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This paper introduces a Context-aware Privacy Policy Language (CPPL) that enables mobile users to control who can access their context information, at what detail, and in which situation by specifying their context-aware privacy rules. Context-aware privacy rules map a set of privacy rules to one or more user's situations, in which these rules are valid. Each time a user's situation changes, a list of valid rules is updated, leaving only a subset of the specified rules to be evaluated by a privacy framework upon arrival of a context query. In the existing context-dependent privacy policy languages a user's context is used as an additional condition parameter in a privacy rule, thus all the specified privacy rules have to be evaluated when a request to access a user's context arrives. Keeping the number of rules that need to be evaluated small is important because evaluation of a large number of privacy rules can potentially increase the response time to a context query. CPPL also enables rules to be defined based on a user's social relationship with a context requestor, which reduces the number of rules that need to be defined by a user and that consequently need to be evaluated by a privacy mechanism. This paper shows that when compared to the existing context-dependent privacy policy languages, this number of rules (that are encoded using CPPL) decreases with an increasing number of user-defined situations and requestors that are represented by a small number of social relationship groups., QC 20151113

The very recent development of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) provides a smart infrastructure connecting abstract computational artifacts with the physical world. The solution to CPS must transcend the boundary between the cyber world and the physical world by providing integrated modelsaddressing issues from both worlds simultaneously. This needs new theories, conceptual frameworks and engineering practice. In this paper, we set out the key requirements that must be met by CPS systems, review and evaluate the progress that has been made in the development of theory, conceptual frameworks and practical applications. We then discuss the need for semantics and a proposed approach for addressing this. Grand challenges to informatics posed by CPS are raised in the paper.

In this paper, we describe the Software Tag which makes software development visible to software purchasers (users). A software tag is a partial set of empirical data about a software development project shared between the purchaser and developer. The purchaser uses the software tag to evaluate the software project, allowing them to recognize the quality level of the processes and products involved. With Japanese government support, we have successfully standardized the software tag named Software Tag Standard 1.0, and have developed various associated tools for tag data collection and visualization. For its initial evaluation, the software tag has been applied to several projects. This paper also presents various activities aimed at promoting the use of the software tag in Japan and the world.

Intelligent Mobile Robots are increasingly used in unstructured domains; one particularly challenging example for this is, planetary exploration. The preparation of according missions is highly non-trivial, especially as it is difficult to carry out realistic experiments without, very sophisticated infrastructures. In this paper, we argue that, the, Unified System for Automation and Robot Simulation (USARSim) offers interesting opportunities for research on planetary exploration by mobile robots. With the example of work on terrain classification, it, is shown how synthetic as well as real world data, from Mars call be used to test an algorithm's performance in USARSim. Concretely, experiments with an algorithm for the detection of negotiable ground oil a, planetary surface are presented. It is shown that the approach performs fast; and robust on planetary surfaces., Proceedings details: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), 2009, Volume 5399, Volume DOI:10.1007/978-3-642-02921-9, Sublibrary S7 - Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, editors R. Goebel, J. Siekmann, and W.Wahlster. Conference paper DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-02921-9_40

Designing for Universal Access requires designers to have a good understanding of the full range of users and their capabilities, appropriate datasets, and the most suitable tools and techniques. Education clearly plays an important role in helping designers acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to find the relevant information about the users and then apply it to produce a genuinely inclusive design. This paper presents a reflective analysis of a variant of the “Usability and Accessibility” course for MSc students, developed and delivered by the author over five successive semesters at the IT University of Copenhagen. The aim is to examine whether this course provided an effective and useful method for raising the issues around Universal Access with the designers of the future. This paper examines the results and conclusions from the students over five semesters of this course and provides an overview of the success of the different design and evaluation methods. The paper concludes with a discussion of the effectiveness of each of the specific methods, techniques and tools used in the course, both from design and education perspectives.

For the family of non-parametric q-exponential statistical models, in a former paper, written by the same authors, a differentiable Banach manifold modelled on Lebesgue spaces of real random variables has been built -- In this paper, the geometry induced on this manifold is characterized by q-divergence functionals -- This geometry turns out to be a generalization of the geometry given by Fisher information metric and Levi-Civita connections -- Moreover, the classical Amari´s α-connections appears as special case of the q−connections (q) -- The main result is the expected one, namely the zero curvature of the manifold, For the family of non-parametric q-exponential statistical models, in a former paper, written by the same authors, a differentiable Banach manifold modelled on Lebesgue spaces of real random variables has been built -- In this paper, the geometry induced on this manifold is characterized by q-divergence functionals -- This geometry turns out to be a generalization of the geometry given by Fisher information metric and Levi-Civita connections -- Moreover, the classical Amari´s α-connections appears as special case of the q−connections (q) -- The main result is the expected one, namely the zero curvature of the manifold

For the family of non-parametric q-exponential statistical models, in a former paper, written by the same authors, a differentiable Banach manifold modelled on Lebesgue spaces of real random variables has been built. In this paper, the geometry induced on this manifold is characterized by q-divergence functionals. This geometry turns out to be a generalization of the geometry given by Fisher information metric and Levi-Civita connections. Moreover, the classical Amari’s α-connections appears as special case of the q −connections ∇ (q). The main result is the expected one, namely the zero curvature of the manifold. Loading... Geometric Science of InformationGeometric Science of Information Look Inside Chapter Metrics Downloads1K Provided by Bookmetrix Other actions Export citation About this Book Reprints and Permissions Add to Papers Share Share this content on Facebook Share this content on Twitter Share this content on LinkedIn

Customer retention is crucial in a variety of businesses as acquiring new customers is often more costly than keeping the current ones. As a consequence, churn prediction has attracted great attention from both the business and academic worlds. Traditional efforts in the financial domain mainly focus on domain specific variables such as product ownership or service usage aggregation, however, without considering dynamic behavioral patterns of customers’ financial transactions. In this paper, we attempt to fill in this gap by investigating the spatio-temporal patterns and entropy of choices underlying the customers’ financial decisions, and their relations to customer churning activities. Inspired by previous works in the emerging field of computational social science, we built a prediction model based on spatio-temporal and choice behavioral traits using individual transaction records. Our results show that proposed dynamic behavioral models could predict churn decisions significantly better than traditionally considered factors such as demographic-based features, and that this effect remains consistent across multiple data sets and various churn definitions. We further study the relative importance of the various behavioral features in churn prediction, and how the predictive power varies across different demographic groups. More generally, the proposed features can also be applied to churn prediction in other domains where spatio-temporal behavioral data are available. Keywords: Churn prediction, Customer behavior, Spatio-temporal patterns, Credit card data

Landslides are among the most important and frequent natural calamities that cause severe socio-economic and human losses. After earthquakes, landslides are responsible for the greatest number of casualties and the largest amount of damage to man-made structures. On average, southern Italy is affected by a high spatial density of landslides due to its complex geological setting, which often predisposes it to slope instability phenomena under both natural and anthropogenic influences. Structurally complex formations are widespread in the southern Apennines and are characterized by high heterogeneity and very poor mechanical properties. Thus, these formations represent one of the main factors contributing to the predisposition of slopes to landsliding. In this paper, landslide-induced damage was investigated and analyzed in an area within the municipality of Agnone (Molise region), which is affected by a complex landslide that involves a structurally complex formation. The approaches used were based on six different methods that have previously been described in the literature, and a comparison of the results was made. Data regarding the damage, which consists largely of cracks observed in buildings and at the ground, were compiled through field surveys. The results were critically analyzed to note the advantages and constraints of each classification scheme. The aim of the work was to apply and compare different approaches in order to test the best and most accurate procedures for assessing damage due to landslides at the scale of individual buildings as well as to provide an objective assessment of the degree of landslide damage to structures and facilities.

The Messinian coral reef of Santa Pola, one of the most relevant geosites in the geological heritage of the western Mediterranean, is quantitatively assessed in terms of geoscience and features of potential use. Two different methodologies are used, one developed by the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME) for the Spanish Geosite Inventory (IELIG) and the other prepared by the Paleontological Museum of Elche (MUPE) for the Fossils and Heritage Project of Alicante (FOPALI). Santa Pola scores very high with both methods, which is a clear indication that this exceptionally relevant scientific geosite (included in the Spanish Geosite Inventory) also has a high didactic and tourism-recreational potential. In addition, the paper compares and discusses the two different methodologies, concluding that the selection of a model depends on the purpose of the evaluation (representativeness of the geosite in the Spanish territory associated to the Spanish Geological Inventory (IELIG) and a comparison of palaeontological and geological features (FOPALI) between different geosites). This work is a starting point to develop a specially designed management plan and geoconservation strategy for this exceptional geosite of the western Mediterranean.

Agricultural irrigation represents the main use of global water resources. Irrigation has an impact on the environment, and scientific evidence suggests that it inevitably leads to salinization of both soil and aquifers. The effects are most pronounced under arid and semi-arid conditions. In considering the varied impacts of irrigation practices on groundwater quality, these can be classed as either direct—the direct result of applying water and accompanying agrochemicals to cropland—or indirect—the effects of irrigation abstractions on groundwater hydrogeochemistry. This paper summarizes and illustrates through paradigmatic case studies the main impacts of irrigation practices on groundwater salinity. Typically, a diverse range of groundwater salinization processes operating concomitantly at different time scales (from days to hundreds of years) is involved in agricultural irrigation. Case studies suggest that the existing paradigm for irrigated agriculture of focusing mainly on crop production increases has contributed to widespread salinization of groundwater resources.

Grapevine downy mildew (Plasmopara viticola) was first detected in commercial vineyards in the Swan Valley region of Western Australia (WA) in 1998 and has now spread to all grape-growing regions of the state. This paper uses a bioeconomic model linking weather, spread, infection development, variable production costs and revenue to estimate the costs of P. viticola over time. Results indicate mean annual costs of AUD $7.3 million per year, equivalent to a 1% drop in the gross value of WA grape-growing industries. Cumulative losses since the disease became established are estimated to be AUD $140 million.

In this paper we further develop the fluctuating hydrodynamics proposed in [1] in a number of ways. We first work out in detail the classical limit of the hydrodynamical action, which exhibits many simplifications. In particular, this enables a transparent formulation of the action in physical spacetime in the presence of arbitrary external fields. It also helps to clarify issues related to field redefinitions and frame choices. We then propose that the action is invariant under a Z[subscript 2] symmetry to which we refer as the dynamical KMS symmetry. The dynamical KMS symmetry is physically equivalent to the previously proposed local KMS condition in the classical limit, but is more convenient to implement and more general. It is applicable to any states in local equilibrium rather than just thermal density matrix perturbed by external background fields. Finally we elaborate the formulation for a conformal fluid, which contains some new features, and work out the explicit form of the entropy current to second order in derivatives for a neutral conformal fluid. Keywords: Effective Field Theories; Space-Time Symmetries; Quantum Dissipative Systems, United States. Department of Energy (Award DE-FG0205ER41360)

This papers investigates device approaches towards the confinement of acoustic modes in unreleased UHF MEMS resonators. Acoustic mode confinement is achieved using specially designed mechanically coupled acoustic cavities known as acoustic Bragg Grating Coupler structures to spatially localize the vibration energy within the resonators and thereby improve the motional impedance (R[subscript x]) and mechanical quality factor (Q). This enhancement in the mechanical response is demonstrated with numerical simulations using distinct unreleased resonator technologies involving dielectric transduction mechanisms. These initial investigations show improvements in the Q as well as enhanced vibrational amplitudes within the resonator domains (i.e. translating to improved R[subscript x] values) in the case of coupled cavities as opposed to single cavity designs. An initial approach to fabricate the devices in a CMOS compatible dual-trench technology are presented.

When supergravity (SUGRA) is spontaneously broken, it is well known that anomaly mediation generates sparticle soft masses proportional to the gravitino mass. Recently, we showed that one-loop anomaly-mediated gaugino masses should be associated with unbroken supersymmetry (SUSY). This counterintuitive result arises because the underlying symmetry structure of (broken) SUGRA in flat space is in fact (unbroken) SUSY in anti-de Sitter (AdS) space. When quantum corrections are regulated in a way that preserves SUGRA, the underlying AdS curvature (proportional to the gravitino mass) necessarily appears in the regulated action, yielding soft masses without corresponding goldstino couplings. In this paper, we extend our analysis of anomaly mediation to sfermion soft masses. Already at tree-level we encounter a number of surprises, including the fact that zero soft masses correspond to broken (AdS) SUSY. At one-loop, we explain how anomaly mediation appears when regulating SUGRA in a way that preserves super-Weyl invariance. We find that recent claims in the literature about the non-existence of anomaly mediation were based on a Wilsonian effective action with residual gauge dependence, and the gaugeinvariant 1PI effective action contains the expected anomaly-mediated spectrum. Finally, we calculate the sfermion spectrum to all orders, and use supertrace relations to derive the familiar two-loop soft masses from minimal anomaly mediation, as well as unfamiliar tree-level and one-loop goldstino couplings consistent with renormalization group invariance. Keywords: Supersymmetry; Phenomenology

The last 60 years has seen unprecedented groundwater extraction and overdraft as well as development of new technologies for water treatment that together drive the advance in intentional groundwater replenishment known as managed aquifer recharge (MAR). This paper is the first known attempt to quantify the volume of MAR at global scale, and to illustrate the advancement of all the major types of MAR and relate these to research and regulatory advancements. Faced with changing climate and rising intensity of climate extremes, MAR is an increasingly important water management strategy, alongside demand management, to maintain, enhance and secure stressed groundwater systems and to protect and improve water quality. During this time, scientific research—on hydraulic design of facilities, tracer studies, managing clogging, recovery efficiency and water quality changes in aquifers—has underpinned practical improvements in MAR and has had broader benefits in hydrogeology. Recharge wells have greatly accelerated recharge, particularly in urban areas and for mine water management. In recent years, research into governance, operating practices, reliability, economics, risk assessment and public acceptance of MAR has been undertaken. Since the 1960s, implementation of MAR has accelerated at a rate of 5%/year, but is not keeping pace with increasing groundwater extraction. Currently, MAR has reached an estimated 10 km3/year, ~2.4% of groundwater extraction in countries reporting MAR (or ~1.0% of global groundwater extraction). MAR is likely to exceed 10% of global extraction, based on experience where MAR is more advanced, to sustain quantity, reliability and quality of water supplies.

While the theory of designing for Universal Access is increasingly understood, there remain persistent issues over realising products and systems that meet the goal of being accessible and usable by the broadest possible set of users. Clearly products or services that are designed without even considering the needs of the wider user base are implicitly going to struggle to be universally accessible. However, even products that have been designed knowing that they are to be used by broad user bases frequently still struggle to achieve the ambition of being universally accessible. This paper examines a number of such products that did not achieve, at least initially, the desired level of universal accessibility. Principal recommendations from each case study are presented to provide a guide to common issues to be avoided.

Big Data are hard to capture, store, search, share, analyze, and visualize. Without any doubts, Big Data represent the new frontier of data analysis, although their manipulation is far to be realized by standard computing machines. In this paper, we present a strategy to process and extract knowledge from Facebook data, in order to address marketing actions of a pharmaceutical company. The case study relies on a large Italians sample, interested in wellness and health care. The results of the study are very sturdy and can be easily replicated in different contexts.

It is well documented and has been the topic of much research as well that Computer Science courses tend to have higher than average drop-out rates at third level, particularly so, for students advancing from first year to second year. This is a problem that needs to be addressed not only with urgency but also with caution. The required number of Computer Science graduates is growing every year, but the number of graduates is not meeting this demand, and one way that this problem can be alleviated is to encourage students, at an early age, towards studying Computer Science courses. This paper presents a systematic literature review that examines the role of visual and textual programming languages when learning to program, particularly as a First Programming Language. The approach is systematic in that a structured search of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and quantitatively analysed. This study will provide insight into whether or not the current approaches to teaching young learners programming are viable, and examines what we can do to increase the interest and retention of these students as they progress through their education.

Firefly algorithm (FA) is a newly introduced meta-heuristic, nature-inspired, stochastic algorithm for solving various types of optimization problems. FA takes inspiration from natural phenomenon of light emission by fireflies and is one of the robust and easily implementable algorithms. The standard FA consists of three stages namely initialization, firefly position changing stage and termination stage. A major drawback associated with standard FA in its termination stage is its failure in getting the most optimal value due to the fact that after a fixed number of iterations, no significant improvement can be observed in the solution quality. In this paper, this issue is resolved by introducing pattern search (PS) at the termination stage of standard FA when there is no further improvement in the solution quality. The proposed approach consists of three stages. In the first stage, the parameters of standard FA are initialized. In the firefly changing position stage, the randomization factor is used to update the solution in each iteration of operational stages. In the final stage, the optimized values obtained from the FA during its maximum number of iteration are given as inputs to the pattern search algorithm. The pattern search is an optimization algorithm that further optimizes the values obtained in the maximum iterations of standard FA. The proposed technique has been named as FA-PS in which PS has been used to introduce enhancement in the solution quality of standard FA. The developed approach has been applied to various types of maximization and minimization functions and the performance has been compared with standard FA and genetic algorithm in terms of getting the most optimal values for the functions being considered. A significant improvement has been observed in the solution quality of FA.

Systemic risk describes the phenomenon that dependency adds a specific component of risk to a system or network of (financial) institutions as a whole, which would not be present if the institutions were independent from each other. This paper introduces the concept of systemic risk measures. We describe and study its behavior as a function of the copula, which represents the loss variables of the institutions in the network. Further, we define stochastic order relations on copulas and relate them with systemic risk measures.

Systemic risk describes the phenomenon that dependency adds a specific component of risk to a system or network of (financial) institutions as a whole, which would not be present if the institutions were independent from each other. This paper introduces the concept of systemic risk measures. We describe and study its behavior as a function of the copula, which represents the loss variables of the institutions in the network. Further, we define stochastic order relations on copulas and relate them with systemic risk measures.

Nonlocal means (NLM) which utilizes the self-similarity is considered as one of the most popular denoising techniques. Although NLM can attain significant performance, it shows a few loopholes, such as its computational complexity when it comes to similarity measurements, and the small number of sufficient candidates that use to choose the target patches which have complicated textures. In this paper, the use of clustering based on moment invariants and the hidden Markov model (HMM) is proposed to achieve preclassification and thus capture the dependency between additive white Gaussian noise pixel and its neighbors on the wavelet transform. The HMM also allows hidden states to connect to one another to capture the dependencies among coefficients in the transform domain. In the practical part, the experimental results present that the proposed algorithm has the ability to show denoised images better than the results of state-of-the-art denoising methods both objectively in peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity and subjectively using visual results, especially when the noise level is high.

This paper presents the search for the production of a Higgs boson in association with a single top quark (tHq), using data collected in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb[superscript −1]. The search exploits a variety of Higgs boson decay modes resulting in final states with photons, bottom quarks, and multiple charged leptons, including tau leptons, and employs a variety of multivariate techniques to maximize sensitivity to the signal. The analysis is optimized for the opposite sign of the Yukawa coupling to that in the standard model, corresponding to a large enhancement of the signal cross section. In the absence of an excess of candidate signal events over the background predictions, 95% confidence level observed (expected) upper limits on anomalous tHq production are set, ranging between 600 (450) fb and 1000 (700) fb depending on the assumed diphoton branching fraction of the Higgs boson. This is the first time that results on anomalous tHq production have been reported. Keywords: Hadron-Hadron scattering (experiments), Higgs physics, Top physics, United States. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation (U.S.)

This paper presents a measurement of the underlying event activity in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, performed using inclusive Z boson production events collected with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The analyzed data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 2.1 fb⁻¹. The underlying event activity is quantified in terms of the charged particle multiplicity, as well as of the scalar sum of the charged particles’ transverse momenta in different topological regions defined with respect to the Z boson direction. The distributions are unfolded to the stable particle level and compared with predictions from various Monte Carlo event generators, as well as with similar CDF and CMS measurements at center-of-mass energies of 1.96 and 7 TeV respectively.

In this paper we construct a refinement of the transchromatic generalized character maps by taking into account the torus action on the inertia groupoid (also known as the Fix functor). The relationship between this construction and the geometry of p-divisible groups is made precise. Keywords: Generalized character theory, HKR, Morava E -theory, National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant DMS-0943787)

Recent studies of out-of-time ordered thermal correlation functions (OTOC) in holographic systems and in solvable models such as the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model have yielded new insights into manifestations of many-body chaos. So far the chaotic behavior has been obtained through explicit calculations in specific models. In this paper we propose a unified description of the exponential growth and ballistic butterfly spreading of OTOCs across different systems using a newly formulated “quantum hydrodynamics,” which is valid at finite ℏ and to all orders in derivatives. The scrambling of a generic few-body operator in a chaotic system is described as building up a “hydrodynamic cloud,” and the exponential growth of the cloud arises from a shift symmetry of the hydrodynamic action. The shift symmetry also shields correlation functions of the energy density and flux, and time ordered correlation functions of generic operators from exponential growth, while leads to chaotic behavior in OTOCs. The theory also predicts an interesting phenomenon of the skipping of a pole at special values of complex frequency and momentum in two-point functions of energy density and flux. This pole-skipping phenomenon may be considered as a “smoking gun” for the hydrodynamic origin of the chaotic mode. We also discuss the possibility that such a hydrodynamic description could be a hallmark of maximally chaotic systems. Keywords: Effective Field Theories, Gauge-gravity correspondence, Quantum Dissipative Systems, United States. Department of Energy. Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics (DE-SC0012567)

This paper presents a mortar-based finite element formulation for modeling the dynamics of shear rupture on rough interfaces governed by slip-weakening and rate and state (RS) friction laws, focusing on the dynamics of earthquakes. The method utilizes the dual Lagrange multipliers and the primal–dual active set strategy concepts, together with a consistent discretization and linearization of the contact forces and constraints, and the friction laws to obtain a semi-smooth Newton method. The discretization of the RS friction law involves a procedure to condense out the state variables, thus eliminating the addition of another set of unknowns into the system. Several numerical examples of shear rupture on frictional rough interfaces demonstrate the efficiency of the method and examine the effects of the different time discretization schemes on the convergence, energy conservation, and the time evolution of shear traction and slip rate., Aramco Services Company (Grant 6500009957), Southern California Earthquake Center (Grant 16108)

During the past several decades, the Earth system has changed significantly, especially across Northern Eurasia. Changes in the socio-economic conditions of the larger countries in the region have also resulted in a variety of regional environmental changes that can have global consequences. The Northern Eurasia Future Initiative (NEFI) has been designed as an essential continuation of the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI), which was launched in 2004. NEESPI sought to elucidate all aspects of ongoing environmental change, to inform societies and, thus, to better prepare societies for future developments. A key principle of NEFI is that these developments must now be secured through science-based strategies co-designed with regional decision-makers to lead their societies to prosperity in the face of environmental and institutional challenges. NEESPI scientific research, data, and models have created a solid knowledge base to support the NEFI program. This paper presents the NEFI research vision consensus based on that knowledge. It provides the reader with samples of recent accomplishments in regional studies and formulates new NEFI science questions. To address these questions, nine research foci are identified and their selections are briefly justified. These foci include warming of the Arctic; changing frequency, pattern, and intensity of extreme and inclement environmental conditions; retreat of the cryosphere; changes in terrestrial water cycles; changes in the biosphere; pressures on land use; changes in infrastructure; societal actions in response to environmental change; and quantification of Northern Eurasia’s role in the global Earth system. Powerful feedbacks between the Earth and human systems in Northern Eurasia (e.g., mega-fires, droughts, depletion of the cryosphere essential for water supply, retreat of sea ice) result from past and current human activities (e.g., large-scale water withdrawals, land use, and governance ch

Nonlocal means (NLM) which utilizes the self-similarity is considered as one of the most popular denoising techniques. Although NLM can attain significant performance, it shows a few loopholes, such as its computational complexity when it comes to similarity measurements, and the small number of sufficient candidates that use to choose the target patches which have complicated textures. In this paper, the use of clustering based on moment invariants and the hidden Markov model (HMM) is proposed to achieve preclassification and thus capture the dependency between additive white Gaussian noise pixel and its neighbors on the wavelet transform. The HMM also allows hidden states to connect to one another to capture the dependencies among coefficients in the transform domain. In the practical part, the experimental results present that the proposed algorithm has the ability to show denoised images better than the results of state-of-the-art denoising methods both objectively in peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity and subjectively using visual results, especially when the noise level is high.

Landslides are among the most important and frequent natural calamities that cause severe socio-economic and human losses. After earthquakes, landslides are responsible for the greatest number of casualties and the largest amount of damage to man-made structures. On average, southern Italy is affected by a high spatial density of landslides due to its complex geological setting, which often predisposes it to slope instability phenomena under both natural and anthropogenic influences. Structurally complex formations are widespread in the southern Apennines and are characterized by high heterogeneity and very poor mechanical properties. Thus, these formations represent one of the main factors contributing to the predisposition of slopes to landsliding. In this paper, landslide-induced damage was investigated and analyzed in an area within the municipality of Agnone (Molise region), which is affected by a complex landslide that involves a structurally complex formation. The approaches used were based on six different methods that have previously been described in the literature, and a comparison of the results was made. Data regarding the damage, which consists largely of cracks observed in buildings and at the ground, were compiled through field surveys. The results were critically analyzed to note the advantages and constraints of each classification scheme. The aim of the work was to apply and compare different approaches in order to test the best and most accurate procedures for assessing damage due to landslides at the scale of individual buildings as well as to provide an objective assessment of the degree of landslide damage to structures and facilities.

The Messinian coral reef of Santa Pola, one of the most relevant geosites in the geological heritage of the western Mediterranean, is quantitatively assessed in terms of geoscience and features of potential use. Two different methodologies are used, one developed by the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME) for the Spanish Geosite Inventory (IELIG) and the other prepared by the Paleontological Museum of Elche (MUPE) for the Fossils and Heritage Project of Alicante (FOPALI). Santa Pola scores very high with both methods, which is a clear indication that this exceptionally relevant scientific geosite (included in the Spanish Geosite Inventory) also has a high didactic and tourism-recreational potential. In addition, the paper compares and discusses the two different methodologies, concluding that the selection of a model depends on the purpose of the evaluation (representativeness of the geosite in the Spanish territory associated to the Spanish Geological Inventory (IELIG) and a comparison of palaeontological and geological features (FOPALI) between different geosites). This work is a starting point to develop a specially designed management plan and geoconservation strategy for this exceptional geosite of the western Mediterranean.

Grapevine downy mildew (Plasmopara viticola) was first detected in commercial vineyards in the Swan Valley region of Western Australia (WA) in 1998 and has now spread to all grape-growing regions of the state. This paper uses a bioeconomic model linking weather, spread, infection development, variable production costs and revenue to estimate the costs of P. viticola over time. Results indicate mean annual costs of AUD $7.3 million per year, equivalent to a 1% drop in the gross value of WA grape-growing industries. Cumulative losses since the disease became established are estimated to be AUD $140 million.

© 2018 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature Over the last few decades, resource constrained project scheduling has been widely studied. In real life, resources may fail or be interrupted due to various reasons. They then require reactive rescheduling to minimize the effect of such disruptions. During the course of a project, a single or a series of independent disruptions may take place where the disruption information is not known a priori. In this paper, we have formulated two discrete time based models to deal with two types of disruption scenarios. We have also proposed a solution approach that can deal with a single, as well as a series of independent disruptions, in a reactive rescheduling manner. To judge the performance of the proposed approach, a number of test instances from the Project Scheduling Library were combined with randomly generated disruption events. The computational experiments were also conducted to analyse the effects of different factors related to the disruption recovery process.

Sample average approximation (SAA) is a widely popular approach to data-driven decision-making under uncertainty. Under mild assumptions, SAA is both tractable and enjoys strong asymptotic performance guarantees. Similar guarantees, however, do not typically hold in finite samples. In this paper, we propose a modification of SAA, which we term Robust SAA, which retains SAA’s tractability and asymptotic properties and, additionally, enjoys strong finite-sample performance guarantees. The key to our method is linking SAA, distributionally robust optimization, and hypothesis testing of goodness-of-fit. Beyond Robust SAA, this connection provides a unified perspective enabling us to characterize the finite sample and asymptotic guarantees of various other data-driven procedures that are based upon distributionally robust optimization. This analysis provides insight into the practical performance of these various methods in real applications. We present examples from inventory management and portfolio allocation, and demonstrate numerically that our approach outperforms other data-driven approaches in these applications. Keywords: Sample average approximation of stochastic optimization, Data-driven optimization, Goodnessof-fit testing, Distributionally robust optimization, Conic programming, Inventory management, Portfolio allocation

This paper analyzes U(1) F-theory models admitting matter with charges q = 3 and 4. First, we systematically derive a q = 3 construction that generalizes the previous q = 3 examples. We argue that U(1) symmetries can be tuned through a procedure reminiscent of the SU(N ) and Sp(N ) tuning process. For models with q = 3 matter, the components of the generating section vanish to orders higher than 1 at the charge-3 matter loci. As a result, the Weierstrass models can contain non-UFD structure and thereby deviate from the standard Morrison-Park form. Techniques used to tune SU(N ) models on singular divisors allow us to determine the non-UFD structures and derive the q = 3 tuning from scratch. We also obtain a class of a q=4 models by deforming a prior U(1) × U(1) construction. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first published F-theory example with charge-4 matter. Finally, we discuss some conjectures regarding models with charges larger than 4. Keywords: F-Theory, Superstring Vacua

For multiple attributes decision making, D numbers theory has been widely used to deal with uncertain and incomplete information. However, the incomplete information is abandoned in the D numbers’ integration representation. This results in unreasonable conclusions in some real-world applications. To overcome this drawback, this paper proposes an improved D numbers’ integration representation method, by effectively allocating the incomplete information into decision making according to the original value of D numbers. The proposed method is applied to assess the performance of different types of motorcycles. The results show that the proposed method can effectively increase both the accuracy and efficiency of assessment when compared with the original D numbers theory. Keywords: Uncertainty, Incompleteness, MADM, D numbers theory, D numbers’ integration representation, China Scholarship Council, National Natural Science Foundation (China) (Grant 61364030), National Natural Science Foundation (China) (Grant 11365008), Hubei Province (China). National Natural Science Foundation (Grant 2014CFB608), Hubei Province (China). Educational Commission (Grant D20151902), Hubei University for Nationalities (Grant MY2014b003)

Agricultural irrigation represents the main use of global water resources. Irrigation has an impact on the environment, and scientific evidence suggests that it inevitably leads to salinization of both soil and aquifers. The effects are most pronounced under arid and semi-arid conditions. In considering the varied impacts of irrigation practices on groundwater quality, these can be classed as either direct—the direct result of applying water and accompanying agrochemicals to cropland—or indirect—the effects of irrigation abstractions on groundwater hydrogeochemistry. This paper summarizes and illustrates through paradigmatic case studies the main impacts of irrigation practices on groundwater salinity. Typically, a diverse range of groundwater salinization processes operating concomitantly at different time scales (from days to hundreds of years) is involved in agricultural irrigation. Case studies suggest that the existing paradigm for irrigated agriculture of focusing mainly on crop production increases has contributed to widespread salinization of groundwater resources.

The development and operation of liquid-argon time-projection chambers for neutrino physics has created a need for new approaches to pattern recognition in order to fully exploit the imaging capabilities offered by this technology. Whereas the human brain can excel at identifying features in the recorded events, it is a significant challenge to develop an automated, algorithmic solution. The Pandora Software Development Kit provides functionality to aid the design and implementation of pattern-recognition algorithms. It promotes the use of a multi-algorithm approach to pattern recognition, in which individual algorithms each address a specific task in a particular topology. Many tens of algorithms then carefully build up a picture of the event and, together, provide a robust automated pattern-recognition solution. This paper describes details of the chain of over one hundred Pandora algorithms and tools used to reconstruct cosmic-ray muon and neutrino events in the MicroBooNE detector. Metrics that assess the current pattern-recognition performance are presented for simulated MicroBooNE events, using a selection of final-state event topologies.

It is well documented and has been the topic of much research as well that Computer Science courses tend to have higher than average drop-out rates at third level, particularly so, for students advancing from first year to second year. This is a problem that needs to be addressed not only with urgency but also with caution. The required number of Computer Science graduates is growing every year, but the number of graduates is not meeting this demand, and one way that this problem can be alleviated is to encourage students, at an early age, towards studying Computer Science courses. This paper presents a systematic literature review that examines the role of visual and textual programming languages when learning to program, particularly as a First Programming Language. The approach is systematic in that a structured search of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and quantitatively analysed. This study will provide insight into whether or not the current approaches to teaching young learners programming are viable, and examines what we can do to increase the interest and retention of these students as they progress through their education.

Due to the increasing of software requirements and software features, modern software systems continue to grow in size and complexity. Locating source code entities that required to implement a feature in millions lines of code is labor and cost intensive for developers. To this end, several studies have proposed the use of Information Retrieval (IR) to rank source code entities based on their textual similarity to an issue report. The ranked source code entities could be at a class or function granularity level. Source code entities at the class-level are usually large in size and might contain a lot of functions that are not implemented for the feature. Hence, we conjecture that the class-level feature location technique requires more effort than function-level feature location technique. In this paper, we investigate the impact of granularity levels on a feature location technique. We also presented a new evaluation method using effort-based evaluation. The results indicated that function-level feature location technique outperforms class-level feature location technique. Moreover, function-level feature location technique also required 7 times less effort than class-level feature location technique to localize the first relevant source code entity. Therefore, we conclude that feature location technique at the function-level of program elements is effective in practice.

application/pdf, Due to the increasing of software requirements and software features, modern software systems continue to grow in size and complexity. Locating source code entities that required to implement a feature in millions lines of code is labor and cost intensive for developers. To this end, several studies have proposed the use of Information Retrieval (IR) to rank source code entities based on their textual similarity to an issue report. The ranked source code entities could be at a class or function granularity level. Source code entities at the class-level are usually large in size and might contain a lot of functions that are not implemented for the feature. Hence, we conjecture that the class-level feature location technique requires more effort than function-level feature location technique. In this paper, we investigate the impact of granularity levels on a feature location technique. We also presented a new evaluation method using effort-based evaluation. The results indicated that function-level feature location technique outperforms class-level feature location technique. Moreover, function-level feature location technique also required 7 times less effort than class-level feature location technique to localize the first relevant source code entity. Therefore, we conclude that feature location technique at the function-level of program elements is effective in practice., APRES 2014 : Asia Pacific Requirements Engineering Symposium, April 28-29, 2014, Auckland, New Zealand, conference paper

For a prime number p , Bergman (Israel J Math 18:257–277, 1974) established that End(Zp×Zp2) is a semilocal ring with p5 elements that cannot be embedded in matrices over any commutative ring. In an earlier paper Climent et al. (Appl Algebra Eng Commun Comput 22(2):91–108, 2011), the authors presented an efficient implementation of this ring, and introduced a key exchange protocol based on it. This protocol was cryptanalyzed by Kamal and Youssef (Appl Algebra Eng Commun Comput 23(3–4):143–149, 2012) using the invertibility of most elements in this ring. In this paper we introduce an extension of Bergman’s ring, in which only a negligible fraction of elements are invertible, and propose to consider a key exchange protocol over this ring.

The San Julián’s stone is the main material used to build the most important historical buildings in Alicante city (Spain). This paper describes the analysis developed to obtain the relationship between the static and the dynamic modulus of this sedimentary rock heated at different temperatures. The rock specimens have been subjected to heating processes at different temperatures to produce different levels of weathering on 24 specimens. The static and dynamic modulus has been measured for every specimen by means of the ISRM standard and ultrasonic tests, respectively. Finally, two analytic formulas are proposed for the relationship between the static and the dynamic modulus for this stone. The results have been compared with some relationships proposed by different researchers for other types of rock. The expressions presented in this paper can be useful for the analysis, using non-destructive techniques, of the integrity level of historical constructions built with San Julián’s stone affected by fires.

The paper is devoted to the problem of establishing right-convergence of sparse random graphs. This concerns the convergence of the logarithm of number of homomorphisms from graphs or hyper-graphs GN,N≥1 to some target graph W . The theory of dense graph convergence, including random dense graphs, is now well understood (Borgs et al. in Ann Math 176:151–219, 2012; Borgs et al. in Adv Math 219:1801–1851, 2008; Chatterjee and Varadhan in Eur J Comb 32:1000–1017, 2011; Lovász and Szegedy in J Comb Theory Ser B 96:933–957, 2006), but its counterpart for sparse random graphs presents some fundamental difficulties. Phrased in the statistical physics terminology, the issue is the existence of the limits of appropriately normalized log-partition functions, also known as free energy limits, for the Gibbs distribution associated with W . In this paper we prove that the sequence of sparse Erdös-Rényi graphs is right-converging when the tensor product associated with the target graph W satisfies a certain convexity property. We treat the case of discrete and continuous target graphs W . The latter case allows us to prove a special case of Talagrand’s recent conjecture [more accurately stated as level III Research Problem 6.7.2 in his recent book (Talagrand in Mean Field Models for Spin Glasses: Volume I: Basic examples. Springer, Berlin, 2010)], concerning the existence of the limit of the measure of a set obtained from RN by intersecting it with linearly in N many subsets, generated according to some common probability law. Our proof is based on the interpolation technique, introduced first by Guerra and Toninelli (Commun Math Phys 230:71–79, 2002) and developed further in (Abbe and Montanari in On the concentration of the number of solutions of random satisfiability formulas, 2013; Bayati et al. in Ann Probab Conference version in Proceedings of 42nd Ann. Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC), 2010; Contucci et al. in Antiferromagnetic Potts model on the Erdös-Rényi ran, National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF grant CMMI-1031332)

For a prime number p , Bergman (Israel J Math 18:257–277, 1974) established that End(Zp×Zp2) is a semilocal ring with p5 elements that cannot be embedded in matrices over any commutative ring. In an earlier paper Climent et al. (Appl Algebra Eng Commun Comput 22(2):91–108, 2011), the authors presented an efficient implementation of this ring, and introduced a key exchange protocol based on it. This protocol was cryptanalyzed by Kamal and Youssef (Appl Algebra Eng Commun Comput 23(3–4):143–149, 2012) using the invertibility of most elements in this ring. In this paper we introduce an extension of Bergman’s ring, in which only a negligible fraction of elements are invertible, and propose to consider a key exchange protocol over this ring.

The San Julián’s stone is the main material used to build the most important historical buildings in Alicante city (Spain). This paper describes the analysis developed to obtain the relationship between the static and the dynamic modulus of this sedimentary rock heated at different temperatures. The rock specimens have been subjected to heating processes at different temperatures to produce different levels of weathering on 24 specimens. The static and dynamic modulus has been measured for every specimen by means of the ISRM standard and ultrasonic tests, respectively. Finally, two analytic formulas are proposed for the relationship between the static and the dynamic modulus for this stone. The results have been compared with some relationships proposed by different researchers for other types of rock. The expressions presented in this paper can be useful for the analysis, using non-destructive techniques, of the integrity level of historical constructions built with San Julián’s stone affected by fires.

The Bridge Engineering Laboratory in Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan has introduced a number of different damage identification techniques to detect structural damage and identify its location utilizing piezoelectric actuators as a localized excitation source. Several spectral functions, such as cross spectral density, power spectral density, phase angle and transfer function estimate, were used to estimate the dynamic response of the structure. Each function’s magnitude, measured in a specified frequency range, is used in the damage identification methods. The change of the spectral function magnitude between the baseline state and the current state is then used to identify the location of possible damage in the structure. It is then necessary to determine which spectral function is best able to estimate the dynamic response and which algorithm is best able to identify the damage. The first part of this paper compares the performance of different spectral functions when their magnitude is used in one damage identification algorithm using experimental data from a railway steel bridge. The second part of this paper compares the performance of different damage identification algorithms using the same data.

Choreographers may exploit digital technologies to create augmented choreographies where the behavior of dancers determines the behavior of projections, lighting and other scenographic effects. This paper presents the preliminary results of ethnographic studies about how choreographers work from an interaction design perspective. Finally the paper describes the first elements of a choreographers-oriented design process for an Augmented Choreography.

The Bayon temple—located at the centre of Angkor Thom and built by king Jayavarman VII (1181–c.1220)—has been virtualized several times since the ‘rediscovery’ of the Angkor site by Europeans in the middle of the nineteenth century CE. Some of this ‘virtualization’ has involved artistic interpretations of the Bayon, while others were actual archaeological reconstructions based on knowledge of the monument at that time. The layout of the Bayon is its first virtualization, and its evolution from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1960s, shows the complexity and the difficulty met by the explorers and architects who have tried to depict the temple. This paper discusses the recent virtualization of this complex Khmer temple as a three-dimensional model based on a specific context of the building’s archaeological history. Like classical archaeological reconstruction drawings, the main purpose of this kind of virtualization of ancient buildings using 3D modelling is the depiction of a monument in its original shape before deterioration. In the specific case of the Bayon, this purpose poses several challenges linked with the site’s complex architectural history. It is not just one archaeological reconstruction but rather a series of reconstructions that are needed in order to depict the different chronological incarnations of this temple. This paper summarily raises two points about the generalization of the 3D model for the archaeology of ancient buildings: Because an archaeological reconstruction is not definitive but represents our current understanding of the monument based on a synthesis of architectural and archaeological studies, the question of rendering 3D archaeological reconstructions for the public has to be reassessed. On the other hand, the utilization of the CAD system to elaborate the 3D models of these archaeological reconstructions can be a genuine research tool used to validate hypotheses and conduct new investigations, not just produce i