Utility max-min fair resource allocation for communication networks with multipath routing

This paper considers the flow control and resource allocation problem as applied to the generic multipath communication networks with heterogeneous applications. We propose a novel distributed algorithm, show and prove that among all the sources with positive increasing and bounded utilities (no need to be concave) in steady state, the utility max-min fairness is achieved, which is essential for balancing QoS (Quality of Service) for different applications. By combining the first order Lagrangian method and filtering mechanism, the adopted approach eliminates typical oscillation behavior in multipath networks and possesses a rapid convergence property. In addition, the algorithm is capable of deciding the optimal routing strategy and distributing the total traffic evenly out of the available paths. The performance of our utility max-min fair flow control algorithm is evaluated through simulations under two representative case studies, as well as the real implementation issues are addressed deliberately for the practical purpose.


3D High-Efficiency Video Coding for Multi-View Video and Depth Data

This paper describes an extension of the high efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard for coding of multi-view video and depth data. In addition to the known concept of disparity-compensated prediction, inter-view motion parameter, and inter-view residual prediction for coding of the dependent video views are developed and integrated. Furthermore, for depth coding, new intra coding modes, a modified motion compensation and motion vector coding as well as the concept of motion parameter inheritance are part of the HEVC extension. A novel encoder control uses view synthesis optimization, which guarantees that high quality intermediate views can be generated based on the decoded data. The bitstream format supports the extraction of partial bitstreams, so that conventional 2D video, stereo video, and the full multi-view video plus depth format can be decoded from a single bitstream. Objective and subjective results are presented, demonstrating that the proposed approach provides 50% bit rate savings in comparison with HEVC simulcast and 20% in comparison with a straightforward multi-view extension of HEVC without the newly developed coding tools.


Fuzzy logic controller for an inverted pendulum system using quantum genetic optimization

In this paper, we propose a new generalized design methodology of intelligent robust fuzzy control systems based on quantum genetic algorithm (QGA) called quantum fuzzy model that enhance robustness of fuzzy logic controllers. The QGA is adopted because of their capabilities of directed random search for global optimization to find the parameters of the shape and width of membership functions and rule set of the FLC to obtain the optimal fuzzy controller simultaneously. We test the optimal FLC obtained by the quantum computing applied on the control of dynamic balance and motion of cart-pole balancing system. We compare the proposed technique with existing mamdani fuzzy logic controller which is designed through conventional genetic algorithm. Simulation results reveal that QGA performs better than conventional GA in terms of running speed and optimizing capability.


Sparse Recovery of Hyperspectral Signal from Natural RGB Images

Hyperspectral imaging is an important visual modality with growing interest and range of applications. The latter, however, is hindered by the fact that existing devices are limited in either spatial, spectral, and/or temporal resolution, while yet being both complicated and expensive. We present a low cost and fast method to recover high quality hyperspectral images directly from RGB. Our approach first leverages hyperspectral prior in order to create a sparse dictionary of hyperspectral signatures and their corresponding RGB projections. Describing novel RGB images via the latter then facilitates reconstruction of the hyperspectral image via the former. A novel, larger-than-ever database of hyperspectral images serves as a hyperspectral prior. This database further allows for evaluation of our methodology at an unprecedented scale, and is provided for the benefit of the research community. Our approach is fast, accurate, and provides high resolution hyperspectral cubes despite using RGB-only input.


Supervised Learning Based Algorithm Selection for Deep Neural Networks

Many recent deep learning platforms rely on thirdparty libraries (such as cuBLAS) to utilize the computing power of modern hardware accelerators (such as GPUs). However, we observe that they may achieve suboptimal performance because the library functions are not used appropriately. In this paper, we target at optimizing the operations of multiplying a matrix with the transpose of another matrix (referred to as NT operation hereafter), which contribute half of the training time of fully connected deep neural networks. Rather than directly calling the library function, we propose a supervised learning based algorithm selection approach named MTNN, which uses a gradient boosted decision tree to select one from two alternative NT implementations intelligently: (1) calling the cuBLAS library function; (2) calling our proposed algorithm TNN that uses an efficient out-of-place matrix transpose. We evaluate the performance of MTNN on two modern GPUs: NVIDIA GTX 1080 and NVIDIA Titan X Pascal. MTNN can achieve 96% of prediction accuracy with very low computational overhead, which results in an average of 54% performance improvement on a range of NT operations. To further evaluate the impact of MTNN on the training process of deep neural networks, we have integrated MTNN into a popular deep learning platform Caffe. Our experimental results show that the revised Caffe can outperform the original one by an average of 28%. Both MTNN and the revised Caffe are open-source.


Energy-Efficient Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

This paper represents energy efficient routing protocols in WSN. It is a collection of sensor nodes with a set of limited Processor and limited memory unit embedded in it. Reliable routing of packets from the sensor node to its base station is the most important task for the networks. The routing protocols applied for the other networks cannot be used here due to its battery powered nodes This paper gives an overview of the different routing strategies used in wireless sensor networks and gives a brief working model of energy efficient routing protocols in WSN. It also shows the comparison of these different routing protocols based on metrics such as mobility support, stability, issues and latency.


All-Digital Background Calibration of a Successive Approximation ADC Using the “Split ADC” Architecture

The “split ADC” architecture enables fully digital calibration and correction of nonlinearity errors due to capacitor mismatch in a successive approximation (SAR) ADC. The die area of a single ADC design is split into two independent halves, each converting the same input signal. Total area and power is unchanged, resulting in minimal increase in analog complexity. For each conversion, the half-sized ADCs generate two independent outputs which are digitally corrected using estimates of capacitor mismatch errors for each ADC. The ADC outputs are averaged to produce the ADC output code. The difference of the two outputs is used in a background calibration algorithm which estimates the error in the correction parameters. Any nonzero difference drives an LMS feedback loop toward zero difference which can only occur when the average error in each correction parameter is zero. A novel segmentation and shuffling scheme in the SAR capacitive DAC enables background calibration for a wide range of input signals including dc. Simulation of a 16 bit 1 Msps SAR ADC in 180 nm CMOS shows calibration convergence within 200 000 samples.


A Survey of Face Recognition Techniques

Face recognition presents a challenging problem in the field of image analysis and computer vision, and as such has received a great deal of attention over the last few years because of its many applications in various domains. Face recognition techniques can be broadly divided into three categories based on the face data acquisition methodology: methods that operate on intensity images; those that deal with video sequences; and those that require other sensory data such as 3D information or infra-red imagery. In this paper, an overview of some of the well-known methods in each of these categories is provided and some of the benefits and drawbacks of the schemes mentioned therein are examined. Furthermore, a discussion outlining the incentive for using face recognition, the applications of this technology, and some of the difficulties plaguing current systems with regard to this task has also been provided. This paper also mentions some of the most recent algorithms developed for this purpose and attempts to give an idea of the state of the art of face recognition technology.


Algebraic feature extraction of image for recognition

The extraction of image features is one of the fundamental tasks in image recognition . Up until now, there have been several kinds of features to be used for the purpose of image recognition as follows: (1) visual features ; (2) statistical features of pixel ; (3) transform coefficient features . In addition, there is another kind of feature which the author believes is very useful, i.e . (4) algebraic features which represent intrinsic attributions of an image . Singular Values (SV) of image are this kind of feature . In this paper, we prove that SV feature vector has some important properties of algebraic and geometric invariance, and insensitiveness to noise . These properties are very useful for the description and recognition of images . As an example, SV feature vector is used for the problem of recognizing human facial images . In this paper, using SV feature vector samples of facial images, a normal pattern Bayes classification model based on Sammon s optimal descriminant plane is constructed . The experimental result shows that SV feature vector has good performance of class separation . Image recognition Algebraic feature extraction Singular value feature Facial image recognition Discrinlinant vector Dimensionality reduction


Parameterisation of a stochastic model for human face identification

Stochastic modelling of non-stationary vector timeseries based on HMMs has been very successful for speech applications [5]. Recently it has been applied to a range of image recognition problems [7, 9]. Previously reported work [6] has investigated the use of HMMs to model human faces for identi cation purposes. Faces can be intuitively divided into regions such as the mouth, eyes, nose, etc., and these regions can be associated with the states of an HMM. The identi cation performance of a top-bottom HMM compares favourably with some of the well-known algorithms, for example eigenfaces as detailed in [8]. However, the HMM parameterisation in the work presented so far was arrived at by subjective intuition. This paper presents experimental results which show how identi cation rates vary with HMM parameters, and which indicate the most sensible choice of parameters. The paper is organised as follows: section 2 gives an overview of the HMM-based approach; section 3 details the training and recognition processes; section 4 describes the experimental setup; section 5 presents the identi cation results; section 6 concludes the paper.


A comparative study of texture measures with classification based on featured distributions

-This paper evaluates the performance both of some texture measures which have been successfully used in various applications and of some new promising approaches proposed recently. For classification a method based on Kullback discrimination of sample and prototype distributions is used. The classification results for single features with one-dimensional feature value distributions and for pairs of complementary features with two-dimensional distributions are presented Texture analysis Classification Feature distribution Kullback discriminant Performance evaluation Brodatz textures l. I N T R O D U C T I O N Texture is an important characteristic for the analysis of many types of images. A wide variety of measures for discriminating textures have been proposed, c1'2~ Comparative studies to evaluate the performance of some texture measures have been carried out by Weszka et al., ~3~ Du Bufet al. ~4~ and Ohanian and Dubes, ~s) for


Video-Based Face Recognition Using Probabilistic Appearance Manifolds

This paper presents a novel method to model and recognize human faces in video sequences. Each registered person is represented by a low-dimensional appearance manifold in the ambient image space. The complex nonlinear appearance manifold expressed as a collection of subsets (named pose manifolds), and the connectivity among them. Each pose manifold is approximated by an affine plane. To construct this representation, exemplars are sampled from videos, and these exemplars are clustered with a K-means algorithm; each cluster is represented as a plane computed through principal component analysis (PCA). The connectivity between the pose manifolds encodes the transition probability between images in each of the pose manifold and is learned from a training video sequences. A maximum a posteriori formulation is presented for face recognition in test video sequences by integrating the likelihoo d that the input image comes from a particular pose manifold and the transition probability to this pose manifold from th e previous frame. To recognize faces with partial occlusion, we introduce a weight mask into the process. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing frame-based face recognition methods with temporal voting schemes.


Theory application by school-based occupational therapists.

OBJECTIVES
Recent literature indicates that there is an inconsistent use of theory to guide clinical actions by occupational therapists, including those working in pediatrics. The purpose of this study was to describe school-based therapists' theory application by collecting information about what frames of reference they used and why.

METHOD
Of the 72 school-based therapists in the mid-Atlantic states who agreed to respond to a questionnaire, 51 (70.8%) returned the questionnaire. Information about demographics, what frames of reference were used, and why they were used was obtained from the questionnaire.

RESULTS
Respondents reported using a multitheoretical approach, with sensory integration theory and neurodevelopmental theory being the predominate frames of reference applied but not the only ones used. The frames of reference were used on the basis of several factors, including the children's needs and the respondent's education.

CONCLUSION
Formal and continuing education seems to have a great effect on school-based occupational therapists as they develop their personal conceptual frameworks.


Geotagging Named Entities in News and Online Documents

News sources generate constant streams of text with many references to real world entities; understanding the content from such sources often requires effectively detecting the geographic foci of the entities. We study the problem of associating geography to named entities in online documents. More specifically, given a named entity and a page (or a set of pages) where the entity is mentioned, the problem being studied is how the geographic focus of the name can be resolved at a location granularity (e.g. city or country), assuming that the name has a geographic focus. We further study dispersion, and show that the dispersion of a name can be estimated with a good accuracy, allowing a geo-centre to be detected at an exact dispersion level. Two key features of our approach are: (i) minimal assumption is made on the structure of the mentions hence the approach can be applied to a diverse and heterogeneous set of web pages, and (ii) the approach is unsupervised, leveraging shallow English linguistic features and the large volume of location data in public domain.
 We evaluate our methods under different task settings and with different categories of named entities. Our evaluation reveals that the geo-centre of a name can be estimated with a good accuracy based on some simple statistics of the mentions, and that the accuracy of the estimation varies with the categories of the names.


Increased human intestinal barrier permeability plasma biomarkers zonulin and FABP2 correlated with plasma LPS and altered gut microbiome in anxiety or depression.

We read with interest the recent work by Uhde et al, which demonstrated that physically asymptomatic non-coeliac gluten/ wheat sensitivity involves compromised intestinal epithelium barrier dysfunction in conjunction with systemic immune activation events. We also read with interest the recent work by Marchesi et al, which comprehensively reviewed the role of microbiota in physical disorders of the gut and extra-gut organs. But common to these Gut papers was the lack of accounting for anxiety and depression, comorbidities often experienced in gastroenterology clinics. Patients who are otherwise physically asymptomatic often do not explicitly divulge these mental disorders, or the disorders are unintentionally overlooked, yet they report ‘diminished quality of life’. In response to this gap, we explored roles of dysbiosis and gut barrier integrity in individuals physically asymptomatic for gastrointestinal distress, yet nonetheless experiencing mental distress. We hypothesised that anxiety and depressive disorders are linked to human gut dysbiosis with microbiota that secrete lipopolysaccharide (LPS) endotoxin into plasma, which in conjunction with compromised gut barrier integrity has systemic manifestations including the brain. We further hypothesised that this correlates with altered intestinal epithelium paracellular integrity molecules discharged into blood as biomarkers, namely zonulin and intestinal fatty acidbinding protein-2 (FABP2). Zonulin is the master regulator of endothelial and epithelium tight junctions, modulating both gut and blood–brain barriers. We analysed stool faecal microbiota and plasma in 50 subjects who self-reported to be asymptomatic for gastrointestinal physical disorders; 22 volunteers met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition criteria for a depressive disorder or an anxiety disorder (DEP/ ANX), and 28 more were control reference subjects (NODEPANX). Subjects refrained from probiotics and antibiotics during 30 days prior to providing samples (see online supplementary methods). LEfSe analyses (online supplementary figures S1 and S2) revealed gut dysbiosis in the DEP/ANX subjects, in contrast to microbiome of control subjects. PICRUSt analyses (figure 1) predicted KEGG orthologue gene differences consistent with a pathophysiological gut metagenomic signature in DEP/ANX versus NODEPANX microbiome. Notable in figure 1 were over-represented LPS biosynthesis genes in the gut microbiome of PostScript Gut Online First, published on August 16, 2017 as 10.1136/gutjnl-2017-314759


What do exploratory searchers look at in a faceted search interface?

This study examined how searchers interacted with a web-based, faceted library catalog when conducting exploratory searches. It applied eye tracking, stimulated recall interviews, and direct observation to investigate important aspects of gaze behavior in a faceted search interface: what components of the interface searchers looked at, for how long, and in what order. It yielded empirical data that will be useful for both practitioners (e.g., for improving search interface designs), and researchers (e.g., to inform models of search behavior). Results of the study show that participants spent about 50 seconds per task looking at (fixating on) the results, about 25 seconds looking at the facets, and only about 6 seconds looking at the query itself. These findings suggest that facets played an important role in the exploratory search process.


Family presence during resuscitation and/or invasive procedures in the Emergency Department: one size does not fit all.


Security for Online Social Networks : Challenges

nline social networks (OSNs) [1, 2] such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter enable people to stay in touch with their contacts, reconnect with old acquaintances, and establish new relationships with other people based on shared features such as communities, hobbies, interests, and overlaps in friendship circles. Recent years have seen unprecedented growth in the application of OSNs, with about 300 OSN systems collecting information on more than half a billion registered users [2]. As a result, OSNs store a huge amount of possibly sensitive and private information on users and their interactions. This information is usually private and intended for the eyes of a specific audience only. However, the popularity of OSNs attracts not only faithful users but parties with rather adverse interests as well [3, 4]. The diversification and sophistication of purposes and usage patterns of OSNs inevitably introduce privacy infringement risks to all OSN users as a result of information exchange and sharing on the Internet. It is therefore not surprising that stories about privacy breaches by Facebook and MySpace appear repeatedly in mainstream media [3–5]. Regardless of the purpose of an OSN, one of the main motivations for users to join an OSN, create a profile, and use different applications offered by the OSN is the possibility to easily share information with selected contacts or the public, and facilitate social interactions between the users of OSNs. Disclosing personal information in OSNs is a double-edged sword [6]. On one hand, information exposure is usually a plus, even a must, if people want to participate in social communities. Visibility of users' profiles and public display of connections (friend lists) are necessary for implementing core functionalities of OSNs such as social search and social traver-sal. On the other hand, leakage of personal information, especially one's identity, may invite malicious attacks from the real world and cyberspace, such as stalking, reputation slander, personalized spamming, and phishing [7]. Despite the risks, many of the privacy and access control mechanisms of today's OSNs are purposefully weak to make joining the OSN and sharing information easy. We believe that more effective and flexible security mechanisms are therefore required for the safety of OSN users as well as the continued thriving of OSNs. In this article we present a general framework for assessing the security and privacy of current and next-generation OSNs. Whereas others have considered specific mechanisms for improving OSN users' security and privacy, …


Computer aided inbetweening

The production of inbetweens is a tedious task for animators and a complicated one for algorithms. In this paper, an algorithm for computer aided inbetweening and its integration in a pen-based graphical user interface are presented.The algorithm is layer-based, assuming an invariant layering order. It is applicable to animations in a style similar to paper cut out, in which the drawings on the cut-out pieces are inbetweened as well. The content of each key drawing is analysed and classified into strokes, chains of strokes and relations that hold among them. Rules decide what parts of different drawings may be matched. These rules specify allowed changes between relations in key drawings. A cost function based approach determines the correct matching of strokes. Generated animation paths between corresponding strokes determine the resulting inbetweens.To hold for possible mismatchings and to allow for artistic control over the results, the inbetweening algorithm is embedded in a free form graphic user interface. Thus artists are enabled to focus on the part of the inbetweening task computers are not able to solve.


Robust Control Over a Packet-based Network

In this paper, we consider a robust network control problem. We consider linear unstable and uncertain discrete time plants with a network between the sensors and controller and the controller and plant. We investigate two defining characteristics of network controlled systems and the impact of uncertainty on these. Namely, the minimum data rates required for the two networks and the tolerable data drop out in the form of packet losses. We are able to derive sufficient conditions in terms of the minimum data rate and minimum packet arrival rate to ensure stability of the closed loop system. I. I NTRODUCTION Recently, networked control systems (NCS) have gained great attention from both the control community and the network and communication community. When compared with classical feedback control system, networked control systems have many advantages. For example, they can reduce the system wiring, make the system easy to operate and maintain and later diagnose in case of malfunctioning, and increase system agility [16]. In spite of the great advantages that the networked control architecture brings, inserting a network in between the plant and the controller introduces many problems as well. For instance, zero-delayed sensing and actuation, perfect information and synchronization are no longer guaranteed in the new system architecture as only finite bandwidth is available and packet drops and delays may occur due to network traffic conditions. These must be revisited and analyzed before any practical networked control systems are built. In the past decade, many researchers have spent effort on those issues and a number of significant results were obtained and many are in progress. Many of the aforementioned issues are studied separately. Tatikonda [15] and Sahai [11] have presented some interesting results in the area of control under communication constraints. Specifically, Tatikonda gave a necessary and sufficient condition on the channel data rate such that a noiseless LTI system in the closed loop is asymptotically stable. He also gave rate results for stabilizing a noisy LTI system over the digital channel. Sahai proposed the notion of anytime capacity to deal with real time estimation and control for a networked control system. In our companion paper [13], the authors have considered various rate issues under finite bandwidth, packet drops and finite controls. The effect of pacekt loss and delay on state Control and Dynamical Systems, California Institute of Technology; Pasadena, CA 91125. Email:{shiling, epstein, murray }@cds.caltech.edu; Tel: (626) 395-2313, Fax: (626) 796-8914. Work supported in part by NSF ITR grant CCR-0326554. The authors are equally contributed to this work. estimation was studied by the work of Sinopoli, et. al. in [2]. It has further been investigated by many researchers including the present authors in [12] and [5]. One of the hallmarks of a good control system design is that the closed loop remain stable in the presence of uncertainty [3], [4]. While the researchers in [7] studied the problem of LQG control across a packet dropping networks, not many have considered the norm bounded uncertainty investigated in the present paper. We examine the impact of a norm bounded uncertainty on the network control system and provide sufficient conditions for stability in terms of the minimum data rates and packet arrival rates for the networks. The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we present the mathematical model of the closed loop system and state our assumptions. In Section III, we state the sufficient conditions for closed loop stability for the case where a network connects the sensors to the controller. In Section IV, we state the sufficient stability conditions where in addition there is a network between the controller and the plant. For both sections we obtain results for scalar and general vector cases. Conclusions and future work are given in the last section. II. PROBLEM SET UP We consider linear discrete time systems with a norm bounded uncertainty in the A matrix. We will investigate two NCS that we will define by the type of networks embedded in the control loop. The first NCS considered has a network between the measurement sensors and the controller, with the controller then directly connected to the actuators/plant. The second NCS will also include a network between the controller and the actuators/plant. These two network types and depicted in Figures 1 and 2. The networks are defined in terms of their data rates and probability of dropping packets. We would consider any packet delays as losses, i. ., we do not use delayed packets for estimation or control. The following equations represent the closed loop system for NCS I (Figure 1). xk+1 = (A + ∆k)xk + Buk (1) yk = λkCxk (2) wherexk ∈ IR is the state of the system, uk ∈ IR is the control input,yk ∈ IR is the output of the system, and λk are Bernoulli i.i.d random variable with parameter λ, i.e., E[λk] = λ for all k. ∆k satisfies∆k ∆k ≤ KI for all k. We also assume the initial condition x0 ∈ IR is bounded. The matrix A is assumed to be unstable without loss of generality as for any matrix A, we can always do some state transformation to decompose the states into stable ones and


Model-based fault-detection and diagnosis - status and applications

For the improvement of reliability, safety and efficiency advanced methods of supervision, fault detection and fault diagnosis become increasingly important for many technical processes. This holds especially for safety related processes like aircraft, trains, automobiles, power plants and chemical plants. The classical approaches are limit or trend checking of some measurable output variables. Because they do not give a deeper insight and usually do not allow a fault diagnosis, model-based methods of fault detection were developed by using input and output signals and applying dynamic process models. These methods are based, e.g., on parameter estimation, parity equations or state observers. Also signal model approaches were developed. The goal is to generate several symptoms indicating the difference between nominal and faulty status. Based on different symptoms fault diagnosis procedures follow, determining the fault by applying classification or inference methods. This contribution gives a short introduction into the field and shows some applications for an actuator, a passenger car and a combustion engine. Copyright © 2004 IFAC


A layered software architecture for quantum computing design tools

Compilers and computer-aided design tools are essential for fine-grained control of nanoscale quantum-mechanical systems. A proposed four-phase design flow assists with computations by transforming a quantum algorithm from a high-level language program into precisely scheduled physical actions.


Graph-Based Relational Data Visualization

Relational databases are rigid-structured data sources characterized by complex relationships among a set of relations (tables). Making sense of such relationships is a challenging problem because users must consider multiple relations, understand their ensemble of integrity constraints, interpret dozens of attributes, and draw complex SQL queries for each desired data exploration. In this scenario, we introduce a twofold methodology, we use a hierarchical graph representation to efficiently model the database relationships and, on top of it, we designed a visualization technique for rapidly relational exploration. Our results demonstrate that the exploration of databases is deeply simplified as the user is able to visually browse the data with little or no knowledge about its structure, dismissing the need for complex SQL queries. We believe our findings will bring a novel paradigm in what concerns relational data comprehension.


A novel LLC resonant controller with best-in-class transient performance and low standby power consumption

This paper introduces a novel LLC resonant controller with better light load efficiency and best-in-class transient performance. A new control algorithm — hybrid hysteretic control, is proposed which combines the benefit of charge control and frequency control. It maintains the good transient performance of charge control, but avoids the related stability issues by adding slope compensation. The slope compensation also helps to sense the resonant capacitor voltage by only using lossless capacitor divider. Burst mode operation is developed to improve the light load efficiency. By turning on the power devices for only a short period during light load, it helps to reduce the equivalent switching frequency and achieve high efficiency. The effectiveness of the proposed controller has been validated in a 12 V/120 W half-bridge LLC converter, as well as a commercial power supply unit.


A Markerless Augmented Reality Approach Based on Real-Time 3 D Reconstruction using Kinect

In this paper we present a markerless augmented reality (MAR) approach based on real-time 3D reconstruction using a low-cost depth camera, the Kinect. We intend to use this MAR approach for 3D medical visualization. In the actual state of developing, our approach is based on the KinectFusion algorithm with some minor adaptations, as long as our goal is not reconstruct scenes but use the reconstructed model as a reference to MAR. Keywords-Augmented Reality; 3D Reconstruction; Kinect;


Donna Interactive Chat-bot acting as a Personal Assistant

Chat-bots are computer programs coded to have a textual or verbal conversation which is logical or intelligent. Chat-bots are designed to make humans believe that they are talking to a human; but instead they are in fact talking to a machine. Taking advantage of this transparency property of chat-bot, an artificial character and personality can be given to a chat-bot which acts like a person of a specific profession. This paper describes an approach to the idea of implementing web-based artificially intelligent chat-bot as a personal assistant of the user, which stimulates setting and initiating meetings of user with his clients. The exchange of information happens through email conversations whereas its evaluation happens through natural language procession and natural language generation and AIML files.


The gut microbiota shapes intestinal immune responses during health and disease

Immunological dysregulation is the cause of many non-infectious human diseases such as autoimmunity, allergy and cancer. The gastrointestinal tract is the primary site of interaction between the host immune system and microorganisms, both symbiotic and pathogenic. In this Review we discuss findings indicating that developmental aspects of the adaptive immune system are influenced by bacterial colonization of the gut. We also highlight the molecular pathways that mediate host–symbiont interactions that regulate proper immune function. Finally, we present recent evidence to support that disturbances in the bacterial microbiota result in dysregulation of adaptive immune cells, and this may underlie disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease. This raises the possibility that the mammalian immune system, which seems to be designed to control microorganisms, is in fact controlled by microorganisms.


The FrameNet Database and Software Tools

The FrameNet Project is producing a lexicon of English for both human use and NLP applications, based on the principles of Frame Semantics, in which sentences are described on the basis of predicators which evoke semantic frames and other constituents which express the participants (frame elements) in these frames. Our lexicon contains detailed information about the possible syntactic realizations of frame elements, derived from annotated corpus examples. In the process, we have developed a suite of tools for the definition of semantic frames, for annotating sentences, for searching the results, and for creating a variety ofreports. We will discuss the conceptual basis ofour work and demonstrate the tools we work with, the results we produce, and how they may be ofuse to other NLP projects.


A new look at survey propagation and its generalizations

We study the survey propagation algorithm [19, 5, 4], which is an iterative technique that appears to be very effective in solving random k-SAT problems even with densities close to threshold. We first describe how any SAT formula can be associated with a novel family of Markov random fields (MRFs), parameterized by a real number ρ. We then show that applying belief propagation---a well-known "message-passing technique---to this family of MRFs recovers various algorithms, ranging from pure survey propagation at one extreme (ρ = 1) to standard belief propagation on the uniform distribution over SAT assignments at the other extreme (ρ = 0). Configurations in these MRFs have a natural interpretation as generalized satisfiability assignments, on which a partial order can be defined. We isolate cores as minimal elements in this partial ordering, and prove that any core is a fixed point of survey propagation. We investigate the associated lattice structure, and prove a weight-preserving identity that shows how any MRF with p > 0 can be viewed as a "smoothed" version of the naive factor graph representation of the k-SAT problem (p = 0). Our experimental results show that message-passing on our family of MRFs is most effective for values of ρ ≠ 1 (i.e., distinct from survey propagation); moreover, they suggest that random formulas may not typically possess non-trivial cores. Finally, we isolate properties of Gibbs sampling and message-passing algorithms that are typical for an ensemble of k-SAT problems. We prove that the space of cores for random formulas is highly disconnected, and show that for values of p sufficiently close to one, either the associated MRF is highly concentrated around the all-star assignment, or it has exponentially small conductance. Similarly, we prove that for p sufficiently close to one, the all-star assignment is attractive for message-passing when analyzed in the density-evolution setting.


A Powered Leg Orthosis for Gait Rehabilitation of Motor-Impaired Patients

This paper describes a powered leg orthosis for gait rehabilitation of patients with walking disabilities. The paper proposes controllers which can apply suitable forces on the leg so that it moves on a desired trajectory. The description of the controllers, simulations and experimental results with the powered orthosis are presented in the paper. Currently, experiments have been performed with a dummy leg in the orthosis. In the coming months, this powered orthosis will be used on healthy subjects and stroke patients.


Rubik: Knowledge Guided Tensor Factorization and Completion for Health Data Analytics

Computational phenotyping is the process of converting heterogeneous electronic health records (EHRs) into meaningful clinical concepts. Unsupervised phenotyping methods have the potential to leverage a vast amount of labeled EHR data for phenotype discovery. However, existing unsupervised phenotyping methods do not incorporate current medical knowledge and cannot directly handle missing, or noisy data.
 We propose Rubik, a constrained non-negative tensor factorization and completion method for phenotyping. Rubik incorporates 1) guidance constraints to align with existing medical knowledge, and 2) pairwise constraints for obtaining distinct, non-overlapping phenotypes. Rubik also has built-in tensor completion that can significantly alleviate the impact of noisy and missing data. We utilize the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) framework to tensor factorization and completion, which can be easily scaled through parallel computing.
 We evaluate Rubik on two EHR datasets, one of which contains 647,118 records for 7,744 patients from an outpatient clinic, the other of which is a public dataset containing 1,018,614 CMS claims records for 472,645 patients. Our results show that Rubik can discover more meaningful and distinct phenotypes than the baselines. In particular, by using knowledge guidance constraints, Rubik can also discover sub-phenotypes for several major diseases. Rubik also runs around seven times faster than current state-of-the-art tensor methods. Finally, Rubik is scalable to large datasets containing millions of EHR records.


Novel Vector Control Method for Three-Stage Hybrid Cascaded Multilevel Inverter

A three-stage 18-level hybrid inverter circuit and its innovative control method have been presented. The three hybrid inverter stages are the high-, medium-, and low-voltage stages. The high-voltage stage is made of a three-phase conventional inverter to reduce dc source cost and losses. The medium- and low-voltage stages are made of three-level inverters constructed using cascaded H-bridge units. The novelty of the proposed algorithm is to avoid the undesirable high switching frequency for high- and medium-voltage stages despite the fact that the inverter's dc sources are selected to maximize the inverter levels by eliminating redundant voltage states. Switching algorithms of the high- and medium-voltage stages have been developed to assure fundamental switching frequency operation of the high-voltage stages and not more than few times this frequency for the medium-voltage stage. The low-voltage stage is controlled using SVM to achieve the reference voltage vector exactly and to set the order of dominant harmonics as desired. The realization of this control approach has been enabled by considering the vector space plane in the state selection rather than individual phase levels. The inverter has been constructed, and the control algorithm has been implemented. Test results show that the proposed algorithm achieves the claimed features, and all major hypotheses have been verified.


Formal Verification of Piece-Wise Linear Feed-Forward Neural Networks

We present an approach for the verification of feed-forward neural networks in which all nodes have a piece-wise linear activation function. Such networks are often used in deep learning and have been shown to be hard to verify for modern satisfiability modulo theory (SMT) and integer linear programming (ILP) solvers. The starting point of our approach is the addition of a global linear approximation of the overall network behavior to the verification problem that helps with SMT-like reasoning over the network behavior. We present a specialized verification algorithm that employs this approximation in a search process in which it infers additional node phases for the non-linear nodes in the network from partial node phase assignments, similar to unit propagation in classical SAT solving. We also show how to infer additional conflict clauses and safe node fixtures from the results of the analysis steps performed during the search. The resulting approach is evaluated on collision avoidance and handwritten digit recognition case studies.


Practical Black-Box Attacks against Deep Learning Systems using Adversarial Examples

Machine learning (ML) models, e.g., state-of-the-art deep neural networks (DNNs), are vulnerable to adversarial examples: malicious inputs modified to yield erroneous model outputs, while appearing unmodified to human observers. Potential attacks include having malicious content like malware identified as legitimate or controlling vehicle behavior. Yet, all existing adversarial example attacks require knowledge of either the model internals or its training data. We introduce the first practical demonstration of an attacker controlling a remotely hosted DNN with no such knowledge. Indeed, the only capability of our black-box adversary is to observe labels given by the DNN to chosen inputs. Our attack strategy consists in training a local model to substitute for the target DNN, using inputs synthetically generated by an adversary and labeled by the target DNN. We then use the local substitute to craft adversarial examples, and find that they are misclassified by the targeted DNN. To perform a real-world and properly-blinded evaluation, we attack a DNN hosted by MetaMind, an online deep learning API. After labeling 6,400 synthetic inputs to train our substitute (an order of magnitude smaller than the training set used by MetaMind), we find that their DNN misclassifies adversarial examples crafted with our substitute at a rate of 84.24%. We demonstrate that our strategy generalizes to many ML techniques like logistic regression or SVMs, regardless of the ML model chosen for the substitute. We instantiate the same attack against models hosted by Amazon and Google, using logistic regression substitutes trained with only 800 label queries. They yield adversarial examples misclassified by Amazon and Google at rates of 96.19% and 88.94%. We also find that this black-box attack strategy is capable of evading defense strategies previously found to make adversarial example crafting harder. We conclude with experiments exploring why adversarial samples transfer between models.


Alphasort: A cache-sensitive parallel external sort

A new sort algorithm, called AlphaSort, demonstrates that commodity processors and disks can handle commercial batch workloads. Using commodity processors, memory, and arrays of SCSI disks, AlphaSort runs the industrystandard sort benchmark in seven seconds. This beats the best published record on a 32-CPU 32-disk Hypercube by 8:1. On another benchmark, AlphaSort sorted more than a gigabyte in one minute. AlphaSort is a cache-sensitive, memoryintensive sort algorithm. We argue that modern architectures require algorithm designers to re-examine their use of the memory hierarchy. AlphaSort uses clustered data structures to get good cache locality, file striping to get high disk bandwidth, QuickSort to generate runs, and replacement-selection to merge the runs. It uses shared memory multiprocessors to break the sort into subsort chores. Because startup times are becoming a significant part of the total time, we propose two new benchmarks: (1) MinuteSort: how much can you sort in one minute, and (2) PennySort: how much can you sort for one penny.


Universal OWL Axiom Enrichment for Large Knowledge Bases

The Semantic Web has seen a rise in the availability and usage of knowledge bases over the past years, in particular in the Linked Open Data initiative. Despite this growth, there is still a lack of knowledge bases that consist of high quality schema information and instance data adhering to this schema. Several knowledge bases only consist of schema information, while others are, to a large extent, a mere collection of facts without a clear structure. The combination of rich schema and instance data would allow powerful reasoning, consistency checking, and improved querying possibilities as well as provide more generic ways to interact with the underlying data. In this article, we present a light-weight method to enrich knowledge bases accessible via SPARQL endpoints with almost all types of OWL 2 axioms. This allows to semiautomatically create schemata, which we evaluate and discuss using DBpedia.


Role-Based Access Controls

While Mandatory Access Controls (MAC) are appropriate for multilevel secure military applications, Discretionary Access Controls (DAC) are often perceived as meeting the security processing needs of industry and civilian government. This paper argues that reliance on DAC as the principal method of access control is unfounded and inappropriate for many commercial and civilian government organizations. The paper describes a type of non-discretionary access control role-based access control (RBAC)  that is more central to the secure processing needs of non-military systems than DAC.


Leveraging the schema in latent factor models for knowledge graph completion

We focus on the problem of predicting missing links in large Knowledge Graphs (KGs), so to discover new facts. Over the last years, latent factor models for link prediction have been receiving an increasing interest: they achieve state-of-the-art accuracy in link prediction tasks, while scaling to very large KGs. However, KGs are often endowed with additional schema knowledge, describing entity classes, their sub-class relationships, and the domain and range of each predicate: the schema is actually not used by latent factor models proposed in the literature. In this work, we propose an unified method for leveraging additional schema knowledge in latent factor models, with the aim of learning more accurate link prediction models. Our experimental evaluations show the effectiveness of the proposed method on several KGs.


A new miniaturized antenna for ISM 433 MHz frequency band

A new miniaturized antenna for 433MHz frequency band is introduced for sensor networks. The antenna is a magnetic monopole loaded with a capacitor, which can significantly decrease the resonant frequency of the structure. It is designed to operate in the ISM 433MHz band on a small PCB (103mm⋆55mm) and has at least 3MHz bandwidth. Moreover, its radiation efficiency is suitable for the possible applications and its pattern is omnidirectionnal.


HeidelPlace: An Extensible Framework for Geoparsing

Geographic information extraction from textual data sources, called geoparsing, is a key task in text processing and central to subsequent spatial analysis approaches. Several geoparsers are available that support this task, each with its own (often limited or specialized) gazetteer and its own approaches to toponym detection and resolution. In this demonstration paper, we present HeidelPlace, an extensible framework in support of geoparsing. Key features of HeidelPlace include a generic gazetteer model that supports the integration of place information from different knowledge bases, and a pipeline approach that enables an effective combination of diverse modules tailored to specific geoparsing tasks. This makes HeidelPlace a valuable tool for testing and evaluating different gazetteer sources and geoparsing methods. In the demonstration, we show how to set up a geoparsing workflow with HeidelPlace and how it can be used to compare and consolidate the output of different geoparsing approaches.


Learning Recurrent Span Representations for Extractive Question Answering

The reading comprehension task, that asks questions about a given evidence document, is a central problem in natural language understanding. Recent formulations of this task have typically focused on answer selection from a set of candidates pre-defined manually or through the use of an external NLP pipeline. However, Rajpurkar et al. (2016) recently released the SQUAD dataset in which the answers can be arbitrary strings from the supplied text. In this paper, we focus on this answer extraction task, presenting a novel model architecture that efficiently builds fixed length representations of all spans in the evidence document with a recurrent network. We show that scoring explicit span representations significantly improves performance over other approaches that factor the prediction into separate predictions about words or start and end markers. Our approach improves upon the best published results of Wang & Jiang (2016) by 5% and decreases the error of Rajpurkar et al.’s baseline by > 50%.


Optimizing 2D Gabor Filters for Iris Recognition

The randomness and richness present in the iris texture make the 2D Gabor filter bank analysis a suitable technique to be used for iris recognition systems. To accurately characterize complex texture structures using 2D Gabor filters it is necessary to use multiple sets of parameters of this type of filters. This paper proposes a technique of optimizing multiple sets of 2D Gabor filter parameters to gradually enhance the accuracy of an iris recognition system. The proposed methodology is suitable to be applied on both near infrared and visible spectrum iris images. To illustrate the efficiency of the filter bank design technique, UBIRISv1 database was used for benchmarking.


Investigation of a new GaN AC/DC topology for battery charging application

Switching losses are reduced by gallium nitride (GaN) technology, which allows faster device switching speeds. At the same time, the weight and size of converters utilizing these devices are greatly reduced in several applications by using high frequency (HF) transformers. A new, low voltage high current, GaN-based AC/DC topology for battery charging applications is simulated, modeled, and investigated in this paper. The proposed topology is designed to operate at 1 MHz for 120Vac to 48Vdc/60Vdc conversion for 1.4 kW load. The integration of GaN totem-pole power factor correction rectifier (TP-PFC), high-frequency series-resonant converter (SRC), and current doubler rectifier (CDR) presents an opportunity to further increase the efficiency and compactness of this GaN battery charging system. In this work, a new GaN topology to combine the advantages of TP-PFC and SRC with CDR in a battery charging converter is investigated, simulated, and modelled. Loss analysis of the proposed topology is addressed.


BodyAvatar: creating freeform 3D avatars using first-person body gestures

BodyAvatar is a Kinect-based interactive system that allows users without professional skills to create freeform 3D avatars using body gestures. Unlike existing gesture-based 3D modeling tools, BodyAvatar centers around a first-person "you're the avatar" metaphor, where the user treats their own body as a physical proxy of the virtual avatar. Based on an intuitive body-centric mapping, the user performs gestures to their own body as if wanting to modify it, which in turn results in corresponding modifications to the avatar. BodyAvatar provides an intuitive, immersive, and playful creation experience for the user. We present a formative study that leads to the design of BodyAvatar, the system's interactions and underlying algorithms, and results from initial user trials.


Reduction in gravitational torques of an industrial robot equipped with 2 DOF passive counterbalance mechanisms

In most 6 DOF robot arms, considerable amounts of gravitational torques due to the robot's own weight are applied to pitch joints of the robot, which causes most arms to use high capacity motors and speed reducers. A spring-based counterbalance mechanism can compensate for this gravitational torque, thus leading to a significant reduction in the effect of gravity. However, a simple installation of counterbalance mechanisms at each pitch joint does not work properly because the gravitational torque at each joint is dependent also on the other joints. To achieve multi-DOF counterbalancing, we propose a parallelogram linkage combined with dual counterbalance mechanisms, each being composed of a slider-crank mechanism and springs. Simulations and experimental results showed that the counterbalance robot arm based on the proposed counterbalance mechanisms effectively reduced the torques required to support the robot mass, thus allowing the prospective use of much smaller motors and speed reducers than traditional industrial robots.


Simple Personalized Search Based on Long-Term Behavioral Signals

Extensive research has shown that content-based Web result ranking can be significantly improved by considering personal behavioral signals (such as past queries) and global behavioral signals (such as global click frequencies). In this work we present a new approach to incorporating click behavior into document ranking, using ideas of click models as well as learning to rank. We show that by training a click model with pairwise loss, as is done in ranking problems, our approach achieves personalized reranking performance comparable to the stateof-the-art while eliminating much of the complexity required by previous models. This contrasts with other approaches that rely on complex feature engineering.


Development of a Biomimetic Hand Exotendon Device (BiomHED) for Restoration of Functional Hand Movement Post-Stroke

Significant functional impairment of the hand is common among stroke survivors and restoration of hand function should be prioritized during post-stroke rehabilitation. The goal of this study was to develop a novel biomimetic device to assist patients in producing complex hand movements with a limited number of actuators. The Biomimetic Hand Exoskeleton Device (BiomHED) is actuated by exotendons that mimic the geometry of the major tendons of the hand. Ten unimpaired subjects and four chronic stroke survivors participated in experiments that tested the efficacy of the system. The exotendons reproduced distinct spatial joint coordination patterns similar to their target muscle-tendon units for both subject groups. In stroke survivors, the exotendon-produced joint angular displacements were smaller, but not significantly different, than those of unimpaired subjects (\mbi p = 0.15-0.84). Even with limited use of the BiomHED, the kinematic workspace of the index finger increased by 63%-1014% in stroke survivors. The device improved the kinematics of the tip-pinch task in stroke survivors and resulted in a significant reduction in the fingertip-thumb tip distance ( 17.9 ±15.3 mm). This device is expected to enable effective “task-oriented” training of the hand post-stroke.


Local-global ranking for facial expression intensity estimation

Facial action units provide an objective characterization of facial muscle movements. Automatic estimation of facial action unit intensities is a challenging problem given individual differences in neutral face appearances and the need to generalize across different pose, illumination and datasets. In this paper, we introduce the Local-Global Ranking method as a novel alternative to direct prediction of facial action unit intensities. Our method takes advantage of the additional information present in videos and image collections of the same person (e.g. a photo album). Instead of trying to estimate facial expression intensities independently for each image, our proposed method performs a two-stage ranking: a local pair-wise ranking followed by a global ranking. The local ranking is designed to be accurate and robust by making a simple 3-class comparison (higher, equal, or lower) between randomly sampled pairs of images. We use a Bayesian model to integrate all these pair-wise rankings and construct a global ranking. Our Local-Global Ranking method shows state-of-the-art performance on two publicly-available datasets. Our cross-dataset experiments also show better generalizability.


Development of humanoid robot HRP-3P

A development of humanoid robot HRP-3P, which is a humanoid robot HRP-3 prototype, is presented in this paper. HRP-3 is under development as the succession humanoid to HRP-2, which we developed in phase two of HRP (humanoid robotics project). One of futures of HRP-3P is that its main mechanical and structural components are designed for protection against dust and water. Another is that node controllers are developed for realization of distributed control system. Real-time communication on Ethernet is also newly developed for communication between main controller and node controllers. In this paper, mechanical features and electrical features are presented with specifications of HRP-3P


An Algebraic Fault Attack on the LED Block Cipher

In this paper we propose an attack on block ciphers where we combine techniques derived from algebraic and fault based cryptanalysis. The recently introduced block cipher LED serves us as a target for our attack. We show how to construct an algebraic representation of the encryption map and how to cast the side channel information gained from a fault injection into polynomial form. The resulting polynomial system is converted into a logical formula in conjunctive normal form and handed over to a SAT solver for reconstruction of the secret key. Following this approach we were able to mount a new, successful attack on the version of LED that uses a 64-bit secret key, requiring only a single fault injection.


The building blocks of economic complexity.

For Adam Smith, wealth was related to the division of labor. As people and firms specialize in different activities, economic efficiency increases, suggesting that development is associated with an increase in the number of individual activities and with the complexity that emerges from the interactions between them. Here we develop a view of economic growth and development that gives a central role to the complexity of a country's economy by interpreting trade data as a bipartite network in which countries are connected to the products they export, and show that it is possible to quantify the complexity of a country's economy by characterizing the structure of this network. Furthermore, we show that the measures of complexity we derive are correlated with a country's level of income, and that deviations from this relationship are predictive of future growth. This suggests that countries tend to converge to the level of income dictated by the complexity of their productive structures, indicating that development efforts should focus on generating the conditions that would allow complexity to emerge to generate sustained growth and prosperity.


3D spatial pyramid: descriptors generation from point clouds for indoor scene classification

Traditionally, the indoor scene classification problem has been approached from a 2D image recognition point of view. In most visual scene classification systems, a descriptor for the input image is generated to obtain a suitable representation that includes features related to color, shape or spatial information. Techniques based on the use of a spatial pyramid have proven to be adequate to perform this step. In the past years, on the other hand, 3D sensors have become widely available, which allows to include new information sources to the framework previously described. In this work we rely on RGB-D data to extend the spatial pyramid approach, aimed at building descriptors that can lead to a more robust representation against changing lighting conditions. The proposed descriptors are evaluated on the RobotVision@ImageCLEF-2013 benchmark dataset, remarkably outperforming state-of-the-art 3D local and global descriptors.


Customer churn analysis : A case study on the telecommunication industry of Thailand

Customer churn creates a huge anxiety in highly competitive service sectors especially the telecommunications sector. The objective of this research was to develop a predictive churn model to predict the customers that will be to churn; this is the first step to construct a retention management plan. The dataset was extracted from the data warehouse of the mobile telecommunication company in Thailand. The system generated the customer list, to implement a retention campaign to manage the customers with tendency to leave the company. WEKA software was used to implement the followings techniques: C4.5 decision trees algorithm, the logistic regression algorithm and the neural network algorithm. The C4.5 algorithm of decision trees proved optimal among the models. The findings are unequivocally beneficial to industry and other partners.


A New Concave Hull Algorithm and Concaveness Measure for n-dimensional Datasets

Convex and concave hulls are useful concepts for a wide variety of application areas, such as pattern recognition, image processing, statistics, and classification tasks. Concave hull performs better than convex hull, but it is difficult to formulate and few algorithms are suggested. Especially, an n-dimensional concave hull is more difficult than a 2or 3dimensional one. In this paper, we propose a new concave hull algorithm for n-dimensional datasets. It is simple but creative. We show its application to dataset analysis. We also suggest a concaveness measure and a graph that captures geometric shape of an n-dimensional dataset. Proposed concave hull algorithm and concaveness measure/graph are implemented using java, and are posted to http://user.dankook.ac.kr/ ~bitl/dkuCH.


User Migration in Online Social Networks: A Case Study on Reddit During a Period of Community Unrest

Platforms like Reddit have attracted large and vibrant communities, but the individuals in those communities are free to migrate to other platforms at any time. History has borne this out with the mass migration from Slashdot to Digg. The underlying motivations of individuals who migrate between platforms, and the conditions that favor migration online are not well-understood. We examine Reddit during a period of community unrest affecting millions of users in the summer of 2015, and analyze large-scale changes in user behavior and migration patterns to Reddit-like alternative platforms. Using self-reported statements from user comments, surveys, and a computational analysis of the activity of users with accounts on multiple platforms, we identify the primary motivations driving user migration. While a notable number of Reddit users left for other platforms, we found that an important pull factor that enabled Reddit to retain users was its long tail of niche content. Other platforms may reach critical mass to support popular or “mainstream” topics, but Reddit’s large userbase provides a key advantage in supporting niche top-


Innovative technology-based interventions for autism spectrum disorders: a meta-analysis.

This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of technology-based intervention studies for children with autism spectrum disorders. We conducted a systematic review of research that used a pre-post design to assess innovative technology interventions, including computer programs, virtual reality, and robotics. The selected studies provided interventions via a desktop computer, interactive DVD, shared active surface, and virtual reality. None employed robotics. The results provide evidence for the overall effectiveness of technology-based training. The overall mean effect size for posttests of controlled studies of children with autism spectrum disorders who received technology-based interventions was significantly different from zero and approached the medium magnitude, d = 0.47 (confidence interval: 0.08-0.86). The influence of age and IQ was not significant. Differences in training procedures are discussed in the light of the negative correlation that was found between the intervention durations and the studies' effect sizes. The results of this meta-analysis provide support for the continuing development, evaluation, and clinical usage of technology-based intervention for individuals with autism spectrum disorders.


Social recommendation using Euclidean embedding

Traditional recommender systems assume that all the users are independent, and they usually face the cold start and data sparse problems. To alleviate these problems, social recommender systems use social relations as an additional input to improve recommendation accuracy. Social recommendation follows the intuition that people with social relationships share some kinds of preference towards items. Current social recommendation methods commonly apply the Matrix Factorization (MF) model to incorporate social information into the recommendation process. As an alternative model to MF, we propose a novel social recommendation approach based on Euclidean Embedding (SREE) in this paper. The idea is to embed users and items in a unified Euclidean space, where users are close to both their desired items and social friends. Experimental results conducted on two real-world data sets illustrate that our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of recommendation accuracy.


The CMU Pose, Illumination, and Expression Database

In the Fall of 2000 we collected a database of over 40,000 facial images of 68 people. Using the CMU 3D Room we imaged each person across 13 different poses, under 43 different illumination conditions, and with 4 different expressions. We call this the CMU Pose, Illumination, and Expression (PIE) database. We describe the imaging hardware, the collection procedure, the organization of the images, several possible uses, and how to obtain the database.


Combining Models and Exemplars for Face Recognition : An Illuminating Example

We propose a modeland exemplar-based approach for face recognition. This problem has been previously tackled using either models or exemplars, with limited success. Our idea uses models to synthesize many more exemplars, which are then used in the learning stage of a face recognition system. To demonstrate this, we develop a statistical shape-fromshading model to recover face shape from a single image, and to synthesize the same face under new illumination. We then use this to build a simple and fast classifier that was not possible before because of a lack of training data.


From Few to Many: Generative Models for Recognition Under Variable Pose and Illumination

Image variability due to changes in pose and illumination can seriously impair object recognition. This paper presents appearance-based methods which, unlike previous appearance-based approaches, require only a small set of training images to generate a rich representation that models this variability. Speci cally, from as few as three images of an object in xed pose seen under slightly varying but unknown lighting, a surface and an albedo map are reconstructed. These are then used to generate synthetic images with large variations in pose and illumination and thus build a representation useful for object recognition. Our methods have been tested within the domain of face recognition on a subset of the Yale Face Database B containing 4050 images of 10 faces seen under variable pose and illumination. This database was speci cally gathered for testing these generative methods. Their performance is shown to exceed that of popular existing methods.


Optical Flow Constraints on Deformable Models with Applications to Face Tracking

Optical flow provides a constraint on the motion of a deformable model. We derive and solve a dynamic system incorporating flow as a hard constraint, producing a model-based least-squares optical flow solution. Our solution also ensures the constraint remains satisfied when combined with edge information, which helps combat tracking error accumulation. Constraint enforcement can be relaxed using a Kalman filter, which permits controlled constraint violations based on the noise present in the optical flow information, and enables optical flow and edge information to be combined more robustly and efficiently. We apply this framework to the estimation of face shape and motion using a 3D deformable face model. This model uses a small number of parameters to describe a rich variety of face shapes and facial expressions. We present experiments in extracting the shape and motion of a face from image sequences which validate the accuracy of the method. They also demonstrate that our treatment of optical flow as a hard constraint, as well as our use of a Kalman filter to reconcile these constraints with the uncertainty in the optical flow, are vital for improving the performance of our system.


Visual Semantic Landmark-Based Robust Mapping and Localization for Autonomous Indoor Parking

Autonomous parking in an indoor parking lot without human intervention is one of the most demanded and challenging tasks of autonomous driving systems. The key to this task is precise real-time indoor localization. However, state-of-the-art low-level visual feature-based simultaneous localization and mapping systems (VSLAM) suffer in monotonous or texture-less scenes and under poor illumination or dynamic conditions. Additionally, low-level feature-based mapping results are hard for human beings to use directly. In this paper, we propose a semantic landmark-based robust VSLAM for real-time localization of autonomous vehicles in indoor parking lots. The parking slots are extracted as meaningful landmarks and enriched with confidence levels. We then propose a robust optimization framework to solve the aliasing problem of semantic landmarks by dynamically eliminating suboptimal constraints in the pose graph and correcting erroneous parking slots associations. As a result, a semantic map of the parking lot, which can be used by both autonomous driving systems and human beings, is established automatically and robustly. We evaluated the real-time localization performance using multiple autonomous vehicles, and an repeatability of 0.3 m track tracing was achieved at a 10 kph of autonomous driving.


A New Word Language Model Evaluation Metric for Character Based Languages

Perplexity is a widely used measure to evaluate word prediction power of a word-based language model. It can be computed independently and has shown good correlation with word error rate (WER) in speech recognition. However, for character based languages, character error rate (CER) is commonly used instead of WER as the measure for speech recognition, although language model is still word based. Due to the fact that different word segmentation strategies may result in different word vocabulary for the same text corpus, in many cases, wordbased perplexity is incompetent to evaluate the combined effect of word segmentation and language model training to predict final CER. In this paper, a new word-based language model evaluation measure is proposed to account for the effect of word segmentation and the goal of predicting CER. Experiments were conducted on Chinese speech recognition. Compared to the traditional word-based perplexity, the new measure is more robust to word segmentation and shows much more consistent correlation with CER in a large vocabulary continuous Chinese speech recognition task.


Joint wavelet-based spectrum sensing and FBMC modulation for cognitive mmWave small cell networks

Millimetre-wave (mmWave) 5G communications is an emerging technology to enhance the capacity of existing systems by thousand-fold improvement. Heterogeneous networks employing densely distributed small cells can optimise the available coverage and throughput of 5G systems. Efficiently utilising the spectrum bands by small cells is one of the approaches that will considerably increase the available data rate and capacity of the heterogeneous networks. This challenging task can be achieved by spectrum sensing capability of cognitive radios and new modulation techniques for data transmission. In this study, a wavelet-based filter bank is proposed for spectrum sensing and modulation in 5G heterogeneous networks. The proposed technique can mitigate the spectral leakage and interference by adapting the subcarriers according to cognitive information provided by wavelet packet based spectrum sensing (WPSS) and lowering sidelobes using wavelet-based filter bank multicarrier modulation. The performance improvement of WPSS compared with Fourier-based spectrum sensing is verified in terms of power spectral density comparison and probabilities of detection and false alarm. Meanwhile, the bit error rate performance demonstrates the superiority of the proposed wavelet-based system compared with its Fourier-based counterpart over the 60 GHz mmWave channel.


Model-Driven Game Development Addressing Architectural Diversity and Game Engine-Integration


The NumPy Array: A Structure for Efficient Numerical Computation

In the Python world, NumPy arrays are the standard representation for numerical data and enable efficient implementation of numerical computations in a high-level language. As this effort shows, NumPy performance can be improved through three techniques: vectorizing calculations, avoiding copying data in memory, and minimizing operation counts.


Survey of Event Correlation Techniques for Attack Detection in Early Warning Systems

In the context of early warning systems for detecting Internet worms and other attacks, event correlation techniques are needed for two reasons. First, network attack detection is usually based on distributed sensors, e.g. intrusion detection systems. During attacks but even in normal operation, the generated amount of events is hard to handle in order to evaluate the current attack situation for a larger network. Thus, the concept of event or alert correlation has been introduced. This survey was motivated by recent work on early warning systems. We summarize and clarify the typical terminology used in this context and present a requirement analysis from an early warning system’s point of view. In the main part of this survey, we summarize and classify event correlation techniques as described in the literature.


Bayesian Optimization Using Domain Knowledge on the ATRIAS Biped

Robotics controllers often consist of expert-designed heuristics, which can be hard to tune in higher dimensions. Simulation can aid in optimizing these controllers if parameters learned in simulation transfer to hardware. Unfortunately, this is often not the case in legged locomotion, necessitating learning directly on hardware. This motivates using data-efficient learning techniques like Bayesian Optimization (BO) to minimize collecting expensive data samples. BO is a black-box data-efficient optimization scheme, though its performance typically degrades in higher dimensions. We aim to overcome this problem by incorporating domain knowledge, with a focus on bipedal locomotion. In our previous work, we proposed a feature transformation that projected a 16-dimensional locomotion controller to a 1-dimensional space using knowledge of human walking. When optimizing a human-inspired neuromuscular controller in simulation, this feature transformation enhanced sample efficiency of BO over traditional BO with a Squared Exponential kernel. In this paper, we present a generalized feature transform applicable to non-humanoid robot morphologies and evaluate it on the ATRIAS bipedal robot, in both simulation and hardware. We present three different walking controllers and two are evaluated on the real robot. Our results show that this feature transform captures important aspects of walking and accelerates learning on hardware and simulation, as compared to traditional BO.


GENDER AND LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR AMONG SENIOR PASTORS

Research findings have been equivocal as to the existence of gender difference in leadership across settings. However, some studies based on transformational leadership theory and employing the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire to measure leadership behaviors have indicated a difference in the leadership styles of female and male leaders. This study sought to test whether there were gender differences in the use of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership behaviors by Senior Pastors in an Australian Christian Church. The study did not detect any significant gender differences in leadership behaviors. Gender and Leadership Behavior among Senior Pastors Gender and Leadership Leadership has been typically a male prerogative in most sectors of society, including the corporate, political, military, and church sectors (Eagly & Karau, 2002). However, over the last 30 years women have made steady progress in moving into leadership roles. In 1972, women held 17% of all management and professional positions in Fortune 500 Companies. By 2006, this number had grown to 50.3% (Hoyt, Simon, and Reid, 2009). Women typically tend to occupy lower and middle management ranks while men cluster around the most powerful positions at the top. Women managers still receive significantly less remuneration for their work, with female managers receiving 24 percent less pay than men performing the equivalent function (Haslam and Ryan, 2008). Nonetheless, despite continuing 138 Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 12:2 (2009) inequity, it is clear that women are gradually occupying an increasing number of management and leadership positions. Although women have increasingly gained access to supervisory and middle management positions, they remain quite rare as elite leaders. For example, in 2006 women represented 5.2% of top earners, 14.7% of board members, 7.9% of the highest earners, and less than 2% of CEOs in Fortune 500 Companies (Hoyt, Simon, and Reid, 2009). This phenomenon has been explained by use of the idea of a “glass ceiling” – an invisible barrier preventing the rise of women within leadership ranks (Haslam & Ryan, 2008). Eagly and Karau (2002) describe it as “a barrier of prejudice and discrimination that excludes women from higher leadership positions” (p. 573). It is evident in the lower number of women in leadership positions, and particularly in high-level leadership positions. Yukl (2006) observes that “In the complete absence of sex-based discrimination, the number of women in chief executive positions in business and government should be close to 50 percent” (p. 427). A variety of explanations have been offered for the existence of gender-based discrimination in the appointment of organizational leaders. These include: (1) gender stereotypes suggesting that men are more suited to leadership positions and that women are more suited to support roles (Yukl, 2006); (2) overt sexism in the workplace (Schwartz, 1971); (3) perceived incompatibilities between women’s abilities and the requirements of leadership (Arvey, 1979); (4) women’s competing responsibilities in the home (Schwartz, 1994); and (5) women’s fear of success (Horner, 1972). The explanations are not mutually exclusive and they may combine to create significant barriers to the advancement of women. Martell and DeSmet (2001) found that a contributing reason for the glass ceiling and the continued absence of women in the upper ranks of management is “the existence of gender-based stereotypes in the leadership domain” (p. 1227). Gender stereotypes are “categorical beliefs composed of the traits and behavioral characteristics assigned to women and men only on the basis of the group label” (Martell & DeSmet, 2001, p. 1223). Such stereotypes serve as a type of expectation regarding the likely abilities of group members and, if left unchallenged, can translate into discriminatory behavior. Eagly and Karau (2002) point out that a “potential for prejudice exists when social perceivers hold a stereotype about a social group that is incongruent with the attributes that are thought to be required for success in certain classes of social roles” (p. 574). Prejudice against women as leaders Fogarty, Gender and Leadership 139 “follows from the incongruity that many people perceive between the characteristics of women and the requirements of leader roles” (Eagly & Karau, 2002, p. 574). Gender and Leadership within Christian Churches Within Christian churches gender based discrimination has been reinforced by theological perspectives (Barron, 1990; Bridges, 1998; Franklin, 2008; Scholz, 2005). The case that women are forbidden by scripture and church tradition to assume leadership within the church has been made frequently (Barron, 1990). This exclusion has been predominantly based on two Pauline texts (1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:33-34) and a broader theological position which sees men and women as being ontologically equal but functionally different. Its basic logic is that “God designed women to be subordinate to men in role and function” and therefore “women should not operate in positions of authority over men” (Franklin, 2008, 14). For example, Piper and Grudem (1991) state that “we are persuaded that the Bible teaches that only men should be pastors and elders. That is, men should bear primary responsibility for Christlike leadership and teaching in the church. So it is unbiblical, we believe, and therefore detrimental, for women to assume this role” (p. 60-61). Complementary to this theological position is the suggestion that women do not have the capacity for effective church leadership (Bridges, 1998). Piper (1991) exemplifies this position when he writes: “At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships” and “At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships’ (p. 35-36). The understanding portrayed is that men have the capacity to lead and that women do not. The assumption implicit within this understanding is that leadership does not involve affirming and nurturing behaviors.


A double-tail sense amplifier for low-voltage SRAM in 28nm technology

A double-tail sense amplifier (DTSA) is designed as a drop-in replacement for a conventional SRAM sense amplifier (SA), to enable a robust read operation at low voltages. A pre-amplification stage helps reduce the offset voltage of the sense amplifier by magnifying the input of the regeneration stage. The self-timed regenerative latch simplifies the timing logic so the DTSA can replace the SA with no area overhead. A test chip in 28nm technology achieves 56% error rate reduction at 0.44V. The proposed scheme achieves 50mV of VDDmin reduction compared to commercial SRAM with a faster timing option that demonstrates a smaller bitline swing.


Sampling cube: a framework for statistical olap over sampling data

Sampling is a popular method of data collection when it is impossible or too costly to reach the entire population. For example, television show ratings in the United States are gathered from a sample of roughly 5,000 households. To use the results effectively, the samples are further partitioned in a multidimensional space based on multiple attribute values. This naturally leads to the desirability of OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) over sampling data. However, unlike traditional data, sampling data is inherently uncertain, i.e., not representing the full data in the population. Thus, it is desirable to return not only query results but also the confidence intervals indicating the reliability of the results. Moreover, a certain segment in a multidimensional space may contain none or too few samples. This requires some additional analysis to return trustable results.
 In this paper we propose a Sampling Cube framework, which efficiently calculates confidence intervals for any multidimensional query and uses the OLAP structure to group similar segments to increase sampling size when needed. Further, to handle high dimensional data, a Sampling Cube Shell method is proposed to effectively reduce the storage requirement while still preserving query result quality.


Diagnostic assessment of the borg MOEA for many-objective product family design problems

The recently introduced Borg multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) framework features auto-adaptive search that tailors itself to effectively explore different problem spaces. A key auto-adaptive feature of the Borg MOEA is the dynamic allocation of search across a suite of recombination and mutation operators. This study explores the application of the Borg MOEA on a real-world product family design problem: the severely constrained, ten objective General Aviation Aircraft (GAA) problem. The GAA problem represents a promising benchmark problem that strongly highlights the importance of using auto-adaptive search to discover how to exploit multiple recombination strategies cooperatively. The auto-adaptive behavior of the Borg MOEA is rigorously compared against its ancestor algorithm, the ε-MOEA, by employing global sensitivity analysis across each algorithm's feasible parameter ranges. This study provides the first Sobol' sensitivity analysis to determine the individual and interactive parameter sensitivities of MOEAs on a real-world many-objective problem.


Foundations of RDF⋆ and SPARQL⋆ (An Alternative Approach to Statement-Level Metadata in RDF)

The standard approach to annotate statements in RDF with metadata has a number of shortcomings including data size blow-up and unnecessarily complicated queries. We propose an alternative approach that is based on nesting of RDF triples and of query patterns. The approach allows for a more compact representation of data and queries, and it is backwards compatible with the standard. In this paper we present the formal foundations of our proposal and of different approaches to implement it. More specifically, we formally capture the necessary extensions of the RDF data model and its query language SPARQL, and we define mappings based on which our extended notions can be converted back to ordinary RDF and SPARQL. Additionally, for such type of mappings we define two desirable properties, information preservation and query result equivalence, and we show that the introduced mappings possess these properties.


Learning to Decode for Future Success

We introduce a general strategy for improving neural sequence generation by incorporating knowledge about the future. Our decoder combines a standard sequence decoder with a ‘soothsayer’ prediction function Q that estimates the outcome in the future of generating a word in the present. Our model draws on the same intuitions as reinforcement learning, but is both simpler and higher performing, avoiding known problems with the use of reinforcement learning in tasks with enormous search spaces like sequence generation. We demonstrate our model by incorporating Q functions that incrementally predict what the future BLEU or ROUGE score of the completed sequence will be, its future length, and the backwards probability of the source given the future target sequence. Experimental results show that future prediction yields improved performance in abstractive summarization and conversational response generation and the state-of-the-art in machine translation, while also enabling the decoder to generate outputs that have specific properties.


Aspect extraction for opinion mining with a deep convolutional neural network

In this paper, we present the first deep learning approach to aspect extraction in opinion mining. Aspect extraction is a subtask of sentiment analysis that consists in identifying opinion targets in opinionated text, i.e., in detecting the specific aspects of a product or service the opinion holder is either praising or complaining about. We used a 7-layer deep convolutional neural network to tag each word in opinionated sentences as either aspect or non-aspect word. We also developed a set of linguistic patterns for the same purpose and combined them with the neural network. The resulting ensemble classifier, coupled with a word-embedding model for sentiment analysis, allowed our approach to obtain significantly better accuracy than state-of-the-art methods.


Design, fabrication and preliminary results of a novel anthropomorphic hand for humanoid robotics: RCH-1

Among social infrastructure technologies, robot technology (RT) is expected to play an important role in solving the problems of both decrease of birth rate and increase of elderly people in the 21st century, specially but not only in Japan. In order to achieve this objective, the new generation of personal robots should be capable of a natural communication with humans by expressing human-like emotion. In this sense, human hands play a fundamental role in communication, because they have grasping, sensing and emotional expression ability. This paper presents the recent results of the collaboration between the Takanishi Lab of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, and the Arts Lab of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy, and ROBOCASA. In this paper, the development of a novel anthropomorphic hand for humanoid robotics RCH-1 (ROBOCASA Hand No.1) and its integration into a humanoid robotic platform, named WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II) is presented.


Educational System for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences for Blind and Handicapped People Based on Google Speech API

There is a great need to provide educational environments for blind and handicapped people. There are many Islamic websites and applications dedicated to the educational services for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences (Quran Recitations, the interpretations, etc.) on the Internet. Unfortunately, blind and handicapped people could not use these services. These people cannot use the keyboard and the mouse. In addition, the ability to read and write is essential to benefit from these services. In this paper, we present an educational environment that allows these people to take full advantage of the scientific materials. This is done through the interaction with the system using voice commands by speaking directly without the need to write or to use the mouse. Google Speech API is used for the universal speech recognition after a preprocessing and post processing phases to improve the accuracy. For blind people, responses of these commands will be played back through the audio device instead of displaying the text to the screen. The text will be displayed on the screen to help other people make use of the system.


Web 3.0 Emerging

While Web 3.0 technologies are difficult to define precisely, the outline of emerging applications has become clear over the past year. We can thus essentially view Web 3.0 as semantic Web technologies integrated into, or powering, large-scale Web applications. The base of Web 3.0 applications resides in the resource description framework (RDF) for providing a means to link data from multiple Web sites or databases. With the SPARQL query language, a SQL-like standard for querying RDF data, applications can use native graph-based RDF stores and extract RDF data from traditional databases.


Multiple Handshakes Security of TLS 1.3 Candidates

The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol is by far the most widely deployed protocol for securing communications and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is currently developing TLS 1.3 as the next-generation TLS protocol. The TLS standard features multiple modes of handshake protocols and supports many combinational running of successive TLS handshakes over multiple connections. Although each handshake mode is now well-understood in isolation, their composition in TLS 1.2 remains problematic, and yet it is critical to obtain practical security guarantees for TLS. In this paper, we present the first formal treatment of multiple handshakes protocols of TLS 1.3 candidates. First, we introduce a multi-level&stage security model, an adaptation of the Bellare-Rogaway authenticated key exchange model, covering all kinds of compositional interactions between different TLS handshake modes and providing reasonably strong security guarantees. Next, we prove that candidate handshakes of TLS 1.3 draft meet our strong notion of multiple handshakes security. Our results confirm the soundness of TLS 1.3 security protection design. Such a multi-level&stage approach is convenient for analyzing the compositional design of the candidates with different session modes, as they establish dependencies of multiple sessions. We also identify the triple handshake attack of Bhargavan et al. on TLS 1.2 within our multiple handshakes security model. We show generically that the proposed fixes (RFC 7627) for TLS 1.2 offer good protection against multiple handshakes attacks.


Improving Design of Systems Supporting Creativity-intensive Processes - A Cross-industry Focus Group Evaluation


Exploring Users' Attitudes and Intentions toward the Adoption of Cloud Computing in Saudi Arabia: an Empirical Investigation

Over the past few years, cloud computing has evolve d as one of the major advances in the field of Information Technology (IT) utilizing third-party s ervices. Therefore, trust in cloud vendors as well as the determination of potential risks, such as privacy a nd security issues, are crucial for ensuring the su ccessful adoption of an appropriate cloud. Prior research ha ve ddressed the technical aspects of cloud-based environments, such as cloud virtualization, scalabi lity and security. Nevertheless, it is argued that the biggest obstacle of cloud computing is not technolo gical, rather it is perceptual or attitudinal. The adoption of cloud computing has been central to several scho larly research areas, particularly user acceptance. This study presents an extended Technology Acceptance Mo del (TAM), which integrates Trust (TR), Anxiety (ANX) and Perceived Risk (PR), to investigate users ’ attitudes and intentions toward the adoption of c l ud computing. The proposed model was empirically exami ned using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) to analyze data gathered by a survey of both IT profes sionals and end users. The results herein suggested that trust, anxiety and PR can be successfully integrate d within the TAMs. Trust has demonstrated to have a strong positive influence on Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU), but it had no significant effects on Perceived Use fuln ss (PU). Both anxiety and PR were found to have signif icant negative effects on PEOU and PU. In addition, Behavioral Intention (BI) to use the cloud can be p r dicted by trust, attitudes and PU, as PR was show n t have no significant effect on BI. The proposed model, including PR, trust and anxiety , has been demonstrated to be a true predictor of user intentions, toward t he use of cloud computing, within the context of Sa udi Arabia.


Software-Defined LANs for Interconnected Smart Environment

In this paper, we propose a solution to delegate the control and the management of the network connecting the many devices of a smart environment to a software entity, while keeping end-users in control of what is happening in their networks. For this, we rely on the logical manipulation of all connected devices through device abstraction and network programmability. Applying Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles, we propose a software-based solution that we call Software-Defined LANs in order to interconnect devices of smart environments according to the services the users are requesting or expecting.We define the adequate virtualization framework based on Virtual Objects and Communities of Virtual Objects. Using these virtual entities, we apply the SDN architectural principles to define a generic architecture that can be applied to any smart environment. Then we describe a prototype implementing these concepts in the home networking context, through a scenario in which users of two different homes can easily interconnect two private but shareable DLNA devices in a dedicated video-delivery SD-LAN. Finally we provide a discussion of the benefits and challenges of our approach regarding the generalization of SDN principles, autonomic features, Internet of Things scalability, security and privacy aspects enabled by SD-LANs intrinsic properties.