ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Beginners Guide to SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005
Authors: Jayaram Krishnaswamy
Venue:  (2007)

This step-by-step, hands on guide will take you right into the Visual Studio 2005 Integrated Development Interface making you appreciate and understand how Business Intelligence Projects and Packages are created using the Visual Studio designer. Sql Server Integration Services with the acronym SSIS is a comprehensive ETL tool that made its debut with SQL Server 2005. It is a tool tightly integrated with the Visual Studio 2005 having all the functionalities that its forerunner DTS (Data Transformation Services) had in SQL Server 2000. This does not mean that it is just an improvement over DTS but a product which is totally different with a vastly improved interface; an extensible architecture; an enlarged tool set; ease of integration with other SQL Server Tools such as Analysis Services; capable of supporting connectivity with third party databases and bringing into a central location many database management tasks. Beginners Guide to SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005 provides you with the basic knowledge that you should have before you move on to more advanced ETL [Extraction, Transformation, and Loading]. The book will also provide you with a comprehensive description of the many designer windows that you may encounter while working with the designer. This guide provides the building blocks describing each block by way of an example as well as describing the nuts and bolts that bind the blocks. A majority of SSIS tasks are covered in this book and they are described fully in the summary of table contents section. You start building packages right from Chapter 2 and continue on to Chapter 20 gathering and building upon your knowledge in each step. The book will give you step-by-step explanation of the examples in the book. In each chapter you will get a little background of the SSIS task that you are going to create. You will then step through the numbered steps, creating, configuring, executing, and reviewing the results. The book has minimal coding (only two chapters) and exclusively uses the Visual Studio 2005 Designer. 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
Running a programming contest in an introductory computer science course
Authors: Arnold Rosenbloom
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education (2009)

We describe how to run a motivating in-class competition for an Introductory Computer Science course. We outline the students background, the problems, the motivation and the materials needed to run the competition.
Towards ACL semantics based on commitments and penalties
Authors: Leila Amgoud, Florence Dupin de Saint-Cyr
Venue: Proceeding of the 2006 conference on ECAI 2006: 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence August 29 -- September 1, 2006, Riva del Garda, Italy (2006)

The importance of defining a standard framework for agent communication languages (ACL) with a simple, clear, and a verifiable semantics has been widely recognized. This paper proposes a logic-based semantics which is social in nature. The basic idea is to associate with each speech act a meaning in terms of the commitment induced by that speech act, and the penalty to be paid in case that commitment is violated. A violation criterion based on the existence of arguments is then defined per speech act. Moreover, we show that the proposed semantics satisfies some key properties that ensure the approach is well-founded. The logical setting makes the semantics verifiable.
Re-ranking search results using language models of query-specific clusters
Authors: Oren Kurland
Venue: Information Retrieval (2009)

To obtain high precision at top ranks by a search performed in response to a query, researchers have proposed a cluster-based re-ranking paradigm: clustering an initial list of documents that are the most highly ranked by some initial search, and using information induced from these (often called) query-specific clusters for re-ranking the list. However, results concerning the effectiveness of various automatic cluster-based re-ranking methods have been inconclusive. We show that using query-specific clusters for automatic re-ranking of top-retrieved documents is effective with several methods in which clusters play different roles, among which is the smoothing of document language models. We do so by adapting previously-proposed cluster-based retrieval approaches, which are based on (static) query-independent clusters for ranking all documents in a corpus, to the re-ranking setting wherein clusters are query-specific. The best performing method that we develop outperforms both the initial document-based ranking and some previously proposed cluster-based re-ranking approaches; furthermore, this algorithm consistently outperforms a state-of-the-art pseudo-feedback-based approach. In further exploration we study the performance of cluster-based smoothing methods for re-ranking with various (soft and hard) clustering algorithms, and demonstrate the importance of clusters in providing context from the initial list through a comparison to using single documents to this end.
A cross-country comparative analysis of e-government service delivery among Arab countries
Authors: Akemi Takeoka Chatfield, Omar Alhujran
Venue: Information Technology for Development (2009)

Much of the existing e-government research focuses on developed countries. Although a relatively small number of studies explored Arab e-government development, they did so in a single country context. This article provides an insight into the current state of Arab e-government developments. A cross-country comparative analysis of e-government Web sites and portals was conducted on 16 Arab countries to assess their development stages in e-government service delivery capability. Further comparative analysis was performed between the top Arab e-governments and the global top e-governments in developed countries with regard to &ldquo;e-democracy,&rdquo; often the highest level e-government service delivery capability identified in the literature. The results confirm a wide digital divide that remains between the Arab countries and the leading developed countries. Importantly, however, the results also show a wide digital divide even among the Arab countries studied, particularly in the development of advanced e-government service delivery capabilities. These results have important implications for developing countries in managing both economic and non-economic resources effectively for successful e-government development. &copy; 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syed Nasirin and Anastasia Papazafeiropoulou are the accepting Guest Editors for this article.
Ant colony technique for transformer tap changer setting optimization
Authors: M. R. Kalil, I. Musirin, M. M. Othman, T. K. A. Rahman
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th WSEAS international conference on Artificial intelligence, knowledge engineering and data bases (2009)

Optimization techniques are perquisite in solving multi-dimensional, higher order and multivariable problem formulations. They can be used to solve problems in various fields such as mathematics, engineering, sciences and medicine. In electric power system engineering, optimization problems normally dealt with multi-variables, quadratic, non-convex and involved many constraints. Amongst the popular optimization techniques are such as; tabu search, genetic algorithm (GA), evolutionary programming (EP), ant colony optimization (ACO), artificial immune system (AIS) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). The trend these days is going towards EP, PSO, ACO and GA. However, any of these techniques are not accurate for all cases; in which generalization cannot be made with regards to a particular optimization technique. This paper presents ACO technique for optimizing the size for transformer tap changer setting (OTTCS) in a power transmission network which aims to improve voltage stability condition or loss minimization in the system. ACO is a new cooperative agent's approach, which was inspired by the observation of the behaviours of real ant colonies on the topics of ant trial formation and foraging method. The set of cooperating agents called "ant" cooperate to find the optimal point of OTTCS. The essence of original ACO in solving graphical optimization problems have been modified to solve the power system optimization problems which are more continuous in nature. Implementation of ACO in identifying the optimal values for OTTCS, tested on a reliable test system has produced promising results. Comparative studies presented with respect to EP and AIS had indicated the merit of the proposed technique.
Computational methods for the analysis of phase dynamics in biological oscillators
Authors: Linda R. Petzold, Francis J. Doyle,  III
Venue:  (2008)

Background. Nature is rife with rhythmic processes. Among the most important sources of rhythmicity are circadian clocks, which regulate daily behaviors in organisms across the tree of life. Two key characteristics of a circadian clock are (a) its ability to sustain oscillations in constant conditions, and (b) its ability to entrain its internal time, or phase, to rhythmic conditions, such as the daily light/dark cycle. The clockworks reside at the cellular level in the form of transcriptional feedback networks and are highly complex dynamical systems. The clockworks of mammals have increased complexity because they are comprised of networks of coupled cellular oscillators. Mathematical modeling and analysis serve as tools to elucidate the mechanisms undergirding oscillatory behavior, phase resetting, and dynamics of coupled oscillators.Analysis. Phase resetting has been studied via experimentally collected curves; these so-called phase response curves (PRCs) map the phase of a light signal's arrival with the resulting phase adjustment. This black-box technique is appropriate for biological experimentation, but is not appropriate for mathematical models, which are amenable to analytic techniques. Thus we have derived the parametric impulse phase response curve (pIPRC), which characterizes the phase behavior of processes within the clock and predicts its phase response to external stimuli. We demonstrate the ability of the pIPRC to yield insights into the phase behavior of circadian clocks in plants, flies, and mammals. Model reduction. To decrease the complexity of circadian clock models, we have developed a novel model reduction technique. We minimize the number of single oscillator model components while preserving the pIPRC and demonstrate that, in numerical experiments, a reduced model will reproduce the phase response behavior of the full model. Further, we couple a population of reduced models and demonstrate that they are able to synchronize sponteneously and at the same rate as the coupled population of full models. Thus preserving the pIPRC of a single oscillator preserves emergent behaviors of a coupled population of oscillators.
Automatic Configuration of Multi-Robot Systems: Planning for Multiple Steps
Authors: Robert Lundh, Lars Karlsson, Alessandro Saffiotti
Venue: Proceeding of the 2008 conference on ECAI 2008: 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2008)

We consider multi-robot systems where robots need to cooperate tightly by sharing functionalities with each other. There are methods for automatically configuring a multi-robot system for tight cooperation, but they only produce a single configuration. In this paper, we show how methods for automatic configuration can be integrated with methods for task planning in order to produce a complete plan were each step is a configuration. We also consider the issues of monitoring and replanning in this context, and we demonstrate our approach on a real multi-robot system, the PEIS-Ecology.
Intelligent Technical Systems, 1st edition
Authors: Natividad Martnez Madrid, Ralf E.D. Seepold
Venue:  (2009)

Intelligent technical systems are networked, embedded systems incorporating real-time capacities that are able to interact with and adapt to their environments. These systems need innovative approaches in order to meet requirements like cost, size, power and memory consumption, as well as real-time compliance and security. Intelligent Technical Systems covers different levels like multimedia systems, embedded programming, middleware platforms, sensor networks and autonomous systems and applications for intelligent engineering. Each level is discussed by a set of original articles summarizing the state of the art and presenting a concrete application; they include a deep discussion of their model and explain all design decisions relevant to obtain a mature solution.
A generic framework for comparing semantic similarities on a subsumption hierarchy
Authors: Emmanuel Blanchard, Mounira Harzallah, Pascale Kuntz
Venue: Proceeding of the 2008 conference on ECAI 2008: 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2008)

Defining a suitable semantic similarity between concept pairs of a subsumption hierarchy is becoming a generic problem for many applications in knowledge engineering exploiting ontologies. In this paper, we define a generic framework which can guide the proposition of new measures by making explicit the information on the ontology which has not been integrated into existing definitions yet. Moreover, this framework allows us to rewrite numerous measures, originally proposed in various contexts, which are in fact closely related to each other. From this observation, we show some metrical and ordinal properties. Experimental comparisons on Word-Net and on collections of human judgments complete the theoretical results and confirm the relevance of our propositions.
FEA-based durability assessment: a case study using a parabolic leaf spring
Authors: S. Abdullah, F. N. Ahmad Refngah, A. Jalar, I. B. Chua, A. K. Ariffin, A. Zaharim
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th WSEAS international conference on System science and simulation in engineering (2008)

This paper presents the about fatigue life prediction based on finite element analysia and variable amplitude loading (VAL). Parabolic spring is one of the vital component in a vehicle suspension system, and it is commonly used in trucks. It needs to have an excellent fatigue life, and recently, manufacturers rely on constant loading fatigue data. This study objective is to simulating the variable amplitude loading for the fatigue life analysis. Service loading of parabolic spring has been collected using data acquisition system. Finite element analysis (FEA) was performed on the spring model so stress and damage distribution can be observed. Experimental works was done in order to validate the FEA result. The main finding can be obtained when VAL as the input, and it was then combines with the FE model. Fatigue life simulation was performed and analyzed. From the results, the fatigue damage using VAL was predicted and the result was correlated with FEA.
Web Page Prediction Based on Conditional Random Fields
Authors: Yong Zhen Guo, Kotagiri Ramamohanarao, Laurence A. F. Park
Venue: Proceeding of the 2008 conference on ECAI 2008: 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2008)

Web page prefetching is used to reduce the access latency of the Internet. However, if most prefetched Web pages are not visited by the users in their subsequent accesses, the limited network bandwidth and server resources will not be used efficiently and may worsen the access delay problem. Therefore, it is critical that we have an accurate prediction method during prefetching. Conditional Random Fields (CRFs), which are popular sequential learning models, have already been successfully used for many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks such as POS tagging, name entity recognition (NER) and segmentation. In this paper, we propose the use of CRFs in the field of Web page prediction. We treat the accessing sessions of previous Web users as observation sequences and label each element of these observation sequences to get the corresponding label sequences, then based on these observation and label sequences we use CRFs to train a prediction model and predict the probable subsequent Web pages for the current users. Our experimental results show that CRFs can produce higher Web page prediction accuracy effectively when compared with other popular techniques like plain Markov Chains and Hidden Markov Models (HMMs).
Opponent Modelling in Texas Hold'em Poker as the Key for Success
Authors: Dinis Félix, Luís Paulo Reis
Venue: Proceeding of the 2008 conference on ECAI 2008: 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2008)

Over the last few years, research in Artificial Intelligence has focussed on games with incomplete information and non-deterministic moves. The game of Poker is a perfect theme for studying this subject. The best known Poker variant is Texas Hold'em that combines simple rules with a huge amount of possible playing strategies. This paper is focussed on developing algorithms for performing simple online opponent modelling in Texas Hold'em Poker enabling to select the best strategy to play against each given opponent. Several autonomous agents were developed in order to simulate typical Poker player's behaviour and an observer agent was developed, capable of using simple opponent modelling techniques, in order to select the best playing strategy against each opponent. The results obtained in realistic experiments using eight distinct poker playing agents showed the usefulness of the approach. The observer agent is clearly capable of outperforming all their counterparts in all tests performed.
Multiobjective genetic programming approach to evolving heuristics for the bounded diameter minimum spanning tree problem: MOGP for BDMST
Authors: Rajeev Kumar, Bipul Kumar Bal, Peter I. Rockett
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th Annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation (2009)

The bounded-diameter (or diameter-constrained) minimum spanning tree (BDMST) problem is a well-studied combinatorial optimization problem for which several heuristics such as: one-time tree construction (OTTC), center based tree construction(CBTC), iterative refinement (IR) and randomized greedy heuristics (RGH) have been developed. Very little work, however, has been done on producing heuristics for BDMSTs using evolutionary algorithms. In this paper we have used multiobjective genetic programming (MOGP) to explore the evolution of a set of heuristics for the BDMST problem. The quality of the Pareto fronts obtained from the MOGP-evolved heuristics is comparable to, or in some cases better than, the Pareto fronts generated by established, hand-crafted heuristics. MOGP is thus a very promising technique for finding heuristics for BDMSTs and more general multiobjective combinatorial optimizations.
Agent-based algorithms for collaborative price search in electronic commerce: a case study and performance evaluation
Authors: Ali Chamam, Samuel Pierre, Roch H. Glitho
Venue: Intelligent Decision Technologies (2008)

This paper presents an architecture based on mobile agents to search for admissible prices of a specific item among many merchant sites over the Internet. To make the search more efficient, mobile agents collaborate by exchanging information. In this paper, we present and compare two collaboration strategies: blackboard and inter-agent communication. The performance of the presented strategies was investigated regarding the response time and the induced network traffic. For that, we carried out analytical and experimental estimation of the lower and the upper bounds of the average search time and average induced network flow of each proposed algorithm. We also addressed system scalability with respect to the number of involved agents. Experimental results show that collaboration among agents improves performance compared to non-collaborative solutions and that increasing the number of agents does not always guarantee better performance.
Multi-resolution fourier-based texture image retrieval
Authors: Abdelhamid Abdesselam
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 conference on Information Science, Technology and Applications (2009)

During the last decades, several approaches were proposed to describe texture contents of an image. In early research works, the texture features were mainly extracted from the pixel space itself (Edge histograms, Co-occurrence-based features). Later on, the focus was more on the use of dual spaces (transform of pixel space) such as frequency space or spaces resulting from Gabor and wavelet transforms. Recent physiological studies showed that the human visual system can be modeled as a set of independent channels of various orientations and scales, this finding motivated the proliferation of multi-resolution methods for describing texture images. Most of these methods are either wavelet-based or Gabor-based. In this paper we propose a multi-resolution technique for characterizing and retrieving images which works on the Fourier domain. Our approach differs from the work of [3] since it applies global Fourier transform on a hierarchy of images of various resolutions while their approach uses local (windowed) Fourier transform of increasing sizes. The experiments we have conducted showed that the multi-resolution approach improves the retrieval accuracy of the similar method that uses the same texture feature vector but in a single resolution. The experiments have also demonstrated that our Fourier based multi-resolution technique outperforms many wavelet-based multi-resolution techniques recently described in literature.
Exploring biomedical databases with BioNav
Authors: Abhijith Kashyap, Vagelis Hristidis, Michalis Petropoulos, Sotiria Tavoulari
Venue: Proceedings of the 35th SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (2009)

We demonstrate the BioNav system, a novel search interface for biomedical databases, such as PubMed. BioNav enables users to navigate large number of query results by categorizing them using MeSH; a comprehensive concept hierarchy used by PubMed. Once the query results are organized into a navigation tree, BioNav reveals only a small subset of the concept nodes at each step, selected such that the expected user navigation cost is minimized. In contrast, previous works expand the hierarchy in a predefined static manner, without navigation cost modeling. BioNav is available at http://db.cse.buffalo.edu/bionav.
Improving recommender systems with adaptive conversational strategies
Authors: Tariq Mahmood, Francesco Ricci
Venue: Proceedings of the 20th ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia (2009)

Conversational recommender systems (CRSs) assist online users in their information-seeking and decision making tasks by supporting an interactive process. Although these processes could be rather diverse, CRSs typically follow a fixed strategy, e.g., based on critiquing or on iterative query reformulation. In a previous paper, we proposed a novel recommendation model that allows conversational systems to autonomously improve a fixed strategy and eventually learn a better one using reinforcement learning techniques. This strategy is optimal for the given model of the interaction and it is adapted to the users' behaviors. In this paper we validate our approach in an online CRS by means of a user study involving several hundreds of testers. We show that the optimal strategy is different from the fixed one, and supports more effective and efficient interaction sessions.