pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Visualising a Text with a Tree Cloud

International audienceTag clouds have gained popularity over the internet to provide a quick overview of the content of a website or a text. We introduce a new visualisation which displays more information: the tree cloud. Like a word cloud, it shows the most frequent words of the text, where the size reflects the frequency, but the words are arranged on a tree to reflect their semantic proximity according to the text. Such tree clouds help identify the main topics of a document, and even be used for text analysis. We also provide methods to evaluate the quality of the obtained tree cloud, and some key steps of its construction. Our algorithms are implemented in the free software TreeCloud available at http://www.treecloud.or
On Secure Implementation of an IHE XUA-Based Protocol for Authenticating Healthcare Professionals

The importance of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) has been addressed in recent years by governments and institutions.Many large scale projects have been funded with the aim to allow healthcare professionals to consult patients data. Properties such as confidentiality, authentication and authorization are the key for the success for these projects. The Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative promotes the coordinated use of established standards for authenticated and secure EHR exchanges among clinics and hospitals. In particular, the IHE integration profile named XUA permits to attest user identities by relying on SAML assertions, i.e. XML documents containing authentication statements. In this paper, we provide a formal model for the secure issuance of such an assertion. We first specify the scenario using the process calculus COWS and then analyse it using the model checker CMC. Our analysis reveals a potential flaw in the XUA profile when using a SAML assertion in an unprotected network. We then suggest a solution for this flaw, and model check and implement this solution to show that it is secure and feasible
Securing Remote Access Inside Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) that are being increasingly deployed in communities and public places provide a relatively stable routing infrastructure and can be used for diverse carrier-managed services. As a particular example we consider the scenario where a mobile device initially registered for the use with one wireless network (its home network) moves to the area covered by another network inside the same mesh. The goal is to establish a secure access to the home network using the infrastructure of the mesh. Classical mechanisms such as VPNs can protect end-to-end communication between the mobile device and its home network while remaining transparent to the routing infrastructure. In WMNs this transparency can be misused for packet injection leading to the unnecessary consumption of the communication bandwidth. This may have negative impact on the cooperation of mesh routers which is essential for the connection establishment. In this paper we describe how to establish remote connections inside WMNs while guaranteeing secure end-to-end communication between the mobile device and its home network and secure transmission of the corresponding packets along the underlying multi-hop path. Our solution is a provably secure, yet lightweight and round-optimal remote network access protocol in which intermediate mesh routers are considered to be part of the security architecture. We also sketch some ideas on the practical realization of the protocol using known standards and mention extensions with regard to forward secrecy, anonymity and accounting
Application Management Framework in User Centric Smart Card Ownership Model

The predominant smart card ownership model is the issuer centric, and it has played a vital role in the proliferation of the technology. However, recent developments of multi-application smart card technology lead to new potential ownership models. One of the possible models is the User Centric Smart Card Ownership Model. In this model, the ownership is with smart card users. To support user's ownership, we require a framework that can assist cardholders to manage applications on their smart cards. In this paper, we present such a framework for managing application securely on a smart card
On the power of mediators

We consider a problem at the intersection of distributed computing and game theory, namely: Is it; possible to achieve the "windfall of malice" even without the actual presence of malicious players'? Our answer to this question is "Yes and No". Our positive result is that for the virus inoculation game, it is possible to achieve the windfall of malice by use of a mediator. Our negative result is that for symmetric congestion games that are known to have a windfall of malice, it is not possible to design a mediator that achieves this windfall. In proving these two results, we develop novel techniques for mediator design that we believe will be helpful for creating non-trivial mediators to improve social welfare in a large class of games.Postprint (published version
A note on strictly competitive games

Strictly competitive games are a class of 2-player games often quoted in the literature to be a proper generalization of zero-sum games. Other times it is claimed, e.g. by Aumann, that strictly competitive games are only payoff transformations of zero-sum games. But to the best of our knowledge there is no proof of such claim. We shed light to this point of confusion in the literature, showing that any strictly competitive game is indeed a payoff transformation of a zero sum-game; in fact, an affine transformation. We offer two proofs of this fact, one combinatorial and one algebraic.5th International Workshop, WINE 2009, Rome, Italy, December 14-18, 2009. Proceeding
Betting on the Real Line

We study the problem of designing prediction markets for random variables with continuous or countably infinite outcomes on the real line. Our interval betting languages allow traders to bet on any interval of their choice. Both the call market mechanism and two automated market maker mechanisms, logarithmic market scoring rule (LMSR) and dynamic parimutuel markets (DPM), are generalized to handle interval bets on continuous or countably infinite outcomes. We examine problems associated with operating these markets. We show that the auctioneer's order matching problem for interval bets can be solved in polynomial time for call markets. DPM can be generalized to deal with interval bets on both countably infinite and continuous outcomes and remains to have bounded loss. However, in a continuous-outcome DPM, a trader may incur loss even if the true outcome is within her betting interval. The LMSR market maker suffers from unbounded loss for both countably infinite and continuous outcomes.Engineering and Applied Science
Gaming Dynamic Parimutuel Markets

We study the strategic behavior of risk-neutral non-myopic agents in Dynamic Parimutuel Markets (DPM). In a DPM, agents buy or sell shares of contracts, whose future payff in a particular state depends on aggregated trades of all agents. A forward-looking agent hence takes into consideration of possible future trades of other agents when making its trading decision. In this paper, we analyze non-myopic strategies in a two-outcome DPM under a simple model of incomplete information and examine whether an agent will truthfully reveal its information in the market. Specifically, we first characterize a single agent’s optimal trading strategy given the payoff uncertainty. Then, we use a two-player game to examine whether an agent will truthfully reveal its information when it only participates in the market once. We prove that truthful betting is a Nash equilibrium of the two-stage game in our simple setting for uniform initial market probabilities. However, we show that there exists some initial market probabilities at which the first player has incentives to mislead the other agent in the two-stage game. Finally, we brieﬂy discuss when an agent can participate more than once in the market whether it will truthfully reveal its information at its first play in a three-stage game. We find that in some occasions truthful betting is not a Nash equilibrium of the three-stage game even for uniform initial market probabilities.Engineering and Applied Science
Oracle-Assisted Static Diffie-Hellman Is Easier Than Discrete Logarithms

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comInternational audienceThis paper extends Joux-Naccache-Thomé's e-th root algorithm to the static Diffie-Hellman problem (sdhp). The new algorithm can be adapted to diverse finite fields by customizing it with an nfs-like core or an ffs-like core. In both cases, after a number of sdhp oracle queries, the attacker builds-up the ability to solve new sdhp instances unknown before the query phase. While sub-exponential, the algorithm is still significantly faster than all currently known dlp and sdhp resolution methods. We explore the applicability of the technique to various cryptosystems. The attacks were implemented in F_{2^1025} and also in F_p, for a 516-bit p
Decentralized Polling With Respectable Participants

International audienceWe consider the polling problem in a social network where participants care about their reputation: they do not want their vote to be disclosed nor their misbehaving, if any, to be publicly exposed. Assuming this reputation concern, we show that a simple secret sharing scheme, combined with verification procedures, can efficiently enable polling without the need for any central authority or heavyweight cryptography. More specifcally, we present DPol, a simple and scalable distributed polling protocol where misbehaving nodes are exposed with a non-zero probability and the probability of dishonest participants violating privacy is balanced with their impact on the accuracy of the polling result. The trade-off is captured by a generic parameter of the protocol, an integer k we call the privacy parameter, so that in a system of N nodes with B < sqrt(N) dishonest participants, the probability of disclosing a participant's vote is bounded by (B=N)k+1, whereas the impact on the polling result is bounded by (6k + 2)B. We report on the deployment of DPol over 400 PlanetLab nodes. The polling result suffers a relative error of less than 10% in the face of message losses, crashes and asynchrony inherent in PlanetLab. In the presence of dishonest nodes, our experiments show that the impact on the polling result is (4k + 1)B on average, consistently lower that the theoretical bound of (6k + 2)B
Time to extinction in a two-host interaction model for the macroparasite Echinococcus granulosus

An approximation is derived for the time to extinction in a sub-critical epidemic two-host interaction process for the macroparasite Echinococcus granulosus.\ud
The argument is based on coupling the epidemic model with a two-type branching process, and then to approximate the time to extinction for the branching process.\ud
It is shown that the approximate time is proportional to the logarithm of a weighted sum of the initially infectives in the host populations plus a Gumbel random variable.\ud
The accuracy of the approximation is illustrated
Foreground Text Extraction in Color Document Images for Enhanced Readability

Quite often it is observed that text information in documents is printed on colorful complex background. Smooth reading of text content in such documents is difficult due to background patterns and mix up of foreground text color with background color. Further the character recognition rate when such documents are OCRed, is low. In this paper we are presenting a novel approach for extraction of text information in complex color document images. The proposed approach is a three stage process. In the first stage the edge map is obtained utilizing the Canny edge operator. The edge map is split into blocks of uniform size and image blocks are classified as text or non-text. In each text block the possible text regions are identified and enclosed in tight bounding boxes using x-y cut on edge pixels. Further the text regions that are immediate adjacent to each other in vertical direction in which the character(s) are split horizontally are merged so as to enclose the character(s) fully in one text region. In the second stage certain amount of false text regions are eliminated based on a property of printed text. In the last stage the foreground text in each text region is extracted by unsupervised thresholding using the data of refined text regions. We conducted exhaustive experiments on documents having variety of background complexities with printed foreground text in any color, font and tilt. The experimental evaluations show that on an average 98.03% of text is identified. The processed document images showed better performance when OCRed compared with the corresponding unprocessed source document images
Beam-ACO based on stochastic sampling: a case study on the TSP with time windows

Selected papers at Learning and Intelligent Optimization: Third International Conference, LION 3, Trento, Italy, January 14-18, 2009Beam-ACO algorithms are hybrid methods that combine the metaheuristic ant colony optimization with beam search. They heavily rely on accurate and computationally inexpensive bounding information for choosing between different partial solutions during the solution construction process. In this work we present the use of stochastic sampling as a useful alternative to bounding information in cases were computing accurate bounding information is too expensive. As a case study we choose the well-known travelling salesman problem with time windows. Our results clearly demonstrate that Beam-ACO, even when bounding information is replaced by stochastic sampling, may have important advantages over standard ACO algorithms.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
ParadisEO-MOEO: A Software Framework for Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization

This chapter presents ParadisEO-MOEO, a white-box object-oriented software framework dedicated to the flexible design of metaheuristics for multi-objective optimization. This paradigm-free software proposes a unified view for major evolutionary multi-objective metaheuristics. It embeds some features and techniques for multi-objective resolution and aims to provide a set of classes allowing to ease and speed up the development of computationally efficient programs. It is based on a clear conceptual distinction between the solution methods and the problems they are intended to solve. This separation confers a maximum design and code reuse. This general-purpose framework provides a broad range of fitness assignment strategies, the most common diversity preservation mechanisms, some elitistrelated features as well as statistical tools. Furthermore, a number of state-of-the-art search methods, including NSGA-II, SPEA2 and IBEA, have been implemented in a user-friendly way, based on the fine-grained ParadisEO-MOEO components
High resolution spectroscopic characterization of the FGK stars in the Solar neighborhood

We present the most recent results of our ongoing long-term high resolution spectroscopic study of nearby (d ≤ 25 pc) FGK stars which aim is to characterize the local properties of the Galaxy, in particular the star-formation history. A through analysis has been carried out for 253 cool stars in the solar neighborhood. This includes radial and rotational velocities determinations, chromospheric activity levels inference, kinematic analysis, and age estimates. This study does not only shed new light on the issue of stellar formation history but also contributes to any present or future mission aiming to detect extra-solar planets. Exo-planets are likely to be found orbiting around nearby cool stars and their detection and characterization is highly dependent on the precise determination of fundamental stellar parameters such as age, activity levels. Therefore, our study is of paramount importance to ensure the success of any such mission
INSA scientific activities in the space astronomy area

Support to Astronomy operations is an important and long-lived activity
within INSA. Probably the best known (and traditional) INSA activities are
those related with real-time spacecraft operations: Ground station maintenance
and operation (Ground station engineers and operators); spacecraft and payload
real-time operation (spacecraft and instruments controllers); computing
infrastructure maintenance (operators, analysts) and general site services.In
this paper, we'll show a different perspective, probably not so well-known,
presenting some INSA recent activities at the European Space Astronomy Centre
(ESAC) and NASA Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex (MDSCC) directly
related to scientific operations. Basic lines of activity involved include:
Operations support for science operations; system and software support for real
time systems; technical administration and IT support; R \& D activities,
radioastronomy (at MDSCC and ESAC) and scientific research projects. This paper
is structured as follows: first, INSA activities in two ESA cornerstone
astrophysics missions, XMM-Newton and Herschel, will be outlined. Then, our
activities related to Science infrastructure services, represented by the
Virtual Observatory (VO) framework and the Science Archives development
facilities are briefly shown. Radio Astronomy activities will be described
afterwards, and finally, a few research topics in which INSA scientists are
involved will be also described.Comment: 6 pages. Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics V Proceedings of the VIII
  Scientific Meeting of the Spanish AstronomicalSociety (SEA) held in
  Santander, 7-11 July, 200
Magnetic fingerprints of solar and stellar oscillations

Waves connect all the layers of the Sun, from its interior to the upper
atmosphere. It is becoming clear now the important role of magnetic field on
the wave propagation. Magnetic field modifies propagation speed of waves, thus
affecting the conclusions of helioseismological studies. It can change the
direction of the wave propagation, help channeling them straight up to the
corona, extending the dynamic and magnetic couplings between all the layers.
Modern instruments provide measurements of complex patterns of oscillations in
solar active regions and of tiny effects such as temporal oscillations of the
magnetic field. The physics of oscillations in a variety of magnetic structures
of the Sun is similar to that of pulsations of stars that posses strong
magnetic fields, such as roAp stars. All these arguments point toward a need of
systematic self-consistent modeling of waves in magnetic structures that is
able to take into account the complexity of the magnetic field configurations.
In this paper, we describe simulations of this kind, summarize our recent
findings and bring together results from the theory and observations.Comment: Proceeding of VIII Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society,
  Santander 7-11 July 200
Optimization of Co-rotating twin-screw extruders using pareto local search

A Pareto Local Search (PLS) algorithm was developed and applied to
the screw configuration of co-rotating twin-screw extruders. This problem can be
seen as a sequencing problem where a set of different screw elements are to be sequentially
positioned along the screw in order to maximize the extruder performance.
The results obtained were compared with previous results obtained with a
Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA), which was previously developed
by the authors. These results show that the PLS algorithm, despite its conceptual
simplicity, is able to generate screws with good performance
Feature selection for bankruptcy prediction : a multi-objective optimization approach

In this work a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) was
applied for feature selection in the problem of bankruptcy prediction. The aim is to
maximize the accuracy of the classifier while keeping the number of features low.
A two-objective problem - minimization of the number of features and accuracy
maximization – is fully analyzed using two classifiers: Support Vector Machines
and Logistic Function. A database containing financial statements of 1200 medium
sized private French companies was used. It was shown that MOEA is a
very efficient feature selection approach. Furthermore, it can provide very useful
information for the decision maker in characterizing the financial health of a company
Why the Internet is so 'small'?

During the last three decades the Internet has experienced fascinating
evolution, both exponential growth in traffic and rapid expansion in topology.
The size of the Internet becomes enormous, yet the network is very `small' in
the sense that it is extremely efficient to route data packets across the
global Internet. This paper provides a brief review on three fundamental
properties of the Internet topology at the autonomous systems (AS) level.
Firstly the Internet has a power-law degree distribution, which means the
majority of nodes on the Internet AS graph have small numbers of links, whereas
a few nodes have very large numbers of links. Secondly the Internet exhibits a
property called disassortative mixing, which means poorly-connected nodes tend
to link with well-connected nodes, and vice versa. Thirdly the best-connected
nodes, or the rich nodes, are tightly interconnected with each other forming a
rich-club. We explain that it is these structural properties that make the
global Internet so 'small'
A new intersection model and improved algorithms for tolerance graphs.

Tolerance graphs model interval relations in such a way that intervals can tolerate a certain degree of overlap without being in conflict. This class of graphs, which generalizes in a natural way both interval and permutation graphs, has attracted many research efforts since their introduction in [9], as it finds many important applications in constraint-based temporal reasoning, resource allocation, and scheduling problems, among others. In this article we propose the first non-trivial intersection model for general tolerance graphs, given by three-dimensional parallelepipeds, which extends the widely known intersection model of parallelograms in the plane that characterizes the class of bounded tolerance graphs. Apart from being important on its own, this new representation also enables us to improve the time complexity of three problems on tolerance graphs. Namely, we present optimal O(nlogn) algorithms for computing a minimum coloring and a maximum clique, and an O(n2) algorithm for computing a maximum weight independent set in a tolerance graph with n vertices, thus improving the best known running times O(n2) and O(n3) for these problems, respectively
A dynamical point of view of Quantum Information: entropy and pressure

Quantum Information is a new area of research which has been growing rapidly
since last decade. This topic is very close to potential applications to the so
called Quantum Computer. In our point of view it makes sense to develop a more
"dynamical point of view" of this theory. We want to consider the concepts of
entropy and pressure for "stationary systems" acting on density matrices which
generalize the usual ones in Ergodic Theory (in the sense of the Thermodynamic
Formalism of R. Bowen, Y. Sinai and D. Ruelle). We consider the operator
$\mathcal{L}$ acting on density matrices $\rho\in \mathcal{M}_N$ over a finite
$N$-dimensional complex Hilbert space $\mathcal{L}(\rho):=\sum_{i=1}^k
tr(W_i\rho W_i^*)V_i\rho V_i^*,$ where $W_i$ and $V_i$, $i=1,2,...k$ are
operators in this Hilbert space. $\mathcal{L}$ is not a linear operator. In
some sense this operator is a version of an Iterated Function System (IFS).
Namely, the $V_i\,(.)\,V_i^*=:F_i(.)$, $i=1,2,...,k$, play the role of the
inverse branches (acting on the configuration space of density matrices $\rho$)
and the $W_i$ play the role of the weights one can consider on the IFS. We
suppose that for all $\rho$ we have that $\sum_{i=1}^k tr(W_i\rho W_i^*)=1$. A
family $W:=\{W_i\}_{i=1,..., k}$ determines a Quantum Iterated Function System
(QIFS) $\mathcal{F}_{W}$, $\mathcal{F}_W=\{\mathcal{M}_N,F_i,W_i\}_{i=1,...,
k}.