by Alec Pawling In this dissertation, we address two problems associated with the development of an emergency response system that utilizes a cell phone network as a sensor network to facilitate the initiation and online validation of predictive simulations. Schoenharl [77] describes the simulation component of the emergency response system; this dissertation addresses two other significant com...

In this abstract we present ReTAX, a system for taxonomy revision in Botany. The function of ReTAX is to revise, and eventually modify, a taxonomic hierarchy as novel inconsistent data are provided. The system has been applied to replicate some taxonomic revisions which have taken place historically in the botanical family Ericaceae. As noted by different researchers (e.g., Lakatos, 1976; Kulka...

Transistor-level circuit simulation is a fundamental computer-aided design technique that enables the design and verification of an extremely broad range of integrated circuits. With the proliferation of modern parallel processor architectures, leveraging parallel computing becomes a necessity and also an important avenue for facilitating large-scale circuit simulation. This monograph presents ...

This paper examines the effects of strategic alliances on non-financial firms’ bank loan financing. We construct several measures to capture firms’ alliance activities using the frequency of alliance activities, the prominence of the alliance partner and the relative networking position in the overall alliance network. We find that firms with active alliance involvement experience a lower cost ...

This paper proposes a novel method for document enhancement. The method is based on the combination of two state-of-the-art filters through the construction of a mask. The mask is applied to a TV (Total Variation) regularized image where background noise has been reduced. The masked image is then filtered by NLmeans (Non Local Means) which reduces the noise in the text areas located by the mask...

We present richer typesetting models that extend the unsupervised historical document recognition system of BergKirkpatrick et al. (2013). The first model breaks the independence assumption between vertical offsets of neighboring glyphs and, in experiments, substantially decreases transcription error rates. The second model simultaneously learns multiple font styles and, as a result, is able to...

This paper explores a method for creating large-scale urban 3D models using Historical GIS data. The method is capable of automatically generating realistic VR models based on GIS data at a low cost. 3D models of houses are created from polygon data, fences from line data, and pedestrians and trees from point data. The method is applied to the Virtual Kyoto Project in which the landscape of the...

We analyzed historical and literary documents in Chinese to gain insights into research issues, and overview our studies which utilized four different sources of text materials in this paper. We investigated the history of concepts and transliterated words in China with the Database for the Study of Modern China Thought and Literature, which contains historical documents about China between 183...

Dstl has sponsored the development and use of several campaign level models of military operations. The models are required to provide insight into force assessment, procurement decisions of future concepts and for investigations into potential doctrinal developments. COMAND is a theatre level representation of the naval-air (maritime) campaign. COMAND also contains a simple representation of t...

We propose a new method for pricing options based on GARCH models with filtered historical innovations. In an incomplete market framework, we allow for different distributions of historical and pricing return dynamics enhancing the model flexibility to fit market option prices. An extensive empirical analysis based on S&P 500 index options shows that our model outperforms other competing GARCH ...