Christopher Strachey: Recollections of His Influence

My early research was inspired by the mathematical semantics of Scott and Strachey. Two such topics, recounted in this paper, were the fixed-point analysis of pointer loops and the expressibility of a style of functional programming introduced by Barron and Strachey.     

Predicting change for individual psychotherapy clients on the basis of their nearest neighbors.

This study extended client-focused research by using the nearest neighbor (NN) approach, a client-specific sampling and prediction strategy derived from research on alpine avalanches. Psychotherapy clients (N = 203) seen in routine practice settings in the United Kingdom completed a battery of intake measures and then completed symptom intensity ratings before each session. Forecasts of each client's rate of change and session-by-session variability were computed on the basis of that client's NNs (n = 10-50 in different comparisons). Alternative forecasts used linear or log-linear slopes and were compared with an alternative prediction strategy. Results showed that the NN approach was superior to the alternative model in predicting rate of change, though the advantage was less clear for predicting variability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

National and international university departmental Web site interlinking

Although many link patterns have been identified at the university level, departmental interlinking has been relatively ignored. Universities are multidisciplinary by nature and various disciplines may employ the Web differently, thus patterns identified at the university level may hide subject differences. Departments are typically subject-oriented, and departmental interlinking may therefore illustrate interesting disciplinary linking patterns, perhaps relating to informal scholarly communication. The aim of this paper is to identify whether and how link patterns differ along country and disciplinary lines between similar disciplines and similar countries. Physics, Chemistry and Biology departments in Australia, Canada and the UK have been chosen. In order to get a holistic picture of departments' Web use profiles and link patterns, five different perspectives are identified and compared for each set of departments. Differences in link patterns are identified along both national and disciplinary lines, and are found to reflect offline phenomena. Along national lines, a likely explanation for the difference is that countries with better research performances make more general use of the Web; and, with respect to international peer interlinking, countries that share more scholarly communication tend to interlink more with each other. Along disciplinary lines, it seems that departments from disciplines which are more willing to distribute their research outputs tend to make more general use of the Web, and also interlink more with their national and international peers.     

Domain–Specific High–Level Modeling and Synthesis for ATM Switch Prototyping

ATM switch, the core technology of an ATM networking system, is one of the major products in Fujitsu telecommunication business. However, current gate–level design methodology can no longer satisfy its stringent time–to–market requirement. It becomes necessary to exploit high–level methodology to specify and synthesize the design at an abstraction level higher than logic gates. This paper presents our prototyping experience on domain–specific high–level modeling and synthesis for Fujitsu ATM switch design. We propose a high–level design methodology using VHDL, where ATM switch architectural features are considered during behavior modeling, and a high–level synthesis compiler, MEBS, is prototyped to synthesize the behavior model down to a gate–level implementation. Since the specific ATM switch architecture is incorporated into both modeling and synthesis phases, a high–quality design is efficiently derived. The synthesis results shows that given the design constraints, the proposed high–level design methodology can produce a gate–level implementation by MEBS with about 15 percent area reduction in shorter design cycle when compared with manual design.     

MEXICA: A computer model of a cognitive account of creative writing

MEXICA is a computer model that produces frameworks for short stories based on the engagement-reflection cognitive account of writing. During engagement MEXICA generates material guided by content and rhetorical constraints, avoiding the use of explicit goals or story-structure information. During reflection the system breaks impasses, evaluates the novelty and interestingness of the story in progress and verifies that coherence requirements are satisfied. In this way, MEXICA complements and extends those models of computerised story-telling based on traditional problem-solving techniques where explicit goals drive the generation of stories. This paper describes the engagement-reflection account of writing, the general characteristics of MEXICA and reports an evaluation of the program.     

Dynamic construction site layout planning using max-min ant system

Construction site layout planning (CSLP) is a dynamic multi-objective optimization (MOO) problem as there are different facilities employed in the different construction phases of a construction project. In this study, a new method using continuous dynamic searching scheme to guide the max-min ant system (MMAS) algorithm, which is one of the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms, to solve the dynamic CSLP problem under the two congruent objective functions of minimizing safety concerns and reducing construction cost is proposed. Using weighted sum method the MOO problem can be solved by the proposed MMAS method. An office building case was used to verify the capability of the proposed method to solve dynamic CSLP problem and the results are promising. The approach could be benchmarked by researchers using other advanced optimization algorithms to solve the same problem or expand the applications to other fields.     

Robust and accurate registration of 2-D electrophoresis gels using point-matching.

Point-matching is a widely applied image registration method and many algorithms have been developed. Registration of 2-D electrophoresis gels is an important problem in biological research that presents many of the technical difficulties that beset point-matching: large numbers of points with variable densities, large nonrigid transformations between point sets, paucity of structural information and large numbers of unmatchable points (outliers) in either set. In seeking the most suitable algorithm for gel registration we have evaluated a number of approaches for accuracy and robustness in the face of these difficulties. Using synthetic images we test combinations of three algorithm components: correspondence assignment, distance metrics and image transformation. We show that a version of the iterated closest point (ICP) algorithm using a non-Euclidean distance metric and a robust estimation of transform parameters provides best performance, equalling SoftAssign in the presence of moderate image distortion, and providing superior robustness against large distortions and high outlier proportions. From this evaluation we develop a gel registration algorithm based on robust ICP and a novel distance metric combining Euclidean, shape context and image-related features. We demonstrate the accuracy of gel matching using synthetic distortions of real gels and show that robust estimation of transform parameters using M-estimators can enforce inverse consistency, ensuring that matching results are independent of the order of the images.     

DVB-H移动数字电视综述

概述 自从20世纪40年代黑白广播电视问世以来,电视已走过了一个漫长的发展历程。我们经历了彩色电视与数字广播电视在画质方面的创新,以及在信号传输方式上的不断进步,如从有线到卫星再到HD等。每项新技术的推出都使电视的受欢迎程度与日俱增,并都能为观众带来更为丰富的节目内容。目前,电视正在迎来它的另一个全新的发展阶段：移动数字电视。