ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
A practical experience of usage and evaluation of the usable course
Authors: Lorenzo Sommaruga, Nadia Catenazzi
Venue: Proceedings of the sixth conference on IASTED International Conference Web-Based Education - Volume 2 (2007)

This paper describes an experience of use and evaluation of the USABLE environment in an academic course at the Università degli Studi dell'Insubria. USABLE is a project whose purpose is to provide a blended learning course on usability evaluation of web applications. In our experience, where target users were undergraduate university students, USABLE was evaluated using different methods: direct observation and system logging during the use of the system, and questionnaires afterwards. In addition, the users' learning performance was analyzed at the end the course. The focus was on the assessment of the USABLE course impact on the learning process, and on the collection of feedback for system improvements. The evaluation results demonstrated a high level of satisfaction of the students in using the system and provided constructive comments to improve some aspects. Moreover, as indicated by the students' learning outcomes, USABLE has resulted to be an effective environment for blended learning and a valuable tool to motivate students towards a deeper study of the usability subject.
A probabilistic dynamical model for quantitative inference of the regulatory mechanism of transcription
Authors: Guido Sanguinetti, Magnus Rattray, Neil D. Lawrence
Venue: Bioinformatics (2006)

Motivation: Quantitative estimation of the regulatory relationship between transcription factors and genes is a fundamental stepping stone when trying to develop models of cellular processes. This task, however, is difficult for a number of reasons: transcription factors’ expression levels are often low and noisy, and many transcription factors are post-transcriptionally regulated. It is therefore useful to infer the activity of the transcription factors from the expression levels of their target genes. Results: We introduce a novel probabilistic model to infer transcription factor activities from microarray data when the structure of the regulatory network is known. The model is based on regression, retaining the computational efficiency to allow genome-wide investigation, but is rendered more flexible by sampling regression coefficients independently for each gene. This allows us to determine the strength with which a transcription factor regulates each of its target genes, therefore providing a quantitative description of the transcriptional regulatory network. The probabilistic nature of the model also means that we can associate credibility intervals to our estimates of the activities. We demonstrate our model on two yeast datasets. In both cases the network structure was obtained using chromatin immunoprecipitation data. We show how predictions from our model are consistent with the underlying biology and offer novel quantitative insights into the regulatory structure of the yeast cell. Availability: MATLAB code is available from Contact: guido@dcs.shef.ac.uk Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available on Bioinformatics online.
A Policy-Based Framework for Designing Strategies for Service Negotiation
Authors: Yu Cheng, Hua-mao Gu
Venue: Proceedings of the Eighth ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking, and Parallel/Distributed Computing - Volume 02 (2007)

At the present stage, automated service negotiation faces a dilemma. On the one hand, it's autonomous such that agents are capable of making decisions about what actions to take without constantly referring back to its user [7]. On the other hand, the system is trustworthy in the sense that the agents should make their users believe that it will act to achieve their business goals (i.e. the users are able to guide and control the behalf of agent). To deal with conflicts between "autonomous" and "trustworthy", this paper represents a policy-based framework which composes of information and policy part. Information part provides knowledge and policy part control agent negotiation strategy. Under this framework, users define their business goals in abstract policy. Then, the abstract policy is refined to concrete policies whose strategy can be implemented by different heuristic methods. Thus, the framework helps to eliminate the conflict between 'autonomous" and "trustworthy". After describing the framework, we then went on illustrating its use in our prototype system.
An Experimental Study on the Importance of the Choice of the Ensemble Members in Fuzzy Combination Methods
Authors: Marjory C. C. Abreu, Anne Magaly P. Canuto
Venue: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications (2007)

In the context of Ensembles or Multi-Classifier Systems, many combination methods and algorithms have been developed in the literature, including methods based on fuzzy sets. This paper presents an evaluation of how the choice of the components (classifiers) can affect the accuracy of some fuzzy combination methods. The main aim of this analysis is to investigate whether or not fuzzy combination methods are less affected by the choice of the ensemble members than the non-fuzzy methods.
Using Reactive Agents to Mimic the Dissemination of Slums in Cities
Authors: Jamil Coimbra Diuana, Orlando Bernardo Filho
Venue: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications (2007)

In this paper we present a multi-agent system based on a very simple reactive agents system paradigm, in order to simulate the dynamics of land- use in urban environments, Our agents operate on a cell-based framework built from Geographical Information Systems raster images, aerophotos or satelite images. Using cellular automata and agent concepts we can model, simulate, predict and dynamically visualize the growth and dissemination of slums, and envision future possible scenarios, The motivation of this research has its ground on some previsions saying that in the next three decades the population that lives in slums will duplicate, reaching 32% of the total world population [1]. In this context, building scenarios related to the growing of existent slums, the birth of new ones, and their evolution, would be very useful for urban planning and for the elaboration of social policies aiming to minimize the impact caused by the uncontrolled growing of slums.
A coordinatization structure for generalized quadrangles with a regular spread
Authors: Bart De Bruyn
Venue: European Journal of Combinatorics (2008)

We shall coordinatize generalized quadrangles with a regular spread by means of a Steiner system (P,L), a set X and a certain nice map @D:PxP->Sym(X). We shall then show how this coordinatization method can be used to improve a result independently obtained by Kantor [W.M. Kantor, Note on span-symmetrical generalized quadrangles, Adv. Geom. 2 (2) (2002) 197-200] and Thas [K. Thas, Classification of span-symmetric generalized quadrangles of order s, Adv. Geom. 2 (2) (2002) 189-196] stating that a generalized quadrangle of order s>=2 is isomorphic to W(s) if it has a hyperbolic line all of whose points are centres of symmetry. We shall show that if a generalized quadrangle Q of order s>=2 has a hyperbolic line containing only regular points, then all these points are also centres of symmetry. Combining this with the above-mentioned result independently obtained by Kantor and Thas, we then obtain that Q is isomorphic to the symplectic quadrangle W(s).
Application of Multi-Agent for Collaborative Product Design Engineering
Authors: Yan Li
Venue: Proceedings of the Eighth ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking, and Parallel/Distributed Computing - Volume 02 (2007)

The manufacturing industries are now experiencing fierce pressure of competition. In addition, the advancement in computer networks and information technologies has been gradually reshaping the manufacturing companies by shifting from the industrial age to the information era. A number of new manufacturing and management strategies have emerged for the innovation of manufacturing enterprises. This paper proposes a multi-agent collaborative design system to support the enterprise functions/resources integration and collaboration over the networked environment. The realizing method of the design project of the multi-agent collaborative design system is discussed. An Application example is also presented.
BANCS Special Feature the Concept and Implementation of BANCS
Authors: S. K. -L. Leung
Venue: Computer (1980)

With BANCS, each operating telephone company within the Bell System can engineer its own message-switching network. Five modular components facilitate both central support and future expansion. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
A Hybrid Optical Computer Processing Technique for Fingerprint Identification
Authors: D. H. McMahon
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1975)

An automated procedure involving both optical and computer processing steps is being developed as a means for easing the growing burden associated with manual preparation and manual searching of ten print fingerprint card files. A description of this technique is presented along with results recently obtained during a monitored test using a 10 000 fingerprint card library.
Low-Cost Stereo Vision on an FPGA
Authors: Chris Murphy, Daniel Lindquist, Ann Marie Rynning, Thomas Cecil, Sarah Leavitt, Mark L. Chang
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th Annual IEEE Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (2007)

We present a low-cost stereo vision implementation suitable for use in autonomous vehicle applications and designed with agricultural applications in mind. This implementation utilizes the Census Transform algorithm [5, 6] to calculate depth maps from a stereo pair of automotive-grade CMOS cameras. The final prototype utilizes commodity hardware, including a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA, to process 320x240 pixel images at greater than 150 frames per second and deliver them via a USB 2.0 interface.
VHDL?The Language
Authors: Roger Lipsett, Erich Marschner, Moe Shahdad
Venue: IEEE Design Test (1986)

The VHSIC hardware description language (or VHDL) provides a standard textual means of description for hardware componentsat abstraction levels ranging from the logic gate level to the digital system level. It provides precise syntax and semanticsfor these hardware components, enabling design transfer both within and among organizations. The language is designed to beefficiently simulated and natural for hardware designers. In addition, it allows designers to represent information outsidethe primary range of language coverage, although the initial toolset does not support simulation at those levels (switch level,for example). Finally, by not restricting designers to a particular hardware technology or design style, the language permitswide industrial usage.
Leakage Minimization Technique for Nanoscale CMOS VLSI
Authors: Kyung Ki Kim, Yong-Bin Kim, Minsu Choi, Nohpill Park
Venue: IEEE Design Test (2007)

This article proposes a new heuristic approach to determine the input patterns that minimize leakage currents of nanometer CMOS circuits during sleep mode. The proposed approach uses a new macromodeling technique to characterize the minimum leakage current of each individual cell, considering fan-out effects, stack effect, and the interaction between gate-leakage and subthreshold currents. Experimental results shows that the methodology using the proposed macromodel provides less than a 4% error compared to Hspice simulation results.
Shelf Packing to the Design and Optimization of A Power-Aware Multi-Frequency Wrapper Architecture for Modular IP Cores
Authors: Dan Zhao, Unni Chandran, Hideo Fujiwara
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (2007)

This paper proposes a novel power-aware multi-frequency wrapper architecture design to achieve at-speed testability. The trade-offs between power dissipation, scan time and bandwidth are well handled by gating off certain virtual cores at a time while parallelizing the remaining. A shelf packing based optimization algorithm is proposed to design and optimize the wrapper architecture while minimizing the test time under power and bandwidth constraints.
Symbiotic Tabu Search, A General Evolutionary Optimization Approach
Authors: Ramin Halavati, Saeed Bagheri Shouraki, Bahareh Jafari Jashmi, Mojdeh Jalali Heravi
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems (2007)

Recombination in the Genetic Algorithm (GA) is supposed to extract the component characteristics from two parents and reassemble them in different combinations - hopefully producing an offspring that has the good characteristics of both parents. Symbiotic Combination is formerly introduced as an alternative for sexual recombination operator to overcome the need of explicit design of recombination operators in GA. This paper presents an optimization algorithm based on using this operator in Tabu Search. The algorithm is benchmarked on two problem sets and is compared with standard genetic algorithm and symbiotic evolutionary adaptation model, showing success rates higher than both cited algorithms.
Characterizing VLAN usage in an operational network
Authors: Prashant Garimella, Yu-Wei Eric Sung, Nan Zhang, Sanjay Rao
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 SIGCOMM workshop on Internet network management (2007)

In this paper, we present one of the first studies characterizing VLAN usage in a large operational network. Our study employs a "white-box" approach, based on analysis of switch and router configuration files, and interactions with network operators. Our findings are: (i) VLANs are extensively used to enable users at physically disparate locations to be treated as a group; (ii) the performance inefficiencies resulting from such usage is significant; and (iii) the inefficiencies are exacerbated by sub-optimal placement policies. Finally, we identify potential sources of errors that may arise with VLAN configurations, and demonstrate their prevalence.
Salient Moving Object Detection Using Stochastic Approach Filtering
Authors: Peng Tang, Lin Gao, Zhifang Liu
Venue: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Image and Graphics (2007)

Background modeling techniques are important for object detection and tracking in video surveillance. Traditional background subtraction approaches are suffered from problems, such as persistent dynamic backgrounds, quick illumination changes, occlusions, noise etc. In this paper, we address the problem of detection and localization of moving objects in a video stream without apperception of background statistics. Three major contributions are presented. First, introducing the Monte Carlo importance sampling techniques greatly reduce the computation complexity while compromise the expected accuracy. Second, the robust salient motion is considered when resampling the feature points by removing those who do not move in a relative constant velocity. Finally, the proposed Spatial Kinetic Mixture of Gaussian Model (SKMGM) enforced spatial consistency. Promising results demonstrate the potentials of the proposed framework.
Reliability Testing for Industrial Use
Authors: W. T. Greenwood
Venue: Computer (1977)

The meaning of reliability varies greatly with its context. In an aerospace or military context, where system reliability requirements are frequently life-critical or mission-critical, reliability means certainty. Such certainty is achieved through design, testing, and conditioning of integrated circuits, components, and systems, as well as through system redundancy. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
Synthesis of Chinese Character Using Affine Transformation
Authors: L. Jin, X. Zu
Venue: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition - Volume 01 (2007)

We present a novel Chinese synthesis method based on affine transform. A set of basic Chinese character element (BCCE) are designed, which can be used to generate any Chinese character in standard GB2312-80 level 1. Structure similarity measurement is used to evaluate the synthesis quality. Experiments showed that the synthesized characters look smooth and natural. Storage of synthesized characters can be greatly reduced. The proposed Chinese character synthesis method has many potential applications, such as building small-size Chinese font, building compact classifier for Chinese OCR, and etc.
Tree expressions for information systems
Authors: Min Zhao, Su-Qing Han, Jue Wang
Venue: Journal of Computer Science and Technology (2007)

The discernibility matrix is one of the most important approaches to computing positive region, reduct, core and value reduct in rough sets. The subject of this paper is to develop a parallel approach of it, called "tree expression". Its computational complexity for positive region and reduct is O(m2 × n) instead of O(m × n2) in discernibility-matrix-based approach, and is not over O(n2) for other concepts in rough sets, where m and n are the numbers of attributes and objects respectively in a given dataset (also called an "information system" in rough sets). This approach suits information systems with n ≫ m and containing over one million objects.
Throughput and QoS optimization for EDCA-based IEEE 802.11 WLANs
Authors: Zhong Fan
Venue: Wireless Personal Communications: An International Journal (2007)

The enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) mechanism has been adopted by both the IEEE 802.11e standard and the Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA) for quality of service (QoS) provisioning in high speed wireless LANs and UWB-based wireless PANs. Based on an analytical model of EDCA, this paper presents an optimal solution to providing maximum system throughput while maintaining the service differentiation among traffic classes. Contention window sizes are adapted to achieve throughput optimization according to the throughput ratio and number of active stations of each traffic class. To overcome the difficulty of accurate estimation of the number of competing stations we propose to use the method of subrange partitioning. An admission control scheme is also discussed. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MAC optimization framework.
Discovering geographic locations in web pages using urban addresses
Authors: Karla A. V. Borges, Alberto H. F. Laender, Claudia B. Medeiros, Clodoveu A. Davis,  Jr.
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th ACM workshop on Geographical information retrieval (2007)

This paper presents an approach that helps to discover geographic locations from the recognition, extraction, and geocoding of urban addresses found in Web pages. Experiments that evaluate the presence and incidence of urban addresses in Web pages are described. Experimental results, based on a collection of over 4 million documents from the Brazilian Web, show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.
Dynamic Score Selection for Fusion of Multiple Biometric Matchers
Authors: Roberto Tronci, Giorgio Giacinto, Fabio Roli
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing (2007)

A biometric system for user authentication produces a matching score representing the degree of similarity of the input biometry with the set of templates for that user. If the score is greater than a prefixed threshold, then the user is accepted, otherwise the user is rejected. Typically the performance are evaluated in terms of the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, and the Equal Error Rate (EER). In order to increase the reliability of authentication through biometrics, the combination of different biometric systems is currently investigated by researchers. While a number of "fusion" algorithms have been proposed in the literature, in this paper we propose a theoretical analysis of a novel approach based on the "dynamic selection" of matching scores. Such a selector aims at choosing, for each user to be authenticated, just one of the scores produced by the different biometric systems available. We show that the "dynamic selection" of matching scores can provide a better ROC than those of individual biometric systems. Reported results on the FVC2004 dataset confirm the theoretical analysis, and show that the proposed "dynamic selection" approach is more effective when low quality scores are used.
Mining Privilege Escalation Paths for Network Vulnerability Analysis
Authors: Baowen Zhang, William Zhu, Zhi Xue
Venue: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery - Volume 04 (2007)

Computer security is an important issue in our society. In order to prevent computer systems and networks from attacks, we should try to find flaws in these systems and evaluate them. Generally researchers and red teams use attack graphs to perform network vulnerability analysis, which tend to suffer scalability problems. In this paper we put forward a mining method to generate privilege escalation paths in networks. With these privilege escalation paths we create net privilege graphs and use them for network vulnerability analysis. Experiments show that our approach is valid and scalable to find the possible vulnerabilities exploitation ways in networks.
A utility-based unified disk scheduling framework for shared mixed-media services
Authors: Akshat Verma, Rohit Jain, Sugata Ghosal
Venue: ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS) (2008)

We present a new disk scheduling framework to address the needs of a shared multimedia service that provides differentiated multilevel quality-of-service for mixed-media workloads. In such a shared service, requests from different users have different associated performance objectives and utilities, in accordance with the negotiated service-level agreements (SLAs). Service providers typically provision resources only for average workload intensity, so it becomes important to handle workload surges in a way that maximizes the utility of the served requests. We capture the performance objectives and utilities associated with these multiclass diverse workloads in a unified framework and formulate the disk scheduling problem as a reward maximization problem. We map the reward maximization problem to a minimization problem on graphs and, by novel use of graph-theoretic techniques, design a scheduling algorithm that is computationally efficient and optimal in the class of seek-optimizing algorithms. Comprehensive experimental studies demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other disk schedulers under all loads, with the performance improvement approaching 100&percnt; under certain high load conditions. In contrast to existing schedulers, the proposed scheduler is extensible to new performance objectives (workload type) and utilities by simply altering the reward functions associated with the requests.
The Deadlock Problem: An Overview
Authors: S. S. Isloor
Venue: Computer (1980)

Deadlock is a constant threat in terminal-oriented systems. This comprehensive study of deadlock-handling techniques introduces a method for on-line detection in distributed data bases.