We present an importance sampling technique for enhancing the efficiency of sampling rare transition events in Markov processes. Our approach is based on the design of an importance function by which the absolute probability of sampling a successful transition event is significantly enhanced, while preserving the relative probabilities among different successful transition paths. The method fea...

Change detection based on the comparison of independently classified images (i.e. post-classification comparison) is well-known to be negatively affected by classification errors of individual maps. Incorporating spatial-temporal contextual information in the classification helps to reduce the classification errors, thus improving change detection results. In this paper, spatial-temporal Markov...

The participants in the NIMH-MATRICS Consensus Development Conference on Negative Symptoms recommended that an instrument be developed that measured blunted affect, alogia, asociality, anhedonia, and avolition. The Brief Negative Symptom Scale (BNSS) is a 13-item instrument designed for clinical trials and other studies that measures these 5 domains. The interrater, test-retest, and internal co...

The line of phase transitions, separating the confinement and the Coulomb phases in the four-dimensional pure compact U(1) gauge theory with extended Wilson action, is reconsidered. We present new numerical evidence that a part of this line, including the original Wil-son action, is of second order. By means of a high precision simulation on homogeneous lattices on a sphere we find that along t...

We report the results of an experimental study of particle-particle interactions in a horizontally shaken granular layer that undergoes a second order phase transition from a binary gas to a segregation liquid as the packing fraction C is increased. By focusing on the behavior of individual particles, the effect of C is studied on (1) the process of cluster formation, (2) cluster dynamics, and ...

We have obtained exact results for the Ising model on a hierarchical lattice incorporating three key features characterizing many real-world networks--a scale-free degree distribution, a high clustering coefficient, and the small-world effect. By varying the probability p of long-range bonds, the entire spectrum from an unclustered, non-small-world network to a highly clustered, small-world sys...

Abstract: This paper suggests an approach to software system architecture specification based on behavior models. The behavior of the system is defined as an event occurring probability and time. The behavior of the system over a time of stationary Markov process is completely characterized by the one step transition matrix, the matrix of instantaneous transition rates. Given the element of the...