spanning the pareto front of a counter radar detection problem Radar system design and optimization are complex problems recently cast in the framework of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms. However, in the problem of counter radar detection and tracking, the state-of-the-art multi-objective optimization algorithm NSGA-II is unable to span the complete 2D Pareto front of the asymptotic and convex problem domain, leaving out vital information on the radar-jammer system dynamics. Common modifications to the domination principle employed will to some degree increase the span of the Pareto front, at the expense of slower convergence and a less dense front. In this paper, the new Surface Evolutionary Algorithm (SEA) is introduced to overcome these problems. The SEA characterizes all solutions by one single metric and uses interpolated attraction points along the boundary of the solution set as basis for selecting and evolving solutions in the optimizer. The SEA is proposed and analyzed in the context of the conflicting multi-objective optimization criteria of search efficiency, density distribution and span of the complete Pareto front of the counter radar detection problem. The SEA is shown to produce high performance solutions not easily obtained using the well-established optimization methods of NSGA-II and e-MOEA.

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

digital rf memory
constant false alarm rate
pulse-doppler radar
jamming technique design
genetic algorithm
multi-objective optimization


A framework for the development of videogames A framework is a high-level solution for the reuse of software pieces, a step forward in simple library-based reuse, that allows the sharing of not only common functions but also the generic logic of a domain application. It also ensures a better level of quality for the final product, given the fact that an important fraction of the application is already found within the framework and has therefore already been tested. This case study takes the systematic generation of hot-spot subsystems approach as a reference point to describe the underlying concepts in the design of a framework for the development of 2D action videogames for low-performance machines. The main goal of this paper is to show the applicability of framework-based reuse to videogames. Both standard and framework-based game implementations are compared and the results are analysed. Special attention is paid to the (potential) benefits that the use of frameworks brings to the fulfillment of maintenance tasks along the game's life cycle, a stage that normally consumes most resources in software projects. At the end of the paper, based on the implementation results, this study shows the predicted conditions under which building a framework is cost effective for the development of videogames similar to the ones from the studied domain. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


A new framework for the computation of Hessians We investigate the computation of Hessian matrices via Automatic Differentiation, using a graph model and an algebraic model. The graph model reveals the inherent symmetries involved in calculating the Hessian. The algebraic model, based on Griewank and Walther's [Evaluating derivatives, in Principles and Techniques of Algorithmic Differentiation, 2nd ed., Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Philadelphia, PA, 2008] state transformations synthesizes the calculation of the Hessian as a formula. These dual points of view, graphical and algebraic, lead to a new framework for Hessian computation. This is illustrated by developing edge_pushing, a new truly reverse Hessian computation algorithm that fully exploits the Hessian's symmetry. Computational experiments compare the performance of edge_pushing on 16 functions from the CUTE collection [I. Bongartz et al. Cute: constrained and unconstrained testing environment, ACM Trans. Math. Softw. 21(1) (1995), pp. 123-160] against two algorithms available as drivers of the software ADOL-C [A. Griewank et al. ADOL-C: A package for the automatic differentiation of algorithms written in C/C++, Technical report, Institute of Scientific Computing, Technical University Dresden, 1999. Updated version of the paper published in ACM Trans. Math. Softw. 22, 1996, pp. 131-167; A. Walther, Computing sparse Hessians with automatic differentiation, ACM Trans. Math. Softw. 34(1) (2008), pp. 1-15; A. H. Gebremedhin et al. Efficient computation of sparse Hessians using coloring and automatic differentiation, INFORMS J. Comput. 21(2) (2009), pp. 209-223], and the results are very promising.

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

hessian matrix
reverse computation
sparse matrices


An iterative GMRES-based boundary element solver for acoustic scattering High-frequency scattering of complex structures is studied using a new variant of the generalized minimum residual method (GMRES) along with an appropriate preconditioning, which was originally developed for iterative solutions in electrodynamics [Comparison of GMRES and CG Iterations on the Normal Form of Magnetic Field Integral Equation, submitted]. The starting point is a self-adjoint formulation of the Helmholtz integral equation for scattering. Three iterative methods, the Jacobi iteration with overrelaxation and two variants of the GMRES are presented, and the advantages of the improved GMRES are discussed. The GMRES is applied to the scattering of a plane wave from a cylinder-like, rigid structure comprising several ten thousands of boundary elements. Fast convergence of the iteration process is observed for all investigated cases. The relative error decreases rapidly and becomes smaller than the discretization error after a few iteration steps. The GMRES solver is only weakly affected by internal resonances, but could be combined with a dual-layer CHIEF approach. All computations are carried out on regular personal computers, even for the boundary element model with about 48,000 elements.

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

generalized minimum residual method
jacobi iteration with overrelaxation


The interactive analysis of the multicriteria shortest path problem by the reference point method The multicriteria shortest path problem is considered. The paper presents the interactive method of analyzing this problem by the reference point approach. The reference point guided labeling algorithm was developed. This algorithm finds the Pareto-optimal shortest path which is best attuned to the specified preferences.

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

multiple criteria analysis
pareto-optimal paths


Effective treatment of complex statical and dynamical load combinations within shakedown analysis of 3D frames Shakedown analysis of 3D frames subjected to complex load combinations is presented. The strategy is suitable to treat n-dimensional load space (n of order of hundred). The algorithm avoids redundant constraints improving computational performances. The method deals with seismic actions coming from response spectrum analysis.

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


Lattice-Nystrom method for Fredholm integral equations of the second kind with convolution type kernels We consider Fredholm integral equations of the second kind of the form f(x) = g(x) + integral k(x-y) f(y) dy, where g and k are given functions from weighted Korobov spaces. These spaces are characterized by a smoothness parameter alpha > 1 and weights gamma(1) >= gamma(2) >=... The weight gamma(j) moderates the behavior of the functions with respect to the jth variable. We approximate f by the Nystrom method using n rank-1 lattice points. The combination of convolution and lattice group structure means that the resulting linear system can be solved in O(n log n) operations. We analyze the worst case error measured in sup norm for functions g in the unit ball and a class of functions k in weighted Korobov spaces. We show that the generating vector of the lattice rule can be constructed component-by-component to achieve the optimal rate of convergence O(n(-alpha/2+delta)), delta >0, with the implied constant independent of the dimension d under an appropriate condition on the weights. This construction makes use of an error criterion similar to the worst case integration error in weighted Korobov spaces, and the computational cost is only O(n log nd) operations. We also study the notion of QMC-Nystrom tractability: tractability means that the smallest n needed to reduce the worst case error (or normalized error) to F is bounded polynornially in epsilon(-1) and d; strong tractability means that the bound is independent of d. We prove that strong QMC-Nystrom tractability in the absolute sense holds iff Sigma(infinity)(j=1) gamma j infinity)Sigma(d)(j=1) gamma(j)/(log d+1) < infinity (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier Inc.

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

nystrom method
worst case error
tractability

lattice rules
quasi-monte carlo rules
fredholun integral equations


A What-and-Where fusion neural network for recognition and tracking of multiple radar emitters A neural network recognition and tracking system is proposed for classification of radar pulses in autonomous Electronic Support Measure systems. Radar type information is considered with position-specific information from active emitters in a scene. Type-specific parameters of the input pulse stream are fed to a neural network classifier trained on samples of data collected in the field. Meanwhile, a clustering algorithm is used to separate pulses from different emitters according to position-specific parameters of the input pulse stream. Classifier responses corresponding to different emitters are separated into tracks, or trajectories, one per active emitter, allowing for more accurate identification of radar types based on multiple views of emitter data along each emitter trajectory. Such a What-and-Where fusion strategy is motivated by a similar subdivision of labor in the brain. The fuzzy ARTMAP neural network is used to classify streams of pulses according to radar type using their functional parameters. Simulation results obtained with a radar pulse data set indicate that fuzzy ARTMAP compares favorably to several other approaches when performance is measured in terms of accuracy and computational complexity. Incorporation into fuzzy ARTMAP of negative match tracking (from ARTMAP-IC) facilitated convergence during training with this data set. Other modifications improved classification of data that include missing input pattern components and missing training classes. Fuzzy ARTMAP was combined with a bank of Kalman filters to group pulses transmitted from different emitters based on their position-specific parameters, and with a module to accumulate evidence from fuzzy ARTMAP responses corresponding to the track defined for each emitter. Simulation results demonstrate that the system provides a high level of performance on complex, incomplete and overlapping radar data.

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

electronic support measures
pattern recognition
data fusion
kalman filter


On contracts for VMI program with continuous review (r,Q) policy Based on continuous review (r,Q) policy, this paper deals with contracts for vendor managed inventory (VMI) program in a system comprising a single vendor and a single retailer. Two business scenarios that are popular in VMI program are vendor with ownership and retailer with ownership. Taking the system performance in centralized control as benchmark, we define a contract perfect if the contract can enable the system to be coordinated and can guarantee the program to be trusted. A revenue sharing contract is designed for vendor with ownership, and a franchising contract is designed for retailer with ownership. Without consideration of order policy and related costs at the vendor site, it is shown that one contract can perform satisfactorily and the other one is a perfect contract. With consideration of order policy and related costs at the vendor site, it is shown that one contract can perform satisfactorily and the performance of the other one depends on system parameters.

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


Energy Efficient Topology Control based on Sociological Cluster in Wireless Sensor Networks The network topology for a wide area sensor network has to support connectivity and a prolonged lifetime for the many applications used within it. The concepts of structure and group in sociology are similar to the concept of cluster in wireless sensor networks. The clustering method is one of the preferred ways to produce a topology for reduced electrical energy consumption. We herein propose a cluster topology method based on sociological structures and concepts. The proposed sociological clustering topology (SOCT) is a method that forms a network in two phases. The first phase, which from a sociological perspective is similar to forming a state within a nation, involves using nodes with large transmission capacity to set up the global area for the cluster. The second phase, which is similar to forming a city inside the state, involves using nodes with small transmission capacity to create regional clusters inside the global cluster to provide connectivity within the network. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms other methods in terms of energy efficiency and network lifetime.

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

clustering method
energy efficiency
sensor networks
topology control

self-organization network
sociological topology


The validity of a game-based assessment of persistence We created an assessment of persistence based on timing data in the game. Game-based assessment of persistence was validated. Game-based assessment of persistence predicted learning. Findings support the implementation of a formative assessment of persistence.

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

game-based assessment
qualitative physics


A Randomized Sieving Algorithm for Approximate Integer Programming The Integer Programming Problem (IP) for a polytope \(P \subseteq \mathbb{R} ^{n}\) is to find an integer point in P or decide that P is integer free. We give a randomized algorithm for an approximate version of this problem, which correctly decides whether P contains an integer point or whether a (1+?)-scaling of P about its center of gravity is integer free in 2 O(n)(1/? 2) n -time and 2 O(n)(1/?) n -space with overwhelming probability. Our algorithm proceeds by reducing the approximate IP problem to an approximate Closest Vector Problem (CVP) under a near-symmetric norm. Our main technical contribution is an extension of the AKS randomized sieving technique, first developed by Ajtai et al. (Proceedings of 33rd Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC), pp.601610, 2001) for lattice problems under the ? 2 norm, to the setting of asymmetric norms. We also present an application of our techniques to exact IP, where we give a nearly optimal algorithmic implementation of the Flatness Theorem, a central ingredient for many IP algorithms. Our results also extend to general convex bodies and lattices.

O O O O O O B I O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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
lattice problems
closest vector problem


On

maximum

order

statistics

from

heterogeneous

geometric

variables

Let

X

be

independent

geometric

random

variables

with

parameters

p

respectively,

and

Y

be

i.i.d.

geometric

random

variables

with

common

parameter

p.

It

is

shown

that

X

the

maximum

order

statistic

from

X

is

larger

than

Y

the

second

order

statistic

from

Y

in

terms

of

the

hazard

rate

order

[usual

stochastic

order]

if

and

only

if

\(p\geq

\tilde{p}\),

where

\(\tilde{p}=(p_{1}p_{2})^{\frac{1}{2}}\)

is

the

geometric

mean

of

(p

This

result

answers

an

open

problem

proposed

recently

by

Mao

and

Hu

(Probab.

Eng.

Inf.

Sci.

for

the

case

when

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

hazard rate order
usual stochastic order

exponential distribution
geometric distribution
parallel system


self-regulation as a central mechanism to collaboratively manage unexpected events in complex work environments Within acute patient care that is characterized by highly dynamic work processes the competent and coordinated management of unexpected events is essential to patient safety. The qualitative analysis of interview data on coordination requirements and processes during cardiac anesthesia within the conceptual framework of cooperation by Wehner et al. (2000) highlights the central importance of anticipation in dealing with possible breaks in coordination. Our results underlined the heuristic value of this model regarding coordination and teamwork in complex environments. However, the discrepancies between data and the model point to areas that need further theoretical development such as the relationship between initial coordinatedness and self-regulation as well as the role of personal trust.

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

teamwork
cardiac anesthesia
unexpected events

task interdependence
adaptive coordination


Sparse Color Interest Points for Image Retrieval and Object Categorization Interest point detection is an important research area in the field of image processing and computer vision. In particular, image retrieval and object categorization heavily rely on interest point detection from which local image descriptors are computed for image matching. In general, interest points are based on luminance, and color has been largely ignored. However, the use of color increases the distinctiveness of interest points. The use of color may therefore provide selective search reducing the total number of interest points used for image matching. This paper proposes color interest points for sparse image representation. To reduce the sensitivity to varying imaging conditions, light-invariant interest points are introduced. Color statistics based on occurrence probability lead to color boosted points, which are obtained through saliency-based feature selection. Furthermore, a principal component analysis-based scale selection method is proposed, which gives a robust scale estimation per interest point. From large-scale experiments, it is shown that the proposed color interest point detector has higher repeatability than a luminance-based one. Furthermore, in the context of image retrieval, a reduced and predictable number of color features show an increase in performance compared to state-of-the-art interest points. Finally, in the context of object recognition, for the Pascal VOC 2007 challenge, our method gives comparable performance to state-of-the-art methods using only a small fraction of the features, reducing the computing time considerably.

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

ars-iiu
color invariance
eli-col
local features
smr-rep


A survey on self-healing systems: approaches and systems Present large-scale information technology environments are complex, heterogeneous compositions often affected by unpredictable behavior and poor manageability. This fostered substantial research on designs and techniques that enhance these systems with an autonomous behavior. In this survey, we focus on the self-healing branch of the research and give an overview of the current existing approaches. The survey is introduced by an outline of the origins of self-healing. Based on the principles of autonomic computing and self-adapting system research, we identify self-healing systems' fundamental principles. The extracted principles support our analysis of the collected approaches. In a final discussion, we summarize the approaches' common and individual characteristics. A comprehensive tabular overview of the researched material concludes the survey.

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

autonomous behaving systems
self-adaptive systems
self-* properties
self-healing principles
self-healing approaches


protocol-aware matching of web service interfaces for adapter development With the rapid growth in the number of online Web services, the problem of service adaptation has received significant attention. In matching and adaptation, the functional description of services including interface and data as well as behavioral descriptions are important. Existing work on matching and adaptation focuses only on one aspect. In this paper, we present a semi-automated matching approach that considers both service descriptions. We introduce two protocol-aware service interface matching algorithms, i.e. depth-based interface matching and iterative reference-based interface matching. These algorithms refine the results of interface matching by incorporating the ordering constraints imposed by business protocol definitions on service operations. We have implemented a prototype and performed experiments using the specification of synthetic and real-world Web services. Experiments show that the proposed approaches lead to a significant improvement in the quality of matching between services.

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


Feature-level and decision-level fusion of noncoincidently sampled sensors for land mine detection We present and compare methods for feature-level (predetection) and decision-level (postdetection) fusion of multisensor data. This study emphasizes fusion techniques that are suitable for noncommensurate data sampled at noncoincident points. Decision-level fusion is most convenient for such data, but it is suboptimal in principle, since targets not detected by all sensors will not obtain the full benefits of fusion. A novel algorithm for feature-level fusion of noncommensurate, noncoincidently sampled data is described, in which a model is fitted to the sensor data and the model parameters are used as features. Formulations for both feature-level and decision-level fusion are described, along with some practical simplifications. A closed-form expression is available for feature-level fusion of normally distributed data and this expression is used with simulated data to study requirements for sample position accuracy in multisensor data. The performance of feature-level and decision-level fusion algorithms are compared for experimental data acquired by a metal detector, a ground-penetrating radar, and an infrared camera at a challenging test site containing surrogate mines. It is found that fusion of binary decisions does not perform significantly better than the best available sensor. The performance of feature-level fusion is significantly better than the individual sensors, as is decision-level fusion when detection confidence information is also available ("soft-decision" fusion).

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

land mines
sensor fusion
ground penetrating radar
metal detectors


A novel ant-based clustering algorithm using Renyi entropy Ant-based clustering is a type of clustering algorithm that imitates the behavior of ants. To improve the efficiency, increase the adaptability to non-Gaussian datasets and simplify the parameters of the algorithm, a novel ant-based clustering algorithm using Renyi Entropy (NAC-RE) is proposed. There are two aspects to application of Renyi entropy. Firstly, Kernel Entropy Component Analysis (KECA) is applied to modify the random projection of objects when the algorithm is run initially. This projection can create rough clusters and improve the algorithm's efficiency. Secondly, a novel ant movement model governed by Renyi entropy is proposed. The model takes each object as an ant. When the object (ant) moves to a new region, the Renyi entropy in its local neighborhood will be changed. The differential value of entropy governs whether the object should move or be moveless. The new model avoids complex parameters that have influence on the clustering results. The theoretical analysis has been conducted by kernel method to show that Renyi entropy metric is feasible and superior to distance metric. The novel algorithm was compared with other classic ones by several well-known benchmark datasets. The Friedman test with the corresponding Nemenyi test are applied to compare and conclude the algorithms performance The results indicate that NAC-RE can get better results for non-linearly separable datasets while its parameters are simple.

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


University students' attainment and perceptions of computer delivered assessment; a comparison between computer-based and traditional tests in a high-stakes examination This study compared higher education dental undergraduate student performance in online assessments with performance in traditional paper-based tests and investigated students' perceptions of the fairness and acceptability of online tests, and showed performance to be comparable. The project design involved two parallel cross-over trials, one in Year 3 (n=132) of the dental curriculum, one in Year 5 (n=134). A total of 266 students undertook related tests of the same knowledge base in both online and traditional paper formats. Order of presentation of the test form was randomized. One hundred and thirty-two students in Year 3 additionally completed questions concerning their perceptions of the acceptability and fairness of the online examination process. Focus group discussions were held with groups of students (n=30) from both Year 3 and 5 to explore their perceptions of the online format. The online tests were created using the commercial software package MaxExam (Bristol, UK). The results were analysed using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the order of presentation being entered as a variable in the analysis. The results of the study showed that for both Years 3 and 5 students there was a high degree of consistency in performance between the two versions of the tests, although a minority of students performed better in the online version of the test. Over 70% of students rated the online test as acceptable, and 90% felt that the online format did not disadvantage them even in a high-stakes situation. From these results, we conclude that online assessment does not confer any disadvantage to students. Students perceive such assessment to be both fair and acceptable, and to have some advantages over the traditional paper-based methods of assessment.

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

e-learning
high stakes
student perceptions


capacity-optimum mode switching strategies over a cooperative relay network In this paper, we deal with two mode switching strategies for capacity-optimum transmission over a cooperative relay network. Both of them switch the transmission mode back and forth between a cooperative mode and a non-cooperative mode based on their corresponding spectral efficiencies. We use the distributed Alamouti code [1] for the cooperative mode transmission. The first strategy uses the same frame structure in both the cooperative and non-cooperative modes. In the cooperative mode, a source node S transmits two signals to a relay node R and a destination node D over two consecutive time slots during the 1 st phase. During the 2 nd phase, S and R transmit again cooperatively the same set of the above two signals to D over two consecutive time slots according to the Alamouti encoding rule, and then D detects jointly the two signals received over two consecutive phases. Sometimes a spectral efficiency of the S-D link might be higher than that of the S-R link. In such a case, cooperative transmission might not be better any longer and non-cooperative transmission in which D does not take any relayed replicas of the two signals would be recommended. We also introduce the 2 nd disruptive strategy that changes disruptively the frame structure between the cooperative and non-cooperative modes in order to utilize best the radio resource in the non-cooperative mode. In the non-cooperative mode, one signal for every slot is transmitted only through the S-D link with no interruption for relaying. Numerical and simulation results show that the second one can provide almost twice the spectral efficiency than the first one does, though it may need a little forward signaling that S notifies the mode change status to D. The performance of the second strategy gets improved more significantly as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the S-R link is getting low and/or the SNR of the S -D link is getting high.

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

mode switching
cooperative relay
distributed alamouti code
spectral efficiency


Sequential decision making with partially ordered preferences This paper presents new insights and novel algorithms for strategy selection in sequential decision making with partially ordered preferences; that is, where some strategies may be incomparable with respect to expected utility. We assume that incomparability amongst strategies is caused by indeterminacy/imprecision in probability values. We investigate six criteria for consequentialist strategy selection: Gamma-Maximin, Gamma-Maximax, Gamma-Maximix, Interval Dominance, Maximality and E-admissibility. We focus on the popular decision tree and influence diagram representations. Algorithms resort to linear/multilinear programming; we describe implementation and experiments. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

sequential decision making under uncertainty


Performance of iterative solvers for acoustic problems. Part I. Solvers and effect of diagonal preconditioning Boundary element discretization of the KirchhoffHelmholtz integral equation gives rise to a linear system of equations. This system may be solved directly or iteratively. Application of direct solvers is quite common but turns out to be inefficient for large scale problem with 10,000 unknowns and more. These systems can be solved on behalf of iterative methods. This paper is dedicated to testing performance of four iterative solvers being the Restarted Bi-Conjugate Gradient Stabilized algorithm, the Conjugate Gradient method applied to the normal equations (CGNR), the Generalized Minimal Residual (GMRes) and the Transpose Free Quasi Minimal Residual. For that, we distinguish between internal and external problems. Performance of iterative solvers with respect to problem size, polynomial degree of interpolation, wave-number, wave-number over problem size, absorption at surface, and smoothness of the surface is investigated. Furthermore, the effect of diagonal preconditioning is illuminated. All examples consist of different meshes of up to more than 100,000 elements. In general, the methods perform well for the internal problems, a duct problem, a sedan cabin compartment and a fictitious small concert hall. GMRes proves to solve the problems most efficiently. External problems appear more challenging due to the hypersingular operator of the Burton and Miller formulation. Scattering of a plane wave at a sphere and at a cat's eye are investigated as well as a tire noise problem. The first two are remarkably efficiently solved in the medium and high frequency range by CGNR whereas the tire noise example is only solved by GMRes. In all examples, at least one or two solution methods turn out to require less operations than a direct solver. The effect of diagonal preconditioning is marginal especially for higher frequencies.

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

boundary element method
boundary elements
acoustics


proposing new metrics to evaluate web usability for the blind Accessibility-related regulations and guidelines are contributing to the steady improvement of Web accessibility. There are various accessibility evaluation tools, and they also help Web authors make their pages compliant with guidelines. As a result, an increasing number of Web pages are compliant with the evaluation tools. These days, however, blind people face the serious problem that reading Web pages is quite difficult. Improvements in information density by using visual effects such as two-dimensional layouts are making it difficult for blind people to understand the page structure. Also, inappropriate alternative texts mislead or confuse blind users.In this paper, to evaluate these kinds of usability problems, we introduce two metrics: navigability and listenability. Navigability evaluates how well structured the Web content is by using headings, intra-page links, labels, etc. Listenability denotes how appropriate the alternative texts are. By using these metrics, we summarize the historical transition of Web usability for blind people.

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


Knowledge acquisition and development of accurate rules for predicting protein stability changes Knowing the mechanisms by which protein stability change is one of the most important and valuable tasks in molecular biology. The conventional methods of predicting protein stability changes mainly focus on improving prediction accuracy. However, it is desirable to extract domain knowledge from large databases that is beneficial to accurate prediction of the protein stability change. This paper presents an interpretable prediction tree method (named iPTREE) that produces explanatory rules to explore hidden knowledge accompanied with high prediction accuracy and consequently analyzes the factors influencing the protein stability changes. To evaluate iPTREE and the knowledge upon protein stability changes, a thermodynamic dataset consisting of 1615 mutants led by single point mutation from ProTherm is adopted. Being as a predictor for protein stability changes, the rule-based approach can achieve a prediction accuracy of 87%, which is better than other methods based on artificial neural networks (ANN) and support vector machines (SVM). Besides, these methods lack the ability in biological knowledge discovery. The human-interpretable rules produced by iPTREE reveal that temperature is a factor of concern in predicting protein stability changes. For example, one of interpretable rules with high support is as follows: if the introduced residue type is Alanine and temperature is between 4C and 40C, then the stability change will be negative (destabilizing). The present study demonstrates that iPTREE can easily be used in the application of protein stability changes where one requires more understandable knowledge.

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

data mining
decision trees
bioinformatics


Multiscale Modeling of Calcium Signaling in the Cardiac Dyad Calcium (Ca2+)-induced Ca2+-release (CICR) takes place in spatially restricted microdomains known as dyads. The length scale over which CICR occurs is on the order of nanometers and relevant time scales range from micro- to milliseconds. Quantitative understanding of CICR therefore requires development of models that are applicable over a range of spatio-temporal scales. We will present several new approaches for multiscale modeling of CICR. First, we present a model of dyad Ca2+ dynamics in which the Fokker-Planck equation (FPE) is solved for the probability P(x, t) that a Ca2+ ion is located at dyad position x at time t. Using this model, we demonstrate that (a) Ca2+ signaling in the dyad is mediated by approximately tens of Ca2+ ions; (b) these signaling events are noisy due to the small number of ions involved; and (c) the geometry of the RyR (ryanodine receptors) protein may function to restrict the diffusion of and to funnel Ca2+ ions to activation-binding sites on the RyR, thus increasing RyR open probability and excitation-contraction (EC) coupling gain. Simplification of this model to one in which the dyadic space is represented using a single compartment yields the stochastic local-control model of CICR developed previously. We have shown that this model captures fundamental properties of CICR, such as graded release and voltage-dependent gain, may be integrated within a model of the myocyte and may be simulated in reasonable times using a combination of efficient numerical methods and parallel computing, but remains too complex for general use in cell simulations. To address this problem, we show how separation of time scales may be used to formulate a model in which nearby L-type Ca2+ channels (LCCs) and RyRs gate as a coupled system that may be described using low-dimensional systems of ordinary differential equations, thus reducing computational complexity while capturing fundamentally important properties of CICR. The simplified model may be solved many orders of magnitude faster than can either of the more detailed models, thus enabling incorporation into tissue-level simulations

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

calcium-induced calcium-release
excitation-contraction coupling


traffic scheduling for frame length minimization in ofdma based systems In this paper, we investigate a scheduling problem in systems adopting OFDMA transmission technique at the physical layer, like WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) systems. In such systems, carriers with different rates must be assigned to users, each carrier being assigned to one user at most, each user can be scheduled on multiple carriers. The objective of our problem is to produce a legal schedule (i.e. one meeting all the system constraints) with minimum length. We first show that the above problem is NP-complete, and thus computationally intractable, even in an extremely simple case. Then, we propose several very simple and fast suboptimal heuristics, and evaluate their average performance by means of simulation experiments. Some of the proposed heuristics perform very well, being in most cases within 10\% of the optimal (minimal) schedule length.

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

heuristic algorithms
ofdma wireless systems
complexity


Approximation algorithms for a geometric set cover problem Given a finite set of straight line segments S S in R2 R 2 and some k?N k ? N , is there a subset V V of points on segments in S S with |V|?k | V | ? k such that each segment of S S contains at least one point in V V ? This is a special case of the set covering problem where the family of subsets given can be taken as a set of intersections of the straight line segments in S S . Requiring that the given subsets can be interpreted geometrically this way is a major restriction on the input, yet we have shown that the problem is still strongly NP-complete [5]. In light of this result, we studied the accuracy of two polynomial-time approximation algorithms along with a third heuristic based algorithm which return segment coverings. We obtain certain theoretical results, and in particular we show that the performance ratio for each of these algorithms is unbounded, in general. Despite this, our experimental results suggest that the cases where this ratio exceeds 2 are rare for reasonable methods of placing segments. This is evidence that these polynomial-time algorithms solve the problem accurately in practice.

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

guarding set of segments
art-gallery problem
approximation algorithm
vertex cover


visual comparison of software architectures Reverse engineering methods produce different descriptions of software architectures. In this work we analyze and define the task of exploring and comparing these descriptions. We present a novel visualization technique to compare architectures based on the decomposition of the software system and on the dependencies among the code entities. A case study related to software clustering shows how we can apply this technique in practice.

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

hierarchy comparison
software architecture
graph visualization


A Perspective on Inflammation in Alzheimer's Disease Although there have been hundreds of recent papers that document a role for innate inflammatory responses in Alzheimer's disease (AD), several global issues and organizational points are still worth emphasizing. These include etiologic versus pathogenic roles for AD inflammation, the potency of AD inflammation, the sources of AD inflammation, and the highly interactive nature of AD inflammatory responses.

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

alzheimer's disease
cytokines
complement
acute-phase proteins
microglia


A model for obstacles to be used in simulations of wireless sensor networks and its application in studying routing protocol performance We propose a simple obstacle model to be used while simulating wireless sensor networks. To the best of our, knowledge, this is the first time such an integrated and systematic obstacle model for these networks has been proposed. We define several types of obstacles that can be found inside the deployment area of a wireless sensor network and provide a categorization of these obstacles based on their nature (physical and communication obstacles, i.e. obstacles that are formed out of node distribution patterns or have physical presence, respectively), their shape and their change of nature over time. We make an extension to a custom-made sensor network simulator (simDust) and conduct a number of simulations in order to study the effect of obstacles on the performance of some representative (in terms of their logic) data propagation protocols for wireless sensor networks. Our findings confirm that obstacle presence has a significant impact on protocol performance, and also that different obstacle shapes and sizes may affect each protocol in different ways. This provides an insight into how a routing protocol will perform in the presence of obstacles and highlights possible protocol shortcomings. Moreover, our results show that the effect of obstacles is not directly related to the density of a sensor network, and cannot be emulated only by changing the network density.

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

applications in computer networks
modeling and simulation environments
parallel and distributed computing
performance evaluation
obstacle avoidance


Speeding up the EM algorithm for mixture model-based segmentation of magnetic resonance images Mixture models implemented via the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm are being increasingly used in a wide range of problems in pattern recognition such as image segmentation. However, the EM algorithm requires considerable computational time in its application to huge data sets such as a three-dimensional magnetic resonance (MR) image of over 10 million voxels. Recently, it was shown that a sparse, incremental version of the EM algorithm could improve its rate of convergence. In this paper, we show how this modified EM algorithm can be speeded up further by adopting a multiresolution kd-tree structure in performing the E-step. The proposed algorithm outperforms some other variants of the EM algorithm for segmenting MR images of the human brain.

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

em algorithm
image segmentation
mixture models

hidden markov random field
magnetic resonance imaging
multiresolution kd-trees
sparse incremental em algorithm
statistical pattern recognition


Nonlinear image representation for efficient perceptual coding Image compression systems commonly operate by transforming the input signal into a new representation whose elements are independently quantized. The success of such a system depends on two properties of the representation. First, the coding rate is minimized only if the elements of the representation are statistically independent. Second, the perceived coding distortion is minimized only if the errors in a reconstructed image arising from quantization of the different elements of the representation are perceptually independent. We argue that linear transforms cannot achieve either of these goals and propose, instead, an adaptive nonlinear image representation in which each coefficient of a linear transform is divided by a weighted sum of coefficient amplitudes in a generalized neighborhood. We then show that the divisive operation greatly reduces both the statistical and the perceptual redundancy amongst representation elements. We develop an efficient method of inverting this transformation, and we demonstrate through simulations that the dual reduction in dependency can greatly improve the visual quality of compressed images.

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

independent components
jpeg
nonlinear response
perceptual independence
perceptual metric
scalar quantization
statistical independence
transform coding


standardizing radiation oncology data for future modelling of side effects after radiation therapy Wider acceptance of data standards in radiation oncology would facilitate pooling of data from different studies. In turn, this would help clinicians and medical physicists to better understand the relationships between radiation treatments and consequent late developing side effects, and to design treatment plans that improve patients' quality of life. In this paper, we describe challenges of collecting and integrating radiation oncology data from medical records and treatment planning systems for the purpose of modelling side effects after radiation therapy

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

radiation oncology informatics
data standardization
data integration


Field programmable gate array implementation of spectrum allocation technique for cognitive radio networks ? To maximize the network utilization, spectrum allocation technique fairly allocates the channels to secondary users. SA problem is solved by Differential Evolution algorithm and compared the performance with PSO and FA. DE improved the quality of solution and time complexity by 29.9%, 242.32% and 19.04%, 46.3% compared to PSO and FA. We propose FPGA based coprocessor for DE-SA IP and interfaced to PowerPC. The coprocessor accelerates SA task by 76.79105x and 5.196.91x compared to float and fixed DE-SA software.

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

spectrum allocation
differential evolution
cognitive radio


net weighting to reduce repeater counts during placement We demonstrate how to use placement to ameliorate the predicted repeater explosion problem caused by poor interconnect scaling. We achieve repeater count reduction by dynamically modifying net weights in a context-sensitive manner during global placement and coarse legalization. Our scheme, which models layer assignment as well as valid inter-repeater distance ranges, can decrease the repeater counts significantly with minimal impact on wirelength.

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

repeater
scaling
placement
net weighting
interconnect


Multi-scale methods and complex processes: A survey and look ahead A comprehensive overview of multi-scale methods is presented with a focus on the ways in which information is communicated between scales. Liquid density computations, which are important in phase equilibrium of carbon storage, are used to illustrate multi-scale process engineering ideas. It is shown that using the Gibbs-Helmholtz equation to constrain the energy parameter in cubic equations of state leads to (1) a natural bridge between bulk and molecular length scales, (2) a new Gibbs-Helmholtz constrained equation of state, and (3) a novel mixing rule, and that the GHC equation can be coupled to NTP molecular simulations to provide more accurate predictions of density for use in phase equilibrium computations and reservoir simulations. Improvements for the next generation of multi-scale tools for analysis, visualization, simulation, and optimization of complex processes including the need to proceed with partial knowledge, multiplicity at various length scales, problems with many scales, and methods for predicting behavior over very long time and length scales are also discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

gibbs-helmholtz constrained equation of state


Fast parallel exponentiation algorithm for RSA public-key cryptosystem We know the necessity for information security becomes more widespread in these days, especially for hardware-based implementations such as smart cards chips for wireless applications and cryptographic accelerators. Fast modular exponentiation algorithms are often considered of practical significance in public-key cryptosystems. The RSA cryptosystem is one of the most widely used technologies for achieving information security. The main task of the encryption and decryption engine of RSA cryptosystem is to compute M-E mod N. Because the bit-length of the numbers M, E, and N would be about 512 to 1024 bits now, the computations for RSA cryptosystem are time-consuming. In this paper, an efficient technique for parallel computation of the modular exponentiation is proposed and our algorithm can reduce time complexity. We can have the speedup ratio as 1.06 or even 2.75 if the proposed technique is used. In Savas-Tenca-Koc algorithm, they design a multiplier with an insignificant increase in chip area (about 2.8%) and no increase in time delay. Our proposed technique is faster than Savas-Tenca-Koc algorithm in time complexity and improves efficiency for RSA cryptosystem.

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

parallel computing
modular arithmetic
complexity analyses
number theory
cryptography
algorithm design


A simple method for protein structural classification Since the concept of structural classes of proteins was proposed, the problem of protein classification has been tackled by many groups. Most of their classification criteria are based only on the helix/strand contents of proteins. In this paper, we proposed a method for protein structural classification based on their secondary structure sequences. It is a classification scheme that can confirm existing classifications. Here a mathematical model is constructed to describe protein secondary structure sequences, in which each protein secondary structure sequence corresponds to a transition probability matrix that characterizes and differentiates protein structure numerically. Its application to a set of real data has indicated that our method can classify protein structures correctly. The final classification result is shown schematically. So it is visual to observe the structural classifications, which is different from traditional methods. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

secondary structure sequence
structural classes
transition probability matrix

content of helix/strand
structural characteristic vector


Introduction to set constraint-based program analysis This paper gives an introduction to using set constraints to specify program analyses. Several standard analysis problems are formulated using set constraints, which serves both to illustrate the style of using constraints to specify program analysis problems and the range of application of set constraints. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Design of sensor location based on various fault diagnostic observability and reliability criteria The success of any fault diagnosis technique depends critically on the sensors measuring the important process variables. To select the optimum number of sensors for a given process, qualitative (cause-effect), graph theoretic approaches, based on process digraph (DG) were proposed. Graph approaches that used the concepts of observability (detecting all faults) and resolution (identifying the exact fault) were discussed. In this article, besides briefly summarizing these approaches, a reliability formulation for selecting optimal sensors is presented. The formulation takes into account quantitative information such as fault occurrence probabilities, sensor failure probabilities, and sensor costs. The formulation can also handle various constraints. Heuristics to solve the posed problem are also discussed. Sensor location based on the proposed formulation is applied to a chemical process to illustrate the utility of the proposed approach. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

dg
sensor location
fault diagnosis
reliability


Interference Alignment-Based Sum Capacity Bounds for Random Dense Gaussian Interference Networks We consider a dense K user Gaussian interference network formed by paired transmitters and receivers placed independently at random in a fixed spatial region. Under natural conditions on the node position distributions and signal attenuation, we prove convergence in probability of the average per-user capacity C(Sigma)/K to 1/2Elog(1 + 2SNR). The achievability result follows directly from results based on an interference alignment scheme presented in recent work of Nazer et al. Our main contribution comes through an upper bound, motivated by ideas of "bottleneck capacity" developed in recent work of Jafar. By controlling the physical location of transmitter-receiver pairs, we can match a large proportion of these pairs to form so-called epsilon-bottleneck links, with consequent control of the sum capacity.

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

gaussian interference networks
interference alignment
sum capacity

bottleneck states
dense networks
matching


openModeller: a generic approach to species potential distribution modelling Species potential distribution modelling is the process of building a representation of the fundamental ecological requirements for a species and extrapolating these requirements into a geographical region. The importance of being able to predict the distribution of species is currently highlighted by issues like global climate change, public health problems caused by disease vectors, anthropogenic impacts that can lead to massive species extinction, among other challenges. There are several computational approaches that can be used to generate potential distribution models, each achieving optimal results under different conditions. However, the existing software packages available for this purpose typically implement a single algorithm, and each software package presents a new learning curve to the user. Whenever new software is developed for species potential distribution modelling, significant duplication of effort results because many feature requirements are shared between the different packages. Additionally, data preparation and comparison between algorithms becomes difficult when using separate software applications, since each application has different data input and output capabilities. This paper describes a generic approach for building a single computing framework capable of handling different data formats and multiple algorithms that can be used in potential distribution modelling. The ideas described in this paper have been implemented in a free and open source software package called openModeller. The main concepts of species potential distribution modelling are also explained and an example use case illustrates potential distribution maps generated by the framework.

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

potential distribution modelling
openmodeller

ecological niche modelling
predicting species distribution


Relational Trauma and the Developing Right Brain Psychoanalysis, the science of unconscious processes, has recently undergone a significant transformation. Self psychology, derived from the work of Heinz Kohut, represents perhaps the most important revision of Freud's theory as it has shifted its basic core concepts from an intrapsychic to a relational unconscious and from a cognitive ego to an emotion-processing self. As a result of a common interest in the essential, rapid, bodily based, affective processes that lie beneath conscious awareness, a productive dialogue is now occurring between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Here I apply this interdisciplinary perspective to a deeper understanding of the nonconscious brain/mind/body mechanisms that lie at the core of self psychology. I offer a neuropsychoanalytic conception of the development and structuralization of the self, focusing on the experience-dependent maturation of the emotion-processing right brain in infancy. I then articulate an interdisciplinary model of attachment trauma and pathological dissociation, an early forming defense against overwhelming affect that is a cardinal feature of self-psychopathologies. I end with some thoughts on the mechanism of the psychotherapeutic change process and suggest that self psychology is, in essence, a psychology of the unique functions of the right brain and that a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and neuroscience is now at hand.

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

right brain
trauma
dissociation
unconscious
attachment


A multivariate methodology to uncover regional disparities: A contribution to improve European Union and governmental decisions The aim of this paper is to present a new methodology to classify the levels of socio-economic development of a countrys territory, in order to support regional development policy. This classification is obtained through the use of multivariate statistical methods factor and cluster analysis, and is based on a wide number of demographic, economic, health, education, employment and culture indicators. The Portuguese continental territory is used as the working example. Results lead to the identification of nine axes of socio-economic characterisation, and the division of the Portuguese territory into four regions with differing degrees of development, reflecting the well-known asymmetry between coastal and inland zones. The socio-economic regions uncovered with this methodology allow a much more useful characterisation of the Portuguese territory, for policy making, than does the NUTS-2 classification scheme used by the European Union.

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

government
multivariate statistics
factor analysis


Global convergence of an SQP method without boundedness assumptions on any of the iterative sequences Usual global convergence results for sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithms with linesearch rely on some a priori assumptions about the generated sequences, such as boundedness of the primal sequence and/or of the dual sequence and/or of the sequence of values of a penalty function used in the linesearch procedure. Different convergence statements use different combinations of assumptions, but they all assume boundedness of at least one of the sequences mentioned above. In the given context boundedness assumptions are particularly undesirable, because even for non-pathological and well-behaved problems the associated penalty functions (whose descent is used to produce primal iterates) may not be bounded below for any value of the penalty parameter. Consequently, boundedness assumptions on the iterates are not easily justifiable. By introducing a very simple and computationally cheap safeguard in the linesearch procedure, we prove boundedness of the primal sequence in the case when the feasible set is nonempty, convex, and bounded. If, in addition, the Slater condition holds, we obtain a complete global convergence result without any a priori assumptions on the iterative sequences. The safeguard consists of not accepting a further increase of constraints violation at iterates which are infeasible beyond a chosen threshold, which can always be ensured by the proposed modified SQP linesearch criterion.

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

sequential quadratic programming
global convergence
linesearch
slater condition


Developing of an ontological interface agent with template-based linguistic processing technique for FAQ services This paper proposes an ontological Interface agent which works as an assistant between the users and FAQ systems. We integrated several interesting techniques including domain ontology, user modeling, and template-based linguistic processing to effectively tackle the problems associated with traditional FAQ retrieval systems. Specifically, we address the following issues. Firstly, how can an interface agent learn a user's specialty in order to build a proper user model for him/her? Secondly, how can domain ontology help in establishing user models, analyzing user query, and assisting and guiding interface usage? Finally. how can the intention and focus of a user be correctly extracted? Our work features an template-based linguistic processing technique for developing ontological interface agents; a nature language query mode, along with an improved keyword-based query mode; and an assistance and guidance for human-machine interaction. Our preliminary experimentation demonstrates that user intention and focus Of Up to eighty percent of the user queries can be correctly understood by the system, and accordingly provides the query solutions with higher user satisfaction. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 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

ontological interface agents
faq services


Two-phase reanalysis model for understanding user intention ? Two-phase reanalysis model for user intention in utterances. Use of a reanalysis phase that refines the results of the first phase. Considering the correlative characteristics of the attributes of user intention. Improving the performance of natural language understanding in a dialogue system.

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

natural language processing
machine learning
user intention analysis


T2WellAn integrated wellborereservoir simulator At its most basic level, management of subsurface fluid resources involves a system comprising the wellbore and the target reservoir. As discrete pathways through geologic formations, boreholes and wells are critical to the success of many water, energy, and environmental management operations. Although many stand-alone simulators for two-phase flow in wellbores with various levels of sophistication have been developed, simulating non-isothermal, multiphase, and multi-component flows in both the wellbore and in the porous or fractured media reservoir as an integrated system remains a challenging yet important task. The difficulties include (1) different governing equations apply to the wellbore and the reservoir that need to be solved efficiently in a uniform framework, (2) the significant contrast in temporal and spatial scales between the wellbore and the reservoir that results in a very challenging set of stiff partial differential equations, and (3) other complexities (e.g., dry-out) that can be caused by flow processes between the wellbore and the reservoir. To address the need to simulate coupled wellborereservoir flow, we have developed T2Well, a numerical simulator for non-isothermal, multiphase, and multi-component flows in the integrated wellborereservoir system. The new model extends the existing numerical reservoir simulator TOUGH2 to calculate the flow in both the wellbore and the reservoir simultaneously and efficiently by introducing a special wellbore sub-domain into the numerical grid. For grid blocks in the wellbore sub-domain, we solve the 1D momentum equation of the mixture (which may be two-phase) as described by the drift-flux model (DFM). A novel mixed implicitexplicit scheme for friction in the wellbore is applied to facilitate the solution of the momentum equation, while other variables are calculated fully implicitly. Applications of the new simulator to problems in various fields are presented to demonstrate its capabilities.

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

numerical simulator
coupled wellborereservoir flow
multiphase


Rotation invariant texture classification using even symmetric Gabor filters Rotation invariant texture features are derived from the even symmetric Gabor filtered images of texture. The feature used is modified average absolute deviation from mean. Sixty Brodatz textures rotated in 12 different directions are classified using these features. Equal number of samples are used for training and testing phase. The percentage correct classification is 81.02. Segmentation of texture images with rotated textures is demonstrated using the features.

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

rotation invariance
gabor filter
bayesian classifier


A new two-trap tunneling model for the anomalous stress-induced leakage current (SILC) in Flash memories We present new experimental and numerical results on the leakage current in Flash cells after cycling, showing that two markedly different behaviors can be identified. Most tail cells show a leakage current that can be successfully described by single-trap tunneling. However, the unstable and very high leakage exhibited by a few anomalous cells requires a different explanation. An improved physical model including two-trap tunneling processes can account for the large current enhancement in the anomalous cells, as well as explaining for the first time their asymmetric and erratic behavior.

O O O O 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

two-trap tunneling model
stress-induced leakage current


High capacity recurrent associative memories Various algorithms for constructing weight matrices for Hopfield-type associative memories are reviewed, including ones with much higher capacity than the basic model. These alternative algorithms either iteratively approximate the projection weight matrix or use simple perceptron learning. An experimental investigation of the performance of networks trained by these algorithms is presented, including measurements of capacity, training time and their ability to correct corrupted versions of the training patterns.

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

associative memory
attractor basins
hopfield neural networks
learning rules
performance measures
pseudo-inverse


Throughput efficiency in body sensor networks: A clean-slate approach In this paper, a flexible role-based architecture for Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) is introduced. The proposed non-layered context-aware architecture is application-oriented and able to incorporate future applications. Particular applications have certain requirements. Functional units (roles) instead of protocol layers are designed to perform the required tasks for applications to work properly. The role data of an application is inserted in the role headers of the container and is available for other applications with the same basic, specific or particular roles. Furthermore, the performance of Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ), Forward Error Correction (FEC) block codes and FEC convolutional codes with respect to the throughput efficiency has also been analyzed for a BSN following the proposed role-based architecture. The numerical results show that the proposed role-based architecture outperforms the traditional layered architecture with respect to the throughput efficiency for all error control schemes. FEC block codes are able to maintain a high throughput efficiency over longer distances because the hop length extension technique is applied. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

sensor networks
arq
fec
throughput efficiency

bit error rate
packet error rate
role-based architecture
packet size optimization


a system dynamics model to evaluate sustainability of water supply in a watershed A system dynamics model is developed with the purpose of analyzing scenarios of supply and demand of water in the hydrological basin around the city of Queretaro, Mexico. The model takes into account the main components of the social environment, together with their relations with the hydrological cycle. Population was estimated with the Cohort-Component method, domestic, industrial and livestock use was calculated with standard coefficients, while agricultural use was estimated with the Blaney-Criddle method. The hydrological model involved estimated monthly runoff with the Curve Number method. Precipitation was modeled in a disaggregate manner, first annual rainfall was modeled with spatially correlated lognormal random variables and these variables are used to generate monthly precipitations with the fragments method. Percolation coefficients were used to estimate aquifer's recharge. Water supply took into account the main reservoirs and aquifers in the region, together with water treatment and reuse. In the scenario construction phase, ten critical variables were selected and integrated in three basic scenarios. Results showed that in spite of a recent major inter-basin transfer, overexploitation of the main aquifer will continue in two of those scenarios, reinforcing the idea that demand administration measures are necessary to complement future supplies of water.

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

water supply sustainability
continuous simulation


consolidating computer operation and wheelchair control The HAnds-free Mouse COntrol System HaMCoS is a software kit designed for persons with severe physical disabilities, allowing its users to fully operate a PC using intentional contractions of a single dedicated muscle only. The system's theoretical concept has originally been developed for a wheelchair control system, a revised and enhanced version of which -comprising a stand-alone realization plus a software-based simulator - has been introduced just recently. Since it is very likely that someone who needs the kind of assistance offered by HaMCoS is also obliged to use a wheelchair, the idea to interface the simulator with the computer tool really suggested itself. This demo presents the outcome of that idea. It will be shown how both systems work individually and how they interact with each other.

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

intentional muscle contractions
human-computer interaction


Thesaurus or logical ontology, which one do we need for text mining? Ontologies are recognised as important tools, not only for effective and efficient information sharing, but also for information extraction and text mining. In the biomedical domain, the need for a common ontology for information sharing has long been recognised, and several ontologies are now widely used. However, there is confusion among, researchers concerning the type of ontology that is needed for text mining, and how it can be used for effective knowledge management, sharing, and integration in biomedicine. We argue that there are several different ways to define an ontology and that, while the logical view is popular for some applications, it may be neither possible nor necessary for text mining. We propose a text-centered approach for knowledge sharing, as an alternative to formal ontologies. We argue that a thesaurus (i.e. an organised collection of terms enriched with relations) is more useful for text mining applications than formal ontologies.

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


Soluble solids content and pH prediction and varieties discrimination of grapes based on visible-near infrared spectroscopy Visible and near infrared reflectance spectroscopy was used for the non-destructive variety discrimination and the prediction of soluble solids content (SSC) and pH of grapes. Spectra of 439 grape samples from three varieties were analyzed by genetic algorithm (GA). Results of GA indicated the most effective wavelengths for the variety discrimination and content prediction. With the spectra of the effective wavelengths from GA, variety discrimination and component content prediction were executed based on least-squares support vector machine. There were 293 samples of grapes used for calibration and the left 146 samples for prediction. The correct answer rate of 96.58% for variety discrimination was achieved. The correlation coefficients are 0.9781 for pH and 0.9065 for SSC in the prediction set. Models established based on effective wavelengths overperformed those that use whole spectral data. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

visible and near infrared spectroscopy
genetic algorithms
least-squares support vector machine


Paralic Confinement: Models and Simulations This paper deals with the mathematical modelling of confinement of paralic ecosystems. It is based on the recent paper (Frnod and Goubert in Ecol. Model. 200(12):139148, 2007) that presents a modelling procedure in order to compute the confinement field of a lagoon.

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

numerical modelling
partial differential equations
numerical simulations
finite elements
ecological systems


New criteria for estimating baroreflex sensitivity using the transfer function method Computer simulations were carried out to appraise three new criteria for the estimation of baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) using the transfer function method. The major goal was to identify a computation procedure able to overcome the intrinsic limitations of the classical coherence criterion. Four representative shapes of the gain function and three different average gains (2, 5 and 8 ms(mmHg)(-1)) in the low-frequency (LF) band (0.04-0.15 Hz) were considered. The signal-to-noise ratio was made to vary so that the peak coherence in the LF band changed from 0.15 to 0.9. All simulation parameters were derived from previous observations in healthy subjects and heart disease patients. The error of the estimated gain function was obtained from its confidence interval. BRS was computed as average gain in the LF band: (a) including in the average only those points having error less than or equal to threshold (criterion 1, C1); (b) calculating the mean error in the band and accepting BRS measurements only when this error was less than or equal to threshold (criterion 2, C2); (c) including in the average all points, regardless of the error (criterion 3, C3). The three criteria were compared in terms of measurability (percentage of measured BRS) and accuracy (bias and SD of BRS). Using C1 and C2, measurability dropped to 10% when the peak coherence in the LF band decreased, respectively, to 0.18-0.41 and to 0.26-0.53, depending on the shape and strength of the gain. In this condition (lower bound of measurability), worst bias and SD (average gain: 8 ms(mmHg)(-1)) were, respectively, 0.8 ms(mmHg)(-1) and 3.3 ms(mmHg)(-1) (C1), and 0.1 ms(mmHg)(-1) and 1.0 ms(mmHg)(-1) (C2). C3, by definition, always ensured 100% measurability and showed bias and SD comparable with, or even lower than, C1 and C2, within the common range of measurable BRS. In the extreme condition of 0.15 coherence, bias and SD were, respectively, 1.7 ms(mmHg)(-1) and 2.3 ms(mmHg)(-1) (average gain: 8 ms(mmHg)(-1)). Hence, error checking (Cl and C2) dramatically reduced measurability and did not improve accuracy of BRS measurements compared with performing no error check (C3). In conditions of low signal-to-noise ratio and/or impaired baroreflex gain, leading to markedly reduced coherence, the simple average of the gain function in the LF band allows BRS to be estimated with accuracy adequate for clinical purposes.

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

baroreflex sensitivity
transfer function

spectral analysis
cardiovascular variability


Exploring 3D-QSAR of thiazole and thiadiazole derivatives as potent and selective human adenosine A(3) receptor antagonists(+) Binding affinity data [Bioorg Med Chem (2004) 12:613-623] of thiazole and thiadiazole derivatives (n = 30) for the human adenosine A(3) receptor subtype have been subjected to 3D-QSAR (Quantitative structure-activity relationships) analyses by molecular shape analysis (MSA) and molecular field analysis (MFA) techniques using Cerius2 Version 4.8. In the case of the MSA, the major steps were (1) generation of conformers and energy minimization; (2) hypothesizing an active conformer (global minimum of the most active compound); (3) selecting a candidate shape-reference compound (based on the active conformation); (4) performing pairwise molecular superimposition using the maximum common subgroup (MCSG) method; (5) measuring molecular shape commonality using MSA descriptors; (6) determining other molecular features by calculating spatial, electronic and conformational parameters; (7) selection of conformers; (8) generation of QSAR equations by genetic function algorithm (GFA) or stepwise regression. The best 3D-QSAR equation (MSA) obtained from GFA technique shows 70.0% predicted variance (leave-one-out) and 77.7% explained variance. This equation shows the importance of Jurs descriptors (atomic charge weighted positive surface area, relative negative charge and relative positive charge surface area), partial moment of inertia, energy of the most stable conformer and the ratio of common overlap steric volume to volume of individual molecules. In the case of stepwise regression, the best relation showed 46.1% predicted variance and 72.3% explained variance. In the case of MFA, the major steps were (1) generating conformers and energy minimization; (2) matching atoms using a maximum common substructure (MCS) search and aligning molecules using the default options; (3) setting MFA preferences (rectangular grid with 2 angstrom step size, charges by the Gasteiger algorithm, H+ and CH3 as probes); (4) creating the field; (5) analysis by the Genetic partial least squares (G/PLS) method. The equation obtained was of excellent statistical quality: 96.1% explained variance and 71.6% predicted variance. Statistically reliable 3D-QSAR models obtained from this study suggest that these techniques could be useful to design potent A(3) receptor antagonists.

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


A Reputation Framework for Social Participatory Sensing Systems Social participatory sensing is a newly proposed paradigm that tries to address the limitations of participatory sensing by leveraging online social networks as an infrastructure. A critical issue in the success of this paradigm is to assure the trustworthiness of contributions provided by participants. In this paper, we propose an application-agnostic reputation framework for social participatory sensing systems. Our framework considers both the quality of contribution and the trustworthiness level of participant within the social network. These two aspects are then combined via a fuzzy inference system to arrive at a final trust rating for a contribution. A reputation score is also calculated for each participant as a resultant of the trust ratings assigned to him. We adopt the utilization of PageRank algorithm as the building block for our reputation module. Extensive simulations demonstrate the efficacy of our framework in achieving high overall trust and assigning accurate reputation scores.

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

reputation framework
trust
participatory sensing
online social networks

data quality
urban sensing
fuzzy logic
ranking algorithms


A multiple kernel framework for inductive semi-supervised SVM learning We investigate the benefit of combining both cluster assumption and manifold assumption underlying most of the semi-supervised algorithms using the flexibility and the efficiency of multiple kernel learning. The multiple kernel version of Transductive SVM (a cluster assumption based approach) is proposed and it is solved based on DC (Difference of Convex functions) programming. Promising results on benchmark data sets and the BCI data analysis suggest and support the effectiveness of proposed work.

O O O O O O O O O O O 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 kernel learning
transductive svm

inductive semi-supervised learning
dc programming
bci application


The benefits of total quality management In this article, we will review the implementation of the ISO 9000 quality system in the Department of Nuclear Medicine. We will also discuss the benefits of working with the ISO 9000 standards and explain why we have shifted our focus from ISO 9000 towards the EFQM model. After an introduction concerning Total Quality Management and the EFQM model, we will describe how we have used the EFQM model to date and how we intend to implement TQM in the future.

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

quality management
nuclear medicine
efqm
implementation