Enterprise architecture (EA) efforts focus on business, technology, data, and application architecture, and their integration. However, less attention has been given to one of the most critical EA elements, i.e., users (EA audiences). As a result, existing EA management systems (EAMS) have become old, large, content-centric document-repositories that are unable to provide meaningful information of use to the enterprise users and aligned with their needs and functional scope. We argue that a semantic technology based mechanism focusing on enterprise information and user-centricity has the potential to solve this problem. In this context, we present a novel ontology-based strategy named the user-centric semantics-oriented EA (U-SEA) model. Based on this model, we have developed a user-centric semantics-oriented enterprise architecture management (U-SEAM) system. Our approach is generic enough to be used in a wide variety of user-centric EAM applications. The results obtained show computational feasibility to integrate and govern enterprise information and to reduce complexity with respect to interoperability between enterprise information and users.

Notifiable infectious diseases are a major public health concern in China, causing about five million illnesses and twelve thousand deaths every year. Early detection of disease activity, when followed by a rapid response, can reduce both social and medical impact of the disease. We aim to improve early detection by monitoring health-seeking behavior and disease-related news over the Internet. Specifically, we counted unique search queries submitted to the Baidu search engine in 2008 that contained disease-related search terms. Meanwhile we counted the news articles aggregated by Baidu’s robot programs that contained disease-related keywords. We found that the search frequency data and the news count data both have distinct temporal association with disease activity. We adopted a linear model and used searches and news with 1–200-day lead time as explanatory variables to predict the number of infections and deaths attributable to four notifiable infectious diseases, i.e., scarlet fever, dysentery, AIDS, and tuberculosis. With the search frequency data and news count data, our approach can quantitatively estimate up-to-date epidemic trends 10–40 days ahead of the release of Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Chinese CDC) reports. This approach may provide an additional tool for notifiable infectious disease surveillance.

Based on the ratio of the size of the feasible region of constraints to the size of the feasible region of a constrained optimization problem, we propose a new constraint handling approach to improve the efficiency of heuristic search methods in solving the constrained optimization problems. In the traditional classification of a solution candidate, it is either a feasible or an infeasible solution. To refine this classification, a new concept about the relative feasibility degree of a solution candidate is proposed to represent the amount by which the ‘feasibility’ of the solution candidate exceeds that of another candidate. Relative feasibility degree based selection rules are also proposed to enable evolutionary computation techniques to accelerate the search process of reaching a feasible region. In addition, a relative feasibility degree based differential evolution algorithm is derived to solve constraint optimization problems. The proposed approach is tested with nine benchmark problems. Results indicate that our approach is very competitive compared with four existing state-of-the-art techniques, though still sensitive to the intervals of control parameters of the differential evolution.

This paper proposes an optimized simulated annealing (SA) algorithm for thinning and weighting large planar arrays in 3D underwater sonar imaging systems. The optimized algorithm has been developed for use in designing a 2D planar array (a rectangular grid with a circular boundary) with a fixed side-lobe peak and a fixed current taper ratio under a narrow-band excitation. Four extensions of the SA algorithm and the procedure for the optimized SA algorithm are described. Two examples of planar arrays are used to assess the efficiency of the optimized method. The proposed method achieves a similar beam pattern performance with fewer active transducers and faster convergence ability than previous SA algorithms.

Inpainting is the process of reconstructing damaged regions of images and video frames. This study deals with weaknesses of the current video inpainting techniques, when an object is totally damaged, and a framework for video inpainting is proposed. Using this framework, the moving object is separated from the background. A large mosaic image is constructed using the moving object and then a patch-based method with large patches is used to fill holes. In each frame, the inpainted foreground is obtained by placing the object in its location. Missing areas of the stationary background are also filled separately and the final video is produced by composing the inpainted background and object frames. Results for three video sequences with an occluded object show that this approach represents the object in the missing region better than other approaches.

A DP curve is a new kind of parametric curve defined by Delgado and Pe?a (2003); it has very good properties when used in both geometry and algebra, i.e., it is shape preserving and has a linear time complexity for evaluation. It overcomes the disadvantage of some generalized Ball curves that are fast for evaluation but cannot preserve shape, and the disadvantage of the Bézier curve that is shape preserving but slow for evaluation. It also has potential applications in computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems. As conic section is often used in shape design, this paper deduces the necessary and sufficient conditions for rational cubic or quartic DP representation of conics to expand the application area of DP curves. The main idea is based on the transformation relationship between low degree DP basis and Bernstein basis, and the representation theory of conics in rational low degree Bézier form. The results can identify whether a rational low degree DP curve is a conic section and also express a given conic section in rational low degree DP form, i.e., give positions of the control points and values of the weights of rational cubic or quartic DP conics. Finally, several numerical examples are presented to validate the effectiveness of the method.

The digital signature is a very important subject for network security. Considering multiple signers and multiple verifiers, Xie and Yu (2004) pointed out that the multisignature scheme of Laih and Yen (1996) is vulnerable to a harmful attack. An attack can occur when a specified group of verifiers cooperate to forge a multisignature by secret key substitution following the leak of a secret key or by group public key adjustment during the process of renewing membership. Xie and Yu proposed an improvement of Laih and Yen’s multisignature scheme. In this paper, we show that Xie and Yu’s scheme is vulnerable to clerk and rogue-key attacks. We propose an improved multisignature scheme to resist such attacks. In the proposed scheme, multiple signers can generate a multisignature for the message with the signers’ secret keys, and the specified group of verifiers can cooperate to verify the validity of the multisignature with the signers’ public keys and the verifiers’ secret key. The proposed scheme for a special verifier group not only has the advantages of Xie and Yu’s scheme, but also is secure against clerk and rogue-key attacks.

This paper presents a procedure for designing a supplementary damping stabilizer for a static synchronous series compensator (SSSC) in multi-machine power systems. The objective is to shift the lightly damped inter-area modes toward the prescribed stability region. A lead-lag stabilizer is used to demonstrate this technique, in which a particular measure of stabilizer gain is considered as an objective function. Constraints of the problem for phase-lead and lag structures are derived. The objective function with the constraints is formed as a quadratic mathematical programming problem. For robust design, the parameters of the stabilizer are calculated under various operating conditions. Two types of SSSC-based stabilizer have been presented and designed. Numerical results including eigenvalue analysis and the nonlinear simulations on the 4- and 50-machine power systems are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper presents an approach for analyzing the key parts of a general digital radio frequency (RF) charge sampling mixer based on discrete-time charge values. The cascade sampling and filtering stages are analyzed and expressed in theoretical formulae. The effects of a pseudo-differential structure and CMOS switch-on resistances on the transfer function are addressed in detail. The DC-gain is restrained by using the pseudo-differential structure. The transfer gain is reduced because of the charge-sharing time constant when taking CMOS switch-on resistances into account. The unfolded transfer gains of a typical digital RF charge sampling mixer are analyzed in different cases using this approach. A circuit-level model of the typical mixer is then constructed and simulated in Cadence SpectreRF to verify the results. This work informs the design of charge-sampling, infinite impulse response (IIR) filtering, and finite impulse response (FIR) filtering circuits. The discrete-time approach can also be applied to other multi-rate receiver systems based on charge sampling techniques.