ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Practical Random Linear Network Coding on GPUs
Authors: Xiaowen Chu, Kaiyong Zhao, Mea Wang
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th International IFIP-TC 6 Networking Conference (2009)

Recently, random linear network coding has been widely applied in peer-to-peer network applications. Instead of sharing the raw data with each other, peers in the network produce and send encoded data to each other. As a result, the communication protocols have been greatly simplified, and the applications experience higher end-to-end throughput and better robustness to network churns.Since it is difficult to verify the integrity of the encoded data, such systems can suffer from the famous pollution attack, in which a malicious node can send bad encoded blocks that consist of bogus data. Consequently, the bogus data will be propagated into the whole network at an exponential rate. Homomorphic hash functions (HHFs) have been designed to defend systems from such pollution attacks, but with a new challenge: HHFs require that network coding must be performed in GF(q), where q is a very large prime number. This greatly increases the computational cost of network coding, in addition to the already computational expensive HHFs. This paper exploits the potential of the huge computing power of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) to reduce the computational cost of network coding and homomorphic hashing. With our network coding and HHF implementation on GPU, we observed significant computational speedup in comparison with the best CPU implementation. This implementation can lead to a practical solution for defending against the pollution attacks in distributed systems.
Automatic annotation of multimedia content by user clickthroughs: enhancing the performance of multimedia search engines
Authors: Klimis Ntalianis, Anastasios Doulamis, Nicolas Tsapatsoulis, Nikolaos Doulamis
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS international conference on Mathematical methods, computational techniques and intelligent systems (2008)

Content-based multimedia retrieval is a very hot research topic, applicable to several domains. Traditional feature vector based retrieval methods cannot provide semantically meaningful results. Additionally manual annotation is both time/money consuming and user-dependent. To address these problems in this paper we present an approach to automatically annotate multimedia files by incorporating clickthrough data of search engines. In particular the query-log of the search engine in connection with the log of links the users clicked on in the presented ranking, are analyzed in order to assign keywords to selected content. A query extension method is also proposed in order to agitate the pool of files and bring content with similar visual features to the surface. This is very important since users typically select only the first files of the ranking by clicking on them. The proposed method is feasible even for large sets of queries and features and theoretical results are verified in a controlled experiment, which shows that the method can effectively annotate multimedia files and significantly enhance the performance of multimedia search engines.
Extreme visualisation of query optimizer search space
Authors: Anisoara Nica, Daniel Scott Brotherston, David William Hillis
Venue: Proceedings of the 35th SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (2009)

This demonstration showcases a system for visualizing and analyzing search spaces generated by the SQL Anywhere optimizer during the optimization process of a SQL statement. SQL Anywhere dynamically optimizes each statement every time it is executed. The decisions made by the optimizer during the optimization process are both cost-based and heuristics adapted to the current state of the server and the database instance. Many performance issues can be understood and resolved by analyzing the search space generated when optimizing a certain request. In our experience, there are two main classes of performance issues related to the decisions made by a query optimizer:(1) a request is very slow due to a suboptimal access plan; and (2) a request has a different, less optimal access plan than a previous execution. We have enhanced SQL Anywhere to log, in a very compact format, its search space during the optimization process when tracing mode is on. These search space logs can be used for performance analysis in the absence of the database instances or of extra information about the SQL Anywhere server state at the time the logs were generated. This demonstration introduces the SearchSpaceAnalyzer System, a research prototype used to analyze the search spaces of the SQL Anywhere optimizer. The system visualizes and analyzes (1) a single search space and (2) the differences between two search spaces generated for the same query by two different optimization processes. The SearchSpaceAnalyze System can be used for the analysis of any query optimizer search spaces as long as the logged data is recorded using the syntax understood by the system.
Accelerated statistical image reconstruction algorithms and simplified cost functions for x-ray computed tomography
Authors: Jeffrey A. Fessler
Venue:  (2008)

Statistical image reconstruction methods are poised to replace traditional methods like filtered back-projection (FBP) in commercial X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanners. Statistical methods offer many advantages over FBP, including incorporating physical effects and physical constraints, modeling of complex imaging geometries, and imaging at lower X-ray doses. But, the use of statistical methods is limited due to many practical problems. This thesis proposes methods to improve four aspects of statistical methods: reconstruction time, beam hardening, non-negativity constraints, and organ motion. To reduce the reconstruction time, several novel iterative algorithms are proposed that are adapted to multi-core computing, including a hybrid ordered subsets (OS)/iterative coordinate descent (ICD) approach. This approach leads to a reduction in reconstruction time, and it also makes the ICD algorithm robust to the initial guess image. Statistical methods have accounted for beam hardening by using more information than needed by traditional FBP-based methods like the Joseph-Spital (JS) method. This thesis proposes a statistical method that uses exactly the same beam hardening information as the JS method while suppressing beam hardening artifacts. Directly imposing the non-negativity constraints can increase the computation time of algorithms such as the preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) method. This thesis proposes a modification of the penalized-likelihood cost function for monoenergetic transmission tomography, and a corresponding PCG algorithm, that reduce reconstruction time when enforcing nonnegativity. Organ motion during a scan causes image artifacts, and in some cases these artifacts are more apparent when standard statistical methods are used. A preliminary simulation study of a new approach to remove motion artifacts is presented. The distinguishing feature of this approach is that it does not require any new information from the scanner. The target applications of this research effort are 3-D volume reconstructions for axial cone-beam and helical cone-beam scanning geometries of multislice CT (MSCT) scanners.
Information retrieval based on image detection on web pages
Authors: Hazem M. El-Bakry, Nikos Mastorakis
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th WSEAS international conference on Computational intelligence, man-machine systems and cybernetics (2008)

The main objective of Internet users is to find the required information with high efficiency and effectiveness. Finding information on an object's visual features is useful when specific keywords for the object are not known. Since mobile agent technology is expected to be a promising technology for information retrieval, there is a number of mobile agent based-information retrieval approaches have been proposed in recent years. In this paper a new approach for image-based information retrieval using mobile agents is presented. Multiple information agents continuously traverse the Internet and collect images that are subsequently indexed based on image information such as the URL location, size, type and the date of indexation. In the search phase, the mobile agent receives the image of object as a query and searches the set of web pages that contain information about the object by matching the query to images on web pages.
The Impact of Open Source Software on the Strategic Choices of Firms Developing Proprietary Software
Authors: Jeevan Jaisingh, Eric See-To, Kar Tam
Venue: Journal of Management Information Systems (2008)

Open source software (OSS) is now posing significant competition to proprietary or closed source software (CSS) in several software markets. In this paper, we characterize the response of a firm developing CSS (where the CSS is a revenue earner) to the presence of an OSS in its market. In particular, we look at the firm's choice of resource investments to improve quality and the firm's pricing decisions. We are primarily motivated by the following questions: Would a firm producing CSS produce higher-quality software when it faces competition from an OSS than when there is no OSS in its market? Would there be a change in the firm's response if the CSS faced competition from another CSS in addition to competition from the OSS? We show that the firm produces lower-quality CSS when it faces competition from an OSS than when it does not. Also, the quality of the CSS decreases as the quality of the OSS increases. This result holds true even if we consider network effects. When we consider competition from another CSS, in addition to competition from the OSS, then the quality of the CSS could increase or decrease as the quality of the OSS increases. The change in quality depends on how closely substitutable the two CSS are. We also extend our base model to consider (1) competition for resources, (2) uncertainty in resources available to the OSS, and (3) uncertainty about the software development process.
xShare: supporting impromptu sharing of mobile phones
Authors: Yunxin Liu, Ahmad Rahmati, Yuanhe Huang, Hyukjae Jang, Lin Zhong, Yongguang Zhang, Shensheng Zhang
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services (2009)

Loaded with personal data, e.g. photos, contacts, and call history, mobile phones are truly personal devices. Yet it is often necessary or desirable to share our phones with others. This is especially true as mobile phones are integrating features conventionally provided by other dedicated devices, from MP3 players to games consoles. Unfortunately, when we lend our phones to others, we give away complete access because existing phones assume a single user and provide little protection for private data and applications. In this work, we present xShare, a protection solution to address this problem. xShare allows phone owners to rapidly specify what they want to share and place the phone into a restricted mode where only the data and applications intended for sharing can be accessed. We first present findings from two motivational user studies based on which we provide the design requirements of xShare. We then present the design of xShare based on file-level access control. We describe the implementation of xShare on Windows Mobile and report a comprehensive usability evaluation of the implementation, including mea-surements and user studies. The evaluation demonstrates that our xShare implementation has negligible overhead for interactive phone usage, is extremely favored by mobile users, and provides robust protection against attacks by experienced Windows Mobile users and developers.
Remembering José Mira
Authors: Isabel Gonzalo-Fonrodona
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd International Work-Conference on The Interplay Between Natural and Artificial Computation: Part I: Methods and Models in Artificial and Natural Computation. A Homage to Professor Mira's Scientific Legacy (2009)

Here I emphasize the importance of the help, advice, suggestions and backing that I received from José Mira in the task of dissemination and formalization of the research of Justo Gonzalo (1910-1986). This survey intents to be an expression of my profound gratitude to José Mira.
An Analysis-by-Synthesis Method for Heterogeneous Face Biometrics
Authors: Rui Wang, Jimei Yang, Dong Yi, Stan Z. Li
Venue: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Advances in Biometrics (2009)

Face images captured in different spectral bands, e.g., in visual (VIS) and near infrared (NIR), are said to be heterogeneous. Although a person's face looks different in heterogeneous images, it should be classified as being from the same individual. In this paper, we present a new method, called face analogy, in the analysis-by-synthesis framework, for heterogeneous face mapping, that is, transforming face images from one type to another, and thereby performing heterogeneous face matching. Experiments show promising results.
Conceptual Modeling of Semantic Service Chain Management for Building Service Networks: A Preliminary Result
Authors: Jason J. Jung, Young-Shin Han
Venue: Proceedings of the Third KES International Symposium on Agent and Multi-Agent Systems: Technologies and Applications (2009)

In this paper, we emphasize that services (more specifically, a service network of a single business sector) should be aligned and matched with each other. This process enables the businesses to be aware of hidden relationships (or dependency) for discovering better service networks. Furthermore, once we have an integrated service network, classical social network analysis methods can be applied to understand structural role of each businesses, so that we can conceptually design a prototype of semantic service chain management.
Adobe Photoshop for Fashion Design
Authors: Susan Lazear
Venue:  (2009)

A market-leader, thisbook has helped prepare thousands of students for careers as food scientists, foodservice managers, dietitians, and extension agents. Focusing on both the how and why of food preparation, it integrates discussion of introductory food science, food technology, food safety and food consumption into one volume. With over 350 new references, this edition includes recent developments in food safety, consumer trends and technological innovations. Its visual format uses charts, feature boxes and tables to help students understand the principles of food and food preparation. Anyone interested in a career in the following fields:food scientists, foodservice managers, dietitians, and extension agents
Scalable high performance main memory system using phase-change memory technology
Authors: Moinuddin K. Qureshi, Vijayalakshmi Srinivasan, Jude A. Rivers
Venue: Proceedings of the 36th annual international symposium on Computer architecture (2009)

The memory subsystem accounts for a significant cost and power budget of a computer system. Current DRAM-based main memory systems are starting to hit the power and cost limit. An alternative memory technology that uses resistance contrast in phase-change materials is being actively investigated in the circuits community. Phase Change Memory (PCM) devices offer more density relative to DRAM, and can help increase main memory capacity of future systems while remaining within the cost and power constraints. In this paper, we analyze a PCM-based hybrid main memory system using an architecture level model of PCM.We explore the trade-offs for a main memory system consisting of PCMstorage coupled with a small DRAM buffer. Such an architecture has the latency benefits of DRAM and the capacity benefits of PCM. Our evaluations for a baseline system of 16-cores with 8GB DRAM show that, on average, PCM can reduce page faults by 5X and provide a speedup of 3X. As PCM is projected to have limited write endurance, we also propose simple organizational and management solutions of the hybrid memory that reduces the write traffic to PCM, boosting its lifetime from 3 years to 9.7 years.
Locally restorable routing of highly variable traffic
Authors: Murali Kodialam, T. V. Lakshman, Sudipta Sengupta
Venue: IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON) (2009)

Two-phase routing, where traffic is first distributed to intermediate nodes before being routed to the final destination, has been recently proposed for handling widely fluctuating traffic without the need to adapt network routing to changing traffic. Preconfiguring the network in a traffic independent manner using two-phase routing simplifies network operation considerably. In this paper, we extend this routing scheme by providing resiliency against link failures through fast restoration along link backup detours. We view this as important progress towards adding carrier-class reliability to the robustness of the scheme so as to facilitate its future deployment in Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks. On the theoretical side, the main contribution of the paper is the development of linear programming based and fast combinatorial algorithms for two-phase routing with link restoration so as to minimize the maximum utilization of any link in the network, or equivalently, maximize the throughput. The algorithms developed are Fully Polynomial Time Approximation Schemes (FPTAS)--for any given Ɛ > 0, an FPTAS guarantees a solution that is within a (1 + Ɛ)-factor of the optimum and runs in time polynomial in the input size and 1/Ɛ. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work in the literature that considers making the scheme resilient to link failures through preprovisioned fast restoration mechanisms. We evaluate the performance of link restoration (in terms of throughput) and compare it with that of unprotected routing. For our experiments, we use actual ISP network topologies collected for the Rocketfuel project and three research network topologies.
On unbiased sampling for unstructured peer-to-peer networks
Authors: Daniel Stutzbach, Reza Rejaie, Nick Duffield, Subhabrata Sen, Walter Willinger
Venue: IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON) (2009)

This paper presents a detailed examination of how the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of real-world peer-to-peer systems can introduce bias into the selection of representative samples of peer properties (e.g., degree, link bandwidth, number of files shared). We propose the Metropolized Random Walk with Backtracking (MRWB) as a viable and promising technique for collecting nearly unbiased samples and conduct an extensive simulation study to demonstrate that our technique works well for a wide variety of commonly-encountered peer-to-peer network conditions. We have implemented the MRWB algorithm for selecting peer addresses uniformly at random into a tool called ion-sampler. Using the Gnutella network, we empirically show that ion-sampler. yields more accurate samples than tools that rely on commonly-used sampling techniques and results in dramatic improvements in efficiency and scalability compared to performing a full crawl.
High Performance and Energy Efficient Serial Prefetch Architecture
Authors: Glenn Reinman, Brad Calder, Todd Austin
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on High Performance Computing (2009)

Energy efficient architecture research has flourished recently, in an attempt to address packaging and cooling concerns of current microprocessor designs, as well as battery life for mobile computers. Moreover, architects have become increasingly concerned with the complexity of their designs in the face of scalability, verification, and manufacturing concerns.In this paper, we propose and evaluate a high performance, energy and complexity efficient front-end prefetch architecture. This design, called Serial Prefetching, combines a high fetch bandwidth branch prediction and efficient instruction prefetching architecture with a low-energy instruction cache. Serial Prefetching explores the benefit of decoupling the tag component of the cache from the data component. Cache blocks are first verified by the tag component of the cache, and then the accesses are put into a queue to be consumed by the data component of the instruction cache. Energy is saved by only accessing the correct way of the data component specified by the tag lookup in a previous cycle. The tag component does not stall on a I-cache miss, only the data component. The accesses that miss in the tag component are speculatively brought in from lower levels of the memory hierarchy. This in effect performs a prefetch, while the access migrates through the queue to be consumed by the data component.
Optimizing OSPF routing using accelerated iterative heuristic
Authors: Sadiq M. Sait, Mohammed H. Sqalli, Syed Asadullah
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th WSEAS international conference on Artificial intelligence, knowledge engineering and data bases (2009)

The problem of setting Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) weights on links such that congestion can be avoided is proved to be NP-hard. Many iterative heuristics have been applied to solve the OSPF weight setting (OSPFWS) problem. As the size of any combinatorial optimization problem increases, it becomes more difficult to find an optimum solution using sequential algorithms. In this paper, we investigate the parallelization of Tabu Search and apply two variants of a Parallel Tabu Search (PTS) heuristic on the OSPFWS problem. It is shown through experimental results that both PTS approaches produced better solutions quality compared to the sequential heuristics; specifically for larger topologies. In one approach, we propose a new design for our parallel cooperative search algorithm, which performs better than the conventional parallel heuristic.
Behaviour of welded aluminium T-stub joints under monotonic loading
Authors: G. De Matteis, M. Brescia, A. Formisano, F. M. Mazzolani
Venue: Computers and Structures (2009)

This paper deals with the behaviour of aluminium alloy T-stub joints subjected to monotonic tensile loads. In particular, a numerical model developed by means of the non linear code ABAQUS has been accurately calibrated on the basis of previous experimental test results related to 26 specimens, characterised by different geometry and connection type. In particular, four different geometries (by varying geometrical dimensions, plate thickness, number and location of the bolts), three aluminium alloys as base material and three types of bolts (including both aluminium and steel bolts) have been taken into consideration. Such parameters determine the modification of the connection response in terms of initial stiffness, ultimate strength and deformation capacity. The comparison with the experimental results shows that the proposed model is able to accurately reproduce the behaviour of the joint in all examined cases. Test results have been also compared with the ones derived from the application of the calculation method provided in the final version of Eurocode 9 (EN-1999-1-1), showing the reliability of the codified procedure, also in relation to a direct evaluation of the connection effective width (b"e"f"f), as it is evidenced by the developed numerical simulations.