Optimal Solutions for the Temporal Precedence Problem

Abstract. In this paper we refer to the Temporal Precedence Problem on Pure Pointer Machines . This problem asks for the design of a data structure, maintaining a set of stored elements and supporting the following two operations: insert and precedes . The operation insert (a) introduces a new element a in the structure, while the operation precedes (a,b) returns true iff element a was inserted before element b temporally. In [11] a solution was provided to the problem with worst-case time complexity O (log log n ) per operation and O(n log log n) space, where n is the number of elements inserted. It was also demonstrated that the precedes operation has a lower bound of Ω (log log n ) for the Pure Pointer Machine model of computation. In this paper we present two simple solutions with linear space and worst-case constant insertion time. In addition, we describe two algorithms that can handle the precedes (a,b) operation in O (log log d ) time, where d is the temporal distance between the elements a and b .     

Behavioral and subjective effects of D-amphetamine and modafinil in healthy adults.

Modafinil is indicated for the management of excessive daytime sleepiness; however, recent studies have examined a broad range of potential uses. Given that clinical uses of modafinil may be expanding, this study compared modafinil and d-amphetamine effects on subjective and performance measures. Across 11 sessions, 11 healthy adults were tested after oral doses of placebo (5 sessions), modafinil (1.75 mg/kg, 3.50 mg/kg, or 7.00 mg/kg), and d-amphetamine (0.035 mg/kg, 0.070 mg/kg, 0.140 mg/kg) under double-blind, randomized conditions. Assessments of cognitive performance and subjective effects were completed before drug administration, 30 min after drug administration, and at hourly intervals after drug administration for 5 hr. Modafinil increased ratings on the Amphetamine and Morphine Benzedrine Group scales of the Addiction Research Center Inventory (ARCI) and increased ratings on the Vigor and Total Positive scales of the Profile of Mood States. d-Amphetamine increased visual analog ratings of feeling stimulated and liking the drug and increased ratings on the Morphine Benzedrine Group scale of the ARCI. Both medications significantly reduced visual analog scale ratings of feeling sleepy, and modafinil decreased ratings on the ARCI Pentobarbital-Chlorpromazine-Alcohol Group scale. Both medications sustained performance that deteriorated across time on the Sternberg Number Recognition Test. Modafinil also enhanced performance rate on the Digit-Symbol Substitution Task above baseline levels and increased response rate on the Repeated Acquisition of Response Sequences Task. These results suggest that modafinil engenders alerting effects and increases performance in healthy non-sleep-deprived individuals comparable with that of d-amphetamine. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ag-ZnO catalysts for UV-photodegradation of methylene blue

High surface area Ag-ZnO catalysts have been made by flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen adsorption, UV–vis spectroscopy and electron microscopy (SEM and transmission electron microscopy (TEM)) combined with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXS) for elemental mapping. Silver metal clusters deposited directly on ZnO nanocrystals were obtained from this process. The Ag loading (1–5 at.%) controlled the Ag cluster size from 5 to 25 nm but did not influence the ZnO crystal size. Photodegradation of 10 ppm methylene blue (MB) solution was used to evaluate the performance of these FSP-made Ag-ZnO and was compared to wet-made Ag-ZnO and reference titania photocatalysts. The rate of photodegradation was optimal for Ag loading around 3 at.%. The best photocatalytic performance was exhibited by flame-made Ag-ZnO produced at the longest high-temperature residence times having high crystallinity as determined by XRD and UV–vis.     

On the information modeling for the electronic operation of supply chains: A maritime case study

Nowadays, the manufacturing industry is adopting modern information technologies in order to optimize their business process and to achieve integration with supply chain partners that are geographically dispersed, by expanding the physical limits of their business globally. The growth of the World Wide Web and the advantages of the software technologies arising from it render this goal possible. This paper discusses how modern information technology, particularly the ISO 10303—STEP and eXtensible Markup Language—XML, can be utilized jointly to support the communication of different partners. An approach to support enterprise operation through efficient data exchanges, by adopting modern data modeling techniques for integration among partners worldwide and using the web as a communication layer, is described. The paper deals particularly with the ship repair industry as a case study of these problems and suggests a feasible solution.     

Accelerated collection of sensor data by mobility-enabled topology ranks

We study the problem of fast and energy-efficient data collection of sensory data using a mobile sink, in wireless sensor networks in which both the sensors and the sink move. Motivated by relevant applications, we focus on dynamic sensory mobility and heterogeneous sensor placement. Our approach basically suggests to exploit the sensor motion to adaptively propagate information based on local conditions (such as high placement concentrations), so that the sink gradually “learns” the network and accordingly optimizes its motion. Compared to relevant solutions in the state of the art (such as the blind random walk, biased walks, and even optimized deterministic sink mobility), our method significantly reduces latency (the improvement ranges from 40% for uniform placements, to 800% for heterogeneous ones), while also improving the success rate and keeping the energy dissipation at very satisfactory levels.     

Direction-based adaptive data propagation for heterogeneous sensor mobility

We consider sensor networks where the sensor nodes are attached on entities that move in a highly dynamic, heterogeneous manner. To capture this mobility diversity we introduce a new network parameter, the direction-aware mobility level, which measures how fast and close each mobile node is expected to get to the data destination (the sink). We then provide local, distributed data dissemination protocols that adaptively exploit the node mobility to improve performance. In particular, “high” mobility is used as a low cost replacement for data dissemination (due to the ferrying of data), while in the case of “low” mobility either (a) data propagation redundancy is increased (when highly mobile neighbors exist) or (b) long-distance data transmissions are used (when the entire neighborhood is of low mobility) to accelerate data dissemination toward the sink. An extensive performance comparison to relevant methods from the state of the art demonstrates significant improvements, i.e. latency is reduced by even four times while keeping energy dissipation and delivery success at very satisfactory levels.