COSIMA/sup B2B/ - sales automation for e-procurement
We present a fully automated electronic sales agent for e-procurement portals. The key technologies for this breakthrough are based on preferences modeled as strict partial orders, enabling a deep personalization of the B2B sales process. The interplay of several novel middleware components achieves to automate skills that so far could be executed only by a human vendor. As personalized search engine for XML based e-catalogs, we use Preference XPath; the Preference Presenter implements a sales psychology based presentation of search results, supporting various human sales strategies; the Preference Repository provides the management of situated long-term preferences; the flexible Personalized Price Offer and the multi-objective Preference Bargainer provide a personalized price fixing and the opportunity to bargain about the price of an entire product bundle, applying up/cross and down selling techniques. Our prototype COSIMA/sup B2B/, supported by industrial partners, has been successfully demonstrated at a large computer fair.

title: Evaluation and optimization of the catalog search process of e-procurement platforms
abstract: With the emerging of e-catalog standards the product search can be used in a very different and improved matter. Beyond the usual keyword search this opens the arena for attribute-based search engines, including parametric search and preference search. We analyze the impact of different search techniques for such e-catalogs on the overall search process costs. It turns out that preference search has a high potential to significantly reduce the process costs. A large-scale use case with the MAN2B e-procurement platform supports our claim. We identify improvements achievable by using preference search, in particular less navigation steps during the product search and better search results due to the BMO query model. Expensive cases, where frustrated users accept bad search results or phone up the company's purchasing department, should decrease significantly. This in turn will enable the purchasing department to focus more on strategic issues like supplier relationship management than on operative issues as it still happens widely today.

title: Experiences with an Emotional Sales Agent
abstract: With COSIMAB2B we demonstrate a prototype of a complex and visionary e-procurement application. The embodied character agent named COSIMA is able to respect a customer’s preferences and deals with him or her via natural speech. She expresses various emotions via mimic, gesture, combined with speech synthesis, and COSIMA is even able to consider the customer’s emotions via mimic recognition. As first observations show, this is a very promising approach to improve the bargaining with the customer or the recommendation of products.

title: Optimizing the catalog search process for e-procurement platforms
abstract: Many e-procurement platforms support XML-based e-catalogs combined with standardized feature descriptions. Beyond the usual keyword search this opens the arena for attribute-based search engines, including parametric search and preference search. We analyze the impact of different search techniques for such e-catalogs on the overall search process costs. It turns out that preference search has a high potential to significantly reduce the process costs. A large-scale use case with the MAN2B e-procurement platform supports our claim. We identify improvements achievable by using preference search, in particular less navigation steps during the product search and better search results due to the BMO query model. Expensive cases, where frustrated users accept bad search results or phone up the company's purchasing department, should decrease significantly. This in turn will enable the purchasing department to focus more on strategic issues like supplier relationship management than on operative issues as it still happens widely today.

title: Efficient Computation of Algebraic Immunity for Algebraic and Fast Algebraic Attacks
abstract: In this paper we propose several efficient algorithms for assessing the resistance of Boolean functions against algebraic and fast algebraic attacks when implemented in LFSR-based stream ciphers. An algorithm is described which permits to compute the algebraic immunity d of a Boolean function with n variables in $\mathcal{O}(D^2)$ operations, for $D \approx \binom{n}{d}$, rather than in $\mathcal{O}(D^3)$ operations necessary in all previous algorithms. Our algorithm is based on multivariate polynomial interpolation. For assessing the vulnerability of arbitrary Boolean functions with respect to fast algebraic attacks, an efficient generic algorithm is presented that is not based on interpolation. This algorithm is demonstrated to be particularly efficient for symmetric Boolean functions. As an application it is shown that large classes of symmetric functions are very vulnerable to fast algebraic attacks despite their proven resistance against conventional algebraic attacks.

title: Face authentication with Gabor information on deformable graphs
abstract: Elastic graph matching has been proposed as a practical implementation of dynamic link matching, which is a neural network with dynamically evolving links between a reference model and an input image. Each node of the graph contains features that characterize the neighborhood of its location in the image. The elastic graph matching usually consists of two consecutive steps, namely a matching with a rigid grid, followed by a deformation of the grid, which is actually the elastic part. The deformation step is introduced in order to allow for some deformation, rotation, and scaling of the object to be matched. This method is applied here to the authentication of human faces where candidates claim an identity that is to be checked. The matching error as originally suggested is not powerful enough to provide satisfying results in this case. We introduce an automatic weighting of the nodes according to their significance. We also explore the significance of the elastic deformation for an application of face-based person authentication. We compare performance results obtained with and without the second matching step. Results show that the deformation step slightly increases the performance, but has lower influence than the weighting of the nodes. The best results are obtained with the combination of both aspects. The results provided by the proposed method compare favorably with two methods that require a prior geometric face normalization, namely the synergetic and eigenface approaches.

title: Symmetry based indexing of diatoms in an image database
abstract: We introduce several methods for symmetry detection and present results of their experimental evaluation on diatom images. The methods are based on distance lists, cyclic string matching, and gray level gradient direction histograms. From the experimental results it can be concluded that symmetry information is useful for various indexing tasks in image databases. Types of symmetry considered in this paper are rotational and reflectional symmetry of the shape as well as symmetry of the gray level distribution of the internal structure of objects. Using the symmetry based indexing scheme proposed, the effort for the subsequent task of diatom classification can significantly be reduced.

title: Chosen IV Statistical Analysis for Key Recovery Attacks on Stream Ciphers
abstract: A recent framework for chosen IV statistical distinguishing analysis of stream ciphers is exploited and formalized to provide new methods for key recovery attacks. As an application, a key recovery attack on simplified versions of two eSTREAM Phase 3 candidates is given: For Grain-128 with IV initialization reduced to up to 180 of its 256 iterations, and for Trivium with IV initialization reduced to up to 672 of its 1152 iterations, it is experimentally demonstrated how to deduce a few key bits. Evidence is given that the present analysis is not applicable on Grain-128 or Trivium with full IV initialization.

title: Nonuniform charge scaling (NUCS): A practical approximation of solvent electrostatic screening in proteins
abstract: In molecular mechanics calculations, electrostatic interactions between chemical groups are usually represented by a Coulomb potential between the partial atomic charges of the groups. In aqueous solution these interactions are modified by the polarizable solvent. Although the electrostatic effects of the polarized solvent on the protein are well described by the Poisson--Boltzmann equation, its numerical solution is computationally expensive for large molecules such as proteins. The procedure of nonuniform charge scaling (NUCS) is a pragmatic approach to implicit solvation that approximates the solvent screening effect by individually scaling the partial charges on the explicit atoms of the macromolecule so as to reproduce electrostatic interaction energies obtained from an initial Poisson--Boltzmann analysis. Once the screening factors have been determined for a protein the scaled charges can be easily used in any molecular mechanics program that implements a Coulomb term. The approach is particularly suitable for minimization-based simulations, such as normal mode analysis, certain conformational reaction path or ligand binding techniques for which bulk solvent cannot be included explicitly, and for combined quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical calculations when the interface to more elaborate continuum solvent models is lacking. The method is illustrated using reaction path calculations of the Tyr 35 ring flip in the bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor.