Attentional filtering in the design of electronic map displays: a comparison of color coding,intensity coding,and decluttering techniques

In a series of experiments color coding, intensity coding, and decluttering were compared in order to assess their potential benefits for accessing information from electronic map displays. Participants viewed electronic battlefield maps containing 5 classes of information discriminable by color or intensity, or, in the decluttering condition, displayed or removed entirely by a key press. Participants were asked questions requiring them to focus on objects within a class (objects presented at the same color or intensity) or to integrate data between objects in different classes (objects presented at different colors and intensities). The results suggested that the benefits of color and intensity coding appear to be in segregating the visual field rather than calling attention to the objects presented at a certain color or intensity. Interactivity proved to be a disadvantage; the time cost of information retrieval outweighed the time benefits of presenting less information on the display or even allowing map users to customize their displays. Potential applications of this research include a cost-benefit analysis for the use of 3 attentional filtering techniques and an attempt to quantitatively measure map complexity.     

Multi-objective modelling and decision support using a Bayesian network approximation to a non-point source pollution model

This paper illustrates a methodology to create a multi-objective modelling system using Bayesian probability networks to emulate the behaviour of an environmental model that was originally intended for the purpose of analyzing a problem – non-point source pollution in our example. Modelling systems frequently pertain to a single domain (physical or chemical process modelling, hydrology or combinations) to simulate a process in nature such as pollution transport or the production of food or manufactured goods. Economic or other effects are treated separately, or handled in a non-interactive manner. Side-effects of agro-industrial processes, or gains/losses from production enterprises, are generally modelled separately without the ability to examine trade-offs or alternatives. Multi-objective modelling attempts to work in more than one problem domain through decision theoretical principles. Such treatments are designed to couple production and waste systems, to quantify the economic cost of remediation. This model will demonstrate such an application, from the data acquisition, model calibration to the hypothesis testing, for a non-point source pollution model. This will be combined with a simplified net revenue model based on crop rotations typically found in Southern Ontario, Canada, using realistic economic data obtained from agricultural operations similar to those found in this region. We will demonstrate that multi-year analyses are possible with such a system.     

Structural dimensions of small programming environments

Although substantial variety exists among small programming environments, common points-of-choice in their design suggest the following structural characterization: real or virtual hardware; message-passing or procedure-calling; static or dynamic binding; horizontal or vertical organization; abstract or concrete structures; fixed or extensible language. Often these dimensions must support a very focused programming idiom, which combined with other requirements such as portability or performance, establishes structural dependencies, precludes features and forces exceptions. The characterization provides a rough framework that is useful in evaluating programming environments.     

基于不干扰理论的隔离语义描述及隔离策略的自动化验证方法研究

隔离有助于阻止信息泄露或被篡改、错误或失败被传递等.利用不干扰理论给出了隔离的精确语义,以利于分析和制定系统的隔离策略;利用通信顺序进程CSP来定义上述隔离语义,并给出一个系统满足给定隔离策略的判定断言,以利于借助形式化验证工具FDR2来实现系统内隔离策略的自动化验证.以基于虚拟机的文件服务监控器为例,展示了如何利用CSP来建模一个系统及其隔离策略以及如何利用FDR2来验证该系统模型满足给定的隔离策略.     

Petri net modelling of buffers in automated manufacturing systems

This paper presents Petri net models of buffers and a methodology by which buffers can be included in a system without introducing deadlocks or overflows. The context is automated manufacturing. The buffers and models are classified as random order or order preserved (first-in-first-out or last-in-first-out), single-input-single-output or multiple-input-multiple-output, part type and/or space distinguishable or indistinguishable, and bounded or safe. Theoretical results for the development of Petri net models which include buffer modules are developed. This theory provides the conditions under which the system properties of boundedness, liveness, and reversibility are preserved. The results are illustrated through two manufacturing system examples: a multiple machine and multiple buffer production line and an automatic storage and retrieval system in the context of flexible manufacturing.     

Collaborative cross-checking to enhance resilience

Resilience, the ability to adapt or absorb disturbance, disruption, and change, may be increased by team processes in a complex, socio-technical system. In particular, collaborative cross-checking is a strategy where at least two individuals or groups with different perspectives examine the others’ assumptions and/or actions to assess validity or accuracy. With this strategy, erroneous assessments or actions can be detected quickly enough to mitigate or eliminate negative consequences. In this paper, we seek to add to the understanding of the elements that are needed in effective cross-checking and the limitations of the strategy. We define collaborative cross-checking, describe in detail three healthcare incidents where collaborative cross-checks played a key role, and discuss the implications of emerging patterns.     

Bayesian clustering for unsupervised estimation of surface andtexture models

A method of calculating the maximum-likelihood clustering for the unsupervised estimation of polynomial models for the data in images of smooth surfaces or for range data for such surfaces is presented. An image or a depth map of a region of smooth 3-D surface is modeled as a polynomial plus white noise. A region of physically meaningful textured-image such as the image of foliage, grass, or road in outdoor scenes or conductor or lintburn on a thick-film substrate is modeled as a colored Gaussian-Markov random field (MRF) with a polynomial mean-value function. Unsupervised-model parameter-estimation is accomplished by determining the segmentation and model parameter values that maximize the likelihood of the data or a more general Bayesian performance functional. Agglomerative clustering is used for this purpose     

On the measure and the estimation of evenness and diversity

Modelling word or species frequency count data through zero truncated Poisson mixture models allows one to interpret the model mixing distribution as the distribution of the word or species frequencies of the vocabulary or population. As a consequence, estimates of their mixing density can be used as a fingerprint of the style of the author in his texts or of the ecosystem in its samples. Definitions of measure of the evenness and of measure of the diversity within a vocabulary or population are given, and the novelty of these definitions is explained. It is then proposed that the measures of the evenness and of the diversity of a vocabulary or population be approximated through the expectation of these measures under the word or species frequency distribution. That leads to the assessment of the lack of diversity through measures of the variability of the mixing frequency distribution estimates described above.     

能力共享架构及其在IM和SNS中的应用研究

目前的IM(即时通信)和SNS(社交网络服务)系统主要为用户及其好友或组成员间提供即时信息发送、语音或视频通话、多媒体文件共享等功能,不能在好友或组成员间共享应用程序、处理器、内存、磁盘或其它设备资源以及设备的通讯能力等等,而这些功能常常正是用户所迫切需要的.介绍了一种新的、潜在的Web3.0或Web 2.0 架构,该架构可用于IM 和SNS中共享好友或组成员的计算机上或智能设备的各种能力,为每个用户的计算机或智能设备提供了一种简单可行的、可扩展的能力发现和共享机制.该机制可极大地提高用户体验,并可成倍地提升现有资源的利用率.     

The pudding of trust [intelligent systems]

Trust - "reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing" - is pervasive in social systems. We constantly apply it in interactions between people, organizations, animals, and even artifacts. We use it instinctively and implicitly in closed and static systems, or consciously and explicitly in open or dynamic systems. An epitome for the former case is a small village, where everybody knows everybody, and the villagers instinctively use their knowledge or stereotypes to trust or distrust their neighbors. A big city exemplifies the latter case, where people use explicit rules of behavior in diverse trust relationships. We already use trust in computing systems extensively, although usually subconsciously. The challenge for exploiting trust in computing lies in extending the use of trust-based solutions, first to artificial entities such as software agents or subsystems, then to human users' subconscious choices.     

VIEWER: a program for visualising, recording, and analysing animal behaviour.

In order to determine the influence of environmental interventions, medical substances, drugs, or diseases on an animal, it is a common to observe the behaviour of the animal in the open field or in other environments. Changes in animal behaviour can be the first indicators for an influence of a substance or an intervention on the organism and certain kinds of behavioural changes can permit speculations about the underlying physiological mechanisms. Behavioural properties which are of interest in this respect are movement parameters such as velocity or direction, activity patterns, spatial distribution and occurrence of several types of standard behaviours of an animal. Observation of simple behaviours such as determining the average activity level can help to detect general changes of the internal state of an animal, while changes in complex behaviours may point to specific influences of a substance or an intervention. Our system 'VIEWER' uses a microcomputer (IBM-compatible PC running WINDOWS 95, WINDOWS 98, WINDOWS NT, or WINDOWS 2000), a low budget framegrabber card (e.g. WinTV, Hauppauge) and a standard black-and-white video camera (if necessary with infrared sensitivity). The software records the position of the animal online with a sample rate of up to 25 frames/s. After identification of the animal in the arena, animal location and orientation with respect to time is determined. In addition, movement velocity and direction, general activity level, and several other behavioural parameters which can include complex behavioural patterns are processed online. Data are presented as graphics and/or tables. Results may also be exported into those programs that are capable of importing graphics (wmf or bmp format) or ASCII-files. VIEWER offers an inexpensive, fast and easy way for analysing simple and complex behaviours of many species of animals in a variety of behavioural situations.     

Bayesian recognition of local 3-d shape by approximating image intensity functions with quadric polynomials

The recognition in image data of viewed patches of spheres, cylinders, and planes in the 3-D world is discussed as a first step to complex object recognition or complex object location and orientation estimation. Accordingly, an image is partitioned into small square windows, each of which is a view of a piece of a sphere, or of a cylinder, or of a plane. Windows are processed in parallel for recognition of content. New concepts and techniques include approximations of the image within a window by 2-D quadric polynomials where each approximation is constrained by one of the hypotheses that the 3-D surface shape seen is either planar, cylindrical, or spherical; a recognizer based upon these approximations to determine whether the object patch viewed is a piece of a sphere, or a piece of a cylinder, or a piece of a plane; lowpass filtering of the image by the approximation. The shape recognition is computationally simple, and for large windows is approximately Bayesian minimum-probability-of-error recognition. These classifications are useful for many purposes. One such purpose is to enable a following processor to use an appropriate estimator to estimate shape, and orientation and location parameters for the 3-D surface seen within a window.     

Are developers morally challenged?

Having recently concluded another sordid software development affair, the author is again pondering a question: do computer programmers have ethics or morals? Time and time again he has seen an investment lost, a deal disrupted, or a business destroyed because a programmer acted without regard to fairness or legal rights. Does this conduct reflect a shortcoming in the character of computer programmers, or are they somehow victims who cannot be held responsible for their conduct? How can programmers take such pride in their own work yet have little or no respect for the work of others? Even thieves honor each other. Legal and policy aspects of information technology use and development are discussed     

Determination of camera location from 2-D to 3-D line and pointcorrespondences

A method for the determination of camera location from two-dimensional (2-D) to three-dimensional (3-D) straight line or point correspondences is presented. With this method, the computations of the rotation matrix and the translation vector of the camera are separable. First, the rotation matrix is found by a linear algorithm using eight or more line correspondences, or by a nonlinear algorithm using three or more line correspondences, where the line correspondences are either given or derived from point correspondences. Then, the translation vector is obtained by solving a set of linear equations based on three or more line correspondences, or two or more point correspondences. Eight 2-D to 3-D line correspondences or six 2-D to 3-D point correspondences are needed for the linear approach; three 2-D to 3-D line or point correspondences for the nonlinear approach. Good results can be obtained in the presence of noise if more than the minimum required number of correspondences are used     

A steady-state detection (SSD) algorithm to detect non-stationary drifts in processes

Detecting windows or intervals of when a continuous process is operating in a state of steadiness is useful especially when steady-state models are being used to optimize the process or plant on-line or in real-time. The term steady-state implies that the process is operating around some stable point or within some stationary region where it must be assumed that the accumulation or rate-of-change of material, energy and momentum is statistically insignificant or negligible. This new approach is to assume the null-hypothesis that the process is stationary about its mean subject to independent and identically distributed random error or shocks (white-noise) with the alternative-hypothesis that it is non-stationary with a detectable and deterministic slope, trend, bias or drift. The drift profile would be typical of a time-varying inventory or holdup of material with imbalanced flows or even an unexpected leak indicating that the process signal is not steady. A probability of being steady or at least stationary over the window is computed by performing a residual Student t test using the estimated mean of the process signal without any drift and the estimated standard-deviation of the underlying white-noise driving force. There are essentially two settings or options for the method which are the window-length and the Student t critical value and can be easily tuned for each process signal that are included in the multivariate detection strategy.     

Mathematics for Architecture: Some European Experiences

Orietta Pedemonte studies how mathematics in taught in faculties or schools of architecture in Belgium, Portugal, France, Switzerland and Spain, comparing course organizations, subjects offered and entrance requirements. Which and how much mathematics for architecture? What kind of teaching? Is it better to have information on many aspects, or a deeper insight into only a few? Is it better to privilege a historical-philosophical overview, or to focus aspects of application that are current today? These are some of the questions that are raised by whoever deals with teaching mathematics in a faculty or school of architecture.     

Phase Transitions on Fixed Connected Graphs and Random Graphs in the Presence of Noise

In this paper, we study the phase transition behavior emerging from the interactions among multiple agents in the presence of noise. We propose a simple discrete-time model in which a group of non-mobile agents form either a fixed connected graph or a random graph process, and each agent, taking bipolar value either +1 or -1, updates its value according to its previous value and the noisy measurements of the values of the agents connected to it. We present proofs for the occurrence of the following phase transition behavior: At a noise level higher than some threshold, the system generates symmetric behavior (vapor or melt of magnetization) or disagreement; whereas at a noise level lower than the threshold, the system exhibits spontaneous symmetry breaking (solid or magnetization) or consensus. The threshold is found analytically. The phase transition occurs for any dimension. Finally, we demonstrate the phase transition behavior and all analytic results using simulations. This result may be found useful in the study of the collective behavior of complex systems under communication constraints.     

AzimMod: Method to honor channel directionality when building 3-D petrophysical models

Object-based (or Boolean) methods are used to create channels, bars, splays, or other features to model the distribution of facies in a reservoir. Geologic objects and their facies subsequently are used as templates to control the distribution of petrophysical and lithologic properties. Channels do not flow in a single direction or azimuth, but may meander or have different azimuths, so properties within them should not be aligned in a single direction or azimuth. Hence, standard geostatistical modeling methods, which assume a single azimuth, are not appropriate. This paper describes a process to assign petrophysical properties with continuity aligned parallel to the orientation of channels or bodies, regardless of their varying azimuths. The general process (1) transforms the coordinate system to one in which a channel is straight and can be modeled with geostatistical methods using a constant azimuth, (2) relates the geostatistical calculations to objects and facies, and (3) returns the petrophysical properties to the original, variable-azimuth coordinate system.     

Development of a Kanji (Chinese Characters) Instruction Tool by Using Image-Processing Aided Method

Nowadays, it is quite easy to read or write kanji, that is Chinese character, by. writingthem on the computer monitor tube and/or word processor on screen. On the other hand, their realmeanings or history as they have originated and developed can not always be understood by theJapanese people.Moreover, any kanji today is often used only as a symbol without other meaning, andmeaningless words otherwise than their pronunciations are prevalent;which trend trend should never besupported by the public in general.In this study, we propose a system of educational tools for presenting kanji characters to let thestudents understand meanings of them as they originated from their prototypes or hieroglyphicimages representing their original meanings. The key frame or interval figure method is one ofeffective methods in computer graphic (CG) to show the transition of one original figure (A) to itscurrent form (B). Using this method is considered very effective when kanji is usually written ordisplayed in straight lines and curves. However, sometimes and kanji is also written or drawn like apicture with a special pen or a Japanese fude () to make adequate a main auxiliary techniquecalled morphing introduced in this study. Several examples in point are demonstrated on the videotape at the conference.     

Argument-based mixed recommenders and their application to movie suggestion

Recommender systems have become prevalent in recent years as they help users to access relevant items from the vast universe of possibilities available these days. Most existing research in this area is based purely on quantitative aspects such as indices of popularity or measures of similarity between items or users. This work introduces a novel perspective on movie recommendation that combines a basic quantitative method with a qualitative approach, resulting in a family of mixed character recommender systems. The proposed framework incorporates the use of arguments in favor or against recommendations to determine if a suggestion should be presented or not to a user. In order to accomplish this, Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP) is adopted as the underlying formalism to model facts and rules about the recommendation domain and to compute the argumentation process. This approach has a number features that could be proven useful in recommendation settings. In particular, recommendations can account for several different aspects (e.g., the cast, the genre or the rating of a movie), considering them all together through a dialectical analysis. Moreover, the approach can stem for both content-based or collaborative filtering techniques, or mix them in any arbitrary way. Most importantly, explanations supporting each recommendation can be provided in a way that can be easily understood by the user, by means of the computed arguments. In this work the proposed approach is evaluated obtaining very positive results. This suggests a great opportunity to exploit the benefits of transparent explanations and justifications in recommendations, sometimes unrealized by quantitative methods.