Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A model for information retrieval driven by conceptual spaces

A retrieval model describes the transformation of a query into a set of documents. The question is: what drives this transformation? For semantic information retrieval type of models this transformation is driven by the content and structure of the semantic models. In this case, Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) are the semantic models that encode the meaning employed for monolingual and cross-language retrieval. The focus of this research is the relationship between these meanings’ representations and their role and potential in augmenting existing retrieval models effectiveness. The proposed approach is unique in explicitly interpreting a semantic reference as a pointer to a concept in the semantic model that activates all its linked neighboring concepts. It is in fact the formalization of the information retrieval model and the integration of knowledge resources from the Linguistic Linked Open Data cloud that is distinctive from other approaches. The preprocessing of the semantic model using Formal Concept Analysis enables the extraction of conceptual spaces (formal contexts)that are based on sub-graphs from the original structure of the semantic model. The types of conceptual spaces built in this case are limited by the KOSs structural relations relevant to retrieval: exact match, broader, narrower, and related. They capture the definitional and relational aspects of the concepts in the semantic model. Also, each formal context is assigned an operational role in the flow of processes of the retrieval system enabling a clear path towards the implementations of monolingual and cross-lingual systems. By following this model’s theoretical description in constructing a retrieval system, evaluation results have shown statistically significant results in both monolingual and bilingual settings when no methods for query expansion were used. The test suite was run on the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum Domain Specific 2004-2006 collection with additional extensions to match the specifics of this model.
Neuro-Fuzzy Classifiers/Quantifiers for E-Nose Applications

Smell is still a mystery to scientists in somehow, which cannot be studied with ease in vertebrates. Another problem is that the sense of smell is poorly developed in human beings in comparison with the same in many vertebrates (Menini et al., 2004). This makes realization of an artificial olfactory system a challenging task. An artificial olfactory system (commonly known as E-nose) provides a low cost alternative to identification, quantification and characterization of odours. The traditional methods of characterization and quantification of odours generally involve the use of a trained panel of human experts. The use of human panel is sensitive to individual variability, adaptation (tendency to become less sensitive after prolonged exposure), mental state, fatigue, subjectivity, infections and exposure to hazardous compounds (Nagle et al., 1998). Therefore, it is necessary to have a low cost and compact device to perform real-time analysis. It is thus natural for researchers to envisage a system, which is biologically inspired and modelled on the lines of an olfactory system. The increased understanding of the biological phenomenon of olfaction has motivated scientists to achieve artificial olfaction. Rapid strides made in the field of material science and fabrication technology has paved the way for manufacture of a large variety of micro-sensors, of which a large percentage is chemical sensors.
Phase Transitions of the Asymmetric Traveling Salesman

We empirically study phase transitions of the asymmetric Traveling Salesman. Using random instances of up to 1,500 cities, we show that many properties of the problem, including the backbone and optimal tour cost, experience sharp transitions as the precision of intercity distances increases across a critical value. We also show that the average computational cost of the well-known branch-and-bound subtour elimination algorithm for the problem also exhibits a threshold behavior, transitioning from easy to difficult as the distance precision increases. These results provide strong positive evidences to a decade-long open question regarding the existence of phase transitions of the Traveling Salesman.
Demonstration of the CompactPSH Incentive Scheme in a Peer-to-Peer Streaming Application

This demo shows the CompactPSH incentive scheme integrated in LiveShift. LiveShift is a peer-to-peer video streaming application, which supports both live streaming and video-on-demand. Peers participate in a distributed storage, which adds the ability to replay time-shifted streams from other peers in a distributed manner. The incentive scheme is in place to encourage peers to provide stored video data. CompactPSH allows peers to establish direct and indirect reciprocity to determine the contribution of peers. Thus, non-cooperative peers get a lower video quality than cooperative peers.
Image processing for automatic defect detection in industrial radiographic images

Due to the nature of image formation and the resultant image quality the radiographic image is very difficult to interpret which makes the detection of defects inconsistent. In order to improve this situation image processing techniques are applied to the inspection process. This paper describes two new image processing techniques for the automatic detection of defects in industrial radiographic images. This work is part of a project concerned with the development of an automatic radiographic inspection system to provide on-line quality assurance for engineering components. < >
Compiling Typed Attribute-Value Logic Grammars

The unification-based approach to processing attribute-value logic grammars, similar to Prolog interpretation, has become the standard. We propose an alternative, embodied in the Attribute-Logic Engine (ALE) (Carpenter 1993) , based on the Warren Abstract Machine (WAM) approach to compiling Prolog (Aït-Kaci 1991). Phrase structure grammars with procedural attachments, similar to Definite Clause Grammars (DCG) (Pereira — Warren 1980), are specified using a typed version of Rounds-Kasper logic (Carpenter 1992). We argue for the benefits of a strong and total version of typing in terms of both clarity and efficiency. Finally, we discuss the compilation of grammars into a few efficient low-level instructions for the basic feature structure operations.
Database mining by learned cognitive dissonance reduction

A soft computing approach for unsupervised, reactive, database mining is used. This is to meet the broad goals of database mining of discovering noteworthy, unrecognized associations between database items. A novel approach is suggested for unsupervised search controlled by dissonance reduction. Both crisp and non-crisp data are subject to discovery. Issues involve: coherence measures, granularization, user intelligible results, unsupervised recognition of interesting results, and concept equivalent formation.
Strategy Analysis and Creation by Simulation in the General Game

— In this paper the General Game problem is described. In this problem the competition or cooperation dilemma occurs as the two basic types of strategies. The strategy possibilities have been analyzed for finding winning strategy in uncertain situations (no information about the number of players and their strategy types). The winning strategy is missing, but a good solution can be found by simulation by varying the ratio of the two types of strategies. This new method has been used in a real contest with human players, where the created strategies by simulation have reached very good ranks. This construction can be applied in other real social games as well.
Run-time Scaling of Microarchitecture Resources in a Processor for Energy Savings

In this paper we present a strategy for run-time profiling to optimize the configuration of a microprocessor dynamically so as to save power with minimum performance penalty. The configuration of the processor is changed at run-time to attain the optimal energy consumption for the program. Experiments on some benchmark programs show good savings in total energy consumption; we have observed a decrease of up to 25% in energy/cycle and up to 10% in energy per instruction. Our proposed approach can be used for energy-aware computing in either portable applications or in desktop environments where power density is becoming a concern. This approach can also be incorporated in larger power management strategies like ACPI.
Software Alchemy: Turning Complex Statistical Computations into Embarrassingly-Parallel Ones

The growth in the use of computationally intensive statistical procedures, especially with Big Data, has necessitated the usage of parallel computation on diverse platforms such as multicore, GPU, clusters and clouds. However, slowdown due to interprocess communication costs typically limits such methods to "embarrassingly parallel" (EP) algorithms, especially on non-shared memory platforms. This paper develops a broadly-applicable method for converting many non-EP algorithms into statistically equivalent EP ones. The method is shown to yield excellent levels of speedup for a variety of statistical computations. It also overcomes certain problems of memory limitations.
The Augmented Models of Associative Memory Asymmetric Interaction and Hierarchy of Patterns - Int. J. Mod. Phys. B1, 51 (1987)

The asymmetric modification of the Hopfield model of the associative memory is considered. It is shown that the asymmetry does not change the main properties of the model, but leads to the internal nonthermal noise. The modification of the Hopfield algorithm is proposed which can be used for storing the correlated patterns and its storage capacity is estimated. The hierarchical memory model is proposed and studied.
Velocity and Acceleration Estimation and Uniform Hardness Perception in 6-DOF Haptic Rendering

With advances in human computer interface technologies, the sense of touch has been successfully brought into many virtual reality applications. Haptic devices are such kinds of interfaces which can generate programmable forces to its users, allowing for natural manipulations of objects inside virtual environments. In this thesis, we study two critical issues with haptic interfaces that have a tool-like end effector. The first issue is about velocity and acceleration estimation for haptic interfaces. Since most haptic devices are equipped with neither tachometers nor accelerometers, this information has to be derived from discrete position measurements. However, due to a limited sensor resolution and a fast update rate requirement of haptic simulations, getting accurate and robust estimates is challenging. In studies of human arm/hand trajectories, researchers observed that skilled movements are usually extremely smooth that is equivalent to minimizing an objective measure with a performance index of jerk. With the assumption of a constrained minimum-jerk model for human arm/hand trajectories, an adaptive constrained 4-state Kalman filter is proposed for the velocity and acceleration estimation for haptic devices. The second issue is about the influences of a haptic interface's effective mass and viscous damping on users' perceived virtual stiffness in 6-DOF haptic rendering. In any haptic simulations, we always hope that the desired force can be delivered to the user faithfully. But the inherent dynamics of the device may have negative effects on the final perceived force. Through experiments, we have found that the induced forces from those physical parameters affect the perceived virtual stiffness non-uniformly: a surface that should feel uniformly stiff will feel softer or harder, depending on which part of the virtual tool it contacts. The scale of the non-uniform perception is also related to the user's holding point as well as its relative position to the contact points on the tool. Nevertheless, the goal of this study is not to increase the perceived hardness but to make users perceive a uniform hardness when tapping a virtual object. For that, we propose three different methods to compensate for the non-uniform hardness perception. The subjective evaluations show the effectiveness of all three methods.
Intelligent Multi-Media Integrated Interface Project

Abstract : This report discusses the results of the Intelligent Multi Media Interfaces (IMMI) project. The IMMI project has been devoted to the application of artificial intelligence technology to the development of human computer interface technology that integrates speech input, speech output, natural language text, graphics, and deictic gestures for interactive dialogues between human and computer. These dialogues are modelled on the manner in which two people naturally communicate in coordinated multiple modalities when working at a graphics device. The goal has been to develop multi modal human computer interface technology that enhances human-computer communication and is more capable of meeting the demands of modern information intensive systems. As part of this project, a knowledge based multi media interface system, called CUBRICON (the CUBRIC Intelligent CONversationalist), has been developed as a proof-of- concept prototype. The CUBRICON system is described in this report. Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Human computer interfaces, Intelligent interfaces, Multi media interfaces, Interfaces.
Secrecy and Anonymity in Interactive Systems

When building systems that guarantee confidentiality, system designers must first define confidentiality appropriately. Although researchers have proposed definitions of properties such as secrecy, anonymity, and privacy for a wide variety of system models, general definitions that are intuitive, widely applicable, and sufficiently formal have proven surprisingly elusive. The goal of this dissertation is to provide such a framework for systems that interact with multiple agents, emphazising definitions of secrecy (to rule out unwanted information flows) and anonymity (to prevent observers from learning the identity of an agent who performs some action). The definitions of secrecy extend earlier definitions of secrecy and nondeducibility given by Shannon and Sutherland. Roughly speaking, one agent maintains secrecy with respect to another if the second agent cannot rule out any possibilities for the behavior or state of the first agent. These definitions are characterized syntactically, using a modal logic of knowledge. Definitions of anonymity are given, with respect to agents, actions, and observers, and are also stated in terms of a modal logic of knowledge. The general framework is shown to handle probability and nondeterminism cleanly, and to be useful for reasoning about asynchronous systems as well as synchronous systems. It also suggests generalizations of secrecy and anonymity that may be useful for dealing with issues such as resource-bounded reasoning. Finally, the dissertation leverages these definitions of secrecy and formulates new strategy-based information-flow conditions for a simple imperative programming language that includes input and output operators. A soundness theorem demonstrates the feasibility of statically enforcing the security conditions via a simple type system.
Points-Based Safe Path Planning of Continuum Robots

Continuum robots exhibit great potential in a number of challenging applications where traditional rigid link robots pose certain limitations, e.g., working in unstructured environments. In order to enable the usage of continuum robots in safety-critical applications, such as surgery and nuclear decontamination, it is extremely important to ensure a safe path for the robot's movement. Existing algorithms for continuum robot path planning have certain limitations that need to be addressed. These include the fact that none of the algorithms provide safety assurance parameters and control for path planning. They are computationally expensive, applicable to a specific type of continuum robots, and mostly they do not incorporate design and kinematics constraints. In this paper, we propose a points-based path planning (PoPP) algorithm for continuum robots that computes the path by imposing safety constraints and improves upon the limitations of existing approaches. In the algorithm, we exploit the constant curvature-bending property of continuum robots in their path planning process. The algorithm is computationally efficient and provides a good tradeoff between accuracy and efficiency that can be implemented to enable the safety-critical application of continuum robots. This algorithm also provides information regarding path volume and flexibility in movement. Simulation results confirm that the algorithm possesses promising potential for all types of continuum robots (following the constant curvature-bending property). We believe that this effectively balances the desired safety and efficiency requirements.
New concatenated sequences for wireless indoor asynchronous DS-CDMA communications

The performance of an indoor asynchronous DS-CDMA system was investigated. The analysis focuses on spreading sequences. In particular, we compare some known sequences, characterised by particular correlation properties, with other sequences constructed by using a concatenation technique. The concatenation effect is to make the statistics of the values of the even and the odd correlation functions similar and converging towards low values, thus keeping low the multi-user interference and obtaining good BER performance.
Practical Light Field Rendering

Light field rendering is an image-based rendering method first explicitly described in 1996. The light field function determines the radiance, or colour, seen along any ray into or out of a scene. It is a function over a 4D space of directed lines. With some restrictions on the placement of the eyepoint, almost any view of the scene can be recreated by sampling the light field function for every ray that goes through the eyepoint and the scene. In practice, the light field function consists of discrete samples obtained either photographically using a calibrated camera setup, or from computer-generated imagery. Light field rendering is a purely image-based rendering technique. No geometric information about the scene is required or derived in the process. Although potentially capable of creating photorealistic renderings quickly, light field rendering has seen little use in either the research community, or the wider graphics world. The reasons may be traced to a number of weaknesses and limitations in the method, which make its use impractical. This thesis explores and improves upon several aspects of light field rendering, with the aim of making it a more practical means of image-based rendering. The main contributions are: • Better interpolation using a focal distance for improved rendering quality. • Incorporating depth information in the light field. • A light field parameterisation which encompasses the entire light field scene within a single structure. • Creation and rendering of compressed light fields using the standard MPEG video encoding scheme. • Use of light fields as a scene element in combination with polygon rendering. The most important contribution of this thesis is the use of light field rendering in combination with another rendering method, namely polygon rendering. A scene can be composed using both polygon objects and light fields. Light fields can intersect with other light fields or with polygonal objects, and still be rendered in a consistent manner from all view directions. This demonstrates, for the first time, that light fields can be used as part of a general rendering system in a practical manner.
Tree perception accuracy in high-resolution images: exploratory analysis of combined effects of image parameters and stand characteristics

The aim of our work was to explain and quantify the perception accuracy of trees identified by 2D and 3D visual interpretation using a large set of images. The results of the image analysis, i.e. number of viewed trees and accuracy of crown diameter measurements, were compared to ground information. It was thus possible to study influence of base/height (B/H) ratio, and both spatial and spectral resolutions on interpretation quality. The best results were obtained with small B/H ratios (0.05 to 0.3) and the finest spatial resolution (0.6 m). Infrared information did not systematically improved results for the analyzed stands. The variability in spatial organization of trees revealed to be a major explanatory factor.
Communication and Environmental Designs Analyzing Organizational Culture to Improve Human Performance

The relationship between environmental design, communication, and organizational culture is examined to provide performance improvement practitioners with an analytical tool that helps determine appropriate interventions. Organizations are comprised of people who communicate and socially construct artifacts, norms, values, and assumptions that guide how they conduct business. That is, employees interact to create, maintain, and reify their organizational culture. One artifact of organisational culture that should be apparent to human performance technologists is the environmental design of the office in which the organization operates. While some performance improvement interventions focus on the orientation of humans to their physical surroundings (ie., ergonomics), our analysis focuses on the communication patterns and organizational culture imbedded in the physical environment. We posit that performance technologists should look beyond the explicit environment and analyze organizational culture to begin understanding the implicit nature of how employees perform. A case study is provided to illustrate how three levels of organizational culture can be used to analyze an environment in which employees work to determine appropriate performance improvement solutions.
Multipoint Relaying: An Efficient Technique for Flooding in Mobile Wireless Networks

In this paper we discuss the mechanism of multipoint relays (MPRs) to efficiently do the flooding of broadcast messages in the mobile wireless networks. Multipoint relaying is a technique to reduce the number of redundant re-transmissions while diffusing a broadcast message in the network. We discuss the principle and the functioning of MPRs, and propose a heuristic to select these MPRs in a mobile wireless environment. We also analyze the complexity of this heuristic and prove that the computation of a multipoin- t relay set with minimal size is NP-complete. Finally, we present some simulation results to show the efficiency of multipoint relays.
How to write a lot: A practical guide to productive academic writing (2nd ed.).

All students and professors need to write, and many struggle to finish their stalled dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule. In this practical, light-hearted, and encouraging book, Paul Silvia explains that writing productively does not require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing examples from his own field of psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational roadblocks and become prolific without sacrificing evenings, weekends, and vacations. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives detailed advice from the trenches on how to write, submit, revise, and resubmit articles, how to improve writing quality, and how to write and publish academic work.