ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
An adaptive rate control algorithm for video coding over personal digital assistants (PDA)
Authors: Feng Pan, Z. G. Li, K. P. Lim, D. J. Wu, R. S. Yu, G. N. Feng
Venue: Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Multimedia and Expo - Volume 1 (2003)

With the recent development of third-generation communication technologies, encoding live video using a PDA and sharing it among friends has become a reality. However, the embedded processor inside a PDA is still not powerful enough and there are two major hurdles to overcome: (1) video coding needs to meet the rigorous constraint of the available computation capacity of a PDA; (2) In a PDA the computing power allocated to video coding may vary drastically (in bursts). In this paper, a new adaptive rate control algorithm is proposed for video coding over a PDA. This adaptive rate control scheme takes into account the time constraint of a PDA, and its bit allocation depends not only on the available data bits, but more importantly, on the available coding time. Experimental results show that, compared to the existing rate control scheme, the new algorithm can always achieve the maximum frame rate, maximize the utilization of the available bandwidth and computing power, increase the average PSNR, and improve the subjective perceptual quality of the reconstructed video.
Towards Deploying Model-Based Testing with a Domain-Specific Modeling Approach
Authors: Mika Katara, Antti Kervinen, Mika Maunumaa, Tuula Paakkonen, Mikko Satama
Venue: Proceedings of the Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference on Practice And Research Techniques (2006)

Model-based testing automating the generation of test cases is technically superior to conventional scripted testing. However, there have been difficulties in deploying the methodology in large scale industrial context. In this paper we present a domain-specific approach to model-based GUI testing that should be easier to adopt than more generic solutions. The method is based on keywords and action words that are considered as best practices in conventional GUI test automation. The basic idea is to record GUI events just like in capture/replay tools, but instead of producing scripts that can be hard to maintain, we produce sequences of keywords. These sequences are further transformed semiautomatically into Labeled Transition Systems where action words are used as transition labels. The action words model user behavior at a high level of abstraction while the keywords correspond to the GUI navigation. We also describe the associated tool set that we are developing and an example of using the approach.
Design and implementation of TruMan, a Trust Manager Component for Distributed Systems
Authors: Valentina Casola, Luigi Coppolino, Antonino Mazzeo, Nicola Mazzocca, Massimiliano Rak
Venue: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Security, Privacy and Trust in Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (2006)

Obtaining a measure of the trustability of a system in an open environment is a dif£cult task since trust concepts involve different quality criteria including non-technological aspects. Quality criteria and, above all, security mechanisms are commonly characterized by means of a set of statements making part of a policy. We are working on an evaluation methodology allowing automatic management for semi-formal policies and in this paper we propose a Trust Manager architecture (TruMan) enabling our methodology and an implementation of such architecture. We also present a proof-of-concept case study where Tru- Man is adopted in the context of Service Oriented Architectures.
Verifiable shuffles: a formal model and a Paillier-based three-round construction with provable security
Authors: Lan Nguyen, Rei Safavi-Naini, Kaoru Kurosawa
Venue: International Journal of Information Security (2006)

A shuffle takes a list of ciphertexts and outputs a permuted list of re-encryptions of the input ciphertexts. Mix-nets, a popular method for anonymous routing, can be constructed from a sequence of shuffles and decryption. We propose a formal model for security of verifiable shuffles and a new verifiable shuffle system based on the Paillier encryption scheme, and prove its security in the proposed dmodel. The model is general and can be extended to provide provable security for verifiable shuffle decryption.
Follow the Leader: Profiling Agents in an Opinion Formation Model of Dynamic Confidence and Individual Mind-Sets
Authors: Daniel Ramirez-Cano, Jeremy Pitt
Venue: Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (2006)

We present and analyse a model of opinion formation with dynamic confidence in agent-mediated social networks where the profiling of agents as leaders or followers is possible. An opinion leader is specified as a highly self-confident agent with strong opinions. An opinion follower is attracted to those agents in which it has more confidence. In our model, an agent i increases its confidence in another agent j based on how well j's opinion meets the criteria specified in i's mind-set. A mind-set represents the set of beliefs, attitudes, assumptions and tendencies that predetermine the way an agent evaluates a received opinion. It is observed that the opinion formation in a group of persuadable agents, with similar confidence in each other, can easily lead to groupthink with agents following each other and one (or some) following the opinion of a single opinionated agent (i.e. an opinion leader). However this can be prevented by having at least one more self-confident, opinionated agent with an alternative opinion. This shows that divergent opinions from opinionated agents inhibit consensus. Furthermore, it is seen that once an equilibrium in the opinion formation has been reached, paradigm shifts can occur as the result of the sudden appearance of alternative opinion leaders.
A Texas Hold'em poker player based on automated abstraction and real-time equilibrium computation
Authors: Andrew Gilpin, Tuomas Sandholm
Venue: Proceedings of the fifth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems (2006)

We demonstrate our game theory-based Texas Hold'em poker player. To overcome the computational difficulties stemming from Texas Hold'em's gigantic game tree, our player uses automated abstraction and real-time equilibrium approximation. Our player solves the first two rounds of the game in a large off-line computation, and solves the last two rounds in a real-time equilibrium approximation. Participants in the demonstration will be able to compete against our opponent and experience first-hand the cognitive abilities of our player. Some of the techniques used by our player, which does not directly incorporate any poker-specific expert knowledge, include such poker techniques as bluffing, slow-playing, check-raising, and semi-bluffing, all techniques normally associated with human play.
A Modified Quasi-Newton Method for Structured Optimization with Partial Information on the Hessian
Authors: L. H. Chen, N. Y. Deng, J. Z. Zhang
Venue: Computational Optimization and Applications (2006)

This paper develops a modified quasi-Newton method for structured unconstrained optimization with partial information on the Hessian, based on a better approximation to the Hessian in current search direction. The new approximation is decided by both function values and gradients at the last two iterations unlike the original one which only uses the gradients at the last two iterations. The modified method owns local and superlinear convergence. Numerical experiments show that the proposed method is encouraging comparing with the methods proposed in [4] for structured unconstrained optimization
Automatic Medical Image Annotation and Retrieval Using SECC
Authors: Jian Yao, Sameer Antani, Rodney Long, George Thoma, Zhongfei Zhang
Venue: Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (2006)

The demand for automatically annotating and retrieving medical images is growing faster than ever. In this paper, we present a novel medical image annotation method based on the proposed Semantic Error-Correcting output Codes (SECC). With this annotation method, we present a new semantic image retrieval method, which exploits the high level semantic similarity. For example, a user may query the system using an image of arm while he/she expects images of hand. This cannot be realized by traditional retrieval methods. The experimental results on the IMAGECLEF 2005 annotation data set clearly show the strength and the promise of the presented methods.
Experimental evaluation of topology control and synchronization for in-building sensor network applications
Authors: W. Steven Conner, Jasmeet Chhabra, Mark Yarvis, Lakshman Krishnamurthy
Venue: Mobile Networks and Applications (2005)

While multi-hop networks consisting of 100s or 1000s of inexpensive embedded sensors are emerging as a means of mining data from the environment, inadequate network lifetime remains a major impediment to real-world deployment. This paper describes several applications deployed throughout our building that monitor conference room occupancy and environmental statistics and provide access to room reservation status. Because it is often infeasible to locate sensors and display devices near power outlets, we designed two protocols that allow energy conservation in a large class of sensor network applications. The first protocol, Relay Organization (ReOrg), is a topology control protocol which systematically shifts the network's routing burden to energy-rich nodes, exploiting heterogeneity. The second protocol, Relay Synchronization (ReSync), is a MAC protocol that extends network lifetime by allowing nodes to sleep most of the time, yet wake to receive packets. When combined, ReOrg and ReSync lower the duty cycle of the nodes, extending network lifetime. To our knowledge, this research provides the first experimental testbed evaluation of energy-aware topology control integrated with energy-saving synchronization. Using a 54-node testbed, we demonstrate an 82-92% reduction in energy consumption, depending on traffic load. By rotating the burden of routing, our protocols can extend network lifetime by 5-10 times. Finally, we demonstrate that a small number of wall-powered nodes can significantly improve the lifetime of a battery-powered network.
Development of Virtual Simulator for Visual Validation of PLC Program
Authors: Chang Mok Park, Sachin Man Bajimaya, Sang C. Park, Gi Nam Wang, Jong Geun Kwak, Kwan Hee Han
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Inteligence for Modelling Control and Automation and International Conference on Intelligent Agents Web Technologies and International Commerce (2006)

Agile and flexible manufacturing systems make it mandatory that control programs have features such as agility, flexibility and reusability to meet fastchanging customer demands. Visual validation of control logics is one of the most sought-after ways to make the control logic more feasible for rapid product prototyping, concurrent engineering and flexible and agile manufacturing. This paper presents the development of virtual simulator to validate control programs (PLC) visually. For simplification, virtual cell is separated into generic model that resembles the operations and events of real cell and graphic model - a visualization module - which gives easy understanding of dynamic behavior of cell. The generic model is formalized using timed Finite State Automata. ROBOWORKS and IGRIP are used for graphic model. We developed tools for easy integration of proposed simulators with 3D graphic simulators and soft PLCs. We applied our system to real PLC applications and found that PLC programs can be easily validated by this system.
Queuing models of vehicle-based automated material handling systems in semiconductor fabs
Authors: Dima Nazzal, Leon F. McGinnis
Venue: Proceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation (2005)

This research explores analytical models useful in the design of vehicle-based Automated Material Handling Systems (AMHS) to support semiconductor manufacturing. The objective is to correctly estimate the throughput and move request delay. The analysis approach is based on queuing network models, but taking into account details of the operation of the AMHS. We analyze the vehicles movement in the system using a Markov chain. This analysis provides the essential parameters such as the blocking probabilities in order to estimate the performance measures. A numerical example is provided to demonstrate and validate the queuing model.
Crafting the mobile experience
Authors: Didier Chincholle, Maria Farrugia, Cristian Norlin
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services (2006)

This tutorial provides a deep insight into the issues that surround the development of mobile services, including the mobile user, the target device, the user experience and the mobile network supporting the delivery of services. The emphasis is on developing skills through methods and techniques that can be used to approach these issues from an interaction design point of view. The tutorial combines lectures segments, demonstrations and videos with hands-on exercises and group discussions. The content of the tutorial is based on several years experience gained through the research and development of mobile services at two of the mobile industry's largest companies.
Multi-faceted evaluation for complex, distributed activities
Authors: Dennis C. Neale, John M. Carroll
Venue: Proceedings of the 1999 conference on Computer support for collaborative learning (1999)

Computer-supported cooperative learning presents challenges for evaluation methodology: Learning events and learning outcomes are dispersed in time and space, making causal relationships difficult to identify. We are developing techniques to address these challenges including systematic sampling, collation of multiple evaluation methods and data, and the use of collaborative critical incidents. In this paper we overview and discuss this emerging methodology.
Properties of Confidentiality Requirements
Authors: Adeniyi Onabajo, Jens H. Jahnke
Venue: Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (2006)

There is a growing concern to ensure personal information is protected in the emerging information society, and this can be attributed to the increasing incident of identity theft and confidentiality breach. There are also potential risks associated with mishandling personal information in the healthcare sector, for example, medical conditions, which should remain confidential, can be disclosed to unauthorized persons, subsequently leading to negative social and psychological effects on the affected individuals. Many governments and international agencies have developed legislations and guidelines to prevent misuse of personal information by organizations in their jurisdictions. However, there is a challenge in properly integrating the complex nature and interaction of confidentiality concerns in many information systems. This is because the concerns involve multiple interests - the data owner, the data custodian, potential users of the system, as well as government agencies, and they can be conflicting. In addition, the requirements are usually specified in free text form, which can be ambiguous and difficult to translate to software systems. A better understanding of confidentiality requirement properties will assist information system designers and developers in specifying and analyzing the requirements, and ultimately result in good "confidentiality-aware" systems. This research is aimed at developing an approach for improved specification, modelling and analysis of confidentiality requirements. In this paper, we describe the study to identify key confidentiality properties, which will enable precise specification of confidentiality requirements.
An Energy-Efficient Dynamic Power Management in Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Chuan Lin, Yan-Xiang He, Naixue Xiong
Venue: Proceedings of the Proceedings of The Fifth International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (2006)

Wireless sensor networks play a key role in monitoring remote or inhospitable physical environments. One of the most important constraints is the energy efficiency problem. Power conservation and power management must be taken into account at all levels of the sensor networks system hierarchy. DPM (Dynamic Power Management) technology has been widely used in sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a new energy-efficient DPM, which is a modified sleep state policy developed by Simunic and Chdrakasan in [1] and combined with Optimal Geographical Density Control (OGDC) [22] to keep a minimal number of sensor nodes in the active mode in wireless sensor networks. Implementing dynamic power management with considering the battery status, probability of event generation and OGDC will reduce the energy consumption and prolong the whole lifetime of the sensor networks.
East Austin Stories Exchange: facilitating 'empathy' for differing perspectives
Authors: Damien Brockmann, Todd C. Reimer
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Learning sciences (2006)

The East Austin Stories Exchange is a web-based platform where junior high and high school students can share personal films about their community and empathize with the perspectives presented in other students' films. The goal of the project is to foster students' ability to incorporate perspectives different than one's own into a developing worldview. This poster presentation will present our needs assessment, design solutions, and demonstrate the Exchange's functionality.
A Novel Log-WT Based Super-Resolution Algorithm
Authors: Jianping Qiao, Ju Liu
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia (2006)

Most learning-based super-resolution algorithms neglect the illumination problem such as shadows and illumination direction changes. In this paper we propose a logarithmic-wavelet transform (Log-WT) based method to combine super-resolution and shadow removing into a single operation. First intrinsic, illumination invariant features of the image are extracted by exploiting logarithmic-wavelet transform. Then an initial estimation of high resolution image is obtained based on the assumption that small patches in low resolution space and patches in high resolution space share the similar local manifold structure. Finally the target high resolution image is reconstructed by applying the reconstruction constraints in pixel domain. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method simultaneously achieves singleimage super-resolution and image enhancement especially shadow removing.
Registration of Multiple Laser Scans Based on 3D Contour Features
Authors: Shaoxing HU, Hongbin ZHA, Aiwu ZHANG
Venue: Proceedings of the conference on Information Visualization (2006)

When 3D laser scanner captures range data of real scenes, one of most important problems is how to align all range data into a common coordinate system. In this paper, we propose an algorithm of registration of multiple range data from real scenes using 3D contour features. Firstly, 3D contour features are extracted using self-adaptive curve fitting, and a searching structure of octree is built from the 3D contour features. Secondly, using mahalanobis distance, the leaf nodes are matched between two scans to compute original transform matrix, and then transform matrix is refined step by step through ICP until a best transform matrix is obtained. Lastly, a new global registration strategy is given based on the nearby principle. The experiments of multiple range data registration from indoor scenes, outdoor scenes and ancient buildings are done, and the results show the proposed algorithm is robust.
Optimizing Repetitive Resource Accesses with Stateful Web Services
Authors: Huashan Yu, Zhuoqun Xu
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Services Computing (2006)

Many modern scientific applications consist of numerous executions of legacy programs. The repetitive but discontinuous resource access pattern in these applications causes challenge in solving them with Grid technologies. A stateful Web service model is proposed, which exploits the factory/instance pattern to schedule resources according to job submitters instead of submitted jobs. Each instance represents a customized execution environment that is exclusively accessed by one job submitter, and can be accessed repetitively to perform as many jobs as desired. At the same time, this model introduces an individualizing operation for every instance, which provides a mechanism to minimize the amount cost of remote data accesses required by all jobs submitted to the instance. This service model is exploited in enabling and optimizing repetitive resource accesses that occur in AS applications
Design patterns as higher-order datatype-generic programs
Authors: Jeremy Gibbons
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Generic programming (2006)

Design patterns are reusable abstractions in object-oriented software. However, using current mainstream programming languages, these elements can only be expressed extra-linguistically: as prose, pictures, and prototypes. We believe that this is not inherent in the patterns themselves, but evidence of a lack of expressivity in the languages of today. We expect that, in the languages of the future, the code parts of design patterns will be expressible as reusable library components. Indeed, we claim that the languages of tomorrow will suffice; the future is not far away. All that is needed, in addition to commonly-available features, are higher-order and datatype-generic constructs; these features are already or nearly available now. We argue the case by presenting higher-order datatype-generic programs capturing ORIGAMI, a small suite of patterns for recursive data structures.
Asymptotic Bayesian structure learning using graph supports for Gaussian graphical models
Authors: Guillaume Marrelec, Habib Benali
Venue: Journal of Multivariate Analysis (2006)

The theory of Gaussian graphical models is a powerful tool for independence analysis between continuous variables. In this framework, various methods have been conceived to infer independence relations from data samples. However, most of them result in stepwise, deterministic, descent algorithms that are inadequate for solving this issue. More recent developments have focused on stochastic procedures, yet they all base their research on strong a priori knowledge and are unable to perform model selection among the set of all possible models. Moreover, convergence of the corresponding algorithms is slow, precluding applications on a large scale. In this paper, we propose a novel Bayesian strategy to deal with structure learning. Relating graphs to their supports, we convert the problem of model selection into that of parameter estimation. Use of non-informative priors and asymptotic results yield a posterior probability for independence graph supports in closed form. Gibbs sampling is then applied to approximate the full joint posterior density. We finally give three examples of structure learning, one from synthetic data, and the two others from real data.