In this paper, a novel method called fuzzy diffusion maps (FDM) is proposed to evaluate cartoon similarity, which is critical to the applications of cartoon recognition, cartoon clustering and cartoon reusing. We find that the features from heterogeneous sources have different influence on cartoon similarity estimation. In order to take all the features into consideration, a fuzzy consistent relation is presented to convert the preference order of the features into preference degree, from which the weights are calculated. Based on the features and weights, the sum of the squared differences (L2) can be calculated between any cartoon data. However, it has been demonstrated in some research work that the cartoon dataset lies in a low-dimensional manifold, in which the L2 distance cannot evaluate the similarity directly. Unlike the global geodesic distance preserved in Isomap, the local neighboring relationship preserved in Locally Linear Embedding, and the local similarities of neighboring points preserved in Laplacian Eigenmaps, the diffusion maps we adopt preserve diffusion distance summing over all paths of length connecting the two data. As a consequence, this diffusion distance is very robust to noise perturbation. Our experiment in cartoon classification using Receiver Operating Curves shows fuzzy consistent relation's excellent performance on weights assignment. The FDM's performance on cartoon similarity evaluation is tested on the experiments of cartoon recognition and clustering. The results show that FDM can evaluate the cartoon similarity more precisely and stably compared with other methods.

Direct volume rendering (DVR) is a powerful visualization technique which allows users to effectively explore and study volumetric datasets. Different transparency settings can be flexibly assigned to different structures such that some valuable information can be revealed in direct volume rendered images (DVRIs). However, end-users often feel that some risks are always associated with DVR because they do not know whether any important information is missing from the transparent regions of DVRIs. In this paper, we investigate how to semi-automatically generate a set of DVRIs and also an animation which can reveal information missed in the original DVRIs and meanwhile satisfy some image quality criteria such as coherence. A complete framework is developed to tackle various problems related to the generation and quality evaluation of visibility-aware DVRIs and animations. Our technique can reduce the risk of using direct volume rendering and thus boost the confidence of users in volume rendering systems.

We present a multi-level partition of unity algebraic set surfaces (MPU-APSS) for surface reconstruction which can be represented by either a projection or in an implicit form. An algebraic point set surface (APSS) defines a smooth surface from a set of unorganized points using local moving least-squares (MLS) fitting of algebraic spheres. However, due to the local nature, APSS does not work well for geometry editing and modeling. Instead, our method builds an implicit approximation function for the scattered point set based on the partition of unity approach. By using an octree subdivision strategy, we first adaptively construct local algebraic spheres for the point set, and then apply weighting functions to blend together these local shape functions. Finally, we compute an error-controlled approximation of the signed distance function from the surface. In addition, we present an efficient projection operator which makes our representation suitable for point set filtering and dynamic point resampling. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our unified approach for both surface reconstruction and geometry modeling such as surface completion.

Activity recognition is a core aspect of ubiquitous computing applications. In order to deploy activity recognition systems in the real world, we need simple sensing systems with lightweight computational modules to accurately analyze sensed data. In this paper, we propose a simple method to recognize human activities using simple object information involved in activities. We apply activity theory for representing complex human activities and propose a penalized naive Bayes classifier for performing activity recognition. Our results show that our method reduces computation up to an order of magnitude in both learning and inference without penalizing accuracy, when compared to hidden Markov models and conditional random fields.

Many image segmentation solutions are problem-based. Medical images have very similar grey level and texture among the interested objects. Therefore, medical image segmentation requires improvements although there have been researches done since the last few decades. We design a self-learning framework to extract several objects of interest simultaneously from Computed Tomography (CT) images. Our segmentation method has a learning phase that is based on reinforcement learning (RL) system. Each RL agent works on a particular sub-image of an input image to find a suitable value for each object in it. The RL system is define by state, action and reward. We defined some actions for each state in the sub-image. A reward function computes reward for each action of the RL agent. Finally, the valuable information, from discovering all states of the interest objects, will be stored in a Q-matrix and the final result can be applied in segmentation of similar images. The experimental results for cranial CT images demonstrated segmentation accuracy above 95%.

In wireless ad hoc networks cooperation among nodes cannot always be assumed since nodes with limited resources and different owners are capable of making independent decisions. Cooperation problems in topology control and packet forwarding tasks have been mostly studied separately but these two tasks are not independent. Considering a joint cooperation problem by taking into account dependencies between tasks will result in more reliable and efficient networks. In this paper topology control definition is extended to cover cooperation problem in both packet forwarding and topology control in a single problem. In this definition nodes have to adjust their transmission power and decide on their relay role. This paper models the interactions of nodes as a potential game with two-dimensional utility function. The presented model, named TCFORCE (Topology Control packet FORwarding Cooperation Enforcement), preserves the network connectivity and reduces the energy consumption by providing cooperative paths between all pairs of nodes in the network.

This paper presents a construction for a class of 1-resilient functions with optimal algebraic immunity on an even number of variables. The construction is based on the concatenation of two balanced functions in associative classes. For some n, a part of 1-resilient functions with maximum algebraic immunity constructed in the paper can achieve almost optimal nonlinearity. Apart from their high nonlinearity, the functions reach Siegenthaler's upper bound of algebraic degree. Also a class of 1-resilient functions on any number n > 2 of variables with at least sub-optimal algebraic immunity is provided.

The theory of finite pseudo-random binary sequences was built by C. Mauduit and A. Sárközy and later extended to sequences of k symbols (or k-ary sequences). Certain constructions of pseudo-random sequences of k symbols were presented over finite fields in the literature. In this paper, two families of sequences of k symbols are constructed by using the integers modulo pq for distinct odd primes p and q. The upper bounds on the well-distribution measure and the correlation measure of the families sequences are presented in terms of certain character sums over modulo pq residue class rings. And low bounds on the linear complexity profile are also estimated.

Compared with flat routing protocols, clustering is a fundamental performance improvement technique in wireless sensor networks, which can increase network scalability and lifetime. In this paper, we integrate the multi-hop technique with a backoff-based clustering algorithm to organize sensors. By using an adaptive backoff strategy, the algorithm not only realizes load balance among sensor node, but also achieves fairly uniform cluster head distribution across the network. Simulation results also demonstrate our algorithm is more energy-efficient than classical ones. Our algorithm is also easily extended to generate a hierarchy of cluster heads to obtain better network management and energy-efficiency.

Recently, a method known as pipeline stage unification (PSU) has been proposed to alleviate the increasing energy consumption problem in modern microprocessors. PSU achieves a high energy efficiency by employing a changeable pipeline depth and its working scheme is eligible for a fine control method. In this paper, we propose a dynamic method to study fine-grained program interval behaviors based on some easy-to-get runtime processor metrics. Using this method to determine the proper PSU configurations during the program execution, we are able to achieve an averaged 13.5% energydelay-product (EDP) reduction for SPEC CPU2000 integer benchmarks, compared to the baseline processor. This value is only 0.14% larger than the theoretically idealized controlling. Our hardware synthesis result indicates that the proposed method can largely decrease the hardware overhead in both area and delay costs, as compared to a previous program study method which is based on working set signatures.

This paper describes the design for testability (DFT) challenges and techniques of Godson-3 microprocessor, which is a scalable multicore processor based on the scalable mesh of crossbar (SMOC) on-chip network and targets high-end applications. Advanced techniques are adopted to make the DFT design scalable and achieve low-power and low-cost test with limited IO resources. To achieve a scalable and flexible test access, a highly elaborate test access mechanism (TAM) is implemented to support multiple test instructions and test modes. Taking advantage of multiple identical cores embedding in the processor, scan partition and on-chip comparisons are employed to reduce test power and test time. Test compression technique is also utilized to decrease test time. To further reduce test power, clock controlling logics are designed with ability to turn off clocks of non-testing partitions. In addition, scan collars of CACHEs are designed to perform functional test with low-speed ATE for speed-binning purposes, which poses low complexity and has good correlation results.

Even after thorough testing, a few bugs still remain in a program with moderate complexity. These residual bugs are randomly distributed throughout the code. We have noticed that bugs in some parts of a program cause frequent and severe failures compared to those in other parts. Then, it is necessary to take a decision about what to test more and what to test less within the testing budget. It is possible to prioritize the methods and classes of an object-oriented program according to their potential to cause failures. For this, we propose a program metric called influence metric to find the influence of a program element on the source code. First, we represent the source code into an intermediate graph called extended system dependence graph. Then, forward slicing is applied on a node of the graph to get the influence of that node. The influence metric for a method m in a program shows the number of statements of the program which directly or indirectly use the result produced by method m. We compute the influence metric for a class c based on the influence metric of all its methods. As influence metric is computed statically, it does not show the expected behavior of a class at run time. It is already known that faults in highly executed parts tend to more failures. Therefore, we have considered operational profile to find the average execution time of a class in a system. Then, classes are prioritized in the source code based on influence metric and average execution time. The priority of an element indicates the potential of the element to cause failures. Once all program elements have been prioritized, the testing effort can be apportioned so that the elements causing frequent failures will be tested thoroughly. We have conducted experiments for two well-known case studies—Library Management System and Trading Automation System—and successfully identified critical elements in the source code of each case study. We have also conducted experiments to compare our scheme with a related scheme. The experimental studies justify that our approach is more accurate than the existing ones in exposing critical elements at the implementation level.

Software defect detection aims to automatically identify defective software modules for efficient software test in order to improve the quality of a software system. Although many machine learning methods have been successfully applied to the task, most of them fail to consider two practical yet important issues in software defect detection. First, it is rather difficult to collect a large amount of labeled training data for learning a well-performing model; second, in a software system there are usually much fewer defective modules than defect-free modules, so learning would have to be conducted over an imbalanced data set. In this paper, we address these two practical issues simultaneously by proposing a novel semi-supervised learning approach named Rocus. This method exploits the abundant unlabeled examples to improve the detection accuracy, as well as employs under-sampling to tackle the class-imbalance problem in the learning process. Experimental results of real-world software defect detection tasks show that Rocus is effective for software defect detection. Its performance is better than a semi-supervised learning method that ignores the class-imbalance nature of the task and a class-imbalance learning method that does not make effective use of unlabeled data.