A Policy-based Network Management (PBNM) in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) should be efficient and reliable. In this letter, we propose a mechanism for the policy-based management in ad hoc networks and we discuss methods to discover the Policy Decision Point (PDP), set the management area, and manage the movements of nodes in the PBNM system. Finally, we assess the results through simulations.

Optical burst switching (OBS) is a promising approach for the realization of future flexible high-speed optical networks. In particular, a multicast forwarding method for optical bursts is important if an efficient high-speed grid computing network is to be realized. In OBS networks, the number of burst replicas generated at each node is strongly restricted due to optical power impairment of multicast bursts. Moreover, unrestricted replication of multicast bursts at each OBS node may not be advantageous because an increase in the number of multicast bursts within the network causes more frequent deflection forwarding of both multicast and unicast bursts. This paper proposes an efficient hop-by-hop multicast forwarding method for optical bursts, where idle output ports are selected based on scores simply calculated using a routing table that each OBS node holds. This method can mitigate increases in loss rate and transfer delay of multicast bursts, even if the number of burst replicas generated at each OBS node is strongly restricted. Moreover, this method can efficiently mitigate an increase in the number of multicast bursts within the network by avoiding unnecessary replication of multicast bursts at each OBS node. Simulation results show that the proposed method can actually mitigate degradation of the loss rate and transfer delay for multicast bursts under the restricted number of burst replicas at each OBS node. Moreover, when the arrival rate of multicast bursts is large relative to that of unicast bursts, the proposed method is able to improve the loss rates of both multicast and unicast bursts by switching the forwarding method for the multicast bursts to the simple unicast forwarding method without burst replication.

Interpretations by physicians of capsule endoscopy image sequences captured over periods of 7-8 hours usually require 45 to 120 minutes of extreme concentration. This paper describes a novel method to reduce diagnostic time by automatically controlling the display frame rate. Unlike existing techniques, this method displays original images with no skipping of frames. The sequence can be played at a high frame rate in stable regions to save time. Then, in regions with rough changes, the speed is decreased to more conveniently ascertain suspicious findings. To realize such a system, cue information about the disparity of consecutive frames, including color similarity and motion displacements is extracted. A decision tree utilizes these features to classify the states of the image acquisitions. For each classified state, the delay time between frames is calculated by parametric functions. A scheme selecting the optimal parameters set determined from assessments by physicians is deployed. Experiments involved clinical evaluations to investigate the effectiveness of this method compared to a standard-view using an existing system. Results from logged action based analysis show that compared with an existing system the proposed method reduced diagnostic time to around 32.5 7 minutes per full sequence while the number of abnormalities found was similar. As well, physicians needed less effort because of the systems efficient operability. The results of the evaluations should convince physicians that they can safely use this method and obtain reduced diagnostic times.

In laparoscopic surgery, the lack of tactile sensation and 3D visual feedback make it difficult to identify the position of a blood vessel intraoperatively. An unintentional partial tear or complete rupture of a blood vessel may result in a serious complication; moreover, if the surgeon cannot manage this situation, open surgery will be necessary. Differentiation of arteries from veins and other structures and the ability to independently detect them has a variety of applications in surgical procedures involving the head, neck, lung, heart, abdomen, and extremities. We have used the artery's pulsatile movement to detect and differentiate arteries from veins. The algorithm for change detection in this study uses edge detection for unsupervised image registration. Changed regions are identified by subtracting the systolic and diastolic images. As a post-processing step, region properties, including color average, area, major and minor axis lengths, perimeter, and solidity, are used as inputs of the LVQ (Learning Vector Quantization) network. The output results in two object classes: arteries and non-artery regions. After post-processing, arteries can be detected in the laparoscopic field. The registration method used here is evaluated in comparison with other linear and nonlinear elastic methods. The performance of this method is evaluated for the detection of arteries in several laparoscopic surgeries on an animal model and on eleven human patients. The performance evaluation criteria are based on false negative and false positive rates. This algorithm is able to detect artery regions, even in cases where the arteries are obscured by other tissues.

The Transition Edge Sensor (TES)-Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS) is an X-ray detector with high-energy resolution (12.8 eV). The TES can be mounted to a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The TES-EDS is based on a cryogen-free dilution refrigerator. The high-energy resolution enables analysis of the distribution of various elements in samples under low acceleration voltage (typically under 5 keV) by using K-lines of light elements and M lines of heavy elements. For example, the energy of the arsenic L line differs from the magnesium K line by 28 eV. When used to analyze the spore of the Pteris vittata L plant, the TES-EDS clearly reveals a different distribution of As and Mg in the micro region of the plant. The TES-EDS with SEM yields detailed information about the distribution of multi-elements in a sample.

Delivering video streaming service over the Internet encounters some challenges. Two of them are heterogeneity of networks capacity and variability of video data rate. The capacity of network segments are constrained. Meanwhile, the rate of video data to be transmitted is highly variable in order to get near-constant images quality. Therefore, to send variable bit rate (VBR) video data over capacity-constrained network, its bit rate should be adjusted. In this paper a system to adjust the transmission bit rate of VBR MPEG video data called Transcoding-after-Smoothing (TaS), which is a combination of bit rate transcoding and bit rate smoothing algorithm, is proposed. The system smoothes out transmission rate of video data while at the same time also performs transcoding on some video frames when necessary in order to keep the transmission bit rate below a certain threshold value. Two kinds of TaS methods are proposed. One method does not have transcoding preference, while the other method uses frame type preference where an intra-coded frame is the last one that will be transcoded. These methods are implemented in our video server where a VBR video data is accessed by a client. Our experiment results show that the first TaS method yields significant reduction in the number of transcoded frames compared with the second TaS method and conventional frame-level transcoding. However, the second method performs better in minimizing the quality distortion.

In this paper, we suggest a method of analyzing the post-wall waveguide (PWW) or the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) by applying the analytical technique of the H-plane waveguide discontinuities based on the planar circuit approach. The analytical procedure consists of the derivation of the mode impedance matrices for regular-shaped circuits and the short-circuiting operation on fictitious ports arranged at the peripheries of the metallic posts. First, a straight section of the PWW is treated as an example and the analytical method for the calculation of the S-parameters is described in detail. Then the attenuation and phase constants of the PWW are computed with the aid of the Thru-Reflect Line (TRL) calibration technique. Next, the analytical method is applied to the design of two types of right-angled corners. The analysis and the design results are verified using an em-simulator (HFSS).

In situ observation of electrochemical activity and time dependent characteristics of cytochrome c (cyt c) was carried out in 0.01 M phosphate buffered saline (PBS, pH 7.4) containing 20 µM cyt c solutions at bare indium-tin-oxide (ITO) electrodes by using a cyclic voltammetry (CV) and a slab optical waveguide (SOWG) spectroscopy. The bare ITO electrodes could retain the electrochemical activity of cyt c in the PBS solutions, indicating the great advantage of using ITO electrodes against other electrode materials, such as gold (Au). The CV curves and simultaneously observed the time-resolved SOWG absorption spectra in the consecutive cycles implied that the cyt c molecules could retain its own electrochemical function for a long time.

In this report, we demonstrate electrocatalytic oxidation properties of ascorbic acid at poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) thin films in view of their potential application for bio-sensing devices. PEDOT thin films were deposited on gold thin films by electropolymerization of EDOT monomer in acetonitrile solvent. In-situ electrochemical-surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (EC-SPR) was used to detect both electrochemical and optical signals upon an injection of ascorbic acid.

In-situ measurement of photoelectron spectra of polypyrrole during electrochemical undoping/doping cycles has been carried out by using an open-type electrochemical cell. It has been observed that the ionization potential decreases with decreased electrochemical potential. This result seems to be reasonable because the decreased electrochemical potential corresponds to the undoping or recovery of electrons into vacant state of valence band.

This paper proposes a MAC protocol for presence information discovery in ubiquitous networks. The proposed protocol is designed for proactive discovery in which wireless devices periodically broadcast packets containing presence information. The protocol is based on Framed Aloha. The objective of the protocol is to assure the discovery time of single-hop neighbors considering wireless collisions and also power consumption. In this paper, we show that the proposed protocol is able to assure specified discovery time in distributed networks with random topology.

Even though weighted frequent pattern (WFP) mining is more effective than traditional frequent pattern mining because it can consider different semantic significances (weights) of items, existing WFP algorithms assume that each item has a fixed weight. But in real world scenarios, the weight (price or significance) of an item can vary with time. Reflecting these changes in item weight is necessary in several mining applications, such as retail market data analysis and web click stream analysis. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a dynamic weight for each item, and propose an algorithm, DWFPM (dynamic weighted frequent pattern mining), that makes use of this concept. Our algorithm can address situations where the weight (price or significance) of an item varies dynamically. It exploits a pattern growth mining technique to avoid the level-wise candidate set generation-and-test methodology. Furthermore, it requires only one database scan, so it is eligible for use in stream data mining. An extensive performance analysis shows that our algorithm is efficient and scalable for WFP mining using dynamic weights.

This paper presents a new methodology, Beacognition, for real-time discovery of the associations between a signal space and arbitrarily defined regions, termed as Semantically Meaningful Areas (SMAs), in the corresponding physical space. It lets the end users develop semantically meaningful location systems using standard 802.11 network beacons as they roam through their environment. The key idea is to discover the unique associations using a beacon popularity model. The popularity measurements are then used to localize the mobile devices. The beacon popularity is computed using an election' algorithm and a new recognition model is presented to perform the localization task. We have implemented such a location system in a five story campus building. The comparative results show significant improvement in localization by achieving on average 83% SMA and 88% Floor recognition rate in less than one minute per SMA training time.

We propose to integrate a single lens on top of multiple OLEDs. Angular distribution of the light emitted from the lens surface is altered by turning on the OLEDs selectively. We can use such a light source as a backlight for a liquid crystal display to switch its viewing angle range and/or to display multiple images in different directions. Pixel-level integration would allow one to construct an OLED display with a similar emission angle control.

Liquid crystal (LC) lenses that have hole-patterned electrodes and are driven by two voltages used as imaging devices are reported. Two different LC lenses are applied in image formation systems. One LC lens is used with a polarizer in a relay lens scope, and another LC lens that is polarization independent is used in a TV lens. Both LC lenses play roles of focusing elements in lens systems; objects are separately brought into focus by the LC lenses. Very sharp black-and-white and color images are formed by the systems.

This paper presents a text-independent speaker verification method using Gaussian mixture models (GMMs), where only utterances of enrolled speakers are required. Artificial cohorts are used instead of those from speaker databases, and GMMs for artificial cohorts are generated by changing model parameters of the GMM for a claimed speaker. Equal error rates by the proposed method are about 60% less than those by a conventional method which also uses only utterances of enrolled speakers.

In on-line signature verification, complexity of signature shape can influence the value of the optimal threshold for individual signatures. Writer-dependent threshold selection has been proposed but it requires forgery data. It is not easy to collect such forgery data in practical applications. Therefore, some threshold equalization method using only genuine data is needed. In this letter, we propose three different threshold equalization methods based on the complexity of signature. Their effectiveness is confirmed in experiments using a multi-matcher DWT on-line signature verification system.

This paper reports on the effect of switching action on the contact surfaces of earthquake disaster prevention relays. Large-scale earthquakes occur frequently in Japan and bring extensive damage with them, and fire caused by electrical equipments is one example of the serious damage which can occur. Earthquake sensors capable of maintaining a high level of reliability when earthquakes occur play an important role as a means of minimizing this damage. For this reason, we carried out observations by focusing on samples which had either been subjected to an electric current of 10 mA or 0.1 A. The samples of 10 mA exhibited low and constant contact resistance despite the addition of seismic motion, while the samples of 0.1 A samples exhibited varying contact resistance and damage on their contact spots resulting from the addition of seismic motion. The sample surfaces were then observed using an atomic force microscope (AFM) in tapping mode and a surface potential microscope (SPoM). As a result, we found that even the unused earthquake disaster prevention relay (standard sample) which had a surface lined with asperities on its parallel striations formed by irregular protrusions due to dust and other deposits. In addition, scanning the contact surface with the SPoM at the same potential revealed the occurrence of differences in surface potential which varied in response to the asperities on the striations.

In a D.C.42 V-10A resistive circuit, break arcs are generated between electrical contact pairs. The materials of the contact pairs are Ag, Ag/C 2wt%, Ag/SnO2 12wt%, and Ag/ZnO 12wt%. The arc spectral intensities are measured by a time-resolved spectroscopic temperature measurement system. The arc temperature is calculated from the spectral intensities by using the method of relative intensities of two spectra. The experimental results are as follows. The arc temperature gradually decreases with increase of the gap of electrical contacts. The ranges of arc temperature for Ag, Ag/C 2wt%, Ag/SnO2 12wt%, and Ag/ZnO 12wt% contacts pairs are 4500-11000 K, 4000-6000 K, 4000-7000 K, and 4000-11000 K, respectively.

A fuzzy logic control battery equalizing controller (FLC-BEC) is adopted to control the cell voltage balancing process for a series connected Li-ion battery string. The proposed individual cell equalizer (ICE) is based on the bidirectional Cuk converter operated in the discontinuous capacitor voltage mode (DCVM) to reduce the switching loss and improve equalization efficiency. The ICE with the proposed FLC-BEC can reduce the equalizing time, maintain safe operations during the charge/discharge state and increase the battery string capacity.