Objectives:To compare the research productivity of different Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the field of biomedical sciences from 2011-2013.Methods:This is a retrospective study conducted in the College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Data on the biomedical publications originating from GCC countries published between January 2011 to December 2013 was searched via MEDLINE using PubMed. The total number of publications emanating from each country was normalized with the country’s population. The mean impact factor (IF) of all the publications in a year was calculated for comparative analysis.Results:A total of 11,000 publications were retrieved via MEDLINE using PubMed, out of which, 9222 were selected for analysis. A successive increase in the number of publications by every country was observed. The most striking increase in the number of publications was from Saudi Arabia. However, after normalization with population, the performance of Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait looks far better than Saudi Arabia in terms of research productivity. Data on mean IF showed that the overall mean IF of all GCC countries has remained largely unchanged except Oman. Although Oman had a comparatively low mean IF value in 2011, they recorded a tremendous improvement in successive years.Conclusion:All GCC countries underwent an increase in quantitative research productivity over the last 3 years. However, no increase in quality of research publications was noted based on the proxy reports of mean journal IF.

We are warmly welcoming you to attend the Fourth International Conference on Control, Automation and Information Sciences (ICCAIS 2015). The ICCAIS aims to provide a forum for regional and international researchers, engineers and practitioners to discuss and present relevant achievements, challenges, innovation as well as future direction in control, automation and information sciences research and practice. Following the success of ICCAIS 2014 (Gwangju, Korea), ICCAIS 2013 (Nha Trang, Vietnam), ICCAIS 2012 (Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam), Changshu Institute of Technology is very lucky and also proud to host the ICCAIS 2015 together with the Nanjing University of Science and Technology and HangzhouDianzi University. With the generous help and contributions from many of our notable colleagues in the field, we have been reasonably successful with our aims. This year seems no exception as we continue to see the strong support of our conference by the academic and professional communities, particularly in terms of the international contributions.ICCAIS 2015 received 194 submissions from 14 countries and regions, and all papers went through a rigorous peer review procedure and each paper was reviewed by at least two reviewers. Based on the suggestions of the Program Committee members and reviewers, 94 high-quality papers were selected for publications in this proceedings volume with an acceptance rate of 49%.As the organizers, we would like to express our sincere thanks to the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society and IEEE Nanjing Section for their technical co-sponsorship, as well as to the National Science Foundation of China, Suzhou Association for Science and Technology and Changshu Tianyin for their financial support. We also appreciate Nanjing University of Science and Technology and Hangzhou Dianzi University for their co-sponsorship.We would also take this opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to the members of the International Program Committee and all reviewers for their professional reviews of the papers. Their expertise guaranteed the high quality of the technical program of the ICCAIS 2015.In addition, there are still many more colleagues, associates, friends, and supporters who helped us in immeasurable ways, so we express our sincere gratitude to them all. Last, but not the least ,we would like to thank all the speakers, authors and participants for their great contributions that made ICCAIS 2015 successful and all the hard work worthwhile. We would also like to sincerely thank numerous volunteers for their dedicated service to the conference. AbstractQuadrotor aerial vehicles are one of the most flexible and adaptable platforms for aerial robotics research. The impact of the quadrotor in the field of robotics research can be seen as similar to that of the Puma robotic arm in the early years of robotic manipulators, and the unicycle wheeled robot, in a similar period in mobile robotics. This talk presents some of the key ideas behind state estimation and high performance control for these vehicles. . S...