ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Motorcycle Detection and Tracking System with Occlusion Segmentation
Authors: Chung-Cheng Chiu, Min-Yu Ku, Hung-Tsung Chen
Venue: Proceedings of the Eight International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services (2007)

This paper proposes a vision-based motorcycle monitoring system to detect and tracking motorcycles. The system proposes an occlusion detection and segmentation method. The method uses the visual length, visual width. and Pixel Ratio to detect the classes of the motorcycle occlusions and segment the motorcycle from each occlusive class. Because the motorcycle riders must put on their helmets, the helmet detection or search method is used to make sure whether the helmet/motorcycle exits or not. Experiments obtained by using complex road scenes are reported, which demonstrate the validity of the method in terms of robustness, accuracy, and time responses.
Shibboleth: private mailing list manager
Authors: Matt Curtin
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th conference on USENIX Security Symposium - Volume 9 (2000)

We describe Shibboleth, a program to manage private Internet mailing lists. Differing from other mailing list managers, Shibboleth manages lists or groups of lists that are closed, or have membership by invitation only. So instead of focusing on automating the processes of subscribing and unsubscribing readers, we include features like SMTP forgery detection, prevention of outsiders' ability to harvest usable email addresses from mailing list archives, and support for cryptographic strength user authentication and nonrepudiation.
Information Security and Task Interdependence: An Exploratory Investigation
Authors: Kenneth J. Knapp, Thomas E. Marshall
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

This sequential qualitative-quantitative study investigates reported levels of task interdependence by certified information security professionals from organizations worldwide. The empirical tests show that information security ranked high in task interdependence compared to other information system related tasks. Additionally, comparing results from a different survey, information security work demonstrates higher levels of reported task interdependence than telecommunications software development work. We present the results of a demographic analysis of the survey taken by 936 certified information security professionals. Overall, the results suggest that information security work in organizations requires high levels of task interdependence. These findings have implications for researchers by identifying task interdependence-related topics for future study. For practitioners, these findings provide relevant insight into the nature of information security work in organizations.
Sprint: a middleware for high-performance transaction processing
Authors: Lásaro Camargos, Fernando Pedone, Marcin Wieloch
Venue: ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review (2007)

Sprint is a middleware infrastructure for high performance and high availability data management. It extends the functionality of a standalone in-memory database (IMDB) server to a cluster of commodity shared-nothing servers. Applications accessing an IMDB are typically limited by the memory capacity of the machine running the IMDB. Sprint partitions and replicates the database into segments and stores them in several data servers. Applications are then limited by the aggregated memory of the machines in the cluster. Transaction synchronization and commitment rely on total-order multicast. Differently from previous approaches, Sprint does not require accurate failure detection to ensure strong consistency, allowing fast reaction to failures. Experiments conducted on a cluster with 32 data servers using TPC-C and a micro-benchmark showed that Sprint can provide very good performance and scalability.
Efficient RTL Coverage Metric for Functional Test Selection
Authors: Jian Kang, Sharad C. Seth, Vijay Gangaram
Venue: Proceedings of the 25th IEEE VLSI Test Symmposium (2007)

For performance-critical microprocessors, efficient test-selection methods are needed for reusing a subset of functional validation tests to detect manufacturing defects. Our new input/output transition fault-coverage metric (TRIO) at the register-transfer level is shown to perform much better than current metric in test selection at only an incrementally higher computational cost. TRIO may also be used for testability analysis early in the design cycle.
The effectiveness of freshman recruiting strategies: an analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Authors: D. C. Woolston
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference,1997. on 27th Annual Conference. Teaching and Learning in an Era of Change. - Volume 01 (1997)

A steady flow of bright, talented and focused freshmen is a goal of any undergraduate engineering program. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, a diverse set of programs to reach out to promising high school students, their parents and teachers has evolved over the last decade. They include a freshman merit scholarship program, a by-invitation-only, day-long campus visit program for high-ability juniors and seniors and their parents, an Expanding Your Horizons program based on the national model for middle-school girls and NSF-sponsored teaching enhancement programs for high school math and science teachers and counsellors. Work in progress reported here analyzes the relative effectiveness of two of the University's most important undergraduate recruiting programs: their day-long campus visit program called ESTEAM, and their freshmen merit scholarship program.
An Optimal Node Selection Scheme in Multi-hop Wireless Network
Authors: Jian Jiang, Jian Ma
Venue: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops - Volume 02 (2007)

In this paper, a cooperative wireless multi-hop network is considered, cooperative diversity can be realized by allowing nodes close proximity to cooperate in transmission. In order to group receiver nodes into a cluster, it is necessary to select appropriate nodes. We introduce an optimal node selection algorithm based on MIMO antenna selection, this algorithm, combining with cooperative transmission strategy, gives an optimal node selection algorithm using convex optimization theory. Theoretical analysis and simulation indicate that this scheme can give good performance of maximizing the channel capacity through optimal node selection.
On Convergence in Elliptic Shape Optimization
Authors: Karsten Eppler, Helmut Harbrecht, Reinhold Schneider
Venue: SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization (2007)

The present paper aims at analyzing the existence and convergence of approximate solutions in shape optimization. Motivated by illustrative examples, an abstract setting of the underlying shape optimization problem is suggested, taking into account the so-called two norm discrepancy. A Ritz-Galerkin-type method is applied to solve the associated necessary condition. Existence and convergence of approximate solutions are proved, provided that the infinite dimensional shape problem admits a stable second order optimizer. The rate of convergence is confirmed by numerical results.
The Impact of Requirements Knowledge and Experience on Software Architecting: An Empirical Study
Authors: Remo Ferrari, Nazim H. Madhavji
Venue: Proceedings of the Sixth Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (2007)

While the relationship between Requirements Engineering and Software Architecture (SA) has been studied increasingly in the past five years in terms of methods, tools, development models, and paradigms, that in terms of the human agents conducting these processes has barely been explored. This paper describes the impact of requirements knowledge and experience (RKE) on SA tasks. Specifically, it describes an exploratory, empirical study involving a number of architecting teams, some with requirements background and others without, all architecting from the same set of requirements. The overall results of this study suggest that architects with RKE perform better than those without, and specific areas of architecting are identified where these differences manifest. We discuss the possible implications of the findings on the areas of training, education and technology.
How to build a low-cost, extended-range RFID skimmer
Authors: Ilan Kirschenbaum, Avishai Wool
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th conference on USENIX Security Symposium - Volume 15 (2006)

Radio-Frequency Identifier (RFID) technology, using the ISO-14443 standard, is becoming increasingly popular, with applications like credit-cards, national-ID cards, Epassports, and physical access control. The security of such applications is clearly critical. A key feature of RFID-based systems is their very short range: Typical systems are designed to operate at a range of 5-10cm. Despite this very short nominal range, Kfir and Wool predicted that a rogue device can communicate with an ISO-14443 RFID tag from a distance of 40-50cm, based on modeling and simulations. Moreover, they claimed that such a device can be made portable, with low power requirements, and can be built very cheaply. Such a device can be used as a stand-alone RFID skimmer, to surreptitiously read the contents of simple RFID tags. The same device can be as the "leech" part of a relay-attack system, by which an attacker can make purchases using a victim's RFID-enhanced credit card-despite any cryptographic protocols that may be used. In this study we show that the modeling predictions are quite accurate. We show how to build a portable, extended-range RFID skimmer, using only electronics hobbyist supplies and tools. Our skimmer is able to read ISO-14443 tags from a distance of ≈ 25cm, uses a lightweight 40cm-diameter copper-tube antenna, is powered by a 12V battery-and requires a budget of ≈$100. We believe that, with some more effort, we can reach ranges of ≈35cm, using the same skills, tools, and budget. We conclude that (a) ISO-14443 RFID tags can be skimmed from a distance that does not require the attacker to touch the victim; (b) Simple RFID tags, that respond to any reader, are immediately vulnerable to skimming; and (c) We are about halfway toward a full-blown implementation of a relay-attack.
"Dashboard": a knowledge-based real-time control panel
Authors: De Clarke De Clarke
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th conference on Annual Tcl/Tk Workshop 1997 - Volume 5 (1997)

This paper describes the use of Tcl and Tk to implement a "soft" or generic GUI for real time control systems. UCO/Lick Observatory is using Tcl/Tk in conjunction with a relational database to implement a suite of code for instrument control and observing at Keck Observatory. One Tcl/Tk application serves as both the GUI builder and the GUI. It relies on information from an authoritative database to configure its behaviour. The project illustrates the use of Tcl and Tk as the common language holding a complex project together, and the particular suitability of Tcl to database applications. It also illustrates a software design philosophy in which an online database engine is an integral part of software design and deployment, rather than the target of the application.
A new semi-analytical method for phase transformations in binary alloys
Authors: S. G. Ahmed
Venue: Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics (2007)

In the present paper, a new semi-analytical method is developed to cover a wide range of phase transformation problems and their practical applications. The solution procedure consists of two parts: first, determination of the position of the moving boundary named the homogenous part and second, determination of the concentration named the non-homogenous part. The homogenous part leads to a system of homogenous linear equations, based on the mathematical fact that a homogenous system has a non-trivial solution if the determinant of the coefficient matrix equals zero. This determinant leads to an ordinary differential equation for the moving boundary, and its solution leads to a closed form formula for the position of the moving boundary. The non-homogenous part transforms the governing equations to a non-homogenous linear system of equations, having three unknowns that appear in the concentration profile assumed in the beginning of the proposed method. Solution of the non-homogenous system leads to a value of these unknowns. Once these unknowns are computed, the concentration at any time and at any point can be found easily.
News Briefs
Authors: Linda Dailey Paulson, George Lawton
Venue: Computer (2007)

Topics covered include a prototype for a low-cost holographic display system, a system that tests spammers' patience, the efforts of a group that is working on open source interoperability, and a company that cleans up after online messes.
Modeling lexical tones for mandarin large vocabulary continuous speech recognition
Authors: Mari Ostendorf
Venue:  (2006)

Tones in Mandarin carry lexical meaning to distinguish ambiguous words. Therefore, some representation of tone is considered to be an important component of an automatic Mandarin speech recognition system. In this dissertation, we propose several new strategies for tone modeling and explore their effectiveness in state-of-the-art HMM-based Mandarin large vocabulary speech recognition systems in two domains: conversational telephone speech and broadcast news. A scientific study of tonal patterns in different domains is performed first, showing the different levels of tone coarticulation effects. Then we investigate two classes of approaches to tone modeling for speech recognition: embedded and explicit tone modeling. In embedded tone modeling, a novel spline interpolation algorithm is proposed for continuation of the F 0 contour in unvoiced regions, and more effective pitch features are extracted from the interpolated F0 contour. Since tones span syllables rather than phonetic units, we also investigate the use of a multi-layer perceptron and long-term F0 windows to extract tone-related posterior probabilities for acoustic modeling. Experiments reveal the new tone features can improve the recognition performance significantly. To address the different natures of spectral and tone features, multi-stream adaptation is also explored. To further exploit the suprasegmental nature of tones, we combine explicit tone modeling with the embedded tone modeling by lattice rescoring. Explicit tone models allow the use of variable windows to synchronize feature extraction with the syllable. Oracle experiments reveal that there is substantial room for improvement by adding explicit tone modeling (30% reduction in character error rate). Pursuing that potential improvement, syllable-level tone models are first trained and used to provide an extra knowledge source in the lattice. Then we extend the syllable-level tone modeling to word-level modeling with a hierarchical backoff. Experimental results show the proposed word-level tone modeling outperforms the syllable-level modeling consistently and leads to significant gains over embedded tone modeling alone. An important aspect of this work is that the methods are evaluated in the context of a high performance, continuous speech recognition system. Hence, our development of two state-of-the-art Mandarin large vocabulary speech recognition systems to incorporate the tope modeling techniques is also described.
Error Estimation for Reduced-Order Models of Dynamical Systems
Authors: Chris Homescu, Linda R. Petzold, Radu Serban
Venue: SIAM Review (2007)

The use of reduced-order models to describe a dynamical system is pervasive in science and engineering. Often these models are used without an estimate of their error or range of validity. In this paper we consider dynamical systems and reduced models built using proper orthogonal decomposition. We show how to compute estimates and bounds for these errors by a combination of small sample statistical condition estimation and error estimation using the adjoint method. Most important, the proposed approach allows the assessment of regions of validity for reduced models, i.e., ranges of perturbations in the original system over which the reduced model is still appropriate. Numerical examples validate our approach: the error norm estimates approximate well the forward error, while the derived bounds are within an order of magnitude.
An optimum algorithm for compacting error traces for efficient functional debugging
Authors: Chia-Chih Yen, Jing-Yang Jou
Venue: Proceedings of the High-Level Design Validation and Test Workshop, 2005. on Tenth IEEE International (2005)

Diagnosing counterexamples with error traces has acted as one of the most critical steps in functional verification. Unfortunately, error traces are normally very lengthy such that designers need to spend considerable effort to understand them. To alleviate designers' burden for debugging, we present a SAT-based algorithm for reducing the lengths of error traces. The algorithm performs the paradigm of binary search algorithm to halve the search space recursively. Furthermore, it applies a theorem to guarantee to gain the shortest lengths for the error traces. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach greatly surpasses previous work and indeed has the optimum solutions.
Security Objectives within a Security Testing Case Study
Authors: Kaarina Karppinen, Reijo Savola, Mikko Rapeli, Esa Tikkala
Venue: Proceedings of the The Second International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (2007)

Obviously, there is a need for automated information security analysis, validation, evaluation and testing approaches. Unfortunately, there is no state-of-art approach to carrying out information security evaluation in a systematic way. Information security evaluation of software-intensive and telecommunications systems typically relies heavily on the experience of the security professionals. Requirements are within the focus of the information security evaluation process. Information security requirements can be based on iterative risk, threat and vulnerability analyses, and technical and architectural information. There is a need for more practical ways to carry out this iterative process. In this paper we discuss security evaluation process, security objectives and security requirements from the basis of the experiences of a security testing project.
Quantum versus Classical Proofs and Advice
Authors: Scott Aaronson, Greg Kuperberg
Venue: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity (2007)

This paper studies whether quantum proofs are more powerful than classical proofs, or in complexity terms, whether QMA = QCMA. We prove three results about this question. First, we give a "quantum oracle separation" between QMA and QCMA. More concretely, we show that any quantum algorithm needs \Omega \left( {\sqrt {\frac{{2^n }} {{m + 1}}} } \right) queries to find an n-qubit "marked state" \left| {\left. {\not \upsilon } \right\rangle } \right., even if given an m-bit classical description of \left| {\left. {\not \upsilon } \right\rangle } \right. together with a quantum black box that recognizes \left| {\left. {\not \upsilon } \right\rangle } \right.. Second, we give an explicit QCMA protocol that nearly achieves this lower bound. Third, we show that, in the one previously-known case where quantum proofs seemed to provide an exponential advantage, classical proofs are basically just as powerful. In particular, Watrous gave a QMA protocol for verifying non-membership in finite groups. Under plausible group-theoretic assumptions, we give a QCMA protocol for the same problem. Even with no assumptions, our protocol makes only polynomially many queries to the group oracle. We end with some conjectures about quantum versus classical oracles, and about the possibility of a classical oracle separation between QMA and QCMA.
Theoretical bounds on control-plane self-monitoring in routing protocols
Authors: Raj Kumar Rajendran, Vishal Misra, Dan Rubenstein
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems (2007)

The distributed routing protocols in use today promise to operate correctly only if all nodes implement the protocol faithfully. A small insignificant set of nodes have, in the past, brought an entire network to a standstill by reporting incorrect route information. The damage caused by these erroneous reports, in some instances, could have been contained since incorrect route reports sometimes reveal themselves as inconsistencies in the state-information of correctly functioning nodes. By checking for such inconsitencies and taking preventive action, such as disregarding selected route-reports, a correctly functioning node could have limited the damage caused by the malfunctioning nodes. Our theoretical study attempts to understand when a correctly functioning node can, by analysing its routing-state, detect that some node is misimplementing route selection. We present a methodology, called Strong-Detection that helps answer the question. We then apply Strong-Detection to three classes of routing protocols: distance-vector, path-vector, and link-state. For each class, we derive low-complexity self-monitoring algorithms that take as input the routing state and output whether any detectable anomalies exist. We then use these algorithms to compare and contrast the self-monitoring power ofthese different classes of protocols in relation to the complexity of the irrouting-state.
The ECSEL's integrated approach to industry-academe relations
Authors: B. Liaw
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference on 1995. Proceedings., 1995 vol 1. - Volume 01 (1995)

ECSEL, a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded coalition for engineering education, has developed a strong industry tie with a network of industrial partners. The involvement of these partners in the ECSEL project has been voluminous and can be summarized in three words: breadth, depth and continuity. Examples of their efforts are: providing projects for interdisciplinary integration of design; full partnership in the planning, development and implementation of courses; serving on the Industry Advisory Board; hosting tours of manufacturing plants; donation of equipment and software; offering summer co-op opportunities, etc. In short, their contributions include cash, materials, personnel time and, most importantly, their expertise in real-life product development, a task that a new engineering graduate is expected to tackle when entering industry.
Testing of a LIGA-microspectrometer for monitoring dissolved nickel concentration when etching nickel and its alloys in aqueous ferric chloride solutions
Authors: D. M. Allen, H. J. A. Almond, D. Boubal
Venue: Proceedings of the Symposium on Design, Test, Integration and Packaging of MEMS/MOEMS (2003)

In the photochemical machining of micro-parts from nickel-containing alloys, a solution of ferric chloride is used as the etchant. As the alloy is dissolved into solution, the concentration of dissolved nickel will increase to a point where the surface finish of the etched parts will be affected adversely and become rougher. To control part quality and reduce the number of defective parts, it is therefore necessary to monitor the build-up of nickel ions on-line. A miniature, commercial microspectrometer has been evaluated for its suitability to monitor the nickel concentration. The microspectrometer has been shown to be cost-effective and is capable of measuring the concentration of nickel ions to /spl plusmn/1 g/l.