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Past research on the process of extinguishing a fire typically used a traditional linear water jet falling point model and the results ignored external factors, such as environmental conditions and the status of the fire engine, even though the water jet falling point location prediction was often associated with these parameters and showed a nonlinear relationship. This paper constructed a BP (Back Propagation) neural network model. The fire gun nozzle characteristics were included as model inputs, and the water discharge point coordinates were the model outputs; thus, the model could precisely predict the water discharge point with small error and high precision to determine an accurate firing position and allow for the timely adjustment of the spray gun. To improve the slow convergence and local optimality problems of the BP neural network (BPNN), this paper further used a genetic algorithm to optimize the BPNN (GA-BPNN). The BPNN can be used to optimize the weights in the network to train them for global optimization. A genetic algorithm was introduced into the neural network approach, and the water jet landing prediction model was further improved. The simulation results showed that the prediction accuracy of the GA-BP model was better than that of the BPNN alone. The established model can accurately predict the location of the water jet, making the prediction results more useful for firefighters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Map-matching technology is a key and difficult technology in the development of vehicle navigation systems. Only by correctly identifying the road segment on which the vehicle is traveling can the navigation system make the right decision. At the same time, the complexity of the road network structure and a variety of error factors have introduced great challenges to map matching and have attracted the attention of many researchers as well. This paper analyzes various map-matching algorithms, determines that the key to the matching performance is the junction matching, performs an in-depth study on the junction-matching problem, and puts forward the junction decision domain model. The model mainly involves information regarding the width of the road segment, the angle between two road segments, the accuracy of GPS and the accuracy of the road network. In this paper, we use this model to improve the map-matching algorithm based on a hidden Markov model (HMM). The experimental results show that the improved matching algorithm can effectively reduce the error rate of junction matching and improve the matching performance of a navigation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extreme learning machine (ELM) is a novel training method for single-hidden layer feedforward neural networks (SLFNs) in which the hidden nodes are randomly assigned and fixed without iterative tuning. ELMs have earned widespread global interest due to their fast learning speed, satisfactory generalization ability and ease of implementation. In this paper, we extend this theory to hypercomplex space and attempt to simultaneously consider multisource information using a hypercomplex representation. To illustrate the performance of the proposed hypercomplex extreme learning machine (HELM), we have applied this scheme to the task of multispectral palmprint recognition. Images from different spectral bands are utilized to construct the hypercomplex space. Extensive experiments conducted on the PolyU and CASIA multispectral databases demonstrate that the HELM scheme can achieve competitive results. The source code together with datasets involved in this paper can be available for free download at . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational modeling of engineered gene circuits is an important while challenged task in systems biology. In order to describe and predict the response behaviors of genetic circuits using reliable model parameters, this paper applies an optimal experimental design(OED) method to obtain input signals. In order to obtain informative observations, this study focuses on maximizing Fisher information matrix(FIM)-based optimal criteria and to provide optimal inputs. Furthermore, this paper designs a two-stage optimization with the modified E-optimal criteria and applies harmony search(HS)-based OED algorithm to minimize estimation errors. The proposed optimal identification methodology involves estimation errors and the sample size to pursue a trade-off between estimation accuracy and measurement cost in modeling gene networks. The designed cost function takes two major factors into account, in which experimental costs are proportional to the number of time points. Experiments select two types of synthetic genetic networks to validate the effectiveness of the proposed HS-OED approach. Identification outcomes and analysis indicate the proposed HS-OED method outperforms two candidate OED approaches, with reduced computational effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a method to reduce a set of n 2D points to a smaller set of s 2D points with the property that the convex hull on the smaller set is the same as the convex hull of the original bigger set. The paper shows, experimentally, that such reduction accelerates computations; the time it takes to reduce from n down to s points plus the time of computing the convex hull on the s points is less than the time to compute the convex hull on the original set of n points. The method accepts 2D points expressed as real numbers and thus extends our previous method that required points as integers. The method achieves a percentage of reduction of points of over 90% in a collections of four datasets. This amount of reduction provides speedup factors of at least two for various common convex hull algorithms. Theoretically, the reduction method executes in time within O(n) and thus is suitable for preprocessing 2D data before computing the convex hull by any known algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic maps order genetic markers along chromosomes. They are, for instance, extensively used in marker-assisted selection to accelerate breeding programs. Even for the same species, people often have to deal with several alternative maps obtained using different ordering methods or different datasets, e.g. resulting from different segregating populations. Having efficient tools to identify the consistency and discrepancy of alternative maps is thus essential to facilitate genetic map comparisons. We propose to encode genetic maps by bucket order, a kind of order, which takes into account the blurred parts of the marker order while being an efficient data structure to achieve low complexity algorithms. The main result of this paper is an O(n log(n)) procedure to identify the largest agreements between two bucket orders of n elements, their Longest Common Subsequence (LCS), providing an efficient solution to highlight discrepancies between two genetic maps. The LCS of two maps, being the largest set of their collinear markers, is used as a building block to compute pairwise map congruence, to visually emphasize maker collinearity and in some scaffolding methods relying on genetic maps to improve genome assembly. As the LCS computation is a key subroutine of all these genetic map related tools, replacing the current LCS subroutine of those methods by ours –to do the exact same work but faster– could significantly speed up those methods without changing their accuracy. To ease such transition we provide all required algorithmic details in this self contained paper as well as an R package implementing them, named LCSLCIS, which is freely available at: . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a two-stage filter for removing salt-and-pepper noise using noise detector based on characteristic difference parameter and adaptive directional mean filter is proposed. The first stage firstly detects the noise corrupted pixels by combining characteristic difference parameter and gray level extreme, then develops an improved adaptive median filter to firstly restore them. The second stage introduces a restoration scheme to further restore the noise corrupted pixels, which firstly divides them into two types and then applies different restoration skills for the pixels based on the classification result. One type of pixels is restored by the mean filter and the other type of pixels is restored by the proposed adaptive directional mean filter. The new filter firstly adaptively selects the optimal filtering window and direction template, then replaces the gray level of noise corrupted pixel by the mean value of pixels on the optimal template. Experimental results show that the proposed filter outperforms many existing main filters in terms of noise suppression and detail preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outlier removal is a fundamental data processing task to ensure the quality of scanned point cloud data (PCD), which is becoming increasing important in industrial applications and reverse engineering. Acquired scanned PCD is usually noisy, sparse and temporarily incoherent. Thus the processing of scanned data is typically an ill-posed problem. In the paper, we present a simple and effective method based on two geometrical characteristics constraints to trim the noisy points. One of the geometrical characteristics is the local density information and another is the deviation from the local fitting plane. The local density based method provides a preprocessing step, which could remove those sparse outlier and isolated outlier. The non-isolated outlier removal in this paper depends on a local projection method, which placing those points onto objects. There is no doubt that the deviation of any point from the local fitting plane should be a criterion to reduce the noisy points. The experimental results demonstrate the ability to remove the noisy point from various man-made objects consisting of complex outlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we compare systematically the most promising neuroevolutionary methods and two new original methods on the double-pole balancing problem with respect to: the ability to discover solutions that are robust to variations of the environment, the speed with which such solutions are found, and the ability to scale-up to more complex versions of the problem. The results indicate that the two original methods introduced in this paper and the Exponential Natural Evolutionary Strategy method largely outperform the other methods with respect to all considered criteria. The results collected in different experimental conditions also reveal the importance of regulating the selective pressure and the importance of exposing evolving agents to variable environmental conditions. The data collected and the results of the comparisons are used to identify the most effective methods and the most promising research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In business replenishment, discount offers of multi-item may either provide different discount schedules with a single discount type, or provide schedules with multiple discount types. The paper investigates the joint effects of multiple discount schemes on the decisions of multi-item joint replenishment. In this paper, a joint replenishment problem (JRP) model, considering three discount (all-unit discount, incremental discount, total volume discount) offers simultaneously, is constructed to determine the basic cycle time and joint replenishment frequencies of multi-item. To solve the proposed problem, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to find the optimal solutions and the corresponding total cost of the JRP model. Numerical experiment is performed to test the algorithm and the computational results of JRPs under different discount combinations show different significance in the replenishment cost reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an integrated hybrid optimization algorithm for training the radial basis function neural network (RBF NN). Training of neural networks is still a challenging exercise in machine learning domain. Traditional training algorithms in general suffer and trap in local optima and lead to premature convergence, which makes them ineffective when applied for datasets with diverse features. Training algorithms based on evolutionary computations are becoming popular due to their robust nature in overcoming the drawbacks of the traditional algorithms. Accordingly, this paper proposes a hybrid training procedure with differential search (DS) algorithm functionally integrated with the particle swarm optimization (PSO). To surmount the local trapping of the search procedure, a new population initialization scheme is proposed using Logistic chaotic sequence, which enhances the population diversity and aid the search capability. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed RBF hybrid training algorithm, experimental analysis on publicly available 7 benchmark datasets are performed. Subsequently, experiments were conducted on a practical application case for wind speed prediction to expound the superiority of the proposed RBF training algorithm in terms of prediction accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recommender systems are vulnerable to shilling attacks. Forged user-generated content data, such as user ratings and reviews, are used by attackers to manipulate recommendation rankings. Shilling attack detection in recommender systems is of great significance to maintain the fairness and sustainability of recommender systems. The current studies have problems in terms of the poor universality of algorithms, difficulty in selection of user profile attributes, and lack of an optimization mechanism. In this paper, a shilling behaviour detection structure based on abnormal group user findings and rating time series analysis is proposed. This paper adds to the current understanding in the field by studying the credibility evaluation model in-depth based on the rating prediction model to derive proximity-based predictions. A method for detecting suspicious ratings based on suspicious time windows and target item analysis is proposed. Suspicious rating time segments are determined by constructing a time series, and data streams of the rating items are examined and suspicious rating segments are checked. To analyse features of shilling attacks by a group user’s credibility, an abnormal group user discovery method based on time series and time window is proposed. Standard testing datasets are used to verify the effect of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pruning is applied in order to combat over-fitting problem where the tree is pruned back with the goal of identifying decision tree with the lowest error rate on previously unobserved instances, breaking ties in favour of smaller trees with high accuracy. In this paper, pruning with Bayes minimum risk is introduced for estimating the risk-rate. This method proceeds in a bottom-up fashion converting a parent node of a subtree to a leaf node if the estimated risk-rate of the parent node for that subtree is less than the risk-rates of its leaf. This paper proposes a post-pruning method that considers various evaluation standards such as attribute selection, accuracy, tree complexity, and time taken to prune the tree, precision/recall scores, TP/FN rates and area under ROC. The experimental results show that the proposed method produces better classification accuracy and its complexity is not much different than the complexities of reduced-error pruning and minimum-error pruning approaches. The experiments also demonstrate that the proposed method shows satisfactory performance in terms of precision score, recall score, TP rate, FP rate and area under ROC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine Learning (ML) methods have been proposed in the academic literature as alternatives to statistical ones for time series forecasting. Yet, scant evidence is available about their relative performance in terms of accuracy and computational requirements. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate such performance across multiple forecasting horizons using a large subset of 1045 monthly time series used in the M3 Competition. After comparing the post-sample accuracy of popular ML methods with that of eight traditional statistical ones, we found that the former are dominated across both accuracy measures used and for all forecasting horizons examined. Moreover, we observed that their computational requirements are considerably greater than those of statistical methods. The paper discusses the results, explains why the accuracy of ML models is below that of statistical ones and proposes some possible ways forward. The empirical results found in our research stress the need for objective and unbiased ways to test the performance of forecasting methods that can be achieved through sizable and open competitions allowing meaningful comparisons and definite conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and telemonitoring in congestive heart failure (CHF), both increasingly important topics. The interest in CHF trials is shifting from hard end-points such as hospitalization and mortality, to softer end-points such health-related quality of life. However, the relation of these softer end-points to objective parameters is not well studied. Telemonitoring is suitable for collecting both patient-reported outcomes and objective parameters. Most telemonitoring studies, however, do not take full advantage of the available sensor technology and intelligent data analysis. The Chiron clinical observational study was performed among 24 CHF patients (17 men and 7 women, age 62.9 ± 9.4 years, 15 NYHA class II and 9 class III, 10 of ishaemic, aetiology, 6 dilated, 2 valvular, and 6 of multiple aetiologies or cardiomyopathy) in Italy and UK. A large number of physiological and ambient parameters were collected by wearable and other devices, together with PROs describing how well the patients felt, over 1,086 days of observation. The resulting data were mined for relations between the objective parameters and the PROs. The objective parameters (humidity, ambient temperature, blood pressure, SpO2, and sweeting intensity) could predict the PROs with accuracies up to 86% and AUC up to 0.83, making this the first report providing evidence for ambient and physiological parameters to be objectively related to PROs in CHF patients. We also analyzed the relations in the predictive models, gaining some insights into what affects the feeling of health, which was also generally not attempted in previous investigations. The paper strongly points to the possibility of using PROs as primary end-points in future trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several power allocation algorithms for cooperative relay networks are presented in the literature. These contributions assume perfect channel knowledge and capacity achieving codes. However in practice, obtaining the channel state information at a relay or at the destination is an estimation problem and can generally not be error free. The investigation of the power allocation mechanism in a wireless network due to channel imperfections is important because it can severely degrade its performance regarding throughput and bit error rate. In this paper, the impact of imperfect channel state information on the power allocation of an adaptive relay network is investigated. Moreover, a framework including Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) mechanism is provided to make the power allocation mechanism robust against these channel imperfections. For this framework, the end-to-end SNR is calculated considering imperfect channel knowledge using ARQ analytically. The goal is to emphasize the impact of imperfect channel knowledge on the power allocation mechanism. In this paper, the simulation results illustrate the impact of channel uncertainties on the average outage probability, throughput, and consumed sum power for different qualities of channel estimation. It is shown that the presented framework with ARQ is extremely robust against the channel imperfections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic surveillance systems are interesting to many researchers to improve the traffic control and reduce the risk caused by accidents. In this area, many published works are only concerned about vehicle detection in normal conditions. The camera may vibrate due to wind or bridge movement. Detection and tracking of vehicles is a very difficult task when we have bad weather conditions in winter (snowy, rainy, windy, etc.), dusty weather in arid and semi-arid regions, at night, etc. Also, it is very important to consider speed of vehicles in the complicated weather condition. In this paper, we improved our method to track and count vehicles in dusty weather with vibrating camera. For this purpose, we used a background subtraction based strategy mixed with an extra processing to segment vehicles. In this paper, the extra processing included the analysis of the headlight size, location, and area. In our work, tracking was done between consecutive frames via a generalized particle filter to detect the vehicle and pair the headlights using the connected component analysis. So, vehicle counting was performed based on the pairing result, with Centroid of each blob we calculated distance between two frames by simple formula and hence dividing it by the time between two frames obtained from the video. Our proposed method was tested on several video surveillance records in different conditions such as dusty or foggy weather, vibrating camera, and in roads with medium-level traffic volumes. The results showed that the new proposed method performed better than our previously published method and other methods, including the Kalman filter or Gaussian model, in different traffic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing nations, many expanding cities are facing challenges that result from the overwhelming numbers of people and vehicles. Collecting real-time, reliable and precise traffic flow information is crucial for urban traffic management. The main purpose of this paper is to develop an adaptive model that can assess the real-time vehicle counts on urban roads using computer vision technologies. This paper proposes an automatic real-time background update algorithm for vehicle detection and an adaptive pattern for vehicle counting based on the virtual loop and detection line methods. In addition, a new robust detection method is introduced to monitor the real-time traffic congestion state of road section. A prototype system has been developed and installed on an urban road for testing. The results show that the system is robust, with a real-time counting accuracy exceeding 99% in most field scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an established adjunctive therapy for pharmacologically refractory epilepsy and depression and is currently in active clinical research for other applications. In current clinical studies, VNS is delivered in an open-loop approach, where VNS parameters are defined during a manual titration phase. However, the physiological response to a given VNS configuration shows significant inter and intra-patient variability and may significantly evolve through time. VNS closed-loop approaches, allowing for the optimization of the therapy in an adaptive manner, may be necessary to improve efficacy while reducing side effects. This paper proposes a generic, closed-loop control VNS system that is able to optimize a number of VNS parameters in an adaptive fashion, in order to keep a control variable within a specified range. Although the proposed control method is completely generic, an example application using the cardiac beat to beat interval (RR) as control variable will be developed in this paper. The proposed controller is based on a state transition model (STM) that can be configured using a partially or a fully-connected architecture, different model orders and different state-transition algorithms. The controller is applied to the adaptive regulation of heart rate and evaluated on 6 sheep, for 13 different targets, using partially-connected STM with 10 states. Also, partially and fully-connected STM defined by 30 states were applied to 7 other sheep for the same 10 targets. Results illustrate the interest of the proposed fully-connected STM and the feasibility of integrating this control system into an implantable neuromodulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries have some kind of energy-system transformation either planned or ongoing for various reasons, such as to curb carbon emissions or to compensate for the phasing out of nuclear energy. One important component of these transformations is the overall reduction in energy demand. It is generally acknowledged that the domestic sector represents a large share of total energy consumption in many countries. Increased energy efficiency is one factor that reduces energy demand, but behavioral approaches (known as “sufficiency”) and their respective interventions also play important roles. In this paper, we address citizens’ heterogeneity regarding both their current behaviors and their willingness to realize their sufficiency potentials—that is, to reduce their energy consumption through behavioral change. We collaborated with three Swiss cities for this study. A survey conducted in the three cities yielded thematic sets of energy-consumption behavior that various groups of participants rated differently. Using this data, we identified four groups of participants with different patterns of both current behaviors and sufficiency potentials. The paper discusses intervention types and addresses citizens’ heterogeneity and behaviors from a city-based perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to optimize a desirable fare structure for the public transit service along a bus-subway corridor with the consideration of those factors related to equity in trip, including travel distance and comfort level. The travel distance factor is represented by the distance-based fare strategy, which is an existing differential strategy. The comfort level one is considered in the area-based fare strategy which is a new differential strategy defined in this paper. Both factors are referred to by the combined fare strategy which is composed of distance-based and area-based fare strategies. The flat fare strategy is applied to determine a reference level of social welfare and obtain the general passenger flow along transit lines, which is used to divide areas or zones along the corridor. This problem is formulated as a bi-level program, of which the upper level maximizes the social welfare and the lower level capturing traveler choice behavior is a variable-demand stochastic user equilibrium assignment model. A genetic algorithm is applied to solve the bi-level program while the method of successive averages is adopted to solve the lower-level model. A series of numerical experiments are carried out to illustrate the performance of the models and solution methods. Numerical results indicate that all three differential fare strategies play a better role in enhancing the social welfare than the flat fare strategy and that the fare structure under the combined fare strategy generates the highest social welfare and the largest resulting passenger demand, which implies that the more equity factors a differential fare strategy involves the more desirable fare structure the strategy has. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban spaces have a great impact on how people’s emotion and behaviour. There are number of factors that impact our brain responses to a space. This paper presents a novel urban place recommendation approach, that is based on modelling in-situ EEG data. The research investigations leverages on newly affordable Electroencephalogram (EEG) headsets, which has the capability to sense mental states such as meditation and attention levels. These emerging devices have been utilized in understanding how human brains are affected by the surrounding built environments and natural spaces. In this paper, mobile EEG headsets have been used to detect mental states at different types of urban places. By analysing and modelling brain activity data, we were able to classify three different places according to the mental state signature of the users, and create an association map to guide and recommend people to therapeutic places that lessen brain fatigue and increase mental rejuvenation. Our mental states classifier has achieved accuracy of (%90.8). NeuroPlace breaks new ground not only as a mobile ubiquitous brain monitoring system for urban computing, but also as a system that can advise urban planners on the impact of specific urban planning policies and structures. We present and discuss the challenges in making our initial prototype more practical, robust, and reliable as part of our on-going research. In addition, we present some enabling applications using the proposed architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a method for formation flight and collision avoidance of multiple UAVs. Due to the shortcomings such as collision avoidance caused by UAV’s high-speed and unstructured environments, this paper proposes a modified tentacle algorithm to ensure the high performance of collision avoidance. Different from the conventional tentacle algorithm which uses inverse derivation, the modified tentacle algorithm rapidly matches the radius of each tentacle and the steering command, ensuring that the data calculation problem in the conventional tentacle algorithm is solved. Meanwhile, both the speed sets and tentacles in one speed set are reduced and reconstructed so as to be applied to multiple UAVs. Instead of path iterative optimization, the paper selects the best tentacle to obtain the UAV collision avoidance path quickly. The simulation results show that the method presented in the paper effectively enhances the performance of flight formation and collision avoidance for multiple high-speed UAVs in unstructured environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of computer network bandwidth, packet classification algorithms which are able to deal with large-scale rule sets are in urgent need. Among the existing algorithms, researches on packet classification algorithms based on hierarchical trie have become an important packet classification research branch because of their widely practical use. Although hierarchical trie is beneficial to save large storage space, it has several shortcomings such as the existence of backtracking and empty nodes. This paper proposes a new packet classification algorithm, Hierarchical Trie Algorithm Based on Expectation-Maximization Clustering (HTEMC). Firstly, this paper uses the formalization method to deal with the packet classification problem by means of mapping the rules and data packets into a two-dimensional space. Secondly, this paper uses expectation-maximization algorithm to cluster the rules based on their aggregate characteristics, and thereby diversified clusters are formed. Thirdly, this paper proposes a hierarchical trie based on the results of expectation-maximization clustering. Finally, this paper respectively conducts simulation experiments and real-environment experiments to compare the performances of our algorithm with other typical algorithms, and analyzes the results of the experiments. The hierarchical trie structure in our algorithm not only adopts trie path compression to eliminate backtracking, but also solves the problem of low efficiency of trie updates, which greatly improves the performance of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the Hybrid Scalable-Minimized-Butterfly-Fat-Tree (H-SMBFT) topology for on-chip communication. Main aspects of this work are the description of the architectural design and the characteristics as well as a comparative analysis against two established indirect topologies namely Butterfly-Fat-Tree (BFT) and Scalable-Minimized-Butterfly-Fat-Tree (SMBFT). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed topology outperforms its predecessors in terms of performance, area and power dissipation. Specifically, it improves the link interconnectivity between routing levels, such that the number of required links isreduced. This results into reduced router complexity and shortened routing paths between any pair of communicating nodes in the network. Moreover, simulation results under synthetic as well as real-world embedded applications workloads reveal that H-SMBFT can reduce the average latency by up-to35.63% and 17.36% compared to BFT and SMBFT, respectively. In addition, the power dissipation of the network can be reduced by up-to33.82% and 19.45%, while energy consumption can be improved byup-to32.91% and 16.83% compared to BFT and SMBFT, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The solution to the job shop scheduling problem (JSSP) is of great significance for improving resource utilization and production efficiency of enterprises. In this paper, in view of its non-deterministic polynomial properties, a multi-agent genetic algorithm based on tabu search (MAGATS) is proposed to solve JSSPs under makespan constraints. Firstly, a multi-agent genetic algorithm (MAGA) is proposed. During the process, a multi-agent grid environment is constructed based on characteristics of multi-agent systems and genetic algorithm (GA), and a corresponding neighbor interaction operator, a mutation operator based on neighborhood structure and a self-learning operator are designed. Then, combining tabu search algorithm with a MAGA, the algorithm MAGATS are presented. Finally, 43 benchmark instances are tested with the new algorithm. Compared with four other algorithms, the optimization performance of it is analyzed based on obtained test results. Effectiveness of the new algorithm is verified by analysis results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a new multi-focus microscope (MFM) system based on a phase mask and HiLo algorithm, achieving high-speed (20 volumes per second), high-resolution, low-noise 3-D fluorescent imaging. During imaging, the emissions from the specimen at nine different depths are simultaneously modulated and focused to different regions on a single CCD chip, i.e., the CCD chip is subdivided into nine regions to record images from the different selected depths. Next, HiLo algorithm is applied to remove the background noises and to form clean 3-D images. To visualize larger volumes, the nine layers are scanned axially, realizing fast 3-D imaging. In the imaging experiments, a mouse kidney sample of ~ 60 × 60 × 16 μm3 is visualized with only 10 raw images, demonstrating substantially enhanced resolution and contrast as well as suppressed background noises. The new method will find important applications in 3-D fluorescent imaging, e.g., recording fast dynamic events at multiple depths in vivo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development and universal application of satellite technology, an important way to expand the function of satellites is setting up inter-satellite networks to make them work together. Traditional satellite networking methods generally adopt a fixed time slot allocation method, which is not suitable for small satellite groups with low latency and high throughput requirements. In order to solve this problem, it has been proposed to apply the traditional Wifi protocol in satellite networking. As there are differences between satellite networks and terrestrial networks, it’s necessary to improve the traditional 802.11 protocol. The Media Access Control (MAC) protocol in 802.11 is improved in this paper, which mainly includes the adaptive algorithm of maximum contention window size and the growth algorithm of Contention Window (CW) size. The maximum contention window is adjusted according to the conflict state of the current network, which makes the network accommodate more satellite nodes. The CW growth algorithm improves the traditional Binary Exponential Back-off (BEB) algorithm, where the CW is designed according to the priority of the data frame or the network load. In this way, high-priority satellite accusation information will have higher reliability or tolerate greater network load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forgery detection is essential to verify the integrity and authenticity of images. Existing block-based detection techniques detect forgery in the same image, most of which use similar frameworks while differ in the feature extraction schemes. These methods have high accuracy in detecting the forged regions, but the computational load is heavy when facing exhaustive search problems. This paper describes a forgery detection method based on local binary pattern residue classes and color regions. An image is divided into overlapped blocks. Local binary pattern residue classes are computed for each block. The plane formed by a dimensional and b dimensional from Lab color space is divided into 16 regions. Similar blocks are searched in the overlapped blocks with the same local binary pattern residue class and color region, then they are grouped into several suspicious regions. Finally, we analyze the multi-region relation of these suspicious regions and their areas to locate the tampered regions. The small hole is filled through the morphologic operation. The results of experiments demonstrated that our method has good performance in that it improved detection accuracy and reduced execution time under various challenging conditions. As the proposed method reduces the search range for similar blocks, it has a higher speed than exhaustive search and has comparable detection results at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Path planning for electric vehicles (EVs) can alleviate the limited cruising range and “range anxiety”. Many existing path optimization models cannot produce satisfactory solutions due to the imposition of too many assumptions and simplifications. The targeted optimal-path problem for electric vehicles (EV-TOP), which is proposed in the paper, aims at identifying the targeted optimal path for EVs under the limited battery level. It minimizes the travel cost, which is composed of the travel time and the total time that is spent at charging stations (CSs). The model is much more realistic due to the prediction and the consideration of the waiting times at CSs and more accurate approximations of the electricity consumption function and the charging function. Charging station information and the road traffic state are utilized to calculate the travel cost. The EV-TOP is decomposed into two subproblems: a constrained optimal path problem in the network (EV1-COP) and a shortest path problem in the meta-network (EV2-SP). To solve the EV1-COP, the Lagrangian relaxation algorithm, the simple efficient approximation (SEA) algorithm, and the Martins (MS) deletion algorithm are used. The EV2-SP is solved using Dijkstra’s algorithm. Thus, a polynomial-time approximation algorithm for the EV-TOP is developed. Finally, two computational studies are presented. The first study assesses the performance of the travel cost method. The second study evaluates the performance of our EV-TOP by comparing it with a well-known method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A point cloud that is obtained by an RGB-D camera will inevitably be affected by outliers that do not belong to the surface of the object, which is due to the different viewing angles, light intensities, and reflective characteristics of the object surface and the limitations of the sensors. An effective and fast outlier removal method based on RGB-D information is proposed in this paper. This method aligns the color image to the depth image, and the color mapping image is converted to an HSV image. Then, the optimal segmentation threshold of the V image that is calculated by using the Otsu algorithm is applied to segment the color mapping image into a binary image, which is used to extract the valid point cloud from the original point cloud with outliers. The robustness of the proposed method to the noise types, light intensity and contrast is evaluated by using several experiments; additionally, the method is compared with other filtering methods and applied to independently developed foot scanning equipment. The experimental results show that the proposed method can remove all type of outliers quickly and effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the location trajectory contains more spatial-temporal information about the user, it will be even dangerous for jeopardizing the privacy of the user. In order to cope with the correlation, an algorithm that utilizes the query division had been proposed. In this algorithm, random blocks of query context was used, so as the adversary was obfuscated and difficult to correlate the real result. However, this algorithm fails to dispose the size of each query block, as once same size blocks were obtained by the adversary continuously, so the adversary can regard them as blocks from the same query context, and then obtains the query context to correlate the discrete locations. In view of above conditions, in this paper we propose a fine granularity block division algorithm based on the conception of granularity measurement as well as granularity layer division, so with the help of collaborative users the location privacy of the user will be protected. In this algorithm, the query context will be divided into fine granularity size of information blocks that difficult to be distinguished with others, and then these blocks will be exchanged with other collaborative users to eliminate the difference in block size. In addition, as each block is divided into fine granularity size, the adversary will be difficult to correlate the discrete locations into location trajectory, so the location privacy will be protected. At last, through security analysis and experimental verification, this granularity indistinguishable algorithm is analyzed and verified at both theoretical and practical levels, which further demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm compared with other similar algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new fast busbar protection algorithm based on the comparison of the similarity of back-wave waveforms is proposed in this paper. The S-transform is performed on the back-wave from each defected transmission line connected to the busbar, and the protection criterion is thus constructed by using the Euclidean distance to analyze the similarity of the back-waves, with the implementation of the S-transform between the transmission lines. When a fault occurs internally on the busbar, the Euclidean distance of the S-transformed back-wave between each associated transmission line is small, and there is a remarkable similarity between the waveform. When a fault occurs externally on the busbar, the Euclidean distance of the S-transformed backward traveling wave between the faulty line and the nonfaulty line is larger than that between the nonfaulty lines. The wave-forms of the faulty line and the nonfaulty line bear little similarity, while there is a striking similarity between the nonfaulty lines. Therefore, a protection criterion is established according to the ratio between the maximal similarity and the minimal similarity to discriminate the internal and external faults of the busbar zones. The simulation results show that the proposed busbar protection method can discriminate the internal and external faults of busbar zones in a sensitive and reliable way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the use of Twitter data to deliver signals for syndromic surveillance in order to assess its ability to augment existing syndromic surveillance efforts and give a better understanding of symptomatic people who do not seek healthcare advice directly. We focus on a specific syndrome—asthma/difficulty breathing. We outline data collection using the Twitter streaming API as well as analysis and pre-processing of the collected data. Even with keyword-based data collection, many of the tweets collected are not be relevant because they represent chatter, or talk of awareness instead of an individual suffering a particular condition. In light of this, we set out to identify relevant tweets to collect a strong and reliable signal. For this, we investigate text classification techniques, and in particular we focus on semi-supervised classification techniques since they enable us to use more of the Twitter data collected while only doing very minimal labelling. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised approach to symptomatic tweet classification and relevance filtering. We also propose alternative techniques to popular deep learning approaches. Additionally, we highlight the use of emojis and other special features capturing the tweet’s tone to improve the classification performance. Our results show that negative emojis and those that denote laughter provide the best classification performance in conjunction with a simple word-level n-gram approach. We obtain good performance in classifying symptomatic tweets with both supervised and semi-supervised algorithms and found that the proposed semi-supervised algorithms preserve more of the relevant tweets and may be advantageous in the context of a weak signal. Finally, we found some correlation (r = 0.414, p = 0.0004) between the Twitter signal generated with the semi-supervised system and data from consultations for related health conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to design an automated, efficient and intelligent tomato grading method that facilitates the graded selling of the fruit. Based on machine vision, the color images of tomatoes with different morphologies were studied, and the color, shape and size were selected as the key features. On this basis, an automated grading classifier was created based on the surface features of tomatoes, and a grading platform was set up to verify the effect of the classifier. Specifically, the Hue value distributions of tomatoes with different maturities were investigated, and the Hue value ranges were determined for mature, semi-mature and immature tomatoes, producing the color classifier. Next, the first-order Fourier descriptor (1D- FD) was adopted to describe the radius sequence of tomato contour, and an equation was established to compute the irregularity of tomato contour, creating the shape classifier. After that, a linear regression equation was constructed to reflect the relationship between the transverse diameters of actual tomatoes and tomato images, and a classifier between large, medium and small tomatoes was produced based on the transverse diameter. Finally, a comprehensive tomato classifier was built based on the color, shape and size diameters. The experimental results show that the mean grading accuracy of the proposed method was 90.7%. This means our method can achieve automated real-time grading of tomatoes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image segmentation applied to medical image analysis is still a critical and important task. Although there exist several segmentation algorithms that have been widely studied in literature, these are subject to segmentation problems such as over- and under-segmentation as well as non-closed edges. In this paper, a simple method that combines well-known segmentation algorithms is presented. This method is applied to detect acid-fast bacilli (AFB) in bacilloscopies used to diagnose pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). This diagnosis can be performed through different tests, and the most used worldwide is smear microscopy because of its low cost and effectiveness. This diagnosis technique is based on the analysis and counting of the bacilli in the bacilloscopy observed under an optical microscope. The proposed method is used to segment the bacilli in digital images from bacilloscopies processed using Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) staining. The proposed method is fast, has a low computational cost and good efficiency compared to other methods. The bacilli image segmentation is performed by image processing and analysis techniques, probability concepts and classifiers. In this work, a Bayesian classifier based on a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is used. The segmentations' results are validated by using the Jaccard index, which indicates the efficiency of the classifier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic research is increasingly cross-disciplinary and collaborative, between and within institutions. In this context, what is the role and relevance of an individual’s spatial position on a campus? We examine the collaboration patterns of faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, through their academic output (papers and patents), and their organizational structures (institutional affiliation and spatial configuration) over a 10-year time span. An initial comparison of output types reveals: 1. diverging trends in the composition of collaborative teams over time (size, faculty versus non-faculty, etc.); and 2. substantively different patterns of cross-building and cross-disciplinary collaboration. We then construct a multi-layered network of authors, and find two significant features of collaboration on campus: 1. a network topology and community structure that reveals spatial versus institutional collaboration bias; and 2. a persistent relationship between proximity and collaboration, well fit with an exponential decay model. This relationship is consistent for both papers and patents, and present also in exclusively cross-disciplinary work. These insights contribute an architectural dimension to the field of scientometrics, and take a first step toward empirical space-planning policy that supports collaboration within institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly 1% of the global population has Epilepsy. Forecasting epileptic seizures with an acceptable confidence level, could improve the disease treatment and thus the lifestyle of the people who suffer it. To do that the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is usually studied through spectral power band filtering, but this paper proposes an alternative novel method of preprocessing the EEG signal based on supervised filters. Such filters have been employed in a machine learning algorithm, such as the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), to improve the prediction of seizures. The proposed solution extends with this novel approach an algorithm that was submitted to win the third prize of an international Data Science challenge promoted by Kaggle contest platform and the American Epilepsy Society, the Epilepsy Foundation, National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Mayo Clinic. A formal description of these preprocessing methods is presented and a detailed analysis in terms of Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve and Area Under ROC curve is performed. The obtained results show statistical significant improvements when compared with the spectral power band filtering (PBF) typical baseline. A trend between performance and the dataset size is observed, suggesting that the supervised filters bring better information, compared to the conventional PBF filters, as the dataset grows in terms of monitored variables (sensors) and time length. The paper demonstrates a better accuracy in forecasting when new filters are employed and its main contribution is in the field of machine learning algorithms to develop more accurate predictive systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Localization of the wireless sensor network is a vital area acquiring an impressive research concern and called upon to expand more with the rising of its applications. As localization is gaining prominence in wireless sensor network, it is vulnerable to jamming attacks. Jamming attacks disrupt communication opportunity among the sender and receiver and deeply impact the localization process, leading to a huge error of the estimated sensor node position. Therefore, detection and elimination of jamming influence are absolutely indispensable. Range-based techniques especially Received Signal Strength (RSS) is facing severe impact of these attacks. This paper proposes algorithms based on Combination Multiple Frequency Multiple Power Localization (C-MFMPL) and Step Function Multiple Frequency Multiple Power Localization (SF-MFMPL). The algorithms have been tested in the presence of multiple types of jamming attacks including capture and replay, random and constant jammers over a log normal shadow fading propagation model. In order to overcome the impact of random and constant jammers, the proposed method uses two sets of frequencies shared by the implemented anchor nodes to obtain the averaged RSS readings all over the transmitted frequencies successfully. In addition, three stages of filters have been used to cope with the replayed beacons caused by the capture and replay jammers. In this paper the localization performance of the proposed algorithms for the ideal case which is defined by without the existence of the jamming attack are compared with the case of jamming attacks. The main contribution of this paper is to achieve robust localization performance in the presence of multiple jamming attacks under log normal shadow fading environment with a different simulation conditions and scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leveraging smart metering solutions to support energy efficiency on the individual household level poses novel research challenges in monitoring usage and providing accurate load forecasting. Forecasting electricity usage is an especially important component that can provide intelligence to smart meters. In this paper, we propose an enhanced approach for load forecasting at the household level. The impacts of residents’ daily activities and appliance usages on the power consumption of the entire household are incorporated to improve the accuracy of the forecasting model. The contributions of this paper are threefold: (1) we addressed short-term electricity load forecasting for 24 hours ahead, not on the aggregate but on the individual household level, which fits into the Residential Power Load Forecasting (RPLF) methods; (2) for the forecasting, we utilized a household specific dataset of behaviors that influence power consumption, which was derived using segmentation and sequence mining algorithms; and (3) an extensive load forecasting study using different forecasting algorithms enhanced by the household activity patterns was undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stockwell transform(ST) time-frequency representation(ST-TFR) is a time frequency analysis method which combines short time Fourier transform with wavelet transform, and ST time frequency filtering(ST-TFF) method which takes advantage of time-frequency localized spectra can separate the signals from Gaussian noise. The ST-TFR and ST-TFF methods are used to analyze the fault signals, which is reasonable and effective in general Gaussian noise cases. However, it is proved that the mechanical bearing fault signal belongs to Alpha(α) stable distribution process(1 < α < 2) in this paper, even the noise also is α stable distribution in some special cases. The performance of ST-TFR method will degrade under α stable distribution noise environment, following the ST-TFF method fail. Hence, a new fractional lower order ST time frequency representation(FLOST-TFR) method employing fractional lower order moment and ST and inverse FLOST(IFLOST) are proposed in this paper. A new FLOST time frequency filtering(FLOST-TFF) algorithm based on FLOST-TFR method and IFLOST is also proposed, whose simplified method is presented in this paper. The discrete implementation of FLOST-TFF algorithm is deduced, and relevant steps are summarized. Simulation results demonstrate that FLOST-TFR algorithm is obviously better than the existing ST-TFR algorithm under α stable distribution noise, which can work better under Gaussian noise environment, and is robust. The FLOST-TFF method can effectively filter out α stable distribution noise, and restore the original signal. The performance of FLOST-TFF algorithm is better than the ST-TFF method, employing which mixed MSEs are smaller when α and generalized signal noise ratio(GSNR) change. Finally, the FLOST-TFR and FLOST-TFF methods are applied to analyze the outer race fault signal and extract their fault features under α stable distribution noise, where excellent performances can be shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, based on our previous multi-pattern uniform resource locator (URL) binary-matching algorithm called HEM, we propose an improved multi-pattern matching algorithm called MH that is based on hash tables and binary tables. The MH algorithm can be applied to the fields of network security, data analysis, load balancing, cloud robotic communications, and so on—all of which require string matching from a fixed starting position. Our approach effectively solves the performance problems of the classical multi-pattern matching algorithms. This paper explores ways to improve string matching performance under the HTTP protocol by using a hash method combined with a binary method that transforms the symbol-space matching problem into a digital-space numerical-size comparison and hashing problem. The MH approach has a fast matching speed, requires little memory, performs better than both the classical algorithms and HEM for matching fields in an HTTP stream, and it has great promise for use in real-world applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among Parkinson’s disease (PD) symptoms, freezing of gait (FoG) is one of the most debilitating. To assess FoG, current clinical practice mostly employs repeated evaluations over weeks and months based on questionnaires, which may not accurately map the severity of this symptom. The use of a non-invasive system to monitor the activities of daily living (ADL) and the PD symptoms experienced by patients throughout the day could provide a more accurate and objective evaluation of FoG in order to better understand the evolution of the disease and allow for a more informed decision-making process in making adjustments to the patient’s treatment plan. This paper presents a new algorithm to detect FoG with a machine learning approach based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) and a single tri-axial accelerometer worn at the waist. The method is evaluated through the acceleration signals in an outpatient setting gathered from 21 PD patients at their home and evaluated under two different conditions: first, a generic model is tested by using a leave-one-out approach and, second, a personalised model that also uses part of the dataset from each patient. Results show a significant improvement in the accuracy of the personalised model compared to the generic model, showing enhancement in the specificity and sensitivity geometric mean (GM) of 7.2%. Furthermore, the SVM approach adopted has been compared to the most comprehensive FoG detection method currently in use (referred to as MBFA in this paper). Results of our novel generic method provide an enhancement of 11.2% in the GM compared to the MBFA generic model and, in the case of the personalised model, a 10% of improvement with respect to the MBFA personalised model. Thus, our results show that a machine learning approach can be used to monitor FoG during the daily life of PD patients and, furthermore, personalised models for FoG detection can be used to improve monitoring accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-robot task allocation is one of the main problems to address in order to design a multi-robot system, very especially when robots form coalitions that must carry out tasks before a deadline. A lot of factors affect the performance of these systems and among them, this paper is focused on the physical interference effect, produced when two or more robots want to access the same point simultaneously. To our best knowledge, this paper presents the first formal description of multi-robot task allocation that includes a model of interference. Thanks to this description, the complexity of the allocation problem is analyzed. Moreover, the main contribution of this paper is to provide the conditions under which the optimal solution of the aforementioned allocation problem can be obtained solving an integer linear problem. The optimal results are compared to previous allocation algorithms already proposed by the first two authors of this paper and with a new method proposed in this paper. The results obtained show how the new task allocation algorithms reach up more than an 80% of the median of the optimal solution, outperforming previous auction algorithms with a huge reduction of the execution time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel method on the optimization of bi-objective Flexible Job-shop Scheduling Problem (FJSP) under stochastic processing times. The robust counterpart model and the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) are used to solve the bi-objective FJSP with consideration of the completion time and the total energy consumption under stochastic processing times. The case study on GM Corporation verifies that the NSGA-II used in this paper is effective and has advantages to solve the proposed model comparing with HPSO and PSO+SA. The idea and method of the paper can be generalized widely in the manufacturing industry, because it can reduce the energy consumption of the energy-intensive manufacturing enterprise with less investment when the new approach is applied in existing systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Mesh topology is one of the most promising architecture due to its regular and simple structure for on-chip communication. Performance of mesh topology degraded greatly by increasing the network size due to small bisection width and large network diameter. In order to overcome this limitation, many researchers presented modified Mesh design by adding some extra links to improve its performance in terms of network latency and power consumption. The Cross-By-Pass-Mesh was presented by us as an improved version of Mesh topology by intelligent addition of extra links. This paper presents an efficient topology named Cross-By-Pass-Torus for further increase in the performance of the Cross-By-Pass-Mesh topology. The proposed design merges the best features of the Cross-By-Pass-Mesh and Torus, to reduce the network diameter, minimize the average number of hops between nodes, increase the bisection width and to enhance the overall performance of the network. In this paper, the architectural design of the topology is presented and analyzed against similar kind of 2D topologies in terms of average latency, throughput and power consumption. In order to certify the actual behavior of proposed topology, the synthetic traffic trace and five different real embedded application workloads are applied to the proposed as well as other competitor network topologies. The simulation results indicate that Cross-By-Pass-Torus is an efficient candidate among its predecessor’s and competitor topologies due to its less average latency and increased throughput at a slight cost in network power and energy for on-chip communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human activity recognition(HAR) from the temporal streams of sensory data has been applied to many fields, such as healthcare services, intelligent environments and cyber security. However, the classification accuracy of most existed methods is not enough in some applications, especially for healthcare services. In order to improving accuracy, it is necessary to develop a novel method which will take full account of the intrinsic sequential characteristics for time-series sensory data. Moreover, each human activity may has correlated feature relationship at different levels. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a three-stage continuous hidden Markov model (TSCHMM) approach to recognize human activities. The proposed method contains coarse, fine and accurate classification. The feature reduction is an important step in classification processing. In this paper, sparse locality preserving projections (SpLPP) is exploited to determine the optimal feature subsets for accurate classification of the stationary-activity data. It can extract more discriminative activities features from the sensor data compared with locality preserving projections. Furthermore, all of the gyro-based features are used for accurate classification of the moving data. Compared with other methods, our method uses significantly less number of features, and the over-all accuracy has been obviously improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combinatorial test design is a plan of test that aims to reduce the amount of test cases systematically by choosing a subset of the test cases based on the combination of input variables. The subset covers all possible combinations of a given strength and hence tries to match the effectiveness of the exhaustive set. This mechanism of reduction has been used successfully in software testing research with t-way testing (where t indicates the interaction strength of combinations). Potentially, other systems may exhibit many similarities with this approach. Hence, it could form an emerging application in different areas of research due to its usefulness. To this end, more recently it has been applied in a few research areas successfully. In this paper, we explore the applicability of combinatorial test design technique for Fractional Order (FO), Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) parameter design controller, named as FOPID, for an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) system. Throughout the paper, we justify this new application theoretically and practically through simulations. In addition, we report on first experiments indicating its practical use in this field. We design different algorithms and adapted other strategies to cover all the combinations with an optimum and effective test set. Our findings indicate that combinatorial test design can find the combinations that lead to optimum design. Besides this, we also found that by increasing the strength of combination, we can approach to the optimum design in a way that with only 4-way combinatorial set, we can get the effectiveness of an exhaustive test set. This significantly reduced the number of tests needed and thus leads to an approach that optimizes design of parameters quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Hyperspectral (HS) image provides observational powers beyond human vision capability but represents more than 100 times the data compared to a traditional image. To transmit and store the huge volume of an HS image, we argue that a fundamental shift is required from the existing “original pixel intensity”-based coding approaches using traditional image coders (e.g., JPEG2000) to the “residual”-based approaches using a video coder for better compression performance. A modified video coder is required to exploit spatial-spectral redundancy using pixel-level reflectance modelling due to the different characteristics of HS images in their spectral and shape domain of panchromatic imagery compared to traditional videos. In this paper a novel coding framework using Reflectance Prediction Modelling (RPM) in the latest video coding standard High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) for HS images is proposed. An HS image presents a wealth of data where every pixel is considered a vector for different spectral bands. By quantitative comparison and analysis of pixel vector distribution along spectral bands, we conclude that modelling can predict the distribution and correlation of the pixel vectors for different bands. To exploit distribution of the known pixel vector, we estimate a predicted current spectral band from the previous bands using Gaussian mixture-based modelling. The predicted band is used as the additional reference band together with the immediate previous band when we apply the HEVC. Every spectral band of an HS image is treated like it is an individual frame of a video. In this paper, we compare the proposed method with mainstream encoders. The experimental results are fully justified by three types of HS dataset with different wavelength ranges. The proposed method outperforms the existing mainstream HS encoders in terms of rate-distortion performance of HS image compression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stereo matching is essential and fundamental in computer vision tasks. In this paper, a novel stereo matching algorithm based on disparity propagation using edge-aware filtering is proposed. By extracting disparity subsets for reliable points and customizing the cost volume, the initial disparity map is refined through filtering-based disparity propagation. Then, an edge-aware filter with low computational complexity is adopted to formulate the cost column, which makes the proposed method independent on the local window size. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Bad pixels in our output disparity map are considerably decreased. The proposed method greatly outperforms the adaptive support-weight approach and other conditional window-based local stereo matching algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]