A new well-solvable class of PNS problems A manufacturing system consists of operating units which convert their input materials into their output materials. In the problem of designing a process network. we have to find a suitable network of operating units which produces the desired products from the given raw materials. If we consider this process network design problem from a structural point of view. then we obtain a combinatorial optimization problem called the Process Network Synthesis or (PNS) problem. It is known that the PNS problem is NP-complete. Here, a new method is presented to reduce the solution of some more difficult PNS problems to the solution of simpler ones, and using this method, a new well-solvable class of PNS problems is established.

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

combinatorial optimization
network design


Packet Scheduling for Cellular Relay Networks by Considering Relay Selection, Channel Quality, and Packet Utility In this paper, we propose a packet scheduling algorithm for cellular relay networks by considering relay selection, variation of channel quality, and packet delay. In the networks, mobile users are equipped with not only cellular but also user relaying radio interfaces, where base station exploits adaptive high speed downlink channel. Our proposed algorithm selects a user with good cellular channel condition as a relay station for other users with bad cellular channel condition but can get access to relay link with good quality. This can achieve flexible packet scheduling by adjusting transmission rates of cellular link. Packets are scheduled for transmission depending on scheduling indexes which are calculated based on user's achieved transmission rate, packet utility, and proportional fairness of their throughput. The performance results obtained by using computer simulation show that the proposed scheduling algorithm is able to achieve high network capacity, low packet loss, and good fairness in terms of received throughput of mobile users.

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

packet delay
relay selection
scheduling algorithm
throughput


Kernel Factory: An ensemble of kernel machines We propose an ensemble method for kernel machines. The training data is randomly split into a number of mutually exclusive partitions defined by a row and column parameter. Each partition forms an input space and is transformed by an automatically selected kernel function into a kernel matrix K. Subsequently, each K is used as training data for a base binary classifier (Random Forest). This results in a number of predictions equal to the number of partitions. A weighted average combines the predictions into one final prediction. To optimize the weights, a genetic algorithm is used. This approach has the advantage of simultaneously promoting (1) diversity, (2) accuracy, and (3) computational speed. (1) Diversity is fostered because the individual Ks are based on a subset of features and observations, (2) accuracy is sought by automatic kernel selection and the genetic algorithm, and (3) computational speed is obtained because the computation of each K can be parallelized. Using five times twofold cross validation we benchmark the classification performance of Kernel Factory against Random Forest and Kernel-Induced Random Forest (KIRF). We find that Kernel Factory has significantly better performance than Kernel-Induced Random Forest. When the right kernel is selected Kernel Factory is also significantly better than Random Forest. In addition, an open-source R-software package of the algorithm (kernelFactory) is available from CRAN.

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

kernel factory
classification
genetic algorithm
random forest


Robustness Against the Decision-Maker's Attitude to Risk in Problems With Conflicting Objectives In multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs), the Pareto set consists of efficient solutions that represent the best trade-offs between the conflicting objectives. Many forms of uncertainty affect the MOP, including uncertainty in the decision variables, parameters or objectives. A source of uncertainty that is not studied in the evolutionary multiobjective optimization (EMO) literature is the decision-maker's attitude to risk (DMAR) even though it has great significance in real-world applications. Often the decision-makers change over the course of the decision-making process and thus, some relevant information about preferences of future decision-makers is unknown at the time a decision is made. This poses a major risk to organizations because a new decision-maker may simply reject a decision that has been made previously. When an EMO technique attempts to generate the set of nondominated solutions for a problem, then DMAR-related uncertainty needs to be reduced. Solutions generated by an EMO technique should be robust against perturbations caused by the DMAR. In this paper, we focus on the DMAR as a source of uncertainty and present two new types of robustness in MOP. In the first type, dominance robustness (DR), the robust Pareto solutions are those which, if perturbed, would have a high chance to move to another Pareto solution. In the second type, preference robustness (PR), the robust Pareto solutions are those that are close to each other in configuration space. Dominance robustness captures the ability of a solution to move along the Pareto optimal front under some perturbative variation in the decision space, while PR captures the ability of a solution to produce a smooth transition (in the decision variable space) to its neighbors (defined in the objective space). We propose methods to quantify these robustness concepts, modify existing EMO techniques to capture robustness against the DMAR, and present test problems to examine both DR and PR.

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


Interactive multi-modal suturing We present a mechanics-based interactive multi-modal environment designed as part of a serious gaming platform. The specific objectives are to teach basic suturing and knotting techniques for simple skin or soft tissue wound closure. The pre-wound suturing target, skin, or deformable tissue is modeled as a modified mass-spring system. The suturing material is designed as a mechanics-based deformable linear object. Tools involved in a typical suturing procedures are also simulated. Collision management modules between the soft tissue and the needle, the soft tissue and the suture are analyzed. In addition to modeling the interactive environment of a typical suturing procedure, basics of the modeling approaches on the evaluation of a stitch formed by the user are also discussed. For example, if needle insertion points are too close from each other or to the edge of the wound, when the suture is pulled, the suture will tear the soft tissue instead of suturing the incision together. Experiment results show that our simulator can run on a standard personal computer and allow users to perform different suturing patterns with smooth graphics and haptic feedback.

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

virtual suturing
suture model
tissue tearing
surgical training environment
serious games


Measuring load distribution on the outer raceways of rotating machines The ring of the roller bearing is equipped with a capacitive probe. This device enables to calculate distribute on coefficients of the load. These probes measure with a high accuracy bearing paths displacements. These probes enable to determine the transmitted load. Load can be determined in an easy way.

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

rolling bearing
raceway
load distribution measurement


Hardware Support for Fine-Grained Event-Driven Computation in Anton 2 Exploiting parallelism to accelerate a computation typically involves dividing it into many small tasks that can be assigned to different processing elements. An efficient execution schedule for these tasks can be difficult or impossible to determine in advance, however, if there is uncertainty as to when each task's input data will be available. Ideally, each task would run in direct response to the arrival of its input data, thus allowing the computation to proceed in a fine-grained event-driven manner. Realizing this ideal is difficult in practice, and typically requires sacrificing flexibility for performance. In Anton 2, a massively parallel special-purpose supercomputer for molecular dynamics simulations, we addressed this challenge by including a hardware block, called the dispatch unit, that provides flexible and efficient support for fine-grained event-driven computation. Its novel features include a many-to-many mapping from input data to a set of synchronization counters, and the ability to prioritize tasks based on their type. To solve the additional problem of using a fixed set of synchronization counters to track input data for a potentially large number of tasks, we created a software library that allows programmers to treat Anton 2 as an idealized machine with infinitely many synchronization counters. The dispatch unit, together with this library, made it possible to simplify our molecular dynamics software by expressing it as a collection of independent tasks, and the resulting fine-grained execution schedule improved overall performance by up to 16% relative to a coarse-grained schedule for precisely the same computation.

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

performance
parallel
dispatch unit
anton 2


Eigenface-domain super-resolution for face recognition Face images that are captured by surveillance cameras usually have a very low resolution, which significantly limits the performance of face recognition systems. In the past, super-resolution techniques have been proposed to increase the resolution by combining information from multiple images. These techniques use super-resolution as a preprocessing step to obtain a high-resolution image that is later passed to a face recognition system. Considering that most state-of-the-art face recognition systems use an initial dimensionality reduction method, we propose to transfer the super-resolution reconstruction from pixel domain to a lower dimensional face space. Such an approach has the advantage of a significant decrease in the computational complexity of the super-resolution reconstruction. The reconstruction algorithm no longer tries to obtain a visually improved high-quality image, but instead constructs the information required by the recognition system directly in the low dimensional domain without any unnecessary overhead. In addition, we show that face-space super-resolution is more robust to registration errors and noise than pixel-domain super-resolution because of the addition of model-based constraints.

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 O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 range extension
multiframe reconstruction
super-resolution


Data reordering converter: an interface block in a linear chain of processing arrays This paper addresses the problem of hardware synthesis of data reordering converter intended to reorganize the layout of transferred data between various processing stages (components) with different I/O format requirements. The proposed design is based on two objectives: (a) fixed bandwidth to main memory, and (b) scalability to higher performance without increasing main-memory bandwidth. The data reordering converter involves two address transformators and an array of dual-port RAMs. The use of distributed dual-port RAM architecture provides several benefits. First, to exploits parallelism, second, to achieve very high-speed data transfer, and third, to allow random access to data elements within the stream. We outline a new architecture for interfacing processing stages in a linear chain, which operate in a pipeline-parallel fashion that trades speed advantages of systolic/processor arrays with area advantages of high wire organizations. An implementation, in VLSI, of address transformators is described, and shown why data reordering converter is useful in designing special purpose high-performance computing for embedded digital signal processing applications.

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

data reordering converter
digital signal processing

address transformator
accelerator
memory bandwidth
scalable coprocessor system


robust symbolic regression with affine arithmetic We use affine arithmetic to improve both the performance and the robustness of genetic programming for symbolic regression. During evolution, we use affine arithmetic to analyze expressions generated by the genetic operators, estimating their output range given the ranges of their inputs over the training data. These estimated output ranges allow us to discard trees that contain asymptotes as well as those whose output is too far from the desired output range determined by the training instances. We also perform linear scaling of outputs before fitness evaluation. Experiments are performed on 15 problems, comparing the proposed system with a baseline genetic programming system with protected operators, and with a similar system based on interval arithmetic. Results show that integrating affine arithmetic with an implementation of standard genetic programming reduces the number of fitness evaluations during training and improves generalization performance, minimizes overfitting, and completely avoids extreme errors of unseen test data.

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

robustness
affine arithmetic
symbolic regression


A fuzzy-based reliability system for knowledge sharing between robots in P2P JXTA-overlay platform The design of an efficient collaborative multi-robot framework that ensures the autonomy and the individual requirements of the involved robots is a very challenging task. This requires designing an efficient platform for inter-robot communication. P2P is a good approach to achieve this goal. P2P aims at making the communication ubiquitous thereby crossing the communication boundary and has many attractive features to use it as a platform for collaborative multi-robot environments. In this paper, we present our implemented P2P system based on JXTA Overlay. We use JXTA Overlay as a platform for robot collaboration and knowledge sharing. We also propose a fuzzy-based peer reliability system for JXTA-Overlay platform considering three parameters: Actual Behavior Criterion (ABC), Mutually Agreed Behavior (MAB) and Reputation (R). We evaluated the knowledge sharing system by many experiments and show that this system has a good performance and can be used successfully for knowledge sharing between robots. Also, we present some simulation results, which show the fuzzy-based peer reliability system has a good behavior and can successfully select the best peer candidate.

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


Inspection scheduling for imperfect production processes under free repair warranty contract The paper considers scheduling of inspections for imperfect production processes where the process shift time from an in-control state to an out-of-control state is assumed to follow an arbitrary probability distribution with an increasing failure (hazard) rate and the products are sold with a free repair warranty (FRW) contract. During each production run, the process is monitored through inspections to assess its state. If at any inspection the process is found in out-of-control state, then restoration is performed. The model is formulated under two different inspection policies: (i) no action is taken during a production run unless the system is discovered in an out-of-control state by inspection and (ii) preventive repair action is undertaken once the in-control state of the process is detected by inspection. The expected sum of pre-sale and post-sale costs per unit item is taken as a criterion of optimality. We propose a computational algorithm to determine the optimal inspection policy numerically, as it is quite hard to derive analytically. To ease the computational difficulties, we further employ an approximate method which determines a suboptimal inspection policy. A comparison between the optimal and suboptimal inspection policies is made and the impact of FRW on the optimal inspection policy is investigated in a numerical example.

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

imperfect production processes
inspection
warranty


A multi-degree of freedom piezoelectric vibration energy harvester with piezoelectric elements inserted between two nearby oscillators The proposed two degree of freedom piezoelectric vibration energy harvester could generate 9.78 times energy than that of a conventional two degree of freedom piezoelectric vibration energy harvester. The improvements of harvesting performance can be achieved with minor modification to the system. A comparison of piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters from one degree of freedom to five degree of freedom has been conducted. A generalized multiple degree of freedom piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting model is presented for parameter study and dimensionless analysis.

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

vibration energy harvester
multiple degree of freedom
piezoelectric elements
oscillators


collaborative sketching with distributed displays and multimodal interfaces In this paper we describe a system design for supporting creative group activities using distributed displays and multimodal interaction. We describe the rationale behind our approach and proposed interaction techniques for supporting collaborative sketching. Our goal is to understand how the interface metaphor, display space and interaction modalities may influence exploration and communication in collaborative settings.

O O 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

creativity support
multi-display environments
collaboration
design tools


ethics education in the microchip millennium In today's fast-paced, technology-dependent society, individuals are often confronted with a wide variety of ethical dilemmas and moral issues when living, learning and working in an Information Technology (IT) environment. In many instances, IT users find themselves at a loss, because it is often not clear which, if any, moral rule applies. In addition, if two or more moral rules are relevant this can also lead to problems and confusion, particularly if those rules clash. Furthermore, ethical ignorance concerning IT security and IT-related crimes, not withstanding overt disregard, can cause many individuals to make inappropriate decisions, such as virus creation, the invasion of privacy and the proliferation of e-mail hoaxes. In this paper, which is designed to guide and assist both educators and administrators in their efforts to improve, expand and/or create an ethics workshop or credit course, the authors will discuss the unethical actions associated with IT and the motivations that are often promulgated by lack of awareness. The authors also point out the increasing and critical need for universities and colleges to take a more active role--including, but not limited to, compulsory ethics education--in preparing students, faculty and staff for the ethical IT dilemmas they may encounter both academically and professionally in the "Microchip Millennium.

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

ethical dilemmas
compulsory
information technology
education
ethics


modeling and simulation of nano quantum fpgas (abstract only) As CMOS technology reaches its limitations during the next decade, novel nano electronic devices like Carbon Nano Tubes, Single Electron Transistors, Quantum Cellular Automata, and Spin Transistors are being explored as future alternatives to CMOS devices. This research focuses on Quantum Cellular Automata (QCA) as a viable technology for future FPGA devices. Small device size, ultra low power consumption, and extremely high device operation speeds are some of the outstanding features of QCA which makes it attractive. In this research paper, modeling, implementation, and successful simulation of a CLB slice for a nano quantum FPGA in QCA technology is discussed. The design is modeled using standard QCA cells with multiple layers for reliable interconnect crossovers. The designs are implemented and simulated using the QCA Designer software tool.

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


Ensembles of decision trees based on imprecise probabilities and uncertainty measures In this paper, we present an experimental comparison among different strategies for combining decision trees built by means of imprecise probabilities and uncertainty measures. It has been proven that the combination or fusion of the information obtained from several classifiers can improve the final process of the classification. We use previously developed schemes, known as Bagging and Boosting, along with a new one based on the variation of the root node via the information rank of each feature of the class variable. To this end, we applied two different approaches to deal with missing data and continuous variables. We use a set of tests on the performance of the methods analyzed here, to show that, with the appropriate approach, the Boosting scheme constitutes an excellent way to combine this type of decision tree. It should be noted that it provides good results, even compared with a standard Random Forest classifier, a successful procedure very commonly used in the literature. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

imprecise probabilities
uncertainty measures
decision trees

credal sets
supervised classification
ensemble methods


Augmented Lagrangian methods under the constant positive linear dependence constraint qualification Two Augmented Lagrangian algorithms for solving KKT systems are introduced. The algorithms differ in the way in which penalty parameters are updated. Possibly infeasible accumulation points are characterized. It is proved that feasible limit points that satisfy the Constant Positive Linear Dependence constraint qualification are KKT solutions. Boundedness of the penalty parameters is proved under suitable assumptions. Numerical experiments are presented.

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

augmented lagrangian methods
kkt systems
numerical experiments


semiotic inspection method in the context of educational simulation games Software process simulation is increasingly being used as an approach for analyzing complex business, for supporting management planning, for helping with software process training and learning and for supporting the software process improvement. In addition to providing to users a simulation tool that supports all these aspects, it is also important to consider some other requirements during the tool's design, such as efficient and effective communication of the designer's message to the user. In this way, we show how semiotic concepts can be used in the analysis and generation of knowledge through the application of the Semiotic Inspection Method (SIM), a semiotic engineering evaluation method. In this paper we present a scientific application of SIM to a Software Engineering simulation game focusing the analysis on feedback aspects and issues. The results go beyond the system analyzed and point to considerations regarding simulation games used in educational contexts.

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

semiotic inspection method
simulation
game


From efficiency to flexibility: The strategic use of information in the airline industry This paper explores the development of competition in the US airline industry from an information perspective. It analyses the uses made of information by industry participants from the regulated era to the present, and finds growing strategic use of information. Information is an enabler, allowing things to be done, but information can also be a resource in itself. The US airline industry has progressed from the obvious use of information for organisational efficiency, to an increasingly strategic use of information for organisational flexibility. The industry provides an excellent example of the route that other information-intensive industries can be expected to follow.

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


A non-associative generalization of effect algebras Effect algebras play an important role in the logic of quantum mechanics. The aim of this paper is to drop the associativity of addition. However, some important properties of effect algebras are preserved, e.g. every so-called skew effect algebra is still a bounded poset with an antitone involution. Moreover, skew effect algebras are fully characterized as certain bounded posets with sectionally switching involutions.

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


Discovering knowledge from large databases using prestored information In this paper, we examine the two issues of mining association rules and mining sequential patterns in a large database of sales transactions. The problems of mining association rules and mining sequential patterns focus on discovering large itemsets and large sequences, respectively. We present PSI and PSI-seq for efficient large itemsets generation and large sequences generation, respectively. The main ideas of these two algorithms are using prestored information to minimize the numbers of candidate itemsets and candidate sequences counted in each database scan. The prestored informations for PSI and PSI-seq include the itemsets and the sequences along with their support counts found in the last mining, respectively. Typically a user may require to tune the value of the minimum support many times before a set of useful association rules can be obtained from the transaction database. Using prestored information, the total computation time will be reduced effectively. Empirical results show that our approaches outperform previous methods by an order of magnitude, using little storage space for the prestored information.(C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

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


Leftmove-bounded picture languages Let Pi = {u, d, r, l} be the chain-code picture alphabet such that u (d, r, l,) denotes the graphics command to move the drawing pen up (down, right, left) in the 2D Cartesian plane. It is known that the picture membership problem can be solved in polynomial time For each context-free language over (u, d, r) and is NP-complete for a so-called retreat-bounded regular (or reversal-bounded Linear) language over Pi. Imposing both retreat and reversal bounds on languages over Pi results in the leftmove-bounded languages whose words describe pictures by making no more than a bounded number of left moves. The picture membership problem can be solved in polynomial time for each leftmove-bounded context-free language over Pi and is NP-complete for a leftmove-unbounded (but retreat-bounded) linear language over (u, d, lr). There exists a context-sensitive language over {u, d, r} (or {u, d, lr}) for which the picture membership problem is undecidable. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Testing the significance of cell-cycle patterns in time-course microarray data using nonparametric quadratic inference functions We develop an approach to analyze time-course microarray data which are obtained from a single sample at multiple time points and to identify which genes are cell-cycle regulated. Since some genes have similar gene expression patterns, to reduce the amount of hypothesis testing, we first perform a clustering analysis to group genes into classes with similar cell-cycle patterns, including a class with no cell-cycle phenomena at all. Then we build a statistical model and an inference function assuming that genes within a cluster share the same mean model. A varying coefficient nonparametric approach is employed to be more flexible to fit the time-course data. In order to incorporate the correlation of longitudinal measurements, the quadratic inference function method is applied to obtain more efficient estimators and more powerful tests. Furthermore, this method allows us to perform chi-squared tests to determine whether certain genes are cell-cycle regulated. A data example on cell-cycle microarray data as well as simulations are illustrated.

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

cell-cycle microarray data
gene grouping
varying coefficient model
chi-squared test


Cultural Signifiers of Web Site Images Web sites rely on pictures and animation to convey subtle messages that are more effectively communicated nonverbally. We argue that such messages could have strong cultural content, which should be understood in developing Web sites. Hence, this paper explores the cultural content of Web site images and develops a theory for Web-image signifiers. This is done in two phases. Phase I has an interpretive qualitative approach that uses Grounded Theory to identify signifiers and to develop the Web-image signifiers (WIS) theory. Phase II quantitatively tests the WIS theory. Together, these two phases identify and validate signifiers of cultural dimensions in Web site images. More interestingly, the results uncover that cultural dimensions are signified in five categories, of which two, humans and buildings categories, are the most prominent. The contribution of this paper is in developing a comprehensive theory for the cultural content of Web images, identifying 48 signifiers in Web images, discovering new categories of signifiers, and providing insights into the nature of cultural signification by testing the theory. Such knowledge could heighten our sensitivity and awareness of hidden cultural messages in Web site images. The WIS theory could provide a novel approach to the cultural studies of Web images and other artifacts with cultural content. The results of this work have immediate application in the design of Web sites for a multicultural audience.

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

cultural signifiers
grounded theory
web site images

hofstede's cultural dimensions
semiology
web-image signifiers theory


Multiple Roles of Hoxc8 in Skeletal Development We are interested in investigating the function of Hoxc8 in skeletogenesis during mouse development. Previous studies have shown that deregulation of Hoxc8 expression in the mouse leads to several skeletal defects, such as homeotic transformation in the thoracic vertebrae, abnormal development of the rib cage, and overproliferation of chondrocytes in the hypertrophic area.By deleting a crucial enhancer of Hoxc8 in vivo, we found that precise temporal expression of Hoxc8 is important for determining the correct identity of the vertebral column in early embryos. We also identified downstream targets of Hoxc8 relevant to osteoblast differentiation at later developmental stages

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


Barriers and Challenges to Virtual Reunification This paper presents challenges and barriers to virtual reunification as a strategy to represent dispersed ethnographic collections online. The study draws from the case of Dean C. Worcester's photos of U.S. colonial Philippines currently kept in various archives, libraries and museums. Findings presented are based on two types of qualitative data sources: two years of archival research in various owning repositories as well as semi-structured interviews of heritage administrators and professionals directly responsible for the Worcester photographs. Representatives from grant institutions that provide funding for digitization projects as well as researchers of the collection were also interviewed. By examining several repositories and analyzing stakeholders pre-reunification concerns, the study examines prevailing challenges of virtual reunification as an inter-institutional collaborative endeavor.

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

virtual reunification
ethnographic collections


A novel multiple-level trust management framework for wireless sensor networks The distributed deployment nature of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) poses a challenge to the security of node cooperation in them as it is difficult for WSN to ensure that all nodes can recognise a huge number of other individual nodes and select appropriate and trustworthy nodes for cooperation. Node cooperation may therefore be launched in an unreliable environment and might be vulnerable to attacks. Consequently, the security of nodes is of paramount importance for the proper operation of WSNs. The distributed trust management scheme is a feasible solution. With a view to making improvement on the existing trust management mechanisms, we in this paper propose ML-TRUST, a multiple-level trust management framework for trust management in WSN in which three levels of trust are used to establish trustworthy relationships among nodes for their cooperation, namely, (1) a subjective trust, which is defined as belief and is proposed with respect to three aspects: past judgements, witness evidence, and capacity evaluation; (2) an objective trust, which is defined as reputation and is proposed with two factors, number of functioning communities and weighted judgements by rating nodes reputations, being introduced in reputation rating, and with several rules and fraud factor tests being given to prevent reputation rating from malicious attacks, and (3) the recommended trust method, which is proposed to obtain trustable impressions from strange recommendations with, in connection, several consistency factors being presented to determine the trustworthiness of a recommendation. Besides using a set of lemmas and theorems to back up our ML-TRUST framework, we also list the results of a series of simulation tests to further verify the performance of our mechanism.

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

wireless sensor networks
belief
reputation
recommended trust


text retrieval conference (trec) genomics pre-track workshop The goal of this workshop is to allow individuals interested in the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC, trec.nist.gov) Genomics Pre-Track to come together to discuss common goals and interests for the pre-track. The workshop will be designed to generate a plan for developing a common set of tasks, databases, and evaluation measures for the pre-track. The morning will be devoted to presentations by attendees, with the topics to be covered determined by selection by the program committee. The afternoon will be geared towards developing a plan for the pre-track, with the structure based on the number of attendees (i.e., if attendance is large, we will break into small groups).

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

bioinformatics
text retrieval conference (trec)


Simplifying syntactic and semantic parsing of NL-based queries in advanced application domains The paper presents a high level query language (MDDQL) for databases, which relies on an ontology driven automaton. This is simulated by the humancomputer interaction mode for the query construction process, which is driven by an inference engine operating upon a frames based ontology description. Therefore, given that the query construction process implicitly leads to the contemporary construction of high level query trees prior to submission of the query for transformation and execution to a semantic middle-ware, syntactic and semantic parsing of a query with conventional techniques, i.e., after completion of its formulation, becomes obsolete. To this extent, only, as meaningful as possible, queries can be constructed at a low typing, learning, syntactic and semantic parsing effort and regardless the preferred natural (sub)language. From a linguistics point o view, it turns out that the query construction mechanism can easily be adapted and work with families of natural languages, which underlie another type order such as SubjectObjectVerb as opposed to the typical SubjectVerbObject type order, which underlie most European languages. The query construction mechanism has been proved as practical in advanced application domains, such as those provided by medical applications, with an advanced and hardly understood terminology for naive users and the public.

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

query languages
ontologies
semantic web
information retrieval
automata theory


text classification with kernels on the multinomial manifold Support Vector Machines (SVMs) have been very successful in text classification. However, the intrinsic geometric structure of text data has been ignored by standard kernels commonly used in SVMs. It is natural to assume that the documents are on the multinomial manifold, which is the simplex of multinomial models furnished with the Riemannian structure induced by the Fisher information metric. We prove that the Negative Geodesic Distance (NGD) on the multinomial manifold is conditionally positive definite (cpd), thus can be used as a kernel in SVMs. Experiments show the NGD kernel on the multinomial manifold to be effective for text classification, significantly outperforming standard kernels on the ambient Euclidean space.

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

machine learning
manifolds
differential geometry
support vector machine


an agency theory model of erp implementation Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are becoming rapidly indispensable in order for large and medium sized organizations to run their operations. Therefore, management needs to know the factors that drive successful ERP implementation, a product of the continuous interaction between the implementation consultants and client firms. Agency theory has been successfully used by different researchers to explain relationships between two parties seeking a common outcome. This paper develops a model of testable propositions for applying agency theory to study the relationship between implementation consultants and client organizations deploying the ERP systems, and to consequently evaluate how the relationship affects the implementation success.

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

agency theory
enterprise resource planning
implementation


Nice error bases and Sylow subgroups Nice error bases have various applications in quantum computing such as in the teleportation of quantum states and in the theory of noiseless systems. Associated in a natural way to any nice error basis there is a so-called index group and also a group of central type. In this paper, we will extend the number of known index groups for nice error bases by exploiting the connections between groups of central type and their Sylow subgroups. Our methods will allow us find all index groups of degree up to 44 with two exceptions.

B I I O O O B I 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 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


A random forest classifier for lymph diseases Machine learning-based classification techniques provide support for the decision-making process in many areas of health care, including diagnosis, prognosis, screening, etc. Feature selection (FS) is expected to improve classification performance, particularly in situations characterized by the high data dimensionality problem caused by relatively few training examples compared to a large number of measured features. In this paper, a random forest classifier (RFC) approach is proposed to diagnose lymph diseases. Focusing on feature selection, the first stage of the proposed system aims at constructing diverse feature selection algorithms such as genetic algorithm (GA), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Relief-F, Fisher, Sequential Forward Floating Search (SFFS) and the Sequential Backward Floating Search (SBFS) for reducing the dimension of lymph diseases dataset. Switching from feature selection to model construction, in the second stage, the obtained feature subsets are fed into the RFC for efficient classification. It was observed that GA-RFC achieved the highest classification accuracy of 92.2%. The dimension of input feature space is reduced from eighteen to six features by using GA.

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

machine learning (ml)
feature selection (fs)
genetic algorithm (ga)
random forest classifier (rfc)


Comparison of the Lambert W-function based solutions to the Colebrook equation Purpose - The Colebrook equation for determination of hydraulic resistances is implicit in fluid flow friction factor and hence it has to be approximately solved using iterative procedure or using some of the approximate explicit formulas developed by many authors. The purpose of this paper is to compare different Lambert W based solutions of the Colebrook equation and to make comparisons among them and identify some constraints in applicability of certain solutions. Design/methodology/approach - Alternate mathematically equivalents to the implicit Colebrook equation in explicit form with no approximation involved actually exist. Findings - These alternate equations were developed using Lambert W-function. The paper compares various implementations of the Lambert W methodology and shows that some of these are less able than others to yield solutions using modern computer hardware. This is because the functions require the evaluation of terms with numerical values outside the ranges that can be expressed on most computers. Research limitations/implications - Some of existed transformations cannot be applied for high values of relative roughness of inner pipe surface and the Reynolds number. This limitation applied only for computer computations. Other presented transformations do not sufferer of this limitation. Practical implications - Presented procedures can be easily implemented in a computer code. Recommended solution can be used in all cases that can occur in engineering practice. Originality/value - The paper shows some possible practical procedures for solution of the transformed Colebrook equation. Accuracy analysis and comparisons of presented formulas are also performed and recommendation for use is shown.

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

flow
friction
hydraulic resistances
colebrook equation

mathematics
fluid flow
friction factor
turbulent flow
lambert w-function


A Time Predefined Variable Depth Search for Nurse Rostering This paper presents a variable depth search for the nurse rostering problem. The algorithm works by chaining together single neighbourhood swaps into more effective compound moves. It achieves this by using heuristics to decide whether to continue extending a chain and which candidates to examine as the next potential link in the chain. Because end users vary in how long they are willing to wait for solutions, a particular goal of this research was to create an algorithm that accepts a user specified computational time limit and uses it effectively. When compared against previously published approaches the results show that the algorithm is very competitive.

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


Improving heuristic search algorithms by means of pruning by dominance. Application to scheduling problems In this dissertation, we face the Job Shop Scheduling problem by means of state space heuristic search. Our goal was devising new algorithms to reach either optimal schedules for moderate size instances or sub-optimal schedules for larger ones. We considered two different objective functions, designed new heuristics estimations and studied the formal properties of them. The main contribution is the formulation of an efficient pruning method based on dominance relations among states of the search space. This method reduces drastically the effective search space and can be adapted in principle to any regular objective function. The experimental study shows that the proposed method is quite competitive with other state-of-the-art methods in reaching both optimal and sub-optimal schedules.

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

job shop scheduling
heuristic search
pruning by dominance


Dasu - ISP Characterization from the Edge Evaluating and characterizing access ISPs is critical to consumers shopping for alternative services and governments surveying the availability of broadband services to their citizens. We present Dasu, a service for crowdsourcing ISP characterization to the edge of the network. Dasu is implemented as an extension to a popular BitTorrent client [5] and has been available since July 2010. While the prototype uses BitTorrent as its host application, its design is agnostic to the particular host application. The demo showcases our current implementation using both a prerecorded execution trace and a live run.

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 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

experimentation
performance
measurement
broadband access networks


path smoothing via discrete optimization A fundamental problem in timing-driven physical synthesis is the reduction of critical paths in a design. In this work, we propose a powerful new technique that moves (and can also resize) multiple cells simultaneously to smooth critical paths, thereby reducing delay and improving worst negative slack or a figure-of-merit. Our approach offers several key advantages over previous formulations, including the accurate modeling of objectives and constraints in the true timing model, and a guarantee of legality for all cell locations.

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

static timing analysis
timing-driven placement


A general algorithm for automated scheduling of drip irrigation in tree crops Judicious irrigation necessitates development of technologies that apply the precise amount of water demanded by crops. The goal is to schedule irrigation according to the particular requirements of each orchard and to the variability encountered during the season caused by weather conditions, canopy development and other factors. For supporting a precise and low labour management of irrigation here we propose and depict an algorithm that coordinates seven automatable tasks: (1) estimation of irrigation needs, (2) adaptation to a particular irrigation setup, (3) execution of the schedule, (4) soil and/or plant monitoring, (5) interpretation of sensor data, (6) reaction to occasional events and (7) tuning the model of irrigation needs. This is illustrated with three examples from a peach orchard where a software tool implementing the algorithm was configured to manage irrigation under different strategies. They included two alternative methods for estimating the crop water needs: a typical water balance based on reference evapotranspiration (ETo) and a variation based on the measurement of solar radiation intercepted by the canopy. They also included two types of sensors for feedback: soil water probes and dendrometers, the latter for applying regulated deficit irrigation. The results show that the proposed algorithm provided a common framework that could be embraced under different irrigation strategies to support autonomous control through the season, requiring no more data than those acquired and processed by the same system and enabling some degree of tolerance to failures. Overall, some advantages were the fast response to changes in factors such as weather conditions whose effect is rather predictable. At the same time the algorithm self-adjusted through feedback to variation in orchard-specific factors related with crop development and phenology which would be hard to model. The separation between agro-meteorological and hydraulic concerns in different steps of the algorithm facilitated the adaptation to the particularities of each irrigation setup, simplifying the use of commercial equipment from different manufacturers.

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

irrigation scheduling
precision irrigation
crop coefficient
trunk diameter fluctuations


Comparison of Ising magnet on directed versus undirected Erdos-Renyi and scale-free networks Scale-free networks are a recently developed approach to model the interactions found in complex natural and man-made systems. Such networks exhibit a power-law distribution of node link (degree) frequencies n(k) in which a small number of highly connected nodes predominate over a much greater number of sparsely connected ones. In contrast, in an Erdoos-Renyi network each of N sites is connected to every site with a low probability p (of the order of 1/N). Then the number k of neighbors will fluctuate according to a Poisson distribution. One can instead assume that each site selects exactly k neighbors among the other sites. Here we compare in both cases the usual network with the directed network, when site A selects site B as a neighbor, and then B influences A but A does not influence B. As we change from undirected to directed scale-free networks, the spontaneous magnetization vanishes after an equilibration time following an Arrhenius law, while the directed ER networks have a positive Curie temperature.

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

directed and undirected erdos-renyi network


Combinatorics on update digraphs in Boolean networks Boolean networks have been used as models of gene regulation and other biological networks. One key element in these models is the update schedule, which indicates the order in which states have to be updated. In Aracena et al. (2009)[1], the authors define equivalence classes that relate deterministic update schedules that yield the same update digraph and thus the same dynamical behavior of the network. In this paper we study algorithmical and combinatorial aspects of update digraphs. We show a polynomial characterization of these digraphs, which enables us to characterize the corresponding equivalence classes. We prove that the update digraphs are exactly the projections, on the respective subgraphs, of a complete update digraph with the same number of vertices. Finally, the exact number of complete update digraphs is determined, which provides upper and lower bounds on the number of equivalence classes.

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


Exact recording of Metropolis-Hastings-class Monte Carlo simulations using one bit per sample The Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm is the prototype for a class of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods that propose transitions between states and then accept or reject the proposal. These methods generate a correlated sequence of random samples that convey information about the desired probability distribution. Deciding how this information gets recorded is an important step in the practical design of MH-class algorithm implementations. Many implementations discard most of this information in order to reduce demands on storage capacity and disk writing throughput. Here, we describe how recording a bit string containing 1's for acceptance and 0's for rejection allows the full sample sequence to be recorded with no information loss, facilitating decoupling of simulation design from the constraints of data analysis. The recording uses only one bit per sample, which is an upper bound on the rate at which information about the desired distribution is acquired. We also demonstrate the method and quantify its benefits on a nontrivial colloidal system of charged particles in the canonical ensemble. The method imposes no restrictions on the system or simulation design and is compatible with descendants of the MH algorithm. (C) 2011 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 B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

metropolis-hastings
information theory
data representation


Web user clustering and Web prefetching using Random Indexing with weight functions Users of a Web site usually perform their interest-oriented actions by clicking or visiting Web pages, which are traced in access log files. Clustering Web user access patterns may capture common user interests to a Web site, and in turn, build user profiles for advanced Web applications, such as Web caching and prefetching. The conventional Web usage mining techniques for clustering Web user sessions can discover usage patterns directly, but cannot identify the latent factors or hidden relationships among users' navigational behaviour. In this paper, we propose an approach based on a vector space model, called Random Indexing, to discover such intrinsic characteristics of Web users' activities. The underlying factors are then utilised for clustering individual user navigational patterns and creating common user profiles. The clustering results will be used to predict and prefetch Web requests for grouped users. We demonstrate the usability and superiority of the proposed Web user clustering approach through experiments on a real Web log file. The clustering and prefetching tasks are evaluated by comparison with previous studies demonstrating better clustering performance and higher prefetching accuracy.

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

web user clustering
random indexing
weight functions
web prefetching


Designing agents to support learning by explaining Although prior research has shown that generating explanations encourages students to learn new content with deeper understanding and to monitor their own comprehension more effectively, helping students learn how to explain properly remains a significant challenge. This study investigated the use of software agents as learning partners in an activity where students generated explanations about river ecosystem concepts. The results of the experiment demonstrated that software agents can have a positive impact as learning partners in a virtual world environment. It was found that the agents encouraged the use of explanation resources designed to help students generate more effective explanations. Students working with the agents generated deeper explanations than students who did not interact with an agent. Implications for the design of learning environments with agents as learning partners are discussed. (C) 2005 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

cooperative/collaborative learning
interactive learning environments
pedagogical issues
teaching/learning strategies
virtual reality


Performance evaluation of an admission control algorithm: dynamic threshold with negotiation An admission control algorithm for a multimedia server is responsible for determining if a new request can be accepted without violating the QoS requirements of the existing requests in the system. Most admission control algorithms treat every request uniformly and hence optimize the system performance by maximizing the number of admitted and served requests. In practice, requests might have different levels of importance to the system. Requests offering high contribution or reward to the system performance deserve priority treatment. Failure of accepting a high-priority request would incur high penalty to the system. A novel threshold-based admission control algorithm with negotiation for two priority classes of requests is proposed in our previous study. The server capacity is divided into three partitions based on the threshold values: one for each class of requests and one common pool shared by two classes of requests. Reward and penalty are adopted in the proposed system model. High-priority requests are associated with higher values of reward as well as penalty than low-priority ones. In this paper, given the characteristics of the system workload, the proposed analytical models aim to finds the best partitions, optimizing the system performance based on the objective function of the total reward minus the total penalty. The negotiation mechanism reduces the QoS requirements of several low-priority clients, by cutting out a small fraction of the assigned server capacity, to accept a new high-priority client and to achieve a higher net earning value. Stochastic Petri-Net model is used to find the optimal threshold values and two analytical methods are developed to find sub-optimal settings. The experiment results show that the sub-optimal solutions found by the proposed analytical methods are very close to optimal ones. The methods enable the algorithm to dynamically adjust the threshold values, based on the characteristics of the system workload, to achieve higher system performance. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

multimedia systems
stochastic petri-net
queuing theory


Adaptive range-spread maneuvering target detection in compound-Gaussian clutter ? Adaptive detection of range spread maneuvering target embedded in compound-Gaussian clutter is an important challenge for radar engineers. For the long integration, maneuvering target suffers from inevitable range walks across cells as well as unpredictable phase change at individual range cells. Therefore, the traditional adaptive normalized matched filter detectors are ineffective in long integration duration. In this paper, combining adaptive normalized matched filter with sliding high-order cross-correlation integration, a new adaptive range-spread target detector is proposed. Firstly, the long integration duration is segmented into short disjoint subintervals. In each subinterval, it is assumed that no range walking across cells happens and target's complex returns accord with the traditional rank-one parameter models. In each subinterval, the coherent integration output vector is obtained by the adaptive normalized matched filter along the slow-time dimension in different range cells. If a target is present, the coherent integration outputs of each subinterval share similar waveforms except for unknown range walks. Otherwise, when a target is absent, the coherent integration output vectors estimated from individual subintervals are uncorrelated positive random vectors without similarity. Further, the sliding high-order cross-correlation integration of these coherent integration output vectors is calculated for target detection. The new detector combines the short-time coherent integration and long-time similarity integration. The experimental results using raw radar target data and simulated clutter data show that the new detector achieves better detection performance for range-spread maneuvering targets than the existing detectors.

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

compound-gaussian clutter
high-order correlation
range-spread maneuvering target


The IP's guide to the galaxy of portal planning - Part I - drafting a portal vision Purpose - This article is the first in a four-part series that aims to illustrate the processes involved in planning a portal and creating a portal definition document. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a review of the academic and industry literature and using a case study, the authors share their experience in planning the Florida ExpertNet Research portal. Findings - Portal development is a complex and costly endeavor that requires meticulous planning and design. As with any system development initiative, the time and energy spent in the planning process is reflected in the success or failure of the end product. Creating a portal vision is the first step in developing the portal definition document and includes the following areas: mission statement, objectives, needs assessment, creative layout, benefits, and funding and sponsorship. Originality/value - This series will be useful to the information professional who is contemplating portal development and may be used as a model in developing a blueprint - the portal definition document. Whether the information professional is considering doing the development or outsourcing, it is important to understand the architectural requirements of a portal.

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

portals
project planning
knowledge management
information management


eye-tracking to model and adapt to user meta-cognition in intelligent learning environments In this paper we describe research on using eye-tracking data for on-line assessment of user meta-cognitive behavior during the interaction with an intelligent learning environment. We describe the probabilistic user model that processes this information, and its formal evaluation. We show that adding eye-tracker information significantly improves the model accuracy on assessing user exploration and self-explanation behaviors.

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

user modeling
meta-cognitive skills
adaptive interfaces
eye-tracking


Vision and rain The visual effects of rain are complex. Rain produces sharp intensity changes in images and videos that can severely impair the performance of outdoor vision systems. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the visual effects of rain and the various factors that affect it. Based on this analysis, we develop efficient algorithms for handling rain in computer vision as well as for photorealistic rendering of rain in computer graphics. We first develop a photometric model that describes the intensities produced by individual rain streaks and a dynamic model that captures the spatio-temporal properties of rain. Together, these models describe the complete visual appearance of rain. Using these models, we develop a simple and effective post-processing algorithm for detection and removal of rain from videos. We show that our algorithm can distinguish rain from complex motion of scene objects and other time-varying textures. We then extend our analysis by studying how various factors such as camera parameters, rain properties and scene brightness affect the appearance of rain. We show that the unique physical properties of rain-its small size, high velocity and spatial distribution-inakes its visibility depend strongly on camera parameters. This dependence is used to reduce the visibility of rain during image acquisition by judiciously selecting camera parameters. Conversely, camera parameters can also be chosen to enhance the visibility of rain. This ability can be used to develop an inexpensive and portable camera-based rain gauge that provides instantaneous rain-rate measurements. Finally, we develop a rain streak appearance model that accounts for the rapid shape distortions (i.e. oscillations) that a raindrop undergoes as it falls. We show that modeling these distortions allows us to faithfully render the complex intensity patterns that are visible in the case of raindrops that are close to the camera.

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

physics-based vision
outdoor vision and weather
atmospheric scattering
appearance modeling
natural phenomena
video analysis
video enhancement


Linear and sigmoidal fuzzy cognitive maps: An analysis of fixed points Fixed points of fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) with different functions are considered. We show how drastically different fixed points of different functional forms can be. We give conditions so that a linear FCM has (effectively) a unique fixed point. We give a sufficient condition for sigmoidal FCMs to have unique stable fixed points.

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


Splash Formation by a Spherical Body Plunging into Water Splashes caused by a spherical body plunging into water were investigated experimentally using a high speed CMOS camera. We categorized types of splash according to impact velocities of the sphere. Three types of splash were found: Type-I is a thin spire-type splash, Type-II is a mushroom-type splash with many droplets, and Type-III is a crown-type splash with many droplets. The reaction to the concave water surface attached to the sinking sphere is a cause of the Type-I splash. The film flow climbing up the sphere is a dominant cause of the Type-II splash. The velocity of the film flow, which is proportional to the impact velocity of the sphere, affects the fingers of the film flow, detaching of droplets, and maximum height of the Type-II splash. The Type-III crown-type splash is characterized by water jets with many droplets. A bulky air column in water is formed behind the sinking sphere, and longitudinal ridges and ripples on the surface of the air column were observed.

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

visualization
water splash
solid sphere
high speed cmos video camera


When

and

how

to

evaluate

health

information

systems?

Aims:

Evaluating

large

scale

health

information

systems

(HIS)

such

as

hospital

systems

can

be

difficult.

This

article

discusses

the

reasons

we

need

to

evaluate

these

systems

and

a

range

of

appropriate

methods

to

carry

out

evaluations.

It

is

written

in

non-technical

language

to

assist

health

policy

makers

and

others

commissioning

or

implementing

such

systems,

with

references

and

a

web

site

containing

information

for

those

wishing

more

detail

Methods:

A

variety

of

questions

relevant

to

HIS

and

qualitative

and

quantitative

methods

ranging

from

simple

beforeafter

to

controlled

beforeafter

and

fully

randomised

designs,

are

discussed.

A

running

exampleevaluating

the

impact

of

an

order

communications

system

on

lab

requestsis

used

to

illustrate

the

potential

problems,

and

how

they

can

be

resolved.

Results:

The

main

types

of

biases

affecting

impact

studies

and

methods

to

reduce

them

are

described.

The

article

then

discusses

some

trade-offs

between

the

low

cost,

easily

conducted

beforeafter

study

with

its

unreliable

results

versus

the

more

complex,

expensive

but

much

more

rigorous

randomised

trial.

Conclusions:

As

would

be

expected,

the

correct

methods

to

evaluate

depend

not

on

what

technology

is

being

evaluatedwhether

an

information

system

or

a

drugbut

on

the

questions

the

study

is

designed

to

answer,

and

how

reliable

the

answers

must

be.

Only

those

commissioning

an

evaluation

study

can

decide

these.

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


Interface control volume finite element method for modelling multi-phase fluid flow in highly heterogeneous and fractured reservoirs We present a new control volume finite element method that improves the modelling of multi-phase fluid flow in highly heterogeneous and fractured reservoirs, called the Interface Control Volume Finite Element (ICVFE) method. The method drastically decreases the smearing effects in other CVFE methods, while being mass conservative and numerically consistent. The pressure is computed at the interfaces of elements, and the control volumes are constructed around them, instead of at the elements' vertices. This assures that a control volume straddles, at most, two elements, which decreases the fluid smearing between neighbouring elements when large variations in their material properties are present. Lowest order RaviartThomas vectorial basis functions are used for the pressure calculation and first-order Courant basis functions are used to compute fluxes. The method is a combination of Mixed Hybrid Finite Element (MHFE) and CVFE methods. Its accuracy and convergence are tested using three dimensional tetrahedron elements to represent heterogeneous reservoirs. Our new approach is shown to be more accurate than current CVFE methods.

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

flow in heterogeneous and fractured porous media


Representing the dwelling stock as 3D generic tiles estimated from average residential density A statistical method of forecasting housing stock variability from average density A unique method for studying the variability of dwellings by type and age bands The 3D tile typologies include both dwelling characteristics and the plot sizes. The tiles are useful for estimating the potential for sustainable technologies. The outputs have been validated at against housing survey and footprint 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 B I O O O

urban modelling
gamma distribution
dwelling typology
building-scale technologies


Multi-objective learning of white box models with low quality data ? Improving energy efficiency in buildings represents one of the main challenges faced by engineers. In fields like lighting control systems, the effect of low quality sensors compromises the control strategy and the emergence of new technologies also degrades the data quality introducing linguistic values. This research analyzes the aforementioned problem and shows that, in the field of lighting control systems, the uncertainty in the measurements gathered from sensors should be considered in the design of control loops. To cope with this kind of problems Hybrid Intelligent methods will be used. Moreover, a method for learning equation-based white box models with this low quality data is proposed. The equation-based models include a representation of the uncertainty inherited in the data. Two different evolutive algorithms are use for learning the models: the well-known NSGA-II genetic algorithm and a multi-objective simulated annealing algorithm hybridized with genetic operators. The performance of both algorithms is found valid to evolve this learning process. This novel approach is evaluated with synthetic problems.

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

genetic programming
genetic algorithm and programming
multi-objective simulated annealing


Fast cluster techniques for BEM ? In this paper, we will present a new approach for solving boundary integral equations with panel clustering. In contrast to all former versions of panel clustering, the computational and storage complexity of the algorithm scales linearly with respect to the number of degrees of freedom without any additional logarithmic factors. The idea is to develop alternative formulations of all classical boundary integral operators for the Laplace problem where the kernel function has a reduced singular behaviour. It turns out that the application of the panel-clustering method with variable approximation order preserves the asymptotic convergence rate of the discretisation and has significantly reduced complexity.

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

panel-clustering method
galerkin boundary element method
alternative representations


Single password authentication Users frequently reuse their passwords when authenticating to various online services. Combined with the use of weak passwords or honeypot/phishing attacks, this brings high risks to the security of the users account information. In this paper, we propose several protocols that can allow a user to use a single password to authenticate to multiple services securely. All our constructions provably protect the user from dictionary attacks on the password, and cross-site impersonation or honeypot attacks by the online service providers. Our solutions assume the user has access to either an untrusted online cloud storage service (as per Boyen [16]), or a mobile storage device that is trusted until stolen. In the cloud storage scenario, we consider schemes that optimize for either storage server or online service performance, as well as anonymity and unlinkability of the users actions. In the mobile storage scenario, we minimize the assumptions we make about the capabilities of the mobile device: we donotassume synchronization, tamper resistance, special or expensive hardware, or extensive cryptographic capabilities. Most importantly, the users password remains secure even after the mobile device is stolen. Our protocols provide another layer of security against malware and phishing. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose such various and provably secure password-based authentication schemes. Lastly, we argue that our constructions are relatively easy to deploy, especially if a few single sign-on services (e.g., Microsoft, Google, and Facebook) adopt our proposal.

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

password-based authentication
honeypots
privacy


Mechanizing common knowledge logic using COQ This paper presents a formalization in COQ of Common Knowledge Logic and checks its adequacy on case studies. Those studies allow exploring experimentally the proof-theoretic side of Common Knowledge Logic. This work is original in that nobody has considered Higher Order Common Knowledge Logic from the point of view of proofs performed on a proof assistant. As a matter of facts, it is experimental by nature as it tries to draw conclusions from experiments.

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

epistemic logic
higher order common knowledge logic
modalities


Homogeneous grammars with a reduced number of non-context-free productions A homogeneous production has its left-hand side formed by a non-empty string of identical nonterminals. A phrase-structure grammar is homogeneous if each of its productions is homogeneous. The present paper discusses the reduction of homogeneous grammars with respect to the number of non-context-free productions. More specifically, it demonstrates that for every phrase-structure grammar, there exists an equivalent homogeneous grammar that has only three non-context-free productions of the form 00 --> epsilon, 11 --> epsilon, and 22 --> epsilon. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


How to steer an embedded software project: tactics for selecting the software process model Modern large new product developments (NPD) are typically characterized by many uncertainties and frequent changes. Often the embedded software development projects working on such products face many problems compared to traditional, placid project environments. One of the major project management decisions is then the selection of the project's software process model. An appropriate process model helps coping with the challenges, and prevents many potential project problems. On the other hand, an unsuitable process choice causes additional problems. This paper investigates the software process model selection in the context of large market-driven embedded software product development for new telecommunications equipment. Based on a quasi-formal comparison of publicly known software process models including modern agile methodologies, we propose a process model selection frame, which the project manager can use as a systematic guide for (re)choosing the project's process model. A novel feature of this comparative selection model is that we make the comparison against typical software project problem issues. Some real-life project case examples are examined against this model. The selection matrix expresses how different process models answer to different questions, and indeed there is not a single process model that would answer all the questions. On the contrary, some of the seeds to the project problems are in the process models themselves. However, being conscious of these problems and pitfalls when steering a project enables the project manager to master the situation.

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

software project management
risk management
embedded systems
new product development


Decision-support for environmental impact assessment: A hybrid approach using fuzzy logic and fuzzy analytic network process The decision-making on approval of environmental impact assessment (EIA) is an intrinsically complex multi-dimensional process because it does not only consider the scientific facts but also reflect subjective values. The use of decision-support methods to balance facts and values can be beneficial for decision makers. This paper attempts to propose an integrated decision-support framework that employs fuzzy logic (FL) to manipulate the subjectivity as decision makers do in appraising the facts and values, significance-acceptability transformation (SAT) to incorporate standards and decision makers' risk attitude into decision-making process, and fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) to manage the dependences among environmental factors and Suggest an overall acceptability of the proposal. Finally, the proposed approach will be applied to the EIAs of construction projects, exemplified in a case study of the Taiwan High-Speed Rail project. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

fuzzy logic
fuzzy analytic network process
risk attitude
environmental impact assessment


VENUS-LEVIS and its spline-Fourier interpolation of 3D toroidal magnetic field representation for guiding-centre and full-orbit simulations of charged energetic particles Curvilinear guiding-centre drift and full-orbit equations of motion are presented as implemented in the VENUS-LEVIS code. A dedicated interpolation scheme based on Fourier reconstruction in the toroidal and poloidal directions and cubic spline in the radial direction of flux coordinate systems is detailed. This interpolation method exactly preserves the order of the RK4 integrating scheme which is crucial for the investigation of fast particle trajectories in 3D magnetic structures such as helical saturated tokamak plasma states, stellarator geometry and resonant magnetic perturbations (RMP). The initialisation of particles with respect to the guiding-centre is discussed. Two approaches to implement RMPs in orbit simulations are presented, one where the vacuum field is added to the 2D equilibrium, creating islands and stochastic regions, the other considering 3D nested flux-surfaces equilibrium including the RMPs.

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

magnetic equilibrium representation
fast ion transport
tokamak plasmas
curvilinear coordinates


Modified conditions for minimum of compliance We consider the problem of finding a design with minimum compliance using a SIMP material. In particular, we present a method to obtain competitive designs that do not include composite like material distributions. The idea of this method is to modify a necessary condition for the optimal design of an object. We prove that the modified condition defines a design and present numerical solutions.

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

topology optimization
necessary optimality conditions
smoothing


Global exponential stability of fuzzy BAM neural networks with distributed delays and time-varying delays in the leakage terms In this paper, fuzzy BAM neural networks with distributed delays and time-varying delays in the leakage terms are studied. Sufficient conditions for the global exponential stability of equilibrium point are established by constructing suitable Lyapunov functional and differential inequality techniques, which complement and improve the main results of Zhang etal. (Adv Differ Equ 8:112; 2011) and Gopalsamy (J Math Anal Appl 325:11171132; 2007). Moreover, an example is given to demonstrate the feasibility of our method.

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

fuzzy bam neural networks
global exponential stability
distributed delays
leakage terms