Quantum theory , the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer

It is argued that underlying the Church-Turing hypothesis there is an implicit physical assertion. Here, this assertion is presented explicitly as a physical principle: ‘every finitely realizable physical system can be perfectly simulated by a universal model computing machine operating by finite means’. Classical physics and the universal Turing machine, because the former is continuous and the latter discrete, do not obey the principle, at least in the strong form above. A class of model computing machines that is the quantum generalization of the class of Turing machines is described, and it is shown that quantum theory and the ‘universal quantum computer’ are compatible with the principle. Computing machines resembling the universal quantum computer could, in principle, be built and would have many remarkable properties not reproducible by any Turing machine. These do not include the computation of non-recursive functions, but they do include ‘quantum parallelism’, a method by which certain probabilistic tasks can be performed faster by a universal quantum computer than by any classical restriction of it. The intuitive explanation of these properties places an intolerable strain on all interpretations of quantum theory other than Everett’s. Some of the numerous connections between the quantum theory of computation and the rest of physics are explored. Quantum complexity theory allows a physically more reasonable definition of the ‘complexity’ or ‘knowledge’ in a physical system than does classical complexity theory. Current address: Centre for Quantum Computation, Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, Parks Road, OX1 3PU Oxford, United Kingdom. Email: david.deutsch@qubit.org This version (Summer 1999) was edited and converted to L TEX by Wim van Dam at the Centre for Quantum Computation. Email:wimvdam@qubit.org 1 Computing machines and the Church-Turing principle The theory of computing machines has been extensively developed during the last few decades. Intuitively, a computing machine is any physical system whose dynamical evolution takes it from one of a set of ‘input’ states to one of a set of ‘output’ states. The states are labelled in some canonical way, the machine is prepared in a state with a given input label and then, following some motion, the output state is measured. For a classical deterministic system the measured output label is a definite functionf of the prepared input label; moreover the value of that label can in principle be measured by an outside observer (the ‘user’) and the machine is said to ‘compute’the functionf . Two classical deterministic computing machines are ‘computationally equivalent’ under given labellings of their input and output states if they compute the same function under those labellings. But quantum computing machines, and indeed classical stochastic computing machines, do not ‘compute functions’ in the above sense: the output state of a stochastic machine is random with only the probability distribution function for the possible outputs depending on the input state. The output state of a quantum machine, although fully determined by the input state is not an observable and so the user cannot in general discover its label. Nevertheless, the notion of computational equivalence can be generalized to apply to such machines also. Again we define computational equivalence under given labellings,but it is now necessary to specify more precisely what is to be labelled. As far as the input is concerned, labels must be given for each of the possible ways of preparing the machine, which correspond, by definition, to all the possible input states. This is identical with the classical deterministic case. However, there is an asymmetry between input and output because there is an asymmetry between preparation and measurement: whereas a quantum system can be prepared in any desired permitted input state, measurement cannot in general determine its output state; instead one must measure the value of some observable. (Throughout this paper I shall be using the Schr ̈ odinger picture, in which the quantum state is a function of time but observables are constant operators.) Thus what must be labelled is the set of ordered pairs consisting of an output observable and a possible measured value of that observable (in quantum theory, a Hermitian operator and one of its eigenvalues). Such an ordered pair contains, in effect, the specification of a possible experiment that could be made on the output, together with a possible result of that experiment. Two computing machines are computationally equivalent under given labellings if in any possible experiment or sequence of experiments in which their inputs were prepared equivalently under the input labellings, and observables corresponding to each other under the output labellings were measured, the measured values of these observables for the two machines would be statistically indistinguishable. That is, the probability distribution functions for the outputs of the two machines would be identical. In the sense just described, a given computing machine M computes at most one function. However, there ought to be no fundamental difference between altering the input state in which M is prepared, and altering systematically the constitution of M so that it becomes a different machine M0 computing a different function. To formalize such operations, it is often useful to consider machines with two inputs, the preparation of one constituting a ‘program’ determining which function of the other is to be computed. To each such machine M there corresponds a set C (M) of ‘M-computable functions’. A functionf isM-computable ifM can computef when prepared with some program. The set C(M) can be enlarged by enlarging the set of changes in the constitution of M that are labelled as possible M-programs. Given two machines M andM0 it is possible to construct a composite machine whose set of computable functions contains the union of C (M) and C(M0). There is no purely logical reason why one could not go on ad infinitumbuilding more powerful


Quantum Inspired Genetic Algorithms

|A novel evolutionary computing method | quantum inspired genetic algorithms | is introduced, where concepts and principles of quantum mechanics are used to inform and inspire more eecient evolutionary computing methods. The basic terminology of quantum mechanics is introduced before a comparison is made between a classical genetic algorithm and a quantum inspired method for the travelling salesperson problem. It is informally shown that the quantum inspired genetic algorithm performs better than the classical counterpart for a small domain. The paper concludes with some speculative comments concerning the relationship between quantum inspired genetic algorithms and various complexity classes.


Algorithms for Quantum Computation: Discrete Log and Factoring Extended Abstract

This paper gives algorithms for the discrete log and the factoring problems that take random polynomial time on a quantum computer (thus giving the rst examples of quantum cryptanalysis).


A Path-Tracking Criterion for an LHD Articulated Vehicle

A path-tracking criterion for the so-called LHD (load-haul-dump) truck used in underground mining is proposed in this paper. It exploits the particular configuration of this vehicle, composed of two units connected by an actuated articulation. The task is to follow the path represented by the middle of the tunnel, maintaining the whole vehicle at a reduced distance from the path itself, to decrease the risk of crashes against the walls of the tunnel. This is accomplished via feedback through the synthesis of an appropriate path-tracking criterion. The criterion is based on monitoring the distances of the midpoints of both axles of the vehicle from their orthogonal projections on the path, using two different moving frames simultaneously. Local asymptotic stability to paths of constant curvature is achieved by means of linear-state feedback. KEY WORDS—mobile robots, articulated vehicles, mining trucks, path tracking, off-tracking, feedback stabilization


A Multilingual Multimedia Indian Sign Language Dictionary Tool

This paper presents a cross platform multilingual multimedia Indian Sign Language (ISL) dictionary building tool. ISL is a linguistically under-investigated language with no source of well documented electronic data. Research on ISL linguistics also gets hindered due to a lack of ISL knowledge and the unavailability of any educational tools. Our system can be used to associate signs corresponding to a given text. The current system also facilitates the phonological annotation of Indian signs in the form of HamNoSys structure. The generated HamNoSys string can be given as input to an avatar module to produce an animated sign representation.


Detection and Recognition of Malaysian Special License Plate Based On SIFT Features

Automated car license plate recognition systems are developed and applied for purpose of facilitating the surveillance, law enforcement, access control and intelligent transportation monitoring with least human intervention. In this paper, an algorithm based on SIFT feature points clustering and matching is proposed to address the issue of recognizing Malaysian special plates. These special plates do not follow the normal standard car plates’ format as they may contain italic, cursive, connected and small letters. The algorithm is tested with 150 Malaysian special plate images under different environment and the promising experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is relatively robust. Keywords-license plate recognition, scale invariant feature transform (SIFT), feature extraction, homography, special license plate.


The quality of online social relationships

Online relationships are less valuable than offline ones. Indeed, their net benefit depends on whether they supplement or substitute for offline social relationships.


Low power and low voltage VT extractor circuit and MOSFET radiation dosimeter

This work discusses two fundamental blocks of an in vivo MOS dosimeter, namely the radiation sensor and the VT-extractor circuit. It is shown that threshold extractor circuits based on an all-region MOSFET model are very appropriate for low power design. The accuracy of the extractor circuits allows using the PMOS transistors of the integrated circuit CD4007 as the radiation sensor in a dosimeter for radiotherapy applications.


Control of hybrid AC/DC microgrid involving energy storage, renewable energy and pulsed loads

This paper proposes the coordinated control of a hybrid AC/DC power system with renewable energy source, energy storages and critical loads. The hybrid microgrid consists of both AC and DC sides. A synchronous generator and a PV farm supply power to the system's AC and DC sides, respectively. A bidirectional fully controlled AC/DC converter with active and reactive power decoupling technique is used to link the AC bus with the DC bus while regulating the system voltage and frequency. A DC/DC boost converter with a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) function is implemented to maximize the energy generation from the PV farm. Current controlled bidirectional DC/DC converters are applied to connect each lithium-ion battery bank to the DC bus. Lithium-ion battery banks act as energy storage devices that serve to increase the system stability by absorbing or injecting power to the grid as ancillary services. The proposed system can function in both grid-connected mode and islanding mode. Power electronic converters with different control strategies are analyzed in both modes in detail. Simulation results in MATLAB Simulink verify that the proposed topology is coordinated for power management in both AC and DC sides under critical loads with high efficiency, reliability, and robustness under both grid-connected and islanding modes.


Does the Tyndall effect describe the blue hue periodically observed in subdermal hyaluronic acid gel placement?

BACKGROUND
The blue hue of skin overlying injected hyaluronic acid (HA) fillers in certain cases has been hypothesized in the literature as related to the Tyndall effect. This investigation aims to understand the relevant optical concepts and to discuss the plausibility of this assertion.

METHODS
Theoretic and physical aspects of relevant optical theories including the Tyndall effect, the Raleigh criterion and the Mie Solution are discussed, with simple examples. The physical properties of the system (both HA and subcutaneous tissue) are explored. Alternate concepts of dermal hue generation are discussed.

RESULTS
The Tyndall effect (and Rayleigh criterion) describe optical phenomenon that occur as light passes through colloidal solutions containing uniform spherical particles of sizes less than the length of a wavelength of visible light. HA fillers are complex, large, non-spherical, cross-linked hydrogels, and thus are not well characterized by these theories.Skin is a complex optical surface in which shorter wavelengths of light are selectively filtered at superficial depths. Light passing through to subdermal HA would have low blue light amplitude, minimizing what light could be preferentially scattered. Further, should blue hues be 'generated' subdermally, the same skin filters work in reverse, making the blue light poorly detectable by an external observer.

CONCLUSIONS
The Tyndall effect is unlikely to cause dermal hue changes in HA filler instillation. Optical and perceptual processes explaining superficial vein coloration may better describe subdermal HA hue changes. Vein coloration is thought to be related to three processes: the reflective properties of the skin, the absorptive properties of blood and the perceptive properties of an observer's eyes. Subdermal HA may simulate these phenomena by a number of undetermined, yet plausible mechanisms.


Character-Based Text Classification using Top Down Semantic Model for Sentence Representation

Despite the success of deep learning on many fronts especially image and speech, its application in text classification often is still not as good as a simple linear SVM on n-gram TF-IDF representation especially for smaller datasets. Deep learning tends to emphasize on sentence level semantics when learning a representation with models like recurrent neural network or recursive neural network, however from the success of TF-IDF representation, it seems a bag-of-words type of representation has its strength. Taking advantage of both representions, we present a model known as TDSM (Top Down Semantic Model) for extracting a sentence representation that considers both the word-level semantics by linearly combining the words with attention weights and the sentence-level semantics with BiLSTM and use it on text classification. We apply the model on characters and our results show that our model is better than all the other characterbased and word-based convolutional neural network models by (Zhang et al., 2015) across seven different datasets with only 1% of their parameters. We also demonstrate that this model beats traditional linear models on TF-IDF vectors on small and polished datasets like news article in which typically deep learning models surrender.


Treating the Banana Fold with the Dermotuberal Anchorage Technique: Case Report

The banana fold, or the infragluteal fold, is a fat deposit on the posterior thigh close to the gluteal crease and parallel to it. A banana fold may form for different reasons, among which an iatrogenic cause is recurrent. Although banana fold is a common problem, unrelished by most women, few procedures are targeted specifically to fight it. This report presents a severe case of iatrogenic banana fold corrected by a modification of the dermotuberal anchorage buttock-lifting technique, as reported by the author for gluteal ptosis. The operation is performed by tucking in part of the banana fold tissue caudal to the gluteal crease, sliding that tissue, after depithelization, under the buttock, and pulling it up toward the ischial tuberosity until the redundant skin on the posterior thigh is tight and the banana fold is reduced. Assessment of the results 1 year after surgery showed that the technique provided a good scar kept within the subgluteal crease, and that it satisfactorily corrected the patient’s major complaint: the banana-shaped fold.


Sliding spotlight SAR processing for TerraSAR-X using a new formulation of the extended chirp scaling algorithm

This paper describes the sliding spotlight algorithm and the processing strategy to be applied for TerraSAR-X. The steering spotlight geometry is analysed. Analysis of scene size and resolution demonstrates the particularities of this mode. The Doppler frequencies for individual targets and for a whole sliding spotlight scene are analyzed and the result shows the applicability of azimuth subaperture processing to sliding spotlight data. A description of the Extended Chirp Scaling Algorithm for sliding spotlight is presented.


Enhancing Knowledge Graph Embedding with Probabilistic Negative Sampling

Link Prediction using Knowledge graph embedding projects symbolic entities and relations into low dimensional vector space, thereby learning the semantic relations between entities. Among various embedding models, there is a series of translation-based models such as TransE [1], TransH [2], and TransR[3]. This paper proposes modifications in the TransR model to address the issue of skewed data which is common in real-world knowledge graphs. The enhancements enable the model to smartly generate corrupted triplets during negative sampling, which significantly improves the training time and performance of TransR. The proposed approach can be applied to other translationbased models.


A survey of wireless sensor technologies applied to precision agriculture

This paper gives a state-of-art of wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies and solutions applied to precision agriculture (PA). The paper first considers applications and existing experiences that show how WSN technologies have been introduced in to agricultural applications. Then, a survey in hardware and software solutions is related with special emphasis on technological aspects. Finally, the paper shows how five networking and technological solutions may impact the next generation of sensors. These are (i) scalar wireless sensor networks, (ii) wireless multimedia sensor networks, (iii) Mobility of nodes, (iv) tag-based systems, and (v) smart-phone applications.


Neural Clinical Paraphrase Generation with Attention

Paraphrase generation is important in various applications such as search, summarization, and question answering due to its ability to generate textual alternatives while keeping the overall meaning intact. Clinical paraphrase generation is especially vital in building patient-centric clinical decision support (CDS) applications where users are able to understand complex clinical jargons via easily comprehensible alternative paraphrases. This paper presents Neural Clinical Paraphrase Generation (NCPG), a novel approach that casts the task as a monolingual neural machine translation (NMT) problem. We propose an end-to-end neural network built on an attention-based bidirectional Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) architecture with an encoderdecoder framework to perform the task. Conventional bilingual NMT models mostly rely on word-level modeling and are often limited by out-of-vocabulary (OOV) issues. In contrast, we represent the source and target paraphrase pairs as character sequences to address this limitation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that uses attention-based RNNs for clinical paraphrase generation and also proposes an end-to-end character-level modeling for this task. Extensive experiments on a large curated clinical paraphrase corpus show that the attention-based NCPG models achieve improvements of up to 5.2 BLEU points and 0.5 METEOR points over a non-attention based strong baseline for word-level modeling, whereas further gains of up to 6.1 BLEU points and 1.3 METEOR points are obtained by the character-level NCPG models over their word-level counterparts. Overall, our models demonstrate comparable performance relative to the state-of-the-art phrase-based non-neural models.


ViBe: A Disruptive Method for Background Subtraction

The proliferation of the video surveillance cameras, which accounts for the vast majority of cameras worldwide, has resulted in the need to nd methods and algorithms for dealing with the huge amount of information that is gathered every second. This encompasses processing tasks, such as raising an alarm or detouring moving objects, as well as some semantic tasks like event monitoring, trajectory or ow analysis, counting people, etc.


A Large Scale Ranker-Based System for Search Query Spelling Correction

This paper makes three significant extensions to a noisy channel speller designed for standard written text to target the challenging domain of search queries. First, the noisy channel model is subsumed by a more general ranker, which allows a variety of features to be easily incorporated. Second, a distributed infrastructure is proposed for training and applying Web scale n-gram language models. Third, a new phrase-based error model is presented. This model places a probability distribution over transformations between multi-word phrases, and is estimated using large amounts of query-correction pairs derived from search logs. Experiments show that each of these extensions leads to significant improvements over the stateof-the-art baseline methods.


Unifying Logical and Statistical AI

Intelligent agents must be able to handle the complexity and uncertainty of the real world. Logical AI has focused mainly on the former, and statistical AI on the latter. Markov logic combines the two by attaching weights to first-order formulas and viewing them as templates for features of Markov networks. Inference algorithms for Markov logic draw on ideas from satisfiability, Markov chain Monte Carlo and knowledge-based model construction. Learning algorithms are based on the voted perceptron, pseudo-likelihood and inductive logic programming. Markov logic has been successfully applied to a wide variety of problems in natural language understanding, vision, computational biology, social networks and others, and is the basis of the open-source Alchemy system.


The role of autophagy in cancer development and response to therapy

Autophagy is a process in which subcellular membranes undergo dynamic morphological changes that lead to the degradation of cellular proteins and cytoplasmic organelles. This process is an important cellular response to stress or starvation. Many studies have shed light on the importance of autophagy in cancer, but it is still unclear whether autophagy suppresses tumorigenesis or provides cancer cells with a rescue mechanism under unfavourable conditions. What is the present state of our knowledge about the role of autophagy in cancer development, and in response to therapy? And how can the autophagic process be manipulated to improve anticancer therapeutics?


Optical Character Recognition for Cursive Handwriting

ÐIn this paper, a new analytic scheme, which uses a sequence of segmentation and recognition algorithms, is proposed for offline cursive handwriting recognition problem. First, some global parameters, such as slant angle, baselines, and stroke width and height are estimated. Second, a segmentation method finds character segmentation paths by combining gray scale and binary information. Third, Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is employed for shape recognition to label and rank the character candidates. For this purpose, a string of codes is extracted from each segment to represent the character candidates. The estimation of feature space parameters is embedded in HMM training stage together with the estimation of the HMM model parameters. Finally, the lexicon information and HMM ranks are combined in a graph optimization problem for word-level recognition. This method corrects most of the errors produced by segmentation and HMM ranking stages by maximizing an information measure in an efficient graph search algorithm. The experiments in dicate higher recognition rates compared to the available methods reported in the literature. Index TermsÐHandwritten word recognition, preprocessing, segmentation, optical character recognition, cursive handwriting, hidden Markov model, search, graph, lexicon matching.


IGLOO: Slicing the Features Space to Represent Long Sequences

Up until recently Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have been the standard go-to component when processing sequential data with neural networks. Issues relative to vanishing gradient have been partly addressed by Long short-term memory (LSTM) and gated recurrent unit (GRU), but in practice experiments show that very long terms dependencies (beyond 1000 time steps) are difficult to learn. We introduce IGLOO, a new neural network architecture which aims at being faster than both LSTM and GRU but also their respective CuDNN optimized versions when convergence happens and provide an alternative in the case when there is no convergence at all. IGLOO’s core idea is to use the relationships between patches sliced out of the features maps of convolution layers at different levels of granularity to build a representation for the sequence. We show that the model can deal with dependencies of more than 25,000 steps in a reasonable time frame. Beyond the well bench-marked copy-memory and addition problems which show good results, we also achieve best recorded accuracy on permuted MNIST (98.4%). IGLOO is also applied on the IMDB set and on the TUH Abnormal EEG Corpus.


Wafer level fabrication method of hemispherical reflector coupled micro-led array stimulator for optogenetics

We report a monolithic wafer-level fabrication method for a hemispherical reflector coupled light-emitting-diode (LED) array using isotropic etching of silicon. These neural stimulators collect the backside as well as the front side emission of the μ-LEDs and thus provide higher intensity, which is imperative for opsin expressions in optogenetics experiments. Aluminum was used as the reflective layer and the planarization of polymer on the reflector cavity was done using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The lateral and vertical profiles of silicon etching were measured and the light intensity increase due to the reflector was investigated. It was found that the intensity increases by a minimum of 49% and maximum of 65% when coupling a reflector with the μ-LEDs.


Improved extraction of vegetable oils under high-intensity ultrasound and/or microwaves.

Ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) and microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) techniques have been employed as complementary techniques to extract oils from vegetable sources, viz, soybean germ and a cultivated marine microalga rich in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Ultrasound (US) devices developed by ourselves, working at several frequencies (19, 25, 40 and 300 kHz), were used for US-based protocols, while a multimode microwave (MW) oven (operating with both open and closed vessels) was used for MAE. Combined treatments were also studied, such as simultaneous double sonication (at 19 and 25 kHz) and simultaneous US/MW irradiation, achieved by inserting a non-metallic horn in a MW oven. Extraction times and yields were compared with those resulting from conventional procedures. With soybean germ the best yield was obtained with a 'cavitating tube' prototype (19 kHz, 80 W), featuring a thin titanium cylinder instead of a conventional horn. Double sonication, carried out by inserting an immersion horn (25 kHz) in the same tube, improved the yield only slightly but halved the extraction time. Almost comparable yields were achieved by closed-vessel MAE and simultaneous US/MW irradiation. Compared with conventional methods, extraction times were reduced by up to 10-fold and yields increased by 50-500%. In the case of marine microalgae, UAE worked best, as the disruption by US of the tough algal cell wall considerably improved the extraction yield from 4.8% in soxhlet to 25.9%. Our results indicate that US and MW, either alone or combined, can greatly improve the extraction of bioactive substances, achieving higher efficiency and shorter reaction times at low or moderate costs, with minimal added toxicity.


The Complexity of Temporal Logic Model Checking

Temporal logic. Logical formalisms for reasoning about time and the timing of events appear in several fields: physics, philosophy, linguistics, etc. Not surprisingly, they also appear in computer science, a field where logic is ubiquitous. Here temporal logics are used in automated reasoning, in planning, in semantics of programming languages, in artificial intelligence, etc. There is one area of computer science where temporal logic has been unusually successful: the specification and verification of programs and systems, an area we shall just call “programming” for simplicity. In today’s curricula, thousands of programmers first learn about temporal logic in a course on model checking! Temporal logic and programming. Twenty five years ago, Pnueli identified temporal logic as a very convenient formal language in which to state, and reason about, the behavioral properties of parallel programs and more generally reactive systems [Pnu77, Pnu81]. Indeed, correctness for these systems typically involves reasoning upon related events at different moments of a system execution [OL82]. Furthermore, when it comes to liveness properties, the expected behavior of reactive systems cannot be stated as a static property, or as an invariant one. Finally, temporal logic is well suited to expressing the whole variety of fairness properties that play such a prominent role in distributed systems [Fra86]. For these applications, one usually restricts oneself to propositional temporal logic: on the one hand, this does not appear to be a severe limitation in practice, and on the other hand, this restriction allows decision procedures for validity and entailment, so that, at least in principle, the above-mentioned reasoning can be automated. Model checking. Generally speaking, model checking is the algorithmic verification that a given logic formula holds in a given structure (the model


Stereo-Based Autonomous Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance*

This paper presents a stereo vision-based autonomous navigation system using a GPS and a modified version of the VFH algorithm. In order to obtain a high-accuracy disparity map and meet the time constraints of the real time navigation system, this work proposes the use of a semi-global stereo method. By not suffering the same issues of the regularly used local stereo methods, the employed stereo technique enables the generation of a highly dense, efficient, and accurate disparity map. Obstacles are detected using a method that checks for relative slopes and heights differences. Experimental tests using an electric vehicle in an urban environment were performed to validate the proposed approach.


Practical electrical parameter aware methodology for analog designers with emphasis on LDE aware for devices

The device layout structure has proven to have profound effects to its electrical characteristics for advanced technology nodes, which, if not taken into account during the design cycle, will have devastating impact to the circuit functionality. A new design methodology is presented in this paper, which can help circuit designers identify early in the design stage the performance implication due to shift of critical device instance parameters from its layout.


Understanding Mutual Information and its Use in InfoGAN

Interpretable variables are useful in generative models. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are generative models that are flexible in their input. The Information Maximizing GAN (InfoGAN) ties the output of the generator to a component of its input called the latent codes. By forcing the output to be tied to this input component, we can control some properties of the output representation. It is notoriously difficult to find the Nash equilibrium when jointly training the discriminator and generator in a GAN. We uncover some successful and unsuccessful configurations for generating images using InfoGAN.


On lightweight mobile phone application certification

Users have begun downloading an increasingly large number of mobile phone applications in response to advancements in handsets and wireless networks. The increased number of applications results in a greater chance of installing Trojans and similar malware. In this paper, we propose the Kirin security service for Android, which performs lightweight certification of applications to mitigate malware at install time. Kirin certification uses security rules, which are templates designed to conservatively match undesirable properties in security configuration bundled with applications. We use a variant of security requirements engineering techniques to perform an in-depth security analysis of Android to produce a set of rules that match malware characteristics. In a sample of 311 of the most popular applications downloaded from the official Android Market, Kirin and our rules found 5 applications that implement dangerous functionality and therefore should be installed with extreme caution. Upon close inspection, another five applications asserted dangerous rights, but were within the scope of reasonable functional needs. These results indicate that security configuration bundled with Android applications provides practical means of detecting malware.


DroidScope: Seamlessly Reconstructing the OS and Dalvik Semantic Views for Dynamic Android Malware Analysis

The prevalence of mobile platforms, the large market share of Android, plus the openness of the Android Market makes it a hot target for malware attacks. Once a malware sample has been identified, it is critical to quickly reveal its malicious intent and inner workings. In this paper we present DroidScope, an Android analysis platform that continues the tradition of virtualization-based malware analysis. Unlike current desktop malware analysis platforms, DroidScope reconstructs both the OSlevel and Java-level semantics simultaneously and seamlessly. To facilitate custom analysis, DroidScope exports three tiered APIs that mirror the three levels of an Android device: hardware, OS and Dalvik Virtual Machine. On top of DroidScope, we further developed several analysis tools to collect detailed native and Dalvik instruction traces, profile API-level activity, and track information leakage through both the Java and native components using taint analysis. These tools have proven to be effective in analyzing real world malware samples and incur reasonably low performance overheads.


AppIntent: analyzing sensitive data transmission in android for privacy leakage detection

Android phones often carry personal information, attracting malicious developers to embed code in Android applications to steal sensitive data. With known techniques in the literature, one may easily determine if sensitive data is being transmitted out of an Android phone. However, transmission of sensitive data in itself does not necessarily indicate privacy leakage; a better indicator may be whether the transmission is by user intention or not. When transmission is not intended by the user, it is more likely a privacy leakage. The problem is how to determine if transmission is user intended. As a first solution in this space, we present a new analysis framework called AppIntent. For each data transmission, AppIntent can efficiently provide a sequence of GUI manipulations corresponding to the sequence of events that lead to the data transmission, thus helping an analyst to determine if the data transmission is user intended or not. The basic idea is to use symbolic execution to generate the aforementioned event sequence, but straightforward symbolic execution proves to be too time-consuming to be practical. A major innovation in AppIntent is to leverage the unique Android execution model to reduce the search space without sacrificing code coverage. We also present an evaluation of AppIntent with a set of 750 malicious apps, as well as 1,000 top free apps from Google Play. The results show that AppIntent can effectively help separate the apps that truly leak user privacy from those that do not.


Towards automatic generation of vulnerability-based signatures

In this paper we explore the problem of creating vulnerability signatures. A vulnerability signature matches all exploits of a given vulnerability, even polymorphic or metamorphic variants. Our work departs from previous approaches by focusing on the semantics of the program and vulnerability exercised by a sample exploit instead of the semantics or syntax of the exploit itself. We show the semantics of a vulnerability define a language which contains all and only those inputs that exploit the vulnerability. A vulnerability signature is a representation (e.g., a regular expression) of the vulnerability language. Unlike exploit-based signatures whose error rate can only be empirically measured for known test cases, the quality of a vulnerability signature can be formally quantified for all possible inputs. We provide a formal definition of a vulnerability signature and investigate the computational complexity of creating and matching vulnerability signatures. We also systematically explore the design space of vulnerability signatures. We identify three central issues in vulnerability-signature creation: how a vulnerability signature represents the set of inputs that may exercise a vulnerability, the vulnerability coverage (i.e., number of vulnerable program paths) that is subject to our analysis during signature creation, and how a vulnerability signature is then created for a given representation and coverage. We propose new data-flow analysis and novel adoption of existing techniques such as constraint solving for automatically generating vulnerability signatures. We have built a prototype system to test our techniques. Our experiments show that we can automatically generate a vulnerability signature using a single exploit which is of much higher quality than previous exploit-based signatures. In addition, our techniques have several other security applications, and thus may be of independent interest


Computer security technology planning study

Approved for pubJic reJease; distribution unri mited. When U.S. Government drawings, specifications or other data are used for any purpose other than a definitely related government procurement operation, the government thereby incurs no responsibility nor any obligation whatsoever; and the fact that the government may have formulated, fui·nished, or in any way sup plied the said drawings, specifications, or other data is not to be regarded by implication or otherwise as in any manner licensing the holder or any other person or conveying any rights or permission to manufacture, use, or sell any patented invention that may in any way be related thereto.


Ghost hunters: ambient light and hand gesture utilization in mobile augmented reality games

This paper presents the current status of work-in-progress in developing Ghost Hunters that is targeted to explore the possibilities of incorporating gesture control and ambient lighting in a mobile augmented reality game played with smart glasses. We present the design and implementation of the current prototype, together with a small feasibility evaluation of battery consumption and gesture control.


An Expressive (Zero-Knowledge) Set Accumulator

We present a new construction of an expressive set accumulator. Unlike existing cryptographic accumulators, ours provides succinct proofs for a large collection of operations over accumulated sets, including intersection, union, set difference, SUM, COUNT, MIN, MAX, and RANGE, as well as arbitrary nestings of the above. We also show how to extend our accumulator to be zero-knowledge. The security of our accumulator is based on extractability assumptions and other assumptions that hold in the generic group model. Our construction has asymptotically optimal verification complexity and proof size, constant update complexity, and public verifiability/updatability—namely, any client who knows the public key and the last accumulator value can verify the supported operations and update the accumulator. The expressiveness of our accumulator comes at the cost of quadratic prover time. However, we show that the cryptographic operations involved are cheap compared to those incurred by generic approaches (e.g., SNARKs) that are equally expressive: our prover runs faster for sets of up to 5 million items. Our accumulator serves as a powerful cryptographic tool with many applications. For example, it can be applied to efficiently support verification of a rich collection of SQL queries when used as a drop-in replacement in existing verifiable database systems (e.g., IntegriDB, CCS 2015).


Effectiveness of fundamental frequency (F0) and strength of excitation (SOE) for spoofed speech detection

Current countermeasures used in spoof detectors (for speech synthesis (SS) and voice conversion (VC)) are generally phase-based (as vocoders in SS and VC systems lack phase-information). These approaches may possibly fail for non-vocoder or unit-selection-based spoofs. In this work, we explore excitation source-based features, i.e., fundamental frequency (F0) contour and strength of excitation (SoE) at the glottis as discriminative features using GMM-based classification system. We use F0 and SoE1 estimated from speech signal through zero frequency (ZF) filtering method. Further, SoE2 is estimated from negative peaks of derivative of glottal flow waveform (dGFW) at glottal closure instants (GCIs). On the evaluation set of ASVspoof 2015 challenge database, the F0 and SoEs features along with its dynamic variations achieve an Equal Error Rate (EER) of 12.41%. The source features are fused at score-level with MFCC and recently proposed cochlear filter cepstral coefficients and instantaneous frequency (CFCCIF) features. On fusion with MFCC (CFCCIF), the EER decreases from 4.08% to 3.26% (2.07% to 1.72%). The decrease in EER was evident on both known and unknown vocoder-based attacks. When MFCC, CFCCIF and source features are combined, the EER further decreased to 1.61%. Thus, source features captures complementary information than MFCC and CFCCIF used alone.


Quantitative trait loci for glucosinolate accumulation in Brassica rapa leaves.

Glucosinolates and their breakdown products have been recognized for their effects on plant defense, human health, flavor and taste of cruciferous vegetables. Despite this importance, little is known about the regulation of the biosynthesis and degradation in Brassica rapa. Here, the identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) for glucosinolate accumulation in B. rapa leaves in two novel segregating double haploid (DH) populations is reported: DH38, derived from a cross between yellow sarson R500 and pak choi variety HK Naibaicai; and DH30, from a cross between yellow sarson R500 and Kairyou Hakata, a Japanese vegetable turnip variety. An integrated map of 1068 cM with 10 linkage groups, assigned to the international agreed nomenclature, is developed based on the two individual DH maps with the common parent using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and single sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Eight different glucosinolate compounds were detected in parents and F(1)s of the DH populations and found to segregate quantitatively in the DH populations. QTL analysis identified 16 loci controlling aliphatic glucosinolate accumulation, three loci controlling total indolic glucosinolate concentration and three loci regulating aromatic glucosinolate concentrations. Both comparative genomic analyses based on Arabidopsis-Brassica rapa synteny and mapping of candidate orthologous genes in B. rapa allowed the selection of genes involved in the glucosinolate biosynthesis pathway that may account for the identified QTL.


Can Smartwatches Replace Smartphones for Posture Tracking?

This paper introduces a human posture tracking platform to identify the human postures of sitting, standing or lying down, based on a smartwatch. This work develops such a system as a proof-of-concept study to investigate a smartwatch's ability to be used in future remote health monitoring systems and applications. This work validates the smartwatches' ability to track the posture of users accurately in a laboratory setting while reducing the sampling rate to potentially improve battery life, the first steps in verifying that such a system would work in future clinical settings. The algorithm developed classifies the transitions between three posture states of sitting, standing and lying down, by identifying these transition movements, as well as other movements that might be mistaken for these transitions. The system is trained and developed on a Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch, and the algorithm was validated through a leave-one-subject-out cross-validation of 20 subjects. The system can identify the appropriate transitions at only 10 Hz with an F-score of 0.930, indicating its ability to effectively replace smart phones, if needed.


API design for machine learning software: experiences from the scikit-learn project

scikit-learn is an increasingly popular machine learning library. Written in Python, it is designed to be simple and efficient, accessible to non-experts, and reusable in various contexts. In this paper, we present and discuss our design choices for the application programming interface (API) of the project. In particular, we describe the simple and elegant interface shared by all learning and processing units in the library and then discuss its advantages in terms of composition and reusability. The paper also comments on implementation details specific to the Python ecosystem and analyzes obstacles faced by users and developers of the library.


Social support: a conceptual analysis.

Using the methodology of Walker and Avant, the purpose of this paper was to identify the most frequently used theoretical and operational definitions of social support. A positive relationship between social support and health is generally accepted in the literature. However, the set of dimensions used to define social support is inconsistent. In addition, few measurement tools have established reliability and validity. Findings from this conceptual analysis suggested four of the most frequently used defining attributes of social support: emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal. Social network, social embeddedness, and social climate were identified as antecedents of social support. Social support consequences were subsumed under the general rubric of positive health states. Examples were personal competence, health maintenance behaviours, effective coping behaviours, perceived control, sense of stability, recognition of self-worth, positive affect, psychological well-being, and decreased anxiety and depression. Recommendations for future research were made.


Child sexual abuse in sub-Saharan Africa: a literature review.

OBJECTIVE
This article reviews the English-language literature on child sexual abuse in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The focus is on the sexual abuse of children in the home/community, as opposed to the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

METHODS
English language, peer-reviewed papers cited in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) are examined. Reports from international and local NGOs and UN agencies are also examined.

RESULTS
Few published studies on the sexual abuse of children have been conducted in the region, with the exception of South Africa. Samples are predominantly clinical or University based. A number of studies report that approximately 5% of the sample reported penetrative sexual abuse during their childhood. No national survey of the general population has been conducted. The most frequent explanations for the sexual abuse of children in SSA include rapid social change, AIDS/HIV avoidance strategies and the patriarchal nature of society. Child sexual abuse is most frequently perpetrated by family members, relatives, neighbors or others known to the child.

CONCLUSIONS
There is nothing to support the widely held view that child sexual abuse is very rare in SSA-prevalence levels are comparable with studies reported from other regions. The high prevalence levels of AIDS/HIV in the region expose sexually abused children to high risks of infection. It is estimated that, approximately.6-1.8% of all children in high HIV-incidence countries in Southern Africa will experience penetrative sexual abuse by an AIDS/HIV infected perpetrator before 18 years of age.


Stabilizing Dynamic Controllers for Hybrid Systems: A Hybrid Control Lyapunov Function Approach

This paper proposes a dynamic controller structure and a systematic design procedure for stabilizing discrete-time hybrid systems. The proposed approach is based on the concept of control Lyapunov functions (CLFs), which, when available, can be used to design a stabilizing state-feedback control law. In general, the construction of a CLF for hybrid dynamical systems involving both continuous and discrete states is extremely complicated, especially in the presence of non-trivial discrete dynamics. Therefore, we introduce the novel concept of a hybrid control Lyapunov function, which allows the compositional design of a discrete and a continuous part of the CLF, and we formally prove that the existence of a hybrid CLF guarantees the existence of a classical CLF. A constructive procedure is provided to synthesize a hybrid CLF, by expanding the dynamics of the hybrid system with a specific controller dynamics. We show that this synthesis procedure leads to a dynamic controller that can be implemented by a receding horizon control strategy, and that the associated optimization problem is numerically tractable for a fairly general class of hybrid systems, useful in real world applications. Compared to classical hybrid receding horizon control algorithms, the proposed approach typically requires a shorter prediction horizon to guarantee asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system, which yields a reduction of the computational burden, as illustrated through two examples.


Familial hypertrichosis cubiti: hairy elbows syndrome.

Genetically determined hypertrichosis is uncommon, but several forms of familial hairiness have been described. In some kindreds the unusual hairiness has been generalized, while in others, the hypertrichosis has been confined to a specific site on the body. The purpose of this paper is to report the occurrence of undue hairiness of the elbow regions in members of an Amish family, and to discuss the genetic significance of the condition. No previous descriptions of hypertrichosis of this distribution could be found in the literature, and it is therefore suggested that the condition be termed familial hypertrichosis cubiti or the hairy elbows syndrome.


Instance Based Clustering of Semantic Web Resources

The original Semantic Web vision was explicit in the need for intelligent autonomous agents that would represent users and help them navigate the Semantic Web. We argue that an essential feature for such agents is the capability to analyse data and learn. In this paper we outline the challenges and issues surrounding the application of clustering algorithms to Semantic Web data. We present several ways to extract instances from a large RDF graph and computing the distance between these. We evaluate our approaches on three different data-sets, one representing a typical relational database to RDF conversion, one based on data from a ontologically rich Semantic Web enabled application, and one consisting of a crawl of FOAF documents; applying both supervised and unsupervised evaluation metrics. Our evaluation did not support choosing a single combination of instance extraction method and similarity metric as superior in all cases, and as expected the behaviour depends greatly on the data being clustered. Instead, we attempt to identify characteristics of data that make particular methods more suitable.


An Evaluation of Fine and Gross Motor Skills in Adolescents with Down Syndromes

Down syndrome (DS) is the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability. Motor development of children with DS is delayed. The aim of the present study was to evaluate of fine and gross motor skills of adolescents with DS. The study sample of a total of 34 participants aged between 14 to 20 years comprised 16 adolescents with DS and a normally developing group of 18 adolescents without DS. Fine and gross motor skills of the participants were assessed by Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, second edition short form (BOT-2 SF). The highest score of the test is 88 and higher score shows higher performance. The average age of adolescents with DS and without DS who participated in the study were 17.06±2.79 and 16.56±1.09, respectively. All partcipants were male. It was found a significant differences for all BOT-2 SF subtests and total scores when compared between adolescents with DS and adolescents without DS (p<0.05). Adolescents without DS has higher scores than adolescents with DS. In conclusion, both fine and gross motor skill performance of adolescents with DS is lower than normally developing adolescents. This study stresses the importance of interventions facilitating motor skills.


Deep Continuous Fusion for Multi-sensor 3D Object Detection

In this paper, we propose a novel 3D object detector that can exploit both LIDAR as well as cameras to perform very accurate localization. Towards this goal, we design an end-to-end learnable architecture that exploits continuous convolutions to fuse image and LIDAR feature maps at different levels of resolution. Our proposed continuous fusion layer encode both discrete-state image features as well as continuous geometric information. This enables us to design a novel, reliable and efficient end-to-end learnable 3D object detector based on multiple sensors. Our experimental evaluation on both KITTI as well as a large scale 3D object detection benchmark shows significant improvements over the state of the art.


Wideband Excitation Technology of ${\rm TE}_{20}$ Mode Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) and Its Applications

The higher order mode substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) has advantages in the applications, which are: simplifying the structure with reduced fabrication cost and enhancing the stability of performance by relaxed fabrication tolerance. In this paper, two wideband TE20 mode excitation structures are presented and investigated for the SIW. A slot along the mid line in the longitudinal direction of the SIW is employed to convert the electromagnetic field pattern between slotline and the TE20 mode SIW. The second structure is based on the slot aperture coupling and can realize wideband direct transition between the TE20 mode SIW and microstrip line. Both transitions have a simple and compact structure, as well as broadband characteristics. The wideband transition performance is demonstrated in this paper. As application examples of the transitions, two broadband substrate integrated baluns are presented and fabricated based on the TE20 mode excitation structures and TE20 mode characteristics. The 180 ° out-of-phase and equal magnitude of the balun outputs in a wide frequency range can be achieved inherently. The balun based on the slotline excitation has a fractional bandwidth of 50.2%, from 7.3 to 12.2 GHz, with measured return loss, amplitude imbalance, and phase imbalance better than 10 and 0.45 dB and 3.8 °. The balun based on the aperture coupling excitation shows a fractional bandwidth of 50.3%, from 7 to 11.7 GHz, with measured return loss, insertion loss, amplitude imbalance, and phase imbalance better than 10, 1, and 0.27 dB and 2.4 °, respectively. Both baluns not only show good performance, but also demonstrate the existence of the TE20 mode in the SIW.


Intuitionistic fuzzy sets and L-fuzzy sets

This paper proves that the concepts of intuitionistic fuzzy sets and intuitionistic L-fuzzy sets and the concept of L-fuzzy sets are equivalent. c © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved


Games and Agents: Designing Intelligent Gameplay

There is an attention shift within the gaming industry toward more natural (long-term) behavior of nonplaying characters (NPCs). Multiagent system research offers a promising technology to implement cognitive intelligent NPCs. However, the technologies used in game engines and multiagent platforms are not readily compatible due to some inherent differences of concerns. Where game engines focus on real-time aspects and thus propagate efficiency and central control, multiagent platforms assume autonomy of the agents. Increased autonomy and intelligence may offer benefits for a more compelling gameplay and may even be necessary for serious games. However, it raises problems when current game design techniques are used to incorporate state-of-the-art multiagent system technology. In this paper, we will focus on three specific problem areas that arise from this difference of view: synchronization, information representation, and communication. We argue that the current attempts for integration still fall short on some of these aspects. We show that to fully integrate intelligent agents in games, one should not only use a technical solution, but also a design methodology that is amenable to agents. The game design should be adjusted to incorporate the possibilities of agents early on in the process.


Towards Enhancing the Security of OAuth Implementations in Smart Phones

With the roaring growth and wide adoption of smart mobile devices, users are continuously integrating with culture of the mobile applications (apps). These apps are not only gaining access to information on the smartphone but they are also able gain users' authorization to access remote servers on their behalf. The Open standard for Authorization (OAuth) is widely used in mobile apps for gaining access to user's resources on remote service providers. In this paper, we analyze the different OAuth implementations adopted by the SDKs of the popular resource providers on smartphones and demonstrate possible attacks on most OAuth implementations. By analyzing source code of more than 430 popular Android apps we summarized the trends followed by the service providers and by the OAuth development choices made by application developers. In addition, we propose an application-based OAuth Manager framework, that provides a secure OAuth flow in smartphones that is based on the concept of privilege separation and does not require high overhead.


Improving Cancer Treatment via Mathematical Modeling: Surmounting the Challenges Is Worth the Effort

Drug delivery schedules are key factors in the efficacy of cancer therapies, and mathematical modeling of population dynamics and treatment responses can be applied to identify better drug administration regimes as well as provide mechanistic insights. To capitalize on the promise of this approach, the cancer field must meet the challenges of moving this type of work into clinics.


Unsupervised learning of feature hierarchies

The applicability of machine learning methods is often limi ted by the amount of available labeled data, and by the ability (or inability) of the de signer to produce good internal representations and good similarity measures for the input data vectors. The aim of this thesis is to alleviate these two limitations by proposing al gorithms tolearngood internal representations, and invariant feature hierarchies from u nlabeled data. These methods go beyond traditional supervised learning algorithms, and rely on unsupervised, and semi-supervised learning. In particular, this work focuses on “deep learning” methods , a et of techniques and principles to train hierarchical models. Hierarchical mod els produce feature hierarchies that can capture complex non-linear dependencies among the observed data variables in a concise and efficient manner. After training, these mode ls can be employed in real-time systems because they compute the representation by a very fast forward propagation of the input through a sequence of non-linear transf ormations. When the paucity of labeled data does not allow the use of traditional supervi s d algorithms, each layer of the hierarchy can be trained in sequence starting at the bott om by using unsupervised or semi-supervised algorithms. Once each layer has been train ed, the whole system can be fine-tuned in an end-to-end fashion. We propose several unsu pervised algorithms that can be used as building block to train such feature hierarchi es. We investigate algorithms that produce sparse overcomplete representations a nd fe tures that are invariant to known and learned transformations. These algorithms are designed using the Energy-


Deep convolutional neural network for latent fingerprint enhancement

In this work, we propose a novel latent fingerprint enhancement method based on FingerNet inspired by recent development of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Although CNN is achieving superior performance in many computer vision tasks from low-level image processing to high-level semantic understanding, limited attention has been paid in fingerprint community. The proposed FingerNet has three major parts: one common convolution part shared by two different deconvolution parts, which are the enhancement branch and the orientation branch. The convolution part is to extract fingerprint features particularly for enhancement purpose. The enhancement deconvolution branch is employed to remove structured noise and enhance fingerprints as its task. The orientation deconvolution branch performs the task of guiding enhancement through a multi-task learning strategy. The network is trained in the manner of pixels-to-pixels and end-to-end learning, that can directly enhance latent fingerprint as the output. We also study some implementation details such as single-task learning, multi-task learning, and the residual learning. Experimental results of the FingerNet system on latent fingerprint dataset NIST SD27 demonstrate effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.


IRIS performer: a high performance multiprocessing toolkit for real-time 3D graphics

This paper describes the design and implementation of IRIS Performer, a toolkit for visual simulation, virtual reality, and other real-time 3D graphics applications. The principal design goal is to allow application developers to more easily obtain maximal performance from 3D graphics workstations which feature multiple CPUs and support an immediate-mode rendering library. To this end, the toolkit combines a low-level library for high-performance rendering with a high-level library that implements pipelined, parallel traversals of a hierarchical scene graph. While discussing the toolkit architecture, the paper illuminates and addresses performance issues fundamental to immediate-mode graphics and coarse-grained, pipelined multiprocessing. Graphics optimizations focus on efficient data transfer to the graphics subsystem, reduction of mode settings, and restricting state inheritance. The toolkit's multiprocessing features solve the problems of how to partition work among multiple processes, how to synchronize these processes, and how to manage data in a pipelined, multiprocessing environment. The paper also discusses support for intersection detection, fixed-frame rates, run-time profiling and special effects such as geometric morphing.


Tversky loss function for image segmentation using 3D fully convolutional deep networks

Fully convolutional deep neural networks carry out excellent potential for fast and accurate image segmentation. One of the main challenges in training these networks is data imbalance, which is particularly problematic in medical imaging applications such as lesion segmentation where the number of lesion voxels is often much lower than the number of non-lesion voxels. Training with unbalanced data can lead to predictions that are severely biased towards high precision but low recall (sensitivity), which is undesired especially in medical applications where false negatives are much less tolerable than false positives. Several methods have been proposed to deal with this problem including balanced sampling, two step training, sample re-weighting, and similarity loss functions. In this paper, we propose a generalized loss function based on the Tversky index to address the issue of data imbalance and achieve much better trade-off between precision and recall in training 3D fully convolutional deep neural networks. Experimental results in multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation on magnetic resonance images show improved F2 score, Dice coefficient, and the area under the precision-recall curve in test data. Based on these results we suggest Tversky loss function as a generalized framework to effectively train deep neural networks.


Implementation of FC-TCR for Reactive Power Control

This paper deals with the simulation and implementation of fixed capacitor thyristor controlled reactor system(SVC) . The TCR system is simulated using MATLAB and the simulation results are presented. SVC is basically a shunt connected static var generator whose output is adjusted to exchange capacitive or inductive current so as to maintain or control specific power variable. In this paper, simple circuit model of Thyristor Controlled Reactor is modeled and simulated using MATLAB. The simulation results are presented. The current drawn by the TCR varies with the variation in the firing angle. The simulation results are compared with the theoretical results.


Deep Automatic Portrait Matting

We propose an automatic image matting method for portrait images. This method does not need user interaction, which was however essential in most previous approaches. In order to accomplish this goal, a new end-to-end convolutional neural network (CNN) based framework is proposed taking the input of a portrait image. It outputs the matte result. Our method considers not only image semantic prediction but also pixel-level image matte optimization. A new portrait image dataset is constructed with our labeled matting ground truth. Our automatic method achieves comparable results with state-of-the-art methods that require specified foreground and background regions or pixels. Many applications are enabled given the automatic nature of our system.


Prediction of Primary Pupil Enrollment in Government School Using Data Mining Forecasting Technique

This research concentrates upon predictive analysis of enrolled pupil using forecasting based on data mining technique. The Microsoft SQL Server Data Mining Add-ins Excel 2007 was employed as a software mining tool for predicting enrollment of pupils. The time series algorithm was used for experiment analysis. U-DISE (Unified District Information System for Education) Dataset of Aurangabad district in Maharashtra (India) was obtained from SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) and was used for analysis. Data mining for primary pupil enrollment research provides a feasible way to analyze the trend and to addresses the interest of pupil. The dataset was studied and analyzed to forecast registered pupils in government for upcoming years. We conclude that for upcoming year, pupil strength in government school will be dropped down and number of teachers will be supersizing in the said district. Keywords— Data mining, Microsoft SQL Server Data Mining Add-ins Excel 2007, Time series algorithm, U-DISE


60-GHz Circularly Polarized U-Slot Patch Antenna Array on LTCC

This communication presents a 60-GHz wideband circularly polarized (CP) U-slot patch antenna array of 4 × 4 elements on low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC). A CP U-slot patch antenna is used as the array element to enhance the impedance bandwidth and a stripline sequential rotation feeding scheme is applied to achieve wide axial ratio (AR) bandwidth. Meanwhile, a grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW) to stripline transition is designed for probe station measurement. The fabricated antenna array has a dimension of 14 ×16 × 1.1 mm3 . The simulated and measured impedance bandwidths, AR bandwidths, and radiation patterns are investigated and compared. Measured results show that the proposed antenna array has a wide impedance bandwidth from 50.5 GHz to 67 GHz for |S11| <; -10 dB, and a wide AR bandwidth from 54 GHz to 65.5 GHz for AR <; 3 dB. In addition, it exhibits a peak gain of 16 dBi and a beam-shaped pattern with 3-dB beam width of 20°. Moreover, its AR keeps below 3 dB within the 3-dB beam width.


Wideband Millimeter-Wave Substrate Integrated Waveguide Cavity-Backed Rectangular Patch Antenna

In this letter, a new type of wideband substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity-backed patch antenna and array for millimeter wave (mmW) are investigated and implemented. The proposed antenna is composed of a rectangular patch with a backed SIW cavity. In order to enhance the bandwidth and radiation efficiency, the cavity is designed to resonate at its TE210 mode. Based on the proposed antenna, a 4 × 4 array is also designed. Both the proposed antenna and array are fabricated with standard printed circuit board (PCB) process, which possess the advantage of easy integration with planar circuits. The measured bandwidth (|S11| ≤ -10 dB) of the antenna element is larger than 15%, and that of the antenna array is about 8.7%. The measured peak gains are 6.5 dBi for the element and 17.8 dBi for the array, and the corresponding simulated radiation efficiencies are 83.9% and 74.9%, respectively. The proposed antenna and array are promising for millimeter-wave applications due to its merits of wide band, high efficiency, low cost, low profile, etc.


Millimeter-Wave Microstrip Comb-Line Antenna Using Reflection-Canceling Slit Structure

A microstrip comb-line antenna is developed in the millimeter-wave band. When the element spacing is one guide wavelength for the broadside beam in the traveling-wave excitation, reflections from all the radiating elements are synthesized in phase. Therefore, the return loss increases significantly. Furthermore, re-radiation from elements due to the reflection wave degrades the design accuracy for the required radiation pattern. We propose the way to improve the reflection characteristic of the antenna with arbitrary beam directions including strictly a broadside direction. To suppress the reflection, we propose a reflection-canceling slit structure installed on the feeding line around each radiating element. A 27-element linear array antenna with a broadside beam is developed at 76.5 GHz. To confirm the feasibility of the simple design procedure, the performance is evaluated through the measurement in the millimeter-wave band.


Low Cost Planar Waveguide Technology-Based Dielectric Resonator Antenna (DRA) for Millimeter-Wave Applications: Analysis, Design, and Fabrication

A compact, low cost and high radiation efficiency antenna structure, planar waveguide, substrate integrated waveguide (SIW), dielectric resonator antennas (DRA) is presented in this paper. Since SIW is a high Q- waveguide and DRA is a low loss radiator, then SIW-DRA forms an excellent antenna system with high radiation efficiency at millimeter-waveband, where the conductor loss dominates. The impact of different antenna parameters on the antenna performance is studied. Experimental data for SIW-DRA, based on two different slot orientations, at millimeter-wave band are introduced and compared to the simulated HFSS results to validate our proposed antenna model. A good agreement is obtained. The measured gain for SIW-DRA single element showed a broadside gain of 5.51 dB,-19 dB maximum cross polarized radiation level, and overall calculated (simulated using HFSS) radiation efficiency of greater than 95%.


Context-Aware Bandits

In this paper, we present a simple and efficient Context-Aware Bandit (CAB) algorithm. With CAB we attempt to craft a bandit algorithm that can capture collaborative effects and that can be easily deployed in a real-world recommendation system, where the multi-armed bandits have been shown to perform well in particular with respect to the cold-start problem. CAB utilizes a context-aware clustering technique augmenting exploration-exploitation strategies. CAB dynamically clusters the users based on the content universe under consideration. We provide a theoretical analysis in the standard stochastic multi-armed bandits setting. We demonstrate the efficiency of our approach on production and real-world datasets, showing the scalability and, more importantly, the significantly increased prediction performance against several existing state-of-theart methods.


Occupational accidents aboard merchant ships.

OBJECTIVES
To investigate the frequency, circumstances, and causes of occupational accidents aboard merchant ships in international trade, and to identify risk factors for the occurrence of occupational accidents as well as dangerous working situations where possible preventive measures may be initiated.

METHODS
The study is a historical follow up on occupational accidents among crew aboard Danish merchant ships in the period 1993-7. Data were extracted from the Danish Maritime Authority and insurance data. Exact data on time at risk were available.

RESULTS
A total of 1993 accidents were identified during a total of 31 140 years at sea. Among these, 209 accidents resulted in permanent disability of 5% or more, and 27 were fatal. The mean risk of having an occupational accident was 6.4/100 years at sea and the risk of an accident causing a permanent disability of 5% or more was 0.67/100 years aboard. Relative risks for notified accidents and accidents causing permanent disability of 5% or more were calculated in a multivariate analysis including ship type, occupation, age, time on board, change of ship since last employment period, and nationality. Foreigners had a considerably lower recorded rate of accidents than Danish citizens. Age was a major risk factor for accidents causing permanent disability. Change of ship and the first period aboard a particular ship were identified as risk factors. Walking from one place to another aboard the ship caused serious accidents. The most serious accidents happened on deck.

CONCLUSIONS
It was possible to clearly identify work situations and specific risk factors for accidents aboard merchant ships. Most accidents happened while performing daily routine duties. Preventive measures should focus on workplace instructions for all important functions aboard and also on the prevention of accidents caused by walking around aboard the ship.


Dynamic intra- and interhemispheric interactions during unilateral and bilateral hand movements assessed with fMRI and DCM

Any motor action results from a dynamic interplay of various brain regions involved in different aspects of movement preparation and execution. Establishing a reliable model of how these areas interact is crucial for a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying motor function in both healthy subjects and patients. We used fMRI and dynamic causal modeling to reveal the specific excitatory and inhibitory influences within the human motor system for the generation of voluntary hand movements. We found an intrinsic balance of excitatory and inhibitory couplings among core motor regions within and across hemispheres. Neural coupling within this network was specifically modulated upon uni- and bimanual movements. During unimanual movements, connectivity towards the contralateral primary motor cortex was enhanced while neural coupling towards ipsilateral motor areas was reduced by both transcallosal inhibition and top-down modulation. Bimanual hand movements were associated with a symmetric facilitation of neural activity mediated by both increased intrahemispheric connectivity and enhanced transcallosal coupling of SMA and M1. The data suggest that especially the supplementary motor area represents a key structure promoting or suppressing activity in the cortical motor network driving uni- and bilateral hand movements. Our data demonstrate that fMRI in combination with DCM allows insights into intrinsic properties of the human motor system and task-dependent modulations thereof.


Stereo HDR Disparity Map Computation Using Structured Light

In this paper, we present work in progress towards the generation of a ground truth data set for High Dynamic Range (HDR) stereo matching. The development and evaluation of novel stereo matching algorithms that are tailored to the characteristics of HDR images would greatly benefit from the availability of such reference data. We describe our laboratory setup and processing steps for acquiring multi-exposed stereo images along with a corresponding reference disparity map computed by a structured light approach. We discuss the special requirements and challenges which HDR test scenes impose on the computation of the reference disparities and show some preliminary results.


Metamodel for Service Design and Service Innovation: Integrating Service Activities, Service Systems, and Value Constellations

This paper presents a metamodel that addresses service system design and innovation by traversing and integrating three essential layers, service activities, service systems, and value constellations. The metamodel's approach to service systems as service-inoperation is an alternative to another currently used approach that views service systems as systems of economic exchange. The metamodel addresses service science topics including basic concepts of service science, design thinking for service systems, decomposition within service systems, and integration of IT service architecture with


Accessing Structured Health Information through English Queries and Automatic Deduction

While much health data is available online, patients who are not technically astute may be unable to access it because they may not know the relevant resources, they may be reluctant to confront an unfamiliar interface, and they may not know how to compose an answer from information provided by multiple heterogeneous resources. We describe ongoing research in using natural English text queries and automated deduction to obtain answers based on multiple structured data sources in a specific subject domain. Each English query is transformed using natural language technology into an unambiguous logical form; this is submitted to a theorem prover that operates over an axiomatic theory of the subject domain. Symbols in the theory are linked to relations in external databases known to the system. An answer is obtained from the proof, along with an English language explanation of how the answer was obtained. Answers need not be present explicitly in any of the databases, but rather may be deduced or computed from the information they provide. Although English is highly ambiguous, the natural language technology is informed by subject domain knowledge, so that readings of the query that are syntactically plausible but semantically impossible are discarded. When a question is still ambiguous, the system can interrogate the patient to determine what meaning was intended. Additional queries can clarify earlier ones or ask questions referring to previously computed answers. We describe a prototype system, Quadri, which answers questions about HIV treatment using the Stanford HIV Drug Resistance Database and other resources. Natural language processing is provided by PARC’s Bridge, and the deductive mechanism is SRI’s SNARK theorem prover. We discuss some of the problems that must be faced to make this approach work, and some of our solutions.


Automatic categorization of medical images for content-based retrieval and data mining.

Categorization of medical images means selecting the appropriate class for a given image out of a set of pre-defined categories. This is an important step for data mining and content-based image retrieval (CBIR). So far, published approaches are capable to distinguish up to 10 categories. In this paper, we evaluate automatic categorization into more than 80 categories describing the imaging modality and direction as well as the body part and biological system examined. Based on 6231 reference images from hospital routine, 85.5% correctness is obtained combining global texture features with scaled images. With a frequency of 97.7%, the correct class is within the best ten matches, which is sufficient for medical CBIR applications.


Capturing and analyzing low-level events from the code editor

In this paper, we present FLUORITE, a publicly available event logging plug-in for Eclipse which captures all of the low-level events when using the Eclipse code editor. FLUORITE captures not only what types of events occurred in the code editor, but also more detailed information such as the inserted and deleted text and the specific parameters for each command. This enables the detection of many usage patterns that could otherwise not be recognized, such as "typo correction" that requires knowing that the entered text is immediately deleted and replaced. Moreover, the snapshots of each source code file that has been opened during the session can be completely reproduced using the collected information. We also provide analysis and visualization tools which report various statistics about usage patterns, and we provide the logs in an XML format so others can write their own analyzers. FLUORITE can be used for not only evaluating existing tools, but also for discovering issues that motivate new tools.


Zero-Day Attack Identification in Streaming Data Using Semantics and Spark

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) have been in existence for many years now, but they fall short in efficiently detecting zero-day attacks. This paper presents an organic combination of Semantic Link Networks (SLN) and dynamic semantic graph generation for the on the fly discovery of zero-day attacks using the Spark Streaming platform for parallel detection. In addition, a minimum redundancy maximum relevance (MRMR) feature selection algorithm is deployed to determine the most discriminating features of the dataset. Compared to previous studies on zero-day attack identification, the described method yields better results due to the semantic learning and reasoning on top of the training data and due to the use of collaborative classification methods. We also verified the scalability of our method in a distributed environment.


Leveraging social grouping for trust building in foreign electronic commerce firms: An exploratory study

Internet development has fueled e-commerce firms’ globalization efforts, but many have met with only limited success. This often stems from the foreign firms’ limited understanding of a focal country’s local culture and idiosyncrasies. Foreign firms are usually viewed as out-group entities, which lowers consumers’ trust in them. The extent of such a phenomenon varies. In locations where people are more skeptical of out-groups, a critical question is whether it is possible to transform such foreign out-group firms into in-groups, specifically with the support of popular social networking media. Based on Social Identity Theory and Trust Transference Process, five strategies leveraging social grouping and social ties to build trust for foreign electronic commerce firms were proposed. A survey was conducted to examine their effectiveness. The results suggest that social-grouping strategies are useful for in-grouping foreign out-group entities to build trust, and the effectiveness of strategies is determined by the social similarity and psychological distance between the consumer and the endorser. This has important implications for scholars and practitioners, both local and abroad, to leverage social grouping to boost Internet sales. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


DSD: Dense-Sparse-Dense Training for Deep Neural Networks

Modern deep neural networks have a large number of parameters, making them very hard to train. We propose DSD, a dense-sparse-dense training flow, for regularizing deep neural networks and achieving better optimization performance. In the first D (Dense) step, we train a dense network to learn connection weights and importance. In the S (Sparse) step, we regularize the network by pruning the unimportant connections with small weights and retraining the network given the sparsity constraint. In the final D (re-Dense) step, we increase the model capacity by removing the sparsity constraint, re-initialize the pruned parameters from zero and retrain the whole dense network. Experiments show that DSD training can improve the performance for a wide range of CNNs, RNNs and LSTMs on the tasks of image classification, caption generation and speech recognition. On ImageNet, DSD improved the Top1 accuracy of GoogLeNet by 1.1%, VGG-16 by 4.3%, ResNet-18 by 1.2% and ResNet-50 by 1.1%, respectively. On the WSJ’93 dataset, DSD improved DeepSpeech and DeepSpeech2 WER by 2.0% and 1.1%. On the Flickr-8K dataset, DSD improved the NeuralTalk BLEU score by over 1.7. DSD is easy to use in practice: at training time, DSD incurs only one extra hyper-parameter: the sparsity ratio in the S step. At testing time, DSD doesn’t change the network architecture or incur any inference overhead. The consistent and significant performance gain of DSD experiments shows the inadequacy of the current training methods for finding the best local optimum, while DSD effectively achieves superior optimization performance for finding a better solution. DSD models are available to download at https://songhan.github.io/DSD.


High quality information provisioning and data pricing

This paper presents ideas on how to advance the research on high quality information provisioning and information pricing. To this end, the current state of the art in combining data curation and information provisioning as well as in regard to data pricing is reviewed. Based on that, open issues, such as tailoring data to a user's need and determining a market value of data, are identified. As preliminary solutions, it is proposed to investigate the identified problems in an integrated manner.


Chukwa: A large-scale monitoring system

We describe the design and initial implementation of Chukwa, a data collection system for monitoring and analyzing large distributed systems. Chukwa is built on top of Hadoop, an open source distributed filesystem and MapReduce implementation, and inherits Hadoop’s scalability and robustness. Chukwa also includes a flexible and powerful toolkit for displaying monitoring and analysis results, in order to make the best use of this collected data.


Role of Procedural Justice , Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction on job Performance : The Mediating Effects of Organizational Citizenship Behavior

The study examines the impact of procedural justice, organizational commitment, job satisfaction on employee performance, and the potential mediating role played by organization citizenship behaviors in that process. This model was tested using a sample of 70 employees embedded in 2 groups from 15 branches of a large, syariah bank in Malang. The sample is taken using proportional random sampling. Data is collected directly from respondents using questionnaires and technical data analysis using GeSCA. The study results showed that both procedural justice and organizational commitment positively affected Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Organizational commitments do positive influence job performance. Job satisfaction did not positively influence Organizational Citizenship Behavior and job performance. Organizational Citizenship behavior positively influences job performance. Organizational Citizenship behavior acted as a partial mediator between procedural justice, organizational commitment, and job performance. A number of suggestions on managerial theory and implementation were proposed.


Substrate-Integrated Two-Port Dual-Frequency Antenna

A two-port dual-frequency substrate-integrated antenna with a large frequency difference is presented. It consists of a differentially fed slot antenna and a substrate-integrated dielectric resonator antenna for low- and high-frequency radiation, respectively. The former is loaded by a hollow patch, whereas the latter is fabricated inside the hollow region of the patch by using air holes and metalized vias. Beneath the antenna substrate is a second substrate on which slot-coupled sources are printed to feed the two antennas. For demonstration, a two-port dual-frequency antenna working at 5.2-GHz WLAN band and 24-GHz ISM band was designed, fabricated, and measured. The S-parameters, radiation patterns, and antenna gains of the two antenna parts are reported. Reasonable agreement between the measured and simulated results is observed. Very good isolation of over 35 dB between the two antenna parts is observed.


Balanced Multithreading: Increasing Throughput via a Low Cost Multithreading Hierarchy

A simultaneous multithreading (SMT) processor can issue instructions from several threads every cycle, allowing it to effectively hide various instruction latencies; this effect increases with the number of simultaneous contexts supported. However, each added context on an SMT processor incurs a cost in complexity, which may lead to an increase in pipeline length or a decrease in the maximum clock rate. This paper presents new designs for multithreaded processors which combine a conservative SMT implementation with a coarse-grained multithreading capability. By presenting more virtual contexts to the operating system and user than are supported in the core pipeline, the new designs can take advantage of the memory parallelism present in workloads with many threads, while avoiding the performance penalties inherent in a many-context SMT processor design. A design with 4 virtual contexts, but which is based on a 2-context SMT processor core, gains an additional 26% throughput when 4 threads are run together.


Can machine learning aid in delivering new use cases and scenarios in 5G?

5G represents the next generation of communication networks and services, and will bring a new set of use cases and scenarios. These in turn will address a new set of challenges from the network and service management perspective, such as network traffic and resource management, big data management and energy efficiency. Consequently, novel techniques and strategies are required to address these challenges in a smarter way. In this paper, we present the limitations of the current network and service management and describe in detail the challenges that 5G is expected to face from a management perspective. The main contribution of this paper is presenting a set of use cases and scenarios of 5G in which machine learning can aid in addressing their management challenges. It is expected that machine learning can provide a higher and more intelligent level of monitoring and management of networks and applications, improve operational efficiencies and facilitate the requirements of the future 5G network.


Hierarchical Multi-label Conditional Random Fields for Aspect-Oriented Opinion Mining

A common feature of many online review sites is the use of an overall rating that summarizes the opinions expressed in a review. Unfortunately, these document-level ratings do not provide any information about the opinions contained in the review that concern a specific aspect (e.g., cleanliness) of the product being reviewed (e.g., a hotel). In this paper we study the finer-grained problem of aspect-oriented opinion mining at the sentence level, which consists of predicting, for all sentences in the review, whether the sentence expresses a positive, neutral, or negative opinion (or no opinion at all) about a specific aspect of the product. For this task we propose a set of increasingly powerful models based on conditional random fields (CRFs), including a hierarchical multi-label CRFs scheme that jointly models the overall opinion expressed in the review and the set of aspect-specific opinions expressed in each of its sentences. We evaluate the proposed models against a dataset of hotel reviews (which we here make publicly available) in which the set of aspects and the opinions expressed concerning them are manually annotated at the sentence level. We find that both hierarchical and multi-label factors lead to improved predictions of aspect-oriented opinions.


International Telecommunication Union. Systems Management: Summarization function. Recommendation X.738

Prepaid mobile phone plans are gaining in importance in the U.S. and are already well established in Europe. Aggregation of a certain number of Micropayments is the preferred business model for wireless carriers to leverage the existing payment infrastructure with a mobile payment solution. There exist various Payment Scenarios that are based on the Wallet metaphor, and in general, they can be used to implement flexible and scalable solutions. Person-to-person transactions are already very popular in the U.S. as a consequence of the widespread use a payment instrument for auctions at eBay. This scenario is most often discussed as a valuable alternative to check payments in the U.S. For several reasons, the U.S. has been slower to adopt wireless technology than Europe. First, landlines in the U.S. are dominant and high personal computer penetration prevents people from using mobile phones to communicate, either by voice calls or text messaging. Second, prices in the U.S. favor landlines, even though prices for mobile phone plans in the competitive market have been cut many times in the past. For mobile payment, the fact that social patterns matter could affect the adoption of this form of payment in Europe, because in several countries, solutions already exist. The factors that form the concept of Diffusion of Innovation Theory eventually can be seen as the critical success factors of mobile payment. ii Whereas some emerging and existing mobile payment systems will come along with their own processing infrastructure, several will be based on existing payment networks that have initially been designed for another purpose. In Europe, credit card operators launch mobile payment solutions to leverage their existing networks while in the U.S., operators of ATM networks and leading credit card processors even try to bypass existing networks. Unlike in Europe, where checks have de facto been banned from the market by charging high prices for the processing of this non-cash payment instrument, the U.S. partly supports innovative check processing solutions to leverage the ACH infrastructure. The European bank approach shows that customer's payment behavior can be influenced by a pricing policy. Meanwhile, European countries and the U.S. have switched to 2.5G networks. With the transition to 3G, interoperability within the U.S. should finally become reality. Commercial launches of 3G services have already started in both regions. Notably, the first U.S. carrier to launch a broadband wireless service seems to be attracting business customers and offering high …


A Systematic Gap Analysis of Social Engineering Defence Mechanisms Considering Social Psychology

Social engineering is the acquisition of information about computer systems by methods that deeply include non-technical means. While technical security of most critical systems is high, the systems remain vulnerable to attacks from social engineers. Social engineering is a technique that: (i) does not require any (advanced) technical tools, (ii) can be used by anyone, (iii) is cheap. Traditional penetration testing approaches often focus on vulnerabilities in network or software systems. Few approaches even consider the exploitation of humans via social engineering. While the amount of social engineering attacks and the damage they cause rise every year, the defences against social engineering do not evolve accordingly. Hence, the security awareness of these attacks by employees remains low. We examined the psychological principles of social engineering and which psychological techniques induce resistance to persuasion applicable for social engineering. The techniques examined are an enhancement of persuasion knowledge, attitude bolstering and influencing the decision making. While research exists elaborating on security awareness, the integration of resistance against persuasion has not been done. Therefore, we analysed current defence mechanisms and provide a gap analysis based on research in social psychology. Based on our findings we provide guidelines of how to improve social engineering defence mechanisms such as security awareness programs.


An innovative oscillometric blood pressure measurement: Getting rid of the traditional envelope

Oscillometric blood pressure devices are popular and are considered part of the family's medical chest at home. The popularity of these devices for private use is not shared by physicians mainly due to the fact that the blood pressures are computed instead of measured. The classical way to compute the systolic and diastolic blood pressure is based on the envelope of the oscillometric waveform. The algorithm to compute the blood pressures from the waveform is firm dependent, often patented and lacks scientific foundation. In this paper, we propose a totally new approach. Instead of the envelope of the oscillometric waveform, we use a statistical test to pin-point the time instances where the systolic and diastolic blood pressures are measured in the cuff. This technique has the advantage of being mathematically well-posed instead of the ill-posed problem of envelope fitting. Hence, in order to calibrate the oscillometric blood pressure monitor it is sufficient to make the statistical test unbiased.


A new ultrawideband printed monopole antenna: the planar inverted cone antenna (PICA)

A new antenna, the planar inverted cone antenna (PICA), provides ultrawideband (UWB) performance with a radiation pattern similar to monopole disk antennas , but is smaller in size. Extensive simulations and experiments demonstrate that the PICA antenna provides more than a 10:1 impedance bandwidth (for VSWR<2) and supports a monopole type omnidirectional pattern over 4:1 bandwidth. A second version of the PICA with two circular holes changes the current flow on the metal disk and extends the high end of the operating frequency range, improving the pattern bandwidth to 7:1.