A Proof System for Timed Automata
A proof system for timed automata is presented, based on a CCS-style language for describing timed automata. It consists of the standard monoid laws for bisimulation and a set of inference rules. The judgments of the proof system are conditional equations of the form Φ ▹ t = u where Φ is a clock constraint and t, u are terms denoting timed automata. It is proved that the proof system is complete for timed bisimulation over the recursion-free subset of the language. The completeness proof relies on the notion of symbolic timed bisimulation. The axiomatisation is also extended to handle an important variation of timed automata where each node is associated with an invariant constraint.

title: Symbolic Bisimulations

title: Axiomatising timed automata
abstract: Timed automata has been developed as a basic semantic model for real time systems. Its algorithmic aspects for automated analysis have been well studied. But so far there is still no satisfactory algebraic theory to allow the derivation of semantical equivalence of automata by purely syntactical manipulation. The aim of this paper is to provide such a theory. We present an inference system of timed bisimulation equivalence for timed automata based on a CCS-style regular language for describing timed automata. It consists of the standard monoid laws for bisimulation and a set of inference rules. The judgments of the proof system are conditional equations of the form 
$\phi \rhd t = u$ where 
$\phi$ is a clock constraint and t,u are terms denoting timed automata. The inference system is shown to be sound and complete for timed bisimulation. The proof of the completeness result relies on the notion of symbolic timed bisimulation, adapted from the work on value–passing processes.

title: PAM: A Process Algebra Manipulator
abstract: PAM is a general proof tool for process algebras. It allows users to define their own calculi and then perform algebraic style proofs in these calculi by directly manipulating process terms. The logic that PAM implements is equational logic plus recursion, with some features tailored to the particular requirements of process algebras. Equational reasoning is implemented by rewriting, while recursion is dealt with by induction. Proofs are constructed interactively, giving users the freedom to control the proof processes.

title: Symbolic Transition Graph with Assignment
abstract: A new model for message-passing processes is proposed which generalizes the notion of symbolic transition graph as introduced in [HL95], by allowing assignments to be carried in transitions. The main advantage of this generalization is that a wider class of processes can be represented as finite state graphs. Two kinds of operational semantics, ground and symbolic, are given to such graphs. On top of them both ground and symbolic bisimulations are defined and are shown to agree with each other. An algorithm is also presented which computes bisimulation formulae for finite state symbolic transition graphs with assignments, in terms of the greatest solutions of predicate equation systems.

title: An Interactive Proof Tool for Process Algebras
abstract: A proof assistant for process algebras is described. The main novelty of this proof system is that it is parameterised by process calculi: the users can define their own calculi by providing suitable signatures and axioms. Proofs are constructed by directly manipulating process terms, and some forms of induction has been built-in to handle recursion.

title: Large-Margin Thresholded Ensembles for Ordinal Regression: Theory and Practice
abstract: We propose a thresholded ensemble model for ordinal regression problems. The model consists of a weighted ensemble of confidence functions and an ordered vector of thresholds. We derive novel large-margin bounds of common error functions, such as the classification error and the absolute error. In addition to some existing algorithms, we also study two novel boosting approaches for constructing thresholded ensembles. Both our approaches not only are simpler than existing algorithms, but also have a stronger connection to the large-margin bounds. In addition, they have comparable performance to SVM-based algorithms, but enjoy the benefit of faster training. Experimental results on benchmark datasets demonstrate the usefulness of our boosting approaches.

title: Navigating inner space: 3-D assistance for minimally invasive surgery
abstract: Since its inception about three decades ago, modern minimally invasive surgery has made huge advances in both technique and technology. However, the minimally invasive surgeon is still faced with daunting challenges in terms of visualization and hand-eye coordination. At the Center for Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (CISST) we have been developing a set of techniques for assisting surgeons in navigating and manipulating the three-dimensional space within the human body. In order to develop such systems, a variety of challenging visual tracking, reconstruction and registration problems must be solved. In addition, this information must be tied to methods for assistance that improve surgical accuracy and reliability but allow the surgeon to retain ultimate control of the procedure and do not prolong time in the operating room. In this article, we present two problem areas, eye microsurgery and thoracic minimally invasive surgery, where computational vision can play a role. We then describe methods we have developed to process video images for relevant geometric information, and related control algorithms for providing interactive assistance. Finally, we present results from implemented systems.

title: TCP Selective Negative Acknowledgment over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks
abstract: This paper investigates the performance of the TCP transport protocol over IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. A wireless link is generally characterized by high transmission errors and a varying latency. The erratic packet losses and poor bandwidth utilization which occur as a result limit the TCP's performance, resulting in a curbing of the flow of segments on the TCP connection and a corresponding degradation of the network performance. This paper examines the effects of the 802.11 characteristics on the TCP performance and proposes a scheme to improve the performance of TCP over wireless links. A novel acknowledgement scheme, SNACK, is introduced and a series of ns-2 based simulations are performed to compare its performance against that of other TCP schemes. The simulation results confirm that SNACK provides a better performance than other conventional TCP implementations in 802.11 wireless networks

title: A Note on the Decomposition Methods for Support Vector Regression
abstract: The dual formulation of support vector regression involves two closely related sets of variables. When the decomposition method is used, many existing approaches use pairs of indices from these two sets as the working set. Basically, they select a base set first and then expand it so all indices are pairs. This makes the implementation different from that for support vector classification. In addition, a larger optimization subproblem has to be solved in each iteration. We provide theoretical proofs and conduct experiments to show that using the base set as the working set leads to similar convergence (number of iterations). Therefore, by using a smaller working set while keeping a similar number of iterations, the program can be simpler and more efficient.

title: A switched delay line based optical switch architecture with a bypass line
abstract: This paper proposes a new switching architecture to be used in all-optical networks. The proposed switch, M-B-Quadro switch, is extended from an original 2/spl times/2 two-stage multi-buffer switched delay line based optical switching node, known as M-Quadro node. By incorporating bypass lines and employing a novel switch control strategy, denoted as LAVS, the switching node can effectively resolve packet contentions, thus reducing the packet deflection probability substantially.