ALBERT

Description:    Gegenwärtig wird das Cloud-Computing für die dienstbasierte Nutzung skalierbarer Computerressourcen, wie z. B. Speicher, Rechenleistung oder Anwendungen, häufig diskutiert. Der Anbieter ist verantwortlich für die zuverlässige Bereitstellung, während der Konsument die Dienste nach Bedarf nutzt und vergütet. Für die Entwicklung von Cloud-Anwendungen stellen die Anbieter oft eigene Entwicklungsumgebungen bereit, die dazu tendieren, den Kunden früh im Entwicklungsprozess an sich zu binden. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Entwicklungsmethoden bestehender Cloud-Angebote für geschäftsorientierte Webanwendungen und bewertet sie anhand der Anforderungen eines modernen Entwicklungsprozesses. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-10 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0531-1 Authors Vincent Tietz, Institut für Software- und Multimediatechnik, Professur Multimediatechnik, Technische Universität Dresden, Nöthnitzer Str. 46, 01062 Dresden, Deutschland Gregor Blichmann, Institut für Software- und Multimediatechnik, Professur Multimediatechnik, Technische Universität Dresden, Nöthnitzer Str. 46, 01062 Dresden, Deutschland Gerald Hübsch, Institut für Systemarchitektur, Professur Rechnernetze, Technische Universität Dresden, Nöthnitzer Str. 46, 01062 Dresden, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    Mainstream research in Description Logics (DLs) until recently concentrated on increasing the expressive power of the employed description language while keeping standard inference problems like subsumption and instance manageable in the sense that highly optimized reasoning procedures for them behave well in practice. One of the main successes of this line of research was the adoption of OWL DL, which is based on an expressive DL, as the standard ontology language for the Semantic Web. More recently, there has been a growing interest in more light-weight DLs , and in other kinds of inference problems , mainly triggered by need in applications with large-scale ontologies. In this paper, we first review the DL research leading to the very expressive DLs with practical inference procedures underlying OWL, and then sketch the recent development of light-weight DLs and novel inference procedures. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0534-y Authors Franz Baader, Theoretical Computer Science, TU Dresden, Dresden, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    Der Beitrag untersucht die notwendigen Komponenten, um in mobilen Webbrowsern den geografischen Aufenthaltsort eines Nutzers und seines Endgeräts zu ermitteln und in webbasierten Anwendungen verwenden zu können. Dabei werden der relevante Standard ,,W3C Geolocation API“, die verfügbaren Location Provider und Schnittstellen betrachtet. Außerdem wird die Verfügbarkeit dieser Komponenten in den meistverbreiteten mobilen Webbrowsern analysiert. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-10 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0530-2 Authors Stefan Christmann, Professur für Anwendungssysteme und E-Business, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 5, 37073 Göttingen, Deutschland Arne Becker, Professur für Anwendungssysteme und E-Business, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 5, 37073 Göttingen, Deutschland Svenja Hagenhoff, Institut für Medienwirtschaft, Fachhochschule St. Pölten, Matthias Corvinus-Straße 15, 3100 St. Pölten, Österreich Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    Soziale Tagging-Systeme gehören zu den in den vergangenen Jahren entstandenen Web2.0-Systemen. Sie ermöglichen es Anwendern, beliebige Informationen in das Internet einzustellen und untereinander auszutauschen. Je nach Anbieter verlinken Nutzer Videos, Fotos oder Webseiten und beschreiben die eingestellten Medien mit entsprechenden Schlagwörtern (Tags). Die damit einhergehende freiwillige Preisgabe oftmals persönlicher Informationen wirft Fragen im Bereich der informationellen Selbstbestimmung auf. Dieses Grundrecht gewährleistet dem Einzelnen, grundsätzlich selbst über die Preisgabe und Verwendung seiner persönlichen Daten zu bestimmen. Für viele Funktionalitäten, wie beispielsweise Empfehlungsdienste oder die Bereitstellung einer API, ist eine solche Kontrolle allerdings schwierig zu gestalten. Oftmals existieren keine Richtlinien, inwieweit Dienstanbieter und weitere Dritte diese öffentlichen Daten (und weitere Daten, die bei der Nutzung des Systems anfallen) nutzen dürfen. Dieser Artikel diskutiert anhand eines konkreten Systems typische, für den Datenschutz relevante Funktionalitäten und gibt Handlungsanweisungen für eine datenschutzkonforme technische Gestaltung. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 DOI 10.1007/s00287-010-0485-8 Authors Beate Krause, Fachgebiet Wissensverarbeitung, Universität Kassel, Kassel, Deutschland Hana Lerch, Projektgruppe Verfassungsverträgliche Technikgestaltung, Universität Kassel, Kassel, Deutschland Andreas Hotho, Fachgebiet Wissensverarbeitung, Universität Kassel, Kassel, Deutschland Alexander Roßnagel, Projektgruppe Verfassungsverträgliche Technikgestaltung, Universität Kassel, Kassel, Deutschland Gerd Stumme, Fachgebiet Wissensverarbeitung, Universität Kassel, Kassel, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    Die objektive Bewertung von Domainnamen gestaltet sich meist schwierig. Auf Basis einer Diskussion, welche auf einer ausführlichen Literaturrecherche beruht, werden die ausschlaggebenden Kriterien für das Bewertungsverfahren aus einer Vielzahl von Informationsquellen gefiltert und anschließend in drei verschiedenen Szenarien gewichtet. Um eine zuverlässige Analyse durchführen zu können, muss erst eine entsprechend umfangreiche Datenbasis aufgebaut werden, welche die zuvor extrahierten Kriterien widerspiegelt. Hierzu wurde ein modularer Prototyp entwickelt, der aus einem Datenspeicher, einer Warteschlange und aus Satelliten besteht. Es wurde eine Beispielerhebung für Domains aus dem Gesundheitswesen anhand von 42 Keywords durchgeführt. Der Prototyp bietet nun die Möglichkeit, bereits vorhandene Domainnamen vergleichend zu betrachten sowie Potenziale neuer Domainnamen zu erkennen. Weiterhin können eine Domain und ihr Rating im Detail betrachtet werden und so weitere nützliche Erkenntnisse gewonnen werden; hier sind beispielsweise zugehörige Subdomains, Nameserver und Google Ratings inkl. Historie verfügbar. Das vorgestellte Modell unterstützt nachweislich den Anwender bei der Wahl eines Domainnamens. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s00287-010-0484-9 Authors Ali Sunyaev, Juniorprofessur für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Information Systems Quality, Universität zu Köln, Albert-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Köln, Deutschland Alexander Kaletsch, Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Technische Universität München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching, Deutschland Helmut Krcmar, Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Technische Universität München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    Im Bereich der Computerspiele und virtuellen Welten wurden in den vergangenen Jahren komplexe Strategien und Werkzeuge entwickelt, welche in beispiellosem Umfang die Integration der Nutzer in den Kreativprozess und die Wertschöpfungskette ermöglichen. Durch Zusammenarbeit mit der Gemeinschaft der ambitionierten Amateure lassen sich die Kosten und Risiken innovativer Produktentwicklung reduzieren und zudem eine besonders starke Identifikation der Nutzer mit dem gemeinsam gestalteten, sich stets dynamisch verändernden Produkt erzeugen. Ausschlaggebend für die Ausschöpfung des innovativen Potenzials ist der Grad der Freiheit, den die Game-Editoren gewähren. Dieser variiert von Spiel zu Spiel erheblich und reicht von der rein oberflächlichen Dekoration der Spielwelt bis hin zur weitreichenden Umgestaltung der Spiele. Proportional zur gestalterischen Freiheit wächst allerdings die Gefahr von Zielkonflikten zwischen den verschiedenen Parteien. Die Art und Weise, wie die Entwickler diesen Zielkonflikten begegnen und die Produktion von User-generated Content koordinieren, ist für Bereiche der Produktentwicklung von Interesse, die weit über die Sphäre des Computerspiels hinausweisen. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s00287-010-0477-8 Authors Florian Alexander Schmidt, Bötzowstr. 57, 10407 Berlin, Deutschland Danny Pannicke, Schliemannstraße 41, 10437 Berlin, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    Dieser Beitrag erläutert Kostenmodelle für die Entwicklung von Softwareproduktlinien und vergleicht diese auf Basis wichtiger Kriterien. Die Ergebnisse helfen, die verschiedenen Aspekte der Wirtschaftlichkeitsbetrachtung von Softwareproduktlinien besser zu verstehen und für konkrete Projekte anwenden zu können. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s00287-010-0478-7 Authors Oliver Charles, Fakultät Informatik, Hochschule Furtwangen, Robert-Gerwig-Platz 1, 78120 Furtwangen, Deutschland Markus Schalk, Fakultät Informatik, Hochschule Furtwangen, Robert-Gerwig-Platz 1, 78120 Furtwangen, Deutschland Steffen Thiel, Fakultät Informatik, Hochschule Furtwangen, Robert-Gerwig-Platz 1, 78120 Furtwangen, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Offene Innovationen und die sie begünstigenden Systeme Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s00287-010-0479-6 Authors Albert Endres, Iselerstr. 1, 71067 Sindelfingen, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    Die heute angebotenen Prozess- und Workflowmanagementsysteme basieren weitgehend auf der Annahme, dass sich die zu unterstützenden Arbeitsabläufe – inklusive Ausnahmen – komplett vormodellieren lassen. Ein Abweichen vom vorgeplanten Ablauf zur Laufzeit ist, falls überhaupt vorgesehen, nur unter sehr starken Einschränkungen möglich. Für Anwendungsumgebungen, die eine rasche und flexible Reaktion auf nicht vorhergesehene Ausnahmesituationen und Notfälle erfordern, sind Systeme dieser Art praktisch jedoch nicht einsetzbar. Der Beitrag beschreibt, welche grundlegenden technologischen Eigenschaften ein Prozessmanagementsystem erfüllen muss, um den Flexibilitätsanforderungen der realen Welt gerecht zu werden. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s00287-010-0456-0 Authors Peter Dadam, Universität Ulm Institut für Datenbanken und Informationssysteme (DBIS) James-Franck-Ring 89069 Ulm Deutschland Manfred Reichert, Universität Ulm Institut für Datenbanken und Informationssysteme (DBIS) James-Franck-Ring 89069 Ulm Deutschland Stefanie Rinderle-Ma, Universität Wien Fakultät für Informatik, Workflow Systems and Technology Rathausstraße 19/9 1010 Wien Österreich Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    Dieses Papier zeigt, wie man komplexe, heterogene Systeme analysiert, wenn die einfachen Methoden (Debugger, Profiler) nicht ausreichen. Wir erläutern die Grundlagen, beschreiben ein Vorgehen mit den nötigen Tools und bringen einige Beispiele aus unserer Praxis. Wir behandeln ferner den präventiven Einsatz des Vorgehens im Entwicklungsprozess und definieren die Diagnostizierbarkeit (Diagnosibility) eines Softwaresystems als wichtige nichtfunktionale Eigenschaft. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0541-z Authors Johannes Weigend, QAware GmbH, Aschauer Str. 32, 81549 München, Deutschland Johannes Siedersleben, QAware GmbH, Aschauer Str. 32, 81549 München, Deutschland Josef Adersberger, QAware GmbH, Aschauer Str. 32, 81549 München, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Mehr Lebensqualität dank Informatik Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0521-3 Authors Manfred Broy, Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching, Deutschland Albert Endres, Iselerstr. 1, 71067 Sindelfingen, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Modellbasierte Entwicklung von Benutzungsschnittstellen Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0546-7 Authors Gerrit Meixner, Forschungsbereich Innovative Fabriksysteme (IFS), Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI), Trippstadter Strasse 122, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: A significant open issue in cloud computing is the real performance of the infrastructure. Few, if any, cloud providers or technologies offer quantitative performance guarantees. Regardless of the potential advantages of the cloud in comparison to enterprise-deployed applications, cloud infrastructures may ultimately fail if deployed applications cannot predictably meet behavioral requirements. In this paper, we present the results of comprehensive performance experiments we conducted on Windows Azure from October 2009 to February 2010. In general, we have observed good performance of the Windows Azure mechanisms, although the average 10 min VM startup time must be accounted for in application design. We also present performance and reliability observations and analysis from our deployment of a large-scale scientific application hosted on Azure, called ModisAzure, that show unusual and sporadic VM execution slowdown of over 4× in some cases and affected up to 16% of task executions at times. In addition to a detailed performance evaluation of Windows Azure, we provide recommendations for potential users of Windows Azure based on these early observations. Although the discussion and analysis is tailored to scientific applications, the results are broadly applicable to the range of existing and future applications running in Windows Azure. Content Type Journal Article Pages 121-132 DOI 10.3233/SPR-2011-0323 Authors Zach Hill Jie Li Ming Mao Arkaitz Ruiz-Alvarez Marty Humphrey Journal Scientific Programming Online ISSN 1875-919X Print ISSN 1058-9244 Journal Volume Volume 19 Journal Issue Volume 19, Number 2-3 / 2011

Description: In this paper, we present a programming and runtime framework that enables the autonomic management of complex application workflows on hybrid computing infrastructures. The framework is designed to address system and application heterogeneity and dynamics to ensure that application objectives and constraints are satisfied. The need for such autonomic system and application management is becoming critical as computing infrastructures become increasingly heterogeneous, integrating different classes of resources from high-end HPC systems to commodity clusters and clouds. For example, the framework presented in this paper can be used to provision the appropriate mix of resources based on application requirements and constraints. The framework also monitors the system/application state and adapts the application and/or resources to respond to changing requirements or environment. To demonstrate the operation of the framework and to evaluate its ability, we employ a workflow used to characterize an oil reservoir executing on a hybrid infrastructure composed of TeraGrid nodes and Amazon EC2 instances of various types. Specifically, we show how different applications objectives such as acceleration, conservation and resilience can be effectively achieved while satisfying deadline and budget constraints, using an appropriate mix of dynamically provisioned resources. Our evaluations also demonstrate that public clouds can be used to complement and reinforce the scheduling and usage of traditional high performance computing infrastructure. Content Type Journal Article Pages 75-89 DOI 10.3233/SPR-2011-0319 Authors Hyunjoo Kim, NSF Center for Autonomic Computing, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA Yaakoub el-Khamra, Texas Advanced Computing Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA Ivan Rodero, NSF Center for Autonomic Computing, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA Shantenu Jha, NSF Center for Autonomic Computing, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA Manish Parashar, NSF Center for Autonomic Computing, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA Journal Scientific Programming Online ISSN 1875-919X Print ISSN 1058-9244 Journal Volume Volume 19 Journal Issue Volume 19, Number 2-3 / 2011

Description:    In this paper, we have presented a new method for computing the best-fitted rectangle for closed regions using their boundary points. The vertices of the best-fitted rectangle are computed using a bisection method starting with the upper-estimated rectangle and the under-estimated rectangle. The vertices of the upper- and under-estimated rectangles are directly computed using closed-form solutions by solving for pairs of straight lines. Starting with these two rectangles, we solve for the best-fitted rectangle iteratively using a bisection method. The algorithm stops when the areas of the fitted rectangles remain unchanged during consecutive iterations. Extensive evaluation of our algorithm demonstrates its effectiveness. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s00138-011-0348-6 Authors D. Chaudhuri, IAC, DEAL, Raipur Road, Dehradun, 248001 Uttarakhand, India N. K. Kushwaha, IAC, DEAL, Raipur Road, Dehradun, 248001 Uttarakhand, India I. Sharif, IAC, DEAL, Raipur Road, Dehradun, 248001 Uttarakhand, India A. Samal, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA Journal Machine Vision and Applications Online ISSN 1432-1769 Print ISSN 0932-8092

Description:    We propose using machine learning techniques to analyze the shape of living cells in phase-contrast microscopy images. Large scale studies of cell shape are needed to understand the response of cells to their environment. Manual analysis of thousands of microscopy images, however, is time-consuming and error-prone and necessitates automated tools. We show how a combination of shape-based and appearance-based features of fibroblast cells can be used to classify their morphological state, using the Adaboost algorithm. The classification accuracy of our method approaches the agreement between two expert observers. We also address the important issue of clutter mitigation by developing a machine learning approach to distinguish between clutter and cells in time-lapse microscopy image sequences. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-15 DOI 10.1007/s00138-011-0345-9 Authors Diane H. Theriault, Department of Computer Science, Boston University, 111 Cummington St., Boston, MA 02215, USA Matthew L. Walker, Department of Biology, Boston University, 111 Cummington St., Boston, MA 02215, USA Joyce Y. Wong, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 111 Cummington St., Boston, MA 02215, USA Margrit Betke, Department of Computer Science, Boston University, 111 Cummington St., Boston, MA 02215, USA Journal Machine Vision and Applications Online ISSN 1432-1769 Print ISSN 0932-8092

Description: One of the main methods to reduce the production costs is waste recycling which is the most important challenge for the future. Cotton wastes collected from ginning process have desirable properties which could be used during spinning process. The purpose of this study was to develop predictive models of breaking strength and mass irregularity (CVm%) of cotton waste rotor-spun yarns containing cotton waste collected from ginning process by using the artificial neural network trained with backpropagation algorithm. Artificial neural network models have been developed based on rotor diameter, rotor speed, navel type, opener roller speed, ginning waste proportion and yarn linear density as input parameters. The parameters of artificial neural network model, namely, learning, and momentum rate, number of hidden layers and number of hidden processing elements (neurons) were optimized to get the best predictive models. The findings showed that the breaking strength and mass irregularity of rotor spun yarns could be predicted satisfactorily by artificial neural network. The maximum error in predicting the breaking strength and mass irregularity of testing data was 8.34% and 6.65%, respectively.

Description: The possibility of condensation of electron pairs has been established by Yang and Coleman. Recent observations of Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of alkali atoms, containing odd number of electrons, require some explanation, which also must be based on a correct permutational symmetry of a system, containing different types of fermions. In the framework of the same reduced density matrix formalism, it is proved that aggregates (atoms), containing even number 2f of fermions, can be condensed only in a mixed quantum state in contrast to elementary bosons because a natural occupation number λ is proved to be strictly smaller than their total sum. If fermions are absent in aggregates the reduction of sum of λ to one term becomes possible. The upper bound λ_{max} for a macroscopic ensemble of n aggregates, built of m different sorts of fermions is shown to be m^1[((2f-1)!!)^3 A/(2f)!!B]^{1/2} where A is the number of all possible aggregates in a system, B is the number of ways to form a given composition of an aggregate from 2f-fermions of m sorts; n is a macroscopic greatest common devisor of fermion numbers of all sorts. The bound λ_{max} increases as n^{f}, while sum of λ grows as n^{2f}. The evenness of the total number of fermions 2f in an aggregate is a necessary and sufficient condition for BEC formation. In particular, the number N of neutrons in neutral atom must be even because of the integrity of f=Z+N/2. The extreme type wave function is built, for which λ is arbitrary close to n^{f} that proves the sufficiency of this criterion. The occupation maximum is achieved when pairs of fermions (identical or different) are condensed independently. The possibility of condensation of bound aggregates only (atoms) is shown arising from nonoverlapping of wave functions of electron relative coordinates of different atoms. This conclusion is based on separation of the centers' of mass motion, which are proved behaving like a bosonic gas. The remaining product of identical atomic wave functions of relative coordinates, which determine main properties of condensate ingredients, is shown not requiring further antisymmetrization that makes condensation possible. Content Type Journal Article Pages 127-142 DOI 10.3233/JCM-2011-0370 Authors M. Mestechkin, 12773 Seabreeze Farms Dr. # 33, San Diego, CA 92130, USA. E-mail: mestechkinmm@gmail.com Journal Journal of Computational Methods in Science and Engineering Online ISSN 1875-8983 Print ISSN 1472-7978 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 3 / 2011

Description: The present work consists to elaborate a computing program able to generate a Delaunay unstructured triangular meshes around the complex configurations applied in aerodynamics, like airfoil of aircraft, multi-elements airfoils, nacelle, fuselage, etc... While basing on the Delaunay criterion, again called 'in-circle criterion' of the hollow circle that means no point is inside a circle circumscribes a triangle of the mesh. The initial mesh can be set up by joining the trailing-edge point of the airfoil to all the outer boundary points, the surface mesh points for the airfoil are then introduced one at a time, and the internal nodes of the O-mesh generated by using a sequence of conformal transformation of Von Karman Trefftz through the whole domain of the out-flow. Each time a new point is introduced, the triangles failing the 'Delaunay criterion' are located using the tree-search algorithm, forming a convex cavity named 'Delaunay cavity'. These triangles will be broken and will be replaced by new triangles while connecting this new point to each of the points at vertices of this cavity. This generated a new triangulation and the algorithm repeats this process with the next new point until succeed to a Delaunay mesh. A Laplacian filter is used to reposition the mesh points in order to have a regular mesh clever to be exploited by the numerical methods: finite volume method or finite element method. Content Type Journal Article Pages 143-158 DOI 10.3233/JCM-2011-0372 Authors Toufik Zebbiche, University SAAD Dahleb of Blida, BP 270, Blida 09000, Algeria Nasreddine Hamdi, University Amar TELIDJI of Laggouat, BP 37, Lagouat 03000, Algeria Journal Journal of Computational Methods in Science and Engineering Online ISSN 1875-8983 Print ISSN 1472-7978 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 3 / 2011

Description:    Humans decide how to carry out a spontaneous interaction with an object by using the whole geometric information obtained from their eyes. The aim of this paper is to present how our object representation model MWS (Adán in Comput Vis Image Underst 79:281–307, 2000 ) can help a robot manipulator to make a single and reliable interaction. The contribution of this paper is particularly focused on the grasp synthesis stage. The main idea is that the grasping system, through MWS, can use non-strict-local features of the contact points to find a consistent grasping configuration. The Direction Kernels (DK) concept, which is integrated into the MWS model, is used to define a set of candidate contact-points and interaction regions. The set of DK is a global feature which represents the principal normal vectors of the object and their relative weight in a three-connectivity mesh model. Our method calculates the optimal grasp points (which are ordered according to the quality function) for two-finger grippers, whilst maintaining the requirements of force closure and safety of the grasp. Our strategy has been extensively tested on real free-shape objects using a 6 DOF industrial robot. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s00138-011-0351-y Authors Antonio Adán, Dpto Ingeniería E.E.A.C, Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Spain Andrés S. Vázquez, Dpto Ingeniería E.E.A.C, Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Spain Pilar Merchán, Escuela de ingenierías Industriales, Universidad de Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain Ruben Heradio, Dpto de Ingeniería de Software y Sistemas Informáticos, UNED, Madrid, Spain Journal Machine Vision and Applications Online ISSN 1432-1769 Print ISSN 0932-8092

Description:    Plug-in frameworks support the development of component-based software that is extensible and can be customized to the needs of specific users. However, most plug-in frameworks target desktop applications and do not support web applications that can be extended by end users. In contrast to that, our plug-in framework Plux supports customizable and extensible web applications. Plux tailors a web application to the needs of every user, by assembling it from a user-specific component set. Furthermore, Plux supports end-user extensions, by integrating components provided by the end user into the web application. And finally, Plux supports distributed web applications, by integrating components on the client machines into the web application. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s00450-011-0182-0 Authors Markus Jahn, Christian Doppler Laboratory for Automated Software Engineering, Johannes Kepler University, 4040 Linz, Austria Reinhard Wolfinger, Christian Doppler Laboratory for Automated Software Engineering, Johannes Kepler University, 4040 Linz, Austria Markus Löberbauer, Christian Doppler Laboratory for Automated Software Engineering, Johannes Kepler University, 4040 Linz, Austria Hanspeter Mössenböck, Christian Doppler Laboratory for Automated Software Engineering, Johannes Kepler University, 4040 Linz, Austria Journal Computer Science - Research and Development Online ISSN 1865-2042 Print ISSN 1865-2034

Description:    Lookahead is a classic concept in the theory of online scheduling. An online algorithm without lookahead has to process tasks as soon as they arrive and without any knowledge about future tasks. With lookahead, this strict assumption is relaxed. There are different variations on the exact type of information provided to the algorithm under lookahead but arguably the most common one is to assume that, at every point in time, the algorithm has knowledge of the attributes of the next k tasks to arrive. This assumption is justified by the fact that, in practice, tasks may not always strictly arrive one-by-one and therefore, a certain number of tasks are always waiting in a queue to be processed. In recent years, so-called reordering buffers have been studied as a sensible generalization of lookahead. The basic idea is that, in problem settings where the order in which the tasks are processed is not important, we can permit a scheduling algorithm to choose to process any task waiting in the queue. This stands in contrast to lookahead, where the algorithm has knowledge of all the tasks in the queue but still has to process them in the order they arrived. We discuss some of the results for reordering buffers for different scheduling problems. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-7 DOI 10.1007/s00450-011-0180-2 Authors Matthias Englert, DIMAP and Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Journal Computer Science - Research and Development Online ISSN 1865-2042 Print ISSN 1865-2034

Description:    Engineering design of thermal quality clothing is a promising solution by applying multi-disciplinary knowledge to achieve the design and production of clothing with desirable thermal functions. In this paper, a special simulation-based and lifestyle-oriented CAD system is introduced to help the user in engineering design of thermal quality clothing. The engineering-oriented simulation models endowed with explicit data availability arose from the material parameters that are the key issue for engineering application. To offer an easy-to-use tool, this system is implemented with a lifestyle-oriented design procedure. It can facilitate the designers to quickly implement design and simulate on the wearing scenario, and evaluate and optimize their design. Due to the design of thermal quality clothing can be achieved without making physical prototypes, it is able to speed up the design cycle and reduce the design and development cost. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-17 DOI 10.1007/s00366-011-0224-z Authors Aihua Mao, School of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006 China Jie Luo, Institute of Textiles and Clothing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong, China Yi Li, Institute of Textiles and Clothing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong, China Ruomei Wang, School of Information Science and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510006 China Guiqing Li, School of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006 China Yueping Guo, Institute of Textiles and Clothing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong, China Journal Engineering with Computers Online ISSN 1435-5663 Print ISSN 0177-0667

Description:    Informatikstudenten können heute auf vielfältige Art neben dem Studium Geld verdienen. Eine attraktive Möglichkeit ist das selbstständige Entwickeln und Verkaufen von Smartphone-Apps. Ein Erfahrungsbericht. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0547-6 Authors Korbinian Schmid, Augustenstr. 88, 80798 München, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Today, our picture of the Universe radically differs from that of just over a decade ago. We now know that the Universe is not only expanding as Hubble discovered in 1929, but that the rate of expansion is accelerating, propelled by mysterious new physics dubbed “Dark Energy”. This revolutionary discovery was made by comparing the brightness of nearby Type Ia supernovae (which exploded in the past billion years) to that of much more distant ones (from up to seven billion years ago). The reliability of this comparison hinges upon a very detailed understanding of the physics of the nearby events. To further this understanding, the Nearby Supernova Factory (SNfactory) relies upon a complex pipeline of serial processes that execute various image processing algorithms in parallel on ~10 TBs of data. This pipeline traditionally runs on a local cluster. Cloud computing [Above the clouds: a Berkeley view of cloud computing, Technical Report UCB/EECS-2009-28, University of California, 2009] offers many features that make it an attractive alternative. The ability to completely control the software environment in a cloud is appealing when dealing with a community developed science pipeline with many unique library and platform requirements. In this context we study the feasibility of porting the SNfactory pipeline to the Amazon Web Services environment. Specifically we: describe the tool set we developed to manage a virtual cluster on Amazon EC2, explore the various design options available for application data placement, and offer detailed performance results and lessons learned from each of the above design options. Content Type Journal Article Pages 107-119 DOI 10.3233/SPR-2011-0324 Authors Keith R. Jackson Krishna Muriki Lavanya Ramakrishnan Karl J. Runge Rollin C. Thomas Journal Scientific Programming Online ISSN 1875-919X Print ISSN 1058-9244 Journal Volume Volume 19 Journal Issue Volume 19, Number 2-3 / 2011

Description: Special issue on Science-Driven Cloud Computing Content Type Journal Article Category Guest-editorial Pages 71-73 DOI 10.3233/SPR-2011-0326 Authors Ivona Brandic, Information Systems Institute, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria Ioan Raicu, Department of Computer Science, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA Journal Scientific Programming Online ISSN 1875-919X Print ISSN 1058-9244 Journal Volume Volume 19 Journal Issue Volume 19, Number 2-3 / 2011

Description: We report on attempts to put an astronomical database – the Sloan Digital Sky Survey science archive – in the cloud. We find that it is very frustrating to impossible at this time to migrate a complex SQL Server database into current cloud service offerings such as Amazon (EC2) and Microsoft (SQL Azure). Certainly it is impossible to migrate a large database in excess of a TB, but even with (much) smaller databases, the limitations of cloud services make it very difficult to migrate the data to the cloud without making changes to the schema and settings that would degrade performance and/or make the data unusable. Preliminary performance comparisons show a large performance discrepancy with the Amazon cloud version of the SDSS database. These difficulties suggest that much work and coordination needs to occur between cloud service providers and their potential clients before science databases – not just large ones but even smaller databases that make extensive use of advanced database features for performance and usability – can successfully and effectively be deployed in the cloud. We describe a powerful new computational instrument that we are developing in the interim – the Data-Scope – that will enable fast and efficient analysis of the largest (petabyte scale) scientific datasets. Content Type Journal Article Pages 147-159 DOI 10.3233/SPR-2011-0325 Authors Ani Thakar, Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA Alex Szalay, Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA Ken Church, Human Language Technology Center of Excellence and IDIES, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA Andreas Terzis, Department of Computer Science and IDIES, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA Journal Scientific Programming Online ISSN 1875-919X Print ISSN 1058-9244 Journal Volume Volume 19 Journal Issue Volume 19, Number 2-3 / 2011

Description: The aim of the current research is to propose a new generation of automated guided vehicle systems for alleviating the collision states in material handling systems where the automated guided vehicles movements are allowed to be both unidirectional and bidirectional. The objective function is to maximize the average annual profit in an FMS system using a simulation method. Despite several researches done in this field, this criterion has been studied rarely. The current study includes some new changes in AGV design for preventing some common problems such as congestions and deadlocks based on real profits/costs analysis in a flexible manufacturing system. For this reason, some experiments have been carried out to study the effects of several empty vehicle dispatching rules on average annual profit. The results show that the proposed framework is efficient and robust enough for industrial environments.

Description: Editorial to the special issue “Online algorithms” Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s00450-011-0181-1 Authors Matthias Westermann, Institut für Informatik, Abteilung I, Universität Bonn, 53113 Bonn, Germany Journal Computer Science - Research and Development Online ISSN 1865-2042 Print ISSN 1865-2034

Description: Dagstuhl Manifesto Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-11 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0552-9 Authors Redaktion Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Peelle’s Pertinent Puzzle (PPP) was described in 1987 in the context of estimating fundamental parameters that arise in nuclear interaction experiments. In PPP, generalized least squares (GLS) parameter estimates fell outside the range of the data, which has raised concerns that GLS is somehow flawed and has led to suggested alternatives to GLS estimators. However, there have been no corresponding performance comparisons among methods, and one suggested approach involving simulated data realizations is statistically incomplete. Here we provide performance comparisons among estimators, introduce approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) using density estimation applied to simulated data realizations to produce an alternative to the incomplete approach, complete the incompletely specified approach, and show that estimation error in the assumed covariance matrix cannot always be ignored.

Description: Evolution strategies with q-Gaussian mutation, which allows the self-adaptation of the mutation distribution shape, is proposed for dynamic optimization problems in this paper. In the proposed method, a real parameter q, which allows to smoothly control the shape of the mutation distribution, is encoded in the chromosome of the individuals and is allowed to evolve. In the experimental study, the q-Gaussian mutation is compared to Gaussian and Cauchy mutation on experiments generated from the simulation of evolutionary robots and on dynamic optimization problems generated by the Moving Peaks generator. Content Type Journal Article Pages 155-168 DOI 10.3233/HIS-2011-0136 Authors Renato Tinós, Department of Computing and Mathematics, FFCLRP, University of São Paulo (USP), 14040-901, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil Shengxiang Yang, Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, UK Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 8 Journal Issue Volume 8, Number 3 / 2011

Description: This paper addresses the problem of managing inconsistent databases, that is, databases violating integrity constraints. Most of the works dealing with the problem of extracting reliable information from inconsistent databases are based on the notion of repair, a "minimal" set of update operations which leads the database to a consistent state (called repaired database), and the notion of consistent query answer, a query answer that can be obtained from every repaired database. The problem of computing consistent query answers in the presence of different classes of constraints and under different repair strategies is analyzed. Content Type Journal Article Pages 119-129 DOI 10.3233/KES-2011-0216 Authors S. Greco, DEIS, Università della Calabria, 87036 Rende, Italy E-mail: {greco,cmolinaro}@deis.unical.it C. Molinaro, DEIS, Università della Calabria, 87036 Rende, Italy E-mail: {greco,cmolinaro}@deis.unical.it Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 3 / 2011

Description: The main aim of biometric-based identification systems is to automatically recognize individuals based on their physiological and/or behavioural characteristics such as fingerprint, face, hand-geometry, among others. These systems offer several advantages over traditional forms of identity protection. However, there are still some important aspects that need to be addressed in these systems. The main questions are concerned with the security of biometric authentication systems since it is important to ensure the integrity and public acceptance of these systems. In order to avoid the problems arising from compromised biometric templates, the concept of cancellable biometrics has recently been introduced. The concept is to transform a biometric trait into a new representation for enrolment and matching. Although cancellable biometrics were proposed to solve privacy concerns, the concept raises new issues, since they make the authentication problem more complex and difficult to solve. Thus, more effective authentication structures are needed to perform these tasks. In this paper, we investigate the use of ensemble systems in cancellable biometrics, using fingerprint-based identification to illustrate the possible benefits accruing. In order to increase the effectiveness of the proposed ensemble systems, three feature selection methods will be used to distribute the attributes among the individual classifiers of an ensemble. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the performance of such well-established structures on transformed biometric data to determine whether they have a positive effect on the performance of this complex and difficult task. Content Type Journal Article Pages 143-154 DOI 10.3233/HIS-2011-0135 Authors Anne M.P. Canuto, Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics, Federal University of RN, Natal Brazil Michael C. Fairhurst, School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK Fernando Pintro, Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics, Federal University of RN, Natal Brazil João C. Xavier Junior, Computing and Automation Engineering Department, Federal University of RN, Natal Brazil Antonino Feitosa Neto, Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics, Federal University of RN, Natal Brazil Luis Marcos G. Gonçalves, Computing and Automation Engineering Department, Federal University of RN, Natal Brazil Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 8 Journal Issue Volume 8, Number 3 / 2011

Description: Many real-world problems, like microchip design, can be modeled by means of the well-known traveling salesman problem (TSP). Many instances of this problem can be found in the literature. Although several optimization algorithms have been applied to TSP instances, the selection of the more promising algorithm is, in practice, a difficult decision. In this paper, a new meta-learning-based approach is investigated for the selection of optimization algorithms for TSP instances. Essentially, a learning model is trained with TSP instances for which the performance of a set of optimization algorithms is known a priori. Then, the learned model is used to predict the best algorithm for a new TSP instance. Each instance is described by meta-features that capture characteristics of the TSP that affect the performance of the optimization algorithms. Given that the best solution for a given TSP instance can be obtained by several algorithms, the meta-learning problem is considered here to be a multi-label classification problem. Several experiments illustrate the performance of the proposed approach, with promising results. Content Type Journal Article Pages 117-128 DOI 10.3233/HIS-2011-0133 Authors Jorge Kanda, Instituto de Ciencias Matematicas e de Computacao, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, Brazil Andre Carvalho, Instituto de Ciencias Matematicas e de Computacao, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, Brazil Eduardo Hruschka, Instituto de Ciencias Matematicas e de Computacao, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, Brazil Carlos Soares, LIAAD-INESC Porto LA/Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 8 Journal Issue Volume 8, Number 3 / 2011

Description: A novel framework of indirect adaptive H_{&infty;} control method based on least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM) is proposed for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with unavailable states and external disturbance. In this method, a state observer is designed to estimate the system states, and the LS-SVM is employed to approximate unknown nonlinear dynamics of the systems. The proposed adaptive H_{&infty;} control is used to attenuate the effect on the tracking error caused by LS-SVM approximation errors and external disturbance. The parameters of the controller are self-tuned according to the adaptive law derived by using Lyapunov stability theory. The asymptotic stability of the proposed close-loop control system is proved. For evaluating the proposed method, numerical simulations of a chaotic system and an inverted pendulum system are presented. The simulation results verified its effectiveness and feasibility. Content Type Journal Article Pages 177-187 DOI 10.3233/KES-2011-0220 Authors Chunli Xie, School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian Liaoning, China Shao, School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian Liaoning, China Jiangtao Cao, School of Information and Control Engineering, Liaoning Shihua University, Fushun Liaoning, China Dandan Zhao, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Dalian Nationalities University, Dalian Liaoning, China Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 3 / 2011

Description:    This paper describes a novel system for mobile robot localization in an indoor environment, using concepts like homography and matching borrowed from the context of stereo and content-based image retrieval techniques (CBIR). To deal with variations with respect to viewpoint and camera positions, a group of points of interest (POI) is extracted to represent the image for robust matching. To cope with illumination changes, we propose to produce a contrast image for each video frame by using the root mean square strategy, thus all the POIs are extracted from the corresponding contrast images to provide perceptually consistent measurement of image content. To achieve effective image matching, modeling of robot behavior for model constrained matching is proposed, where normalized cross correlation is employed for local matching to determine corresponding POI pairs followed by homography based global optimization using RANSAC. Meanwhile, application of specific constraints also helps to exclude irrelevant frames in the training set to further improve the efficiency and robustness. The proposed approach has been successfully applied to the Robot Vision task for the ImageCLEF workshop, and the experimental results have fully demonstrated the high-quality performance of our approaches in terms of both precision and robustness. The system and approach outlined in this paper was ranked the second best in the optional task group in ImageCLEF 2009. In addition to demonstrating the merits of our approach in isolation, we also illustrate the benefits of our proposed approach in comparison with other submissions. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-17 DOI 10.1007/s00138-011-0350-z Authors Yue Feng, Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Science, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, London, UK Jinchang Ren, Centre for excellence in Signal and Image Processing, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, 204 George Street, Glasgow, G1 1XW UK Jianmin Jiang, Digital Media and Systems Research Institute, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK Martin Halvey, Glasgow Interactive Systems Group (GIST), University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK Joemon M. Jose, Multimedia Information Retrieval Group, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK Journal Machine Vision and Applications Online ISSN 1432-1769 Print ISSN 0932-8092

Description: Cerebral aneurysms are local expansions of blood vessel walls in the brain blood system. The rupture of an aneurysm is a very severe event associated with a high rate of mortality. When cerebral aneurysms are detected, clinicians need to decide if operation is required. The risk of aneurysm rupture is then compared to the risks associated with the medical intervention. In the present paper, a probabilistic framework for a mechanically based rupture risk assessment of cerebral aneurysms is proposed. The method is based on the assumption that the strength of aneurysmal tissues can be described by a statistical distribution. A structural analysis of the aneurysm in question is performed, and the maximum stress experienced by the aneurysm is compared to the strength distribution. The proposed model was compared with clinical results for ruptured aneurysms in terms of rupture density and accumulated rupture risk as a function of aneurysm size. The model was able to reproduce the clinical results well. The proposed framework may potentially be used under in vivo conditions to predict the risk of rupture for diagnosed aneurysms.

Description:    Wie unterstützt man den Schreibprozess einer wissenschaftlichen Arbeit mit modernen Textverarbeitungssystemen? Einige Antworten auf diese Frage sind im AuthorSupportTool implementiert, das eine Erweiterung für den OpenOffice.org 3 Writer darstellt. Hauptmerkmale des AuthorSupportTools sind eine Quellen- und Zitatverwaltung, eine Versionsverwaltung zur Unterstützung kooperativer Arbeit sowie ein grafischer Editor mit Mindmap-Funktion, um Themen, Notizen und Querverbindungen zu verwalten. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-7 DOI 10.1007/s00287-010-0455-1 Authors Steffen Bothe, Universität Bremen Fachbereich Mathematik/Informatik Bibliothekstr. 1 28359 Bremen Deutschland Ali Ayhan Dardagan, Universität Bremen Fachbereich Mathematik/Informatik Bibliothekstr. 1 28359 Bremen Deutschland Marcus Ermler, Universität Bremen Fachbereich Mathematik/Informatik Bibliothekstr. 1 28359 Bremen Deutschland Patrick Fehrmann, Universität Bremen Fachbereich Mathematik/Informatik Bibliothekstr. 1 28359 Bremen Deutschland Christoph Jahn, Universität Bremen Fachbereich Mathematik/Informatik Bibliothekstr. 1 28359 Bremen Deutschland Marshall Nana, Universität Bremen Fachbereich Mathematik/Informatik Bibliothekstr. 1 28359 Bremen Deutschland Vitali Richter, Universität Bremen Fachbereich Mathematik/Informatik Bibliothekstr. 1 28359 Bremen Deutschland Benjamin Vollmer, Universität Bremen Fachbereich Mathematik/Informatik Bibliothekstr. 1 28359 Bremen Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Leibniz und Newton Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s00287-010-0445-3 Authors Roland Z. Bulirsch, Technische Universität München und Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften Zentrum Mathematik (M2) Boltzmannstraße 3 85748 Garching bei München Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    Im Internet bilden sich immer mehr Onlinecommunities, in denen Mitglieder Freundschaften pflegen, Interessengruppen beitreten und miteinander diskutieren. Die Vernetzung versetzt die Communitymitglieder in die Lage, sich ohne zentrale Steuerung selbstständig durch einfache Kommunikation und Interaktion zu organisieren. Das kollektiv intelligente Verhalten führt dazu, dass Meinungen nicht mehr hauptsächlich durch Massenmedien sondern durch Netzwerkbeziehungen geprägt werden. Für Unternehmen stellt die Analyse der Meinungsbildung in Netzwerken ein mächtiges Marktforschungsinstrument dar. In diesem Beitrag wird ein Ansatz vorgestellt, der es ermöglicht, durch die Kombination von Methoden aus den Bereichen Text-Mining und Schwarmintelligenz Meinungen einzelner Communitymitglieder auf Basis ihrer Netzwerkbeziehungen zu erklären und zu prognostizieren. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s00287-010-0444-4 Authors Carolin Kaiser, Lehrstuhl Wirtschaftsinformatik 2 Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Lange Gasse 20 90403 Nürnberg Deutschland Johannes Kröckel, Lehrstuhl Wirtschaftsinformatik 2 Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Lange Gasse 20 90403 Nürnberg Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Kooperation, Frauen und die F-Quote Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0545-8 Authors Gunter Dueck, IBM Deutschland GmbH, Gottlieb-Daimler-Straße 12, 68165 Mannheim, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description:    We present an object-oriented framework, named DOOLINES , for non-linear static and dynamic analyses of slender marine structures which often appear in offshore structures employed in the petroleum and gas industries as, among others, flexible risers, steel catenary risers, umbilicals, floating hoses, and mooring lines. DOOLINES allows the rapid development of tailored, modular, reusable and extensible large-size systems, being itself extensible. These properties, along with the ease of use of our framework, are assessed by means of case studies. Code examples are provided. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-11 DOI 10.1007/s00366-011-0226-x Authors Eduardo S. S. da Silveira, Laboratório de Computação Científica e Visualização, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Campus A. C. Simões, Av. Lourival de Melo Mota S/N, Tabuleiro do Martins, 57072-970 Maceió, AL, Brazil Eduardo N. Lages, Laboratório de Computação Científica e Visualização, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Campus A. C. Simões, Av. Lourival de Melo Mota S/N, Tabuleiro do Martins, 57072-970 Maceió, AL, Brazil Fábio M. G. Ferreira, Laboratório de Computação Científica e Visualização, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Campus A. C. Simões, Av. Lourival de Melo Mota S/N, Tabuleiro do Martins, 57072-970 Maceió, AL, Brazil Journal Engineering with Computers Online ISSN 1435-5663 Print ISSN 0177-0667

Description: Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Informatik 210. Folge (Fortsetzung) Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0549-4 Authors Gesellschaft für Informatik Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Informatik-Erwerbsbiografien Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-1 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0548-5 Authors Arndt Bode, TU München, München, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Mitteilungen der Schweizer Informatik Gesellschaft / 4_2011 Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0553-8 Authors Schweizer Informatik Gesellschaft Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Image analysis is one of the common applications in the medical field especially in cytology, where the microscopic examination of cells and tissues is involved. Visual interpretation of microscopic images is tedious and in many cases is error-prone. Therefore a number of attempts have been carried out using the computer vision system to supplement the human visual inspection and to automate some of these tedious visual screening tasks. This study, in effect, proposes a semi-automated method of identifying features for Pap smear cytology images; i.e. semi-automated Pseudo-Colour Feature Extraction (PCFE) technique by integrating a clustering algorithm with the manual PCFE algorithm. The technique is used to segment the cervical cell images to provide the clearly seen nucleus and cytoplasm regions and then to extract the four features of cervical cells namely the size of nucleus and cytoplasm of cervical cells, as well as their gray level. A correlation test is applied between the data extracted using the proposed algorithm and data extracted manually by cytotechnologists. The technique operates well on cervical cells images with correlation values approaching 1.0, which indicates a strong positive correlation. The analysis also favours the AFKM clustering algorithm as the best clustering algorithm to be used with the PCFE by possessing the strongest relationship in terms of the correlation value. Furthermore, this study proves that the proposed algorithm is suitable and capable to be used to detect and extract features of cervical cells even for the overlapping cervical cells' images. Content Type Journal Article Pages 131-143 DOI 10.3233/KES-2011-0217 Authors Siti Noraini Sulaiman, Imaging and Intelligent Systems Research Team (ISRT), School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Engineering Campus, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang Malaysia Nor Ashidi Mat Isa, Imaging and Intelligent Systems Research Team (ISRT), School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Engineering Campus, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang Malaysia Nor Hayati Othman, Clinical Research Platform, School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 16150 Kubang Kerian, Kelantan, Malaysia Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 3 / 2011

Description:    Die Java Modeling Language (JML) wurde als Ansatz konzipiert, um das Spezifizieren von Software-Produkten einer breiteren Masse zugänglich zu machen. Die Sprache baut auf Java auf und wird in einer Vielzahl von Verifikationswerkzeugen eingesetzt. Im Gegensatz zu anderen Modellierungssprachen mangelt es JML jedoch weiterhin an einer fundierten formalen Referenzsemantik. In diesem Beitrag wird ein Schritt zu diesem Ziel unternommen, der ausschließlich auf elementaren mathematischen Notationen beruht und unabhängig von der Semantikdefinition von Java selbst ist. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0532-0 Authors Daniel Bruns, Institut für Theoretische Informatik, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Am Fasanengarten 5, 76131 Karlsruhe, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Text analysis tools are nowadays required to process increasingly large corpora which are often organized as small files (abstracts, news articles, etc.). Cloud computing offers a convenient, on-demand, pay-as-you-go computing environment for solving such problems. We investigate provisioning on the Amazon EC2 cloud from the user perspective, attempting to provide a scheduling strategy that is both timely and cost effective. We derive an execution plan using an empirically determined application performance model. A first goal of our performance measurements is to determine an optimal file size for our application to consume. Using the subset-sum first fit heuristic we reshape the input data by merging files in order to match as closely as possible the desired file size. This also speeds up the task of retrieving the results of our application, by having the output be less segmented. Using predictions of the performance of our application based on measurements on small data sets, we devise an execution plan that meets a user specified deadline while minimizing cost. Content Type Journal Article Pages 133-145 DOI 10.3233/SPR-2011-0322 Authors Gabriela Turcu, Computer Science Department, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Ian Foster, Argonne National Laboratory, Computer Science Department, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Svetlozar Nestorov, Computation Institute, Chicago, IL, USA Journal Scientific Programming Online ISSN 1875-919X Print ISSN 1058-9244 Journal Volume Volume 19 Journal Issue Volume 19, Number 2-3 / 2011

Description: Today, Cloud computing proposes an attractive alternative to building large-scale distributed computing environments by which resources are no longer hosted by the scientists' computational facilities, but leased from specialised data centres only when and for how long they are needed. This new class of Cloud resources raises new interesting research questions in the fields of resource management, scheduling, fault tolerance, or quality of service, requiring hundreds to thousands of experiments for finding valid solutions. To enable such research, a scalable simulation framework is typically required for early prototyping, extensive testing and validation of results before the real deployment is performed. The scope of this paper is twofold. In the first part we present GroudSim, a Grid and Cloud simulation toolkit for scientific computing based on a scalable simulation-independent discrete-event engine. GroudSim provides a comprehensive set of features for complex simulation scenarios from simple job executions on leased computing resources to file transfers, calculation of costs and background load on resources. Simulations can be parameterised and are easily extendable by probability distribution packages for failures which normally occur in complex distributed environments. Experimental results demonstrate the improved scalability of GroudSim compared to a related process-based simulation approach. In the second part, we show the use of the GroudSim simulator to analyse the problem of dynamic provisioning of Cloud resources to scientific workflows that do not benefit from sufficient Grid resources as required by their computational demands. We propose and study four strategies for provisioning and releasing Cloud resources that take into account the general leasing model encountered in today's commercial Cloud environments based on resource bulks, fuzzy descriptions and hourly payment intervals. We study the impact of our techniques to the overall execution time, overall cost and cost per unit of saved time with respect to various instance types offered by the Amazon EC2. Content Type Journal Article Pages 161-178 DOI 10.3233/SPR-2011-0321 Authors Simon Ostermann Kassian Plankensteiner Radu Prodan Journal Scientific Programming Online ISSN 1875-919X Print ISSN 1058-9244 Journal Volume Volume 19 Journal Issue Volume 19, Number 2-3 / 2011

Description: Cloud computing, with its promise of virtually infinite resources, seems to suit well in solving resource greedy scientific computing problems. To study the effects of moving parallel scientific applications onto the cloud, we deployed several benchmark applications like matrix–vector operations and NAS parallel benchmarks, and DOUG (Domain decomposition On Unstructured Grids) on the cloud. DOUG is an open source software package for parallel iterative solution of very large sparse systems of linear equations. The detailed analysis of DOUG on the cloud showed that parallel applications benefit a lot and scale reasonable on the cloud. We could also observe the limitations of the cloud and its comparison with cluster in terms of performance. However, for efficiently running the scientific applications on the cloud infrastructure, the applications must be reduced to frameworks that can successfully exploit the cloud resources, like the MapReduce framework. Several iterative and embarrassingly parallel algorithms are reduced to the MapReduce model and their performance is measured and analyzed. The analysis showed that Hadoop MapReduce has significant problems with iterative methods, while it suits well for embarrassingly parallel algorithms. Scientific computing often uses iterative methods to solve large problems. Thus, for scientific computing on the cloud, this paper raises the necessity for better frameworks or optimizations for MapReduce. Content Type Journal Article Pages 91-105 DOI 10.3233/SPR-2011-0320 Authors Satish Narayana Srirama Oleg Batrashev Pelle Jakovits Eero Vainikko Journal Scientific Programming Online ISSN 1875-919X Print ISSN 1058-9244 Journal Volume Volume 19 Journal Issue Volume 19, Number 2-3 / 2011

Description:    Compressible Mooney–Rivlin theory has been used to model hyperelastic solids, such as rubber and porous polymers, and more recently for the modeling of soft tissues for biomedical tissues, undergoing large elastic deformations. We propose a solution procedure for Lagrangian finite element discretization of a static nonlinear compressible Mooney–Rivlin hyperelastic solid. We consider the case in which the boundary condition is a large prescribed deformation, so that mesh tangling becomes an obstacle for straightforward algorithms. Our solution procedure involves a largely geometric procedure to untangle the mesh: solution of a sequence of linear systems to obtain initial guesses for interior nodal positions for which no element is inverted. After the mesh is untangled, we take Newton iterations to converge to a mechanical equilibrium. The Newton iterations are safeguarded by a line search similar to one used in optimization. Our computational results indicate that the algorithm is up to 70 times faster than a straightforward Newton continuation procedure and is also more robust (i.e., able to tolerate much larger deformations). For a few extremely large deformations, the deformed mesh could only be computed through the use of an expensive Newton continuation method while using a tight convergence tolerance and taking very small steps. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s00366-011-0225-y Authors Suzanne M. Shontz, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA Stephen A. Vavasis, Department of Combinatorics and Optimization, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada Journal Engineering with Computers Online ISSN 1435-5663 Print ISSN 0177-0667

Description: Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Informatik 210. Folge Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-1 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0550-y Authors Gesellschaft für Informatik Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: The aim of this paper is, in accordance with efficient web search service operation objectives, to propose enhancements to the sophistication of the functionality that can be offered by search engine services. A meta-search third-party result ranking mechanism is proposed, which is capable of adapting over the continuous changes that occur on the web, providing in parallel personalized information acquisition considering the user's navigation behaviour. Transparency is achieved for both personalization and web evolution adaptation mechanisms, requiring virtually none effort from the user's part. In essence, the proposed meta search engine rates, re-organises and combines the results acquired from search services for a specific user information resource request in accordance with a weighted combination of a performance related factor (tightly related to the ranking of the web result as given by the search engine service) and a reliability related factor (corresponding to the user satisfaction stemming from the specific web result that he/she browses), while the performance of each search engine with respect to adequately adapting to the web evolution is taken into account. For the evaluation of the web results reliability, a collaborative reputation mechanism is utilized, which helps estimating their quality and predicting their future usability, taking into account their past performance in consistently satisfying user expectations. A set of results indicative of the efficiency of our proposed scheme is provided. The Internet search services used were Google, MSN and Yahoo! Content Type Journal Article Pages 109-124 DOI 10.3233/JCM-2011-0368 Authors Malamati Louta, University of Western Macedonia, Department of Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, Kozani, Greece Ioannis Anagnostopoulos, University of Central Greece, Department of Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, Lamia, Greece Ilias Maglogiannis, University of Central Greece, Department of Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, Lamia, Greece Angelos Michalas, Technological Educational Institute of Western Macedonia, Department of Informatics and Computer Technology GR-52100, Kastoria, Greece Journal Journal of Computational Methods in Science and Engineering Online ISSN 1875-8983 Print ISSN 1472-7978 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 3 / 2011

Description: 'Motion' and intention that are involved in the perception of musical structure combined with mirror neuron (MN) system activation are studied in this article. The mechanism of MN involved in the perception of musical structures is seen as a means for cueing the learner on `known' factors that can be used for his/her knowledge scaffolding. To explore such relationships, EEG recordings, and especially the Mu-rhythm in the premotor cortex that relates to the activation of MN, were acquired and explored. Three experiments were designed to provide the auditory and visual stimuli to a group of subjects, including both musicians and non-musicians. The acquired signals, after appropriate averaging in the time domain, were analyzed in frequency and bifrequency domains, using spectral and bispectral analysis, respectively. Experimental results have shown that an intention – related activity shown in musicians could be associated with Mu – rhythm suppression. Moreover, an underlying ongoing function appearing in the transition from heard sound to imagined sound could be revealed in the bispectrum domain. A Mu-rhythm modulation provoked by the MNs could cause bispectral fluctuations, especially when visual stimulation is combined with an auditory one for the case of musicians. These results pave the way for further exploitation of the role of MNs in music and, in general, knowledge perception. Content Type Journal Article Pages 91-107 DOI 10.3233/JCM-2011-0367 Authors Panagiotis Doulgeris, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, GR – 541 24, Thessaloniki, Greece Stelios Hadjidimitriou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, GR – 541 24, Thessaloniki, Greece Konstantinos Panoulas, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, GR – 541 24, Thessaloniki, Greece Leontios Hadjileontiadis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, GR – 541 24, Thessaloniki, Greece Stavros Panas, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, GR – 541 24, Thessaloniki, Greece Journal Journal of Computational Methods in Science and Engineering Online ISSN 1875-8983 Print ISSN 1472-7978 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 3 / 2011

Description: Content Type Journal Article Category Preface Pages 89-90 DOI 10.3233/JCM-2011-0366 Authors Dimitris Kanellopoulos Sotiris Kotsiantis Panagiotis Pintelas Journal Journal of Computational Methods in Science and Engineering Online ISSN 1875-8983 Print ISSN 1472-7978 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 3 / 2011

Description: As one of the most well-known music elements, music key, which reveals an important feature in music transcription, structure analysis and mood comprehension, is always an essential theoretical construct of music. As a result, key finding is becoming a popular topic of Music Information Retrieval (MIR). In this paper, we propose a novel approach with good robustness to detect keys in polyphonic music from a view of pitch class distribution theory. A signal transformation with musical representation-Constant Q transform (CQT) is firstly applied to music audio for spectrum analysis. Then onset detection and pitch tuning are introduced in order to ensure robustness. Finally, a weighted harmonic structure pattern-pitch class distribution matrix (PCDM) is extracted as feature for key classification. PCDM contains both pitch class information and chord structure, and it is based on pitch class distribution view. Considering the classifier, a neural network is applied to model the pitch class distribution and complete the task of key recognition. Also, a key smoothing method makes proposed method capable of processing modulation and reducing key fluctuation. Experiments showed that the proposed strategy can reach a good performance in polyphonic music at a relatively lower computational cost, and proved our strategy to be quite promising. Content Type Journal Article Pages 165-175 DOI 10.3233/KES-2011-0219 Authors Jiayin Sun, School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China Haifeng Li, School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China Lin Ma, School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 3 / 2011

Description: Content Type Journal Article Category Guest-editorial Pages 115-116 DOI 10.3233/HIS-2011-0132 Authors Teresa B. Ludermir, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil Ricardo B.C. Prudêncio, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil Cleber Zanchettin, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 8 Journal Issue Volume 8, Number 3 / 2011

Description: A paraconsistent annotated logic program called EVALPSN has been developed for dealing with defeasible deontic reasoning and plausible reasoning, and applied to various kinds of intelligent control and safety verification. Moreover, in order to deal with before-after relation between processes(time intervals), bf(before-after)-EVALPSN has also been developed recently. In this paper, we propose a logical reasoning system for before-after relation between processes based on bf-EVALPSN. The system consists of two groups of inference rules in bf-EVALPSN called basic and transitive bf-inference rules. The application of the reasoning system to real-time process order control is also introduced with simple examples. Content Type Journal Article Pages 145-163 DOI 10.3233/KES-2011-0218 Authors Kazumi Nakamatsu, School of Human Science and Environment, University of Hyogo, 1-1-12 Shinzaike, Himeji, 670-0092, Japan Jair Minoro Abe, Graduate Program in Production Engineering, ICET – Paulista University, R. Dr. Bacelar 1212, CEP 04026-002 São Paulo – SP – BRAZIL Institute For Advanced Studies – University of São Paulo, São Paulo – SP – Brazil Seiki Akama, Department of Risk Engineering, School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8573, Japan Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 3 / 2011

Description: A time series is a sequence of observations of a random variable. Hence, it is a stochastic process. Forecasting time series data is important component of operations research because these data often provide the foundation for decision models. This models are used to predict data points before they are measured based on known past events. Researches in this subject have been done in many areas like economy, energy production, ecology and others. To improve the process of time series forecasting it is important to identify which of past values will be considered to be used in the models by eliminating redundant or irrelevant attributes. Two hybrid systems Harmony Search with Neural Networks (HS) and Temporal Memory Search with Neural Networks (TMS) are improved and a new one is proposed: the Temporal Memory Search Limited with Neural Networks (TMSL). The performance of the techniques is investigated through an empirical evaluation on twenty real-world time series. Content Type Journal Article Pages 129-141 DOI 10.3233/HIS-2011-0134 Authors Ivna Valença, Informatics Center, Federal University of Pernambuco, Av. Jornalista Anibal Fernandes, s/n, Cidade Universitária, 50740-560, Recife-PE, Brazil Tarcísio Lucas, Informatics Center, Federal University of Pernambuco, Av. Jornalista Anibal Fernandes, s/n, Cidade Universitária, 50740-560, Recife-PE, Brazil Teresa Ludermir, Informatics Center, Federal University of Pernambuco, Av. Jornalista Anibal Fernandes, s/n, Cidade Universitária, 50740-560, Recife-PE, Brazil Mêuser Valença, Department of Systems and Computer, University of Pernambuco, Benfica, 455, Madalena, Recife-PE, Brazil Journal International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems Online ISSN 1875-8819 Print ISSN 1448-5869 Journal Volume Volume 8 Journal Issue Volume 8, Number 3 / 2011

Description:    This paper proposes model-driven techniques to extend IBM’s SOMA method towards migrating legacy systems into Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). The proposal explores how graph-based querying and transformation techniques enable the integration of legacy assets into a new SOA and how these techniques can be integrated into the overall migration process. The presented approach is applied to the identification and migration of services in an open source Java software system. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s00450-011-0183-z Authors Andreas Fuhr, Institute for Software Technology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Universitätsstr. 1, 56070 Koblenz, Germany Tassilo Horn, Institute for Software Technology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Universitätsstr. 1, 56070 Koblenz, Germany Volker Riediger, Institute for Software Technology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Universitätsstr. 1, 56070 Koblenz, Germany Andreas Winter, Department of Computing Science Software Engineering, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany Journal Computer Science - Research and Development Online ISSN 1865-2042 Print ISSN 1865-2034

Description:    Dieses Papier zeigt, wie man komplexe, heterogene Systeme analysiert, wenn die einfachen Methoden (Debugger, Profiler) nicht ausreichen. Wir erläutern die Grundlagen, beschreiben ein Vorgehen mit den nötigen Tools und bringen einige Beispiele aus unserer Praxis. Wir behandeln ferner den präventiven Einsatz des Vorgehens im Entwicklungsprozess und definieren die Diagnostizierbarkeit (Diagnosibility) eines Softwaresystems als wichtige nichtfunktionale Eigenschaft. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0541-z Authors Johannes Weigend, QAware GmbH, Aschauer Str. 32, 81549 München, Deutschland Johannes Siedersleben, QAware GmbH, Aschauer Str. 32, 81549 München, Deutschland Josef Adersberger, QAware GmbH, Aschauer Str. 32, 81549 München, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Gewissensbits – Wie würden Sie urteilen? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-18 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0543-x Authors Redaktion Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: In 2009, just 27% of American teens with mobile phones reported using their devices to access the internet. However, teens from lower income families and minority teens were significantly more likely to use their phones to go online. Together, these surprising trends suggest a potential narrowing of the digital divide, offering internet access to those without other means of going online. This is an important move, as, in today’s society, internet access is central to active citizenship in general and teen citizenship in particular. Yet the cost of this move toward equal access is absorbed by those who can least afford it: Teenagers from low income households. Using survey and focus group data from a national study of “Teens and Mobile Phone Use” (released by Pew and the University of Michigan in 2010), this article helps identify and explain this and other emergent trends for teen use (as well as non-use) of the internet through mobile phones.

Description: Norms in human societies are expectations of behaviours of the individuals. In human societies, there are several types of norms such as moral norms, social norms and legal norms (laws). In multi-agent systems, software agents are modelled as possessing characteristics and behaviour borrowed from human societies. In order to design and develop robust artificial agent societies, it is important to understand different approaches proposed by researchers by which norms can spread and emerge within agent societies. This paper makes three contributions to the study of norms. Firstly, based on the simulation research on norms, we propose a life-cycle model for norms. Secondly, we discuss different mechanisms used by researchers to study norm creation, identification, spreading, enforcement and emergence. We also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each of these mechanisms. Thirdly, in the context of identifying the desired characteristics of the simulation models of norms we discuss the research issues that need to be addressed. Content Type Journal Article Pages 21-54 DOI 10.3233/MGS-2011-0167 Authors Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu, Department of Information Science, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Stephen Cranefield, Department of Information Science, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Journal Multiagent and Grid Systems Online ISSN 1875-9076 Print ISSN 1574-1702 Journal Volume Volume 7 Journal Issue Volume 7, Number 1 / 2011

Description: Interactive art courses usually require a huge amount of computational resources to run in real time. These computational demands can significantly grow whenever the application is designed to run within a Virtual Environment. This paper studies the viability of combining two previously developed approaches: a Collaborative Awareness Model for Task-Balancing-Delivery (CAMT) in clusters and the "Teaching about Madrid" course, which provides a cultural interactive background of the capital of Spain. The integration of both systems can improve the response times of the interactive course by distributing the rendering tasks among the set of available nodes at a given time. We present some experimental results that show how CAMT efficiently manages the rendering process of the "Teaching about Madrid" course. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.3233/MGS-2011-0165 Authors José Luis Bosque, Dpto. de Electrónica y Computadores, Universidad de Cantabria, Spain Pilar Herrero, Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain Susana Mata, ETSII, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain Gonzalo Méndez, I. Tecnología del Conocimiento, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain Journal Multiagent and Grid Systems Online ISSN 1875-9076 Print ISSN 1574-1702 Journal Volume Volume 7 Journal Issue Volume 7, Number 1 / 2011

Description:    Geological time description largely rests on an event based chronology based on the stratigraphical model . It uses a hierarchy of chronologically ordered geochronological units and boundaries . In order to be easily dealt with within large databases used by complex engineering systems, the geological time chronology must be formalized. Stratigraphical time successions should accordingly be described by using adequate semantic tools (ontologies) complemented by a set of logical rules. At present, geological time formalization mainly rests on the GeoSciML model. This model is fit for describing individual geological time scales but does not provide all the necessary tools for comparing various time successions and for operating full stratigraphic correlations. For complementing the GeoSciML model, we define two ontologies for geological time description and for geological dating. They extend the GeoSciML model, so that it becomes possible to fully use the Allen rules for operating time correlations between any couple of time scales or stratigraphic successions. We additionally propose a codification resting on the defined ontologies, which allows operating all age identification and correlation by means of simple computation rules. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s12145-011-0080-9 Authors Michel Perrin, Ecole des Mines de Paris, Paris, France Laura S. Mastella, Ecole des Mines de Paris, Paris, France Olivier Morel, Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières, Orléans, France Alexandre Lorenzatti, Institut Français du Pétrole, Rueil-Malmaison, France Journal Earth Science Informatics Online ISSN 1865-0481 Print ISSN 1865-0473

Description:    Effective I/O buffering is a performance-critical task in database management systems. Accordingly, systems usually employ various special-purpose buffers to align, e.g., device speed, page size, and replacement policies with the actual data and workload. However, such partitioning of available buffer memory results in complex optimization problems for database administrators and also in fragile configurations which quickly deteriorate on workload shifts. Reliable forecasts of I/O costs enable a system to evaluate alternative configurations to continuously optimize its buffer memory allocation at runtime. So far, all techniques proposed for the prediction of buffer performance focus solely on hit ratio gains for increased buffer sizes to identify buffers which promise the greatest benefit. These approaches, however, assume that their forecast allows to extrapolate the effect for buffer downsizing, too. As we will show, this comes along with a severe risk of wrong tuning decisions, which may heavily impact system performance. Thus, we emphasize the importance of reliably forecasting the penalty to expect for shrinking buffers in favor of others. We explore the use of lightweight extensions for widely used buffer algorithms to perform on-the-fly simulation of buffer performance of smaller and larger buffer sizes simultaneously. Furthermore, we present a simple cost model and demonstrate how to compose these concepts into a self-tuning component for dynamic buffer reallocation. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-15 DOI 10.1007/s00450-011-0175-z Authors Karsten Schmidt, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany Sebastian Bächle, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany Journal Computer Science - Research and Development Online ISSN 1865-2042 Print ISSN 1865-2034

Description:    Cloud infrastructures enable the efficient parallel execution of data-intensive tasks such as entity resolution on large datasets. We investigate challenges and possible solutions of using the MapReduce programming model for parallel entity resolution using Sorting Neighborhood blocking (SN). We propose and evaluate two efficient MapReduce-based implementations for single- and multi-pass SN that either use multiple MapReduce jobs or apply a tailored data replication. We also propose an automatic data partitioning approach for multi-pass SN to achieve load balancing. Our evaluation based on real-world datasets shows the high efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approaches. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s00450-011-0177-x Authors Lars Kolb, Institut für Informatik, Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik, Universität Leipzig, PF 100920, 04009 Leipzig, Germany Andreas Thor, Institut für Informatik, Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik, Universität Leipzig, PF 100920, 04009 Leipzig, Germany Erhard Rahm, Institut für Informatik, Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik, Universität Leipzig, PF 100920, 04009 Leipzig, Germany Journal Computer Science - Research and Development Online ISSN 1865-2042 Print ISSN 1865-2034

Description:    The number of open source software (OSS) users has increased in recent years. No longer are they limited to technically adept software developers. Many believe that the OSS market share could increase tremendously provided OSS had systems that were easier to use. Although examples of good usable open source software exist, it is agreed that OSS can be made more usable. This study presents an empirical investigation into the impact of some key factors on OSS usability from the end users’ point of view. The research model studies and establishes the relationship between the key usability factors from the users’ perspective and OSS usability. A data set of 102 OSS users from 13 open source projects of various sizes was used to study the research model. The results of this study provide empirical evidence by indicating that the highlighted key factors play a significant role in improving OSS usability. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s00366-011-0222-1 Authors Arif Raza, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada Luiz Fernando Capretz, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada Faheem Ahmed, Faculty of Information Technology, United Arab Emirates University, P. O. Box 17551, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates Journal Engineering with Computers Online ISSN 1435-5663 Print ISSN 0177-0667

Description:    The detection and segmentation of adherent eukaryotic cells from brightfield microscopy images represent challenging tasks in the image analysis field. This paper presents a free and open-source image analysis package which fully automates the tasks of cell detection, cell boundary segmentation, and nucleus segmentation in brightfield images. The package also performs image registration between brightfield and fluorescence images. The algorithms were evaluated on a variety of biological cell lines and compared against manual and fluorescence-based ground truths. When tested on HT1080 and HeLa cells, the cell detection step was able to correctly identify over 80% of cells, whilst the cell boundary segmentation step was able to segment over 75% of the cell body pixels, and the nucleus segmentation step was able to correctly identify nuclei in over 75% of the cells. The algorithms for cell detection and nucleus segmentation are novel to the field, whilst the cell boundary segmentation algorithm is contrast-invariant, which makes it more robust on these low-contrast images. Together, this suite of algorithms permit brightfield microscopy image processing without the need for additional fluorescence images. Finally our sephaCe application, which is available at http://www.sephace.com , provides a novel method for integrating these methods with any motorised microscope, thus facilitating the adoption of these techniques in biological research labs. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-15 DOI 10.1007/s00138-011-0337-9 Authors Rehan Ali, Department of Radiation Physics, Stanford University, 875 Blake Wilbur Drive, CC-G206, Stanford, CA 94305, USA Mark Gooding, Mirada Medical Ltd, Innovation House, Mill Street, Oxford, OX2 0JX UK Tünde Szilágyi, Department of Engineering Science, FRS FREng FMedSci Wolfson Medical Vision Lab, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PJ UK Borivoj Vojnovic, Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology, University of Oxford, Old Road Campus Research Building, Oxford, OX3 7QD UK Martin Christlieb, Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology, University of Oxford, Old Road Campus Research Building, Oxford, OX3 7QD UK Michael Brady, Department of Engineering Science, FRS FREng FMedSci Wolfson Medical Vision Lab, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PJ UK Journal Machine Vision and Applications Online ISSN 1432-1769 Print ISSN 0932-8092

Description:    Lack of concentration in a driver due to fatigue is a major cause of road accidents. This paper investigates approaches that can be used to develop a video-based system to automatically detect driver fatigue and warn the driver, in order to prevent accidents. Ocular cues such as percentage eye closure (PERCLOS) are considered strong fatigue indicators; thus, accurately locating and tracking the driver’s eyes is vital. Tests were carried out based on two approaches to track the eyes and estimate PERCLOS: (1) classification approach and (2) optical flow approach. In the first approach, the eyes are tracked by finding local regions, the state (open or closed) of the eyes in each image frame is estimated using a classifier, and thereby the PERCLOS is calculated. In the second approach, the movement of the upper eyelid is tracked using a newly proposed simple eye model, which captures image velocities based on optical flow, thereby the eye closures and openings are detected, and then the eye states are estimated to calculate PERCLOS. Experiments show that both approaches can detect fatigue with reasonable accuracy, and that the classification approach is more accurate. However, the classification approach requires a large amount of suitable training data. If such data are unavailable, then the optical flow approach would be more practical. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-22 DOI 10.1007/s00138-011-0321-4 Authors Rajinda Senaratne, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Melbourne School of Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia Budi Jap, Department of Medical and Molecular Biosciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia Sara Lal, Department of Medical and Molecular Biosciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia Arthur Hsu, Bioinformatics Division, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, VIC 3050, Australia Saman Halgamuge, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Melbourne School of Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia Peter Fischer, Signal Network Technology Pty Ltd, Lane Cove, Sydney, NSW 1595, Australia Journal Machine Vision and Applications Online ISSN 1432-1769 Print ISSN 0932-8092

Description:    Das Paradigma des Cloud Computing ist in den vergangenen zwei Jahren mit eindrucksvoller Geschwindigkeit auf den ersten Platz der IT-Hitparade aufgestiegen. Rund um dynamische IT-Dienstleistungen hat sich im Internet ein lukratives Geschäft entwickelt. Neben kommerziellen Angeboten von öffentlich verfügbaren Dienstleistungen, die bezüglich der Offenlegung ihrer zugrunde liegenden Technologien und Spezifikationen eher einen proprietären Ansatz verfolgen, haben mittlerweile auch zahlreiche quelloffene Lösungen ihren Weg auf den Markt gefunden. Die Konstruktion einer eigenen privaten Cloud ist damit ohne weiteres zu realisieren. Ein quelloffener Ansatz ermöglicht darüber hinaus breite Unterstützung bezüglich der Weiterentwicklung von Software und Architektur. Von besonderem Interesse ist dabei die Kompatibilität zu den Schnittstellen der Amazon Web Services, da diese aufgrund ihrer großen Verbreitung einen de facto Standard darstellen und auch eine große Zahl von Managementwerkzeugen zur Verfügung steht. Im vorliegenden Artikel werden diese Aspekte diskutiert und es werden aktuelle Entwicklungen vorgestellt. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0533-z Authors Christian Baun, Steinbuch Centre for Computing, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Deutschland Marcel Kunze, Steinbuch Centre for Computing, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Deutschland Tobias Kurze, Steinbuch Centre for Computing, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Deutschland Viktor Mauch, Steinbuch Centre for Computing, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: When students study for multiple-choice cloze tests as the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), they tend to repeatedly tackle questions of the same type. In such situations, students can effectively solve questions related to their incorrectly answered questions. However, since they need several different kinds of knowledge and a large vocabulary to derive answers, it is inappropriate to statically define the relations among questions from various viewpoints beforehand. In this paper, we propose a recommendation algorithm for English multiple-choice cloze questions that maximize students' expected improvements of test scores based on the learning log data of other students. Effective questions may be identical for most students who incorrectly answered the same questions. Therefore, in our approach, relations among questions in tests and questions studied during tests are determined based on the change from incorrect to the correct answers of the test questions. Questions that maximize the expected test scores, which are calculated based on the input test scores using regression models, are recommended for future students. Based on this method, students can acquire higher test scores with better learning efficiency. Experimental results show that our method yields major improvements in performance compared with random material recommendation method. Content Type Journal Article Pages 15-24 DOI 10.3233/KES-2010-0209 Authors Tomoharu Iwata, NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Japan Tomoko Kojiri, Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University, Japan Takeshi Yamada, NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Japan Toyohide Watanabe, Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University, Japan Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 1 / 2011

Description: The present work evaluates the use of the evolutionary programming in problems of Industrial Automation. It is well known that technical of the evolutionary calculation as the Genetic Algorithms have provided satisfactory results when facing problems of automatic control, especially of continuous type, while the study of discrete dynamics have been relegated. In this work, an identification technique based on the evolutionary programming is proposed for Discrete-Event Dynamic Systems (DEDS), using finite state machines (like the machines of Mealy). Content Type Journal Article Pages 43-53 DOI 10.3233/KES-2010-0207 Authors Jose Aguilar, Universidad de Los Andes, Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Computación, CEMISID Núcleo la Hechicera, Mérida 5101, Venezuela Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 1 / 2011

Description: Argumentation is essential in our daily life since we argue all the time in scientific communities, parliaments, courts … etc. In the field of education, argumentation and argument skills reflect the students' abilities to outline a claim in a logical and convincing way and provide supportable reasons for that claim as well as identifying the often implicit assumptions that underlie the claim. This paper introduces an innovative agent-based ITS teaching environment "ALES", which concerns natural argument analysis. ALES offers two phases; learning phase and evaluation phase. The learning phase encompasses two learning strategies, learning by search and learning by assessment, in which different representative reports that follow the student progress can be produced easily. During learning by search, ALES utilizes mining techniques to expose and retrieve the underlying experts' analyses that are most relevant to the subject of search. Learning by assessment provides guidance through partial and total feedback, which guide the student analysis based on the pre-selected scheme. The evaluation phase aims to assess the student's analysis comparable to the pre-existed expert's analysis. The paper aims to (i) describe the constituent models of ALES and their functions, (ii) present the encompassed tutoring scenarios associated with an illustration of the teaching pedagogy, (iii) present a comparative study between ALES and other systems in the same field. Content Type Journal Article Pages 25-41 DOI 10.3233/KES-2010-0208 Authors Safia Abbas, Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Ain Shams University, Abbasia, Cairo, Egypt Hajime Sawamura, Institute of Natural Science and Technology, Niigata University, 8050, 2-cho, Ikarashi, Niigata 950-2181, Japan Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 1 / 2011

Description: This paper proposes a content-based recommendation method tuned for multiple content domains. Most content-based recommender systems use content attributes (e.g. description of content and category of content) to represent items and user profiles. This raises the problem that when recommending content from new content domain, the recommendation quality will be poor until the item profile representation is updated through the input of a sufficient quantity of contents in the new content domain. In this paper, to develop an item profile representation that is independent of the contents, we propose a method that uses common categories to represent item profiles; it focuses on the real world activities (tasks) that attract the user's interest. Concretely, we present a light-weight task-model that covers a wide variety of tasks and yields item profiles. We also create a recommendation algorithm by incorporating the proposed profile representation into a statistical SVM(Support Vector Machine) based recommendation algorithm. Finally, we conduct a user test and the results of this test show 9% higher user evaluation scores of content recommendations compared to an existing content-based recommendation algorithm using term-based profile representation. This shows the effectiveness of our user-centered profile representation approach. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-14 DOI 10.3233/KES-2010-0210 Authors Yusuke Fukazawa, NTT DOCOMO, Inc., 3--6 Hikari-no-oka, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan Jun Ota, NTT DOCOMO, Inc., 3--6 Hikari-no-oka, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 1 / 2011

Description: In multi-agent systems, the presence of learning agents can cause the environment to be non-Markovian from an agent's perspective thus violating the property that traditional single-agent learning methods rely upon. This paper formalizes some known intuition about concurrently learning agents by providing formal conditions that make the environment non-Markovian from an independent (non-communicative) learner's perspective. New concepts are introduced like the divergent learning paths and the observability of the effects of others' actions. To illustrate the formal concepts, a case study is also presented. These findings are significant because they both help to understand failures and successes of existing learning algorithms as well as being suggestive for future work. Content Type Journal Article Pages 55-64 DOI 10.3233/KES-2010-0206 Authors Guillaume J. Laurent, FEMTO-ST Institute, CNRS / ENSMM / UFC/ UTBM, 24 rue Alain Savary, 25000 Besançon, France Laëtitia Matignon, FEMTO-ST Institute, CNRS / ENSMM / UFC/ UTBM, 24 rue Alain Savary, 25000 Besançon, France N. Le Fort-Piat, FEMTO-ST Institute, CNRS / ENSMM / UFC/ UTBM, 24 rue Alain Savary, 25000 Besançon, France Journal International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems Online ISSN 1875-8827 Print ISSN 1327-2314 Journal Volume Volume 15 Journal Issue Volume 15, Number 1 / 2011

Description: As a member of the Annex 1 countries to the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Japan is committed to reducing 6% of the greenhouse gas emissions. In order to achieve this commitment, Japan has undertaken several major mitigation measures, one of which is the domestic measure that includes ecologically friendly lifestyle programs, utilizing natural energy, participating in local environmental activities, and amending environmental laws. Mitigation policies could be achieved if public responses were strong. As the internet has increasingly become an online platform for sharing environmental information, public responses to the need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions may be assessed using available online tools. We used Google Insights for Search, Google AdWords Keyword Tool, and Google Timeline View to assess public responses in Japan based on the interest shown for five search terms that define global climate change and its mitigation policies. Data on online search interests from January 04, 2004 to July 18, 2010 were analyzed according to locations and categories. Our study suggests that the search interests for the five chosen search terms dramatically increased, especially when new mitigation policies were introduced or when climate change related events were organized. Such a rapid increase indicates that the Japanese public strongly responds to climate change mitigation policies.

Description: Multimedia streaming means delivering continuous data to a plethora of client devices. Besides the actual data transport, this also needs a high degree of content adaptation respecting the end users’ needs given by content preferences, transcoding constraints, and device capabilities. Such adaptations can be performed in many ways, usually on the media server. However, when it comes to content editing, like mixing in subtitles or picture-in-picture composition, relying on third party service providers may be necessary. For economic reasons this should be done in a service-oriented way, because a lot of adaptation modules can be reused within different adaptation workflows. Although service-oriented architectures have become widely accepted in the Web community, the multimedia environment is still dominated by monolithic systems. The main reason is the insufficient support for working with continuous data: generally the suitability of Web services for handling complex data types and state-full applications is still limited. In this paper we discuss extensions of Web service frameworks, and present a first implementation of a service-oriented framework for media streaming and digital item adaptation. The focus lies on the technical realization of the services. Our experimental results show the practicality of the actual deployment of service-oriented multimedia frameworks.

Description:    The University of Colorado (CU) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have been deploying complimentary and federated resources supporting computational science in the Western United States since 2004. This activity has expanded to include other partners in the area, forming the basis for a broader Front Range Computing Consortium (FRCC). This paper describes the development of the Consortium’s current architecture for federated high-performance resources, including a new 184 teraflop/s (TF) computational system at CU and prototype data-centric computing resources at NCAR. CU’s new Dell-based computational plant is housed in a co-designed pre-fabricated data center facility that allowed the university to install a top-tier academic resource without major capital facility investments or renovations. We describe integration of features such as virtualization, dynamic configuration of high-throughput networks, and Grid and cloud technologies, into an architecture that supports collaboration among regional computational science participants. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-8 DOI 10.1007/s00450-011-0172-2 Authors Michael Oberg, National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305, USA Matthew Woitaszek, National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305, USA Theron Voran, University of Colorado, Boulder, UCB 430, Boulder, CO 80309, USA Henry M. Tufo, National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305, USA Journal Computer Science - Research and Development Online ISSN 1865-2042 Print ISSN 1865-2034

Description: Document engineering Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s00450-011-0176-y Authors Uwe M. Borghoff, Institute for Software Technology, Faculty of Computer Science, Universität der Bundeswehr München, 85577 Neubiberg, Germany Sebastian Rönnau, Institute for Software Technology, Faculty of Computer Science, Universität der Bundeswehr München, 85577 Neubiberg, Germany Journal Computer Science - Research and Development Online ISSN 1865-2042 Print ISSN 1865-2034

Description:    Many GIS-based landslide models require detailed datasets that are ideally collected from field measurements, which can incur high costs for carrying out surveys. Even when the data is on hand, implementing physics-based slope stability techniques can be difficult. Common research practice uses differential equations to characterize the dynamic flow of a landslide, but it is often laborious without making substantial simplifications. A possible solution is to implement a cellular automata modeling approach, which represents both spatial and temporal components, to simulate the dynamics of the landslide propagation process. In this study, a simplified cellular automata model is developed for the effective prediction of landslide runouts, where the data requirement is a high resolution digital elevation model (DEM). Parameters, such as slope and slope curvature features, are derived from the DEM and coupled with logistic regression. The developed model is implemented on the Patrick and Dawson-Chu Slide in North Vancouver, Canada. The results from this study site were favorable, given almost 90% agreement between simulated landslides and data obtained for real landslides. In addition, sensitivity analysis was performed on the initiation sites to test the model logic and outputs of the landslide flow. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 DOI 10.1007/s12145-011-0078-3 Authors Terence Lai, Spatial Analysis and Modeling Laboratory, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada Suzana Dragićević, Spatial Analysis and Modeling Laboratory, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada Journal Earth Science Informatics Online ISSN 1865-0481 Print ISSN 1865-0473

Description:    In this study, a new metaheuristic optimization algorithm, called cuckoo search (CS), is introduced for solving structural optimization tasks. The new CS algorithm in combination with Lévy flights is first verified using a benchmark nonlinear constrained optimization problem. For the validation against structural engineering optimization problems, CS is subsequently applied to 13 design problems reported in the specialized literature. The performance of the CS algorithm is further compared with various algorithms representative of the state of the art in the area. The optimal solutions obtained by CS are mostly far better than the best solutions obtained by the existing methods. The unique search features used in CS and the implications for future research are finally discussed in detail. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s00366-011-0241-y Authors Amir Hossein Gandomi, Department of Civil Engineering, Tafresh University, Tafresh, Iran Xin-She Yang, Mathematics and Scientific Computing, National Physical Lab, Teddington, TW11 0LW UK Amir Hossein Alavi, School of Civil Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Narmak, Tehran, Iran Journal Engineering with Computers Online ISSN 1435-5663 Print ISSN 0177-0667

Description: Kamaniskeg Lake is a long, narrow, and deep small lake located in the northern part of Ontario, Canada. The goals of this paper were to examine various options to improve the water quality in the northern part of the lake by altering the local hydraulic flow conditions. Towards this end, a preliminary screening suggested that the flow circulation could be increased around a central island (Mask Island) in the northern part of the lake by opening up an existing causeway connecting the mainland and central island. Three-dimensional (3D) hydraulic and transport models were adopted in this paper to investigate the hydraulic conditions under various wind forces and causeway structures. The modelling results show that opening the causeway in a few places is unlikely to generate a large flow circulation around the central island. Full circulation only appears to be possible if the causeway is fully removed and a strong wind blows in a favourable direction. The possible reasons for existing water quality variations at the intake of a local WTP (water treatment plant) are also explored in the paper.

Description: Ontologies significantly enhance the possibility to make agent-based Web applications really “semantic”. However, in order to make their usage both effective and efficient, some alignment problems, arising from the presence of semantic heterogeneities among them, should be solved. Recent approaches introduced the possibility to face these problems by allowing agents to negotiate the meanings of the terms contained in their ontology and exchanged among them. This solution appears significantly effective but not particularly efficient since its computational cost increases linearly against the number of agents belonging to the community. This paper proposes a new framework aiming at solving efficiently ontology alignment problems; for this purpose, it exploits: (i) a light bilateral negotiation procedure which allows an agent to understand a message coming from another agent correctly, (ii) a global ontology, which avoids heavy semantic negotiation activities, (iii) an ontology enrichment algorithm, which allows ontology alignment to be performed with an effectiveness comparable with that obtained by semantic negotiation approaches, and (iv) a new ontology model supporting efficient and effective communication activities among agents. Content Type Journal Article Pages 291-318 DOI 10.3233/WIA-2011-0220 Authors Salvatore Garruzzo Giovanni Quattrone Domenico Rosaci Domenico Ursino Journal Web Intelligence and Agent Systems Online ISSN 1875-9289 Print ISSN 1570-1263 Journal Volume Volume 9 Journal Issue Volume 9, Number 4 / 2011

Description: Langzeitarchivierung mit PDF/A-2 Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s00287-011-0560-9 Authors Olaf Drümmer, PDF/A Competence Center, Neue Kantstr. 14, 14057 Berlin, Deutschland Thomas Zellmann, PDF/A Competence Center, Neue Kantstr. 14, 14057 Berlin, Deutschland Journal Informatik-Spektrum Online ISSN 1432-122X Print ISSN 0170-6012

Description: Numerical simulation of the arc-flow interaction in high-voltage circuit breakers requires a radiation model capable of handling high-temperature participating thermal plasmas. The modeling of the radiative transfer plays a critical role in the overall accuracy of such CFD simulations. As a result of the increase of computational power, CPU intensive methods based on the radiative transfer equation, leading to more accurate results, are now becoming attractive alternatives to current approximate models. In this paper, the predictive capabilities of the finite volume method (RTE-FVM) and the P1 model are investigated. A systematic comparison between these two models and analytical solutions are presented for a variety of relevant test cases. Two implementations of each approach are compared, and a critical evaluation is presented.

Description: Usually, test automation scripts for a web application directly mirror the actions that the tester carries out in the browser, but they tend to be verbose and repetitive, making them expensive to maintain and ineffective in an agile setting. Our research has focussed on providing tool-support for business-level, example-based specifications that are mapped to the browser level for automatic verification. We provide refactoring support for the evolution of existing browser-level tests into business-level specifications. As resulting business rule tables may be incomplete, redundant or contradictory, our tool provides feedback on coverage.

Description: In the usual statistical approach of spatial classification, it is assumed that the feature observations are independent conditionally on class labels (conditional independence). Discarding this popular assumption, we consider the problem of statistical classification by using multivariate stationary Gaussian Random Field (GRF) for modeling the conditional distribution given class labels of feature observations. The classes are specified by multivariate regression model for means and by common factorized covariance function. In the two-class case and for the class labels modeled by Random Field (RF) based on 0–1 divergence, the formula of the Expected Bayes Error Rate (EBER) is derived. The effect of training sample size on the EBER and the influence of statistical parameters to the values of EBER are numerically evaluated in the case when the spatial framework of data is the subset of the 2-dimensional rectangular lattice with unit spacing. Content Type Journal Article Pages 371-381 Authors Kęstutis Dučinskas Lijana Stabingienė Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 22 Journal Issue Volume 22, Number 3 / 2011

Description: In the protocol conformance testing, many existing test methods can effectively detect the possible faults of the implementation under test. However, it is difficult to diagnose the found faults in terms of the test results. This paper presents a diagnosable input/output (DIO) sequence, to differentiate a state from other states under a given condition. We further propose a two-tier protocol conformance testing and diagnosing method based on DIO sequences. The proposed method can effectively detect and diagnose the possible faults of the implementation of a protocol. Content Type Journal Article Pages 447-469 Authors Xinchang Zhang, Shandong Key Laboratory of Computer Networks, Shandong Computer Science Center, Jinan 250014, China, e-mail: xinczhang@hotmail.com, yangmh@keylab.net Meihong Yang, Shandong Key Laboratory of Computer Networks, Shandong Computer Science Center, Jinan 250014, China, e-mail: xinczhang@hotmail.com, yangmh@keylab.net Guanggang Geng, Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China, e-mail: gengguanggang@cnnic.cn, lwm@cnic.cn Wanming Luo, Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China, e-mail: gengguanggang@cnnic.cn, lwm@cnic.cn Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 22 Journal Issue Volume 22, Number 3 / 2011

Description: Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is a relatively new, emerging and constantly changing area of business management and information technology. One of the technological innovations in banking, finance and e-commerce is the electronic cash (e-cash) transfer system. E-cash transfer systems refers to the technological breakthrough that enables us to perform financial transactions electronically. In this paper we propose a secure e-cash transfer system based on the elliptic curve cryptography. In order to protect the honest participants of the e-cash system we use an elliptic curve blind signature scheme and also we need a trusted third party to trace the criminals. Content Type Journal Article Pages 395-409 Authors Constantin Popescu, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Oradea, Universitatii str. 1, Oradea, Romania, e-mail: cpopescu@uoradea.ro Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 22 Journal Issue Volume 22, Number 3 / 2011

Description: This paper discusses the disease-free and endemic equilibrium points of a SVEIRS propagation disease model which potentially involves a regular constant vaccination. The positivity of such a model is also discussed as well as the boundedness of the total and partial populations. The model takes also into consideration the natural population growing and the mortality associate to the disease as well as the lost of immunity of newborns. It is assumed that there are two finite delays affecting to the susceptible, recovered, exposed and infected population dynamics. Content Type Journal Article Pages 339-370 Authors Manuel De la Sen, Institute of Research and Development of Processes, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the Basque Country, PO. Box 644-Bilbao, Spain. Also with Department of Electricity and Electronics, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the Basque Country, PO. Box 644-Bilbao, Spain, e-mail: manuel.delasen@ehu.es, santi@we.lc.ehu.es Asier Ibeas, Department of Telecommunications and Systems Engineering, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193-Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain, e-mail: raul.nistal@gmail.com, asier.ibeas@uab.cat Santiago Alonso-Quesada, Institute of Research and Development of Processes, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the Basque Country, PO. Box 644-Bilbao, Spain. Also with Department of Electricity and Electronics, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the Basque Country, PO. Box 644-Bilbao, Spain, e-mail: manuel.delasen@ehu.es, santi@we.lc.ehu.es Raul Nistal, Institute of Research and Development of Processes, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the Basque Country, PO. Box 644-Bilbao, Spain. Also with Department of Electricity and Electronics, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the Basque Country, PO. Box 644-Bilbao, Spain, e-mail: manuel.delasen@ehu.es, santi@we.lc.ehu.es Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 22 Journal Issue Volume 22, Number 3 / 2011

Description:    A numerical form-finding procedure of tensegrity structures is developed. The only required information is the topology and the types of members. The singular value decompositions of the force density and equilibrium matrices are performed iteratively to find the feasible sets of nodal coordinates and force densities which satisfy the minimum required deficiencies of these two matrices, respectively. An approach of defining a unique configuration of tensegrity structure by specifying an independent set of nodal coordinates is provided. An explanation is given for the preservation in self-equilibrium status of the tensegrity structures under affine transformation. Two- and three-dimensional examples are illustrated to demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method in searching stable self-equilibrium configurations of tensegrity structures. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Article Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s00366-011-0245-7 Authors Hoang Chi Tran, Department of Architectural Engineering, Sejong University, 98 Kunja Dong, Kwangjin Ku, Seoul, 143-747 Korea Jaehong Lee, Department of Architectural Engineering, Sejong University, 98 Kunja Dong, Kwangjin Ku, Seoul, 143-747 Korea Journal Engineering with Computers Online ISSN 1435-5663 Print ISSN 0177-0667

Description: The aim of the current research is to measure objective congruence (incongruence) of the results obtained in a process of multiple criteria analysis when applying different MCDM methods. The methodology for evaluation of ranking results is developed on the ground of a case study of the redevelopment of derelict buildings as well as on composed experimental tasks. Fuzzified COPRAS, TOPSIS and VIKOR methods are applied for ranking the alternatives. Calculation results are evaluated by applying mathematical statistics methods. A methodology for measuring the congruence (incongruence) of the relative significances of alternatives is proposed. Content Type Journal Article Pages 319-338 Authors Jurgita Antucheviciene Algimantas Zakarevicius Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas Journal Informatica Online ISSN 1822-8844 Print ISSN 0868-4952 Journal Volume Volume 22 Journal Issue Volume 22, Number 3 / 2011

Description: This is the continuation of our research on development of a fully nonlinear, dynamically consistent, numerical ship motion model (DiSSEL). In this paper we report our results on modeling ship maneuvering in arbitrary seaway that is one of the most challenging and important problems in seakeeping. In our modeling, we developed an adaptive algorithm to maintain dynamical balances numerically as the encounter frequencies (the wave frequencies as measured on the ship) varying with the ship maneuvering state. The key of this new algorithm is to evaluate the encounter frequency variation differently in the physical domain and in the frequency domain, thus effectively eliminating possible numerical dynamical imbalances. We have tested this algorithm with several well-documented maneuvering experiments, and our results agree very well with experimental data. In particular, the numerical time series of roll and pitch motions and the numerical ship tracks (i.e., surge, sway, and yaw) are nearly identical to those of experiments.

Description: Healthcare currently consumes 17% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and is expected to reach 20% within the coming decade. Confronted with such high costs, sharp demand, and limited capacity, many hospitals now are vying for shorter lengths of stay and are transferring services from inpatient to outpatient facilities. This paper seeks to develop a methodology for constructing effective outpatient appointment scheduling systems. The objective of these appointment systems is to minimize the average total cost function describing total costs incurred by patient waiting and by staff idle time and overtime. In the paper, we will establish that the average total cost function exhibits a unimodal curve. The lowest point of the curve essentially means the lowest average total cost. We will next develop a simulation-based heuristic algorithm for finding an outpatient schedule near the lowest point. In the paper, we present numerical examples using the heuristic based upon a set of predetermined unit costs. Specifically, we find the near optimal interappointment times for schedules, where there are two and three patients in each block, respectively. The current work does not consider possible no shows and walk-ins. Future work will undertake these issues.

Description:    In this paper, a new attempt has been made in the area of tool-based micromachining for automated, non-contact, and flexible prediction of quality responses such as average surface roughness ( R a ), tool wear ratio (TWR) and metal removal rate (MRR) of micro-turned miniaturized parts through a machine vision system (MVS) which is integrated with an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The images of machined surface grabbed by the MVS could be extracted using the algorithm developed in this work, to get the features of image texture [average gray level ( G a )]. This work presents an area-based surface characterization technique which applies the basic light scattering principles used in other optimal optical measurement systems. These principles are applied in a novel fashion which is especially suitable for in-process prediction and control. The main objective of this study is to design an ANFIS for estimation of R a , TWR, and MRR in micro-turning process. Cutting speed ( S ), feed rate ( F ), depth of cut ( D ), G a were taken as input parameters and R a , TWR, MRR as the output parameters. The results obtained from the ANFIS model were compared with experimental values. It is found that the predicted values of the responses are in good agreement with the experimental values. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s00138-011-0378-0 Authors S. Palani, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mount Zion College of Engineering and Technology, Pudukkottai, Tamilnadu, India U. Natarajan, Department of Mechanical Engineering, A.C. College of Engineering and Technology, Karaikudi, Tamilnadu, India M. Chellamalai, Department of Micro and Precision Machining, Central Manufacturing Technology Institute, Bangalore, India Journal Machine Vision and Applications Online ISSN 1432-1769 Print ISSN 0932-8092

Description:    In this paper, the technique of saliency detection is proposed to model people’s biological ability of attending to their interest. There are two phases in the scheme of intelligent saliency searching: saliency filtering and saliency refinement. In saliency filtering, non-salient regions of a scene image are filtered out by measuring information entropy and biological color sensitivity. The information entropy evaluates the level of knowledge and energy contained, and the color sensitivity measures biological stimulation of a presented scene. In saliency refinement, candidate salient regions obtained are cultivated for a good representation of saliency by extracting salient objects, similarly to people’s manner of perception. The performance of the proposed technique is studied on noiseless and noisy natural scenes and evaluated with eye fixation data. The evaluation proved the effectiveness of the approach in discovering salient regions or objects from scene images. The performance of addressing transformation and illumination variance is also investigated. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s00138-011-0372-6 Authors Shuzhi Sam Ge, Social Robotics Lab, Interactive Digital Media Institute and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117576 Singapore Hongsheng He, Social Robotics Lab, Interactive Digital Media Institute and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117576 Singapore Zhengchen Zhang, Social Robotics Lab, Interactive Digital Media Institute and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117576 Singapore Journal Machine Vision and Applications Online ISSN 1432-1769 Print ISSN 0932-8092

Description:    Early prediction of natural disasters like floods and landslides is essential for reasons of public safety. This can be attained by processing Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) images and retrieving soil-moisture parameters. In this article, TerraSAR-X product images are investigated in combination with a water-cloud model based on the Shi semi-empirical model to determine the accuracy of soil-moisture parameter retrieval. SAR images were captured between January 2008 and September 2010 in the vicinity of the city Maribor, Slovenia, at different incidence angles. The water-cloud model provides acceptable estimated soil-moisture parameters at bare or scarcely vegetated soil areas. However, this model is too sensitive to speckle noise; therefore, a pre-processing step for speckle-noise reduction is carried out. Afterwards, self-organizing neural networks (SOM) are used to segment the areas at which the performance of this model is poor, and at the same time neural networks are also used for a more accurate approximation of model parameters’ values. Ground-truth is measured using the Pico64 sensor located on the field, simultaneously with capturing SAR images, in order to enable the comparison and validation of the obtained results. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the water-cloud model accuracy over all incidence angles. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s00138-011-0375-3 Authors Matej Kseneman, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia Dušan Gleich, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia Božidar Potočnik, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia Journal Machine Vision and Applications Online ISSN 1432-1769 Print ISSN 0932-8092