ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary minimization of the Rand index for speaker clustering
Authors: Wei-Ho Tsai, Hsin-Min Wang
Venue: Computer Speech and Language (2009)

We propose an effective method for clustering unknown speech utterances based on their associated speakers. The method jointly optimizes the generated clusters and the required number of clusters by estimating and minimizing the Rand index. The metric reflects the clustering errors that arise when utterances from the same speaker are placed in different clusters; or when utterances from different speakers are placed in the same cluster. One useful characteristic of the Rand index is that its value only reaches the minimum when the number of clusters is equal to the size of the true speaker population. We approximate the Rand index by a function of the similarity measures between utterances and then use a genetic algorithm to determine the cluster in which each utterance should be located, such that the function is minimized. Our experiment results show that this novel speaker-clustering method outperforms conventional methods that use the Bayesian information criterion to determine the required number of clusters.
Co-designing the failure analysis and monitoring of large-scale systems
Authors: Abhishek Chandra, Rohini Prinja, Sourabh Jain, ZhiLi Zhang
Venue: ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review (2008)

Large-scale distributed systems provide the backbone for numerous distributed applications and online services. These systems span over a multitude of computing nodes located at different geographical locations connected together via wide-area networks and overlays. A major concern with such systems is their susceptibility to failures leading to downtime of services and hence high monetary/business costs. In this paper, we argue that to understand failures in such a system, we need to co-design monitoring system with the failure analysis system. Unlike existing monitoring systems which are not designed specifically for failure analysis, we advocate a new way to design a monitoring system with the goal of uncovering causes of failures. Similarly the failure analysis techniques themselves need to go beyond simple statistical analysis of failure events in isolation to serve as an effective tool. Towards this end, we provide a discussion of some guiding principles for the co-design of monitoring and failure analysis systems for planetary scale systems.
Focused ion beam core hole drilling for stress detection in thin-films
Authors: H. Gerdes, H. H. Gatzen
Venue: Microsystem Technologies (2008)

Since excessive stress in deposited thin-films may result in a delamination of these films, a low internal stress level is desirable. State of technology for measuring internal stress in bulk materials is the hole-drilling method. This paper investigates the application of the hole-drilling method to thin-films using a focused ion beam (FIB) for creating micro holes. With the FIB, a hole of about 20&#x00a0;&#x03bc;m in diameter is cut into a thin-film structure. The film thickness may be up to a couple of micrometers. By comparing the FIB cutting geometry and the resulting hole diameter, the stress level of the thin-film may be derived. This typically fails in the case of compressive stress. For films under tensile stress, the feasibility of the detection is shown.
A Decisional Trust Implementation on a Maintenance System by the Means of Decisional DNA and Reflexive Ontologies
Authors: Cesar Sanin, Edward Szczerbicki
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 03 (2008)

This article introduces the elements that we replaced together in order to achieve a decisional technology that can offer trust. Thus, we refer to it as Decisional Trust. Enhancing a decisional knowledge system with trust means that the user relies on what the system knows and that the system possesses a qualified reliance on received knowledge. Our proposal works in two fronts:(i) the construction of Reflexive Ontologies; and (ii)the construction of Decisional DNA. Then, we add trust models in order to gain certainty based upon the past decisional experience, and just until then, we can refer to the system as a Decisional Trust System. Additionally, an augmented reality (AR)maintenance system is improved by adding the elements of decisional trust. This framework improves the quality of decision-making, and advances the notion of administering trustable knowledge in the current decision making environment.
A switching rule for plastics identification in electronics recycling
Authors: J. A. S. Williams, X. Qu, P. Rios, J. Wieland, E. Grant
Venue: International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (2008)

The looming obsolescence of 3 billion consumer electronics by 2010 calls for effective recycling of 10 billion pounds of high-value engineering thermoplastics. Because general shredding operations generate mixed plastics of low value, a switching rule is needed rapidly to identify plastics for sortation by colour and type to increase plastics-to-plastics recycling value. The current paper develops a heuristic rule to determine the thresholds for a switching rule that reduces set-up time while managing queue space. Our recycling system is modelled as a multiclass queuing network in a simulation model. Results indicate that laser identification probe utilization, setups, and queue space are sensitive to the switching rule. Our work contributes important insights into the relationship between traffic intensity, setup time, and queue capacity, and generalizes to multiclass queuing systems in other applications.
Finding programming errors earlier by evaluating runtime monitors ahead-of-time
Authors: Eric Bodden, Patrick Lam, Laurie Hendren
Venue: Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of software engineering (2008)

Runtime monitoring allows programmers to validate, for instance, the proper use of application interfaces. Given a property specification, a runtime monitor tracks appropriate runtime events to detect violations and possibly execute recovery code. Although powerful, runtime monitoring inspects only one program run at a time and so may require many program runs to find errors. Therefore, in this paper, we present ahead-of-time techniques that can (1) prove the absence of property violations on all program runs, or (2) flag locations where violations are likely to occur. Our work focuses on tracematches, an expressive runtime monitoring notation for reasoning about groups of correlated objects. We describe a novel flow-sensitive static analysis for analyzing monitor states. Our abstraction captures both positive information (a set of objects could be in a particular monitor state) and negative information (the set is known not to be in a state). The analysis resolves heap references by combining the results of three points-to and alias analyses. We also propose a machine learning phase to filter out likely false positives. We applied a set of 13 tracematches to the DaCapo benchmark suite and SciMark2. Our static analysis rules out all potential points of failure in 50% of the cases, and 75% of false positives on average. Our machine learning algorithm correctly classifies the remaining potential points of failure in all but three of 461 cases. The approach revealed defects and suspicious code in three benchmark programs.
Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of software engineering
Venue: Foundations of Software Engineering (2008)

Welcome to SIGSOFT 2008 and the Sixteenth ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-16). SIGSOFT 2008 provides many different opportunities for software engineering researchers and practitioners to interact. Four workshops, ranging in topics from specification and verification to collaborative development tools, provide an opportunity for in-depth discussion of particular areas. A doctoral symposium and a student research forum allow for lively exchange between experienced researchers and student participants. A symposium for new faculty and new researchers allows for sharing of experiences and the opportunity for those new to the field to gain advice from more experienced researchers. A symposium dedicated to software engineering educators aims to improve the recruitment, education and retention of students in software engineering. Also co-located with SIGOSFT 2008 is the 8th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT Workshop on Program Analysis for Software Tools and Engineering (PASTE), which provides an opportunity to explore how program analysis can help improve and extend the software tools available to developers. The main event at SIGSOFT 2008 is FSE, a leading conference for research in software engineering theory and practice. This year, FSE received 152 submissions from the global software engineering community. Each paper was reviewed by at least three members of the high-qualified technical program committee. The program committee met for one-and-a-half days to discuss the submissions in detail. Based on this discussion, the program committee selected 31 papers for presentation at the conference and publication in the conference proceedings. In addition to these papers, the conference proceedings contains abstracts from the keynote speakers and the SIGSOFT award winners that we are thrilled to have as part of the FSE-16 program.
An application of the Birmingham discourse analysis system of the study of computer guidance interactions
Authors: Michael J. Coombs, James L. Alty
Venue: Human-computer interaction (1985)

University researchers need to use computers in their work yet they are not computer professionals and are not able to progress efficiently without adequate guidance. All British universities make such computer-use guidance available, the most important source of information being the advisory service of the local computer center. However, little is known of the structure and effectiveness of advisory interactions. The analysis of advisory conversations requires some method for representing their structure. This paper reports such a method based on a scheme devised by a research team at the University of Birmingham, UK (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975) for the study of teaching discourse. Using this system, we are able to define the problem-solving nature of advisory discourse, along with a number of limitations inherent in the way advisers currently conduct interactions. Various coding extensions are suggested, along with proposals for the application of the system to the development of improved advisory strategies.
New correlation analysis method for nonstationary signal
Authors: Zuojin Li, Weiren Shi, Kai Wang, Xiaowei Sun, Zhi Zhong
Venue: WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications (2008)

This paper proposes a new correlation analysis method for nonstationary and energy-limited continual signals, which works out a formula similar to time correlation theory; that is to say when the operator, ƒ, meets a certain condition, its auto-correlation property of Fourier transform can be presented by Fourier transform of its energy function, |ƒ(t)|2, revealing its correlation of the Fourier transform coefficients of frequency interval, ω. It proves that the Parseval identical equation is the special case happening when ω=0. The above conclusion explains the theory of image compressing and noise removing through wavelet transform.
Proceedings of the first international workshop on Ontology-supported business intelligence
Venue: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 308 (2008)

The First International Workshop on Ontology-supported Business Intelligence (OBI2008), co-located with the 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2008), aims to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners from both academic and commercial backgrounds in this emerging but promising application area for semantic technology. It will also serve as a facilitator for bringing BI and Data Mining research closer to the Semantic Web community.
Effects of fatigue and damage on the hysteresis loops of ferroelectric ceramics
Authors: Shouwen Yu, Li Yu
Venue: Microsystem Technologies (2008)

Electric fatigue and radiation damage may induce pinched polarization hysteresis loops and asymmetric strain hysteresis loops of ferroelectric ceramics, respectively. Based on a gradual domain switching model, this paper formulates a novel constitutive model to investigate the hysteresis deformation behavior of ferroelectric ceramics by radiation damage and electric fatigue. First, two important physical mechanisms, namely, alignment of the defect dipoles and domain-wall pinning due to diffusion of charged defects, are considered in irradiated ferroelectric ceramics. It is found that the alignment of the defect dipoles acts as an internal field and increases the coercive field, while the domain-wall pinning clamps the domain and causes the vanishment of remanent polarization. Second, the effects of point defects and domain pinning by space charges are taken into account in ferroelectric fatigue model. The results of simulations reveal that the spatial distribution and electric property of space charges play a dominant role in the asymmetry of strain hysteresis loops. The proposed model can elucidate experimental phenomena reported in the literature.
High-performance signal peptide prediction based on sequence alignment techniques
Authors: Karl Frank, Manfred J. Sippl
Venue: Bioinformatics (2008)

Summary: The accuracy of current signal peptide predictors is outstanding. The most successful predictors are based on neural networks and hidden Markov models, reaching a sensitivity of 99% and an accuracy of 95%. Here, we demonstrate that the popular BLASTP alignment tool can be tuned for signal peptide prediction reaching the same high level of prediction success. Alignment-based techniques provide additional benefits. In spite of high success rates signal peptide predictors yield false predictions. Simple sequences like polyvaline, for example, are predicted as signal peptides. The general architecture of learning systems makes it difficult to trace the cause of such problems. This kind of false predictions can be recognized or avoided altogether by using sequence comparison techniques. Based on these results we have implemented a public web service, called Signal-BLAST. Predictions returned by Signal-BLAST are transparent and easy to analyze. Availability: Signal-BLAST is available online at http://sigpep.services.came.sbg.ac.at/signalblast.html Contact: sippl@came.sbg.ac.at
Expert system classification of urban land use/cover for Delhi, India
Authors: Elizabeth A. Wentz, David Nelson, Atiqur Rahman, William L. Stefanov, Shoursaseni Sen Roy
Venue: International Journal of Remote Sensing (2008)

This study presents the results of classifying land use/land cover for Delhi, India using an expert system approach. For this study Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) data of 22 September 2003 were used. The research goals of this project are two-fold. In one respect, the research goal is to report on the extent covered by urbanization using the classified image. Thirteen different land-cover categories were identified with an 85.55% overall classification accuracy based on 256 random points for validation and 50 on the ground observations. Secondly, we report on our efforts to duplicate an expert system model previously developed for Phoenix Arizona as a generalized approach for urban land use classification. Results suggest that while some of the methodology could be duplicated, there are local factors (e.g. data availability and specific land features) that required the approach to be modified.
Duality for almost convex optimization problems via the perturbation approach
Authors: Radu Ioan Boţ, Gábor Kassay, Gert Wanka
Venue: Journal of Global Optimization (2008)

We deal with duality for almost convex finite dimensional optimization problems by means of the classical perturbation approach. To this aim some standard results from the convex analysis are extended to the case of almost convex sets and functions. The duality for some classes of primal-dual problems is derived as a special case of the general approach. The sufficient regularity conditions we need for guaranteeing strong duality are proved to be similar to the ones in the convex case.
Experience Mining: Building a Large-Scale Database of Personal Experiences and Opinions from Web Documents
Authors: Kentaro Inui, Shuya Abe, Kazuo Hara, Hiraku Morita, Chitose Sao, Megumi Eguchi, Asuka Sumida, Koji Murakami, Suguru Matsuyoshi
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 01 (2008)

This paper proposes a new UGC-oriented language technology application, which we call experience mining. Experience mining aims at automatically collecting instances of personal experiences as well as opinions from an explosive number of user generated contents (UGCs) such as weblog and forum posts and storing them in an experience database with semantically rich indices. After arguing the technical issues of this new task, we focus on the central problem, factuality analysis, among others and propose a machine learning-based solution as well as the task definition itself. Our empirical evaluation indicates that our factuality analysis task is sufficiently well-defined to achieve a high inter-annotator agreement and our Factorial CRF-based model considerably outperforms the baseline. We also present an application system, which currently stores over 30M experience instances extracted from 150M Japanese blog posts with semantic indices and is scheduled to start serving as an experience search engine for unrestricted users in October.
Equilibrium analysis through separation of user and network behavior
Authors: Y. C. Tay, Dinh Nguyen Tran, Eric Yi Liu, Wei Tsang Ooi, Robert Morris
Venue: Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking (2008)

Internet complexity makes reasoning about traffic equilibrium difficult, partly because users react to congestion. This difficulty calls for an analytic technique that is simple, yet have enough details to capture user behavior and flexibly address a broad range of issues. This paper presents such a technique. It treats traffic equilibrium as a balance between an inflow controlled by users, and an outflow controlled by the network (link capacity, congestion avoidance, etc.). This decomposition is demonstrated with a surfing session model, and validated with a traffic trace and NS2 simulations. The technique's accessibility and breadth are illustrated through an analysis of several issues concerning the location, stability, robustness and dynamics of traffic equilibrium.
Dynamic Evaluation Tree for Presenting Expression Evaluations Visually
Authors: Essi Lahtinen, Tuukka Ahoniemi
Venue: Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS) (2009)

Novice programmers have difficulties with their visual attention strategies when following program visualizations. This article presents work in progress on improving the user interfaces of visualization tools to support students in the visual attention problems. We introduce a user interface solution called the dynamic evaluation tree. The basic idea is to reduce the amount of separate windows of the user interface and thus make it possible to concentrate the visual attention more in one part of the screen.
Discovering and Browsing of Power Users by Social Relationship Analysis in Large-Scale Online Communities
Authors: Hyoseop Shin, Zhiwei Xu, Eun-Yi Kim
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 01 (2008)

Community web sites on specific topics are very popular on the web. Some active web communities are so huge and diverse that it becomes a challenging issue to efficiently mine meaningful knowledge from the web communities. In this paper, we develop schemes to discover and browse power users by their activities in online communities. The novelties of this work are two-fold. 1) We define new features to describe user's social activities: statistical features to summarize users’ activities and relationship-based features to describe interactions between individual users. And, through extensive user study and experiments to compare the performances of the ranking models based on various features, it is shown that the cross reference (CR) feature plays an unique and effective role in discovering power users in post-dominant online communities. 2) Thereafter, we develop a novel interface for effective exploration of power users based on the CR rank. Two schemes are proposed to incrementally navigate a large number of candidate power users with higher CR values: threshold-based navigation and traversal-based one. Experimental results shows that the proposed CR rank can be used for effective browsing of power users: about 70 % precision is maintained while retrieving all the power users, which means that we can discover all the power users with relatively small number of false alarms.
Active Integration of Databases in Grids for Scalable Distributed Query Processing
Authors: Alexander Wöhrer, Peter Brezany
Venue: Proceedings of the OTM 2008 Confederated International Conferences, CoopIS, DOA, GADA, IS, and ODBASE 2008. Part I on On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: (2008)

A focus of Grid computing are data intensive applications. Additionally, database management systems (DBMS) are gaining on importance in many scientific disciplines for publication of research results. The employment of Service-oriented-Architecture (SoA) raises the question of how DBMSs and their built-in technologies can be best utilized in such environments. A common way is to pull out all required data for a certain task from a source and process it service side far away from the original source. This approach is characterized by a passive usage of the DBMS as a pure data provider which implies significant overheads. The research effort described in this paper allows an active usage of a DBMS by relocating distributed query processing functionality inside it. Our novel solution utilizes the existing database technology, puts just the interface code at the service level while the data processing code resides at the database level and uses a push mechanism for the result data. The advantages are less overheads and data movement as well as increased data locality. Our proof of concept implementation is evaluated by comparing our distributed query processing prototype working inside popular relational DBMS (Oracle 10g and PostGreSQL 8.3) with a traditional installation of the OGSA-DQP middleware developed for distributed query processing on the Grid.
Collaborative Support for Community Data Sharing
Authors: Gianluca Correndo, Harith Alani
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 03 (2008)

The Semantic Web aims to create a web of data where contents can be easily discovered and integrated using metadata. Many ontologies have been proposed over the years in different domains, thus producing a semantic heterogeneity that is difficult to manage. Various automated ontology mapping techniques and tools have been developed to facilitate the bridging and integration of distributed data repositories. Nevertheless, such tools are still in need of human supervision to ensure accuracy. The spread of Web 2.0 approaches demonstrate the possibility and the added value of using collaborative techniques for improving data sharing and consensus reaching. In this paper, we describe our prototype for collaborative ontology mapping and data sharing. The possibility to exploit ontology alignments for querying data is a key capability for data sharing in a networked ontology environment.