ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Outpatient appointment scheduling in a multi facility system
Authors: Athula Wijewickrama, Soemon Takakuwa
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Conference on Winter Simulation (2008)

This study evaluates appointment systems used in hospitals by incorporating appointment rules and patient characteristics. Using an experiment unit at an internal medicine department of a large outpatient ward in Nagoya university hospital, a number of prevailing assumptions were relaxed, and twenty-five appointment systems were developed combining five appointment rules with five patient sequences. These appointment systems were evaluated under two different environments namely no-show and patient punctuality, with each of the two-levels totaling one-hundred different environments. A best appointment system is capable of identifying the problems in terms of both patient waiting time and doctor idle time.
An intelligent handover management system for future generation wireless networks
Authors: Meriem Kassar, Brigitte Kervella, Guy Pujolle
Venue: EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking (2008)

Future generation wireless networks should provide to mobile users the best connectivity to services anywhere at anytime. The most challenging problem is the seamless intersystem/vertical mobility across heterogeneous wireless networks. In order to answer it, a vertical handover management system is needed. In our paper, we propose an intelligent solution answering user requirements and ensuring service continuity. We focus on a vertical handover decision strategy based on the context-awareness concept. The given strategy chooses the appropriate time and the most suitable access network among those available to perform a handover. It uses advanced decision algorithms (for more efficiency and intelligence) and it is governed by handover policies as decision rules (for more flexibility and optimization). To maintain a seamless service continuity, handover execution is based on mobile IP functionalities. We study our decision system in a case of a 3G/UMTS-WLAN scenario and we discuss all the handover decision issues in our solution.
Module locking in biochemical synthesis
Authors: Brian Fett, Marc D. Riedel
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (2008)

We are developing a framework for computation with biochemical reactions with a focus on synthesizing specific logical functionality, a task analogous to technology-independent logic synthesis. Our method synthesizes biochemical reactions that compute output quantities of molecular types as a function of input quantities, either deterministically or probabilistically. An important constraint is the timing, captured in the relative rates of the biochemical reactions: all the outputs of a given phase must be produced before the next phase can begin consuming them as inputs. To achieve this synchronization, the reaction rates must sometimes be separated by orders of magnitude: some much faster than others, some much slower. This might be costly or infeasible given a specific library of biochemical reactions. In this paper, we describe a novel mechanism for locking the computation of biochemical modules - analogous to handshaking mechanisms in asynchronous circuit design. With locking, our method synthesizes robust computation that is nearly rate independent, requiring at most two speeds ("fast" and "slow"). The trade-off is with respect to the size of the solution: more reactions are needed. We characterize this trade-off for inter-and intra-module locking in general and for a variety of specific modules that we have designed. In particular, we discuss locking in detail for a stochastic module that implements probabilistic computation, producing different combinations of molecular types according to specified probability distributions.
Dynamic digital representations in architecture: visions in motion
Authors: Imdat As, Daniel Schodek
Venue:  (2008)

Graphic communication in architecture has made a dramatic shift from traditional drafting practices to dynamic and hyper-medial representations. This book provides a concise and practical introduction to new ways of architectural representation. It conveys principles and guidelines for producing in-depth dynamic representations for design projects and illustrates them with examples of studio work. Advanced digital media techniques and dynamic representations are introduced as primary emerging modes of architectural representation, with techniques such as 3D modelling, animations, montage, virtual and augmented realities and other digitally based techniques discussed.
C++/Pascal developer's handbook
Authors: Alexander Kolarski, Martin Kirilov, Krasimir Asenov
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies and Workshop for PhD Students in Computing (2008)

"Pascal/C++" Developer's Handbook" is a web-based system for online education, designed for students and teachers from the high school levels. We offer an educational environment of full value, enabling the decision and discussion of Pascal and C++ problems, their try out via the emulsifier which we developed, organization of online programming competitions. Our own host guarantees the accessibility of the digest at any time. The school appliance is used in the Mathematics and Science high school in Montana where it meets the approval of our school-mates and teachers. The system contains over 800 exercises and their solutions in two languages, offers the opportunity of adding more, their consideration, reference book, automatically generated tests, question and answer system. The website corresponds to the web-standards and can be visualized on all kinds of browsers with no problem.
Deviance information criterion (DIC) in Bayesian multiple QTL mapping
Authors: Daniel Shriner, Nengjun Yi
Venue: Computational Statistics Data Analysis (2009)

Mapping multiple quantitative trait loci (QTL) is commonly viewed as a problem of model selection. Various model selection criteria have been proposed, primarily in the non-Bayesian framework. The deviance information criterion (DIC) is the most popular criterion for Bayesian model selection and model comparison but has not been applied to Bayesian multiple QTL mapping. A derivation of the DIC is presented for multiple interacting QTL models and calculation of the DIC is demonstrated using posterior samples generated by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. The DIC measures posterior predictive error by penalizing the fit of a model (deviance) by its complexity, determined by the effective number of parameters. The effective number of parameters simultaneously accounts for the sample size, the cross design, the number and lengths of chromosomes, covariates, the number of QTL, the type of QTL effects, and QTL effect sizes. The DIC provides a computationally efficient way to perform sensitivity analysis and can be used to quantitatively evaluate if including environmental effects, gene-gene interactions, and/or gene-environment interactions in the prior specification is worth the extra parameterization. The DIC has been implemented in the freely available package R/qtlbim, which greatly facilitates the general usage of Bayesian methodology for genome-wide interacting QTL analysis.
A Theoretical Framework for Watermarking of Compressed Signals
Authors: Séverine Baudry, Philippe Nguyen
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Digital Watermarking (2008)

Nowadays, digital video, audio and multimedia signals are mostly transported, stored, exchanged, broadcast in compressed form. Thus, most of the multimedia processing operations, amongst them watermarking, shall be done in the compressed domain. When the bitrate is small, the quantization steps are coarse, and the inserted watermark may be heavily distorted or visible; moreover, watermark insertion may increase the stream rate, which is most of the time not acceptable. We propose to model the watermark insertion as an optimization problem on a discrete set, with visibility and rate constraints. We give an iterative method to get the optimal watermarked signal. We show by experimental results that this approach increases the robustness of the watermark.
Surface planarization of ZnO thin film for optoelectronic applications
Authors: Woo-Sun Lee, Gwon-Woo Choi, Yong-Jin Seo
Venue: Microelectronics Journal (2009)

In this paper, surface morphology and optical properties are investigated to find the optimum microstructure of zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films deposited by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. To achieve a high transmittance and a low resistivity, we examined various film deposition conditions. The transmittance and surface morphology of ZnO thin films were measured by an ultraviolet (UV)-visible spectrometer and atomic force microscopy (AFM), respectively. In order to improve the surface quality of ZnO thin films, we performed chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) by change of process parameters, and compared the optical properties of polished ZnO thin films. As an experimental result, we were able to obtain good uniformity and improved transmittance efficiency by the CMP technique.
Multiserver bulk service discrete-time queue with finite buffer and renewal input
Authors: V. Goswami, G. B. Mund
Venue: Computers Mathematics with Applications (2009)

This paper analyzes a discrete-time finite-buffer multi-server bulk-service queueing system in which the interarrival- and service-times are, respectively, arbitrarily and geometrically distributed. Using the supplementary variable and the imbedded Markov-chain techniques, the queue is analyzed for the early arrival system. We obtain state probabilities at prearrival, arbitrary and outside observer's observation epochs. Some performance measures, waiting-time distribution in the queue along with some numerical results, and special cases of the model have also been discussed. Finally, it is shown that in the limiting case the results obtained in this paper tend to the continuous-time counterpart.
Using daily student presentations to address attitudes and communication skills in CS1
Authors: Chris Bennett, Timothy Urness
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (2009)

Many CS1 courses lack a breadth in coverage of computing-related topics and do not actively engage in non-programming computer science topics. In addition, many introductory (and advanced) courses fail to help students develop oral communication skills. In this paper, we describe our experience with addressing these issues in CS1 courses at two different institutions through the use of brief, daily student presentations. Not only can this help recruitment and retention, but it helps to develop more well-rounded students. We also describe the results of a survey students take before and after the course to evaluate how participating in the course can affect attitudes and beliefs about computer science.
The Matthew effect defined and tested for the 100 most prolific economists
Authors: Richard S. J. Tol
Venue: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (2009)

The Matthew effect has that recognition is bestowed on researchers of already high repute. If recognition is measured by citations, this means that often-cited papers or authors are cited more often. I use the statistical theory of the growth of firms to test whether the fame of papers and authors indeed exhibits increasing returns to scale, and confirm this hypothesis for the 100 most prolific economists. &copy; 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
ECM on Graphics Cards
Authors: Daniel J. Bernstein, Tien-Ren Chen, Chen-Mou Cheng, Tanja Lange, Bo-Yin Yang
Venue: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Advances in Cryptology: the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques (2009)

This paper reports record-setting performance for the elliptic-curve method of integer factorization: for example, 926.11 curves/second for ECM stage 1 with B 1 = 8192 for 280-bit integers on a single PC. The state-of-the-art GMP-ECM software handles 124.71 curves/second for ECM stage 1 with B 1 = 8192 for 280-bit integers using all four cores of a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600.The extra speed takes advantage of extra hardware, specifically two NVIDIA GTX 295 graphics cards, using a new ECM implementation introduced in this paper. Our implementation uses Edwards curves, relies on new parallel addition formulas, and is carefully tuned for the highly parallel GPU architecture. On a single GTX 295 the implementation performs 41.88 million modular multiplications per second for a general 280-bit modulus. GMP-ECM, using all four cores of a Q6600, performs 13.03 million modular multiplications per second.This paper also reports speeds on other graphics processors: for example, 2414 280-bit elliptic-curve scalar multiplications per second on an older NVIDIA 8800 GTS (G80), again for a general 280-bit modulus. For comparison, the CHES 2008 paper "Exploiting the Power of GPUs for Asymmetric Cryptography" reported 1412 elliptic-curve scalar multiplications per second on the same graphics processor despite having fewer bits in the scalar (224 instead of 280), fewer bits in the modulus (224 instead of 280), and a special modulus (2224 ¿ 296 + 1).
Microprocessor software engineering training: a case study
Authors: Christine L. Braun
Venue: Proceedings of the May 19-22, 1980, national computer conference (1980)

The rapid growth of the computer software field has resulted in a problem that is beginning to threaten that growth---a critical scarcity of skilled software engineers, trained in modern software engineering practices and able to function effectively in a real working environment. In response to this need, industrial training, through public courses, in-house programs, and audio-visual packages, has become one of the fastest-growing areas of the computer field. However, such programs frequently fail to provide the depth of training that is really required to produce skilled software engineers, and are often too general-purpose to address the particular needs of the company procuring the program.
Traffic modeling and proportional partial caching for peer-to-peer systems
Authors: Mohamed Hefeeda, Osama Saleh
Venue: IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON) (2008)

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems generate a major portion of the Internet traffic, and this portion is expected to increase in the future. We explore the potential of deploying proxy caches in different Autonomous Systems (ASes) with the goal of reducing the cost incurred by Internet service providers and alleviating the load on the Internet backbone. We conduct an eight-month measurement study to analyze the P2P traffic characteristics that are relevant to caching, such as object popularity, popularity dynamics, and object size. Our study shows that the popularity of P2P objects can be modeled by a Mandelbrot-Zipf distribution, and that several workloads exist in P2P traffic. Guided by our findings, we develop a novel caching algorithm for P2P traffic that is based on object segmentation, and proportional partial admission and eviction of objects. Our trace-based simulations show that with a relatively small cache size, a byte hit rate of up to 35% can be achieved by our algorithm, which is close to the byte hit rate achieved by an off-line optimal algorithm with complete knowledge of future requests. Our results also show that our algorithm achieves a byte hit rate that is at least 40% more, and at most triple, the byte hit rate of the common web caching algorithms. Furthermore, our algorithm is robust in face of aborted downloads, which is a common case in P2P systems.
A multi-direction GVF snake for the segmentation of skin cancer images
Authors: Jinshan Tang
Venue: Pattern Recognition (2009)

A multi-direction gradient vector flow (GVF) snake-based scheme is proposed in this paper for the segmentation of skin cancer images. Unlike the traditional anisotropic diffusion (AD) filter, which has many disadvantages such as sensitivity to noise, a new AD filter has been developed to remove the noise. The proposed AD filter uses adaptive threshold selection and a new gradient computation method, which is robust to noise and can effectively remove the hairs. After the noise is removed from the skin cancer image, the image is segmented using a multi-direction GVF snake. The multi-direction GVF snake extends the single direction GVF snake and traces the boundary of the skin cancer even if there are other objects near the skin cancer region. Experiments performed on 11 cancer images show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Defining the Behaviour of BPELlight Interaction Activities Using Message Exchange Patterns
Authors: Jörg Nitzsche, Benjamin Höhensteiger, Frank Leymann, Mirko Sonntag, Markus Tost
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on Towards a Service-Based Internet (2008)

BPELlight is an extension of BPEL that allows defining executable business processes independant of WSDL port types and operations. However, it adopts BPELs principle of having either non-blocking activities that only send or receive a single message or blocking activities, that are restricted to at most two messages, i.e. they implement a send-receive or receive-send behaviour. In recent work BPELlight has been used to define arbitrary complex message exchange patterns. In this paper we use message exchange patterns defined in BPELlight to describe the behaviour of interaction activities in a generic manner. This is beneficial as complex behaviour like a "request-for-bid" only have to be modelled once on an abstract level and can then be reused by simply referencing the corresponding message exchange pattern and filling in parameters whenever needed. This makes process modelling more convenient as the modelling primitives are not restricted to a request-response behaviour but are lifted to a business oriented level.
Predictive receive-directed antenna selection for quasistatic Rayleigh fading channel
Authors: Ian McLoughlin, Shiva Prakash Premananda
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Advanced Infocomm Technology (2008)

Multiple-input multiple output systems (MIMO) improve the performance of wireless channels through the use of space-time coding or through spatial multiplexing techniques. As the number of antennae increases, hardware costs naturally increase, as do power requirements. The physical antennas are themselves inexpensive, but the main driving factor is the requirement for multiple parallel RF chains at transmitter, receiver or both. There is consequently interest in developing so-called hybridselection schemes, where the best L out of N antenna signals are chosen at either end. In this way, only the best set of antennae are used, while the remaining antennae are not employed, thus reducing the number of required RF chains, but preferably gaining some channel benefit from their locations as they are switched into and out of the link dynamically. A critical problem faced by such closed-loop MIMO systems in mobile channels is that channel information estimated at a receiver becomes outdated quickly, due to feedback and processing delays. For receive-directed transmit antenna selection schemes, BER is thus sensitive to inaccurate CSI due to feedback delays from receiver to transmitter. In this paper a transmit antenna selection strategy with prediction is investigated for a temporally correlated flat fading Raleigh channel based on minimum error rate criteria, which aims to save transmit power through only transmitting over the best channel -- a suboptimal approach to space-time coding, but one which can be far more power efficient. The minimum error rate method finds particular application in an adaptive coding and modulation network where receive signal strength indication (RSSI) is either not present or not relevant.
System modelling and realistic simulation of back-end module LNAs. application to QUIJOTE experiment radiometer
Authors: F. J. Casas, J. P. Pascual, J. Portilla, M. L. De La Fuente, B. Aja, E. Artal
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Signal, Speech and image processing (2008)

In this work, system level modelling and realistic simulation results of the 31 GHz Back-End Module (BEM) Low-Noise Amplifiers (LNAs), designed for the QUIJOTE CMB (Q U I JOint TEnerife CMB) experiment radiometer, are reported. The signals received by radiometers can be identified as continuous spectre gaussian white noise signals. This makes necessary time-domain simulation techniques and appropriate models for the realistic analysis of radiometers behaviour. The measured-based modelling of the two BEM's LNAs and their simulation in nominal conditions by using filtered white noise excitation signals will be shown. Typically, in the LNAs design process the linearity is not taken into account but, as we will see, in the radiometers case the nature of gaussian noise excitation signals makes their amplifiers to present higher nonlinearity in their characteristics than when using single tone excitation signals. So, in order to analyze the suitability of the LNAs nominal operation, linearity figures of merit have to be obtained but using realistic excitation signals. In this paper, the LNAs nonlinear characteristics with gaussian noise excitation signals have been obtained.
Development of decision rationale in complex group decision making
Authors: Helena M. Mentis, Paula M. Bach, Blaine Hoffman, Mary Beth Rosson, John M. Carroll
Venue: Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems (2009)

This study explores the characteristics of rationale development in a complex group decision making task and considers design implications for better supporting rationale development in group decision making. Twelve three-person, multi-role teams performed three instances of a collaborative decision making task with physical maps. We used rhetorical structure theory to analyze the structure of their decision making discourse. We found that groups begin their reasoning processing by stating and relating information and finish their reasoning through a point-counterpoint discussion. We also found that established groups reduced their need to analyze information during the last moments of a decision. Implications for the design of group decision support systems to encourage rationale development are presented.
Introducing Support for Release Planning of Quality Requirements — An Industrial Evaluation of the QUPER Model
Authors: Richard Berntsson Svensson, Thomas Olsson, Björn Regnell
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 Second International Workshop on Software Product Management (2008)

In market-driven product development and release planning, it is important to market success to find the right balance among competing quality requirements. To address this issue, a conceptual model that incorporates quality as a dimension in addition to the cost and value dimensions used in prioritisation approaches for functional requirements has been developed. In this paper, we present an industrial evaluation of the model. The results indicate that the quality performance model provides helpful information about quality requirements in release planning. All subjects stated that the most difficult estimations may be more accurate by using the quality performance model.