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Some of the most interesting developments within computer system design in recent years have emerged from an exploration of the ways everyday objects and artefacts can be augmented with computational resources. Often under the rubric of "ubiquitous computing", research programmes in Europe, North America and Japan have directed substantial funding towards these initiatives, and leading industrial and academic research laboratories have developed a diverse range of ubiquitous computing "solutions". These developments mark an important shift in system design, a shift that is having a corresponding impact on social science research. Surprisingly though, given the growing commitment to the ubiquitous and the tangible, there is a mundane, even humble artefact that pervades our ordinary lives that has received less attention than one might imagine. This artefact is paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To facilitate the transition from paper-based patient record (PPR) to computer-based patient record (CPR), engineers should try to improve the usability of CPR system. From the point of view of a physician, we reviewed PPRs written by 8 Japanese physicians. We revealed the characteristics of PPR to find out about the barrier to transition from PPR to CPR. Our findings may be helpful to the engineers who are aiming to develop a CPR system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe the design of a hybrid search that combines simple metadata search with a traditional keyword search over unstructured context data. This paradigm provides the inquirer additional options to narrow the search with some semantic aspects through the XML metadata query. We demonstrate a paper search for a case study of the hybrid search, and describe a data integration hub to integrate those data dispersed on the Net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increased use of Internet and information technology all over the world, there is an increased amount of criminal activities that involve computing and digital data. These digital crimes (e-crimes) impose new challenges on prevention, detection, investigation, and prosecution of the corresponding offences. Computer forensics (also known as cyberforensics) is an emerging research area that applies computer investigation and analysis techniques to help detection of these crimes and gathering of digital evidence suitable for presentation in courts. This new area combines the knowledge of information technology, forensics science, and law and gives rise to a number of interesting and challenging problems related to computer security and cryptography that are yet to be solved. In this paper, we present and discuss some of these problems together with two successful cases of computer forensics technology developed in Hong Kong that enable the law enforcement departments to detect and investigate digital crimes more efficiently and effectively. We believe that computer forensics research is an important area in applying security and computer knowledge to build a better society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter, we proudly introduce eight awarded papers, selected from the papers presented in the 20th annual conference of Japan Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI2006). The conference was held at Tower Hall Funabori located in the east part of Tokyo from June 7 until June 9, 2006. 276 papers were presented in about 60 sessions and over 500 people participated in the conference. Sessions vary from the fundamental issues to the state-of-the-art applications. Session for regular papers are as follows; Logic and learning, Reinforcement learning and agent learning, Agent theory, Auction/Game/Economics, Agent learning, Agent planning, Agent simulation and interaction, Genetic algorithm, Image processing, Information extraction and classification, Clustering/self-organization, Classifi- cation learning, Text mining, Graph mining, Mining algorithm, Web mining, Pre- and post-processing for data mining, Practices of data mining, Cognitive modeling, Language processing and dialogue, Robot/sensor network, Web information system, Semantic Web, Knowledge modeling and knowledge sharing, Support of knowledge management, knowledge modeling/ontology,Web service, Human interface and communication support, Education support, Learning support environment, and Musical and auditory information processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bearing in mind the changeable and complicated needs of business environment, in this paper we examine the necessity of evolution in the traditional decision support techniques. Our aim is to intensify the need for integrated performance measurement and management, as a way to ameliorate the existing tools for decision making, which are currently based on historical data. Because of the nature of challenges and trends in the retail industry, it is considered to be an appropriate application scenario. In addition to that, a framework is proposed and a case study is described as a proof of our claim. Keywords: Performance management, business intelligence, retailing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the millennium, a quickly increasing number of research papers in the field of "computational trust and reputation" have appeared in the Computer Science literature. However, it remains hard to compare and evaluate the respective merits of proposed systems. We argue that rigorous use of formal probabilistic models enables the clear specification of the assumptions and objectives of systems, which is necessary for comparisons. To exemplify such probabilistic modeling, we present a simple probabilistic trust model in which the system assumptions as well as its objectives are clearly specified. We show how to compute (in this model) the so-called predictive probability: The probability that the next interaction with a specific principal will have a specific outcome. We sketch preliminary ideas and first theorems indicating how the use of probabilistic models could enable us to quantitatively compare proposed systems in various different environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter, we introduce five awarded papers, selected from the 19th annual conference of JSAI (Japan Society for Artificial Intelligence) 2005. These five papers are truly excellent, for they were selected out of over 290 papers, the rate of which was less than 2%, voted by the total number of approximately seventy reviewers. As has been often mentioned, the research of artificial intelligence branches to many fields; among them, we could observe such tendency that empirical methods were rather prevalent compared with theoretical issues. However, we contend that the following five papers were both sound in theory and practical in feasibility. We show the synopses of the five papers, adding short comments for the award for each. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss importance and usefulness of interpersonal network in a community support system. We built a scheduling support system for an academic conference. Our system supports information exchange among participants and information discovery with generating participants' interpersonal network. This system was used in an academic conference called JSAI2003 involving 276 active users. The analysis of the networks reveals that interpersonal networks can promote information exchange among people by indicating existence of people to the others, and that it can also support information discovery by recommendation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On behalf of the program committee (PC) of JSAI 2003, I would like to thank all the chair persons, discussants, and attentive audience who contributed to select these awarded papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to explore trends in computer crime and cybercrime research from 1974 to 2006. All publications for this analysis were drawn from the ISI Web of Science, the Science Citation Index (SCI), and the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). The ISI Web of Science is considered a powerful and relatively accurate tool in bibliometric studies. About 292 papers related to computer crime and cybercrime were published during this period. The greatest number of these papers was written in English, and the annual output increased significantly after 2003. In the period under study, most papers originated in the USA. Approximately 57% of the publications were articles, and 72% of these articles had single authors. More bibliometric analyses are described in this study, which shows a high scientific production of articles on computer crime and cybercrime publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research community plays a very important role in helping researchers undertake new research topics. The authors propose a community mining system that helps to find communities of researchers by using bibliography data. The basic concept of this system is to provide interactive visualization of communities both local and global communities. We implemented this concept using actual bibliography data and present a case study using the proposed system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A programming model for the automatic construction of USN applications based on Nano-Qplus is proposed in this paper. Nano-Qplus is a sensor network platform developed by ETRI. Programs of nodes such as sensors, routers, sinks and actuators in a sensor network are automatically generated through the technique of this paper. Developers can implement USN applications from models of sensor networks. The configuration information of each node is automatically generated from a model. Then, the execution code is automatically generated using the configuration information. Through the technique of this paper, developers can easily implement USN applications even if they do not know the details of low-level information. The development effort of USN applications also will be decreased because execution codes are automatically generated. Furthermore, developers can consistently construct USN applications from USN models using the proposed tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern information systems interact with a wide variety of users ranging from people with specific roles in business processes to end-users who access information in various ways and in different environments. Therefore, an application has to adhere to a well defined security policy on one hand and be highly adaptable to context on the other. We have extended the OM data model, with its rich support for role modelling, with concepts for modelling interactions between users and applications. In this paper, we show how the resulting interaction model can be used for role-based access control, as well as for modelling interactions in context-aware applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an analytical approach which is provided to calculate the downlink and uplink capacities of the time division duplex (TDD) system utilizing the underused frequency division duplex (FDD) uplink which shares the same frequency band. Then the ratio of downlink and uplink slots in one frame is adjusted, so as to prevent the radio resource waste due to asymmetric traffic characteristic in mobile multimedia services. The computer simulation shows that the resource waste problem can be considerably solved through the asymmetric slot allocation. Thus, this paper can be useful as a guideline in the course of planning a two-layer hierarchical cell structure (HCS) employing the TDD system as a microcell and FDD system as a macrocell as well as a mean to increase the performance of such a system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the invited session of "Intelligent Agents and their Applications" being presented at the 10th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems. This session concentrates on discussing Intelligent Agents and uses some applications to demonstrate the theories reported. An update on last years session [1] is included to report on several key advances in technology that further enable the ongoing development of multi-agent systems. A brief summary of the impediments presented to researchers is also provided to highlight why innovation must be used to sustain the evolution of Artificial Intelligence. This year a variety of challenges and concepts are presented, together with a collection of thoughts about the direction and vision of Intelligent Agents ands their Applciations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Object-level vertical search engine has been the research focus recently where the resource collecting problem is still an open area. It is difficult to adapt the traditional link-based web crawler for this task because of the sparse linkage and data-centered webpage of the relevant resources. In this paper, we propose a meta-search based method enhanced with auxiliary crawling to address the problem caused by sparse linkage of the relevant resources. And to retrieve the data-centered webpages efficiently, domain schema is defined to describe the target resource, and representative data instances are selected for meta-search query composing. Moreover, evaluation criteria for the domain resource survey are also proposed as the guideline for query composing and auxiliary crawling, which enable the resource discovery to be automatically performed by computers. Experiment results on real-world data show that our method is effective and efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper characterizes the family of truthful double-sided auctions. Despite the importance of double-sided auctions to market design, to date no characterization of truthful double-sided auctions was made. This paper characterizes truthful mechanisms for double-sided auctions by generalizing Roberts' classic result [18], to show that truthful double-sided auctions must "almost" be affine maximizers. Our main result of characterizing double-sided auctions required the creation of a new set of tools, reductions that preserve economic properties. This paper utilizes two such reductions; a truth-preserving reduction and a non-affine preserving reduction. The truth-preserving reduction is used to reduce the double-sided auction to a special case of a combinatorial auction to make use of the impossibility result proved in [11]. Intuitively, our proof shows that truthful double-sided auctions are as hard to design as truthful combinatorial auctions. Two important concepts are developed in addition to the main result. First, the form of reduction used in this paper is of independent interest as it provides a means for comparing mechanism design problems by design difficulty. Second, we define the notion of extension of payments; which given a set of payments for some players finds payments for the remaining players. The extension payments maintain the truthful and affine maximization properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we give the definition of randomized symmetric incentive compatible auctions. Then we define three monotone properties of such auctions and study the implication relationships among them. This paper extends our previous work [4] which was focused on deterministic symmetric incentive compatible auctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an online sponsored search auction that motivates advertisers to report their true budget, arrival time, departure time, and value per click. The auction is based on a modified Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) mechanism that allows for advertisers who arrive and depart in an online fashion, have a value per click, and are budget constrained. In tackling the problem of truthful budget, arrival and departure times, it turns out that it is not possible to achieve truthfulness in the classical sense (which we show in a companion paper). As such, we define a new concept called δ-gain. δ-gain bounds the utility a player can gain by lying as opposed to his utility when telling the truth. Building on the δ-gain concept we define another new concept called relative ε-gain, which bounds the relative ratio of the gain a player can achieve by lying with respect to his true utility. We argue that for many practical applications if the δ-gain and or the relative ε-gain are small, then players will not invest time and effort in making strategic choices but will truthtell as a default strategy. These concepts capture the essence of dominant strategy mechanisms as they lead the advertiser to choose truthtelling over other strategies. In order to achieve δ-gain truthful mechanism this paper also presents a new payment scheme, Time series Truthful Payment Scheme (TTPS), for an online budget-constrained auction mechanism. The payment scheme is a generalization of the VCG principles for an online scheduling environment with budgeted players. Using the concepts of δ-gain truthful we present the only known budget-constrained sponsored search auction with truthful guarantees on budget, arrivals, departures, and valuations. Previous works that deal with advertiser budgets only deal with the non-strategic case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software watermarking is a technique to protect programs from piracy through embedding secret information into the programs. As software unauthorized use and modification are ubiquitous in the world, progresses in software watermarking will certainly benefit software research and industry. In this paper, we study one of core concepts in this area - informed recognition. To recognize a watermark in a software is to judge the existence of such a watermark in the corresponding software code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many business solutions provide best practice process templates, both generic as well as for specific industry sectors. However, it is often the variance from template solutions that provide organizations with intellectual capital and competitive differentiation. In this paper, we present a modeling framework that is conducive to constrained variance, by supporting user driven process adaptations. The focus of the paper is on providing a means of utilizing the adaptations effectively for process improvement through effective management of the process variants repository (PVR). In particular, we will provide deliberations towards a facility to provide query functionality for PVR that is specifically targeted for effective search and retrieval of process variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method for sensitivity communication robots which infer their dialogist's emotion. The method is based on the Bayesian approach: by using a Bayesian modeling for prosodic features. In this research, we focus the elements of emotion included in dialogist's voice. Thus, as training datasets for learning Bayesian networks, we extract prosodic feature quantities from emotionally expressive voice data. Our method learns the dependence and its strength between dialogist's utterance and his emotion, by building Bayesian networks. Bayesian information criterion, one of the information theoretical model selection method, is used in the building Bayesian networks. The paper finally proposes a reasoner to infer dialogist's emotion by using a Bayesian network for prosodic features of the dialogist's voice. The paper also reports some empirical reasoning performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a state transition model using context based approach for gesture analysis. This method defines the analysis situation as five different states; NULL, OBJECT, POSTURE, LOCAL, and GLOBAL. We first infer the situation of the system by estimating the transition of the state model, and then apply different analysis algorithms according to the system state. Gestures are analyzed with the queue-based matching method which is newly proposed in the paper instead of general gesture spotting algorithms. In the algorithm, movement of feature points; face and both hands, is compared directly, so gesture can be recognized quickly without applying any constraints for real world application. The transition of the states can be interpreted as the context of motion and that is estimated with conditional probability between the states in the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social aspects of security of information systems are often discussed in terms of "actual security" and "perceived security". This may lead to the hypothesis that e-voting is controversial because in paper voting, actual and perceived security coincide, whereas they do not in electronic systems. In this paper, we argue that the distinction between actual and perceived security is problematic from a philosophical perspective, and we develop an alternative approach, based on the notion of trust. We investigate the different meanings of this notion in computer science, and link these to the philosophical work of Luhmann, who distinguishes between familiarity, confidence and trust. This analysis yields several useful distinctions for discussing trust relations with respect to information technology. We apply our framework to electronic voting, and propose some hypotheses that can possibly explain the smooth introduction of electronic voting machines in the Netherlands in the early nineties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International workshop on Risk Mining (RM2006) was held in conjunction with the 20th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence(JSAI2005), Tokyo Japan, June 2005. The workshop aimed at sharing and comparing experiences on risk mining techniques applied to risk detection, risk clarification and risk utilization. In summary, the workshop gave a discussion forum for researchers working on both data mining and risk management where the attendees discussed various aspects on data mining based risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Model checking Web service behaviour has remained limited to checking safety and liveness properties. However when viewed as a multi agent system, the system composition can be analysed by considering additional properties which capture the knowledge acquired by services during their interactions. In this paper we present a novel approach to model checking service composition where in addition to safety and liveness, epistemic properties are analysed and verified. To do this we use a specialised system description language (ISPL) paired with a symbolic model checker (MCMAS) optimised for the verification of temporal and epistemic modalities. We report on experimental results obtained by analysing the composition for a Loan Approval Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) makes application development flexible in such a way that services are composed in a highly distributed manner. However, because of the flexibility, it is often hard for users to define application configurations properly. Regarding the security concerns we address in this paper, though WS-SecurityPolicy provides a standard way to describe security policies, it is difficult for users to make sure that the defined policies are valid. In this paper, we discuss the validation of WS-SecurityPolicy in the context of Service Component Architecture, and propose a method called syntactic validation. Most enterprises have security guidelines, some of which can be described in the format of Web services security messages. There also exist standard profiles for Web services such as the WS-I Basic Security Profile that also prescribes message formats. Since those guidelines and profiles are based on accepted best practices, the syntactic validation is sufficiently effective for practical use to prevent security vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper relates to a method for performing Stateful Packet Inspection(SPI) in real time using a session table management scheme that allows more efficient generation of session state information. SPI is an important technique to reduce false positive alerts in network intrusion detection system(NIDS). As the number of session increases, this technique requires a higher processing speed, thereby causing performance problems. However, existing software-based solutions cannot perform real-time packet inspection ensuring the wire speed. To guarantee both performance and functionality with respect to statefulness, we designed and implemented SPI-based intrusion detection module in a FPGA to help alleviating a bottleneck in network intrusion detection systems in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With constantly increasing complexity of active measurement methods, the issue of processing measurement results becomes important. Similarly to traditional pattern discovery, temporal patterns found in active measurement samples should be provided effective storage and means to compare to other samples. Traditional time series data mining is not applicable to temporal patterns in active measurement time series. This paper proposes a pattern discovery method based on unique features of active measurement results. The method is implemented in form of a database and is used in the paper to verify the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research on the detection of zero-day network attack and the signature generation is highlighted as an issue according to the outbreak of the new network attack is faster than a prediction. In this paper, we propose a very practical method that detects the executable codes within the network packet payload. It could be used as the key function of the signature generation against the zero-day attack or the high speed anomaly detection. The proposed heuristic method in this paper could be expressed in terms of visually classifying the characteristic of the instruction pattern of executable codes. And then we generalize this by applying the discrete parameter Markov chain. Our experimental study showed that the presented scheme could find all types of executable codes in our experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid networks are networks capable of switching data at multiple levels (optical and IP packet level) by means of multi-service optical switches. As a result of that, huge flows at the IP-level may be moved to the optical-level, which is faster than the packet-level. Such move could be beneficial since congested IP networks could be off-loaded, leaving more resources for other IP flows. At the same time, the flows switched at the optical-level would get better Quality of Service (QoS). In order to achieve this beneficial move, huge IP flows have to be properly detected at the packet-level and lambda-connections are to be established for them at the optical-level. Two approaches are currently used for that purpose: the first is based on conventional management techniques and the second is based on GMPLS signaling. Both approaches mostly depend on human intervention, which can be error prone and slow. The idea proposed in this paper to overcome this problem consists of adding self-management capabilities to the multi-service optical switches. The optical switches would then be responsible for automatically identifying IP flows, and establishing and releasing lambda-connections for such flows. The main goal of this paper is therefore to propose an architecture for the self-management of lambda-connections in hybrid networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of multicores in all processor segments including mobile, embedded, desktop and server ones, we are in the new era of multiplying computing power via scaling the number of cores. The multicore approach is more versatile and programmable than the ASIC approach. For instance, the same multicore product can be adapted to the ever-improving potpourri image processing standards. Developing ASIC modules for each standard would pose million-dollar start-up cost and time-to-market disadvantage. However, the multicore approach is a two-edge sword: Unleashing its multiplying power presents significant programming challenges. The harmony between the multiplying power and programming productivity is the holy grail in this field. This paper addresses the challenge in the Digital Cinema domain. This paper presents an oblivious parallelization paradigm in both compressing and decompressing images via JPEG2000 on multicore platforms with maximum productivity. This approach dramatically reduces compression and decompression time in performing JPEG2000 lossless encoding and decoding algorithms on high definition images in almost real time without any extra hardware acceleration. By boosting parallelism coverage, the high resolution images could be compressed and decompressed in near real time: 15 images decoded/encoded per second. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose a software-based coding solution using commodity multicores to achieve near real-time performance result for JPEG2000. This cost-effective approach could be applied to digital cinema on devices with multicores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a dynamic rate adjustment (DRA) algorithm for WiMAX systems supporting multicast services. A scalable video coder with layered coding capability is assumed to be used to encode the multicast video information as a single base layer and multiple enhancement layers. The DRA algorithm first determines the portion of the base layer according to the QoS requirement of the multicast video service. It then dynamically adjusts the remaining portions of the enhancement layers to maximize the average throughput of the cell. In this paper, an analytical solution is presented to determine the best portions of the enhancement layers based on the estimated users' signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). The accuracy of the analysis is verified via simulations. Simulation results indicate that DRA always achieves a higher average throughput than that of either uniform allocation algorithm or location-based allocation algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intrusion detection, especially anomaly detection, requires sufficient security background knowledge. It is very significant to recognize system anomaly behavior under the condition of poor domain knowledge. In this paper, the general methods for system calls anomaly detection are summarized and HMM used for anomaly detection is deeply discussed from detection theory, system framework and detection methods. Moreover, combining with experiments, the detection efficiency and real-time performance of HMM with all-states transition and part-states transition are analyzed in detail in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how the interaction of quantification and dependent anaphora may be analysed in a dynamic semantics. It discusses a simple theory of the creation and accessibility of dependencies based on a dynamic semantics for distributivity and some basic assumptions on number agreement in discourse. This theory forms a partial defence of the line of semantics set out by van den Berg 1996. I argue, however, that it is essential to quantified anaphora to contextualise the labelling of antecedents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes complex collective behaviors of a multiagent system, which consists of interacting agents with evolutionary learning capabilities. The interaction and learning of the agents are modeled by the concept of Connected Replicator Dynamics expanded from evolutionary Game Theory.The dynamic learning system we analyze shows various behavioral and decision changes including bifurcation of chaos in the sense of physical sciences.The main contributions of the paper are summarized as follows: (1) In amultiagent system, the emergence of chaotic behaviors is general and essential, even if each agent does not have chaotic properties; and (2) However,asimple controlling agent with the Keep-It-Simple-Stupid (KISS) principle, or a sheep-dog agent, is able to domesticate or tame the complex behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose some extensions of the business process modeling notation (BPMN) to be able to evaluate the overall cost of business process diagrams. The BPMN is very expressive, and a general treatment of this problem is very complex. Therefore, it seems reasonable to define classes of business process diagrams capturing real processes and to develop efficient analysis methods for these classes. In the paper we define some relevant subsets of the BPMN, extend them with the concept of cost, and provide computational models for each class, in most cases reducing them to existing problems for which efficient solutions already exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business services are deliveries of capabilities to consumers. The way such capabilities are selected, combined and delivered makes for the flexibility in services provision compared to, for example, manufacturing of tangible goods. The coordination (‘orchestration’) of services is an essential requirement for the delivery of more complex services. However, current technologies for web service orchestration assume a procedural ‘program-like’ approach that as we argue in this paper reduces the flexibility to adapt the composite service in response to changing requirements. This paper proposes that service orchestration should be carried out at the business level, preserving the business semantics and transformed if required to specific orchestration execution models such as BPEL4WS, using MDA techniques. Keywords: Service composition, Service orchestration, Service semantics, IDEF0, MDA, BPEL4WS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of regions and the algorithms for synthesizing a Petri net model from a transition system, which are based on this theory, have interesting practical applications – in particular in the design of electronic circuits. In this paper, we show that this theory can be also applied for mining the underlying process from the user interactions with a document management system. To this end, we combine an algorithm that we called activity mining with such Petri net synthesis algorithms. We present the basic idea of this approach, show some first results, and compare them with classical process mining techniques. The main benefit is that, in combination, the activity mining algorithm and the synthesis algorithms do not need a log of the activities, which is not available when the processes are supported by a document management system only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a method for discovering and detecting shill bids in combinatorial auctions. Combinatorial auctions have been studied very widely. The Generalized Vickrey Auction (GVA) is one of the most important combinatorial auctions because it can satisfy the strategy-proof property and Pareto efficiency. As Yokoo et al. pointed out, false-name bids and shill bids pose an emerging problem for auctions, since on the Internet it is easy to establish different e-mail addresses and accounts for auction sites. Yokoo et al. proved that GVA cannot satisfy the false-name-proof property. Moreover, they proved that there is no auction protocol that can satisfy all three of the above major properties. Their approach concentrates on designing new mechanisms. As a new approach against shill-bids, in this paper, we propose a method for finding shill bids with the GVA in order to avoid them. Our algorithm can judge whether there might be a shill bid from the results of the GVA's procedure. However, a straightforward way to detect shill bids requires an exponential amount of computing power because we need to check all possible combinations of bidders. Therefore, in this paper we propose an improved method for finding a shill bidder. The method is based on winning bidders, which can dramatically reduce the computational cost. The results demonstrate that the proposed method successfully reduces the computational cost needed to find shill bids. The contribution of our work is in the integration of the theory and detecting fraud in combinatorial auctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we proposed a processor architecture that is suitable for next generation embedded applications, especially for personal information devices such as smart phones, PDAs, and handheld computers. Latest high performance embedded processors are developed to achieve high clock speed. Because increasing performance makes design more difficult and induces large overhead, architectural evolution in embedded processor field is necessary. Among more enhanced processor types, out-of-order superscalar cannot be a candidate for embedded applications due to its excessive complexity and relatively low performance gain compared to its overhead. Therefore, new architecture with moderate complexity must be designed. In this paper, we developed a low-cost SMT architecture model and compared its performance to other architectures including scalar, superscalar and multiprocessor. Because current personal information devices have a tendency to execute multiple tasks simultaneously, SMT or CMP can be a good choice. And our simulation result shows that the efficiency of SMT is the best among the architectures considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DoS(Denial of Service) / DDoS(Distributed Denial of Service) attacks threaten Internet security nowadays. However, the current Internet protocol and backbone network do not support traceback to know attacker's real location. Many methods to defend DoS/DDoS attack have been proposed. However these kinds of methods cause network overhead because they use many packets to reconstruct an attack path. In this paper we propose effective probability marking methods and a pushback algorithm to reduce network overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed computing systems are continuously increasing in complexity and cost of managing, and system management tasks require significantly higher levels of autonomic management. In distributed computing, system management is changing from a conventional central administration, to autonomic computing. However, most existing research focuses on healing after a problem has already occurred. In order to solve this problem, an inference model is required to recognize operating environments and predict error occurrence. In this paper, we proposed a hybrid inference model - ID3, Fuzzy Logic, FNN and Bayesian Network - through four algorithms supporting self-healing in autonomic computing. This inference model adopts a selective healing model, according to system situations for self-diagnosing and prediction of problems using four algorithms. Therefore, correction of error prediction becomes possible. In this paper, a hybrid inference model is adopted to evaluate the proposed model in a self-healing system. In addition, inference is compared with existing research and the effectiveness is demonstrated by experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we evaluate the feasibility of distributed control of shared resources in user-managed networks. This paradigm has become possible with the advent of broadband wireless networking technologies such as IEEE 802.11. One of the most popular applications in these networks is peer-to-peer (P2P) file exchange. Node cooperation can optimize the usage of shared "external" accesses to the Internet (set of links between the user network and the Internet). In a previous paper, we evaluated different agent-oriented distributed control schema, based on the concept of credit limits, on ideal mesh networks subject to uniform traffic. Each node in the mesh network chooses to behave as a cooperator or a defector. Cooperators may assist in file exchange, whereas defectors try to get advantage of network resources without providing help in return. Before this paper was completed, we observed that popular P2P protocols like eMule, Kazaa and BitTorrent were evolving towards the same credit-oriented strategies we previously proposed. Now, we realistically model both user network traffic and topology, and evaluate a new advanced agent-based distributed control scheme. The simulation results in this paper confirm on realistic networks the main conclusion in our previous research: autonomous node agents become cooperators in their permanent state when they take decisions from local information, checking that file exchange services offered to neighbor nodes do not exceed appropriate credit limits. Keywords: P2P, agents, network management, mesh networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a consensus-based algorithm for resolving inconsistency in Web-based recommendation systems. In such systems it is possible that a user have his own usage path (the way of usage of the system) and system can recommend individual usage path for new user. The problem of determining a new path for a new user is the subject of this paper. An algorithm for solving this problem will be described below and some results of the experiments with this algorithm will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust plays a fundamental role in multi-agent systems in which tasks are delegated or agents must rely on others to perform actions that they themselves cannot do. Dating from the mid-1980s, the Belief-Desire-Intention architecture (BDI) is the longest-standing model of intelligent agency used in multi-agent systems. Part of the attraction of BDI is that it is amenable to logical formalisms such as Wooldridge's Logic Of Rational Agents (LORA). In a previous paper the present authors introduced a model of trust, here named the Ability-Belief-Commitment-Desire (ABCD) model, that could be implemented within the BDI framework. This paper explores the definition of the ABCD model within the LORA formalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we model the concept of "coarseness", typically used in texture image descriptions, by means of fuzzy sets. Specifically, we relate representative measures of this kind of texture with its presence degree. To obtain these "presence degrees", we collect assessments from polls filled by human subjects, performing an aggregation of these assessments by means of OWA operators. Using this collected data, and some statistics as reference set, the membership function corresponding to the fuzzy set "coarseness" is modelled. Keywords: Image features, texture features, fuzzy texture, visual coarseness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with experience management in computer-mediated environments. It particularly focuses on complex tasks whose support relies more on experience than on knowledge. The presented approach is based on the "use traces" concept to investigate the "activity reflexivity" as a first step in experience management, and experience sharing and reusing as possible applications. The paper also outlines the framework supporting Trace-Based Systems creation. Traces, trace models and trace life cycle are formally defined. The main parts of the framework architecture: collecting, transformation, visualization, and query systems are also detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Camera Calibration (CC) is required in many Photogrammetry and Computer-Vision applications, where 3D information is extracted from images and CC is also employed for pose determination of imaging sensors. In this paper, a novel implicit-CC model (ICC) based on Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System has been introduced. The ICC is particularly useful for back-projection in the applications that do not require internal and external camera calibration parameters in addition to the expert knowledge. The ICC supports multi-view back-projection in intelligent-photogrammetry. In this paper, the back-projection performance of the ICC has been compared with the Modified Direct-Linear-Transformation (MDLT) on real-images in order to evaluate the success of the proposed ICC. Extensive simulation results show that the ICC achieves a better performance than the MDLT in the 3D reconstruction of scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]