Adaptive navigation support can be of great help in large hypermedia systems supporting learners as well as users searching for specific information. A wide variety of adaptive mechanisms have been implemented in exis...
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The design of wholesale electricity markets through deregulation has focused almost exclusively on the development of competitive supply (generation). The demand side of the market has been virtually ignored. Mostly, ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0780373227
The design of wholesale electricity markets through deregulation has focused almost exclusively on the development of competitive supply (generation). The demand side of the market has been virtually ignored. Mostly, this is due to the assumption that electricity demand is almost completely inelastic. As a result, deregulated wholesale markets universally fail to pass price signals down to the end-users. This paper challenges the assumption of inelastic demand by exploring the potential benefits of implementing a simple load control scheme. This load control scheme allows consumers to shift demand from high priced hours to low priced hours during the day. The benefits to the individual consumer are explored through an example applied to residential air conditioning using price and demand data from California. This example shows that "smart" use of air conditioning can lead to great savings for residential consumers, without sacrificing comfort. The potential for multiple consumers implementing load control to reduce wholesale prices is also examined.
We present the use of molecular beacons as sensitive indicators in microfluidic bioMEM devices. A method has been developed to study mixing and hybridization of molecular beacons to target nucleic acids in real time i...
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We present the use of molecular beacons as sensitive indicators in microfluidic bioMEM devices. A method has been developed to study mixing and hybridization of molecular beacons to target nucleic acids in real time in a microfluidic channel. This method allows quantification of DNA and RNA molecules in solution, i.e., without the prerequisite of an immobilization step necessary in most other hybridization formats. The detection limit for DNA was determined to be in the order of femtomoles. Our results suggest the feasibility of using molecular beacon hybridization in microfluidic devices for the detection of pathogenic bacteria in environmental and medical fluids.
Work‐zone delay is very costly to the movement of goods and people. It is increasingly problematic for logistics management if the travel time or delay information cannot be estimated in an accurate way. This paper d...
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Work‐zone delay is very costly to the movement of goods and people. It is increasingly problematic for logistics management if the travel time or delay information cannot be estimated in an accurate way. This paper describes a study to investigate the effects of work zones, enhance computer‐based capability to estimate the associated work‐zone delays, assess the interrelationship of significant factors that affect work‐zone delays and develop a user‐friendly tool to assist transportation operations and logistics planning. A computerized information system, called lane‐occupancy‐delay estimation system (LODES), is developed to assess work‐zone delays that may affect short‐ or long‐term logistic activities. The results from trials and their implications are discussed and, finally, areas of further research are proposed.
Paper discusses some issues related to the utility of finite games for early formal methods teaching and for validation of automatic tools which implement formal methods. In particular, some experience with (1) underg...
Paper discusses some issues related to the utility of finite games for early formal methods teaching and for validation of automatic tools which implement formal methods. In particular, some experience with (1) undergraduate teaching model checking via finite games, (2) solving game-based constraints via model checking, (3) testing model checkers against game test suits is presented. Basic ideas are illustrated by a model checking based solution for a complicated puzzle how to identify a unique false coin among given ones balancing them limited times.
We report an observation of essentially full spatial coherence in a high average power soft-x-ray laser. Rapid coherence buildup due to strong refractive antiguiding in a long plasma column is experimentally demonstra...
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We report an observation of essentially full spatial coherence in a high average power soft-x-ray laser. Rapid coherence buildup due to strong refractive antiguiding in a long plasma column is experimentally demonstrated. This allows the generation of fully coherent, milliwatt-level average power soft-x-ray radiation by a tabletop device. The peak brightness of this laser reaches 2×1025photonss−1mm−2mrad−2 within 0.01% spectral bandwidth, making it one of the brightest soft-x-ray sources available.
We present new simulation results, in which a computational model of interacting visual neurons simultaneously predicts the modulation of spatial vision thresholds by focal visual attention, for five dual-task human p...
We present new simulation results, in which a computational model of interacting visual neurons simultaneously predicts the modulation of spatial vision thresholds by focal visual attention, for five dual-task human psychophysics experiments. This new study complements our previous findings that attention activates a winner-take-all competition among early visual neurons within one cortical hypercolumn. This "intensified competition" hypothesis assumed that attention equally affects all neurons, and yielded two single-unit predictions: an increase in gain and a sharpening of tuning with attention. While both effects have been separately observed in electrophysiology, no single-unit study has yet shown them simultaneously. Hence, we here explore whether our model could still predict our data if attention might only modulate neuronal gain, but do so non-uniformly across neurons and tasks. Specifically, we investigate whether modulating the gain of only the neurons that are loudest, best-tuned, or most informative about the stimulus, or of all neurons equally but in a task-dependent manner, may account for the data. We find that none of these hypotheses yields predictions as plausible as the intensified competition hypothesis, hence providing additional support for our original findings.
In studying actual Web searching by the public at large, we analyzed over one million Web queries by users of the Excite search engine. We found that most people use few search terms, few modified queries, view few We...
In studying actual Web searching by the public at large, we analyzed over one million Web queries by users of the Excite search engine. We found that most people use few search terms, few modified queries, view few Web pages, and rarely use advanced search features. A small number of search terms are used with high frequency, and a great many terms are unique; the language of Web queries is distinctive. Queries about recreation and entertainment rank highest. Findings are compared to data from two other large studies of Web queries. This study provides an insight into the public practices and choices in Web searching.
- This paper presents an adaptive QoS management scheme to accommodate dynamic variations in network resources, due to the mobility of the users and location-dependent errors. The scheme ensures that satisfactory leve...
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Allen's Interval Algebra (IA) and Vilain & Kautz's Point Algebra (PA) consider an interval and a point as basic temporal entities (i.e., events) respectively. However, in many situations we need to deal wi...
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Allen's Interval Algebra (IA) and Vilain & Kautz's Point Algebra (PA) consider an interval and a point as basic temporal entities (i.e., events) respectively. However, in many situations we need to deal with recurring events that include multiple points, multiple intervals or combinations of points and intervals. In this paper, we present a framework to model recurring events as multi-point events (MPEs) by extending point algebra. The reasoning tasks are formulated as binary constraint satisfaction problems. We propose a polynomial time algorithm (based on van Beek's algorithm) for finding all feasible relations. For the problem of finding a consistent scenario, we propose a backtracking method with a local search heuristic. We also describe an implementation and a detail empirical evaluation of the proposed algorithms. Our empirical results indicate that the MPE-based approach performs better than the existing approaches.
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