Muscle based face image synthesis is one of the most realistic approaches to the realization of a life-like agent in computers. A facial muscle model is composed of facial tissue elements and simulated muscles. In this model, forces are calculated effecting a facial tissue element by contraction of each muscle string, so the combination of each muscle contracting force decides a specific facial expression. This muscle parameter is determined on a trial and error basis by comparing the sample photograph and a generated image using our Muscle-Editor to generate a specific face image. In this paper, we propose the strategy of automatic estimation of facial muscle parameters from 2D markers'movements located on a face using a neural network. This corresponds to the non-realtime 3D facial motion capturing from 2D camera image under the physics based condition.

It is now known that a seemingly random irregular time series can be deterministic chaos (hereafter, chaos). However, there can be various kind of noise superimposed into signals from real systems. Other factors affecting a signal include sampling intervals and finite length of observation. Perhaps, there may be cases in which a chaotic time series is considered as noise. J. Theiler proposed a method of surrogating data to address these problems. The proposed method is one of a number of approaches for testing a statistical hypothesis. The method can identify the deterministic characteristics of a time series. In this approach, a surrogate data is formed to have stochastic characteristics with the statistic value associated with the original data. When the characteristics of the original data differs from that of a surrogate data, the null hypothesis is no longer valid. In other words, the original data is deterministic. In comparing the characteristics of an original time series data and that of a surrogate data, the maximum Lyapunov exponents, correlation dimensions and prediction accuracy are utilized. These techniques, however, can not calculate the structure in local subspaces on the attractor and the flow of trajectories. In deal with these issues, we propose the trajectory parallel measure (TPM) method to determine whether the null hypothesis should be rejected. In this paper, we apply the TPM method and the method of surrogate data to test a chaotic time series and a random time series. We also examine whether a practical time series has a deterministic property or not. The results demonstrate that the TPM method is useful for judging whether the original and the surrogate data sets are different. For illustration, the TPM method is applied to a practical time series, tap water demand data.

The minimum number of comparators in a (6,6)-merging network is shown to be 17. The number has been known to be either 16 or 17 [See Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming Vol. 3: Sorting and Searching, p. 230]. Minimum numbers for (n,n)-merging netwerks, 1 n 9, n 6, were already known. The problem had been open for more than two decades.

In this paper, the waveforms measured by the strain gauge in the tapping test on a number of healthy subjects and patients with Parkinson's disease are analyzed with the objective of reaching a quantitatively evaluation of the associated symptom. It has been observed that the waveform of a patient with Parkinson's disease becomes more irregular as the symptom is getting more serious, while the waveform of a healthy subject is rather regular. In this study, the regularity of the waveform is evaluated by the so-called trajectory parallel measure. The results show a large difference in the trajectory parallel measure of the waveforms of healthy subjects vs. those of the Parkinson's disease patients. Furthermore, the trajectory parallel measure of Parkinson's disease patients can be quantitatively ranked to correlate to the degree of the symptom. This paper begins with a brief description about Parkinson's disease. The trajectory parallel measure is then introduced and applied to analysis of the waveforms of both healthy subjects and patients with Parkinson's disease. Illustrative results are shown to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed analysis methodology.

In this paper, we present two parallel algorithms for computing the all nearest neighbors of an n n binary image on the Bulk-Synchronous Parallel(BSP) model. The BSP model is an asynchronous parallel computing model, where its communication features are abstracted by two parameters L and g: L denotes synchronization periodicity and g denotes a reciprocal of communication bandwidth. We propose two parallel algorithms for the all nearest neighbor problems based on two distance metrics. The first algorithm is for Lp distance, and the second algorithm is for weighted distance. Both two algorithms run in O(n2/p + L) computation time and in O(g(n/p) + L) communication time using p (1 p n) processors and in O(n2/p + (d+L)(log(p/n)/log(d+1))) computation time and in O(g(n/p) + (gd+L)(log(p/n)/log(d+1))) communication time using p (n< p n2) processors on the BSP model, for any integer d(1 dp/n).

It is important to establish the technology to accommodate best effort TCP/IP traffic over wide area ATM networks. The UBR (Unspecified Bit Rate) service category is the most typical service category for the best effort traffic, especially in the LAN environment. On the other hand, the VBR (Variable Bit Rate) service category with SCD (Selective Cell Discard) option is considered as the service category which is appropriate for wide area networks due to its fairness and minimum guarantee of the cell transmission using not only PCR (Peak Cell Rate) but SCR (Sustainable Cell Rate) and MBS (Maximum Burst Size). However, there is no actual evaluation for such service. We have, therefore, performed the experimental studies on TCP/IP over VBR with SCD along with UBR and VBR without SCD by VC (Virtual Channel) level policing when each TCP connection is mapped to a different VC. Through these experiments, we measured the link utilization of the effective data and the fairness between each obtained TCP throughput during the congestion of the ATM switch. From the results of the link utilization, the value is over 95% under the various conditions. Therefore, even in the case of the cell losses due to SCD or buffer overflow in ATM switch congestion, average throughput is almost the same as the value which equals the trunk line speed divided by the number of the accommodated TCP connections. From the results of the fairness, VBR with SCD per VC is better than UBR and also obtains better TCP throughput than VBR without SCD. Furthermore, to confirm those characteristics more generally, we adopt the accommodated TCP connections not only with the same TCP send/receive socket buffer size but with different sizes. Finally, we discuss the effectiveness between VBR with SCD and the other service categories, such as UBR and ABR (Available Bit Rate) and GFR (Guaranteed Frame Rate), and conclude that VBR with SCD is one of the most suitable ATM service categories for accommodating best effort traffic.

A data-parallel processing approach is promising for real-time volume rendering because of the massive parallelism in volume rendering. In data-parallel volume rendering, local results processing elements(PEs) generate from allocated subvolumes are integrated to form a final image. Generally, the integration causes an overhead unavoidable in data-parallel volume rendering due to communications among PEs. This paper proposes a data-parallel shear-warp volume rendering algorithm combined with an adaptive volume subdivision method to reduce the communication overhead and improve processing efficiency. We implement the parallel algorithm on a message-passing multiprocessor system for performance evaluation. The experimental results show that the adaptive volume subdivision method can reduce the overhead and achieve higher efficiency compared with a conventional slab subdivision method.

In this paper, we propose an analytic method for dimensioning traffic descriptors at the leaky bucket-based UPC for VBR MPEG video traffic on ATM networks. We analytically derived cell violation probabilities at the UPC by using a proposed scene-based video traffic model, and then we showed that it was possible to select sets of traffic descriptors that produce the required violation probability. In two example video traces, the numerical results showed that our proposed traffic descriptor dimensioning method well approximated the simulation-based traffic control results of the real video traces. In cases where an effective bandwidth allocation method based on the ON/OFF model was used for the call admission control in the networks, we compared the allocated effective bandwidth to each set of traffic descriptors that produced zero UPC losses.

This paper is intended as an investigation of scientific discoveries from a philosophical point of view. In the first half of this century, most of philosophers rather concentrated on the logical analysis of science and set the problem of discovery aside. Logical positivists distinguished a context of discovery from a context of justification and excluded the former from their analysis of scientific theories. Although Popper criticized their inductivism and suggested methodological falsificationism, he also left the elucidation of discovery to psychological inquiries. The problem of scientific discovery was proprely treated for the first time by the "New Philosophy of Science" school in the 1960's. Hanson reevaluated the method of "retroduction" on the basis of Peirce's logical theory and analysed Kepler's astronomical discovery in detail as a typical application of it. Kuhn's theory of paradigm located discoveries in the context of scientific revolutions. Moreover, he paid attention to the function of metaphor in scientific discoveries. Metaphorical use of existing terms and concepts to overcome theoretical difficulties often plays a decisive role in developping new ideas. In the period of scientific revolution, theoretical metaphors can open up new horizons of scientific research by way of juxtapositions of heterogeneous concepts. To explicate such a complicated situation we need the "rhetoric" of science rather than the "logic" of science.

We propose an untraceable electronic money system. Our system uses the partially blind signature based on the discrete logarithm problem, and applies secret key certificates to the payment protocol.

High-speed low-power matched filter plays an important role in the fast despreading of spread-signals in wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA) mobile communications. In this paper, we describe the algorithm and the VLSI-architecture of a complex matched filter chip implemented by our proposed digital-controlled analog parallel operational circuits. The complex matched filter VLSI with variable taps from 4 to 128 is developed for despreading QPSK-modulated spread-signals for W-CDMA communications, which is fabricated by a 2-metal 0.8 µm CMOS technology. The dissipation power of the chip is 225 mW and 130 mW when it operates at the chip-rate of 20 MHz with the supply voltages of 3.0 V and 2.5 V, respectively, and it can be furthermore reduced to 62 mW at chip rate of 10 MHz when the supply voltage is lowered to 2.2 V. The 3-dB cut-off frequency of the fabricated chip is higher than 20 MHz for both 3.0 V and 2.5 V supplies. Comparing to pure digital matched filters, the massive and high-speed despreading operations of the spread-signals are directly carried out in analog domain. As a result, two high-speed analog-to-digital (A/D) converters operating at chip rate are omitted, the inner signal paths and the total dissipation power are greatly reduced.

This paper addresses output regulation for nonlinear systems driven by a time varying parameter. The derivative information of the time varying parameter is necessary for the improved regulation performance but it is not readily available in general. In this paper, we propose a velocity estimation of the time varying parameter for use in the control law without amplifying noise signals.

The arrangement graph An,k is not only a generalization of star graph (n-k=1), but also more flexible. Designing efficient broadcasting algorithm on a regular interconnection network is a fundamental issue for the parallel processing techniques. Two contributions are proposed in this paper. Initially, we elucidate a first result to construct n-k edge-disjoint spanning trees in an An,k. Second, we present efficient (one/all)-to-all broadcasting algorithms by using constructed n-k spanning trees, where height of each spanning tree is 2k-1. The arrangement graph is assumed to use one-port and all-port communication models and packet-switching (or store-and-forward) technique. Using n-k spanning trees allows us to present efficient broadcasting algorithm in the arrangement graphs and outperforms previous results. This is justified by our performance analysis.

This paper presents a new fuzzy dynamic output feedback controller design technique for the Takagi Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model with unknown-but-bounded time-varying modeling error. It is shown that the quadratic stabilization problem of the T-S fuzzy modeled system can be converted into an H control problem of the scaled polytopic Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) system. Then, a controller satisfying a prescribed H performance is designed for the stabilization of the T-S fuzzy modeled system.

In various digital wireless communication systems, it is known that turbo coding provides an error rate performance within a few tenths of a dB of the theoretical Shannon limit. The error correcting capability of turbo coding is attractive for a recording code in a digital magnetic recording system. The performance of a partial response maximum-likelihood (PRML) system with any recording code is degraded by many undesirable factors such as linear and nonlinear distortions. For improving the performance of the PRML system, it is useful to adopt a high-order PRML system or high rate code in general. In this paper, the two-track recording system using turbo coding which can increase the coding rate over 1 and improve the performance is proposed. Turbo-coding provides a near-ML performance by the suboptimum symbol-by-symbol maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) decoding algorithm. Our proposed turbo-coded class 4 partial response (PR4) systems use the rate 4/6, 8/10 and 16/18 turbo codes for high-density two-track digital magnetic recording. The error rate performance is obtained by computer simulation, taking account of the partial erasure which is a prominent nonlinear distortion in high-density recording. As a result, the proposed systems are hardly affected by partial erasure and maintains good performance compared with the conventional NRZ coded PR4ML system.

The design of array processors for solving linear systems using two-step division-free Gaussian elimination method is considered. The two-step method can be used to improve the systems based on the one-step method in terms of numerical stability as well as the requirements for high-precision. In spite of the rather complicated computations needed at each iteration of the two-step method, we develop an innovative parallel algorithm whose data dependency graph meets the requirements for regularity and locality. Then we derive two-dimensional array processors by adopting a systematic approach to investigate the set of all admissible solutions and obtain the optimal array processors under linear time-space scheduling. The array processors is optimal in terms of the number of processing elements used.

As VLSI technology has developed, the interest in implementing an entire or significant part of a parallel computer system using wafer scale integration is growing. The major problem for the case is the possibility of drastically low yield and/or reliability of the system if there is no strategy for coping with such situations. Various strategies to restructure the faulty physical system into the fault-free target logical system are described in the literature [1]-[5]. In this paper, we propose an efficient approximate method which can reconstruct the 1 1/2 track-switch mesh arrays with faulty PEs using hardware as well as software. A logical circuit added to each PE and a network connecting the circuits are used to decide spare PEs which compensate for faulty PEs. The hardware compexity of each circuit is much less than that of a PE where the size of each additional circuit is independent of array sizes and constant. By using the exclusive hardware scheme, a built-in self-reconfigurable system without using a host computer is realizable and the time for reconfiguring arrays becomes very short. The simulation result of the performance of the method shows that the reconstructing efficiency of our algorithm is a little less than those of the exaustive and Shigei's ones [6] and [7], but much better than that of the neural one [3]. We also compare the time complexities of reconstructions by hardware as well as software, and the hardware complexity in terms of the number of gates in the logical circuit added to each PE among the other methods.

This paper describes a method of predicting transmission performance to be obtained by applying RAKE reception and parallel transmission in realistic urban multipath environments. Delay profiles measured in metropolitan Tokyo at microwave frequencies were used to obtain the impulse responses of radio channels, and the closed-form equations corresponding to the performance of these anti-multipath techniques were derived, by means of the characteristic function method, under the assumption that the phases of the impulse responses are uniformly distributed. Results show that RAKE reception provides bit error rates 100 times lower than bare transmission does, whereas the improvement obtained by using parallel transmission should be especially valuable in broadband communication systems, such as those operating at data rates above 10 Mb/s.

We propose a new technique that is able to extract the small-signal equivalent-circuit elements of high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) without causing any gate degradation. For the determination of extrinsic resistance values, unlike other conventional techniques, the proposed technique does not require an additional relationship for the resistances. For the extraction of extrinsic inductance values, the technique uses the R-estimate, which is known to be more robust relative to the measurement errors than the commonly used least-squares regression. Additionally, we suggest an improved cold HEMT model that seems to be more general than conventional cold HEMT models. With the use of the improved cold HEMT model, the proposed technique extracts the extrinsic resistance and inductance values.

An approximate formula is proposed for the equivalent susceptance of a circular iris in a parallel plate waveguide when the TEM mode cylindrical wave is incident from the center of the iris. Schwinger's variational method for a linear iris is generalized to the cylindrical case, and an approximate closed form formula is obtained which recovers the result of the linear iris when the radius of the circular iris is sufficiently larger than the wavelength. For verification of the formula, an exact integral equation is formulated and solved numerically by Galerkin's method. A comparison between them shows good agreement.