2336438
Software reuse and competition: Consumer preferences in a software component market
Research on software reuse has traditionally focused on reuse among employees within the same organization. In contrast, our research investigates consumer preferences in a software component market with multiple producers and consumers of software components. We propose that empirically studying competition in software component markets is crucial to discovering success factors for improving software reuse. To facilitate such research, we have developed an experimental market laboratory called SofTrade; we report here the results of two empirical studies made possible by this environment. Our results support some existing reuse maxims, such as the concept that consumers prefer to reuse components that are general and flexible. Other established reuse beliefs are not supported by our results, such as the expectation that consumers will prefer objects with unique, complex features. Overall, the research reported here strongly supports the claim that the practice of exploring software reuse activity within real or artificial software component markets produces unique insights into how we can improve software reuse.
3211752
Information-Processing Costs in Online Stock Trading
The recent proliferation of online stock trading raises the question of whether online stock trading provides online investors with better benefits than does traditional brokerage-based trading. Compared to its well-known benefits such as lowered commission costs and convenience, the costs incurred to online investors before the transaction - information-processing costs - seem to have received little attention. Due to the 'do-it-yourself' nature of online stock trading, individual online traders have to expend their time and effort to reach investment decisions. More specifically, online investors need to sort out the relevant online information, reprocess it to suit their investment needs, and use the refined information to calibrate their final investment decisions. Depending on an individual investor's characteristics, the costs to reach their online transactions can vary. For some online investors, the costs can be higher than the savings in online transaction costs, thus making the overall cost of o...
242071
Searching Color Images by Emotional Concepts
Most of the content-based image retrieval systems focus on similarity- based retrieval of images by utilizing color, shape and texture features. For color-based image retrieval, the average color or color-histograms of images are widely used as feature vectors. In this paper, we propose a new searching scheme, called Fuzzy Membership Value-Indexing, to guarantee higher retrieval quality. This scheme allows us to retrieve images based on high-level emotional concepts, such as ‘cool', ‘soft', ‘strong,' etc. Each image is automatically classified into predefined emotional categories, by analyzing its color values in HSI color space and assigning appropriate fuzzy membership values. Our experimental results show that the proposed technique can reflect user's searching intention more accurately.
8929657
Drawing Planar Graphs Symmetrically, II: Biconnected Planar Graphs
AbstractSymmetry is one of the most important aesthetic criteria in graph
drawing because it reveals the structure in the graph. This paper
discusses symmetric drawings of biconnected planar graphs. More
specifically, we discuss geometric automorphisms, that is,
automorphisms of a graph G that can be represented as symmetries
of a drawing of G. Finding geometric automorphisms is the first
and most difficult step in constructing symmetric drawings of
graphs. The problem of determining whether a given graph has a
non-trivial geometric automorphism is NP-complete for general
graphs. In this paper we present a linear time algorithm for
finding planar geometric automorphisms of biconnected planar
graphs. A drawing algorithm is also discussed.
10660638
The Metro Map Layout Problem
We initiate a new problem of automatic metro map layout. In general, a metro map consists of a set of lines which have intersections or overlaps. We define a set of aesthetic criteria for good metro map layouts and present a method to produce such layouts automatically. Our method uses a variation of the spring algorithm with a suitable preprocessing step. The experimental results with real world data sets show that our method produces good metro map layouts quickly.
3107205
Crossing Minimization for Symmetries
AbstractWe consider the problem of drawing a graph with a given symmetry
 such that the number of edge crossings is minimal. We show that this
 problem is NP-hard, even if the order of orbits around the rotation
 center or along the reflection axis is fixed.
 We devise an O(m log m) algorithm
 for computing a crossing minimal drawing if inter-orbit edges may
 not cross orbits, showing in particular that intra-orbit edges do
 not contribute to the NP-hardness of the crossing minimization
 problem for symmetries.
1910054
A neuromorphic model for achromatic and chromatic surface representation of natural images
This study develops a neuromorphic model of human lightness perception that is inspired by how the mammalian visual system is designed for this function. It is known that biological visual representations can adapt to a billion-fold change in luminance. How such a system determines absolute lightness under varying illumination conditions to generate a consistent interpretation of surface lightness remains an unsolved problem. Such a process, called 'anchoring' of lightness, has properties including articulation, insulation, configuration, and area effects. The model quantitatively simulates such psychophysical lightness data, as well as other data such as discounting the illuminant, and lightness constancy and contrast effects. The model retina embodies gain control at retinal photoreceptors, and spatial contrast adaptation at the negative feedback circuit between mechanisms that model the inner segment of photoreceptors and interacting horizontal cells. The model can thereby adjust its sensitivity to input intensities ranging from dim moonlight to dazzling sunlight. A new anchoring mechanism, called the Blurred-Highest-Luminance-As-White rule, helps simulate how surface lightness becomes sensitive to the spatial scale of objects in a scene. The model is also able to process natural color images under variable lighting conditions, and is compared with the popular RETINEX model.