Given the respective advantages of the two complimentary techniques for peer-to-peer media streaming (namely tree-based push and mesh-based pull), there is a strong trend of combining them into a hybrid streaming system. Backed by recently proposed mechanisms to identify stable peers, such a hybrid system usually consists of backbone trees formed by the stable peers and other overlay structures...

Multi-tier strategies exist in many biochemical processes to ensure a maximal fidelity of the reactions. In this review, we focus on the two-tier quality control strategy that ensures the quality of the products of the pre-mRNA splicing reactions catalyzed by the spliceosome. The first step in the quality control process relies on kinetic proofreading mechanisms that are internal to the spliceo...

We show how the Fiat-Shamir transform can be used to convert three-move identification protocols into two-tier signature schemes (a primitive we define) with a proof of security that makes a standard assumption on the hash function rather than modeling it as a random oracle. The result requires security of the starting protocol against concurrent attacks. We can show that numerous protocols hav...

In this article, I propose a hybrid data envelopment analysis (DEA) system that utilizes a methodology combining the tier analysis with the neural clustering method. I aim to show that the hybrid system can be used to evaluate the inter-organizational efficiency in the life insurance companies. The application is unfolded in two phases. In the first phase, DEA is repetitively used to evaluate t...

We present a tiered-approach to the recognition of metaphor. The first tier is made up of highly precise expert-driven lexico-syntactic patterns which are automatically expended on in the second tier using lexical and dependency transformations. The final tier utilizes an SVM classifier using a variety of syntactic, semantic, and psycholinguistic features to determine if an expression is metaph...

Cloud computing is a multi-tenant computational paradigm that offers an efficient, elastic and scalable business model for organizations to adopt various information technology (IT) resources i.e. software, hardware, network, storage, bandwidth etc. There are various aspects of security problem in cloud computing field which include data security, privacy and users’ authenticity. The purpose of...

Cluster-based routing protocols have special advantages that help enhance both scalability and efficiency of the routing protocol. Likewise, finding the best way to arrange clustering so as to maximize the network’s lifetime is now an important research topic in the field of wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we present an Energy-Aware, ClusterBased Routing Algorithm (ECRA) for wireless s...

1. Biofuel production has the potential of reducing CO2 emissions while decreasing global dependence on fossil fuels. However, concerns have been raised on the invasiveness of biofuel feedstocks. Estimating invasion potential remains a challenge because of inconsistencies and inherent limitations of using first-tier qualitative weed risk assessment (WRA) protocols singularly. 2. We evaluated th...

Cross-domain classi cation for speech understanding is an interesting research problem because of the need for portable solutions in the design for spoken dialogue systems. In this paper, a twotier classi er is proposed for speech understanding. The rst tier consists of domain independent dialogue acts while the second tier consists of application actions that are domain speci c. A maximum like...