ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Increasing accessibility by pooling digital resources
Authors: Steve Cushion
Venue: ReCALL (2004)

There are now many CALL authoring packages that can create interactive websites and a large number of language teachers are writing materials for the whole range of such packages. Currently, each product stores its data in different formats thus hindering interoperability, pooling of digital resources and moving between software packages based in different technology. The use of Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) for data storage goes a long way to solve this problem and allows for the easy conversion of exercises. Starting from a desire to develop a common format between Hot Potatoes, WELTS (part of the WELL project) and the Interactive Language Learning package from London Metropolitan University, a new version of the Interactive Language Learning software, now renamed Guildhall Interactive Software for Multimedia On-line (GISMO), has made such conversion possible. Given the immense resources required to develop the critical mass of material required to make online CALL relevant to an individual&rsquo;s teaching practice, such a common approach is required to facilitate the pooling of resources. Should a bureaucratic or financial decision in an institution result in a change of software, teachers need to be able to easily convert their legacy material. XML technology can facilitate interoperability, thereby increasing potential accessibility by allowing teachers and students to have the use of a greater amount of pedagogical material. It is further proposed, using these developments, to create a large pool of exercises for practice and assessment that is independent of the delivery approach employed. This will obviate the need for teachers to keep reproducing basic language learning material and allow for the expansion of online CALL into more imaginative areas. This possibility introduces the question of standards within XML and whether it is necessary to further specify how the material is stored, perhaps using a standard such as the &lsquo;IMS Question & Test Interoperability Specification&rsquo; or whether XML is a sufficient standard in itself.
Lower bounds for linear degeneracy testing
Authors: Nir Ailon, Bernard Chazelle
Venue: Proceedings of the thirty-sixth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing (2004)

In the late nineties Erickson proved a remarkable lower bound on the decision tree complexity of one of the central problems of computational geometry: given n numbers, do any r of them add up to 0? His lower bound of Ω(n⌈r/2⌉), for any fixed r, is optimal if the polynomials at the nodes are linear and at most r-variate. We generalize his bound to s-variate polynomials for s>>r. Erickson's bound decays quickly as r grows and never reaches above pseudo-polynomial: we provide an exponential improvement. Our arguments are based on three ideas: (i) a geometrization of Erickson's proof technique; (ii) the use of error-correcting codes; and (iii) a tensor product construction for permutation matrices.
Evaluation of the real and perceived value of automatic and interactive query expansion
Authors: Yael Nemeth, Bracha Shapira, Meirav Taeib-Maimon
Venue: Proceedings of the 27th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval (2004)

The paper describes a user study examining methods for improving users queries, specifically interactive and automatic query expansion and advanced search options. The user study includes subjective and objective evaluation of the effect of the above methods and a comparison between the real and perceived effect.
DesCOTS: A Software System for Selecting COTS Components
Authors: Gemma Grau, Juan Pablo Carvallo, Xavier Franch, Carme Quer
Venue: Proceedings of the 30th EUROMICRO Conference (2004)

Selection of commercial-off-the-shelf software components (COTS components) has a growing importance in software engineering. Unfortunately, selection projects have a high risk of ending up into abandonment or yielding an incorrect selection. The use of some software engineering practices such as the definition of quality models can reduce this risk. We defined a process for COTS components selection based on the use of quality models and we started to apply it in academic and industrial cases. The need of having a tool to support this process arose and, although some tools already exist to partially support the involved activities, none of them was suitable enough. Because of this we developed DesCOTS, a software system that embraces several tools that interact to support the different activities of our process. The system has been designed taking into account not only functional concerns but also non-functional aspects such as reusability, interoperability and portability. We present in this paper the different subsystems of DesCOTS and discuss about their applicability.
Adaptive Strip Compression for Panorama Video Streaming
Authors: Bo Youn Kim, Kyung Ho Jang, Soon Ki Jung
Venue: Proceedings of the Computer Graphics International (2004)

In a traditional streaming system, the field of view(FOV) of an image is limited based on the FOV of thecamera. One solution is the use of a pan/tilt camera,yet this is difficult for multiple clients to handle, plusthere is a delay between the client and the server dueto camera motion. Therefore, to solve these problems,a new streaming system is proposed that usespanorama image. However, the server does notcompress the whole panorama image, which wouldinvolve sending huge amounts of data through theInternet. Instead, only parts of the panorama imageare compressed and transmitted based on thenavigation requests of the client, thereby reducing thecompression burden on the server.
Introduction to logical information systems
Authors: S. Ferré, O. Ridoux
Venue: Information Processing and Management: an International Journal (2004)

Logical information systems (LIS) use logic in a uniform way to describe their contents, to query it, to navigate through it, to analyze it, and to maintain it. They can be given an abstract specification that does not depend on the choice of a particular logic, and concrete instances can be obtained by instantiating this specification with a particular logic. In fact, a logic plays in a LIS the role of a schema in databases. We present the principles of LIS, the constraints they impose on the expression of logics, and hints for their effective implementation.
Introducing assistive technology in an HCI course
Authors: Blaise W. Liffick
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education (2004)

This poster describes part 1 of the 2-year project "Integrating Assistive Technology into an Undergraduate Computer Science Curriculum from an HCI Approach," funded by the National Science Foundation. The intent of this phase of the project is to introduce the topic of computerized aids for the disabled (generally called assistive technology (AT)) as one-to-three week curriculum modules as part of a typical human-computer interaction (HCI) course offered for senior Computer Science majors. This poster will briefly describe some of the topics to be covered, how these topics fit within HCI concepts, sample assignments, and the laboratory equipment used to support demonstrations and assignments.
Controlling Uncertainty in Discretization of Continuous Data
Venue: Proceedings of the 34th International Symposium on Multiple-Valued Logic (2004)

There is a demand for formalization of dependenciesbetween multiple-valued and continuous signals. Thecomposition of both has been successfully appliedto various problems of circuit design and knowledgediscovery. This paper reviews some information measuresin the multiple-valued and continuous domains consideringdifferent representation forms for functions with multiple-valuedand continuous attributes. Being at the cross-roadsof analog and discrete data processing, the paper addressesthe problem known as discretization and introduces anadaptive method of finding an optimal representation ofcontinuous data in the multiple-valued domain. Bothmultiple-valued and interval decision diagrams areexamined for ef.cient representation of continuous data.
Real-Time Rendering of Human Hair Using Programmable Graphics Hardware
Authors: Martin Koster, Jorg Haber, Hans-Peter Seidel
Venue: Proceedings of the Computer Graphics International (2004)

We present a hair model together with rendering algorithmssuitable for real-time rendering. In our approach,we take into account the major lighting factors contributingto a realistic appearance of human hair: anisotropicreflection and self-shadowing. To deal with the geometriccomplexity of human hair, we combine single hair fibersinto hair wisps, which are represented by textured trianglestrips. Our rendering algorithms use OpenGL extensions toachieve real-time performance on recent commodity graphicsboards. We demonstrate the applicability of our hairmodel for a variety of different hairstyles.
An Efficient Value Predictor Dynamically Using Loop and Locality Properties
Authors: Po-Jen Chuang, Young-Tzong Hsiao, Yu-Shian Chiu
Venue: The Journal of Supercomputing (2004)

Value prediction, a technique to break data dependency, is important in enhancing instruction-level parallelism and processor performance. A new value predictor utilizing both the loop and locality properties of data values has been proposed in this paper to pursue desirable prediction accuracy at reasonable cost. The proposed value predictor, called the Dynamic Loop and Locality-based (DLL) predictor, makes predictions by dynamically practicing the loop or locality-based prediction policy according to the state. With certain simple designs, the DLL predictor gains prediction accuracy in an efficient way. To secure more comprehensive experimental evaluation of value predictors, a new performance measure, accuracy improvement per cost, briefed as the A/C ratio, is introduced in the paper. Simulation results show that, compared with other existing value predictors, the proposed DLL predictor produces better A/C ratios in almost all situations due to flexible application of different prediction policies and reduced cost.
Automatic Generation of Polynomial Loop Invariants: Algebraic Foundations
Authors: Enric Rodríguez-Carbonell, Deepak Kapur
Venue: Proceedings of the 2004 international symposium on Symbolic and algebraic computation (2004)

This paper presents the algebraic foundation for an approach for generating polynomial loop invariants in imperative programs. It is first shown that the set of polynomials serving as loop invariants has the algebraic structure of an ideal. Using this connection, a procedure for finding loop invariants is given in terms of operations on ideals, for which Grobner basis constructions can be employed. Most importantly, it is proved that if the assignment statements in a loop are solvable (in particular, affine) mappings with positive eigenvalues, then the procedure terminates in at most 2m+1 iterations, where m is the number of variables in the loop. The proof is done by showing that the irreducible subvarieties of the variety associated with the polynomial ideal approximating the invariant polynomial ideal of the loop either stay the same or increase their dimension in every iteration. This yields a correct and complete algorithm for inferring conjunctions of polynomial equations as invariants. The method has been implemented in Maple using the Groebner package. The implementation has been used to automatically discover nontrivial invariants for several examples to illustrate the power of the techniques.
Computing Planar Sections of Surfaces of Revolution with Revolute Quadric Decomposition
Venue: Proceedings of the Shape Modeling International 2004 (2004)

Computing the planar sections of objects is a fundamentaloperation in solid modeling. Subdivision method iscommonly used for solving such intersection problems. Inthis paper, a novel revolute quadric decomposition is proposedfor surfaces of revolution, which are subdivided intoa set of coaxial revolute quadrics along the generatrix.This reduces the intersection problem of a plane and a surfaceof revolution to the intersection problem of a planeand a revolute quadric, which has robust, accurate andefficient geometric solution. Further, the intersectioncurves can be represented with a group of G1 conic arcs. Anew concept, valid intersection interval (VII), is introducedand a new technique, cylindrical bounding shell clipping,is proposed for efficient intersection detection for a planeand a surface of revolution. Finally, a tracing algorithm ispresented for recognizing singular points and closed loopsof intersection curves. Implemented examples show therobustness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Typical properties of winners and losers in discrete optimization
Authors: Rene Beier, Berthold Vöcking
Venue: Proceedings of the thirty-sixth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing (2004)

We present a probabilistic analysis for a large class of combinatorial optimization problems containing, e. g., all binary optimization problems defined by linear constraints and a linear objective function over (0,1)n. By parameterizing which constraints are of stochastic and which are of adversarial nature, we obtain a semi-random input model that enables us to do a general average-case analysis for a large class of optimization problems while at the same time taking care for the combinatorial structure of individual problems. Our analysis covers various probability distributions for the choice of the stochastic numbers and includes smoothed analysis with Gaussian and other kinds of perturbation models as a special case. In fact, we can exactly characterize the smoothed complexity of optimization problems in terms of their random worst-case complexity.A binary optimization problem has a polynomial smoothed complexity if and only if it has a pseudopolynomial complexity. Our analysis is centered around structural properties of binary optimization problems, called winner, loser, and feasibility gaps. We show, when the coefficients of the objective function and/or some of the constraints are stochastic, then there usually exist a polynomial n-Ω(1) gap between the best and the second best solution as well as a polynomial slack to the boundary of the constraints. Similar to the condition number for linear programming, these gaps describe the sensitivity of the optimal solution to slight perturbations of the input and can be used to bound the necessary accuracy as well as the complexity for solving an instance. We exploit the gaps in form of an adaptive rounding scheme increasing the accuracy of calculation until the optimal solution is found. The strength of our techniques is illustrated by applications to various NP-hard optimization problems from mathematical programming, network design, and scheduling for which we obtain the the first algorithms with polynomial average-case/smoothed complexity.
Compiler-Directed Dynamic Memory Disambiguation for Loop Structures
Authors: Soyeb Alli, Chris Bailey
Venue: Proceedings of the Digital System Design, EUROMICRO Systems (2004)

The increase in the latencies of memory operations can be attributed to the increasing disparity between the speeds of the processor and memory. This effect is compounded by the fact that superscalar processors may generate several memory operations in a clock cycle, whereas the memory system often only handles one memory operation at a time because caches should preferably be single ported. Thus, there may be several memory operations outstanding concurrently. Processors alleviate the effects of this restriction by issuing loads ahead of stores. However, the memory references must first be disambiguated in order to ensure correct execution of the program. This paper introduces a technique for disambiguating memory references dynamically. This technique enables the compiler to convey information about the program that is available at compile time but cannot be exploited fully due to practical limitations. The processor can then use this information to issue loads ahead of stores.
Some problems concerning the Smarandache square complementary function (III)
Authors: Maohua Le
Venue: Smarandache Notions Journal (2004)

In this paper we discuss a diophantine equations concerning the Smarandache square complementary function.
Reflections on capital-intensive software technology
Authors: Peter Wegner
Venue: ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (1982)

"Capital" is defined as a reusable resource, and it is shown that many software engineering activities are capital-intensive in the sense that they serve to create reusable resources. Just as the Eskimo has many different words for snow, we have many words for reusability, including commonality, portability, modularity, abstraction, generality, equivalence, maintainability, adaptability, and sharability. A plausible conclusion is that reusability of the resources we create is as important in our lives as snow is in the life of the Eskimo. The definition of capital in terms of reusability suggests that the reason for the importance of reusability is in part economic. But the drive to create permanent rather than transitory artifacts has aesthetic and intellectual as well as economic motivations, and is part of man's desire for immortality.
A Data Mining Approach to PubMed Query Refinement
Authors: Margherita Berardi, Michele Lapi, Pietro Leo, Donato Malerba, Caterina Marinelli, Gaetano Scioscia
Venue: Proceedings of the Database and Expert Systems Applications, 15th International Workshop (2004)

Finding disease relationships requires laborious examination of hundreds of possible candidate heterogeneous factors. Much of the related information is currently contained in biological and medical journals, making biomedical text mining a central bioinformatic problem. More than 14 million abstracts of such papers are contained in the Medline collection and are available online. In this paper we present a data mining engine, namely MeSH Terms Associator (MTA), that has been employed in a distributed architecture to refine a generic PubMed query by means of discovery of concept relations in the form of association rules. However, the number of discovered association rules is usually high and the interest of most of them does not fulfil user expectations. In addition, the presentation of thousands of rules can discourage users from interpreting them. To overcome this problem we investigate the application of some filtering techniques. Experimental results on datasets corresponding to real-world biomedical queries are discussed and future directions are drawn.
The Security and Privacy of Smart Vehicles
Authors: Jean-Pierre Hubaux, Srdjan Čapkun, Jun Luo
Venue: IEEE Security and Privacy (2004)

Road safety, traffic management, and driver convenience continue to improve, in large part thanks to appropriate usage of information technology. But this evolution has deep implications for security and privacy, which the research community has overlooked so far.
An efficient, high-order perturbation approach for flow in random porous media via Karhunen-Loève and polynomial expansions
Authors: Dongxiao Zhang, Zhiming Lu
Venue: Journal of Computational Physics (2004)

In this study, we attempt to obtain higher-order solutions of the means and (co)variances of hydraulic head for saturated flow in randomly heterogeneous porous media on the basis of the combination of Karhunen-Loève decomposition, polynomial expansion, and perturbation methods. We first decompose the log hydraulic conductivity Y = ln Ks as an infinite series on the basis of a set of orthogonal Gaussian standard random variables {ξi}. The coefficients of the series are related to eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the covariance function of log hydraulic conductivity. We then write head as an infinite series whose terms h(n) represent head of nth order in terms of σY, the standard deviation of Y, and derive a set of recursive equations for h(n). We then decompose h(n) with polynomial expansions in terms of the products of n Gaussian random variables. The coefficients in these series are determined by substituting decompositions of Y and h(n) into those recursive equations. We solve the mean head up to fourth-order in σY and the head variances up to third-order in σY2. We conduct Monte Carlo (MC) simulation and compare MC results against approximations of different orders from the moment-equation approach based on Karhunen-Loève decomposition (KLME). We also explore the validity of the KLME approach for different degrees of medium variability and various correlation scales. It is evident that the KLME approach with higher-order corrections is superior to the conventional first-order approximations and is computationally more efficient than the Monte Carlo simulation.
Confetti: Object-Space Point Blending and Splatting
Authors: Renato Pajarola, Miguel Sainz
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2004)

In this paper, we present Confetti, a novel point-based rendering approach based on object-space point interpolation of densely sampled surfaces. We introduce the concept of a transformation-invariant covariance matrix of a set of points which can efficiently be used to determine splat sizes in a multiresolution point hierarchy. We also analyze continuous point interpolation in object-space and we define a new class of parameterized blending kernels as well as a normalization procedure to achieve smooth blending. Furthermore, we present a hardware accelerated rendering algorithm based on texture mapping and \alpha{\hbox{-}}{\rm blending} as well as programmable vertex and pixel-shaders.
Minimax mutual information approach for independent component analysis
Authors: Deniz Erdogmus, Kenneth E. Hild,  II, Yadunandana N. Rao, José C. Príncipe
Venue: Neural Computation (2004)

Minimum output mutual information is regarded as a natural criterion for independent component analysis (ICA) and is used as the performance measure in many ICA algorithms. Two common approaches in information-theoretic ICA algorithms are minimum mutual information and maximum output entropy approaches. In the former approach, we substitute some form of probability density function (pdf) estimate into the mutual information expression, and in the latter we incorporate the source pdf assumption in the algorithm through the use of nonlinearities matched to the corresponding cumulative density functions (cdf). Alternative solutions to ICA use higher-order cumulant-based optimization criteria, which are related to either one of these approaches through truncated series approximations for densities. In this article, we propose a new ICA algorithm motivated by the maximum entropy principle (for estimating signal distributions). The optimality criterion is the minimum output mutual information, where the estimated pdfs are from the exponential family and are approximate solutions to a constrained entropy maximization problem. This approach yields an upper bound for the actual mutual information of the output signals--hence, the name minimax mutual information ICA algorithm. In addition, we demonstrate that for a specific selection of the constraint functions in the maximum entropy density estimation procedure, the algorithm relates strongly to ICA methods using higher-order cumulants.