A noun-based approach to feature location using time-aware term-weighting

ContextFeature location aims to identify the source code location corresponding to the implementation of a software feature. Many existing feature location methods apply text retrieval to determine the relevancy of the features to the text data extracted from the software repositories. One of the preprocessing activities in text retrieval is term-weighting, which is used to adjust the importance of a term within a document or corpus. Common term-weighting techniques may not be optimal to deal with text data from software repositories due to the origin of term-weighting techniques from a natural language context.ObjectiveThis paper describes how the consideration of when the terms were used in the repositories, under the condition of weighting only the noun terms, can improve a feature location approach.MethodWe propose a feature location approach using a new term-weighting technique that takes into account how recently a term has been used in the repositories. In this approach, only the noun terms are weighted to reduce the dataset volume and avoid dealing with dimensionality reduction.ResultsAn empirical evaluation of the approach on four open-source projects reveals improvements to the accuracy, effectiveness and performance up to 50%, 17%, and 13%, respectively, when compared to the commonly-used Vector Space Model approach. The comparison of the proposed term-weighting technique with the Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency technique shows accuracy, effectiveness, and performance improvements as much as 15%, 10%, and 40%, respectively. The investigation of using only noun terms, instead of using all terms, in the proposed approach also indicates improvements up to 28%, 21%, and 58% on accuracy, effectiveness, and performance, respectively.ConclusionIn general, the use of time in the weighting of terms, along with the use of only the noun terms, makes significant improvements to a feature location approach that relies on textual information.     

Evaluation of the absolute affinity of neuraminidase inhibitor using steered molecular dynamics simulations

The absolute free energy difference of binding (ΔG) between neuraminidase and its inhibitor was evaluated using fast pulling of ligand (FPL) method over steered molecular dynamics (SMD) simulations. The metric was computed through linear interaction approximation. Binding nature was described by free energy differences of electrostatic and van der Waals (vdW) interactions. The finding indicates that vdW metric is dominant over electrostatics in binding process. The computed values are in good agreement with experimental data with a correlation coefficient of R = 0.82 and error of σΔG_exp = 2.2 kcal/mol. The results were observed using Amber99SB-ILDN force field in comparison with CHARMM27 and GROMOS96 43a1 force fields. Obtained results may stimulate the search for an Influenza therapy.     

Fast super-resolution algorithm using rotation-invariant ELBP classifier and hierarchical pattern matching

This paper proposes a fast super-resolution (SR) algorithm using content-adaptive two-dimensional (2D) finite impulse response (FIR) filters based on a rotation-invariant classifier. The proposed algorithm consists of a learning stage and an inference stage. In the learning stage, we cluster a sufficient number of low-resolution (LR) and high-resolution (HR) patch pairs into a specific number of groups using the rotation-invariant classifier, and choose a specific number of dominant clusters. Then, we compute the optimal 2D FIR filter(s) to synthesize a high-quality HR patch from an LR patch per cluster, and finally store the patch-adaptive 2D FIR filters in a dictionary. Also, we present a smart hierarchical addressing method for effective dictionary exploration in the inference stage. In the inference stage, the ELBP of each input LR patch is extracted in the same way as the learning stage, and the best matched FIR filter(s) to the input LR patch is found from the dictionary by the hierarchical addressing. Finally, we synthesize the HR patch by using the optimal 2D FIR filter. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm produces better HR images than the existing SR methods, while providing fast running time.     

Leveraging multiple cues for recognizing family photos

Social relation analysis via images is a new research area that has attracted much interest recently. As social media usage increases, a wide variety of information can be extracted from the growing number of consumer photos shared online, such as the category of events captured or the relationships between individuals in a given picture. Family is one of the most important units in our society, thus categorizing family photos constitutes an essential step toward image-based social analysis and content-based retrieval of consumer photos. We propose an approach that combines multiple unique and complimentary cues for recognizing family photos. The first cue analyzes the geometric arrangement of people in the photograph, which characterizes scene-level information with efficient yet discriminative capability. The second cue models facial appearance similarities to capture and quantify relevant pairwise relations between individuals in a given photo. The last cue investigates the semantics of the context in which the photo was taken. Experiments on a dataset containing thousands of family and non-family pictures collected from social media indicate that each individual model produces good recognition results. Furthermore, a combined approach incorporating appearance, geometric and semantic features significantly outperforms the state of the art in this domain, achieving 96.7% classification accuracy.     

Saliency and KAZE features assisted object segmentation

In this paper, we propose an unsupervised salient object segmentation approach using saliency and object features. In the proposed method, we utilize occlusion boundaries to construct a region-prior map which is then enhanced using object properties. To reject the non-salient regions, a region rejection strategy is employed based on the amount of detail (saliency information) and density of KAZE keypoints contained in them. Using the region rejection scheme, we obtain a threshold for binarizing the saliency map. The binarized saliency map is used to form a salient superpixel cluster. Finally, an iterative grabcut segmentation is applied with salient texture keypoints (SIFT keypoints on the Gabor convolved texture map) supplemented with salient KAZE keypoints (keypoints inside saliency cluster) as the foreground seeds and the binarized saliency map (obtained using the region rejection strategy) as a probably foreground region. We perform experiments on several datasets and show that the proposed segmentation framework outperforms the state of the art unsupervised salient object segmentation approaches on various performance metrics.     

Synergic predator-prey optimization for economic thermal power dispatch problem

This paper introduces a synergic predator-prey optimization (SPPO) algorithm to solve economic load dispatch (ELD) problem for thermal units with practical aspects. The basic PPO model comprises prey and predator as essential components. SPPO uses collaborative decision for movement and direction of prey and maintains diversity in the swarm due to fear factor of predator, which acts as the baffled state of preys’ mind. In the SPPO, the decision making of prey is bifurcated into corroborative and impeded parts. It comprises four behaviors namely inertial, cognitive, collective swarm intelligence, and prey's individual and neighborhood concern of predator. The prey particle memorizes its best and not-best positions as experiences. In this research work, to improve the quality of prey swarm, which influence convergence rate, opposition based initialization is used. To verify robustness of proposed algorithm general benchmark problems and small, medium, and large power generation test power system are simulated. These test systems have non-linear behavior due to multi-fuel options and practical constraints. The constraints of prohibited operating zone and ramp rate limits of power generators’ are handled using heuristics. Newton–Raphson procedure is exploited to attain the transmission losses using load flow analysis. The outcomes of SPPO are compared with the results described in literature and are found satisfactory.     

Vector median filters

Median filters (MF) are used both to filter ‘salt and pepper’ noise from signals and images and in other signal processing applications. In this paper, an extension of the MF, the vector median filter (VMF), is introduced. As opposed to the MF, the VMF outputs for each window location a number of data elements. By adjusting the VMF parameters, the MF is obtained as a VMF special case. Just like the MF, the VMF filters impulses while simultaneously preserving step changes in a signal. The VMF's principal advantage is that it reduces the total stored data signal computation time while it produces visual outputs comparable to that of an MF. Deterministic and statistical properties of the VMF are examined. Computer-generated experimental results are also presented.     

Coons' surface method for formulation of finite element of plates and shells

In this paper, we apply the Coons' surface method and fitted function interpolation to fit boundary conditions of the finite element, and obtain different displacement functions of the plate and shell rectangular element, as well as the sectorial element, parallelogram element, ring element and quadrilateral element. The method is easily implemented and its geometric significance and mechanical conception are quite clear. Both computing technique and operational procedure are relatively unified. It is convenient to formulate conforming elements and high-precision elements, and also may be applied to formulate mixed and hybrid elements.     

基于相关性反馈的开源系统跨层需求追踪方法

大型复杂软件系统的需求分析与生成是一个由上而下逐层分解的过程,跨层需求间追踪关系的构建对于项目的管理、开发与演化都至关重要.开源系统的松耦合贡献方式需要每位参与者能便捷地理解需求的来龙去脉及需求状态,这依赖跨层需求间的追踪.问题描述日志是开源系统中需求的常见呈现方式,其无固定模板要求,内容多样(含文本、代码、调试信息等),术语使用自由,跨层需求间抽象层次大,给自动追踪带来极大的挑战.提出一种面向关键特征维度的相关性反馈方法,通过静态分析项目代码结构,抽取代码相关术语及其间的关联强度,构建代码词汇库,以缓解跨层需求的抽象层次差距及用语不统一的问题;通过度量词汇对需求描述的重要性并基于此筛选关键特征维度,以对查询语句进行针对性的优化,有效减少需求描述长度、内容形式等方面的噪音.通过在3个开源系统需求集上针对两个场景的实验,表明所提方法相比基线方法在跨层需求追踪方面的优越性,相比VSM、Standard Rocchio和Trace BERT, F2值的最大提升分别可达29.01%、7.45%和59.21%.