On new completely regular <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-ary codes

In this paper, new completely regular q-ary codes are constructed from q-ary perfect codes. In particular, several new ternary completely regular codes are obtained from the ternary [11, 6, 5] Golay code. One of these codes with parameters [11, 5, 6] has covering radius ρ = 5 and intersection array (22, 20, 18, 2, 1; 1, 2, 9, 20, 22). This code is dual to the ternary perfect [11, 6, 5] Golay code. Another [10, 5, 5] code has covering radius ρ = 4 and intersection array (20, 18, 4, 1; 1, 2, 18, 20). This code is obtained by deleting one position of the former code. All together, the ternary Golay code results in eight completely regular codes, only four of which were previously known. Also, new infinite families of completely regular codes are constructed from q-ary Hamming codes.     

On the construction of <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-ary equidistant codes

The problem of constructing equidistant codes over an alphabet of an arbitrary size q is considered. Some combinatorial constructions and computer-based search methods are presented. All maximal equidistant codes with distances 3 and 4 are found.     

Nonlinear <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-ary codes with large code distance

We construct a family of nonlinear q-ary codes obtained from the corresponding families of modified complex Butson–Hadamard matrices. Parameters of the codes are quite close to the Plotkin bound and in a number of cases attain this bound. Furthermore, these codes admit rather simple encoding and decoding procedures.     

On <Emphasis Type="Italic">m</Emphasis>-Near-Resolvable Block Designs and <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-ary Constant-Weight Codes

We introduce m-near-resolvable block designs. We establish a correspondence between such block designs and a subclass of (optimal equidistant) q-ary constant-weight codes meeting the Johnson bound. We present constructions of m-near-resolvable block designs, in particular based on Steiner systems and super-simple t-designs.     

On fragments of words over a <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-ary alphabet

We consider several combinatorial problems concerning fragments of words over a q-ary alphabet. We obtain a number of new facts, some of them being previously known in the binary case only.     

Refinements of Levenshtein Bounds in <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-ary Hamming Spaces

We develop refinements of the Levenshtein bound in q-ary Hamming spaces by taking into account the discrete nature of the distances versus the continuous behavior of certain parameters used by Levenshtein. We investigate the first relevant cases and present new bounds. In particular, we derive generalizations and q-ary analogs of the MacEliece bound. Furthermore, we provide evidence that our approach is as good as the complete linear programming and discuss how faster are our calculations. Finally, we present a table with parameters of codes which, if exist, would attain our bounds.     

The group of permutation automorphisms of a <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-ary hamming code

We prove that the group of permutation automorphism of a q-ary Hamming code of length n = (q ^m − 1)/(q − 1) is isomorphic to the unitriangular group UT _m (q) if the code has a parity-check matrix composed of all columns of the form (0 ...0 1 * ... *)^T. We also show that the group of permutation automorphisms of a cyclic Hamming code cannot be isomorphic to UT _m (q). We thus show that equivalent codes can have different permutation automorphism groups.     

Low-density incomplete <Emphasis Type="Italic">LDL</Emphasis><Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">T</Emphasis></Superscript> factorizations

A particular class of incomplete factorizations is proposed as preconditioners for the linear system Ax = b where A is a symmetric, large and sparse matrix. The ILDL ^T< (p) factorization (p = 1,2,3, …) determines the density of the lower triangular matrix L selecting the p largest off-diagonal entries of each column during the Gaussian elimination process. This selection may be computationally expensive, but the effectiveness of the preconditioner allows us to choose very low-density factors to reduce both work time and storage requirements. This incomplete factorization can be performed reliably on H-matrices. When A is a positive definite matrix, but not an H-matrix, one can perform an incomplete factorization if positive off-diagonal entries are removed or reduced and diagonally compensated. Numerical results for a variety of problems and comparisons with other incomplete factorizations are presented. Received: August 2002 / Accepted: December 2002 RID="*" ID="*"This work was supported by the Spanish grant BFM 2001-2641.     

Approximations in <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-ary algebraic systems

Algebraic systems have many applications in the theory of sequential machines, formal languages, computer arithmetics, design of fast adders and error-correcting codes. The theory of rough sets has emerged as another major mathematical approach for managing uncertainty that arises from inexact, noisy, or incomplete information. This paper is devoted to the discussion of the relationship between algebraic systems, rough sets and fuzzy rough set models. We shall restrict ourselves to algebraic systems with one n-ary operation and we investigate some properties of approximations of n-ary semigroups. We introduce the notion of rough system in an n-ary semigroup. Fuzzy sets, a generalization of classical sets, are considered as mathematical tools to model the vagueness present in rough systems.     

Symmetric Masks for In-fill Pixel Interpolation on Discrete <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>:<Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis> Lattices

A 2D p:q lattice contains image intensity entries at pixels located at regular, staggered intervals that are spaced p rows and q columns apart. Zero values appear at all other intermediate grid locations. We consider here the construction, for any given p:q, of convolution masks to smoothly and uniformly interpolate values across all of the intermediate grid positions. The conventional pixel-filling approach is to allocate intensities proportional to the fractional area that each grid pixel occupies inside the boundaries formed by the p:q lines. However, these area-based masks have asymmetric boundaries, flat interior values and may be odd or even in size. Where edges, lines or points are in-filled, area-based p:q masks imprint intensity patterns that recall p:q because the shape of those masks is asymmetric and depends on p:q. We aim to remove these “memory” artefacts by building symmetric p:q masks. We show here that smoother, symmetric versions of such convolution masks exist. The coefficients of the masks constructed here have simple integer values whose distribution is derived purely from symmetry considerations. We have application for these symmetric interpolation masks as part of a precise image rotation algorithm which disguises the rotation angle, as well as to smooth back-projected values when performing discrete tomographic image reconstruction.     

Maximum <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-Splittable <Emphasis Type="Italic">s</Emphasis>,<Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis>-Flows

Given a graph with a source and a sink node, the NP-hard maximum k-splittable s,t-flow (M k SF) problem is to find a flow of maximum value from s to t with a flow decomposition using at most k paths. The multicommodity variant of this problem is a natural generalization of disjoint paths and unsplittable flow problems. Constructing a k-splittable flow requires two interdepending decisions. One has to decide on k paths (routing) and on the flow values for the paths (packing). We give efficient algorithms for computing exact and approximate solutions by decoupling the two decisions into a first packing step and a second routing step. Usually the routing is considered before the packing. Our main contributions are as follows: (i) We show that for constant k a polynomial number of packing alternatives containing at least one packing used by an optimal M k SF solution can be constructed in polynomial time. If k is part of the input, we obtain a slightly weaker result. In this case we can guarantee that, for any fixed ε>0, the computed set of alternatives contains a packing used by a (1−ε)-approximate solution. The latter result is based on the observation that (1−ε)-approximate flows only require constantly many different flow values. We believe that this observation is of interest in its own right. (ii) Based on (i), we prove that, for constant k, the M k SF problem can be solved in polynomial time on graphs of bounded treewidth. If k is part of the input, this problem is still NP-hard and we present a polynomial time approximation scheme for it.     

From <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-cell to artificial brain

This article briefly introduces the artificial-brain-building paradigm developed at the Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute International (ATR). The ATR Artificial Brain Project consists of two related themes: dedicated hardware and psychodynamic architecture. The first theme includes work on the theory of pulsed paraneural networks (PPNN), experiments with q-cellular automata, and studies toward a post-FPGA technology for 3-dimensional evolvable elastic circuits. The second theme involves an original version of the psychodynamic theory of mind, investigating dynamics phenomena in simulated working memories (MemeStorms), testing the behaviors of psychodynamic robots, and building of an environment for growing intelligent systems.This work was presented in part at the 8th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 24–26, 2003     

Heidegger on technology and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Gelassenheit</Emphasis>: <Emphasis Type="Italic">wabi</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">sabi</Emphasis> and the art of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Verfallenheit</Emphasis>

The question of the contemporary relevance of Heidegger’s reflections on technology to today’s advanced technology is here explored with reference to the notion of “entanglement” towards a review of Heidegger’s understanding of technology and media, including the entertainment industry and modern digital life. Heidegger’s reflections on Gelassenheit have been connected with the aesthetics of the tea ceremony, disputing the material aesthetics of porcelain versus plastic. Here by approaching the art of wabi-sabi as the art of Verfallenheit, I argue that Gelassenheit may be understood in these terms.     

Upper bound on the minimum distance of LDPC codes over <Emphasis Type="Italic">GF</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>) based on counting the number of syndromes

In [1] a syndrome counting based upper bound on the minimum distance of regular binary LDPC codes is given. In this paper we extend the bound to the case of irregular and generalized LDPC codes over GF(q). A comparison with the lower bound for LDPC codes over GF(q), upper bound for the codes over GF(q), and the shortening upper bound for LDPC codes is made. The new bound is shown to lie under the Gilbert–Varshamov bound at high rates.     

Efficient <Emphasis Type="Italic">l</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis></Subscript> norm based sparse subspace clustering via smooth IRLS and ADMM

Recently, sparse subspace clustering, as a subspace learning technique, has been successfully applied to several computer vision applications, e.g. face clustering and motion segmentation. The main idea of sparse subspace clustering is to learn an effective sparse representation that are used to construct an affinity matrix for spectral clustering. While most of existing sparse subspace clustering algorithms and its extensions seek the forms of convex relaxation, the use of non-convex and non-smooth l _q (0 < q < 1) norm has demonstrated better recovery performance. In this paper we propose an l _q norm based Sparse Subspace Clustering method (lqSSC), which is motivated by the recent work that l _q norm can enhance the sparsity and make better approximation to l ₀ than l ₁. However, the optimization of l _q norm with multiple constraints is much difficult. To solve this non-convex problem, we make use of the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) for solving the l _q norm optimization, updating the variables in an alternating minimization way. ADMM splits the unconstrained optimization into multiple terms, such that the l _q norm term can be solved via Smooth Iterative Reweighted Least Square (SIRLS), which converges with guarantee. Different from traditional IRLS algorithms, the proposed algorithm is based on gradient descent with adaptive weight, making it well suit for general sparse subspace clustering problem. Experiments on computer vision tasks (synthetic data, face clustering and motion segmentation) demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves considerable improvement of clustering accuracy than the convex based subspace clustering methods.     

EP<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>P: An Accurate <Emphasis Type="Italic">O</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>) Solution to the P<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>P Problem

We propose a non-iterative solution to the PnP problem—the estimation of the pose of a calibrated camera from n 3D-to-2D point correspondences—whose computational complexity grows linearly with n. This is in contrast to state-of-the-art methods that are O(n ⁵) or even O(n ⁸), without being more accurate. Our method is applicable for all n≥4 and handles properly both planar and non-planar configurations. Our central idea is to express the n 3D points as a weighted sum of four virtual control points. The problem then reduces to estimating the coordinates of these control points in the camera referential, which can be done in O(n) time by expressing these coordinates as weighted sum of the eigenvectors of a 12×12 matrix and solving a small constant number of quadratic equations to pick the right weights. Furthermore, if maximal precision is required, the output of the closed-form solution can be used to initialize a Gauss-Newton scheme, which improves accuracy with negligible amount of additional time. The advantages of our method are demonstrated by thorough testing on both synthetic and real-data.     

Some high-rate linear codes over <Emphasis Type="Italic">GF</Emphasis>(5) and <Emphasis Type="Italic">GF</Emphasis>(7)

Let an [n, k, d] _q code be a linear code of length n, dimension k, and with minimum Hamming distance d over GF(q). The ratio R = k/n is called the rate of a code. In this paper, [62, 53, 6]₅, [62, 48, 8]₅, [71, 56, 8]₅, [124, 113, 6]₅, [43, 36, 6]₇, [33, 23, 7]₇, and [27, 18, 7]₇ high-rate codes and new codes with parameters [42, 14, 19]₅, [42, 15, 18]₅, [48, 13, 24]₅, [52, 12, 28]₅, [71, 15, 38]₅, [71, 16, 36]₅, [72, 12, 41]₅, [78, 10, 50]₅, [88, 11, 54]₅, [88, 13, 51]₅, [124, 14, 77]₅, [32, 12, 15]₇, [32, 10, 17]₇, [36, 10, 20]₇, and [48, 10, 29]₇ are constructed. The codes with parameters [62, 53, 6]₅ and [43, 36, 6]₇ are optimal.     

On switching equivalence of <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-ary quasigroups of order 4 and perfect binary codes

We prove that arbitrary n-ary quasigroups of order 4 can be transformed into each other by successive switchings of {a, b}-components. We prove that perfect (closely packed) binary codes with distance 3 whose rank (dimension of the linear span) is greater by 1 or 2 than the rank of a linear perfect code can be taken to each other by successive switchings of i-components.     

Corepresentation of a sylow <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-subgroup of a group <Emphasis Type="Italic">S</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis></Subscript>

The corepresentation of a Sylow p-subgroup of a symmetric group in the form of generating relations is investigated, and a Sylow subgroup of a group , i.e., an n-fold wreath product of regular cyclic groups of prime order, that is isomorphic to the group of automorphisms of a spherically homogeneous root tree is also studied. Translated from Kibernetika i Sistemnyi Analiz, No. 1, pp. 27–41, January–February 2009.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">I-Quest</Emphasis>: an <Emphasis Type="Italic">i</Emphasis>ntelligent <Emphasis Type="Italic">que</Emphasis>ry <Emphasis Type="Italic">st</Emphasis>ructuring based on user browsing feedback for semantic retrieval of video data

In spite of significant improvements in video data retrieval, a system has not yet been developed that can adequately respond to a user’s query. Typically, the user has to refine the query many times and view query results until eventually the expected videos are retrieved from the database. The complexity of video data and questionable query structuring by the user aggravates the retrieval process. Most previous research in this area has focused on retrieval based on low-level features. Managing imprecise queries using semantic (high-level) content is no easier than queries based on low-level features due to the absence of a proper continuous distance function. We provide a method to help users search for clips and videos of interest in video databases. The video clips are classified as interesting and uninteresting based on user browsing. The attribute values of clips are classified by commonality, presence, and frequency within each of the two groups to be used in computing the relevance of each clip to the user’s query. In this paper, we provide an intelligent query structuring system, called I-Quest, to rank clips based on user browsing feedback, where a template generation from the set of interesting and uninteresting sets is impossible or yields poor results.