Lessons learned for building agile and flexible scheduling tool for turbulent environments in the extended enterprise This paper presents results of a 2.5-year, multidisciplinary, universityindustry collaborative effort investigating design of Internet-based Scheduler for material Optimisation and agile ProducTion In MUlti-Site enterprises in agile manufacturing (IS-OPTIMUS), a four nation collaborative project aimed at improvements in turbulent manufacturing environments. The focus of this paper is specifically on the content of the work carried out, along with the main benefits and results. Key to achieving the goals is following a complete project-life-cycle path from the initial stages where the industrial users requirements were identified and the system specification took place to the development and tuning of the final system. Design choices for software must strike a balance between the user flexibility required and the representing environment constraints, i.e. finite capacity scheduling, which takes production requirements from existing production planning systems, to schedule production resources like plant workers, critical tools and machines. The system consists of a material optimiser working closely with the finite capacity scheduler and a dynamic scheduler providing automatic reaction to real-time exceptions, thus deriving in solutions of higher performance.

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


A simulation based supply partner selection decision support tool for service provision in Dell Partner selection is an important aspect of all outsourcing processes. Traditional partner selection typically involves steps to determine the criteria for outsourcing, followed by a qualification of potential suppliers and concluding with a final selection of partner(s). Reverse auctions (RAs) have widely been used for partner selection in recent times. However, RAs, although proven successful in initial price reduction strategies for product and service provision, can suffer from reduced effectiveness as the number of executions increases. This paper illustrates Dell's experience of such diminishing returns for its outsourced after sales product repair service and presents the development of a new partner selection methodology, which incorporates a new process improvement stage to be executed in combination with the final selection phase. This new methodology is underpinned by the development of a computer based simulation supply partner selection decision support tool for service provision. The paper highlights the significant additional cost saving benefits and improvement in service achievable through the use of advanced simulation based decision supports. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

reverse auctions
computer based simulation

supplier selection
contract negotiation
after-sales services


Robust particle tracker via Markov Chain Monte Carlo posterior sampling Particle Filter has grown to be a standard framework for visual tracking. This paper proposes a robust particle tracker based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, aiming at solving the thorny problems in visual tracking induced by object appearance changes, occlusions, background clutter, and abrupt motions. In this algorithm, we derive the posterior probability density function based on second order Markov assumption. The posterior probability density is the joint density of the previous two states. Additionally, a Markov Chain with certain length is used to approximate the posterior density to avoid the drawbacks of traditional importance sampling based algorithm, which consequently improves the searching ability of the proposed tracker. We compare our approach with several alternative tracking algorithms, and the experimental results demonstrate that our tracker is superior to others in dealing with various types of challenging scenarios.

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

visual tracking
particle filter
markov chain monte carlo


Kinetics of muon catalyzed fusion in D/T/H mixture considering muon transfer from hydrogen isotopes to helium isotopes In this paper the kinetics of Muon Catalyzed Fusion (muCF) in H/D/T mixture, considering the muon transfer from hydrogen isotopes (p,d,t) to helium isotopes (He-3,He-4) in the range of temperatures of 300 K < T < 1300 K at the density of Phi = 1 LHD, is presented. Calculation of cycling rate in different branches of fusion such as dtmu, ptmu, pdmu, ddmu, ttmu and energy gain showed that in certain physical conditions, the H/D/T mixture is comparable to D/T one. Finally the results of this research are compared with the experimental results reported by other researchers; and good agreements were found.

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 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


Cell phone video recording feature as a language learning tool: A case study This paper reports on a case study conducted at a Japanese national university. Nine participants used the video recording feature on their cell phones to produce weekly video productions. The task required that participants produce one 30-second video on a teacher-selected topic. Observations revealed the process of video creation with a cell phone. The weekly video performances indicated that students were able to increase the number of words they spoke in one monologue. The surveys indicated that participants believed that using the cell phone video recording feature was a useful activity. However, they did not believe that such a task was transferable to other courses. The discussion emphasizes that, due to technological advances, educators need to understand the benefits and challenges of integrating cell phone devices as learning tools in their classrooms. In addition, whereas in the past researchers focused on reading and writing skills, this article reveals that it is now possible to use the video recording feature to evaluate learners' speaking skills. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

video recording feature and speaking production


A two-loop robust controller for HIV infection models in the presence of parameter uncertainties A two-loop robust nonlinear controller is proposed to deal with uncertain model parameters in HIV infection models, which are described by nonlinear differential equations of three state variables and antiretroviral drugs. The treatment goal is to suppress the concentration of infected CD4+ T cells to a target value using only the measurement of total CD4+ T cell concentration. The outer-loop controller is designed to achieve the treatment goal for the nominal HIV infection model, while a nonlinear disturbance observer (DOB) controller is employed in the inner-loop to compensate for parameter uncertainties. In the nonlinear DOB controller, a disturbance signal, equivalent to the parameter variation in terms of effect on the output, is canceled by its estimate. Numerical simulations verify that the proposed controller achieves robust performance for reducing the concentration of infected CD4+ T cells even in the presence of parameter uncertainties.

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

hiv infection
antiretroviral drugs
parameter uncertainties
disturbance observer


Sparse direct factorizations through unassembled hyper-matrices ? We present a novel strategy for sparse direct factorizations that is geared towards the matrices that arise from hp-adaptive Finite Element Methods. In that context, a sequence of linear systems derived by successive local refinement of the problem domain needs to be solved. Thus, there is an opportunity for a factorization strategy that proceeds by updating (and possibly downdating) the factorization. Our scheme consists of storing the matrix as unassembled element matrices, hierarchically ordered to mirror the refinement history of the domain. The factorization of such an unassembled hyper-matrix proceeds in terms of element matrices, only assembling nodes when they need to be eliminated. The main benefits are efficiency from the fact that only updates to the factorization are made, high scalar efficiency since the factorization process uses dense matrices throughout, and a workflow that integrates naturally with the application.

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

gaussian elimination
sparse matrices
hp-adaptive finite elements


Visualization of evolving social networks using actor-level and community-level trajectories Visualization of static social networks is a mature research field in information visualization. Conventional approaches rely on node-link diagrams that provide a representation of the network topology by representing nodes as points and links between them as lines. However, the increasing availability of longitudinal network data has spurred interest in visualization techniques that go beyond the static node-link representation of a network. In temporal settings, the focus is on the network dynamics at different levels of analysis (e.g. node, communities and whole network). Yet, the development of visualizations that are able to provide actionable insights into different types of changes occurring in the network and their impact on both the neighbourhood and the overall network structure is a challenging task. In such settings, traditional node-link representations can prove to be limited (Yi et al., 2010). Alternative methods, such as matrix graph representations, fail in tasks involving path finding (Ghoniem et al., 2005). This work attempts to overcome these issues by proposing a methodology for tracking the evolution of dynamic social networks, at both the node-level and the community-level, based on the concept of temporal trajectory. We resort to three-order tensors to represent evolving social networks, and we further decompose them using a Tucker3 model. The two most representative components of this model define the 2D space where the trajectories of social entities are projected. To illustrate the proposed methodology, we conduct a case study using a set of temporal self-reported friendship networks.

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

dynamic social networks
trajectories
tucker3 model


In utero ultrasound backscatter microscopy of early stage mouse embryos A high resolution ultrasound imaging technique, ultrasound backscatter microscopy (UBM), has previously been shown to be useful for in utero imaging of mouse embryos, and for direct manipulation of mouse embryos through UBM-guided injections. UBM images from mouse embryos staged between 8.5 and 10.5 days of gestation are presented to demonstrate the range of anatomical structures which can be studied with this approach. Ultrasound contrast agents have been injected into the forebrain ventricle of 10.5 day embryos to characterize the resulting three-dimensional distribution of the injected agents. These studies provide important background data relevant to future use of this technique for in utero analysis of early brain and heart development, and for in utero manipulation of mouse embryos through UBM-guided injections.

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

ultrasound imaging
ultrasound backscatter microscopy
mouse embryos
brain and heart development


Timing modeling of latch-controlled sub-systems We present a new timing model for latch-controlled sub-systems, referred to as the advanced black box model. The proposed model considers the transparency characteristics of latches in modeling and uses only the constraints on input signals and the characteristics of output departure time to represent the timing characteristics of the latch-controlled sub-system. Thus, it can be used for the efficient timing verification of the IP-based SoC design without re-verifying the internal timings of pre-verified Intellectual Properties (IPs) at the lower level. We also present an efficient algorithm to characterize the proposed model, which enables us to perform the timing characterization and verification of the given system simultaneously. The worst-case complexity of the entire characterization process is O(PN2), where P and N are the numbers of primary inputs and latches in the system.

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 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

intellectual property
latch-controlled system


Simulated time for host-based testing with TTCN-3 Prior to testing embedded software in a target environment, it is usually tested in a host environment used for developing the software. When a system is tested in a host environment, its real-time behaviour is affected by the use of simulators, emulation and monitoring. In this paper, the authors provide a semantics for host-based testing with simulated time and propose a simulated-time solution for distributed testing with TTCN-3, which is a standardized language for specifying and executing test suites. The paper also presents the application of testing with simulated time to two real-life systems. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

distributed systems
real time
discrete time
telecom
railway control systems
ttcn-3


Quality evaluation for Model-Driven Web Engineering methodologies There are lots of approaches or methodologies in the Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) context to develop Web Applications without reaching a consensus on the use of standards and scarcity of both, practical experience and tool support. Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) methodologies are constantly evolving. Moreover, Quality is a very important factor to identify within a methodology as it defines processes, techniques and artifacts to develop Web Applications. For this reason, when analyzing a methodology, it is not only necessary to evaluate quality, but also to find out how to improve it. The main goal of this paper is to develop a set of Quality Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics for MDWE approaches based on ISO/IEC standards. From the software products context, some widely standards proposed, such as ISO/IEC 9126 or ISO/IEC 25000, suggest a Quality Model for software products, although up to now, there are no standard methods to assess quality on MDWE methodologies. Such methodologies can be organized into Properties, thus, a methodology has artifacts, processes and techniques. Then, each item is evaluated through a set of appropriate Quality Characteristics, depending on its nature. This paper proposes to evaluate a methodology as a product itself. This paper recommends a set of Quality Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics based on these standards in order to evaluate MDWE methodologies quality. Additionally, it defines an agile way to relate these Quality Sub-Characteristics to Properties with the sole purpose of not only analyzing, but also assessing and improving MDWE methodologies. The application of these Quality Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics could promote efficiency in methodologies since this kind of assessment enhances both the understanding of strengths and weaknesses of approaches.

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

software engineering
metrics/measurement
quality analysis and evaluation
software quality/sqa


On multi-processor speed scaling with migration ? We investigate a very basic problem in dynamic speed scaling where a sequence of jobs, each specified by an arrival time, a deadline and a processing volume, has to be processed so as to minimize energy consumption. We study multi-processor environments with m parallel variable-speed processors assuming that job migration is allowed, i.e. whenever a job is preempted it may be moved to a different processor. We first study the offline problem and show that optimal schedules can be computed efficiently in polynomial time, given any convex non-decreasing power function. In contrast to a previously known strategy, our algorithm does not resort to linear programming. For the online problem, we extend two algorithms Optimal Available and Average Rate proposed by Yao et al. [15] for the single processor setting. Here we concentrate on power functions P(s)=s? P ( s ) = s ? , where s is the processor speed and ?>1 ? > 1 is a constant.

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

energy efficiency
offline algorithm
online algorithm
flow computation
competitive analysis


Performance and energy impact of parallelization and vectorization techniques in modern microprocessors While Moores law states that the number of transistors is approximately doubled every 2years, powering these transistors simultaneously is only possible as long as Dennard scaling continues. Unfortunately, voltage scaling has slowed down in recent years, and microprocessor designers have hit what is known as the utilization wall or the dark silicon effect. Vectorization, parallelization, specialization and heterogeneity are the key approaches to deal with this utilization wall. However, how software developers can maximize energy efficiency of these architectures remains an open question. This paper presents an energy evaluation of parallelization using both physical and logical cores (i.e., SMT/Hyper-Threading), vectorization (SSE, Advanced Vector Extensions and NEON) and dynamic core reconfiguration [\(\hbox {Intel}^{\circledR }\)s Turbo Boost Technology (TBT)]. The evaluation spans microprocessors for embedded, laptop, desktop and server markets, since there is a convergence among them towards energy efficiency. The analyzed processors include Intels Core\(^\mathrm{TM}\) i5 and i7 family and ARM\(^{\circledR }\)s Cortex\(^\mathrm{TM}\) A9 and A15. Results show that software developers should prioritize vectorization over thread parallelism when possible, as it yields better energy efficiency, especially on the Intel platforms. Application scalability can be reduced drastically when using vectorization and threading simultaneously since vectorization increases pressure on the memory subsystem. Intels TBT further improves energy efficiency by an additional 1020% depending on the number of active threads.

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


a performing medium for working group graphics Writing and drawing together on a common display often assist a working group in a task. For example,face-to-face groups have long enjoyed the richness of graphic communication found on blackboards. The spontaneous image manipulations which take place over time on a blackboard can be viewed as a text-graphic performance . A human performer generates and manipulates text and graphics for the purpose of assisting the working group in their task.The phenomenon of performed text-graphics presents opportunities for research in the area of computer-supported cooperative work. 1] Spontaneous generation demands a performing medium where the focus is on live manipulation of text and graphics. Design of a computer-based medium with enough agility and generality to support blackboard-like activity is a challenge for interface design. 2] Agility and generality must not be achieved at the expense of specializability. After a group has initially sketched an idea in text and graphics, then that same medium should also support refining the sketch according to formal schema. 3] The performing medium can also be used as a recording medium for studying image manipulation as part of the working group process.This paper presents a stepwise approach to the design of a performing medium for working group graphics. First, examples of non-computer text-graphics for groups are examined to get a preliminary idea of the underlying phenomenon: the performing of text-graphic manipulation to assist working groups. Next key features of that kind of text-graphic manipulation are isolated. Then, third, the architecture and behavior of a graphics editor providing those features is described.

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

communication challenge task generation examples drawing design human schema graphics group paper writing place research behavior architecture text image support manipulation

activation
graphic design
computation
timing
general
computer-supported-cooperative-work
interface design
records
formalism
sketching
process
feature
refine


hp-version interior penalty DGFEMs for the biharmonic equation ? We construct hp-version interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods (DGFEMs) for the biharmonic equation, including symmetric and nonsymmetric interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin methods and their combinations: semisymmetric methods. Our main concern is to establish the stability and to develop the a priori error analysis of these methods. We establish error bounds that are optimal in h and slightly suboptimal in p. The theoretical results are confirmed by numerical experiments.

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


Linking DSSAT V3 to a relational database: the AGROSYSDSSAT interface This paper presents an information system that links the decision support system DSSAT V3 to a relational database named AGROSYS. They are coupled by a GUI (graphical user interface) which links crop simulation models in DSSAT and AGROSYS. This prototype runs on Microsoft Windows 95 with Access Version 7.0 or later. AGROSYS is a structured information system, which gives the user access to both data and information on many different agrobiological subjects. This information has been collected from literature reviews (including DSSAT manuals), field experimentation and the contributions of experts in many different areas. Since a relational database makes explicit and normalizes the system's dataset, the information is free of any redundancy or ambiguity, being easily updated.

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

crop models
relational database management
simulations


MOLECULAR EVENT EXTRACTION FROM LINK GRAMMAR PARSE TREES IN THE BIONLP09 SHARED TASK The BioNLP09 Shared Task deals with extracting information on molecular events, such as gene expression and protein localization, from natural language text. Information in this benchmark are given as tuples including protein names, trigger terms for each event, and possible other participants such as bindings sites. We address all three tasks of BioNLP09: event detection, event enrichment, and recognition of negation and speculation. Our method for the first two tasks is based on a deep parser; we store the parse tree of each sentence in a relational database scheme. From the training data, we collect the dependencies connecting any two relevant terms of a known tuple, that is, the shortest paths linking these two constituents. We encode all such linkages in a query language to retrieve similar linkages from unseen text. For the third task, we rely on a hierarchy of hand-crafted regular expressions to recognize speculation and negated events. In this paper, we added extensions regarding a post-processing step that handles ambiguous event trigger terms, as well as an extension of the query language to relax linkage constraints. On the BioNLP Shared Task test data, we achieve an overall F1-measure of 32%, 29%, and 30% for the successive Tasks 1, 2, and 3, respectively.

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

parse tree database
sentence parsing
text mining


User engagement in e-government systems implementation: A comparative case study of two Singaporean e-government initiatives Noting that user engagement is a key issue in e-government systems implementation and that the actual form and strategies of user engagement, especially within the context of e-government, is poorly defined, this paper intends to contribute to the research and practice of e-government systems implementation by conducting a comparative case study of two e-government systems implementation within a single government agency in Singapore. The comparative analysis of these two e-government systems implementation was accomplished through using stakeholder theory as a sense-making theoretical lens. This generated four findings pertaining to the form and strategies of user engagement in e-government systems implementation.

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

user engagement
systems implementation
stakeholder theory
comparative case study


How to meet in anonymous network A set of k mobile agents with distinct identifiers and located in nodes of an unknown anonymous connected network, have to meet at some node. We show that this gathering problem is no harder than its special case for k = 2, called the rendezvous problem, and design deterministic protocols solving the rendezvous problem with arbitrary startups in rings and in general networks. The measure of performance is the number of steps since the startup of the last agent until the rendezvous is achieved. For rings we design an oblivious protocol with cost O(n log l), where n is the size of the network and l is the minimum label of participating agents. This result is asymptotically optimal due to the lower bound showed by [A. Dessmark, P. Fraigniaud, D. Kowalski, A. Pelc, Deterministic rendezvous in graphs, Algorithmica 46 (2006) 69-96]. For general networks we show a protocol with cost polynomial in n and log l, independent of the maximum difference tau of startup times, which answers in the affirmative the open question by [A. Dessmark, P. Fraigniaud, D. Kowalski, A. Pelc, Deterministic rendezvous in graphs, Algorithmica 46 (2006) 69-96]. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

anonymous networks
distributed algorithms


Ubiquitous computing within cars: designing controls for non-visual use Increasingly, computing and communications-based technologies are being implemented within cars. There is a need for fundamental research and development to ensure that the control interfaces for future cars require minimal visual demands. The needs, abilities and preferences of drivers (in particular older drivers) are clearly a prime focus, as part of a user-centred design approach. In addition, it is argued that much can be learnt from the experience and strategies adopted by people who are blind or have low vision (a non-user group). The paper sets out a number of research questions regarding the inclusion of such people in the design process of future automobiles. (C) 2001 Academic Press.

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

vehicle ergonomics
haptic interfaces
visual impairments


Relating the SPICE framework and SEI approach to software process assessment In June 1993, an international effort (SPICE) was launched to develop a standard for software process assessment. An important goal of this effort is to harmonize existing process assessment approaches. This paper describes and characterizes SEI and SPICE software process assessment work and then highlights the similarities and differences. The following aspects are considered-underlying philosophy, goals, scope/domain, rating processes, underlying reference model, tailorability and impact on the international software community.

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


A Lower Bound of 1+? for Truthful Scheduling Mechanisms We study the mechanism design version of the unrelated machines scheduling problem, which is at the core of Algorithmic Game Theory and was first proposed and studied in a seminal paper of Nisan and Ronen. We give an improved lower bound of 1+??2.618 on the approximation ratio of deterministic truthful mechanisms for the makespan. The proof is based on a recursive preprocessing argument which yields a strictly increasing series of new lower bounds for each fixed number of machines n?4.

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

algorithmic game theory
mechanism design
truthful
lower bound

scheduling unrelated machines
dominant strategies
multiparameter mechanism design


CMOS-based near zero-offset multiple inputs max-min circuits and its applications CMOS-based near zero-offset multiple inputs maximum circuit and minimum circuits are proposed. The analog signal building blocks including shunt-feedback buffer, voltage-subtraction circuits and current mirrors are deployed for obtained the good performances. This achieved circuit is a simply scheme and able to work with low-power supplies. The input range is obtained around +/- 600 mV within +/- 1.5 V power supplies. Near zero-offset and low-output impedance are provided by proposed circuit. The delay of output is less than 5 ns for THD less than 1% and frequency response up to 500 MHz. Half-wave, full-wave rectifiers and 4 bits linear combination Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) are raised up to confirm the realistic applications. All performances including the DC-characteristic, frequency response, high-frequency wave output are simulated by PSpice.

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


Metal direct nanoimprinting for photonics In this paper metal direct nanoimprinting (embossing) for the production of metallic microparts is discussed, with a main focus on its suitability for the fabrication of metal-containing optical devices such as photonic crystals, plasmon waveguides or chiral structures. Silver and gold were chosen, since they have the lowest light absorption in the near infrared and visible range. They are also easily formable due to their good ductility, which can be further enhanced by processing at elevated temperature. The mold material, which may form part of the optical device, usually consisted of silicon, but other dielectric materials such as silicon oxide and silicon nitride were also successfully tested. Cylindrical and line-shaped holes with lateral dimensions down to 250nm and aspect ratios of up to 5 were etched in silicon wafers. All the structures were successfully filled with silver and gold, and the filling of smaller dimensions is also deemed possible. This technique is therefore suitable for producing metal-containing optical devices working in the infrared, at least down to the standard telecom wavelength of 1.5?m, which requires metallic dimensions of 200300nm.

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

microforming
coining
microforging
metamaterials
nanoimprint lithography
nano-printing


Optimising upload bandwidth for quality of VCR operations in P2P VoD systems Many P2P VoD systems have been proposed, but only few can support VCR operations. Most of the works require very well provisioned source servers to guarantee the quality. The challenge is to do the same without requiring well provisioned source servers. In this paper, we take the heterogeneity of bandwidth into consideration, and also consider the practical case in which the capacity of the streaming buffer is limited. With these conditions, we formulate the problem as an upload bandwidth optimisation problem. We first prove that this problem is NP-hard and then propose an optimal dynamic programming solution.

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

peer-to-peer
video-on-demand
vcr operation
bandwidth utilisation


An analysis of facial movement tracking in ordinary human-computer interaction Automatic tracking of facial movement is potentially important as a non-invasive source of physiological data in Affective Computing applications. Facial movement tracking software is becoming commercially available and affordable. This paper explores the association between facial and physiological responses to computer-based events, and the viability of facial movement tracking in detecting and distinguishing qualitative differences in users' facial movements under normal conditions of computer use. Fifteen participants took a web-based quiz. The quiz contained two relatively ordinary HCI events as stimuli: an alert intended to evoke surprise, and questions with high affective content intended to evoke amusement. From previous findings, the alert was expected to be the stronger of the two stimuli. Participants' physiological arousal was recorded and their faces videoed. The videos for the periods around each event were analysed by commercially available facial movement tracking software. Human judges considered participants' faces to have responded to both stimuli, but more to the stronger of the two stimuli. Facial response did not always concur with physiological arousal. The tracker detected reactions to the stronger stimulus but had mixed success with the weaker stimulus. The tracker also generated different data profiles for two different facial expressions. These findings support the supposition that users' facial expressions can and do respond to ordinary computer-based events, and indicate that facial movement tracking is becoming a viable technique, and is available to non-computer vision specialists. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

facial expression
usability
facial modelling
anthropomorphic interfaces


On the (n, m, k)-Cast Capacity of Wireless Ad Hoc Networks The capacity of wireless ad-hoc networks is analyzed for all kinds of information dissemination based on single and multiple packet reception schemes under the physical model. To represent the general information dissemination scheme, we use (n, m, k)-cast model [1] where n, m, and k (k <= m) are the number of nodes, destinations and closest destinations that actually receive packets from the source in each (n, m, k)-cast group, respectively. We first consider point-to-point communication, which implies single packet reception between transmitter-receiver pairs and compute the (n, m, k)-cast communications. Next, the achievable throughput capacity is computed when receiver nodes are endowed with multipacket reception (MPR) capability. We adopt maximum likelihood decoding (MLD) and successive interference cancellation as optimal and suboptimal decoding schemes for MPR. We also demonstrate that physical and protocol models for MPR render the same capacity when we utilize MLD for decoding.

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

maximum likelihood decoding (mld)
scaling law
wireless ad hoc network


SPARQL in the cloud using Rya We build a scalable RDF data management system in a cloud environment. Rya is based on Accumulo columnar store and OpenRDF Sesame framework. We used 3 indexed tables, SPO, POS, OSP, with triple data stored in the row ID. We implemented performance enhancements to scale to billions of triples and milliseconds query time for most queries. Rya provides fast and easy access to the data through SPARQL.

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


compact and efficient generation of radiance transfer for dynamically articulated characters We present a data-driven technique for generating the precomputed radiance transfer vectors of an animated character as a function of its joint angles. We learn a linear model for generating real-time lighting effects on articulated characters while capturing soft self-shadows caused by dynamic distant lighting. Indirect illumination can also be reproduced using our framework. Previous data-driven techniques have either restricted the type of lighting response (generating only ambient occlusion), the type of animated sequences (response functions to external forces) or have complicated runtime algorithms and incur non-trivial memory costs. We provide insights into the dimensionality reduction of the pose and coefficient spaces. Our model can be fit quickly as a preprocess, is very compact (~ 1 MB ) and runtime transfer vectors are generated using a simple algorithm in real-time (> 100 Hz using a CPU-only implementation.) We can reproduce lighting effects on hundreds of trained poses using less memory than required to store a single mesh's PRT coefficients. Moreover, our model extrapolates to produce smooth, believable lighting results on novel poses and our method can be easily integrated into existing interactive content pipelines.

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

real-time
model fitting
animated precomputed radiance transfer


Investigating different types of research collaboration and citation impact: a case study of Harvard Universitys publications This study aims to investigate the influence of different patterns of collaboration on the citation impact of Harvard Universitys publications. Those documents published by researchers affiliated with Harvard University in WoS from 20002009, constituted the population of the research which was counted for 124,937 records. Based on the results, only 12% of Harvard publications were single author publications. Different patterns of collaboration were investigated in different subject fields. In all 22 examined fields, the number of co-authored publications is much higher than single author publications. In fact, more than 60% of all publications in each field are multi-author publications. Also, the normalized citation per paper for co-authored publications is higher than that of single author publications in all fields. In addition, the largest number of publications in all 22 fields were also published through inter-institutional collaboration and were as a result of collaboration among domestic researchers and not international ones. In general, the results of the study showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the number of authors and the number of citations in Harvard publications. In addition, publications with more number of institutions have received more number of citations, whereas publications with more number of foreign collaborators were not much highly cited.

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 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


Dynamic Programming-Based Runtime Thermal Management (DPRTM): An Online Thermal Control Strategy for 3D-NoC Systems Complex thermal behavior inhibits the advancement of three-dimensional (3D) very-large-scale-integration (VLSI) system designs, as it could lead to ultra-high temperature hotspots and permanent silicon device damage. This article introduces a new runtime thermal management strategy to effectively diffuse and manage heat throughout 3D chip geometry for a better throughput performance in networks on chip (NoC). This strategy employs a dynamic programming-based runtime thermal management (DPRTM) policy to provide online thermal regulation. Reactive and proactive adaptive schemes are integrated to optimize the routing pathways depending on the critical temperature thresholds and traffic developments. Also, when the critical system thermal limit is violated, an urgent throttling will take place. The proposed DPRTM is rigorously evaluated through cycle-accurate simulations, and results show that the proposed approach outperforms conventional approaches in terms of computational efficiency and thermal stability. For example, the system throughput using the DPRTM approach can be improved by 33% when compared to other adaptive routing strategies for a given thermal constraint. Moreover, the DPRTM implementation presented in this article demonstrates that the hardware overhead is insignificant. This work opens a new avenue for exploring the on-chip adaptability and thermal regulation for future large-scale and 3D many-core integrations.

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

performance
networks on chip
thermal management
adaptive routing

design
algorithms
3d-ic
dynamic programming
traffic-thermal cosimulation
performance analysis


Runtime vs. manual data distribution for architecture-agnostic shared-memory programming models This paper compares data distribution methodologies for scaling the performance of OpenMP on NUMA architectures. We investigate the performance of automatic page placement algorithms implemented in the operating system, runtime algorithms based on dynamic page migration, runtime algorithms based on loop scheduling transformations and manual data distribution. These techniques present the programmer with trade-offs between performance and programming effort. Automatic page placement algorithms are transparent to the programmer, but may compromise memory access locality. Dynamic page migration algorithms are also transparent, but require careful engineering and tuned implementations to be effective. Manual data distribution requires substantial programming effort and architecture-specific extensions to the API, but may localize memory accesses in a nearly optimal manner. Loop scheduling transformations may or may not require intervention from the programmer, but conform better to an architecture-agnostic programming paradigm like OpenMP. We identify the conditions under which runtime data distribution algorithms can optimize memory access locality in OpenMP. We also present two novel runtime data distribution techniques, one based on memory access traces and another based on affinity scheduling of parallel loops. These techniques can be used to effectively replace manual data distribution in regular applications. The results provide a proof of concept that it is possible to scale a portable shared-memory programming model up to more than 100 processors, without modifying the API and without exposing architectural details to the programmer.

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

operating systems
runtime systems
performance evaluation


The Spectral Signal Processing Suite A software suite written in the Java programming language for the postprocessing of Chebyshev approximations to discontinuous functions is presented. It is demonstrated how to use the package to remove the effects of the Gibbs-Wilbraham phenomenon from Chebyshev approximations of discontinuous functions. Additionally, the package is used to postprocess Chebyshev collocation and Chebyshev super spectral viscosity approximations of hyperbolic partial differential equations. The postprocessing method is the Gegenbauer reconstruction procedure. The Spectral Signal Processing Suite is the first publicly available package that implements the procedure. State-of-the-art techniques are used to implement the algorithms with efficiency while reducing round-off error.

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

gegenbauer postprocessing
gibbs-wilbraham phenomenon
edge detection


Acetylcholine nicotinic receptors: finding the putative binding site of allosteric modulators using the "blind docking" approach Allosteric potentiation of acetylcholine nicotinic receptors is considered to be one of the most promising approaches for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. However, the exact localization of the allosteric binding site and the potentiation mechanism at the molecular level are presently unknown. We have performed the "blind docking" of three known allosteric modulators (galanthamine, codeine and eserine) with the Acetylcholine Binding Protein and models of human alpha 7, alpha 3 beta 4 and alpha 4 beta 2 nicotinic receptors, created by homology modeling. Three putative binding sites were identified in the channel pore, each one showing different affinities for the ligands. One of these sites is localized opposite to the agonist binding site and is probably implicated in the potentiation process. On the basis of these results, a possible mechanism for nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChRs) activation is proposed. The present findings may represent an important advance for understanding the allosteric modulation mechanism of nAChRs.

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

allosteric modulators
acetylcholine nicotinic receptors
docking


Learning Bayesian network parameters under order constraints We consider the problem of learning the parameters of a Bayesian network from data, while taking into account prior knowledge about the Signs Of influences between variables. Such prior knowledge can be readily obtained from domain experts. We show that this problem of parameter learning is a special case of isotonic regression and provide a simple algorithm for computing isotonic estimates. Our experimental results for a small Bayesian network in the medical domain show that taking prior knowledge about the signs of influences into account leads to an improved fit of the true distribution, especially when only a small sample of data is available. More importantly, however, the isotonic estimator provides parameter estimates that are consistent with the specified prior knowledge, thereby resulting in a network that is more likely to be accepted by experts in its domain of application. (C) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

bayesian networks
order-constrained estimation


Learning a hidden matching We consider the problem of learning a matching (i.e., a graph in which all vertices have degree 0 or 1) in a model where the only allowed operation is to query whether a set of vertices induces an edge. This is motivated by a problem that arises in molecular biology. In the deterministic nonadaptive setting, we prove a (1/2 + o(1))((n)(2)) upper bound and a nearly matching 0.32 ((n)(2)) lower bound for the minimum possible number of queries. In contrast, if we allow randomness, then we obtain (by a randomized, nonadaptive algorithm) a much lower O(n log n) upper bound, which is best possible (even for randomized fully adaptive algorithms).

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

matchings in graphs
combinatorial search problems
genome sequencing
finite projective planes


Combining rough decisions for intelligent text mining using Dempster's rule An important issue in text mining is how to make use of multiple pieces knowledge discovered to improve future decisions. In this paper, we propose a new approach to combining multiple sets of rules for text categorization using Dempster's rule of combination. We develop a boosting-like technique for generating multiple sets of rules based on rough set theory and model classification decisions from multiple sets of rules as pieces of evidence which can be combined by Dempster's rule of combination. We apply these methods to 10 of the 20-newsgroups-a benchmark data collection (Baker and McCallum 1998), individually and in combination. Our experimental results show that the performance of the best combination of the multiple sets of rules on the 10 groups of the benchmark data is statistically significant and better than that of the best single set of rules. The comparative analysis between the Dempster-Shafer and the majority voting (MV) methods along with an overfitting study confirm the advantage and the robustness of our approach.

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

rule induction
dempster's rule of combination


A New Model for Graph Matching and Its Algorithm Graph matching is a NP-Hard problem. In this paper, we relax the admissible set of permutation matrices and meantime incorporate a barrier function into the objective function. The resulted model is equivalent to the original model. Alternate iteration algorithm is designed to solve it. It is proven that the algorithm proposed is locally convergent. Our experimental results reveal that the proposed algorithm outperforms the algorithm in [1].

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 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

graph matching
alternate iteration algorithm


Integrating domain knowledge with statistical and data mining methods for high-density genomic SNP disease association analysis Genome-wide association studies can help identify multi-gene contributions to disease. As the number of high-density genomic markers tested increases, however, so does the number of loci associated with disease by chance. Performing a brute-force test for the interaction of four or more high-density genomic loci is unfeasible given the current computational limitations. Heuristics must be employed to limit the number of statistical tests performed. In this paper we explore the use of biological domain knowledge to supplement statistical analysis and data mining methods to identify genes and pathways associated with disease. We describe Pathway/SNP, a software application designed to help evaluate the association between pathways and disease. Pathway/SNP integrates domain knowledgeSNP, gene and pathway annotation from multiple sourceswith statistical and data mining algorithms into a tool that can be used to explore the etiology of complex diseases.

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 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 O O O O O O O O O O O

false discovery rate (fdr)
data integration
genome-wide association (gwa)
pathway-based disease association
single nucleotide polymorphisms (snp)


DIRECT ADAPTIVE CONTROL OF UNKNOWN NONLINEAR SYSTEMS USING A NEW NEURO-FUZZY METHOD TOGETHER WITH A NOVEL APPROACH OF PARAMETER HOPPING The direct adaptive regulation for affine in the control nonlinear dynamical systems possessing unknown nonlinearities, is considered in this paper. The method is based on a new Neuro-Fuzzy Dynamical System definition, which uses the concept of Fuzzy Dynamical Systems (FDS) operating in conjunction with High Order Neural Network Functions (F-HONNFs). Since the plant is considered unknown, we first propose its approximation by a special form of a fuzzy dynamical system (FDS) and in the sequel the fuzzy rules are approximated by appropriate HONNFs. The fuzzy-recurrent high order neural networks (F-RHONN) are used as models of the unknown plant, practically transforming the original unknown system into a F-RHONN model which is of known structure, but contains a number of unknown constant value parameters. The proposed scheme does not require a-priori experts' information on the number and type of input variable membership functions making it less vulnerable to initial design assumptions, is extremely fast and, hence, can be applied in several difficult and very demanding real-time engineering applications. When the F-RHONN model matches the unknown plant, we provide a comprehensive and rigorous analysis of the stability properties of the closed loop system. Convergence of the state to zero plus boundedness of all other signals in the closed loop is guaranteed without the need of parameter (weights) convergence, which is assured only if a sufficiency-of-excitation condition is satisfied. The existence of the control signal is always assured by introducing a novel method of parameter hopping and incorporating it in weight updating law. Simulations illustrate the approximation superiority of the proposed scheme in comparison to other well established approaches. The applicability of the method is also tested on well known simulated nonlinear plants where it is shown that by following the proposed procedure one can obtain asymptotic regulation. Comparison is also made to simple RHONN controllers, showing that our approach is superior to the case of simple RHONN's.

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

direct adaptive control
parameter hopping


Effects of representational guidance on domain specific reasoning in CSCL Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) aims at enhancing and supporting peer interaction and the joint construction of products through technology. This study investigated the effects of the joint construction of external representations on the collaborative process and the learning outcomes. By providing representational guidance, the study aimed at promoting co-elaborated and domain-specific reasoning. Since it is assumed that the representational format may be of influence on the collaborative process and outcomes, three representational formats, namely an argumentative diagram, an argument list and a matrix, were compared with a control group. Sixty-five student pairs from pre-university education collaborated on a historical writing task in a CSCL environment. The analyses included analyses of interaction processes in the chat, the quality of the co-constructed representation, the quality of the essay and the scores on the individual posttest. The results indicated that each representational format has its own affordances and constraints. For example, Matrix users talked more about historical changes, whereas Diagram users were more focused on the balance in their argumentation. However, this did not result in differences in the quality of historical reasoning in the essay, nor in outcomes on the posttest.

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

external representations
historical reasoning


Evaluating authoring tools for teachers as instructional designers The REDEEM authoring environment was developed to allow educators with no programming knowledge to design learning environments (simple Intelligent Tutoring Systems) for their students in a time-effective manner. The success of this approach depends on two key factors. Firstly, on the extent to which the authoring tool is usable by its intended author population (classroom teachers, university lecturers, adult trainers), and secondly, whether the resulting systems are effective at supporting learning. In this paper, a five year program is reviewed that evaluated the extent to which REDEEM has met these goals. The conclusion of the research is that in many ways REDEEM has exceeded the initial expectations for it, but that improvements to its design could further enhance its functionality.

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

e-learning
instructional design
classroom practice
evaluation


Parallel progressive ray-tracing A dynamic task allocation algorithm for ray-tracing by progressive refinement on a distributed-memory parallel computer is described. Parallelization of progressive ray-tracing is difficult because of the inherent sequential nature of the sample location generation process, which is optimized (and different) for any given image. We report on experimental results obtained from our implementation of this algorithm on a Meiko parallel computer. The three performance measures of the algorithm, namely, load-balance, speedup, and image quality, are shown to be good.

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

ray tracing
adaptive sampling
load balancing


An

introduction

to

the

hydrological

modelling

system

PREVAH

and

its

pre-

and

post-processing-tools

Spatially

distributed

modelling

is

an

important

instrument

for

studying

the

hydrological

cycle,

both

concerning

its

present

state

as

well

as

possible

future

changes

in

climate

and

land

use.

Results

of

such

simulations

are

particularly

relevant

for

the

fields

of

water

resources,

natural

hazards

and

hydropower.

The

semi-distributed

hydrological

modelling

system

PREVAH

(PREecipitation-Runoff-EVApotranspiration

HRU

Model)

implements

a

conceptual

process-oriented

approach

and

has

been

developed

especially

to

suit

conditions

in

mountainous

environments

with

their

highly

variable

environmental

and

climatic

conditions.

This

article

presents

an

overview

of

the

actual

model

core

of

PREVAH

and

introduces

the

various

tools

which

have

been

developed

for

obtaining

a

comprehensive,

user-friendly

modelling

system:

DATAWIZARD

for

importing

and

managing

hydrometeorological

data,

WINMET

for

pre-processing

meteorological

data,

GRIDMATH

for

carrying

out

elementary

raster

data

operations,

FAOSOIL

for

processing

FAO

World

Soil

Map

information,

WINHRU

for

pre-processing

spatial

data

and

aggregating

hydrological

response

units

(HRU),

WINPREVAH

for

operating

the

model,

HYDROGRAPH

for

visualising

hydrograph

data

and

VIEWOPTIM

for

visualising

the

calibration

procedure.

The

PREVAH

components

introduced

here

support

a

modelling

task

from

pre-processing

the

data

over

the

actual

model

calibration

and

validation

to

visualising

and

interpreting

the

results

(post-processing).

A

brief

overview

of

current

PREVAH

applications

demonstrates

the

flexibility

of

the

modelling

system

with

examples

that

range

from

water

balance

modelling

over

flood

estimation

and

flood

forecasting

to

drought

analysis

in

Switzerland,

Austria,

China,

Russia

and

Sweden.

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

hydrological modelling
hydrological response units
model calibration
modelling system

mountain hydrology
process-based model
pre-processing
post-processing
hbv-type model


Building the blocks of protocol design and analysis - Challenges and lessons learned from case studies on mobile ad hoc routing and micro-mobility protocols With the emergence of new application-specific sensor and Ad-hoc networks, increasingly complex and custom protocols will be designed and deployed. We propose a framework to systematically design and evaluate networking protocols based on a 'building block' approach. In this approach, each protocol is broken down into a set of parameterized modules called "building blocks", each having its own specific functionality. The properties of these building blocks and their interaction define the overall behavior of the protocol. In this paper, we aim to identify the major research challenges and questions in the building block approach. By addressing some of those questions, we point out potential directions to analyze and understand the behavior of networking protocols systematically. We discuss two case studies on utilizing the building block approach for analyzing Ad-hoc routing protocols and IP mobility protocols in a systematic manner.

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

performance
protocol design
protocol analysis
mobile ad hoc network
micro-mobility


path tracing using the ar350 processor The AR350 is a ray tracing processor developed by Advanced Rendering Technologies. By using AR350 processors arrays, the PURE and RenderDrive products achieve high performances in Ray Tracing based rendering. In this paper we present an extension of their capabilities to global illumination computation by implementing Path Tracing based methods. Because the core program of these rendering appliances is not modifiable but driven by a Render-Man compliant interface, we achieve this goal by writing dedicated shaders. We obtain better indirect illumination than with the use of standard shaders and keep high performances by the exclusive use of the AR350 processors array for all intersection tests.

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

path tracing
ar350
renderman
global illumination


Determination of electromagnetic torque with on-line computation of the optimal radius of the integration contour Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to calculate the electromagnetic torque at a radius of an integration contour for which an optimal value is determined. Design/methodology/approach - To analyze electrical machine dynamics, the electromagnetic torque should be precisely determined. This paper presents a method for calculating the torque, where the radius of the integration contour is variable and estimated from the field distribution. Findings - The electromagnetic torque of the three-phase AC motor model proposed in TEAM Problem No. 30 is estimated using the proposed method. The obtained results are compared to solutions obtained analytically. Originality/value - This paper examines the application of the presented method to determine the electromagnetic torque in three-phase AC motors.

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


Applying 3D human model in a posture recognition system This paper proposes an approach to recognise human postures in video sequences, which combines a 2D approach with a 3D human model. The 3D model is a realistic articulated human model which is used to obtain reference postures to compare with test postures. Several 2D approaches using different silhouette representations are compared with each other: projections of moving pixels on the reference axis, Hu moments and skeletonisation. We are interested in a set of specific postures which are representative of typical video understanding applications. We describe results for recognition of general postures (e.g. standing) and detailed postures (e.g. standing with one arm up) in ambiguous/optimal viewpoint with good/bad segmented silhouette to show the effectiveness of our approach.

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

human posture
vision and image processing
horizontal and vertical projections
image skeletonisation


High-Performance Hardware Architectures for Galois Counter Mode Various high-performance hardware architectures for Galois Counter Mode (GCM) in conjunction with various Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) circuits and multiplier-adders are proposed. A total of 17 GCM-AES circuits were synthesized by using a 130-nm CMOS standard cell library, and the trade-offs between speed and hardware resources were evaluated. Our flexible architectures achieved a wide variety of performances from compact (2.56 Gbps with 34.5 Kgates) to high speed (62.6 Gbps with 979.3 Kgates). All of our architectures support key sizes of 128, 192, and 256 bits, while only one previous approach does. Even with variable-length key support, our architecture also achieved the highest hardware efficiency (defined as throughput per gate) among the designs using the same generation of process technology.

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

asic
high-speed hardware
multiplier
s-box
vlsi


Strong consistency of the over- and underdetermined LSE of 2-D exponentials in white noise We consider the problem of least squares estimation of the parameters of two-dimensional (2-D) exponential signals observed in the presence of an additive noise field, when the assumed number of exponentials is incorrect. We consider both the case where the number of exponential signals is underestimated, and the case where the number of exponential signals is overestimated. In the case where the number of exponential signals is underestimated, we prove the almost sure convergence of the least squares estimates (LSE) to the parameters of the dominant exponentials. In the case where the number of exponential signals is overestimated, the estimated parameter vector obtained by the least squares estimator contains a subvector that converges almost surely to the correct parameters of the exponentials.

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

least squares estimation
strong consistency

model-order selection
random fields
two-dimensional (2-d) exponentials
2-d parameter estimation


usability evaluation of horizontal navigation bar with drop-down menus by middle aged adults The Web has become an extremely important source of information and services that have been made widely available. Navigation is an important aspect in designing a Web site in order to make the information easy to find, however the task of organizing and structuring information from a website can become complex as the set of information and services provided increases. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of eight different types of menus while performing two tasks for each menu. The target for the experiment was of people aged over 40 and some experience in using the Internet. The experiment revealed that menus which presented properties more commonly found in web applications, the task completion time and number of errors was lower, during the sessions.

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

web accessibility
user interface
interaction


Finite Termination of Inexact Proximal Point Algorithms in Hilbert Spaces In the present paper, we study the finite termination of sequences generated by inexact proximal point algorithms for finding zeroes of a maximal monotone (set-valued) operator \(T\) on a Hilbert space. Under some mild conditions, we get that a sequence generated by inexact proximal point algorithm stops after a finite number of iterations. Our results extend the corresponding results in Rockafellar (SIAM J Control Optim 14:877898, 1976). In particular, for optimization problems, our results improve corresponding results in Ferris (Math Progr 50:359366, 1991). As applications, we obtain finite termination of projected gradient method.

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

finite termination
inexact proximal point algorithms
maximal monotone
projected gradient method


Lossless acceleration of fractal image encoding via the fast Fourier transform In fractal image compression the encoding step is computationally expensive. We present a new technique for reducing the encoding complexity. It is lossless, i.e., it does not sacrifice any image reconstruction quality for the sake of speedup. It is based on a codebook coherence characteristic of fractal image compression and leads to a novel application of the fast Fourier transform-based cross correlation. The proposed method is particularly well suited for use with highly irregular image partitions for which most traditional (lossy) acceleration schemes lose a large part of their efficiency. For large ranges our approach outperforms other currently known lossless acceleration methods.

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 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

complexity reduction
fft
cross-correlation


Memetic algorithms for the job shop scheduling problem with operators New neighborhood structures for the job shop scheduling problem with operators (JSO) are proposed and analyzed. A new memetic algorithm is proposed for the JSO that incorporates the neighborhood structures in the local search procedure. An experimental study was conducted showing that the memetic algorithm compares favorably with the state-of-the-art.

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

metaheuristics
scheduling with operators


Evaluating effects of data popularity on performance of caching strategy in pull-based data boradcast systems A data broadcast in wireless environments is one of efficient methods to disseminate data from a server to a number of clients. In data broadcast systems, a caching can be a useful technique to alleviate performance degradation by reducing contention for narrow bandwidth due to broadcast requests. In this paper, for pull-based data broadcast systems we propose a caching strategy which is expected to have prefetching effects by considering data popularity among clients. Then, we evaluate the proposed strategy through a simulation approach to analyze the prefetching effects. According to the results, in normal case the proposed strategy generally shows better performance than other strategies in terms of average response time.

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


Non-adaptive second-order generalized integrator for sinusoidal parameters estimation In this paper, a simple method for frequency, amplitude and phase estimation of a single sinusoidal signal is proposed. The approach described herein uses an orthogonal signals generator based on a Second-Order Generalized Integrator (SOGI). The frequency, amplitude and phase are estimated on the base of straightforward explicit formulas without any adaption of SOGI parameters. The method is implemented as a dynamic third- or fourth-order system according to specified cost function to be minimized. In case of highly corrupted signal a double-SOGI scheme can be used to further improve the filtering capabilities. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated through simulated experiments and comparisons with existing methods.

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

second-order generalized integrator
adaptive estimation


The role of social media in higher education classes (real and virtual) A literature review The ubiquity of social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) is no more apparent than at the university. Social media are increasingly visible in higher education settings as instructors look to technology to mediate and enhance their instruction as well as promote active learning for students. Many scholars argue for the purposeful integration of social media as an educational tool. Empirical evidence, however, has lagged in supporting the claim. Most of the existing research on the utility and effectiveness of social media in the higher education class is limited to self-reported data (e.g., surveys, questionnaires) and content analyses. This paper summarizes the scholarly writings as well as reviews the findings of empirical investigations. Some limitations are discussed, and future areas of research are proposed.

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

social media
higher education
facebook
twitter


Automatic system for detecting driver use of mobile phones This paper presents the preliminary results for an automatic electronic system for detecting driver use of mobile phones for voice communications. An electronic circuit (Radio Frequency harvesting) captures the power generated by mobile-phone use and two antennae located inside the vehicle and a signal analysis algorithm are used to identify when the driver is using a mobile phone. Practical tests have been conducted in which the event is detected in the worst operating conditions. The system could be used in research work into automatic detection of mobile-phone use (instead of using autotest or direct human inspection), in automobile insurance as part of a Pay-As-You-Drive system, or even in implementation of automated safety devices inside the vehicle.

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


Four-point wavelets and their applications Multiresolution analysis (MRA) and wavelets provide useful and efficient tools for representing functions at multiple levels of details. Wavelet representations have been used in a broad range of applications, including image compression, physical simulation and numerical analysis. In this paper, the authors construct a new class of wavelets, called four-point wavelets, based on an interpolatory four-point subdivision scheme. They are of local support, symmetric and stable. The analysis and synthesis algorithms have linear time complexity. Depending on different weight parameters omega, the scaling functions and wavelets generated by the four-point subdivision scheme are of different degrees of smoothness. Therefore the user can select better wavelets relevant to the practice among the classes of wavelets. The authors apply the four-point wavelets in signal compression. The results show that the four-point wavelets behave much better than B-spline wavelets in many situations.

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

wavelet
multiresolution
signal compression


sw development projects in academia A significant amount of current software engineering research is conducted within the context of computer science and computing departments or colleges. Similarly, software engineering degree programs are being developed by such academic units as well as within engineering colleges [1]. However, every computer or computing department has its own experiences, successes or pitfalls in software engineering (SE) and software development (SD) teaching, which would be useful to share and discuss with the education community. In this paper we discuss the experiences and results from four years of teaching "Projects in Computer Science" in Computer Information Systems (CIS) Diploma and "Software Engineering" in Bachelor of Computer Information Systems (BCIS) Degree programs [2] at Okanagan College. Also we provide analysis and evaluation for several already finished and current projects. The class teaching in both programs was organized into two parts. The learning of SD in the CIS as well as SE in the BCIS programs were synchronized with the practical SD and SE projects with real sponsors from industry and academia in small and medium size groups of students (3--6 members in SD and 5--11 members in SE projects). Students developed their final projects incorporating four main Rational Unified Process phases [3] and 4--7 short iterations typical to the Agile SD process. Additionally, in the SE projects students learned and used Extreme Programming (XP) iterative process [4]. In several projects students successfully combined Software prototyping [5] with Agile SD and Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools [6]. Instructors supervised and supported students in the role of sponsors or mediators. Many student groups were able to develop impressive, high quality final project applications and systems. The sponsors provided very positive feedback and references for most of the projects.

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

college
computer information systems
software development
projects


on the impact of far-away interference on evaluations of wireless multihop networks It is common practice in wireless multihop network evaluations to ignore interfering signals below a certain signal strength threshold. This paper investigates the thesis that this produces highly inaccurate evaluations in many cases. We start by defining a bounded version of the physical interference model, in which interference generated by transmitters located beyond a certain distance s from a receiver is ignored. We then derive a lower bound on neglected interference and show that it is approximately two orders of magnitude greater than the noise floor for typical parameter values and a surprisingly small number of nodes. We next evaluate the effect of neglected interference through extensive simulations done with a widely-used packet-level simulator (GTNetS), considering 802.11 MAC with both CBR and TCP traffic in networks of varying size and topology. The results of these simulations show very large evaluation errors when neglecting far-away interference: errors in evaluating aggregate throughput when using the default interference model reached up to 210\% with 100 nodes, and errors in individual flow throughput were far greater.

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


Restricted robust uniform matroid maximization under interval uncertainty For the problem of selecting p items with interval objective function coefficients so as to maximize total profit, we introduce the r-restricted robust deviation criterion and seek solutions that minimize the r-restricted robust deviation. This new criterion increases the modeling power of the robust deviation (minmax regret) criterion by reducing the level of conservatism of the robust solution. It is shown that r-restricted robust deviation solutions can be computed efficiently. Results of experiments and comparisons with absolute robustness, robust deviation and restricted absolute robustness criteria are reported.

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


Learning multi-kernel distance functions using relative comparisons In this manuscript, a new form of distance function that can model spaces where a Mahalanobis distance cannot be assumed is proposed. Two novel learning algorithms are proposed to allow that distance function to be learnt, assuming only relative-comparisons training examples. This allows a distance function to be learnt in non-linear, discontinuous spaces, avoiding the need for labelled or quantitative information. The first algorithm builds a set of basic distance bases. The second algorithm improves generalisation capability by merging different distance bases together. It is shown how the learning algorithms produce a distance function for clustering multiple disjoint clusters belonging to the same class. Crucially, this is achieved despite the lack of any explicit form of class labelling on the training data.

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

distance function learning
multi-kernel basis
basis grouping


Uptake and joint action In natural language dialogue, the way a responder takes up the initiative of a participant, largely influences the further course of the dialogue. This uptake mechanism can be understood as a negotiation at a meta level: an initiative counts as a bid of a dialogue game; an appropriate response counts as an acceptance of the bid. We propose to extend this account of uptake to other conventional joint activities besides dialogue. We show that for an uptake mechanism to be effective, a joint activity must be characterisable in terms of initiatives and responses, with projection rules that indicate what initiatives count as a bid for a joint action, and appropriateness rules that indicate what responses count as appropriate.

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


Controller design for synchronization of an array of delayed neural networks using a controllable probabilistic PSO ? In this paper, a controllable probabilistic particle swarm optimization (CPPSO) algorithm is introduced based on Bernoulli stochastic variables and a competitive penalized method. The CPPSO algorithm is proposed to solve optimization problems and is then applied to design the memoryless feedback controller, which is used in the synchronization of an array of delayed neural networks (DNNs). The learning strategies occur in a random way governed by Bernoulli stochastic variables. The expectations of Bernoulli stochastic variables are automatically updated by the search environment. The proposed method not only keeps the diversity of the swarm, but also maintains the rapid convergence of the CPPSO algorithm according to the competitive penalized mechanism. In addition, the convergence rate is improved because the inertia weight of each particle is automatically computed according to the feedback of fitness value. The efficiency of the proposed CPPSO algorithm is demonstrated by comparing it with some well-known PSO algorithms on benchmark test functions with and without rotations. In the end, the proposed CPPSO algorithm is used to design the controller for the synchronization of an array of continuous-time delayed neural networks.

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 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 B I

controllable probabilistic particle swarm optimization (cppso)


Spectrum Efficiency Evaluation with Diversity Combining for Fading and Branch Correlation Impairments In this paper, closed-form expressions for capacities per unit bandwidth for fading channels with impairments due to Branch Correlation are derived for optimal power and rate adaptation, constant transmit power, channel inversion with fixed rate, and truncated channel inversion policies for maximal ratio combining diversity reception case. Closed-form expressions for system spectrum efficiency when employing different adaptation policies are derived. Analytical results show accurately that optimal power and rate adaptation policy provides the highest capacity over other adaptation policies. In the case of errors due to branch correlation, optimal power and rate adaptation policy provides the best results. All adaptation policies suffer no improvement in channel capacity as the branch correlation is increased. This fact is verified using various plots for different policies. With increase in branch correlation, capacity gains are significantly larger for optimal power and rate adaptation policy as compared to the other policies. The outage probability for branch correlation is also derived and analyzed using plots for the same.

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

optimal power and rate adaptation
constant transmit power
channel inversion with fixed rate
truncated channel inversion
outage probability


Scheduling of Synchronous Data Flow Models onto Scratchpad Memory-Based Embedded Processors In this article, we propose a heuristic algorithm for scheduling synchronous data flow (SDF) models on scratch pad memory (SPM) enhanced processors with the objective of minimizing its steady-state execution time. The task involves partitioning the limited on-chip SPM for actor code and data buffer, and executing actors in such a manner that the physical SPM is time shared with different actors and buffers (formally defined as code overlay and data overlay, respectively). In our setup, a traditional minimum buffer schedule could result in very high code overlay overhead and therefore may not be optimal. To reduce the number of direct memory access (DMA) transfers, actors need to be grouped into segments. Prefetching of code and data overlay that overlaps DMA transfers with actor executions also need to be exploited. The efficiency of the our heuristic was evaluated by compiling ten stream applications onto one synergistic processing engine (SPE) of an IBM Cell Broadband Engine. We compare the performance results of our heuristic approach with a minimum buffer scheduling approach and a 3-stage ILP approach, and show that our heuristic is able to generate high quality solutions with fast algorithm run time.

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

algorithms
design
scratchpad memory
stream computing
compiler
embedded systems