Abstract The k-means clustering algorithm is one of the most commonly used algorithms for clustering analysis. The traditional k-means algorithm is, however, inefficient while working on large numbers of data sets and improving the algorithm efficiency remains a problem. This paper focuses on the efficiency issues of cluster algorithms. A refined initial cluster centers method is designed to reduce the number of iterative procedures in the algorithm. A parallel k-means algorithm is also studied for the problem of the operation limitation of a single processor machine when given huge data sets. The analytical results demonstrate that these improvements can greatly enhance the efficiency of the k-means algorithm, i.e., allow the grouping of a large number of data sets more accurately and more quickly. The analysis has theoretical and practical importance for work on the improvement and parallelism of cluster algorithms.

Tests involving a large number of test cases and test scenarios are always time- and effort-intensive, and use ad hoc approaches. Test management is needed to control the complexity and the quality of the testing of large software systems. The reporting mechanism is critical for monitoring the testing progress, analyzing test results, and evaluating the test effectiveness for a disciplined testing process throughout the testing lifecycle. This paper presents an XML-based report generation method for large system testing. The service-oriented architecture enables flexible test report generation, presentation, and exchange to facilitate collaboration in a distributed environment. The results show that proper reporting can effectively improve the visibility of the testing process and that this web-based approach is critical to enhance communication among multiple testing groups.

Many business processes in enterprise applications are both long running and transactional in nature. However, no current transaction model can provide full transaction support for such long running business processes. This paper proposes a new transaction model, the pessimistic predicate/transform (PP/T) model, which can provide full transaction support for long running business processes. A framework was proposed on the enterprise JavaBeans platform to implement the PP/T model. The framework enables application developers to focus on the business logic, with the underlying platform providing the required transactional semantics. The development and maintenance effort are therefore greatly reduced. Simulations show that the model has a sound concurrency management ability for long running business processes.

To evaluate the fault location and the failure prediction models, simulation-based and code-based experiments were conducted to collect the required failure data. The PIE model was applied to simulate failures in the simulation-based experiment. Based on syntax and semantic level fault injections, a hybrid fault injection model is presented. To analyze the injected faults, the difficulty to inject (DTI) and difficulty to detect (DTD) are introduced and are measured from the programs used in the code-based experiment. Three interesting results were obtained from the experiments: 1) Failures simulated by the PIE model without consideration of the program and testing features are unreliably predicted; 2) There is no obvious correlation between the DTI and DTD parameters; 3) The DTD for syntax level faults changes in a different pattern to that for semantic level faults when the DTI increases. The results show that the parameters have a strong effect on the failures simulated, and the measurement of DTD is not strict.

OpenMP is able to develop multithreaded programs with lower cost as a promising way to quickly parallelize a great number of serial programs. However, there are many difficulties when developing OpenMP multithreaded programs. Most importantly, the performance of OpenMP programs cannot be guaranteed, which has greatly affected the application of OpenMP. This paper examines several factors that affect the execution performance of OpenMP programs, including loop transformation, scheduling strategy, the number of threads, and nested parallelism. The results show that one of the key reasons for performance degradation is load imbalance, which can be corrected by reasonable use of these key factors to improve the execution performance of OpenMP programs.

The web is an extremely dynamic world where information is updated even every second. A web information monitoring system fetches information from the web continuously and finds changes by comparing two versions of the same page. The updating of a specific web page is modeled as a Poisson process with parameter to indicate the change frequency. As the amount of computing resources is limited, it is necessary to find some policies for reducing the overall change-detection time. Different allocation schemas are evaluated experimentally to find out which one is the most suitable for the web information monitoring problem. The experimental data shows the runtime characteristics of the overall system performance and the relationship to the total amount of resources.

Non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) curves and surfaces are very important tools for modelling curves and surfaces. Several important details, such as the choice of the sample points, of the parameterization, and of the termination condition, are however not well described. These details have a great influence on the performance of the approximation algorithm, both in terms of quality as well as time and space usage. This paper described how to sample points, examining two standard parameterizations: equidistant and chordal. A new and local parameterization, namely an adaptive equidistant model, was proposed, which enhances the equidistant model. Localization can also be used to enhance the chordal parameterization. For NURBS surfaces, one must choose which direction will be approximated first and must pay special attention to surfaces of degree 1 which have to be handled as a special case.

In modern low-altitude terrain-following guidance, a constructing method of the digital surface model (DSM) is presented in the paper to reduce the threat to flying vehicles of tall surface features for safe flight. The relationship between an isolated obstacle size and the intervals of vertical- and cross-section in the DSM model is established. The definition and classification of isolated obstacles are proposed, and a method for determining such isolated obstacles in the DSM model is given. The simulation of a typical urban district shows that when the vertical- and cross-section DSM intervals are between 3 m and 25 m, the threat to terrain-following flight at low-altitude is reduced greatly, and the amount of data required by the DSM model for monitoring in real time a flying vehicle is also smaller. Experiments show that the optimal results are for an interval of 12.5 m in the vertical- and cross-sections in the DSM model, with a 1:10 000 DSM scale grade.

Micropayment schemes usually do not provide fairness, which means that either the customer or the merchant, or both, can cheat each other and gain a financial advantage by misusing the protocols. This paper proposes an efficient hash chain-based micropayment scheme, which is an offline, prepaid scheme that supports simpler divisibility of digital coins. In the execution of payment protocol, the customer's disbursement and the merchant's submittal are performed step by step, whoever cannot gain addition profits even if he breaks off the transaction. The hash chain can also be used for transactions with different merchants. Unlike other micropayment schemes, e.g., PayWord, no public-key operation is required, which improves the efficiency. The scheme also provides restricted anonymity.

This paper presents an investigation of the interaction between housing prices and general economic conditions in China for the period of 1986-2002. The empirical results indicate that housing prices in China are predictable by market fundamentals, which could explain most of the variations in housing prices. The results of Granger causality tests confirm that unemployment rate, total population, changes in construction costs, changes in the consumer price index (CPI) are all Granger causalities of housing prices, with feedback effects observed to affect the vacancy rate of new dwellings, changes in CPI, and changes in per capita disposable income of urban households. Studies with impulse response functions further illustrate these relationships in terms of the degree of the impact on housing prices from the determinants and the feedbacks. The findings indicate that there is a long-term equilibrium relationship between housing prices and market fundamentals in China and it is the identified fundamentals that drive housing prices up, rather than a bubble.

The analysis of hidden spatial features is crucial for the improvement of hedonic regression models for analyzing the structure of land and housing prices. If critical variables representing the influence of spatial features are omitted in the models, the residuals and the coefficients estimated usually exhibit some kind of spatial pattern. Hence, exploration of the relationship between the spatial patterns and the spatial features essentially leads to the discovery of omitted variables. The analyses in this paper were based on two exploratory approaches: one on the residual of a global regression model and the other on the geographically weighted regression (GWR) technique. In the GWR model, the regression coefficients are allowed to differ by location so more spatial patterns can be revealed. Comparison of the two approaches shows that they play supplementary roles for the detection of lot-associated variables and area-associated variables.

Wind loads are key considerations in the structural design of large-span structures since wind loads can be more important than earthquake loads, especially for large flexible structures. The analysis of wind loads on large span roof structures (LSRS) requires large amounts of calculations. Due to the combined effects of horizontal and vertical winds, the wind-induced vibrations of LSRS are analyzed in this paper with the frequency domain method as the first application of method for the analysis of the wind response of LSRS. A program is developed to analyze the wind-induced vibrations due to a combination of wind vibration modes. The program, which predicts the wind vibration coefficient and the wind pressure acting on the LSRS, interfaces with other finite element software to facilitate analysis of wind loads in the design of LSRS. The effectiveness and accuracy of the frequency domain method have been verified by numerical analyses of practical projects.

The complexity of geotechnical engineering and variability in construction circumstances of large extra caissons make the problem of maintaining appropriate sink attitude quite difficult, especially in keeping sink uniformity and achieving the expected final sink depth. A new construction control method is presented using H∞ theory, considering uncertainties in the mechanics model and external noise in the construction site parameters. The design method of an H∞ controller has consequently been obtained for large extra caissons. Control results using only constructor experiences are compared with simulation results using the H∞ controller for a practical engineering situation, which indicates that the H∞ controller is successful in maintaining sink uniformity, avoiding sink as well as in achieving the expected final sink depth.

The velocity field in the Wu River at Chongqing was simulated using the shallow water equation implemented on clustered workstations. The parallel computing technique was used to increase the computing power. The shallow water equation was discretized to a linear system of equations with a direct parallel generalized minimum residual algorithm (GMRES) used to solve the linear system. Unlike other parallel GMRES methods, the direct GMRES method does not alter the sequential algorithm, but bases the parallelization on basic operations such as the matrix-vector product. The computed results agree well with observed results. The parallel computing technique significantly increases the solution speed for this large-scale problem.

A new gradient operator was derived in recent studies of topological structures and shape transitions in biomembranes. Because this operator has widespread potential uses in mechanics, physics, and biology, the operator's general mathematical characteristics should be investigated. This paper explores the integral characteristics of the operator. The second divergence and the differential properties of the operator are used to demonstrate new integral transformations for vector and scalar fields on curved surfaces, such as the second divergence theorem, the second gradient theorem, the second curl theorem, and the second circulation theorem. These new theorems provide a mathematical basis for the use of this operator in many disciplines.

Based on the second gradient operator and corresponding integral theorems such as the second divergence theorem, the second gradient theorem, the second curl theorem, and the second circulation theorem on curved surfaces, a few new scalar differential operators are defined and a series of integral transformations are derived. Interesting transformations between the average curvature and the Gauss curvature are presented. Various conserved integrals related to the Gauss curvature and the second fundamental tensor are disclosed. The important applications of the results in disciplines such as the geometry, physics, mechanics, and biology are briefly discussed.

To develop high energy-density micro power generation systems, a novel two-stroke cycle micro free-piston swing engine (MFPSE), inspired by the concept of the micro internal combustion swing engine, is proposed to supply mechanical power for a micro power generation system. The working principle, gas exchange and ignition timing control cycles, and structure and operation advantages of the MFPSE are discussed in detail. A prototype where the timing control and geometric parameters are designed with reference to a traditional two-stroke cycle internal combustion engine is fabricated. The successful ignition experiment shows that this new concept engine is feasible and is worthy of further study.

Current software cannot easily model an airbag to be flattened without wrinkles. This paper improves the modeling efficiency using the initial metric method to design a mapped mesh auto-flattening algorithm. The element geometric transformation matrix was obtained using the theory of computer graphics. The algorithm proved to be practical for modeling a passenger-side airbag model. The efficiency and precision of modeling airbags are greatly improved by this method.

The heat transfer and thermal hydraulic stability in a two-phase thermosyphon with coaxial riser and down-comer has been experimentally investigated and theoretically analyzed to facilitate its application in cold neutron source. The flow in a coaxial thermosyphon was studied experimentally for a variety of heating rates, transfer tube lengths, charge capacities, and area ratios. A numerical analysis of the hydraulic balance between the driving pressure head and the resistance loss has also been performed. The results show that the presented coaxial thermosyphon has dynamic performance advantages relative to natural circulation in a boiling water reactor.

A dynamic propagation model was developed for waves in two-phase flows by assuming that continuity waves and dynamic waves interact nonlinearly for certain flow conditions. The drift-flux model is solved with the one-dimensional continuity equation for gas-liquid two-phase flows as an initial-boundary value problem solved using the characteristic-curve method. The numerical results give the void fraction distribution propagation in a gas-liquid two-phase flow which shows how the flow pattern transition occurs. The numerical simulations of different flow patterns show that the void fraction distribution propagation is determined by the characteristics of the drift-flux between the liquid and gas flows and the void fraction range. Flow pattern transitions begin around a void fraction of 0.27 and end around 0.58. Flow pattern transitions do not occur for very high void concentrations.

This paper proves the existence of rotationally symmetric solutions to a curvature flow in image processing. The flow includes the level sets flow and the mean curvature flow projected onto the normal. Sharp estimates are obtained for these solutions..