ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Algorithms for procurement in transportation networks
Authors: Dharmaraj Veeramani
Venue:  (2006)

With the advent of the Internet, companies are getting interested in e-procurement to reduce cost and time of the procurement operations. In this research work, we address the procurement problem in the context of transportation networks. We consider two types of network procurement problems. For some industries, e.g., oil, electricity or natural gas supply chain, links of the networks (namely pipelines, transmission lines) are the object of procurement. We call this scenario as edge procurement, because edges are procured to facilitate formation of a network. For other types of businesses, there is a predefined underlying network specified by the sources and destinations of transportation of goods or services. A route in such a network is a set of edges leading from the source node to the destination node. For these industries, the procurement process includes selection of transportation agents and routes. We refer to this as transportation service procurement. In the context of edge procurement, our research considers a distribution network model where each edge is owned by a selfish owner and a customer wants to supply a product or a service to each of the nodes in the network using a set of edges that results in the lowest possible distribution cost, i.e., a minimum spanning supply tree. We then study the strategic behavior of the owners in such an auction and show that following a greedy strategy is a Nash equilibrium for the owners. Transportation service procurement auctions are typically characterized by limited number of rounds and low profit margin. In this context, our research addresses the bundle selection and bid determination problem on behalf of truckload carriers for single-lane and combinatorial bids in the successive rounds of an auction, which maximizes the profit for the carriers. We also study an extension of the above process where we relax the assumption of a carrier winning all the truckloads associated with the lane. A simple modification of the above models is used to analyze this case. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Subcortical Loop Activation during Selection of Currently Relevant Memories
Authors: Valerie Treyer, Alfred Buck, Armin Schnider
Venue: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2003)

Clinical studies on spontaneous confabulation and imaging studies with healthy subjects indicate that the anterior limbic system, in particular, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), is necessary to adjust thought and behavior to current reality. It appears to achieve this by continuously suppressing activated memories that do not pertain to ongoing reality, even before their content is consciously recognized. In the present study, we explored through what anatomical connections the OFC exerts this influence. Healthy subjects were scanned with H215O PET as they performed four blocks of continuous recognition tasks, each block composed of a different type of stimuli (meaningful designs, geometric designs, words, nonwords). Within each block, three runs composed of exactly the same picture series, arranged in different order each time, were made. Subjects were asked to indicate item recurrences only within the currently ongoing run and to disregard familiarity from previous runs. In the combined first runs, in which all items were initially new and responses could be based on familiarity judgement (with repeated items) alone, we found medial temporal and right orbitofrontal activation. In the combined third runs, when all items were already known and selection of currently relevant memories was required, we found left orbitofrontal activation contingent with distinct activation of the ventral striatum, head and body of the caudate nucleus, substantia nigra, and medial thalamus. The study indicates that the OFC influences the cortical representation of memories through subcortical connections including the basal ganglia and the thalamus. The data are compatible with a role of the dopaminergic reward system in the monitoring of ongoing reality in thinking.
Predicting queueing delays for multiclass call centers
Authors: Oualid Jouini, Yves Dallery
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Performance evaluation methodolgies and tools (2006)

This paper deals with real-time operation management in call centers. We investigate the prediction of the waiting time for each customer upon arrival. We model our call center by a multiclass multiserver service system. The system consists of a pool of full-flexible agents, and two classes of impatient customers. First, we propose estimators for the state-dependent waiting time distributions for new arrivals by incorporating the change that may occur on their waiting experience. Next, we investigate the way to inform customers about their anticipated delays. We discuss different ways to communicate this information. In particular, we give attention to analyzing the announcement of the waiting time by steps.
It's not just programming: reflection and the nature of experience in learning through design
Authors: Cynthia Carter Ching
Venue: Proceedings of the 1999 conference on Computer support for collaborative learning (1999)

When students with varying levels of expertise collaborate on computer-based design projects, different roles for experienced and inexperienced designers often emerge. The goal of this study was to determine if students with different levels of experience, knowledge, and skill in learning through design are aware of these differences; and also if they are aware of how this variation affects their collaborative interactions. Toward this end, sixty-two fourth and fifth-grade designers with varying levels of expertise in design and programming were interviewed following their participation in a 10-week learning through design project. Students were asked to identify differences between experienced and inexperienced designers. Their responses were classified via an emergent coding scheme. Results showed that students were aware of differences not only in requisite skills, but also how these skills contributed to collaborative interactions. Students cited knowledge and interaction differences in relation to visible skills like programming more often than other meta-design skills, such as planning and project monitoring.
A priori determination of bounds for the optimal value of variables in integer linear programming problems
Authors: K. Sh. Mamedov
Venue: Cybernetics and Systems Analysis (2006)

The paper outlines a simple technique for determining a narrower interval containing the coordinates of the optimal solution to integer linear programming problems. Computational experiments show that the lengths of the given ranges of variables decreases by 30---90% on average.
DiffServ Quality of Service Support for Multimedia Applications in Broadband Access Networks
Authors: Seungchul Park
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Hybrid Information Technology - Volume 02 (2006)

QoS support in broadband access network is indispensable because QoS-sensitive realtime multimedia applications such as voice of IP, teleconferencing, IP TV, and audio/video streaming are currently rapidly deployed in broadband access networks. Since broadband access networks are already widely deployed in the world, there are several important consideration factors when supporting DiffServ in broadband access networks. They are backward compatibility with DiffServ-unaware legacy systems, consistency with existing pricing infrastructure, effective QoS support for various applications, and so on. In this paper, we propose several candidate models to support DiffServ QoS in broadband access network environment. The proposed DiffServ models are divided into static and dynamic models. The static DiffServ models include Flat DiffServ providing per-subscriber DiffServ QoS and Structured DiffServ providing both per-service and per-subscriber DiffServ QoS. The dynamic DiffServ models include Direct DiffServ for peer to peer multimedia applications and Indirect DiffServ for applications of service providers.
An effective multilevel thresholding approach using conditional probability entropy and genetic algorithm
Authors: Yan Chang, Hong Yan
Venue: Selected papers from the 2002 Pan-Sydney workshop on Visualisation - Volume 22 (2003)

Entropy-based image thresholding are used widely in image processing. Conventional methods are efficient in the case of bi-level thresholding. But they are very computationally time consuming when extended to multilevel thresholding since they exhaustively search the optimal thresholds to optimize the objective functions. In this paper, we propose a conditional probability entropy (CPE) based on Bayesian theory and employ Genetic Algorithm (GA) to maximize the CPE for the multithresholds. The experimental results show that CPE is a good criterion of image thresholding and GA is a applicable fast algorithm for multi-level thresholding compared to the exhaustive searching method.
A Tabu Search Meta-Heuristic for Image Semi-Supervised Classification
Authors: Mahmoud Zennaki, Ahmed Ech-cherif, Jean Charles Lamirel
Venue: Proceedings of the conference on Geometric Modeling and Imaging: New Trends (2006)

We investigate the utility of Tabu Search (TS) Meta-heuristics for semi-supervised image classification tasks. The proposed heuristic solves the integer programming Transductive Support Vector Machine (MIP-TSVM) formulation considered in [8]. Preliminary results, with a linear kernel show that our TS implementation can effectively find optimal global solutions for TSVM with relatively large problem dimensions and is competitive, in terms of generalization performance, with Transductive SVMlight package on LIBSVM benchmarks. However on Corel image database, TSVMlight demonstrates superior performance. As a result, the usefulness of such MIP-TSVM formulation may be application dependant.
Enhancing Learning Experiences through Context-Aware Collaborative Services: Software Architecture and Prototype System
Authors: Nikolaos Dimakis, Lazaros Polymenakos, John Soldatos
Venue: Proceedings of the Fourth IEEE International Workshop on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technology in Education (2006)

Context-aware computing systems hold the promise of enhancing the level and quality of educational activities. However, development of such systems to provide novel educational services is still extremely challenging and requires new architectures and middleware paradigms. In this paper we present a structured, agent based, middleware architecture, able to support sophisticated context-awareness in lectures, presentations and meetings. The architecture caters for the generation of sophisticated context by employing a large set of contextacquisition components, while enabling service logic using non-trivial situation state models. Based on this architectural framework, we have developed a wide array of innovative context-aware services that can play a significant role in education. We present the most prominent of these (named 'Memory Jog'), which provides pertinent information and human-centric assistance to participants in lectures, presentations and meetings.
A probabilistic total system approach to the simulation of complex environmental systems
Authors: Rick Kossik, Ian Miller
Venue: Proceedings of the 36th conference on Winter simulation (2004)

GoldSim is a powerful and flexible Windows-based computer program for carrying out probabilistic simulations of complex systems to support management and decision-making in engineering, science and business. The program is highly graphical, highly extensible, able to directly represent uncertainty, and allows you to create compelling presentations of your model. Although GoldSim can be used to solve a wide variety of complex problems, it is particularly well-suited (and was originally developed) to support evaluation of complex environmental systems. Powerful contaminant transport features allow nearly any kind of natural or man-made environmental system to be simulated. This paper provides a brief overview of GoldSim, with special emphasis on environmental applications.
The Psychophysiology of Real-Time Financial Risk Processing
Authors: Andrew W. Lo, Dmitry V. Repin
Venue: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2002)

A longstanding controversy in economics and finance is whether financial markets are governed by rational forces or by emotional responses. We study the importance of emotion in the decision-making process of professional securities traders by measuring their physiological characteristics (e.g., skin conductance, blood volume pulse, etc.) during live trading sessions while simultaneously capturing real-time prices from which market events can be detected. In a sample of 10 traders, we find statistically significant differences in mean electrodermal responses during transient market events relative to no-event control periods, and statistically significant mean changes in cardiovascular variables during periods of heightened market volatility relative to normal-volatility control periods. We also observe significant differences in these physiological responses across the 10 traders that may be systematically related to the traders' levels of experience.
An improved multi-objective evolutionary algorithm with adaptable parameters
Authors: Sumitra Mukherjee
Venue:  (2006)

Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) are not easy to use because they require parameter tunings of three main parameters---population size, crossover probability, and mutation probability---in order to achieve desirable solutions and performance for an arbitrary complex problem. Moreover, the use of fixed parameter settings may lead to slow convergence and sub-optimal solutions. This dissertation develops a MOEA with self-adaptive crossover, self-adaptive mutation, and adaptive population size parameters for automating the process of adjusting appropriate parameter values in order to make the MOEA more efficient, simple to use and available to more users. The MOEA with adaptable parameters is built on the NSGA-II (Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II) and named as ANSGA-II (Adaptable NSGA-II). The NSGA-II is chosen because it is one of the best-known MOEAs. In the ANSGA-II, the crossover and mutation parameters are attached to each solution in the population and allowed to co-evolve with each solution. This enables the algorithm to carry prior successful crossover and mutation for creating children solutions and for adaptation of the parameters. Since good parameter values are associated with good candidate solutions, better parameter values will survive because they produce better solutions. The ANSGA-II selects the right population size by running several populations with different population sizes simultaneously and allows the smaller populations more time to run. Smaller populations may find diverse non-dominated solution sets close to the Pareto-optimal front faster than the larger populations. If a subsequent larger population identifies a better non-dominated solution set then the algorithm stops running the smaller population since it is unlikely to identify better solutions than the larger one due to genetic drift. Two performance metrics are investigated for their effective use in comparing non-dominated solution sets among different populations during the execution of the ANSGA-II. The dissertation evaluates and discusses the performance of the ANSGA-II, in terms of finding a diverse non-dominated solution set and converging to the true Pareto-optimal front, by comparing the results obtained on a suite of thirteen benchmark multi-objective problems with those obtained by the original NSGA-II. The results demonstrate that the ANSGA-II out-performs the NSGA-II. The improvement comes with the cost of longer execution time due to overheads of finding good non-dominated solutions and learning good parameter values at the same time. However, the execution time appears to be acceptable on all thirteen benchmark multi-objective problems.
Simulation optimization: a review, new developments, and applications
Authors: Michael C. Fu, Fred W. Glover, Jay April
Venue: Proceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation (2005)

We provide a descriptive review of the main approaches for carrying out simulation optimization, and sample some recent algorithmic and theoretical developments in simulation optimization research. Then we survey some of the software available for simulation languages and spreadsheets, and present several illustrative applications.
Secret sharing schemes with partial broadcast channels
Authors: Rei Safavi-Naini, Huaxiong Wang
Venue: Designs, Codes and Cryptography (2006)

In a conventional secret sharing scheme a dealer uses secure point-to-point channels to distribute the shares of a secret to a number of participants. At a later stage an authorised group of participants send their shares through secure point-to-point channels to a combiner who will reconstruct the secret. In this paper, we assume no point-to-point channel exists and communication is only through partial broadcast channels. A partial broadcast channel is a point-to-multipoint channel that enables a sender to send the same message simultaneously and privately to a fixed subset of receivers. We study secret sharing schemes with partial broadcast channels, called partial broadcast secret sharing schemes. We show that a necessary and sufficient condition for the partial broadcast channel allocation of a (t, n)-threshold partial secret sharing scheme is equivalent to a combinatorial object called a cover-free family. We use this property to construct a (t, n)-threshold partial broadcast secret sharing scheme with O(log n) partial broadcast channels. This is a significant reduction compared to n point-to-point channels required in a conventional secret sharing scheme. Next, we consider communication rate of a partial broadcast secret sharing scheme defined as the ratio of the secret size to the total size of messages sent by the dealer. We show that the communication rate of a partial broadcast secret sharing scheme can approach 1/O(log n) which is a significant increase over the corresponding value, 1/n, in the conventional secret sharing schemes. We derive a lower bound on the communication rate and show that for a (t,n)-threshold partial broadcast secret sharing scheme the rate is at least 1/t and then we propose constructions with high communication rates. We also present the case of partial broadcast secret sharing schemes for general access structures, discuss possible extensions of this work and propose a number of open problems.
Using searcher simulations to redesign a polyrepresentative implicit feedback interface
Authors: Ryen W. White
Venue: Information Processing and Management: an International Journal (2006)

Information seeking is traditionally conducted in environments where search results are represented at the user interface by a minimal amount of meta-information such as titles and query-based summaries. The goal of this form of presentation is to give searchers sufficient context to help them make informed interaction decisions without overloading them cognitively. The principle of polyrepresentation [Ingwersen, P. (1996). Cognitive perspectives of information retrieval interaction: elements of a cognitive IR theory. Journal of Documentation 52, 3-50] suggests that information retrieval (IR) systems should provide and use different cognitive structures during acts of communication to reduce the uncertainty associated with interactive IR. In previous work we have created content-rich search interfaces that implement an aspect of polyrepresentative theory, and are capable of displaying multiple representations of the retrieved documents simultaneously at the results interface. Searcher interaction with content-rich interfaces was used as implicit relevance feedback (IRF) to construct modified queries. These interfaces have been shown to be successful in experimentation with human subjects but we do not know whether the information was presented in a way that makes good use of the display space, or positioned most useful components in easily accessible locations, for use in IRF. In this article we use simulations of searcher interaction behaviour as design tools to determine the most rational interface design for when IRF is employed. This research forms part of the iterative design of interfaces to proactively support searchers.
Towards Integration Services for Heterogeneous Resources: An Integrated Search Engine forWeb Content and TV Programs
Authors: Hisashi Miyamori, Zoran Stejic, Tadashi Araki, Mitsuru Minakuchi, Qiang Ma, Katsumi Tanaka
Venue: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Semantics, Knowledge, and Grid (2006)

A search engine that can handle TV programs and Web content in an integrated way is proposed. Conventional search engines can target Web content and/or data stored in desktop PCs. However, in the future, the information to be searched is expected to be stored in various places such as in hard-disk recorders, digital cameras, mobile devices, and even in real space, and a search engine that can search across such heterogeneous resources will become essential. As a first step towards developing such a next-generation search engine, a prototype search system is proposed that can handle Web content as an information source with hyperlinks and TV programs as another without them, that performs integrated searches of those content, and that can subsequently search for content related to each search result. An integrated search is achieved by generating integrated indices based on keywords obtained from TV programs and Web content and by ranking them, and a chain search for related content is done by calculating the similarities of and ranking the content in the integrated indices. A zoom-based display of the results enables information to be acquired efficiently. Testing a prototype of the system validated the approach of the proposed method.
NC State Team Wins $20,000 CSIDC Prize
Authors: Bob Ward
Venue: Computer (2006)

A team of undergraduates from North Carolina State University recently received $20,000 for its first-place finish in the 2006 Computer Society International Design Competition world finals event in Washington, D.C.
Trying to Cater for Replication Consistency and Integrity of Highly Available Data
Authors: J. E. Armendariz-Inigo, J. R. Juarez-Rodriguez, H. Decker, F. D. Munoz-Escoi
Venue: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (2006)

Replication increases the availability of data. Availability, consistency and integrity are competing objectives. They need to be reconciled, and adapted to the needs of diferent applications and users, by appropriate replication strategies. We outline work in progress on a middleware architecture for replicated databases. It simultaneously maintains several protocols, so that it can be reconfigured on the fly to the actual needs of availability, consistency and integrity of possibly simultaneous applications and users.