ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Enabling scalability by partitioning virtual environments using frontier sets
Authors: Anthony Steed, Cameron Angus
Venue: Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments (2006)

We present a class of partitioning scheme that we have called frontier sets. Frontier sets build on the notion of a potentially visible set (PVS). In a PVS, a world is subdivided into cells and for each cell all the other cells that can be seen are computed. In contrast, a frontier set considers pairs of cells, A and B. For each pair, it lists two sets of cells (two frontiers), FAB and FBA, By definition, from no cell in FAB iS any cell in FBA visible and vice versa.Our initial use of frontier sets has been to enable scalability in distributed networking. This is possible because, for example, if at time t0 Playerl is in cell A and Play- er2 is in cell B, as long as they stay in their respective frontiers, they do not need to send update information to each other.In this paper we describe two strategies for building frontier sets. Both strategies are dynamic and compute frontiers only as necessary at runtime. The first is distance-based frontiers. This strategy requires precomputation of an enhanced potentially visible set. The second is greedy frontiers. This strategy is more expensive to compute at runtime, however it leads to larger and thus more efficient frontiers.Network simulations using code based on the Quake II engine show that frontiers have significant promise and may allow a new class of scalable peer-to-peer game infrastructures to emerge.
Merging Source and Shared Trees Multicast in MPLS Networks
Authors: Xiao-yong Li, Xiao-lin Gui
Venue: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies (2006)

Multicast and MPLS are two complementary technologies. Merging MPLS and multicast technologies can acquire two advantages: Multicast saving bandwidth and MPLS supporting high-speed, QoS and traffic engineering, VPN. Implementation of MPLS multicast has two key expectations: how to construct multicast tree over MPLS domain and how to enhance multicast scalability. In this paper, we design a scalable MPLS multicast algorithm. The algorithm uses tunneling technology and branching nodes technology, which can merge source and shared trees multicast in MPLS networks. Using tunneling technology to implement multipoint-to-multipoint (MP2MP) shared-tree multicast can solve one of the difficulties of MPLS multicast: MP2MP label distribution. Using branching nodes technology can reduce multicast forwarding state in routers and enhance multicast scalability. We also evaluate our proposal in terms of scalability and efficiency and present some simulation results based on NS-2.
Appearance based prosthetic eye
Authors: Naho Inamoto, Takeo Kanade, Hideo Saito
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 international conference on Augmented tele-existence (2005)

This paper introduces a new approach to improve the appearance of a prosthetic eye using computer vision and graphics technology. The proposed method can synthesize realistic appearance and movement of a prosthetic eye.
PANS-Preference-Aware News Screen
Authors: Pekka Jappinen, Jari Porras
Venue: Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems & Applications (2006)

The world we live in provides excessive amounts of information everywhere we go. Small walk on the downtown shows that streets are filled with advertisements, store windows contain data about products and a screen on broadcasting company building shows the latest news. To provide meaningful information for the people near the information screen, the contents of the news screen should be dynamic and take into account what type of information the users are interested in. This paper presents a concept of a news screen that is aware of the interests of the people in its proximity. The awareness is accomplished by fetching the preference information from the mobile devices of the people nearby the service. The information is used for deciding what kind of sport results are shown on the screen.
Two-Level Schwarz Algorithms with Overlapping Subregions for Mortar Finite Elements
Authors: Hyea Hyun Kim, Olof B. Widlund
Venue: SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis (2006)

Preconditioned conjugate gradient methods based on two-level overlapping Schwarz methods often perform quite well. Such a preconditioner combines a coarse space solver with local components which are defined in terms of subregions that form an overlapping covering of the region on which the elliptic problem is defined. Precise bounds on the rate of convergence of such iterative methods have previously been obtained in the case of conforming lower order and spectral finite elements as well as in a number of other cases. In this paper, this domain decomposition algorithm and analysis are extended to mortar finite elements. It is established that the condition number of the relevant iteration operator is independent of the number of subregions and varies with the relative overlap between neighboring subregions linearly as in the conforming cases previously considered.
Adapting and Evaluating Commercial Workflow Engines for e-Science
Authors: Sharanya Eswaran, David Del Vecchio, Glenn Wasson, Marty Humphrey
Venue: Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing (2006)

Numerous Grid workflow engines exist, each generally specialized for a single application domain such as protein folding. Although the underlying purpose and functionality of the Grid workflow engines are similar, and they make use of a common set of Grid protocols, the implementations vary vastly, making interoperation among them nearly impossible. On the other hand, the concept of workflows of Web services is very popular in the enterprise domain and many engines exist for business workflows. These mostly revolve around the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), an emerging standard for Web services workflow description. We study three different business workflow engines - Microsoft's BizTalk Server, Microsoft's Windows Workflow Foundation and Oracle's Business Process Manager and analyze how each of these engines can be adapted to e-science and the Grid environment. We have implemented widely-used grid workflows on each of these engines and show quantitatively and qualitatively that each business engine has positive and negative aspects for large-scale e-science.
Context-Aware Profiles
Authors: A. Ferscha, M. Hechinger, A. Riener, H. Schmitzberger, M. Franz, M. dos Santos Rocha, A. Zeidler
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomic and Autonomous Systems (2006)

A spatial proximity based spontaneous interaction approach for "shared nothing" peer-to-peer systems is proposed. Mobile peers that come spatially close to each other wirelessly exchange self describing profiles encoded in an XML dialect. Each peer individually conducts a similarity analysis of the semistructured data contained in the received profile, and, in case of the similarity exceeding a predifined threshold, notifies an application to start executing. Profiles are organized hierarchically, allowing for an efficient interaction check based on peer roles in the first step, and a more detailed analysis of peer preferences in the second step. A novel context-aware profile description language (PPDL) has been developed, expressing peer preferences with respect to the particular situation (like time, geoposition, owner, environmental conditions, etc.) in which the interaction among peers is attempted. The context of a peer is modelled symbolically within its profile, so that sensors can verify the actual context and use the context specific interpretation of the profile prior to similarity analysis. A fully functional software framework has been developed implementing context-aware profiles. Similarity metrics and profile matching strategies are presented and assesed. In a flexible manufactoring systems applications scenario we demonstrate its potentials in the context of wireless peer ensembles.
Space-Time Video Montage
Authors: Hong-Wen Kang, Xue-Quan Chen, Yasuyuki Matsushita, Xiaoou Tang
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition - Volume 2 (2006)

Conventional video summarization methods focus predominantly on summarizing videos along the time axis, such as building a movie trailer: The resulting video trailer tends to retain much empty space in the background of the video frames while discarding much informative video content due to size limit. In this paper we propose a novel spacetime video summarization method which we call space-time video montage. The method simultaneously analyzes both the spatial and temporal injbrmation distribution in a video sequence, and extracts the visually informative space-time portions of the input videos. The informative video porlions are represented in volumetric layers. The layers are then packrd together in a smull ouzput video volume such that the total amount of visual information in the video volume is maximized. To achieve the packing process, we develop a new algorithm based upon the first-fit and Graph cut optimization techniques. Since our method is uble to cut off spatially und temporally less informative portions, it is uble to generate much more compact yet highly informative output videos. The effecliveness of our method is validated by extensive experiments over a wide variety of videos.
Backing up in singly linked lists
Authors: Amir M. Ben-Amram, Holger Petersen
Venue: Journal of the ACM (JACM) (2006)

We show how to reduce the time overhead for implementing two-way movement on a singly linked list to O(n&epsi;) per operation without modifying the list and without making use of storage other than a finite number of pointers into the list. We also prove a matching lower bound.These results add precision to the intuitive feeling that doubly linked lists are more efficient than singly linked lists, and quantify the efficiency gap in a read-only situation. We further analyze the number of points of access into the list (pointers) necessary for obtaining a desired value of &epsi;. We obtain tight tradeoffs which also separate the amortized and worst-case settings.Our upper bound implies that read-only programs with singly-linked input can do string matching much faster than previously expected.
Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Parallel architectures and compilation techniques
Venue: PACT (2006)

It has been my honor to serve as General Chair for PACT'2006. We have an exciting program and a wonderful venue in Seattle, and we hope that you will be able to partake of some of what the city has to offer.Our Program Chairs, Kevin Skadron and Ben Zorn, and their Program Committee have put together a strong program of technical papers. We also are also pleased to offer three keynote addresses.Our Workshops Chair, Albert Cohen, and our Tutorials Chair, Sandhya Dwarkadas also put together strong offerings, with four workshops and five tutorials on a variety of topics likely to be of interest to PACT attendees.Seattle is a beautiful and vibrant city. The surrounding area offers a wealth of scenic beauty and natural attractions, and we encourage you to avail yourself of some of these when time permits. Seattle's natural wonders include beautiful Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula, the Cascade Mountains, and Mount Rainier. Seattle is also a tremendous cultural center, with world class dining, music, and the arts. Seattle is center of high-tech industry, and we will have an opportunity to see that industry first-hand, during our excursion to the Boeing wide-body assembly plant in Everett, Washington. Our Local Arrangements Chair, Trishul Chilimbi, has worked hard to arrange this visit, and to ensure that the conference facilities matched the high quality of the program. I thank the Steering Committee for their support for holding PACT in Seattle and their many points of guidance.Sony has also been provided strong support to PACT, and will sponsor Tuesday's lunch. We also appreciate the support of CA (Computer Associates) for their support of the Tuesday evening reception. Microsoft and IBM have also continued their longstanding support for PACT.Our Finance Chair, Lixin Zhang, has done in excellent job in making handling our funds, and our Registration Chair, Michael Gschwind, has likewise done an excellent job in both developing and running the registration process.
The Learning Kit Project: Advancing Research on Learning as Learners Learn in Everyday Settings
Authors: Philip H. Winne
Venue: Proceedings of the Sixth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (2006)

Realizing the full promise of software technologies in education requires thinking differently about how software can advance research while simultaneously making direct and powerful contributions to learning. In the Learning Kit Project,12we are developing software that meets this two-fold need. We describe here major components of our software suite: gStudy, the Coach, gChat, and the Log Analyzer. We then examine how using this software may revolutionize some research in the learning sciences. Finally, we identify 10 ways that this software can make important contributions to the dual goals of advancing science and increasing learning effectiveness.
A learning system engineering approach to developing online courses
Authors: Matt Bower
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th Austalian conference on Computing education - Volume 52 (2006)

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to present the systematic "Learning System Engineering" approach adopted by Macquarie University to constructing a new online Graduate Diploma of Information Technology. Second, to present the pedagogical and technological research and development that resulted from implementation of the Learning System Engineering cycle. Emphasis is placed upon the application of technologies to learning. It is intended that sharing the experience gained in both the development of the Learning System Engineering approach and the decisions made as a result of its implementation will be of value to other institutions embarking on similar projects.
Learning Boosted Asymmetric Classifiers for Object Detection
Authors: Xinwen Hou, Cheng-Lin Liu, Tieniu Tan
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition - Volume 1 (2006)

Object detection can be posted as those classification tasks where the rare positive patterns are to be distinguished from the enormous negative patterns. To avoid the danger of missing positive patterns, more attention should be payed on them. Therefore there should be different requirements for False Reject Rate (FRR) and False Accept Rate (FAR) , and learning a classifier should use an asymmetric factor to balance between FRR and FAR. In this paper, a normalized asymmetric classification error is proposed for the task of rejecting negative patterns. Minimizing it not only controls the ratio of FRR and FAR, but more importantly limits the upper-bound of FRR. The latter characteristic is advantageous for those tasks where there is a requirement for low FRR. Based on this normalized asymmetric classification error, we develop an asymmetric AdaBoost algorithm with variable asymmetric factor and apply it to the learning of cascade classifiers for face detection. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method achieves less complex classifiers and better performance than some previous AdaBoost methods.
On Resource Volatility in Enterprise Desktop Grids
Authors: Derrick Kondo, Gilles Fedak, Franck Cappello, Andrew A. Chien, Henri Casanova
Venue: Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing (2006)

Desktop grids, which use the idle cycles of many desktop PC's, are currently one of the largest distributed systems in the world. Despite the popularity and success of many desktop grid projects, the volatility of hosts within desktop grids has been poorly understood. Yet, such host characterization is essential for accurate simulation and modelling of such platforms. In this paper, we present application-level traces of four enterprise desktop grids with a wide range of user bases. We then describe aggregate and per host statistics that reflect the volatility of desktop grid resources. Further, we determine the correlation of volatility between resources, and investigate the correlation of volatility and other host characteristics. Finally, we detail a number of implications of these findings with respect to application performance.
A Novel Stopping Criterion for Turbo Decoding
Authors: Lei Li, Qin Wang, Cheng Youn Lu
Venue: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control - Volume 1 (2006)

Turbo decoder estimates message values sent from transmitter by computing iteratively to get the maximum posteriori probability. It will be inefficient if the number of iteration is set irrationally. To reduce decoding process latency, lots of stopping criteria for Turbo decoding were proposed [1-8]. Those methods also increase computation complexity at each iteration. The computation complexity may become issue in the real implementation in terms of gate count, power consumption, and computing latency in the end. In this paper, we propose a novel stopping criterion called Convolution-Sum (CS) stopping criterion with lower computation complexity. Turbo decoding achieves more efficiency with CS stopping criterion. The result of simulation indicates that the number of iteration with CS stopping criterion will be reduced by 30% at most when the signal-to-noise ratio is between 0.5dB and 2dB while maintaining Turbo decoding performance.
Stretch It - Realistic Smooth Skinning
Authors: Xiaosong Yang, Jian J. Zhang
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation (2006)

Smooth Skinning is still the most popular method for the animation of deformable human and creature characters. It has became almost an industry standard because of its intuitiveness to use and efficiency to compute. However it suffers from a number of problems, such as the collapsing elbow and candywrapper effect. In this paper, we present a new method, which is able to solve these defects with very little extra stretching computations. The advantage of this method is its compatibility with the current animation workflow. The animator can change the skin weight any way they like and therefore it favours creativity. The aim of our method is trying to retain the realism and computational efficiency at the same time. It is suitable for situations, where real time response is necessary, like computer games. A practical implementation in the form of a Maya plug-in is created to demonstrate the viability of the method.
Fast disjoint transistor networks from BDDs
Authors: Leomar S. da Rosa Junior, Felipe S. Marques, Tiago M. G. Cardoso, Renato P. Ribas, Sachin S. Sapatnekar, André I. Reis
Venue: Proceedings of the 19th annual symposium on Integrated circuits and systems design (2006)

In this paper, we describe different ways to derive transistor networks from BDDs. The use of disjoint pull-up (composed of PMOS transistors) and pull-down (composed of NMOS transistors) planes allows simplifications that result in shorter pull-up and pull-down transistor stacks. The reduced length of transistor stacks leads to the fastest implementation among the six different strategies evaluated to generate transistor networks from BDDs. Delay and area results are presented showing the impact of the proposed strategy.
Fault and defect tolerant computer architectures: reliable computing with unreliable devices
Authors: Rusty D. Baldwin
Venue:  (2006)

As conventional silicon Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) technology continues to shrink, logic circuits are increasingly subject to errors induced by electrical noise and cosmic radiation. In addition, the smaller devices are more likely to degrade and fail in operation. In the long term, new device technologies such as quantum cellular automata and molecular crossbars may replace silicon CMOS, but they have significant reliability problems. Rather than requiring the circuit to be defect-free, fault tolerance techniques incorporated into an architecture allow continued system operation in the presence of faulty components. This research addresses construction of a reliable computer from unreliable device technologies. A system architecture is developed for a "fault and defect tolerant" (FDT) computer. Trade-offs between different techniques are studied, and the yield of the system is modelled. Yield and hardware cost models are developed for the fault tolerance techniques used in the architecture. Fault and defect tolerant designs are created for the processor, and its most critical component, the cache memory. A content-addressable memory (CAM)-based cache design is developed. Simulation results show the cache achieves 90% yield with device failure probabilities of 3 x 10-6, three orders of magnitude better than non fault tolerant caches of the same size. The entire processor achieves 70% yield with device failure probabilities exceeding 10-6. The hardware redundancy required to achieve this performance is approximately 15 times that of a non-fault tolerant design. While large compared to fault tolerant designs used today, this architecture allows the use of devices much more likely to fail than silicon CMOS. Given the size improvements predicted for future device technologies, the hardware overhead may be acceptable. As part of the work to develop reliable models for fault tolerance techniques, an improved model is developed for NAND Multiplexing, a cornerstone fault-tolerance technique based upon large levels of redundancy. The model is the first exact model for NAND Multiplexing with small and medium amounts of redundancy. Previous models are extended to account for dependence between the inputs and produce more accurate results. An example shows the required hardware redundancy is reduced by 50%.
Testing the Implementation of Business Rules Using Intensional Database Tests
Authors: David Willmor, Suzanne M. Embury
Venue: Proceedings of the Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference on Practice And Research Techniques (2006)

One of the key roles of any information system is to enforce the business rules and policies set by the owning organisation. As for any important functionality, it is necessary to verify the implementation of any business rule carefully, through thorough testing. However, business rules have some specific features which make testing a particular challenge. They represent a more fine-grained unit of functionality than is usually considered by testing tools (programs, module, UML models, etc.) and their implementations are typically spread across a system (or perhaps some specific layer of a system). There is no convenient one-toone relationship between programs and business rules that can facilitate their testing. To the best of our knowledge, no tools, methods or guidelines exist for helping software developers to test the implementation of business rules. Standard testing tools can help to a certain extent, but they leave the rule-specific work entirely in the programmer's hands. In this paper, we discuss the problems of testing business rules, and elicit the key features of a good test suite for a collection of business rules. We focus in particular on constraint business rules - an important class of rule that is commonly applied to the persistent data managed by the information system. We show how intensional database tests provide a suitable platform on which to implement business rule tests rapidly, and show how existing intensional test suites can be automatically adapted to test business rules. We have applied these ideas in a case study, which has allowed us to compare the relative costs of creating and executing these augmented test suites, as well as providing some evidence of their ability to detect faults in business rule implementations.