ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Distributed simulation in industry -- a survey: part 1 -- the COTS vendors
Authors: Csaba Attila Boer, Arie de Bruin, Alexander Verbraeck
Venue: Proceedings of the 38th conference on Winter simulation (2006)

Distributed simulation is used very little in industry, especially when compared with the interest in distributed simulation from research and from the military domain. In order to answer the question why industry lags behind, the authors have carried out an extensive survey, using a questionnaire and interviews, with users, vendors, and developers of distributed simulation products, as well as with vendors of non-distributed simulation software. Based on the results the discrepancies between the different "worlds" become clear enough to enable the formulation of clear guidelines for further developments of standards for distributed simulation. This paper reports on the first part of the survey, namely a questionnaire targeted at vendors of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation packages. Analysis of the answers obtained establish that it is indeed the case that industry is relatively underdeveloped in the area of distributed simulation and also sheds some light on the reasons behind this.
Context-specific middleware specialization techniques for optimizing software product-line architectures
Authors: Arvind S. Krishna, Aniruddha S. Gokhale, Douglas C. Schmidt
Venue: ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review (2006)

Product-line architectures (PLAs) are an emerging paradigm for developing software families for distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems by customizing reusable artifacts, rather than hand-crafting software from scratch. To reduce the effort of developing software PLAs and product variants for DRE systems, developers are applying general-purpose -- ideally standard -- middleware platforms whose reusable services and mechanisms support a range of application quality of service (QoS) requirements, such as low latency and jitter. The generality and flexibility of standard middleware, however, often results in excessive time/space overhead for DRE systems, due to lack of optimizations tailored to meet the specific QoS requirements of different product variants in a PLA.This paper provides the following contributions to the study of middleware specialization techniques for PLA-based DRE systems. First, we identify key dimensions of generality in standard middleware stemming from framework implementations, deployment platforms, and middleware standards. Second, we illustrate how context-specific specialization techniques can be automated and used to tailor standard middleware to better meet the QoS needs of different PLA product variants. Third, we quantify the benefits of applying automated tools to specialize a standard Realtime CORBA middleware implementation. When applied together, these middleware specializations improved our application product variant throughput by ~65%, average- and worst-case end-to-end latency measures by ~43% and ~45%, respectively, and predictability by a factor of two over an already optimized middleware implementation, with little or no effect on portability, standard middleware APIs, or application software implementations, and interoperability.
Illustrations with Photoshop: A Designer's Notebook
Authors: Bengal, Nicolas Bouvier, Judith Darmont, Ben Carre, Nicolas Fructus, Joel Legars, Antoine Quaresma, Marguerite Sauvage, William Rodarmor
Venue:  (2004)

World-renowned French artists share their exciting and innovative digital creations in Illustrations with Photoshop: A Designer's Notebook, a first-time English translation of the cutting-edge French work. The images in this book will energize image professionals, graphic artists, photographers, computer graphics designers--all creators of images, whether still or animated--and will forever change the way you see and perform your design work. Photoshop is best known among photographers as a photographic image manipulation tool; it is used largely for retouching and photomontage. But Photoshop is also a powerful and highly sophisticated tool for creating quality digital drawings and artwork. Artists, like the ones showcased within, use it to realize their unique vision through illustration. In this lavish, full-color collection, nine French graphic artists--well-known professionals from a vibrant culture with a reputation for taking creative risks and producing incomparable graphics and art--are turned loose with Photoshop. Ranging from advertising to children's book illustration, science fiction to settings for graphic novels and role-playing games, their groundbreaking creations will inspire you to see your industry anew, appreciate graphic design from a changed perspective, and revitalize your work. Representing the very finest of French creation in the world of graphic design and digital imaging, this notebook leads you into the heart of each author's artistic approach, guiding you through the inception and making of nine unparalleled works of art that spring from widely varying sources of inspiration. But you'll come away with more than ideas and inspiration--you'll find detailed, step-by-step information on making Photoshop do anything and everything you want to accomplish your ideal digital illustration. Unlike any other available, this visually stunning book will give you the creative license and technical know-how you need to create one-of-a-kind digital illustrations with Photoshop that are limited only by your imagination.
Nuggeteer: automatic nugget-based evaluation using descriptions and judgements
Authors: Gregory Marton, Alexey Radul
Venue: Proceedings of the main conference on Human Language Technology Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association of Computational Linguistics (2006)

The TREC Definition and Relationship questions are evaluated on the basis of information nuggets that may be contained in system responses. Human evaluators provide informal descriptions of each nugget, and judgements (assignments of nuggets to responses) for each response submitted by participants. While human evaluation is the most accurate way to compare systems, approximate automatic evaluation becomes critical during system development.We present Nuggeteer, a new automatic evaluation tool for nugget-based tasks. Like the first such tool, Pourpre, Nuggeteer uses words in common between candidate answer and answer key to approximate human judgements. Unlike Pourpre, but like human assessors, Nuggeteer creates a judgement for each candidate-nugget pair, and can use existing judgements instead of guessing. This creates a more readily interpretable aggregate score, and allows developers to track individual nuggets through the variants of their system. Nuggeteer is quantitatively comparable in performance to Pourpre, and provides qualitatively better feedback to developers.
Thresholding based on variance and intensity contrast
Authors: Yu Qiao, Qingmao Hu, Guoyu Qian, Suhuai Luo, Wieslaw L. Nowinski
Venue: Pattern Recognition (2007)

A new thresholding criterion is formulated for segmenting small objects by exploring the knowledge about intensity contrast. It is the weighted sum of within-class variance and intensity contrast between the object and background. Theoretical bounds of the weight are given for the uniformly distributed background and object, followed by the procedure to estimate the weight from prior knowledge. Tests against two real and two synthetic images show that small objects can be extracted successfully irrespective of the complexity of background and difference in class sizes.
The Official Ubuntu Book
Authors: Benjamin Mako Hill, Jono Bacon, Corey Burger, Jonathan Jesse, Ivan Krstic
Venue:  (2006)

Ubuntu is a complete, free operating system that emphasizes community, support, and ease of use while refusing to compromise on speed, power, and flexibility. It's Linux for human beings--designed for everyone from computer novices to experts. Ubuntu is the most in-demand Linux distribution, and this official guide will get you up and running quickly.Learn how to seamlessly install and customize Ubuntu for your home or small businesses. Its open source power can be used in schools, government, or by corporations, and is suitable for both desktop and server use. The Ubuntu community is built on the premise that software should be available free of charge, and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.Written by leading Ubuntu community members, this is the only book that you need to become a savvy Ubuntu user. Covers the latest version of Ubuntu--Ubuntu 6.06LTS Covers every standard desktop application from word processing, spreadsheets, Web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, music, video, and, of course, games, all the way to software development, databases, and other server applications Includes real-world troubleshooting advice contributed by Ubuntu users from around the world Learn about the extended Ubuntu community, which includes translators; software developers; teachers; people who love to hand out CDs and help friends try free software; artists; people who write documentation, tips, and guides; accountants; and even a lawyer or two. Covers both Ubuntu and Kubuntu desktop systems Explains Ubuntu Server installation and basic administration, complete with advanced installer features like LVM and RAIDThis book comes with a version of Ubuntu that can run right off the DVD, as well as the complete set of supported packages for Ubuntu, including Kubuntu. Try out Ubuntu on the DVD. If you want to keep it, install it directly from your desktop.Community Contributors: James Stanger, Jorge O. Castro, Matthew East, Quim Gil, Dennis Kaarsemaker, David Bain, Alan Barnard, David Clayton, Manu Cornet, Scott Dier, Oskar Jönefors, Jason LaPrade, Avinash Meetoo, Julien Rottenberg, Stephen Sandlin, David Symons, Paul van Genderen, Andrew Zajac
Introduction to modeling and generating probabilistic input processes for simulation
Authors: Michael E. Kuhl, Emily K. Lada, Natalie M. Steiger, Mary Ann Wagner, James R. Wilson
Venue: Proceedings of the 38th conference on Winter simulation (2006)

Techniques are presented for modeling and generating the univariate and multivariate probabilistic input processes that drive many simulation experiments. Among univariate input models, emphasis is given to the generalized beta distribution family, the Johnson translation system of distributions, and the B&eacute;zier distribution family. Among bivariate and higher-dimensional input models, emphasis is given to computationally tractable extensions of univariate Johnson distributions. Also discussed are nonparametric techniques for modeling and simulating time-dependent arrival streams using nonhomogeneous Poisson processes.
Enhanced Snake algorithm by embedded domain transformation
Authors: S. Y. Lam, C. S. Tong
Venue: Pattern Recognition (2006)

There have been many attempts to improve the original Snake algorithm by Kass et al. to enhance its ability to locate object boundaries with sharp corners or concave parts. But most of these variants of the Snake model require introducing additional external forces or modifying internal energy terms, all of which necessitate cumbersome fine-tuning by users for optimal performance. In this paper, we present a mathematical formulation for a new algorithm that embeds a domain transformation mapping within the Snake algorithm. The domain transformation step serves to render the object contour more convex and hence is more amenable to be better represented by the Snake contour. Analysis of the new algorithm is carried out which facilitated further enhancements to our technique, rendering a final algorithm that is computationally efficient and is easy and flexible to use. Our approach has been tested with very encouraging experimental results.
Microsoft WSH and VBScript Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition (For the Absolute Beginner)
Authors: Jerry Lee Ford,  Jr.
Venue:  (2005)

Coverage includes- Jerry Lee Ford, Jr. is an author, educator, and IT professional with over 16 years' experience in information technology, including roles as an automation analyst, technical manager, technical support analyst, automation engineer, and security analyst. Jerry has a master's degree in business administration from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. He also is the author of 13 other books, including VBScript Professional Projects, Microsoft Windows Shell Scripting and WSH Administrator's Guide, Learn VBScript in a Weekend, Microsoft Windows Shell Scripting for the Absolute Beginner, Learn JavaScript in a Weekend, and Microsoft Windows XP Professional Administrator's Guide. He has over five years' experience as an adjunct instructor teaching networking courses in Information Technology. Jerry lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife, Mary, and their children William, Alexander, and Molly. Written for the beginning programmer, so no prior programming experience is required or assumed. Readers will learn entry level programming techniques using the WSH environment and VBScript as a foundation. Using a games-based approach and real-world scenarios, the book covers programming basics and how to create scripts that automate common Windows tasks. Includes a collection of sample administrative scripts that can be used as a foundation for developing more complex scripts that will automate an assortment of Windows tasks 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
Access Data Analysis Cookbook
Authors: Ken Bluttman, Wayne Freeze
Venue:  (2007)

If you have large quantities of data in a Microsoft Access database, and need to study that data in depth, this book is a data cruncher's dream. Access Data Analysis Cookbook offers practical recipes to solve a variety of common problems that users have with extracting Access data and performing calculations on it. Each recipe includes a discussion on how and why the solution works. Whether you use Access 2007 or an earlier version, this book will teach you new methods to query data, different ways to move data in and out of Access, how to calculate answers to financial and investment issues, and more. Learn how to apply statistics to summarize business information, how to jump beyond SQL by manipulating data with VBA, how to process dates and times, and even how to reach into the Excel data analysis toolkit. Recipes demonstrate ways to: Develop basic and sophisticated queriesApply aggregate functions, custom functions, regular expressions, and crosstabsApply queries to perform non-passive activities such as inserting, updating, and deleting dataCreate and manipulate tables and queries programmaticallyManage text-based data, including methods to isolate parts of a string and ways to work with numbers that are stored as textUse arrays, read and write to the Windows registry, encrypt data, and use transaction processingUse the FileSystemObject, use XML with XSLT, communicate with SQL Server, and exchange data with other Office productsFind answers from time-based data, such as how to add time, count elapsed time, work with leap years, and how to manage time zones in your calculationsDeal with business and finance problems, including methods for calculating depreciation, loan paybacks, and Return on Investment (ROI)Explore statistical techniques, such as frequency, variance, kurtosis, linear regression, combinations and permutations Access Data Analysis Cookbook is a one-stop-shop for extracting nuggets of valuable information from your database, and anyone with Access experience will benefit from these tips and techniques, including seasoned developers. If you want to use your data, and not just store it, you'll find this guide indispensable.
Understanding collateral evolution in Linux device drivers
Authors: Yoann Padioleau, Julia L. Lawall, Gilles Muller
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGOPS/EuroSys European Conference on Computer Systems 2006 (2006)

In a modern operating system (OS), device drivers can make up over 70% of the source code. Driver code is also heavily dependent on the rest of the OS, for functions and data structures defined in the kernel and driver support libraries. These properties pose a significant problem for OS evolution, as any changes in the interfaces exported by the kernel and driver support libraries can trigger a large number of adjustments in dependent drivers. These adjustments, which we refer to as collateral evolutions, may be complex, entailing substantial code reorganizations. As to our knowledge there exist no tools to help in this process, collateral evolution is thus time consuming and error prone.In this paper, we present a qualitative and quantitative assessment of collateral evolution in Linux device driver code. We provide a taxonomy of evolutions and collateral evolutions, and use an automated patch-analysis tool that we have developed to measure the number of evolutions and collateral evolutions that affect device drivers between Linux versions 2.2 and 2.6. In particular, we find that from one version of Linux to the next, collateral evolutions can account for up to 35% of the lines modified in such code.
Estimation of dry road braking distance considering frictional energy of patterned tires
Authors: J. R. Cho, J. H. Choi, W. S. Yoo, G. J. Kim, J. S. Woo
Venue: Finite Elements in Analysis and Design (2006)

This paper is concerned with the braking distance estimation of tire controlled by anti-lock brake system (ABS) according to a numerical-analytical method. While the frictional heat dissipation at disc pad is derived analytically, the tire frictional energy loss is computed by the 3D dynamic rolling analysis of patterned tire. Since the tire rolling analysis to obtain the time history of the frictional energy rate for the entire braking period is impractical, we alternatively seek the tire frictional energy rate curve versus the lapse of time by interpolating the discretized frictional energy rates computed at intervals of 10km/h. The effect of ABS is numerically implemented by specifying the corresponding tire angular velocity to the dynamic rolling analysis. Applying the energy conservation law to each speed interval determines the interval-wise braking times and distances from which the total braking time and distance are predicted. Illustrative numerical experiment is presented together with the comparison with the experimental estimation.
Optimal Multiple Assignments Based on Integer Programming in Secret Sharing Schemes with General Access Structures*This paper was presented at the technical meeting on ISEC of IEICE, 2003, and the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, 2004.
Authors: Mitsugu Iwamoto, Hirosuke Yamamoto, Hirohisa Ogawa
Venue: IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences (2007)

It is known that for any general access structure, a secret sharing scheme (SSS) can be constructed from an (m, m)-threshold scheme by using the so-called cumulative map or from a (t, m)-threshold SSS by a modified cumulative map. However, such constructed SSSs are not efficient generally. In this paper, a new method is proposed to construct a SSS from a (t, m)-threshold scheme for any given general access structure. In the proposed method, integer programming is used to derive the optimal (t, m)-threshold scheme and the optimal distribution of the shares to minimize the average or maximum size of the distributed shares to participants. From the optimality, it can always attain lower coding rate than the cumulative maps because the cumulative maps cannot attain the optimal distribution in many cases. The same method is also applied to construct SSSs for incomplete access structures and/or ramp access structures.
On the condition of four-parameter sine wave fitting
Authors: Kui-Fu Chen
Venue: Computer Standards Interfaces (2007)

Matrix equations need to be solved in each round of an iterative algorithm for four-parameter sine wave fitting. The condition number (CN) of its coefficient matrix was studied approximately under a practical scenario (large sample size, and the frequency being well inside [0, Nyquist frequency]). Upon the first approximate level, secondary entries in the coefficient matrix are ignored. Thereafter, their contribution is examined by the matrix perturbation theory on the second approximate level. This study shows that, firstly, the CN does not depend on the offset. Secondly, the CN at the first approximate level only depends on the amplitude. Thirdly, the secondary entries modulate the CN weakly, and when the amplitude deviates away from the optimal value, this modulation is sinusoidal.
The use of slow down factors for the analysis and development of scheduling algorithms for parallel cluster tools
Authors: Robert Unbehaun, Oliver Rose
Venue: Proceedings of the 38th conference on Winter simulation (2006)

In this paper, we describe the problem of developing scheduling algorithms for an environment of parallel cluster tools, which is a special case of the parallel unrelated machines problem. At first we will describe the problem under consideration in detail and then present our scheduling environment and the idea of using slow down factors to predict lot cycle times to evaluate schedules and parts of them. This article is more a conceptual kind of work containing mostly basic thoughts to illustrate facets of the problem and first solution ideas. Nonetheless the authors see a high potential in examining these questions. Little research has been done on that issue so far.