C-1 finite element analysis in gradient enhanced continua Finite element analysis of the gradient enhanced elastic continuum requires C-1 continuity across the element boundaries. However the use of C-1 finite elements is usually avoided due to the complexity in their implementation and the excessive number of primary unknowns at each node. Hence except for a very few solid mechanics problems such as plate bending, the potential capabilities of C-1 finite elements are not widely explored. This paper presents a series of analyses where two benchmark problems of gradient elasticity are tackled by using C-1 finite elements in which displacements and their first and second derivatives are the primary nodal unknowns. It is shown that very accurate solutions are achieved with relatively coarse finite element meshes. Moreover, it is shown that C-1 finite elements are very useful for elastoplastic analyses where a large number of C-0 elements are usually needed to achieve accurate results. An elastoplastic analysis of bending in a deep beam shows that even a very coarse mesh can provide highly accurate results. Successful performance of C-1 finite elements in the above mentioned problems suggests that C-1 elements are useful alternatives for numerical investigation of the issues of size effect and strain localization in the response of elastic and elastoplastic systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

gradient elasticity
gradient enhanced continua

c-1 finite element
plasticity, size effects


Face recognition using partial least squares components The paper considers partial least squares (PLS) as a new dimension reduction technique for the feature vector to overcome the small sample size problem in face recognition. Principal component analysis (PCA), a conventional dimension reduction method, selects the components with maximum variability, irrespective of the class information. So PCA does not necessarily extract features that are important for the discrimination of classes. PLS, on the other hand, constructs the components so that the correlation between the class variable and themselves is maximized. Therefore PLS components are more predictive than PCA components in classification. The experimental results on Manchester and ORL databases show that PLS is to be preferred over PCA when classification is the goal and dimension reduction is needed.

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

partial least squares
principal component analysis
face recognition


Timing- and crosstalk-driven area routing We present a timing- and crosstalk-driven router for the chip assembly task that is applied between global and detailed routing. Our new approach aims to process the crosstalk and timing constraints by ordering nets and tuning wire spacing in a quantitative way. The new approach fits between global routing and detailed muting along the physical design flow It is the first to address the timing- and crosstalk-driven area routing problem using crosspoint assignment prior to the detailed routing stage, in contrast to the most previous approaches applied in the post-detailed routing stage. Our new approach enjoys a larger optimization solution space than the previous approaches whose solution space is highly Limited by routed geometric constraints, Based on the global routing information, our graph-based optimizer preroutes wires on the global routing grids incrementally, The graph-based optimizer has two stages, net order assignment and space relaxation, A quick capacitance extraction and Elmore delay calculator considering signal switching activities are implemented to find the timing of critical nets and to provide the timing slack database of critical nets. As the graph-based algorithm proceeds, the path delay of critical nets and the timing slack database are updated, During the optimization process, it only optimizes the timing critical paths with negative slack values, The experimental results show a 5%-16% delay reduction for MCNC macrocell benchmark circuits far a 0.25-mum process for wire geometric ratio (height/width) = 1.0, against a 25% delay reduction if there is infinite space around each metal,Fire on the same layer. it shows a remarkable 8.4%-25% delay reduction for MCNC benchmarks for wire geometric ratio = 2.0, against a 33% delay reduction if there is infinite space around each metal wire. its experimental results indicate, our new approach overall achieves an average 46% reduction on intralayer coupling capacitance. Therefore, the delay reduction by our optimizer is more significant when the minimum feature size continuously shrinks and the wire geometric ratio increases.

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


Optimal BSR solutions to several convex polygon problems This paper focuses on BSR (Broadcasting with Selective Reduction) implementation of algorithms solving basic convex polygon problems. More precisely, constant time solutions on a linear number, max(N, M) (where N and M are the number of edges of the two considered polygons), of processors for computing the maximum distance between two convex polygons, finding critical support lines of two convex polygons, computing the diameter, the width of a convex polygon and the vector sum of two convex polygons are described. These solutions are based on the merging slopes technique using one criterion BSR operations.

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

broadcast
crcw pram
parallel algorithm
selection
geometric problems


A surgical scheduling method considering surgeons preferences A surgical scheduling method considering surgeons preferences to the time segments has been designed. The one whole days work time of an operation room is seen as a kind of resource. According to the number of surgeons who applied for this operation room, the time is divided into corresponding time segments. Time segments and surgeons are seen as two sides of matching problem, the preference functions of two sides have been defined, and the model has been developed based on two-sided matching theory, then the solution of the model has been presented. An example showed that the satisfactions of surgeons have been improved obviously based on the efficient use of time resources.

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

management science
two-sided matching
preference function


A note on adaptive 2D-H strings1 A picture is defined to be ambiguous if there exists more than one different reconstructed picture from its representation. In this paper, we first give an ambiguous case based on the adaptive 2D-H string representation (Chang and Lin, 1996). We next show how to avoid the ambiguous cases.

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

2d strings
2d-h strings
adaptive 2d-h strings
image databases
symbolic pictures


Robustness of granulometric moments Granulometric moments are used for classification of random sets and estimation of their parameters. These moments are random variables possessing their own probability distributions. For certain random sets composed of nonoverlapping grains, there are expressions for the granulometric moments, the moments are asymptotically normal, and their asymptotic means and variances are known. All representations depend on the grain sizing distributions being known for all grain primitives generating the random set. This paper investigates model robustness by considering the effects of the following violations of the assumptions: (1) assuming an incorrect sizing distribution, (2) using erroneous parameters for the sizing distribution, and (3) prior segmentation when there is modest overlapping. The last situation occurs because the paper proposes segmentation prior to granulometric analysis when there is modest overlapping. Both nonreconstructive and reconstructive granulometries are investigated in the case of prior segmentation. (C) 1999 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

classification
estimation
random set
robustness

granulometry
morphology
pattern spectrum


development reuse and the logic program derivation of two string-matching algorithms Program transformation advocates the development of programs by applying a sequence of meaning-preserving rules to a specification, thereby obtaining an implementation. The cost of program development and maintenance decreases if previous, similar derivations can be reused conveniently Through the string-matching problem, we study the reuse of complete parts of the derivation of an algorithm, in the deriv ation of another, "similar" algorithm. In particular, we first derive the search stage of a variant of the Boyer--Moore algorithm, and then reuse some "dev elopments" in a derivation of the search stage of the Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm. Several advantages result from employing logic programming. First, we get the semantic benefit of having a logical basis. Second, we can easily exploit nondeterminism. Third, we link both deriv ations by observing that repetitive "deterministic" unfolding (i.e. sequences of unfolding steps that halt when more than one clause would be inferred) is closely related to the preprocessing stage of both algorithms.

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


Fully automated computer-aided volume estimation system for thyroid planar scintigraphy Patient-specific dosimetry calculations are often performed for radioiodine therapy in patients with Graves? hyperthyroidism. The radioiodine doses are typically calculated to deliver the desired amount of radiation based on gland size and radioactive iodine uptake. Thus the estimation of thyroid gland volume is of great importance for radioiodine therapy. In clinical practice, thyroid volume determinations are usually performed with ultrasonography (US) or with planar scintigraphy (PS). In traditional planar scintigraphic studies, the thyroid boundary is estimated using a fixed threshold value if the shape of the thyroid is well-defined or a manually drawn region of interest (ROI) if the thyroid shape is irregular. The thyroid volume is then calculated based on the area thus determined. Delineating the thyroid area on a planar scintigram is not easy when applying a fixed threshold value. Moreover, hand-drawn ROIs are time consuming, tedious, and highly operator-dependent. In this study, for a PS image, a fully automated thyroid volume estimation system mainly consisting of four steps, i.e. preprocessing, image contrast enhancement, image segmentation, and automated ROI finding, was proposed to obtain the maximum height and area of each thyroid lobe, and thus calculate the thyroid volume using either HimankaLarsson?s formula or AllenGoodwin?s formula. A set of 40 Graves?s disease patients regarded as training set were used to determine empirically some parameters operated in the system. A set of 30 Graves?s disease patients being independent of the training set, regarded as test set for thyroid volume measurements were used for comparisons and performance analyses. In this study, the US was adopted as a standard reference. The statistical analyses were performed with bias, precision, and relative differences. The results of thyroid volume estimation from the proposed approach correlated well with those from US, and the statistical performance analyses showed good agreement between them. In comparison, our automated approach with AllenGoodwin?s formula had not only good correlation with US (R2=0.99) but also the best bias (0.8), precision (2.32ml), and low relative differences (2.26.1%). It is expected that this automated computer-assisted approach can help physicians in the determination of patient-specific administered activities for treatment of thyroid disease.

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

radioiodine therapy
planar scintigraphy
ultrasonography
thyroid volume estimation
contrast enhancement
image segmentation


Morphological preprocessing method to thresholding degraded word images This paper presents a novel preprocessing method based on mathematical morphology techniques to improve the subsequent thresholding quality of raw degraded word images. The raw degraded word images contain undesirable shapes called critical shadows on the background that cause noise in binary images. This noise constitutes obstacles to posterior segmentation of characters. Direct application of a thresholding method produces inadequate binary versions of these degraded word images. Our preprocessing method called Shadow Location and Lightening (SL*L) adaptively, accurately and without manual fine-tuning of parameters locates these critical shadows on grayscale degraded images using morphological operations, and lightens them before applying eventual thresholding process. In this way, enhanced binary images without unpredictable and inappropriate noise can be provided to subsequent segmentation of characters. Then, adequate binary characters can be segmented and extracted as input data to optical character recognition (OCR) applications saving computational effort and increasing recognition rate. The proposed method is experimentally tested with a set of several raw degraded images extracted from real photos acquired by unsophisticated imaging systems. A qualitative analysis of experimental results led to conclusions that the thresholding result quality was significantly improved with the proposed preprocessing method. Also, a quantitative evaluation using a testing data of 1194 degraded word images showed the essentiality and effectiveness of the proposed preprocessing method to increase segmentation and recognition rates of their characters. Furthermore, an advantage of the proposed method is that Otsus method as a simple and easily implementable global thresholding technique can be sufficient to reducing computational load.

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

mathematical morphology
morphological preprocessing
optical character recognition

degraded word image
critical shadow location
critical shadow lightening


QSAR and Pharmacophore Modeling of Natural and Synthetic Antimalarial Prodiginines Prodiginines are a family of linear and cyclic oligopyrrole red-pigmented compounds possessing antibacterial, anticancer and immunosuppressive activities and are produced by actinomycetes and other eubacteria. Recently, prodiginines have been reported to possess potent in vitro as well as in vivo antimalarial activity against chloroquine sensitive D6 and multi-drug resistant Dd2 strains of Plasmodium falciparum. In the present paper, a QSAR and pharmacophore modeling for a series of natural and synthetic prodiginines was performed to find out structural features which are crucial for antimalarial activity against these D6 and Dd2 Plasmodium strains. The study indicated that inertia moment 2 length, Kier Chi6 (path) index, kappa 3 index and Wiener topological index plays important role in antimalarial activity against D6 strain whereas descriptors inertia moment 2 length, ADME H-bond donors, VAMP polarization XX component and VAMP quadpole XZ component play important role in antimalarial activity against Dd2 strain. Furthermore, a five-point pharmacophore (ADHRR) model with one H-bond acceptor (A), one H-bond donor (D), one hydrophobic group (H) and two aromatic rings (R) as pharmacophore features was developed for D6 strain by PHASE module of Schrodinger suite. Similarly a six-point pharmacophore AADDRR was developed for Dd2 strain activity. All developed QSAR models showed good correlation coefficient (r(2) > 0.7), higher F value (F >20) and excellent predictive power (Q(2) > 0.6). Developed models will be highly useful for predicting antimalarial activity of new compounds and could help in designing better molecules with enhanced antimalarial activity. Furthermore, calculated ADME properties indicated drug-likeness of prodiginines.

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


Speeding up the simulation of the semiconductor device under microwave interference Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of high-power microwave interferences on electronic devices needs the simulation of semiconductor components. Although the semiconductor equations can be solved numerically by Newton method, the conventional Newton method exhibits significant speed degradation when the power of interference is high enough to cause device burnout. Therefore, this paper aims at speeding up the simulation of the semiconductor components under high-power microwave interferences. Design/methodology/approach - Some approximations in conventional Newton method works efficiently only when the electric field in the simulated semiconductor is relatively low. This is the reason of the formerly mentioned speed degradation problem. The proposed method speeds up the simulation by modifying these approximations to acquire enough precision in these high-power situations. Findings - The modified Newton method proposed in this paper shows an acceleration of 100-150 percent compared to conventional method for typical applications. Moreover, the simulation speed becomes nearly independent of the power of the microwave interferences, which means the speed degradation phenomenon of the conventional method has almost been eliminated. Originality/value - This paper proposes a modified Newton method to speed up the simulation of the semiconductor components under high-power microwave interferences.

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


Implementing Panel-Corrected Standard Errors in R: The pcse Package Time-series-cross-section (TSCS) data are characterized by having repeated observations over time on some set of units, such as states or nations. TSCS data typically display both contemporaneous correlation across units and unit level heteroskedasity making inference from standard errors produced by ordinary least squares incorrect. Panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) account for these these deviations from spherical errors and allow for better inference from linear models estimated from TSCS data. In this paper, we discuss an implementation of them in the R system for statistical computing. The key computational issue is how to handle unbalanced data.

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

pcse
contemporaneous correlation
heteroskedasity
r

time-series-cross-section
covariance matrix estimation


STABILITY FOR AN n-DIMENSIONAL FUNCTIONAL EQUATION OF QUADRATIC-ADDITIVE TYPE WITH THE FIXED POINT APPROACH In this paper, we investigate the stability of a functional equation Sigma(1 <=tau,j <= n,i not equal j) [f(x(i) + x(j)) + f (x(i) - x(j))] - (n - 1) Sigma(f)(j=1)(2x(j)) = 0 by using the fixed point methd in the sense of Cadariu and Radu.

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

n-dimensional quadratic-additive type functional equation


Generative character of perception: a neural architecture for sensorimotor anticipation The basic idea of our anticipatory approach to perception is to avoid the common separation of perception and generation of behavior and to fuse both aspects into a consistent neural process. Our approach tries to explain the phenomenon of perception, in particular, of perception at the level of sensorimotor intelligence, from a behavior-oriented point of view. Perception is assumed to be a generative process of anticipating the course of events resulting from alternative sequences of hypothetically executed actions. By means of this sensorimotor anticipation, it is possible to characterize a visual scenery immediately in categories of behavior, i.e. by a set of actions which describe possible methods of interaction with the objects in the environment. Thus, the competence to perceive a complex situation can be understood as the capability to anticipate the course of events caused by different action sequences. Starting from an abstract description of anticipatory perception and the essential biological evidence for internal simulation, we present two biologically motivated computational models that are able to anticipate and evaluate hypothetically sensorimotor sequences. Both models consider functional aspects of those cortical and subcortical systems that are assumed to be involved in the process of sensory prediction and sensorimotor control. Our first approach, the Model for Anticipation based on Sensory IMagination (MASIM), realizes a sequential search in sensorimotor space using a simple model of lateral cerebellum as sensory predictor. We demonstrate the efficiency of this model approach in the light of visually guided local navigation behaviors of a mobile system. The second approach, the Model for Anticipation based on Cortical Representations (MACOR), is actually still at a conceptual level of realization. We postulate that this model allows a completely parallel search at the neocortical level using assemblies of spiking neurons for grouping, separation, and selection of sensorimotor sequences. Both models are intended as general schemes for anticipation based perception at the level of sensorimotor intelligence.

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

perception
sensorimotor intelligence
anticipation
cerebellum


Logical Relations for Fine-Grained Concurrency Fine-grained concurrent data structures (or FCDs) reduce the granularity of critical sections in both time and space, thus making it possible for clients to access different parts of a mutable data structure in parallel. However, the tradeoff is that the implementations of FCDs are very subtle and tricky to reason about directly. Consequently, they are carefully designed to be contextual refinements of their coarse-grained counterparts, meaning that their clients can reason about them as if all access to them were sequentialized. In this paper, we propose a new semantic model, based on Kripke logical relations, that supports direct proofs of contextual refinement in the setting of a type-safe high-level language. The key idea behind our model is to provide a simple way of expressing the "local life stories" of individual pieces of an FCD's hidden state by means of protocols that the threads concurrently accessing that state must follow. By endowing these protocols with a simple yet powerful transition structure, as well as the ability to assert invariants on both heap states and specification code, we are able to support clean and intuitive refinement proofs for the most sophisticated types of FCDs, such as conditional compare-and-set (CCAS).

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

fine-grained concurrency
linearizability
separation logic
data abstraction
local state


Non-Existence of isomorphisms between certain unitals We show that the Ree-Tits unitals are neither classical nor isomorphic to the polar unitals found in the Coulter-Matthews planes. To this end, we determine the full automorphism groups of the finite Ree-Tits unitals.

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

unital
ree group
coulter-matthews plane
isomorphism
automorphism group
o'nan configuration


A contour tracing and coding algorithm for generating 2D contour codes from 3D classified objects In 3D image data sets generated by voxel-based classification, each voxel is marked with a specific class label. Voxels of the same class label can form 3D objects of extremely complex shape. Interactively drawn regions are usually represented by their 2D region borders. In order to combine automatically classified with interactively drawn regions, a contour tracing and coding algorithm for generating optimized 2D contours from 3D classified objects is presented. A special conversion algorithm allows a chain or a crack code representation. An application to medical images shows the method's necessity and usefulness in dealing with highly complex regions.

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

image classification
contour coding
chain code


Feature Extraction for Facial Expression Recognition based on Hybrid Face Regions Facial expression recognition has numerous applications, including psychological research, improved human computer interaction, and sign language translation. A novel facial expression recognition system based on hybrid face regions (HFR) is investigated. The expression recognition system is fully automatic, and consists of the following modules: face detection, facial detection, feature extraction, optimal features selection, and classification. The features are extracted from both whole face image and face regions (eyes and mouth) using log Gabor filters. Then, the most discriminate features are selected based on mutual information criteria. The system can automatically recognize six expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. The selected features are classified using the Naive Bayesian (NB) classifier. The proposed method has been extensively assessed using Cohn-Kanade database and JAFFE database. The experiments have highlighted the efficiency of the proposed HFR method in enhancing the classification rate.

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

facial expression recognition
gabor filters
face regions
human computer interaction
feature extraction


Implementation and performance evaluation for a ubiquitous and unified multimedia messaging platform As networking technology advances, more advanced message services are provided. Users may have one or more different message accounts and devices. Before sending messages, the sender must make sure which message service the receipt currently uses. Any misjudgement may delay the time when the messages are received. To make users be able to receive messages anytime and anywhere with any kind of devices, we propose a Ubiquitous and Unified Multimedia Messaging (UMM) platform. The UMM platform integrates different message services and provides a more efficient way for message delivery. Our design does not modify the existing protocols of message services and need not involve the network operators. An analytical model is proposed to evaluate the performance of the implemented platform. Our study shows that with a large number of message services the user subscribes and long message processing time in the network, the delayed message probability can be limited within 1.5%. This performance is considered satisfactory.

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


Ranking strategies for navigation based query formulation Navigating through a hypermedia retrieval system bears the problem of selecting an item from a large number of options available to continue the trajectory. Ranking these options according to some criterion is a method to ease the task of navigation. A number of ranking strategies have already been proposed. This paper presents a formalization of the concept of ranking, and of the aforementioned strategies. Furthermore we propose two strategies allowing a personalized approach to ranking.

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


An unified VoIP model for workload generation This paper presents a new model for VoIP workload generation. The novelty of our proposal consists in modeling the sessions by characterizing both the user behavior (session level) and the packet generation for an active call (intra-session level) with easily measured parameters and low computational complexity. This approach also facilitates systematic study of changes in user behavior and voice codec. The session level was modeled by analysis of call-holding time and time interval between successive calls. The model for call-holding time, characterizing the individual user behavior, uses the Pareto type 2 probability distribution. The time interval between calls is obtained from aggregate traffic and can be modeled by exponential probability distribution. Aggregate traffic is obtained by superposition of simultaneous sessions. The data used to characterize the session level were collected at the backbone of two Brazilian telecommunication carriers. The model for intra-session level comprises the characterization of the packet size and the packet inter-arrival time. The intra-session model was based on data generated in a laboratory environment, in order to properly characterize the codec influence on packet generation and to avoid the effects of delay, jitter and loss commonly present in an operational network. Models for constant bit rate and variable bit rate codecs were considered. A simulator was implemented and the results indicate that our model properly mimics the characteristics observed in real traffic and can be used for VoIP modeling and workload generation. Additionally, an application to automate the performance analysis was developed.

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


Discord and entanglement of two-particle quantum walk on cycle graphs In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of quantum discord and entanglement between the coin states of two quantum walkers on cycle graphs of various size in discrete time. For a few special cycle sizes, we obtained analytical solutions showing the origin of perfect periodic recurrence of quantum discord and entanglement. We found that the time evolution of such quantum correlations becomes increasingly complex when we introduce local interactions between the two walkers by applying an additional phase to the coin operator when they are at the same node. The effects of the interaction strength on the dynamics of the quantum discord and entanglement are studied in detail.

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


Discrete stability of perfectly matched layers for anisotropic wave equations in first and second order formulation Analysis of standard central finite difference discretization of perfectly matched layers for a scalar wave equation violating the geometric stability condition is presented. Both first and second order formulations are considered, and in the continuous setting our layers support temporally growing modes. The analysis shows that the discrete second order layer has much better stability properties than the discrete first order layer. In particular the second order layer exhibits growth only if well resolved growing modes are represented on the grid, while the first order version is unstable at most resolutions. We generalize this instability result to other first order systems.

B I O O O O O 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


the promis compiler prototype Source code parallelizers and instruction level parallelizers each have specific advantages. Usually, a compiler is designed to be one or the other based on the target architecture and/or algorithms. A compiler that is designed to generate near-optimal code for modern, multi-level machines must have the capabilities of both. This paper describes the prototype of the PROMIS compiler. The prototype was designed to show that loop level and instruction level parallelization can be combined to produce results better than either one alone. In addition, it shows how communication between the levels can produce additional speedup.

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

hierarchical htg parallelizing multi-level


Limit values of the recurrence quotient of Sturmian sequences The recurrence quotient is a real number associated to any symbolic sequence. In the case of Sturmian sequences, Morse and Hedlund proved that the smallest possible value is (5 + root 5)/2. We study here the structure of the set of values taken by the recurrence quotient for a Sturmian sequence. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

recurrence function
continued fraction
singular factor


Arbitrary dual-band unequal Wilkinson power divider based on negative refractive index transmission lines This paper focused on the application of negative refractive index transmission line (NRI-TL) in dual-band unequal Wilkinson power divider (WPD) with controllable frequency and power dividing ratio. Theory and design procedure of the dual-band NRI-TL are presented in details. For demonstration, two dual-band unequal Wilkinson power dividers (WPDs) with power dividing ratio of 2:1 and operating frequencies of 0.9 and 1.8GHz are designed, fabricated and tested. The first unequal divider is based on 2-stage NRI-TLs and the second one is based on 4-stage NRI-TLs. In addition, these two types of NRI-TLs are presented to demonstrate that by increasing the number of NRI-TL unit-cells the phase response of the NRI-TLs converge to the desired characteristic. The good agreement between measured and simulated results confirmed the design concept and derived closed-form design equations. Measurements show that the first divider has 18.37% and 21.86% relative bandwidths and the second one has 33.52% and 29.12% relative bandwidths at 0.9 and 1.8GHz, respectively. The design concept of this paper can be extended to equal dual-band power dividers with arbitrary frequency ratio.

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

negative refractive index transmission line (nri-tl)


Improving Energy Efficiency for Mobile Media Cloud via Virtual Machine Consolidation Mobile media applications are on the rise due to the explosive popularity of mobile devices. Advances in mobile media cloud (MMC) make it a promising solution to serve those huge multimedia applications. In MMC, virtualization is adopted to allocate resources elastically from a shared resource pool. Therefore, effective virtual machine (VM) consolidation is of paramount importance to maximize energy efficiency. In this paper, we consider a scenario that mobile media cloud performs video streaming and transcoding for viewers with different mobile devices. We formulate the VM consolidation problem as a mixed integer linear programming. Under this framework, the minimum energy consumption and the number of physical machines (PMs) in operation are derived. Based on these analytical results, for homogeneous media cloud, we develop an approximation algorithm for VM consolidation and placement which jointly considers CPU and bandwidth constraints. For heterogeneous media cloud, we derive an upper and a lower bound of the number of PMs and their energy consumption. Trace-driven simulations demonstrate that our proposed algorithm significantly reduces energy consumption and the number of PMs used.

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


Learning-based constitutive parameters estimation in an image sensing system with multiple mirrors A sensing system sometimes requires a complicated optical unit consisting of multiple mirrors, in which case it is important to estimate accurately constitutive parameters of the optical unit to enhance its sensing capability. However, the parameters include generally uncertainties since the optical unit cannot avoid the fixing and aligning errors and the manufacturing tolerance of its components. Accordingly, it should construct a projective model of the complicated sensing system accurately and build up an estimation method of tangled parameters. However, it is not easy to estimate complicated constitutive parameters from an accurate model of an optical unit with multiple mirrors, and moreover, they are sometimes changed during operation due to unexpected disturbance or intermittent adjustments such as computer control zoom, auto focus, and mirror relocation. Due to these operational circumstances, it is not easy to take apart components of the assembled system and directly measure the components. Therefore, an indirect and adaptive estimation method, taking all the components into simultaneous consideration without disassembling the sensing system, is needed for calibrating the uncertain and changeable constitutive parameters. In this paper, we propose not only a generalized projective model for an optical sensing system consisting of n-mirrors and a camera with a collecting lens, but also a learning-based process using the model to estimate recursively the uncertain constitutive parameters of the optical sensing system. We also show its feasibility through a series of calibration of an optical system.

O O O B 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 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 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

multiple mirror
learning algorithm
uncertainty


Adding draft angles on mechanical components containing constant radius blending surfaces The automation of mould design and manufacturing using computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) draws the attention of many researchers. However, little attention is given to the automation of draft angles addition process. Draft angle is an important feature that facilitates the ejection of moulded parts. Existing algorithms for draft angles addition are still having limitations, especially for geometry with blending surfaces. A new approach for draft angles addition is introduced. It reduces the workload of users by automatically producing inclination on surfaces that require draft angles.

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

injection mould design
computer-aided design


Construction of exact solutions to the Jimbo-Miwa equation through Backlund transformation and symbolic computation Based on a simple transformation, and with the aid of symbolic computation, a Backlund transformation relating the Jimbo-Miwa equation and a system of linear partial differential equations is obtained, which enables us to construct exact solutions of the Jimbo-Miwa equation through the Wronskian determinants of independent solutions of the linear system. Particularly, explicit Wronskian form N-soliton solutions for the Jimbo-Miwa equation are presented. Moreover, the introduced transformation also helps to construct bi-soliton-like solutions of the Jimbo-Miwa equation. Due to the arbitrary functions they contain, the bi-soliton-like solutions can represent various waves such as classical cross-line bi-solitons, curved bi-solitons and bi-soliton-like breathers. (C) 2012 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 B O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

jimbo-miwa equation
n-soliton solution
bi-soliton-like solution


Sensitivity Analysis of Multichannel Images Intended for Instantaneous Imaging Spectrometry Applications This paper presents a sensitivity analysis of using instantaneous multichannel two-dimensional (2D) imaging to achieve instantaneous 2D imaging spectroscopy. A simulated multiple-filter mosaic was introduced and used to acquire multichannel data which were transformed into spectra. The feasibility of two different transformation approaches (the concrete pseudoinverse approach and a statistical approach) was investigated through extensive experimental tasks. A promising statistical method was identified to be used for accurate estimation of spectra from multichannel data. Comparison between estimated and measured spectra shows that higher estimation accuracy can be achieved when using a larger number of usable multiple-filter combinations in the mosaic.

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

imaging spectroscopy
sensitivity analysis
pseudoinverse

multiple color filters
color mosaics
singular value decomposition
spectral estimation


Interval-based timing constraints: Their satisfactions and applications In real-time distributed systems, it is often difficult to timestamp an event with a point value. Hence, constraints based on intervals are more realistic. However, when a constraint is extended from point-based to interval-based, its satisfaction is not a simple Boolean value; instead, a satisfaction probability is associated with the constraint. We study the satisfaction probability of interval-based timing constraints when event occurrence times are nonuniformly distributed in given time intervals. An algorithm is developed to derive implicit constraints from a set of given interval-based constraints. Our study shows that there are bounds for certain constraint configurations. These analytical results are further applied in two application domains in which constraints are based on single and composite event models, respectively.

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

constraint satisfaction
distribution functions
interval-based timing constraints
real-time distributed systems


A common framework for deriving preference values from pairwise comparison matrices Pairwise comparison is commonly used to estimate preference values of finite alternatives with respect to a given criterion. We discuss 18 estimating methods for deriving preference values from pairwise judgment matrices under a common framework of effectiveness: distance minimization and correctness in error free cases. We point out the importance of commensurate scales when aggregating all the columns of a judgment matrix and the desirability of weighting the columns according to the preference values. The common framework is useful in differentiating the strength and weakness of the estimated methods. Some comparison results of these 18 methods on two sets of judgment matrices with small and large errors are presented. We also give insight regarding the underlying mathematical structure of some of the methods. Pairwise comparison is commonly used to estimate preference values of finite alternatives with respect to a given criterion. This is part of the model structure of the analytical hierarchy process, a widely used multicriteria decision-making methodology. The main difficulty is to reconcile the inevitable inconsistency of the pairwise comparison matrix elicited from the decision makers in real-world applications. We discuss 18 estimating methods for deriving preference values from pairwise judgment matrices under a common framework of effectiveness: the common concepts of minimizing aggregated deviation and correctness in error free cases. The common framework is useful in differentiating the strength and weakness of these methods. For each of these methods, we point out their individual strength in decisional effectiveness. Some comparison results of these 18 methods on two sets of judgment matrices with small and large errors are presented. We also give insight regarding the underlying mathematical structure of some of the methods. We recommend the simple geometric mean method with the stronger feature of distance minimization and the simple normalized column sum method that is based on the simple ideas of commensurate unit and column sum. These two methods have closed-form formulas for easy calculation and good performance on both sets of judgment matrices with small and large errors.

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


LMI static output-feedback design of fuzzy power system stabilizers The design of a model-free fuzzy power system stabilizer (PSS) lacks systematic stability analysis and performance guarantees. This paper provides a step towards the design of a model-based fuzzy PSS that guarantees not only stability but also performance specifications of power systems. A new practical and simple design based on static output feedback is proposed. The design guarantees robust pole-clustering in an acceptable region in the complex plane for a wide range of operating conditions. A power system design model is approximated by a set of Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy models to account for nonlinearities, uncertainties and large scale power systems. The proposed PSS design is based on parallel distributed compensation (PDC). Sufficient design conditions are derived as linear matrix inequalities (LMI). The design procedure leads to a tractable convex optimization problem in terms of the stabilizer gain matrix. Simulations results of both single-machine and multi-machine power systems confirm the effectiveness of the proposed PSS design. (c) 2008 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 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

power system stability
robustness
linear matrix inequality (lmi)
takagi-sugeno (t-s) fuzzy models
parallel-distributed compensation (pdc)


Immersive multi-projector display on hybrid screens with human-scale haptic interface Many immersive displays developed in previous researches are strongly influenced by the design concept of the CAVE, which is the origin of the immersive displays. In the view of human-scale interactive system for virtual environment (VE), the existing immersive systems are not enough to use the potential of a human sense further extent. The displays require more complicated structure for flexible extension, and are more restrictive to user's movement. Therefore we propose a novel multi-projector display for immersive VE with haptic interface for more flexible and dynamic interaction. The display part of our system named "D-vision" has a hybrid curved screen which consist of compound prototype with flat and curve screen. This renders images seamlessly in real time, and generates high-quality stereovision by PC cluster and two-pass technology. Furthermore a human-scale string-based haptic device will integrate with the D-vision for more interactive and immersive VE. In this paper, we show an overview of the D-vision and technologies used for the human-scale haptic interface.

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

immersive projection technology
human-scale virtual environment
multi-modal interaction
force feedback


A comparison study of improved HilbertHuang transform and wavelet transform: Application to fault diagnosis for rolling bearing For rolling bearing fault detection, it is expected that a desired timefrequency analysis method should have good computation efficiency, and have good resolution in both time domain and frequency domain. As the best available timefrequency method so far, the wavelet transform still cannot fulfill the rolling bearing fault detection task very well since it has some inevitable deficiencies. The recent popular timefrequency analysis method, HilbertHuang transform (HHT), has good computation efficiency and does not involve the concept of the frequency resolution and the time resolution. So the HHT seems to have potential to become a perfect tool for rolling bearing fault detection. However, in practical applications, the HHT also suffers from some unsolved deficiencies. To ameliorate these deficiencies, by seeking help from the wavelet packet transform (WPT) and a simple but effective method for intrinsic mode function (IMF) selection, an improved HHT is put forward in this studying. Several numerical study cases will be used to validate the capabilities of the improved HHT. Finally, the improved HHT's performance in rolling bearing fault detection is compared with that of the wavelet based scalogram through experimental case studies. The comparison results have shown that (1) the improved HHT has better resolution both in time domain and in frequency domain than the scalogram; (2) the improved HHT has better computing efficiency than scalogram; (3) the HHT spectrum also has one unresolved and maybe inevitable deficiencyripple phenomenon in its estimated frequency, which would mislead our analysis.

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

wavelet transform
hilberthuang transform
fault diagnosis


Using SDRAM Memories for High-Performance Accesses to Two-Dimensional Matrices Without Transpose The data throughput of SDRAMs is significantly reduced by the control overhead required for access or transposition of large two-dimensional data matrices stored in SDRAM memories. In this paper, a new address mapping scheme is introduced, taking advantage of multiple banks and burst capabilities of modern SDRAMs. In this way, the data throughput is maximized when reading or writing rows or columns of a two-dimensional data matrix. Other address mapping strategies minimize the total number of SDRAM page-opens while traversing the two-dimensional index-space in row or column direction. In order to achieve a higher data throughput, the new approach uses an alternative bank interleaving method to hide additional wait cycles. In this way, the number of data bus wait cycles do not depend on the overall number of page-opens directly any more. It is shown, that the data bus utilization can be increased significantly. In particular, the new mapping strategy is optimized for access of parallel samples, distributed among a number of SDRAM chips. Therefore, double buffering can be omitted. As a special operation, 2D-FFT processing for radar applications is considered. Depending on SDRAM parameters and dimensions, a continuous bandwidth utilization of 96-98 % is achieved for accesses in both matrix dimensions, including all page-opens and refresh operations.

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


Auto-adjusted 3-D optic disk viewing from low-resolution stereo fundus image Three-dimensional (3-D) visualization of the optic nerve head (optic disk) is very useful for clinical applications. It allows clinicians to measure the disk parameters more accurately and thus make the pathological diagnosis and progression monitoring easier. This paper describes an automatic, precise, 3-D optic nerve head reconstruction method from a pair of stereo images for which efficient steps including sparse-image registration and dense-depth recovery are used. A combination of two registration methods is used to detect the sub-pixel correspondences. The proposed method takes advantages of both the correlation methods which is robust to noise and the feature-based method on its accuracy. The searching range in image registration is auto-adjusted based on the previous iteration result. Only sparse matched points are computed to speed up the processing and the sub-pixel matching is used to overcome the problem of low resolution in the image. This is followed by the piecewise cubic interpolation to obtain the dense disparities and depths. Multiple windowing is applied here by first using the large window to obtain basic disparities followed by the small window and previous basic disparities to measure details. The result is then smoothed and displayed as the final 3-D shape.

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

3-d reconstruction
stereo image
medical imaging
sub-pixel matching


an extension of vose's markov chain model for genetic algorithms The paper presents an extension of Vose's Markov chain model for genetic algorithm (GA). The model contains not only standard genetic operators such as mutation and crossover but also two new operators - translation to the left/right and permutation of bits. The presented model can be used for finding the transition matrices and for the investigation of asymptotic properties by using Markov transition functions. The ergodity of the Markov chain describing the GA with new operators, translation to the left/right and permutation, is shown. The model is specialized for a case of Bentley's GA. For this GA the ergodity of the Markov chains and the asymptotic correctness in the probabilistic sense are shown. To model other aspects of the Bentley's GA (effective fitness, total transmission probability) the microscopic Exact Poli GP Schema Theory for Subtree-Swapping Crossover is used.

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

markov chain model
schema theory
asymptotic correctness
genetic algorithms
ergodity


MLSR: A novel routing algorithm for multilayered satellite IP networks Several IP-based routing algorithms have been developed for low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks in recent years. The performance of the satellite IP networks can be improved drastically if multiple satellite constellations are used in the architecture. In this work, a multilayered satellite IP network is introduced that consists of LEO, medium-Earth orbit (MEO), and geostationary Earth, orbit (GEO) satellites. A new multilayered satellite routing algorithm (MLSR) is developed that calculates routing tables efficiently using the collected delay measurements. The performance of the multilayered satellite network and MLSR is evaluated through simulations and analysis.

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


Project delivery system selection of construction projects in China The suitability of the project delivery system (PDS) selected for a project greatly influences the efficiency to conduct a project. It is not an easy task to select an appropriate PDS as a large amount of ambiguous information exists. The paper aims to develop a PDS selection model to help owners to make a decision. The similar projects are identified through the similarity metrics between the target project to be predicted and those in the database. In addition, some of the indicator values are examined and modified through DEA-BND model, and then they are trained by ANN model to predict an appropriate PDS for the target project. A survey was conducted by postal questionnaire to empirically validate the reliability of the model in China. The indicator system for the selection of an appropriate PDS is established. Through the comparison of results predicted by different models, it is found that the PDS selection model developed in this paper can predict PDS precisely, and shows higher reliability than the ANN model. A PDS selection model is developed by inputting project-specific data, which proves to be more accurate and less dependent on experts judgment. Its practical application will benefit the owners decision making in the selection of the PDS.

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

construction project
data envelopment analysis
artificial neural network


Structuralization of universes In this work a new set of clustering criteria for the structuralization of universes in the logical combinatory approach of the Pattern Recognition Theory is introduced. The criteria are considered for classical partitions and covers fuzzy classes as well. The existing relationships between these criteria are studied. An example of an application of the criteria introduced herein is also included. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

cluster analysis
crisp clustering criterion
fuzzy clustering criterion
unsupervised classification
logical combinatorial approach


scratch-pad memory allocation without compiler support for java applications This paper presents the first scratch-pad memory allocation scheme that requires no compiler support for interpreted-language based applications. A scratch-pad memory(SPM) is a fast compiler-managed SRAM that replaces the hardware-managed cache. Its uses are motivated by its better realtime guarantees as compared to cache and by its significantly lower overheads in energy consumption, area and access time. Interpreted languages are languages such as Java that are interpreted by a runtime environment instead of being executed directly on hardware. All existing memory allocation schemes for SPM require compiler analysis to develop the allocation strategy. Specifically, existing allocation schemes for Java-based applications determine the allocations at compile-time. They then annotate the Java bytecodes with these allocation decisions for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to implement the actual allocation at runtime. These existing allocation schemes tie the resulting bytecode to specific SPM sizes, therefore preventing the applications from being portable to different SPM sizes. Further, existing methods do not work for unmodified third-party byte codes produced by compilers other than their specialized compilers. In this paper, we propose the first ever SPM allocation schemethat is completely implemented inside the JVM. Our method requires no compiler support and works for unmodified byte codes from any source. Moreover, unlike existing methods, it preserves the portability of bytecode to any SPM size. We investigate our method on the Sun Hotspot JVM on which we achieve a 27.8\% improvement on runtime and 21.8\% on energy saving versus not using the SPM - the only existing alternative for unmodified bytecodes.

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


Model-driven rapid prototyping with programmed graph transformations ? Modern software systems are constantly increasing in complexity and supporting the rapid prototyping of such systems has become crucial to check the feasibility of extensions and optimizations, thereby reducing risks and, consequently, the cost of development. As modern software systems are also expected to be reused, extended, and adapted over a much longer lifetime than ever before, ensuring the maintainability of such systems is equally gaining relevance. In this paper, we present the development, optimization and maintenance of MoSo-PoLiTe, a framework for Software Product Line (SPL) testing, as a novel case study for rapid prototyping via metamodelling and programmed graph transformations. The first part of the case study evaluates the use of programmed graph transformations for optimizing an existing, hand-written system (MoSo-PoLiTe) via rapid prototyping of various strategies. In the second part, we present a complete re-engineering of the hand-written system with programmed graph transformations and provide a critical comparison of both implementations. Our results and conclusions indicate that metamodelling and programmed graph transformation are not only suitable techniques for rapid prototyping, but also lead to more maintainable systems.

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

rapid prototyping
programmed graph transformations
metamodelling

software product lines
model-driven testing


A multi-scale template method for shape detection with bio-medical applications In this paper we present a novel methodology based on non-parametric deformable prototype templates for reconstructing the outline of a shape from a degraded image. Our method is versatile and fast and has the potential to provide an automatic procedure for classifying pathologies. We test our approach on synthetic and real data from a variety of medical and biological applications. In these studies it is important to reconstruct accurately the shape of the object under investigation from very noisy data. Here we assume that we have some prior knowledge about the object outline represented by a prototype shape. Our procedure deforms this shape by means of non-affine transformations and the contour is reconstructed by minimizing a newly developed objective function that depends on the transformation parameters. We introduce an iterative template deformation procedure in which the scale of the deformation decreases as the algorithm proceeds. We compare our results with those from a Gaussian Mixture Model segmentation and two state-of-the-art Level Set methods. This comparison shows that the proposed procedure performs consistently well on both real and simulated data. As a by-product we develop a new filter that recovers the connectivity of a shape.

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

non-parametric deformable template
non-affine transformations
image segmentation
dynamic breast imaging
ultrasonography
computed tomography
pet


Using unlabelled data to train a multilayer perceptron This Letter presents an approach to using both labelled and unlabelled data to train a multilayer perceptron. The unlabelled data are iteratively pre-processed by a perceptron being trained to obtain the soft class label estimates. It is demonstrated that substantial gains in classification performance may be achieved from the use of the approach when the labelled data do not adequately represent the entire class distributions. The experimental investigations performed have shown that the approach proposed may be successfully used to train neural networks for learning different classification problems.

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

artificial neural networks
multiplayer perceptron
supervised learning


Instance-specific canonical correlation analysis We model locality and nonlinearity jointly for multi-view correlation learning. Instance-specific projections are computed along the smooth curve of the manifold. The convex objective functions are solved efficiently with a global optimal solution.

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

least squares regression
multi-view statistical learning


Two dimensional synthetic face generation and verification using set estimation technique ? In this paper set estimation technique is applied for generation of 2D face images. The synthesis is done on the basis of inheriting features from inter and intra face classes in face space. Face images without artifacts and expressions are transformed to images with artifacts and expressions with the help of the developed methods. Most of the test images are generated using the proposed method. The measured PSNR values for the generated faces with respect to the training faces reflect the well accepted quality of the generated images. The generated faces are also classified properly to their respective face classes using nearest neighbor classifier. Validation of the method is demonstrated on AR and FIA datasets. Classification accuracy is increased when the new generated faces are added to the training set.

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 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

inter class feature and intra class feature


Verification and Trade-Off Analysis of Security Properties in UML System Models Designing secure systems is a nontrivial task. Incomplete or faulty designs can cause security mechanisms to be incorrectly incorporated in a system, allowing them to be bypassed and resulting in a security breach. We advocate the use of the Aspect-Oriented Risk-Driven Development (AORDD) methodology for developing secure systems. This methodology begins with designers defining system assets, identifying potential attacks against them, and evaluating system risks. When a risk is unacceptable, designers must mitigate the associated threat by incorporating security mechanisms methodically into the system design. Designers next formally evaluate the resulting design to ensure that the threat has been mitigated, while still allowing development to meet other project constraints. In this paper, we focus on the AORDD analysis, which consists of: 1) a formal security evaluation and 2) a trade-off analysis that enables system designers to position alternative security solutions against each other. The formal security evaluation uses the Alloy Analyzer to provide assurance that an incorporated security mechanism performs as expected and makes the system resilient to previously identified attacks. The trade-off analysis uses a Bayesian Belief Network topology to allow equally effective security mechanisms to be compared against system security requirements and other factors such as time-to-market and budget constraints.

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

aspect-oriented modeling (aom)
bayesian belief network (bbn)
security analysis
trade-off analysis


Predicting linear B-cell epitopes using amino acid anchoring pair composition Accurate identification of linear B-cell epitopes plays an important role in peptide vaccine designs, immunodiagnosis, and antibody productions. Although several prediction methods have been reported, unsatisfied accuracy has limited the broad usages in linear B-cell epitope prediction. Therefore, developing a reliable model with significant improvement on prediction accuracy is highly desirable.

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

linear b-cell epitopes
epitopes prediction


Exact and heuristic solution approaches for the mixed integer setup knapsack problem We consider a class of knapsack problems that include setup costs for families of items. An individual item can be loaded into the knapsack only if a setup cost is incurred for the family to which it belongs. A mixed integer programming formulation for the problem is provided along with exact and heuristic solution methods. The exact algorithm uses cross decomposition. The proposed heuristic gives fast and tight bounds. In addition, a Benders decomposition algorithm is presented to solve the continuous relaxation of the problem. This method for solving the continuous relaxation can be used to improve the performance of a branch and bound algorithm for solving the integer problem. Computational performance of the algorithms are reported and compared to CPLEX.

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

integer programming
knapsack
cross decomposition
benders decomposition


Solution of the Navier-Stokes equations in velocity-vorticity form using a Eulerian-Lagrangian boundary element method This paper describes the Eulerian-Lagrangian boundary element model for the solution of incompressible viscous flow problems using velocity-vorticity variables. A Eulerian-Lagrangian boundary element method (ELBEM) is proposed by the combination of the Eulerian-Lagrangian method and the boundary element method (BER I). ELBEM overcomes the limitation of the traditional BEM, which is incapable of dealing with the arbitrary velocity field in advection-dominated flow problems. The present ELBEM model involves the solution of the vorticity transport equation for vorticity whose solenoidal vorticity components are obtained iteratively by solving velocity Poisson equations involving the velocity and vorticity components. The velocity Poisson equations are solved using a boundary integral scheme and the vorticity transport equation is solved using the ELBEM. Here the results of two-dimensional Navier-Stokes problems with low-medium Reynolds numbers in a typical cavity flow are presented and compared with a series solution and other numerical models. The ELBEM model has been found to be feasible and satisfactory. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

eulerian-lagrangian method
navier-stokes equations
velocity-vorticity formulation


Value-at-Risk for country risk ratings The country risk literature argues that country risk ratings have a direct impact on the cost of borrowings as they reflect the probability of debt default by a country. An improvement in country risk ratings, or country creditworthiness, will lower a country's cost of borrowing and debt servicing obligations, and vice versa. In this context, it is useful to analyse country risk ratings data, much like financial data, in terms of the time series patterns, as such an analysis would provide policy makers and the industry stakeholders with a more accurate method of forecasting future changes in the risks and returns of country risk ratings. This paper considered an extension of the Value-at-Risk (VaR) framework where both the upper and lower thresholds are considered. The purpose of the paper was to forecast the conditional variance and Country Risk Bounds (CRBs) for the rate of change of risk ratings for 10 countries. The conditional variance of composite risk returns for the 10 countries were forecasted using the Single Index (SI) and Portfolio Methods (PM) of McAleer and da Veiga [10,11]. The results suggested that the country risk ratings of Switzerland, Japan and Australia are much mode likely to remain close to current levels than the country risk ratings of Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. This type of analysis would be useful to lenders/investors evaluating the attractiveness of lending/investing in alternative countries. (c) 2010 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

value-at-risk
risk bounds
risk management


The multicast address allocation problem: theory and practice ? In this paper, we perform the first comprehensive study of the multicast address allocation problem. We analyze this problem both within its context as a classic resource allocation problem and with respect to its practical use for multicast address assignment. We define a framework for the problem, introduce complexity results, and formulate several new allocation algorithms. Despite the theoretical superiority of these algorithms, our performance evaluation demonstrates that a common, prefix-based algorithm is better under a range of workloads. We conclude by illustrating the conditions under which dynamic address allocation should be used and provide insight into how to further improve the performance of prefix-based allocation.

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


A New Construction of Permutation Arrays Let PA(n, d) be a permutation array (PA) of order n and the minimum distance d. We propose a new construction of the permutation array PA (pm, p(m-1) k) for a given prime number p, a positive integer k = 2p/3. Moreover the proposed construction provides an algorithm to find the i-th row of PA (p(m), p(m-1) k) for a given index i very simply.

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


Incremental controlled relaxation of failing flexible queries In this paper, we discuss an approach for relaxing a failing query in the context of flexible (or fuzzy) querying. The approach relies on the notion of a parameterized proximity relation which is defined in a relative way. We show how such a proximity relation allows for transforming a gradual predicate into an enlarged one. The resulting predicate is semantically close to the original one and it is obtained by a simple fuzzy arithmetic operation. Such a transformation provides the basis for a flexible query relaxation which can be controlled in a non-empirical rigorous way without requiring any additional information from the user. We also show how the search for a non-failing relaxed query over the lattice of relaxed queries can be improved by exploiting the notion of Minimal Failing Sub-queries derived from the failing query.

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

flexible queries
query relaxation
proximity relation


Design of a service platform for delay-sensitive video streaming applications based on multicast p2p and scalable MDC encoding The great diffusion of Internet accesses in the world and the enormous evolution of the Internet technologies have strongly determined dissemination and consolidation of many applications of video content distribution. However, multicast real-time video communications for interactive service applications with a very high number of users, like for example multipoint videoconferences and interactive video games, remains a challenging research topic for the presence of very strict requirements in terms of end-to-end delay and perceived quality. The target of this paper is to propose a video distribution platform that is able to provide a huge number of users with a delay constrained multicast video streaming. To this purpose, the proposed content delivery platform is based on a peer-to-peer approach that exploits multicast overlay organization of the peers to address the challenges due to bandwidth heterogeneity. To improve reliability and flexibility, video is coded using a scalable multiple description approach. Some design guidelines are provided taking into account some requirements in terms of delay, average PSNR, robustness against underlying network bandwidth fluctuations, and fairness. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Biomimetic design through natural language analysis to facilitate cross-domain information retrieval Biomimetic, or biologically inspired, design uses analogous biological phenomena to develop solutions for engineering problems. Several instances of biomimetic design result from personal observations of biological phenomena. However, many engineers' knowledge of biology may be limited, thus reducing the potential of biologically inspired solutions. Our approach to biomimetic design takes advantage of the large amount of biological knowledge already available in books, journals, and so forth, by performing keyword searches on these existing natural-language sources. Because of the ambiguity and imprecision of natural language, challenges inherent to natural language processing were encountered. One challenge of retrieving relevant cross-domain information involves differences in domain vocabularies, or lexicons. A keyword meaningful to biologists may not occur to engineers. For an example problem that involved cleaning, that is, removing dirt, a biochemist suggested the keyword "defend." Defend is not an obvious keyword to most engineers for this problem, nor are the words defend and "clean/remove" directly related within lexical references. However, previous work showed that biological phenomena retrieved by the keyword defend provided useful stimuli and produced successful concepts for the clean/remove problem. In this paper, we describe a method to systematically bridge the disparate biology and engineering domains using natural language analysis. For the clean/remove example, we were able to algorithmically generate several biologically meaningful keywords, including defend, that are not obviously related to the engineering problem. We developed a method to organize and rank the set of biologically meaningful keywords identified, and confirmed that we could achieve similar results for two other examples in encapsulation and microassembly. Although we specifically address cross-domain information retrieval from biology, the bridging process presented in this paper is not limited to biology, and can be used for any other domain given the availability of appropriate domain-specific knowledge sources and references.

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

biomimetic
biologically inspired
information retrieval

bioanalogous design
concept generation
domain lexicons


Tracking population densities using dynamic neural fields with moderately strong inhibition We discuss the ability of dynamic neural fields to track noisy population codes in an online fashion when signals are constantly applied to the recurrent network. To report on the quantitative performance of such networks we perform population decoding of the orientation embedded in the noisy signal and determine which inhibition strength in the network provides the best decoding performance. We also study the performance of decoding on time-varying signals. Simulations of the system show good performance even in the very noisy case and also show that noise is beneficial to decoding time-varying signals.

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

dynamic neural field model
noise reduction


Numerical analysis of a synthetic jet using an automated adaptive method An automated adaptive remeshing methodology is applied to a synthetic jet. A set of two-dimensional, axisymmetric, time-dependent Computational Fluid Dynamics analyses are performed. Grid independence is achieved via successive levels of adaptive refinement using a novel methodology. The method employs adaptive remeshing, performed in an automated fashion. Adaptation criteria are based upon the undivided differences in select field variables. Sensors are placed at strategic locations within the flow field, which are used to aid in judging grid independence. The resulting analytical predictions are compared to an experimental dataset. The automated methodology yields both a verified and validated set of analysis results for the synthetic jet. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

grid independence adaptation synthetic jet


Adaptive Power Control with Overhearing Avoidance for Wireless Sensor Networks In this paper, Adaptive Power Control with Overhearing Avoidance (APC-OA) has been proposed. The proposed power control algorithm has been implemented in PICSENSE wireless sensor nodes. The energy consumption of proposed MAC has been compared with that of On Demand Transmission Power Control (ODTPC) protocol and it is shown that the Adaptive Power Control with Overhearing Avoidance gives higher energy conservation compared to ODTPC. The power level convergence towards the optimal power for APC-OA is two times faster than the ODTPC.

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

transmission power control
overhearing avoidance


The Tower of Babel Did Not Fail Fred Brooks' retelling of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel offers many insights into what makes building software difficult. The difficulty, according to common interpretations, comes from the communication and organizational problems in software development. But the story contains one more important lesson that people tend to miss: one cannot accomplish impossible goals, which programmers are often asked to do. Software engineering, as a discipline, can overcome poor communication; but as long as we attempt to live up to impossible expectations, we will always fail.

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

design
documentation
economics
human factors
languages
management
programming
science


credit-based dynamic reliability management using online wearout detection As circuit geometries continue to shrink, and supply voltages remain relatively constant, circuit wearout becomes a concern. We propose that the relative reliability of the circuits of a processor be exposed to the operating system, and be managed by a credit-based wearout monitor. This wearout monitor receives dynamic updates of the reliability of circuits through the use of stability detector circuits that are small enough to be widely deployed. We find that through the combined use of the wearout monitor and stability detectors, we can efficiently and accurately manage the reliability of a processor, and re-coup the performance of a processor that would otherwise be lost when processors are over-provisioned to meet an expected lifetime. We simulate a 16 core DSP with a wearout monitor and stability detectors on a mix of four different media algorithms. Using the wearout monitor and stability detectors, we find that by reducing average performance by only 5\%, we can increase the lifetime of the processor by 46\%.

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


On Degrees of Freedom Region of MIMO Networks Without Channel State Information at Transmitters We study the effect of the absence of channel knowledge at the transmitters for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) networks. Specifically, we assume perfect channel state information at the receivers, no channel state information at the transmitter(s), and independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading across antennas, users and time slots. We provide the characterization of the degrees of freedom (DoF) region for a 2-user MIMO broadcast channel. We then provide a DoF region outer bound for a 2-user MIMO interference channel. This bound is shown to be tight for all possible combinations of the number of antennas at each node except for one case. To analyze the unsolved case, we point out the potential of interference alignment in the 2-user MIMO interference channel with no channel state information at the transmitters. As a byproduct, we explore a special class of MIMO broadcast channels where the capacity region is established by using the outer bound developed in the DoF analysis.

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

broadcast channel
interference alignment
interference channel

degrees of freedom (dof)
multiple-input-multiple-output (mimo)


The Hermite interpolation approach for computing eigenvalues of Dirac systems We use the derivative sampling theorem (Hermite interpolations) to compute eigenvalues of Dirac systems numerically. We use recently derived estimates for the truncation and amplitude errors to compute error bounds. Numerical examples, illustrations and comparisons with the sinc methods are exhibited. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

dirac system
truncation error
amplitude error