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In this article, we present a new algorithm to deal with foreground-background separation in very degraded documents. In particular, our work is applied to patrimonial document images which suffer from several types of degradation as aging effects, noise, back-to-front ink interference, etc. Our main objective is to correctly classify ink and paper to allow an efficient segmentation of the image creating high quality monochromatic images. This makes easier the broadcast of these images through the Internet. The new algorithm is based on the classical Shannon definition of entropy and a generalization defined as Tsallis Entropy and it is compared to 19 well-known classical algorithms, including DjVu algorithm. It achieved the best results by analyzing precision, recall, accuracy, specificity, PSNR and MSE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we first discuss the level of compliance for timetabling research to two important research qualities, namely measurability and reproducibility, analyzing what we believe are the most important contributions in the literature. Secondly, we discuss some practices that, in our opinion, could contribute to the improvement on the two aforementioned qualities for future papers in timetabling research. For the sake of brevity, we restrict our scope to university timetabling problems (exams, courses, or events), and thus we leave out other equally important timetabling problems, such as high-school, employee, and transportation timetabling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of RFID technology, the so called internet of things for managing supply chain events has gained increasing attention. This paper proposes a peer to peer broker network on top of existing specifications for this infrastructure. With the broker network, event based communication is enabled for the internet of things. However, the main contribution of this paper is a mechanism to optimize event queries for in-network processing of supply chain events. Here, models of supply chain processes are exploited for optimizing event queries and enabling improved mapping of query operators to the broker network. Experiments are presented which show that the proposed mechanism reduces network load compared to existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimodal systems support people with different needs and different features during the interaction process making it more easy and natural. However naturalness can usually produce ambiguous interpretation. This paper discusses ambiguities in multimodal interaction proposing in particular two different examples of ambiguities: a) multimodal ambiguities produced combining un-ambiguous modal information containing contrasting concepts in multimodal dialogue, b) ambiguities arising by the propagation at multimodal level of a modal input ambiguity. Moreover, the paper proposes a formal representation of multimodal inputs using the hybrid approach that combines the attribute multi-set grammar with the linear logic. This paper starts from discussing the main features of a multimodal system and the classes of cooperation between modalities. The attribute multi-set grammar combined with the linear logic enables to highlight the multidimensionality of multimodality and allows to formally describe ambiguities that can occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the electronic and paper-based voting systems that are used in Belgium. It compares the advantages and disadvantages of these systems, and presents a selection of voting systems that have been recommended to the federal and regional governments for future elections in Belgium: an improved paper-based voting system with voter-verifiable paper trails, a family of optical scanning systems, a remote/Internet voting system, and a kiosk/intranet voting system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy and elections have more than 2.500 years of tradition. Technology has always influenced and shaped the ways elections are held. Since the emergence of the Internet there has been the idea of conducting remote electronic elections. In this paper we reviewed 104 elections with a remote e-voting possibility based on research articles, working papers and also on press releases. We analyzed the cases with respect to the level where they take place, technology, using multiple channels, the size of the election and the provider of the system. Our findings show that while remote e-voting has arrived on the regional level and in organizations for binding elections, on the national level it is a very rare phenomenon. Further paper based elections are here to stay; most binding elections used remote e-voting in addition to the paper channel. Interestingly, providers of e-voting systems are usually only operating in their own territory, as out-of-country operations are very rare. In the long run, for remote e-voting to become a reality of the masses, a lot has to be done. The high number of excluded cases shows that not only documentation is scarce but also the knowledge of the effects of e-voting is rare as most cases are not following simple experimental designs used elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a multi-dependency language modeling approach to information retrieval. The approach extends the basic KL-divergence retrieval approach by introducing the hybrid dependency structure, which includes syntactic dependency, syntactic proximity dependency and co-occurrence dependency, to describe dependencies between terms. Term and dependency language models are constructed for both document and query. The relevant between a document and a query is then evaluated by using the KL-divergence between their corresponding models. The new dependency retrieval model has been compared with other traditional retrieval models. Experiment results indicate that it produces significant improvements in retrieval effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are huge numbers of documents in digital libraries. How to effectively organize these documents so that humans can easily browse or reference is a challenging task. Existing classification methods and chronological or geographical ordering only provide partial views of the news articles. The relationships among news articles might not be easily grasped. In this paper, we propose a near-duplicate copy detection approach to organizing news archives in digital libraries. Conventional copy detection methods use word-level features which could be time-consuming and not robust to term substitutions. In this paper, we propose a sentence-level statistics-based approach to detect near-duplicate documents, which is language independent, simple but effective. It's orthogonal to and can be used to complement word-based approaches. Also it's insensitive to actual page layout of articles. The experimental results showed the high efficiency and good accuracy of the proposed approach in detecting near-duplicates in news archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern production management systems consist of transaction processing systems and decision enhancement systems. A clear example of two such components are an ERP systems and APS systems. These systems are often standard software systems, and therefore suitable for many different situations. This paper analyses the combination of ERP and APS from the perspective of change. The paper builds on a classification of ERP-APS integrations and an analysis of changeability of ERP systems. The paper elaborates on issues encountered when changing ERP-APS integrations. The main conclusion is that such changes are technically complex because of different technologies and different data models used. Therefore, end user education and training is emphasized Moreover, they are organizationally complex because many stakeholders are involved. [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]

In this paper, a novel sentence retrieval model with type-based expansion is proposed. In this retrieval model, sentences expected to be relevant should meet with the requirements both in query terms and query types. To obtain the information about query types, this paper proposes a solution based on classification, which utilizes the potential associations between terms and information types to obtain the optimized classification results. Inspired by the idea that relevant sentences always tend to occur nearby, this paper further re-ranks each sentence by considering the relevance of its adjacent sentences. The proposed retrieval model has been compared with other traditional retrieval models and experiment results indicate its significant improvements in retrieval effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the diverse failures and error conditions in grid environments, node unavailability is increasingly becoming severe and poses great challenges to reliable job scheduling in grid environment. Current job management systems mainly exploit fault recovery mechanism to guarantee the completion of jobs, but sacrificing system efficiency. To address the challenges, in this paper, a node TTF (Time To Failure) prediction model and job completion prediction model are designed. Based on these models, the paper proposes a dependability guided job scheduling system, called DGSS, which provides failure avoidance job scheduling. The experimental results validate the improvement in the dependability of job execution and system resources utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we proposed enhanced spreading activation algorithm. Because SARM requires a lot of computation time, enhanced SARM is possible as reducing unnecessary activation value. By removing the parts with a small number of references in the retrieval process, the time taken for retrieval in simulation has been reduced by 37.8% in comparison with SARM. Also, in this paper, we focus performance evaluation of our component retrieval system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper embodies Data Transformation System for PCB (Printed Circuit Board) production automation. Data designed by CAD cannot be compatible with data of PCB production line, so it should have a data compatible automated system. This paper has been developed a human error extraction algorithm for PCB production automation and an algorithm that transforms reliable data for PCB production line and also an interface for this. As the result, processing rate has been improved and it helps PCB production automation with reliable optimized data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable progress has been made in recent years in complexity analysis of Nash equilibrium, so we restrict our attention to seek it from the empirical perspective in this paper. Based on a new description format of game - stimulate - response pair proposed in the paper, we put forward a constraints satisfaction-based algorithm on this data structure to compute pure Nash equilibrium of graphical game. And then, we discuss how to employ search strategies when finding the equilibrium in different types. To evaluate our algorithm, we use a comprehensive game generator - GAMUT, to produce a mass of data and take a famous tool - gambit as competitor. At last the experimental result is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have shown that shape cues should dominate gait recognition. This motivates us to perform gait recognition through shape features in 2D human silhouettes. In this paper, we propose six simple projective features to describe human gait and compare eight kinds of projective features to figure out which projective directions are important to walker recognition. First, we normalize each original human silhouette into a square form. Inspired by the pure horizontal and vertical projections used in the frieze gait patterns, we explore the positive and negative diagonal projections with or without normalizing silhouette projections and obtain six new uniprojective features to characterize walking gait. Then this paper applies principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimension of raw gait features. Finally, we recognize unknown gait sequences using the Mahalanobis-distance-based nearest neighbor rule. Experimental results show that the horizontal and diagonal projections have more discriminative clues for the side-view gait recognition and that the projective normalization generally can improve the robustness of projective features against the noise in human silhouettes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various organizations use the RFID technology for linking, tracking and identifying objects in their operative context. Nevertheless, the RFID components cannot yet be considered as mobile, intelligent and communicating elements of the organization's information infrastructure. They are not always used for accomplishing the linkage between the physical world and the adopted Information Technologies (IT) solutions. Therefore, they are not used for enabling organizations to automatically monitor, decide, and take actions. Heterogeneous networked devices and services installed within the organizations, often work independently instead of collaborating for offering a better quality of the daily activities to the end-user. This paper discusses the adoption of a Smart Ubiquitous Platform (SUP) for monitoring and managing the documents circulation by using the RFID technology. Advantages of the adoption of RFID are discussed too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mizar, unlike in most other proof assistants, the types are not part of the foundations of the system. Mizar is based on untyped set theory, which means that in Mizar expressions are typed but the values of those expressions are not. In this paper we present the Mizar type system as a collection of type inference rules. We will interpret Mizar types as soft types, by translating Mizar's type judgments into sequents of untyped first order predicate logic. We will then prove that the Mizar type system is correct with respect to this translation in the sense that each derivable type judgment translates to a provable sequent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a neural-based method to map facial expressions between human and robot. We applied the method to a sensitivity communication robot, Ifbot, which has been developed by our industry-university joint research project. The method enables the robot to imitate an arbitrary human facial expression. The paper describes the feature extraction from face image, and proposes neural network based parameter matching between human facial expression and Ifbot's facial expression mechanism. This paper also reports the evaluation of the facial expression transmission performance of Ifbot with the proposed system. The evaluation shows the effectiveness of emphasizing emotional expressions and the possibility of using Ifbot as an agent for distance communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an association method using Concept-base. Concept-base is a large-scale relational database constructed by some electronic dictionaries and some newspapers. Each concept which is defined in Concept-base has attributes which characterize the concept and weights which show each attribute's importance. Concept-base enables to calculate the depth of relationship (Degree of Association) of two any concepts using attributes and weights. This paper proposes One Word Association Method which associates one word (concept) with some relative words (concepts). Also, a threshold of Degree of Association is defined using the evaluation result of One Word Association Method. Finally, Two Words Association Method is proposed based on the threshold of Degree of Association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose gesture recognition in multiple people environment. Our system is divided into two modules: Segmentation and Recognition. In segmentation part, we extract foreground area from input image, and we decide the closest person as a recognition subject. In recognition part, firstly we extract feature point of subject's both hands using contour based method and skin based method. Extracted points are tracked using Kalman filter. We use trajectories of both hands for recognizing gesture. In this paper, we use the simple queue matching method as a recognition method. We also apply our system as an animation system. Our method can select subject effectively and recognize gesture in multiple people environment. Therefore, proposed method can be used for real world application such as home appliance and humanoid robot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web-based Geographic Information System(WebGIS) is a key direction towards GIS development. By analysing of the deficiency in the design of conventional WebGIS, this paper proposes an architecture of the intelligent WebGIS based on Multi-Agent, which has been applied in a agricultural WebGIS. In order to solve the key problem of Agent communication, the paper also presents an Agent communication model, which decreases the working capacity to maintain the communication protocl and enhances the system's adaptability and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends a survey on Networked Control Systems (NCSs) published in previous papers. General frameworks and some fundamental issues for the study of NCSs are proposed. A significant emphasis has been on developing control methodologies to study the character of NCSs. This survey paper presents recent NCSs control methodologies, some promising research directions are also covered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of how empirical research can be a valid approach to improve epistemological foundations and ontological representations in Software Engineering (SE). Despite of all the research done in SE, most of the results have not been yet been stated as laws, theories, hypothesis or conjectures, i.e., from an epistemological point of view. This paper explores such facts and advocates that the use of empirical methods can help to improve this situation. Furthermore, it is also imperative for SE experiments to be planned and executed properly in order to be valid epistemologically. Finally, this paper presents some epistemological and ontological results obtained from empirical research in SE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike fixed networks, mobile ad-hoc networks have diverse characteristics, such as dynamic topologies, bandwidth-constrained links, energy-constrained operation, limited physical security, etc. Due to these characteristics their security requirements are different from those of fixed networks. This paper presents a method of authenticating the nodes in the ad-hoc network and securely transmitting information in consideration of the characteristics of the mobile ad hoc network. To this end, this paper proposes a method of combining asymmetric and symmetric cryptography to enhance the efficiency of secret key management for authentication and secure channel establishment. In particular, this paper proposes a method that introduces the concept of Hamming Distance to share the secret keys between the nodes. According to this proposal, secure communication between the nodes is possible when one node manages only log2N secret keys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we suggested a healthcare information management system for supporting healthcare home services. Our researching focus in this paper is how to design system and how to use constructed database on the framework for supporting healthcare home services. The healthcare database constructed by using this information for the purpose of healthcare home services is divided into the base information with real schemes and the context based information with view schemes. Finally, for verifying the practical use of healthcare information constructed in this paper, we show an example of healthcare home monitoring service using information, emergency call, home appliance control, and we describes the results of the experimental evaluation between the base and context based information in terms of execution service time for healthcare home applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manual curation of biological databases is an expensive and labor-intensive process in Genomics and Systems Biology. We report the implem-entation of a state-of-the-art, rule-based Natural Language Processing system that creates computer-readable networks of regulatory interactions directly from abstracts and full-text papers. We evaluate its output against a manually-curated standard database, and test the possibilities and limitations of automatic and semi-automatic curation of the so-called biobibliome. We also propose a novel Regulatory Interaction Mining Markup Language suited for representing this data, useful both for biologists and for text-mining specialists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an approach for solving the driving load forecasting problem based on Cascade Neural Networks with node-decoupled extended Kalman Filtering (CNN-NDEKF). Because of the inherent advantages, hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) are being given more and more attention. The power control strategy of HEVs is the key technology which determines the HEV's efficiency and pollutive emission level. Since the extent of improvement involved with HEV power control strategies greatly depends on the future driving load forecasting, in this paper, we attempt to achieve driving load forecasting using CNN-NDEKF. Instead of forecasting the entire load sequence, we define 5 load levels by a fuzzy logic method and then we forecast the load level. Simulation study is given to illustrate the feasibility of the driving load forecasting approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at improving the convergence performance of conventional BP neural network, this paper presents an improved PSO algorithm instead of gradient descent method to optimize the weights and thresholds of BP network. The strategy of the algorithm is that in each iteration loop, on every dimension d of particle swarm containing n particles, choose the particle whose velocity decreases most quickly to mutate its velocity according to some probability. Simulation results show that the new algorithm is very effective. It is successful to apply the algorithm to gas turbine fault diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the Cohen-Grossberg neural networks with mixed time-varying delays. By applying the Lyapunov functional method and combining with the inequality 3abc ≤ a3 + b3 + c3 (a,b,c > 0) technique, a series of new and useful criteria on the existence of equilibrium point and its global asymptotical stability are established. The results obtained in this paper extend and generalize the corresponding results existing in previous literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies a general class of neural networks with time-varying delays and the neuron activations belong to the set of discontinuous monotone increasing functions. The discontinuities in the activations are an ideal model of the situation where the gain of the neuron amplifiers is very high. Because the delay in combination with high-gain nonlinearities is a particularly harmful source of potential instability, in the paper, conditions which ensure the global convergence of the neural network are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electromagnetic (EM)-based neural network (NN) approaches have recently gained recognition as unconventional and useful methods for radio frequency (RF) components modeling. In this paper, several improvement techniques including a new data preprocessing technique and an improved training algorithm are presented. Comprehensive cases are compared in this paper. The experimental results indicate that with these techniques, the modified model has better performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The split-radix FFT computes a size-n complex DFT, when n is a large power of 2, using just $4n\lg n-6n+8$ arithmetic operations on real numbers. This operation count was first announced in 1968, stood unchallenged for more than thirty years, and was widely believed to be best possible. Recently James Van Buskirk posted software demonstrating that the split-radix FFT is not optimal. Van Buskirk's software computes a size-n complex DFT using only $(34/9+o(1))n\lg n$ arithmetic operations on real numbers. There are now three papers attempting to explain the improvement from 4 to 34/9: Johnson and Frigo, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2007; Lundy and Van Buskirk, Computing, 2007; and this paper. This paper presents the "tangent FFT," a straightforward in-place cache-friendly DFT algorithm having exactly the same operation counts as Van Buskirk's algorithm. This paper expresses the tangent FFT as a sequence of standard polynomial operations, and pinpoints how the tangent FFT saves time compared to the split-radix FFT. This description is helpful not only for understanding and analyzing Van Buskirk's improvement but also for minimizing the memory-access costs of the FFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usability is a feature of software quality that has traditional significance in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community. Recent works that have been proposed by the Software Engineering (SE) community are intended to improve the usability of software applications. This paper combines aspects that are defined in both these communities to produce usable web applications. To achieve this goal, a well-known strategy to improve usability is used: usability patterns. However, many usability patterns and guidelines could only be applied when the final system is implemented. In this work, STATUS patterns have been chosen because they solve usability issues at conceptual level. The main purpose of this paper is to improve the usability of Web Applications automatically generated by OOWS (a model-based web engineering method) applying the STATUS patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys first-order probabilistic languages (FOPLs), which combine the expressive power of first-order logic with a probabilistic treatment of uncertainty. We provide a taxonomy that helps make sense of the profusion of FOPLs that have been proposed over the past fifteen years. We also emphasize the importance of representing uncertainty not just about the attributes and relations of a fixed set of objects, but also about what objects exist. This leads us to Bayesian logic, or BLOG, a language for defining probabilistic models with unknown objects. We give a brief overview of BLOG syntax and semantics, and emphasize some of the design decisions that distinguish it from other languages. Finally, we consider the challenge of constructing FOPL models automatically from data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The iData Toolkit is a purely functional toolkit for the Clean programming language to create highly dynamic, interactive, thin client web applications on a high level of abstraction. Its main building block is the iData element. With this element the programming effort of the application programmer is reduced significantly because it takes care of state handling, rendering, user interaction, and storage management automatically. In this paper we show that it can be used for even more tasks: handle destructively shared model data, perform version management, and state consistency management. This can be done entirely on top of the iData Toolkit. The toolkit comes with a new programming paradigm. We illustrate the extended power of the toolkit and programming paradigm by a case study of a conference management system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of the Internet and its associated technologies did open space for a new type of human interaction: virtual, social interaction environments.The introduction of regulated interaction in these virtual interaction spaces may be a solution towards their organization and inherent increased credibility. In this paper we propose a model for interaction regulation and control for virtual, social interaction spaces, called Social Theatres. A multi-layer software architecture was developed to support this web-based interaction model, allowing easy construction of such social interaction spaces and adaptation to users' devices. This paper discusses the advantages of regulated interaction, addresses the Social Theatre metaphor and presents the software architecture for the implementation of these regulated social interaction spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses efficiency measures for the evaluation of high performance multimedia systems on a chip (SOC), considering a throughput rate R, chip size A, power dissipation P, and a flexibility criterion F. Based on the analysis of recently published multimedia chips, the paper shows equivalences between the ratio of R over AP, a weighted sum on 1/R, A, P, and a fuzzy multicriteria analysis on R, A, P. The paper indicates the fuzzy multicriteria analysis as generalization of the other efficiency measures, which can be easily applied to multiple cost and performance criteria. Because of the application of fuzzy set theory, the multicriteria approach supports quantitative criteria with a physical background as well as qualitative criteria by linguistic variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let consider n autonomous mobile robots that can move in a two dimensional plane. The gathering problem is one of the most fundamental tasks of autonomous mobile robots. In short, given a set of robots with arbitrary initial locations, gathering must make all robots meet in finite time at a point that is not predefined. In this paper, we study about the feasibility of gathering by mobile robots that have φ-absolute error dynamic compasses. While the direction of each local coordinate system is fixed in usual systems, the dynamic compass model allows the angle difference between a local coordinate system and the global coordinate system to vary with time in the range of [0, φ]. This paper proposes a semi-synchronous gathering algorithm for n robots with (π/2 − ε)-absolute error dynamic compasses, where ε is an arbitrary small constant larger than zero. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed algorithm is the first one that considers both inaccurate compass models and more than two robots. We also show the optimality of our algorithm. It is proved that for any φ ≥ π/2, there is no algorithm to gather two robots with φ-absolute error dynamic compasses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider some problems about the computation time of evolutionary algorithms in this paper. First, some exact analytic expressions of the mean first hitting times of general evolutionary algorithms in finite search spaces are obtained theoretically by using the properties of Markov chain associated with evolutionary algorithms considered here. Then, by introducing drift analysis and applying Dynkin's Formula, the general upper and lower bounds of the mean first hitting times of evolutionary algorithms are estimated rigorously under some mild conditions listed in the paper. Those results in this paper are commonly useful. Also, the analytic techniques adopted in the paper are widely instructive for analyzing the computation time of evolutionary algorithms in a given search space as long as some specific mathematical arts are introduced accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A software product-line is a set of products built from a core set of software components. Although software engineers develop software product-lines for various application types, they are most commonly used for embedded systems development, where the variability of hardware features requires variability in the supporting firmware. Feature models are used to represent the variability in these software product-lines. Various feature modeling approaches have been proposed, including feature diagrams, domain specific languages, constraint languages, and the semantic web language OWL. This paper explores a conceptual graph approach to feature modeling in an effort to produce feature models that have a more natural, and more easily expressed mapping to the problem domain. It demonstrates the approach using a standard Graph Product-line problem that has been discussed in various software product-line papers. A conceptual graph feature model is developed for the graph product-line and it is compared to other feature models for this product-line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisations want nowadays more controlled processes and easily usable solutions, but achieving them requires winning many challenges. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based technology has been proposed for improving mobile solution workflows and usability. NFC (Near Field Communication) technology is based on integrating RFID on mobile devices. This paper identifies how NFC based systems could be used to improve mobile solution workflows and usability. The results of this study are based on the implementation of six pilot cases in 2005-2007. This paper concludes that use of NFC provides both advantages and disadvantages and, therefore, to estimate the potential of NFC, its pros and cons have to be weighed up for each case in question. This paper also concludes that only a comprehensive solution achieves the full potential of NFC from users' point of view. Considering mobile solution usability, this paper concludes that NFC based solutions are easy to use, but the small and limited keyboard of mobile devices poses challenges to the design of these solutions. NFC use poses new organizational challenges like need for the rest of the system to catch up and feeling of distrust from the user side. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporal difference (TD) learning is a form of approximate reinforcement learning using an incremental learning updates. For large, stochastic and dynamic systems, however, it is still on open question for lacking the methodology to analyse the convergence and sensitivity of TD algorithms. Meanwhile, analysis on convergence and sensitivity of parameters are very expensive, such analysis metrics are obtained only by running an experiment with different parameter values. In this paper, we utilise the TD(λ) learning control algorithm with a linear function approximation technique known as tile coding in order to help soccer agent learn the optimal control processes. The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology for analysing the performance for adaptively selecting a set of optimal parameter values in TD(λ) learning algorithm. [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]

Description logics (DLs) are a well-known family of knowledge representation (KR) languages. The notation of DLs has the style of a variable-free first order predicate logic. In this paper a diagrammatic representation of the DL $\cal ALC$- based on Peirce's existential graphs - is presented and a set of transformation rules on these graphs provided. As the transformation rules modify the diagrammatic representation of $\cal ALC$ this produces a diagrammatic calculus. Some examples present in the paper illustrate the use and properties of this calculus. [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]

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]

We describe a test development method, named OTK, that is aimed at optimizing compiler testing. The OTK method is based on constructing a model of optimizer's input data. The method allows developing tests targeted to testing a chosen optimizer. A formal data model is constructed on the basis of an abstract informal description of an algorithm of the optimizer under test. In the paper, we consider in detail the process of analyzing an optimization algorithm and building a formal model. We also consider in outline the other part of the method, test selection and test running. The OTK method has been successfully applied in several case studies, including test development for several different optimizing compilers for modern architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a concept of an intelligent control platform for the Hexor mobile robot, based on the XTT knowledge representation method for rule-based systems. The control systems is implemented in Prolog, with use of the Embedded Prolog Platform. The paper presents real-time control capabilities provided by this solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multiple viewed search engine presented here retrieves documents of an indicated search area and displays a matrix of the distribution of the clustering from two aspects of the retrieval result. The search engine provides a visual and semantic bird's-eye view of the entire retrieval result. In addition, the characteristic words of each cluster are displayed in the matrix, and supports narrowing of the search. Furthermore, it is possible to immediately change the analysis criteria or the number of clusters and to use a zooming function. Thus, various retrieval conditions for a query can be attempted immediately and continuously. As a case study, this paper performs several analyses on the electronic journal Zoological Science using a multiple viewed search engine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]