Efficient model checking for LTL with partial order snapshots

Certain behavioral properties of distributed systems are difficult to express in interleaving semantics, whereas they are naturally expressed in terms of partial orders of events or, equivalently, Mazurkiewicz traces. Two examples of such properties are serializability of a database and global snapshots of concurrent systems. Recently, a modest extension for LTL by an operator that expresses snapshots, has been proposed. It combines the ease of linear (interleaving) specification with this useful partial order concept. The new construct allows one to assert that a global snapshot appeared in the past, perhaps not in the observed execution sequence, but possibly in an equivalent one.     

Creating change and driving innovation in highly automated and lean organizations: The Temporal Think Tank™ (T3™)

This paper introduces the concept of the temporal think tank™ (T3™), a temporary in-house research center, based on case studies with a highly automated global manufacturer and in various small-sized manufacture (SME's). The T3™ brings individuals from across the organization together in a team setting in which they are charged to look at the future, develop their decision-making skills, and use entrepreneurial thinking to incubate new processes and/or products. After an appropriate time in the temporal think tank™, the individuals are asked to return to their regular positions to implement the best practices and best ideas and doing so spur the organization forward. At intervals, the temporal think tanks™ can be reconvened, or reconstituted with new participants. This approach prepares technology champions for the SME, who can return to the organization with a fresh outlook and renewed energy to keep the enterprise at the peak of efficiency and effectiveness.     

Grounded design: Design patterns as the link between theory and practice

The process of designing a networked learning environment can be characterized by a high degree of uncertainty. This is especially true when the design includes innovative technologies. It is difficult to design a networked learning environment that closely fits the requirements of the educational practice. Often the technology seems leading in the design process because it is the most tangible aspect of the e-learning environment. This brings along the risk that the technology becomes detached from its context of use.Design patterns are a means to overcome this problem of detachment between design and practice. Design patterns make the tight relationship between the two more explicit. In this paper we further elaborate on the relationship between design and practice. We will stress the importance of theory in the development of design patterns. Theory development is an essential aspect of our approach to the development of design patterns. The approach is oriented towards a systematic analysis of problems and the development of conceptual models that guide the definition and evaluation of design patterns. In this paper we present a case study of how the approach was used to develop design patterns for networked learning in the classroom.     

An order-clique-based approach for mining maximal co-locations

Most algorithms for mining spatial co-locations adopt an Apriori-like approach to generate size-k prevalence co-locations after size-(k − 1) prevalence co-locations. However, generating and storing the co-locations and table instances is costly. A novel order-clique-based approach for mining maximal co-locations is proposed in this paper. The efficiency of the approach is achieved by two techniques: (1) the spatial neighbor relationships and the size-2 prevalence co-locations are compressed into extended prefix-tree structures, which allows the order-clique-based approach to mine candidate maximal co-locations and co-location instances; and (2) the co-location instances do not need to be stored after computing some characteristics of the corresponding co-location, which significantly reduces the execution time and space required for mining maximal co-locations. The performance study shows that the new method is efficient for mining both long and short co-location patterns, and is faster than some other methods (in particular the join-based method and the join-less method).     

Combining appearance and motion for face and gender recognition from videos

While many works consider moving faces only as collections of frames and apply still image-based methods, recent developments indicate that excellent results can be obtained using texture-based spatiotemporal representations for describing and analyzing faces in videos. Inspired by the psychophysical findings which state that facial movements can provide valuable information to face analysis, and also by our recent success in using LBP (local binary patterns) for combining appearance and motion for dynamic texture analysis, this paper investigates the combination of facial appearance (the shape of the face) and motion (the way a person is talking and moving his/her facial features) for face analysis in videos. We propose and study an approach for spatiotemporal face and gender recognition from videos using an extended set of volume LBP features and a boosting scheme. We experiment with several publicly available video face databases and consider different benchmark methods for comparison. Our extensive experimental analysis clearly assesses the promising performance of the LBP-based spatiotemporal representations for describing and analyzing faces in videos.     

Design patterns for user interface for mobile applications

The topic of this paper is a collection of user interface (UI) design patterns for mobile applications. In the paper we present the structure of the patterns collection – the patterns are suggested solutions to problems that are grouped into a set of problem areas that are further grouped into three main problem areas – a structure which is valuable both as an index to identifying patterns to use, and it gives a fairly comprehensive overview of issues when designing user interfaces for mobile applications. To show the breadth of the patterns collection we present six individual problems with connected design patterns in some detail – each coming from different problem areas. They represent important and relevant problems, and are on different levels of abstraction, thus showing how patterns may be used to present problems and solutions on different levels of detail. To show the relevance and usefulness of the patterns collection for usability professionals with a mixed background, we present some relevant findings from a validation of the patterns collection. In addition to verifying the relevance and usefulness of the patterns collection, it also shows both expected and surprising correlations between background and perceived relevance and usefulness. One important finding from the validation is an indication that the patterns collection is best suited for experienced UI developers wanting to start developing mobile UIs. Using a patterns collection for documenting design knowledge and experience has been a mixed experience, so we discuss pros and cons of this. Finally, we present related work and future research.     

Discovery of stop regions for understanding repeat travel behaviors of moving objects

GPS trajectory dataset with high sampling-rates is usually in large volume that challenges the processing efficiency. Most of the data points on trajectories are useless. This paper summarizes trajectories using stop points. We define a new concept of stay stability (i.e., time dividing distance or reciprocal of speed) between any two GPS points to detect stop points on individual trajectories. We propose a novel Mining Repeat Travel Behaviors Using Stop Regions (MRTBUSR) method. In MRTBUSR, a stop region is a popular region containing a certain number of close stop points that can be grouped into a cluster. We then retrieve common sequences of stop regions to denote repeat route patterns and further analyze the stop durations on a stop region to find repeat travel behaviors. The experiments on 20 labeled trajectories selected from GeoLife demonstrated the semantic effect, accuracy and near linear efficiency of our proposed method.     

谈话节目语料库的构建与会话结构分析

口语语料库的建设是口语研究的基础工作,该文选择具有代表性的交谈式谈话节目《锵锵三人行》和对谈式谈话节目《鲁豫有约》作为语料,建立了一个小型的谈话节目语料库,并构建了包含五大类16小类的会话结构标注体系,对语料进行了会话结构的标注。统计得到打断结构309例,插入结构141例,重复结构111例,问答结构653/589例,阻碍—修正结构51/21例,反映了会话结构在数量上的不均衡分布,节目的形式、性质以及交际任务是会话结构分布的主要影响因素。会话结构组合具有模式性,该文使用Trigram方法对其组合情况进行了分析,发现语料中的高频组合是问答毗邻对,此外有大量的非毗邻性组合。会话结构组合模式不但反映出谈话节目的风格特点,还有助于分析会话中的功能性模块、会话策略的形成,进而更加深入地了解会话的运作机制。     

软件设计模式课程实验教学系统探索

设计模式是软件工程专业的重要核心课程,兼具理论性和实践性,但其高度的抽象性给学生学习带来较大困难.针对该课程及学生的认知特点,设计开发了一个基于Spring框架的设计模式实验教学系统-在线教务管理平台,该系统采用B/S架构,综合了多种常用设计模式,不仅展示了单个设计模式的特点,同时展示了这些设计模式在实际项目开发中的复合应用,有助于学生加深设计模式方法学理论精髓的理解,提高实践动手能力,从而为进一步掌握高级软件工程知识奠定基础.     

Multi-camera calibration based on an invariant pattern

In this paper we present a method for the calibration of multiple cameras based on the extraction and use of the physical characteristics of a one-dimensional invariant pattern which is defined by four collinear markers. The advantages of this kind of pattern stand out in two key steps of the calibration process. In the initial step of camera calibration methods, related to sample points capture, the proposed method takes advantage of using a new technique for the capture and recognition of a robust sample of projective invariant patterns, which allows to capture simultaneously more than one invariant pattern in the tracking area and recognize each pattern individually as well as each marker that composes them. This process is executed in real time while capturing our sample of calibration points in the cameras of our system. This new feature allows to capture a more numerous and robust set of sample points than other patterns used for multi-camera calibration methods. In the last step of the calibration process, related to camera parameters' optimization, we explore the collinearity feature of the invariant pattern and add this feature in the camera parameters optimization model. This approach obtains better results in the computation of camera parameters. We present the results obtained with the calibration of two multi-camera systems using the proposed method and compare them with other methods from the literature.