A robust and self-reconfigurable design of spherical microphone array for multi-resolution beamforming - Zhiyun Li; Duraiswami, Ramani (Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2005. Proceedings. (ICASSP '05). IEEE International Conference on, 2005)
We describe a robust and self-reconfigurable design of a spherical microphone array for beamforming. Our approach achieves a multi-resolution spherical beamformer with performance that is either optimal in the approximation of desired beampattern or is optimal in the directivity achieved, both robustly. Our implementation converges to the optimal performance quickly while exactly satisfying the specified frequency response and robustness constraint in each iteration step without accumulated round-off errors. The advantage of this design lies in its robustness and self-reconfiguration in microphone array reorganization, such as microphone failure, which is highly desirable in online maintenance and anti-terrorism. Design examples and simulation results are presented.
Keywords: 3D; anti-terrorism; array; array; arrays; audio; beam; beamforming; beampattern; directivity; Frequency; microphone; multiresolution; omnidirectional; optimisation; optimization; processing; reorganization; response; robustness; sampling; self-reconfigurable; signal; soundfield; spherical; steering

ROMER: resilient opportunistic mesh routing for wireless mesh networks - Yuan,Y.; Yang,H.; Wong,S. H.Y; Lu,S.; Arbaugh, William A. (Proc. of IEEE WiMesh, 2005)

Search-based structured prediction as classification - Daumé, Hal; Langford,J.; Marcu,D. (NIPS Workshop on Advances in Structured Learning for Text and Speech Processing, Whistler, Canada, 2005)

A sentence-trimming approach to multi-document summarization - Zajic, David; Dorr, Bonnie J; Jimmy Lin; Monz,C.; Schwartz,R. (Proceedings of DUC2005, 2005)
We implemented an initial applicationof a sentence-trimming approach (Trim- mer) to the problem of multi-document summarization in the MSE2005 and DUC2005 tasks. Sentence trimming was incorporated into a feature-based summarization system, called Multi- Document Trimmer (MDT), by us- ing sentence trimming as both a pre- processing stage and a feature for sen- tence ranking. We demonstrate that we were able to port Trimmer easily to this new problem. Although the direct im- pact of sentence trimming was minimal compared to other features used in the system, the interaction of the other fea- tures resulted in trimmed sentences ac- counting for nearly half of the selected summary sentences.

Severity and Impact of Computer User Frustration: A Comparison of Student and Workplace Users (2002) - Lazar,Jonathan; Jones,Adam; Hackley,Mary; Shneiderman, Ben (Institute for Systems Research Technical Reports, 2005)
User frustration with information and computing technology is a pervasive and persistent problem. When computers crash, network congestion causes delays, and poor user interfaces trigger confusion there are dramatic consequences for individuals, organizations, and society. These frustrations not only cause personal dissatisfaction and loss of self-efficacy, but may disrupt workplaces, slow learning, and reduce participation in local and national communities. Our study of 107 student computer users and 50 workplace computer users shows high levels of frustration and loss of 1/3 to 1/2 of time spent. This paper reports on the incident-specific and user-specific causes of frustration, and they raise frustration severity. It examines the frustration impacts on the daily interactions of the users. The time lost and time to fix problem, and importance of task, strongly correlate with frustration levels for both student and workplace users. Differences between students and workplace users are discussed in the paper.
Keywords: Technical Report

Simulation and Secure Computation-Handling Expected Polynomial-Time Strategies in Simulation-Based Security Proofs - Katz, Jonathan; Lindell,Y. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005)

Social and Psychological Influences on Computer User Frustration (Newhagen book chapter, 2002) - Bessiere,Katie; Ceaparu,Irina; Lazar,Jonathan; Robinson,John; Shneiderman, Ben (Institute for Systems Research Technical Reports, 2005)
As computer usage has proliferated, so has user frustration. Even devoted and knowledgeable users encounter annoying delays, incomprehensible messages, incompatible files, and indecipherable menus. The frustration generated by these problems can be personally disturbing and socially disruptive. Psychological and social perspectives on frustration may clarify the relationships among variables such as personality types, cultural factors, goal attainment, workplace anger, and computer anxiety. These perspectives may also help designers, managers, and users understand the range of responses to frustration, which could lead to effective interventions such as redesign of software, improved training, better online help, user discipline, and even resetting of national research priorities.
Keywords: Technical Report

Software process improvement in small organizations: a case study - Dangle,K.C.; Larsen,P.; Shaw,M.; Zelkowitz, Marvin V (Software, IEEE, 2005)
The Capability Maturity Model for software has become a major force in software development process improvement. We looked at the role of process improvement in the context of a small organization. Although the Capability Maturity Model integration is replacing the CMM, we focused on the older CMM. We had to look at more than which CMM key process areas apply to small businesses. Our overall goal was to institute good software development practices, we used the language of the CMM to gain the management's cooperation. Applying these practices is essential to managing growth, yet undertaking this effort without prior experience could impede a small company's innovative nature. This case study's purpose was to investigate the success factors of a software process improvement effort for a small software development organization.
Keywords: area; aspects; capability; CMM; development; improvement; key; management; Maturity; model; organisational; organization; process; small; software

Structural metadata and parsing speech - Harper,M.; Dorr, Bonnie J; Hale,J.; Roark,B.; Shafran,I.; Lease,M.; Liu,Y.; Snover,M.; Yung,L.; Krasnyanskaya,A.; others (JHU Language Engineering Workshop, 2005)

Stub Domain DDoS Detection - Kommareddy,C.; Levin,D.; Bhattacharjee, Bobby; La,R.J.; Shayman,M. (Technical Report of the Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, 2005)

System for capturing of highorder spatial audio using spherical microphone array and binaural head-tracked playback over headphones with head related transfer function cues - Duraiswami, Ramani; Zotkin,Dmitry N; Li,Z.; Grassi,E.; Gumerov, Nail A.; Davis, Larry S. (Proc. 119th convention AES, 2005)

Temperature-Driven Campylobacter Seasonality in England and Wales - Louis,Valérie R.; Gillespie,Iain A.; O'Brien,Sarah J.; Russek-Cohen,Estelle; Pearson,Andrew D.; Rita R Colwell (Applied and Environmental MicrobiologyAppl. Environ. Microbiol., 2005)
Campylobacter incidence in England and Wales between 1990 and 1999 was examined in conjunction with weather conditions. Over the 10-year interval, the average annual rate was determined to be 78.4 ± 15.0 cases per 100,000, with an upward trend. Rates were higher in males than in females, regardless of age, and highest in children less than 5 years old. Major regional differences were detected, with the highest rates in Wales and the southwest and the lowest in the southeast. The disease displayed a seasonal pattern, and increased campylobacter rates were found to be correlated with temperature. The most marked seasonal effect was observed for children under the age of 5. The seasonal pattern of campylobacter infections indicated a linkage with environmental factors rather than food sources. Therefore, public health interventions should not be restricted to food-borne approaches, and the epidemiology of the seasonal peak in human campylobacter infections may best be understood through studies in young children.

Toward resilient security in wireless sensor networks - Yang,H.; Ye,F.; Yuan,Y.; Lu,S.; Arbaugh, William A. (Proceedings of the 6th ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking and computing, 2005)

Umd/bbn at mse2005 - Zajic, David; Dorr, Bonnie J; Jimmy Lin; Schwartz,R. (Proceedings of the MSE2005 track of the Association for Computational Linguistics Workshop on Intrinsic and Extrinsic Evaluation Meatures for MT and/or Summarization, Ann Arbor, MI, 2005)
We implemented an initial applicationof a sentence-trimming approach (Trim- mer) to the problem of multi-document summarization in the MSE2005 task. Sentence trimming was incorporated into a feature-based summarization sys- tem, called Multi-Document Trimmer (MDT), by using sentence trimming as both a pre-processing stage and a fea- ture for sentence ranking. We demon- strate that we were able to port Trimmer easily to this new problem, although the impact of sentence trimming was min- imal compared to other features used in the system. The performance of our sys- tem in the official MSE2005 task was around the middle of the pack (16 out of 27). After some minor bug fixes and a simple correction (dateline removal) we obtained an improvement on a post-hoc run on the test data.

Universally composable password-based key exchange - Canetti,R.; Halevi,S.; Katz, Jonathan; Lindell,Y.; MacKenzie,P. (Advances in Cryptology–Eurocrypt 2005, 2005)
We propose and realize a definition of security for password-based key exchange within the framework of universally composable (UC) security, thus providing security guarantees under arbitrary composition with other protocols. In addition, our definition captures some aspects of the problem that were not adequately addressed by most prior notions. For instance, it does not assume any underlying probability distribution on passwords, nor does it assume independence between passwords chosen by different parties. We also formulate a definition of password-based secure channels, and show that such a definition is achievable given password-based key exchange.Our protocol realizing the new definition of password-based key exchange is in the common reference string model and relies on standard number-theoretic assumptions. The components of our protocol can be instantiated to give a relatively efficient solution which is conceivably usable in practice. We also show that it is impossible to satisfy our definition in the “plain” model (e.g., without a common reference string).

Unwarping Images of Curved Documents Using Global Shape Optimization - Liang,Jian; DeMenthon,Daniel; David Doermann (Proc. Fist International Workshop on Camera-based Document Analysis and Recognition, 2005)

User Frustration with Technology in the Workplace (2004) - Lazar,Jonathan; Jones,Adam; Bessiere,Katie; Ceaparu,Irina; Shneiderman, Ben (Institute for Systems Research Technical Reports, 2005)
When hard to use computers cause users to become frustrated, it can affect workplace productivity, user mood, and interactions with other co-workers. Previous research has examined the frustration that graduate students and their families face in using computers. To learn more about the causes and effects of user frustration with computers in the workplace, we collected modified time diaries from 50 workplace users, who spent an average of 5.1 hours on the computer. In this experiment, users reported wasting on average, 42-43% of their time on the computer due to frustrating experiences. The causes of the frustrating experiences, the time lost due to the frustrating experiences, and the effects of the frustrating experiences on the mood of the users are discussed in this paper. Implications for designers, managers, users, information technology staff, and policymakers are discussed.
Keywords: Technical Report

Using Computer Vision to Detect Web Browser Display Errors - Liu,Xu; David Doermann (3rd Web Document Analysis Workshop (on ICDAR 2005), 2005)
As the functionality and complexity of the WWW continues to grow so does the need for WWW quality assurance and testing. Although there have been numerous approaches to automated Web testing, existing techniques analyze primarily textual information, and the final judgment on correctness of layout is via human observation. The motivation of this paper is to employ computer vision techniques to detect Web display errors. To do this, we analyze images of the rendered pages rather than the HTML to discover errors. Our approach includes page segmentation, dynamic matching and outlier identification. We show that the approach successfully detects layout errors in the Opera browser on Microsoft Websites, while minimizing false alarms.

Using the inner-distance for classification of articulated shapes - Ling,H.; Jacobs, David W. (Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2005. CVPR 2005. IEEE Computer Society Conference on, 2005)
We propose using the inner-distance between landmark points to build shape descriptors. The inner-distance is defined as the length of the shortest path between landmark points within the shape silhouette. We show that the inner-distance is articulation insensitive and more effective at capturing complex shapes with part structures than Euclidean distance. To demonstrate this idea, it is used to build a new shape descriptor based on shape contexts. After that, we design a dynamic programming based method for shape matching and comparison. We have tested our approach on a variety of shape databases including an articulated shape dataset, MPEG7 CE-Shape-1, Kimia silhouettes, a Swedish leaf database and a human motion silhouette dataset. In all the experiments, our method demonstrates effective performance compared with other algorithms.
Keywords: articulated; CE-Shape-1; classification; database; databases; dataset; descriptor; dynamic; human; image; inner-distance; Kimia; landmark; leaf; matching; MOTION; MPEG7; points; programming; SHAPE; silhouette; silhouette; Swedish; visual

Vision geometry XIII(San Jose CA, 18-19 January 2005) - Latecki,L.J.; Mount, Dave; Wu,A. Y (SPIE proceedings series, 2005)

The web in theoretical linguistics research: Two case studies using the Linguist’s Search Engine - Resnik, Philip; Elkiss,A.; Lau,E.; Taylor,H. (31st Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2005)

Abstracting workflows: unifying bioinformatics task conceptualization and specification through Semantic Web services - Hashmi,N.; Lee,S.; Cummings, Michael P. (W3C Workshop on Semantic Web for Life Sciences, 2004)

Advances in schistosome genomics - El‐Sayed, Najib M.; Bartholomeu,Daniella; Ivens,Alasdair; Johnston,David A.; LoVerde,Philip T. (Trends in Parasitology, 2004)
In Spring 2004, the first draft of the 270 Mb genome of Schistosoma mansoni will be released. This sequence is based on the assembly and annotation of a >7.5-fold coverage, shotgun sequencing project. The key stages involved in the international collaborative efforts that have led to the generation of these sequencing data for the parasite S. mansoni are discussed here.

Capture and recreation of higher order 3d sound fields via reciprocity - Li,Z.; Duraiswami, Ramani; Gumerov, Nail A. (International Conference on Audio Display, 2004)
We propose a unified and simple approach for capturing andrecreating 3D sound fields by exploring the reciprocity prin- ciple that is satisfied between the two processes. Our ap- proach makes the system easy to build, and practical. Us- ing this approach, we can capture the 3D sound field by a spherical microphone array and recreate it using a spheri- cal loudspeaker array, and ensure that the recreated sound field matches the recorded field up to a high order of spheri- cal harmonics. A design example and simulation results are presented. For some regular or semi-regular microphone layouts, we design an efficient parallel implementation of the multi-directional spherical beamformer by using the ro- tational symmetries of the beampattern and of the spherical microphone array. This can be implemented in either soft- ware or hardware. A simple design example is presented to demonstrate the idea. It can be easily adapted for other regular or semi-regular layouts of microphones.

The case for a multi-hop wireless local area network - Lee,Seungjoon; Banerjee,S.; Bhattacharjee, Bobby (INFOCOM 2004. Twenty-third AnnualJoint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, 2004)
We propose a multi-hop wireless LAN architecture and demonstrate its benefits to wireless clients. For this architecture, we define implementation paths that allow interoperation with existing wireless LANs which can lead to an incremental deployment of this system. We quantify the performance benefits of the proposed schemes through measurements in realistic wireless LAN environments. We also examine the performance of such multi-hop wireless LANs through detailed simulation studies. Our results show that these multi-hop extensions can significantly improve the wireless access experience (in terms of data throughput, latency, etc.) for clients who enable such mechanisms. More interestingly, when multi-hop extensions are enabled by some of the clients, it also positively impacts the performance at other clients that are completely unaware of these extensions.
Keywords: access; access; area; benefits; client-server; clients; interoperation; LAN; local; multihop; network; networks; performance; radio; systems; wireless

CHARACTERIZATION OF Ath17, A QUANTITATIVE TRAIT LOCUS FOR ATHEROSCLEROSIS SUSCEPTIBILITY BETWEEN C57BL/6J AND 129S1/SvImJ; SINGLE-NUCLEOTIDE POLYMORPHISMS HAVE IMPORTANT IMPLICATIONS ON IDENTIFYING ATHEROSCLEROSIS MODIFIER GENES - Ishimori,Naoki; Walsh,Kenneth; Zheng,Xiangqun; Lu,Fu; Hannenhalli, Sridhar; Nusskern,Deborah; Mural,Richard; Paigen,Beverly (Cardiovascular Pathology, 2004)
Although identifying quantitative trait loci (QTL) for atherosclerosis susceptibility in experimental murine models has helped us better understand the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis, identifying the genes underlying these QTL has been a slow and difficult process. We are currently in the process of identifying the gene that underlies Ath17, an atherosclerosis-susceptibility QTL we discovered in a (C57BL/6J×129S1/SvImJ)F2 intercross. Ath17 maps to a 6 cM interval region on chromosome 10 (D10Mit31, LOD score 6.6) and contains 46 annotated and 133 predicted genes. We searched the Celera Discovery System database for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) between C57BL/6J (B6) and 129S1/SvImJ in the Ath17 region and found defined blocks of high and low diversity and one polymorphic region of over 4 Mb surrounded by nonpolymorphic regions. Four of the genes, including the annotated Desrt, in the polymorphic region contained mis-sense mutations. The Desrt coding region contained four mis-sense mutations: B6 lysine to 129 glutamic acid at aa382, B6 asparagine to 129 serine at aa388, B6 threonine to 129 alanine at aa836, and B6 glycine to 129 serine at aa964. In addition, intron 5 of Desrt contained a SNP which co-localized with a putative transcription factor binding site. Desrt is a DNA binding protein, widely expressed in adult tissues, and likely plays a role in cell proliferation, differentiation, and development, making Dsert a strong candidate gene for Ath17. The murine SNP database dramatically reduced the percentage of the murine genome we had to search to find viable candidate genes for Ath17.

Collusion resistant multimedia fingerprinting: A unified framework - Wu,M.; Trappe,W.; Wang,Z.J.; Liu,K. J.R (Electronic Imaging Symposium: Security, Steganography, and Watermarking of Multimedia Contents VI, San Jose, CA, Proc. of SPIE, 2004)
Digital fingerprints are unique labels inserted in different copies of the same content before distribution. Eachdigital fingerprint is assigned to an intended recipient, and can be used to trace the culprits who use their content for unintended purposes. Attacks mounted by multiple users, known as collusion attacks, provide a cost-effective method for attenuating the identifying fingerprint from each colluder, thus collusion poses a real challenge to protect the digital media data and enforce usage policies. This paper examines a few major design methodologies for collusion-resistant fingerprinting of multimedia, and presents a unified framework that helps highlight the common issues and the uniqueness of different fingerprinting techniques.

Collusion-resistant fingerprinting for multimedia - M. Wu; Trappe,W.; Wang,Z.J.; Liu,K. J.R (Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE, 2004)
Digital fingerprinting is a technology for enforcing digital rights policies whereby unique labels, known as digital fingerprints, are inserted into content prior to distribution. For multimedia content, fingerprints can be embedded using conventional watermarking techniques that are typically concerned with robustness against a variety of attacks mounted by an individual. These attacks, known as multiuser collusion attacks, provide a cost-effective method for attenuating each of the colluder's fingerprints and poses a real threat to protecting media data and enforcing usage policies. In this article, we review some major design methodologies for collusion-resistant fingerprinting of multimedia and highlight common and unique issues of different fingerprinting techniques. It also provides detailed discussions on the two major classes of fingerprinting strategies, namely, orthogonal fingerprinting and correlated fingerprinting.
Keywords: attacks; colluder; collusion; collusion-resistant; content; correlated; data; digital; fingerprinting; identification; multimedia; multiuser; of; orthogonal; policies; rights; Security; systems; techniques; tracing; watermarking; watermarking

Constant-time navigation in four-dimensional nested simplicial meshes - Lee,M.; De Floriani, Leila; Samet, Hanan (Shape Modeling Applications, 2004. Proceedings, 2004)
We consider a recursive decomposition of a four-dimensional hypercube into a hierarchy of nested 4-dimensional simplexes, that we call pentatopes. The paper presents an algorithm for finding the neighbors of a pentatope along its five tetrahedral faces in constant time. To this aim, we develop a labeling technique for nested pentatopes that enables their identification by using location codes. The constant-time behavior is achieved through bit manipulation operations, thus avoiding traversing the simplicial hierarchy via pointer following. We discuss an application of this representation to multi-resolution representations of four-dimensional scalar fields. Extracting adaptive continuous approximations of the scalar field from such a model requires generating conforming meshes, i.e., meshes in which the pentatopes match along their tetrahedral faces. Our neighbor finding algorithm enables computing face-adjacent pentatopes efficiently.
Keywords: 4-dimensional; adaptive; algorithm; approximations; bit; codes; computational; constant-time; continuous; decomposition; face-adjacent; faces; fields; finding; following; four-dimensional; generation; geometry; hierarchy; hypercube; location; manipulation; mesh; meshes; multiresolution; navigation; neighbor; nested; operations; pentatopes; pointer; recursive; representation; scalar; simplexes; simplicial; tetrahedral

Data hiding in binary image for authentication and annotation - M. Wu; Liu,Bede (Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on, 2004)
This paper proposes a new method to embed data in binary images, including scanned text, figures, and signatures. The method manipulates "flippable" pixels to enforce specific block-based relationship in order to embed a significant amount of data without causing noticeable artifacts. Shuffling is applied before embedding to equalize the uneven embedding capacity from region to region. The hidden data can be extracted without using the original image, and can also be accurately extracted after high quality printing and scanning with the help of a few registration marks. The proposed data embedding method can be used to detect unauthorized use of a digitized signature, and annotate or authenticate binary documents. The paper also presents analysis and discussions on robustness and security issues.
Keywords: annotation; authentication; binary; coding; data; digital; digitized; document; EMBEDDING; encapsulation; extraction; feature; hiding; image; image; method; signature; unauthorized; user; watermarking

Data sciences technology for homeland security information management and knowledge discovery - Kolda,T.; Brown,D; Corones,J.; Critchlow,T.; Eliassi-Rad,T.; Getoor, Lise; Hendrickson,B.; Kumar, V.; Lambert,D.; Matarazzo,C. (Report of the DHS Workshop Data Sciences, Jointly Released by Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Alexandria, Va, 2004)

Determining Causes and Severity of End-User Frustration - Ceaparu,Irina; Lazar,Jonathan; Bessiere,Katie; Robinson,John; Shneiderman, Ben (International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 2004)
Although computers are beneficial to individuals and society, frequently users encounter frustrating experiences when using computers. This study represents an attempt to measure, in 111 participants, the frequency, the cause, and the level of severity of frustrating experiences. The data show that frustrating experiences happen on a frequent basis. The applications in which the frustrating experiences happened most frequently were Web browsing, e-mail, and word processing. The most-cited causes of frustrating experiences were error messages, dropped network connections, long download times, and hard-to-find features. The time lost due to frustrating experiences ranged from 47% to 53% of time spent on a computer, depending on the location and study method. After extreme cases were discarded, the time lost was still above 38%. These disturbing results should be a basis for future study.Although computers are beneficial to individuals and society, frequently users encounter frustrating experiences when using computers. This study represents an attempt to measure, in 111 participants, the frequency, the cause, and the level of severity of frustrating experiences. The data show that frustrating experiences happen on a frequent basis. The applications in which the frustrating experiences happened most frequently were Web browsing, e-mail, and word processing. The most-cited causes of frustrating experiences were error messages, dropped network connections, long download times, and hard-to-find features. The time lost due to frustrating experiences ranged from 47% to 53% of time spent on a computer, depending on the location and study method. After extreme cases were discarded, the time lost was still above 38%. These disturbing results should be a basis for future study.

Distortion management of real-time MPEG-4 video over downlink multicode CDMA networks - Su,Guan-Ming; Han,Zhu; Kwasinski,A.; M. Wu; Liu,K. J.R; Farvardin,N. (Communications, 2004 IEEE International Conference on, 2004)
In this paper, a protocol is designed to manage source rate/channel coding rate adaptation, code allocation, and power control to transmit real-time MPEG-4 FGS video over downlink multicode CDMA networks. We develop a fast adaptive scheme of distortion management to reduce the overall distortion received by all users subject, to the limited number of codes and maximal transmitted power. Compared with a modified greedy method in literature, our proposed algorithm can reduce the overall system's distortion by at least 45%.
Keywords: access; adaptation; allocation; CDMA; channel; code; coding; coding; combined; communication; compression; control; data; distortion; division; downlink; links; management; MPEG-4; multicode; multiple; networks; power; radio; rate; real-time; resource; source; source-channel; video; video; visual

Dynamic distortion control for 3-D embedded wavelet video over multiuser OFDM networks - Su,Guan-Ming; Han,Zhu; M. Wu; Liu,K. J.R (Global Telecommunications Conference, 2004. GLOBECOM '04. IEEE, 2004)
In this paper, we propose a system to transmit multiple 3D embedded wavelet video programs over downlink multiuser OFDM. We consider the fairness among users and formulate the problem as minimizing the users' maximal distortion subject to power, rate, and subcarrier constraints. By exploring frequency, time, and multiuser diversity in OFDM and flexibility of the 3D embedded wavelet video codec, the proposed algorithm can achieve fair video qualities among all users. Compared to a scheme similar to the current multiuser OFDM standard (IEEE 802.11a), the proposed scheme outperforms it by 1-5 dB on the worst received PSNR among all users and has much smaller PSNR deviation.
Keywords: 3D; 802.11a; channels; codec; codecs; communication; control; deviation; distortion; diversity; diversity; downlink; dynamic; embedded; fairness; Frequency; IEEE; LAN; maximal; minimax; minimization; modulation; multimedia; multiuser; OFDM; OFDM; PSNR; rate; reception; streaming; systems; techniques; theory; TIME; transforms; video; video; wavelet; wireless

Dynamic join-exit amortization and scheduling for time-efficient group key agreement - Mao,Yinian; Sun,Yan; M. Wu; Liu,K. J.R (INFOCOM 2004. Twenty-third AnnualJoint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, 2004)
We propose a time-efficient contributory key agreement framework for secure communications in dynamic groups. The proposed scheme employs a special join-tree/exit-tree topology in the logical key tree and effectively exploits the efficiency of amortized operations. We derive the optimal parameters and design an activation algorithm for the join and exit trees. We also show that the asymptotic average time cost per user join and leave event is theta;(log (log n)), where n is the group size. Our experiment results on both simulated user activities and the real MBone data have shown that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing tree-based schemes.
Keywords: agreement; asymptotic; average; communication; complexity; computational; cost; cryptography; dynamic; group; join-tree/exit-tree; key; logical; Multicast; network; secure; security; special; Telecommunication; TIME; time-efficient; topology; tree

Efficient techniques to explore and rank paths in life science data sources - Lacroix,Z.; Raschid, Louiqa; Vidal,M. E (Data Integration in the Life Sciences, 2004)

Empirical-based estimation of the effect on software dependability of a technique for architecture conformance verification - Asgari, S.; Basili, Victor R.; Costa,P.; Donzelli,P.; Hochstein, L.; Lindvall,M.; Rus,I.; Shull, F.; Tvedt,R.; Zelkowitz, Marvin V (Proceedings of the ICSE 2004 Workshop on Architecting Dependable Systems, Edinburgh, UK, 2004)
The High Dependability Computing Program (HDCP)project is a NASA initiative for increasing dependability of software-based systems. It researches achieving high dependability by introducing new technologies. We focus on the evaluation of the effectiveness of technologies with respect to dependability. We employ empirical evaluation methods along with evaluation testbeds. In this paper, our technology evaluation approach is described. A testbed representative of air traffic control applications is used. An experiment to evaluate a technology to for identification of architectural violations is presented.

Exploiting multiple paths to express scientific queries - Lacroix,Z.; Moths,T.; Parekh,K.; Raschid, Louiqa; Vidal,M. -E (16th International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management, 2004. Proceedings, 2004)
The purpose of this demonstration is to present the main features of the BioNavigation system. Scientific data collection needed in various stages of scientific discovery is typically performed manually. For each scientific object of interest (e.g., a gene, a sequence), scientists query a succession of Web resources following links between retrieved entries. Each of the steps provides part of the intended characterization of the scientific object. This process is sometimes partially supported by hard-coded scripts or complex queries that will be evaluated by a mediation-based data integration system or against a data warehouse. These approaches fail in guiding the scientists during the collection process. In contrast, the BioNavigation approach presented in the paper provides the scientists with information on the available alternative resources, their provenance, and the costs of data collection. The BioNavigation system enhances a mediation-based integration system and provides scientists with support for the following: to ask queries at a high conceptual level; to visualize the multiple alternative resources that may be exploited to execute their data collection queries; to choose the final execution path to evaluate their queries.
Keywords: access protocols; biology computing; BioNavigation system; complex queries; Costs; Data analysis; data handling; Data visualization; data warehouse; Data warehouses; Databases; diseases; distributed databases; hard-coded scripts; information resources; Information retrieval; mediation-based data integration system; multiple paths; query evaluation; Query processing; scientific data collection; scientific discovery; scientific information; scientific information systems; scientific object of interest; scientific queries; sequences; Web resources

Exploring the tradeoff between performance and data freshness in database-driven web servers - Labrinidis,A.; Roussopoulos, Nick (The VLDB Journal, 2004)

Fine-grained lexical semantic representations and compositionally-derived events in Mandarin Chinese - Jimmy Lin (Proceedings of the HLT-NAACL Workshop on Computational Lexical Semantics, 2004)
Current lexical semantic representations for natural language applications view verbs as simple predicates over their arguments. These structures are too coarse-grained to capture many important generalizations about verbal argument structure. In this paper, I specifically defend the following two claims: verbs have rich internal structure expressible in terms of finer-grained primitives of meaning, and at least for some languages, verbal meaning is compositionally derived from these primitive elements. I primarily present evidence from Mandarin Chinese, whose verbal system is very different from that of English. Many empirical facts about the typology of verbs in Mandarin cannot be captured by a "flat" lexical semantic representation. These theoretical results hold important practical consequences for natural language processing applications.

Flexible layout and optimal cancellation of the orthonormality error for spherical microphone arrays - Zhiyun Li; Duraiswami, Ramani; Grassi,E.; Davis, Larry S. (Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2004. Proceedings. (ICASSP '04). IEEE International Conference on, 2004)
This paper describes an approach to achieving a flexible layout of microphones on the surface of a spherical microphone array for beamforming. Our approach achieves orthonormality of spherical harmonics to higher order for relatively distributed layouts. This gives great flexibility in microphone layout on the spherical surface. One direct advantage is that it makes it much easier to build a real world system, such as those with cable outlets and a mounting base, with minimal effects on the performance. Simulation results are presented.
Keywords: array; audio; base; beamforming; cable; cancellation; correction; error; flexible; harmonics; higher; layout; microphone; microphones; mounting; optimization; order; orthonormality; outlets; processing; signal; spherical; surface

Geometric algorithms for automated design of rotary-platen multi-shot molds - Li,Xuejun; Gupta, Satyandra K. (Computer-Aided Design, 2004)
This paper describes algorithms for automated design of rotary-platen type of multi-shot molds for manufacturing multi-material objects. The approach behind our algorithms works in the following manner. First, we classify the given multi-material object into several basic types based on the relationships among different components in the object. For every basic type, we find a molding sequence based on the precedence constraints resulting due to accessibility and disassembly requirements. Then, starting from the last mold stage, we generate the mold pieces for every mold stage. We expect that algorithms described in this paper will provide the necessary foundations for automating the design of rotary-platen molds.
Keywords: geometric reasoning; mold design; Multi-shot molds

A global-state-triggered fault injector for distributed system evaluation - Chandra,Ramesh; Lefever,R.M.; Joshi,K.R.; Michel Cukier; Sanders,W. H. (Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Transactions on, 2004)
Validation of the dependability of distributed systems via fault injection is gaining importance because distributed systems are being increasingly used in environments with high dependability requirements. The fact that distributed systems can fail in subtle ways that depend on the state of multiple parts of the system suggests that a global-state-based fault injection mechanism should be used to validate them. However, global-state-based fault injection is challenging since it is very difficult in practice to maintain the global state of a distributed system at runtime with minimal intrusion into the system execution. We present Loki, a global-state-based fault injector, which has been designed with the goals of low intrusion, high precision, and high flexibility. Loki achieves these goals by utilizing the ideas of partial view of global state, optimistic synchronization, and offline analysis. In Loki, faults are injected based on a partial, view of the global state of the system, and a post-runtime analysis is performed to place events and injections into a single global timeline and to discard experiments with incorrect fault injections. Finally, the experiments with correct fault injections are used to estimate user-specified performance and dependability measures. A flexible measure language has been designed that facilitates the specification of a wide range of measures.
Keywords: distributed processing; distributed system evaluation; fault tolerant computing; global-state-based fault injection mechanism; Loki; offline clock synchronization; performance evaluation; post-runtime analysis; Synchronisation; system recovery; user-specified performance

Group-oriented fingerprinting for multimedia forensics - Wang,Z. Jane; M. Wu; Trappe,Wade; Liu,K. J.R (EURASIP J. Appl. Signal Process., 2004)
Digital fingerprinting of multimedia data involves embedding information in the content signal and offers protection to the digital rights of the content by allowing illegitimate usage of the content to be identified by authorized parties. One potential threat to fingerprinting is collusion, whereby a group of adversaries combine their individual copies in an attempt to remove the underlying fingerprints. Former studies indicate that collusion attacks based on a few dozen independent copies can confound a fingerprinting system that employs orthogonal modulation. However, in practice an adversary is more likely to collude with some users than with other users due to geographic or social circumstances. To take advantage of prior knowledge of the collusion pattern, we propose a two-tier group-oriented fingerprinting scheme where users likely to collude with each other are assigned correlated fingerprints. Additionally, we extend our construction to represent the natural social and geographic hierarchical relationships between users by developing a more flexible tree-structure-based fingerprinting system. We also propose a multistage colluder identification scheme by taking advantage of the hierarchial nature of the fingerprints. We evaluate the performance of the proposed fingerprinting scheme by studying the collusion resistance of a fingerprinting system employing Gaussian-distributed fingerprints. Our results show that the group-oriented fingerprinting system provides the superior collusion resistance over a system employing orthogonal modulation when knowledge of the potential collusion pattern is available.
Keywords: collusion resistance; group-oriented fingerprinting; multimedia fingerprinting; multimedia forensics; multistage colluder identification

iCLEF 2003 at Maryland: Translation selection and document selection - Dorr, Bonnie J; He,D.; Luo,J.; Oard, Douglas; Schwartz,R.; Wang,J.; Zajic, David (Comparative Evaluation of Multilingual Information Access Systems, 2004)

iCLEF 2003 at Maryland: Translation Selection and Document Selection - Dorr, Bonnie J; He,Daqing; Luo,Jun; Oard, Douglas; Schwartz,Richard; Wang,Jianqiang; Zajic, David (Comparative Evaluation of Multilingual Information Access SystemsComparative Evaluation of Multilingual Information Access Systems, 2004)
Maryland performed two sets of experiments for the 2003 Cross-Language Evaluation Forum’s interactive track, one focused on interactive selection of appropriate translations for query terms, the second focused on interactive selection of relevant documents. Translation selection was supported using possible synonyms discovered through back translation and two techniques for generating KeyWord In Context (KWIC) examples of usage. The results indicate that searchers typically achieved a similar search effectiveness using fewer query iterations when interactive translation selection was available. For document selection, a complete extract of the first 40 words of each news story was compared to a compressed extract generated using an automated parse-and-trim approach that approximates one way in which people can produce headlines. The results indicate that compressed “headlines” result in faster assessment, but with a 20% relative reduction in the F α = 0.8 search effectiveness measure.

iCLEF 2004 at Maryland: Summarization design for interactive cross-language question answering - He,D.; Wang,J.; Luo,J.; Oard, Douglas (Proceeding of Cross Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF2004), 2004)

Implementation of the regularized structured total least squares algorithms for blind image deblurring - Mastronardi,N.; Lemmerling,P.; Kalsi,A.; O’Leary,D. P; Huffel,S. Van (Linear Algebra and its Applications, 2004)
The structured total least squares (STLS) problem has been introduced to handle problems involving structured matrices corrupted by noise. Often the problem is ill-posed. Recently, regularization has been proposed in the STLS framework to solve ill-posed blind deconvolution problems encountered in image deblurring when both the image and the blurring function have uncertainty. The kernel of the regularized STLS (RSTLS) problem is a least squares problem involving Block–Toeplitz–Toeplitz–Block matrices.In this paper an algorithm is described to solve this problem, based on a particular implementation of the generalized Schur Algorithm (GSA). It is shown that this new implementation improves the computational efficiency of the straightforward implementation of GSA from O(N2.5) to O(N2), where N is the number of pixels in the image.
Keywords: Block Toeplitz matrix; Displacement rank; Generalized Schur algorithm; Image deblurring; Structured total least squares; Tikhonov regularization

Improved Multiuser Detectors Employing Genetic Algorithms in a Space-Time Block Coded System, Yinggang Du and Kam Tai Chan - Self-Similarity,G.R.U.I.; BenAbdelkader,C.; Cutler,R.G.; Davis, Larry S.; Local,F.R.U.; Global Features,J.H.; Yuen, P.C.; Lai,JH; Li,C. (Signal, 2004)

Interactive cross-language document selection - Oard, Douglas; Gonzalo,J.; Sanderson,M.; López-Ostenero,F.; Wang,J. (information retrieval, 2004)

Interlingual Annotation for MT Development - Reeder,Florence; Dorr, Bonnie J; Farwell,David; Habash,Nizar; Helmreich,Stephen; Hovy,Eduard; Levin,Lori; Mitamura,Teruko; Miller,Keith; Rambow,Owen; Siddharthan,Advaith (Machine Translation: From Real Users to ResearchMachine Translation: From Real Users to Research, 2004)
MT systems that use only superficial representations, including the current generation of statistical MT systems, have been successful and useful. However, they will experience a plateau in quality, much like other “silver bullet” approaches to MT. We pursue work on the development of interlingual representations for use in symbolic or hybrid MT systems. In this paper, we describe the creation of an interlingua and the development of a corpus of semantically annotated text, to be validated in six languages and evaluated in several ways. We have established a distributed, well-functioning research methodology, designed a preliminary interlingua notation, created annotation manuals and tools, developed a test collection in six languages with associated English translations, annotated some 150 translations, and designed and applied various annotation metrics. We describe the data sets being annotated and the interlingual (IL) representation language which uses two ontologies and a systematic theta-role list. We present the annotation tools built and outline the annotation process. Following this, we describe our evaluation methodology and conclude with a summary of issues that have arisen.

Interlingual annotation of multilingual text corpora - Farwell,D.; Helmreich,S.; Dorr, Bonnie J; Habash,N.; Reeder,F.; Miller,K.; Levin,L.; Mitamura,T.; Hovy,E.; Rambow,O.; others (Proceedings of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics Workshop on Frontiers in Corpus Annotation, 2004)
This paper describes a multi-site project toannotate six sizable bilingual parallel corpora for interlingual content. After presenting the background and objectives of the effort, we describe the data set that is being annotated, the interlingua representation language used, an interface environment that supports the an- notation task and the annotation process itself. We will then present a preliminary version of our evaluation methodology and conclude with a summary of the current status of the project along with a number of issues which have arisen.

Light Collages: Lighting Design for Effective Visualization - Lee,Chang Ha; Hao,Xuejun; Varshney, Amitabh (Proceedings of the conference on Visualization '04, 2004)
We introduce Light Collages ¿ a lighting design system for effective visualization based on principles of human perception. Artists and illustrators enhance perception of features with lighting that is locally consistent and globally inconsistent. Inspired by these techniques, we design the placement of light sources to convey a greater sense of realism and better perception of shape with globally inconsistent lighting. Our algorithm segments the objects into local surface patches and uses a number of perceptual heuristics, such as highlights, shadows, and silhouettes, to enhance the perception of shape. We show our results on scientific and sculptured datasets.
Keywords: inconsistent lighting; light placement; lighting design; proximity shadows; scientific illustration; silhouette enhancement

Links and paths through life sciences data sources - Lacroix,Z.; Murthy,H.; Naumann,F.; Raschid, Louiqa (Data Integration in the Life Sciences, 2004)

Machine printed text and handwriting identification in noisy document images - Yefeng Zheng; Huiping Li; David Doermann (Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on, 2004)
In this paper, we address the problem of the identification of text in noisy document images. We are especially focused on segmenting and identifying between handwriting and machine printed text because: 1) Handwriting in a document often indicates corrections, additions, or other supplemental information that should be treated differently from the main content and 2) the segmentation and recognition techniques requested for machine printed and handwritten text are significantly different. A novel aspect of our approach is that we treat noise as a separate class and model noise based on selected features. Trained Fisher classifiers are used to identify machine printed text and handwriting from noise and we further exploit context to refine the classification. A Markov Random Field-based (MRF) approach is used to model the geometrical structure of the printed text, handwriting, and noise to rectify misclassifications. Experimental results show that our approach is robust and can significantly improve page segmentation in noisy document collections.
Keywords: Automated; Reading; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Signal Processing; Computer-Assisted; Information Storage and Retrieval; Models; Computer-Assisted; Pattern Recognition; Computer-Assisted; Stochastic Processes; Subtraction Technique; User-Computer Interface; Writing; Markov random field; fisher classifiers; handwriting identification; machine printed text; noisy document images; page segmentation; recognition techniques; text identification; Markov processes; document image processing; feature extraction; handwriting recognition; Statistical; Numerical Analysis

Mandarin-English Information (MEI): investigating translingual speech retrieval - Meng,Helen M.; Chen,Berlin; Khudanpur,Sanjeev; Levow,Gina-Anne; Lo,Wai-Kit; Oard, Douglas; Schone,Patrick; Tang,Karen; Wang,Hsin-Min; Wang,Jianqiang (Computer Speech & Language, 2004)
This paper describes the Mandarin–English Information (MEI) project, where we investigated the problem of cross-language spoken document retrieval (CL-SDR), and developed one of the first English–Chinese CL-SDR systems. Our system accepts an entire English news story (text) as query, and retrieves relevant Chinese broadcast news stories (audio) from the document collection. Hence, this is a cross-language and cross-media retrieval task. We applied a multi-scale approach to our problem, which unifies the use of phrases, words and subwords in retrieval. The English queries are translated into Chinese by means of a dictionary-based approach, where we have integrated phrase-based translation with word-by-word translation. Untranslatable named entities are transliterated by a novel subword translation technique. The multi-scale approach can be divided into three subtasks – multi-scale query formulation, multi-scale audio indexing (by speech recognition) and multi-scale retrieval. Experimental results demonstrate that the use of phrase-based translation and subword translation gave performance gains, and multi-scale retrieval outperforms word-based retrieval.
Keywords: English–Chinese cross-language spoken document retrieval; Multi-scale spoken document retrieval

Measurement based optimal multi-path routing - Guven,T.; Kommareddy,C.; La,R.J.; Shayman,M.A.; Bhattacharjee, Bobby (INFOCOM 2004. Twenty-third AnnualJoint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, 2004)
We propose a new architecture for efficient network monitoring and measurements in a traditional IP network. This new architecture enables establishment of multiple paths (tunnels) between source-destination pairs without having to modify the underlying routing protocol(s). Based on the proposed architecture we propose a measurement-based multipath routing algorithm derived from simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation. The proposed algorithm does not assume that the gradient of analytical cost function is known to the algorithm, but rather relies on noisy estimates from measurements. Using the analytical model presented in the paper we prove the convergence of the algorithm to the optimal solution. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed algorithm under a variety of network scenarios. A comparative study with an existing optimal routing algorithm, MATE, is also provided
Keywords: algorithm; network; approximation; routing; IP; measurement; network; monitoring; optimization; perturbation; multipath; network; measurement-based; networks; Internet; optimisation; routing; processes; protocol; IP; protocols; stochastic; Routing; Stochastic

Multi-level fast multipole method for thin plate spline evaluation - Zandifar,A.; Lim,S.; Duraiswami, Ramani; Gumerov, Nail A.; Davis, Larry S. (Image Processing, 2004. ICIP '04. 2004 International Conference on, 2004)
Image registration is an important problem in image processing and computer vision. Much recent work in image registration is on matching non-rigid deformations. Thin plate splines are an effective image registration method when the deformation between two images can be modeled as the bending of a thin metal plate on point constraints such that the topology is preserved (non-rigid deformation). However, because evaluating the computed TPS model at all the image pixels is computationally expensive, we need to speed it up. We introduce the use of multi-level fast muitipole method (MLFMM) for this purpose. Our contribution lies in the presentation of a clear and concise MLFMM framework for TPS, which will be useful for future application developments. The achieved speedup using MLFMM is an improvement from O(N2) to O(N log N). We show that the fast evaluation outperforms the brute force method while maintaining acceptable error bound.
Keywords: (mathematics); Computer; deformation; evaluation; fast; image; MATCHING; matching; metal; method; multilevel; multipole; nonrigid; pixel; plate; plate; processing; registration; resolution; spline; splines; thin; vision

Multi-resolution modeling, visualization and streaming of volume meshes - Cignoni,P.; De Floriani, Leila; Lindstrom,P.; Pascucci,V.; Rossignac,J.; Silva,C. (Eurographics 2004, Tutorials 2: Multi-resolution Modeling, Visualization and Streaming of Volume Meshes, 2004)

New year’s resolutions for software quality - Basili, Victor R.; Boehm,B.; Davis,A.; Humphrey,W. S; Leveson,N.; Mead,N. R; Musa,J. D; Parnas,D. L; Pfleeger,S. L; Weyuker,E. (IEEE Software, 2004)
In the spirit of making resolutions for betterment in the New Year, ten distinguished individuals in the software quality field offer their recommendations on how organizations can improve software quality In the spirit of making resolutions for betterment in the New Year, ten distinguished individuals in the software quality field offer their recommendations on how organizations can improve software quality.

Occurrence and distribution of Vibrio cholerae in the coastal environment of Peru - Gil,Ana I.; Louis,Valérie R.; Rivera,Irma N. G.; Lipp,Erin; Huq,Anwar; Lanata,Claudio F.; Taylor,David N.; Russek‐Cohen,Estelle; Choopun,Nipa; Sack,R. Bradley; Rita R Colwell (Environmental Microbiology, 2004)
The occurrence and distribution of Vibrio cholerae in sea water and plankton along the coast of Peru were studied from October 1997 to June 2000, and included the 1997–98 El Niño event. Samples were collected at four sites in coastal waters off Peru at monthly intervals. Of 178 samples collected and tested, V. cholerae O1 was cultured from 10 (5.6%) samples, and V. cholerae O1 was detected by direct fluorescent antibody assay in 26 out of 159 samples tested (16.4%). Based on the number of cholera cases reported in Peru from 1997 to 2000, a significant correlation was observed between cholera incidence and elevated sea surface temperature (SST) along the coast of Peru (P < 0.001). From the results of this study, coastal sea water and zooplankton are concluded to be a reservoir for V. cholerae in Peru. The climate–cholera relationship observed for the 1997–98 El Niño year suggests that an early warning system for cholera risk can be established for Peru and neighbouring Latin American countries.

One-round protocols for two-party authenticated key exchange - Jeong,I. R; Katz, Jonathan; Lee,D. H (Applied Cryptography and Network Security, 2004)

Optimal models of disjunctive logic programs: semantics, complexity, and computation - Leone,N.; Scarcello,F.; V.S. Subrahmanian (Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, 2004)
Almost all semantics for logic programs with negation identify a set, SEM(P), of models of program P, as the intended semantics of P, and any model M in this class is considered a possible meaning of P with regard to the semantics the user has in mind. Thus, for example, in the case of stable models [M. Gelfond et al., (1988)], choice models [D. Sacca et al., (1990)], answer sets [M. Gelfond et al., (1991)], etc., different possible models correspond to different ways of "completing" the incomplete information in the logic program. However, different end-users may have different ideas on which of these different models in SEM(P) is a reasonable one from their point of view. For instance, given SEM(P), user U1 may prefer model M1 isin;SEM(P) to model M2 isin;SEM(P) based on some evaluation criterion that she has. We develop a logic program semantics based on optimal models. This semantics does not add yet another semantics to the logic programming arena - it takes as input an existing semantics SEM(P) and a user-specified objective function Obj, and yields a new semantics Opt(P)_ sube; SEM(P) that realizes the objective function within the framework of preferred models identified already by SEM(P). Thus, the user who may or may not know anything about logic programming has considerable flexibility in making the system reflect her own objectives by building "on top" of existing semantics known to the system. In addition to the declarative semantics, we provide a complete complexity analysis and algorithms to compute optimal models under varied conditions when SEM(P) is the stable model semantics, the minimal models semantics, and the all-models semantics.
Keywords: complexity; computational; disjunctive; function; knowledge; LANGUAGE; Logic; minimal; model; nonmonotonic; objective; optimisation; OPTIMIZATION; problems; program; Programming; programming; reasoning; representation; semantics; stable; user-specified

Polylysogeny and prophage induction by secondary infection in Vibrio cholerae - Espeland,Eric M.; Lipp,Erin K.; Huq,Anwar; Rita R Colwell (Environmental Microbiology, 2004)
Strains of Vibrio cholerae O1, biotypes El Tor and classical, were infected with a known temperate phage (ΦP15) and monitored over a 15-day period for prophage induction. Over the course of the experiment two morphologically and three genomically distinct virus-like particles were observed from the phage-infected El Tor strain by transmission electron microscopy and field inversion gel electrophoresis, respectively, whereas only one phage, ΦP15, was observed from the infected classical strain. In the uninfected El Tor culture one prophage was spontaneously induced after 6 days. No induction in either strain was observed after treatment with mitomycin C. Data indicate that El Tor biotypes of V. cholerae may be polylysogenic and that secondary infection can promote multiple prophage induction. These traits may be important in the transfer of genetic material among V. cholerae by providing an environmentally relevant route for multiple prophage propagation and transmission.

Reconfigurable optical wireless sensor networks - Llorca,Jaime; Desai,Aniket; Vishkin, Uzi; Davis,Christopher C.; Milner,Stuart D (Proceedings of SPIE, 2004)
Optical wireless networks are emerging as a viable, cost effective technology for rapidly deployable broadband sensor communication infrastructures. The use of directional, narrow beam, optical wireless links provides great promise for secure, extremely high data rate communication between fixed or mobile nodes, very suitable for sensor networks in civil and military contexts. The main challenge is to maintain the quality of such networks, as changing atmosphericand platform conditions critically affect their performance. Topology control is used as the means to achieve survivable optical wireless networking under adverse conditions, based on dynamic and autonomous topology reconfiguration. The topology control process involves tracking and acquisition of nodes, assessment of link-state information, collection and distribution of topology data, and the algorithmic solution of an optimal topology. This paper focuses onthe analysis, implementation and evaluation of algorithms and heuristics for selecting the best possible topology in order to optimize a given performance objective while satisfying connectivity constraints. The work done at the physical layer is based on link cost information. A cost measure is defined in terms of bit-error-rate and the heuristics developed seek to form a bi-connected topology which minimizes total network cost. At the network layer a key factor is the traffic matrix, and heuristics were developed in order to minimize congestion, flow-rate or end-to-end delay.

Recording and reproducing high order surround auditory scenes for mixed and augmented reality - Zhiyun Li; Duraiswami, Ramani; Davis, Larry S. (Mixed and Augmented Reality, 2004. ISMAR 2004. Third IEEE and ACM International Symposium on, 2004)
Virtual reality systems are largely based on computer graphics and vision technologies. However, sound also plays an important role in human's interaction with the surrounding environment, especially for the visually impaired people. In this paper, we develop the theory of recording and reproducing real-world surround auditory scenes in high orders using specially designed microphone and loudspeaker arrays. It is complementary to vision-based technologies in creating mixed and augmented realities. Design examples and simulations are presented.
Keywords: array; audio; auditory; augmented; Computer; graphics; high; loudspeaker; microphone; mixed; order; processing; reality; reality; scene; signal; surround; system; technology; virtual; VISION; vision

Scalable resilient media streaming - Banerjee,Suman; Lee,Seungjoon; Braud,Ryan; Bhattacharjee, Bobby; Srinivasan, Aravind (Proceedings of the 14th international workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio and video, 2004)
We present a low-overhead media streaming system, called SRMS (Scalable Resilient Media Streaming) that can be used to scalably deliver streaming data to a large group of receivers. SRMS uses overlay multicast for data distribution. to a large group of users. SRMS leverages a probabilistic loss recovery technique to provide high data delivery guarantees even under large network losses and overlay node failures. The clients in the SRMS system are able to interoperate with existing media streaming servers that use RTP for data transport. One of the interesting features of SRMS is that it can simultaneously support clients with disparate access bandwidths. It enables the necessary bandwidth adaptations using standard Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) mechanisms, e.g. RTP translators. We have implemented and evaluated the SRMS system in detail on an emulated network as well as on a wide-area testbed with up to 128 clients. Our results show that clients using SRMS achieve high (97%) data delivery ratios with low overheads (<5%) even for a very dynamic network (up to five membership changes per minute).
Keywords: media streaming; Multicast; overlay network; Resilience

Schistosoma mansoni genome project: an update - LoVerde,Philip T.; Hirai,Hirohisa; Merrick,Joseph M; Lee,Norman H; El‐Sayed, Najib M. (Parasitology International, 2004)
A schistosome genome project was initiated by the World Health Organization in 1994 with the notion that the best prospects for identifying new targets for drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic development lie in schistosome gene discovery, development of chromosome maps, whole genome sequencing and genome analysis. Schistosoma mansoni has a haploid genome of 270 Mb contained on 8 pairs of chromosomes. It is estimated that the S. mansoni genome contains between 15 000 and 25 000 genes. There are approximately 16 689 ESTs obtained from diverse libraries representing different developmental stages of S. mansoni, deposited in the NCBI EST database. More than half of the deposited sequences correspond to genes of unknown function. Approximately 40-50% of the sequences form unique clusters, suggesting that approximately 20-25% of the total schistosome genes have been discovered. Efforts to develop low resolution chromosome maps are in progress. There is a genome sequencing program underway that will provide 3X sequence coverage of the S. mansoni genome that will result in approximately 95% gene discovery. The genomics era has provided the resources to usher in the era of functional genomics that will involve microarrays to focus on specific metabolic pathways, proteomics to identify relevant proteins and protein-protein interactions to understand critical parasite pathways. Functional genomics is expected to accelerate the development of control and treatment strategies for schistosomiasis.
Keywords: Chromosome mapping; Gene discovery; Genomics; Schistosoma mansoni

Selective refinement on nested tetrahedral meshes - De Floriani, Leila; Lee,M. (Geometric Modeling for Scientific VisualizationGeometric Modeling for Scientific Visualization, 2004)

Semantic annotation and lexico-syntactic paraphrase - Dorr, Bonnie J; Green,R.; Levin,L.; Rambow,O.; Farwell,D.; Habash,N.; Helmreich,S.; Hovy,E.; Miller,K.J.; Mitamura,T.; others (Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC) Workshop on Building Lexical Resources from Semantically Annotated Corpora, 2004)
The IAMTC project (Interlingual Annotation of Multilingual Translation Corpora) is developing an interlingual representation frameworkfor annotation of parallel corpora (English paired with Arabic, French, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish) with deep-semantic representations. In particular, we are investigating meaning equivalent paraphrases involving conversives and non-literal language use, as well as extended paraphrases involving syntax, lexicon, and grammatical features. The interlingua representation has three levels of depth. Each level is characterized by the types of meaning equivalent paraphrases that receive identical representations at that level.

Semantic Annotation for Interlingual Representation of Multilingual Texts - Mitamura,T.; Miller,K.; Dorr, Bonnie J; Farwell,D.; Habash,N.; Helmreich,S.; Hovy,E.; Levin,L.; Rambow,O.; Reeder,F.; others (Workshop Programme, 2004)
This paper describes the annotation process being used in a multi-site project to create six sizable bilingual parallel corpora annotated with a consistent interlingua representation. After presenting the background and objectives of the effort, we describe the multilingual corpora and the three stages of interlingual representation being developed. We then focus on the annotation process itself, including an interface environment that supports the annotation task, and the methodology for evaluating the interlingua representation. Finally, we discuss some issues encountered during the annotation tasks. The resulting annotated multilingual corpora will be useful for a wide range of natural language processing research tasks, including machine translation, question answering, text summarization, and information extraction.

SESSION 2: STREAMING - Banerjee,S.; Lee,S.; Braud,R.; Bhattacharjee, Bobby; Srinivasan, Aravind; Chu,Y.; Zhang,H.; Sinha,R.; Papadopoulos,C.; Boustead,P.; others (Proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video: NOSSDAV 2003: June 16-18, 2004, Cork, Ireland, 2004)

Shot boundary detection based on Image correlation features in video - Luo,Ming; DeMenthon,D.; David Doermann (TREC-VID: Text Retrieval and Evaluation Conference, 2004)
This paper introduced a framework of shot boundary detection used by the LAMPLAB, University of Maryland, College Park. It deals with cuts and dissolves detection. Generally, it is based on image correlation features in the videos. The cut detection is based on the so-called 2max ratio criterion in a sequential image buffer. The dissolve detection is based on the skipping image difference and linearity error in a sequential image buffer. We also eliminated the effect of flashlights in our algorithms. We submitted 5 runs to TRECVID 2004. Their run-ids are “D0, D1, … , D4”. They use the same algorithms with different parameter settings. These runs show a tradeoff curve between precision and recall on the testing data of TRECVID 2004.

Social and psychological influences on computer user frustration - Bessiere,K.; Ceaparu,I.; Lazar,J.; Robinson,J.; Shneiderman, Ben (Media access: Social and psychological dimensions of new technology useMedia access: Social and psychological dimensions of new technology use, 2004)

A spherical microphone array system for traffic scene analysis - Zhiyun Li; Duraiswami, Ramani; Grassi,E.; Davis, Larry S. (Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2004. Proceedings. The 7th International IEEE Conference on, 2004)
This paper describes a practical spherical microphone array system for traffic auditory scene capture and analysis. Our system uses 60 microphones positioned on the rigid surface of a sphere. We then propose an optimal design of a robust spherical beamformer with minimum white noise gain (WNG) of -6 dB. We test this system in a real-world traffic environment. Some preliminary simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate its performance. This system may also find applications in broader areas such as 3D audio, virtual environment, etc.
Keywords: -6; 3D; analysis; array; arrays; audio; auditory; beamformer; capture; dB; environment; gain; microphone; NOISE; noise; processing; real; robust; scene; signal; spherical; system; traffic; traffic; virtual; white; World

A STEP TOWARDS AUTOMATED DESIGN OF INDEX-PLATE MULTI-SHOT MOLDS - Li,X.; Gupta,S.K. (2004)
This paper describes an algorithm for automateddesign of index-plate type of multi-shot molds for manufacturing multi-material objects. This new algorithm is a significant improvement over previous mold design algorithms and it accounts for constraints associated with the index-plate molding process. Our algorithm works in the following manner. First, based on the index-plate process constraints, we determine whether the given multi-material object is moldable by index- plate process by analyzing the geometry of the object. If the object can be molded, then the molding sequence is determined. Finally, the mold pieces. We expect that the algorithm described in this paper will provide the necessary foundations for automating the design of index-plate molds and therefore will help in significantly reducing the mold manufacturing lead-time associated with this type of molds.

Techniques for optimization of queries on integrated biological resources - Lacroix,Z.; Raschid, Louiqa; Eckman,B. A (Journal of bioinformatics and computational biology, 2004)

Uncalibrated stereo rectification for automatic 3D surveillance - Lim,S.-N.; Mittal,A.; Davis, Larry S.; Paragios,N. (Image Processing, 2004. ICIP '04. 2004 International Conference on, 2004)
We describe a stereo rectification method suitable for automatic 3D surveillance. We take advantage of the fact that in a typical urban scene, there is ordinarily a small number of dominant planes. Given two views of the scene, we align a dominant plane in one view with the other. Conjugate epipolar lines between the reference view and plane-aligned image become geometrically identical and can be added to the rectified image pair line by line. Selecting conjugate epipolar lines to cover the whole image is simplified since they are geometrically identical. In addition, the polarities of conjugate epipolar lines are automatically preserved by plane alignment, which simplifies stereo matching.
Keywords: 3D; AUTOMATIC; conjugate; epipolar; image; lines; matching; method; processing; rectification; scene; stereo; surveillance; uncalibrated; urban

Using the structure of Web sites for automatic segmentation of tables - Lerman,Kristina; Getoor, Lise; Minton,Steven; Knoblock,Craig (Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, 2004)
Many Web sites, especially those that dynamically generate HTML pages to display the results of a user's query, present information in the form of list or tables. Current tools that allow applications to programmatically extract this information rely heavily on user input, often in the form of labeled extracted records. The sheer size and rate of growth of the Web make any solution that relies primarily on user input is infeasible in the long term. Fortunately, many Web sites contain much explicit and implicit structure, both in layout and content, that we can exploit for the purpose of information extraction. This paper describes an approach to automatic extraction and segmentation of records from Web tables. Automatic methods do not require any user input, but rely solely on the layout and content of the Web source. Our approach relies on the common structure of many Web sites, which present information as a list or a table, with a link in each entry leading to a detail page containing additional information about that item. We describe two algorithms that use redundancies in the content of table and detail pages to aid in information extraction. The first algorithm encodes additional information provided by detail pages as constraints and finds the segmentation by solving a constraint satisfaction problem. The second algorithm uses probabilistic inference to find the record segmentation. We show how each approach can exploit the web site structure in a general, domain-independent manner, and we demonstrate the effectiveness of each algorithm on a set of twelve Web sites.

Visibility Planning: Predicting Continuous Period of Unobstructed Views - Lim,Ser-Nam; Davis, Larry S.; Wan,Yung-Chun (Justin) (Technical Reports from UMIACS, 2004)
To perform surveillance tasks effectively, unobstructed views ofobjects are required e.g. unobstructed video of objects are often needed for gait recognition. As a result, we need to determine intervals for video collection during which a desired object is visible w.r.t. a given sensor. In addition, these intervals are in the future so that the system can effectively plan and schedule sensors for collecting these videos. We describe an approach to determine these visibility intervals. A Kalman filter is first used to predict the trajectories of the objects. The trajectories are converted to polar coordinate representations w.r.t. a given sensor. Trajectories with the same angular displacement w.r.t. the sensor over time can be found by determining intersection points of functions representing these trajectories. Intervals between these intersection points are suitable for video collection. We also address the efficiency issue of finding these intersection points. An obvious brute force approach of $O(N^2)$ exists, where $N$ is the number of objects. This approach suffices when $N$ is small. When $N$ is large, we introduce an optimal segment intersection algorithm of $O(N\log^2N+I)$, $I$ being the number of intersection points. Finally, we model the prediction errors associated with the Kalman filter using a circular object representation. Experimental results that compare the performance of the brute force and the optimal segment intersection algorithms are shown. (UMIACS-TR-2004-22)
Keywords: Technical Report

Vision Geometry XII - Latecki,L.J.; Mount, Dave; Wu,A. Y (Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference Series, 2004)

Vision geometry XII:(San Jose CA, 19-20 January 2004) - Latecki,L.J.; Mount, Dave; Wu,A. Y (SPIE proceedings series, 2004)

Visualizations for taxonomic and phylogenetic trees - Parr,C.S.; Lee,B.; Campbell,D.; Bederson, Benjamin B. (Bioinformatics, 2004)

What works better for question answering: Stemming or morphological query expansion - Bilotti,M. W; Katz,B.; Jimmy Lin (Proceedings of the Information Retrieval for Question Answering (IR4QA) Workshop at SIGIR 2004, 2004)
How do different information retrieval techniques affect theperformance of document retrieval in the context of question answering? An exploration of this question is our overall re- search goal. In this paper, we specifically examine strategies for coping with morphological variation. This work quanti- tatively compares two different approaches to handling term variation: applying a stemming algorithm at indexing time, and performing morphological query expansion at retrieval time. We discovered that, compared to the no-stemming baseline, stemming results in lower recall, and morphologi- cal expansion yields higher recall. By separately weighting different term variants, we were able to achieve even higher recall, which opens the door to interesting question analy- sis algorithms for sophisticated query generation. Another significant contribution of our work is the development of a reusable question answering test collection to support our experiments.

Whitening for photometric comparison of smooth surfaces under varying illumination - Osadchy,M.; Lindenbaum,M.; Jacobs, David W. (Computer Vision-ECCV 2004, 2004)
We consider the problem of image comparison in order to match smooth surfaces under varying illumination. In a smooth surface nearby surface normals are highly correlated. We model such surfaces as Gaussian processes and derive the resulting statistical characterization of the corresponding images. Supported by this model, we treat the difference between two images, associated with the same surface and different lighting, as colored Gaussian noise, and use the whitening tool from signal detection theory to construct a measure of difference between such images. This also improves comparisons by accentuating the differences between images of different surfaces. At the same time, we prove that no linear filter, including ours, can produce lighting insensitive image comparisons. While our Gaussian assumption is a simplification, the resulting measure functions well for both synthetic and real smooth objects. Thus we improve upon methods for matching images of smooth objects, while providing insight into the performance of such methods. Much prior work has focused on image comparison methods appropriate for highly curved surfaces. We combine our method with one of these, and demonstrate high performance on rough and smooth objects.

Whole-genome shotgun assembly and comparison of human genome assemblies - Istrail,S.; Sutton,G. G; Florea,L.; Halpern,A. L; Mobarry,C. M; Lippert,R.; Walenz,B.; Shatkay,H.; Dew,I.; Miller,J. R; others (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2004)

19th Biennial Conference on Mechanical Vibration and Noise - Gupta,A. K.; Fadel,G. M.; Lewicki,D. G.; Shabana,A. A.; Royston,T. J.; Gupta,S.K.; Hayes,C.; Herrmann,J.W.; Dym,C. L.; Schmidt,L. C. (American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 2003)

A 4-Year Study of the Epidemiology of Vibrio Cholerae in Four Rural Areas of Bangladesh - Sack,R. Bradley; Siddique,A. Kasem; Longini,Ira M.; Nizam,Azhar; Yunus,Md; M. Sirajul Islam; Morris,Jr; Ali,Afsar; Huq,Anwar; Nair,G. Balakrish; Qadri,Firdausi; Faruque,Shah M.; et al. (Journal of Infectious DiseasesJ Infect Dis., 2003)
How Vibrio cholerae spreads around the world and what determines its seasonal peaks in endemic areas are not known. These features of cholera have been hypothesized to be primarily the result of environmental factors associated with aquatic habitats that can now be identified. Since 1997, fortnightly surveillance in 4 widely separated geographic locations in Bangladesh has been performed to identify patients with cholera and to collect environmental data. A total of 5670 patients (53% <5 years of age) have been studied; 14.3% had cholera (10.4% due to V. cholerae O1 El Tor, 3.8% due to O139). Both serogroups were found in all locations; outbreaks were seasonal and often occurred simultaneously. Water-use patterns showed that bathing and washing clothes in tube-well water was significantly protective in two of the sites. These data will be correlated with environmental factors, to develop a model for prediction of cholera outbreaks

Accurate dense optical flow estimation using adaptive structure tensors and a parametric model - Liu,Haiying; Chellapa, Rama; Rosenfeld, A. (Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on, 2003)
An accurate optical flow estimation algorithm is proposed in this paper. By combining the three-dimensional (3D) structure tensor with a parametric flow model, the optical flow estimation problem is converted to a generalized eigenvalue problem. The optical flow can be accurately estimated from the generalized eigenvectors. The confidence measure derived from the generalized eigenvalues is used to adaptively adjust the coherent motion region to further improve the accuracy. Experiments using both synthetic sequences with ground truth and real sequences illustrate our method. Comparisons with classical and recently published methods are also given to demonstrate the accuracy of our algorithm.
Keywords: 3D; accuracy; adaptive; and; coherent; confidence; dense; eigenfunctions; eigenvalue; eigenvalues; eigenvectors; estimation; flow; generalized; ground; image; measure; model; MOTION; optical; parameter; parametric; problem; real; region; sequences; structure; synthetic; tensor; tensors; three-dimensional; truth

AModel-based Line Detection Algorithm in Documents - Zheng,Y.; Li,H.; David Doermann (ICDAR, 2003)

Anti-collusion fingerprinting for multimedia - Trappe,W.; M. Wu; Wang,Z.J.; Liu,K. J.R (Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions on, 2003)
Digital fingerprinting is a technique for identifying users who use multimedia content for unintended purposes, such as redistribution. These fingerprints are typically embedded into the content using watermarking techniques that are designed to be robust to a variety of attacks. A cost-effective attack against such digital fingerprints is collusion, where several differently marked copies of the same content are combined to disrupt the underlying fingerprints. We investigate the problem of designing fingerprints that can withstand collusion and allow for the identification of colluders. We begin by introducing the collusion problem for additive embedding. We then study the effect that averaging collusion has on orthogonal modulation. We introduce a tree-structured detection algorithm for identifying the fingerprints associated with K colluders that requires O(Klog(n/K)) correlations for a group of n users. We next develop a fingerprinting scheme based on code modulation that does not require as many basis signals as orthogonal modulation. We propose a new class of codes, called anti-collusion codes (ACCs), which have the property that the composition of any subset of K or fewer codevectors is unique. Using this property, we can therefore identify groups of K or fewer colluders. We present a construction of binary-valued ACC under the logical AND operation that uses the theory of combinatorial designs and is suitable for both the on-off keying and antipodal form of binary code modulation. In order to accommodate n users, our code construction requires only O( radic;n) orthogonal signals for a given number of colluders. We introduce three different detection strategies that can be used with our ACC for identifying a suspect set of colluders. We demonstrate the performance of our ACC for fingerprinting multimedia and identifying colluders through experiments using Gaussian signals and real images.
Keywords: (mathematics); additive; algorithm; and; anti-collusion; attack; averaging; binary; code; codes; codevectors; coding; colluders; collusion; combinatorial; communication; compression; correlation; cost-effective; data; data; design; DETECTION; detection; digital; embedding; fingerprinting; Gaussian; identification; image; images; keying; logical; mathematics; Modulation; modulation; multimedia; multimedia; of; on-off; operation; orthogonal; processes; real; redistribution; Security; signal; signals; theory; tree-structured; TREES; watermarking

Anti-collusion of group-oriented fingerprinting - Wang,Z.J.; M. Wu; Trappe,W.; Liu,K. J.R (Multimedia and Expo, 2003. ICME '03. Proceedings. 2003 International Conference on, 2003)
Digital fingerprinting of multimedia data involves embedding information in the content, and offers protection to the digital rights of the content by allowing illegitimate usage of the content to be identified by authorized parties. One potential threat to fingerprints is collusion, whereby a group of adversaries combine their individual copies in an attempt to remove the underlying fingerprints. Former studies indicate that collusion attacks based on a few dozen independent copies can confound a fingerprinting system that employs orthogonal modulation. However, since an adversary is more likely to collude with some users than other users, we propose a group-based fingerprinting scheme where users likely to collude with each other are assigned correlated fingerprints. We evaluate the performance of our group-based fingerprints by studying the collusion resistance of a fingerprinting system employing Gaussian distributed fingerprints. We compare the results to those of fingerprinting systems employing orthogonal modulation.
Keywords: anticollusion; attacks; collusion; communication; data; digital; distributed; distribution; fingerprinting; fingerprints; Gaussian; group-oriented; Internet; method; modulation; multimedia; orthogonal; security; Telecommunication; watermarking

AParallel Line Detection Algorithm Based on HMMDecoding - Yefeng Zheng; Huiping Li; David Doermann (University of Maryland, College Park, 2003)
The detection of groups of parallel lines is important in applications such as form processing and text (handwriting) extraciton in rule lined paper. These tasks can be very challenging in degraded documents where the lines are severely broken. In this paper we propose a novel model-based method which incorporates high level context to detect these lines. After preprocessing and skew correction, we use trained Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to locate the optimal positions of all lines simultaneously, based on the Viterbi decoding. The algorithm is trainable, therefore, it can easily be adapted to different application scenarios. The experiments conducted on known form processing and rule line detection show our method is robust, and achieved better results than other widely used line detection methods, such as the Hough transform, projection or vectorization-based methods.

Automatic thumbnail cropping and its effectiveness - Suh,B.; Ling,H.; Bederson, Benjamin B.; Jacobs, David W. (Proceedings of the 16th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, 2003)

Automatic thumbnail cropping and its effectiveness - Suh,Bongwon; Ling,Haibin; Bederson, Benjamin B.; Jacobs, David W. (Proceedings of the 16th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, 2003)
Thumbnail images provide users of image retrieval and browsing systems with a method for quickly scanning large numbers of images. Recognizing the objects in an image is important in many retrieval tasks, but thumbnails generated by shrinking the original image often render objects illegible. We study the ability of computer vision systems to detect key components of images so that automated cropping, prior to shrinking, can render objects more recognizable. We evaluate automatic cropping techniques 1) based on a general method that detects salient portions of images, and 2) based on automatic face detection. Our user study shows that these methods result in small thumbnails that are substantially more recognizable and easier to find in the context of visual search.
Keywords: Face detection; image cropping; saliency map; thumbnail; usability study; visual search; zoomable user interfaces

Balancing performance and data freshness in web database servers - Labrinidis,A.; Roussopoulos, Nick (Proceedings of the 29th international conference on Very large data bases-Volume 29, 2003)

Characterization of a Vibrio cholerae phage isolated from the coastal water of Peru - Talledo,Miguel; Rivera,Irma N. G.; Lipp,Erin K.; Neale,Angela; Karaolis,David; Huq,Anwar; Rita R Colwell (Environmental Microbiology, 2003)
A Vibrio cholerae bacteriophage, family Myoviridae, was isolated from seawater collected from the coastal water of Lima, Peru. Genome size was estimated to be 29 kbp. The temperate phage was specific to V. cholerae and infected 12/13 V. cholerae O1 strains and half of the four non-O1/non-O139 strains tested in this study. Vibrio cholerae O139 strains were resistant to infection and highest infection rates were obtained in low nutrient media amended with NaCl or prepared using seawater as diluent.

A collaborative digital library for children - Druin, Allison; Revelle,G.; Bederson, Benjamin B.; Hourcade,J. P; Farber,A.; Lee,J.; Campbell,D. (Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 2003)

Content Features for Logical Document Labeling - Liang,Jian; David Doermann (Proc. SPIE Conference on Document Recognition and Retrieval X, 2003)
The use of content features extracted from recognized text is valuable in labeling logical elements in documents withoutrigid layout structure, like business letters. This paper discusses a model-based approach to combining content features with other geometrical and presentation features for logical labeling. Models are automatically initialized and adaptively improved using training samples. Satisfactory experimental results are presented.

Cooperative peer groups in NICE - Lee,S.; Sherwood,R.; Bhattacharjee, Bobby (INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-Second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications. IEEE Societies, 2003)
A distributed scheme for trust inference in peer-to-peer networks is presented. Our work is in context of the NICE system, which is a platform for implementing cooperative applications over the Internet. We describe a technique for efficiently storing user reputation information in a completely decentralized manner, and show how this information can be used to efficiently identify noncooperative users in NICE. We present a simulation based study of our algorithms, in which we show our scheme scales to thousands of users using modest amounts of storage, processing, and bandwidth at any individual node. Lastly, we show that our scheme is robust and can form cooperative groups in systems where the vast majority of users are malicious.
Keywords: algorithm; cooperative; decentralized; distributed; identification; individual; inference; inference; information; Internet; malicious; manner; mechanisms; networks; NICE; node; noncooperative; peer-to-peer; platform; reputation; retrieval; storage; system; trust; users; users

Data hiding in image and video .I. Fundamental issues and solutions - M. Wu; Liu,Bede (Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on, 2003)
We address a number of fundamental issues of data hiding in image and video and propose general solutions to them. We begin with a review of two major types of embedding, based on which we propose a new multilevel embedding framework to allow the amount of extractable data to be adaptive according to the actual noise condition. We then study the issues of hiding multiple bits through a comparison of various modulation and multiplexing techniques. Finally, the nonstationary nature of visual signals leads to highly uneven distribution of embedding capacity and causes difficulty in data hiding. We propose an adaptive solution switching between using constant embedding rate with shuffling and using variable embedding rate with embedded control bits. We verify the effectiveness of our proposed solutions through analysis and simulation.
Keywords: adaptive; analysis; bits; colour; condition; constant; CONTROL; data; embedded; EMBEDDING; embedding; encapsulation; extractable; hiding; image; Modulation; modulation; multilevel; multiplexing; multiplexing; NOISE; nonstationary; processing; rate; reviews; shuffling; signal; signals; simulation; solution; techniques; variable; video; visual

Data hiding in image and video .II. Designs and applications - M. Wu; Yu,H.; Liu,Bede (Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on, 2003)
For pt. I see ibid., vol.12, no.6, p.685-95 (2003). This paper applies the solutions to the fundamental issues addressed in Part I to specific design problems of embedding data in image and video. We apply multilevel embedding to allow the amount of embedded information that can be reliably extracted to be adaptive with respect to the actual noise conditions. When extending the multilevel embedding to video, we propose strategies for handling uneven embedding capacity from region to region within a frame as well as from frame to frame. We also embed control information to facilitate the accurate extraction of the user data payload and to combat such distortions as frame jitter. The proposed algorithm can be used for a variety of applications such as copy control, access control, robust annotation, and content-based authentication.
Keywords: access; annotation; authentication; capacity; conditions; content-based; CONTROL; control; copy; data; distortions; EMBEDDING; embedding; encapsulation; extraction; frame; hiding; image; information; jitter; message; multilevel; NOISE; noise; payload; processing; robust; signal; uneven; user; video

Desparately seeking cebuano - Oard, Douglas; David Doermann; Dorr, Bonnie J; He,D.; Resnik, Philip; Weinberg, Amy; Byrne,W.; Khudanpur,S.; Yarowsky,D.; Leuski,A.; others (Third Conference on Human Language Technologies, 2003)
This paper describes an effort to rapidly de-velop language resources and component tech- nology to support searching Cebuano news sto- ries using English queries. Results from the first 60 hours of the exercise are presented.

Direct Detection of Vibrio Cholerae and ctxA in Peruvian Coastal Water and Plankton by PCR - Lipp,Erin K.; Rivera,Irma N. G.; Gil,Ana I.; Espeland,Eric M.; Choopun,Nipa; Louis,Valérie R.; Russek-Cohen,Estelle; Huq,Anwar; Rita R Colwell (Applied and Environmental MicrobiologyAppl. Environ. Microbiol., 2003)
Seawater and plankton samples were collected over a period of 17 months from November 1998 to March 2000 along the coast of Peru. Total DNA was extracted from water and from plankton grouped by size into two fractions (64 μm to 202 μm and >202 μm). All samples were assayed for Vibrio cholerae, V. cholerae O1, V. cholerae O139, and ctxA by PCR. Of 50 samples collected and tested, 33 (66.0%) were positive for V. cholerae in at least one of the three fractions. Of these, 62.5% (n = 32) contained V. cholerae O1; ctxA was detected in 25% (n = 20) of the V. cholerae O1-positive samples. None were positive for V. cholerae O139. Thus, PCR was successfully employed in detecting toxigenic V. cholerae directly in seawater and plankton samples and provides evidence for an environmental reservoir for this pathogen in Peruvian coastal waters.

The dog genome: survey sequencing and comparative analysis - Kirkness,E. F; Bafna,V.; Halpern,A. L; Levy,S.; Remington,K.; Rusch,D. B; Delcher,A. L; Pop, Mihai; Wang,W.; Fraser,C. M; others (Science, 2003)

The Dog Genome: Survey Sequencing and Comparative Analysis - Kirkness,Ewen F.; Bafna,Vineet; Halpern,Aaron L.; Levy,Samuel; Remington,Karin; Rusch,Douglas B; Delcher,Arthur L.; Pop, Mihai; Wang,Wei; Fraser,Claire M.; Venter,J. Craig (ScienceScience, 2003)
A survey of the dog genome sequence (6.22 million sequence reads; 1.5× coverage) demonstrates the power of sample sequencing for comparative analysis of mammalian genomes and the generation of species-specific resources. More than 650 million base pairs (>25%) of dog sequence align uniquely to the human genome, including fragments of putative orthologs for 18,473 of 24,567 annotated human genes. Mutation rates, conserved synteny, repeat content, and phylogeny can be compared among human, mouse, and dog. A variety of polymorphic elements are identified that will be valuable for mapping the genetic basis of diseases and traits in the dog.

Driving scientific applications by data in distributed environments - Saltz, J.; Catalyurek,U.; Kurc, T.; Gray,M.; Hastings,S.; Langella,S.; Narayanan,S.; Martino,R.; Bryant,S.; Peszynska,M.; others (Computational Science—ICCS 2003, 2003)

Effect of treatment on the dynamics of circulating hypodermin C in cattle naturally infested with Hypoderma lineatum (Diptera: Oestridae) - Douglas D Colwell; Panadero-Fontan,Rosario; López-Sandez,Ceferino; Parra-Fernandez,Francisco; Paz-Silva,A; Sánchez-Andrade,Rita; Dı́ez-Baños,Pablo (Veterinary Parasitology, 2003)
An antigen capture ELISA, using a murine monoclonal antibody recognising recombinant hypodermin C (rHyC), was used to evaluate the influence of early treatment with eprinomectin (Eprinex®) or fenthion (Spotton®) on the kinetics of circulating hypodermin C in calves naturally infested with Hypoderma lineatum. No viable larvae were collected from treated animals, whereas a variable number of warbles were found in control animals. Treatment provoked a decrease in circulating HyC levels that was significant 9 days post-treatment (p.t.). Circulating antigen levels in the treated cattle remained detectable for approximately 99 days p.t. In contrast, control animals had no detectable antigen at 64 days p.t., 42 days earlier than in the treated animals. These results suggest that larvae were either gradually killed, resulting in slow release of antigen or they were encapsulated, leading to the slow liberation of antigen. Kinetics of circulating HyC did not differ among the two insecticide treatments. Antibodies persisted, in all groups, throughout the 120-day study. These results suggest that the antigen capture ELISA will be useful as a technique for detecting successful treatment of cattle grub infestations and for the detection of new infestations in previously infested cattle.
Keywords: Capture ELISA; Cattle-arthropoda; Control methods-arthropoda; Eprinomectin; Fenthion; Hypoderma spp.

Efficient dissemination of aggregate data over the wireless web - Sharaf,M. A; Sismanis,Y.; Labrinidis,A.; Chrysanthis,P.; Roussopoulos, Nick (International Workshop on the Web and Databases (WebDB), 2003)

Electronic voting system usability issues - Bederson, Benjamin B.; Lee,B.; Sherman,R.M.; Herrnson,P.S.; Niemi,R.G. (Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 2003)

An experimental evaluation of correlated network partitions in the Coda distributed file system - Lefever,R.M.; Michel Cukier; Sanders,W. H. (2003)
Experimental evaluation is an important way to assess distributed systems, and fault injection is the dominant technique in this area for the evaluation of a system's dependability. For distributed systems, network failure is an important fault model. Physical network failures often have far-reaching effects, giving rise to multiple correlated failures as seen by higher-level protocols. This paper presents an experimental evaluation, using the Loki fault injector, which provides insight into the impact that correlated network partitions have on the Coda distributed file system. In this evaluation, Loki created a network partition between two Coda file servers, during which updates were made at each server to the same replicated data volume. Upon repair of the partition, a client requested directory resolution to converge the diverging replicas. At various stages of the resolution, Loki invoked a second correlated network partition, thus allowing us to evaluate its impact on the system's correctness, performance, and availability.
Keywords: client-server systems; Coda distributed file system; correlated network partitions; distributed file systems; experimental evaluation; fault model; Loki fault injector; multiple correlated failures; network failure; Network topology; performance evaluation; replicated data; replicated databases; software fault tolerance; system performance evaluation

Extracting structural paraphrases from aligned monolingual corpora - Ibrahim,Ali; Katz,Boris; Jimmy Lin (Proceedings of the second international workshop on Paraphrasing - Volume 16, 2003)
We present an approach for automatically learning paraphrases from aligned monolingual corpora. Our algorithm works by generalizing the syntactic paths between corresponding anchors in aligned sentence pairs. Compared to previous work, structural paraphrases generated by our algorithm tend to be much longer on average, and are capable of capturing long-distance dependencies. In addition to a standalone evaluation of our paraphrases, we also describe a question answering application currently under development that could immensely benefit from automatically-learned structural paraphrases.

A Fast Implementation of the ISOCLUS Algorithm - Memarsadeghi,Nargess; Mount, Dave; Netanyahu,Nathan S.; LeMoigne,Jacqueline (IEEE 2003 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2003)
Unsupervised clustering is a fundamental building block in numerous image processing applications. One of the most popular and widely used clustering schemes for remote sensing applications is the ISOCLUS algorithm, which is based on the ISODATA method. The algorithm is given a set of n data points in d-dimensional space, an integer k indicating the initial number of clusters, and a number of additional parameters. The general goal is to compute the coordinates of a set of cluster centers in d-space, such that those centers minimize the mean squared distance from each data point to its nearest center. This clustering algorithm is similar to another well-known clustering method, called k-means. One significant feature of ISOCLUS over k-means is that the actual number of clusters reported might be fewer or more than the number supplied as part of the input. The algorithm uses different heuristics to determine whether to merge lor split clusters. As ISOCLUS can run very slowly, particularly on large data sets, there has been a growing .interest in the remote sensing community in computing it efficiently. We have developed a faster implementation of the ISOCLUS algorithm. Our improvement is based on a recent acceleration to the k-means algorithm of Kanungo, et al. They showed that, by using a kd-tree data structure for storing the data, it is possible to reduce the running time of k-means. We have adapted this method for the ISOCLUS algorithm, and we show that it is possible to achieve essentially the same results as ISOCLUS on large data sets, but with significantly lower running times. This adaptation involves computing a number of cluster statistics that are needed for ISOCLUS but not for k-means. Both the k-means and ISOCLUS algorithms are based on iterative schemes, in which nearest neighbors are calculated until some convergence criterion is satisfied. Each iteration requires that the nearest center for each data point be computed. Naively, this requires O(kn) time, where k denotes the current number of centers. Traditional techniques for accelerating nearest neighbor searching involve storing the k centers in a data structure. However, because of the iterative nature of the algorithm, this data structure would need to be rebuilt with each new iteration. Our approach is to store the data points in a kd-tree data structure. The assignment of points to nearest neighbors is carried out by a filtering process, which successively eliminates centers that can not possibly be the nearest neighbor for a given region of space. This algorithm is significantly faster, because large groups of data points can be assigned to their nearest center in a single operation. Preliminary results on a number of real Landsat datasets show that our revised ISOCLUS-like scheme runs about twice as fast.
Keywords: algorithms; Cluster Analysis; Data structures; HEURISTIC METHODS; IMAGE PROCESSING; INTEGERS; LANDSAT SATELLITES; MEAN SQUARE VALUES; Remote sensing

Fast two-frame multiscale dense optical flow estimation using discrete wavelet filters - Liu,Haiying; Chellapa, Rama; Rosenfeld,Azriel (Journal of the Optical Society of America AJ. Opt. Soc. Am. A, 2003)
A multiscale algorithm with complexity O(N) (where N is the number of pixels in one image) using wavelet filters is proposed to estimate dense optical flow from two frames. Hierarchical image representation by wavelet decomposition is integrated with differential techniques in a new multiscale framework. It is shown that if a compactly supported wavelet basis with one vanishing moment is carefully selected, hierarchical image, first-order derivative, and corner representations can be obtained from the wavelet decomposition. On the basis of this result, three of the four components of the wavelet decomposition are employed to estimate dense optical flow with use of only two frames. This overcomes the “flattening-out” problem in traditional pyramid methods, which produce large errors when low-texture regions become flat at coarse levels as a result of blurring. A two-dimensional affine motion model is used to formulate the optical flow problem as a linear system, with all resolutions simultaneously (i.e., coarse-and-fine) rather than the traditional coarse-to-fine approach, which unavoidably propagates errors from the coarse level. This not only helps to improve the accuracy but also makes the hardware implementation of our algorithm simple. Experiments on different types of image sequences, together with quantitative and qualitative comparisons with several other optical flow methods, are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and the robustness of our algorithm.
Keywords: digital image processing; Image analysis; optical flow

Goal-Driven Reconfiguration of Polymorphous Architectures - Lohani,S.; Bhattacharyya, Shuvra S. (Domain-specific processors: systems, architectures, modeling, and simulation, 2003)

Help! I’m lost: User frustration in web navigation - Lazar,J.; Bessiere,K.; Ceaparu,I.; Robinson,J.; Shneiderman, Ben (IT & Society, 2003)
Computers can be valuable tools, and networked resources via the Internet can be beneficial to many different populations and communities. Unfortunately, when people are unable to reach their task goals due to frustrating experiences, this can hinder the effectiveness of technology. This research summary provides information about the user frustration research that has been performed at the University of Maryland and Towson University. Causes of user frustration are discussed in this research summary, along with the surprising finding that nearly one-third to one-half of the time spent in front of the computer is wasted due to frustrating experiences. Furthermore, when interfaces are planned to be deceptive and confusing, this can lead to increased frustration. Implications for designers and users are discussed.

Image-based pan-tilt camera control in a multi-camera surveillance environment - Lim,Ser-Nam; Elgammal,A.; Davis, Larry S. (Multimedia and Expo, 2003. ICME '03. Proceedings. 2003 International Conference on, 2003)
In automated surveillance systems with multiple cameras, the system must be able to position the cameras accurately. Each camera must be able to pan-tilt such that an object detected in the scene is in a vantage position in the camera's image plane and subsequently capture images of that object. Typically, camera calibration is required. We propose an approach that uses only image-based information. Each camera is assigned a pan-tilt zero-position. Position of an object detected in one camera is related to the other cameras by homographies between the zero-positions while different pan-tilt positions of the same camera are related in the form of projective rotations. We then derive that the trajectories in the image plane corresponding to these projective rotations are approximately circular for pan and linear for tilt. The camera control technique is subsequently tested in a working prototype.
Keywords: automated; camera; cameras; control; detection; environment; image; image-based; information; multicamera; object; pan-tilt; position; processing; sensors; Surveillance; surveillance; systems; vantage; zero-position; zero-positions

Innovating the Interaction - Bederson, Benjamin B.; Plaisant, Catherine; Mushlin,R.; Snyder,A.; Li,J.; Heller,D.; Shneiderman, Ben; Hochheiser,H.; Fekete,J. D; Czenvinski,M. (The craft of information visualization: readings and reflectionsThe craft of information visualization: readings and reflections, 2003)

The International Children's Digital Library - Druin, Allison; Bederson, Benjamin B.; Weeks,A.; Farber,A.; Grosjean,J.; Guha,M.L.; Hourcade,J. P; Lee,J.; Liao,S.; Reuter,K.; others (First Monday, 2003)

The International Children's Digital Library: Description and analysis of first use - Druin, Allison; Bederson, Benjamin B.; Weeks,A.; Farber,A.; Grosjean,J.; Guha,M.L.; Hourcade,J. P; Lee,J.; Liao,S.; Reuter,K.; others (First Monday, 2003)

Intradomain Overlays: Architecture and Applications - Kommareddy,Christopher; Guven,Tuna; Bhattacharjee, Bobby; La,Richard; Shayman,Mark (Technical Reports from UMIACS, UMIACS-TR-2003-70, 2003)
We introduce an architecture for ``Intradomain Overlays'', where a subset of routers within a domain is augmented with a dedicated host. These strategically placed hosts form an overlay network, and we describe a number of applications for such overlays. These applications include efficient network monitoring, policy- and load-based packet re-routing, and network resource accounting. In this paper, we elaborate on the network monitoring application and describe a distributed protocol for monitoring routers within an AS which has been augmented with a few overlay nodes. The routers and other infrastructure are unaware of the overlay nodes, and the monitoring of individual elements is conducted using plain SNMP. We describe techniques for efficiently synthesizing and transporting the monitored SNMP data, and present results using trace data collected from an AS with 400+ routers. Our results show that the overlay-based monitoring reduces overheads by 2--4 orders of magnitude, and thus enables much finer grained monitoring and traffic engineering than is otherwise possible. (UMIACS-TR-2003-70)
Keywords: Technical Report

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3: WEB NAVIGATION - Shneiderman, Ben; Lazar,J.; IVORY,M. (IT&SOCIETY, 2003)

Iterative and incremental developments. a brief history - Larman,C.; Basili, Victor R. (Computer, 2003)
Although many view iterative and incremental development as a modern practice, its application dates as far back as the mid-1950s. Prominent software-engineering thought leaders from each succeeding decade supported IID practices, and many large projects used them successfully. These practices may have differed in their details, but all had a common theme-to avoid a single-pass sequential, document-driven, gated-step approach.
Keywords: agile; and; developments; iterative; engineering; engineering; software; enhancement; software; incremental; methods; iterative; system; history; software

LifeLines: Using Visualization to Enhance Navigation and Analysis of Patient Records - Plaisant, Catherine; Mushlin,Richard; Snyder,Aaron; Li,Jia; Heller,Dan; Shneiderman, Ben (The Craft of Information VisualizationThe Craft of Information Visualization, 2003)

Machine Printed Text and Handwriting Identification in Noisy Document Images - Yefeng Zheng; Huiping Li; David Doermann (University of Maryland, College Park, 2003)
In this paper we address the problem of the identification of text in noisy document images. We are especially focused on segmenting and identifying between handwriting and machine printed text because: 1) handwriting in a document often indicates corrections, additions, or other supplemental information that should be treated differently from the main content, and 2) the segmentation and recognition techniques requested for machine printed and handwritten text are significantly different. A novel aspect of our approach is that we treat noise as a separate class and model noise based on selected features. Trained Fisher classifiers are used to identify machine printed text and handwriting from noise, and we further exploit context to refine the classification. AMarkov Random Field (MRF) based approach is used to model the geometrical structure of the printed text, handwriting, and noise to rectify misclassifications. Experimental results show that our approach is robust and can significantly improve page segmentation in noisy document collections.

Making miracles: Interactive translingual search for cebuano and hindi - He,D.; Oard, Douglas; Wang,J.; Luo,J.; Demner-Fushman,D.; Darwish,K.; Resnik, Philip; Khudanpur,S.; Nossal,M.; Subotin,M.; others (ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing (TALIP), 2003)

Manufacturability Analysis of Multi-Material Objects Molded by Rotary Platen Multi-Shot Molding Process - Li,Xuejun; Gupta, Satyandra K. (ASME, 2003)
This paper describes a systematic approach for manufacturability analysis of multi-material objects molded using rotary platen multi-shot injection molding process. In this paper we first identify potential manufacturability problems that are associated with objects molded by the rotary platen process. Identified problems include infeasibility of molding sequences, unnecessary mold complexity, undesired friction during mold opening and closing, and undesired material flash on finished faces. These problems are unique to multi-material molding and do not occur in traditional injection molding. For each of the above four potential manufacturability problems, this paper also describes geometric algorithms for detecting the potential occurrence of the problem based on the object and mold design, finding its causes, and offering appropriate redesign suggestions. We expect that these algorithms will help in decreasing the product development time and improving the product quality for molded multi-material objects

Method of DNA extraction and application of multiplex polymerase chain reaction to detect toxigenic Vibrio cholerae O1 and O139 from aquatic ecosystems - Rivera,Irma N. G.; Lipp,Erin K.; Gil,Ana; Choopun,Nipa; Huq,Anwar; Rita R Colwell (Environmental Microbiology, 2003)
Vibrio cholerae is a free-living bacterium found in water and in association with plankton. V. cholerae non-O1/non-O139 strains are frequently isolated from aquatic ecosystems worldwide. Less frequently isolated are V. cholerae O1 and V. cholerae O139, the aetiological agents of cholera. These strains have two main virulence-associated factors, cholera toxin (CT) and toxin co-regulated pilus (TCP). By extracting total DNA from aquatic samples, the presence of pathogenic strains can be determined quickly and used to improve a microbiological risk assessment for cholera in coastal areas. Some methods suggested for DNA extraction from water samples are not applicable to all water types. We describe here a method for DNA extraction from coastal water and a multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for O1 and O139 serogroups. DNA extraction was successfully accomplished from 117 sea water samples collected from coastal areas of Perú, Brazil and the USA. DNA concentration in all samples varied from 20 ng to 480 µg µl−1. The sensitivity of the DNA extraction method was 100 V. cholerae cells in 250 ml of water. The specificity of multiplex O1/O139 PCR was investigated by analysing 120 strains of V. cholerae, Vibrio and other Bacteria species. All V. cholerae O1 and O139 tested were positive. For cholera surveillance of aquatic environments and ballast water, total DNA extraction, followed by V. cholerae PCR, and O1/O139 serogroup and tcpA/ctxA genes by multiplex PCR offers an efficient system, permitting risk analysis for cholera in coastal areas.

Multimedia Data Hiding - M. Wu; Liu,Bede (Springer, 2003)
With the advances of the digital information revolution and the societal changes they have prompted, it has become critical to facilitate secure management of content usage and delivery across communication networks. Data hiding and digital watermarking are promising new technologies for multimedia information protection and rights management. Multimedia Data Hiding addresses the theory, methods, and design of multimedia data hiding and its application to multimedia rights management, information security, and communication. It offers theoretical and practical aspects, and both design and attack problems. Applications discussed include: annotation, tamper detection, copy/access control, fingerprinting, and ownership protection. Countermeasures for attacks on data hiding are discussed, and a chapter assesses attack problems on digital music protection under a unique competitive environment. Topics and features: * Comprehensive and practical coverage of data hiding for various media types, including binary image, grayscale and color images and video, and audio * Provides unique analysis of problems and solutions, such as data hiding in binary signature and generic binary documents, block concealment attacks, and attacks on audio watermarking * Authoritative discussion and analysis of data hiding and effective countermeasures, supported by concrete application examples * Accessible, well-organized progression from the fundamentals to specific approaches to various data-hiding problems This work offers a state-of-the-art presentation covering theoretical, algorithmic, and design topics for digital content/data security protection, and rights management. It is an essential resource for multimedia security researchers and professionals in electrical engineering, computer science, IT, and digital rights management.
Keywords: computer security; Computers / Computer Engineering; Computers / Computer Science; Computers / Database Management / General; Computers / Information Technology; Computers / Information Theory; Computers / Interactive & Multimedia; Computers / Networking / General; Computers / Security / Cryptography; Computers / Security / General; Computers / System Administration / Storage & Retrieval; Data encryption (Computer science); multimedia systems; Technology & Engineering / Electrical; Technology & Engineering / Engineering (General)

Nonlinear collusion attacks on independent fingerprints for multimedia - Zhao,Hong; M. Wu; Wang,Z.J.; Liu,K. J.R (Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2003. Proceedings. (ICASSP '03). 2003 IEEE International Conference on, 2003)
Digital fingerprinting is a technology for tracing the distribution of multimedia content and protecting them from unauthorized redistribution. Collusion attack is a cost effective attack against digital fingerprinting where several copies with the same content but different fingerprints are combined to remove the original fingerprints. In this paper, we investigate average and nonlinear collusion attacks of independent Gaussian fingerprints and study both their effectiveness and the perceptual quality. We also propose the bounded Gaussian fingerprints to improve the perceptual quality of the fingerprinted copies. We further discuss the tradeoff between the robustness against collusion attacks and the perceptual quality of a fingerprinting system.
Keywords: attacks; average; bounded; collusion; computing; content; copies; digital; distribution; fingerprinted; fingerprinting; fingerprints; Gaussian; independent; multimedia; nonlinear; perceptual; quality; robustness; watermarking

The Opsis project: materialized views for data warehouses and the web - Roussopoulos, Nick; Kotidis,Y.; Labrinidis,A.; Sismanis,Y. (Advances in Informatics, 2003)

Performance of detection statistics under collusion attacks on independent multimedia fingerprints - Zhao,Hong; M. Wu; Wang,Z.J.; Liu,K. J.R (Multimedia and Expo, 2003. ICME '03. Proceedings. 2003 International Conference on, 2003)
Digital fingerprinting is a technology for tracing the distribution of multimedia content and protecting them from unauthorized redistribution. Collusion attack is a cost effective attack against digital fingerprinting where several copies with the same content but different fingerprints are combined to remove the original fingerprints. In this paper, we consider average attack and several nonlinear collusion attacks on independent Gaussian based fingerprints, and study the detection performance of several commonly used detection statistics in the literature under collusion attacks. Observing that these detection statistics are not specifically designed for collusion scenarios and do not take into account the characteristics of the newly generated fingerprints under collusion attacks, we propose pre-processing techniques to improve the detection performance of the detection statistics under collusion attacks.
Keywords: analysis; attacks; based; collusion; content; DETECTION; digital; fingerprint; fingerprinting; fingerprints; Gaussian; identification; independent; multimedia; performance; preprocessing; processes; redistribution; security; statistical; statistics; systems; techniques; Telecommunication; unauthorized

Predictability of Vibrio Cholerae in Chesapeake Bay - Louis,Valérie R.; Russek-Cohen,Estelle; Choopun,Nipa; Rivera,Irma N. G.; Gangle,Brian; Jiang,Sunny C.; Rubin,Andrea; Patz,Jonathan A.; Huq,Anwar; Rita R Colwell (Applied and Environmental MicrobiologyAppl. Environ. Microbiol., 2003)
Vibrio cholerae is autochthonous to natural waters and can pose a health risk when it is consumed via untreated water or contaminated shellfish. The correlation between the occurrence of V. cholerae in Chesapeake Bay and environmental factors was investigated over a 3-year period. Water and plankton samples were collected monthly from five shore sampling sites in northern Chesapeake Bay (January 1998 to February 2000) and from research cruise stations on a north-south transect (summers of 1999 and 2000). Enrichment was used to detect culturable V. cholerae, and 21.1% (n = 427) of the samples were positive. As determined by serology tests, the isolates, did not belong to serogroup O1 or O139 associated with cholera epidemics. A direct fluorescent-antibody assay was used to detect V. cholerae O1, and 23.8% (n = 412) of the samples were positive. V. cholerae was more frequently detected during the warmer months and in northern Chesapeake Bay, where the salinity is lower. Statistical models successfully predicted the presence of V. cholerae as a function of water temperature and salinity. Temperatures above 19°C and salinities between 2 and 14 ppt yielded at least a fourfold increase in the number of detectable V. cholerae. The results suggest that salinity variation in Chesapeake Bay or other parameters associated with Susquehanna River inflow contribute to the variability in the occurrence of V. cholerae and that salinity is a useful indicator. Under scenarios of global climate change, increased climate variability, accompanied by higher stream flow rates and warmer temperatures, could favor conditions that increase the occurrence of V. cholerae in Chesapeake Bay.

Prefix sums and an application thereof - Vishkin, Uzi (2003)
A method for performing prefix sums, by including a prefix sum instruction in the instruction set of a microprocessor. Both general prefix summation, base-zero prefix summation and base-zero suffix summation are included in the scope of the present invention. The prefix sum instruction may be implemented in software, using the instructions of existing instruction sets, or may be implemented in dedicated hardware, for example, as a functional unit of a microprocessor. The hardware implementation is suitable for application to the allocation of computational resources among concurrent tasks. The scope of the present invention includes one such application: guaranteeing conflict-free access to multiple single-ported register files.

A query language to support scientific discovery - Eckman,B.; Deutsch,K.; Janer,M.; Lacroix,Z.; Raschid, Louiqa (Proc. 2nd IEEE International Computer Society, 2003)

Question answering from the web using knowledge annotation and knowledge mining techniques - Jimmy Lin; Katz,Boris (Proceedings of the twelfth international conference on Information and knowledge management, 2003)
We present a strategy for answering fact-based natural language questions that is guided by a characterization of real-world user queries. Our approach, implemented in a system called Aranea, extracts answers from the Web using two different techniques: knowledge annotation and knowledge mining. Knowledge annotation is an approach to answering large classes of frequently occurring questions by utilizing semi\-structured and structured Web sources. Knowledge mining is a statistical approach that leverages massive amounts of Web data to overcome many natural language processing challenges. We have integrated these two different paradigms into a question answering system capable of providing users with concise answers that directly address their information needs.
Keywords: data-redundancy; semistructured data

Question answering techniques for the World Wide Web - Jimmy Lin; Katz,B. (Tutorial presentation at The 11th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association of Computational Linguistics (EACL-2003), 2003)
Question answering systems have become increasingly popular because they deliverusers short, succinct answers instead of overloading them with a large number of irrelevant documents. The vast amount of information readily available on the World Wide Web presents new opportunities and challenges for question answering. In order for question answering systems to benefit from this vast store of useful knowledge, they must cope with large volumes of useless data. Many characteristics of the World Wide Web distinguish Web-based question answering from question answering on closed corpora such as newspaper texts. The Web is vastly larger in size and boasts incredible “data redundancy,” which renders it amenable to statistical techniques for answer extraction. A data-driven approach can yield high levels of performance and nicely complements traditional question answering techniques driven by information extraction. In addition to enormous amounts of unstructured text, the Web also contains pockets of structured and semistructured knowledge that can serve as a valuable resource for question answering. By organizing these resources and annotating them with natural language, we can successfully incorporate Web knowledge into question answering systems. This tutorial surveys recent Web-based question answering technology, focusing on two separate paradigms: knowledge mining using statistical tools and knowledge annotation using database concepts. Both approaches can employ a wide spectrum of techniques ranging in linguistic sophistication from simple “bag-of-words” treatments to full syntactic parsing.

Recovery of a Digital Image Collection Through the SDSC/UMD/NARA Prototype Persistent Archive - Smorul,Mike; JaJa, Joseph F.; McCall,Fritz; Brown,Susan Fitch; Moore,Reagan; Marciano,Richard; Chen,Sheau-Yen; Lopez,Rick; Chadduck,Robert (Instititue for Advanced Computer Studies, Univ of Maryland, College Park, 2003)
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the University of Maryland, and theNational Archives and Records Administration (NARA) are collaborating on building a pilot persistent archive using and extending data grid and digital library technologies. The current prototype consists of node servers at SDSC, University of Maryland, and NARA, connected through the Storage Request Broker (SRB) data grid middleware, and currently holds several terabytes of NARA selected collections. In particular, a historically important image collection that was on the verge of becoming inaccessible was fully restored and ingested into our pilot system. In this report, we describe the methodology behind our approach to fully restore this image collection and the process used to ingest it into the prototype persistent archive. (UMIACS-TR-2003-105)
Keywords: Technical Report

Resilient multicast using overlays - Banerjee,Suman; Lee,Seungjoon; Bhattacharjee, Bobby; Srinivasan, Aravind (SIGMETRICS Perform. Eval. Rev., 2003)
We introduce PRM (Probabilistic Resilient Multicast): a multicast data recovery scheme that improves data delivery ratios while maintaining low end-to-end latencies. PRM has both a proactive and a reactive component; in this paper we describe how PRM can be used to improve the performance of application-layer multicast protocols, especially when there are high packet losses and host failures. Further, using analytic techniques, we show that PRM can guarantee arbitrarily high data delivery ratios and low latency bounds. As a detailed case study, we show how PRM can be applied to the NICE application-layer multicast protocol. We present detailed simulations of the PRM-enhanced NICE protocol for 10,000 node Internet-like topologies. Simulations show that PRM achieves a high delivery ratio (> 97%) with a low latency bound (600 ms) for environments with high end-to-end network losses (1-5%) and high topology change rates (5 changes per second) while incurring very low overheads (< 5%).
Keywords: overlay multicast; randomized forwarding; Resilience

Resistance of orthogonal Gaussian fingerprints to collusion attacks - Wang,Z.J.; M. Wu; Zhao,Hong; Liu,K. J.R; Trappe,W. (Multimedia and Expo, 2003. ICME '03. Proceedings. 2003 International Conference on, 2003)
Digital fingerprinting is a means to offer protection to digital data by which fingerprints embedded in the multimedia are capable of identifying unauthorized use of digital content. A powerful attack that can be employed to reduce this tracing capability is collusion. In this paper, we study the collusion resistance of a fingerprinting system employing Gaussian distributed fingerprints and orthogonal modulation. We propose a likelihood-based approach to estimate the number of colluders, and introduce the thresholding detector for colluder identification. We first analyze the collusion resistance of a system to the average attack by considering the probability of a false negative and the probability of a false positive when identifying colluders. Lower and upper bounds for the maximum number of colluders Kmax are derived. We then show that the detectors are robust to different attacks. We further study different sets of performance criteria.
Keywords: approach; attacks; capability; collusion; data; data; digital; distributed; embedded; fingerprinting; fingerprints; Gaussian; likelihood-based; modulation; multimedia; of; orthogonal; probability; processes; protection; Security; systems; tracing

Scalable image-based multi-camera visual surveillance system - Lim,Ser-Nam; Davis, Larry S.; Elgammal,A. (Proceedings. IEEE Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance, 2003., 2003)
We describe the design of a scalable and wide coverage visual surveillance system. Scalability (the ability to add and remove cameras easily during system operation with minimal overhead and system degradation) is achieved by utilizing only image-based information for camera control. We show that when a pan-tilt-zoom camera pans and tilts, a given image point moves in a circular and a linear trajectory, respectively. We create a scene model using a plan view of the scene. The scene model makes it easy for us to handle occlusion prediction and schedule video acquisition tasks subject to visibility constraints. We describe a maximum weight matching algorithm to assign cameras to tasks that meet the visibility constraints. The system is illustrated both through simulations and real video from a 6-camera configuration.
Keywords: ACQUISITION; algorithm; camera; constraints; feature; hidden; image-based; MATCHING; maximum; multi-camera; occlusion; pan-tilt-zoom; PLAN; prediction; processing; removal; scalable; scheduling; signal; Surveillance; surveillance; system; task; video; view; visibility; visual; weight

Searching recorded speech based on the temporal extent of topic labels - Oard, Douglas; Leuski,A. (AAAI Spring Symposium on Intelligent Multimedia Knowledge Management, 2003)
Recorded speech poses unusual challenges for the de- sign of interactive end-user search systems. Automatic speech recognition is sufficiently accurate to support the automated components of interactive search sys- tems in some applications, but finding useful recordings among those nominated by the system can be difficult because listening to audio is time consuming and be- cause recognition errors and speech disfluencies make it difficult to mitigate that effect by skimming automatic transcripts. Support for rapid browsing based on su- pervised learning for automatic classification has shown promise, however, and a segment-then-label framework has emerged as the dominant paradigm for applying that technique to news broadcasts. This paper argues for a more general framework, which we call an activation matrix, that provides a flexible representation for the mapping between labels and time. Three approaches to the generation of activation matrices are briefly de- scribed, with the main focus of the paper then being the use of activation matrices to support search and selec- tion in interactive systems.

The sequence and analysis of Trypanosoma brucei chromosome II - El‐Sayed, Najib M.; Ghedin,E.; Song,J.; MacLeod,A.; Bringaud,F.; Larkin,C.; Wanless,D.; Peterson,J.; Hou,L.; Taylor,S.; others (Nucleic acids research, 2003)

A Simple and Optimal Energy Surface Reconstruction Algorithm from Volumetric Data - Liu,Kexue; Duraiswami, Ramani; Davis, Larry S. (Technical Reports from UMIACS, 2003)
We describe a new method for building 3D surface meshes from volumetricimages, as are created in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The method works by first extracting the contours from the MRI data, and then using modified polygon boolean operations to find difference polygons. The last step is performed by applying a Constrained Delauny Triangulation (CDT) algorithm to build a surface mesh. Since it is based on CDT, the mesh quality is usually very good. Moreover, the resulting triangular surface mesh is the optimal one for surface interpolation. In case of undersampled images, the mesh quality can be improved dramatically by inserting new Steiner points in to the mesh. Thus the mesh can be made suitable for use in scientific computation. Our method has the advantages of combining the generation and optimization of the mesh in one step compared with other methods. These advantages are illustrated. Also UMIACS-TR-2003-11
Keywords: Technical Report

Special section on perceptual organization in computer vision - Jacobs, David W.; Lindenbaum,M.; August,J.; Zucker,SW; Ben-Shahar,O.; Zucker,SW; Tuytelaars,T.; Turina,A.; Van Gool,L.; Mahamud,S. (IEEE Computer Society, 2003)

Sports Video Classification Using HMM - Gilbert,X.; Li,H.; David Doermann (ICME, 2003)

A Step Towards Automated Design of Rotary-Platen Multi-Shot Molds - Li,Xuejun; Gupta, Satyandra K. (ASME, 2003)
This paper describes an improved algorithm for automated design of rotary-platen type of multi-shot molds for manufacturing multi-material objects. The algorithm described in this paper accounts for geometric constraints resulting from the rotary-platen process and it can handle significantly more complex interfaces. Our algorithm works in the following manner. First, we classify the multi-material object into several basic types based on the relationships among different single material components in the object. For every basic type, we find a manufacturing sequence based on the precedence constraints resulting due to accessibility and disassembly requirements. Then, starting from the last mold stage, we generate the mold pieces for every mold stage based on the manufacturing sequence. We expect that the algorithm described in this paper will provide the necessary foundations for automating the design of rotary-platen molds and therefore will help in significantly reducing the mold manufacturing lead-time associated with these types of molds.

Supporting statistical electronic table usage by citizens - Hert,Carol A.; Liddy,Elizabeth D.; Shneiderman, Ben; Marchionini,Gary (Commun. ACM, 2003)
Over 70 agencies at the federal level are charged with collecting data and producing and disseminating statistics. These statistics are used to inform government policy, shape health care initiatives, provide information on the state of the economy, and others. They also have significant impact on the lives of citizens who use the statistics, for example, to determine job opportunities, changes in social security benefits, and quality of life in particular areas. Our digital government project developed several specific technologies to support the location, manipulation, and understanding of a quintessential format for statistical information---the table.

Temporal probabilistic object bases - Biazzo,V.; Giugno,R.; Lukasiewicz,T.; V.S. Subrahmanian (Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, 2003)
There are numerous applications where we have to deal with temporal uncertainty associated with objects. The ability to automatically store and manipulate time, probabilities, and objects is important. We propose a data model and algebra for temporal probabilistic object bases (TPOBs), which allows us to specify the probability with which an event occurs at a given time point. In explicit TPOB-instances, the sets of time points along with their probability intervals are explicitly enumerated. In implicit TPOB-instances, sets of time points are expressed by constraints and their probability intervals by probability distribution functions. Thus, implicit object base instances are succinct representations of explicit ones; they allow for an efficient implementation of algebraic operations, while their explicit counterparts make defining algebraic operations easy. We extend the relational algebra to both explicit and implicit instances and prove that the operations on implicit instances correctly implement their counterpart on explicit instances.
Keywords: algebra; algebraic; bases; constraints; data; database; database; databases; distribution; explicit; functions; handling; implicit; instances; integrity; intervals; management; model; models; object; object-oriented; operations; probabilistic; probability; probability; relational; temporal; theory; Uncertainty; uncertainty

Text Identification in Noisy Document Images Using Markov Random Field - Zheng,Y.; Li,H.; David Doermann (ICDAR, 2003)

Transcriptional regulation of protein complexes and biological pathways - Hannenhalli, Sridhar; Levy,Samuel (Mammalian Genome, 2003)
The cis-element profile (or cis-profile) of a gene refers to the collection of transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) regulating the transcription of the gene. Underlying the various published studies that attempt to discover cis-elements in the vicinity of co-expressed genes via pattern detection algorithms, there is an implicit assumption that a correlation exists between co-expressed genes and their cis-profiles. In this study, we show that the cis-similarity, defined as the proportion of shared TFBS between two cis-element profiles, is higher for functionally linked interacting proteins as well as for members of a signal transduction pathway. A similar analysis of the enzymes catalyzing the conversion of adjacent substrates to products in a collection of metabolic pathways, did not reveal higher cis-similarity. The analysis is based on three distinct sources of publicly available data, namely, 1) the BIND database of interacting proteins, 2) known interactions in NMDAR protein complex, 3) the apoptosis pathway and nine pathways related to metabolism of cofactors and vitamins all from KEGG. Additionally, we analyze the cis-element profiles of all the genes in the glutamate receptor (GR) sub-complex of NMDAR complex to detect a set of cis-elements that occur adjacent to a majority of the genes. We show that most of the corresponding transcription factors are known to be involved in GR regulation by comparing our findings with the published biomedical literature. In addition, we were able to detect transcripts whose gene products associate with GR by searching for transcripts that share the same regulatory signals as those detected for GR. This suggests a novel computational methodology for constructing high-order gene regulatory models and detecting co-regulated gene products.

Understanding Computer User Frustration: Measuring and Modeling the Disruption from Poor Designs - Bessiere,Katie; Ceaparu,Irina; Lazar,Jonathan; Robinson,John; Shneiderman, Ben (Technical Reports from UMIACS, 2003)
User frustration in the use of information and computing technology is apervasive and persistent problem. When computers crash, network congestion causes delays, and poor user interfaces trigger confusion there are dramatic consequences for individuals, organizations, and society. These frustrations not only cause personal dissatisfaction and loss of self-efficacy, but may disrupt workplaces, slow learning, and reduce participation in local and national communities. We propose a Computing Frustration Model with incident specific and individual variables to guide research. Our study of 108 computer users shows high levels of frustration and loss of 1/3 to 1/2 of time spent. The importance of the users' goals and the severity of the disruption were correlated with frustration. Those who had strong self-efficacy, indicated by a willingness to stick to solving the problem, reported lower levels of frustration. Implications for users, software developers, managers, and policymakers are discussed. Keywords: user frustration, user interface design, training, helpdesk, computer experience, computer anxiety (UMIACS-TR-2002-89) (HCIL-TR-2002-18)
Keywords: Technical Report

Using Visualization Tools to Gain Insight Into Your Data - Plaisant, Catherine; Chintalapani,G.; Lukehart,C.; Schiro,D.; Ryan,J. (SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, 2003)
When the term ‘visualization’ is used in the oil and gas industry, it is usually referring to the viewing of complex geologic structures in three-dimensional space. This paper illustrates insights gained by applying interactive visual environments to petroleum industry data that has traditionally been presented in spreadsheets, line graphs, and bar charts. Two information visualization tools, Treemap and SpaceTree, will be shown applied to a variety of oilfield related data.

What makes a good answer? The role of context in question answering - Jimmy Lin; Quan,D.; Sinha,V.; Bakshi,K.; Huynh,D.; Katz,B.; Karger,D. R (Human-Computer Interaction, Interact '03, 2003)

AAAI 2002 Workshops - Blake,Brian; Haigh,Karen; Hexmoor,Henry; Falcone,Rino; Soh,Leen-Kiat; Baral,Chitta; McIlraith,Sheila; Gmytrasiewicz,Piotr; Parsons,Simon; Malaka,Rainer; Krueger,Antonio; Bouquet,Paolo; et al. (AI Magazine, 2002)

AD (Attacker Defender) Game - Kochut,Andrzej; Agrawala, Ashok K.; Larsen,Ronald L; A. Udaya Shankar (Technical Reports from UMIACS, UMIACS-TR-2001-45, 2002)
Information Dynamics is a framework for agent-based systems that givesa central position to the role of information, time, and the value of information. We illustrate system design in the Information Dynamics Framework by developing an intelligence game called AD involving attackers, defenders and targets operating in some space of locations. The goal of the attackers is to destroy all targets. Target destruction takes place when the number of attackers in the target's neighborhood exceeds the number of defenders in this neighborhood by a value WINNING_DIFFERENCE. The goal of defenders is to prevent attackers from achieving their goal. (Also UMIACS-TR-2001-45)
Keywords: Technical Report

Algorithmic issues in modeling motion - Agarwal,Pankaj K.; Guibas,Leonidas J.; Edelsbrunner,Herbert; Erickson,Jeff; Isard,Michael; Har-Peled,Sariel; Hershberger,John; Jensen,Christian; Kavraki,Lydia; Koehl,Patrice; Lin,Ming; Manocha,Dinesh; et al. (ACM Comput. Surv., 2002)
This article is a survey of research areas in which motion plays a pivotal role. The aim of the article is to review current approaches to modeling motion together with related data structures and algorithms, and to summarize the challenges that lie ahead in producing a more unified theory of motion representation that would be useful across several disciplines.
Keywords: computational geometry; Computer vision; mobile networks; modeling; molecular biology; motion modeling; physical simulation; robotoics; spatio-temporal databases

Annotating the semantic web using natural language - Katz,Boris; Jimmy Lin (Proceedings of the 2nd workshop on NLP and XML - Volume 17, 2002)
Because the ultimate purpose of the Semantic Web is to help users better locate, organize, and process content, we believe that it should be grounded in the information access method humans are most comfortable with---natural language. However, the Resource Description Framework (RDF), the foundation of the Semantic Web, was designed to be easily processed by computers, not humans. To render RDF more friendly to humans, we propose to augment it with natural language annotations, or metadata written in everyday language. We argue that natural language annotations, parsed into computer-readable representations, are not only intuitive and effective, but can also accelerate the pace with which the Semantic Web is being adopted. We believe that our technology can facilitate a happy marriage between natural language technology and the Semantic Web vision.

Anti-collusion codes: multi-user and multimedia perspectives - Trappe,W.; M. Wu; Liu,K. J.R (Image Processing. 2002. Proceedings. 2002 International Conference on, 2002)
Digital fingerprinting is an effective method to identify users who might try to redistribute multimedia content, such as images and video. These fingerprints are typically embedded into the content using watermarking techniques that are designed to be robust to a variety of attacks. A cheap and effective attack against such digital fingerprints is collusion, where several differently marked copies of the same content are averaged or combined to disrupt the underlying fingerprint. We present a construction of collusion-resistant fingerprints based upon anti-collusion codes (ACC) and binary code modulation. ACC have the property that the composition of any subset of K or fewer codevectors is unique. Using this property, we build fingerprints that allow for the identification of groups of K or less colluders. We present a construction of binary-valued ACC under the logical AND operation using the theory of combinatorial designs. Our code construction requires only Oscr;( radic;n) orthogonal signals to accommodate n users. We demonstrate the performance of our ACC for fingerprinting multimedia by identifying colluders through experiments using real images.
Keywords: and; anti-collusion; authentication; binary; code; codes; coding; combinatorial; computing; content; data; designs; digital; embedding; encapsulation; fingerprinting; image; images; logical; mathematics; message; Modulation; modulation; multimedia; operation; performance; watermarking

An Augmented Visual Query Mechanism for Finding Patterns in Time Series Data - Keogh,Eamonn; Hochheiser,Harry; Shneiderman, Ben (Flexible Query Answering SystemsFlexible Query Answering Systems, 2002)
Relatively few query tools exist for data exploration and pattern identification in time series data sets. In previous work we introduced Timeboxes . Timeboxes are rectangular, direct-manipulation queries for studying time-series datasets. We demonstrated how Timeboxes can be used to support interactive exploration via dynamic queries, along with overviews of query results and drag-and-drop support for query-by-example. In this paper, we extend our work by introducing Variable Time Timeboxes (VTT). VTTs are a natural generalization of Timeboxes, which permit the specification of queries that allow a degree of uncertainty in the time axis. We carefully motivate the need for these more expressive queries, and demonstrate the utility of our approach on several data sets.

Bayesian methods for face recognition from video - Chellapa, Rama; Zhou,Shaohua; Li,Baoxin (Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2002 IEEE International Conference on, 2002)
Face recognition (FR) from video necessitates simultaneously solving two asks, recognition and tracking. To accommodate the video, a time series state space model is introduced in a Bayesian approach. Given this model, the goal reduces to estimating the posterior distribution of the state vector given the observations up to the present. The Sequential Importance Sampling (SIS) technique is invoked to generate a numerical solution to this model. However, the ultimate goal is to estimate the posterior distribution of the identity of humans for recognition purposes. Presented here are two methods to approximate the above distribution under different experimental scenarios.

Collusion-resistant fingerprinting for multimedia - Trappe,Wade; M. Wu; Liu,K. J.R (Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2002 IEEE International Conference on, 2002)
Digital fingerprinting is an effective method to identify users who might try to redistribute multimedia content, such as images and video. These fingerprints are typically embedded into the content using watermarking techniques that are designed to be robust to a variety of attacks. A cheap and effective attack against such digital fingerprints is collusion, where several differently marked copies of the same content are averaged or combined to disrupt the underlying fingerprint. In this paper, we study the problem of designing fingerprints that can withstand collusion, yet trace colluders. Since, in antipodal CDMA-type watermarking, the correlation contributions only decrease where watermarks differ, by constructing binary code vectors where any subset of k or fewer of these vectors have unique overlap, we may identify groups of k or less colluders. Our construction of such anti-collusion codes (ACC) uses the theory of combinatorial designs, and for n users requires O( #x221A;n) bits. Further, we explore a block matrix structure for the ACC that reduces the computational complexity for identifying colluders and improves the detection capability when colluders belong to the same subgroup.

Combinatorial Algorithms for Design of DNA Arrays - Hannenhalli, Sridhar; Hubbell,Earl; Lipshutz,Robert; Pevzner,Pavel (Chip TechnologyChip Technology, 2002)
Optimal design of DNA arrays requires the development of algorithms with two-fold goals: reducing the effects caused by unintended illumination ( border length minimization problem ) and reducing the complexity of masks ( mask decomposition problem ). We describe algorithms that reduce the number of rectangles in mask decomposition by 20–30% as compared to a standard array design under the assumption that the arrangement of oligonucleotides on the array is fixed. This algorithm produces provably optimal solution for all studied real instances of array design. We also address the difficult problem of finding an arrangement which minimizes the border length and come up with a new idea of threading that significantly reduces the border length as compared to standard designs.

A configurable CORBA gateway for providing adaptable system properties - Seri,M.; Courtney,T.; Michel Cukier; Gupta,V.; Krishnmamurthy,S.; Lyons,J.; Ramasamy,H.; Ren,J.; Sanders,W. H. (2002)

Construction of a Chinese-English Verb Lexicon for Embedded Machine Translation in Cross-Language Information Retrieval - Dorr, Bonnie J; Lin,Dekang; Levow,Gina-Anne (Instititue for Advanced Computer Studies, Univ of Maryland, College Park, 2002)
This paper addresses the problem of automatic acquisition of lexical knowledge for rapid construction of MT engines for use in multilingual applications. We describe new techniques for large-scale construction of a Chinese-English verb lexicon and we evaluate the coverage and effectiveness of the resulting lexicon for a structured MT approach that is embedded in a cross-language information retrieval system. Leveraging off an existing Chinese conceptual database called HowNet and a large, semantically rich English verb database, we use thematic-role information to create links between Chinese concepts and English classes. We apply the metrics of recall and precision to evaluate the coverage and effectiveness of the linguistic resources. The results of this work indicate that: (1) we are able to obtain reliable Chinese-English entries both with and without pre-existing semantic links between the two languages; (2) if we have pre-existing semantic links, we are able to produce a more robust lexical resource by merging these with our semantically rich English database; (3) In our comparisons with manual lexicon creation, our automatic techniques were shown to achieve 62% precision, compared to a much lower precision of 10% for arbitrary assignment of semantic links.
Keywords: *ACQUISITION; *AUTOMATIC; *CROSS-LANGUAGE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL; *INFORMATION RETRIEVAL; *LEXICAL ACQUISITION; *MACHINE TRANSLATION; *VOCABULARY; Chinese language; CHINESE-ENGLISH LEXICONS; DATA BASES; EMBEDDED MT(MACHINE TRANSLATION) RESOURCES; EMBEDDING; English language; INFORMATION SCIENCE; linguistics; semantics; THEMATIC ROLES

Construction of a Chinese–English Verb Lexicon for Machine Translation and Embedded Multilingual Applications - Dorr, Bonnie J; Levow,Gina-Anne; Lin,Dekang (Machine Translation, 2002)
This paper addresses the problem of automatic acquisition of lexical knowledge for rapid construction of engines for machine translation and embedded multilingual applications. We describe new techniques for large-scale construction of a Chinese–English verb lexicon and we evaluate the coverage and effectiveness of the resulting lexicon. Leveraging off an existing Chinese conceptual database called How Net and a large, semantically rich English verb database, we use thematic-role information to create links between Chinese concepts and English classes. We apply the metrics of recall and precision to evaluate the coverage and effectiveness of the linguistic resources. The results of this work indicate that: (a) we are able to obtain reliable Chinese–English entries both with and without pre-existing semantic links between the two languages; (b) if we have pre-existing semantic links, we are able to produce a more robust lexical resource by merging these with our semantically rich English database; (c) in our comparisons with manual lexicon creation, our automatic techniques were shown to achieve 62% precision, compared to a much lower precision of 10% for arbitrary assignment of semantic links.

Detection of Cytotoxin-Hemolysin mRNA in Nonculturable Populations of Environmental and Clinical Vibrio Vulnificus Strains in Artificial Seawater - Fischer-Le Saux,Marion; Hervio-Heath,Dominique; Loaec,Solen; Rita R Colwell; Pommepuy,Monique (Applied and Environmental MicrobiologyAppl. Environ. Microbiol., 2002)
The objective of this study was to develop a molecular detection method that better estimates the potential risk associated with the presence of Vibrio vulnificus. For that purpose, we applied seminested reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) to viable but nonculturable (VBNC) populations of V. vulnificus and targeted the cytotoxin-hemolysin virulence gene vvhA. Three strains, two environmental, IF Vv10 and IF Vv18, and one clinical, C7184, were used in this study. Artificial seawater, inoculated with mid-log-phase cells, was maintained at 4°C. VBNC cells resulted after 3, 6, and 14 days for C7184, IF Vv18, and IF Vv10, respectively. Our data indicate that seminested RT-PCR is sensitive for the detection of vvhA mRNA in artificial seawater when exclusively nonculturable bacteria are present. This is the first report of the expression of a toxin gene in VBNC V. vulnificus. Moreover, vvhA transcripts were shown to persist in nonculturable populations over a 4.5-month period, with a progressive decline of the signal over time. This result indicates that special attention should be given to the presence of potentially pathogenic VBNC cells in environmental samples when assessing public health risk.

Effects of Global Climate on Infectious Disease: The Cholera Model - Lipp,Erin K.; Huq,Anwar; Rita R Colwell (Clinical Microbiology ReviewsClin. Microbiol. Rev., 2002)
Recently, the role of the environment and climate in disease dynamics has become a subject of increasing interest to microbiologists, clinicians, epidemiologists, and ecologists. Much of the interest has been stimulated by the growing problems of antibiotic resistance among pathogens, emergence and/or reemergence of infectious diseases worldwide, the potential of bioterrorism, and the debate concerning climate change. Cholera, caused by Vibrio cholerae, lends itself to analyses of the role of climate in infectious disease, coupled to population dynamics of pathogenic microorganisms, for several reasons. First, the disease has a historical context linking it to specific seasons and biogeographical zones. In addition, the population dynamics of V. cholerae in the environment are strongly controlled by environmental factors, such as water temperature, salinity, and the presence of copepods, which are, in turn, controlled by larger-scale climate variability. In this review, the association between plankton and V. cholerae that has been documented over the last 20 years is discussed in support of the hypothesis that cholera shares properties of a vector-borne disease. In addition, a model for environmental transmission of cholera to humans in the context of climate variability is presented. The cholera model provides a template for future research on climate-sensitive diseases, allowing definition of critical parameters and offering a means of developing more sophisticated methods for prediction of disease outbreaks.

Empirical findings in agile methods - Lindvall,M.; Basili, Victor R.; Boehm,B.; Costa,P.; Dangle,K.; Shull, F.; Tesoriero,R.; Williams,L.; Zelkowitz, Marvin V (Extreme Programming and Agile Methods—XP/Agile Universe 2002, 2002)
In recent years, the use of, interest in, and controversy about Agile methodologies have realized dramatic growth. Anecdotal evidence is rising regarding the effectiveness of agile methodologies in certain environments and for specified projects. However, collection and analysis of empirical evidence of this effectiveness and classification of appropriate environments for Agile projects has not been conducted. Researchers from four institutions organized an eWorkshop to synchronously and virtually discuss and gather experiences and knowledge from eighteen Agile experts spread across the globe. These experts characterized Agile Methods and communicated experiences using these methods on small to very large teams. They discussed the importance of staffing Agile teams with highly skilled developers. They shared common success factors and identified warning signs of problems in Agile projects. These and other findings and heuristics gathered through this valuable exchange can be useful to researchers and to practitioners as they establish an experience base for better decision making.

Experimental Construction of Very Large Scale DNA Databases with Associative Search - Reif,J. H; LaBean,T. H; Pirrung,M.; Rana,V. S; Guo,B.; Kingsford, Carl; Wickham,G. S (DNA computing: 7th International Workshop on DNA-Based Computers, DNA 7, Tampa, FL, USA, June 10-13, 2001: revised papers, 2002)

A generic approach to simultaneous tracking and verification in video - Li,Baoxin; Chellapa, Rama (Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on, 2002)
A generic approach to simultaneous tracking and verification in video data is presented. The approach is based on posterior density estimation using sequential Monte Carlo methods. Visual tracking, which is in essence a temporal correspondence problem, is solved through probability density propagation, with the density being defined over a proper state space characterizing the object configuration. Verification is realized through hypothesis testing using the estimated posterior density. In its most basic form, verification can be performed as follows. Given a measurement vector Z and two hypotheses H1 and H0, we first estimate posterior probabilities P(H0|Z) and P(H1|Z), and then choose the one with the larger posterior probability as the true hypothesis. Several applications of the approach are illustrated by experiments devised to evaluate its performance. The idea is first tested on synthetic data, and then experiments with real video sequences are presented, illustrating vehicle tracking and verification, human (face) tracking and verification, facial feature tracking, and image sequence stabilization.
Keywords: approach; Carlo; configuration; correspondence; data; density; density; estimated; estimation; evaluation; extraction; Face; facial; feature; generic; human; hypothesis; image; measurement; methods; Monte; object; performance; posterior; probability; probability; problem; processing; propagation; recognition; road; sequence; sequences; sequential; signal; space; stabilization; state; synthetic; temporal; testing; tracking; vector; vehicle; vehicles; verification; video; visual

Genome sequence and comparative analysis of the model rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium yoelii yoelii - Carlton,Jane M.; Angiuoli,Samuel V; Suh,Bernard B.; Kooij,Taco W.; Pertea,Mihaela; Silva,Joana C.; Ermolaeva,Maria D.; Allen,Jonathan E; Jeremy D Selengut; Koo,Hean L.; Peterson,Jeremy D.; Pop, Mihai; et al. (Nature, 2002)
Species of malaria parasite that infect rodents have long been used as models for malaria disease research. Here we report the whole-genome shotgun sequence of one species, Plasmodium yoelii yoelii, and comparative studies with the genome of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum clone 3D7. A synteny map of 2,212 P. y. yoelii contiguous DNA sequences (contigs) aligned to 14 P. falciparum chromosomes reveals marked conservation of gene synteny within the body of each chromosome. Of about 5,300 P. falciparum genes, more than 3,300 P. y. yoelii orthologues of predominantly metabolic function were identified. Over 800 copies of a variant antigen gene located in subtelomeric regions were found. This is the first genome sequence of a model eukaryotic parasite, and it provides insight into the use of such systems in the modelling of Plasmodium biology and disease.

Getting real about speech: overdue or overhyped? - James,Frankie; Lai,Jennifer; Suhm,Bernhard; Balentine,Bruce; Makhoul,John; Nass,Clifford; Shneiderman, Ben (CHI '02 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, 2002)
Speech has recently made headway towards becoming a more mainstream interface modality. For example, there is an increasing number of call center applications, especially in the airline and banking industries. However, speech still has many properties that cause its use to be problematic, such as its inappropriateness in both very quiet and very noisy environments, and the tendency of speech to increase cognitive load. Concerns about such problems are valid; however, they do not explain why the use of speech is so controversial in the HCI community. This panel would like to address the issues underlying the controversy around speech, by discussing the current state of the art, the reasons it is so difficult to build a good speech interface, and how HCI research can contribute to the development of speech interfaces.
Keywords: cognitive load; social responses; speech interfaces

A hierarchical approach for obtaining structure from two-frame optical flow - Liu,Haiying; Chellapa, Rama; Rosenfeld, A. (Motion and Video Computing, 2002. Proceedings. Workshop on, 2002)
A hierarchical iterative algorithm is proposed for extracting structure from two-frame optical flow. The algorithm exploits two facts: one is that in many applications, such as face and gesture recognition, the depth variation of the visible surface of an object in a scene is small compared to the distance between the optical center and the object; the other is that the time aliasing problem is alleviated at the coarse level for any two-frame optical flow estimate so that the estimate tends to be more accurate. A hierarchical representation for the relationship between the optical flow, depth, and the motion parameters is derived, and the resulting non-linear system is iteratively solved through two linear subsystems. At the coarsest level, the surface of the object tends to be flat, so that the inverse depth tends to be a constant, which is used as the initial depth map. Inverse depth and motion parameters are estimated by the two linear subsystems at each level and the results are propagated to finer levels. Error analysis and experiments using both computer-rendered images and real images demonstrate the correctness and effectiveness of our algorithm.
Keywords: algorithm; aliasing; analysis; computer-rendered; depth; depth; error; estimation; extraction; Face; feature; flow; gesture; hierarchical; image; images; inverse; iterative; methods; MOTION; nonlinear; optical; parameter; processing; real; recognition; sequences; signal; structure-from-motion; system; systems; TIME; two-frame; variation; video

High-level synthesis of DSP applications using adaptive negative cycle detection - Chandrachoodan,Nitin; Bhattacharyya, Shuvra S.; Liu,K. J.R (EURASIP J. Appl. Signal Process., 2002)
The problem of detecting negative weight cycles in a graph is examined in the context of the dynamic graph structures that arise in the process of high level synthesis (HLS). The concept of adaptive negative cycle detection is introduced, in which a graph changes over time and negative cycle detection needs to be done periodically, but not necessarily after every individual change. We present an algorithm for this problem, based on a novel extension of the well-known Bellman-Ford algorithm that allows us to adapt existing cycle information to the modified graph, and show by experiments that our algorithm significantly outperforms previous incremental approaches for dynamic graphs. In terms of applications, the adaptive technique leads to a very fast implementation of Lawlers algorithm for the computation of the maximum cycle mean (MCM) of a graph, especially for a certain form of sparse graph. Such sparseness often occurs in practical circuits and systems, as demonstrated, for example, by the ISCAS 89/93 benchmarks. The application of the adaptive technique to design-space exploration (synthesis) is also demonstrated by developing automated search techniques for scheduling iterative data-flow graphs.
Keywords: adaptive performance estimation; dynamic graphs; maximum cycle mean; negative cycle detection

Identification of non-autonomous non-LTR retrotransposons in the genome of Trypanosoma cruzi - Bringaud,Frédéric; García-Pérez,José Luis; Heras,Sara R.; Ghedin,Elodie; El‐Sayed, Najib M.; Andersson,Björn; Baltz,Théo; Lopez,Manuel C. (Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology, 2002)
As observed for most eukaryotic cells, trypanosomatids contains non-LTR retrotransposons randomly inserted in the nuclear genome. Autonomous retroelements which, code for their own transposition, have been characterized in Trypanosoma brucei (ingi) and Trypanosoma cruzi (L1Tc), whereas non-autonomous retroelements have only been characterized in T. brucei (RIME). Here, we have characterized in the genome of Trypanosoma cruzi four complete copies of a non-autonomous non-LTR retrotransposon, called NARTc. This 0.26 kb NARTc element has the characteristics of non-LTR retrotransposons: the presence a poly(dA) tail and of a short flanking duplicated motif. Analysis of the Genome Survey Sequence databases indicated that the Trypanosoma cruzi haploid genome contains about 140 NARTc copies and about twice as many L1Tc copies. Interestingly, the NARTc and L1Tc retroelements share, with the Trypanosoma brucei ingi and RIME retrotransposons, a common sequence (the first 45 bp with 91% identity), whereas the remaining sequences are very divergent. This suggests that these four trypanosome non-LTR retrotransposons were derived from the same common ancester and the sequence of their 5'-extremity may have a functional role. In addition, the genome of Leishmania major contains the same conserved motif present in the trypanosome retroelements, whicle no transposable elements have been detected so far in Leishmania sp.
Keywords: Ingi; L1Tc; Non-LTR retrotransposon; RIME; Trypanosoma brucei; Trypanosoma cruzi

Identification of transcription factor binding sites in the human genome sequence - Levy,Samuel; Hannenhalli, Sridhar (Mammalian Genome, 2002)
The identification of transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) is an important initial step in determining the DNA signals that regulate transcription of the genome. We tested the performance of three distinct computational methods for the identification of TFBS applied to the human genome sequence, as judged by their ability to recover the location of experimentally determined, and uniquely mapped, TFBS taken from the TRANSFAC database. These identification methods all attempt to filter the quantity of TFBS identified by aligning positional weight matrices that describe the binding site and employ either (i) a P-value threshold for accepting a site, (ii) an over-representation measure of neighboring sites, or (iii) conservation with the mouse genome and application of P-value thresholds. The results show that the best recognition of TFBS is achieved by combining the identification of TFBS in regions of human–mouse conservation and also by applying a high stringency P-value to the TFBS identified in non-coding regions that are not conserved. Additionally, we find that only half of the 481 experimentally mapped sites can be found in sequence regions conserved with mouse, but the predictive power of the binding site identification method is up to threefold higher in the conserved regions.

The importance of lexicalized syntax models for natural language generation tasks - Daumé, Hal; Knight,K.; Langkilde-Geary,I.; Marcu,D.; Yamada,K. (Proc. of INLG, 2002)

Improved Approximation Algorithms for the Partial Vertex Cover Problem - Halperin,Eran; Srinivasan, Aravind (Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial OptimizationApproximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization, 2002)
The partial vertex cover problem is a generalization of the vertex cover problem:given an undirected graph G = ( V,E ) and an integer k , we wish to choose a minimum number of vertices such that at least k edges are covered. Just as for vertex cover, 2-approximation algorithms are known for this problem, and it is of interest to see if we can do better than this.The current-best approximation ratio for partial vertex cover, when parameterized by the maximum degree d of G , is (2 − Θ (1/ d )).We improve on this by presenting a $$ łeft( 2 - Θ łeft( \tfracłn łn d łn d \right) \right) $$ -approximation algorithm for partial vertex cover using semidefinite programming, matching the current-best bound for vertex cover. Our algorithmuses a new rounding technique, which involves a delicate probabilistic analysis.

In vitro adhesion to human cells by viable but nonculturable Enterococcus faecalis - Pruzzo,C.; Tarsi,R.; Lleò,M. M.; Signoretto,C.; Zampini,M.; Rita R Colwell; Canepari,P. (Current microbiology, 2002)
The ability of viable but nonculturable (VBNC) Enterococcus faecalis to adhere to Caco-2 and Girardi heart cultured cells and to urinary tract epithelial cells (ECs) was studied. Enterococci were harvested during the vegetative growth phase (early exponential and stationary), in the VBNC state, and after recovery of the ability to divide. VBNC bacteria maintained their adherence capability but the efficiency of attachment was reduced by about 50 to 70%, depending on the target cell employed. The decrease was transient, since enterococci that regained their culturability showed adherence values similar to those observed for actively growing cells. Analysis of the invasive properties of E. faecalis revealed that the VBNC state caused a decrease in the number of bacteria that entered the cultured HEK cells as a result of the reduction in the number of adhering bacteria. These results highlight the importance of studies of the VBNC phenomenon, with respect to both microbial survival in the environment and the impact on human health.

Joint coding and embedding for collusion-resistant fingerprinting - Trappe,W.; Wu,M.; Liu,K. J.R (Proceedings of the European Signal Processing Conference, EUSIPCO, 2002)
An effective attack against fingerprints for multimedia is collusion,where several differently marked copies of the same content are av- eraged or combined to disrupt the underlying fingerprint. In this paper, we investigate the problem of designing fingerprints that can withstand collusion and allow for the identification of colluders. We begin by introducing the collusion problem for additive embedding, and introduce an efficient detection algorithm for orthogonal mod- ulation that identifies the fingerprints associated with K colluders and requires O(K log(n/K)) correlations for a group of n users. We present a construction of collusion-resistant fingerprints based upon anti-collusion codes (ACC) and binary code modulation. Us- ing ACC, we build fingerprints that identify groups of K or less colluders. We present a construction of binary-valued ACC un- der the logical AND operation using the theory of combinatorial designs. Our code construction requires only O(√n) orthogonal signals to accommodate n users. We demonstrate the performance of our ACC for fingerprinting multimedia and identifying colluders through experiments using Gaussian signals.

Level of Detail for 3D Graphics - Luebke, David; Watson, Benjamin; Cohen, Jonathan D.; Reddy, Martin; Varshney, Amitabh (Elsevier Science Inc., 2002)
Level of detail (LOD) techniques are increasingly used by professional real-time developers to strike the balance between breathtaking virtual worlds and smooth, flowing animation. Level of Detail for 3D Graphics brings together, for the first time, the mechanisms, principles, practices, and theory needed by every graphics developer seeking to apply LOD methods.Continuing advances in level of detail management have brought this powerful technology to the forefront of 3D graphics optimization research. This book, written by the very researchers and developers who have built LOD technology, is both a state-of-the-art chronicle of LOD advances and a practical sourcebook, which will enable graphics developers from all disciplines to apply these formidable techniques to their own work.

A light-weight process for capturing and evolving defect reduction experience - Basili, Victor R.; Lindvall,M.; Shull, F. (Engineering of Complex Computer Systems, 2002. Proceedings. Eighth IEEE International Conference on, 2002)
Selecting technologies for developing software is a crucial activity in software projects. Defect reduction is an example of an area in which software developers have to decide what technologies to use. CeBASE is a NSF funded project that has the role of improving software development by providing decision support on the selection of techniques and tools. The decision support is based on empirical data organized in experience bases and refined into high-level models. Empirical data is collected through various activities, for example through eWorkshops in which experts discuss important issues, and formalized using the lightweight knowledge dust to knowledge pearl process.
Keywords: bases; experience; CeBASE; NSF; defect; development; software; experience; software; funded; knowledge; software; management; lightweight; management; software; project; decision; projects; software; reduction; reusability; software; reuse; software; support; eWorkshops; experience; tools; tools; knowledge

Logical Labeling of Document Images Using Layout Graph Matching with Adaptive Learning - Liang,J.; David Doermann (IAPR Conference on Document Analysis System, 2002)
Logical structure analysis of document images is an important problem in document image understanding. In this paper, we propose a graph matching approach to label logical components on a document page. Our system is able to learn a model for a document class, use this model to label document images through graph matching, and adaptively improve the model with error feed back. We tested our method on journal/proceeding article title pages. The experimental results show promising accuracy, and confirm the ability of adaptive learning.

Methods and apparatus for multi-layer data hiding - Yu,Hong Heather; M. Wu; Li,Xin; Gelman,Alexander D. (2002)
A data hiding system and method for providing a method of embedding multiple layers of hidden data into multimedia data. First, a media unit of the multimedia data is evaluated to determine an appropriate embedding procedure. Next during a first embedding pass, a ruling layer of primary hidden data is embedded into the media unit. In another embedding pass, a governing layer of secondary hidden data is embedded on top of the ruling layer. The secondary hidden data provides control information for controlling the primary hidden data and the host data. Control information such as error correction data, synchronization data, decoding data, and authentication data is embedded in the governing layer. Embedding schemes such as base domain and spectrum domain embedding are employed.

Multiresolution tetrahedral meshes: an analysis and a comparison - Danovaro,E.; De Floriani, Leila; Lee,M.; Samet, Hanan (Shape Modeling International, 2002. Proceedings, 2002)
We deal with the problem of analyzing and visualizing large-size volume data sets. To this aim, we consider multiresolution representations based on a decomposition of the field domain into tetrahedral cells. We compare two types of multiresolution representations that differ on the rule applied to refine an initial coarse mesh: one is based on tetrahedron bisection, and one based on vertex split. The two representations can be viewed as instances of a common multiresolution model, that we call a multiresolution mesh. Encoding data structures for the two representations are briefly described. An experimental comparison on structured volume data sets is presented
Keywords: (computer; bisection; vertex; cells; tetrahedron; data; generation; rendering; geometry; data; graphics); solid; meshes; rendering; tetrahedral; modelling; refinement; multiresolution; representations; multiresolution; sets; mesh; split; computational; structures; data; tetrahedral; visualisation; mesh; visualization; experiment; large-size; volume

A new, expressed multigene family containing a hot spot for insertion of retroelements is associated with polymorphic subtelomeric regions of Trypanosoma brucei - Bringaud,F.; Biteau,N.; Melville,S. E.; Hez,S.; El‐Sayed, Najib M.; Leech,V.; Berriman,M.; Hall,N.; Donelson,J. E; Baltz,T. (Eukaryotic cell, 2002)

Nonlinear collusion attacks on independent multimedia fingerprints - Zhao,H.; Wu,M.; Wang,Z.J.; Liu,K. J.R (submitted to IEEE Trans. on Image Proc, 2002)

Omnibase: Uniform access to heterogeneous data for question answering - Katz,B.; Felshin,S.; Yuret,D.; Ibrahim,A.; Jimmy Lin; Marton,G.; Jerome McFarland,A.; Temelkuran,B. (Natural Language Processing and Information Systems, 2002)
Although the World Wide Web contains a tremendous amount of information, the lack of uniform structure makes finding the right knowledge difficult. A solution is to turn the Web into a “virtual database” and to access it through natural language.We built Omnibase, a system that integrates heterogeneous data sources using an object- property-value model. With the help of Omnibase, our Start natural language system can now access numerous heterogeneous data sources on the Web in a uniform manner, and answers millions of user questions with high precision.

Page classification through logical labelling - Liang,Jian; David Doermann; Ma,M.; Guo,J. K (Pattern Recognition, 2002. Proceedings. 16th International Conference on, 2002)
We propose an integrated approach to page classification and logical labelling. Layout is represented by a fully connected attributed relational graph that is matched to the graph of an unknown document, achieving classification and labelling simultaneously. By incorporating global constraints in an integrated fashion, ambiguity at the zone level can be reduced, providing robustness to noise and variation. Models are automatically trained from sample documents. Experimental results show promise for the classification and labelling of technical article title pages, and supports the idea of a hierarchical model base.
Keywords: article; attributed; base; character; classification; constraints; document; document; experimental; global; graph; graph; hierarchical; image; images; labelling; logical; model; noise; OCR; optical; page; pages; processing; recognition; relational; results; technical; theory; title; unknown

PASSAT: A user-centric planning framework - Myers,K.L.; Tyson,W.M.; Wolverton,M.J.; Jarvis,P.A.; Lee,T.J.; desJardins, Marie (Proceedings of the 3rd International NASA Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, 2002)
We describe a plan-authoring system called PASSAT (Plan-Authoring System based on Sketches, Advice, and Templates) that combines interactive tools for constructing plans with a suite of automated and mixed-initiative capabilities designed to complement human planning skills. PASSAT is organized around a library of predefined templates that encode task networks describing standard operating procedures and previous cases. Users can select from these templates to apply during plan development, with the system providing various forms of automated assistance. A mixed-initiative plan sketch facility helps users refine outlines for plans to complete solutions, by detecting problems and proposing possible fixes. An advice capability enables user specification of high-level guidelines for plans that the system helps to enforce. Finally, PASSAT includes process facilitation mechanisms designed to help a user track and manage outstanding planning tasks and information requirements, as a means of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the planning process. PASSAT is designed for applications for which a core of planning knowledge can be captured in predefined action models but where significant user control of the planning process is required.

Performance evaluation of object detection algorithms - Mariano,V.Y.; Min,Junghye; Park,Jin-Hyeong; Kasturi,R.; Mihalcik,D.; Huiping Li; David Doermann; Drayer,T. (Pattern Recognition, 2002. Proceedings. 16th International Conference on, 2002)
The continuous development of object detection algorithms is ushering in the need for evaluation tools to quantify algorithm performance. In this paper a set of seven metrics are proposed for quantifying different aspects of a detection algorithm's performance. The strengths and weaknesses of these metrics are described. They are implemented in the Video Performance Evaluation Resource (ViPER) system and will be used to evaluate algorithms for detecting text, faces, moving people and vehicles. Results for running two previous text-detection algorithms on a common data set are presented.
Keywords: algorithms; common; data; DETECTION; detection; Evaluation; evaluation; image; object; performance; recognition; resource; set; system; text-detection; video

Phylogenetic analysis based on 18S ribosomal RNA gene sequences supports the existence of class Polyacanthocephala (Acanthocephala) - García-Varela,M; Cummings, Michael P.; Pérez-Ponce de León,G.; Gardner,S. L; Laclette,J. P (Mol Phylogenet Evol, 2002)
Members of phylum Acanthocephala are parasites of vertebrates and arthropods and are distributed worldwide. The phylum has traditionally been divided into three classes, Archiacanthocephala, Palaeacanthocephala, and Eoacanthocephala; a fourth class, Polyacanthocephala, has been recently proposed. However, erection of this new class, based on morphological characters, has been controversial. We sequenced the near complete 18S rRNA gene of Polyacanthorhynchus caballeroi (Polyacanthocephala) and Rhadinorhynchus sp. (Palaeacanthocephala); these sequences were aligned with another 21 sequences of acanthocephalans representing the three widely recognized classes of the phylum and with 16 sequences from outgroup taxa. Phylogenetic relationships inferred by maximum-likelihood and maximum-parsimony analyses showed Archiacanthocephala as the most basal group within the phylum, whereas classes Polyacanthocephala + Eoacanthocephala formed a monophyletic clade, with Palaeacanthocephala as its sister group. These results are consistent with the view of Polyacanthocephala representing an independent class within Acanthocephala.

Predicting Transcription Factor Synergism - Hannenhalli, Sridhar; Levy,Samuel (Nucleic Acids ResearchNucl. Acids Res., 2002)
Transcriptional regulation is mediated by a battery of transcription factor (TF) proteins, that form complexes involving protein–protein and protein–DNA interactions. Individual TFs bind to their cognate cis‐elements or transcription factor‐binding sites (TFBS). TFBS are organized on the DNA proximal to the gene in groups confined to a few hundred base pair regions. These groups are referred to as modules. Various modules work together to provide the combinatorial regulation of gene transcription in response to various developmental and environmental conditions. The sets of modules constitute a promoter model. Determining the TFs that preferentially work in concert as part of a module is an essential component of understanding transcriptional regulation. The TFs that act synergistically in such a fashion are likely to have their cis‐elements co‐localized on the genome at specific distances apart. We exploit this notion to predict TF pairs that are likely to be part of a transcriptional module on the human genome sequence. The computational method is validated statistically, using known interacting pairs extracted from the literature. There are 251 TFBS pairs up to 50 bp apart and 70 TFBS pairs up to 200 bp apart that score higher than any of the known synergistic pairs. Further investigation of 50 pairs randomly selected from each of these two sets using PubMed queries provided additional supporting evidence from the existing biological literature suggesting TF synergism for these novel pairs.

Quantifying the cost of providing intrusion tolerance in group communication systems - Ramasamy,H. V.; Pandey,P.; Lyons,J.; Michel Cukier; Sanders,W. H. (2002)
Group communication systems that provide consistent group membership and reliable, ordered multicast properties in the presence of faults resulting from malicious intrusions have not been analyzed extensively to quantify the cost of tolerating these intrusions. This paper attempts to quantify this cost by presenting results from an experimental evaluation of three new intrusion-tolerant microprotocols that have been added to an existing crash-fault-tolerant group communication system. The results are analyzed to identify the parts that contribute the most overhead during provision of intrusion tolerance at the group communication system level.
Keywords: consistent group membership; crash-fault-tolerant group communication system; cryptography; finite state machines; groupware; intrusion-tolerant microprotocols; malicious intrusions; multicast communication; reliable ordered multicast properties; security of data; Transport protocols

A real-time seamless tiled display system for 3D graphics - Li,Z.; Varshney, Amitabh (Immersive Projection Technology Symposium of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2002 Conference (VR2002 IPT), 2002)
We outline our seamless tiled display system forinteractive 3D graphics applications that is low-cost, easy to calibrate, scalable, and portable. Our system achieves geometric alignment in software by pre-warping the 3D space in contrast with the current systems that usually achieve this by 2D image pre-warping. Our system accomplishes this through real-time image capture from a digital camcorder, image segmentation, and derivation of the 3D warping matrices for each 3D graphics pipeline that feeds a projector. Our prototype system demonstrates our results on a 2 × 2 tiled array of projectors.

Recompilation for debugging support in a JIT-compiler - Tikir, Mustafa M.; Hollingsworth, Jeffrey K; Lueh,Guei-Yuan (Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT workshop on Program analysis for software tools and engineering, 2002)
A static Java compiler converts Java source code into a verifiably secure and compact architecture-neutral intermediate format, called Java byte codes. The Java byte codes can be either interpreted by a Java Virtual Machine or translated into native code by Java Just-In-Time compilers. Static Java compilers embed debug information in the Java class files to be used by the source level debuggers. However, the debug information is generated for architecture independent byte codes and most of the debug information is valid only when the byte codes are interpreted. Translating byte codes into native instructions puts a limitation on the amount of usable debug information that can be used by source level debuggers. In this paper, we present a new technique to generate valid debug information when Just-In-Time compilers are used. Our approach is based on the dynamic recompilation of Java methods by a fast code generator and lazily generates debug information when it is required. We also present three implementations for field watch support in the Java Virtual Machine Debugger Interface to investigate the runtime overhead and code size growth by our approach.
Keywords: algorithms; debug information; debugging aids; dynamic recompilation; field access watch; java; java virtual machine debugger interface; just-in-time compilation; measurement; performance

Representing thermal vibrations and uncertainty in molecular surfaces - Lee,C. H; Varshney, Amitabh (SPIE Conference on Visualization and Data Analysis, 2002)
The previous methods to compute smooth molecular surface assumed that each atom in a molecule has a fixedposition without thermal motion or uncertainty. In real world, the position of an atom in a molecule is fuzzy because of its uncertainty in protein structure determination and thermal energy of the atom. In this paper, we propose a method to compute smooth molecular surface for fuzzy atoms. The Gaussian distribution is used for modeling the fuzziness of each atom, and a p-probability sphere is computed for each atom with a certain confidence level. The smooth molecular surface with fuzzy atoms is computed efficiently from extended-radius p-probability spheres. We have implemented a program for visualizing three-dimensional molecular structures including the smooth molecular surface with fuzzy atoms using multi-layered transparent surfaces, where the surface of each layer has a different confidence level and the transparency associated with the confidence level.

A robust error resilient approach for MPEG video transmission over internet - Yin,P.; Wu,M.; Liu,B. (Visual Communication and Image Processing, SPIE, 2002)
In network delivery of compressed video, packets may be lost if the channel is unreliable. Such losses tend to occur inburst. In this paper, we develop an error resilient video encoding approach to help error concealment at the decoder. We introduce a new block shuffling scheme to isolate erroneous blocks caused by packet losses. And we apply data hiding to add additional protection for motion vectors. The incorporation of these scheme adds little complexity to the standard encoder. Experimental results suggest that our approach can achieve a reasonable quality for packet loss up to 30% over a wide range of video materials.

Rover: scalable location-aware computing - Banerjee,S.; Agarwal,S.; Kamel,K.; Kochut, A.; Kommareddy,C.; Nadeem,T.; Thakkar,P.; Trinh,Bao; Youssef,A.; Youssef, M.; Larsen,R.L.; Udaya Shankar,A.; et al. (Computer, 2002)
All the components necessary for realizing location-aware computing are available in the marketplace today. What has hindered the widespread deployment of location-based systems is the lack of an integration architecture that scales with user populations. The authors have completed the initial implementation of Rover, a system designed to achieve this sort of integration and to automatically tailor information and services to a mobile user's location. Their studies have validated Rover's underlying software architecture, which achieves system scalability through high-resolution, application-specific resource scheduling at the servers and network. The authors believe that this technology will greatly enhance the user experience in many places, including museums, amusement and theme parks, shopping malls, game fields, offices, and business centers. They designed the system specifically to scale to large user populations and expect its benefits to increase with them.
Keywords: amusement; application-specific; architecture; automation; business; business; computing; data; entertainment; handheld; humanities; integration; LAN; location-aware; malls; mobile; museums; office; parks; processing; resource; Rover; scalability; scalable; scheduling; shopping; software; system; theme; units; user; wireless