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Olive oil is an important component of the Mediterranean diet and its consumption is believed to be beneficial to human health. However, there has been concerns about the presence of pesticides in olive oil, from Greece, Italy and Spain, having endocrine disrupting properties. The toxicity of these pesticides and their ability to interact with the endocrine system is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No silicon integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing process is perfect. Therefore, IC testing is used to screen imperfect devices before shipping them to customers. Chips containing manufacturing defects are potentially malfunctioning chips that may cause system crashes and lead to financial deficit, environmental disaster, and/or jeopardize human life. Moreover, if manufacturing defects are not detected early, the cost of repair is increased by an order of magnitude at each step after the chip fabrication line. It comes naturally that chip testing is an important factor of the business in computer and communications industries, since customers demand reliable products at a reasonable cost and manufacturers, in order to stay competitive in business, must find the means to provide the best products at the lowest cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While latitudinal patterns of genetic diversity are well known for many taxa in Europe, there has been little analysis of longitudinal patterns across Pleistocene glacial refugia. Here we analyze longitudinal patterns in two aspects of diversity (species richness and intraspecific genetic diversity) for two trophically related groups of organisms - oaks (Fagaceae, genus Quercus) and their associated gallwasps (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) - across four southern refugial regions (Asia Minor, the Balkans, Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula). Two major patterns emerge: a) both intraspecific genetic diversity and species richness are lower in Iberia than in eastern refugia; and b) though depauperate, Iberia contains substantial endemic diversity both in terms of intraspecific variation and species. Sequence data for two of three gallwasp case studies show that Iberian lineages diverged from central and eastern European lineages well before the Pleistocene. However, coalescence times for Iberian lineages are far more recent, suggesting that Iberian populations may have a recent history of genetic bottlenecks. We suggest that these patterns are the result of two processes: a) the formation of distinct refugial biotas towards the end of the Pliocene, and b) longitudinal variation in the magnitude of climatic fluctuations during the Pleistocene. Specifically, we suggest that the lower richness in Iberia is the result of a recent history of stronger fluctuations and much more intense aridity than areas further east. Data for equivalent analyses in other taxa exist. Comparison of patterns across taxa should allow the genesis and testing of hypotheses for the origin and maintenance of longitudinal patterns of biodiversity in the Western Palaearctic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new method is proposed for improving microarray spot segmentation for gene quantification. The method introduces a novel combination of three image processing stages, applied locally to each spot image: i/ Fuzzy C-Means unsupervised clustering, for automatic spot background noise estimation, ii/ power spectrum deconvolution filter design, employing background noise information, for spot image restoration, iii/ Gradient-Vector-Flow (GVF-Snake), for spot boundary delineation. Microarray images used in this study comprised a publicly available dataset obtained from the database of the MicroArray Genome Imaging & Clustering Tool website. The proposed method performed better than the GVF-Snake algorithm (Kullback-Liebler metric: 0.0305 bits against 0.0194 bits) and the SPOT commercial software (pairwise mean absolute error between replicates: 0.234 against 0.303). Application of efficient adaptive spot-image restoration on cDNA microarray images improves spot segmentation and subsequent gene quantification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of new blood vessels is a critical factor in many human diseases including cancer, ischemic injury and wound healing. De novo vessel formation or vasculogenesis was thought to take place solely in the embryo from mesodermal progenitor cells, whereas the vasculature in postnatal life was considered to undergo remodeling through expansion of pre-existing endothelial cells, or angiogenesis. Current evidence suggests that endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) also exist in adult organisms as circulating cells originating in the bone marrow. They can be mobilized after vascular trauma, myocardial infarction, tissue injury, or during peripheral vascular disease, by a number of growth factors and chemokines like VEGF, GM-CSF, G-CSF and SDF-1. EPCs do not appear to represent a distinct or homogeneous cell population, but they are defined as cells that can give rise to endothelial progeny under certain circumstances in culture or in vivo. EPCs enhance tissue revascularization by contributing to new vessels and stimulating local angiogenesis, thus offering novel ways to regulate vascular growth. Results from the first clinical studies using mostly bone marrow stem cells as a source of EPCs have been encouraging, emphasizing the therapeutic potential of endothelial progenitor cells. This review summarizes the role of EPCs in the formation of new blood vessels and provides an outline of their biological characteristics and potential use in the clinical setting [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, quantitative evaluation of a proposed digital density equalization technique in mammography was carried out. The evaluation was performed on a set of 90 mammograms, based on wavelet-generated measurable parameters of image quality, such as contrast, noise and contrastto- noise ratio (CNR). These parameters were estimated for dense mammary gland and breast periphery, for both initial and corresponding corrected mammograms. The equalization character of the technique was also examined. A statistically significant (p<0.05) or highly significant increase (p<0.0005) was observed in breast periphery and mammary gland contrast, noise and CNR values. The proposed technique was found to result in density equalization, since the decrease in equalization index is statistically highly significant (p<0.0005). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study was undertaken to show the problems that arise from the transition from a film to a Direct Digital Radiology (DDR) department, as well as the advantages and disadvantages resulting from this transition. Initially a questionnaire was given to 32 Radiologists and Radiographers who worked with conventional systems in the past and are working now with the new systems. From the answers received it was clear that a contradiction existed between the Radiologists and the Radiographers, as far as the time needed with the new systems to perform an examination and reach a diagnosis but both groups of professionals felt more secure working with DDR systems. However, most Radiographers stated that they were not happy with the training, whereas all Radiologists were. In most of the other questions, Radiologists and Radiographers were in agreement that the advantages of DDR systems in respect with Analog systems are considerably more than the disadvantages and in particular the more frequent problems that DDR systems face and the fact that the well running of the Radiology department, depends on technological effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a vision-based interface for controlling a computer mouse via 2D and 3D hand gestures. The proposed interface builds upon our previous work that permits the detection and tracking of multiple hands that can move freely in the field of view of a potentially moving camera system. Dependable hand tracking, combined with fingertip detection, facilitates the definition of simple and, therefore, robustly interpretable vocabularies of hand gestures that are subsequently used to enable a human operator convey control information to a computer system. Two such vocabularies are defined, implemented and validated. The first one depends only on 2D hand tracking results while the second also makes use of 3D information. As confirmed by several experiments, the proposed interface achieves accurate mouse positioning, smooth cursor movement and reliable recognition of gestures activating button events. Owing to these properties, our interface can be used as a virtual mouse for controlling any Windows application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first panel in WAC2005 focused on the relation between autonomicity and complexity. It is widely believed that autonomicity is a principle that can reduce complexity, but there is also concern that autonomicity itself is complexity-producing. Autonomicity promotes all “self-*” attributes of a system and naturally distributes responsibilities and costs, but it can also bring the system close to a state of “anarchy” (modern Greek interpretation of “autonomous”) if not properly handled. It appears that the overall system complexity may increase, but it is distributed and shared (hence, it is potentially easier to manage), in a similar way in which Integrated Circuits encapsulate the increased complexity and hide it from the bigger system. In addition to reducing complexity in the above sense, autonomicity can also help design truly adaptable, self-tuning and “all-weather” near-optimal systems, something not possible under traditional system design that are difficult to cope with the combined fine-tuning of a very large number of parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothalamic neuropeptide corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), as well as its receptors, have been identified in several reproductive organs, including the endometrial glands, the decidualized endometrial stroma and the placental trophoblast, synctiotrophoblast and decidua.1−9 "Reproductive" CRH is a form of "tissue" CRH (CRH found in peripheral tissues), analogous to the "immune" CRH detected in peripheral inflammatory sites.10 "Immune" CRH possesses potent proinflammatory properties, influencing both innate and acquired immune processes. Intrauterine CRH may participate in local immune phenomena associated with embryo implantation (Table 1). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intermittent nature of the wind creates significant uncertainty in the operation of power systems with increased wind power penetration. Con- siderable efforts have been made for the accurate prediction of the wind power using either statistical or physical models. In this paper, a method based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is proposed in order to improve the predictions of an existing neuro-fuzzy wind power forecasting model taking into account the evaluation results from the use of this wind power forecasting tool. Thus, an improved wind power forecasting is achieved and a better estimation of the confidence interval of the proposed model is provided. Keywords: Artificial neural networks, wind power forecasting, prediction error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication between agents needs to be flexible enough to encompass together a variety of different aspects such as, conformance to society protocols, private tactics of the individual agents, strategies that reflect different classes of agent types (or personal attitudes) and adaptability to the particular external circumstances at the time when the communication takes place. In this paper we propose an argument-based framework for representing communication theories of agents that can take into account in a uniform way these different aspects. We show how this approach can be used to realize existing types of dialogue strategies and society protocols in a way that facilitates their modular development and extension to make them more flexible in handling different or special circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curvature effects are shown to distinguish carbon nanotubes from graphitic carbon in qualitative ways. In particular, bonding geometries and magnetic moments are found to be sensitively dependent on curvature. Furthermore, our work also reveals that use of full orbital basis set is necessary for realistic calculations of quantum conductance of carbon nanotubes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe an application of Abductive Logic Programming (ALP) to the analysis of an important class of DNA microarray experiments. We develop an ALP theory that provides a simple and general model of how gene interactions can cause changes in observable expression levels of genes. Input to the procedure are the observed microarray results; output are hypotheses about possible gene interactions that explain the observed effects. We apply and evaluate our approach on microarray experiments on M. tuberculosis and S. cerevisiae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe (), a specialized, model-theoretic logic for narrative reasoning about actions, able to represent non-deterministic domains involving concurrency, static laws (constraints) and indirect effects (ramifications). We give formal results which characterize high degree of modularity and elaboration tolerance, and show how these properties help to separate out, and provide a principled solutions to, the endogenous and exogenous qualification problems. We also show how a notion of (micro) processes can be used to facilitate reasoning at the dual levels of temporal granularity necessary for narrative-based domains involving "instantaneous" series of indirect and knock-on effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the brokering and matchmaking problem in the tourism domain, that is, how a requester's requirements and preferences can be matched against a set of offerings collected by a broker. The proposed solution uses the Semantic Web standard of RDF to represent the offerings, and a deductive logical language for expressing the requirements and preferences. We motivate and explain the approach we propose, and report on a prototypical implementation exhibiting the described functionality in a multi-agent environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, huge volumes of Web data are organized or exported in tree-structured form. Popular examples of such structures are product catalogs of e-market stores, taxonomies of thematic categories, XML data encodings, etc. Even for a single knowledge domain, name mismatches, structural differences and structural inconsistencies raise difficulties when many data sources need to be integrated and queried in a uniform way. In this paper, we present a method for semantically integrating tree-structured data. We introduce dimensions which are sets of semantically related nodes in tree structures. Based on dimensions, we suggest dimension graphs. Dimension graphs can be automatically extracted from trees and abstract their structural information. They are semantically rich constructs that provide query guidance to pose queries, assist query evaluation and support integration of tree-structured data. We design a query language to query tree-structured data. The language allows full, partial or no specification of the structure of the underlying tree-structured data used to issue queries. Thus, queries in our language are not restricted by the structure of the trees. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for checking query satisfiability and we present a technique for evaluating satisfiable queries. Finally, we conducted several experiments to compare our method for integrating tree-structured data with one that does not exploit dimension graphs. Our results demonstrate the superiority of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter we present SOSTOOLS, a third-party MATLAB toolbox for formulating and solving sum of squares optimization problems. Sum of squares optimization forms a basis for formulating convex relaxations to computationally hard problems such as some that appear in systems and control. Currently, sum of squares programs are solved by casting them as semidefinite programs, which can in turn be solved using interior-point based numerical methods. SOSTOOLS helps this translation in such a way that the underlying computations are abstracted from the user. Here we give a brief description of the toolbox, its features and capabilities (with emphasis on the recently added ones), as well as show how it can be applied to solving problems of interest in systems and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in semidefinite programming along with use of the sum of squares decomposition to check nonnegativity have paved the way for efficient and algorithmic analysis of systems with polynomial vector fields. In this paper we present a systematic methodology for analyzing the more general class of non-polynomial vector fields, by recasting them into rational vector fields. The sum of squares decomposition techniques can then be applied in conjunction with an extension of the Lyapunov stability theorem to investigate the stability and other properties of the recasted systems, from which properties of the original, non-polynomial systems can be inferred. This will be illustrated by some examples from the mechanical and chemical engineering domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most common font formats (PostScript Type 1, Type 3, etc., and True Type fonts) can be used with any of the LATEX forms (including standard LATEX, Λ, and pdfLATEX), and, of course, LATEX uses by default fonts created with METAFONT. Newer formats, such as the OpenType format, can also be used since it is possible to convert them to Type 1 fonts. Direct support of Open Type may be added in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To recapitulate on the use of LATEX, the reader may recall that we type our text containing the formatting commands in an input file using our favorite editor. We then invoke the TEX typesetting program, which processes the input file using the LATEX format, outputting a minimum of three files: a DVI file, an auxiliary file used by the program to generate things such as cross-references, and a log file that contains information about what TEX encountered, including details of any warnings or errors. While it is typesetting a file, TEX tells you about its progress either in a window or, on older systems, on the full screen of your computer. Any warnings are described without the program halting, and on faster systems some of this can be rather fleeting, but since they are reproduced in the log file, this can be examined afterwards. When an error is encountered, the program actually halts, giving an indication of the nature of the error, on which line of your input file the error might be found, and a? prompt. Warning messages indicate problems that are not serious but that are likely to affect the output (e.g., problems with hyphenation, line-breaking, cross-references and labels, finding a particular font, etc.), while errors are more serious, causing the TEX program to stop (e.g., the messages environment undefined, an omitted item in a list making environment, and misplaced alignment tab character &, among others). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electronic typesetting of a document written in a language other than English is a problem that has been tackled seriously by the TEX community. A complete solution to this problem involves the solution of two subproblems: the preparation of the LATEX file and the typesetting of this file according to the typographic idiosyncrasies of the (main) language of the document. There are at least three different approaches to this really complicated problem: The use of standard LATEX packages (i.e., packages that suppose the use of TEX as the underlying typesetting engine and allow multilingual text processing in a portable way). The main drawback of this approach is that in many cases the user has to type commands that seem unnatural.The use of customized typsetting engines, such as pTEX, that are based on TEX and take care of most peculiarities of a particular language. The main drawback of this approach is that it is not adequate for documents written in languages other than the native language of the customized typesetting engine.Standard TEX extensions, such as ɛ-TEX and Ω, which have been designed to allow true multilingual typesetting. The drawback of this approach is that these systems have not gained really wide acceptance, mainly because their documentation is still under development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to include drawings, pictures, and line art in modern publications is more than necessary for any typesetting system. Although LATEX by itself can be used to produce drawings, such as those found in mathematics books, it provides facilities to include virtually any kind of graphics file. In this chapter, we describe the picture environment, which can be used to create simple drawings. In addition, we discuss how to add graphics to a LATEX file. We also discuss how one can create graphics with other packages. Graphics inclusion was discussed earlier when we dealt with floats (see Section 6.5), but here we will go into detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bibliography and, in particular, the index are two parts of a document that usually get neglected during the initial stages of the document creation process. This leads to problems later on, so it is wise to plan ahead, as these two parts are very important for a document to be considered complete and with easily accessible material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter, we describe additional topics not covered in the previous chapters: labels, horizontal and vertical spacing, page breaking, floating objects, marginal notes, page parameters and page setup, slide preparation, TEX boxes, lines, the definition of new commands, environments and catalogs, the file input family of commands, and the interactive use of LATEX. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter, we present some packages that do not comfortably fit anywhere else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most demanding jobs in the typesetting business is the typesetting of mathematical text. Here, TEX really excels. Its output is incomparable to the output of any other document preparation system. LATEX, as usual, adds an easier interface to the TEX typesetting engine, making the writing of even the most demanding mathematical text straightforward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many cases, one may want to write a series of names, words, or other items one after the other. This is commonly known as a list. Moreover, in many cases, users want to be able to write an itemized display (e.g., titles, course offerings, or articles for exhibition or sale) usually including descriptive information or illustrations. This is commonly known as a catalog. Since lists and catalogs are very frequently used in printed text, LATEX offers a variety of environments that can be used to produce any possible list or catalog. Furthermore, it provides environments suitable for the typesetting of poetry and quotations, among others. In this chapter, we present these environments and their uses. Although alignment is a subject that does not comfortably fit in this chapter, we include the relevant discussion here as we think this is the most appropriate place for this material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter, we describe the general structure of a LATEX/Λ file. Since a LATEX/Λ file is composed of characters, we elaborate on the characters that one is allowed to type into a valid file and present some special characters with a predefined meaning. Next, we present the concept of a document class, the standard LATEX classes, and the classes provided by the American Mathematical Society. Furthermore, we discuss how one can create the title of a document and a title page. Next, we present how one can get some of the standard logos that are frequently used in the TEX world. We continue by presenting a real-world LATEX file and conclude with the presentation of a package that allows the combination of several LATEX files into a single document. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A very common complaint from beginners to the TEX system and its derivatives is "where are the fonts?" or "am I restricted to the default font?". In this chapter we will see first how to access different font families and within them special symbols. Moreover, we will see size-changing commands and also deal with typographical issues, which the wealth of fonts available to TEX makes necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer Science is a fast growing discipline that rapidly engulfs exciting new disciplines such as Digital Typography and Mathematical Typesetting. Indeed, today Digital Typography is an active research field of Computer Science. In this chapter we introduce the fundamental concepts related to digital typesetting with TEX. We briefly present all of the relevant ideas that are necessary for the rest of this book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Load Sharing is a policy used to improve the performance of distributed systems by transferring workload from heavily loaded nodes to lightly loaded ones in the system. In this paper, we propose a dynamic and symmetrical technique for a two-server system, called Difference-Initiated (DI), in which transferring decisions are based on the difference between the populations of the two servers. In order to measure the performance of this policy, we apply the SSP analytical approximation technique proposed in [3]. Finally, we compare the theoretically derived results of the DI technique with two of the most commonly used dynamic techniques: the Sender-Initiated (SI), and the Receiver-Initiated (RI) which were simulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an approach for solving some of the problems of top-down Inductive Logic Programming systems when learning multiple predicates. The approach is based on an algorithm for learning abductive logic programs. Abduction is used to generate additional information that is useful for solving the problem of global inconsistency when learning multiple predicates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Greek educational system is highly centralized and is based on the principles of the "Greek humanism" which is a blend of the classical Greek tradition, the Greek Orthodox Christianity and the influences of the German idealism. The introduction of computer education in the eighties is based mainly on the policies of the European Community with priority in technical and vocational education. The accession of computer education (informatics) as an independent subject followed the model of the traditional subjects in the curriculum. The content of informatics is characterized by the instruction of programming with emphasis on paper and pencil exercises and the technical theoretical issues of computing, as shown in the results of the IEA-Computers in Education research. The replacement of this "technical approach" by the adoption of the "integrated approach" (using the computer across the curriculum) appears to be the first goal of the new educational policy on informatics education in the nineties. The extent of the realization of this goal is subject to evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]