pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Understanding branch cuts of expressions

We assume some standard choices for the branch cuts of a group of functions and consider the problem of then calculating the branch cuts of expressions involving those functions. Typical examples include the addition formulae for inverse trigonometric functions. Understanding these cuts is essential for working with the single-valued counterparts, the common approach to encoding multi-valued functions in computer algebra systems. While the defining choices are usually simple (typically portions of either the real or imaginary axes) the cuts induced by the expression may be surprisingly complicated. We have made explicit and implemented techniques for calculating the cuts in the computer algebra programme Maple. We discuss the issues raised, classifying the different cuts produced. The techniques have been gathered in the BranchCuts package, along with tools for visualising the cuts. The package is included in Maple 17 as part of the FunctionAdvisor tool
Gesture-Based Applications for Elderly People

According to the literature, normal ageing is associated with a decline in sensory, perceptual, motor and cognitive abilities. When designing applications for elderly people, it is crucial to take into consideration the decline in functions. For this purpose, gesture-based applications that allow for direct manipulations can be useful, as they provide natural and intuitive interactions. This paper examines gesture-based applications for the elderly and studies that have investigated these applications, and it identifies opportunities and challenges in designing such applications
Design of a Visual Query Language for Geographic Information System on a Touch Screen

International audienceThis paper presents two spatial query methods for a Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on a touch screen. On conventional GIS interfaces SQL is used to construct spatial queries. However keyboard typing proves to be inefficient on touch screens. Furthermore, SQL is not an easy-learning language, especially for novices to GIS. To simplify query construction, firstly we have designed a map interaction based query method (MIBQM). This method allows users to make simple queries by selecting necessary layers, features and query operators directly on the interface. To allow users to construct complex queries, a sketch drawing based query method (SDBQM) is proposed. Spatial query concepts can be represented by sketches of some symbolic graphical objects. It is possible to add spatial conditions and non-spatial conditions to describe query concepts more precisely. An evaluation has been made to compare SQL and MIBQM. We have found that for simple queries, MIBQM takes less time and proves to be more user-friendly
Using Online Handwriting and Audio Streams for Mathematical Expressions Recognition: a Bimodal Approach

International audienceThe work reported in this paper concerns the problem of mathematical expressions recognition. This task is known to be a very hard one. We propose to alleviate the difficulties by taking into account two complementary modalities. The modalities referred to are handwriting and audio ones. To combine the signals coming from both modalities, various fusion methods are explored. Performances evaluated on the HAMEX dataset show a significant improvement compared to a single modality (handwriting) based system
Click me if you can! - \ud
How do users decide whether to follow a call to action in an online\ud
message?

Being able to predict how internet users react when confronted with a potentially dangerous call for action in an online message (such as an e-mail) is important for severalreasons. On the one hand, users have to be protected from fraudulent e-mails such as phishing.\ud
On the other hand, over-cautious users would be difficult to communicate with on the internet, so senders of legitimate messages have to know how to convince recipients of the authenticity\ud
of their messages. Extensive research already exists from both of these perspectives, but each study only explores certain aspects of the complex system of factors influencing users’ reactions. In this paper the results of our efforts to integrate the various existing findings into one comprehensive model are presented, along with the results of a preliminary qualitative evaluation of some of the model’s predictions using quantitative as well as qualitative measures\ud
and eye-tracking
A privacy-level model of user-centric cyber-physical systems

In an interconnected cyber-world, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) appear to play an increasingly important role in smart ecosystems. A variety of resource-constrained thin clients, such as sensors, RFIDs, actuators and smart devices, are included in the list of CPS. These devices can be used in a number of medical, vehicular, aviation, military and smart cities applications. A plethora of sensitive data is transmitted in insecure wireless or wired environments whilst adversaries are eager to eavesdrop, modify or destroy sensed data invading the privacy of user-centric CPSs. This work presents an overview and analysis of the most effective attacks, privacy challenges and mitigation techniques for preserving the privacy of users and their interconnected devices. In order to preserve privacy, a privacy-level model is proposed in which users have the capability of assigning different privacy levels based on the variety and severity of privacy challenges and devices' capabilities. Finally, we evaluate the performance of specific CPSs at different privacy-levels in terms of time and consumed energy in an experimental test-bed that we have developed. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
The mobile context framework: providing context to mobile applications

The spread of mobile devices in modern societies has forced the industry to create software paradigms to meet the new challenges it faces. Some of these challenges are the huge heterogeneity of devices or the quick changes of users’ context. In this scenario, context becomes a key element, enabling mobile applications to be user centric and adapt to user requirements. The Mobile Context Framework, proposed in this paper, is a contribution to solve some of these challenges. Using Web servers running on the devices, context data can be provided to web applications. Besides the framework’s architecture, a prototype is presented as proof of concept of the platform’s potential.This work is funded by ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER- 015095
Experiencing the world with archetypal symbols: A new form of aesthetics.

According to the theories of symbolic interactionism, phenomenology of perception and archetypes, we argue that symbols play the key role in translating the  information from the physical world to the human experience, and archetypes are the universal knowledge of cognition that generates the background of human experience (the life-world). Therefore, we propose a conceptual framework that depicts how people experience the world with symbols, and how archetypes relate the deepest level of human experience. This framework indicates a new direction of research on memory and emotion, and also suggests that archetypal symbolism can be a new resource of aesthetic experience design.Postprint (published version
Awesome foursome? The compatibility of situation awareness across drivers, riders, cyclists, and pedestrians

Collisions between distinct road users (e.g. drivers and motorcyclists) make a substantial contribution to the road trauma burden. Although evidence suggests distinct road users interpret the same road situations differently, it is not clear how road users’ situation awareness differs, nor is it clear which differences might lead to conflicts. This article presents the findings from an on-road study which examined driver, cyclist, motorcyclist and pedestrian situation awareness at intersections. The findings suggest that situation awareness at intersection is markedly different across the four road user groups studied, and that some of these differences may create conflicts between the different road users. The findings also suggest that the causes of the differences identified relate to road design and road user experience. In closing, the key role of road design and training in supporting safe interactions between distinct road users is discussed
Background to the development of a curriculum for the history of “cyber” and “communications” security

For any discipline to be regarded as a professional undertaking by which its members may be treated as true “professionals” in a specific area, practitioners must clearly understand that discipline’s history as well as the place and significance of that history in current practice as well as its relevance to available technologies and artefacts at the time. This is common for many professional disciplines such as medicine, pharmacy, engineering, law and so on but not yet, this paper submits, in information technology. Based on twenty five elapsed years of experience in developing and delivering Cybersecurity courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, this paper proposes a rationale and set of differing perspectives for the planning and development of curricula relevant to the delivery of appropriate courses in the history of cybersecurity or information assurance to information and communications technology (ICT) students and thus to potential information technology professionals
PKI Interoperability: Still an Issue? A Solution in the X.509 Realm

There exist many obstacles that slow the global adoption of public key infrastructure (PKI) technology. The PKI interoperability problem, being poorly understood, is one of the most confusing. In this paper, we clarify the PKI interoperability issue by exploring both the juridical and technical domains. We demonstrate the origin of the PKI interoperability problem by determining its root causes, the latter being legal, organizational and technical differences between countries, which mean that relying parties have no one to rely on. We explain how difficult it is to harmonize them. Finally, we propose to handle the interoperability problem from the trust management point of view, by introducing the role of a trust broker which is in charge of helping relying parties make informed decisions about X.509 certificates
Fast Detection of Multiple Textureless 3-D Objects

We propose a fast edge-based approach for detection and approximate pose estimation of multiple textureless objects in a single image. The objects are trained from a set of edge maps, each showing one object in one pose. To each scanning window in the input image, the nearest neighbor is found among these training templates by a twolevel cascade. The first cascade level, based on a novel edge-based sparse image descriptor and fast search by index table, prunes the majority of background windows. The second level verifies the surviving detection hypotheses by oriented chamfer matching, improved by selecting discriminative edges and by compensating a bias towards simple objects. The method outperforms the state-of-the-art approach by Damen et al. (2012). The processing is near real-time, ranging from 2 to 4 frames per second for the training set size  104
Biological models for active vision: towards a unified architecture

Building a general-purpose, real-time active vision system completely based on biological models is a great challenge. We apply a number of biologically plausible algorithms which address different aspects of vision, such as edge and keypoint detection, feature extraction,optical flow and disparity, shape detection, object recognition and scene modelling into a complete system. We present some of the experiments from our ongoing work, where our system leverages a combination of algorithms to solve complex tasks
The age of information in gossip networks

We introduce models of gossip based communication networks in which each node
is simultaneously a sensor, a relay and a user of information. We model the
status of ages of information between nodes as a discrete time Markov chain. In
this setting a gossip transmission policy is a decision made at each node
regarding what type of information to relay at any given time (if any). When
transmission policies are based on random decisions, we are able to analyze the
age of information in certain illustrative structured examples either by means
of an explicit analysis, an algorithm or asymptotic approximations. Our key
contribution is presenting this class of models.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
The topological dimension of type I C*-algebras

While there is only one natural dimension concept for separable, metric
spaces, the theory of dimension in noncommutative topology ramifies into
different important concepts. To accommodate this, we introduce the abstract
notion of a noncommutative dimension theory by proposing a natural set of
axioms. These axioms are inspired by properties of commutative dimension
theory, and they are for instance satisfied by the real and stable rank, the
decomposition rank and the nuclear dimension.
  We add another theory to this list by showing that the topological dimension,
as introduced by Brown and Pedersen, is a noncommutative dimension theory of
type I C*-algebras. We also give estimates of the real and stable rank of a
type I C*-algebra in terms of its topological dimension.Comment: 20 pages; minor correction
SIMS: self-adaptive intelligent monitoring system for supporting home-based heart failure patients

This paper presents our research work to develop an advanced Self-adaptive Intelligent Monitoring System (SIMS) to help patients, families and clinicians manage chronic conditions associated with heart failure more effectively at home. SIMS takes advantages of a number of advanced technologies from software intelligence, data/knowledge retrieval, data mining and database. SIMS is able to provide a number of advanced functions. It can effectively prioritize patients, provide automatic recommendation for checking frequency and risk assessment, and carry out correlation analysis in order to pinpoint relationships between external factors and the development of patient's heart condition overtime. All these functions can significantly reduce patients' burden for checking, build up their self-confidence of health and enhance their general quality of life.
An Accessible Chat Prototype for Screen Reader Users in Mobile Devices

[Poster] 15th International Conference on Human–Computer Interaction (HCI International 2013), Las Vegas (Nevada, USA), 21–26 July 2013Chats present accessibility problems for screen reader users. This work presents a prototype of an accessible chat for Mobile Devices (MD). The main aim of this research is to remove the accessibility barriers that screen reader users face when they use a chat in a MD. Thus, this prototype is based on the requirements which have been elicited considering background research and with the use of Software Engineering (SE) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) methods as well as accessibility standards and guidelines.This research work has been partially supported by MA2VICMR (S2009/TIC-1542) and MULTIMEDICA (TIN2010-20644-C03-01)Publicad
Dialog systems and their inputs

One of the main limitations in existent domain-independent conversational agents is that the general and linguistic knowledge of these agents is limited to what the agents' developers explicitly defined. Therefore, a system which analyses user input at a deeper level of abstraction which backs its knowledge with common sense information will essentially result in a system that is capable of providing more adequate responses which in turn result in a better overall user experience. From this premise, a framework was proposed, and a working prototype was implemented upon this framework. These make use of various natural language processing tools, online and offline knowledge bases, and other information sources, to enable it to comprehend and construct relevant responses.peer-reviewe
Colon Cell Image Segmentation Based on Level Set and Kernel-Based Fuzzy Clustering

This paper presents an integration framework for image segmentation. The proposed method is based on Fuzzy c-means clustering (FCM) and level set method. In this framework, firstly Chan and Vese's level set method (CV) and Bayes classifier based on mixture of density models are utilized to find a prior membership value for each pixel. Then, a supervised kernel based fuzzy c-means clustering (SKFCM) algorithm assisted by prior membership values is developed for final segmentation. The performance of our approach has been evaluated using high-throughput fluorescence microscopy colon cancer cell images, which are commonly used for the study of many normal and neoplastic procedures. The experimental results show the superiority of the proposed clustering algorithm in comparison with several existing techniques.Griffith Sciences, School of Information and Communication TechnologyFull Tex
A Possibilistic Query Translation Approach for Cross-Language Information Retrieval

In this paper, we explore several statistical methods to find solutions to the problem of query translation ambiguity. Indeed, we propose and compare a new possibilistic approach for query translation derived from a probabilistic one, by applying a classical probability-possibility transformation of probability distributions, which introduces a certain tolerance in the selection of word translations. Finally, the best words are selected based on a similarity measure. The experiments are performed on CLEF-2003 French-English CLIR collection, which allowed us to test the effectiveness of the possibilistic approach
NF-κB pathway\ud
activators as potential ageing biomarkers: targets for new therapeutic\ud
strategies.

Chronic inflammation is a major biological mechanism underpinning biological ageing process and age-related\ud
diseases. Inflammation is also the key response of host defense against pathogens and tissue injury. Current opinion\ud
sustains that during evolution the host defense and ageing process have become linked together. Thus, the large\ud
array of defense factors and mechanisms linked to the NF-κB system seem to be involved in ageing process. This\ud
concept leads us in proposing inductors of NF-κB signaling pathway as potential ageing biomarkers. On the other\ud
hand, ageing biomarkers, represented by biological indicators and selected through apposite criteria, should help to\ud
characterize biological age and, since age is a major risk factor in many degenerative diseases, could be\ud
subsequently used to identify individuals at high risk of developing age-associated diseases or disabilities. In this\ud
report, some inflammatory biomarkers will be discussed for a better understanding of the concept of biological\ud
ageing, providing ideas on eventual working hypothesis about potential targets for the development of new\ud
therapeutic strategies and improving, as consequence, the quality of life of elderly populatio
Learning agents with evolving hypothesis classes

It has recently been shown that a Bayesian agent with a universal hypothesis class resolves most induction problems discussed in the philosophy of science. These ideal agents are, however, neither practical nor a good model for how real science works. We here introduce a framework for learning based on implicit beliefs over all possible hypotheses and limited sets of explicit theories sampled from an implicit distribution represented only by the process by which it generates new hypotheses. We address the questions of how to act based on a limited set of theories as well as what an ideal sampling process should be like. Finally, we discuss topics in philosophy of science and cognitive science from the perspective of this framework
When almost is not even close: Remarks on the approximability of HDTP

A growing number of researchers in Cognitive Science advocate the thesis that human cognitive capacities are constrained by computational tractability. If right, this thesis also can be expected to have far-reaching consequences for work in Artificial General Intelligence: Models and systems considered as basis for the development of general cognitive architectures with human-like performance would also have to comply with tractability constraints, making in-depth complexity theoretic analysis a necessary and important part of the standard research and development cycle already from a rather early stage. In this paper we present an application case study for such an analysis based on results from a parametrized complexity and approximation theoretic analysis of the Heuristic Driven Theory Projection (HDTP) analogy-making framework
Defining and model checking abstractions of complex railway models using CSP||B

The safety analysis of interlocking railway systems involves verifying collision and derailment freedom. In this paper we propose a structured way of refining track plans, in order to expand track segments so that they form collections of track segments. We show how the abstract model can be model checked to ensure the safety properties, which must also hold in the corresponding concrete track plan, so that we will never need to model check the concrete track plan directly. We also identify the minimal number of trains that needs to be considered as part of the model checking, and we demonstrate the practicality of the approach on various scenarios. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
Building a customizable Business-Process-as-a-Service application with current state-of-practice

Application-level multi-tenancy is an increasingly prominent architectural pattern in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications that enables multiple tenants (customers) to share common application functionality and resources among each other. This has the disadvantage that multi-tenant applications are often limited in terms of customizability: one application should fit the needs of all customers.

In this paper, we present our experiences with developing a multi-tenant SaaS document processing system using current state-of-practice workflow technologies from the JBoss family. We specifically focus on the customizability w.r.t. the different tenant-specific requirements, and the manageability of the tenant-specific customizations. 

Our main experiences are threefold: (i) we were insufficiently able to modularize the activities and compositions that constitute the document processing workflow, (ii) we lacked support for describing tenant-level variations independently, and (iii) the workflow engine we employed is too centralized in terms of control, which hinders the flexibility and scalability of the document processing application.status: publishe
Modeling stable matching problems with answer set programming

The Stable Marriage Problem (SMP) is a well-known matching problem first introduced and solved by Gale and Shapley [7]. Several variants and extensions to this problem have since been investigated to cover a wider set of applications. Each time a new variant is considered, however, a new algorithm needs to be developed and implemented. As an alternative, in this paper we propose an encoding of the SMP using Answer Set Programming (ASP). Our encoding can easily be extended and adapted to the needs of specific applications. As an illustration we show how stable matchings can be found when individuals may designate unacceptable partners and ties between preferences are allowed. Subsequently, we show how our ASP based encoding naturally allows us to select specific stable matchings which are optimal according to a given criterion. Each time, we can rely on generic and efficient off-the-shelf answer set solvers to find (optimal) stable matchings