http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Research Repositoey of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of SouthamptonFri, 31 Oct 2008 15:32:00 +0000Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:32:00 +0000en http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16258/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16258/Query formulation is a key aspect of information retrieval, contributing to both the efficiency and usability of many semantic applications. A number of query languages, such as SPARQL, have been developed for the Semantic Web; however, there are, as yet, few tools to support end users with respect to the creation and editing of semantic queries. In this paper we present NITELIGHT, a graphical tool for semantic query design. NITELIGHT uses a Visual Query Language (VQL), called vSPARQL, which provides graphical formalisms for SPARQL query specification. NITELIGHT is a highly reusable Web-based component, and it can be easily embedded in a variety of different Web applications. This paper provides an overview of the NITELIGHT tool and the vSPARQL specification. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16788/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16788/The rise of "Web 2.0" has seen an explosion of web sites for the social sharing of personal information. To enable users to make valuable use of the rich yet fragmented sea of public, social, and personal information, data mashups emerged to provide a means for combining and filtering such information into coherent feeds and visualizations. In this paper we present AtomsMasher (AM), a new framework which extends data mashups into the realm of context-aware reactive behaviors. Reactive scripts in AM can be made to trigger automatically in response to changes in its world model derived from multiple web-based data feeds. By exposing a simple state-model abstraction and query language abstractions of data derived from heterogeneous web feeds through a simulation-based interactive script debugging environment, AM greatly simplifies the process of creating such automation in a way that is flexible, predictable, scalable and within the reach of everyday Web programmers. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16329/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16329/The Semantic Web is rapidly becoming a defacto distributed repository for semantically represented data, thus leveraging on the added on value of the network effect. Various ontology mapping techniques and tools have been devised to facilitate the bridging and integration of distributed data repositories. Nevertheless, ontology mapping can benefit from human supervision to increase accuracy of results. The spread of Web 2.0 approaches demonstrate the possibility of using collaborative techniques for reaching consensus. While a number of prototypes for collaborative ontology construction are being developed, collaborative ontology mapping is not yet well investigated. In this paper, we describe a prototype that combines off-the-shelf ontology mapping tools with social software techniques to enable users to collaborate on mapping ontologies. Emphasis is put on the reuse of user generated mappings to improve the accuracy of automatically generated ones. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16696/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16696/We present a new method for viewpoint independent markerless gait analysis. The system uses a single camera, does not require camera calibration and works with a wide range of directions of walking. These properties make the proposed method particularly suitable for identification by gait, where the advantages of completely unobtrusiveness, remoteness and covertness of the biometric system preclude the availability of camera information and use of marker based technology. Tests on more than 200 video sequences with subjects walking freely along different walking directions have been performed. The obtained results show that markerless gait analysis can be achieved without any knowledge of internal or external camera parameters and that the obtained data that can be used for gait biometrics purposes. The performance of the proposed method is particularly encouraging for its appliance in surveillance scenarios. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16690/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16690/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15973/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15973/In this paper we describe how through intelligent chip architecture, a large cohort (~100 students) of undergraduates can be given effective practical insight into IC design by designing and manufacturing their own individual ICs. To achieve this, the “Superchip” has been developed, which allows (without excessive cost in terms of time or resources) multiple student designs to be fabricated on a single IC, and encapsulated in a standard package. We demonstrate how the practical process has been tightly coupled with theoretical aspects of the degree course and how transferable skills are incorporated into the design exercise. The paper provides details of the chip architecture, test regime, test vectors, and an example design. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16161/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16161/Energy efficiency is a key issue for wireless sensor networks, since sensors nodes can often be powered by non-renewable batteries. In this paper, we examine four MAC protocols in terms of energy consumption, throughput and energy efficiency. A forest fire detection application has been simulated using the well-known ns-2 in order to fully evaluate these protocols. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16160/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16160/Semantic spaces encode similarity relationships between objects as a function of position in a mathematical space. This paper discusses three different formulations for building semantic spaces which allow the automatic-annotation and semantic retrieval of images. The models discussed in this paper require that the image content be described in the form of a series of visual-terms, rather than as a continuous feature-vector. The paper also discusses how these term-based models compare to the latest state-of-the-art continuous feature models for auto-annotation and retrieval. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16593/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16593/We define a lossless autonomous system as one having a quadratic differential form associated with it called an energy function, which is positive and which is conserved. We define an oscillatory system as one which has all its trajectories bounded on the entire time axis. In this paper, we show that an autonomous system is lossless if and only if it is oscillatory. Next we discuss a few properties of energy functions of autonomous lossless systems and a suitable way of splitting a given energy function into its kinetic and potential energy components. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15963/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15963/Bibliographic metadata plays a key role in scientific literature, not only to summarise and establish the facts of the publication record, but also to track citations between publications and hence to establish the impact of individual articles within the literature. Commercial secondary publishers have typically taken on the role of rekeying, mining and analysing this huge corpus of linked data, but as the primary literature has moved to the world of the digital repository, this task is now undertaken by new services such as Citeseer, Citebase or Google Scholar. As institutional and subject-based repositories proliferate and Open Access mandates increase, more of the literature will become openly available in well managed data islands containing a much greater amount of detailed bibliometric metadata in formats such as RDF. Through the use of efficient extraction and inference techniques, complex relations between data items can be established. In this paper we explain the importance of the co-relation in enabling new techniques to rate the impact of a paper or author within a large corpus of publications. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15645/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15645/To assist ontology developers modeling complex domain concepts, a comparative analysis of two Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs) has been carried out. As a result, terminology is introduced to characterize certain role and reusability scenarios of class hierarchies in ODPs. An example that benefits from this study is provided. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16269/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16269/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16266/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16266/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16264/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16264/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16270/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16270/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16261/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16261/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16105/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16105/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16025/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16025/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15133/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15133/We investigate equilibrium strategies for bidding agents that participate in multiple, simultaneous second-price auctions with perfect substitutes. For this setting, previous research has shown that it is a best response for a bidder to participate in as many such auctions as there are available, provided that other bidders only participate in a single auction. In contrast, in this paper we consider equilibrium behaviour where all bidders participate in multiple auctions. For this new setting we consider mixed-strategy Nash equilibria where bidders can bid high in one auction and low in all others. By discretising the bid space, we are able to use smooth fictitious play to compute approximate solutions. Specifically, we find that the results do indeed converge to $\epsilon$-Nash mixed equilibria and, therefore, we are able to locate equilibrium strategies in such complex games where no known solutions previously existed. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15647/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15647/In direct current (dc) power cable the electric field is affected by conductivity of the material, which is a function of both temperature and electric field. Loading in high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables results in a temperature gradient across the insulation and hence a radial distribution of the insulation conductivity. A direct consequence is the accumulation of space charge within the insulation bulk, which modifies the electric field across the insulation. The coupled problems due to electric field and temperature inflict difficulties to identify the electric field distribution in HVDC cables, which therefore poses threat to the reliability in operation of dc power cables. A commercial 11 kV ac XLPE power cable will be applied and measured under a voltage application of 80 kV dc. Space charge distributions were obtained respectively across the insulation of the cable by means of a modified pulsed electroacoustic (PEA) system. In this paper, COMSOL Multiphysics software package is also used to accurately determine the electric field distribution in the dc power cable by considering the influences of both the effects of temperature and electric field on the conductivity of the insulating material. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15672/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15672/This paper reports on the investigation into space charge characteristics at interfaces of multi-layer polymeric materials. Planar low density polyethylene (LDPE) samples were used in this study. DC voltage up-to 10 kV was applied to the sample and space charge measurements were taken using the pulsed electro-acoustic (PEA) technique. Experimental results indicated that the electrode interface plays an important role in determining the bulk charge formation and polymer layer interface has different effects on electrons and holes trapping. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15381/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15381/At the University of Southampton, in the UK, we have been developing the Research Repository (e-Prints Soton) since 2005, to showcase the research output and make it more accessible. As a significant next step, the University has taken the strategic decision to develop a repository for educational materials. In developing EdShare at Southampton, we are promoting a cultural shift to a more open and collaborative approach to scholarship as well as research. Successful implementation in such a context requires a lightweight and very simple approach to sharing content facilitated by web 2.0 functionality. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15732/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15732/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15395/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15395/The institutional repository, as a collection of research knowledge, is being encouraged to integrate with the researcher’s desktop environment. However, the desktop metaphor used on personal computer systems provides only limited abilities to organize an individual’s information; the same is true for the digital library metaphor adopted by repositories. Neither environment provides many tools for relating its contents to external information sources. The need for automatically organizing information on the desktop to meet a user’s various needs to accomplish knowledge tasks has been identified by researchers but there is still no widely-adopted solution to tackle it. Semantic web concepts are being used to organize web data into structures that enable machines to interpret and combine it easily with other information to build knowledge. In this paper we discuss the need for an organization mechanism for the desktop that will help integrate desktop data with other data from repositories and from the web, or vice versa. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15364/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15364/Students often build up portfolios of their achievements as they study and present them when they apply for jobs or for further study. Of increasing interest is the concept of an online “ePortfolio” which enables greater power and flexibility in displaying achievements. However, the issue of cheating needs to be addressed, especially where certificates of attainment are being presented. An eCertification project, named “eCert”, has recently been run at Southampton in order to explore these issues. This paper documents how we approach the validation of applicants' claims of attainment. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15734/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15734/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16818/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16818/In shape recognition, a multiscale description provides more information about the object, increases discrimination power and immunity to noise. In this paper, we develop a new multiscale Fourier-based object description in 2-D space using a low-pass Gaussian filter (LPGF) and a high-pass Gaussian filter (HPGF), separately. Using the LPGF, at different scales, represents the inner and central part of an object more than the boundary. On the other hand using the HPGF, at different scales, represents the boundary and exterior parts of an object more than the central part. Our algorithms are also organized to achieve size, translation and rotation invariance. Evaluation indicates that representing the boundary and exterior parts more than the central part using the HPGF performs better than the LPGF based multiscale representation, and in comparison to Zernike moments and elliptic Fourier descriptors with respect to increasing noise. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16155/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16155/Research on energy harvesting from ambient vibration sources has been attracting tremendous attention recently. Free-standing piezoelectric structures are among the devices used as the energy harvester. The structures are commonly fabricated by using thin-film technology. However, their electromechanical properties are typically lower than those of thick-film materials. In this paper, a method of fabricating thick-film free-standing cantilevers, operated in d31 and d33 are described and the measurement results are presented. These devices are able to be operated at relatively low level of vibrations (frequencies below 500 Hz and acceleration levels below 10 m/s2) in ambient environment. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15809/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15809/User Modeling is the core component for the majority of personalization services. It has become an important factor in the effort to personalise a diversity of web resources according to users’ characteristics and needs. While trying to move a step further and model dynamic users in a range of contexts, life-long User Modeling, the ability to model a dynamic and changing user throughout lifetime interactions with a variety of resource providers, appears to be an attractive solution. A Scrutable User Modeling Infrastructure is proposed in this paper, where a first prototype has already been designed and implemented, which blends together some key User Modeling ‘ingredients’- interoperability, scrutability, user privacy - and attempts to model the various life-long user interactions with a diversity of web-based systems from the educational, business and social networking domains. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16693/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16693/Interoperation between knowledge-based systems or agents requires common ontologies to facilitate successful information exchange. However, the openness of the Semantic Web means that the notion of there being common domain ontologies sufficient to cater for the requirements of a diverse range of consumers and producers of services has become untenable. In these types of environments it is necessary to consider that no ontology can be expected to remain unchanged throughout its lifetime. However, the dynamism and the large scale of the environment prevent the use of traditional ontology evolution techniques, where changes are mediated by a knowledge engineer [3]. We argue that the ability to estimate the impact of change a priori, i.e. before performing the change itself, is crucial, since this estimate can be used to assess the usefulness of the change. We assume that agents are capable of rational behaviour, and that they decide whether to change the ontology they commit to if the cost of the change (in terms of reclassification of knowledge) is offset by the benefits derived from the ability of a system to acquire new capabilities and therefore to achieve new tasks (or answer new queries, in the case of knowledge based systems). However, the agent’s decision making process follows the principle of bounded rationality [5]: agents operate with limited computational resources, and with partial knowledge of the environment [4]. We present an approach that evaluates the impact of change on an ontology a priori, without using reasoning, by estimating which set of axioms in an ontology is impacted by the change. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16363/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16363/In this work we investigate the series resistances in vertical MOSFETs incorporating the fillet local oxidation (FILOX) structure that serves to reduce the gate to drain/source overlap capacitances. The series resistances are modeled analytically and the important influencing factors, namely gate bias dependence and the asymmetric nature of the device, are identified. We extract by simulation, Rd and Rs from devices with different FILOX thicknesses, employing an impedance method often used in RF characterisation. We identify the trade-off whereby thickening the FILOX first causes an increase of the cut-off frequency fT, until the on-current Ion becomes limited by increasing series resistances and fT therefore reduces. The results indicate a thickness of 40nm FILOX for maximum fT. We also investigate the influence of process conditions on low series resistances, namely time of rapid thermal annealing RTA and angle of implantation. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15151/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15151/In this paper, we describe a simple method of reusing an EPrints RSS2.0 feed and Dublin Core meta-data to produce a synthetic-voice podcast that includes both citation and abstract details, which can be easily added to iTunes. Rather than allocating precious time to reviewing the latest institutional releases at work, this system allows users to listen to the details of papers during unutilized time, where the eyes and hands might be otherwise engaged. Early work has already produced the podcast and upcoming work will look at automatically producing a ‘to read’ list with pre-downloaded full texts, based on track ratings given to each item. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14985/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14985/OpenKnowledge is a peer-to-peer system for sharing knowl- edge and is driven by interaction models that give the necessary context for mapping of ontological knowledge fragments necessary for the in- teraction to take place. The OpenKnowledge system is agnostic to any specic data formats that are used in the interactions, relying on on- tology mapping techniques for shimming the messages. The potentially large search space for matching ontologies is reduced by the shared con- text of the interaction. In this paper we investigate what this means for multimedia data on the OpenKnowledge network by discussing how an existing application that provides multimedia annotation (the Semantic Logger) can be migrated into the OpenKnowledge domain. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15684/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15684/This is the poster for the paper: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14507/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15686/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15686/richtags allows you to search across multiple repositories from numerous institutions covering hundreds of disciplines for research that is of interest to you! http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15148/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15148/Ears are a new biometric with major advantage in that they appear to maintain their shape with increased age. Any automatic biometric system needs enrolment to extract the target area from the background. In ear biometrics the inputs are often human head profile images. Furthermore ear biometrics is concerned with the effects of partial occlusion mostly caused by hair and earrings. We propose an ear enrolment algorithm based on finding the elliptical shape of the ear using a Hough Transform (HT) accruing tolerance to noise and occlusion. Robustness is improved further by enforcing some prior knowledge. We assess our enrolment on two face profile datasets; as well as synthetic occlusion. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15676/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15676/The use of digital images is rapidly increasing in digital archives, community databases, as well as on the Web. This creates new challenges for image management and retrieval and promotes the importance of automatic image classification and annotation research. In general current content-based image retrieval methods are still struggling to deal with the semantic gap between low-level visual features and the high-level abstractions perceived by humans. Manual annotation is typically a difficult and tedious task involving a process of describing the content and context of an image to provide direct access to the semantics. Automatic classification can allocate images or image regions to specific object classes and automatic annotation also aims to add descriptive labels to images. This paper will explore classification and image annotation in bridging the semantic gap and present some related projects which illustrate the advantages of these techniques for image retrieval in the medical and cultural heritage domains. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16279/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16279/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16283/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16283/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16280/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16280/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16284/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16284/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16286/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16286/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16282/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16282/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14872/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14872/Novel concepts are introduced for finding the relationship between multiuser detection (MUD) and multiuser transmission (MUT), so that the study in MUT can benefit from the well-built theory in MUD. Our study shows that, for any given linear MUD scheme, there exists a counterpart linear MUT scheme, which can be readily designed from the original linear MUD. Based on our observations, a range of MUT algorithms are derived in correspondence with the well-known linear processing schemes in the fields of MUD and array processing, including minimum mean-square error (MMSE), minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR), minimum power distortionless response (MPDR) and maximum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (MSINR), respectively. Furthermore, the physical principles behind the considered MUT schemes are explained with the aid of the concepts built in this contribution. In order to gain insight into the effect of noise power on the achievable performance of a MUT scheme, a noise-suppression factor is introduced to those MUT schemes, such as MMSE, requiring the knowledge of noise variance. Our study shows that the achievable performance of the MUT is generally loosely depended on the noise-suppression factor. This finding may result in extremely low-complexity wireless transceivers in time-division duplex (TDD) cellular systems, where the uplink MUD and downlink MUT can be implemented based on one adaptive signal processing scheme. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16285/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16285/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16587/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16587/The ability to rank molecules according to their effectiveness in some domain, e.g. pesticide, drug, is important owing to the cost of synthesising and testing chemical compounds. Virtual screening seeks to do this computationally with potential savings of millions of pounds and large profits associated with reduced time to market. Recently, binary kernel discrimination (BKD) is introduced and becoming popular in Chemoinformatics domain. It produces scores based on the estimated likelihood ratio of active to inactive compounds that are then ranked. The likelihoods are estimated through a Parzen Windows approach using the binomial distribution function (to accommodate binary descriptor or "fingerprint" vectors representing the presence, or not, of certain sub-structural arrangements of atoms) in place of the usual Gaussian choice. This research aims to compute the likelihood ratio via direct estimate of posterior probability by using non-parametric generalisation of logistic regression the so-called “Kernel Logistic Regression”. Furthermore, complexity is then controlled by penalising the likelihood function by Lq-norm. The compounds are then rank descending on the basis of posterior probability. The 11 activity classes from the MDL Drug Data Report (MDDR) database are used. The results are found to be less accurate than a currently leading approach but are still comparable in a number of cases. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13955/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13955/In this paper, we explore a new approach for walking pedestrian detection in an unconstrained outdoor environment. The proposed algorithm is based on gait motion as the rhythm of the footprint pattern of walking people is considered the stable and characteristic feature for the classification of moving objects. The novelty of our approach is motivated by the latest research for people identification using gait. The experimental results confirmed the robustness of our method to discriminate between single walking subject, groups of people and vehicles with a detection rate of %100. Furthermore, the results revealed the potential of our method to extend visual surveillance systems to recognize walking people. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16288/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16288/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14117/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14117/In this paper space charge dynamics in low-density polyethylene (LDPE) under different dc electric fields, ranging from 25 kV/mm to 125 kV/mm, have been investigated using the pulsed electroacoustic (PEA) technique. Bipolar space charges have been formed to present in the sample and the amount of charge increases with both the applied electric field and the duration of electric field applied. Double injection is believed to be responsible for the charge measured. Negative charge dominates due to electrode configuration used in the research. The formation of charge leads to an increase in the maximum electric field. Results show that the maximum electric field is both the applied field and time dependent. The charge decay after the removal of the applied field shows a fast decaying rate for the charge formed at high applied electric field. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14655/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14655/This constribution considers nonlinear space-time equalisation (STE) designed for single-input multiple-output (SIMO) systems. By exploiting the inherent symmetry of the underlying optimal Bayesian STE solution, a novel symmetric radial basis function (RBF) based STE scheme is proposed, which is capable of achieving the optimal Bayesian equalisation performance. The adaptive adjustment of the STE taps of this symmetric RBF (SRBF) based STE can be achieved by estimating the SIMO channel encountered using the classic least mean square channel estimator and computing the optimal RBF centres from the resultant SIMO channel matrix estimate. Our simulation results demonstrate that the performance of this SRBF based STE is robust with respect to the choice of the algorithmic parameters. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14767/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14767/The pulsed electroacoustic (PEA) technique was used to perform space charge measurements in polymeric power cables. However, for a practical dc power cable the electric field is affected by conductivity of the material, which is a function of both temperature and electric field. The coupled problems inflict difficulties to identify the electric field distribution in high voltage (HV) cables, which therefore poses threat to the reliability in operation of dc power cables. In this paper we proposed a method of determining electric field distribution in XLPE power cable, where under temperature gradient the existence of space charge density of the cable is determined by means of a modified PEA system. Commercial 11 kV ac XLPE power cable is applied and measured under an applied dc voltage of 80 kV. The space charge across the insulation was obtained and COMSOL Multiphysics software package is used to accurately determine the electric field distribution in the dc power cable by considering the influences of both the effects of temperature and electric field on the conductivity of the insulating material. Therefore, the results of the numerical modelling shall give us a clearer representation of the electric field distribution in HVDC cables. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13732/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13732/When component parts of distributed systems need to reach agreement, arriving at consensus is difficult if some components don’t behave properly. The Byzantine Generals Problem described by Lamport and others exemplifies the difficulty. In a real situation, components don’t know which of their peers are faulty and hence they cannot apply the algorithms of Lamport et al, nor even decide if a suitable algorithm exists. This paper discusses options available in this situation and describes how a good expectation of arriving at a consensus can be achieved without knowing for certain which or how many participants are behaving badly. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15195/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15195/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14360/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14360/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14488/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14488/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13307/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13307/This poster demonstrates our recent work in the field of intelligent image retrieval in response to real requests from the practitioner domain. The poster shows how we are developing a data-driven 'semantic space' framework for information retrieval which can enable retrieval of unannotated imagery through natural language queries, and also facilitate automatic annotation of imagery. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14322/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14322/This paper introduces a faceted model of image semantics which attempts to express the richness of semantic content interpretable within an image. Using a large image data-set from a museum collection the paper shows how the facet representation can be applied. The second half of the paper describes our semantic retrieval system, and demonstrates its use with the museum image collection. A retrieval evaluation is performed using the system to investigate how the retrieval performance varies with respect to each of the facet categories. A number of factors related to the image data-set that affect the quality of retrieval are also discussed. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14709/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14709/The OAI-PMH has become the de-facto standard for exposing metadata. In the PRESERV project we have explored new models for enabling thedigital preservation of and long-term access to content in Institutional Repositories (IRs). We envision digital preservation being achieved through simple preservation services working with standards-based, interoperable repository software. As support for the OAI-PMH matures so repositories are providing more robust mechanisms to access their content through OAI, e.g. community standards for using Dublin Core, support for METS or DIDL. Based on this, we have developed an exemplar File Format Profiling tool in the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), utilizing OAI and PRONOM DROID. PRONOM-ROAR is a first step to preserving digital content through simplifying content file format management for IR Managers by providing file format profiles and alerts. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14439/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14439/Introduction There is a body of clinical evidence to support the use of FES to improve motor control (De Kroon et al. 2002) and theoretical support from neurophysiology (Burridge & Ladouceur 2001) and motor learning research (Schmidt & Lee 1999). Iterative learning control has its origins in the control of processes that repetitively perform a task with a view to improving accuracy. The classic example is the area of trajectory following in robotics but can it be usefully applied to neurological rehabilitation? Method To answer this question, the ability of 10 patients to track a 2 D pattern using a robot arm, over a number of trials is being tested. We are designing an algorithm to control FES of appropriate muscles in terms of timing and amplitude to improve tracking. Subsequently the stimulation will be reduced to encourage optimal voluntary contribution to the task. To achieve this, a model is being created using unimpaired subjects to identify activation patterns with respect to joint positions. This will inform when we need to apply stimulation (although we expect patients to differ due to spasticity). In the initial phase surface EMGs have been collected from triceps, biceps, anterior deltoid, upper, middle and lower trapezius and pectoralis major during 9 reaching tasks. The EMG data will identify which muscles to control, be used in the controller, and to compare differences between stroke and unimpaired subjects. The next phase involves collecting data using the robot both with and without stimulation and then applying different control algorithms. Results Surface EMG results and analysis from 10 unimpaired subjects will be presented. Preliminary analysis on EMGs from 8 subjects shows evidence that reciprocal inhibition of upper trapezius occurs during maximum reach. If successful the concept could be used for other neurological conditions such as cerebral palsy and incomplete spinal injury. References Burridge, J. H. & Ladouceur, M. 2001, ''Clinical and therapeutic applications of neuromuscular stimulation: A review of current use and speculation into future developments'', Neuromodulation, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 147-154. De Kroon, J. R., van der Lee, J. H., Izerman, M. J., & Lankhorst, G. J. 2002, ''Therapeutic electrical stimulation to improve motor control and functional abilities of the upper extremity after stroke: a systematic review'', Clinical Rehabilitation, vol. 16, pp. 350-360. Schmidt, R. A. & Lee, T. D. 1999, Motor control and learning a behavioural emphasis. 3rd Edition Human Kinetics Part 3 Motor Learning. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13384/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13384/Utility computing exemplifies a novel kind of solution to the increasing scale and complexity of modern IT systems. Here, the “on-demand” provisioning of computing resources is managed via a population of independent software agents that query and negotiate with one another in an open system of resource providers and consumers that has no fixed organisation and is free to change and grow organically. Where centralised executive control of agent activity is relaxed or removed, such systems have the potential to deliver scalable, flexible computing. However, major design and control challenges must be overcome if multi-agent systems are to achieve efficient, decentralised resource allocation that delivers reliable and robust performance. In this paper we introduce a minimally complex multi-agent system, where individual agents rely on simple, local strategies to perform resource allocation. We explore the relationship between local and global behaviour as system size, load, heterogeneity and reliability are varied. We identify generic feedbacks underlying system behaviour that must be balanced if decentralised control is to become an effective technique for preserving stable functionality across utility computing infrastructures. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14285/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14285/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14741/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14741/The Semantic Integration Portal is a demonstration of the potential capabilities of Semantic Web applications in a knowledge-rich context. Source data is taken from different online terrorist incident aggregators and marked up according to ontologies specific to those domains. Unlike other semantic web techniques, which scrape the internet for raw data and then mark-up against a standard ontology, the approach here is to allow each data source to have its own domain-specific ontology. This allows the data producers the opportunity to mark up their data in their own way, producing RDF data according to their own ontologies without the need to conform to a standard. A variety of semantic integration techniques can then be applied to these ontologies, both automatic and interactive, allowing data from both sets to be viewed in a suitable application, in this case the mspace browser. Future iterations of the semantic integration portal aim to introduce more automated ontology-mapping techniques, aligning data from a variety of diverse sources with less need for human intervention. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13705/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13705/This work investigates the application of serialization as a means of reducing the number of wires in NoC combined with asynchronous links in order to simplify the clocking of the link. Throughput is reduced but savings in routing area and reduction in power could make this attractive http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13948/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13948/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14055/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14055/In this paper we outline a simple model of spatially structured populations that is an extension of the replicator dynamics approach used in evolutionary game theory. Using this model, we are able to investigate issues such as how the degree of spatial localisation affects the evolution of cooperative and selfish genotypes in a resource sharing scenario. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14740/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14740/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13715/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13715/This paper presents a semantic portal, SEMPort, which provides better user support with personalized views, semantic navigation, ontology-based search and three different kinds of semantic hyperlinks. Distributed content editing and provision is supplied for the maintenance of the contents in real-time. As a case study, SEMPort is tested on the Course Modules Web Page (CMWP) of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS). http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14441/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14441/This paper presents an ontology-based semantic portal, SEMPort, which aims to support both content providers and the users of the portal during providing information, browsing and searching. The content is enriched with context-based semantic hyperlinks and personalized views. Distributed content editing/provision is supplied for the maintenance of the contents in real-time. As a case study, SEMPort is tested on the school’s Course Modules Web Page (CMWP) and evaluated using this domain. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14264/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14264/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14251/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14251/This paper describes how a Web 2.0 mashup approach, reusing technologies and services freely available on the web, have enabled the development of a dynamic link service system that uses Wikipedia as its linkbase. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14739/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14739/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14281/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14281/Educational technology in higher education has not managed to match the ubiquity of technology in everyday life. Is this because higher education institutions are inherently resistant to change? The organization, structure, culture and climate of higher education institutions reflect the wider agendas of current and predominant practice. They may particularly influence the success or failure of initiatives to establish technology enhanced learning (TEL). This paper reports on analysis of a long term study of change in a UK university, and sets those findings in the context of wider experience across the sector and identifies significant issues which may enable or inhibit success http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14118/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14118/In this paper, the surface potential decay of corona-charged low density polyethylene (LDPE) films has been investigated. It has been found that for the same sample thickness the faster decay occurs in the sample with a higher charging voltage. For the same charging voltage, the surface potential in the thinner sample shows rapid decay. Our new evidence from both the surface potential measurement on multilayer samples and space charge measurement suggests the surface potential decay is a bulk limited process. More importantly, space charge measurement indicates double injection has taken place during corona charging process. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11739/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11739/The motivation and objective for this paper is to demonstrate “Personal High Performance Computing (PHPC)”, which requires only a smaller number of computers, resources and space in the secure wireless home networking (WHN) environment. The PHPC is based on a cluster of the 64-bit AMD machines, which can achieve the following: (a) reducing CPU time by 10% - 50% for a single task; (b) minimizing the memory and hard-disk workload by 50%; (c) running 64-bit software applications successfully; (d) receiving up to 60% better performance in multi-tasking performance; (e) executing fast, robust and accurate calculations, visualization and server-side applications on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows and Linux; (f) ensuring a secure working environment (g) storing a massive amount of data (12 TB, or 12,000 GB) for database and server applications; and (h) successfully integrating with other emerging technologies such as LAN/wireless networks and entertainment systems. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16293/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16293/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16295/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16295/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16297/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16297/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16300/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16300/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12695/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12695/While ontologies exist for the annotation of monomedia, interoperability between these schemes is an important issue. The OntoMedia ontology consists of a generic core, capable of representing a diverse range of media, as well as extension ontologies to focus on specific formats. This paper provides an overview of the OntoMedia ontologies, together with a detailed case study when applied to video, a scripted form, and an associated short story. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16028/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16028/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13998/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13998/Polymnia is an automated solution for the creation of ambient multi-camera personal documentary films. This short paper introduces the system, emphasising the rule-based documentary generation engine that we have created to assemble an edited narrative from source footage. We describe how such automatically generated media can be integrated with and augment personally-authored images and videos as a contribution to an individual’s personal digital memory. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14404/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14404/We present a study of antireflective schemes and their operation over a full day. We compare simulation results for single and double layer antireflective coatings with biomimetic moth-eye structures, taking into account the full range of wavelengths and incident angles experienced by fixed solar cells from sunrise to sunset. We show that solar cells incorporating antireflective moth-eye arrays could produce up to 12% more energy than those employing single layer antireflective coatings. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14268/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14268/The IST Polymnia project is creating a fully automated system for personalised video generation, including content creation, selection and composition. This paper presents a linguistically motivated solution using context-free feature-augmented grammar rules to describe editing tasks and hence automate video editing. The solution is media and application independent. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13486/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13486/We argue that data should be acquired now. Every day that goes by data is lost. We propose Semantic Squirrels, a community-enabled low technology solution to data acquisition to achieve this data acquisition, while other more difficult problems wait to be resolved. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12238/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12238/Ontology is important in sharing and reusing knowledge. It also plays a crucial role in the development of Semantic Web. The paper discusses the DL(Description Logic) and graph view on ontology. Different perspectives have different models and approaches on ontology mapping. The paper presents how the two different approaches handle ontology mapping, respectively. We argue that a combination of the two views can lead to a better solution in ontology mapping. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13070/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13070/Keeping track of ontology changes is becoming a critical issue for ontology-based applications. Updating an ontology that is in use may result in inconsistencies between the ontology and the knowledge base, dependent ontologies and applications/services. Current research concentrates on the creation of ontologies and how to manage ontology changes in terms of mapping ontology versions and keeping consistent with the instances. Very little work investigated controlling the impact on dependent applications/services; which is the aim of the system presented in this paper. The approach we propose is to make use of ontology change logs to analyse incoming RDQL queries and amend them as necessary. Revised queries can then be used to query the ontology and knowledge base as requested by the applications and services. We describe the design of our prototype system, and discuss related problems and future directions. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12883/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12883/In order to support knowledge workers during their tasks of searching, locating and manipulating information, a system that provides information suitable for a particular user’s needs, and that is also able to facilitate annotation, sharing and reuse information is essential. This paper presents Adaptable Personal Information Environment (a-PIE); a service-oriented framework using Open Hypermedia and Semantic Web technologies to provide an adaptable web-based system. a-PIE models the information structures (data and links) and context as Fundamental Open Hypermedia Model (FOHM) structures which are manipulated by using the Auld Linky contextual link service. a-PIE provides an information environment that enables users to search an information space based on ontologically defined domain concepts. The users can add and annotate interesting data or parts of information structures into their information space, leaving the original published data or information structures unchanged. a-PIE facilitates the shareability and reusability of knowledge according to users’ requirements. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12745/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12745/This paper proposes a technique to extend the network lifetime of a wireless sensor network, whereby each sensor node decides its network involvement, based on energy resources and the information in each message (ascertained through a system of rules). Results obtained from the simulation of an industrial monitoring scenario have shown that a considerable increase in the lifetime and connectivity can be obtained. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12869/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12869/Facilitating knowledge acquisition is a task that usually requires special purpose interfaces with which users are not familiar. Providing effective acquisition through a familiar interface, such as a wiki, can provide a route to acquiring knowledge for low user investment. We present an architecture that is being used in the ReSIST project based on a Semantic MediaWiki integrated with a knowledge base that allows users to add and view knowledge using normal Semantic MediaWiki syntax. The architecture aims to facilitate the acquisition and representation of knowledge about resilient systems for users with no experience of knowledge technologies. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13188/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13188/Modern techniques treat color images as separate monochrome images for processing. Partly, because there is no straightforward generalization of linear filters available for color. However the algorithms yield more accurate results when the correlation among color bands are exploited which shows fundamental difference to process the color images. Earlier work[8] reported the transformation of the color images using Quaternion Fourier Transforms and the realization of a holistic filter based on Quaternion convolution. Here, we discuss the rotor based convolution techniques, a generalization of the previous work, within a new mathematical framework in Geometric Algebra. Based thereupon, a novel hardware architecture is proposed. Experiments show the edge detection with this technique belong to a class of linear vector filter and is holistic in nature. It is tailored for image processing applications, providing an acceptable application performance requirements. The usefulness of the introduced approach was demonstrated by analyzing and implementing a computation intensive edge detection algorithm on this hardware. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12351/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12351/In this paper, we describe research into the use of ontologies to integrate access to cultural heritage and photographic archives. The use of the CIDOC CRM and CRM Core ontologies are described together with the metadata mapping methodology. A system integrating data from four content providers will be demonstrated. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13186/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13186/Throughout the age of information technology, we have experienced our lives getting simpler through the use of computers. Computer technology is becoming more and more integrated into our everyday routines, and as the technology becomes available we come to rely upon it. In this document we present a discussion of current technology that may be used to annotate the life of a human being, and propose a future in which diaries are obsolete in favour of computer technology and the Semantic Web. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12992/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12992/Semantic Web services allow applications to automatically discover and provision distributed services at runtime. However, when such services are offered by autonomous providers, as is common in large distributed systems, their behaviour is inherently non-deterministic and unreliable. To address this problem, we describe an OWL-S extension that allows services to be annotated with quantitative performance measures, and outline a flexible, decision-theoretic algorithm that uses this knowledge to provision services as part of complex workflows. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13356/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13356/This paper details the development of a generator based upon a cantilever beam inertial mass system which harvests energy from ambient environmental vibrations. The paper compares the predicted results from Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of the mechanical behaviour and magnetic field simulations and experimental results from a generator. Several design changes were implemented to maximise the conversion of magnetic energy into generated power and a maximum power output of 17.8μW was achieved at a resonant frequency of 56.6Hz and an applied acceleration of 60mg (g = 9.81ms-2). http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13257/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13257/Photo annotation is a resource-intensive task, yet is increasingly essential as image archives and personal photo collections grow in size. There is an inherent conflict in the process of describing and archiving personal experiences, because casual users are generally unwilling to spend large amounts of effort on creating the annotations which are required to manage their collections. This poster outlines Photocopain, a semi-automatic image annotation system which combines information about the context in which a photograph was captured with information extracted from the content of the image. These automatically generated annotations are then presented to the user for extension or alteration as need be. This work is presented as an initial investigation into the applicability of surreptitiously captured metadata to describe the events of a person’s observable life. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12899/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12899/The Semantic Logger SL) is presentedas a system for the importing, housing, and exploiting of personal information. The system has been implemented using a number of Semantic Web enabling technologies, and attempts to store the information in a manner adhering to as many W3C recommendations as possible. The Semantic Logger's utility is grounded in two context-based applications, namely a recommender system, and a photo-annotation tool. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12184/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12184/Increasingly, manufacturing companies are shifting their focus from selling products to providing services. As a result, when designing new products, engineers must increasingly consider the life cycle costs in addition to any design requirements. To identify possible areas of concern, designers are required to consult existing maintenance information from identical products. However, in a large engineering company, the amount of information available is significant and in wide range of formats. This paper presents a prototype knowledge desktop suitable for the design engineer. The Engineering Knowledge Desktop analyses and suggests relevant information from ontologically marked-up heterogeneous web resources. It is designed using a Service-Oriented Architecture, with an ontology to mediate between Web Services. It has been delivered to the user community for evaluation. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16311/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16311/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16317/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16317/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16316/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16316/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16318/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16318/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16313/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16313/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16321/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16321/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10771/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10771/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10772/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10772/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10720/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10720/This paper introduces the subband method of performing adaptive identification and analytic inversion of broadband MIMO channels. It shows that the techniques can potentially lower the computational cost while improving the performance for highly frequency-selective channel with a long impulse response. It covers subband adaptive identification and shows two methods to invert a broadband MIMO channel, the time-domain and frequency-domain methods. Finally results are shown for adaptation MSE, channel-equaliser MSE and BER performance. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10271/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10271/In this paper we describe a novel method for gait based identity verification based on Bayesian classification. The verification task is reduced to a two class problem (Client or Impostor) with logistic functions constructed to provide probability estimates of intra-class (Client) and inter-class (Impostor) likelihoods. These likelihoods are combined using Bayes rule and thresholded to provide a decision boundary. Since the outputs of the classifier are probabilities they are particularly well suited for use without modification in classifier fusion schemes. On tests using 1664 examples from 100 clients and 100 impostors the Bayesian method achieved an equal error rate of 7.3%. The improvement over a Euclidean distance classifier was shown to be statistically significant at the 5% level using McNemar’s test. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11049/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11049/In this paper we report on the design, simulation and initial results of a microgenerator, which converts external vibrations into electrical energy. Power is generated by means of electromagnetic transduction with static magnets positioned either side of a moving coil located on a silicon structure designed to resonate laterally in the plane of the chip. In this paper the development and fabrication of a micromachined microgenerator that uses standard silicon based fabrication techniques and low cost, batch process is presented. Finite element simulations have been carried out using ANSYS to determine an optimum geometry for the microgenerator. Electromagnetic FEA simulations using Ansoft’s Maxwell 2D software have shown voltage levels of 4 to 9V can be generated from the single beam generator designs. Initial results at atmospheric pressure yield 0.5 µW at 9.81ms-2 and 9.5 kHz and emphasise the importance of reducing unwanted loss mechanisms such as air damping. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10934/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10934/As the amount of data systems have to work with increases, it becomes practically impossible to ensure it is consistent, no matter how tough we make our data collection procedures. Currently systems logic is based on the implicit assumption that the data they use is essentially correct and they struggle when this is not the case. To deal with this situation, we need to build applications which are better able to handle inconsistencies. In a series of experiments, we have shown that an application using our “DataWarp” approach to data enjoys a real advantage in one specific environment. Here we describe applying the approach more widely. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10689/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10689/Simulation-based fault injection provides high observability for analyzing the consequences of SEUs. However, the performance of this method is inadequate to handle today’s hardware complexity. As an alternative, FPGA-based fault injection can be used to accelerate the fault injection experiments, but the communication time needed for observing the circuit behavior from outside of the FPGA imposes severe limitations on the observability. In this paper, a novel observation architecture is proposed which significantly reduces the communication time as compared with recently reported scan-based observation architecture. Furthermore, a SEU fault injection method based on a chain of parallel registers which reduces the time needed for injecting faults as compared to traditional scan-based fault-injection methods is described. Experimental results based-on a 32-bit pipelined processor case study show that for the applications which require high degree of observability (e.g. error propagation analysis), the proposed fault injection architecture is over 1460 times faster than simulation-based fault injection, whereas the traditional scan-based architecture can achieve only a speedup of about 3. Such results are supported by theoretical performance analysis. This speed increase has been achieved without excessive increase in area overhead, for example, the FPGA overhead of the proposed architecture is only 1% higher than that of the scan-based architecture. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10366/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10366/Abstract. The development and use of content-based retrieval techniques for 3-D models is a relatively new departure in multimedia retrieval. We have extended our existing multimedia museum information system to support content-, metadata- and concept-based retrieval of 3- D models of museum artifacts and in this paper we describe a "classifier agent" to automatically assign associations between 3-D artifacts and concepts and metadata stored in a domain ontology. The context of the classifier agent is described, together with an overview of its architecture. Selecting appropriate parameters for the agent is an important activity and a comparison is made between manually selected parameters and the results of an automatic technique to determine "optimal" settings. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11551/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11551/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11511/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11511/In this paper, we derive a concurrent constant modulus algorithm (CMA) and decision directed (DD) scheme for blind multiuser equalisation, suitable for downlink DS-CDMA systems. Adaptation is performed by concurrently minimising two cost functions based on either a CM criterion or a DD scheme for all active users. Computer simulations are used to assess the performance of the algorithm. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14602/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14602/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10661/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10661/One-Class Machine Learning techniques (i.e. "bottleneck" neural networks and one-class support vector machines (SVM)) are applied to classify whether a subject is performing a task or not by looking solely at the raw fMRI slices of his brain. "One-class" means that during training the system only has access to positive (i.e. task performing) examples. "Two-class" means it has access to negative examples as well. Successful classification of data by a system trained under either of the one-class systems was accomplished at close to the 60% level. (In contrast, an implementation of a standard two class SVM succeeds at around the 70% level.) These results were stable over repeated experiments and for both motor and visual tasks. Since the one-class neural network technique is naturally related to dimension reduction, it is possible that this mechanism may also be used for feature selection. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11095/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11095/The vector-space retrieval model and Latent Semantic Indexing approaches to retrieval have been used heavily in the field of text information retrieval over the past years. The use of these approaches in image retrieval, however, has been somewhat limited. In this paper, we present methods for using these techniques in combination with an invariant image representation based on local descriptors of salient regions. The paper also presents an evaluation in which the two techniques are used to find images with similar semantic labels. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11302/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11302/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12276/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12276/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11206/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11206/The aim of this investigation is to produce an injection device for precise dispensing of nanolitre volumes of fluid using a piston formed from superparamagnetic beads. A plug of Fe2O3 beads is formed by applying a non-uniform magnetic field from a bullet magnet within close proximity to the fluid filled channel containing the beads. Once the plug is formed it can be moved through the micro channel by moving the magnet and thus, provide a plunger-like action. Fluid is displaced by moving the magnetic plug, providing a technique for fluid dispensing. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15177/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15177/We report on two experiments performed to test the importance of Term Order in automatic summarisation. Experiment one was undertaken as part of DUC 2004 to which three systems were submitted, each with a different summarisation approach. The system that used document Term Order outperformed those that did not use Term Order in the ROUGE evaluation. Experiment two made use of human evaluations of search engine results, comparing our Query Term Order summaries with a simulation of current Google search engine result summaries in terms of summary quality. Our QTO system’s summaries aided users’ relevance judgements to a significantly greater extent than Google’s. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11537/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11537/This paper describes the development of a prototype floor sensor as a gait recognition system. This could eventually find deployment as a standalone system (eg. a burglar alarm system) or as part of a multimodal biometric system. The new sensor consists of 1536 individual sensors arranged in a \unit[3]{m} by \unit[0.5]{m} rectangular strip with an individual sensor area of \unit[3]{cm$^2$}. The sensor floor operates at a sample rate of \unit[22]{Hz}. The sensor itself uses a simple design inspired by computer keyboards and is made from low cost, off the shelf materials. Application of the sensor floor to a small database of 15 individuals was performed. Three features were extracted : stride length, stride cadence, and time on toe to time on heel ratio. Two of these measures have been used in video based gait recognition while the third is new to this analysis. These features proved sufficient to achieve an 80\% recognition rate. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10779/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10779/In this paper we present the potential advantages of using the Grid for mobile e-learning, describe our experiences with implementing a mobile e-learning Grid client using current Grid technologies and look toward the next generation of Grid technology in order to assess whether it will fulfil the loosely coupled requirement of mobile e-learning. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13177/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13177/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10783/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10783/The ability to create reliable, scalable virtual organisations (VOs) on demand in a dynamic, open and competitive environment is one of the challenges that underlie Grid computing. In response, in the CONOISE-G project, we are developing an infrastructure to support robust and resilient virtual organisation formation and operation. Specifically, CONOISE-G provides mechanisms to assure effective operation of agent-based VOs in the face of disruptive and potentially malicious entities in dynamic, open and competitive environments. In this paper, we describe the CONOISE-G system, outline its use in VO formation and perturbation, and review current work on dealing with unreliable information sources. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12965/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12965/Within a ubiquitous environment, intelligent displays can select the most appropriate material depending on factors such as the audience's preferences and diversity of interest. In addition, such intelligent displays should adapt according to how the audience responds. To do this, they need to determine the composition of the audience, in terms of numbers and diversity of interest. This can affect the choice of video clip shown, by taking into consideration the number of people in the local region, and the preferences of the individuals in that region. In this paper we introduce BluScreen, an agent-oriented market-place that uses ubiquitous wireless technology to determine an audience composition as part of the bidding process, and present an ontology that is used to describe the wireless devices (used to identify and track users) within the local region of a display. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11542/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11542/Both of the prosody and spectral features are important for emotional speech synthesis. Besides prosody effects, voice quality and articulation parameters are the factors that should be considered to modify in emotional speech synthetic systems. Generally, rules and filters are designed to process these parameters respectively. This paper proves that by modifying spectral envelope, the voice quality and articulation could be adjusted as a whole. Thus, it will not need to modify each of the parameter separately depending on rules. Accordingly, it will make the synthetic system more flexible by designing an automatic spectral envelope model based on some machine learning methods. The perception test in this paper also shows that when prosody and spectral features are all modified, the best emotional synthetic speech will be obtained. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11535/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11535/The eCHASE project is using semantic web technologies to demonstrate sustainable business models based on access and exploitation of digital cultural heritage content at a European level. In this paper we describe the eCHASE project and outline the system architecture. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11567/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11567/Europe’s digital cultural heritage content has tremendous exploitation potential in applications such as Education, Publishing, e-Commerce, Public Access and Tourism. Value is hugely amplified if the content can be aggregated, repurposed and distributed at a European level. The eCHASE project seeks to demonstrate that public-private partnerships between content holders and commercial service providers can create new services and a sustainable business based on access and exploitation of digital cultural heritage content. This paper describes these issues and introduces the eCHASE architecture that is being developed to showcase the business models created for the project. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12017/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12017/The Semantic Web can, among other things, be used for photograph annotation. Many implementations of this idea exist, but all are limited by the fact that a human must manually create the annotations for the photographs, often using a program with which he or she is not familiar. This poster discusses an opportunistic method of photograph annotation that uses logical inference in conjunction with existing data from various sources in order to obtain information about the images being annotated. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11178/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11178/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11266/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11266/The AKTiveSA project is using Semantic Web technologies to support information fusion and en-hanced situational awareness in a simulated hu-manitarian relief scenario. We have developed an application that shows how situational awareness can be supported during humanitarian relief situa-tions; often occurring alongside military conflict. Semantic Web technologies provide new opportu-nities for harvesting information from numerous, disparate and often heterogeneous information sources and can be used to better support complex knowledge fusion. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9941/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9941/Physics articles self-archived in arXiv have up to 4 times as much citation impact as articles that are not self-archived. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16345/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16345/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16346/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16346/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16335/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16335/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16347/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16347/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16340/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16340/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16348/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16348/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16349/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16349/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9413/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9413/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9369/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9369/This paper discusses MIMO equalisers created by analytic inversion of a known frequency-selective MIMO channel. It considers inversion performed in the $z$-domain, time-domain using convolutional matrices, and the frequency-domain. It explains the criteria of these inversions and compares the performances in terms of MSE between the input and output to a concatenated channel-equaliser system through use of simulations, and puts these results into context in terms of computational cost. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12689/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12689/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10483/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10483/This paper describes the design, simulation and fabrication of an electromagnetic device for generating electrical energy from vibrations. A range of dimensions has been simulated using ANSYS in order to determine natural frequencies and material stresses. A 300µm wide paddle beam gives a natural frequency of 6.4 kHz for the mode of operation and induced stresses at maximum amplitudes are well within material limits. Ansoft's Maxwell 2D has been used to predict the voltages generated and an integrated electroplated coil of 71 turns produces 0.38V with no load. Devices are currently being fabricated and the process is described. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9458/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9458/We report the latest efforts of the Writing in the Context of Knowledge (WiCK) project in investigating the use of Semantic Web technologies in a business-type environment, where authors create and re-use knowledge-rich documents. To date, we have integrated an established commercial off-the-shelf office production environment with knowledge Web services to assist authors in carrying out tasks in a business writing scenario. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15630/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15630/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9422/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9422/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10660/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10660/We use Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis (KCCA) to infer brain activity in functional MRI by learning a semantic representation of fMRI brain scans and their associated activity signal. The semantic space provides a common representation and enables a comparison between the fMRI and the activity signal. We compare the approach against Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) by localising “activity” on a simulated null data set. Finally we present an approach to reconstruct an activity signal from a testing-set fMRI scans (both simulated and real), a method which allows us to validate our initial analysis. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11306/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11306/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9080/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9080/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10199/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10199/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15175/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15175/Current search engines use sentence extraction techniques to produce snippet result summaries, which users may find less than ideal for determining the relevance of pages. Unlike extracting, abstracting programs analyse the context of documents and rewrite them into informative summaries. Our project aims to produce abstracting summaries which are coherent and easy to read thereby lessening users’ time in judging the relevance of pages. However, automatic abstracting technique has its domain restriction. For solving this problem we propose to employ text classification techniques. We propose a new approach to initially classify whole web documents into sixteen top level ODP categories by using machine learning and a Bayesian classifier. We then manually create sixteen templates for each category. The summarisation techniques we use include a natural language processing techniques to weight words and analyse lexical chains to identify salient phrases and place them into relevant template slots to produce summaries. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10013/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10013/There are shortcomings in using the Web to publish information which are information overload and lost in hyperspace. The aim of the research is investigating how the Semantic web, open hypermedia, and adaptive hypermedia can enhance the adaptation, interoperability and sharing of knowledge components of various hypermedia systems, especially in the medical discipline. It also investigates how to create and manage adaptive web services by using ontologies and semantic properties for adaptation. The adaptive link services for the semantic web is proposed. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9249/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9249/As web service technology matures there is growing interest in exploiting workflow techniques to coordinate web services. Bioinformaticians are a user community who combine web resources to perform in silico experiments. These users are scientists and not information technology experts; they require workflow solutions that have a low cost of entry for service users and providers. Problems satisfying these requirements with current techniques led to the development of the Simple conceptual unified flow language (Scufl). Scufl is supported by the Freefluo enactment engine [1], and the Taverna editing workbench [3]. The extensibility of Scufl, supported by these tools, means that workflows and the use of web services can be matched to how users view their problems. The Taverna workbench exploits the web to keep Scufl simple by retrieving detail from URIs when required, and by scavenging the web for services. Scufl and its tools are not bioinformatics specific. They can be exploited by other communities who require user-driven composition and execution of workflows coordinating web resources. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10125/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10125/This paper addresses a low-cost matched filter bank (MFB) receiver for GFSK signals with estimation and correction of carrier frequency and modulation index offsets, such as found in Bluetooth systems. The proposed MFB implementation exploits redundancies in an otherwise prohibitively large system of filter banks by performing matched filtering over a symbol period followed by an iterative process of phase propagation. The resulting scheme has low complexity, is scalable, and permits the estimation of carrier frequency and modulation index offsets from the intermediate MFB outputs. We present simulations and a comparison of the proposed system for a Bluetooth scenario. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10166/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10166/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16351/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16351/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16352/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16352/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16355/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16355/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16350/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16350/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16032/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16032/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10475/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10475/A spin coating composite sol gel technique for producing lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thick films has been modified for use with screen printing techniques. The resulting screen printing technique can be used to produce 10 μm thick films in a single print. The resultant films are porous but the density can be increased through the use of repeated sol infiltration/pyrolysis treatments to yield a high density film. When fired at 710°C the composite screen printed films have dielectric and piezoelectric properties comparable to, or exceeding, those of films produced using a 'conventional' powder/glass frit/oil ink and fired at 890°C. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/8288/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/8288/The vertical MOSFET structure is one of the solutions for reducing the channel length of devices under 50nm. Surround gate structures can be realised which offer improved short channel effects and more channel with per unit silicon area. In this paper, a low technology overlap capacitance, surround gate, vertical MOSFET technology is presented, which uses fillet local oxidation (FILOX) to reduce the overlap capacitance between the gate and the drain on the bottom of the pillar. Electrical characteristics of surround gate n-MOSFETs are presented and compared with results from single gate and double gate devices on the same wafer. The devices show good symmetry between the source on top and source on bottom configuration. The short channel effects of the surround gate MOSFETs are investigated http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7997/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7997/The objective to build integrated bidirectional video support for the digital library systems in orthopaedics, and in particular in the context of the Virtual Universities for computer-supported education and communication has been achieved. This has been set up to concentrate upon the training of image guided orthopaedic surgery, though may be applied generically. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7996/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7996/The objective to build support for the digital library systems in orthopaedics, and in particular in the context of the Virtual Universities for computer-supported education and communication has been achieved. This was done by bridging the gap between the undertaking of experimental work and the dissemination of its results through electronic publication. This work addresses the cycle of activity in which a digital library rests. The authors argue that publishing / dissemination /research/learning are equally important parts of the scientific cycle of activities in orthopaedics. The DRJ is integrated into a Virtual Orthopaedic University learning environment and is an example of a system, which deliberately crosses the barriers between the areas of experimentation, analysis, publishing, dissemination, discussion & education. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9220/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9220/We use Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis (KCCA) for detecting brain activity in function MRI by learning a semantic representation of fMRI brain scans and their associated time frequency. The semantic space provides a common representation and enables a comparison between the fMRI and time frequency. We compare the approach against Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) by localising brain regions that control finger movement and regions that are involved in mental calculation. We also compare the two approaches on a simulated null data set. We hypothesis that once a link can be established between regions of the brain to task one could create a brain-computer interface were computer related tasks could be activated by brain "thought" activity. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9163/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9163/Duration and devoicing of Portuguese fricatives have been studied using a set of corpora that include nonsense words following Portuguese phonological rules, and real words; these were recorded by four subjects (2 male, 2 female). Results show that fricative duration varies most with voicing (voiceless are longer), and also significantly by speaker, place, and position within word. Devoicing occurs most often word-finally, and varies significantly by place; devoicing occurs more often than in English. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10234/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10234/Traditional goal-oriented approaches to building intelligent agents only consider absolute satisfaction of goals. However, in continuous domains there may be many instances in which a goal state can only be partially satisfied. In these situations the traditional symbolic goal representation needs modifying in order that an agent can determine a worth value of a goal state and also of any state approximating the goal. In our work we use the concept of worth in two ways. First, we propose a mechanism by which the worth of a goal is dynamically set as a function of the intensity of an underlying motivation. Second, we determine the worth of any state in relation to a goal through the use of a metric by which we can measure the proximity of an environmental state to a goal. In this way, it is possible to make judgements about the relative satisfaction an environmental state offers in regard to a goal. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/8977/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/8977/In this paper we show how the generation of documents can be thought of as a k-stage Markov process, which leads to a Fisher kernel from which the n-gram and string kernels can be re-constructed. The Fisher kernel view gives a more flexible insight into the string kernel and suggests how it can be parametrised in a way that reflects the statistics of the training corpus. Furthermore, the probabilistic modelling approach suggests extending the Markov process to consider sub-sequences of varying length, rather than the standard fixed-length approach used in the string kernel. We give a procedure for determining which sub-sequences are informative features and hence generate a Finite State Machine model, which can again be used to obtain a Fisher kernel. By adjusting the parametrisation we can also influence the weighting received by the features. In this way we are able to obtain a logarithmic weighting in a Fisher kernel. Finally, experiments are reported comparing the different kernels using the standard Bag of Words kernel as a baseline. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/8801/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/8801/We present a light weight mechanism called preview cues that allows non-experts to explore an audio collection by providing supporting information (analogous to the use of tooltips) at the point of interest. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9162/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9162/A method for tracking fundamental frequency variations in speech is proposed, based on multitaper analysis. Using the multitaper technique, a statistical test is developed for detecting the presence of harmonic components at multiples of a fundamental frequency, embedded in coloured noise. It is shown that this can be applied to speech to estimate the fundamental frequency, when present, as well as the amplitude and phase of each harmonic. The method is validated on synthetic data, to determine accuracy and robustness, and evaluated on a small corpus of real speech data, comparing simultaneous acoustic and electroglottographic measurements to assess performance. Acoustic measurements are marginally less accurate than electroglottographic measurements, but often continue to provide useful fundamental frequency estimates in situations where electroglottography fails. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9273/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9273/This paper details investigations into the effects of different powder size ratios on the d33 coefficient of thick-film PZT layers. The two powders used were 5H type PZT supplied by Morgan Electro Ceramics Ltd. These were prepared using ball milling for the large particles, ~2um, and attritor milling for the small particles, ~1um. These powders were mixed with 10% by weight of Ferro CF7575 lead borosilicate glass and an appropriate quantity of ESL 400 solvent to formulate a screen printable paste. The results show the optimum powder combination obtained and a final formulation for a practical thick-film paste. The highest d33 value, 63.5pC/N, was obtained with the 4:1 ball to attritor powder by weight paste formulation. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6413/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6413/The intimate relationship between human walking and running lies within the skeleto-muscular structure. This is expressed as a mapping that can transform computer vision derived gait signatures from running to walking and vice versa, for purposes of deployment in gait as a biometric or for animation in computer graphics. The computer vision technique can extract leg motion by temporal template matching with a model defined by forced coupled oscillators as the basis. The (biometric) signature is derived from Fourier analysis of the variation in the motion of the thigh and lower leg. These signatures can be used for recognition by running or by walking. In fact, the mapping between these gait modes clusters better than the original signatures (of which running is the more potent) and can be used for recognition purposes alone, or to buttress both of the signatures. Moreover, the two signatures can be made invariant to gait mode by using the new mapping. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16359/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16359/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9465/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9465/For some time, Xilinx FPGAs have included a facility to be configured and re-configured using a JTAG port. There is no application note or other manufacturer's documentation defining the method to be used to achieve this. We have established a straightforward scheme allowing VHDL designs to be configured via JTAG. Example source code is shown. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6991/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6991/We describe spatio-temporal symmetry and its extraction via a Generalised Symmetry Operator. Its use in gait recognition is reinforced by the view from psychology that human gait is a symmetrical pattern of motion. We show that by including temporal information in our symmetry calculations we are not recognizing people by their body shape but also by their motion. Here, the new technique is applied to a database of 28 subjects, which equals in size the largest contemporaneous gait databases. The results of the new approach agree with earlier results that the symmetrical properties of human gait appear to be unique and can indeed be used for analysis and for recognition. The results achieved so far give promising performance and higher recognition rates than those of an earlier spatial approach. Performance analyses suggest that symmetry enjoys practical advantages such as ability to handle noise and occlusion, and especially when resolution is too low for other biometrics to be deployed. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6744/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6744/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6785/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6785/On-line testability is essential in designs with high reliability requirements. High-level synthesis reduces time-to-market and enables efficient design space exploration. In our work, we implement on-line testable designs in a high-level synthesis environment. We refer to our new technique (inversion testing) and exploit its features, in an attempt to reduce hardware penalties. Further, we enhance the design space by providing a metric for on-line testability. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6784/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6784/On-line testability is essential in designs with high reliability requirements. High-level synthesis reduces time-to-market and enables efficient design space exploration. In our work, we implement on-line testable designs in a high-level synthesis context. We refer to our new technique (inversion testing) and exploit its features, in an attempt to reduce hardware penalties. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7682/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7682/Orientation is a complement to Focus + Context: it allows users to orient a domain from their knowledge of that space, and thereby to re-contextualize a new or current focus from the perspective of that knowledge. The Problem: Predetermined hierarchical organization of a domain forces a user to access that domain through one path only. That path itself may exclude the user from meaningful domain access. A Solution: In [2] schraefel proposed orientation as way to let users reorganize the dimensions of an information space dynamically to support access to a space from multiple perspectives in order to privilege what a user may already know about a domain. An Implementation: In [1] Pacheco designed the Phaser Tool as a method to support orientation. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7340/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7340/To utilize services provided by other agents, a requesting agent needs to locate and communicate with these service providers. Specifically, in order to interoperate with the providers, the requesting agent should know: 1) the service provider’s interface; 2) the ontology that defines concepts used by the provider; and 3) the agent communication language (ACL) the agent uses so that it can parse and understand the communication. Currently deployed Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) encode the interface description and the ontology within a service provider’s capability description (or advertisement) that is registered with a Middle Agent; however, this assumes a common ACL between communicating agents. We demonstrate how agents can communicate with each other using a template-based shallow parsing approach to constructing and decomposing messages, thus relaxing assumptions on the ACLs and message formats used. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6737/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6737/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6143/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6143/We show how the symmetry of motion, can be extracted by using the Generalised Symmetry Operator for analysing motion and as biometric. This operator, rather than relying on the borders of a shape or on general appearance, locates features by their symmetrical properties. This approach is reinforced by the view from psychology that human gait is a symmetrical pattern of motion, and by other works. We applied our new method to compare animal gait, and for recognition by gait. Results show that the symmetry properties of gait appear to be unique and can indeed be used for analysis and for recognition. We have so far achieved promising recognition rates of over 95%. Performance analysis also suggests that symmetry enjoys practical advantages such as relative immunity to noise with capability to handle occlusion and as such might prove suitable for applications like clip-database browsing. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16380/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16380/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16382/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16382/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6038/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/6038/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/5922/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/5922/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16397/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16397/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16386/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16386/ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9172/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9172/Recently, reinforcement learning has been proposed as an effective method for knowledge acquisition of the multiagent systems. However, most researches on multiagent system applying a reinforcement learning algorithm focus on the method to reduce complexity due to the existence of multiple agents[4] and goals[8]. Though these pre-defined structures succeeded in putting down the undesirable effect due to the existence of multiple agents, they would also suppress the desirable emergence of cooperative behaviors in the multiagent domain. We show that the potential cooperative properties among the agent are emerged by means of Profit-sharing[2][3] which is robust in the non-MDPs. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12786/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12786/In this paper, we present an interface agent, MokSAF, which facilitates time-critical team-planning tasks for teams of both humans and heterogeneous software agents. This agent assists in the formation of teams of humans (via other MokSAF agents) and task agents that can autonomously perform team subtasks. It provides a suitable interaction mechanism to instruct the various task agents in the team; and, by monitoring the human’s progress, reallocate or modify the sub-tasks if the human fails to achieve that sub-task. A military domain has been used to investigate this interface agent. The task consists of three military (human) commanders that each assemble a platoon, and plan routes so that all three platoons arrive at a given rendezvous by a specified time. An experimental study has been conducted to evaluate MokSAF and the assistance provided by one of three different task agents, and the results summarized. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/8767/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/8767/Crystalline Zinc sulphide (ZnS) is widely applied in electroluminescent devices, blue or ultraviolet light emitting diodes, laser diodes and tuneable mid-infrared lasers and second harmonic generation devices. Crystalline ZnS has two crystallographic phases, zinc blende (cubic) and wurtzite (hexagonal): wurtzite has strong nonlinear optical effects and it transforms to the zinc blende structure at 1020 C. Problems arise however from lattice, polarity and thermal parameter matches in using commonly available substrates Si, GaAs, sapphire, GaP and Ge for epi-growth of crystalline ZnS. Crystalline ZnS thin films can be prepared by conventional deposition techniques such as liquid or vapour phase epitaxy. Due to low growth temperature and low kinetic energy of the transporting molecules in conventional epitaxy, crystalline ZnS grown on various substrates is normally of zinc blende structure and poor crystalline quality. Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on the other hand is a carbon-free and physical transport process. The ablative target material has very high kinetic energy and forms a high flux plasma plume. This is particularly helpful for the vapour phase epitaxial growth of stoichiometric ZnS films.