pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Environment reuse in the WAM

The WAM passes arguments to predicate calls in registers.  The TOAM
pushes arguments to predicate calls onto the execution stack. The WAM
compiles clauses at a time. The TOAM treats a predicate as the
compilation unit. These differences boil down to reuse of argument
registers versus reuse of stack frames. In the TOAM, the environment
reuse comes together with eager environment creation, while the WAM
creates environments lazily.
%
This warrants further investigation.
%
The tak/4 benchmark is used as an inital case study for better
understanding what one can expect from environment reuse for
deterministic predicates. Additionally, artificial programs are used
to amplify the findings.
%
The experiment shows the relative merit of reusing an environment
versus avoiding to create it: the latter seems a superior technique.
%
The expected performance gain is related to the form of the program
and the determinism of its predicates.status: publishe
Automatic test input generation for Mercury

In this work, we consider the automatic generation of test 
inputs for Mercury programs. We use an abstract representation of a 
program that allows to reason about program executions as paths in a 
control-ﬂow graph. Next, we deﬁne how such a path corresponds to a 
set of constraints whose solution deﬁnes input values for the predicate 
under test such that when the predicate is called with respect to these 
input values, the execution is guaranteed to follow the given path. The 
approach is similar to existing work for imperative languages, but has 
been considerably adapted to deal with the speciﬁcities of Mercury, such 
as symbolic data representation, predicate failure and non-determinism.status: publishe
Steiner t-designs for large t

One of the most central and long-standing open questions in combinatorial
design theory concerns the existence of Steiner t-designs for large values of
t. Although in his classical 1987 paper, L. Teirlinck has shown that
non-trivial t-designs exist for all values of t, no non-trivial Steiner
t-design with t > 5 has been constructed until now. Understandingly, the case t
= 6 has received considerable attention. There has been recent progress
concerning the existence of highly symmetric Steiner 6-designs: It is shown in
[M. Huber, J. Algebr. Comb. 26 (2007), pp. 453-476] that no non-trivial
flag-transitive Steiner 6-design can exist. In this paper, we announce that
essentially also no block-transitive Steiner 6-design can exist.Comment: 9 pages; to appear in: Mathematical Methods in Computer Science 2008,
  ed. by J.Calmet, W.Geiselmann, J.Mueller-Quade, Springer Lecture Notes in
  Computer Scienc
Driver Recognition Using Gaussian Mixture Models and Decision Fusion Techniques

In this paper we present our research in driver recognition. The goal of this study is to investigate the performance of different classifier fusion techniques in a driver recognition scenario. We are using solely driving behavior signals such as break and accelerator pedal pressure, engine RPM, vehicle speed; steering wheel angle for identifying the driver identities. We modeled each driver using Gaussian Mixture Models, obtained posterior probabilities of identities and combined these scores using different fixed mid trainable (adaptive) fusion methods. We observed error rates is low as 0.35% in recognition of 100 drivers using trainable combiners. We conclude that the fusion of multi-modal classifier results is very successful in biometric recognition of a person in a car setting.Publisher's Versio
Improving the Competitive Ratio of the Online OVSF Code Assignment Problem

'Algorithms and Computation' 19th International Symposium, ISAAC 2008, Gold Coast, Australia, December 15-17, 2008. ProceedingsOnline OVSF code assignment has an important application to wireless communications. Recently, this problem was formally modeled as an online problem, and performances of online algorithms have been analyzed by the competitive analysis. The previous best upper and lower bounds on the competitive ratio were 10 and 5/3, respectively. In this paper, we improve them to 7 and 2, respectively. We also show that our analysis for the upper bound is tight by giving an input sequence for which the competitive ratio of our algorithm is 7 − ε for arbitrary ε> 0
Interval tree clocks: a logical clock for dynamic systems

Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5401, 2008Causality tracking mechanisms, such as vector clocks and version vectors, rely on mappings from globally unique identifiers to integer counters. In a system with a well known set of entities these ids can be preconfigured and given distinct positions in a vector or distinct names in a mapping. Id management is more problematic in dynamic systems, with large and highly variable number of entities, being worsened when network partitions occur. Present solutions for causality tracking are not appropriate to these increasingly common scenarios. In this paper we introduce Interval Tree Clocks, a novel causality tracking mechanism that can be used in scenarios with a dynamic number of entities, allowing a completely decentralized creation of processes/replicas without need for global identifiers or global coordination. The mechanism has a variable size representation that adapts automatically to the number of existing entities, growing or shrinking appropriately. The representation is so compact that the mechanism can even be considered for scenarios with a fixed number of entities, which makes it a general substitute for vector clocks and version vectors
Computing and updating the process number in trees

International audienceThe process number is the minimum number of requests that have to be simultaneously disturbed during a routing reconﬁguration phase of a connection oriented network. From a graph theory point of view, it is similar to the node search number, and thus to the pathwidth, however they are not always equal. In general determining these parameters is NP-complete. We present a distributed algorithm to compute these parameters and the edge search number, in trees. It can be executed in an asynchronous environment, requires n steps, an overall computation time of O(n log n), and n messages of size log3 n + 2. Then, we propose a distributed algorithm to update these parameters on each component of a forest after addition or deletion of any tree edge. This second algorithm requires O(D) steps, an overall computation time of O(D log n), and O(D) messages of size log3 n + 3, where D is the diameter of the new connected component
Context as a non-ontological determinant of semantics

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/110.1007/978-3-540-92235-3_11Proceedings of Third International Conference on Semantic and Digital Media Technologies, SAMT 2008, Koblenz, Germany, December 3-5, 2008.This paper proposes an alternative to formal annotation for the representation of semantics. Drawing on the position of most of last century’s linguistics and interpretation theory, the article argues that meaning is not a property of a document, but an outcome of a contextualized and situated process of interpretation. The consequence of this position is that one should not quite try to represent the meaning of a document (the way formal annotation does), but the context of the activity of which search is part.
We present some general considerations on the representation and use of the context, and a simple example of a technique to encode the context represented by the documents collected in the computer in which one is working, and to use them to direct search. We show preliminary results showing that even this rather simpleminded context representation can lead to considerable improvements with respect to commercial search engines
CHR for imperative host languages

In this paper, we address the different conceptual and technical difficulties encountered when embedding CHR into an imperative host language. We argue that a tight, natural integration leads to a powerful programming language extension, intuitive to both CHR and imperative programmers. We show how to compile CHR to highly optimized imperative code. To this end, we first review the well-established CHR compilation scheme, and survey the large body of possible optimizations. We then show that this scheme, when used for compilation to imperative target languages, leads to stack overflows. We therefore introduce new optimizations that considerably improve the performance of recursive CHR programs. Rules written using tail calls are even guaranteed to run in constant space. We implemented systems for both Java and C, following the language design principles and compilation scheme presented in this paper, and show that our implementations outperform other state-of-the-art CHR compilers by several orders of magnitude.status: publishe
Improving modularity of interactive software with the MDPC Architecture

International audienceThe "Model - Display view - Picking view - Controller" model is a refinement of the MVC architecture. It introduces the "Picking View" component, which offloads the need from the controller to analytically compute the picked element. We describe how using the MPDC architecture leads to benefits in terms of modularity and descriptive ability when implementing interactive components. We report on the use of the MDPC architecture in a real application : we effectively measured gains in controller code, which is simpler and more focused
Considering context and users in interactive systems analysis

Although the take-up of formal approaches to modelling and reasoning about software has been slow, there has been recent interest and facility in the use of automated reasoning techniques such as model checking [5] on increasingly complex systems. In the case of interactive systems, formal methods can be particularly useful in reasoning about systems that involve complex interactions. These techniques for the analysis of interactive systems typically focus on the device and leave the context of use undocumented. In this paper we look at models that incorporate complexity explicitly, and discuss how they can be used in a formal setting. The paper is concerned particularly with the type of analysis that can be performed with them.This work was carried out in the context of the IVY project, supported by FCT (the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) and FEDER (the European Regional Development Fund) under contract POSC/EIA/26646/2004
Intelligent support for end-user web interface customization

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92698-6_19Proceedings of Selected Papers EIS 2007 Joint Working Conferences, EHCI 2007, DSV-IS 2007, HCSE 2007, Salamanca, Spain.Nowadays, while the number of users of interactive software steadily increase, new applications and systems appear and provide further complexity. An example of such systems is represented by multi-device applications, where the user can interact with the system through different platforms. However, providing end-users with real capabilities to author user interfaces is still a problematic issue, which is beyond the ability of most end-users today. In this paper, we present an approach intended to enable users to modify Web
interfaces easily, considering implicit user intents inferred from example interface modifications carried out by the user. We discuss the design issues involved in the implementation of such an intelligent approach, also reporting on some experimental results obtained from a user test.The work reported in this paper ha been supported by the European Training Network ADVISES, project EU HPRN-CT-2002-00288, and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCyT), projects TIN2005-06885 and TSI2005-08225-C07-0
A Comprehensive Model of Usability

Usability is a key quality attribute of successful software systems.
Unfortunately, there is no common understanding of the factors influencing
usability and their interrelations. Hence, the lack of a comprehensive basis
for designing, analyzing, and improving user interfaces. This paper proposes a
2-dimensional model of usability that associates system properties with the
activities carried out by the user. By separating activities and properties,
sound quality criteria can be identified, thus facilitating statements
concerning their interdependencies. This model is based on a tested quality
meta-model that fosters preciseness and completeness. A case study demonstrates
the manner by which such a model aids in revealing contradictions and omissions
in existing usability standards. Furthermore, the model serves as a central and
structured knowledge base for the entire quality assurance process, e.g. the
automatic generation of guideline documents.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure
The art of non-asserting: dialogue with Nagarjuna

In his excellent paper, Nagarjuna as anti-realist, Siderits showed that it makes sense to perform a connection between the position of the Buddhist Nagarjuna and contemporary anti realist theses such as Dummett’s one. The point of this talk is to argue that this connection is an important one to perform for one’s correct understanding of what Nagarjuna is doing when he criticizes the contemporary Indian theories of knowledge and assertion, first section, but as soon as the theories of argumentation are involved, this connection can be implemented in a better way from another anti realist perspective, namely the one of Dialogical logic (Erlangen school), in which the signification is given in terms of rules in a language game. The philosophical issues are to hold an interpretation of the type of assertion performed by Nagarjuna. We here aim at making a rational reconstruction of his chief claim 'I do not assert any proposition' in which a proposition is considered as the set of its strategies of justification. As for the last section, the point will be to apply these analyses to Buddhist practice. We will in this section consider the conventional character of human activities as the fact that any speech act is performed within a dialogue under ad-hoc restrictions; and the question of one’s progress in the soteriological path to liberation will be asked
Toward the Knowledge Circulation between Institutions and Public Audiences with Virtual Agents

This paper proposes the CINOVA framework that supports the knowledge circulation between the institutions which possess large amount of knowledge and would like to disseminate it to public audiences. This framework proposes the use of visualized knowledge management systems and virtual agents for knowledge presentations. Two VKMSs and two virtual agent based presentation systems cooperate on the framework with a common contents presentation media, knowledge cards. The prototype system is still being implemented but the two virtual agent based presentation systems are already deployed to our client, NFRI in real-world exhibitions andWeb based on-line services
Context awareness and uncertainty in collocated collaborative systems

Context awareness is a necessary feature for mobile collocated\ud
collaborative learning. In this paper we describe how requirements for contextaware\ud
cooperative learning activities are derived from the jigsaw technique\ud
augmented with the use of mobile devices, applications to support the activities\ud
of groups, and tools to provide context-awareness to detect group formation.\ud
The emergence of groups is detected based on the location of the students\ud
within the classroom, but this information has to be careful filtered to evaluate\ud
the degree of uncertainty and protect from erroneous estimations. A three-phase\ud
strategy to manage uncertainty by identifying possible sources of uncertainty,\ud
representing uncertain information, and determining how to proceed under the\ud
presence of uncertainty is used for this propose. These requirements are\ud
validated and confirmed in experiments with students working together in the\ud
classroom, measuring neutral or positive effects on learning and the usefulness\ud
of introducing mobile devices, group support applications, and context awareness.\ud
The ratio of unwanted interruptions to users made by the system is used to\ud
evaluate the utility of the system. Results show that by managing uncertainty,\ud
location estimation becomes more reliable, thus increasing the usefulness of the\ud
learning application.Postprint (published version
Relative roles of cortical and trabecular thinning in reducing osteoporotic vertebral body stiffness: A modeling study

While the effects of reduced bone density on osteoporotic vertebral strength are well known, the relative roles of cortical shell and trabecular architecture thinning in determining vertebral stiffness and strength are less clear. These are important parameters in investigating the changing biome-chanics of the ageing spine, and in assessing the effect of stiff-ening procedures such as vertebroplasty on neighbouring spinal segments. This work presents the development of a microstructural computer model of the osteoporotic lumbar vertebral body, allowing detailed prediction of the effects of bone micro-architecture on vertebral stiffness and strength.  \ud
Microstructural finite element models of an L3 human ver-tebral body were created. The cortex geometry was repre-sented with shell elements and the trabecular network with a lattice of beam elements. Trabecular architecture was varied according to age. Each beam network model was validated against experimental data. Models were generated to represent vertebral bodies of age <50 years, age 50-75y and age >75y respectively.  For all models, an initial cortical shell thickness of 0.5mm was used, followed by reductions in the age >75y models to 0.35mm and 0.2mm to represent cortical thinning in late stage osteoporosis.  Loads were applied to simulate in vitro biomechanical testing, compressing the vertebra by 20% of its height. \ud
Predicted vertebral stiffness and strength reduced with pro-gressive age changes in microarchitecture, demonstrating a 44% reduction in stiffness and a 43% reduction in strength, between the age <50 and age >75 models.  Reducing cortical thickness in the age >75 models demonstrated a substantial reduction in stiffness and strength, resulting in a 48% reduc-tion in stiffness and a 62% reduction in strength between the 0.5mm and 0.2mm cortical thickness models. Cortical thinning in late stage osteoporosis may therefore play an even greater role in reducing vertebral stiffness and strength than earlier reductions due to trabecular thinning
Distributed Management of Massive Data: an Efficient Fine-Grain Data Access Scheme

International audienceThis paper addresses the problem of efficiently storing and accessing massive data blocks in a large-scale distributed environment, while providing efficient fine-grain access to data subsets. This issue is crucial in the context of applications in the field of databases, data mining and multimedia. We propose a data sharing service based on distributed, RAM-based storage of data, while leveraging a DHT-based, natively parallel metadata management scheme. As opposed to the most commonly used grid storage infrastructures that provide mechanisms for explicit data localization and transfer, we provide a transparent access model, where data are accessed through global identifiers. Our proposal has been validated through a prototype implementation whose preliminary evaluation provides promising results
Geometry and Effort in Gestural Renderings of Musical Sound

As may be seen at concerts and in various everyday listening situa- tions, people often make spontaneous gestures when listening to music. We believe these gestures are interesting to study because they may reveal important features of musical experience. In particular, hand movements may give us information on what features are perceived as salient by listeners. Based on various current ideas on embodied cognition, the aim of this paper is to argue that gestures are integral to music perception, and to present research in support of this. A conceptual model of separating geometry and effort is presented in order to better understand the variety of music-related gestures we may observe, lead- ing up to some ideas on how to apply this conceptual model in present and future research.

The final publication is available at link.springer.com
Signs Workshop: the importance of natural gestures in the promotion of early communication skills of children with developmental disabilities

This article emphasises the importance of natural gestures and describes the framework and the development process of the “Signs Workshop” CD-ROM, which is a multimedia application for the promotion of early communication skills of children with developmental disabilities. Signs Workshop CD-ROM was created in the scope of Down’s Comm Project, which was financed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and is the result of a partnership between UNICA (Communication and Arts Research Unit of the University of Aveiro) and the Portuguese Down Syndrome Association (APPT21/Differences)
Sparse Multiscale Patches (SMP) for Image Categorization

International audienceIn this paper we address the task of image categorization using a new similarity measure on the space of Sparse Multiscale Patches (SMP). SMPs are based on a multiscale transform of the image and provide a global representation of its content. At each scale, the probability density function (pdf ) of the SMPs is used as a description of the relevant information. The closeness between two images is defined as a combination of Kullback-Leibler divergences between the pdfs of their SMPs. In the context of image categorization, we represent semantic categories by prototype images, which are defined as the centroids of the training clusters. Therefore any unlabeled image is classified by giving it the same label as the nearest prototype. Results obtained on ten categories from the Corel collection show the categorization accuracy of the SMP method
Parallel H.264 decoding on an embedded multicore processor

In previous work the 3D-Wave parallelization strategy was proposed to increase the parallel scalability of H.264 video decoding.\ud
This strategy is based on the observation that inter-frame dependencies have a limited spatial range. The previous results, however, investigate application scalability on an idealized multiprocessor. This work presents an implementation of the 3D-Wave strategy on a multicore architecture\ud
composed of NXP TriMedia TM3270 embedded processors. The results show that the parallel H.264 implementation scales very well, achieving a speedup of more than 54 on a 64-core processor. Potential drawbacks of\ud
the 3D-Wave strategy are that the memory requirements increase since there can be many frames in flight, and that the latencies of some frames might increase. To address these drawbacks, policies to reduce the number of frames in flight and the frame latency are also presented. The results show that our policies combat memory and latency issues with a negligible effect on the performance scalability.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Participatory approaches

This chapter aims to describe the diversity of participatory approaches in relation to social simulations, with a focus on the interactions between the tools and participants. We consider potential interactions at all stages of the modelling process: conceptual design; implementation; use; and simulation outcome analysis. After reviewing and classifying existing approaches and techniques, we describe two case studies with a focus on the integration of various techniques. The first case study deals with fire hazard prevention in southern France, and the second one with groundwater management on the Atoll of Kiribati. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the advantages and limitations of participatory approaches. (Résumé d'auteur