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Bulk phonon limited mobility in silicon based MOSFETs, have long been observed to demonstrate a -1/3rd dependence on the effective transverse field at room and higher temperatures. However, despite significant effort, existing phonon scattering models fail to reproduce this dependence. This paper reports on the impact of approximations used in the calculation of the intra-valley scattering rate in existing models which causes a much reduced dependence of phonon limited mobility on the effective field. An expression for scattering rate in the absence of such approximations is derived. The improvement of the new complex model is however, insufficient to match experiment. To improve the situation an empirical model is proposed with deformation potentials dependent on the inversion sheet concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlling rotary wing platforms, especially on helicopters, is a difficult task because of the nonlinearity of the structure and strong coupled motion dynamics. In this paper, a linear, quadratic regulator method is used to control the trajectory and mission paths of the autonomous helicopter. Nonlinear motion dynamics is linearized at certain operating points and linear model is obtained by Taylor's series expansion. This model is integrated into MATLAB® program. By using LQR (Linear Quadratic Regulator) methodology, the attitude of the autonomous Puma helicopter is controlled and two simulations are realized. The results show that this approach can effectively be applied to control rotary wing platforms on helicopters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an intelligent daylight panel control system based on fuzzy control theory for green buildings. The goal of this research is to automatically modulate sunlight efficiently and to enhance the quality of interior illuminations, thus reducing the need for artificial lighting and conserving energy. Daylight panels are typically installed on the outside of windows. By applying the proposed fuzzy controller, the reflection angle of daylight panels could be adjusted and optimized so that interior illuminative quality is improved and energy-saving is achieved at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses real-time adaptive Phase-lead controller for maglev systems using digital signal processors (DSP). With an adaptive phase-lead controller, the DSP automatically updates the controller parameters to achieve the desired system output. The controller is applied to maglev systems. Different adaptation rates were tested. Test results show that controller parameters converged to expected values and maglev systems are stabilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a technique to transform the original set of variables into a smaller set of linear combinations that account for most of the original set variance. The data reduction based on the classical PCA is fruitless if outlier is present in the data. The decomposed classical covariance matrix is very sensitive to outlying observations. ROBPCA is an effective PCA method combining two advantages of both projection pursuit and robust covariance estimation. The estimation is computed with the idea of minimum covariance determinant (MCD) of covariance matrix. The limitation of MCD is when covariance determinant almost equal zero. This paper discusses PCA using the minimum vector variance (MVV) to enhance the result. The usefulness of MVV is not limited to small or low dimension data set and to non-singular or singular covariance matrix. The MVV algorithm, compared with FMCD algorithm, has a lower computational complexity; the complexity of VV is of order 0(p²). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergence of modern techniques for scientific data collection has resulted in large scale accumulation of data pertaining to diverse fields. Conventional database querying methods are inadequate to extract useful information from huge data banks. Cluster analysis is one of the major data analysis methods and the k-means clustering algorithm is widely used for many practical applications. But the original k-means algorithm is computationally expensive and the quality of the resulting clusters heavily depends on the selection of initial centroids. Several methods have been proposed in the literature for improving the performance of the k-means clustering algorithm. This paper proposes a method for making the algorithm more effective and efficient, so as to get better clustering with reduced complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research in the sciences involves modelling and prediction of the functional relationship between simultaneous time series. In this paper we present a new method to infer functional relationship between simultaneous time series based on the modified version of Singular Value Decomposition method. We firstly extract the dominant relationships, perform pattern analyses on the dominant relationships, and construct the model equations of functional relationship between the time series through the time before the forecast period of interest. We then conduct predictions on the future values of one time series from another time series based on the model equations. Several regression schemes are proposed to serve as a prediction basis. The proposed model is applied to predict the real simultaneous health outcome time series. The simulation, the predictions and the real data show good agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an investigation of authorship identification on personal blogs or diaries, which are different from other types of text such as essays, emails, or articles based on the text properties. The investigation utilizes couple of intuitive feature sets and studies various parameters that affect the identification performance. Many studies manipulated the problem of authorship identification in manually collected corpora, but only few utilized real data from existing blogs. The complexity of the language model in personal blogs is motivating to identify the correspondent author. The main contribution of this work is at least three folds. Firstly, we utilize the LIWC and MRC feature sets together, which have been developed with Psychology background, for the first time for authorship identification on personal blogs. Secondly, we analyze the effect of various parameters, and feature sets, on the identification performance. This includes the number of authors in the data corpus, the post size or the word count, and the number of posts for each author. Finally, we study applying authorship identification over a limited set of users that have a common personality attributes. This analysis is motivated by the lack of standard or solid recommendations in literature for such task, especially in the domain of personal blogs. The results and evaluation show that the utilized features are compact while their performance is highly comparable with other larger feature sets. The analysis also confirmed the most effective parameters, their ranges in the data corpus, and the usefulness of the common users classifier in improving the performance, for the author identification task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software reliability is one of the most important software quality attribute and Software reliability estimation is a hard problem to solve accurately. However for management of software quality and standard practice of the organization, accurate reliability estimation is important. Non-homogeneous Poisson Process (NHPP) models and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models are among the most important software reliability growth models. In this paper we study an approach using past fault-related data with cubic spline Network model to estimate reliability. A numerical example is shown with simulated datasets. The example shows that the proposed model accurately estimate the software reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of multimedia and internet allows for wide distribution of digital media data. It becomes much easier to edit, modify and duplicate digital information. In additional, digital document is also easy to copy and distribute, therefore it may face many threats. It became necessary to find an appropriate protection due to the significance, accuracy and sensitivity of the information. Nowadays, protection system can be classified into more specific as hiding information and encryption information or a combination between them. The strength of the combination between hiding and encryption science is due to the non-existence of standard algorithms to be used in (hiding and encryption) secret messages. Also there is randomness in hiding methods such as combining several media (covers) with different methods to pass a secret message. Furthermore, there is no formal method to be followed to discover a hidden data. In this paper, a new information hiding system is presented. The aim of the proposed system is to hide information (data file) in an execution file (EXE).The new proposed system is able to embed an information in an execution file and also able to retract the hidden file from the execution file. Meanwhile, since the cover file might be used to identify hiding information, the proposed system considers overcoming this dilemma by using the execution file as a cover file. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypercube parallel architecture is one of the most popular interconnection networks due to many of its attractive properties and its suitability for general purpose parallel processing. An attractive version of the hypercube is the crossed cube. It preserves the important properties of the hypercube and most importantly reduces the diameter by a factor of two. In this paper, we show the ability of the crossed cube as a versatile architecture to simulate other interconnection networks efficiently. We present new schemes to embed complete binary trees, complete quad trees, and cycles into crossed cubes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of data mining provides techniques for new knowledge discovery--finding patterns in the data set such as classifiers and association rules that may be useful to the data miner. Privacy preserving data mining seeks to allow users to share data while ensuring individual and corporate privacy concerns are addressed. Recently algorithms have been introduced to maintain privacy even when all but two parties collude. This paper builds upon previous algorithms, putting cycle-partitioned secure sum into the mathematical framework of edge-disjoint Hamiltonian cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of designing embedded systems is constantly increasing. Some of the factors contributing to the increase in complexity are: increasing complexities of hardware and software, increased pressure to deliver full-featured products with reduced time-to-market, and the fact that more embedded systems are using heterogeneous architectures consisting of dedicated hardware components (ASIC) and software running on processors. This ongoing increase in complexities motivates the usage of high-level system design approaches such as System Level Design tools and methodologies. In System Level Design, specification languages are used to build high level models of the entire system, at the System Level, to allow fast design space exploration. Models of Computations (MoC) are used as the underlying formal representation of a system. This paper investigates the co-design approach and its design activities. Specifically, specification and modeling computation process are investigated and evaluated. Popular models of computations are described and compared. Various specification languages for designing embedded are described and compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network coding is a novel technique that includes many applications in realistic networking era. Through network coding, intermediary nodes might send out packets that are combinations of incoming information. The basic theme behind network coding is the summation of incoming information traffic through simple XOR. There are many profits of network coding: improved throughput, less number of transmissions, better network management, less BER, minimum delay, less resource consumptions. In this paper we will prove how network coding improves and achieves the Qos of any network. We also discuss the Implementation aspects of network coding like how it may implemented on current infrastructure networks, we also discuss the theoretical and practical results on network coding for improving quality of service parameters using four basic approaches of network coding, Optimal, Deterministic, Random and Heuristic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Line Spectrum Frequencies (LSF) have been the current parameter set to represent LPC coefficients in speech coding. Extensive research has been performed to exploit their interframe and intraframe correlations and quantize them more efficiently. Interframe coding of LSF's can cause error propagation when frame erasures occur. Since most LSF quantizers were designed with the primary concerns of bit-rate and complexity, less attention was paid to error propagation. In this paper, we consider the erasure performance of LSF differential scalar quantizer (DSQ) and compare it with the interframe coding method embedded in the standard G723.1 of the ITU. Our results show that with only 5% extra bit-rate, DSQ algorithm is much more robust to frame erasures and improvements in terms of spectral distortion and Enhanced modified bark spectral distortion (EMBSD) tests under various packet loss conditions are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical validation of software metrics to predict quality using machine learning methods is important to ensure their practical relevance in the software organizations. In this paper, we build a Support Vector Machine (SVM) model to find the relationship between object-oriented metrics given by Chidamber and Kemerer and fault proneness. The proposed model is empirically evaluated using public domain KC1 NASA data set. The performance of the SVM method was evaluated by Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis. Based on these results, it is reasonable to claim that such models could help for planning and performing testing by focusing resources on fault-prone parts of the design and code. Thus, the study shows that SVM method may also be used in constructing software quality models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of rapid prototyping tools such as MATLAB-Simulink and Xilinx System Generator becomes increasingly important because of time-to-market constraints. This paper presents a methodology for implementing real-time DSP applications on a reconfigurable logic platform using Xilinx System Generator (XSG) for Matlab. The methodology aims to improve the design verfication efficiency for such complex system. It presents an architecture for Color Space Conversion (CSC) RGBTOYCbCr for video processing using Xilinx System Generator. The design was implemented targeting a Spartan3 device (3S200PQ208) then a Virtex II Pro (xc2vp7-6ff672). Obtained results are discussed and compared with an other architecture. The conversion method has been verified successfully with no visually perceptual errors in the transformed images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prediction of software defects has recently attracted the attention of software quality researchers. Many predictive classification systems have already been proposed, which aim at early discovery of software modules that are fault-prone and versa. The proposed methods are usually assessed using datasets available from NASA Metrics Data repository. These datasets include a combination of design-level and codelevel metrics for different modules. To apply a defect predictor, all metrics have to be measured for any of the modules (to be used as the classifier inputs). The measurement of some of these metrics is easy and can be done straight forward. However, there are a number of metrics which are more difficult or time-consuming to quantify. Moreover, many of them do not have an exact value; so, they may get different values when using different formulas or tools. In this paper, we first discuss this hypothesis that some strong dependencies exist among various features of these datasets. Based on this hypothesis, we search for short combinations of features from the first category (easy-to-measure features), which can describe any of the features from the second category (hard-to-measure features) with a high accuracy. Then, we introduce a set of fuzzy modeling systems, each of which estimates the value of one of the second category features from its specified determinants. The evaluation of the estimation systems is carried out by computing the MSE values for all features. The experimental results are promising. The presented estimation system provides usability of the defect prediction system rather than its accuracy. Using this system, the user will not have to measure all the required mentioned metrics for any of the modules. All the features of the second category will automatically be estimated with a high accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of dynamic, adaptable discrete-event systems calls for adequate modeling formalisms and tools in order to manage possible changes occurring during system's lifecycle. A common approach is to pollute the design with details not concerning the current system behavior, rather its evolution. That hampers analysis, reuse and maintenance in general. A Petri net-based reflective model (based on classical Petri nets) was recently proposed to support dynamic discrete-event system's design, and was applied to dynamic workflow's management. Behind there is the idea that keeping functional aspects separated from evolutionary ones, and applying evolution to the (current) system only when necessary, results in a clean formal model for dynamic systems. This model preserves the ability of verifying properties typical of classical Petri nets. As a first step toward the implementation (in the short time) of a discrete-event simulator, Reflective Petri nets are provided in this paper with a semantics defined in terms of labeled state-transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ad hoc network (MANET) has no fixed networking infrastructure, and consists of mobile nodes that communicate with each other. Since nodes are mobile, Routing in ad hoc network is a challenging task. Efficient routing protocols can make better performance in such networks. Many protocols have been proposed for ad hoc networks which the most common types are: Ad hoc on-demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR). In this paper, we introduce a new Position and Neighborhood based Routing (PNR) algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks which uses GPS and new algorithm to reduce the overhead caused by position update messages. We also compare our scheme with DSR, AODV, OLSR for two metrics: packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay. We use GlomoSim [1] to evaluate these protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an approach for a Classification by Discriminant Analysis of stressed syllables in Standard Arabic. In this study, we exploited the acoustic parameters of fundamental frequency and energy by means of a classification by a discriminant analysis to detect stressed syllables of Standard Arabic words with the structure [CVCVCV] read by four native speakers (two male and two female). We obtained a global percentage of detection equal to 83% of the stressed syllables. These initial results need to be tested on larger corpora but our results suggest this could be a useful addition to existing algorithms, in the goal of improving systems of automatic synthesis and recognition in Standard Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A flexible architecture is proposed in this paper for implementation Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) of 5/3 filter. The proposed architecture includes transforms modules, a RAM and bus interfaces. This architecture works in non separable fashion using a serial-parallel filter with distributed control to compute all the DWT (1D-DWT and 2D-DWT) resolution levels. The so-called lifting scheme represents the fastest implementation of the DWT. A VHDL model was described and synthesized using implementation of our architecture. Synthesis results show that Xilinx XCV600E FPGA implementation can be achieved with a frequency of about 108 Mhz, allowing processing rate between 85 and 187 frames per second for a range of standard picture dimensions. Speed/Area resulting from this processor is analyzed and is shown to demonstrate that our design achieves favourable performances with other FPGA based implementations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My interest is automatic interpretation of natural line drawings of engineering objects. Such drawings only show that part of an object visible from a particular viewpoint, and the major challenge in interpreting them is deducing the remaining, unseen part of the topology. Since engineers routinely use sketched drawings as a means of communicating structure, using well-established (if unstated) conventions to deduce the invisible topology, it should be possible to identify these conventions and use them to interpret such drawings automatically. One practical approach to constructing the hidden topology is to treat the construction process as a search through the space of possible complete topologies. When this approach is used, the most frequent problem is that of mismatched vertex neighbourhoods: the side of an edge which is convex at one end is concave at the other. This paper describes a simple method for overcoming the problem of mismatched neighbourhoods, and analyses the results which are obtained when this method is incorporated in the construction process. Insights gained from this work may also be applicable to other fields, most obviously perception psychology and the "healing" of CAD models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have designed a novel server-side data validation service, based upon semantic web technologies to solve the lack of data validation and bypassing validation issues. The NDVS consists of five components: RDFa annotation for elements of web pages, interceptor, RDFa extractor, RDF parser, and data validator. Our solution is implemented as a prototype. In this paper, we have conducted a pilot study to prevent the security vulnerabilities at the application level such as SQL injections. The results of this initial study have shown that the proposed service (NDVS) could provide a high coverage of prevention of security vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an adaptive multimedia system for teaching fundamentals of finite element method (STFFEM) using a case-based content sequencing. The finite element method is a method for solving partial differential equations. The method is applicable to a wide range of physical and engineering problems that can be mathematically described by partial differential equations. The STFFEM's learning material organization has a hierarchical structure with four levels. The STFFEM is able to utilize the specific knowledge of previously experienced, concrete content sequencing situations (cases). A new content sequencing problem (a new case) is solved by finding a similar past case, and reusing it in the new content sequence problem situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes simulation of pneumatic cylinder systems with long pneumatic pipes. Problem is considered from parameter distribution and time delay perspective. It is applied the control for special group of distributed parameter systems, with distributed control, where control depends of one space and one time coordinate, and finite spectrum assignment method is implemented for time delay system. The stability on finite space interval is analyzed and efficient program support is developed in symbolic Maple program language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes specification and execution of behavioral concepts for Open Distributed Processing (ODP) Computational Language. Open Distributed Processing - ODP is introduced as a general framework upon which open distributed system can be modeled through the viewpoint concept and the use of an object oriented language (Unified Modeling Language UML). The behavior of an ODP system is determined by collecting all possible actions in which the system (acting as an object), or any of its constituent objects, might take part, together with a set of constraints on when these actions can occur. In order to specify the executable behavior of a system and to make the processes of the Computational executable and controllable, the Reference Model for ODP RM-ODP can be used as a meta-model for behavioral specifications. In the Computational language, the behavior is a collection of actions with a set of constraints on when they may occur. Firstly, we give the description and specification of the behavior by the activity diagrams. Secondly, we define the mapping from the concepts of behavior Computational language to BPEL concepts and we present the syntax and the structure of a BPEL Behavior process. Then we generate the corresponding BPEL and computational files to implement the specified process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software fault tolerance demands additional tasks like error detection and recovery through executable assertions, exception handling, diversity and redundancy based mechanisms. These mechanisms do not come for free, rather they introduce additional complexity to the core functionality. This paper presents light weight error detection and recovery mechanisms based on the rate of change in signal or data values. Maximum instantaneous and mean rates are used as plausibility checks to detect erroneous states and recover. These plausibility checks are exercised in a novel aspect oriented software fault tolerant design framework that reduces the additional logical complexity. A Lego XT Robot based case study has been completed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supply chain management system satisfies the customer demands through the most efficient use of resources, including distribution capacity, inventory and labor. E-procurement is expected to be integrated with the supply chain management systems, which are analyzed or processed by computers, in a large-scale and dynamic environment. In this type of systems there can be any number of buyers and suppliers at any time. Each supplier may provide necessary products from other suppliers, piece by piece or as a whole. This type of mechanism forms a multi level hierarchy between suppliers. This paper presents MULEP-a MUlti Level E-Procurement system which deploys the procurement process in this hierarchical supplier structure. System is managed by a set of distributed mobile agents which are developed over Java Agent DEvelopment Framework-JADE for platform independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the identification of the topological spatial relations that can exist between a Circular Spatially Extended Point and a Line in the geographical space. For the identification of the topological spatial relations that can exist between these two types of objects, the intersections existing between the several parts of the objects were verified. Using 14 conditions and the respective proofs, a set of 38 topological spatial relations were identified. The geometric characterization of the topological relations was also achieved, proving the existence of such relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method which combines a clustering technique with asset allocation methods, to improve portfolio Sharpe ratios and weights stability. The portfolio weights are computed based on cluster members and cluster portfolios, which are decided by an optimal cluster pattern. The optimized cluster pattern tells the belonging of assets to particular clusters, which is identified by using a population-based method, i.e. the Differential Evolution, subject to maximizing the Sharpe ratio of terminal portfolios. We employ two different asset allocation methodologies, i.e. the mean-variance Markowitz allocation and the parameter-free equal weights allocation, with the Financial Times and Stock Exchange market and Dow Jones Industrial Average market data, to study the clustering impact on Sharpe ratio and weights instability of the terminal portfolios. As experimental results suggest that, the terminal portfolios from the clustered markets have higher Sharpe ratios than that without clustering. Furthermore, as a side effect of the clustering, the terminal portfolio weights become more stable than that in the non-clustered markets. Portfolio managers may cluster their assets with the Sharpe ratio criterion before distributing asset weights to improve portfolio weights stability and risk-adjusted returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike occidental flutes, Arabian flutes have gained only limited attention in literature over the past years. Moreover, the least tone-to-tone distance in Arabian music is only half of that of occidental music and therefore the analysis and features extraction process of Arabian music is more challenging. This paper investigates the tone-to-tone features of two traditional Arabian flutes; Al-Nay and Shabbaba. These two kinds of flute gain wide popularity in the Middle Eastern and North African countries. A previously reported analysis and features extraction package is adapted and used for query-by --playing melody retrieval. Experimental tone-to-tone investigations based on the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) are presented for both flutes. The obtained results showed that the analysis approach is robust and successfully performed the task of query-by--playing melody retrieval. Comparison results for Al-Nay and Shabbaba were obtained and evaluated using the Arabian musical Scale "Bayat", as a reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous navigation in unknown cluttered environments is one of the main challenges for search and rescue robots inside collapsed buildings. Being able to compare different search strategies in various search fields is crucial to attain fast victim localization. Thus we discuss an algorithmic development and proliferation of realistic after--disaster test fields for search and rescue simulated robots. In this paper we characterized our developed search environments by their fractal dimensions. This index has shown to be a discriminative index for narrow pathways inside confined and cluttered spaces in our simulation test fields. In this approach a simulation of challenging parts of NIST red course is constructed and a benchmark for search strategies has been evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a partial implementation of an integrated Quality, Security and Environment management system [1] to deal with the definition of an appropriate global management plan. This implementation is based on the multi-objective influence diagrams [12] which are one of the most commonly used graphical decision models for reasoning under uncertainty with multiple objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient method to construct an accurate fuzzy classification system. In order to optimize the generalization accuracy, we use rule-weight as a simple mechanism to tune the classifier and propose a new learning method to iteratively adjust the weight of fuzzy rules. The rule-weights in the proposed method are derived by solving the minimization problem through gradient descent. Through computer simulations on some data sets from UCI repository, the proposed scheme shows a uniformly good behavior and achieves results which are comparable or better than other fuzzy and non-fuzzy classification systems, proposed in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the conceptual neighborhood graphs with the transitions between the topological spatial relations that can exist between a circular spatially extended point and a line. The final objective of this work is the use of the transitions in the prediction of a mobile user position in a road network. The conceptual neighborhood graphs were identified using the snapshot model and the smooth-transition model. In the snapshot model, the identification of neighborhood relations is achieved looking at the topological distance existing between pairs of spatial relations. In the smooth-transition model, conceptual neighbors are identified analyzing the topological deformations that may change a topological spatial relation. The obtained graphs and the corresponding topological distances between spatial relations can be used as an alternative, or as a complement, to map-matching techniques usually used to predict the positions of mobile users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 8 of the book "Learned Ignorance in the Medicine Bow Mountains: A Reflection on Intellectual Prejudice," is presented. It discusses the recurring contradiction between the world of the intellectual and the world of the writer where intellectuals have a sense of local origins and writers recognize the power of the home place. It indicates how young American intellectuals must reject their own literary roots and accept the rootedness of writings from foreign cultures in order to receive their intellectual walking papers.

This short paper provides an informal perspective on the United Kingdom's development of security culture. It is an individual and personal viewpoint, as encouraged at this workshop, and does not represent formal U.K. policy on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safeguarding nuclear material has become paramount for international security since the end of the Cold War, and in particular since September 11, 2001. On the one hand, nuclear materials have became more readily available and accessible as a result of the Soviet collapse and the emergence of many new suppliers. On the other, the nature and intensity of the threat have changed, rendering previously existing measures to safeguard nuclear materials less adequate. The biggest threat to international security since the early 1990s has been the theft of nuclear materials by terrorists who use these materials in terror attacks. The emphasis during these early years was on quickly fixing security gaps at a large number of nuclear facilities. There was little time to develop a comprehensive strategy not only to fund, build, or install these upgrades, but also to assure that they were properly used and operated. It soon became clear that these initial strategies placed insufficient emphasis on the human factor of materials protection, control, and accounting (MPC&A). Newly installed equipment was in many cases incompatible with work practices and threat perceptions among facility personnel. Subsequent efforts to develop an appropriate “security culture” that addresses the new security threats have produced positive results. Security culture received the high-level attention it undoubtedly deserves at the U.S.-Russian Bratislava summit in February 2005. However, most observers agree that changing security culture is not as easy as installing technical upgrades: cultures are resistant to change and develop gradually, whereas a quick response is needed. A striking cultural shift occurred in the safety-culture domain after the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Indeed, this cultural transformation took place not only on the workforce level but on the level of facility management, the national leadership, and even the general public. The accident also helped revolutionize international perspectives on and cooperation in nuclear safety, resulting in new international norms and regulations to prevent such accidents in the future. This paper examines the safety-culture shift and considers how applicable it is to the ongoing work of improving security culture at nuclear facilities worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the proceedings of the first session of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Advanced Research Workshop. The session focuses on the properties of security culture that apply universally. The participants at the workshop also discussed issues concerning cyber security and paper security. They also explored the difference between security and safety.

This paper discusses the nuclear security culture concept and definition, and provides a review of the 12 fundamental principles as stipulated in the amended Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives the main definitions relating to dependability, a generic concept including as special case such attributes as reliability, availability, safety, integrity, maintainability, etc. Security brings in concerns for confidentiality, in addition to availability and integrity. Basic definitions are given first. They are then commented upon, and supplemented by additional definitions, which address the threats to dependability and security (faults, errors, failures), their attributes, and the means for their achievement (fault prevention, fault tolerance, fault removal, fault forecasting). The aim is to explicate a set of general concepts, of relevance across a wide range of situations and, therefore, helping communication and cooperation among a number of scientific and technical communities, including ones that are concentrating on particular types of system, of system failures, or of causes of system failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the role that speech pauses play in communication we speculate on the possibility that holds (or gesture pauses) may serve to similar purposes supporting the view that gestures as language are an expressive resource that can take on different functions depending on the communicative demand. The data reported in the present paper seem to support this hypothesis, showing that 93% of the children and 78% of the adult speech pause variation is predictable from holds, suggesting that at the least to some extent, the function of holds may be thought to be similar to speech pauses. While speech pauses are likely to play the role of signalling mental activation processes aimed at replacing the “old spoken content” of an “utterance” with a new one, holds may signal mental activation processes aimed at replacing the “old visible bodily actions” (intimately involved in the semantic and/or pragmatic contents of the old “utterance”) with new bodily actions reflecting the representational and/or propositional contribution that gestures are engaged to convey in the new “utterance”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intonation contributes to conveying information on speakers' regional accent personal trait, as accent identifies a person as belonging to a specific linguistic sub-community. In this paper a discussion on this topic is presented, taking Italian as an example of descriptive aspects of regional variation in intonation, and on German language as a case study on the perceptual identification of varieties by relying on intonation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, successful pause detection plays an important role not only in the process of speech recognition and speech coding but also in the biometrical field for detecting stress in the speaker's emotional state due to uncomfortable situations or in interactive dialog systems for making more natural the human-machine interaction more natural. Most of the recordings exploited in practical applications are made under adverse conditions and few algorithms have been proposed to handle noisy conditions. This paper proposes two methods for non-speech activity pause detection in spontaneous speech recordings made in noisy environments. The input signal is transformed into log spectral energy and is divided into specific frequency bands. Each band is smoothed and tracked by dynamically adjusted thresholds based on noise energy estimation. Thresholds are adapted taking into account the dynamic changes of the speech signal under environmental noise. The proposed methods run in real time and do not require a priori knowledge of the SNR and a priori threshold values. Experimental results show that their performance is comparable with standard VADs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates the need for study of the interdependencies between verbal and nonverbal behavior treated as a unified form of activity, manifesting itself in face-to-face communication. Invoking the principles of Human-Centered Linguistics the author treats communication not as something passed on via language, but rather as something to which language merely contributes. One of the consequences of such an approach to this issue is a reassignment of focus. Rather than attention being drawn to linguistic phenomena, the spotlight is on the communicative properties of the interlocutors, creatively utilizing various elements of the interactional “symbolic spaces.” With reference to the above, the communicative action is perceived as a function of choices correlating verbal and nonverbal signs and signals. Light is also shed on the advantages stemming from an integrated modeling of communicative phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Face recognition is one of the most successful ways for biometric recognition. One of its advantages is the high social acceptance by users, because it does not have the criminal stigma associated to other biometric traits, such as fingerprints. On the other hand, face is also suitable for facial expression analysis and emotion analysis, which can be useful for user convenience systems, where the computer can interact in a more intelligent way with the user. In addition, the cost of a webcam can be below 20 EUR, which is certainly lower than other biometric acquisition devices. This paper provides an overview of face recognition with special emphasis on biometric recognition (identification/ verification). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biometric recognition and authentication based on face recognitions can actually be used in many real-time applications such as surveillance, security systems, access control, and much more. For these purposes systems have to grant a fast computational speed but also robustness to illumination and facial expressions variations. In this paper we propose a very fast image pre-processing by the introduction of a linearly shaded elliptical mask centered over the faces. Simulation results, over the AR Database, show that the proposed method leads to a significant performance improvement in identification, using both eigenfaces and DCT with Nearest Neighbour and RBF Neural Network, without modifying the global computational weight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe here our first effort for developing a virtual talking head able to engage a situated face-to-face interaction with a human partner. This paper concentrates on the low-level components of this interaction loop and the cognitive impact of the implementation of mutual attention and multimodal deixis on the communication task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In future Ambient Intelligence environments we assume intelligence embedded in the environment and its virtual, sometimes visualized agents (virtual humans). These environments support the human inhabitants or visitors in their activities and interactions by perceiving them through their sensors. In this paper we look at our research on bodily and gestural interaction with environments equipped with simple sensors, application-dependent intelligence, and an embodied virtual agent employed in the display of reactive and pro-active activity. The virtual humans we discuss play roles such as dance partner, conductor or trainer. All of them require the perception and the generation of bodily activity and other display of nonverbal communication. The role of affect and persuasion in these ambient entertainment environments is touched upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]