new functionals in DFT such as hybrid functionals. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

density functional theory
finite element method
atomic calculations


participation, collaboration and spectatorship in an alternate reality game In this paper we present a study of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) called MeiGeist -- a cross media game in which narrative elements of a story presented to players across a whole range of on-line and offline media and through which players can interact with in-game characters and events. The study looked at player progress over the eight weeks the game took to play, following their behaviours through the on-line forums, chat rooms and in-game logging of player interactions. The paper explores aspects of collective participation among players, the motivations underlying such participation and the factors that shape these contributions such as timescale of the game. It discusses too, how the narrative is produced and progressed through collective player interactions and how the experience is created through a collaborative suspension of disbelief. Different aspects of participation are also considered, in particular how a more passive spectatorship is an important experience for many players of the game. Finally the game considers how the ideal of a collective ethos among players is sometimes challenged during game play and the efforts necessary to repair this.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 ethnography
collective behaviour
pervasive gaming
alternate reality games


modeling and design description of hierarchical hardware/software systems Two fairly recent trends, one technological and one philosophical, are influencing to an increasing degree the design of digital systems today. The plummeting cost of integrated circuits, the availability of bipolar control stores, and more recently, of bipolar microprocessor elements have resulted in the hardware or firmware implementation of functions which have traditionally been realized in software, and the firmware or software realization of functions traditionally implemented in hardware. Designers of computer systems are faced with the choice of implementing file handling functions, telecommunication service functions, floating point units, and even parts of scheduling algorithms in either hardware, software, or a combination of both.

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

availability
software
systems
microprocessor
design
implementation
floating point
hardware
telecommunication
cost
control

digitize
hierarchic
computation
scheduling algorithm
model
integrated circuit
combinational


A GRASPELS approach for the job-shop with a web service paradigm packaging We present an original GRASPELS approach for job-shop solving. Indirect representation of solution permits to better investigate the search space. The GRASPELS is evaluated with 11 previously published methods. Results prove that the method is state of the art. GRASPELS is packaged into a web service.

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 B I


predictive publish/subscribe matching A new publish/subscribe capability is presented: the ability to predict the likelihood that a subscription will be matched at some point in the future. Knowing that some phenomenon of interest is about to take place, applications can take proactive steps to prevent the situation from occurring altogether, or speculatively begin reacting to the event even before it has transpired. A publish/subscribe matching algorithm is developed in which composite subscriptions consisting of temporal and logical operators are efficiently represented by a set of finite state machines and rules. The algorithm trains a Markov model to an application's event workload, and predicts the probability that a given subscription will match within a window in the future event stream. Evaluations demonstrate that the memory and processing costs of the algorithm scale well with the number of subscriptions, and the prediction precision is high, especially when the workload characteristics do not change rapidly. Furthermore, a comparison with a hand-crafted Markov model using real data traces shows that the algorithm consumes much less memory and processing power, yet still delivers prediction precision that approaches that of the hand-crafted model. This is especially impressive since the algorithms lack any of the domain expertise embedded in the hand-crafted model.

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

complex event processing
publish/subscribe
matching problem and algorithm
event processing
topss and p-topss
prediction problem and algorithm


Thermal nanoimprint lithography using fluoropolymer mold We studied the properties of a fluoropolymer based on perfluoropolyether (PFPE) as the mold material for thermal nanoimprint lithography. The PFPE mold was duplicated from a hard master mold by casting and thermal-curing of the PFPE pre-polymer mixture. The PFPE mold was able to pattern 100nm half-pitch grating into a resist, with the very fine line edge roughness of the master mold faithfully duplicated into the resist. This implies PFPE is capable of a resolution far beyond 100nm, which is consistent with its high elastic modulus (two orders higher than PDMS) extracted from nanoindentation experiment. It was found that the elastic modulus is much higher near the film surface than deep inside the film. This is a very desirable property for an imprint mold, as the relatively stiff top surface offers high resolution, whereas the more flexible bulk is important for a conformal contact with the substrate and easy demolding.

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

nanoimprint lithography
mold
fluoropolymer
perfluoropolyether


On a parallel multilevel preconditioned Maxwell eigensolver We report on a parallel implementation of the JacobiDavidson algorithm to compute a few eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors of a large real symmetric generalized matrix eigenvalue problem The eigenvalue problem stems from the design of cavities of particle accelerators. It is obtained by the finite element discretization of the time-harmonic Maxwell equation in weak form by a combination of Ndlec (edge) and Lagrange (node) elements. We found the JacobiDavidson (JD) method to be a very effective solver provided that a good preconditioner is available for the correction equations that have to be solved in each step of the JD iteration. The preconditioner of our choice is a combination of a hierarchical basis preconditioner and the ML smoothed aggregation AMG preconditioner. It is close to optimal regarding iteration count. The parallel code makes extensive use of the Trilinos software framework. In our examples from accelerator physics, we observe satisfactory speedups and efficiencies.

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

maxwell equation
jacobidavidson algorithm

smoothed aggregation amg preconditioning


Invocation of operations from script-based Grid applications In this paper we address the complexity of building and running modern scientific applications on various Grid systems with heterogeneous middleware. As a solution we have proposed the Grid Operation Invoker (GOI) which offers an object-oriented method invocation semantics for interacting with diverse computational services. GOI forms the core of the ViroLab virtual laboratory and it is used to invoke operations from within in-silico experiments described using a scripting notation. We describe the details of GOI (including architecture, technology adapters and asynchronous invocations) focusing on a mechanism which allows adding high-level support for batch job processing middleware, e.g. EGEE LCG/gLite. As an example, we present the NAMD molecular dynamics program, deployed on EGEE infrastructure. The main achievement is the creation of the Grid Object abstraction, which can be used to represent and access such diverse technologies as Web Services, distributed components and job processing systems. Such an application model, based on high-level scripting, is an interesting alternative to graphical workflow-based tools.

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

e-science application
application building
grid computing
deisa


Spatial interaction models from Irish commuting data: variations in trip length by occupation and gender Core and peripheral contrasts in journey-to-work trip length can be interpreted as imputing the relative value of origin and destination accessibility (yielding theoretical proxies for rent and wages). Because the main variables are shown to be critically dependent on spatial structure, they may be interpreted as showing the shadow prices due to comparative location. There is also a unifying connection between these results and the existing literature on many dimensions: rent gradients, accessibility, and emissivity. In an empirical example, the advantages of a panoramic view of national commuting statistics are shown, using an Irish data set. Variations in the rates of participation in trip making by location, occupation, and gender are examined. Places that emit more trips than would be expected from their relative location are identified. Further, examining ways in which such emissivity is sensitive to a change in trip length highlights the regions where trips could possibly be adjusted to produce a shorter average trip length or which might be especially sensitive to reduction in employment. A careful reinterpretation of one of the key outputs from a calibrated spatial interaction model is shown to be consistent with the declining rent gradient expected from Alonsos theory of land use.

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


Estimating intrinsic dimensionality using the multi-criteria decision weighted model and the average standard estimator Information retrieval today is much more challenging than traditional small document retrieval. The main difference is the importance of correlations between related concepts in complex data structures. As collections of data grow and contain more entries, they require more complex relationships, links, and groupings between individual entries. This paper introduces two novel methods for estimating data intrinsic dimensionality based on the singular value decomposition (SVD). The average standard estimator (ASE) and the multi-criteria decision weighted model are used to estimate matrix intrinsic dimensionality for large document collections. The multi-criteria weighted model calculates the sum of weighted values of matrix dimensions which demonstrated best performance using all possible dimensions [1]. ASE estimates the level of significance for singular values that resulted from the singular value decomposition. ASE assumes that those variables with deep relations have sufficient correlation and that only those relationships with high singular values are significant and should be maintained [1]. Experimental results indicate that ASE improves precision and relative relevance for MEDLINE document collection by 10.2% and 12.9% respectively compared to the percentage of variance dimensionality estimation. Results based on testing three document collections over all possible dimensions using selected performance measures indicate that ASE improved matrix intrinsic dimensionality estimation by including the effect of both singular values magnitude of decrease and random noise distracters. The multi-criteria weighted model with dimensionality reduction provides a more efficient implementation for information retrieval than using a full rank model.

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

dimensionality estimation
average standard estimator
singular value decomposition

market analytics
business process optimization


formal validation of pattern matching code When addressing the formal validation of generated software, two main alternatives consist either to prove the correctness of compilers or to directly validate the generated code. Here, we focus on directly proving the correctness of compiled code issued from powerful pattern matching constructions typical of ML like languages or rewrite based languages such as ELAN, Maude or Tom. In this context, our first contribution is to define a general framework for anchoring algebraic pattern-matching capabilities in existing languages like C, Java or ML. Then, using a just enough powerful intermediate language, we formalize the behavior of compiled code and define the correctness of compiled code with respect to pattern-matching behavior. This allows us to prove the equivalence of compiled code correctness with a generic first-order proposition whose proof could be achieved via a proof assistant or an automated theorem prover. We then extend these results to the multi-match situation characteristic of the ML like languages. The whole approach has been implemented on top of the Tom compiler and used to validate the syntactic matching code of the Tom compiler itself.

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

term rewriting
verified code
compilation
multi-match


Comparison and classification of 3D objects surface point clouds on the example of feet One of the main tasks of shoe manufacturing is the production of well fitting shoes for different specialized markets. The key to conduct this properly is the analysis of the factors that influence the variations of the foot shape. In this paper methods and results of clustering and analysis of 3D foot surfaces are presented. The data were collected from a study with more than 12,000 feet that have been laser-scanned. The database contains point clouds acquired from persons coming from different regions of the world. Furthermore, additional personal data were collected. Two different methods for quantifying the similarity of 3D surface point clouds are therefore developed. The first method generally works on nearly arbitrary 3D surface point clouds, while the second one is specialized on foot data sets. These similarity measures were used on the data sets of the foot-shape study, together with clustering and feature quality evaluation methods. The purpose was to obtain information about the impact of, and the relationship among, the different factors influencing the shape of a foot. Through the observations of the experiments presented here it was possible to build up a hierarchy of different levels of feature-groups determined by their impact on the foot shape. Furthermore, an investigation of the quality and amount of impact of the features, according to their ability to separate specific subgroups of persons, is shown. Based on these results it was possible to select those features, which result in the largest effect when designing shoes for e.g. the Asian versus European markets.

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

3d foot measurement
laser scanner
3d point cloud
unsupervised learning


Edit distance for a run-length-encoded string and an uncompressed string We propose a new algorithm for computing the edit distance of an uncompressed string against a run-length-encoded string. For an uncompressed string of length n and a compressed string with M runs, the algorithm computes their edit distance in time O(Mn). This result directly implies an O(min{mN, Mn}) time algorithm for strings of lengths m and n with M and N runs, respectively. It improves the previous best known time bound O(mN + Mn). (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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 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

run-length-encoding
string compression
algorithms


End users trust in data repositories: definition and influences on trust development While repositories efforts to build trustworthy digital repositories (TDRs) led to the establishment of ISO standards, much less research has been done regarding the users side, despite calls for an understanding of users trust of TDRs. In order to learn about users perspectives on trust in digital repositories, the present study investigated users definitions of trust and factors that influence users trust development, particularly addressing the users of three data repositories in the United States. A total of 19 participants were interviewed in this study. The results of this study indicate that users definition of trust is largely based on a lack of deception, when it comes down to the specific context of data repositories. Regarding factors influencing the development of users trust in repositories, organizational attributes, user communities (recommendations and frequent use), past experiences, repository processes (documentation, data cleaning, and quality checking), and users perception of the repository roles were identified.

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

data repository
trusted digital repository


Equipment for controlled fat trimming of lamb chops People are becoming increasingly health conscious and consequently there is a growing demand for lower fat products. For many meat products fat reduction is achieved by manual trimming, however, labour problems are causing manufacturers and processors to investigate alternatives. Water-jet based trimming machines have been on the market for some time but their size and cost limit their usefulness for many manufacturers. Specific equipment for trimming common joints is another option, e.g. automated loin pullers, but such equipment can be too complex or expensive for many meat producers. This paper describes the first stage of research and development carried out to design and build a relatively low-cost demonstrator system for the automatic trimming of lamb chops to leave a user-determined fat thickness remaining. Machine vision provides fat thickness data along the length of each chop. The system then conforms the meat section to place the fatlean interface at the desired fat thickness from a fixed cutting path. The cutting path is thus simplified and can be made with basic tools and an uncomplicated trajectory. After the cut is complete, the meat section is released and returns to its natural shape but with a uniform covering of fat over the fatlean interface. Industrial plant trials with the demonstrator system have achieved improved accuracy and product appearance over manual trimming.

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 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

adaptive control
conformation
food automation


A Meta heuristic approach for performance assessment of production units There have been many efficiency frontier analysis methods reported in the literature. However, each of these methodologies has its strength as well as major limitations. This study proposes a Meta heuristic approach based on adaptive neural network (ANN) technique, fuzzy C-means and numerical taxonomy (NT) for measuring efficiency as a complementary tool for the common techniques of the efficiency studies in the previous studies. Homogenous test is done by NT. It is used to determine if the DMUs are homogenous or not. The proposed computational methods are able to find a stochastic frontier based on a set of inputoutput observational data and do not require explicit assumptions about the functional structure of the stochastic frontier. In this algorithm, for calculating the efficiency scores, a similar approach to za has been used. Moreover, the effect of the return to scale of decision making unit (DMU) on its efficiency is included and the unit used for the correction is selected by notice of its scale (under constant return to scale assumption). Also in non homogenous situation, for increasing DMUs homogeneousness, fuzzy C-means method is used to cluster DMUs. Two examples using real data are presented for illustrative purposes. Homogenous test result is positive in the first example, which deals with power generation sectors, and is negative in the second example dealing auto industries of various developed countries. Overall, we find that the proposed integrated algorithm based on ANN, fuzzy C-means and numerical taxonomy provides more robust results and identifies more efficient units than the conventional methods since better performance patterns are explored.

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

performance assessment
neural network
numerical taxonomy
meta heuristic


An analogy-based model for estimating design effort This paper describes an analogy-based model for estimating design effort. It is based on estimating the productivity of an upcoming project by incorporating the concept of an eigenvector to estimate the influence of various factors on productivity. The model is intuitive and does not require any prior mathematical relationships to be developed. It has been tested in two case studies from industry.

O O O O O O O O O O O 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


Logic rewiring for delay and power minimization An application of the ATPG-based method by Veneris et al. [11] to multi-level combinational logic circuit delay and power optimization is presented. A number of theoretical results and various heuristics are described to allow for an efficient implementation of the algorithm. Experiments confirm the robustness of the 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

vlsi
logic optimization
low power
design performance
diagnosis


Polynomial 2.1 GHz RF predistorter IC with envelope injection output This paper presents the structure, test setup and measured results of a polynomial RF predistorter IC fabricated in a 0.35 mu m SiGe BiCMOS process. The predistorter is designed for the base station WCDMA band at 2.1 GHz. The predistortion signal is generated by a 5th-degree complex polynomial. Also a squared envelope is generated that can be used as a baseband injection signal to cancel 2nd-order distortion that typically causes memory effects. The performance of the predistorter was measured by driving a three-stage discrete power amplifier chain by a 2-tone test and a 3.84 MHz wide 3GPP WCDMA modulated signal. The 2-tone test showed more than 20 dB IM3 cancellation and the WCDMA signal's ACPR was improved by 8 dB.

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 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

linearization
polynomial rf predistortion