Learning in an Ambient Intelligent World: Enabling Technologies and Practices

The rapid evolution of information and communication technology opens a wide spectrum of opportunities to change our surroundings into an Ambient Intelligent (AmI) world. AmI is a vision of future information society, where people are surrounded by a digital environment that is sensitive to their needs, personalized to their requirements, anticipatory of their behavior, and responsive to their presence. It emphasizes on greater user friendliness, user empowerment, and more effective service support, with an aim to bring information and communication technology to everyone, every home, every business, and every school, thus improving the quality of human life. AmI unprecedentedly enhances learning experiences by endowing the users with the opportunities of learning in context, a breakthrough from the traditional education settings. In this survey paper, we examine some major characteristics of an AmI learning environment. To deliver a feasible and effective solution to ambient learning, we overview a few latest developed enabling technologies in context awareness and interactive learning. Associated practices are meanwhile reported. We also describe our experience in designing and implementing a smart class prototype, which allows teachers to simultaneously instruct both local and remote students in a context-aware and natural way.     

Inductive semimodules and the vector modules over them

The notion of an inductive semimodule over an ordered *-semiring is introduced and some related properties are investigated. Inductive semimodules are extensions of several important algebraic structures such as Kleene modules, Kleene algebras and inductive *-semirings. We prove that an inductive semimodule over an ordered *-semiring K is a Kleene module if and only if K is a Kleene algebra. Moreover, we establish that the vector module of an inductive semimodule over an ordered Conway semiring is again an inductive semimodule over the matrix semiring. Consequently, in an inductive semimodule over an ordered Conway semiring, least solutions to linear inequation systems can be denoted by linear expressions, avoiding the least fixed point operator. In addition, we also introduce a related notion called weak inductive semimodules, and propose several open problems on them.

Output feedback variable structure control of uncertain linear systems in the presence of actuator dynamics

A new output feedback variable structure control scheme is developed based on a novel passivity idea. This scheme may practically stabilize a class of higher‐relative‐degree uncertain linear systems, and realize output tracking and disturbance attenuation as well. The controller is composed of linear filters and a single relay, without employing real‐time exact differentiators. Under this framework, we also explain how actuator dynamics affect the closed loop behavior. A simulation example shows the simplicity and efficiency of this method. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

网络时代杂志形态的转变与发展

信息化浪潮给人们的生活带来剧变,随着计算机和网络的普及,网络数字化阅读开始成为人们新型的阅读方式。多媒体互动电子杂志作为一种融合了平面杂志、网络多媒体技术特点的新型期刊形式,符合阅读方式发展的潮流。本文通过对传统纸媒杂志与多媒体互动电子杂志的比较分析,总结出了电子杂志自身的无可比拟的优势和目前发展中存在的问题,并对网络时代下杂志未来的发展趋势进行了展望。     

Supervisory control using variable lookahead policies

This paper deals with the efficient on-line calculation of supervisory controls for discrete event systems (DES's) in the framework of limited lookahead control policies (or LLPs) that we introduced in previous papers. In the LLP scheme, the control action after a given trace of events has been executed is calculated on-line on the basis of anN-step ahead projection of the behavior of the DES. To compute these controls, one must calculate after the execution of each event the supremal controllable sublanguage of a finite language with respect to another finite larger language. In our previous work, we showed how the required supremal controllable sublanguage calculation can be performed by using a backward dynamic programming algorithm over the nodes of the tree representation of these two languages. In this paper, we pursue the same approach for the calculation of LLP controls, but instead we adopt a forward calculation procedure over theN-level tree of interest. This forward procedure improves upon previous work by avoiding the explicit consideration of all the nodes of theN-level tree, while still permitting tree-to-tree recursiveness as enabled events are executed by the system. The forward search ends whenever a control decision can be made unambiguously or whenever the boundary of theN-level tree is reached, whichever comes first. This motivates the name Variable Lookahead Policy (or VLP) for this implementation of the LLP supervisory control scheme. This paper presents a general VLP algorithm and studies the properties of several special cases of it. The paper also discusses the implementation of the VLP algorithms and presents computational results regarding the application of these algorithms to a time-varying DES.     

云数据中心时延优化的数据放置方法

针对云数据中心数据获取效率低和服务器资源浪费问题,为优化云平台的数据访问和资源利用,文中提出了一种时延优化的云数据中心数据放置（LOP）方法。文中首先分析了云平台的性能,建立了云平台的资源利用和数据获取时间模型。然后基于非支配排序算法NSGA-Ⅲ实现了全局最优的数据放置策略,对数据资源进行合理部署,有效利用服务器的资源,提高了数据获取的效率。最后通过CloudSim仿真平台,对提出的数据放置方法进行了仿真和对比实验。实验结果表明,LOP方法能明显提高云服务器的资源利用率,缩短任务的数据获取时间。     

基于GA-BP算法的充电站负效应评价

由于电动汽车出行需求存在随机性、充电信息不精准等问题,造成城市交通能源供应站承载力与补能需求车辆的时空错配,导致充电站产生了拥堵排队、能源消耗不合理等负效应。基于此,文中从负效应最小化的视角构建了充电站的负效应评价指标体系,综合考虑交通效率影响、站点服务影响、电网负荷影响等3个因素,采用GA-BP神经网络构建了充电站负效应评估模型。最后,以重庆市南岸区某充电站为例,验证了该方法的适用性与有效性。     

A Plug-and-Play,Scalable Control Method for AC Island Microgrid

Wireless Personal Communications - In this paper, a scalable, plug-and-play (PnP) and system-stable synthesis control method is proposed for the AC island microgrid consisting of a distributed...     

An SPH-based mass transfer model for simulating hydraulic characteristics and mass transfer process of dammed rivers

Engineering with Computers - Aerated flow characterized by complex mass transfer processes with multiple hydraulic properties is a common enviro-hydraulics phenomenon, which have a variety of...