Combining conceptual query expansion and visual search results exploration for web image retrieval Most approaches to image retrieval on the web have their basis in document search techniques. Images are indexed based on the text that is related to the images. Queries are matched to this text to produce a set of search results, which are organized in paged grids that are reminiscent of lists of documents. Due to ambiguity both with user-supplied queries and with the text used to describe the images within the search index, most image searches contain many irrelevant images distributed throughout the search results, and are often focused on the most common interpretation of the query. We propose a method for addressing these problems in which conceptual query expansion is used to generate a diverse range of images, and a multi-resolution extension of a self-organizing map is used to group visually similar images. The resulting interface acts as an intelligent search assistant, automatically diversifying the search results and then allowing the searcher to interactively highlight and filter images based on the concepts, and zoom into an area within the image space to show additional images that are visually similar. Evaluations show that the precision of the image search results increase as a result of concept-based focusing and filtering, as well as visual zooming operations, even for uncommon interpretations of ambiguous queries.

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

conceptual query expansion
web image retrieval

image search results organization
interactive exploration


A framework for formalization and strictness analysis of simulation event orderings This article advocates the use of a formal framework for analyzing simulation performance. Simulation performance is characterized based on the three simulation development process boundaries: physical system, simulation model, and simulator implementation. First, the authors formalize simulation event ordering using partially ordered set theory. A simulator implements a simulation event ordering and incurs implementation overheads when enforcing event ordering at runtime. Second, they apply their formalism to extract and formalize the simulation event orderings of both sequential and parallel simulations. Third, they propose the relation stricter and a measure called strictness for comparing and quantifying the degree of event dependency of simulation event orderings, respectively. In contrast to the event parallelism measure, strictness is independent of time.

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

formalization
event ordering
strictness
partially ordered set


alignment of short length parallel corpora with an application to web search With evolving Web, short length parallel corpora is becoming very common and some of these include user queries, web snippets etc. This paper concerns situations where short length parallel corpora has to be analyzed in order to find meaningful unit-alignment. This is similar to dealing with parallel corpora where a sentence level alignment of translations is required, but differs in that the alignment is to be inferred at unit (word or phrase) level. A Conditional Random Field (CRF) based approach is proposed to discover this unit alignment. Given pairs of semantically or syntactically similar entities, the problem is formulated as that of mutual segmentation and sequence alignment problem . The mutual segmentation refers to the process of segmenting the first entity based on units (or labels ) in the second entity and vice-versa. The process of optimizing this mutual segmentation also results in optimal unit alignment. Since our training data is not segmented and unit-aligned, we modify the CRF objective function to accommodate unsupervised data and iterative learning. We have applied this framework to Web Search domain and specifically for query reformulation task. Finally, our experiments suggest that the proposed approach indeed results in meaningful alternatives of the original query.

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

web search
sequence alignment
query reformulation
parallel corpora
mutual segmentation


Discrete shading of three-dimensional objects from medial axis transform In this paper, we present a discrete shading technique using medial axis transform (MAT) of 3D binary image data based on digital generalized octagonal distances. Our method is computationally attractive as it does not require the explicit computation of surface normals. We have compared our results with images rendered from voxel and octree representations while using analytical surface rendered images as bench marks. The quality of rendering by our method is certainly superior to those obtained from voxel and octree representations.

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

medial axis transform
octree
discrete shading

medial sphere representation
octagonal distance


ON-OFF retinal ganglion cells temporally encode OFF/ON sequence While the functions of ON and OFF retinal ganglion cells have been intensively investigated, that of ON-OFF cells has not. In the present study, the temporal properties of spike trains emitted from ON-OFF cells in response to randomly flickering or multiphase ramp stimuli were examined in the Japanese quail. The results indicate that the firing of ON-spikes was influenced by the recent firing of OFF-spikes, and vice versa. As a result of this interaction, OFF/ON sequence of light intensity change was encoded with a spike pair with an interval of 20 ms, indicating that temporal coding is utilized in the vertebrate visual system as early as the retina. Thus, the present results suggest that retinal neuronal circuits may detect specific sequential features of stimuli. (C) 2001 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 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 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 O O

on-off retinal ganglion cells
spike train
stimulus sequence
optic nerve


A reliable approach for determining concrete strength in structures by using cores As known, concrete classes are described as strength of standard specimens produced and kept in ideal conditions, not including reinforcement and not subjected to any load effect before. Under the circumstances, transforming core strengths to the standard specimen strength is necessary and considering all parameters, affected on the core strength, is inevitable. In fact, effects of the reinforcement and the load history on concrete strength are generally neglected when these mentioned transforms are performing. The main purpose of this paper is investigating the effects of the reinforcement and the load history on the core strength. This investigation is experimentally performed on cores drilled from specimens having different keeping conditions, reinforced, unreinforced, subjected to bending and central pressure in various proportions of failure load during specified periods. Obtained results show that the importance of these effects cannot be neglected.

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

concrete strength in structure
effect of reinforcement


Design of timeout-based wireless microsensor network protocols: energy and latency considerations Recent wireless networked sensors revolutionise information gathering and processing for emerging industrial applications. Dynamically managed network topologies and protocols, especially, provide more flexible leverage to the networking applications constrained by limited energy and system latency. For example, increase in number of hops in ad hoc sensor network, in general, can reduce the network energy consumption, but it also increases network latency. In order to reduce the overall network energy consumption and end-to-end response latency, this research proposes a new sensor network protocol based on Timeout-based Information Forwarding (TIF) protocol. The TIF protocol is based on a geometry-specific data forwarding logic with a multi-hop communication method. Communication energy consumption and network latency of the TIF protocol are analysed to provide design guidelines for the emerging sensor network systems. The performance of TIF has been evaluated through specific simulations, applying the Teamwork Integration Evaluator (TIE).

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 B I I B

network protocols
tie
teamwork integration evaluator

communication protocols
wireless communication
sensor networks
ad hoc network


The emotional responses of browsing Facebook: Happiness, envy, and the role of tie strength Positive emotions are more prevalent than negative emotions while browsing Facebook. Users are happier when a positive post comes from a strong tie rather than a weak tie. Similarly, users experience more benign envy when a post comes from a strong tie. The experience of malicious envy is independent of tie strength.

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


Variable Length Pattern Matching for Hardware Network Intrusion Detection System With the wide adoption of internet into our everyday lives, internet security becomes an important issue. Intrusion detection at the network level is an effective way of stopping malicious attacks at the source and preventing viruses and worms from wide spreading. The key component in a successful network intrusion detection system is a high performance pattern matching engine that can uncover the malicious activities in real time. In this paper, we propose a highly parallel, scalable hardware based network intrusion detection system, that can handle variable pattern length efficiently and effectively. Pattern matching for a packet is completed in O(N log M) time where N is the size of the packet and M is the longest pattern length. Implementation is done on a standard off-the-shelf field-programmable gate array. Comparison with the other techniques shows promising results.

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


Price stabilization in the Taiwan hog and broiler industries: Evidence from a STAR approach The paper examines the effectiveness of the price stabilization mechanism for the broiler and poultry industry in Taiwan during the period 1999-2008. After presenting some background information on the domestic marketing system and price stabilization mechanisms for the broiler and pork industry in Taiwan, the paper discusses the smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) methodology. Monthly hog and broiler price data from 1999 to 2008 at farm, import and retail levels are analyzed using the nonlinear. non-asymmetric logistic STAR model in order to determine price transmission structure. A price threshold parameter is used so that price transmission levels can vary, thereby allowing an examination of the efficacy with which the hog and broiler price stabilization mechanisms take effect. (C) 2011 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

pork industry
price stabilization
domestic marketing system

smooth transition autoregressive (star) methodology


Preconditioning Schur complement matrices based on an aggregation multigrid method for shell structures An aggregation multigrid method is utilized in constructing a preconditioner for a Schur complement system of automatically partitioned, non-overlapping subdomains. Preserving the relationship of the partitioned subdomains, we apply a rigid body based aggregation method, which employ geometric data, as a coarsening procedure. And then, we derive a new Schur complement coarse grid matrix by an approach of a condensation after the coarsening procedure. Therefore, we generate a multi-level preconditioner of a Krylov subspace method for Schur complement matrices using the coarse grid matrix. Through numerical experiments, the proposed preconditioner shows efficient performance and robust convergences irrespect of the size of elements and subdomains. It also shows better performance than the preconditioned conjugate gradient method (PCG) for the partitioned system and the aggregation multigrid method for the original domain in shell problems of structural mechanics.

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

aggregation multigrid method
schur complement system
krylov subspace method

partitioned and non-overlapping subdomains


Dimensional issues in agricultural data warehouse designs Recently, the government of India embarked on an ambitious project of designing and deploying the Integrated National Agricultural Resources Information System (INARIS) data warehouse for the agricultural sector. The system's purpose is to support macro level planning. This paper presents some of the challenges faced in designing the data warehouse, specifically dimensional and deployment challenges of the warehouse. We also present some early user evaluations of the warehouse. Governmental data warehouse implementations are rare, especially at the national level. Furthermore, the motivations are significantly different from private sectors. Designing the INARIS agricultural data warehouse posed unique and significant challenges because, traditionally, the collection and dissemination of information are localized. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

agriculture
dimensional model
warehouse architecture


Optimal location and controller design of STATCOM for power system stability improvement using PSO The optimal location of a static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) and its coordinated design with power system stabilizers (PSSs) for power system stability improvement are presented in this paper. First, the location of STATCOM to improve transient stability is formulated as an optimization problem and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is employed to search for its optimal location. Then, coordinated design problem of STATCOM-based controller with multiple PSS is formulated as an optimization problem and optimal controller parameters are obtained using PSO. A two-area test system is used to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach for determining the optimal location and controller parameters for power system stability improvement. The nonlinear simulation results show that optimally located STATCOM improves the transient stability and coordinated design of STATCOM-based controller and PSSs improve greatly the system damping. Finally, the coordinated design problem is extended to a four-machine two-area system and the results show that the inter-area and local modes of oscillations are well damped with the proposed PSO-optimized controllers.

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

static synchronous compensator
transient stability
optimal location
particle swarm optimization
coordinated design
power system stability


Energy-efficient routing in the broadcast communication model The Broadcast Communication Model (BCM, for short) is a distributed system with no central arbiter populated by p stations denoted by S(1), S(2),..., S(p) that communicate by transmitting messages on a communication channel. The stations are assumed to have the computing power of a laptop computer and to be synchronous-in particular, they all run the same program, albeit on different data. We assume that a station is expending power while transmitting or receiving messages. As it turns out, one of the most effective energy-saving strategies is to mandate individual stations to power their transceiver off (i.e., go to sleep) whenever they are not transmitting or receiving messages. Suppose that the p stations of the BCM store collectively n items such that station S(i), (I less than or equal to i less than or equal to p), stores s, items. Each of the items has a unique destination which is the identity of the station to which the item must be routed. The goal is to route all the items to their destinations, while expending as little energy as possible. Since, in the worst case, each item must be transmitted at least once, every routing protocol must take at least n time slots to terminate. Furthermore, station S(i), (1 less than or equal to i less than or equal to p), must be awake for at least s(i) + d(i) time slots, where d(i) denotes the number of items destined for S(i). Since, in the BCM, every station is within transmission range from every other station, the design of energy-efficient protocols is highly nontrivial. An additional complication stems from the inherent asymmetry of the routing problem: no destination knows the identity of the sender, precluding a priori arrangements between senders and receivers. The main contribution of this work is to present an energy-efficient routing protocol for the single-channel, p-station BCM. We show that for every f ! 1, the task of routing n items in this model can be completed with probability exceeding 1 -1/f, in n + O(q + ln f) time slots and that no station S(i), (1 less than or equal to i less than or equal to p), has to be awake for more than s(i) + d(i) + O(q(i) + r(i) log p(i) + log f) time slots, where q(i) is the number of stations that have items destined for S(i), q = q(1) + q(2) + (...) + q(p), and r(i) is the number of stations for which S(i) has items. Since q(i) less than or equal to d(i),r(i) less than or equal to s(i) and q less than or equal to n, our protocol is close to optimal both in terms of overall completion time and energy efficiency.

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

broadcast communications
bus-based computer systems
radio networks
reservation protocols
demand assignment multiple access
energy efficient protocols


Induction of robust classifiers for web ontologies through kernel machines The paper focuses on the task of approximate classification of semantically annotated individual resources in ontological knowledge bases. The method is based on classification models built through kernel methods, a well-known class of effective statistical learning algorithms. Kernel functions encode a notion of similarity among elements of some input space. The definition of a family of parametric language-independent kernel functions for individuals occurring in an ontology allows the application of these statistical learning methods on Semantic Web knowledge bases. The classification models induced by kernel methods offer an alternative way to classify individuals with respect to the typical exact and approximate deductive reasoning procedures. The proposed statistical setting enables further inductive approaches to a variety of other tasks that can better cope with the inherent incompleteness of the knowledge bases in the Semantic Web and with their potential incoherence due to their distributed nature. The effectiveness of the proposed method is empirically proved through experiments on the task of approximate classification with real ontologies collected from standard repositories.

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

support vector machines
individual classification
inductive reasoning
ontology mining


Solving random diffusion models with nonlinear perturbations by the WienerHermite expansion method This paper deals with the construction of approximate series solutions of random nonlinear diffusion equations where nonlinearity is considered by means of a frank small parameter and uncertainty is introduced through white noise in the forcing term. For the simpler but important case in which the diffusion coefficient is time independent, we provide a Gaussian approximation of the solution stochastic process by taking advantage of the WienerHermite expansion together with the perturbation method. In addition, approximations of the main statistical functions associated with a solution, such as the mean and variance, are computed. Numerical values of these functions are compared with respect to those obtained by applying the RungeKutta second-order stochastic scheme as an illustrative example.

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 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

wienerhermite expansion
perturbation method


A secure identity-based multi-proxy signature scheme In a multi-proxy signature scheme, an original signer could authorize a proxy group as his proxy agent. Then only the cooperation of all the signers in the proxy group can generate the proxy signatures on behalf of the original signer. Plenty of multi-proxy signature schemes have been proposed under the certificate-based public key systems. Due to the various applications of the bilinear pairings in cryptography, many identity-based signature schemes have been proposed. In this paper, we give the first formal definition and security model of an identity-based multi-proxy signature scheme, then propose an identity-based multi-proxy signature scheme from bilinear pairings and prove its security in our security 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 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

digital signature
identity based
multi-proxy signature
provable security


Cognitive Developmental Robotics: A Survey Cognitive developmental robotics (CDR) aims to provide new understanding of how human's higher cognitive functions develop by means of a synthetic approach that developmentally constructs cognitive functions. The core idea of CDR is "physical embodiment" that enables information structuring through interactions with the environment, including other agents. The idea is shaped based on the hypothesized development model of human cognitive functions from body representation to social behavior. Along with the model, studies of CDR and related works are introduced, and discussion on the model and future issues are argued.

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


The Workshop on Internet topology (WIT) report Internet topology analysis has recently experienced a surge of interest in computer science, physics, and the mathematical sciences. However, researchers from these different disciplines tend to approach the same problem from different angles. As a result, the field of Internet topology analysis and modeling must untangle sets of inconsistent findings, conflicting claims, and contradicting statements. On May 10-12, 2006, CAIDA hosted the Workshop on Internet topology (WIT). By bringing together a group of researchers spanning the areas of computer science, physics, and the mathematical sciences, the workshop aimed to improve communication across these scientific disciplines, enable interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, identify commonalities in the different approaches, promote synergy where it exists, and utilize the richness that results from exploring similar problems from multiple perspectives. This report describes the findings of the workshop, outlines a set of relevant open research problems identified by participants, and concludes with recommendations that can benefit all scientific communities interested in Internet topology research.

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


Calibration of double stripe 3D laser scanner systems using planarity and orthogonality constraints In this study, 3D scanning systems that utilize a pair of laser stripes are studied. Three types of scanning systems are implemented to scan environments, rough surfaces of near planar objects and small 3D objects. These scanners make use of double laser stripes to minimize the undesired effect of occlusions. Calibration of these scanning systems is crucially important for the alignment of 3D points which are reconstructed from different stripes. In this paper, the main focus is on the calibration problem, following a treatment on the pre-processing of stripe projections using dynamic programming and localization of 2D image points with sub-pixel accuracy. The 3D points corresponding to laser stripes are used in an optimization procedure that imposes geometrical constraints such as coplanarities and orthogonalities. It is shown that, calibration procedure proposed here, significantly improves the alignment of 3D points scanned using two laser stripes.

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

scanner calibration
multi stripe
plane detection
neldermead algorithm


On a certain class of aggregative operators Here our starting point is a study of connection with Dombi aggregative operators, uninorms, strict t-norms and t-conorms. We present a new representation theorem of strong negations that explicitly contains the neutral value. Then the relationships for aggregative operators and strong negations are verified as well as those for the t-norm and t-conorm using the Pan operator concept. We introduce the multiplicative pliant concept and give the necessary and sufficient conditions for it. We study a certain class of weighted aggregative operators (representable uninorms) which build a self-DeMorgan class with infinitely many negations. We provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for these operators.

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

aggregative operator
uninorm
pliant system
dombi operator


Towards spike-based speech processing: A biologically plausible approach to simple acoustic classification Shortcomings of automatic speech recognition (ASR) applications are becoming more evident as they are more widely used in real life. The inherent non-stationarity associated with the timing of speech signals as well as the dynamical changes in the environment make the ensuing analysis and recognition extremely difficult. Researchers often turn to biology seeking clues to make better engineered systems, and ASR is no exception with the usage of feature sets such as Mel frequency cepstral coefficients, which employ filter banks similar to cochlear filter banks in frequency distribution and bandwidth. In this paper, we delve deeper into the mechanics of the human auditory system to take this biological inspiration to the next level. The main goal of this research is to investigate the computation potential of spike trains produced at the early stages of the auditory system for a simple acoustic classification task. First, various spike coding schemes from temporal to rate coding are explored, together with various spike-based encoders with various simplicity levels such as rank order coding and liquid state machine. Based on these findings, a biologically plausible system architecture is proposed for the recognition of phonetically simple acoustic signals which makes exclusive use of spikes for computation. The performance tests show superior performance on a noisy vowel data set when compared with a conventional ASR system.

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 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

synchrony coding
phase locking
speech perception
psychoacoustics


Linear programming based algorithms for preemptive and non-preemptive RCPSP In this paper, the RCPSP (resource constrained project scheduling problem) is solved using a linear programming model. Each activity may or may not be preemptive. Each variable is associated to a subset of independent activities (antichains). The properties of the model are first investigated. In particular, conditions are given that allow a solution of the linear program to be a feasible schedule. From these properties, an algorithm based on neighbourhood search is derived. One neighbour solution is obtained through one Simplex pivoting, if this pivoting preserves feasibility. Methods to get out of local minima are provided. The solving methods are tested on the PSPLIB instances in a preemptive setting and prove efficient. They are used when preemption is forbidden with less success, and this difference is discussed.

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

scheduling
resource constrained project
preemption
linear programming


Robust Positive semidefinite L-Isomap Ensemble In this paper, we derive an ensemble method inspired by boosting, a novel Robust Positive semidefinite L-Isomap Ensemble (RPL-IsomapE) approach. Specifically, we first apply a constant-shifting method to yield a symmetric positive semidefinite (SPSD) matrix. For topological stability, we also employ a method for eliminating critical outlier points using the confusion rate of all the data points. Then we align individual Robust Positive semidefinite L-Isomap (RPL-Isomap) solutions in common coordinate system through high dimensional affine transformations. Finally, we combine multiple RPL-Isomap solutions by the weighted averaging procedure according to residual variance to improve the noise-robustness of our method. Our RPL-IsomapE maintains the scalability and the speed of L-Isomap. Experiments on two images data sets and a video data set confirm the promising performance of the proposed RPL-IsomapE.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 reduction
manifold learning
nystrm approximation
isomap
ensemble learning
high dimensional affine transformation


Performance-driven scheduling of behavioural specifications Conventional scheduling algorithms usually adjust the clock cycle duration to the execution time of the longest operations. This results in large slack times wasted in those cycles with faster operations. To reduce the wasted times multi-cycle and chaining techniques have been employed. Chaining contributes to reduce the circuit latency if it is applied to the critical path operations, and multi-cycle operators usually result in smaller clock cycles. Both techniques are applied at the operation level, and thus their impact on the circuit performance is bounded by the selected latency. Additionally, they have limited reusability. The design methodology presented in this paper overcomes the limitations of previous techniques to obtain substantially faster circuits. It fragments some of the specification operations into several smaller ones that are handled independently. This way, some operations can begin before their predecessors have finished and can also be executed in several unconsecutive cycles. Furthermore, the fragmentation of operations favours the reusability of hardware resources, leading also to smaller designs. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

high-level synthesis
design automation
allocation
binding


The

PRALINE

online

server:

optimising

progressive

multiple

alignment

on

the

web

We

introduce

the

online

server

for

PRALINE

an

iterative

versatile

progressive

multiple

sequence

alignment

(MSA)

tool.

PRALINE

provides

various

MSA

optimisation

strategies

including

weighted

global

and

local

profile

pre-processing,

secondary

structure-guided

alignment

and

a

reliability

measure

for

aligned

individual

residue

positions.

The

latter

can

also

be

used

to

optimise

the

alignment

when

the

profile

pre-processing

strategies

are

iterated.

In

addition,

we

have

modelled

the

server

output

to

enable

comprehensive

visualisation

of

the

generated

alignment

and

easy

figure

generation

for

publications.

The

alignment

is

represented

in

five

default

colour

schemes

based

on:

residue

type,

position

conservation,

position

reliability,

residue

hydrophobicity

and

secondary

structure;

depending

on

the

options

set.

We

have

also

implemented

a

custom

colour

scheme

that

allows

the

user

to

select

which

colour

will

represent

one

or

more

amino

acids

in

the

alignment.

The

grouping

of

sequences,

on

which

the

alignment

is

based,

can

also

be

visualised

as

a

dendrogram.

The

PRALINE

algorithm

is

designed

to

work

more

as

a

toolkit

for

MSA

rather

than

a

one

step

process.

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

profile pre-processing
secondary structure-guided msa
positional reliability


Sensitivity analysis and determination of free relaxation parameters for the weakly-compressible MRT-LBM schemes Lattice Boltzmann methods (LBMs) are very efficient for computational fluid dynamics, and for capturing the dynamics of weak acoustic fluctuations. It is known that multi-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method (MRT-LBM) appears as a very robust scheme with high precision. There exist several free relaxation parameters in the MRT-LBM. Although these parameters have been tuned via linear analysis, the sensitivity analysis of these parameters and other related parameters is still not sufficient for describing the behavior of the dispersion and dissipation relations of the MRT-LBM. Previous researches have shown that the bulk dissipation in the MRT-LBM induces a significant over-damping of acoustic disturbances. This indicates that the classical MRT-LBM is not best suited to recover the correct behavior of pressure fluctuations. In wave-number space, the first/second-order sensitivity analyses of matrix eigenvalues are used to address the sensitivity of the wavenumber magnitudes to the dispersion-dissipation relations. By the first-order sensitivity analysis, the numerical behaviors of the group velocity of the MRT-LBM are first obtained. Afterwards, the distribution sensitivities of the matrix eigenvalues corresponding to the linearized form of the MRT-LBM are investigated in the complex plane. Based on the sensitivity analysis and an effective algorithm of recovering linearized Navier-Stokes equations (L-NSEs) from linearized MRT-LBM (L-MRT-LBM), we propose some simplified optimization strategies to determine the free relaxation parameters of the MRT-LBM. Meanwhile, the dispersion and dissipation relations of the optimal MRT-LBM are quantitatively compared with the exact dispersion and dissipation relations. At last, some numerical validations on classical acoustic benchmark problems are shown to assess the new optimal MRT-LBM. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. 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 B 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 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O B O O O O O O O O O O O B O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

sensitivity
group velocity
dispersion
dissipation

computational aeroacoustics
bgk-lbm
mrt-lbm
eigenvalue distribution
von neumann analysis


A Butterfly Algorithm for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging In spite of an extensive literature on fast algorithms for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging, it is not currently known if it is possible to accurately form an image from N data points in provable near-linear time complexity. This paper seeks to close this gap by proposing an algorithm which runs in complexity O(N logN log(1/epsilon)) without making the far-field approximation or imposing the beam pattern approximation required by time-domain backprojection, with epsilon the desired pixelwise accuracy. It is based on the butterfly scheme, which unlike the FFT works for vastly more general oscillatory integrals than the discrete Fourier transform. A complete error analysis is provided: the rigorous complexity bound has additional powers of logN and log(1/epsilon) that are not observed in practice.

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

fast algorithms
backprojection
synthetic aperture radar


Low-Latency Adaptive Mode Transitions and Hierarchical Power Management in Asymmetric Clustered Cores Recently, engineering solutions that include asymmetric multicores have been fabricated for low form-factor computing devices, indicating a potential direction for future evolution of processors. In this article we propose an asymmetric clustered core architecture, exhibiting low-latency switching between modes relative to asymmetric multicores, and having similarities with the same asymmetric multicore architecture in the context of a wider dynamic range of the processor power-performance characteristic. Asymmetric clustered cores incur additional microarchitectural complexity and area cost inside a core but exhibit better chip-level integration characteristics compared to asymmetric multicores. Focusing on power efficiency of asymmetric clustered cores, we describe: (1) a hierarchical power management partitioning between the operating system and on-die firmware for coarse-grain switch policies, and (2) core-internal tracking hardware for fine-grain switching. The mode switch policies of the core's tracking hardware are dependent on higher-level directives and hints from the operating system, on-die firmware, and compiler or profiling software. We further explore the potential power management benefits of asymmetric clustered cores relative to asymmetric multicores, demonstrating that the ability of asymmetric clustered cores to use tight training periods for adaptive behavior, with low overhead switching between modes, results in a more efficient utilization of power management directives.

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

architecture
power
asymmetric multicores
clustered cores

design
performance
heterogeneous systems
core morphing
energy delay


handling of recursion in dataflow model Programs for dataflow machines often require efficient support for recursive procedure invocation to achieve high performance and programming flexibility. This paper discusses different methods presently used in contemporary dataflow models for handling recursion. Also, an alternative approach is proposed for handling recursion in token storage type of packet communication dataflow architecture.

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

tagged token
template
coloured token
functional program
packet communication architecture
pipelining


Temporal finite element formulation of optimal control in mechanisms A temporal finite element discretization of a boundary value problem has several advantages compared to a time-integrating evolution form for optimized target movement simulations. The paper gives some basic aspects on how such a finite element form can be stated, with both displacements and controls discretized and seen as unknowns. Aspects on the resulting formulations are discussed. Important issues are the order, continuity and fineness of the discretizations. When the formulation is seen in an optimization context, minimizing the effort for a prescribed movement, the discretization affects the results obtained in several manners, where some aspects of results are artifacts. The paper discusses these effects from basic principles, but also verifies them in numerical simulations.

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

biomechanics
mathematical foundation
numerical implementation
discretization effects


Active thrust on retaining walls of narrow backfill width When the backfill behind a retaining wall is narrow, the analytical methods commonly used for evaluating active thrust, such as the method of Coulomb or that of Rankine, are inappropriate. This is because the thrust wedge cannot develop in the shape and size predicted by these methods. To address, this paper presents an analytical method to obtain a solution for the active thrust exerted by backfill of narrow width on gravity retaining walls, using the limit equilibrium method with planar slip surfaces. Three different failure mechanisms of the thrust wedge are examined, called, respectively, Mechanism 1 (with the thrust wedge formed by a single block), Mechanism 2 (where the thrust wedge is composed of two rigid blocks, one slipping with respect to the other) and Mechanism 3 (which considers three blocks). The paper discusses when the problem has an analytical solution in terms of roots, showing that Mechanism 2 is governed by a cubic equation and Mechanism 3 by a system of a cubic and a quartic equation. More complex mechanisms with four or more blocks are described by systems with equations of higher degrees which do not have an analytical solution in the form of roots. A semi-analytical solution is also given for locating the point of application of the active thrust.

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

active earth force
cantilever walls
lateral pressure
active condition


fact-oriented declarative semantic enterprise modeling In this paper we will investigate the extent to which the extension of the fact-oriented approach with modeling constructs that cover the information-, the process- and behavioural perspectives can provide declarative modeling constructs for declarative semantic enterprise modeling.

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

declarative modeling
enterprise modeling

process modeling
knowledge modeling
conceptual modeling


A general model for multiphase texture segmentation and its applications to retinal image analysis In this paper we propose a general variational segmentation model for multiphase texture segmentation based on fuzzy region competition principle. An important strength of the proposed framework is that different region terms (e.g. mutual information Kim et al. (2005) [1], local histogram Ni et al. (2009) [2] models for texture-based segmentation, and piecewise constant intensity model Chan and Vese (2001) [3] for intensity-based segmentation) can be included as appropriate to the problem. Constraints of different phases are considered by introducing Lagrangian multipliers into the energy functional, and a fast numerical solution is achieved by employing the fast dual projection algorithm Chambolle (2004) [4]. The proposed model has been applied to synthetic and natural images in order to make comparisons with other competing models in literature. Our results demonstrate superiority in dealing with multiphase texture segmentation problems. To demonstrate its usefulness in biomedical applications we have applied the new model to two retinal image segmentation problems: segmentation of capillary non-perfusion regions in fluorescein angiogram and segmentation of cellular layers of the retina in optical coherence tomography, and evaluated against the gold standard set by experts. The generalized overlap analysis shows good agreement for both applications. As a generic segmentation technique our new model has the potential to be extended for wider applications.

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

multiphase segmentation
active contour
total variation
fluorescein angiography


NBSOM: The naive Bayes self-organizing map The naive Bayes model has proven to be a simple yet effective model, which is very popular for pattern recognition applications such as data classification and clustering. This paper explores the possibility of using this model for multidimensional data visualization. To achieve this, a new learning algorithm called naive Bayes self-organizing map (NBSOM) is proposed to enable the naive Bayes model to perform topographic mappings. The training is carried out by means of an online expectation maximization algorithm with a self-organizing principle. The proposed method is compared with principal component analysis, self-organizing maps, and generative topographic mapping on two benchmark data sets and a real-world image processing application. Overall, the results show the effectiveness of NBSOM for multidimensional data visualization.

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 B 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 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 B I

clustering
data visualization
naive bayes

online em algorithm
self-organizing maps
unsupervised learning


A transparent transient faults tolerance mechanism for superscalar processors In this paper, we propose a fault-tolerance mechanism for microprocessors, which detects transient faults and recovers from them. The investigation of fault-tolerance techniques for microprocessors is driven by two issues: One regards deep submicron fabrication technologies. Future semiconductor technologies could become more susceptible to alpha particles and other cosmic radiation. The other is the increasing popularity of mobile platforms. Cellular telephones are currently used for applications which are critical to our financial security, such as mobile banking, mobile trading, and making airline ticket reservations. Such applications demand that computer systems work correctly. In light of this, we propose a mechanism which is based on an instruction reissue technique for incorrect data speculation recovery and utilizes time redundancy, and evaluate our proposal using a timing simulator.

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

time redundancy
transient faults
instruction reissue

fault-tolerance
instruction level parallelism


Rotation invariant pattern recognition using ridgelets, wavelet cycle-spinning and Fourier features In this paper, we propose a rotation-invariant descriptor for pattern recognition by using ridgelets, wavelet cycle-spinning, and the Fourier transform. Ridgelets have been developed recently and have many advantages over wavelets in applications to image processing. However, the current implementation of ridgelets cannot be applied to pattern recognition directly. In order to overcome this problem, we have successfully extracted ridgelet features within the circle surrounding the pattern we are trying to recognize. Wavelet cycle-spinning and Fourier spectrum magnitudes are used to achieve rotation invariance. The main motivation of using ridgelets is that we have a much better tool for the extraction of features based on line singularities as compared to point singularities as in the case of wavelets. Based on this observation, important features can be extracted. Our experiments show that our proposed descriptor is very robust to Gaussian noise and it achieves high recognition rates.

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

ridgelets
wavelets
fourier transform
pattern recognition


Supporting multicasting in mobile ad-hoc wireless networks: issues, challenges, and current protocols The basic philosophy of personal communication services is to provide user-to-user, location independent communication services. The emerging group communication wireless applications, such as multipoint data dissemination and multiparty conferencing tools have made the design and development of efficient multicast techniques in mobile ad-hoc networking environments a necessity and not just a desire. Multicast protocols in mobile ad-hoc networks have been an area of active research for the past couple of years. This paper summarizes the activities and recent advances in this work-in-progress area by identifying the main issues and challenges that multicast protocols are facing in mobile ad-hoc networking environments, and by surveying several existing multicasting protocols. This article presents a classification of the current multicast protocols, discusses the functionality of the individual existing protocols, and provides a qualitative comparison of their characteristics according to several distinct features and performance parameters. Furthermore, since many of the additional issues and constraints associated with the mobile ad-hoc networks are due, to a large extent, to the attribute of user mobility, we also present an overview of research and development efforts in the area of group mobility modeling in mobile ad-hoc networks. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

multicasting protocols
wireless networks
mobility


A synergetic mechanism for digital library service in mobile and cloud computing environment Digital library services in the mobile computing have come into our daily life with the development of wireless communication and the manufacture of mobile devices. Digital libraries have collected large-scaled data for providing information service. However, there are still many problems such as limitations of computing on mobile devices and data transmission problems in the wireless network. This paper proposes a synergetic mechanism for digital library to provide information service in the mobile and cloud computing environment, which combines the digital library servers, mobile hosts and personal cloud space into a synergetic work group seamlessly. The proposed mechanism integrates the strong computing and large-scaled storage ability of cloud computing together with the convenience of mobile computing. It could help promoting knowledge sharing and improve work efficiency of users in the mobile and cloud computing environment.

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

digital library services
cloud computing
mobile computing
synergetic


Funneling media access control (MAC) protocol for underwater acoustic sensor networks Due to the characteristics of the underwater acoustic channel, such as long propagation delay and low available bandwidth, the media access control (MAC) protocol designed for underwater acoustic sensor networks (UWASNs) is quite different from that for terrestrial wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a MAC protocol for the UWASNs, named the funneling MAC (FMAC-U), which is a contention-based MAC protocol with a three-way handshake. The FMAC-U protocol uses an improved three-way handshake mechanism and code division multiple access (CDMA) based technology for request-to-send (RTS) signals transmitting to the sink in order that the sink can receive packets from multiple neighbors in a fixed order during each round of handshakes. The mechanism reduces the packet collisions and alleviates the funneling effect, especially alleviating the choke point of the UWASNs. Simulation results show that the proposed FMAC-U protocol achieves higher throughput, smaller packet drop ratio, lower end-to-end delay, and lower overhead of the control packet compared to the existing MAC protocols for UWASNs.

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

underwater acoustic sensor networks (uwasns)


Measuring gene similarity by means of the classification distance Microarray technology provides a simple way for collecting huge amounts of data on the expression level of thousands of genes. Detecting similarities among genes is a fundamental task, both to discover previously unknown gene functions and to focus the analysis on a limited set of genes rather than on thousands of genes. Similarity between genes is usually evaluated by analyzing their expression values. However, when additional information is available (e.g., clinical information), it may be beneficial to exploit it. In this paper, we present a new similarity measure for genes, based on their classification power, i.e., on their capability to separate samples belonging to different classes. Our method exploits a new gene representation that measures the classification power of each gene and defines the classification distance as the distance between gene classification powers. The classification distance measure has been integrated in a hierarchical clustering algorithm, but it may be adopted also by other clustering algorithms. The result of experiments runs on different microarray datasets supports the intuition of the proposed approach.

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

similarity measure
microarray
clustering


Multifractal scaling behavior analysis for existing dams The MF-DFA is introduced to analyze the in situ observed data of existing dam. The multifractal feature of the in situ observed data is revealed. The long term behavior of existing dam is obtained.

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

multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis


Fast generation of 2-D node distributions for mesh-free PDE discretizations Many applications require that nodes be scattered locally quasi-uniformly within 2-D regions or on curved surfaces in 3-D space, while obeying some prescribed spatially varying density function. This study focuses on creating variable density node layouts that are suitable for mesh-free discretizations of PDEs. Another application is dithering to simulate half-tone images. The method is an advancing-front type scheme, inspired by the physical process of dropping of variable sized grains into a bucket.

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

rbf-fd
node/point generation algorithms
mesh-free discretizations


Segmentation of avascular necrosis of the femoral head using 3-D MR images Avascular necrosis of the femoral head (ANFH) is a common clinical disorder in the orthopedic field. Traditional approaches to study the extent of ANFH rely primarily on manual segmentation of clinical magnetic resonance images (MRI). However, manual segmentation is insufficient for quantitative evaluation and staging of ANFH. This paper presents a new computerized approach for segmentation of necrotic lesions of the femoral head. The segmentation method consists of several steps including histogram based thresholding, 3-D morphological operations, oblique data reconstruction, and 2-D ellipse fitting. The proposed technique is rapid and efficient. In addition, it is available as a Microsoft Windows free software package on the Internet. Feasibility of the method is demonstrated on the data sets of 30 patients (1500 MR images).

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

segmentation
avascular necrosis
mri
femoral head


Shape from Sharp and Motion-Blurred Image Pair Motion blur due to camera shake is a common occurrence. During image capture, the apparent motion of a scene point in the image plane varies according to both camera motion and scene structure. Our objective is to infer the camera motion and the depth map of static scenes using motion blur as a cue. To this end, we use an unblurredblurred image pair. Initially, we develop a technique to estimate the transformation spread function (TSF) which symbolizes the camera shake. This technique uses blur kernels estimated at different points across the image. Based on the estimated TSF, we recover the complete depth map of the scene within a regularization framework.

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

motion blur
transformation spread function
depth map


Asymptotic expansions for interior penalty solutions of control constrained linear-quadratic problems We consider a quadratic optimal control problem governed by a nonautonomous affine ordinary differential equation subject to nonnegativity control constraints. For a general class of interior penalty functions, we provide a first order expansion for the penalized states and adjoint states around the state and adjoint state of the original problem. Our main argument relies on the following fact: if the optimal control satisfies strict complementarity conditions for its Hamiltonian except for a set of times with null Lebesgue measure, the functional estimates for the penalized optimal control problem can be derived from the estimates of a related finite dimensional problem. Our results provide several types of efficiency measures of the penalization technique: error estimates of the control for L (s) norms (s in [1, +a]), error estimates of the state and the adjoint state in Sobolev spaces W (1,s) (s in [1, +a)) and also error estimates for the value function. For the L (1) norm and the logarithmic penalty, the sharpest results are given, by establishing an error estimate for the penalized control of order where is the (small) penalty parameter.

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

expansion of value function and solutions


Charge Group Partitioning in Biomolecular Simulation Molecular simulation techniques are increasingly being used to study biomolecular systems at an atomic level. Such simulations rely on empirical force fields to represent the intermolecular interactions. There are many different force fields available-each based on a different set of assumptions and thus requiring different parametrization procedures. Recently, efforts have been made to fully automate the assignment of force-field parameters, including atomic partial charges, for novel molecules. In this work, we focus on a problem arising in the automated parametrization of molecules for use in combination with the gromos family of force fields: namely, the assignment of atoms to charge groups such that for every charge group the sum of the partial charges is ideally equal to its formal charge. In addition, charge groups are required to have size at most k. We show NP-hardness and give an exact algorithm that solves practical problem instances to provable optimality in a fraction of a second.

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

biomolecular simulation
charge groups
gromos

atomic force fields
dynamic programming
tree decomposition


Ill-loaded layout optimization of bi-modulus material Compliance design for a bi-modulus structure under multiple ill-loads is studied. Fractional norm objective function is presented and sensitive analysis is derivated. Material replacement approach is suggested to simplify update of design variables. Typical multiple ill-loaded designs are discussed numerically.

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

bi-modulus
multiple loading cases
q-norm weighting scheme
ill-loading cases


Implementing tablet PCs in schools: Students attitudes and opinions The study explored students attitude toward tablet PCs. Qualitative and quantitative data collection tools were used in the research. Students have a positive attitude towards tablet PCs.

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

computer attitudes
young children
tablet pc
gender differences


Exponential Regression-Based Software Reliability Model and Its Computational Aspect An exponential regression-based model with stochastic intensity is developed to describe the software reliability growth phenomena, where the software testing metrics depend on the intensity process. For such a generalized modeling framework, the common maximum likelihood method cannot be applied any more to the parameter estimation. In this paper, we propose to use the pseudo maximum likelihood method for the parameter estimation and to seek not only the model parameters but also the software reliability measures approximately. It is shown in numerical experiments with real software fault data that the resulting software reliability models based on four parametric approximations provide the better goodness-of-fit performance than the common non-homogeneous Poisson process models without testing metric information.

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

software reliability exponential regression


Factors affecting trading partners' knowledge sharing: Using the lens of transaction cost economics and socio-political theories Knowledge sharing allows trading partners to orchestrate the operation of supply chain and capture positions of advantage. Yet, lack of knowledge sharing has been consistently found to be the most critical failure factor in supply chain management. This paper intends to study the factors a. ffecting trading partners' entering knowledge sharing ties. Drawing upon transaction cost economics and socio- political theories, we developed our research framework. The hypotheses derived were tested by data collected with six medium-sized companies. Data analysis showed that socio-political factors were more robust in affecting the focal firm's decision on whether to share knowledge with a particular partner. In particular, trust towards the partner and the partner's power were the primary factors leading the firm to enter the knowledge sharing ties. In contrast, asset specificity did not play an important role in affecting the. firm's knowledge sharing decision. Theoretical contribution and practical implications are discussed. (C) 2006 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.

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

interorganizational knowledge sharing
interdependence


Solution for wave propagation through a circular cylinder mounted on different topography ripple-bed profile shoals using DRBEM In this paper, the dual reciprocity boundary element method wave model that is governed by a modified mild-slope equation is developed. Instead of addressing the infinite boundary condition, the model automatically satisfies the Sommerfeld radiation condition. This work examines the effects of both the bottom curvature and the slope-squared terms. The conducted numerical experiments have a topography that is composed of a cylinder mounted on two kinds of basic shoal: types 1 and 2 cubic. In addition, numerical experiments that combine two cubic type islands with ripple-beds are performed. The results show that the curvature term dominates the calculation of the sinusoidal-varying topography; even a disturbance in the topography is insignificant. In contrast to smooth topographies, the bottom curvature and the slope-squared terms are not dominant. Thus, the extended terms can be neglected if the seabed is smooth and gentle. When the topographies are combined with ripple-beds, the difference in the dimensionless wave amplitudes along the sidewall of the types 1 and 2 cubic islands is found to be 2.9 and 3.02, respectively. According to our study of cubic islands that are combined with ripple-beds, we can conclude with certainty that even though the variation of the seabed is very slight, the curvature and the slope-squared terms cannot be neglected for an uneven bottom.

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 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

modified mild-slope equation
homma's island
conical island
ripple-beds


reasoning about xacml policies using csp In this work we explore the use of process algebra in formalising and analysing access control policies. We do this by considering a standard access control language (XACML) and show how the core concepts in the language can be represented in CSP. We then show how properties of these policies may also be described in CSP, and how model checking may be used to verify that a policy meets the property.We further consider how we may introduce a notion of workflow into this framework, and show that a simple appreciation of the workflow context may limit the things we need to verify about a policy.

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


Numerical solution of Brillouin and Raman fiber amplifiers using bvp6c Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an effective and faster numerical solution for nonlinear-coupled differential equations describing fiber amplifiers which have no explicit solution. MATLAB boundary value problem (BVP) solver of bvp6c function is addressed for the solution. Design/methodology/approach - Coding method with the bvp6c is introduced, signal evolution, threshold calculation method is introduced, gain and noise figure are plotted and superiority of the bvp6c solver is compared with the Newton-Raphson method. Findings - bvp6c function appears to be an effective tool for the solution fiber amplifier equations and can be used for different pump configurations of BFAs and RFAs. The excellent agreement between the proposed and reported results shows the reliability of the proposed threshold power calculation method. Research limitations/implications - The paper eases the work of the fiber optic research community, who suffer from two point BVPs. Moreover, the stiffness of the signal evolution which is faced with high pump powers and/or long fiber lengths can be solved with continuation. This superiority of the solver can be used to overcome any stiff changes of the signals for the future studies. Practical implications - The main outcome of this paper is the numerically calculation of the threshold values of fiber amplifiers without the necessity of the experiment. The robustness improvement of the solution is that the solver is able to solve the equations even with the poor guess values and the solution can be obtained without the necessity of analytical Jacobian matrix. Originality/value - MATLAB bvp6c solver has proven to be effective for the numerical solution of nonlinear-coupled intensity differential equations describing fiber amplifiers with two-point boundary. values. Beside the signal evolution, thresholds of Brillouin and Raman fiber amplifiers can also be calculated by using the proposed solver. This is a notable and promising improvement of the paper, at least from a fiber optic amplifier designer point of view.

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

fiber amplifiers
threshold
bvp6c function

nonlinear differential equations
boundary value problems


A broadcasting scheme with supporting VCR functions for near video-on-demand systems This paper proposes a new broadcasting method for more complete video-cassette-recorder (VCR) functions to be executed. In our approach, film S is divided into n equal parts and played through k channels. The user simultaneously downloads the film segments from k channels into the set-top-box (STB) and plays them according to their order. The initial p segments in the progammed film will not have fast forwarding capabilities. Every time the user wants to initiate d times fast-forwarding, according to our broadcasting strategy, the segments saved in the user's STB and those that are being continuously downloaded from k channels will be sufficient to provide the user with the portions of the film needed when fast-forwarding is initiated. As such the broadcasting strategy we have proposed not only allows the user to pause and rewind, but also to fast-forward. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

near video-on-demand (vod)
set-top-box (stb)
video-cassette-recorder (vcr) functions


A complete axiomatization for Blocks World Blocks World (BW) has been one of the most popular model domains in At history. However, there has not been serious work on axiomatizing the state constraints of BW and giving justification for its soundness and completeness, In this paper, we model a state of BW by a finite collection of finite chains, and call the theory of all these structures BW theory. We present seven simple axioms and prove that their consequences are precisely BW theory, using Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse games. We give a simple decision procedure for the theory which can be implemented in exponential space, and prove that every decision procedure (even if nondeterministic) for the theory must take at least exponential time. We also give a characterization of all nonstandard models for the theory. Finally, we present an expansion of BW theory and show that it admits elimination of quantifiers. As a result, we are able to characterize all definable predicates in BW theory, and give simple examples of undefinable predicates.

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

finite axiomatization
ehrenfeucht-fraisse games
complexity of logical theories


Learning fuzzy concept hierarchy and measurement with node labeling A concept hierarchy is a kind of general form of knowledge representation. Most of the previous researches on describing the concept hierarchy use tree-like crisp taxonomy. However, concept description is generally vague for human knowledge; crisp concept description usually cannot represent human knowledge actually and effectively. In this paper, the fuzzy characteristics of human knowledge are studied and employed to represent concepts and hierarchical relationships among the concepts. An agglomerative clustering scheme is proposed to learn hierarchical fuzzy concepts from databases. Further, a novel measurement approach is developed for evaluating the effectiveness of the generated fuzzy concept hierarchy. The experimental results show that the proposed method demonstrates the capability of accurate conceptualization in comparison with previous researches.

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

fuzzy concept hierarchy
fuzzy entropy
fuzzy confidence


A survey on face detection in the wild: Past, present and future ? We present a comprehensive and survey for face detection in-the-wild. We critically describe the advances in the three main families of algorithms. We comment on the performance of the state-of-the-art in the current benchmarks. We outline future research avenues on the topic and beyond.

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

feature extraction
boosting
deformable models
deep neural networks


ADAM: A testbed for exploring the use of data mining in intrusion detection Intrusion detection systems have traditionally been based on the characterization of an attack and the tracking of the activity on the system to see if it matches that characterization. Recently, new intrusion detection systems based on data mining are making their appearance in the field. This paper describes the design and experiences with the ADAM (Audit Data Analysis and Mining) system, which we use as a testbed to study how useful data mining techniques can be in intrusion detection.

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

intrusion detection software
pattern analysis
cyber attacks


New technologies, new differences. Gender and ethnic differences in pupils' use of ICT in primary and secondary education This paper investigates the accessibility and attractiveness of different types of ICT applications in education for girls and boys and for pupils from families with an ethnic minority background and from the majority population in the Netherlands. A study was conducted in seven schools (primary and secondary). Data were collected on participation, ICT skills and learning results, ICT attitudes and the learning approach of pupils. A total of 213 pupils completed a questionnaire and interviews were held with 48 pupils and 12 teachers. Gender differences, especially in primary education, appeared to be small. In secondary education, the computer attitude of girls seems to be less positive than that of boys, girls and boys take on different tasks when working together on the computer and they tackle ICT tasks differently. Pupils from an ethnic-minority background in both primary and secondary education appear to consider themselves to be less skilled ICT users than pupils from the majority population. We found ethnic differences in participation in ICT activities at school in both educational sectors. Pupils from an ethnic-minority background use the computer at school less for gathering information and preparing talks and papers and more for drill and practice. Differences between pupils from an ethnic-minority background and from the majority population in access to certain forms of ICT use out of school are confirmed at school instead of being compensated for. The paper concludes with some recommendations on a diversity-oriented ICT policy at school level. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

applications in subject areas
gender studies
elementary education


Applying Antisense Technology Progress in the development of antisense drugs over the last decade has led to the approval of the first such drugVitravene for AIDS-related CMV retinitisand the development of a large number of antisense drugs in clinical trials. Antisense drugs are now being studied in Phase 3 trials for patients with cancer and inflammatory bowel disease. Other antisense drugs are in development for rheumatoid arthritis, other inflammatory conditions, and hepatitis C. Still other antisense drugs are entering clinical trials for treatment of metabolic conditions such as diabetes and hyperlipidemia. These latter applications provide the potential for target effects to be more directly measured in the clinic. Improved antisense chemistry, which will enhance the feasibility of subcutaneous and oral administration of antisense drugs and offer the potential of less frequent dosing, is expected to further expand the opportunities for antisense drug development.

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


coordinated power management of voltage islands in cmps Multiple clock domain architectures have recently been proposed to alleviate the power problem in CMPs by having different frequency/voltage values assigned to each domain based on workload requirements. However, accurate allocation of power to these voltage/frequency islands based on time varying workload characteristics as well as controlling the power consumption at the provisioned power level is non-trivial. Toward this end, we propose a two-tier feedback-based control theoretic solution. Our first-tier consists of a global power manager that allocates power targets to individual islands based on the workload dynamics. The power consumptions of these islands are in turn controlled by a second-tier, consisting of local controllers that regulate island power using dynamic voltage and frequency scaling in response to workload requirements.

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

dvfs
gals
chip multiprocessors (cmp)
control theory


schedule-aware performance estimation of communication architecture for efficient design space exploration In this paper, we are concerned about the performance estimation of bus-based architectures assuming that the task partitioning on the processing components is already determined. Since the communication behavior is usually unpredictable due to dynamic bus requests of processing components, bus contention, and so on, simulation based approach seems inevitable for accurate performance estimation. But it is too time consuming to explore the wide design space. To overcome this serious drawback, we propose a static performance estimation method that is based on the queuing model and makes use of memory traces and task execution schedule information. We propose to use this static estimation approach to prune the design space drastically before applying a simulation-based approach. Comparison with trace-driven simulation results proves the validity of our static estimation technique.

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

design space exploration
performance estimation
communication architecture


Power analysis and estimation for SOC design: Techniques and tools As power consumption becoming a critical concern for System-On-a-Chip (SOC) design, accurate and efficient power analysis and estimation during the design phase at all levels of abstraction are becoming increasingly pressing in order to achieve low power without a costly redesign process. This paper surveys analysis and estimation techniques of dynamic power and leakage power for SOC design covering multiple design levels, which have been recently proposed, aiming to present a cohesive view of the power estimation techniques at all design levels of abstraction.

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

low power
soc
power analysis
power estimation


Rendezvous-based data dissemination for supporting mobile sinks in multi-hop clustered wireless sensor networks In wireless sensor networks, a clustering-based technique is considered as an efficient approach for supporting mobile sinks without using position information. It exploits a Backbone-based Virtual Infrastructure (BVI) which uses only cluster heads (CHs) to construct routing structures. Since sensor nodes have constrained energy and are failure-prone, the effective design of both a clustering structure to construct a BVI and a routing protocol in the BVI is an important issue to achieve energy-efficient and reliable data delivery. However, since previous studies use one-hop clustering for a BVI, they are not robust against node and link failures and thus leading low data delivery ratio. They also use flooding-based routing protocols in a BVI and thus leading high energy consumption. Thus, in this paper, we propose a rendezvous-based data dissemination protocol based on multi-hop clustering (RDDM). Since RDDM uses a multi-hop clustering to provide enough backup sensor nodes to substitute a CH and enough backup paths between neighbor CHs, it can provide high robustness against node and link failures. By using a rendezvous CH, RDDM constructs routing paths from source nodes to mobile sinks without flooding in our BVI and thus can save energy of sensor nodes. By considering movement types of sinks, RDDM finds out a shorter path between a source node and a mobile sink through signaling only between neighbor CHs and thus can reduce the energy consumption. Analysis and simulation results show that RDDM provides better performance than previous protocols in terms of energy consumption and data delivery ratio.

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

multi-hop clustering
backbone-based virtual infrastructure
rendezvous-based data dissemination


Research on key technologies of complex product virtual prototype lifecycle management (CPVPLM) ? As a new product design and development method, virtual prototyping is the advanced research in the modeling and simulation (M&S) field. Nowadays virtual prototyping has evolved into a virtual prototype engineering. Considering that PDM/PLM systems are unable to manage the characteristics of models/content/knowledge of complex product virtual prototype (CPVP) and lifecycle of CPVP, this paper gives the concept of complex product virtual prototype lifecycle management (CPVPLM). Then, the author presents and discusses a three-dimensional (3D) view to reinforce the share and management of the CPVP lifecycle information. Moreover, the paper gives and studies a framework to solve the lifecycle management of CPVP. To manage the digital content in CPVPLM, the content management technology is introduced. To add semantic description information into the documents and models, the ontology technology is introduced. Finally the article introduces the use of CPVPLM prototype system, and gives an illustrative application example.

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

complex product virtual prototype
lifecycle management
ontology
content


Pattern codification strategies in structured light systems Coded structured light is considered one of the most reliable techniques for recovering the surface of objects. This technique is based on projecting a light pattern and viewing the illuminated scene from one or more points of view. Since the pattern is coded, correspondences between image points and points of the projected pattern can be easily found. The decoded points can be triangulated and 3D information is obtained. We present an overview of the existing techniques, as well as a new and definitive classification of patterns for structured light sensors. We have implemented a set of representative techniques in this field and present some comparative results. The advantages and constraints of the different patterns are also discussed.

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

coded patterns
3d measuring devices
active stereo
computer vision


Optimal pricing, shipment and payment policy for an integrated supplierbuyer inventory model with two-part trade credit In this article, we develop an integrated supplierbuyer inventory model with the assumption that the market demand is sensitive to the retail price and the supplier adopts a trade credit policy. The trade credit policy discussed in this paper is a two-part strategy: cash discount and delayed payment. That is, if the buyer pays within M1, the buyer receives a cash discount; otherwise, the full purchasing price must be paid before M2, where M2>M1?0 M 2 > M 1 ? 0 . The objective of this research is to determine the optimal pricing, ordering, shipping, and payment policy to maximize the joint expected total profit per unit time. An iterative algorithm is established to obtain the optimal strategy. Furthermore, numerical examples and sensitivity analysis are presented to illustrate the results of the proposed model and to draw managerial insights.

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

integrated inventory model
delay payment
demand function


Audiovisual-to-articulatory inversion It has been shown that acoustic-to-articulatory inversion, i.e. estimation of the articulatory configuration from the corresponding acoustic signal, can be greatly improved by adding visual features extracted from the speakers face. In order to make the inversion method usable in a realistic application, these features should be possible to obtain from a monocular frontal face video, where the speaker is not required to wear any special markers. In this study, we investigate the importance of visual cues for inversion. Experiments with motion capture data of the face show that important articulatory information can be extracted using only a few face measures that mimic the information that could be gained from a video-based method. We also show that the depth cue for these measures is not critical, which means that the relevant information can be extracted from a frontal video. A real video-based face feature extraction method is further presented, leading to similar improvements in inversion quality. Rather than tracking points on the face, it represents the appearance of the mouth area using independent component images. These findings are important for applications that need a simple audiovisual-to-articulatory inversion technique, e.g. articulatory phonetics training for second language learners or hearing-impaired persons.

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

speech inversion
articulatory inversion
computer vision


Multiple conformational states in retrospective virtual screening homology models vs. crystal structures: beta-2 adrenergic receptor case study Distinguishing active from inactive compounds is one of the crucial problems of molecular docking, especially in the context of virtual screening experiments. The randomization of poses and the natural flexibility of the protein make this discrimination even harder. Some of the recent approaches to post-docking analysis use an ensemble of receptor models to mimic this naturally occurring conformational diversity. However, the optimal number of receptor conformations is yet to be determined.

O O O O O B I 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 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

crystal structures
homology models
virtual screening

structural interaction fingerprints
ensemble of receptors