8573370
Core selection with end-to-end QoS support
Core-based routing with Quality of Service (QoS) support is essential to facilitate multi-sender multimedia multicast applications such as video conferencing and virtual collaboration applications. In this paper, we introduce (i) a new application-level service class framework that allows group members to easily indicate their desired service quality and (ii) the use of as many cores per group as necessary in corebased routing to maximize the number of group members with satisfied QoS requirements. Under the service class framework, we formulate the novel core selection problem that selects as many cores as necessary while maximizing the number of satisfied group members. We propose a new core selection algorithm to address the problem and provide a complete core selection protocol using the algorithm. Experimental results show that our core selection algorithm performs as well as the optimal algorithm and significantly outperforms a recent core selection algorithm with QoS support using a single core.
14407932
Automatic measurement of quality metrics for colonoscopy videos
Colonoscopy is the accepted screening method for detection of colorectal cancer or its precursor lesions, colorectal polyps. Indeed, colonoscopy has contributed to a decline in the number of colorectal cancer related deaths. However, not all cancers or large polyps are detected at the time of colonoscopy, and methods to investigate why this occurs are needed. We present a new computer-based method that allows automated measurement of a number of metrics that likely reflect the quality of the colonoscopic procedure. The method is based on analysis of a digitized video file created during colonoscopy, and produces information regarding insertion time, withdrawal time, images at the time of maximal intubation, the time and ratio of clear versus blurred or non-informative images, and a first estimate of effort performed by the endoscopist. As these metrics can be obtained automatically, our method allows future quality control in the day-to-day medical practice setting on a large scale. In addition, our method can be adapted to other healthcare procedures. Last but not least, our method may be useful to assess progress during colonoscopy training, or as part of endoscopic skills assessment evaluations.
14591533
Leveraging broadband access for true on-demand delivery of Internet videos
We consider in this paper how the increasingly popular broadband access can be leveraged for scalable and cost-effective video service. Although much work has been done for such service, the existing techniques either are not designed for on-demand video delivery, or do not take into account the vastly improved client receiving capability. In this paper, we address this problem and develop three novel video delivery techniques with two ultimate goals: minimizing service latency and maximize data sharing. With the new techniques, a client can be served as soon as server resource becomes available and meanwhile, all its receiving bandwidth can be used for data receiving. In particular, in the proposed dynamic scheduling algorithm, the efficiency of data sharing is further improved by also exploring server bandwidth for early delivery of video segments. This innovation is contradicted to the intuition that each video segment should be delivered as late as possible in order to maximize data sharing. We evaluate the performance of our new techniques using simulation and our study convincingly shows that with the new schemes, zero service latency can indeed be achieved with very minimal system resource.
271858
Providing scalable on-demand video services for heterogeneous receivers
To provide scalable video-on-demand services, precious system bandwidth must be shared among video requests. Although many efficient bandwidth-sharing techniques have been proposed, they are all designed for homogeneous receivers, i.e., the clients are assumed to have the same receiving bandwidth. For networks with client heterogeneity, these techniques either cannot work or have to compromise their performance. In this paper, we address this problem and propose an efficient solution allowing each client to use its whole receiving bandwidth to download data. To serve a client, the server first selects a set of serving channels for the client according to its actual receiving bandwidth. The video data needed for this client are then scheduled and dynamically adjusted for delivery over these channels. We evaluate the performance of the new technique using simulation and compare it with an existing scheme. Our study shows that by effectively leveraging client heterogeneity, the new technique achieves significantly smaller service latency
17046491
Lightweight agents for intrusion detection
We have designed and implemented an intrusion detection system (IDS) prototype based on mobile agents. Our agents travel between monitored systems in a network of distributed systems, obtain information from data cleaning agents, classify and correlate information, and report the information to a user interface and database via mediators.Agent systems with lightweight agent support allow runtime addition of new capabilities to agents. We describe the design of our Multi-agent IDS and show how lightweight agent capabilities allowed us to add communication and collaboration capabilities to the mobile agents in our IDS.
2308501
A framework for parsing colonoscopy videos for semantic units
Colonoscopy is an important screening procedure for colorectal cancer. During this procedure, the endoscopist visually inspects the colon. Currently, there is no content-based analysis and retrieval system that automatically analyzes videos captured from colonoscopic procedures and provides a user-friendly and efficient access to important content. Such a system will be valuable for endoscopic research and education. The first necessary step for the analysis is parsing for semantic units. Since the characteristics of colonoscopy videos differ from those of videos studied in the literature, we introduce a new video parsing framework that includes: (i) a new scene definition and a new video parsing paradigm; (ii) a novel scene segmentation algorithm using audio analysis and finite state automata to recognize scenes and associated boundaries. Our experimental results show average precision and recall of 95% and 81%, respectively, for parsing scenes. The framework is extensible to videos captured from other endoscopic procedures such as upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, enteroscopy, cystoscopy, and laparoscopy.
42047029
The effect of multiplexing, switching and other factors on the performance of broadband networks
A network model is developed for studying the effect of multiplexing and switching on broadband network performance. Emphasis is placed on the queuing behavior in the network and the impact of multiplexing and switching on the burstiness of the various traffic streams. The three parameters commonly used to characterize traffic (peak bit rate, mean bit rate, and mean burst length) are also considered, and the dependence of the queuing behavior on these parameters is investigated. The performance of three congestion control schemes based on the leaky bucket algorithm is evaluated. The results provide insight into how call acceptance, bandwidth allocation, and bandwidth enforcement should be implemented in a broadband integrated services digital network (BISDN).<<ETX>>
2722356
Forensic engineering techniques for VLSI CAD tools
The proliferation of the Internet has affected the business model of almost all semiconductor and VLSI CAD companies that rely on intellectual property (IP) as their main source of revenues. The fact that IP has become more accessible and easily transferable, has influenced the emergence of copyright infringement as one of the most common obstructions to e-commerce of IP.
In this paper, we propose a generic forensic engineering technique that addresses a number of copyright infringement scenarios. Given a solution <italic>S<subscrpt>P</subscrpt></italic> to a particular optimization problem instance <italic>P</italic> and a finite set of algorithms <italic>A</italic> applicable to <italic>P</italic>, the goal is to identify with a certain degree of confidence the algorithm <italic>A<subscrpt>i</subscrpt></italic> which has been applied to <italic>P</italic> in order to obtain <italic>S<subscrpt>P</subscrpt></italic>. We have applied forensic analysis principles to two problem instances commonly encountered in VLSI CAD: graph coloring and boolean satisfiability. We have demonstrated that solutions produced by strategically different algorithms can be associated with their corresponding algorithms with high accuracy.
2968096
An effective erasure node algorithm for slot reuse in DQDB
The distributed queue dual bus (DQDB) protocol, which has been specified by the IEEE 802.6 as the metropolitan area networks (MANs) standard, has an undesirable feature that busy slots that have been already received (i.e. read) continue to propagate downstream unnecessarily. The use of special nodes, known as erasure nodes, allows conversion of read slots to empty, so that downstream nodes may reuse these slots. This should result in an increase of the total throughput of the network. In the paper, the authors introduce and evaluate the performance of an erasure node algorithm. The algorithm keeps track of past activities on both buses to effectively balance the slot erasure and the request cancellation functions. They show that this algorithm possesses a number of features which make it superior to existing algorithms.<<ETX>>
10964676
SpecAlign - processing and alignment of mass spectra datasets
SUMMARY
Pre-processing of chromatographic profile or mass spectral data is an important aspect of many types of proteomics and biomarker discovery experiments. Here we present a graphical computational tool, SpecAlign, that enables simultaneous visualization and manipulation of multiple datasets. SpecAlign not only provides all common processing functions, but also uniquely implements an algorithm that enables the complete alignment of each mass spectrum within a loaded dataset. We demonstrate its utility by aligning two datasets each containing six spectra; one set was acquired prior to instrument calibration and the other following calibration.


AVAILABILITY
The software is free of charge and available for download from http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/~jwong/specalign. Supports Windows operating systems including Windows 9X/NT/2000/XP.
926253
Power minimization in QoS sensitive systems
The majority of modern multimedia and mobile systems have two common denominators: quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, such as latency and synchronization, and strict energy constraints. However, until now no synthesis techniques have been proposed for the design and efficient use of such systems. We have two main objectives: conceptual and synthesis. The conceptual objective is to develop a generic practical technique for the automatic development of online adaptive algorithms from efficient off-line algorithms using statistical techniques. The synthesis objective is to introduce the first design technique for QoS low-power synthesis. We introduce a system of provably-optimal techniques that minimize energy consumption of stream-oriented applications under two main QoS metrics: latency and synchronization. Specifically, we study how multiple voltages can be used to simultaneously satisfy hardware constraints and minimize power consumption while preserving the requested level of QoS. The purpose of the off-line algorithm is threefold. First, it is used as input to statistical software which is used to identify important and relevant parameters of the processes. Second, the algorithm provides buffer occupancy rate indicators. Lastly, it provides a way to combine buffer occupancy and QoS metrics to form a fast and efficient online algorithm. The effectiveness of the algorithms is demonstrated on a number of standard multimedia benchmarks.