Configural Processing

In today’s world , computing systems serve many purposes, we can not imagine a world without them. So it gives us the ability to do tasks at great speeds and it opens a new world of possibilities that we are just starting to explore . One of the most important factors of computing systems is the ability to run several processes at once, or at least a good scheduler gives that impression. So to achieve this, the scheduler causes the system to switch quickly between processes. Each process runs for a certain time, and when a process times out the scheduler chooses which process to execute next on the CPU and for what amount of time. Therefore, the behaviour of a system mainly depends on the scheduler. The scheduler must balance fairness and efficiency to offer the appropriate behaviour. In this paper, we have proposed a new variant of MLFQ algorithm, in which time slice is assigned to each queue for MLFQ scheduling such that it changes with each round of execution dynamically and neur...

The Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) is an inherent property of natural and manmade materials. Its effects depend on the illumination/observation geometry and wavelengths and are apparent in groundbased, airborne and spaceborne imagery. The BRDF is a fundamental quantity from which all other illumination/reflection configurations can be derived. Calibration and validation of hyperspectral images requires knowledge of the BRDF if spectrodirectional effects are to be accounted for. The BRDF can be retrieved from dual-view field goniometer system (FIGOS) data, which is stored in the spectral database SPECCHIO. The retrieval must be precluded by pre-processing steps, which apply transformations on the raw field data and according metadata. SPECCHIO has been updated to support such pre-processing. Intercalibrations of the involved instruments and temporal corrections lead to a network of operations to be applied to the input data. A generalisation of the processing ...

There is currently substantial literature to suggest that patients with schizophrenia are impaired on many face-processing tasks. This study investigated the specific effects of configural changes on face recognition in groups of schizophrenia patients. Methods. In Experiment 1, participants identified facial expressions in upright faces and in faces inverted from their upright orientation. Experiments 2 and 3 examined recognition memory for faces and other non-face objects presented in upright and inverted orientations. Experiment 4 explored recognition of facial identity in composite images where the top half of one face was fused to the bottom half of another face to form a new face configuration. Results. In each experiment, the configural change had the same effect on face recognition for the schizophenia patients as it did for control participants. Recognising inverted faces was more difficult than recognising upright faces, with a disproportionate effect of inversion on faces relative to other objects. Recognition of facial identity in face-halves was interfered with by the formation of a new face configuration. Conclusion. Collectively, these results suggest that people with schizophrenia rely on configural information to recognise photographs of faces. Faces provide essential cues that guide our interpersonal communication and behaviour. Deficits in identifying a facial expression or a person's identity can have dramatic effects on an individual's social interactions. There is a substantial literature showing that people with schizophrenia are impaired on several facial-processing tasks. These individuals have difficulty judging and labelling facial expressions (e.g.,

manual -user fills in everything blind completion -automated tool fills in everything smart completion -automated tool fills as much as possible without making decisions for the user Mikoláš Janota et al. Completing Interactive Configuration

When configuring customizable software, it is useful to provide interactive tool-support that ensures that the configuration does not breach given constraints. But, when is a configuration complete and how can the tool help the user to complete it? We formalize this problem and relate it to concepts from non-monotonic reasoning well researched in Artificial Intelligence. The results are interesting for both practitioners and theoreticians. Practitioners will find a technique facilitating an interactive configuration process and experiments supporting feasibility of the approach. Theoreticians will find links between well-known formal concepts and a concrete practical application.

While Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Schizophrenia (SCZ) differ in many clinically relevant features such as symptomatology and course, they may also share genetic underpinnings, affective problems, deviancies in social interactions, and are all characterized by some kind of cognitive impairment. This situation calls for a joint investigation of the specifics of cognitive (dys-)functions of the three disorders. Such endeavor should focus, among other domains, on the inter-section of processing cognitive, affective and social information that is crucial in effective real-life interactions and can be accomplished when attentional preferences for human facial expressions of emotions is studied. To that end, attention to facial expressions of basic emotions was examined in young adults with ASD, ADHD, or SCZ in the present study. The three clinical groups were compared with an age-matched group of typically-developing participants (TD...

manual -user fills in everything blind completion -automated tool fills in everything smart completion -automated tool fills as much as possible without making decisions for the user Mikoláš Janota et al. Completing Interactive Configuration

Studies of the perceptual performance of individuals with autism have focused, to a large extent, on two domains of visual behavior, one associated with face processing and the other associated with global or holistic processing. Whether autistic individuals differ from neurotypical individuals in these domains is debatable and, moreover, the relationship between the behaviors in these two domains remains unclear. We first compared the face processing ability of 14 adult individuals with autism with that of neurotypical controls and showed that the autistic individuals were slowed in their speed of face discrimination. We then showed that the two groups differed in their ability to derive the global whole in two different tasks, one using hierarchical compound letters and the other using a microgenetic primed matching task with geometric shapes, with the autistic group showing a bias in favor of local information. A significant correlation was also observed between performance on the face task and the configural tasks. We then confirmed the prediction that the ability to derive the global whole is not only critical for faces but also for other objects as well, as the autistic individuals performed more slowly than the control group in discriminating between objects. Taken together, the results suggest that the bias for local processing seen in autistic individuals might have an adverse impact on their ability to process faces and objects.

For the next generation optical internet to meet the growing traffic needs WDM technology is the key issue to realize high capacity networking infrastructure. In this paper an efficient algorithm is implemented for circuit switching in wide area networks. This algorithm known as semelightpath algorithm has been applied to ARPANET and NSFNET to estimate the blocking probability of a call via fully optical or optoelectronics conversion. Blocking probability has been computed for the above networks. This approach for WDM networks ensures full guaranteed restoration against single link failure on dedicated path protection with and without spare capacity sharing of a network.

Background:  Face processing in Williams syndrome (WS) has been a topic of heated debate over the past decade. Initial claims about a normally developing (‘intact’) face‐processing module were challenged by data suggesting that individuals with WS used a different balance of cognitive processes from controls, even when their behavioural scores fell within the normal range. Measurement of evoked brain potentials also point to atypical processes. However, two recent studies have claimed that people with WS process faces exactly like normal controls.Method:  In this paper, we examine the details of this continuing debate on the basis of three new face‐processing experiments. In particular, for two of our experiments we built task‐specific full developmental trajectories from childhood to adolescence/adulthood and plotted the WS data on these trajectories.Results:  The first experiment used photos of real faces. While it revealed broadly equivalent accuracy across groups, the WS partici...

Autism has been associated with atypical face and configural processing, as indicated by the lack of a face inversion effect (better recognition of upright than inverted faces). We investigated whether such atypical processing was restricted to the face or extended to social information found in body postures. An inversion paradigm compared recognition of upright and inverted faces, body postures, and houses. Typical adults demonstrated inversion effects for both faces and body postures, but adults with autism demonstrated only a face inversion effect. Adults with autism may not have a configural processing deficit per se, but instead may have strategies for recognizing faces not used for body postures. Results have implications for therapies employing training in imitation and body posture perception.

The effect of orientation on face recognition was explored by selectively altering facial components (eyes and mouth) or by changing configural information (distances between components). Regardless of the type of change, a linear increase in reaction time for same-different judgments was revealed when the faces were rotated away from upright. The analyses of error scores indicated that the detection of altered components was only slightly affected by orientation, while orientation had a detrimental effect on the detection of configural changes. These results are consistent with the assumption that rotated faces overtax an orientation normalization mechanism so that they have to be processed by mentally rotating parts, which makes it difficult to recover configural information.

Several studies suggest a relation between repeated exposure to extremely thin bodies in media and the perceptual and emotional disturbances of body representation in anorexia nervosa (AN). In this study, we utilized an exposure paradigm to investigate how perceptual experience modulates body appreciation in adolescents with AN as compared to healthy adolescents. Twenty AN patients and 20 healthy controls were exposed to pictures of thin or round models and were then required to express liking judgments about bodies of variable weight. Brief exposure to round models increased the liking judgments of round bodies but not those of thin bodies in healthy adolescents. Furthermore, exposure to round models increased the liking judgments of both thin and round bodies in adolescents with AN. Patients did not show any change of liking judgments after exposure to thin models. These results point to weak norm-based reshaping of body appreciation in AN patients.

The degree to which face-specific brain regions are specialized for different kinds of perceptual processing is debated. This study parametrically varied demands on featural, first-order configural, or second-order configural processing of faces and houses in a perceptual matching task to determine the extent to which the process of perceptual differentiation was selective for faces regardless of processing type (domain-specific account), specialized for specific types of perceptual processing regardless of category (process-specific account), engaged in category-optimized processing (i.e., configural face processing or featural house processing), or reflected generalized perceptual differentiation (i.e., differentiation that crosses category and processing type boundaries). ROIs were identified in a separate localizer run or with a similarity regressor in the face-matching runs. The predominant principle accounting for fMRI signal modulation in most regions was generalized perceptu...

In this paper we propose the use of genetic algorithms (GA) for solving the problem of dynamic establishment of all-optical connections in wavelengthrouted optical networks. All-optical connections can be required to be either fault tolerant or not. We first consider the case where no failure restoration capability is demanded to the optical layer. In this case, an all-optical connection consists of a single lightpath between a source node and a destination node. A genetic algorithm called GRWA is developed to perform routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) of lightpaths. By means of extensive simulation experiments we evaluate its blocking performance and compare it to that of existing algorithms. Results show that GRWA is able to achieve good blocking performance while employing very short computation times. We then consider the case where the optical layer is expected to provide failure restoration capability. This can be achieved by means of protection, wherein each all-optical connection is provided with a pair of lightpaths, a primary lightpath and a backup lightpath, instead of one. Another GA, called FT-GRWA, is derived from GRWA to perform routing and wavelength assignment of primary-backup lightpath pairs, improving the results obtained with existing methods.

We propose a novel genetic algorithm for solving the dynamic routing and wavelength assignment (DRWA) problem in wavelengthrouted optical networks. The algorithm not only obtains low call blocking probability, but it also employs a very short computation time. Moreover, it is capable of providing fairness among connections, that is, to offer approximately the same quality of service (in terms of blocking probability) for all source-destination node pairs. Since requirements on optical network availability are highly severe, we also propose an extension of the algorithm to provide fault-tolerance capability at the optical layer. It is achieved by means of protection, where each optical connection request is provided with a pair of lightpaths (a primary and a backup lightpath). Again, the genetic algorithm proves to be highly ef®cient, in this case, at performing routing and wavelength assignment of pairs of lightpaths.

Impainnents in visuospatial processing exhibited by individuals with Williams Syndrome (WS) have been ascribed to a local processing bias. The imprecise specification of this local bias hypothesis has led to contradictions between different accounts of the visuospatial deficits in WS. We present two experiments investigating visual processing of geometric Navon stimuli by children with WS. The first experiment examined image reproduction in a visuoconstruction task and the second experiment explored the effect of manipulating global salience on recognition of visual stimuli by varying the density of local elements possessed by the stimuli. In the visuoconstruction task, the children with WS did show a local bias with respect to controls, but only when the target being copied was present; when drawing from memory, subjects with WS produced a heterogeneous pattern of answers. In the recognition task, children with WS exhibited the same sensitivity to global figures as matched controls, confinning previous findings in which no local bias in perception was found in WS subjects. We propose that subjects with WS are unable to disengage their attention from local elements during the planning stage of image reproduction (a visual-conflict hypothesis).

Cette page de remerciements est sans doute la plus facile à̀ écrire, avec les excuses de l'innocente d'oublier dès l'avant-propos, des noms, des référents, des visages. Merci donc à̀ tous ceux qui ne me tiendront pas rigueur de ne pas figurer dans la liste qui suit. Dans un premier temps je souhaite remercier les membres du jury pour le temps passé à̀ evaluer ce manuscrit. Merci au Professeur Bonnet-Brilhault et au Docteur Assaiante d'avoir expertisé ce travail et permis d'élargir et éclairer les enjeux qui peuvent s'y rattacher. Je suis également reconnaissante au Professeur N'Kaoua et au Professeur Jouvent d'avoir accepté de juger ce travail. Leurs compétences multiples sauront, je le sais, enrichir le chemin initié par cette thèse. Je remercie tous les patients et leurs familles sans qui ce travail n'aurait aucune raison d'être. Je réserve l'espace de ce paragraphe aux remerciements que j'adresse à mes deux directeurs de Thèse, le Professeur Manuel Bouvard et le Dr Jean-René Cazalets. Le premier qui, en dehors de tout ce qu'il a apporté à ma clinique et à mon expérience de Psychiatre, a permis et suscité consciemment et inconsciemment, en décalé et en différé, sans vouloir enfoncer le bouchon ou le clou (…) l'envol vers le monde d'en face et fait prendre une autre direction à ma vie. Le second qui en investissant sans compter son temps et ses compétences dans ce projet, m'a guidée et formée sur ce chemin et permis de faire vivre cette thèse, malgrés l'incertitude. Je remercie Kattalin Etchegoyhen qui avec ses qualités multiples et polymorphes a accompagné, enrichi, animé et apaisé aussi les mouvements qui ont jalonné ces 5 ans en étant, entre autre, le maillon manquant pour moi, entre le batiment 2A et le CRA, entre la recherche et la clinique. Je remercie Etienne Guillaud pour son partenariat précieux, ses compétences et son sourir qui ont permis de repousser les limites… Je remercie l'équipe du CRA, Emma Bestaven et les membres de l'INCIA qui ont toujours répondu présents à mes sollicitations. Merci et pardon pour ces heures à rédiger cette thèse qui ont été prises à la rue Jules Ferry et à la tribu entière, dendrites et racines comprises.

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a severe impairment in identifying faces that is present from early in life and that occurs despite no apparent brain damage and intact visual and intellectual function. Here, we investigated what aspects of face processing are impaired/ spared in developmental prosopagnosia by examining a relatively large group of individuals with DP (n D 8) using an extensive battery of well-established tasks. The tasks included measures of sensitivity to global motion and to global form, detection that a stimulus is a face, determination of its sex, holistic face processing, processing of face identity based on features, contour, and the spacing of features, and judgments of attractiveness. The DP cases showed normal sensitivity to global motion and global form and performed normally on our tests of face detection and holistic processing. On the other tasks, many DP cases were impaired but there was no systematic pattern. At least half showed deWcits in processing of facial identity based on either the outer contour or spacing of the internal features, and/or on judgments of attractiveness. Three of the eight were impaired in processing facial identify based on the shape of internal features. The results show that DP is a heterogeneous condition and that impairment in recognizing faces cannot be predicted by poor performance on any one measure of face processing.

We report the case of an individual with acquired prosopagnosia who experiences extreme difficulties in recognizing familiar faces in everyday life despite excellent object recognition skills. Formal testing indicates that he is also severely impaired at remembering pre-experimentally unfamiliar faces and that he takes an extremely long time to identify famous faces and to match unfamiliar faces. Nevertheless, he performs as accurately and quickly as controls at identifying inverted familiar and unfamiliar faces and can recognize famous faces from their external features. He also performs as accurately as controls at recognizing famous faces when fracturing conceals the configural information in the face. He shows evidence of impaired global processing but normal local processing of Navon figures. This case appears to reflect the clearest example yet of an acquired prosopagnosic patient whose familiar face recognition deficit is caused by a severe configural processing deficit in the absence of any problems in featural processing. These preserved featural skills together with apparently intact visual imagery for faces allow him to identify a surprisingly large number of famous faces when unlimited time is available. The theoretical implications of this pattern of performance for understanding the nature of acquired prosopagnosia are discussed.

The project will address two main challenges of prevailing architectures: 1) The global interconnect and memory bottleneck due to a single, globally shared memory with high access times and power consumption; 2) The difficulties in programming heterogeneous, multi-core platforms, in particular in dynamically managing data structures in distributed memory. MOSART aims to overcome these through a multi-core architecture with distributed memory organisation, a Network-on-Chip (NoC) communication backbone and configurable processing cores that are scaled, optimised and customised together to achieve diverse energy, performance, cost and size requirements of different classes of applications. MOSART achieves this by: A) Providing platform support for management of abstract data structures including middleware services and a run-time data manager for NoC based communication infrastructure; 2) Developing tool support for parallelizing and mapping applications on the multi-core target platform and customizing the processing cores for the application.

Multitasking and multiuser operating system's performance depends on the efficiency of scheduling algorithm. Most commonly used Round Robin scheduling algorithm may not give optimal result if the burst time of processes is very high as compared to the time quantum of Round Robin algorithm. In this case, context switching and turnaround time of processes is very high. In this paper, a two queue based Round Robin Scheduling Algorithm is proposed. In the proposed approach two queues are used. One queue is exclusively used for CPU intensive processes and other queue is used for I/O intensive processes. This reduces the waiting time and turnaround time when there are less or equal numbers of I/O intensive processes. Performance Analysis depending upon CPU intensive and I/O intensive processes shows that it provides better results.

Multitasking and multiuser operating system's performance depends on the efficiency of scheduling algorithm. Most commonly used Round Robin scheduling algorithm may not give optimal result if the burst time of processes is very high as compared to the time quantum of Round Robin algorithm. In this case, context switching and turnaround time of processes is very high. In this paper, a two queue based Round Robin Scheduling Algorithm is proposed. In the proposed approach two queues are used. One queue is exclusively used for CPU intensive processes and other queue is used for I/O intensive processes. This reduces the waiting time and turnaround time when there are less or equal numbers of I/O intensive processes. Performance Analysis depending upon CPU intensive and I/O intensive processes shows that it provides better results.

The current study investigated the time course of the other-race classification advantage (ORCA) in the subordinate classification of normally configured faces and distorted faces by race. Slightly distorting the face configuration delayed the categorization of own-race faces and had no conspicuous effects on other-race faces. The N170 was sensitive neither to configural distortions nor to faces' races. The P3 was enhanced for other-race than own-race faces and reduced by configural manipulation only for own-race faces. We suggest that the source of ORCA is the configural analysis applied by default while processing own-race faces.

Organizations are looking for ways to collaborate in the area of process management. Common practice until now is the (partial) standardization of processes. This has the main disadvantage that most organizations are forced to adapt their processes to adhere to the standard. In this paper we analyze and compare the actual processes of ten Dutch municipalities. Configurable process models provide a potential solution for the limitations of classical standardization processes as they contain all the behavior of individual models, while only needing one model. The question rises where the limits are though. It is obvious that one configurable model containing all models that exist is undesirable. But are company-wide configurable models feasible? And how about crossorganizational configurable models, should all partners be considered or just certain ones? In this paper we apply a similarity metric on individual models to determine means of answering questions in this area. This way we propose a new means of determining beforehand whether configurable models are feasible. Using the selected metric we can identify more desirable partners and processes before computing configurable process models.

Like faces, human bodies are recognized via the configuration of their parts; their recognition is impaired by inversion. Processing of configural relations has been shown to depend on perceptual expertise with certain classes of objects. Because people see their own body and others' bodies frequently, humans are experts in the visual processing of human body postures. In addition, the observer's own on-line, multimodal body representation which heavily relies on current proprioception may play a crucial role in recognizing human body postures. We investigated whether static body posture recognition relied on current proprioceptive inputs or whether visual familiarity and stored body representations were sufficient. IW, who is deafferented (lost cutaneous touch and proprioception from his body), was tested on the recognition of upright and inverted human body postures, faces, and houses. As controls, IW showed an inversion effect for abstract, common, and rare human body postures as well as faces, but not houses. Results rule out a strong contribution of current afferent inputs to the recognition of human postures. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of the body schema in body posture recognition and how other contributions from one's own body may be involved in the visual processing of human bodies.

Even though South African policy makers and implementers have done a lot to improve education especially in rural areas and townships, much more thinking and policy direction still need to be done to improve education in these areas. The purpose of this article is to compare the perception of teachers and principals of their schools as professional learning communities in three educational areas in the North West Province of South Africa. A quantitative research method was used and questionnaires were used to collect data from schools in these three areas. 1251 teachers and principals were involved in this research. The major findings were: there were no major differences between the three areas in teachers' and principals' perception of their schools as PLCs, but there were major differences between schools in urban centers, townships and rural areas. This study has reiterated the fact that the South African government needs to rethink how to readdress education and social needs in rural and township schools, as the current policies have not completely addressed the disparities between schools in rural areas, townships and urban centers.

The application of Business Process Management (BPM) technology can provide significant benefits to an organisation in terms of e.g. cost savings and responsiveness to changes. In this paper the application of this technology in the context of film production is investigated. A prototype called YAWL4Film was developed on top of a state-of-the-art BPM system. YAWL4Film supports collection and entering of production related data and automatic generation of reports required during film production. This system was deployed in two pilot projects at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.

Perception of upright faces relies on configural processing. Therefore recognition of inverted, compared to upright faces is impaired. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment we investigated the neural correlate of a face inversion task. Thirteen healthy subjects were presented with a equal number of upright and inverted faces alternating with a low level baseline with an upright and inverted picture of an abstract symbol. Brain activation was calculated for upright minus inverted faces. For this differential contrast, we found a signal change in the right superior temporal sulcus and right insula. Configural properties are processed in a network comprising right superior temporal and insular cortex.

One important factor that contributes to create good or bad relationships between individuals inside human societies is the notion of trust. In particular, some research works have proved the influence of trust in the performance of the activities that team-members perform jointly. This paper presents our initial theoretical work to include the trust factor into our TEAKS (TEAm Knowledge-based Structuring) model. TEAKS is an agent-based model to simulate the interaction between individuals when working together in the development of a project. Each team-member is represented through a set of pre-selected human characteristics: the emotional state, social characteristics, cognitive abilities, and personality types. The main outcome of the TEAKS simulation is statistical information about the possible performance at the individual and team levels. In this context we use two (emotional state and personality traits) of the four modelled human characteristics to introduce a model of trust into TEAKS to analyse the impact of trust in the results of the team.

This paper presents a summary of relevant research findings that have been used as the theoretical background in the design of an agent-based model to simulate the human behaviour within work teams (the TEAKS model). It underlines some of the main trends in the modelling of human behaviour in teams, and the rationale for selecting the attributes to represent real team candidates as software agents in the TEAKS model.

Some of the recent proposals of web-based applications are oriented to provide advanced search services through virtual shops. Within this context, this paper proposes an advanced type of software application that simulates how a sales assistant dialogues with a consumer to dynamically configure a product according to particular needs. The paper presents the general knowledge model that uses artificial intelligence and knowledge-based techniques to simulate the configuration process. Finally, the paper illustrates the description with an example of an application in the field of photography equipment.

We report seven experiments that investigate the influence that head orientation exerts on the perception of eye-gaze direction. In each of these experiments, participants were asked to decide whether the eyes in a brief and masked presentation were looking directly at them or were averted. In each case, the eyes could be presented alone, or in the context of congruent or incongruent stimuli. In Experiment 1A, the congruent and incongruent stimuli were provided by the orientation of face features and head outline. Discrimination of gaze direction was found to be better when face and gaze were congruent than in both of the other conditions, an effect that was not eliminated by inversion of the stimuli (Experiment 1B). In Experiment 2A, the internal face features were removed, but the outline of the head profile was found to produce an identical pattern of effects on gaze discrimination, effects that were again insensitive to inversion (Experiment 2B) and which persisted when lateral displacement of the eyes was controlled (Experiment 2C). Finally, in Experiment 3A, nose angle was also found to influence participants' ability to discriminate direct gaze from averted gaze, but here the effect was eliminated by inversion of the stimuli (Experiment 3B). We concluded that an image-based mechanism is responsible for the influence of head profile on gaze perception, whereas the analysis of nose angle involves the configural processing of face features.

The paper presents a novel analysis focused on showing that education is possible through robotic enhancement of the Gestalt processing in children with autism, which is not comparable to alternative educational methods such as demonstration and instruction provided solely by human tutors. The paper underlines the conceptualization of cognitive processing of holistic representations traditionally named in psychology as Gestalt structures, emerging in the process of human-robot interaction in educational settings. Two cognitive processes are proposed in the present studybounding and unfolding-and their role in Gestalt emergence is outlined. The proposed theoretical approach explains novel findings of autistic perception and gives guidelines for design of robotassistants to the rehabilitation process.

Ring networks are an important topic to study because they have certain advantages over their direct network counterparts: easier to manage, better bandwidth, cheaper and wider communication paths. This paper proposes a new online load balancing algorithm for distributed real-time systems having a hierarchical ring as topology. The novelty of the algorithm lies in the goal it tries to achieve and the method used for load balancing. The main goal of the algorithm is to correctly utilize the computing resources in order to satisfy the average response time of clients. The secondary goal is to ensure fairness between the numbers of requests solved per client with respect to the average response time. A request from a client is moving through the network until a node considers that it can solve the request in the promised average time for that client or until it seems like the best opportunity to avoid any additional delays in solving it. A performance analysis and motivation for the proposed algorithm is given with respect to the goals it tries to achieve. The results show that the proposed algorithm satisfies its goals.

Mass customization enables the creation of personalized products that fulfill the features desired by specific customers. In this context, variability models are used to specify which configurable features are supported and which constraints among the features must be satisfied to guarantee the validity of the derived products. As the market demand grows and evolves, variability models become increasingly complex. In such entangled models, it is hard to identify which features are absolutely essential or dispensable because they are required to be included or excluded from all the possible products, respectively. This paper exposes the limitations of existing approaches to automatically detect those features and provides an algorithm that efficiently performs such detection. INDEX TERMS Mass customization, product platform, variability model, configuration model, feature model, dead feature, core feature.

Configuring a million-core parallel system at boot time is a difficult process when the system has neither specialised hardware support for the configuration process nor a preconfigured default state that puts it in operating condition. SpiNNaker is a parallel Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) system for neural network (NN) simulation. Where most large CMP systems feature a sideband network to complete the boot process, SpiNNaker has a single homogeneous network interconnect for both application inter-processor communications and system control functions such as boot load and run-time user-system interaction. This network improves fault tolerance and makes it easier to support dynamic run-time reconfiguration, however, it requires a boot process that is transaction-level compatible with the application's communications model. Since SpiNNaker uses event-driven asynchronous communications throughout, the loader operates with purely local control: there is no global synchronisation, state information, or transition sequence. A novel two-stage "unfolding" boot-up process efficiently configures the SpiNNaker hardware and loads the application using a high-speed flood-fill technique with support for run-time reconfiguration. SystemC simulation of a multi-CMP SpiNNaker system indicates an error-free CMP configuration time of 1.3 ms, while a high-level simulation of a full-scale system (64K CMPs) indicates a mean application-loading time of ∼20ms (for a 100KB application), which is virtually independent of the size of the system. We verified the CMP configuration process with hardware-level Verilog simulation.

A network model is a fundamental part of a network management solution. Traditionally, network models have provided views with static behavior and limited state of the network elements that they represent. This paper discusses an alternative approach to the creation and maintenance of network models that relies on the use of mobile agents and the principle of delegation. In the intelligent network model proposed, behavior and state are part of the model and both may be dynamically updated. A mobile code environment being used to support the research is briefly described.

Configuration of network services is a difficult problem requiring considerable human involvement. Recently, the hardware configuration of a personal computer has been simplified by the Plug and Play specification and the addition of the universal serial bus. Also recent developments in the CORBA framework, the Java language, mobile agent facilities, and Jini, have provided new tools that facilitate the movement of code from device to device, and help to provide a framework for service subscription and utilisation on demand. This paper brings together the principles of the Plug and Play specification, CORBA, and mobile code in a design for plug and play network services that should provide more interoperability and language independence than the Java-centric approach 1. T. Yongchareon et al. (eds.

The face inversion effect refers to a decrement in performance when we try to recognise familiar faces turned upside down (inverted), compared with familiar faces presented in their usual (upright) orientation. Recently, we have demonstrated that the inversion effect can also be found with checkerboards drawn from prototype-defined categories when the participants have been trained with these categories, suggesting that factors such as expertise and the relationships between stimulus features may be important determinants of this effect. We also demonstrated that the typical inversion effect on the N170 seen with faces is found with checkerboards, suggesting that modulation of the N170 is a marker for disruption in the use of configural information. In the present experiment, we first demonstrate that our scrambling technique greatly reduces the inversion effect in faces. Following this, we used Event-Related Potentials ( ERPs) recorded while participants performed an Old/New recogn...

Aim  We investigated whether preterm birth affects later visuocognitive function and, in particular, whether it affects global and configural perceptual processing differently.Method  We compared the performance of 21 healthy preterm children (8 females, 13 males; mean age 7y 8mo, SD 8mo; mean gestational age 29.3wks, SD 1.9; mean birthweight 1186.5g, SD 377.2) with that of a matched term comparison group (8 females, 13 males; mean age 7y 11mo, SD 1y 1mo; mean gestational age >37wks; mean birthweight >2500g) in two perceptual tasks pinpointing differences between local and global and between local and configural processing.Results  There was no difference between preterm and term children’s global processing, as both groups showed a bias towards global information (preterm: t[1,20]=2.6, p=0.01; comparison group: t[1,20]=3.0, p=0.01). By contrast, no such typical pattern of performance was found for configural processing as, unlike the comparison group (t[1,20]=7.1, p<0.001)...

The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces compared to upright faces that is greater than that typically observed with other stimulus types (e.g. houses; Yin, 1969). Nevertheless, the demonstration that the inversion effect in recognition memory can be as strong with images of dogs as with faces when the subjects are experts in specific dog breeds (Diamond & Carey, 1986), suggests that there may be other factors, such as expertise, which give rise to the FIE. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects performed an Old/New recognition study on normal and scrambled faces presented in upright and inverted orientations. We obtained the standard result for normal faces: The electrophysiological activity corresponding to the N170 was larger and delayed for normal inverted faces as compared to normal upright ones. On the other hand, the ERPs for scrambled inverted faces were not significantly larger or delayed as compared ...

The face inversion effect and evoked brain potentials: Complete loss of configural information affects the N170 Ciro Civile (cc413@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Heike Elchlepp (H.Elchlepp@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. R. McLaren (R.P.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Aureliu Lavric (A.Lavric@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. I.P.L. McLaren (I.P.L.McLaren@exeter.ac.uk) School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK. Abstract The face inversion effect (FIE) is a reduction in recognition performance for inverted faces compared to upright faces that is greater than that typically observed with other stimulus types (e.g. houses; Yin, 1969). Never...

Four experiments with unfamiliar objects examined the remarkably late consolidation of part-relational relative to part-based object recognition (Jüttner, Wakui, Petters, Kaur, & Davidoff, 2013). Our results indicate a particularly protracted developmental trajectory for the processing of metric part relations. School children aged 7-14 and adults were tested in 3-AFC tasks to judge the correct appearance of upright and inverted newly learned multi-part objects that had been manipulated in terms of individual parts or part relations. Experiment 1 showed that even the youngest tested children were close to adult levels of performance for recognizing categorical changes of individual parts and relative part position. By contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that performance for detecting metric changes of relative part position was distinctly reduced in young children compared to recognizing metric changes of individual parts, and did not approach the latter until 11-12 years. A similar developmental dissociation was observed in Experiment 3, which contrasted the detection of metric relative size changes and metric part changes. Experiment 4 showed that manipulations of metric size that were perceived as part (rather than part-relational) changes eliminated this dissociation. Implications for theories of object recognition and similarities to the development of face perception are discussed.