We propose requirement validation criteria and a method based on the interaction between actors in an information system. We focus on the cyclical transitions of one actor's situation against another and clarify observable stimuli and responses based on these transitions. Both actors' situations can be listed in a state transition table, which describes the observable stimuli or responses they send or receive. Examination of the interaction between both actors in the state transition tables enables us to detect missing or defective observable stimuli or responses. Typically, this method can be applied to the examination of the interaction between a resource managed by the information system and its user. As a case study, we analyzed 332 requirement defect reports of an actual system development project in Japan. We found that there were a certain amount of defects regarding missing or defective stimuli and responses, which can be detected using our proposed method if this method is used in the requirement definition phase. This means that we can reach a more complete requirement definition with our proposed method.

The public safety spectrum is generally under-utilized due to the unique traffic characteristics of bursty and mission critical. This letter considers the application of dynamic spectrum access (DSA) to the combined spectrum of public safety (PS) and commercial (CMR) users in a common shared network that can provide both PS and CMR services. Our scenario includes the 700 MHz Public/Private Partnership which was recently issued by the Federal Communications Commission. We first propose an efficient DSA mechanism to coordinate the combined spectrum, and then establish a call admission control that reflects the proposed DSA in a wideband code division multiple access based network. The essentials of our proposed DSA are opportunistic access to the public safety spectrum and priority access to the commercial spectrum. Simulation results show that these schemes are well harmonized in various network environments.

The final goal of the present project is to develop a ship detection and identification system by integrating spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR), ground-based maritime radar and automatic identification system (AIS); and this article presents the results of the first phase experiments and current status toward achieving this goal. The data acquired by the Phased Array L-band SAR (PALSAR) on board of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) were used as SAR data, and X-band maritime radar including AIS were used as a ground-based system. The work is divided into two experimental phases. The first phase is to examine the ability of PALSAR to detect ships whose sizes are comparable with the SAR resolution cells, and the second is to incorporate the PALSAR data with those acquired by the ground-based radar with AIS. For the experiments in the first phase, we deployed three small fishing boats whose lengths ranged from approximately 8 m to 15 m in the Tosa Bay in Kochi, Japan in 2006. The experiments were carried out for four observation PALSAR modes: FBS (Fine Beam Single) 34.3, FBS 21.5, FBD (Fine Beam Double) 41.5, and PLR (PoLaRimetric) 20.5, where the numbers in each modes represent the off-nadir angles. For extracting the boats from the PALSAR images, five algorithms were considered, including amplitude-based, CFAR (Constant False Alarm Rate), MLCC (Multi-Look Cross-Correlation), CCF (Cross-Correlation Function) of HH- and HV-polarization amplitudes, and polarimetric analyses. This paper summarizes the results of the first phase experiments; the summary of the integrated system in the second phase will be reported in the near future.

Machine recognition of mathematical expressions on printed documents is not trivial even when all the individual characters and symbols in an expression can be recognized correctly. In this paper, an automatic classification method of spatial relationships between the adjacent symbols in a pair is presented. This classification is important to realize an accurate structure analysis module of math OCR. Experimental results on very large databases showed that this classification worked well with an accuracy of 99.525% by using distribution maps which are defined by two geometric features, relative size and relative position, with careful treatment on document-dependent characteristics.

The pickup and delivery problem (PDP) asks to find a set of vehicles that serve a given set of requests with the minimum travel cost, where each request consists of a pickup point, a delivery point and a load (the quantity to be delivered from the pickup point to the delivery point). In the pickup and delivery problem with transfer (PDPT), for each request, its load picked up at the pickup point is allowed to be dropped at a transshipment point before it is picked up again and delivered to the delivery point by another vehicle. This paper analyzes the maximum travel cost that can be saved by introducing a transshipment point to the pickup and delivery problem (PDP). We show that the bounds are in proportion to square root of the number of cycles in an optimal PDPT solution and also square root of the number of requests. We furthermore present an instance that the bound is the tight for a special case.

This paper introduces multiple view geometry under projective projection from four-dimensional space to two-dimensional space which can represent multiple view geometry under the projection of space-time. We show the multifocal tensors defined under space-time projective projection can be derived from non-rigid object motions viewed from multiple cameras with arbitrary translational motions, and they are practical for generating images of non-rigid object motions viewed from cameras with arbitrary translational motions. The method is tested in real image sequences.

Body movement synchrony (i.e. rhythmic synchronization between the body movements of interacting partners) has been described by subjective impressions of skilled counselors and has been considered to reflect the depth of the client-counselor relationship. This study analyzed temporal changes in body movement synchrony through a video analysis of client-counselor dialogues in counseling sessions. Four 50-minute psychotherapeutic counseling sessions were analyzed, including two negatively evaluated sessions (low evaluation groups) and two positively evaluated sessions (high evaluation groups). In addition, two 50-minute ordinary advice sessions between two high school teachers and the clients in the high rating group were analyzed. All sessions represent role-playing. The intensity of the participants' body movement was measured using a video-based system. Temporal change of body movement synchrony was analyzed using moving correlations of the intensity between the two time series. The results revealed (1) A consistent temporal pattern among the four counseling cases, though the moving correlation coefficients were higher for the high evaluation group than the low evaluation group and (2) Different temporal patterns for the counseling and advice sessions even when the clients were the same. These results were discussed from the perspective of the quality of client-counselor relationship.

We propose an efficient reachability estimation scheme for group membership services in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The periodical message exchange-based scheme, i.e., a typical reachability estimation scheme, requires message exchanges even when the reachability status does not change. It is presumed that the reachability between nodes is maintained while the nodes move around in a limited range. The proposed scheme exploits a virtual grid for the course-grained estimation. A region in the virtual grid can be used to represent the movement range which does not change the reachability. Each node calculates how long it will stay in a region, and issues the duration information only when it gets out of the current region.

This paper describes a novel discrimination method of pulmonary nodules based on statistical analysis of thoracic computed tomography (CT) scans. Our previous Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system can detect pulmonary nodules from CT scans, but, at the same time, yields many false positives. In order to reduce the false positives, the method proposed in the present paper uses a relationship between pulmonary nodules, false positives and image features in CT scans. The trend of variation of the relationships is acquired through statistical analysis of a set of CT scans prepared for training. In testing, by use of the trend, the method predicts the appearances of pulmonary nodules and false positives in a CT scan, and improves the accuracy of the previous CAD system by modifying the system's output based on the prediction. The method is applied to 218 actual thoracic CT scans with 386 actual pulmonary nodules. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is used to evaluate the results. The area under the ROC curve (Az) is statistically significantly improved from 0.918 to 0.931.

This paper presents a new Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) having the ability to support rational-powered membership functions. These functions are extended forms of triangular/trapezoidal membership functions, and also those functions which are generated by applying linguistic hedges. A two-input, single-output, nine-rule Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) type FLC is designed in 0.35 µm standard CMOS technology. This controller can also be used as a standard (Mamdani) type FLC having singleton output membership functions, as well as a Linguistic Hedge FLC (LHFLC). Mixed analog/digital realization of the circuit makes the design programmable and extendable, while having relatively low power consumption. Current mode realization of the circuits leads to simple and intuitive configurations. For a particular set of programming parameters, simulation results of the controller using HSPICE simulator and level 49 parameters (BSIM3v3), show an average power consumption of 5 mW, and an RMS error of 1.32% compared to ideal results obtained from MATLAB software.

Using a pair of matched square-root-raised-cosine (SRRC) filters in the transmitter and the receiver in a band-limited digital communication system can theoretically achieve zero inter-symbol interference (ISI). In reality, the ISI cannot be zero when both SRRC filters are approximately implemented because of some numerical precision problems in the design phase as well as in the implementation phase. In this paper, the author proposes an iterative method to design the coefficients of SRRC FIR filters. The required ISI of the system can be specified such that both ISI and frequency domain specifications are monitored in the design phase. Since the ISI can be specified beforehand, the tradeoff between performance and the filter length becomes possible in the proposed design algorithm.

Group signature schemes with membership revocation have been intensively researched. However, signing and/or verification of some existing schemes have computational costs of O(R), where R is the number of revoked members. Existing schemes using a dynamic accumulator or a similar technique have efficient signing and verifications with O(1) complexity. However, before signing, the signer has to modify his secret key with O(N) or O(R) complexity, where N is the group size. Therefore, for larger groups, signers suffer from enormous costs. On the other hand, an efficient scheme for middle-scale groups with about 1,000 members is previously proposed, where the signer need not modify his secret key. However this scheme also suffers from heavy signing/verification costs for larger groups with more than 10,000 members. In this paper, we adapt the middle-scale scheme to larger groups ranging from 1,000 to 1,000,000 members. At the sacrifice of the group manager's slight cost, our signing/verification is sufficiently efficient.

There is still much problem in sizing software despite the existence of well-known software sizing methods such as Function Point method. Many developers still continue to use ad-hoc methods or so called "expert" approaches. This is mainly due to the fact that the existing methods require much information that is difficult to identify or estimate in the early stage of a software project. The accuracy of ad-hoc and "expert" methods also has much problem. The entity-relationship (ER) model is widely used in conceptual modeling (requirements analysis) for data-intensive systems. The characteristic of a data-intensive system, and therefore the source code of its software, is actually well characterized by the ER diagram that models its data. This paper proposes a method for building software size model from extended ER diagram through the use of regression models. We have collected some real data from the industry to do a preliminary validation of the proposed method. The result of the validation is very encouraging.

This paper proposes a group signature scheme with efficient membership revocation. Though group signature schemes with efficient membership revocation based on a dynamic accumulator were proposed, the previous schemes force a member to change his secret key whenever he makes a signature. Furthermore, for the modification, the member has to obtain a public membership information of O(nN) bits, where n is the length of the RSA modulus and N is the total number of joining members and removed members. In our scheme, the signer needs no modification of his secret, and the public membership information has only K bits, where K is the maximal number of members. Then, for middle-scale groups with the size that is comparable to the RSA modulus size (e.g., up to about 1000 members for 1024 bit RSA modulus), the public membership information is a single small value only, while the signing/verification also remains efficient.

Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) is useful for automatic target recognition (ATR) because it can reconstruct a high resolution image of an observed target. In ISAR imaging, 3-dimensional reflectivity distribution of a target is projected to the plane defined by range axis and cross range axis. In order to recognize the observed target by using pattern matching, reference images of candidate targets must be adequately generated. However, that is difficult because the cross range axis, which depends on the target's unknown rotational motion, can not be determined precisely. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm to generate reference ISAR images of ship targets. In this algorithm, tracking data, Doppler width and the slope of the centerline of an ISAR target image are used to specify the cross range axis. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm was evaluated by using simulated targets.

The purpose of this paper is to present the novel technique to solve the recognition errors in invariant range image multi-pose face recognition. The scale, center and pose error problems were solved by using the geometric transform. Range image face data (RIFD) was obtained from a laser range finder and was used in the model to generate multi-poses. Each pose data size was reduced by linear reduction. The reduced RIFD was transformed to the gradient face model for facial feature image extraction and also for matching using the Membership Matching Score model. Using this method, the results from the experiment are acceptable although the size of gradient face image data is quite small (659 elements). Three-Layer Matching Search was the algorithm designed to reduce the access timing to the most accurate and similar pose position. The proposed algorithm was tested using facial range images from 130 people with normal facial expressions and without eyeglasses. The results achieved the mean success rate of 95.67 percent of 12 degrees up/down and left/right (UDLR) and 88.35 percent of 24 degrees UDLR.

In this study, a CG animation tool was designed that allows interpolation and extrapolation of two types of repeated motions including finger actions, for quantitative analyses of the relationship between features of human motions and subjective impressions. Three-dimensional human motions are measured with a magnetic motion capture and a pair of data gloves, and then relatively accurate time-series joint data are generated utilizing statistical characteristics. Based on the data thus obtained, time-series angular data of each joint for two dancing motions is transformed into frequency domain by Fourier transform, and spectral shape of each dancing action is interpolated. The interpolation and extrapolation of two motions can be synthesized with simple manner by changing an weight parameter while keeping good harmony of actions. Using this CG animation tool as a motion synthesizer, repeated human motions such as a dancing action that gives particular impressions on the observers can be quantitatively measured and analyzed by the synthesis of actions.

Recently, broadband access is widely spreading, and many broadband network E-commerce services are planned and developed. This article proposes a broadband online shop where a videoconferencing system is used to enable direct, face-to-face communication. It is important for a broadband online shop to understand what preference their customers want in order to provide them with more appropriate information. By using customer preferences, a salesclerk can have a serviceable conversation with few questions to his online customers. So, we are developing a visual Customer Relationship Management system (v-CRM system) that offers customer preferences to broadband network service such as broadband online shop. In this paper, we classify customer preferences, and describe three visualization methods that enable customer preferences to be intuitively understood quickly. We outline the v-CRM evaluation system and describe an experiment where we evaluated how accurately customer preferences can be recognized using these methods. The results show that v-CRM system is effective for understanding customer preferences.

This paper proposes a new type of relationship between layers in layered architecture and shows how to concretize the relationship between layers into design constraints. The meaning of layer relationship is explained with examples from design patterns and Microsoft COM. In addition, a prototype tool to check conformance is implemented and the architecture document of an open-source software project is checked against the actual architecture extracted from source code developed by many international developers. As a result of checking, parts that do not conform to the architecture document are investigated and it is pointed out that their modifications should be controlled with caution.

Ship handling for leaving and entering port always carries out for a captain, deck officers and quartermasters and sometimes include a pilot. For navigational watch keeping at sea except for a narrow channel and under restricted visibility etc., the deck officer and quartermaster do it. They achieve safe and efficient navigational watch keeping with their teamwork at a ship's bridge. The importance of teamwork has been recognized in the shipping world, and its training and education methods are also thought over. However, their evaluation is not clear, because they are depended on the experience of the trainers. Therefore, we need to make an evaluation method of teamwork for education and training of the ship handling. In this paper, we define that ship's bridge teamwork is shown by 1) a change of mental workload level and 2) a change of mental workload for time. We challenge to evaluate teammates' mental workload in the ship's bridge with R-R interval of subjects' heart rate variability, and we evaluate their mental workloads with the following three steps. 1) To confirm the evaluation of the mental workload of a ship's navigator with R-R interval. 2) To evaluate teamwork with R-R interval in case of an oral presentation at meetings as pre-experiments. 3) To evaluate the teammates' mental workload among ship's bridge team in case of a leaving port. Their results showed that the method using R-R interval was sufficient for the evaluation of teamwork effects.