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Demand supply planning is a challenging task in today

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The World Wide Web creates many new challenges for information retrieval. Information Filtering (IF) can find good matches between the web pages and the users

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We can make optimum scheduling results using various methods that are proposed by many researchers. However, it is very difficult to process the works on time without delaying the schedule. There are two major causes that disturb the planned optimum schedules; they are (1)the variation of productive capacity, and (2)the variation of products�f quantities themselves. In this paper, we deal with the former variation, or productive capacities, at flow-shop works. When production machines in a shop go out of order at flow-shops, we cannot continue to operate the productions and we have to stop the production line. To the contrary, we can continue to operate the shops even if some workers absent themselves. Of course, in this case, the production capacities become lower, because workers need to move from a machine to another to overcome the shortage of workers and some shops cannot be operated because of the worker shortage. We developed a new re-scheduling method based on Branch-and Bound method. We proposed an equation for calculating the lower bound for our Branch-and Bound method in a practical time. Some evaluation experiments are done using practical data of real flow-shop works. We compared our results with those of another simple scheduling method, and we confirmed the total production time of our result is shorter than that of another method by 4%.

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Researchers in remote sensing have attempted to increase the accuracy of land cover information extracted from remotely sensed imagery. Factors that influence the supervised and unsupervised classification accuracy are the presence of atmospheric effect and mixed pixel information. A linear mixture simulated model experiment is generated to simulate real world data with known end member spectral sets and class cover proportions (CCP). The CCP were initially generated by a random number generator and normalized to make the sum of the class proportions equal to 1.0 using MATLAB program. Random noise was intentionally added to pixel values using different combinations of noise levels to simulate a real world data set. The atmospheric scattering error is computed for each pixel value for three generated images with SPOT data. Accuracy can either be classified or misclassified. Results portrayed great improvement in classified accuracy, for example, in image 1, misclassified pixels due to atmospheric noise is 41 %. Subsequent to the degradation of atmospheric effect, the misclassified pixels were reduced to 4 %. We can conclude that accuracy of classification can be improved by degradation of atmospheric noise.

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In this paper, a framework for a simulation approach to develop a formal representation of control and analysis of human-involved computer integrated manufacturing systems (Hi-CIM) is presented. Important properties of a human material handler within manufacturing systems are discussed and human tasks and errors are identified to build a simulation model. Based on the number of locations where a human operator is required to move to complete a task, material handling tasks are classified into two sets which include an on-the-spot task set and an around-the-system task set. For human errors associated with the task sets, a location error set and an orientation error set are defined. These task sets and error types provide a framework for developing a simulation model of a human material handling task-performing process. To represent the model, a colored Petri net model is used because it provides a good graphical and analytical representation of a system. Human tasks and error types are represented using color tokens. A simulation model of the system can be implemented based on the proposed colored Petri Net model.

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Currently, the speed at which materials can be transferred between ships at sea is limited by sea conditions. Rough sea conditions cause the payload to swing making load transfer difficult and time-consuming. The objective of this research is to develop a real-time, command compensating control for reducing sea state induced payload swing for shipboard robotic cranes. The future use of this control strategy will be to facilitate faster �ship-to-ship� payload transfer in rough sea conditions. In this study, only the sea-induced rotational motion of the ship is considered, since it is assumed that a station-keeping control maintains a constant position of the ship. This rotational motion is modelled using pitch-yaw-roll Euler angles. The shipboard robotic crane is modelled as a spherical pendulum attached to a three-degree-of-freedom manipulator. The three degrees-of-freedom are azimuth (rotation about an axis normal to the ship�s deck), elevation (rotation about an axis parallel with the ship�s deck, also referred to as luffing), and lift-line length. An inverse kinematics based approach and a sliding mode control strategy are explored. Both approaches use the azimuth and the elevation capability of the crane manipulator to maintain a horizontal position of the suspended load to reduce sea-induced payload sway.

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A powered orthosis has applications ranging from assisting the elderly to augmenting astronauts. An assistive control scheme is developed that uses the force from a slave actuator to augment the force of a master actuator. This can be used to augment a closed-loop control scheme applied to the master actuator. Initially, actuator augmentation is explored both theoretically and experimentally using a simple mechanical system. The control scheme is then applied to a scale model of human lower limbs on a stationary bicycle to investigate the feasibility of a powered orthosis using pneumatic muscle actuators.

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A management tool which is needed for monitoring and managing cluster-based DBMSs has been little studied. So, we design and implement a cluster-based DBMS management tool with high-availability that monitors the status of nodes in a cluster system as well as the status of DBMS instances in a node. The tool enables users to recognize a single virtual system image and provides them with the status of all the nodes and resources in the system by using a graphic user interface (GUI). By using a load balancer, our management tool can increase the performance of a cluster-based DBMS as well as can overcome the limitation of the existing parallel DBMSs.

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In this paper, we suggest to use color-image classification (in several phases) using Markov Random Fields (MRFs) in order to understand natural images from outdoor environment�s scenes for a mobile robot. We skip preprocessing phase having same results and better performance. In segmentation phase, we implement a color segmentation method considering I3 color space measure average in little image�s cells obtained from a single split step. In classification phase, a MRF was used to identify regions as one of three selected classes; here, we consider at the same time the intrinsic color features of the image and the neighborhood system between image�s cells. Finally, we use region growing and contextual information to correct misclassification errors. We have implemented and tested those phases with several images taken at our campus� gardens. We include some results in off-line processing mode and in on-line execution mode on an outdoor mobile robot. The vision system has been used for reactive exploration in an outdoor environment.

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This essay highlights the findings of a two tiered, three year evaluation. The first tier studied human resource and quality management initiatives at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) Washington, DC from 1992-1994. The second tier researched disability records through the United States Army Physical Disability Agency, Bethesda, Maryland in 1996. The first tier found that Total Quality Management reduced the average length of stay (ALOS) and size of the disability population from 220 days and 240 disability cases to 65 days and 57 disability cases over 24 months. The second tier studied 8,301 soldiers whose disability records were processed in Fiscal Year 1996. The research shows only administrative variables affect ALOS. The authors recommend a program of disability case management and increasing emphasis on transition assistance programs to reduce ALOS in the PDES.

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A denial of service attack (DOS) is any type of attack on a networking structure to disable a server from servicing its clients. Attacks range from sending millions of requests to a server in an attempt to slow it down, flooding a server with large packets of invalid data, to sending requests with an invalid or spoofed IP address. In this paper we show the implementation and analysis of three main types of attack: Ping of Death, TCP SYN Flood, and Distributed DOS. The Ping of Death attack will be simulated against a Microsoft Windows 95 computer. The TCP SYN Flood attack will be simulated against a Microsoft Windows 2000 IIS FTP Server. Distributed DOS will be demonstrated by simulating a distribution zombie program that will carry the Ping of Death attack. This paper will demonstrate the potential damage from DOS attacks and analyze the ramifications of the damage.

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This paper presents the design and implementation of a DSP-based controller for a super high-speed (>80,000 rpm) permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). The PMSM is a key component of the centrifugal compressor drive of a reverse Brayton cryocooler that is currently under development for NASA and Florida Solar Energy Center. The design of the PMSM open-loop control is presented. Experimental results with open-loop control schemes are presented. System optimization and analysis are also illustrated. They verify the effectiveness of the controller design and the optimization scheme.

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In order to implement a multi-class object detection system, an efficient object representation is needed; in this short paper, we present a feature selection method based on the Genetic Algorithm paradigm. This method allows for the identification of a set of features that best represent the classes in the problem at hand. The idea would then be to have a broad set of features to describe any object, and then to use the presented feature selection method to adapt the description to the actual needs of the classification problem. Furthermore, the tree like solutions generated by the method can be interpreted and modified for increased generality. A brief review of literature, the first implementation of the method and the first results are presented here. The method shows potential to be used as a building block of a detection system, although further experimentation is underway in order to fully asses the power of the method.

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Initially, the analysis and development of adaptive artificial systems has been based in metaphors taken from philosophical schools as well as the disciplines of biology and cognitive science. So far, the dominant approaches exhibit many advantages in specific domains of application but there all have a certain drawback, which is their inability to produce an artificial system which will be able to internally ground its representations so as to use them to produce newer, more developed ones. The respective frameworks are studied in terms of this inability and it is concluded that the problem is traced in the purely causal treatment, function and creation of the notion of representation, wherever it is used. In the case of purely dynamic systems, where the representations seem not to be very useful, it is proposed that the incorporation of a special non-causal kind of representations would give a framework which seems promising in realizing real adaptation. The relevant architecture is analyzed and discussed mainly in terms of its functionality and its contribution to the integration of pragmatic meaning aspects in an artificial system�s interaction.

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To study the effect of aging on deformability of an erythrocyte, rheological measurement has been performed after exposure to a shear field in vitro. Deformability was evaluated with shear stress responsiveness and with critical elongation calculated from an exponential curve between an elongation index and shear stress. Human erythrocytes were classified according to their density by a centrifugal method. Deformability decreases in erythrocytes of high density after shearing. Even after exposure to the shear field of 640 1/s for one hour, erythrocytes deform from biconcave to ellipsoidal and their deformability is maintained.

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An overwhelming number of models in the literature use average interference for calculation of capacity of a CDMA network. In this paper, we calculate the actual per-user interference and analyze the effect of user-distribution on the capacity of a CDMA network. We show that even though the capacity obtained using average interference is a good approximation to the capacity calculated using actual interference for a uniform user distribution, the deviation can be tremendously large for non-uniform user distributions. We also present an analytical model for approximating the user distributions using 2-dimensional Gaussian distributions by determining the means and the standard deviations of the distributions for every cell. This allows us to calculate the inter-cell interference and the reverse-link capacity of the network. We compare our model with simulation results and show that it is fast and accurate enough to be used efficiently in the planning process of large CDMA networks.

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The aim of this project was construction of a universal platform for rapid development and implementation of interactive computer-based collection of clinical data. A TabletPC was used to pilot-test the platform and to implement two self-administered questionnaires: SF-12 Health Survey (SF-12) and Health Utilities Index (HUI). Qualitative analysis of the system acceptance in 12 patients showed that computer-assisted data collection in elderly patients with no previous computer experience can be successfully implemented using a TabletPC.