pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Modelling and verifying contract-oriented systems in Maude

We address the problem of modelling and verifying contractoriented systems, wherein distributed agents may advertise and stipulate contracts, but — differently from most other approaches to distributed agents — are not assumed to always behave “honestly”. We describe an executable specification in Maude of the semantics of CO2, a calculus for contract-oriented systems [6]. The honesty property [5] characterises those agents which always respect their contracts, in all possible execution contexts. Since there is an infinite number of such contexts, honesty cannot be directly verified by model-checking the state space of an agent (indeed, honesty is an undecidable property in general [5]). The main contribution of this paper is a sound verification technique for honesty. To do that, we safely over-approximate the honesty property by abstracting from the actual contexts a process may be engaged with. Then, we develop a model-checking technique for this abstraction, we describe an implementation in Maude, and we discuss some experiments with it
Towards Static Analysis of Functional Programs Using Tree Automata Completion

International audienceThis paper presents the first step of a wider research effort to apply tree automata completion to the static analysis of functional programs. Tree Automata Completion is a family of techniques for com-puting or approximating the set of terms reachable by a rewriting rela-tion. The completion algorithm we focus on is parameterized by a set E of equations controlling the precision of the approximation and influenc-ing its termination. For completion to be used as a static analysis, the first step is to guarantee its termination. In this work, we thus give a sufficient condition on E and T (F) for completion algorithm to always terminate. In the particular setting of functional programs, this condi-tion can be relaxed into a condition on E and T (C) (terms built on the set of constructors) that is closer to what is done in the field of static analysis, where abstractions are performed on data
An Online Fuzzy-Based Approach for Human Emotions Detection: An Overview on the Human Cognitive Model of Understanding and Generating Multimodal Actions

International audienceAn intelligent robot needs to be able to understand human emotions, and to understand and generate actions through cognitive systems that operate in a similar way to human cognition. In this chapter, we mainly focus on developing an online incremental learning system of emotions using Takagi-Sugeno (TS) fuzzy model. Additionally, we present a general overview for understanding and generating multimodal actions from the cognitive point of view. The main objective of this system is to detect whether the observed emotion needs a new corresponding multi-modal action to be generated in case it constitutes a new emotion cluster not learnt before, or it can be attributed to one of the existing actions in memory in case it belongs to an existing cluster
Yield Design of Periodically Heterogeneous Plates

International audienceThis work addresses the determination of the overall strength capacities of periodically heterogeneous plates within a yield design framework. Illustrative applications focus, notably, on reinforced concrete slabs in fire conditions. A homogenization procedure and related numerical tools are proposed to compute macroscopic strength criteria expressed in terms of generalized forces (membrane and bending solicitations). To this end, a yield design auxiliary problem is formulated on the representative three-dimensional unit cell and a numerical resolution by a static approach is presented, making use of simple 3D equilibrium finite elements. A particular emphasis is put on the link between the local strength criterion of steel and concrete and the resulting optimization problem, which can be formulated, either as a second-order cone programming (SOCP) problem or, more generally, as a semi-definite programming (SDP) problem. A first illustrative example of a concrete slab with a single array of steel bars will be used to validate the approach. Then, the influence of fire conditions on the strength capacities of reinforced concrete slabs will be investigated and numerical computations will be confronted to experimental results
Is Spacetime Countable?

Is there a number for every bit of spacetime, or is spacetime smooth like the
real line? The ultimate fate of a quantum theory of gravity might depend on it.
The troublesome infinities of quantum gravity can be cured by assuming that
spacetime comes in countable, discrete pieces which one could simulate on a
computer. But, perhaps there is another way? In this essay, we propose a
picture where scale is meaningless so that there can be no minimum length and,
hence, no fundamental discreteness. In this picture, Einstein's Special
Relativity, suitably modified to accommodate an expanding Universe, can be
reinterpreted as a theory where only the instantaneous shapes of configurations
count.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures. Illustrations by Marc Ngui. To appear in
  Foundations of Physics Frontiers Collections: It From Bit or Bit From It?
  Winner of 4th prize in FQXi Essay contes
Reality, No Matter How You Slice It

In order to reject the notion that information is always about something, the
"It from Bit" idea relies on the nonexistence of a realistic framework that
might underly quantum theory. This essay develops the case that there is a
plausible underlying reality: one actual spacetime-based history, although with
behavior that appears strange when analyzed dynamically (one time-slice at a
time). By using a simple model with no dynamical laws, it becomes evident that
this behavior is actually quite natural when analyzed "all-at-once" (as in
classical statistical mechanics). The "It from Bit" argument against a
spacetime-based reality must then somehow defend the importance of dynamical
laws, even as it denies a reality on which such fundamental laws could operate.Comment: Third Prize winner in 2013 fqxi.org essay contest, "It from bit, or
  bit from it?", and sequel to 1211.7081 ("The Universe is not a Computer"). 10
  pages, 3 fig
Learning Movement Kinematics with a Targeted Sound

International audienceThis study introduces an experiment designed to analyze the sensorimotor adaptation to a motion-based sound synthesis system. We investigated a sound-oriented learning task, namely to reproduce a targeted sound. The motion of a small handheld object was used to control a sound synthesizer. The object angular velocity was measured by a gyroscope and transmitted in real time wirelessly to the sound system. The targeted sound was reached when the motion matched a given reference angular velocity profile with a given accuracy. An incorrect velocity profile produced either a noisier sound or a sound with a louder high harmonic , depending on the sign of the velocity error. The results showed that the participants were generally able to learn to reproduce sounds very close to the targeted sound. A corresponding motor adaptation was also found to occur, at various degrees, in most of the participants when the profile is altered
Fragmentations with pitch, rhythm and parallelism constraints for variation matching

International audienceComposers commonly employ ornamentation and elaboration techniques to generate varied versions of an initial core melodic idea. Dynamic programming techniques, based on edit operations, are used to find similarities between melodic strings. However, replacements, insertions and deletion may give non-musically pertinent similarities, especially if rhythmic or metrical structure is not considered. We propose, herein, to compute the similarity between a reduced query and a melody employing only fragmentation operations. Such fragmentations transform one note from the reduced query into a possible large set of notes, taking into account metrical, pitch and rhythm constraints, as well as elementary parallelism information. We test the proposed algorithm on two prototypical ''theme and variations'' piano pieces by W. A. Mozart and show that the proposed constrained fragmentation operations are capable of detecting variations with high sensitivity and specificity
Understanding Coarticulation in Music

The term coarticulation designates the fusion of small-scale events, such as single sounds and single sound-producing actions, into larger units of combined sound and body motion, resulting in qualitative new features at what we call the chunk timescale in music, typically in the 0.5.–5 s duration range. Coarticulation has been extensively studied in linguistics and to a certain extent in other domains of human body motion as well as in robotics, but so far not so much in music, so the main aim of this paper is to provide a background for how we can explore coarticulation in both the production and perception of music. The contention is that coarticulation in music should be understood as based on a number of physical, biomechanical and cognitive constraints, and that coarticulation is an essential factor in the shaping of several perceptually salient features of music
Characterization of Reachable Attractors Using Petri Net Unfoldings

International audienceAttractors of network dynamics represent the long-term behaviours of the modelled system. Their characterization is therefore crucial for understanding the response and differentiation capabilities of a dynamical system. In the scope of qualitative models of interaction networks, the computation of attractors reachable from a given state of the network faces combinatorial issues due to the state space explosion. In this paper, we present a new algorithm that exploits the concurrency between transitions of parallel acting components in order to reduce the search space. The algorithm relies on Petri net unfoldings that can be used to compute a compact representation of the dynamics. We illustrate the applicability of the algorithm with Petri net models of cell signalling and regulation networks, Boolean and multi-valued. The proposed approach aims at being complementary to existing methods for deriving the attractors of Boolean models, while being %so far more generic since it applies to any safe Petri net
A Rule-Based Model of Base Excision Repair

International audienceThere are ongoing debates in the DNA repair community on whether the coordination of DNA repair is achieved by means of direct protein-protein interactions or whether substrate specificity is sufficient to explain how DNA intermediates are channeled from one repair enzyme to the other. In order to address these questions we designed a model of the Base Excision Repair pathway in Kappa, a rule based formalism for modeling protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions. We use this model to shed light on the key role of the scaffolding protein XRCC1 in coordinating the repair process
Issues in applying model based process improvement in the cloud computing domain

Cloud Computing offers organisations a range of benefits, both economic and technological.  However the decision to deploy a ap- plication or service to the cloud is a not  a trivial one.  Organisations need to be fully aware of not only the business requirements for a given application or service, but also the  technological requirements and or constraints of the cloud.  Model-based process assessment and improvement has been shown to support organizational change in different domains of application, but there are few reports of application in cloud computing.  As a first step in defining suitable models to support process management, the impact of working with cloud resources on existing standard processes has been examined using the techniques of behavior engineering.  A path for future work is proposed.Full Tex
The Preferred System of Reference Reloaded

According to Karl Popper assumptions are statements used to construct
theories. During the construction of a theory whether the assumptions are
either true or false turn out to be irrelevant in view of the fact that,
actually, they gain their scientific value when the deductions derived from
them suffice to explain observations. Science is enriched with assumptions of
all kinds and physics is not exempted. Beyond doubt, some assumptions have been
greatly beneficial for physics. They are usually embraced based on the kind of
problems expected to be solved in a given moment of a science. Some have been
quite useful and some others are discarded in a given moment and reconsidered
in a later one. An illustrative example of this is the conception of light;
first, according to Newton, as particle; then, according to Huygens, as wave;
and then, again, according to Einstein, as particle. Likewise, once, according
to Newton, a preferred system of reference (PSR) was assumed; then, according
to Einstein, rejected; and then, here the assumption is reconsidered. It is
claimed that the assumption that there is no PSR can be fundamentally wrong.Comment: The present topic won a prize awarded on November 2012 by the
  Foundational Question Institute (FQXi) in an essay competition: Which of our
  basic physical assumptions are wrong?; 16 pages, 1 figure. To be published in
  a special edition: The Frontiers Collection, Springer Publishe
Binary Elligator Squared

International audienceApplications of elliptic curve cryptography to anonymity, privacy and censorship circumvention call for methods to represent uniformly random points on elliptic curves as uniformly random bit strings, so that, for example, ECC network traffic can masquerade as random traffic. At ACM CCS 2013, Bernstein et al. proposed an efficient approach, called "Elligator," to solving this problem for arbitrary elliptic curve-based cryptographic protocols, based on the use of efficiently invertible maps to elliptic curves. Unfortunately, such invertible maps are only known to exist for certain classes of curves, excluding in particular curves of prime order and curves over binary fields. A variant of this approach, "Elligator Squared," was later proposed by Tibouchi (FC 2014) supporting not necessarily injective encodings to elliptic curves (and hence a much larger class of curves), but, although some rough efficiency estimates were provided, it was not clear how an actual implementation of that approach would perform in practice. In this paper, we show that Elligator Squared can indeed be implemented very efficiently with a suitable choice of curve encodings. More precisely, we consider the binary curve setting (which was not discussed in Tibouchi's paper), and implement the Elligator Squared bit string representation algorithm based on a suitably optimized version of the Shallue–van de Woestijne characteristic 2 encoding, which we show can be computed using only multiplications, trace and half-trace computations, and a few inversions. On the fast binary curve of Oliveira et al. (CHES 2013), our implementation runs in an average of only 22850 Haswell cycles, making uniform bit string representations possible for a very reasonable overhead—much smaller even than Elligator on Edwards curves. As a side contribution, we also compare implementations of Elligator and Elligator Squared on a curve supported by Elligator, namely Curve25519. We find that generating a random point and its uniform bitstring representation is around 35–40% faster with Elligator for protocols using a fixed base point (such as static ECDH), but 30–35% faster with Elligator Squared in the case of a variable base point (such as ElGamal encryption). Both are significantly slower than our binary curve implementation
Lower bounds for on-line graph colorings

We propose two strategies for Presenter in on-line graph coloring games. The
first one constructs bipartite graphs and forces any on-line coloring algorithm
to use $2\log_2 n - 10$ colors, where $n$ is the number of vertices in the
constructed graph. This is best possible up to an additive constant. The second
strategy constructs graphs that contain neither $C_3$ nor $C_5$ as a subgraph
and forces $\Omega(\frac{n}{\log n}^\frac{1}{3})$ colors. The best known
on-line coloring algorithm for these graphs uses $O(n^{\frac{1}{2}})$ colors
Efficient Enumeration of Induced Subtrees in a K-Degenerate Graph

In this paper, we address the problem of enumerating all induced subtrees in
an input k-degenerate graph, where an induced subtree is an acyclic and
connected induced subgraph. A graph G = (V, E) is a k-degenerate graph if for
any its induced subgraph has a vertex whose degree is less than or equal to k,
and many real-world graphs have small degeneracies, or very close to small
degeneracies. Although, the studies are on subgraphs enumeration, such as
trees, paths, and matchings, but the problem addresses the subgraph
enumeration, such as enumeration of subgraphs that are trees. Their induced
subgraph versions have not been studied well. One of few example is for
chordless paths and cycles. Our motivation is to reduce the time complexity
close to O(1) for each solution. This type of optimal algorithms are proposed
many subgraph classes such as trees, and spanning trees. Induced subtrees are
fundamental object thus it should be studied deeply and there possibly exist
some efficient algorithms. Our algorithm utilizes nice properties of
k-degeneracy to state an effective amortized analysis. As a result, the time
complexity is reduced to O(k) time per induced subtree. The problem is solved
in constant time for each in planar graphs, as a corollary
Media sharing across public display networks

"Lecture notes in computer science (LNCS)". Vol. 8867In this work, we consider the scenario of an open display network in which people can post their content to a potentially large set of public displays. This raises the key challenge of how to associate that content with the displays that may provide a more meaningful context for its presentation. The main contribution of this work is a novel understanding of how different properties of the media sharing scenarios may impact their perceived value. We have conceived 24 media sharing scenarios that represent different combinations of three independent variables: content locativeness, the personal nature of content and the scope in which content is being shared. We then invited 100 participants to express their perception of the appropriateness of those scenarios. The results indicate a clear preference for content that is both personal and locative, something that is in strike contrast with the prevailing content on current digital signage networks.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
They are looking... why not interacting? Understanding interaction around the public display of community sourced videos

In this paper, we study the extent to which the presentation of pedagogical videos on a public display at a communal space of the school is able to promote engagement around those videos. The videos were produced by students from the school itself. Using a mobile application, students could rate, create comments or simply bookmark videos. The evaluation of the platform is made through logs analysis, direct observation and a collective interview with end-users. The results show that even though the videos were able to attract many students to the display, there were not many of them that actually used the application to interact with content. In the final discussion, we explore some of the reasons that may justify this behavior and also the extent to which these videos have managed to foster students’ curiosity towards their topics
Extending Ambient Intelligence to the Internet of Things: New Challenges for QoC Management

Quality of Context (QoC) awareness is recognized as a key point for the success of context-aware computing solutions. At a time where the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, and Ambient Intelligence paradigms bring together new opportunities for more complex context computation, the next generation of Multiscale Distributed Context Managers (MDCM) is facing new challenges concerning QoC management. This paper presents how our QoCIM framework can help application developers to manage the whole QoC life-cycle by providing genericity, openness and uniformity. Its usages are illustrated, both at design time and at runtime, in the case of an urban pollution context- and QoC-aware scenario
Unified platform for M2M Telco Providers

Although many environments are powered by M2M solutions, users do not have a simple way to gather their collective knowledge and program devices’ behaviour. Also, Telco providers still lack proper components for enabling integrated services over their networks. We present the final architecture of the APOLLO project, which delivers a enhanced M2M platform encompassing sensors, management and applications platform for a major Telco provider. APOLLO builds on top of ETSI M2M specifications and rich service execution environments providing easy orchestration of services to end-users
Usability evaluation method for mobile applications for the elderly: a methodological proposal

Como parte inicial se propone una guìa general para Adultos mayores pero se descubrió que no sepuede incluir Adultos Mayores con personas con Down Syndrome en un solo grupo considerando Cognitives Disabilities como tema general. la necesidad de crear una guía enfocada a las personas con Syndrome de Down tomando en cuenta sus destresas y limitaciones.---ABSTRACT---  This  study  aims  to  propose  a  practical  methodology  to  measure  and  \ud
evaluate the usability of mHealth mobile \ud
applications, focusing on elderly users \ud
and  their  primary  limitations.  The  study  \ud
starts  with  an  analysis  of  existing  \ud
 methodologies and tools to evaluate usability and integrates concepts related to \ud
inspection  and  inquiry  methods  into  a  proposal.    The  proposal  includes  the    \ud
opinions  of  experts  and  representative  users;  their  limitations;  their  profiles;    \ud
the types of applications and their domains; the type of devices used; the appli-\ud
cability during the development process; and the accessibility. To facilitate the \ud
application  of  the  methodology  and  integrate  concepts  found  in  different  tools  \ud
into  one  application,  the  creation  of  \ud
a  software  tool  that  automates  the    \ud
evaluation process is proposed.  The applicability of the methodology and tools \ud
is evaluated and finally the results, conclusions and recommendations for future \ud
work are presented
The caregiver perspective: an assistive AAL platform

The Ambient Assisted Living area has spawned several projects that aim to help the user on his/her daily activities. The AAL4ALL (ambient assisted living for all) project aims to develop a unified ecosystem using fully compatible devices and services. The UserAccess platform is part of the AAL4ALL and has as a goal to provide assistance to a type of actor that is commonly forgotten in the Ambient Assisted Living area, the caregiver. This paper presents the archi-tecture, implementation, and interfaces, along with a brief analysis of caregiver’s needs and work related issues.Project "AAL4ALL", co-financed by the European Community Fund FEDER, through COMPETE - Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade (POFC). Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Lisbon, Portugal, through Project PEst-C/CTM/LA0025/2013 and the project PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2014.
Project CAMCoF - Context-aware Multimodal Communication Framework 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-028980