A service provisioning system for distributed personalization with private data protection

Personalized services can provide significant user benefits since they adapt their behavior to better support the user. Personalized services use a variety of data related to the user to decide their behavior. Thus personalized service needs a provisioning system that can collect the data that impacts service behavior and allows selection of the most appropriate service. However, in the coming ubiquitous environment, some data necessary for determining service behavior might be unavailable due to two possible reasons. One is that the data does not exit. The other is that the data exists but cannot be accessed. For example, users do not want to disclose their personal information, and service providers do not also want to expose data related to their knowhow in services. This paper describes a new service provisioning system for distributed personalization with private data protection. Specifically, the system selects applicable services by assessing how well each candidate service behaves when some data is missing. It then executes those selected services while hiding the users’ and providers’ private data in a distributed manner. We first summarize the requirements for a personalized service system, and introduce our fundamental policies for the system. The two main components of our system are then described in detail. One component is a service assessment mechanism that can judge if a service can work without data that can be used for adaptation. The second component is a service execution mechanism that can utilize private data while still ensuring privacy. This component divides service logic and executes divided logic where necessary data is available. The paper finally describes our prototype implementation and its performance evaluation results.     

A fast method for the determination of the efficiency coefficient of bare CR-39 detector

A fast and simple method for the determination of the efficiency coefficient (η) of bare CR-39 detector is presented and discussed. The efficiency coefficient of bare CR-39 detector is then calculated by different ways and the obtained values are found to be comparable to each other. The average value of η of bare CR-39 is found to be 0.20 ± 0.01 tracks cm⁻² day⁻¹ per Bq m⁻³.     

Error estimation of recursive orthogonal polynomial expansion method for large Hamiltonian system

Recursive polynomial expansion method is an efficient scheme to evaluate Green functions for large systems without direct diagonalization of the Hamiltonian. It is based on a polynomial expansion of the Green function, and has many advantages compared with other methods. However, there are little reports on its error estimations. In this paper, the cut-off error of the method is estimated analytically, which results from the truncation of expansion at finite orders. It is found that the error is inversely proportional to the number of expansion order N except for the singular points for the system with point spectrum. For the system with continuous spectrum, the error is inversely proportional to N^3/2 and decreases much faster in terms of the expansion order.     

Detection method of the Kuroshio front using the satellite-derived chlorophyll-a images

Satellite-derived sea surface temperature (SST) has been providing high-resolution information of the oceanic front. However, in summer, increasing surface heating effects make SSTs uniform and the SST front disappears. The purpose of the present study is to examine applicability of satellite-derived surface chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) for detection of the Kuroshio front in the ocean south of Japan during the summer season.The Kuroshio surface front is formed between the Kuroshio water (KW) and the coastal water (CW) in the study area. Investigating accumulated in situ observations of SST and Chl-a, it is shown that the difference of Chl-a between KW and CW is increased in summer though that of SST becomes small. Using 76 pairs of cloud-free satellite-derived SST and Chl-a images with 0.01° spatial resolution, their seasonal variations are investigated through two-dimensional (2-D) histograms of Chl-a and SST. In summer, SST ranges from 25 to 30 °C and Chl-a ranges 0.03 to 0.4 mg/m³. Two peaks in the summer 2-D histogram correspond to wider KW and CW areas with rather uniform Chl-a and SST distributions. The peak values are extracted from the 2-D histograms and used to determine a threshold value dividing the KW and CW surface Chl-a during summer. It is found that the Chl-a concentration of 0.17 mg/m³ divides the extracted peaks into two groups, i.e., CW and KW except for a few peaks.The proposed Kuroshio-front detection method using the Chl-a images and the threshold value is examined using the satellite images and in situ data. The threshold contour superimposed in the summer Chl-a image distinctly separates the two representative waters in the ocean south of Japan. The front positions determined by the satellite-derived Chl-a, in situ SST, and in situ surface salinity transects along observation lines crossing the Kuroshio front agree with each other. Applying a traditional Kuroshio front index of temperature at 200 m depth, the capability of new Chl-a threshold in dividing two waters around the near-front area is quantitatively examined. Producing 74 match-ups of the satellite-derived Chl-a and 200-m temperature in the frontal zone, the dividing capability is evaluated quantitatively using the traditional Kuroshio-axis index. The detection capability of the proposed method is 82%, which can be considered high enough for practical applications.     

Study on Specific Heat of Water Adsorbed in Zeolite Using DSC

In this study, the specific heat of water included in an adsorbent was analyzed by a differential scanning calorimeter in the temperature range from ?50 °C to 50 °C. Zeolites with pore sizes of 3 Å and 9 Å were employed as adsorbents, and the measurement was performed with various water mass fractions in zeolites. In this article, the water was defined as being composed of adsorbed water and free water that is not adsorbed in zeolite. As a result, the specific heat of the dry zeolite increased with temperature. The specific heat of the adsorbed water was measured by a special experimental procedure to establish the experimental accuracy. It was found that the specific heat of the adsorbed water had values in the range from (3 to 5) J · g^?1 · K^?1.     

13C NMR and Fourier transform infrared study of electrochemically prepared polythienylene film

The ¹³C NMR and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra of an electrochemically prepared polythienylene film have been obtained. The polythienylene film displays only two sharp absorption bands, at 124.8 and 136.5 ppm downfield from TMS (tetramethylsilane) in the ¹³C NMR, these being attributable to the carbon atoms in the β-position and the α-position, respectively, relative to the sulfur atom of poly(2,5-thienylene). The polythienylene film also shows a sharp absorption band at 789 cm^?1 in the IR, which is definitely ascribable to the C-H out-of-plane vibration of poly(2,5-thienylene). The polythienylene film will be shown to have a highly defined structure with a dominance of poly(2,5-thienylene).     

Significance of deformation rate softening of memory in viscoelastic fluid mechanics and polymer processing

It is pointed out that in viscoelastic fluid constitutive equations, non-linear response to deformation rate and strain beyond the second order is usually interpreted in terms of the deformation rate or strain dependence of the memory function. These non-linearities act to decrease the extent of the memory. The dependence may be characterized by one or more dimensionless material parameters. A new dimensionless group based on the primary material parameters describing the intensity of the deformation rate dependence of the memory function is introduced and its significance is discussed. This is called the Yamamoto number. The solutions of viscoelastic fluid mechanics problems are considered to depend upon both the Weissenberg and Yamamoto numbers. Such problems include topics of interest in polymer melt processing such as uniaxial elouigatioiial flow, fiber spinning and vortex development in extrusion through a die entry.     

13C NMR spectrum analysis of electrochemically prepared poly(3-methylthienylene) films

The ¹³C NMR spectrum analysis of electrochemically prepared poly(3-methylthienylene) films has been investigated. Both a film doped with ClO₄ ions (P3MT-ClO₄) and an undoped film (P3MT₀) give only two distinct absorption bands through the electrochemical reduction of P3MT-ClO₄. These distinct bands are definitely attributable to the methyl group (upper field) and the thiophene ring (lower field), respectively, and are characteristic of well-defined poly(3-methylthienylene). The correlation between conductivity and ¹³C NMR spectra will be discussed.