An Approach For Integration Testing In Online Retail Applications

Abstract: Retail applications has majorly fraud prevention, procurement, shipping and tax related, pricing, real time bank authentication applications integrated to make the application run successfully. Integration testing here plays an important role as it requires that all applications interact with each other and also interact correctly so that Retailer is at benefit. Different testing techniques and types are used to test the application. Different testing teams will perform integration testing but what is the correct approach and how should you proceed is the major concern of many. Here we propose at what stage of Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC), integration testing should be initiated. Also what should be the approach of performing the testing? An example on Online Retail Application is used to understand the approach.


ROSA Analyser: An automatized approach to analyse processes of ROSA

Abstract: In this work we present the first version of ROSA Analyser, a tool designed to get closer to a fully automatic process of analysing the behaviour of a system specified as a process of the Markovian Process Algebra ROSA. In this first development stage, ROSA Analyser is able to generate the Labelled Transition System, according to ROSA Operational Semantics. ROSA Analyser performance starts with the Syntactic Analysis so generating a layered structure, suitable to then, apply the Operational Semantics Transition rules in the easier way. ROSA Analyser is able to recognize some states identities deeper than the Syntactic ones. This is the very first step in the way to reduce the size of the LTS and then to avoid the state explosion problem, so making this task more tractable. For the sake of better illustrating the usefulness of ROSA Analyser, a case study is also provided within this work.


Quality assurance of e-learning processes

Abstract: A quality assurance system (QA) should ensure that student needs are met. It also respects accreditation requirements and student perceptions, supports training and development of teaching staff, controls costs and improves efficiency of e-learning system.


Low Cost PC Based Real Time Data Logging System Using PCs Parallel Port For Slowly Varying Signals

Abstract: A low cost PC based real time data logging system can be used in the laboratories for the measurement, monitoring and storage of the data for slowly varying signals in science and engineering stream. This can be designed and interfaced to the PCs Parallel Port, which is common to all desktop computers or Personal Computers (PCs). By the use of this data logging system one can monitor, measure and store data for slowly varying signals, which is hard to visualise the signal waveforms by ordinary CRO (Cathode Ray Oscilloscope) and DSO (Digital Storage Oscilloscope). The data so stored can be used for further study and analysis. It can be used for a wide range of applications to monitor and store data of temperature, humidity, light intensity, ECG signals etc. with proper signal conditioning circuitry.


E-banking and E-commerce in India and USA

Abstract: Web based e-banking is becoming an important aspect of worldwide commerce. The United Nations predicts 17% of purchases by firms and individuals will be conducted online by 2006. The future of Web-based e-banking in developed areas appears bright but consumers and merchants in developing countries face in number of barriers to successful e-banking, including less reliable telecommunications infrastructure and power supplies, less access to online payment mechanisms, and relatively high costs for personal computers and Internet access. How should managers in charge of e-banking prepare for global implementation? What can they do reach consumers in developing countries? What factors influence the adoption of consumer-oriented e-banking in various countries? This research paper will give you the idea on the local conditions in India, the Hofstede's dimension of culture in India and USA, the Diffusion of Innovation theory and hence the hypotheses for the innovation characteristics of interest.


A model driven method for promoting reuse in SOA-solutions by managing variability

Abstract: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural paradigm that describes how organizations, people and systems provide and use services to achieve their goals and enhance productivity. Moreover, with the evolution of SOA, the focus in software development has shifted from applications to reusable services. However, the reuse in SOA is more seen as composition of fine-grained services rather than reuse of services implementation to build new services with additional functionalities. This can have some performance repercussions. Hence, in this paper, we propose a model driven method for managing Web service's variability based on MDA (Model Driven Architecture) as a way to promote reuse. In fact, through MDA, the method enables the automation of Web service's realization regardless of the supported platforms. Moreover, we present a WSDL extension meta-model called VarWSDL which enhances Web services by variability notions.


Bounded Model Checking of Temporal Formulas with Alloy

Abstract: Alloy is formal modeling language based on first-order relational logic, with no specific support for specifying reactive systems. We propose the usage of temporal logic to specify such systems, and show how bounded model checking can be performed with the Alloy Analyzer.


On Methods for the Formal Specification of Fault Tolerant Systems

Abstract: This paper introduces different views for understanding problems and faults with the goal of defining a method for the formal specification of systems. The idea of Layered Fault Tolerant Specification (LFTS) is proposed to make the method extensible to fault tolerant systems. The principle is layering the specification in different levels, the first one for the normal behavior and the others for the abnormal. The abnormal behavior is described in terms of an Error Injector (EI), which represents a model of the erroneous interference coming from the environment. This structure has been inspired by the notion of idealized fault tolerant component but the combination of LFTS and EI using Rely/Guarantee reasoning to describe their interaction can be considered as a novel contribution. The progress toward this method and this way to organize fault tolerant specifications has been made experimenting on case studies and an example is presented.


A GPS Pseudorange Based Cooperative Vehicular Distance Measurement Technique

Abstract: Accurate vehicular localization is important for various cooperative vehicle safety (CVS) applications such as collision avoidance, turning assistant, etc. In this paper, we propose a cooperative vehicular distance measurement technique based on the sharing of GPS pseudorange measurements and a weighted least squares method. The classic double difference pseudorange solution, which was originally designed for high-end survey level GPS systems, is adapted to low-end navigation level GPS receivers for its wide availability in ground vehicles. The Carrier to Noise Ratio (CNR) of raw pseudorange measurements are taken into account for noise mitigation. We present a Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) based mechanism to implement the exchange of pseudorange information among neighboring vehicles. As demonstrated in field tests, our proposed technique increases the accuracy of the distance measurement significantly compared with the distance obtained from the GPS fixes.


A Proof of the Pumping Lemma for Context-Free Languages Through Pushdown Automata

Abstract: The pumping lemma for context-free languages is a result about pushdown automata which is strikingly similar to the well-known pumping lemma for regular languages. However, though the lemma for regular languages is simply proved by using the pigeonhole principle on deterministic automata, the lemma for pushdown automata is proven through an equivalence with context-free languages and through the more powerful Ogden's lemma. We present here a proof of the pumping lemma for context-free languages which relies on pushdown automata instead of context-free grammars.


Design and Performance Analysis of hybrid adders for high speed arithmetic circuit

Abstract: Adder cells using Gate Diffusion Technique (GDI) & PTL-GDI technique are described in this paper. GDI technique allows reducing power consumption, propagation delay and low PDP (power delay product) whereas Pass Transistor Logic (PTL) reduces the count of transistors used to make different logic gates, by eliminating redundant transistors. Performance comparison with various Hybrid Adder is been presented. In this paper, we propose two new designs based on GDI & PTL techniques, which is found to be much more power efficient in comparison with existing design technique. Only 10 transistors are used to implement the SUM & CARRY function for both the designs. The SUM and CARRY cell are implemented in a cascaded way i.e. firstly the XOR cell is implemented and then using XOR as input SUM as well as CARRY cell is implemented. For Proposed GDI adder the SUM as well as CARRY cell is designed using GDI technique. On the other hand in Proposed PTL-GDI adder the SUM cell is constructed using PTL technique and the CARRY cell is designed using GDI technique. The advantages of both the designs are discussed. The significance of these designs is substantiated by the simulation results obtained from Cadence Virtuoso 180nm environment.


Positioning Accuracy Improvement via Distributed Location Estimate in Cooperative Vehicular Networks

Abstract: The development of cooperative vehicle safety (CVS) applications, such as collision warnings, turning assistants, and speed advisories, etc., has received great attention in the past few years. Accurate vehicular localization is essential to enable these applications. In this study, motivated by the proliferation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, and the increasing sophistication of wireless communication technologies in vehicular networks, we propose a distributed location estimate algorithm to improve the positioning accuracy via cooperative inter-vehicle distance measurement. In particular, we compute the inter-vehicle distance based on raw GPS pseudorange measurements, instead of depending on traditional radio-based ranging techniques, which usually either suffer from high hardware cost or have inadequate positioning accuracy. In addition, we improve the estimation of the vehicles' locations only based on the inaccurate GPS fixes, without using any anchors with known exact locations. The algorithm is decentralized, which enhances its practicability in highly dynamic vehicular networks. We have developed a simulation model to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, and the results demonstrate that the algorithm can significantly improve the positioning accuracy.


Enterprise Resource Planning - Real blessing or a Blessing in Disguise : An Exploration of the Contextual Factors in Public Sector

Abstract: Information systems have always been in a prime focus in organizations in both local (Pakistani) and global environment. Now the race of being the best through Information Systems has created its importance in public sector organizations to meet the global challenges. Public sector organizations have been facing problems in different segments of technology adoption especially in ERP projects. ERP adoption/implementation projects in public sector organizations still encounter major setbacks in terms of partly/completely success/failure. Cultural and other social barriers have been resistant in technology adoption in Pakistan. Now in the case of big ERP adoptions the contextual factors must be identified and addressed. The paper investigates the reasons of success or failure by addressing nature of complexities regarding different contextual factors. The study includes a sample of Pakistan s four public sector organizations. The sample of this four organizations includes two organizations (Type-A) i.e. Oil & Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) and National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) where ERP has been successfully implemented and other two (Type-B) i.e. Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Limited (PTCL), Higher Education Commission (HEC) where ERP implementation is in progress. The findings address the contextual factors i.e. cultural, environmental & political changes which have a variable impact on ERP systems adoption/implementation in addition to Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). Paper also briefly includes analysis of gaps between pre & post ERP implementation scenarios.


Fast Subsequent Color Iris Matching in large Database

Abstract: Databases play an important role in cyber world. It provides authenticity across the globe to the legitimate user. Biometrics is another important tool which recognizes humans using their physical statistics. Biometrics system requires speedy recognition that provides instant and accurate results. Biometric industry is looking for a new algorithm that interacts with biometric system reduces its recognition time while searching its record in large database. We propose a method which provides an appropriate solution for the aforementioned problem. Iris images database could be smart if iris image histogram ratio is used as its primary key. So, we have developed an algorithm that converts image histogram into eight byte code which will be used as primary key of a large database. Second part of this study explains how color iris image recognition can take place. For this a new and efficient algorithm is developed that segments the iris image and performs recognition in much less time. Our research proposes a fast and efficient algorithm that recognizes color irises from large database. We have already implemented this algorithm in Matlab. It provides real-time, high confidence recognition of a person's identity using mathematical analysis of the random patterns that are visible within the iris of an eye.


Performance Enhancement Factors of ERP Projects in a Telecom Public Sector Organization of Pakistan : An Exploratory Study

Abstract: Public sector organizations are treated in a different manner, as Information technology/information system has become necessity in a highly competitive environment. Importance of information systems is becoming more and more vital as the global technology adoption is in progress. ERP projects are considered as one of the most important and critical area of technology especially in public sector organizations where cost effectiveness and operational efficiency is prioritized on profits. A lot of research studies have been made on ERP projects but mostly on critical success factors (CSFs) and other managerial issues. This ongoing research mainly focuses upon the performance of ERP software in public sector organizations by thoroughly going through one of the largest most public sector organizations of Pakistan. Though ERP projects are handled by experienced consultants in addition to the support of vendor companies but because of its features and functional complexity and mismatch with the organizational processes, different managerial and technical issues arise during and after its implementation. This study investigates the performance of ERP system in a large public sector organization of Pakistan; five most critical technical factors, which can lead the whole project towards success or failure, have been dug out. This exploratory study i.e. extensive literature review and a case study includes survey and interviews which later on investigated through their application in a public sector organization in Pakistan.


Erasure Coding and Congestion Control for Interactive Real-Time Communication

Abstract: The use of real-time applications over the Internet is a challenging problem that the QoS epoch attempted to solve by proposing the DiffServ architecture. Today, the only existing service provided by the Internet is still best-effort. As a result, multimedia applications often perform on top of a transport layer that provides a variable sending rate. In an obvious manner, this variable sending rate is an issue for these applications with strong delay constraint. In a real-time context where retransmission can not be used to ensure reliability, video quality suffers from any packet losses. In this position paper, we discuss this problem and motivate why we want to bring out a certain class of erasure coding scheme inside multimedia congestion control protocols such as TFRC.


Distributed and Big Data Storage Management in Grid Computing

Abstract: Big data storage management is one of the most challenging issues for Grid computing environments, since large amount of data intensive applications frequently involve a high degree of data access locality. Grid applications typically deal with large amounts of data. In traditional approaches high-performance computing consists dedicated servers that are used to data storage and data replication. In this paper we present a new mechanism for distributed and big data storage and resource discovery services. Here we proposed an architecture named Dynamic and Scalable Storage Management (DSSM) architecture in grid environments. This allows in grid computing not only sharing the computational cycles, but also share the storage space. The storage can be transparently accessed from any grid machine, allowing easy data sharing among grid users and applications. The concept of virtual ids that, allows the creation of virtual spaces has been introduced and used. The DSSM divides all Grid Oriented Storage devices (nodes) into multiple geographically distributed domains and to facilitate the locality and simplify the intra-domain storage management. Grid service based storage resources are adopted to stack simple modular service piece by piece as demand grows. To this end, we propose four axes that define: DSSM architecture and algorithms description, Storage resources and resource discovery into Grid service, Evaluate purpose prototype system, dynamically, scalability, and bandwidth, and Discuss results. Algorithms at bottom and upper level for standardization dynamic and scalable storage management, along with higher bandwidths have been designed.


A Novel Process Mapping Strategy in Clustered Environments

Abstract: Nowadays the number of available processing cores within computing nodes which are used in recent clustered environments, are growing up with a rapid rate. Despite this trend, the number of available network interfaces in such computing nodes has almost been remained unchanged. This issue can lead to high usage of network interface in many workloads, especially in heavy-communicating workloads. As a result, network interface may raise as a performance bottleneck and can drastically degrade the performance. The goal of this paper is to introduce a new process mapping strategy in multi-core clusters aimed at reducing network interface contention and improving inter-node communication performance of parallel applications. Performance evaluation of the new mapping algorithm in synthetic and real workloads indicates that the new strategy can achieve 5% to 90% performance improvement in heavy communicating workloads, compared to other well-known methods.


A Web Interface for Matita

Abstract: This article describes a prototype implementation of a web interface for the Matita proof assistant. The interface supports all basic functionalities of the local Gtk interface, but takes advantage of the markup to enrich the document with several kinds of annotations or active elements. Annotations may have both a presentational/hypertextual nature, aimed to improve the quality of the proof script as a human readable document, or a more semantic nature, aimed to help the system in its processing of the script. The latter kind comprises information automatically generated by the proof assistant during previous compilations, and stored to improve the performance of re-executing expensive operations like disambiguation or automation.


Privacy Preserving MFI Based Similarity Measure For Hierarchical Document Clustering

Abstract: The increasing nature of World Wide Web has imposed great challenges for researchers in improving the search efficiency over the internet. Now days web document clustering has become an important research topic to provide most relevant documents in huge volumes of results returned in response to a simple query. In this paper, first we proposed a novel approach, to precisely define clusters based on maximal frequent item set (MFI) by Apriori algorithm. Afterwards utilizing the same maximal frequent item set (MFI) based similarity measure for Hierarchical document clustering. By considering maximal frequent item sets, the dimensionality of document set is decreased. Secondly, providing privacy preserving of open web documents is to avoiding duplicate documents. There by we can protect the privacy of individual copy rights of documents. This can be achieved using equivalence relation.


Effective Capacity of a Rayleigh Fading Channel in the Presence of Interference

Abstract: In recent years the concept of the effective capacity that relates the physical layer characteristics of a wireless channel to the data link layer has gained a lot of attraction in wireless networking research community. The effective capacity is based on G\"artner-Ellis' large deviation theorem and it is used to provide the statistical QoS provisioning in the wireless networks. Effective capacity also helps in the analysis of the resource allocation or scheduling policies in various wireless systems such as Relay networks, multi-user systems and multi-carrier systems subject to statistical QoS requirements. The effective capacity in noise limited wireless network has already been investigated in the recent works. Considering the interference limited wireless channels, in this paper we propose an analytical approach based on Laplace's method for the effective capacity of uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channel in the presence of uncorrelated Rayleigh fading interference. The accuracy of the analytical model for the effective capacity is validated by numerical simulations. We also provide the evaluation of tail probability of the delay and maximum sustainable rate. The validation results reveal that the proposed mathematical approach to the effective capacity can open the path for further researches in statistical QoS provisioning in interference limited wireless networks.


Logit Dynamics with Concurrent Updates for Local-Interaction Games

Abstract: Logit choice dynamics are a family of randomized best response dynamics based on the logit choice function [McFadden, 1974], used for modeling players with limited rationality and knowledge. In this paper we study the all-logit dynamics, where at each time step all players concurrently update their strategies according to the logit choice function. In the well studied one-logit dynamics [Blume, 1993] instead at each step only one randomly chosen player is allowed to update. We study properties of the all-logit dynamics in the context of local interaction games, a class of games that has been used to model complex social phenomena and physical systems. In a local interaction game, players are the vertices of a social graph whose edges are two-player potential games. Each player picks one strategy to be played for all the games she is involved in and the payoff of the player is the sum of the payoffs from each of the games. We prove that local interaction games characterize the class of games for which the all-logit dynamics is reversible. We then compare the stationary behavior of one-logit and all-logit dynamics. Specifically, we look at the expected value of a notable class of observables, that we call decomposable observables. We prove that the difference between the expected values of the observables at stationarity for the two dynamics depends only on the rationality level beta and on the distance of the social graph from a bipartite graph. In particular, if the social graph is bipartite then decomposable observables have the same expected value. Finally, we show that the mixing time of the all-logit dynamics has the same twofold behavior that has been highlighted in the case of the one-logit: for some games it exponentially depends on the rationality level beta, whereas for other games it can be upper bounded by a function independent from beta.


ROI Segmentation for Feature Extraction from Human Facial Images

Abstract: Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is the biggest goal of computer vision researchers. Features form the different facial images are able to provide a very deep knowledge about the activities performed by the different facial movements. In this paper we presented a technique for feature extraction from various regions of interest with the help of Skin color segmentation technique, Thresholding, knowledge based technique for face recognition.


BIGP- a new single protocol that can work as an igp (interior gateway protocol) as well as egp (exterior gateway protocol)

Abstract: EGP and IGP are the key components of the present internet infrastructure. Routers in a domain forward IP packet within and between domains. Each domain uses an intra-domain routing protocol known as Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) like IS-IS, OSPF, RIP etc to populate the routing tables of its routers. Routing information must also be exchanged between domains to ensure that a host in one domain can reach another host in remote domain. This role is performed by inter-domain routing protocol called Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP). Basically EGP used these days is Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Basic difference between the both is that BGP has smaller convergence as compared to the IGP's. And IGP's on the other hand have lesser scalability as compared to the BGP. So in this paper a proposal to create a new protocol is given which can act as an IGP when we consider inter-domain transfer of traffic and acts as BGP when we consider intra-domain transfer of traffic.


Real Root Isolation of Polynomial Equations Based on Hybrid Computation

Abstract: A new algorithm for real root isolation of polynomial equations based on hybrid computation is presented in this paper. Firstly, the approximate (complex) zeros of the given polynomial equations are obtained via homotopy continuation method. Then, for each approximate zero, an initial box relying on the Kantorovich theorem is constructed, which contains the corresponding accurate zero. Finally, the Krawczyk interval iteration with interval arithmetic is applied to the initial boxes so as to check whether or not the corresponding approximate zeros are real and to obtain the real root isolation boxes. Meanwhile, an empirical construction of initial box is provided for higher performance. Our experiments on many benchmarks show that the new hybrid method is more efficient, compared with the traditional symbolic approaches.


A Time and Space Efficient Algorithm for Contextual Linear Bandits

Abstract: We consider a multi-armed bandit problem where payoffs are a linear function of an observed stochastic contextual variable. In the scenario where there exists a gap between optimal and suboptimal rewards, several algorithms have been proposed that achieve $O(\log T)$ regret after $T$ time steps. However, proposed methods either have a computation complexity per iteration that scales linearly with $T$ or achieve regrets that grow linearly with the number of contexts $|\myset{X}|$. We propose an $\epsilon$-greedy type of algorithm that solves both limitations. In particular, when contexts are variables in $\reals^d$, we prove that our algorithm has a constant computation complexity per iteration of $O(poly(d))$ and can achieve a regret of $O(poly(d) \log T)$ even when $|\myset{X}| = \Omega (2^d) $. In addition, unlike previous algorithms, its space complexity scales like $O(Kd^2)$ and does not grow with $T$.


Dynamic Web Service Composition based on Network Modeling with Statistical Analysis and Backtracking

Abstract: A Web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Web services provide a standard means of interoperating between different software applications, running on a variety of platforms and/or frameworks. One of the main advantages of the usage of web services is its ability to integrate with the other services through web service composition and realize the required functionality. This paper presents a new paradigm of dynamic web services composition using network analysis paired with backtracking. An algorithm called "Zeittafel" for the selection and scheduling of services that are to be composed is also presented. With the proposed system better percentage of job success rate is obtained compared to the existing methodology.


Implementation of Private Cloud using Eucalyptus and an open source Operating System

Abstract: Cloud computing is bringing a revolution in computing environment replacing traditional software installations, licensing issues into complete on-demand services through internet. Microsoft office 365 a cloud based office application is available to clients online hence no need to buy and install the software. On Facebook a social networking website, users upload videos which uses cloud provider's storage service so less hardware cost for clients.Virtualization technology has great contribution in advent of cloud computing. Paper describes implementation of Private Cloud using open source operating system Ubuntu 10.04 server edition, installation of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud with Eucalyptus 1.6.2 and providing CentOS 5.3 operating system through cloud.


Non-Local Euclidean Medians

Abstract: In this letter, we note that the denoising performance of Non-Local Means (NLM) at large noise levels can be improved by replacing the mean by the Euclidean median. We call this new denoising algorithm the Non-Local Euclidean Medians (NLEM). At the heart of NLEM is the observation that the median is more robust to outliers than the mean. In particular, we provide a simple geometric insight that explains why NLEM performs better than NLM in the vicinity of edges, particularly at large noise levels. NLEM can be efficiently implemented using iteratively reweighted least squares, and its computational complexity is comparable to that of NLM. We provide some preliminary results to study the proposed algorithm and to compare it with NLM.


Supervised Texture Classification Using a Novel Compression-Based Similarity Measure

Abstract: Supervised pixel-based texture classification is usually performed in the feature space. We propose to perform this task in (dis)similarity space by introducing a new compression-based (dis)similarity measure. The proposed measure utilizes two dimensional MPEG-1 encoder, which takes into consideration the spatial locality and connectivity of pixels in the images. The proposed formulation has been carefully designed based on MPEG encoder functionality. To this end, by design, it solely uses P-frame coding to find the (dis)similarity among patches/images. We show that the proposed measure works properly on both small and large patch sizes. Experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly improves the performance of supervised pixel-based texture classification on Brodatz and outdoor images compared to other compression-based dissimilarity measures as well as approaches performed in feature space. It also improves the computation speed by about 40% compared to its rivals.


Super-Fast 3-Ruling Sets

Abstract: A $t$-ruling set of a graph $G = (V, E)$ is a vertex-subset $S \subseteq V$ that is independent and satisfies the property that every vertex $v \in V$ is at a distance of at most $t$ from some vertex in $S$. A \textit{maximal independent set (MIS)} is a 1-ruling set. The problem of computing an MIS on a network is a fundamental problem in distributed algorithms and the fastest algorithm for this problem is the $O(\log n)$-round algorithm due to Luby (SICOMP 1986) and Alon et al. (J. Algorithms 1986) from more than 25 years ago. Since then the problem has resisted all efforts to yield to a sub-logarithmic algorithm. There has been recent progress on this problem, most importantly an $O(\log \Delta \cdot \sqrt{\log n})$-round algorithm on graphs with $n$ vertices and maximum degree $\Delta$, due to Barenboim et al. (Barenboim, Elkin, Pettie, and Schneider, April 2012, arxiv 1202.1983; to appear FOCS 2012). We approach the MIS problem from a different angle and ask if O(1)-ruling sets can be computed much more efficiently than an MIS? As an answer to this question, we show how to compute a 2-ruling set of an $n$-vertex graph in $O((\log n)^{3/4})$ rounds. We also show that the above result can be improved for special classes of graphs such as graphs with high girth, trees, and graphs of bounded arboricity. Our main technique involves randomized sparsification that rapidly reduces the graph degree while ensuring that every deleted vertex is close to some vertex that remains. This technique may have further applications in other contexts, e.g., in designing sub-logarithmic distributed approximation algorithms. Our results raise intriguing questions about how quickly an MIS (or 1-ruling sets) can be computed, given that 2-ruling sets can be computed in sub-logarithmic rounds.


Real-Time Peer-to-Peer Streaming Over Multiple Random Hamiltonian Cycles

Abstract: We are motivated by the problem of designing a simple distributed algorithm for Peer-to-Peer streaming applications that can achieve high throughput and low delay, while allowing the neighbor set maintained by each peer to be small. While previous works have mostly used tree structures, our algorithm constructs multiple random directed Hamiltonian cycles and disseminates content over the superposed graph of the cycles. We show that it is possible to achieve the maximum streaming capacity even when each peer only transmits to and receives from Theta(1) neighbors. Further, we show that the proposed algorithm achieves the streaming delay of Theta(log N) when the streaming rate is less than (1-1/K) of the maximum capacity for any fixed integer K>1, where N denotes the number of peers in the network. The key theoretical contribution is to characterize the distance between peers in a graph formed by the superposition of directed random Hamiltonian cycles, in which edges from one of the cycles may be dropped at random. We use Doob martingales and graph expansion ideas to characterize this distance as a function of N, with high probability.


Multiple Criteria Clustering of Mobile Agents in WSN

Abstract: In Wireless sensor networks data aggregation with hundreds and thousands of sensor nodes is very complex task. Recently, mobile agents have been proposed for efficient data dissemination in sensor networks. In the traditional client/server based computing architecture, data is collected from multiple sources and forwarded to destination for further processing. It requires high bandwidth, whereas in the mobile agent is a task specific executable code traverses to the relevant source for gathering data. It reduces communication overhead, reduce cost, low bandwidth. Agents have capability to perform task for multiple applications. It will send only useful information to destination node. The problem is to group similar mobile agents into a number of clusters such that each cluster has similarity in responding to a group of nodes. By clustering intelligent mobile agents, it is possible to reduce the cost of time for each individual agent, decrease the demand imposed on network for a set of required tasks, decrease total number of visits. This paper, we present the problem of Multiple Criteria Clustering of Mobile Agents (MCCMA) where the decision is to cluster mobile agents such that a group of similar intelligent mobile agents will visit a group of similar sensor nodes.


Color Constancy based on Image Similarity via Bilayer Sparse Coding

Abstract: Computational color constancy is a very important topic in computer vision and has attracted many researchers' attention. Recently, lots of research has shown the effects of high level visual content information for illumination estimation. However, all of these existing methods are essentially combinational strategies in which image's content analysis is only used to guide the combination or selection from a variety of individual illumination estimation methods. In this paper, we propose a novel bilayer sparse coding model for illumination estimation that considers image similarity in terms of both low level color distribution and high level image scene content simultaneously. For the purpose, the image's scene content information is integrated with its color distribution to obtain optimal illumination estimation model. The experimental results on two real-world image sets show that our algorithm is superior to other prevailing illumination estimation methods, even better than combinational methods.


Reference Point Methods and Approximation in Multicriteria Optimization

Abstract: Operations research applications often pose multicriteria problems. Mathematical research on multicriteria problems predominantly revolves around the set of Pareto optimal solutions, while in practice, methods that output a single solution are more widespread. In real-world multicriteria optimization, reference point methods are widely used and successful examples of such methods. A reference point solution is the solution closest to a given reference point in the objective space. We study the approximation of reference point solutions. In particular, we establish that approximating reference point solutions is polynomially equivalent to approximating the Pareto set. Complementing these results, we show for a number of general algorithmic techniques in single criteria optimization how they can be lifted to reference point optimization. In particular, we lift the link between dynamic programming and FPTAS, as well as oblivious LP-rounding techniques. The latter applies, e.g., to Set Cover and several machine scheduling problems.


Embedding the dual complex of hyper-rectangular partitions

Abstract: A rectangular partition is the partition of an (axis-aligned) rectangle into interior-disjoint rectangles. We ask whether a rectangular partition permits a "nice" drawing of its dual, that is, a straight-line embedding of it such that each dual vertex is placed into the rectangle that it represents. We show that deciding whether such a drawing exists is NP-complete. Moreover, we consider the drawing where a vertex is placed in the center of the represented rectangle and consider sufficient conditions for this drawing to be nice. This question is studied both in the plane and for the higher-dimensional generalization of rectangular partitions.


Formal Verification of Monad Transformers

Abstract: We present techniques for reasoning about constructor classes that (like the monad class) fix polymorphic operations and assert polymorphic axioms. We do not require a logic with first-class type constructors, first-class polymorphism, or type quantification; instead, we rely on a domain-theoretic model of the type system in a universal domain to provide these features. These ideas are implemented in the Tycon library for the Isabelle theorem prover, which builds on the HOLCF library of domain theory. The Tycon library provides various axiomatic type constructor classes, including functors and monads. It also provides automation for instantiating those classes, and for defining further subclasses. We use the Tycon library to formalize three Haskell monad transformers: the error transformer, the writer transformer, and the resumption transformer. The error and writer transformers do not universally preserve the monad laws; however, we establish datatype invariants for each, showing that they are valid monads when viewed as abstract datatypes.


Quality Assurance And Integration Testing Aspects In Web Based Applications

Abstract: Integration testing is one the important phase in software testing life cycle (STLC). With the fast growth of internet and web services, web-based applications are also growing rapidly and their importance and complexity is also increasing. Heterogeneous and diverse nature of distributed components, applications, along with their multi-platform support and cooperativeness make these applications more complex and swiftly increasing in their size. Quality assurance of these applications is becoming more crucial and important. Testing is one of the key processes to achieve and ensure the quality of these software or Webbased products. There are many testing challenges involved in Web-based applications. But most importantly integration is the most critical testing associated with Web-based applications. There are number of challenging factors involved in integration testing efforts. These factors have almost 70 percent to 80 percent impact on overall quality of Web-based applications. In software industry different kind of testing approaches are used by practitioners to solve the issues associated with integration which are due to ever increasing complexities of Web-based applications.


Isomorphisms of types in the presence of higher-order references (extended version)

Abstract: We investigate the problem of type isomorphisms in the presence of higher-order references. We first introduce a finitary programming language with sum types and higher-order references, for which we build a fully abstract games model following the work of Abramsky, Honda and McCusker. Solving an open problem by Laurent, we show that two finitely branching arenas are isomorphic if and only if they are geometrically the same, up to renaming of moves (Laurent's forest isomorphism). We deduce from this an equational theory characterizing isomorphisms of types in our language. We show however that Laurent's conjecture does not hold on infinitely branching arenas, yielding new non-trivial type isomorphisms in a variant of our language with natural numbers.


Canonized Rewriting and Ground AC Completion Modulo Shostak Theories : Design and Implementation

Abstract: AC-completion efficiently handles equality modulo associative and commutative function symbols. When the input is ground, the procedure terminates and provides a decision algorithm for the word problem. In this paper, we present a modular extension of ground AC-completion for deciding formulas in the combination of the theory of equality with user-defined AC symbols, uninterpreted symbols and an arbitrary signature disjoint Shostak theory X. Our algorithm, called AC(X), is obtained by augmenting in a modular way ground AC-completion with the canonizer and solver present for the theory X. This integration rests on canonized rewriting, a new relation reminiscent to normalized rewriting, which integrates canonizers in rewriting steps. AC(X) is proved sound, complete and terminating, and is implemented to extend the core of the Alt-Ergo theorem prover.


Probabilistic Event Calculus for Event Recognition

Abstract: Symbolic event recognition systems have been successfully applied to a variety of application domains, extracting useful information in the form of events, allowing experts or other systems to monitor and respond when significant events are recognised. In a typical event recognition application, however, these systems often have to deal with a significant amount of uncertainty. In this paper, we address the issue of uncertainty in logic-based event recognition by extending the Event Calculus with probabilistic reasoning. Markov Logic Networks are a natural candidate for our logic-based formalism. However, the temporal semantics of the Event Calculus introduce a number of challenges for the proposed model. We show how and under what assumptions we can overcome these problems. Additionally, we study how probabilistic modelling changes the behaviour of the formalism, affecting its key property, the inertia of fluents. Furthermore, we demonstrate the advantages of the probabilistic Event Calculus through examples and experiments in the domain of activity recognition, using a publicly available dataset for video surveillance.


Design for Distributed Moroccan Hospital Pharmacy Information Environment with Service Oriented Architecture

Abstract: In the last five years, Moroccan e-health system has focused on improving the quality of patient care services by making use of advanced Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) solutions. In actual fact, achieving runtime and efficient information sharing, through large-scale distributed environments such as e-health system, is not a trivial task. It seems to present many issues due to the heterogeneity and complex nature of data resources. This concerns, in particular, Moroccan Hospital Pharmacy Information System (HPIS) which needs to interact with several disparate medical information systems. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) offers solution that is both flexible and practical to effectively address the problem of interoperability of e-health systems. In this paper, we discuss the limits and challenges of the current Moroccan information system intended for hospital pharmacy. We therefore propose a global Web services-based e-health architecture for integrating different heterogeneous blocks and various data resources of this system. We also present a solution to secure Web services communication using WS-SecurityPolicy.


Design and Performance Analysis Of Ultra Low Power 6T SRAM Using Adiabatic Technique

Abstract: Power consumption has become a critical concern in both high performance and portable applications. Methods for power reduction based on the application of adiabatic techniques to CMOS circuits have recently come under renewed investigation. In thermodynamics, an adiabatic energy transfer through a dissipative medium is one in which losses are made arbitrarily small by causing the transfer to occur sufficiently slowly. In this work adiabatic technique is used for reduction of average power dissipation. Simulation of 6T SRAM cell has been done for 180nm CMOS technology. It shows that average power dissipation is reduced up to 75% using adiabatic technique and also shows the effect on static noise margin.


Combining Brain-Computer Interfaces and Haptics: Detecting Mental Workload to Adapt Haptic Assistance

Abstract: In this paper we introduce the combined use of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) and Haptic interfaces. We propose to adapt haptic guides based on the mental activity measured by a BCI system. This novel approach is illustrated within a proof-of-concept system: haptic guides are toggled during a path-following task thanks to a mental workload index provided by a BCI. The aim of this system is to provide haptic assistance only when the user's brain activity reflects a high mental workload. A user study conducted with 8 participants shows that our proof-of-concept is operational and exploitable. Results show that activation of haptic guides occurs in the most difficult part of the path-following task. Moreover it allows to increase task performance by 53% by activating assistance only 59% of the time. Taken together, these results suggest that BCI could be used to determine when the user needs assistance during haptic interaction and to enable haptic guides accordingly.


Roadmap for Establishing Interoperability of Heterogeneous Cellular Network Technologies -1-

Abstract: The lack of interoperability between cellular access networks has long been a challenging burden, which telecommunication engineers and researchers are trying to overcome. In second generation networks for example, this problem lies in the lack of standardization. 3rd G networks is limited to a few operating modes using different radio transmission technologies that are not interoperable. 4G technology even being successful in its various trials cannot guarantee interoperability. The undertaken approach to overcome this issue within heterogeneous networks begins by establishing a holistic understanding of cellular communication, and proposing an Ontological approach that expresses the domain's concepts, classes, and properties in a formal and unambiguous way. It begins by analyzing the structure of three different cellular technologies, and producing feature models. Lte-Advanced cellular network is the target of this ongoing analysis. The final objective sought is to build Ontology capable of providing a common view of cellular network technologies' domain.


Learning the Pseudoinverse Solution to Network Weights

Abstract: The last decade has seen the parallel emergence in computational neuroscience and machine learning of neural network structures which spread the input signal randomly to a higher dimensional space; perform a nonlinear activation; and then solve for a regression or classification output by means of a mathematical pseudoinverse operation. In the field of neuromorphic engineering, these methods are increasingly popular for synthesizing biologically plausible neural networks, but the "learning method" - computation of the pseudoinverse by singular value decomposition - is problematic both for biological plausibility and because it is not an online or an adaptive method. We present an online or incremental method of computing the pseudoinverse, which we argue is biologically plausible as a learning method, and which can be made adaptable for non-stationary data streams. The method is significantly more memory-efficient than the conventional computation of pseudoinverses by singular value decomposition.


Deconvolution of vibroacoustic images using a simulation model based on a three dimensional point spread function

Abstract: Vibro-acoustography (VA) is a medical imaging method based on the difference-frequency generation produced by the mixture of two focused ultrasound beams. VA has been applied to different problems in medical imaging such as imaging bones, microcalcifications in the breast, mass lesions, and calcified arteries. The obtained images may have a resolution of 0.7--0.8 mm. Current VA systems based on confocal or linear array transducers generate C-scan images at the beam focal plane. Images on the axial plane are also possible, however the system resolution along depth worsens when compared to the lateral one. Typical axial resolution is about 1.0 cm. Furthermore, the elevation resolution of linear array systems is larger than that in lateral direction. This asymmetry degrades C-scan images obtained using linear arrays. The purpose of this article is to study VA image restoration based on a 3D point spread function (PSF) using classical deconvolution algorithms: Wiener, constrained least-squares (CLSs), and geometric mean filters. To assess the filters' performance, we use an image quality index that accounts for correlation loss, luminance and contrast distortion. Results for simulated VA images show that the quality index achieved with the Wiener filter is 0.9 (1 indicates perfect restoration). This filter yielded the best result in comparison with the other ones. Moreover, the deconvolution algorithms were applied to an experimental VA image of a phantom composed of three stretched 0.5 mm wires. Experiments were performed using transducer driven at two frequencies, 3075 kHz and 3125 kHz, which resulted in the difference-frequency of 50 kHz. Restorations with the theoretical line spread function (LSF) did not recover sufficient information to identify the wires in the images. However, using an estimated LSF the obtained results displayed enough information to spot the wires in the images.


Incremental Learning of 3D-DCT Compact Representations for Robust Visual Tracking

Abstract: Visual tracking usually requires an object appearance model that is robust to changing illumination, pose and other factors encountered in video. In this paper, we construct an appearance model using the 3D discrete cosine transform (3D-DCT). The 3D-DCT is based on a set of cosine basis functions, which are determined by the dimensions of the 3D signal and thus independent of the input video data. In addition, the 3D-DCT can generate a compact energy spectrum whose high-frequency coefficients are sparse if the appearance samples are similar. By discarding these high-frequency coefficients, we simultaneously obtain a compact 3D-DCT based object representation and a signal reconstruction-based similarity measure (reflecting the information loss from signal reconstruction). To efficiently update the object representation, we propose an incremental 3D-DCT algorithm, which decomposes the 3D-DCT into successive operations of the 2D discrete cosine transform (2D-DCT) and 1D discrete cosine transform (1D-DCT) on the input video data.


Dimension Reduction by Mutual Information Feature Extraction

Abstract: During the past decades, to study high-dimensional data in a large variety of problems, researchers have proposed many Feature Extraction algorithms. One of the most effective approaches for optimal feature extraction is based on mutual information (MI). However it is not always easy to get an accurate estimation for high dimensional MI. In terms of MI, the optimal feature extraction is creating a feature set from the data which jointly have the largest dependency on the target class and minimum redundancy. In this paper, a component-by-component gradient ascent method is proposed for feature extraction which is based on one-dimensional MI estimates. We will refer to this algorithm as Mutual Information Feature Extraction (MIFX). The performance of this proposed method is evaluated using UCI databases. The results indicate that MIFX provides a robust performance over different data sets which are almost always the best or comparable to the best ones.


Visualising Virtual Communities: From Erd\H{o}s to the Arts

Abstract: Monitoring communities has become increasingly easy on the web as the number of visualisation tools and amount of data available about communities increase. It is possible to visualise connections on social and professional networks such as Facebook in the form of mathematical graphs. It is also possible to visualise connections between authors of papers. In particular, Microsoft Academic Search now has a large corpus of information on publications, together with author and citation information, that can be visualised in a number of ways. In mathematical circles, the concept of the "Erd\H{o}s number" has been introduced, in honour of the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erd\H{o}s, measuring the "collaborative distance" of a person away from Erd\H{o}s through links by co-author. Similar metrics have been proposed in other fields, including acting. The possibility of exploring and visualising such links in arts fields is proposed in this paper.


Usability, Design and Content Issues of Mobile Apps for Cultural Heritage Promotion: The Malta Culture Guide Experience

Abstract: The paper discusses the experience of producing and distributing an iPhone app for promotion of the Maltese Cultural Heritage on behalf of the Malta Tourism Authority. Thanks to its position at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Malta has been a crossroads of civilisations whose traces are still visible today, leaving a particularly rich and varied cultural heritage, from megalithic temples to baroque palaces and Caravaggio masterpieces. Conveying all these different aspects within a single application, using textual, visual, and audio means, has raised many different issues about the planning and production of cultural content for mobile usage, together with usability aspects regarding design and distribution of a mobile app. In this paper, we outline all of these aspects, focusing on the design and planning strategies for a long-term user commitment and how to evaluate results for cultural mobile applications. We include experience of all the steps of developing a mobile app, information that is of possible benefit to other app developers in the cultural sector.


Design and Development of Low Cost PC Based Real Time Temperature and Humidity Monitoring System

Abstract: This paper presents the design and development of a low cost Data Acquisition System (DAS) using PIC12F675 microcontroller for real time temperature and humidity monitoring. The designed DAS has 4 analog input channels having 10-bit resolution and was interfaced through the serial port of the PC. A precision integrated temperature sensor and an instrumentation-quality RH (Relative Humidity) sensor were used for sensing the temperature and humidity respectively. The firmware was written in Basic and compiled using Oshonsoft PIC IDE and downloaded to the microcontroller by using PICkit2 programmer. An application program was also developed using Visual Basic 6, which allows displaying the waveform of the signal(s) in real time and the data can be saved into the hard disk of the computer for future use and analysis. It can also be interfaced to the USB port of the PC or laptop using USB to serial adapter BAFO BF-810. Thus, the designed low cost device works with the legacy hardware as well as the modern USB interface.


An Approach to Model Interest for Planetary Rover through Dezert-Smarandache Theory

Abstract: In this paper, we propose an approach for assigning an interest level to the goals of a planetary rover. Assigning an interest level to goals, allows the rover autonomously to transform and reallocate the goals. The interest level is defined by data-fusing payload and navigation information. The fusion yields an "interest map", that quantifies the level of interest of each area around the rover. In this way the planner can choose the most interesting scientific objectives to be analyzed, with limited human intervention, and reallocates its goals autonomously. The Dezert-Smarandache Theory of Plausible and Paradoxical Reasoning was used for information fusion: this theory allows dealing with vague and conflicting data. In particular, it allows us directly to model the behavior of the scientists that have to evaluate the relevance of a particular set of goals. The paper shows an application of the proposed approach to the generation of a reliable interest map.


Isabelle/jEdit --- a Prover IDE within the PIDE framework

Abstract: PIDE is a general framework for document-oriented prover interaction and integration, based on a bilingual architecture that combines ML and Scala. The overall aim is to connect LCF-style provers like Isabelle (or Coq or HOL) with sophisticated front-end technology on the JVM platform, overcoming command-line interaction at last. The present system description specifically covers Isabelle/jEdit as part of the official release of Isabelle2011-1 (October 2011). It is a concrete Prover IDE implementation based on Isabelle/PIDE library modules (implemented in Scala) on the one hand, and the well-known text editor framework of jEdit (implemented in Java) on the other hand. The interaction model of our Prover IDE follows the idea of continuous proof checking: the theory source text is annotated by semantic information by the prover as it becomes available incrementally. This works via an asynchronous protocol that neither blocks the editor nor stops the prover from exploiting parallelism on multi-core hardware. The jEdit GUI provides standard metaphors for augmented text editing (highlighting, squiggles, tooltips, hyperlinks etc.) that we have instrumented to render the formal content from the prover context. Further refinement of the jEdit display engine via suitable plugins and fonts approximates mathematical rendering in the text buffer, including symbols from the TeX repertoire, and sub-/superscripts. Isabelle/jEdit is presented here both as a usable interface for current Isabelle, and as a reference application to inspire further projects based on PIDE.


Proceedings Fourth Workshop on Foundations of Interface Technologies

Abstract: This volume contains the proceedings of the 4th workshop on Foundations of Interface Technologies (FIT 2012) which was collocated with ETAPS 2012 in Tallinn, Estonia, and took place on March 25, 2012. The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers who are interested in the formal underpinnings of interface technologies.


A Simple and Correct Even-Odd Algorithm for the Point-in-Polygon Problem for Complex Polygons

Abstract: Determining if a point is in a polygon or not is used by a lot of applications in computer graphics, computer games and geoinformatics. Implementing this check is error-prone since there are many special cases to be considered. This holds true in particular for complex polygons whose edges intersect each other creating holes. In this paper we present a simple even-odd algorithm to solve this problem for complex polygons in linear time and prove its correctness for all possible points and polygons. We furthermore provide examples and implementation notes for this algorithm.


Performance Analysis of a Multiuser Multi-Packet Transmission System for WLANs in Non-Saturation Conditions

Abstract: Multiuser Multi-Packet Transmission (MPT) from an Access Point (AP) equipped with multiple antennas to multiple single-antenna nodes can be achieved by exploiting the spatial dimension of the channel. In this paper we present a queueing model to analytically study such systems from the link-layer perspective, in presence of random packet arrivals, heterogeneous channel conditions and packet errors. The analysis relies on a blind estimation of the number of different destinations among the packets waiting in the queue, which allows for building a simple, but general model for MPT systems with per-node First-In First-Out (FIFO) packet scheduling. Simulation results validate the accuracy of the analytical model and provide further insights on the cross-relations between the channel state, the number of antennas, and the number of active users, as well as how they affect the system performance. The simplicity and accuracy of the model makes it suitable for the evaluation of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for Ad-Hoc or Wireless Local Area Networks supporting multiuser MPT in non-saturation conditions, where the queueing dynamics play an important role on the achieved performance, and simple user selection algorithms are required.


Performance Analysis of CSMA/CA Protocols with Multi-packet Transmission

Abstract: Wireless objects equipped with multiple antennas are able to simultaneously transmit multiple packets by exploiting the channel's spatial dimensions. In this paper, we study the benefits of such Multiple Packet Transmission (MPT) approach, when it is used in combination with a Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol for fully interconnected networks, addressing the interactions between the two mechanisms and showing the performance gains that can be achieved. To this end, a very simple Media Access Control (MAC) protocol that captures the fundamental properties and tradeoffs of a CSMA/CA channel access protocol supporting MPT is introduced. Using this protocol as a reference, a new analytical model is presented for the case of non-saturated traffic sources with finite buffer space. Simulation results show that the analytical model is able to accurately characterize the steady-state behaviour of the reference protocol for different number of antennas and different traffic loads, providing a useful tool for understanding the performance gains achieved by MAC protocols supporting MPT.


HMRF-EM-image: Implementation of the Hidden Markov Random Field Model and its Expectation-Maximization Algorithm

Abstract: In this project, we study the hidden Markov random field (HMRF) model and its expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. We implement a MATLAB toolbox named HMRF-EM-image for 2D image segmentation using the HMRF-EM framework. This toolbox also implements edge-prior-preserving image segmentation, and can be easily reconfigured for other problems, such as 3D image segmentation.


A unified approach to truthful scheduling on related machines

Abstract: We present a unified framework for designing deterministic monotone polynomial time approximation schemes (PTAS's) for a wide class of scheduling problems on uniformly related machines. This class includes (among others) minimizing the makespan, maximizing the minimum load, and minimizing the l_p norm of the machine loads vector. Previously, this kind of result was only known for the makespan objective. Monotone algorithms have the property that an increase in the speed of a machine cannot decrease the amount of work assigned to it. The key idea of our novel method is to show that for goal functions that are sufficiently well-behaved functions of the machine loads, it is possible to compute in polynomial time a highly structured nearly optimal schedule. Monotone approximation schemes have an important role in the emerging area of algorithmic mechanism design. In the game-theoretical setting of these scheduling problems there is a social goal, which is one of the objective functions that we study. Each machine is controlled by a selfish single-parameter agent, where its private information is its cost of processing a unit sized job, which is also the inverse of the speed of its machine. Each agent wishes to maximize its own profit, defined as the payment it receives from the mechanism minus its cost for processing all jobs assigned to it, and places a bid which corresponds to its private information. For each one of the problems, we show that we can calculate payments that guarantee truthfulness in an efficient manner. Thus, there exists a dominant strategy where agents report their true speeds, and we show the existence of a truthful mechanism which can be implemented in polynomial time, where the social goal is approximated within a factor of 1+epsilon for every epsilon>0.


Memory Efficient De Bruijn Graph Construction

Abstract: Massively parallel DNA sequencing technologies are revolutionizing genomics research. Billions of short reads generated at low costs can be assembled for reconstructing the whole genomes. Unfortunately, the large memory footprint of the existing de novo assembly algorithms makes it challenging to get the assembly done for higher eukaryotes like mammals. In this work, we investigate the memory issue of constructing de Bruijn graph, a core task in leading assembly algorithms, which often consumes several hundreds of gigabytes memory for large genomes. We propose a disk-based partition method, called Minimum Substring Partitioning (MSP), to complete the task using less than 10 gigabytes memory, without runtime slowdown. MSP breaks the short reads into multiple small disjoint partitions so that each partition can be loaded into memory, processed individually and later merged with others to form a de Bruijn graph. By leveraging the overlaps among the k-mers (substring of length k), MSP achieves astonishing compression ratio: The total size of partitions is reduced from $\Theta(kn)$ to $\Theta(n)$, where $n$ is the size of the short read database, and $k$ is the length of a $k$-mer. Experimental results show that our method can build de Bruijn graphs using a commodity computer for any large-volume sequence dataset.


Kernel Principal Component Analysis and its Applications in Face Recognition and Active Shape Models

Abstract: Principal component analysis (PCA) is a popular tool for linear dimensionality reduction and feature extraction. Kernel PCA is the nonlinear form of PCA, which better exploits the complicated spatial structure of high-dimensional features. In this paper, we first review the basic ideas of PCA and kernel PCA. Then we focus on the reconstruction of pre-images for kernel PCA. We also give an introduction on how PCA is used in active shape models (ASMs), and discuss how kernel PCA can be applied to improve traditional ASMs. Then we show some experimental results to compare the performance of kernel PCA and standard PCA for classification problems. We also implement the kernel PCA-based ASMs, and use it to construct human face models.


Classification of Approaches and Challenges of Frequent Subgraphs Mining in Biological Networks

Abstract: Understanding the structure and dynamics of biological networks is one of the important challenges in system biology. In addition, increasing amount of experimental data in biological networks necessitate the use of efficient methods to analyze these huge amounts of data. Such methods require to recognize common patterns to analyze data. As biological networks can be modeled by graphs, the problem of common patterns recognition is equivalent with frequent sub graph mining in a set of graphs. In this paper, at first the challenges of frequent subgrpahs mining in biological networks are introduced and the existing approaches are classified for each challenge. then the algorithms are analyzed on the basis of the type of the approach they apply for each of the challenges.


Diagnosing client faults using SVM-based intelligent inference from TCP packet traces

Abstract: We present the Intelligent Automated Client Diagnostic (IACD) system, which only relies on inference from Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) packet traces for rapid diagnosis of client device problems that cause network performance issues. Using soft-margin Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers, the system (i) distinguishes link problems from client problems, and (ii) identifies characteristics unique to client faults to report the root cause of the client device problem. Experimental evaluation demonstrated the capability of the IACD system to distinguish between faulty and healthy links and to diagnose the client faults with 98% accuracy in healthy links. The system can perform fault diagnosis independent of the client's specific TCP implementation, enabling diagnosis capability on diverse range of client computers.


Approximate Counting via Correlation Decay on Planar Graphs

Abstract: We show for a broad class of counting problems, correlation decay (strong spatial mixing) implies FPTAS on planar graphs. The framework for the counting problems considered by us is the Holant problems with arbitrary constant-size domain and symmetric constraint functions. We define a notion of regularity on the constraint functions, which covers a wide range of natural and important counting problems, including all multi-state spin systems, counting graph homomorphisms, counting weighted matchings or perfect matchings, the subgraphs world problem transformed from the ferromagnetic Ising model, and all counting CSPs and Holant problems with symmetric constraint functions of constant arity. The core of our algorithm is a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm which computes the exact values of the Holant problems with regular constraint functions on graphs of bounded treewidth. By utilizing the locally tree-like property of apex-minor-free families of graphs, the parameterized exact algorithm implies an FPTAS for the Holant problem on these graph families whenever the Gibbs measure defined by the problem exhibits strong spatial mixing. We further extend the recursive coupling technique to Holant problems and establish strong spatial mixing for the ferromagnetic Potts model and the subgraphs world problem. As consequences, we have new deterministic approximation algorithms on planar graphs and all apex-minor-free graphs for several counting problems.


Hierarchical Approach for Total Variation Digital Image Inpainting

Abstract: The art of recovering an image from damage in an undetectable form is known as inpainting. The manual work of inpainting is most often a very time consuming process. Due to digitalization of this technique, it is automatic and faster. In this paper, after the user selects the regions to be reconstructed, the algorithm automatically reconstruct the lost regions with the help of the information surrounding them. The existing methods perform very well when the region to be reconstructed is very small, but fails in proper reconstruction as the area increases. This paper describes a Hierarchical method by which the area to be inpainted is reduced in multiple levels and Total Variation(TV) method is used to inpaint in each level. This algorithm gives better performance when compared with other existing algorithms such as nearest neighbor interpolation, Inpainting through Blurring and Sobolev Inpainting.


Information Retrieval Model: A Social Network Extraction Perspective

Abstract: Future Information Retrieval, especially in connection with the internet, will incorporate the content descriptions that are generated with social network extraction technologies and preferably incorporate the probability theory for assigning the semantic. Although there is an increasing interest about social network extraction, but a little of them has a significant impact to infomation retrieval. Therefore this paper proposes a model of information retrieval from the social network extraction.


Directed Acyclic Subgraph Problem Parameterized above the Poljak-Turzik Bound

Abstract: An oriented graph is a directed graph without directed 2-cycles. Poljak and Turz\'{i}k (1986) proved that every connected oriented graph $G$ on $n$ vertices and $m$ arcs contains an acyclic subgraph with at least $\frac{m}{2}+\frac{n-1}{4}$ arcs. Raman and Saurabh (2006) gave another proof of this result and left it as an open question to establish the parameterized complexity of the following problem: does $G$ have an acyclic subgraph with least $\frac{m}{2}+\frac{n-1}{4}+k$ arcs, where $k$ is the parameter? We answer this question by showing that the problem can be solved by an algorithm of runtime $(12k)!n^{O(1)}$. Thus, the problem is fixed-parameter tractable. We also prove that there is a polynomial time algorithm that either establishes that the input instance of the problem is a Yes-instance or reduces the input instance to an equivalent one of size $O(k^2)$.


CEEC: Centralized Energy Efficient Clustering A New Routing Protocol for WSNs

Abstract: Energy efficient routing protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is one of the most challenging task for researcher. Hierarchical routing protocols have been proved more energy efficient routing protocols, as compare to flat and location based routing protocols. Heterogeneity of nodes with respect to their energy level, has also added extra lifespan for sensor network. In this paper, we propose a Centralized Energy Efficient Clustering (CEEC) routing protocol. We design the CEEC for three level heterogeneous network. CEEC can also be implemented in multi-level heterogeneity of networks. For initial practical, we design and analyze CEEC for three level advance heterogeneous network. In CEEC, whole network area is divided into three equal regions, in which nodes with same energy are spread in same region.


On Distributability of Petri Nets

Abstract: We formalise a general concept of distributed systems as sequential components interacting asynchronously. We define a corresponding class of Petri nets, called LSGA nets, and precisely characterise those system specifications which can be implemented as LSGA nets up to branching ST-bisimilarity with explicit divergence.


Learning to rank from medical imaging data

Abstract: Medical images can be used to predict a clinical score coding for the severity of a disease, a pain level or the complexity of a cognitive task. In all these cases, the predicted variable has a natural order. While a standard classifier discards this information, we would like to take it into account in order to improve prediction performance. A standard linear regression does model such information, however the linearity assumption is likely not be satisfied when predicting from pixel intensities in an image. In this paper we address these modeling challenges with a supervised learning procedure where the model aims to order or rank images. We use a linear model for its robustness in high dimension and its possible interpretation. We show on simulations and two fMRI datasets that this approach is able to predict the correct ordering on pairs of images, yielding higher prediction accuracy than standard regression and multiclass classification techniques.


Adaptive-Reliable Medium Access Control Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract: Extensive energy is consumed by Transceiver communication operation [1]. Existing research on MAC layer focuses to maximize battery-powered sensor node's life. Bottleneck of MAC layer protocol design for WBAN is to achieve high reliability and energy minimization. Majority of MAC protocols designed for WBANs are based upon TDMA approach. However, a new protocol needs to be defined to achieve high energy efficiency, fairness and avoid extra energy consumption due to synchronization.


Formalizing Frankl's Conjecture: FC-families

Abstract: The Frankl's conjecture, formulated in 1979. and still open, states that in every family of sets closed for unions there is an element contained in at least half of the sets. FC-families are families for which it is proved that every union-closed family containing them satisfies the Frankl's condition (e.g., in every union-closed family that contains a one-element set {a}, the element a is contained in at least half of the sets, so families of the form {a} are the simplest FC-families). FC-families play an important role in attacking the Frankl's conjecture, since they enable significant search space pruning. We present a formalization of the computer assisted approach for proving that a family is an FC-family. Proof-by-computation paradigm is used and the proof assistant Isabelle/HOL is used both to check mathematical content, and to perform (verified) combinatorial searches on which the proofs rely. FC-families known in the literature are confirmed, and a new FC-family is discovered.


Fusing image representations for classification using support vector machines

Abstract: In order to improve classification accuracy different image representations are usually combined. This can be done by using two different fusing schemes. In feature level fusion schemes, image representations are combined before the classification process. In classifier fusion, the decisions taken separately based on individual representations are fused to make a decision. In this paper the main methods derived for both strategies are evaluated. Our experimental results show that classifier fusion performs better. Specifically Bayes belief integration is the best performing strategy for image classification task.


Approximating the diameter of a graph

Abstract: In this paper we consider the fundamental problem of approximating the diameter $D$ of directed or undirected graphs. In a seminal paper, Aingworth, Chekuri, Indyk and Motwani [SIAM J. Comput. 1999] presented an algorithm that computes in $\Ot(m\sqrt n + n^2)$ time an estimate $\hat{D}$ for the diameter of an $n$-node, $m$-edge graph, such that $\lfloor 2/3 D \rfloor \leq \hat{D} \leq D$. In this paper we present an algorithm that produces the same estimate in $\Ot(m\sqrt n)$ expected running time. We then provide strong evidence that a better approximation may be hard to obtain if we insist on an $O(m^{2-\eps})$ running time. In particular, we show that if there is some constant $\eps>0$ so that there is an algorithm for undirected unweighted graphs that runs in $O(m^{2-\eps})$ time and produces an approximation $\hat{D}$ such that $ (2/3+\eps) D \leq \hat{D} \leq D$, then SAT for CNF formulas on $n$ variables can be solved in $O^{*}((2-\delta)^{n})$ time for some constant $\delta>0$, and the strong exponential time hypothesis of [Impagliazzo, Paturi, Zane JCSS'01] is false. Motivated by this somewhat negative result, we study whether it is possible to obtain a better approximation for specific cases. For unweighted directed or undirected graphs, we show that if $D=3h+z$, where $h\geq 0$ and $z\in {0,1,2}$, then it is possible to report in $\tilde{O}(\min{m^{2/3} n^{4/3},m^{2-1/(2h+3)}})$ time an estimate $\hat{D}$ such that $2h+z \leq \hat{D}\leq D$, thus giving a better than 3/2 approximation whenever $z\neq 0$. This is significant for constant values of $D$ which is exactly when the diameter approximation problem is hardest to solve. For the case of unweighted undirected graphs we present an $\tilde{O}(m^{2/3} n^{4/3})$ time algorithm that reports an estimate $\hat{D}$ such that $\lfloor 4D/5\rfloor \leq \hat{D}\leq D$.


Identify Web-page Content meaning using Knowledge based System for Dual Meaning Words

Abstract: Meaning of Web-page content plays a big role while produced a search result from a search engine. Most of the cases Web-page meaning stored in title or meta-tag area but those meanings do not always match with Web-page content. To overcome this situation we need to go through the Web-page content to identify the Web-page meaning. In such cases, where Webpage content holds dual meaning words that time it is really difficult to identify the meaning of the Web-page. In this paper, we are introducing a new design and development mechanism of identifying the Web-page content meaning which holds dual meaning words in their Web-page content.


Multi-dimensional password generation technique for accessing cloud services

Abstract: Cloud computing is drastically growing technology which provides an on-demand software, hardware, infrastructure and data storage as services. This technology is used worldwide to improve the business infrastructure and performance. However, to utilize these services by intended customer, it is necessary to have strong password authentication. At present, cloud password authentication can be done in several ways, such as, textual password, graphical and 3D password. In this paper, we are proposing the strong password generation technique by considering multiple input parameters of cloud paradigm referred as a multidimensional password. This paper presents the multidimensional password generation technique along with architecture, sequence diagrams, algorithms and typical user interfaces. At the end, we derive the probability of breaking our authentication system.


Matching Games with Additive Externalities

Abstract: Two-sided matchings are an important theoretical tool used to model markets and social interactions. In many real life problems the utility of an agent is influenced not only by their own choices, but also by the choices that other agents make. Such an influence is called an externality. Whereas fully expressive representations of externalities in matchings require exponential space, in this paper we propose a compact model of externalities, in which the influence of a match on each agent is computed additively. In this framework, we analyze many-to-many and one-to-one matchings under neutral, optimistic, and pessimistic behaviour, and provide both computational hardness results and polynomial-time algorithms for computing stable outcomes.


Formal Checking of Multiple Firewalls

Abstract: When enterprises deploy multiple firewalls, a packet may be examined by different sets of firewalls. It has been observed that the resulting complex firewall network is highly error prone and causes serious security holes. Hence, automated solutions are needed in order to check its correctness. In this paper, we propose a formal and automatic method for checking whether multiple firewalls react correctly with respect to a security policy given in a high level declarative language. When errors are detected, some useful feedback is returned in order to correct the firewall configurations. Furthermore, we propose a priority-based approach to ensure that no incoherencies exist within the security policy. We show that our method is both correct and complete. Finally, it has been implemented in a prototype of verifier based on a satisfiability solver modulo theories. Experiment conducted on relevant case studies demonstrates the efficiency of our approach.


Statistical Simulation Models for Cascaded Rayleigh Fading Channels

Abstract: In this paper, we present statistical simulators for cascaded Rayleigh fading channels with and without line-of-sight (LOS). These simulators contain two individual summations and are therefore easy to implement with lower complexity. Detailed statistical properties, including auto- and cross-correlations of the in-phase, quadrature components of the channels, envelopes, and squared envelopes, are derived. The time-average statistical properties and the corresponding variance are also investigated to justify that the proposed simulators achieve good convergence performance. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are performed for various statistical properties to validate the proposed simulators. Results show that the simulators provide fast convergence to all desired statistical properties, including the probability density function (PDF), various auto- and cross-correlations, level crossing rate (LCR), and average fading duration (AFD). While various tests and measurements in dense scattering urban and forest environments indicate that mobile-to-mobile channels may experience cascaded Rayleigh fading, the proposed statistical models can be applied to simulate the underlying channels.


On the Resilience of Routing Tables

Abstract: Many modern network designs incorporate "failover" paths into routers' forwarding tables. We initiate the theoretical study of the conditions under which such resilient routing tables can guarantee delivery of packets.


Making 802.11 DCF Optimal: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation

Abstract: This paper proposes a new protocol called Optimal DCF (O-DCF). Inspired by a sequence of analytic results, O-DCF modifies the rule of adapting CSMA parameters, such as backoff time and transmission length, based on a function of the demand-supply differential of link capacity captured by the local queue length. Unlike clean-slate design, O-DCF is fully compatible with 802.11 hardware, so that it can be easily implemented only with a simple device driver update. Through extensive simulations and real experiments with a 16-node wireless network testbed, we evaluate the performance of O-DCF and show that it achieves near-optimality, and outperforms other competitive ones, such as 802.11 DCF, optimal CSMA, and DiffQ in a wide range of scenarios.


Accuracy Measures for the Comparison of Classifiers

Abstract: The selection of the best classification algorithm for a given dataset is a very widespread problem. It is also a complex one, in the sense it requires to make several important methodological choices. Among them, in this work we focus on the measure used to assess the classification performance and rank the algorithms. We present the most popular measures and discuss their properties. Despite the numerous measures proposed over the years, many of them turn out to be equivalent in this specific case, to have interpretation problems, or to be unsuitable for our purpose. Consequently, classic overall success rate or marginal rates should be preferred for this specific task.


Light Spanner and Monotone Tree

Abstract: In approximation algorithm design, light spanners has applications in graph-metric problems such as metric TSP (the traveling salesman problem). We have developed an efficient algorithm for light spanners in bounded pathwidth graphs, based on an intermediate data structure called monotone tree. In this paper, we extended the results to include bounded catwidth graphs.


A Complete Axiom System for Propositional Interval Temporal Logic with Infinite Time

Abstract: Interval Temporal Logic (ITL) is an established temporal formalism for reasoning about time periods. For over 25 years, it has been applied in a number of ways and several ITL variants, axiom systems and tools have been investigated. We solve the longstanding open problem of finding a complete axiom system for basic quantifier-free propositional ITL (PITL) with infinite time for analysing nonterminating computational systems. Our completeness proof uses a reduction to completeness for PITL with finite time and conventional propositional linear-time temporal logic. Unlike completeness proofs of equally expressive logics with nonelementary computational complexity, our semantic approach does not use tableaux, subformula closures or explicit deductions involving encodings of omega automata and nontrivial techniques for complementing them. We believe that our result also provides evidence of the naturalness of interval-based reasoning.


Hybrid Grey Interval Relation Decision-Making in Artistic Talent Evaluation of Player

Abstract: This paper proposes a grey interval relation TOPSIS method for the decision making in which all of the attribute weights and attribute values are given by the interval grey numbers. In this paper, all of the subjective and objective weights are obtained by interval grey number and decision-making is based on four methods such as the relative approach degree of grey TOPSIS, the relative approach degree of grey incidence and the relative approach degree method using the maximum entropy estimation using 2-dimensional Euclidean distance. A multiple attribute decision-making example for evaluation of artistic talent of Kayagum (stringed Korean harp) players is given to show practicability of the proposed approach.


Qualitative Approximate Behavior Composition

Abstract: The behavior composition problem involves automatically building a controller that is able to realize a desired, but unavailable, target system (e.g., a house surveillance) by suitably coordinating a set of available components (e.g., video cameras, blinds, lamps, a vacuum cleaner, phones, etc.) Previous work has almost exclusively aimed at bringing about the desired component in its totality, which is highly unsatisfactory for unsolvable problems. In this work, we develop an approach for approximate behavior composition without departing from the classical setting, thus making the problem applicable to a much wider range of cases. Based on the notion of simulation, we characterize what a maximal controller and the "closest" implementable target module (optimal approximation) are, and show how these can be computed using ATL model checking technology for a special case. We show the uniqueness of optimal approximations, and prove their soundness and completeness with respect to their imported controllers.


On the Relationship between LTL Normal Forms and Buechi Automata

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the problem of translating LTL formulas to Buechi automata. We first translate the given LTL formula into a special disjuctive-normal form (DNF). The formula will be part of the state, and its DNF normal form specifies the atomic properties that should hold immediately (labels of the transitions) and the formula that should hold afterwards (the corresponding successor state). Surprisingly, if the given formula is Until-free or Release-free, the Buechi automaton can be obtained directly in this manner. For a general formula, the construction is slightly involved: an additional component will be needed for each formula that helps us to identify the set of accepting states. Notably, our construction is an on-the-fly construction, and the resulting Buechi automaton has in worst case 2^{2n+1} states where n denotes the number of subformulas. Moreover, it has a better bound 2^{n+1} when the formula is Until- (or Release-) free.


CBHRP: A Cluster Based Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract: A new two layer hierarchical routing protocol called Cluster Based Hierarchical Routing Protocol (CBHRP) is proposed in this paper. It is an extension of LEACH routing protocol. We introduce cluster head-set idea for cluster-based routing where several clusters are formed with the deployed sensors to collect information from target field. On rotation basis, a head-set member receives data from the neighbor nodes and transmits the aggregated results to the distance base station. This protocol reduces energy consumption quite significantly and prolongs the life time of sensor network. It is found that CBHRP performs better than other well accepted hierarchical routing protocols like LEACH in term of energy consumption and time requirement.


Automated Inference System for End-To-End Diagnosis of Network Performance Issues in Client-Terminal Devices

Abstract: Traditional network diagnosis methods of Client-Terminal Device (CTD) problems tend to be laborintensive, time consuming, and contribute to increased customer dissatisfaction. In this paper, we propose an automated solution for rapidly diagnose the root causes of network performance issues in CTD. Based on a new intelligent inference technique, we create the Intelligent Automated Client Diagnostic (IACD) system, which only relies on collection of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) packet traces. Using soft-margin Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers, the system (i) distinguishes link problems from client problems and (ii) identifies characteristics unique to the specific fault to report the root cause. The modular design of the system enables support for new access link and fault types. Experimental evaluation demonstrated the capability of the IACD system to distinguish between faulty and healthy links and to diagnose the client faults with 98% accuracy. The system can perform fault diagnosis independent of the user's specific TCP implementation, enabling diagnosis of diverse range of client devices


Top Down Approach: SIMULINK Mixed Hardware / Software Design

Abstract: System-level design methodologies have been introduced as a solution to handle the design complexity of mixed Hardware / Software systems. In this paper we describe a system-level design flow starting from Simulink specification, focusing on concurrent hardware and software design and verification at four different abstraction levels: System Simulink model, Transaction Simulink model, Macro architecture, and micro architecture. We used the MP3 CodeC application, to validate our approach and methodology.


Reasoning about Agent Programs using ATL-like Logics

Abstract: We propose a variant of Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL) grounded in the agents' operational know-how, as defined by their libraries of abstract plans. Inspired by ATLES, a variant itself of ATL, it is possible in our logic to explicitly refer to "rational" strategies for agents developed under the Belief-Desire-Intention agent programming paradigm. This allows us to express and verify properties of BDI systems using ATL-type logical frameworks.


Cluster Based Hierarchical Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract: The efficient use of energy source in a sensor node is most desirable criteria for prolong the life time of wireless sensor network. In this paper, we propose a two layer hierarchical routing protocol called Cluster Based Hierarchical Routing Protocol (CBHRP). We introduce a new concept called head-set, consists of one active cluster head and some other associate cluster heads within a cluster. The head-set members are responsible for control and management of the network. Results show that this protocol reduces energy consumption quite significantly and prolongs the life time of sensor network as compared to LEACH.


On lexicographic Groebner bases of radical ideals in dimension zero: interpolation and structure

Abstract: Due to the elimination property held by the lexicographic monomial order, the corresponding Groebner bases display strong structural properties from which meaningful informations can easily be extracted. We study these properties for radical ideals of (co)dimension zero. The proof presented relies on a combinatorial decomposition of the finite set of points whereby iterated Lagrange interpolation formulas permit to reconstruct a minimal Groebner basis. This is the first fully explicit interpolation formula for polynomials forming a lexicographic Groebner basis, from which the structure property can easily be read off. The inductive nature of the proof also yield as a byproduct a triangular decomposition algorithm from the Groebner basis.


Fast View Frustum Culling of Spatial Object by Analytical Bounding Bin

Abstract: It is a common sense to apply the VFC (view frustum culling) of spatial object to bounding cube of the object in 3D graphics. The accuracy of VFC can not be guaranteed even in cube rotated three-dimensionally. In this paper is proposed a method which is able to carry out more precise and fast VFC of any spatial object in the image domain of cube by an analytic mapping, and is demonstrated the effect of the method for terrain block on global surface.


Automatic Segmentation of Manipuri (Meiteilon) Word into Syllabic Units

Abstract: The work of automatic segmentation of a Manipuri language (or Meiteilon) word into syllabic units is demonstrated in this paper. This language is a scheduled Indian language of Tibeto-Burman origin, which is also a very highly agglutinative language. This language usages two script: a Bengali script and Meitei Mayek (Script). The present work is based on the second script. An algorithm is designed so as to identify mainly the syllables of Manipuri origin word. The result of the algorithm shows a Recall of 74.77, Precision of 91.21 and F-Score of 82.18 which is a reasonable score with the first attempt of such kind for this language.