In this paper we study tools for conviviality to develop user-friendly multiagent systems. First, we show how to use the social-cognitive concept of conviviality in multiagent system technology by relating it to agent power and social dependence networks. Second, we define conviviality masks as transformations of social dependencies by hiding power relations and social structures to facilitate ...

We analyze the approximation and smoothness properties of quincunx fundamental refinable functions. In particular, we provide a general way for the construction of quincunx interpolatory refinement masks associated with the quincunx lattice in R2. Their corresponding quincunx fundamental refinable functions attain the optimal approximation order and smoothness order. In addition, these examples...

Continuing our recent work in [5] we study polynomial masks of multivariate tight wavelet frames from two additional and complementary points of view: convexity and system theory. We consider such polynomial masks that are derived by means of the unitary extension principle from a single polynomial. We show that the set of such polynomials is convex and reveal its extremal points as polynomials...

BACKGROUND The incidence of postoperative wound infection is usually not the cause of death but it increases the length of hospital stay and cost of care and morbidity. Since their introduction a century ago there is still controversy about primary purpose of the facemasks as whether they provide protection for the patient from surgical team or weather they protect surgical team from the patien...

Additive noise has long been an issue for robust automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. One approach to noise robustness is the removal of noise information through segregation by binary time-frequency masks; each time-frequency unit in a spectro-temporal representation of the speech signal is labeled either noise-dominant or signal-dominant. The noise-dominant units are masked and their e...

CONTEXT Face masks are recommended for patients with respiratory symptoms to reduce influenza transmission. Little knowledge exists regarding actual utilization and acceptance of face masks in primary care. OBJECTIVE Compare distribution of face masks to clinic and community trends in respiratory infection (RI) and influenza-like illness (ILI); estimate the annual need for face masks in prima...

The optimal mixing evolutionary algorithms (OMEAs) have recently drawn much attention for their robustness, small size of required population, and efficiency in terms of number of function evaluations (NFE). In this paper, the performances and behaviors of OMEAs are studied by investigating the mechanism of optimal mixing (OM), the variation operator in OMEAs, under two scenarios—one-layer and ...

The sprite generator introduced in MPEG-4 blends frames by averaging, which will make places, that are always occupied by moving objects, look blurred. Thus, providing segmented masks for moving objects is suggested. Several researchers have employed automatic segmentation methods to produce moving object masks. Based on these masks, they used a reliability-based blending strategy to generate s...

BACKGROUND Up-to-date studies are needed on the protection provided by face masks used by dentists. We assessed the relative filtering efficacy of two currently used surgical face masks (one a molded mask, the other a tie-on mask) and a certified personal particulate respirator, all made by a single manufacturer. METHODS The authors sprayed bicarbonate particulate against a porcelain surface ...

In this paper we introduce a Bayesian best linear unbiased estimator (Bayesian BLUE) and apply it to generate optimal averaging filters. Linear filtering of signals is a basic operation frequently used in low level vision. In many applications, filter selection is ad hoc without proper theoretical justification. For example input signals are often convolved with Gaussian filter masks, i.e masks...