Segmentation of the fascia lata and reproducible quantification of intermuscular adipose tissue (IMAT) of the thigh

Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine - To develop a precise semi-automated segmentation of the fascia lata (FL) of the thigh to quantify IMAT volume in T1w MR images and...     

An efficient method for solving the Signorini problem in the simulation of free-form surfaces produced by belt grinding

Industrial robots are recently introduced to the belt grinding of free-form surfaces to obtain high productive efficiency and constant surface quality. The simulation of belt grinding process can facilitate planning grinding paths and writing robotic programs before manufacturing. In simulation, it is crucial to get the force distribution in the contact area between the workpiece and the elastic contact wheel because the uneven distributed local forces are the main reason to the unequal local removals on the grated surface. The traditional way is to simplify this contact problem as a Signorini contact problem and use the finite element method (FEM) to calculate the force distribution. However, the FEM model is too computationally expensive to meet the real-time requirement. A new model based on support vector regression (SVR) technique is developed in this paper to calculate the force distribution instead of the FEM model. The new model approximates the FEM model with an error smaller than 5%, but executes much faster (1 s vs 15 min by FEM). With this new model, the real-time simulation and even the on-line robot control of grinding processes can be further conducted.     

Ongoing verification of a multiphysics community code: FLASH

When developing a complex, multi‐authored code, daily testing on multiple platforms and under a variety of conditions is essential. It is therefore necessary to have a regression test suite that is easily administered and configured, as well as a way to easily view and interpret the test suite results. We describe the methodology for verification of FLASH, a highly capable multiphysics scientific application code with a wide user base. The methodology uses a combination of unit and regression tests and an in‐house testing software that is optimized for operation under limited resources. Although our practical implementations do not always comply with theoretical regression‐testing research, our methodology provides a comprehensive verification of a large scientific code under resource constraints.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulating protection rackets: a case study of the Sicilian Mafia

Protection racketeering groups are powerful, deeply entrenched in multiple societies across the globe, and they harm the societies and economies in which they operate in multiple ways. These reasons make their dynamics important to understand and an objective of both scientific and application-oriented interest. Legal and social norm-based approaches arguably play significant roles in influencing protection racket dynamics. We propose an agent-based simulation model, the Palermo Scenario, to enrich our understanding of these influences and to test the effect of different policies on protection racket dynamics. Our model integrates the legal and the social norm-based approaches and uses a complex normative agent architecture that enables the analysis of both agents’ behaviours and mental normative representations driving behaviour. We demonstrate the usefulness of the model and the benefits of using this complex normative architecture through a case study of the Sicilian Mafia.     

Maximal Pairs of Computably Enumerable Sets in the Computably Lipschitz Degrees

A set A is computably Lipschitz or cl-reducible, for short, to a set B if A is Turing reducible to B by an oracle Turing machine with use function ? such that ? is bounded by the identity function up to an additive constant, i.e., ?(n)??n+O(1). In this paper we study maximal pairs of computably enumerable (c.e.) cl-degrees or maximal pairs, for short, i.e., pairs of c.e. cl-degrees such that there is no c.e. cl-degree that is above both cl-degrees in this pair. Our main results are as follows. (1) A c.e. Turing degree contains a c.e. cl-degree that is half of a maximal pair if and only if this Turing degree contains a maximal pair if and only if this Turing degree is array noncomputable. (2) The cl-degrees of all weak truth-table complete sets are halves of maximal pairs while there is a Turing complete set A such that the cl-degree of A is not half of any maximal pair. In fact, any high c.e. Turing degree contains a c.e. cl-degree that is not half of a maximal pair. (3) Above any c.e. cl-degree there is a maximal pair. (4) There is a maximal pair which at the same time is a minimal pair. (5) There is a pair of c.e. cl-degrees that is not maximal and does not possess a least upper bound. Moreover, we make some observations on the structure of the c.e. cl-degrees in general. For instance, we give a very simple proof of the fact that there are no maximal c.e. cl-degrees.     

Downstream environmental effects of dam operations: Changes in habitat quality for native fish species

Hydropeaking dam operation and water extractions for irrigation have been broadly stated as alterations to natural flow regimes, which have also been noticed in the Biobío Watershed, in Central Chile, since 1996. In the Biobío River, most of native fish species are endemic and very little is known about them. Their ecological and social values have never been estimated, and there is lack of information about their habitat preferences. Furthermore, changes on fish habitat availability due to natural and/or man‐made causes have not been evaluated. In this study, eight native fish species, in a representative reach of the Biobío River, were studied and their preferred habitats were surveyed and characterized. A hydrodynamic model was built and linked to the fish habitat simulation model CASiMiR. Fuzzy rules and fuzzy sets were developed for describing habitat preference of the native fish species. CASiMiR was then used to simulate how physical habitat conditions vary due to flow control (i.e. upstream dams). Results show how overall habitat quality, expressed as weighted usable area (WUA) and hydraulic habitat suitability (HHS), changes and fluctuates due to the dam operation and how the daily hydropeaking is influencing quantity, quality and location of different habitats. The study suggests that the analysed fish are highly susceptible to flow control, as dams are currently operated, and fish habitat improvement suggestions are proposed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

VISIM: Sequential simulation for linear inverse problems

Linear inverse Gaussian problems are traditionally solved using least squares-based inversion. The center of the posterior Gaussian probability distribution is often chosen as the solution to such problems, while the solution is in fact the posterior Gaussian probability distribution itself. We present an algorithm, based on direct sequential simulation, which can be used to efficiently draw samples of the posterior probability distribution for linear inverse problems. There is no Gaussian restriction on the distribution in the model parameter space, as inherent in traditional least squares-based algorithms.As data for linear inverse problems can be seen as weighed linear averages over some volume, block kriging can be used to perform both estimation (i.e. finding the center of the posterior Gaussian pdf) and simulation (drawing samples of the posterior Gaussian pdf). We present the kriging system which we use to implement a flexible GSLIB-based algorithm for solving linear inverse problems.We show how we implement such a simulation program conditioned to linear average data. The program is called VISIM as an acronym for Volume average Integration SIMulation. An effort has been made to make the program efficient, even for larger scale problems, and the computational efficiency and accuracy of the code is investigated.Using a synthetic cross-borehole tomography case study, we show how the program can be used to generate realizations of the a posteriori distributions (i.e. solutions) from a linear tomography problem. Both Gaussian and non-Gaussian a priori model parameter distributions are considered.     

Interactive Volume Rendering with Dynamic Ambient Occlusion and Color Bleeding

We propose a method for rendering volumetric data sets at interactive frame rates while supporting dynamic ambient occlusion as well as an approximation to color bleeding. In contrast to ambient occlusion approaches for polygonal data, techniques for volumetric data sets have to face additional challenges, since by changing rendering parameters, such as the transfer function or the thresholding, the structure of the data set and thus the light interactions may vary drastically. Therefore, during a preprocessing step which is independent of the rendering parameters we capture light interactions for all combinations of structures extractable from a volumetric data set. In order to compute the light interactions between the different structures, we combine this preprocessed information during rendering based on the rendering parameters defined interactively by the user. Thus our method supports interactive exploration of a volumetric data set but still gives the user control over the most important rendering parameters. For instance, if the user alters the transfer function to extract different structures from a volumetric data set the light interactions between the extracted structures are captured in the rendering while still allowing interactive frame rates. Compared to known local illumination models for volume rendering our method does not introduce any substantial rendering overhead and can be integrated easily into existing volume rendering applications. In this paper we will explain our approach, discuss the implications for interactive volume rendering and present the achieved results.     

Grouping Techniques for Scheduling Problems: Simpler and Faster

In this paper we describe a general grouping technique to devise faster and simpler approximation schemes for several scheduling problems. We illustrate the technique on two different scheduling problems: scheduling on unrelated parallel machines with costs and the job shop scheduling problem. The time complexity of the resulting approximation schemes is always linear in the number n of jobs, and the multiplicative constant hidden in the O(n) running time is reasonably small and independent of the error ε. Supported by Swiss National Science Foundation project 200020-109854, “Approximation Algorithms for Machine scheduling Through Theory and Experiments II”. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of ESA’01.     

Directed model checking with distance-preserving abstractions

In directed model checking, the traversal of the state space is guided by an estimate of the distance from the current state to the nearest error state. This paper presents a distance-preserving abstraction for concurrent systems that allows one to compute an interesting estimate of the error distance without hitting the state explosion problem. Our experiments show a dramatic reduction both in the number of states explored by the model checker and in the total runtime.