ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Achieving Communication Efficiency through Push-Pull Partitioning of Semantic Spaces to Disseminate Dynamic Information
Authors: Amitabha Bagchi Amitabh Chaudhary Michael T. Goodrich, Chen Li
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (2006)

Many database applications that need to disseminate dynamic information from a server to various clients can suffer from heavy communication costs. Data caching at a client can help mitigate these costs, particularly when individual {\rm PUSH}{\hbox{-}}{\rm PULL} decisions are made for the different semantic regions in the data space. The server is responsible for notifying the client about updates in the {\rm PUSH} regions. The client needs to contact the server for queries that ask for data in the {\rm PULL} regions. We call the idea of partitioning the data space into {\rm PUSH}{\hbox{-}}{\rm PULL} regions to minimize communication cost data gerrymandering. In this paper, we present solutions to technical challenges in adopting this simple but powerful idea. We give a provably optimal-cost dynamic programming algorithm for gerrymandering on a single query attribute. We propose a family of efficient heuristics for gerrymandering on multiple query attributes. We handle the dynamic case in which the workloads of queries and updates evolve over time. We validate our methods through extensive experiments on real and synthetic data sets.
Fuzzy constraint-based agent negotiation
Authors: Menq-Wen Lin, K. Robert Lai, Ting-Jung Yu
Venue: Journal of Computer Science and Technology (2005)

Conflicts between two or more parties arise for various reasons and perspectives. Thus, resolution of conflicts frequently relies on some form of negotiation. This paper presents a general problem-solving framework for modeling multi-issue multilateral negotiation using fuzzy constraints. Agent negotiation is formulated as a distributed fuzzy constraint satisfaction problem (DFCSP). Fuzzy constrains are thus used to naturally represent each agent's desires involving imprecision and human conceptualization, particularly when lexical imprecision and subjective matters are concerned. On the other hand, based on fuzzy constraint-based problem-solving, our approach enables an agent not only to systematically relax fuzzy constraints to generate a proposal, but also to employ fuzzy similarity to select the alternative that is subject to its acceptability by the opponents. This task of problem-solving is to reach an agreement that benefits all agents with a high satisfaction degree of fuzzy constraints, and move towards the deal more quickly since their search focuses only on the feasible solution space. An application to multilateral negotiation of a travel planning is provided to demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of our framework.
Factors Affecting Satisfaction Level with the Food Services in a Military Hospital
Authors: Bayram Sahin, Cesim Demir, Yusuf Celik, A. Kadir Teke
Venue: Journal of Medical Systems (2006)

Objective: To determine the factors affecting general satisfaction level of patients with the food services in a military hospital in Turkey. Study design: The study was carried out in a military hospital providing tertiary health care services with the capacity of 1000 hospital bed. A questionnaire was used as data collection tool on measuring satisfaction of the patients with the food services. Results: The results showed that of 374 patients 51.3% evaluated food service quality adequate, 32.4% said that the food quality was inadequate, and 16.3% stated that they were uncertain. A logistic regression model was estimated in determining the most important and statistically significant factors affecting patient satisfaction with hospital foods and food services. The results showed that patient-specific demographic characteristics were insignificant in explaining satisfaction level with food services, but the variables of taste (OR = 9.853, p = 0.000) and appearance (OR = 2.687, p = 0.014) of the food were statistically significant and important determinants of patient satisfaction with the foods served at the hospital. Conclusions: The results of this study would be helpful in making decision on increasing the level of satisfaction of patients with the food services for hospital managers and the food (nutrition) departments. On the other hand, the results can also be used in benchmarking the hospital's food services quality with other hospitals, and in monitoring improvements in food services quality in the future.
Structure of the impact factor of journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index: Citations from documents labeled &ldquo;editorial material&rdquo;
Authors: Lidia González, Juan Miguel Campanario
Venue: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (2007)

We investigated how citations from documents labeled by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) as &ldquo;editorial material&rdquo; contribute to the impact factor of academic journals in which they were published. Our analysis is based on records corresponding to the documents classified by the ISI as editorial material published in journals covered by the Social Sciences Citation Index between 1999 and 2003 (50,273 records corresponding to editorial material published in 2,374 journals). The results appear to rule out widespread manipulation of the impact factor by academic journals publishing large amounts of editorial material with many citations to the journal itself as a strategy to increase the impact factor. &copy; 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Image Restoration Based on Eigensubspace for Image Structure
Authors: Xiaotong Hu, Dongrui Cao, Shuping Qiu
Venue: Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (2006)

The image restoration is the technology to restore the damaged part in the image automatically. In this paper we proposed a new restoration method based on the eigensubspace for image structure. After the regions need to be restored are selected, the proposed method use the undamaged part to make up the eigenspace, and then, search direrent set of image blocks that have high similarity with for each damaged image block, to make up eigensubspace for image structure. At the end, the damaged image blocks can be restored according to their eigensubspace. Experiments result indicates that the proposed method can restore damaged image accurately.
A new lip feature representation method for video-based bimodal authentication
Authors: Hua Ouyang, Tan Lee
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 NICTA-HCSNet Multimodal User Interaction Workshop - Volume 57 (2006)

As the low-cost video transmission becomes popular, video based bimodal (audio and visual) authentication has great potential in various applications that require access control. It is especially useful for hand-held terminals, which are often used under adverse environments, where the signal quality is rather poor. When human voice is used for authentication, one of the most relevant visual features is the dynamic movement of lips. In this research, we investigate on the use of static and dynamic features of speaking lips in the context of voice based authentication. A new feature representation that preserves both appearance and motion pattern of speaking lips is proposed. The dimension of extracted features is reduced by multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) and the method of nearest neighbor is used for classification. Our method can achieve an identification rate of 98% with only lips features for 200 clients of the XM2VTS database. Experiments on speaker verification using fused audio and visual features are on-going.
The Effects of Gender on the Neural Substrates of Pitch Memory
Authors: Nadine Gaab, Julian Paul Keenan, Gottfried Schlaug
Venue: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2003)

Imaging studies have indicated that males and females differ anatomically in brain regions thought to underlie language functions. Functional studies have corroborated this difference by showing gender differences in terms of language processing with females relying on less lateralized processing strategies than males. Gender differences in musical functions might show similar differences in functional asymmetries, although no detailed study has been performed. The current study employed a pitch memory task while acquiring functional magnetic resonance images to investigate possible differences in hemispheric processing between males and females. Gender differences were found in the time course of activation (during the first four imaging time points after the end of the auditory stimulus&mdash;"perceptual phase"&mdash;and the subsequent three imaging time points after the end of the auditory stimulus&mdash;"memory phase") in both anterior and posterior perisylvian regions. Male subjects had greater lateralized activations (left > right) in anterior and posterior perisylvian regions during the "perceptual" as well as during the "memory" phase. There was a trend for males to have more cerebellar activation than females. Females showed more prominently posterior cingulate/retrosplenial cortex activation compared to males. Although activation patterns differed, there was no difference in the behavioral performance between both genders. These data indicate that similar to language studies, males rely more on left lateralized hemispheric processing even for basic pitch tasks.
Towards Classifying Visualization in Team Sports
Authors: Mitchell Page, Andrew Vande Moere
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation (2006)

Visualization and team sports have an important and established relationship that is seldom understood. Team sports can be considered as complex activities containing a considerable number of abstract datasets and participant categories, such as athletes, coaches, referees and spectators. This paper proposes that the field of visualization has been applied within team sports in various ways to provide these participants with representations of these datasets. This has resulted in data-augmented games which are easier to play, judge and watch respectively. This paper provides a review of past and current applications of visualization within team sports. A model is presented to classify sports visualizations along conceptual axes. This model will allow future or potentially untapped applications of team sports visualization to be identified and classified.
A criterion to detect sensor array distortion
Authors: A. Marsal, S. Marcos
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1993. ICASSP-93 Vol 4., 1993 IEEE International Conference on - Volume 04 (1993)

The authors present a criterion to detect displacements of the sensors along the array. This criterion relies on a new source bearing estimation technique which is less accurate than most of the high-resolution (HR) methods but which is much more robust to sensor array distortion. By comparing the bearing estimates obtained by the HR method and this new method, a test can be defined to decide whether the array shape is distorted or not. A theoretical study of the new estimator as well as that of the proposed criterion are provided. Simulation results are given to illustrate the behavior of the criterion for various array distortions.
Hypnosis Modulates Activity in Brain Structures Involved in the Regulation of Consciousness
Authors: Pierre Rainville, Robert K. Hofbauer, M. Catherine Bushnell, Gary H. Duncan, Donald D. Price
Venue: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2002)

The notion of consciousness is at the core of an ongoing debate on the existence and nature of hypnotic states. Previously, we have described changes in brain activity associated with hypnosis (Rainville, Hofbauer, Paus, Duncan, Bushnell, & Price, 1999). Here, we replicate and extend those findings using positron emission tomography (PET) in 10 normal volunteers. Immediately after each of 8 PET scans performed before (4 scans) and after (4 scans) the induction of hypnosis, subjects rated their perceived level of "mental relaxation" and "mental absorption," two of the key dimensions describing the experience of being hypnotized. Regression analyses between regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) and self-ratings confirm the hypothesized involvement of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the thalamus, and the ponto-mesencephalic brainstem in the production of hypnotic states. Hypnotic relaxation further involved an increase in occipital rCBF that is consistent with our previous interpretation that hypnotic states are characterized by a decrease in cortical arousal and a reduction in cross-modality suppression (disinhibition). In contrast, increases in mental absorption during hypnosis were associated with rCBF increases in a distributed network of cortical and subcortical structures previously described as the brain's attentional system. These findings are discussed in support of a state theory of hypnosis in which the basic changes in phenomenal experience produced by hypnotic induction reflect, at least in part, the modulation of activity within brain areas critically involved in the regulation of consciousness.
Random subspace method for multivariate feature selection
Authors: Carmen Lai, Marcel J. T. Reinders, Lodewyk Wessels
Venue: Pattern Recognition Letters (2006)

In a growing number of domains data captured encapsulates as many features as possible. This poses a challenge to classical pattern recognition techniques, since the number of samples often still is limited with respect to the number of features. Classical pattern recognition methods suffer from the small sample size, and robust classification techniques are needed. In order to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space, the selection of informative features becomes an essential step towards the classification task. The relevance of the features can be evaluated either individually (univariate approaches), or in a multivariate manner. Univariate approaches are simple and fast, therefore appealing. However, possible correlation and dependencies between the features are not considered. Therefore, multivariate search techniques may be helpful. Several limitations restrict the use of multivariate searches. First, they are prone to overtraining, especially in p@?n (many features and few samples) settings. Secondly, they can be computationally too expensive when dealing with a large feature space. We introduce a new multivariate search technique, that is less sensitive to the noise in the data and computationally feasible as well. We compare our approach with several multivariate and univariate feature selection techniques, on an artificial dataset which provides us with ground truth information, and on a real dataset. The results show the importance of multivariate search techniques and the robustness and reliability of our novel multivariate feature selection method.
Task-Oriented Integrated Use of Biological Web Data Sources
Authors: Mustafa Kirac, Ali Cakmak, Gultekin Ozsoyoglu
Venue: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management (2006)

Biological web data sources have now become essential information sources for researchers. However, their use is tedious, labor-intensive, repetitive, and possibly involve the integration of data from multiple web data sources. In this paper, as a first step towards the full integration of web data sources, we propose a framework that allows an integrated use of biological sources in a task-oriented manner. We define and experimentally evaluate a toolkit-based framework for semi-automatically constructing an integrated (software) system that automates and optimizes the execution of a biology-related computational task at hand. To test and refine the principles of the framework, we build and evaluate "Pathway-Infer" as a benchmark integrated system.
Application of a Community of Practice to Improve Knowledge Sharing in Offshoring Relations
Authors: Niels de Vrij, Remko Helms, Pim Voogd
Venue: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (2006)

This paper presents the application of a Community of Practice, supported by a portal, to share knowledge in order to improve the offshore development practices of a global engineering company. The Community of Practice has been implemented in three steps: Seduce, Engage and Sustain. For defining the goals of the CoP a combined approach has been used: top-down and bottom-up. Setting goals, having management commitment and informing employees about the community were not enough to develop a successful community. Therefore, an approach has been developed to identify high priority issues in six different knowledge areas. By identifying high priority issues and assigning moderators employees consider the community to be more important and therefore are prepared to participate in the community.
Robust Tensor Splines for Approximation of Diffusion Tensor MRI Data
Authors: Angelos Barmpoutis, Baba C. Vemuri, John R. Forder
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop (2006)

In this paper, we present a novel and robust spline approximation algorithm given a noisy symmetric positive definite (SPD) tensor field. Such tensor fields commonly arise in the field of Medical Imaging in the form of Diffusion Tensor (DT) MRI data sets. We develop a statistically robust algorithm for constructing a tensor product of B-splines - for approximating and interpolating these data - using the Riemannian metric of the manifold of SPD tensors. Our method involves a two step procedure wherein the first step uses Riemannian distances in order to evaluate a tensor spline by computing a weighted intrinsic average of diffusion tensors and the second step involves minimization of the Riemannian distance between the evaluated spline curve and the given data. These two steps are alternated to achieve the desired tensor spline approximation to the given tensor field. We present comparisons of our algorithm with four existing methods of tensor interpolation applied to DT-MRI data from fixed heart slices of a rabbit, and show significantly improved results in the presence of noise and outliers. We also present validation results for our algorithm using synthetically generated noisy tensor field data with outliers. This interpolation work has many applications e.g., in DT-MRI registration, in DT-MRI Atlas construction etc. This research was in part funded by the NIH ROI NS42075 and the Department of Radiology, University of Florida.
Transaction management in RDBMSs with XML support
Authors: P. O. Pleshachkov, S. D. Kuznetsov
Venue: Programming and Computing Software (2006)

The wide use of XML as a description format for semistructured data resulted in the development of XML data management facilities for the existing relational database management systems (RDBMSs). The leading vendors of RDBMSs have included the support of the XML query and update languages in their systems. However, because of considerable differences between the relational and XML data models, transaction management methods in RDBMS are not quite appropriate for XML data. A series of our experiments with RDBMSs with XML support have revealed that, when accessing the same XML document for reading and updating, the transactions are executed sequentially, although they do not conflict. Thus, concurrency of XML transactions in RDBMSs is essentially limited. In the paper, a new method of the XML transaction management in RDBMSs is described. Our method is based on a two-level transaction model. The key component of this model is the new concurrency control protocol, called XDGL, especially tailored for synchronization of the XML transactions. The XDGL protocol is implemented on the top of the existing RDBMS transaction manager. A software prototype of the suggested method has been implemented for Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Our experiments have revealed considerable reduction of the XML transaction execution time when the number of parallel queries and updates is large.
Negotiation coalitions in group-choice multi-agent systems
Authors: Tom Wanyama, Behrouz H. Far
Venue: Proceedings of the fifth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems (2006)

In Group-Choice Decision Making (GCDM) where a number of stakeholders are involved in choosing a single solution from a set of available solution options, it is common for the stakeholders to form coalitions during negotiations in order to increase their individual welfare. It is also common to use Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) to automate GCDM processes. In such MAS, agents have to form coalitions like their human counterparts. Within each coalition, the individual agents behave according to the strategies of their clients. In this paper we present a coalition formation model which can employ multiple coalition formation algorithms. The model is motivated by a real-world group-choice multi-agent system that we developed; in the system, agents can form coalitions dynamically based on the similarity between their preferences, and based on the ownership criteria. Finally, this paper presents simulation results that illustrate the operational effectiveness of our coalition formation model.
Room for a Thousand Flowers to Bloom
Authors: Shane Greenstein
Venue: IEEE Micro (2006)

Does concentrated commercial leadership or dispersed commercial leadership more efficaciously explore value? Concentrated or dispersed commercial leadership describes whether a small or large range of firms, respectively, can commercialize potential services and products for a similar, though uncertain, technological opportunity. This is both a philosophical and a practical question. The philosophical viewpoint questions whether there's merit to letting a thousand flowers bloom. The practical viewpoint questions what happens when the market lacks room for such variety.
Quantum state protection with quantum feedback schemes
Authors: D. Vitali, S. Zippilli, P. Tombesi
Venue: Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Physics and Control - Volume 3 (2003)

We present a scheme able to protect the quantum states of a cavity mode against the decohering effects of photon loss. The scheme preserves quantum states with a definite parity, and it is implemented by sending single atoms, one by one, through the cavity. By solving numerically the exact master equation of the system we show that the protection of simple quantum states could be experimentally demonstrated using presently available experimental apparatus.
A fast full search equivalent encoding method for vector quantization by using appropriate features
Authors: Z. Pan, K. Kotani, T. Ohmi
Venue: Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Multimedia and Expo - Volume 1 (2003)

The encoding process of vector quantization (VQ) is very heavy and it constrains VQ's application a great deal. In order to speed up VQ encoding, it is most important to avoid unnecessary Euclidean distance computation (k-D) as much as possible by the difference check that uses simpler features (low dimensional) while winner searching is going on. Sum (1-D) and partial sums (2-D) are used together as the appropriate features in this paper because they are the first 2 simplest features. Then, sum difference and partial sum difference are computed as the estimations of Euclidean distance and they are connected to each other by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality so as to reject a lot of codewords. For typical standard images with very different details (Lena, F-16, Pepper and Baboon), the final must-do Euclidean distance computation using the proposed method can be reduced to less than 10% as compared to full search (FS) meanwhile keeping the PSNR not degraded.