ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Increasing Role of Information Systems in Public Health Care -- Challenge to
Authors: Jarmo Tähkäpää
Venue: Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'04) - Track 6 - Volume 6 (2004)

Managing public health care organizations is becoming more demanding and complicated task. The ever-increasing demand for health services and at the same time substantially decreasing resources sets new challenges to the area. Expectations towards information systems (IS) are high and it is seen as one solution to increasing problems. However, it is noticed that also development of IS needs professional management and strategic planning to become an effective tool -- again a new challenge to the management.This paper discusses which are the main management areas to pay attention to in ISdevelopment in public health care and which factors in the operational environment affect those areas the most. The areas are: organisations strategy, information management strategy, strategy implementation, implementation and use of IS and evaluation of IS. Results from two large empirical cases show that developing IS in public health care is far more complicated because of a wide operational environment and number of stakeholders compared to the development in other public areas not to mention private industries. The paper is based on experiences in Finnish public health care.
A Queueing System with Inverse Discipline, Two Types of Customers, and Markov Input Flow
Authors: A. G. Tatashev
Venue: Automation and Remote Control (2003)

The stationary probabilities of the states of a single-server queueing system with a modified Markov input flow and inverse service with interruption are determined. The service of an interrupted customer, depending on his type, is either resumed or started anew.
Overview of multidatabase transaction management
Authors: Yuri Breitbart, Hector Garcia-Molina, Avi Silberschatz
Venue: Proceedings of the 1992 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative research - Volume 2 (1992)

A multidatabase system (MDBS) is a facility that allows users access to data located in multiple autonomous database management systems (DBMSs). In such a system, global transactions are executed under the control of the MDBS. Independently, local transactions are executed under the control of the local DBMSs. Each local DBMS integrated by the MDBS may employ a different transaction management scheme. In addition, each local DBMS has complete control over all transactions (global and local) executing at its site, including the ability to abort at any point any of the transactions executing at its site. Typically, no design or internal DBMS structure changes are allowed in order to accommodate the MDBS. Furthermore, the local DBMSs may not be aware of each other, and, as a consequence, cannot coordinate their actions. Thus, traditional techniques for ensuring transaction atomicity and consistency in homogeneous distributed database systems may not be appropriate for an MDBS environment. The objective of this paper is to provide a brief review of the most current work in the area of multidatabase transaction management. We first define the problem and argue that the multidatabase research will become increasingly important in the coming years. We then outline basic research issues in multidatabase transaction management and review recent results in the area. We conclude the paper with a discussion of open problems and practical implications of this research.
Identifying software project risks in Nigeria: an international comparative study
Authors: Anja Mursu, Kalle Lyytinen, H. A. Soriyan, Mikko Korpela
Venue: European Journal of Information Systems (2003)

We report a study where software project risk factors were solicited in Nigeria. The study repeats a research design, which has been used in a Delphi study in the U.S., Finland, and Hong Kong to rank software development risks. The study produces a rank-order list of software risk factors and compares results with the earlier study, showing significant differences. Obtained rankings signal the importance of the infrastructure related and socio-economic software risks in developing countries like Nigeria. This demonstrates the importance of understanding the broader socio-economic context in identifying and managing software risks. The study also shows that some risks in Nigeria are located on a different scale. The choice of contingent mitigation strategies of project managers play a less important role, because the risks are so deeply engrained with the poor quality of basic infrastructure services.
AAA: a modeling language for software production environments
Authors: Carolyn B. Seaman
Venue: Proceedings of the 1992 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative research - Volume 1 (1992)

If a software production environment wants to reap the benefits of reuse on an organizational level, it must itself be designed to optimize each resouce's access to reusable material and to efficiently implement a reuse-centered software development process. One approach to such redesign, the Experience Factory, divides the environment between the resources involved in reuse activities and the resources involved in current projects. There are many variations on the Experience Factory theme, based on the widely varying characteristics and needs of different environments. The Reference Architecture is used as a model for describing these variations in more detail. Besides explaining the Experience Factory and Reference Architecture models, this paper focuses on AAA, a process modeling language enhancement for modeling the configuration of resources, or the organization, of a software production environment. AAA is based on, and is meant to formalize, the Reference Architecture. The need for an organizational modeling methodology arises from research in incremental organizational design, organizational simulation, and experience packaging. As well as describing the syntax, semantics, and motivation of AAA, this paper also describes, at a high level, the AAA execution environment, which allows the modeler to analyze and modify a AAA model, to simulate projects executed by a modeled architecture, and to control processes currently executing in a modeled architecture. The last section of this paper presents a case study that illustrates some of the issues that arise in modeling organizations and demonstrates the modeling power of AAA.
Texture-Based Approach for Text Detection in Images Using Support Vector Machines and Continuously Adaptive Mean Shift Algorithm
Authors: Kwang In Kim, Keechul Jung, Jin Hyung Kim
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (2003)

Abstract-- The current paper presents a novel texture-based method for detecting texts in images. A support vector machine (SVM) is used to analyze the textural properties of texts. No external texture feature extraction module is used; rather, the intensities of the raw pixels that make up the textural pattern are fed directly to the SVM, which works well even in high-dimensional spaces. Next, text regions are identified by applying a continuously adaptive mean shift algorithm (CAMSHIFT) to the results of the texture analysis. The combination of CAMSHIFT and SVMs produces both robust and efficient text detection, as time-consuming texture analyses for less relevant pixels are restricted, leaving only a small part of the input image to be texture-analyzed.
Curvilinear Linesearch for Tensor Methods
Authors: Brett W. Bader, Robert B. Schnabel
Venue: SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (2003)

This paper presents a curvilinear linesearch for use when solving nonlinear equations with tensor methods. Standard tensor methods use a combination of the tensor step and Newton step in a linesearch, but they are handled separately and in an ad hoc manner. Our curvilinear linesearch combines the two directions in a single parametric step, which guarantees a monotonic decrease on the tensor model and also asymptotically approaches the Newton direction as the step length shrinks to zero, thus guaranteeing descent on the nonlinear equations. Numerical experiments on a set of 35 small-scale problems, drawn primarily from the constrained and unconstrained testing environment, show an 18--23% improvement (in terms of function evaluations) over previous tensor linesearches when using quadratic backtracking and a 41--83% improvement when halving $\lambda$ before each trial. Our results also suggest that the curvilinear linesearch is more robust than linesearch-based Newton's method or the standard tensor linesearch, producing fewer failures than either method. Experiments on two large-scale fluid flow problems complement the small-scale results and give preliminary indication of the applicability of the tensor method and the efficiency of the curvilinear linesearch. The theoretical properties, coupled with the better performance, make this a desirable improvement over previous tensor method linesearches.
On the Construction of Convex and Concave Envelope Formulas for Bilinear and Fractional Functions on Quadrilaterals
Authors: Harold P. Benson
Venue: Computational Optimization and Applications (2004)

Convex and concave envelopes play important roles in various types of optimization problems. In this article, we present a result that gives general guidelines for constructing convex and concave envelopes of functions of two variables on bounded quadrilaterals. We show how one can use this result to construct convex and concave envelopes of bilinear and fractional functions on rectangles, parallelograms and trapezoids. Applications of these results to global optimization are indicated.
The development of a partial design recovery environment for legacy systems
Authors: K. Kontogiannis, M. Bernstein, E. Merlo, R. DeMori
Venue: Proceedings of the 1993 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative research: software engineering - Volume 1 (1993)

Computer Assisted Program Understanding systems take input primarily in the form of source code and produce output representing system concepts in some useful form. This paper discusses the development of a program design recovery environment based on structural and behavioral recognition of programming plans. Our research investigates program and plan representation methods and the issues related to the detection of code fragments using pattern matching techniques. In particular, we consider the integration of diverse tools allowing selection from a choice of strategies. Our investigation focuses on techniques to allow partial design recovery when complete recognition is not feasible. Finally, we discuss the underlying process paradigm, called "Goal-Question-Analysis-Action".
Thematic alignment of recorded speech with documents
Authors: Dalila Mekhaldi, Denis Lalanne, Rolf Ingold
Venue: Proceedings of the 2003 ACM symposium on Document engineering (2003)

We present in this article a method for detecting similarity links between documents' content and speech recordings' content. This process, further called thematic alignment, is a novel research area that combines both document and speech analysis. This alignment will a) provide temporal indexes to documents, which are non-temporal data, and b) help discovering hidden thematic structures. This article first introduces a multi-layered document structure and quickly introduces the traditional speech structure. Further, it presents a simple similarity measure and various multi-level simple alignments between those two structures. Later, the meeting corpus is presented, as well as an evaluation of the implemented alignments. Finally, we present our future works on multi-alignments and thematic structure discovery.
Selective Refinement Queries for Volume Visualization of Unstructured Tetrahedral Meshes
Authors: Paolo Cignoni, Leila De Floriani, Paola Magillo, Enrico Puppo, Roberto Scopigno
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2004)

Abstract- In this paper, we address the problem of the efficient visualization of large irregular volume data sets by exploiting a multiresolution model based on tetrahedral meshes. Multiresolution models, also called Level-Of-Detail (LOD) models, allow encoding the whole data set at a virtually continuous range of different resolutions. We have identified a set of queries for extracting meshes at variable resolution from a multiresolution model, based on field values, domain location, or opacity of the transfer function. Such queries allow trading off between resolution and speed in visualization. We define a new compact data structure for encoding a multiresolution tetrahedral mesh built through edge collapses to support selective refinement efficiently and show that such a structure has a storage cost from 3 to 5.5 times lower than standard data structures used for tetrahedral meshes. The data structures and variable resolution queries have been implemented together with state-of-the art visualization techniques in a system for the interactive visualization of three-dimensional scalar fields defined on tetrahedral meshes. Experimental results show that selective refinement queries can support interactive visualization of large data sets.
Molecular phylogenetics: parallelized parameter estimation and quartet puzzling
Authors: H. A. Schmidt, E. Petzold, A. Vingron, A. von Haeseler
Venue: Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (2003)

Exponential growth of the data available for molecular sequence analysis causes eminent need for methods to analyze large datasets in reasonable time. In molecular phylogenetics maximum-likelihood methods became very popular despite their vast need for computational power. During the last decades parallel computing has proven to be a valuable way to decrease running time of computationally intensive analyses. In this paper we suggest to parallelize the estimation of parameters for evolutionary models and the quartet puzzling algorithm to reconstruct phylogenetic trees from DNA and protein sequences applying the maximum-likelihood principle. Furthermore, we discuss effects of the different parallel granularities of the algorithms.
A tool to develop electronic course books based on WWW technologies, resources and usability criteria
Authors: Pilu Crescenzi, Gaia Innocenti
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (2003)

An electronic course book (ECB in short) is a learning module consisting of hyperdocuments with a functional use of interactivity and multimedia, presented on the WWW and/or CDROM [1]. In this paper we propose an ECB producer application, which can assist any author in the development of an ECB based on WWW usability criteria and which presents a collection of several multimedia elements which can enhance the process of learning and which differentiate an electronic course book from a classical paper book. The ECB, which represents an electronic form of classroom support, will turn out to be useful both to teachers, since they will take advantage of the slide-based presentation of the text and of the several simulation tools included in the ECB, and to students, since they will be able to learn by reading, by doing and by answering.
Simulation of the switching curve in antiferromagnetic ising model
Authors: M. S. Magdoń-Maksymowicz, A. Dydejczyk, P. Gronek, A. Z. Maksymowicz
Venue: Proceedings of the international conference on Computational methods in sciences and engineering (2003)

At sufficiently low temperatures T we expect all spins in the antiferromagnetic ground state for a finite net size. Then we apply magnetic field +H on spins "down" sublattice and -H on spins "up" sublattice to provoke spin reversals on all sites from initial configuration which now is metastable. At sufficiently big H, spin reversal takes place. The switching curve H(T) obtained from computer simulations does reflect different switching mechanism at very low, low and high temperature range corresponding to spin flip and domain wall movement. These two mechanisms may be observed in real samples. In this paper we discuss the onset of the two switching paths and analyze main trends of the switching curves for different model parameters such as the size N of the spin net or the coordination number Z.
Influence of SiH2 on the WNx-PECVD process
Authors: R. Ecke, S. E. Schulz, M. Hecker, N. Mattern, T. Gessner
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2003)

Silane was added to an existing WNx PECVD process in different flow ratios to the WF6, to obtain higher thermal stability of the barrier in comparison to the WNx. The deposition rate rises drastically with increased SiH4/WF6 ratios. The ternary compositions were investigated with regard to the sheet resistance and thickness. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements of selected layers with low electrical resistivities in the as-deposited state show a broad amorphous peak like the WNx barrier, indicating an amorphous structure. After characterising the as-deposited state of these samples, thermal treatments of the layers were performed at temperature of 600 °C for 1 h in vacuum.
Using the transformational approach to build a safe and generic data synchronizer
Authors: Pascal Molli, Gérald Oster, Hala Skaf-Molli, Abdessamad Imine
Venue: Proceedings of the 2003 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work (2003)

Reconciliating divergent data is an important issue in concurrent engineering, mobile computing and software configuration management. Currently, a lot of synchronizers or merge tools perform reconciliations. However, they do not define what is the correctness of their synchronisation. In this paper, we propose to use a transformational approach as the basic model for reasonning about synchronisation. We propose an algorithm and specific transformation functions that realize a file system synchronisation. Unlike classic synchronizers, our synchronizer ensures properties of convergence, causality and intention preservation and is extensible to new data types.
An Improved Batch Means Procedure for Simulation Output Analysis
Authors: Natalie M. Steiger, James R. Wilson
Venue: Management Science (2002)

We formulate and evaluate the Automated Simulation Analysis Procedure (ASAP), an algorithm for steady-state simulation output analysis based on the method of nonover-lapping batch means (NOBM). ASAP delivers a confidence interval for an expected response that is centered on the sample mean of a portion of a simulation-generated time series and satisfies a user-specified absolute or relative precision requirement. ASAP operates as follows: The batch size is progressively increased until either (a) the batch means pass the von Neumann test for independence, and then ASAP delivers a classical NOBM confidence interval; or (b) the batch means pass the Shapiro-Wilk test for multivariate normality, and then ASAP delivers a correlation-adjusted confidence interval. The latter adjustment is based on an inverted Cornish-Fisher expansion for the classical NOBMt-ratio, where the terms of the expansion are estimated via an autoregressive-moving average time series model of the batch means. After determining the batch size and confidence-interval type, ASAP sequentially increases the number of batches until the precision requirement is satisfied. An extensive experimental study demonstrates the performance improvements achieved by ASAP versus well-known batch means procedures, especially in confidence-interval coverage probability.
GUI scripting with Tcl/Tk
Authors: Derek Fountain
Venue: Linux Journal (2004)

Get an interface working quickly with the old-school tool for rapidapp development. 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
Implicit exchange in multiplicative proofnets
Authors: François Métayer
Venue: Mathematical Structures in Computer Science (2001)

Proofnets may be seen as orientable surfaces with boundary. We investigate how the topology of such nets relates to the number of exchange rules in corresponding proofs.
A.I., Scientific Discovery and Realism
Authors: Mario Alai
Venue: Minds and Machines (2004)

Epistemologists have debated at length whether scientific discovery is a rational and logical process. If it is, according to the Artificial Intelligence hypothesis, it should be possible to write computer programs able to discover laws or theories; and if such programs were written, this would definitely prove the existence of a logic of discovery. Attempts in this direction, however, have been unsuccessful: the programs written by Simon&rsquo;s group, indeed, infer famous laws of physics and chemistry; but having found no new law, they cannot properly be considered discovery machines. The programs written in the &lsquo;Turing tradition&rsquo;, instead, produced new and useful empirical generalization, but no theoretical discovery, thus failing to prove the logical character of the most significant kind of discoveries. A new cognitivist and connectionist approach by Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett and Thagard, looks more promising. Reflection on their proposals helps to understand the complex character of discovery processes, the abandonment of belief in the logic of discovery by logical positivists, and the necessity of a realist interpretation of scientific research.
Streaming of DivX AVI movies
Authors: Roger Zimmermann
Venue: Proceedings of the 2003 ACM symposium on Applied computing (2003)

In recent years the MPEG-4 ISO compression standard has gained much attention. With its high compression ratio it promises to make broadband streaming more feasible. However, currently there are only a limited number of fully ISO standard compliant MPEG-4 systems widely available (Apple's Quicktime 6 is one of the first). Some partial implementations, such as the MPEG-4 style codec "DivX" are popular for encoding video content into AVI (Audio Video Interleave) files. The AVI file format was originally not intended for streaming. In this report we document our efforts to enable streaming of DivX AVI files across broadband IP based networks. This will allow the large number of existing AVI files to be made available in streaming applications.
Neural Edge Enhancer for Supervised Edge Enhancement from Noisy Images
Authors: Kenji Suzuki, Isao Horiba, Noboru Sugie
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (2003)

Abstract--We propose a new edge enhancer based on a modified multilayer neural network, which is called a neural edge enhancer (NEE), for enhancing the desired edges clearly from noisy images. The NEE is a supervised edge enhancer: Through training with a set of input noisy images and teaching edges, the NEE acquires the function of a desired edge enhancer. The input images are synthesized from noiseless images by addition of noise. The teaching edges are made from the noiseless images by performing the desired edge enhancer. To investigate the performance, we carried out experiments to enhance edges from noisy artificial and natural images. By comparison with conventional edge enhancers, the following was demonstrated: The NEE was robust against noise, was able to enhance continuous edges from noisy images, and was superior to the conventional edge enhancers in similarity to the desired edges. To gain insight into the nonlinear kernel of the NEE, we performed analyses on the trained NEE. The results suggested that the trained NEE acquired directional gradient operators with smoothing. Furthermore, we propose a method for edge localization for the NEE. We compared the NEE, together with the proposed edge localization method, with a leading edge detector. The NEE was proven to be useful for enhancing edges from noisy images.