Finance and the technology-trade nexus

This paper sketches the contours of the evolving international/monetary system and examines the various roles of the intemediation mechanisms. Then it examines the extent to which the financial system is independent from the “real economy” and the various ways in which it impacts it. The paper discusses some views in good currency on the dynamics of the technology-trade-finance nexus and shows how the financial system influences organization, location and technology choices in meso-innovation systems. The final section of the paper looks at the policy implications that might be derived from the analysis and suggests some directions for the future research.     

Rendering of Surface and Volume Details in Volume Data*

Aiming at the detail rendering in volume data, a new volume illumination model, called Composed Scattering Model (CSM), is presented. In order to enhance different details in volume data, scattering intensity is decomposed into volume scattering intensity and surface scattering intensity with different weight functions. According to the Gauss probability distribution of gray and gradient of data, we propose an accurate method to detect the materials in a voxel, called composed segmentation. In addition, we discuss the principle of constructing these weight functions based on the operators defined in composed segmentation. CSM can generate images containing more details than most popular volume rendering models. This model has been applied to the direct volume rendering of 3D data sets obtained by CT and MRI. The resultant images show not only rich details but also clear boundary surfaces. CSM is demonstrated as an accurate volume rendering model suited for detail enhancement in volume data sets.     

OAZE: A network-friendly distributed zapping system for peer-to-peer IPTV

IPTV systems attracting millions of users are now commonly deployed on peer-to-peer (P2P) infrastructures and provide an appealing alternative to multicast-based systems. Typically, a P2P overlay network is associated with each channel, composed of users who receive, watch and redistribute this channel. Yet, channel surfing (aka as zapping) involves switching overlays and may introduce delays, potentially hurting the user experience when compared to multicast-based IPTV. In this paper, we present a distributed system called OAZE (Overlay Augmentation for Zapping Experience) which speeds up the switching process and reduces the overall cross-domain traffic generated by the IPTV system. In OAZE, each peer maintains connections to other peers, not only in a given channel, but also in a subset of all channels to which the associated user is likely to zap. More specifically, we focus on the channel assignment problem, i.e. determining, in a given P2P overlay, the optimal distribution of the responsibility to maintain contact peers to other channels. We propose an approximate algorithm providing guaranteed performances, and a simpler and more practical one. Our experimental results show that OAZE leads to substantial improvements on the connections between peers, resulting in less switching delay and lower network cost; it then represents an appealing add-on for existing P2P IPTV systems.     

Output controllability and optimal output control of state-dependent switched Boolean control networks

In the present paper, we investigate the output-controllability and optimal output control problems of a state-dependent switched Boolean control network. By using the semi-tensor product, the algebraic form of the system is obtained. Then, output-controllability problems of the system are discussed and some necessary and sufficient conditions are given. Next, the Mayer-type optimal output control issue is considered and an algorithm is provided to find out the control sequence. At last, an example is given to show the effectiveness of the main results.     

Potential thread-level-parallelism exploration with superblock reordering

The growing number of processing cores in a single CPU is demanding more parallelism from sequential programs. But in the past decades few work has succeeded in automatically exploiting enough parallelism, which casts a shadow over the many-core architecture and the automatic parallelization research. However, actually few work was tried to understand the nature, or amount, of the potentially available parallelism in programs. In this paper we will analyze at runtime the dynamic data dependencies among superblocks of sequential programs. We designed a meta re-arrange buffer to measure and exploit the available parallelism, with which the superblocks are dynamically analyzed, reordered and dispatched to run in parallel on an ideal many-core processor, while the data dependencies and program correctness are still maintained. In our experiments, we observed that with the superblock reordering, the potential speedup ranged from 1.08 to 89.60. The results showed that the potential parallelism of normal programs was still far from fully exploited by existing technologies. This observation makes the automatic parallelization a promising research direction for many-core architectures.     

Robust passive autofocus system for mobile phone camera applications

A robust autofocus system is a ubiquitous function in today’s mobile phone camera applications. However, due to the power consumption and size requirements, it is difficult for the autofocus function to be implemented into the design of mobile phone cameras. This paper presents a passive autofocus system with low computational complexity. This system uses a novel contrast measurement to determine degree of image sharpness, which can better reflect the information about image discontinuities. In order to gauge the performance of this measurement, a modified peak search strategy is used in the experiments. The experimental results from several typical image sequences validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Multi-mode of vortex-induced vibration of a flexible circular cylinder

The vortex-induced vibration of a flexible circular cylinder is investigated at a constant Reynolds number of 1 000.The finite-volume method on moving meshes is applied for the fluid flow, and the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory is used to model the dynamic response of a flexible cylinder.The relationship between the reduced velocity and the amplitude response agrees well with the experimental results.Moreover, five different vibrating modes appear in the simulation.From the comparisons of their vortex structures, the strength of the wake flow is related to the exciting vibrating mode and different vortex patterns arise for different vibrating modes.Only 2P pattern appears in the first vibrating mode while 2S-2P patterns occur in the other vibrating modes if monitoring at different sections along the length of the cylinder.The vibration of the flexible cylinder can also greatly alter the three-dimensionality in the wake, which needs further studies in our future work, especially in the transition region for the Reynolds number from 170 to 300.     

A nonlinear geometric approach to power system excitation control and stabilization

In this paper, a unified approach to the design of a nonlinear excitation controller/power system stabilizer for a synchronous generator/infinite bus power system is presented. The approach is based on a form of state feedback linearization, known as input–output feedback linearization, which provides an exact semi-global state transformation that is valid for a large class of operating points of the power system. With this transformation, the terminal voltage becomes a linear function of the control input. The excitation controller/power system stabilizer is then synthesized by using linear controller design techniques. The controller is proven to provide small signal stability and to provide local asymptotic tracking of admissible constant reference signals for a large class of operating points. A procedure is given to tune the controller gains to provide significant damping of the power angle oscillations.     

Engineering TCP transmission and retransmission mechanisms for wireless networks

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) provides mechanisms for reliable data communications. Although it works well in wired networks, it fails to offer satisfactory performance in lossy and wireless environments. And in the multi-hop wireless infrastructure, packet delivery suffers high cumulative loss rate if traveling over multiple wireless hops. The Selective acknowledgment (SACK) is one header option that might be used to combat segment corruptions in air channels. In this paper, an alternative set of flow control mechanisms is proposed to handle high packet loss rate in a wireless medium. Using a measurement-based mechanism, sustainable segment delivery is achievable through a novel size-reduction method. Multiple segment retransmission mechanisms are introduced to reduce successive timeout events. One single byte loss is sufficient to waste all other bytes in a file received at a destination. That is, a good TCP flow control mechanism should provide a high successful file transmission completion rate, and this is set as our design goal. Through thorough simulations, our proposed multi-segment retransmission designs perform with higher successful file transfer rate and fewer timeout events than NewReno and SACK under a wide range of packet loss probabilities.     

Why Teachers Must Learn: Student Innovation as a Driving Factor in the Future of the Web

User innovation is the key to the development and vitality of technology. As Huatong Sun wrote, “expanding the scope of localization practices and linking user localization efforts” to design cycles—including pedagogical design—will help bridge the gap between what teachers/designers create and what skills users/students need and want. This article theorizes the role of modern composition students and teachers as co-constructors of productive spaces for learning critical inquiry based on students’ statuses as digital natives. It focuses on a class of first-year composition students who reshaped an assignment to fit their own needs within the physical classroom and also enacted a shift to a virtual classroom. While doing so, they provided ways for each class member to individualize space within that digital environment, and they focused their project on examining the ways in which social networking forums colonize their daily lives. This article argues that by letting student innovation drive pedagogical practice—just as social media creators let user innovation drive the digital structures they produce—composition teachers can be assured of having a text for critique that blurs the lines between “private” student underlife and “public” classroom practice and legitimizes the creation of student-produced learning spaces. Using critical and cyberfeminist theories as lenses, this article draws conclusions about the future of computer usage in composition pedagogy based on students’ abilities to re-appropriate physical and digital classroom space.