In the age of pervasive computing, ubiquitous collaboration has become an every-day life paradigm. Without an ideal computing infrastructure, issues with ubiquitous collaboration, such as network unreliability, platform heterogeneity, and client's resource constraints, are inevitable. The traditional replication scheme copes with network unreliability by replicating all the objects of a shared application together at once. This is, however, suitable for neither cooperative applications nor mobile computing devices. These problems can be naturally addressed by using a fine-grained replication scheme that enables a portion of the application objects to be replicated. This paper presents an object-oriented middleware that is capable of dynamically and transparently replicating remotely shared Java applications in a partially and on-demand incremental manner. It is also able to maintain various consistency semantics and enables the coexistence of fine-grained replications and conventional remote method invocations. Empirical results indicate several practical benefits of the middleware.

Heterogeneous distributed computing environments are well suited to meet the fast increasing computational demands. Task scheduling is very important for a heterogeneous distributed system to satisfy the large computational demands of applications. The performance of a scheduler in a heterogeneous distributed system normally has something to do with the dynamic task flow, that is, the scheduler always suffers from the heterogeneity of task sizes and the variety of task arrivals. From the long-term viewpoint it is necessary and possible to improve the performance of the scheduler serving the dynamic task flow. In this paper we propose a task scheduling method including a scheduling strategy which adapts to the dynamic task flow and a genetic algorithm which can achieve the short completion time of a batch of tasks. The strategy and the genetic algorithm work with each other to enhance the scheduler's efficiency and performance. We simulated a task flow with enough tasks, the scheduler with our strategy and algorithm, and the schedulers with other strategies and algorithms. We also simulated a complex scenario including the variant arrival rate of tasks and the heterogeneous computational nodes. The simulation results show that our scheduler achieves much better scheduling results than the others, in terms of the average waiting time, the average response time, and the finish time of all tasks.

Time-of-Flight Mass Spectroscopy (TOF-MS) with superconducting detectors has two advantages over MS with conventional ion detectors. First, it is coverage for a very wide range of molecule weight over 1,000,000. Secondly, kinetic energies of accelerated molecules can be measured at impact events one by one. These unique features enable an ultimate detection efficiency of 100% for intact ions and a fragmentation analysis that is critical for top-down proteomics. Superconducting MS is expected to play a role in, for example, the detection of antigen-antibody complexes, which are important for medical diagnosis. In this paper, how superconductivity contributes to MS is described.

A method to detect open node defects that cannot be detected by the conventional IDDQ test method has previously been proposed employing a sinusoidal wave superposed on the DC supply voltage. The present paper proposes a strategy to improve the detectability of the test method by means of frequency analysis of the supply current. In this strategy, defects are detected by determining whether secondary harmonics of the sinusoidal wave exist in the supply current. The effectiveness of the method is confirmed by experiments on two CMOS NAND gate packages (SSIs).

In this paper we focus on the numerical simulation of the mixing behaviors of distributed superconducting junction arrays at 1.2 THz. A novel type of superconducting tunnel junctions, i.e., NbN/AlN/Nb, which have a relatively high gap voltage (4.3 mV) and can reach a critical current density as high as several tens of kA/cm2, are proposed for this characterization along with conventional Nb/AlOx/Nb junctions. The former is incorporated with a NbN/SiO2/Al tuning circuit, and the latter with a Nb/SiO2/Al and a NbTiN/SiO2/Al tuning circuits. The noise performance, local-oscillator power requirement, IF bandwidth, and optimum embedding impedance are thoroughly characterized for the two types of distributed superconducting junction arrays.

This paper addresses the problem of inter-domain QoS routing with Service Level Agreements (SLA) for data transport between peering domains, using virtual-trunk type aggregates. The problem is formally stated and formulated in Integer Linear Programming. As a practical solution, we define the QoS_INFO extension to the BGP routing protocol, conveying three different QoS metrics (light load delay, assigned bandwidth and a congestion alarm), and a path selection algorithm using a combination of these metrics. We present simulation results of QoS_INFO, standard BGP, and BGP with the QoS_NLRI extension, and compare them with the optimal route set provided by the ILP formulation. The results show that our proposal yields better QoS than standard BGP or BGP with the QoS_NLRI extension, since it is able to efficiently avoid congested paths, and that the impact of QoS_INFO in route stability is relatively low.

A normal-distribution-function-shaped superconducting tunnel junction (NDF-STJ) which consists of Nb/Al-AlOx/Al/Nb has been fabricated as an X-ray detector. Current - voltage characteristics were measured at 0.4 K using three kinds of STJs, which have the dispersion parameters σ of 0.25, 0.45 and 0.75. These STJs showed very low subgap leakage current of about 5 nA. By irradiating with 5.9 keV X-rays, we obtained the spectrum of these NDF-STJs. They showed good energy resolution with small magnetic fields of below 3 mT, which is about one-tenth of those for conventional-shaped STJs.

Privacy is increasingly viewed as a key concern in multi-agent based algorithms for Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problems (DCSP) such as the Meeting Scheduling (MS) problem. Many algorithms aim for a global objective function and as a result, incur performance penalties in computational complexity and personal privacy. This paper describes a mobile agent-based scheduling scheme called Efficient and Privacy-aware Meeting Scheduling (EPMS), which results in a tradeoff among complexity, privacy, and global utility. It also introduces a privacy loss model for collaborative computation, multiple criteria for evaluating privacy in the MS problem, and a privacy measurement metric called the Min privacy metric. We have utilized a common computational space in EPMS for reducing the complexity and the privacy loss in the MS problem. The analytical results show that EPMS has a polynomial time computational complexity. In addition, simulation results show that the obtained global utility for scheduling multiple meetings with EPMS is close to the optimal level and the resulting privacy loss is less than for those in existing algorithms.

This paper proposes a jitter tolerant continuous-time sigma-delta A-D converter structure as well as its design method. This method transforms a conventionally designed sigma-delta A-D converter into a jitter tolerant one. Jitter tolerance is provided by the modified feedback signal paths and a consequently inserted digital LPF. This method is applicable independently of a system order and the other specifications.

When a cylindrically curved concave conducting surface is terminated abruptly at the edge, the whispering gallery (WG) mode propagating toward the edge direction is radiated into the free space from the aperture plane at the edge. In this paper, by applying the new analysis method, we shall derive a uniform geometrical theory of diffraction solution (UTD) for the electric-type WG mode radiation field applicable in the transition region near the geometrical boundaries produced by the incident modal ray on the edge of the curved surface. The UTD is represented by the summation of the solution for the geometrical ray converted from the modal ray of the WG mode and the solution for the uniform edge diffracted ray scattered at the cylindrically curved edge. By comparing with the reference solution obtained numerically from the integral representation of the radiation field, we will confirm the validity and the utility of the UTD proposed in this paper.

This paper deals with the singular behavior of the diffraction of transverse magnetic (TM) waves by a perfectly conductive triangular periodic surface at a low grazing limit of incidence. The wave field above the highest excursion of the surface is represented as a sum of Floquet modes with modified diffraction amplitudes, whereas the wave field inside a triangular groove is written as a sum of guided modes with unknown mode amplitudes. Then, two sets of equations are derived for such amplitudes. From the equation sets, all the amplitudes are analytically shown to vanish at a low grazing limit of incidence. From this fact, it is concluded analytically that no diffraction takes place and only reflection occurs at a low grazing limit of incidence for any period length and any triangle height. This theoretical result is verified by a numerical example.

The extended version of spectral domain approach (ESDA) is applied to evaluate the scattering characteristics of discontinuities in coaxial line. Discontinuities may be in inner and/or outer conductor of coaxial line. This method secures the high accuracy by considering the singularities of fields near the conductor edge properly. The computational labor of the new method is far lighter than that of FEM, so that novel method is suitable for the time consuming iterative computation such as fitting procedure in material evaluation or optimization of antenna design.

A feature for classification of shallowly buried landmine-like objects using a ground penetrating radar (GPR) measurement system is proposed and its performance is evaluated. The feature for classification employed here is a time interval between two pulses reflected from top and bottom sides of landmine-like objects. First, we estimate a time resolution required to detect object thickness from GPR data, and check the actual time resolution through laboratory experiment. Next, we evaluate the classification performance using Monte Carlo simulations from dataset generated by a two-dimensional finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The results show that good classification performance is achieved even for landmine-like objects buried at shallow depths under rough ground surfaces. Furthermore, we also estimate the effects of ground surface roughness, soil inhomogeneity, and target inclination on the classification performance.

In this paper, we propose a new technique for the scattering problems of multilayered inhomogeneous columnar dielectric gratings loaded rectangular dielectric constant both TM and TE waves using the combination of improved Fourier series expansion method, the multilayer method, and the eigenvalue matrix method. Numerical results are given for the power transmission coefficients in the parameters ε 3 /ε 0 , c/p, and b/d of rectangular cylinders to obtain the basic characteristic of the power transmission coefficients and reflection coefficients switching or frequency selective devices for both TM and TE waves. The influence of the incident angle and frequency of the transmitted power are also discussed in the connection with the propagation constant β in the free mode.

This paper considers the quantum query complexity of ε-biased oracles that return the correct value with probability only 1/2 + ε. In particular, we show a quantum algorithm to compute N-bit OR functions with O(/ε) queries to ε-biased oracles. This improves the known upper bound of O(/ε2) and matches the known lower bound; we answer the conjecture raised by the paper [1] affirmatively. We also show a quantum algorithm to cope with the situation in which we have no knowledge about the value of ε. This contrasts with the corresponding classical situation, where it is almost hopeless to construct a bounded error algorithm without knowing the value of ε.

When Simulated Annealing (SA) is applied to continuous optimization problems, the design of the neighborhood used in SA becomes important. Many experiments are necessary to determine an appropriate neighborhood range in each problem, because the neighborhood range corresponds to distance in Euclidean space and is decided arbitrarily. We propose Multi-point Simulated Annealing with Adaptive Neighborhood (MSA/AN) for continuous optimization problems, which determine the appropriate neighborhood range automatically. The proposed method provides a neighborhood range from the distance and the design variables of two search points, and generates candidate solutions using a probability distribution based on this distance in the neighborhood, and selects the next solutions from them based on the energy. In addition, a new acceptance judgment is proposed for multi-point SA based on the Metropolis criterion. The proposed method shows good performance in solving typical test problems.

Thanks to recent improvements in road heating technology, traffic problems due to icy roads are decreasing. However, there has always been concern about the high operational and maintenance cost associated with road heating. One way to reduce the cost is to reduce the time when power is applied for preheating because it is often applied even when a road is not likely to be icy. The authors believe that, if it is possible to forecast accurately whether a road will become icy, unnecessary preheating can be greatly reduced. This paper presents an algorithm for forecasting physical road conditions. The algorithm divides the weather conditions that people perceive daily into 11 patterns. The comparison between the changes in road conditions as determined by our method and known changes in road conditions has shown a 12% increase over previous methods in forecasting accuracy.

For execution of computation-intensive applications, one of the most important paradigms is to divide the application into a large number of small independent tasks and execute them on heterogeneous parallel computing environments (abbreviated by HPCEs). In this paper, we aim to execute independent tasks efficiently on HPCEs. We consider the problem to find a schedule that maximizes the throughput of task execution for a huge number of independent tasks. First, for HPCEs where the network forms a directed acyclic graph, we show that we can find, in polynomial time, a schedule that attains the optimal throughput. Secondly, for arbitrary HPCEs, we propose an (+ε)-approximation algorithm for any constant ε(ε>0). In addition, we also show that the framework of our approximation algorithm can be applied to other collective communications such as the gather operation.

We compare the convergence performance of different numerical schemes for computing the fundamental matrix from point correspondences over two images. First, we state the problem and the associated KCR lower bound. Then, we describe the algorithms of three well-known methods: FNS, HEIV, and renormalization. We also introduce Gauss-Newton iterations as a new method for fundamental matrix computation. For initial values, we test random choice, least squares, and Taubin's method. Experiments using simulated and real images reveal different characteristics of each method. Overall, FNS exhibits the best convergence properties.

We present here a simple technique for parametrization of popular biorthogonal wavelet filter banks (BWFBs) having vanishing moments (VMs) of arbitrary multiplicity. Given a prime wavelet filter with VMs of arbitrary multiplicity, after formulating it as a trigonometric polynomial depending on two free parameters, we prove the existence of its dual filter based on the theory of Diophantine equation. The dual filter permits perfect reconstruction (PR) and also has VMs of arbitrary multiplicity. We then give the complete construction of two-parameter families of 17/11 and 10/18 BWFBs, from which any linear-phase 17/11 and 10/18 BWFB possessing desired features could be derived with ease by adjusting the free parameters. In particular, two previously unpublished BWFBs for embedded image coding are constructed, both have optimum coding gains and rational coef ficients. Extensive experiments show that our new BWFBs exhibit performance equal to Winger's W-17/11 and Villasenor's V-10/18 (superior to CDF-9/7 by Cohen et al. and Villasenor's V-6/10) for image compression, and yet require slightly lower computational costs.