bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A new process for documenting and checking archival data
Authors: Austin Erik W. , Barge Sylvia J. , Horvath Susan M. , Traugott Santa M.
Published: April 2007

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is a data archive and repository for social science data. A major function of the ICPSR is to disseminate the data holdings in a reasonably standard format. For holdings that will be extensively used, additional effort is made to prepare comprehensive, machine-readable documentation, to cross-check the documentation against the data for accuracy and consistency, and to correct or document any inconsistencies discovered.In the past, "cleaning" and documenting the data involved using a number of different computer programs. A great deal of human time was expended on procedural matters: which programs to use, when to use them, and how to coordinate the various stages of the cleaning process. As staff costs and the number of new acquisitions skyrocketed, and computers increased in power and decreased in cost, it became imperative to automate as much as possible the procedure for preparing data for distribution. The GIDO software was developed to meet this need.GIDO is an interactive multi-function program package that guides staff members through the procedure for documenting and cleaning social science data. A cohesive history of the processing operations performed on the data is maintained automatically in machine-readable form. Video terminals are used to display "forms" which the staff fill out with the textual and technical documentation for the data. GIDO immediately verifies the contents of each form and provides an opportunity to make corrections. The forms allow the input of information without requiring knowledge of specialized syntax and conventions. After all documentary materials have been entered, GIDO checks the data for consistency with the original documentation, corrects or flags discrepancies encountered, reformats the data using uniform conventions, and produces machine-readable documentation in a form ready for dissemination.Use of GIDO enables the ICPSR archive to perform its data processing functions more efficiently and at lower cost, thus permitting the organization to meet ever-increasing demands on its resources.
Developing an aggregated survey/macro-economic database for statistical and graphical social science applications
Authors: Zartman Michael B. , Gordon Christopher J.
Published: April 2007

The Survey Research Center at The University of Michigan has routinely conducted surveys of consumer attitudes since 1946. The May 1981 survey is the 152nd in this series which provides regular assessments of consumer attitudes and expectations. The surveys are designed to explore why changes in consumer attitudes and expectations occur, and how these changes influence consumer spending and saving decisions. A major research objective of the project is to use this collected data to evaluate economic trends and prospects.Each survey contains "standard" questions asked at regular intervals, many of which have been included from the project's inception. The aggregated results of these surveys provide a wealth of time-series data with the potential to be an important factor in forecasting consumer behavior. The "standard" questions themselves can be disseminated into approximately 190 separate data series (including index transformations). When "nonstandard" (or non-core) questions are included, this total jumps considerably. With such a large number of data variables, many different areas of analysis are available to be researched. When the many macro-economic data series (e.g., Federal Reserve, Census, or Retail Sales data) are added to this compilation, the data management problems increase. The research results which could be achieved, then, are directly related to the development of a flexible method of data storage and retrieval.
Thesaurus on American works of art (abstract only)
Authors: Fik Eleanor E.
Published: April 2007

FOLK is an online analysis and retrieval system developed for the 1801 census of Norway, which is machine readable in a full-text and a coded version, each with approximately 1,000,000 records on individuals. The main advantage of the system is speed. FOLK consists of several parts:- A fast program for statistical analysis of the simple kind. Cross tabulations can be done in 1/16 of the time used by SPSS.- An interface to statistical and graphical packages for more complicated analysis.- A retrieval system for finding subsets of the data base. The subset can be anything from a single person to a region. Information from the coded and the full text version can be used for subtracting individuals.- A recoding system for recoding the coded version using a simple semantic analysis of the full-text version.- A fully computerized record linkage system. Information from other sources can be automatically added to the records on the individuals in the census.
On the need for human rationing (abstract only)
Authors: Sim Francis M. , Kreider Glen D. , Miller Roscoe T.
Published: April 2007

The occasion for this discussion is our recent experience with a severe shortfall in computational capacity at The Pennsylvania State University. Although the details of this affliction may not be reproduced elsewhere, it is our opinion that the events we experienced stem from essential, underlying phenomena which do have wide currency. These are, first, that overall demand for computational facilities and services is increasing "exponentially" and shows no sign of slowdown, and, second, that resources (most especially including funds) to provide increases in the relevant supply of computing capacities are not keeping pace and can not be expected to do so.It is possible that technical advances can treat this disorder, but in the nature of the political/bureaucratic systems which are the vehicles for the delivery of such "fixes", acquiring them will not be painless. Concretely, it seems unlikely that faculty and students in colleges and universities can expect relief from recurrent boom-and-bust in computational resources, whether the duration of such cycles is measured in decades or days. It behooves us to ask whether the attendant pains must be endured, and whether they are conducive to easier and more productive use of computing systems. Our answers are, first, that such pain does not ennoble, and, second, that it often is counterproductive. Consequently, we must try to identify the proximate sources of the disrupting effects of these cyclic shortfalls and attempt to curb them, within our means.We propose that the appropriate guidelines for allocating scarce computing resources may be characterized as prescriptions for humane rationing. In the most general terms, these prescriptions are 1) that qualified users should be ensured a fair share of the available resource without unnecessary expenses of effort in competition for them and in queuing, and 2) that use of computing resources should be so governed as to insure that all user sessions are as free as possible of delays, encumbrances, and constraints induced by management practices rather than by inherent limits of hard and software.While rationing is unnecessary during the occasional boom in academic computing resources, we should have on the shelf the management tools which can make fair and effective allocation possible during the recurrent busts we may anticipate in the 1980's.
Using offline documentation online
Authors: Price Lynne A.
Published: April 2007

Current interactive programs usually provide some form of online documentation in addition to the traditional hard-copy user's manual. To save the expense of writing two documents covering the same material, it is not uncommon to find offline manuals that are available interactively as well as printed versions of material originally organized for online use. Because of the difficulties inherent in using the same material in different ways, neither approach is totally satisfactory. The THUMB system minimizes these problems by structuring offline documentation for interactive use. An expert on a particular text (
e.g.
, its author) prepares a detailed representation of the organization of material within the document. Once this data structure (which resembles a thorough table of contents and heavily cross-referenced index) is available, users access information free from the strictures of linear text, simple indices, and page numbers. The expert's task is nontrivial, but it requires less effort than writing a new document. Creation and revision of text are made easy by supportive utilities. THUMB monitors reader's requests in order to provide experts with feedback about a document's use. Readers need not be aware of THUMB's underlying data structure or the tools available for experts.
Evolution of a query translation system
Authors: Ke Jyh-Sheng , Chang Shi-kuo
Published: April 2007

This paper presents the motivation, history, and idiosyncrasy of a query translation system. Detail of the translation process has also been described.
Lexicon design using perfect hash functions
Authors: Cercone Nick , Krause Max , Boates John
Published: April 2007

The research reported in this paper derives from the recent algorithm of Cichelli (1980) for computing machine-independent, minimal perfect hash functions of the form:hash value: hash key length + associated value of the key's first letter + associated value of the key's last letterA minimal perfect hash function is one which provides single probe retrieval from a minimally-sized table of hash identifiers [ keys]. Cichelli's hash function is machine-independent because the character code used by a particular machine never enters into the hash calculation.Cichelli's algorithm uses a simple backtracking process to find an assignment of non-negative integers to letters which results in a perfect minimal hash function. Cichelli employs a twofold ordering strategy which rearranges the static set of keys in such a way that hash value collisions will occur and be resolved as early as possible during the backtracking process. This double ordering provides a necessary reduction in the size of the potentially large search space, thus considerably speeding the computation of associated values.In spite of Cichelli's ordering strategies, his method is found to require excessive computation to find hash functions for sets of keys with more than about 40 members. Cichelli's method is also limited since two keys with the same first and last letters and the same length are not permitted.Alternative algorithms and their implementations will be discussed in the next section; these algorithms overcome some of the difficulties encountered when using Cichelli's original algorithm. Some experimental results are presented, followed by a discussion of the application of perfect hash functions to the problem of natural language lexicon design.
Cognitive style, categorization, and vocational effectss on performance of REL database users
Authors: Egly Diana Gail , Wescourt Keith T.
Published: April 2007

Twelve subjects from two job categories, sales engineers and programmer analysts, used an REL ENGLISH database to answer a set of questions. These questions were designed to require successively more complex interactions. The database contained Hewlett-Packard's Condensed Order Records, which were pertinent to the jobs of the sales engineers.All of the subjects were given a battery of cognitive tests measuring cognitive style and pattern extrapolation skills prior to using the database. They also received a brief training session on the structure of the database.Analysis of the subjects interactions with the REL ENGLISH database, particularly analysis of the errors made, showed: first, that cognitive style is significantly correlated with the number of questions successfully completed; second, that while sales engineers were able to access all levels of the hierarchy in the database, programmer analysts had significantly more difficulty accessing data from higher levels than they did with data from the same or lower levels than the standard, entry level; and third, that programmer analysts had less difficulty with the fixed-format, programming-language-like features of REL ENGLISH, while sales engineers has less difficulty with the free-format, English-like features of REL ENGLISH.These findings suggest that quasi-natural language database interfaces are appropriate for nonprogrammers who have a field-independent cognitive style and who already are domain experts in the area covered by the database.
An integral approach to user assistance
Authors: Fenchel Robert S
Published: April 2007

User assistance is incorporated into some of today's interactive computing systems. The assistance is rarely consistent in its accuracy, availability, accessibility or style. In this paper we discuss general requirements for assistance systems and a characterization of different types of assistance which may be provided users. A technique for integrating the design of an assistance system with the design of an interactive computing system is described. The technique satisfies the expressed requirements and greatly facilitates the development of assistance systems. Finally, a brief discussion of techniques for evaluating the quality and effectiveness of an interactive assistance system is presented.
Short-term friendly and long-term hostile?
Authors: Klensin John C.
Published: April 2007

Several authors have suggested, and we are hearing some additional papers on the subject at this conference, that our computer systems should be "friendly" -- that the new user, or the infrequent user, should be able to use them quickly, without any special learning, and without any resort to written materials. My colleagues and I are responsible for a large analysis system [1, 3] that has been in active use outside its development group for about five years and which has several philosophically similar predecessor systems that go back another three or four years [4, 5, 6]. It is interactive in the sense that one of its reasons for existence is to permit the user to interact with data and tease results out of them in a variety of ways -- it has never been, nor is it derived from, a front-end to a batch system or batch thinking. Its users have ranged in skill and background from the beginning student to the professional statistician developing new techniques; from the academic researcher to the clerk in commercial environments. We draw, from this experience, some differing views on what kinds of system designs are friendly and what sorts of assumptions lead to "friendly" systems.
A program for social science computer literacy
Authors: Strand Paul J.
Published: April 2007

A strategy for organizing the social science computer user community is presented. The strategy recognizes that social scientists have exceptional educational needs and unfavorable budgetary constraints. A series of workshops is proposed to reduce curriculum redundancy and avoid the costly "on demand" mode of consultation that has developed in most computer centers. An example of a workshop is provided.
Interfacing to text using HELPME
Authors: Kehler Thomas P. , Barnes Mike
Published: April 2007

HELPME is a Lisp based system designed to provide on-line help for novice and expert users of computer systems. HELPME permits the implementation of easy to use interfaces to existing documents by allowing a user familiar with a document (a 'document expert') to produce an index and incorporate information relating to the structure of the document into the interface. A typical user of HELPME can then interact with the document and index through a series of commands to quickly find the information desired.The primary advantage of a system like HELPME is that it permits construction of interfaces to existing on-line documents and provides three modes of interaction with the documents: simple display, indexed-based query and context overview. Simple display permits forward and reverse movement through a document while index-based query uses key-words to select relevant sections of the document hierarchy for display. Context overview permits a hierarchical view of the document. For example, the table of contents of a document can be used to construct this hierarchy. Each of these modes of interaction are independent and may be selected by the user at any point. The goal of HELPME is to allow a user to find any information in a document relating to the user's requests. Of course, many users do not have a good grasp on exactly what they are looking for but rely on inadvertent discovery. It is hoped that the flexibility of a HELPME-like system will satisfy the goals of an easy-to-use, extensible help system for computing environments. A long term goal for HELPME is to use domain knowledge and user models in user assistance and information management.
Human factors studies with system message styles (abstract only)
Authors: Shneiderman Ben
Published: April 2007

Computer systems often contain messages which are imprecise ('SYNTAX ERROR'), hostile ('FATAL ERROR, RUN ABORTED'), cryptic ('IEH291H'), or obscure ('CTL DAMAGE, TRANS ERR'). Such messages may be acceptable to computer professionals who regularly use a specific system, but they lead to frustration for novices and for professionals who are using new features or facilities.We have conducted five studies using COBOL compiler syntax errors and text editor command errors to measure the impact of improving the wording of system messages. The results indicate that increased specificity, more positive tone, and greater clarity can improve correction rates and user satisfaction.An overview of the experimental results will be presented along with guidelines for writing system messages.
Naive user behavior in a restricted interactive command environment (abstract only)
Authors: Haggett Allan G. , McFadden John R. , Newsted Peter R.
Published: April 2007

Results are reported showing the changing pattern of command use by introductory business data processing students. Using the ability of the University of Calgary's Honeywell Multics Operating System to tailor a command and response environment, a subset of commands and responses (called GENIE) was set up in a user-friendly environment to facilitate novice students programming at CRT terminals. Frequency and time of usage of all commands was metered and changing patterns of usage emerged as the semester progressed. For example, "help" usage -- which was originally quite extensive and broad -- limited itself over time to questions only about specific topics. Reluctance to use an "audit" facility to capture an interactive session disappeared as the commands for such usage were likened to a movie camera taking pictures over a student's shoulder. It is further noted that specific emphasis was placed on simplifying commands and reducing options.The whole idea of a restricted command environment is compared to the "abstract machine" concept of Hopper, Kugler, and Unger who are building a universal command and response language (NICOLA, a
NI
ce Standard
CO
mmand
LA
nguage). GENIE is seen as an example of what such an abstract machine could be if the Multics operating system were viewed as a basic or "parent" abstract machine. Interactive environments such as Multics provides are viewed as essential to providing a satisfactory timesharing system for the various, but frequently intermittent uses, in the social sciences.
Design considerations for data base facilities on a desk top (abstract only)
Authors: Cochran Susanne S.
Published: April 2007

The price of computing equipment is decreasing at a rate of about 30% per year and the cost of professional time is steadily increasing, driving industry to focus on improving professional productivity.Computer-aided engineering (design, analysis, research, testing, and planning) is a problem area where professional creativity and equipment flexibility are of paramount importance to success. Engineers and scientists are not typically computer professionals; they intimately understand the application at hand and do not want to he bogged down either with computerese and 25 manuals which might contain a desired answer, or with explaining enough of the problem to a computer professional to have the program written by someone else. Ideally, the problem solution should come from the engineer or scientist when viewed from an efficiency perspective. In such application areas, price/performance is no longer the primary factor in selecting computing equipment; ease of adaptability and availability/accessibility are becoming more important criteria when identifying a computer which can provide effective man/machine synergy.The HP 9845 Computing System has the HP IMAGE DBM System capability available as a tool for its users. To help non-computer people to design data bases (the most difficult and frightening part of using data base), we have created a data base design kit manual. This manual will guide a user, through either an intuitive or a rigorous design technique, from problem definition to a working data base diagram. From this diagram, the user is ready to define, create, and use the data base. For this, we have developed a general purpose data base management program, called QUERY/45. QUERY/45 can define and create data bases, and also provides updating facilities including adding, modifying, and deleting information with or without user-defined forms. All of the helps and teaching tools will enable engineers and scientists to use a data base without having to write any programs. After they become more experienced, the helps and menus can be bypassed in favor of formal command mode.The human factors engineering in the design of this program helps the computer system to become a partner in problem solving for the engineer or scientist.
Learning how to confer
Authors: Parnes Robert
Published: April 2007

Members of the Merit staff first met Robert Parnes in the fall of 1975 and began participating in his experimental CONFERence shortly thereafter. It soon became evident that CONFER could help us provide consultation to our users, who were distributed over a large part of southeastern Michigan, and in January of 1976 Merit started what we believe to be the first CONFERence open to the general public, MNET: CAUCUS.Five years later CAUCUS is still alive and well, and we still use it to provide help to a widely-dispersed user community--in fact, with the advent of Telenet service later that same year, and with Telenet's subsequent expansion of service to Canadian and overseas networks, our users are spread all over the world. But we have learned over the years that computer conferencing is good for much more than simply facilitating the user-consultant relationship. As we gained experience with CONFER we found that it gave us a solution to problems that were so basic we had simply taken them as part of the environment. CONFER also provided a medium for communication among consultants--the Merit staff--and among users.
Third party consulting in the network environment (abstract only)
Authors: Roistacher Richard C.
Published: April 2007

CONFER, first used at Wayne State University in 1979, has proven itself to be an extremely useful and adaptable communications medium. Some examples of present CONFER applicatons at WSU are:
Computing Center Staff CONFERence
Presently used to coordinate communication between the 180 staff members of the CSC. Communications between various departments isolated by distance and responsibility has been improved.
Specialty CONFERences
CONFERences exist on such varied topics as school transportation, text processing, nursing education, microcomputers and instructional technology.
Project Management
Used by the University's PLATO development staff for cross-campus management decision-making and communication. CONFER has reduced the need for staff meetings, has served as a "tracking device" for personnel appointments, and has kept a detailed log of project decisions. CONFER has also been used for CSC project development, notably for the design of an MTS Help Facility.
Academic Communications
CONFER has been used to facilitate communication between students in an undergraduate Computer Science course, for graduate students in Instructional Technology, and for individual student projects. This summer, a CONFERence will be implemented which will manage course communications for 300 students in a freshman Computer Science course.
Statistics on the use of mathematical subroutines from a computer center library
Authors: Aird T. , Dodson D. , Houstis E. , Rice J.
Published: April 2007

The Purdue University Computing Center has introduced a monitor into its operating system to gather statistics on the use of various system elements. A summary of these statistics for mathematical subroutines is presented here for a 3 month period (January 24, 1973, to April 20, 1973). Two tables are presented; Table 1 covers the use of the standard or built-in functions of high level languages (primarily Fortran). These functions have been grouped somewhat including putting complex and double-precision together with the ordinary versions of the functions. The maximum use of a complex and double-precision function occurs for ABS (2.2%) and EXPONENTIATION (1.5%), respectively. The total percentage of the use of complex and double-precision functions is 4.4% and 7.5% respectively. These values give estimates of the use of complex and double-precision arithmetic as follows:
Algorithm and series expansion for the F distribution
Authors: Davis William E. , Khalil Hatem M.
Published: April 2007

POFF computes the probability of F values no greater than some assigned value. The method of evaluation is based on expressing the probability function in a simple algebraic form which is evaluated as a nested polynomial. In this respect it differs from Algorithm 322 [1] which computes the same function by recurrences. A comparison of their efficiency shows that POFF is faster but the core requirements and the accuracy of the results are identical.
Iterative refinement of generalized matrix inverses now practicable
Authors: Zielke Gerhard
Published: April 2007

As you know the iterative refinement of generalized matrix inverses is an unsolved problem [3], [5] so far because the usual iterative methods for inverting nonsingular matrices lose their valuable property to be self-correcting if applied to nonregular matrices. The following example of a second-order iterative method
A “core + modules” approach to Fortran standardization
Authors: Brainerd Walt
Published: April 2007

The ANSI FORTRAN standards committee X3J3 has adopted a “core + modules” approach to specifying the next revision of the standard. The motivation for and the projected benefits of this approach are discussed.
Numerical precision and data structures
Authors: Schenk Werner
Published: April 2007

Group T9 of the ANSI Fortran Committee X3J3 has been assigned to study the areas of numerical precision, storage and data structures, with a goal of developing technical proposals and recommendations for future revisions of the Fortran standard. Developers and users of numerical software have proposed the addition of various functions to return the base of a computer system's number representation. Also desirable are features to enhance Fortran portability, such as single and double precision word lengths, and exponent ranges. Structured types proposed include arrays, records, sets and files.
UNIX
TM
as an environment for producing numerical software
Authors: Schryer N. L.
Published: April 2007

The UNIX operating system [1] supports a number of software tools which, when viewed as a whole, are an unusually powerful aid to programming.

The design, implementation, documentation and maintenance of a portable FORTRAN test of the floating-point arithmetic unit of a computer is used to illustrate these tools at work. The result of this effort was a program created automatically from the paper describing the test. Thus, only the documentation had to be written; the program was automatically produced from it. Also, changes in the document (debugging) were automatically reflected in the program.

The second section briefly describes the UNIX tools to be used. The third section outlines the basic problem and the fourth section shows how the tools can help solve the problem.
A case for TOOLPACK
Authors: Miller Webb
Published: April 2007

We propose a collaborative effort to develop a systematized collection of software tools for Fortran programming.
Portability and the national energy software center
Authors: Butler Margaret K.
Published: April 2007

The software portability problem is examined from the viewpoint of experience gained in the operation of a software exchange and information center. First, the factors contributing to the program interchange to date are identified, then major problem areas remaining are noted. The import of the development of programming language and documentation standards is noted, and the program packaging procedures and dissemination practices employed by the Center to facilitate successful software transport are described. Organization, or installation, dependencies of the computing environment, often hidden from the program author, and data interchange complexities are seen as today's primary issues with dedicated processors and network communications offering an alternative solution.
“Programming effort” analysis of the ELLPACK language
Authors: Rice John R.
Published: April 2007

ELLPACK is a problem statement language and system for elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) which is implemented by a Fortran preprocessor. ELLPACK's principal purpose is as a tool for the performance evaluation of software. However, we use it here as an example with which to study the “programming effort” required for problem solving. It is obvious that problem statement languages can reduce programming effort tremendously; our goal is to quantify this somewhat. We do this by analyzing the lengths and effort (as measured by Halstead's “software science” technique) of various approaches to solving these problems.

A simple ELLPACK program is shown below to illustrate the nature of the ELLPACK language. Space does not allow a description of the language but it is somewhat self explanatory. See [2] and [3] for further details.
Notes from the second department of energy library Workshop
Authors: Fong Kirby W. , Jones Rondall E.
Published: April 2007

The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its successors, first the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration and now the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has been and continues to be one of the nation's major purchasers and users of large scale scientific computers. Historically, each of the more than dozen computer centers at different laboratories evolved independently of the others so that each was self-contained. In particular, each computer center developed mathematical software libraries according to its own needs. In 1975, representatives for the mathematical software libraries at the various AEC computer centers met, with Argonne National Laboratory as the host, to hold the first Workshop on the Operational Aspects of Mathematical Software Libraries. Among the purposes of the first Workshop were: (1) to meet colleagues doing similar work at other AEC computer centers, (2) to share experiences in the management of mathematical software libraries, and (3) to discuss ideas and issues in the operation of libraries. The first Workshop was sufficiently rewarding that the participants felt it appropriate to hold a second Workshop in three years, an interval that would encompass sufficient progress in library operation that new experiences and ideas could be discussed.
On a proposed floating-point standard
Authors: Kahan W. , Palmer J.
Published: April 2007

A standard for binary floating-point arithmetic is being proposed and there is a very real possibility that it will be adopted by many manufacturers and implemented on a wide range of computers. This development matters to all of us concerned with numerical software. One of the principal motivations for the standard is to distribute more evenly the burden of portability between hardware and software. At present, any program intended to be portable must be designed for a mythical computer that enjoys no capability not supported by every computer on which the program will be run. That mythical computer is so much grubbier than almost any real computer that a portable program will frequently be denigrated as "suboptimal" and then supplanted by another program supposedly "optimal" for the real computer in question but often inferior in critical respects like reliability. A standard --- almost any reasonable standard --- will surely improve the situation. A standard environment for numerical programs will promote fair comparisons and sharing of numerical codes, thereby lowering costs and prices. Furthermore, we have chosen repeatedly to enrich that environment in order that applications programs be simpler and more reliable. Thus will the onus of portability be shared among hardware manufacturers and software producers.
The SLATEC mathematical subroutine library
Authors: Vandevender W. H. , Haskell K. H.
Published: April 2007

The SLATEC Common Mathematical Subroutine Library is an experiment in resource sharing by the computing departments of several Department of Energy Laboratories. The objective is to cooperatively assemble and install at each site a mathematical subroutine library characterized by portability, good numerical technology, good documentation, robustness, and quality assurance. The result is a portable Fortran mathematical subroutine library of over 130,000 lines of code.Much of the following report is based on [1], a chapter to be included in a forthcoming book about mathematical software.
Degree reduction for trigonometric functions
Authors: Payne Mary H. , Hanek Robert N.
Published: April 2007

This report is a companion to Reference 1 on radian reduction. As in Reference 1, the motivation arises from a desire to eliminate messages like "argument too large" in trigonometric function routines. The presence of very large arguments in the VAX H format, on the Crayl, and on an IEEE machine with extended registers, make this a real problem. As for the radian reduction algorithm, the degree algorithm will reduce any argument, however large, so long as it is representable; its speed is nearly independent of the size of the argument to be reduced; and full accuracy is maintained in the neighborhoods of the zeros of the desired function. We believe that the approach is new and represents a significant improvement over procedures currently in use. A variant of the procedure is used in Version 3 of the VAX Math Library.
Proposed sparse extensions to the Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms
Authors: Dodson David S. , Lewis John G.
Published: April 2007

Many codes now exist for solving sparse linear systems: MA28 /4/, SPARSPAK /7/, the Yale Sparse Matrix Package /6/, and ICCG/ILU preconditioning /10/. It has been found that sparse matrix computations are useful in many fields. Furthermore, much effort is being expended in other sparse matrix computations such as sparse least squares and eigenvalue extraction.
Numerical Turing
Authors: Hull T. E. , Abrham A. , Cohen M. S. , X. A. F. , Hall C. B. , Penny D. A. , M. J. T.
Published: April 2007

Numerical Turing is an extension of the Turing programming language. Turing is a Pascal-like language (with convenient string handling, dynamic arrays, modules and more general parameter lists) developed at the University of Toronto [4]. Turing has been in use since May, 1983, and is now available on several machines.
Automatic differentiation using almost any language
Authors: Jerrell Max E.
Published: April 2007

F. W. Pfeiffer [1] has recently indicated that automatic partial differentiation of functions can be easily accomplished using the PROSE language. Other authors have implemented these techniques in other special purpose languages which allow user defined operators[2]. It is relatively easy to implement these capabilities in any language which has a minimum of data structure representation. Additionally, it is not difficult to extend the method to deliver numerical values for any order derivative desired.
The sociology of computing in sociology
Authors: Lee Hans , Perlstadt Harry
Published: April 2007

One of the consequences of the introduction and extension of computing in sociology is the division of sociologists into two antagonistic groups: the empiricists and the humanists. The empiricists expect the computer to be the basic vehicle of salvation, whereas the humanists believe the computer to be the incarnation of all that is evil. A prolonged battle over computation and the utilization of computers in sociology may widen the cleavage between the two groups and make their differences irreconcilable. The major purpose of this paper is to trace how computation in sociology has contributed to this political cleavage and to present a possible start towards a future synthesis.
A constraint-based approach to guarded algebraic data types
Authors: Simonet Vincent , Pottier François
Published: April 2007

We study HMG(X), an extension of the constraint-based type system HM(X) with deep pattern matching, polymorphic recursion, andguarded algebraic data types. Guarded algebraic data types subsume the concepts known in the literature asindexed types,guarded recursive datatype constructors,(first-class) phantom types, andequality qualified types, and are closely related toinductive types. Their characteristic property is to allow every branch of a case construct to be typechecked under different assumptions about the type variables in scope. We prove that HMG(X) is sound and that, provided recursive definitions carry a type annotation, type inference can be reduced to constraint solving. Constraint solving is decidable, at least for some instances ofX, but prohibitively expensive. Effective type inference for guarded algebraic data types is left as an issue for future research.
Profile-based pretenuring
Authors: Blackburn Stephen M. , Hertz Matthew , Mckinley Kathryn S. , Moss J. Eliot B. , Yang Ting
Published: April 2007

Pretenuring can reduce copying costs in garbage collectors by allocating long-lived objects into regions that the garbage collector will rarely, if ever, collect. We extend previous work on pretenuring as follows: (1) We produce pretenuring advice that is neutral with respect to the garbage collector algorithm and configuration. We thus can and do combine advice from different applications. We find for our benchmarks that predictions using object lifetimes at each allocation site in Java programs are accurate, which simplifies the pretenuring implementation. (2) We gather and apply advice to both applications and Jikes RVM, a compiler and runtime system for Java written in Java. Our results demonstrate that building combined advice into Jikes RVM from different application executions improves performance, regardless of the application Jikes RVM is compiling and executing. This
build-time
advice thus gives user applications some benefits of pretenuring, without any application profiling. No previous work uses profile feedback to pretenure in the runtime system. (3) We find that application-only advice also consistently improves performance, but that the combination of build-time and application-specific advice is almost always noticeably better. (4) Our same advice improves the performance of generational, Older First, and Beltway collectors, illustrating that it is
collector neutral
. (5) We include an
immortal
allocation space in addition to a nursery and older generation, and show that pretenuring to immortal space has substantial benefit.
PPMexe
Authors: Drinić Milenko , Kirovski Darko , Vo Hoi
Published: April 2007

With the emergence of software delivery platforms, code compression has become an important system component that strongly affects performance. This article presents PPMexe, a compression mechanism for program binaries that analyzes their syntax and semantics to achieve superior compression ratios. We use the generic paradigm of prediction by partial matching (PPM) as the foundation of our compression codec. PPMexe combines PPM with two preprocessing steps: (
i
) instruction rescheduling to improve prediction rates and (
ii
) heuristic partitioning of a program binary into streams with high autocorrelation. We improve the traditional PPM algorithm by (
iii
) using an additional alphabet of frequent variable-length supersymbols extracted from the input stream of fixed-length symbols. In addition, PPMexe features (
iv
) a low-overhead mechanism that enables decompression starting from an arbitrary instruction of the executable, a property pivotal for runtime software delivery. We implemented PPMexe for x86 binaries and tested it on several large applications. Binaries compressed using PPMexe were 18--24% smaller than files created using off-the-shelf PPMD, one of the best available compressors
Abstract canonical inference
Authors: Bonacina Maria Paola , Dershowitz Nachum
Published: April 2007

An abstract framework of canonical inference is used to explore how different proof orderings induce different variants of saturation and completeness. Notions like completion, paramodulation, saturation, redundancy elimination, and rewrite-system reduction are connected to proof orderings. Fairness of deductive mechanisms is defined in terms of proof orderings, distinguishing between (ordinary) “fairness,” which yields completeness, and “uniform fairness,” which yields saturation.
Model-driven development of context-aware Web applications
Authors: Ceri Stefano , Daniel Florian , Matera Maristella , Facca Federico M.
Published: April 2007

Context-aware, multi-channel Web applications are more and more gaining consensus among both content providers and consumers, but very few proposals exist for their conceptual modeling. This article illustrates a conceptual framework that provides modeling facilities for context-aware, multichannel Web applications; it also shows how high-level modeling constructs can drive the application development process through automatic code generation. Our work stresses the importance of user-independent,
context-triggered
adaptation actions, in which the context plays the role of a “first class”
actor
, operating independently of users on the same hypertext the users navigate. Modeling concepts are based on WebML (Web Modeling Language), an already established conceptual model for data-intensive Web applications, which is also accompanied by a development method and a CASE tool. However, given their general validity, the concepts of this article shape up a complete framework that can be adopted independently of the chosen model, method, and tool.
Named entity translation matching and learning
Authors: Lam Wai , Chan Shing-Kit , Huang Ruizhang
Published: April 2007

This article introduces a named entity matching model that makes use of both semantic and phonetic evidence. The matching of semantic and phonetic information is captured by a unified framework via a bipartite graph model. By considering various technical challenges of the problem, including order insensitivity and partial matching, this approach is less rigid than existing approaches and highly robust. One major component is a phonetic matching model which exploits similarity at the phoneme level. Two learning algorithms for learning the similarity information of basic phonemic matching units based on training examples are investigated. By applying the proposed named entity matching model, a mining system is developed for discovering new named entity translations from daily Web news. The system is able to discover new name translations that cannot be found in the existing bilingual dictionary.
Interest-based personalized search
Authors: Ma Zhongming , Pant Gautam , Sheng Olivia R. Liu
Published: April 2007

Web search engines typically provide search results without considering user interests or context. We propose a personalized search approach that can easily extend a conventional search engine on the client side. Our mapping framework automatically maps a set of known user interests onto a group of categories in the Open Directory Project (ODP) and takes advantage of manually edited data available in ODP for training text classifiers that correspond to, and therefore categorize and personalize search results according to user interests. In two sets of controlled experiments, we compare our personalized categorization system (PCAT) with a list interface system (LIST) that mimics a typical search engine and with a nonpersonalized categorization system (CAT). In both experiments, we analyze system performances on the basis of the type of task and query length. We find that PCAT is preferable to LIST for information gathering types of tasks and for searches with short queries, and PCAT outperforms CAT in both information gathering and finding types of tasks, and for searches associated with free-form queries. From the subjects' answers to a questionnaire, we find that PCAT is perceived as a system that can find relevant Web pages quicker and easier than LIST and CAT.
Goal-oriented optimal subset selection of correlated multimedia streams
Authors: Atrey Pradeep K. , Kankanhalli Mohan S. , Oommen John B.
Published: April 2007

A multimedia analysis system utilizes a set of correlated media streams, each of which, we assume, has a confidence level and a cost associated with it, and each of which partially helps in achieving the system goal. However, the fact that at any instant, not all of the media streams contribute towards a system goal brings up the issue of finding the best subset from the available set of media streams. For example, a subset of two video cameras and two microphones could be better than any other subset of sensors at some time instance to achieve a surveillance goal (e.g. event detection). This article presents a novel framework that finds the optimal subset of media streams so as to achieve the system goal under specified constraints. The proposed framework uses a dynamic programming approach to find the optimal subset of media streams based on three different criteria: first, by maximizing the probability of achieving the goal under the specified cost and confidence; second, by maximizing the confidence in the achieved goal under the specified cost and probability with which the goal is achieved; and third, by minimizing the cost to achieve the goal with a specified probability and confidence. Each of these problems is proven to be NP-Complete. From an AI point of view, the solution we propose is heuristic-based, and for each criterion, utilizes a heuristic function which for a given problem, combines
optimal
solutions of small-sized subproblems to yield a potential near-optimal solution to the original problem. The proposed framework allows for a tradeoff among the aforementioned three criteria, and offers the flexibility to compare whether any one set of media streams of low cost would be better than any other set of higher cost, or whether any one set of media streams of high confidence would be better than any other set of low confidence. To show the utility of our framework, we provide the experimental results for event detection in a surveillance scenario.
Experimental analysis of dynamic all pairs shortest path algorithms
Authors: Demetrescu Camil , Italiano Giuseppe F.
Published: April 2007

We present the results of an extensive computational study on dynamic algorithms for all pairs shortest path problems. We describe our implementations of the recent dynamic algorithms of King [1999] and of Demetrescu and Italiano [2006], and compare them to the dynamic algorithm of Ramalingam and Reps and to static algorithms on random, real-world and hard instances. Our experimental data suggest that some of the dynamic algorithms and their algorithmic techniques can be really of practical value in many situations.