Higher Order Convergence for Multidimensional Functions with a New Taylor-Bernstein Form as Inclusion Function

Recently, Lin and Rokne (Interval Approximation of Higher Order to the Ranges of Functions, Computers Math. Applic. 31(7) (1996), pp. 101-109) introduced the so-called Taylor-Bernstein (TB) form as an inclusion function form for multidimensional functions. This form was theoretically shown to have the property of higher order convergence. In this paper, we present an improvement of Lin and Rokne's TB form to make it more effective in practice. We test and compare the higher order convergence behavior of the proposed TB form with that of Lin and Rokne's TB form and also with that of the Taylor model of Berz et al. (Computation and Application of Taylor Polynomials with Interval Remainder Bounds, Reliable Computing 4(1) (1998), pp. 83-97). For the testing, we consider six benchmark examples with dimensions varying from 1 to 6. In all examples, unlike with the Taylor model and Lin and Rokne's TB form, we obtain higher order convergence of orders up to 9 with the proposed TB form. Moreover, with the proposed TB form we quite easily obtain such high orders of convergence for up to 5-dim problems.     

InterAspect: aspect-oriented instrumentation with GCC

We present the InterAspect instrumentation framework for GCC, a widely used compiler infrastructure. The addition of plug-in support in the latest release of GCC makes it an attractive platform for runtime instrumentation, as GCC plug-ins can directly add instrumentation by transforming the compiler??s intermediate representation. Such transformations, however, require expert knowledge of GCC internals. InterAspect addresses this situation by allowing instrumentation plug-ins to be developed using the familiar vocabulary of Aspect-Oriented Programming: pointcuts, join points, and advice functions. Moreover, InterAspect uses specific information about each join point in a pointcut, possibly including results of static analysis, to support powerful customized instrumentation. We describe the InterAspect API and present several examples that illustrate its practical utility as a runtime-verification platform. We also introduce a tracecut system that uses InterAspect to construct program monitors that are formally specified as regular expressions.     

Segmentation,indexing and retrieval of TV broadcast news bulletins using Gaussian mixture models and vector quantization codebooks

In this paper we proposed two-stage segmentation approach for splitting the TV broadcast news bulletins into sequence of news stories and codebooks derived from vector quantization are used for retrieving the segmented stories. At the first stage of segmentation, speaker (news reader) specific characteristics present in initial headlines of news bulletin are used for gross level segmentation. During second stage, errors in the gross level segmentation (first stage) are corrected by exploiting the speaker specific information captured from the individual news stories other than headlines. During headlines the captured speaker specific information is mixed with background music, and hence the segmentation at the first stage may not be accurate. In this work speaker specific information is represented by using mel frequency cepstral coefficients, and captured by Gaussian mixture models (GMMs). The proposed two-stage segmentation method is evaluated on manual segmented broadcast TV news bulletins. From the evaluation results, it is observed that about 93 % of the news stories are correctly segmented, 7 % are missed and 6 % are spurious. For navigating the bulletins, a quick navigation indexing method is developed based on speaker change points. Performance of the proposed two-stage segmentation and quick navigation methods are evaluated using GMM and neural networks models. For retrieving the target news stories from news corpus, sequence of codebook indices derived from vector quantization is explored. Proposed retrieval approach is evaluated using queries of different sizes. Evaluation results indicating that the retrieval accuracy is proportional to size of the query.     

Guidance-机器人视觉传感平台

视觉传感器作为智能机器人的关键技术,可以实现机器人定位、导航和目标跟踪。但是,当前市场上缺乏高性能的机器人视觉传感器平台。本文将介绍一个功能强、效率高的视觉传感平台Guidance,其包含一个中央处理器和多个(五个以上)伺服传感单元,内置的基础功能有:视觉定位、避障、景深图像生成。此外,Guidance配套有完整的SDK文档,可供使用者灵活使用并开发相关的项目,譬如自主导航、目标跟踪、定位和地图构建等     

A framework for scalable delivery of digitized spaces

We present a framework for scalable delivery of digitized environments. Todays digital museums distribute images, text, sounds, and videos. Our work targets the distribution of a more advanced media type that allows users to independently and interactively explore digitized spaces. We describe a multidimensional and multiresolutional representation that maps directly to a set of communication channels. Clients receive data by subscribing to and unsubscribing from these channels. Client adaptation to current application and network conditions is performed by managing a working set of channels. This mechanism enables distribution of digitized environments to large groups of independent digital museum visitors.     

Collaborative eScience libraries

In the context of collaborative eScience, digital libraries are one of many distributed, interoperable resources available to scientists that facilitate both human and machine collaboration: machine collaboration in the form of standards such as the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting and human collaboration in the form of collaborative workspaces. This paper describes a set of collaborative workspaces created at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library, initial patterns of use, and additional user requirements determined based on these initial patterns of use.     

High strain rate mechanical properties of a cross-linked epoxy across the glass transition

Molecular dynamics simulations were used to study the high strain rate mechanical properties of a cross-linked epoxy system comprised of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) that is cross-linked by a poly(oxypropylene) diamine with three propylene oxide moieties per diamine. Atomistic network structures were characterized using volume-temperature behavior and their response to mechanical deformation. The Young's modulus was determined as a function of temperature across strain rates spanning three decades in magnitude, and collapsed onto a single “master curve” using the time–temperature superposition principle (TTSP). The master curve obtained from molecular dynamics simulation data shows good agreement with a similar master curve of the reduced storage modulus as a function of frequency, which was obtained using experiments. At higher strain rates, the simulation master curve deviated from the experimental master curve. This deviation could be attributed to the lack of occurrence of sub-T_g motions on the time scale of simulations due to the use of higher strain rates in simulations compared to experiments. Our work demonstrates the utility of TTSP in connecting the thermo-mechanical behavior of polymers at high strain rates and high temperatures to experiments performed at much different conditions. To the best of our knowledge, the use of the time–temperature superposition to compare mechanical properties determined from molecular simulation and experiments is the first reported effort of its kind.     

First Insights into the Venom Composition of Two Ecuadorian Coral Snakes

Micrurus is a medically relevant genus of venomous snakes composed of 85 species. Bites caused by coral snakes are rare, but they are usually associated with very severe and life-threatening clinical manifestations. Ecuador is a highly biodiverse country with a complex natural environment, which is home to approximately 20% of identified Micrurus species. Additionally, it is on the list of Latin American countries with the highest number of snakebites. However, there is no local antivenom available against the Ecuadorian snake venoms, and the biochemistry of these venoms has been poorly explored. Only a limited number of samples collected in the country from the Viperidae family were recently characterised. Therefore, this study addressed the compositional patterns of two coral snake venoms from Ecuador, M. helleri and M. mipartitus, using venomics strategies, integrating sample fractionation, gel electrophoresis, and mass spectrometry. Chromatographic and electrophoretic profiles of these snake venoms revealed interspecific variability, which was ascertained by mass spectrometry. The two venoms followed the recently recognised dichotomic toxin expression trends displayed by Micrurus species: M. helleri venom contains a high proportion (72%) of phospholipase A₂, whereas M. mipartitus venom is dominated by three-finger toxins (63%). A few additional protein families were also detected in these venoms. Overall, these results provide the first comprehensive views on the composition of two Ecuadorian coral snake venoms and expand the knowledge of Micrurus venom phenotypes. These findings open novel perspectives to further research the functional aspects of these biological cocktails of PLA₂s and 3FTxs and stress the need for the preclinical evaluation of the currently used antivenoms for therapeutic purposes in Ecuador.