ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
A Contour Map of the Ear's Vestibular Apparatus Based on 3D Reconstruction
Authors: Tian-Yu Zhang, Pei-Dong Dai, Zheng-Min Wang, Ke-Qiang Wang, Jim X. Chen, Le Xie
Venue: Computing in Science and Engineering (2007)

This article presents a method for developing anatomic contour maps that quantitatively display the vestibular apparatus's 3D spatial configurations. Contour maps are useful tools for determining the appropriate position of the drill and the safe depth and orientation of the installed piston in stapedotomy procedures.
Unsupervised Statistical Segmentation of Nonstationary Images Using Triplet Markov Fields
Authors: Dalila Benboudjema, Wojciech Pieczynski
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (2007)

Recent developments in statistical theory and associated computational techniques have opened new avenues for image modeling as well as for image segmentation techniques. Thus, a host of models have been proposed and the ones which have probably received considerable attention are the hidden Markov fields (HMF) models. This is due to their simplicity of handling and their potential for providing improved image quality. Although these models provide satisfying results in the stationary case, they can fail in the nonstationary one. In this paper, we tackle the problem of modeling a nonstationary hidden random field and its effect on the unsupervised statistical image segmentation. We propose an original approach, based on the recent triplet Markov field (TMF) model, which enables one to deal with nonstationary class fields. Moreover, the noise can be correlated and possibly non-Gaussian. An original parameter estimation method which uses the Pearson system to find the natures of the noise margins, which can vary with the class, is also proposed and used to perform unsupervised segmentation of such images. Experiments indicate that the new model and related processing algorithm can improve the results obtained with the classical ones.
E-Government Evaluation: Reflections On Three Organisational Case Studies
Authors: Stephen Jones, Zahir Irani, Amir Sharif
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

The deployment of e-Government continues at a significant cost and pace in the worldwide public sector. An important area of research is that of the evaluation of e-Government. In this paper the authors report the findings from three interpretive in-depth organisational case studies that explore e-Government evaluation within UK public sector settings. The paper elicits insights to organisational and managerial aspects with the aim of improving knowledge and understanding of e- Government evaluation. The findings that are extrapolated from the analysis of the three case studies are classified and mapped onto a tentative e-Government evaluation framework and presented in terms lessons learnt. These aim to inform theory and improve e- Government evaluation practice. The paper concludes that e-Government evaluation is an under developed area and calls for senior executives to engage more with the e- Government agenda and commission e-Government evaluation exercises to improve evaluation practice.
Countering targeted file attacks using locationguard
Authors: Mudhakar Srivatsa, Ling Liu
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th conference on USENIX Security Symposium - Volume 14 (2005)

Serverless file systems, exemplified by CFS, Farsite and OceanStore, have received significant attention from both the industry and the research community. These file systems store files on a large collection of untrusted nodes that form an overlay network. They use cryptographic techniques to maintain file confidentiality and integrity from malicious nodes. Unfortunately, cryptographic techniques cannot protect a file holder from a Denial-of-Service (DoS) or a host compromise attack. Hence, most of these distributed file systems are vulnerable to targeted file attacks, wherein an adversary attempts to attack a small (chosen) set of files by attacking the nodes that host them. This paper presents LocationGuard - a location hiding technique for securing overlay file storage systems from targeted file attacks. LocationGuard has three essential components: (i) location key, consisting of a random bit string (e.g., 128 bits) that serves as the key to the location of a file, (ii) routing guard, a secure algorithm that protects accesses to a file in the overlay network given its location key such that neither its key nor its location is revealed to an adversary, and (iii) a set of four location inference guards. Our experimental results quantify the overhead of employing LocationGuard and demonstrate its effectiveness against DoS attacks, host compromise attacks and various location inference attacks.
Implementation and Per formance of a New Teleconference System by High
Authors: Yosuke Sato, Yuya Maita, Koji Hashimoto, Yoshitaka Shibata
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

In this paper, a flexible middleware system for omni-directional video transmission for various teleconferencing applications is introduced. The omni-directional image has more advantages in that it provides a wider view than a single directional camera and able to realize flexible TV conferencing even between remotely separated small rooms. In this paper, we describe system architecture and functions of the middleware for high-definition omni-directional image control and effective video transmission system using DV and HDV (1080i format)[4]. The MidField system which we have developed so far is used for video stream transmission over IPv4/IPv6 networks. The prototype system of a TV conference is constructed to evaluate our suggested high-definition omni-directional middleware. Through the functional and performance evaluation of the prototyped system, we could verify the usefulness of our proposed system.
Cache-Oblivious Computation: Algorithms and Experimental Evaluation
Authors: Vijaya Ramachandran
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computing: Theory and Applications (2007)

We describe our recent research results on cache-oblivious algorithms for certain types of dynamic programs and triply-nested loop computations, and for priority queues and their application in shortest path problems in graphs. We present some preliminary results from our ongoing experimental work on comparing our cache-oblivious algorithms to currently available code for these problems. Our results demonstrate that cache-oblivious methods can give rise to efficient algorithms both in theory and in practice.
A candidate for the ITU-T 4 kbit/s speech coding standard
Authors: J. Thyssen
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 200. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 02 (2001)

This paper presents the 4 kbit/s speech coding candidate submitted by AT&T, Conexant, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Matsushita, and NTT for the ITU-T 4 kbit/s selection phase. The algorithm was developed jointly based on the qualification version of Conexant. This paper focuses on the development carried out during the collaboration in order to narrow the gap to the requirements in an attempt to provide toll quality at 4 kbit/s. This objective is currently being verified in independent subjective tests coordinated by ITU-T and carried out in multiple languages. Subjective tests carried out during the development indicate that the collaboration work has been successful in improving the quality, and that meeting a majority of the requirements in the extensive selection phase test is a realistic goal.
Using Mobile Agent-Based Middleware to Support Distributed Coordination for Vehicle Telematics
Authors: Jinhua Guo, Guangming Xing
Venue: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops - Volume 02 (2007)

With an increasing number of vehicles equipped with embedded computing platforms and advanced wireless technology, general purpose vehicle telematics applications are highly promising. However, the implications of mobility and wireless technology, including frequent disconnection and variability in motion profiles and bandwidth availability, make the deployment of telematics applications on a rapid and dependable scale over mobile computing environments an extremely complex task. We present JNomad, a framework that integrates Jini technology with mobile agents to meet these deployment challenges.
Workshop on Dependable and Secure Nanocomputing
Authors: Jean Arlat, Ravishankar K. Iyer, Michael Nicolaidis
Venue: Proceedings of the 37th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (2007)

The continuous advances and progress made in hardware technology makes it possible to foresee a realm of unprecedented performance levels and new application-driven architectural designs, as evidenced by the recent announcement of a 80-core chip [1]. Nevertheless, the evolution of nanotechnologies raises serious challenges with respect to both dependability and security viewpoints. Issues at stake go far beyond developing protections with respect to accidental disturbances in operation, they also relate to the unreliability and variability that will characterize emerging nanoscale devices. Accounting for malicious threats targeting hardware circuits will constitute another increasing concern.
Infinitely divisible cascade analysis of network traffic data
Authors: D. Veitch
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2000. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 01 (2000)

Infinitely divisible cascades are a model class previously introduced in the field of turbulence to describe the statistics of velocity fields. In this paper, using a wavelet reformulation of the cascades, we investigate their ability to analyze band model scaling properties of data and compare their fundamental ingredients to those of other scaling model classes such as self-similar and multifractal processes. We also propose an estimation procedure for the propagator or kernel of the cascades. Finally the cascade model is successfully applied to describe Internet TCP network traffic data, bringing new insights into their scaling properties and revealing a pitfall in existing techniques.
Evaluating an InfoVis Technique Using Insight Reports
Authors: Markus Rester, Margit Pohl, Sylvia Wiltner, Klaus Hinum, Silvia Miksch, Christian Popow, Susanne Ohmann
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference Information Visualization (2007)

The evaluation of Information Visualization (InfoVis) techniques can help to identify specific strengths and weaknesses of these methods. The following article describes the results of an empirical study assessing the contribution of an interactive InfoVis method based on a spring metaphor (GRAVI), Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) and Machine Learning (ML) to ease understanding. The application domain is the psychotherapeutic treatment of anorectic young women. The three methods are supposed to support the therapists in finding the variables which influence success or failure of the therapy. To conduct the evaluation we developed a report system which helped subjects to formulate and document in a self-directed manner the insights they gained when using the three methods. The results indicate that the three methods are complementary and should be used in conjunction.
Cooperative learning: introduced in three different levels of electrical engineering courses at a military institution
Authors: E. C. Wooten
Venue: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 03 (1998)

Cooperative learning and group work should be prime teaching styles and methods for the US Naval Academy (USNA). For one thing, the students, midshipmen, are all housed in a single dormitory. They have easy access to each other for group homework and group studying, and most of them have commitments to be on campus nightly (Sunday-Friday), as well as most weekends throughout the semester. Also, the midshipmen are formally trained in leadership roles and team management throughout their four years, as part of their military requirement. So the assignment of leadership roles in group learning and their cooperative efforts should come naturally. Therefore, a comprehensive effort to introduce marry aspects of cooperative learning was attempted in three different levels of electrical engineering (EE) courses for juniors at the USNA this academic year (97-98). The Naval Academy requires every midshipman to take an EE course, to familiarize each of them with the technical terms and basic electrical systems that they may encounter in the fleet. One level of the courses was taught to the humanities majors, one level was taught to the engineering majors and another level was taught to the electrical engineering majors. This paper addresses the advantages and disadvantages of the new cooperative teaching methods, which were implemented to these three different classes of students. Richard M. Felder and Rebecca Brent introduced these learning styles to the USNA in the beginning of the fall semester in an inspiring "effective teaching workshop". A discussion is provided on how the methods matched the different classes, and on how they were assessed by the students and the professor.
An iterative technique for training speaker verification systems
Authors: W. M. Campbell
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2000. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 02 (2000)

As biometrics progresses from the lab into practical embedded applications, the need for systems that are computationally simple, memory efficient, and accurate becomes a priority. Polynomial classification systems have high potential to fit these requirements. Previous work has shown that polynomial techniques applied to speaker verification lend to accurate systems with simple multiply-add structures well-fitted to DSP architectures. One of the challenges of the polynomial method is to find memory efficient techniques for training. We show that through a simple matrix index mapping technique combined with iterative training, memory requirements can be reduced drastically in training. We apply the new method to the YOHO database to show the equivalence of the method to prior approaches.
Bottom-k sketches: better and more efficient estimation of aggregates
Authors: Edith Cohen, Haim Kaplan
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems (2007)

A Bottom-k sketch is a summary of a set of items with nonnegative weights. Each such summary allows us to compute approximate aggregates over the set of items. Bottom-k sketches are obtained by associating with each item in a ground set an independent random rank drawn from a probability distribution that depends on the weight of the item. For each subset of interest, the bottom-k sketch is the set of the k minimum ranked items and their ranks. Bottom-k sketches have numerous applications. We develop and analyze data structures and estimators for bottom-k sketches to facilitate their deployment. We develop novel estimators and algorithms that show that they are a superior alternative to other sketching methods in both efficiency of obtaining the sketches and the accuracy of the estimates derived from the sketches.
Diagnostic Test Generation Based on Subsets of Faults
Authors: Irith Pomeranz, Sudhakar M. Reddy
Venue: Proceedings of the 12th IEEE European Test Symposium (2007)

We describe a diagnostic test generation procedure that deals with the large numbers of target fault pairs by considering subsets of faults. Each subset of faults is targeted separately during diagnostic test generation, and fault pairs are defined only out of the faults included in a subset. With M subsets of size K, the number of fault pairs considered is at most MK(K-1)/2 instead of N(N-1)/2 for a circuit with N target faults. Fault subsets can be defined using information about faults that are likely to be difficult or important to distinguish. In this work, fault subsets are defined based on structural analysis of the circuit.
Cooperative collection building in NSDL MatDL pathway through IVIa data fountains
Authors: Laura M. Bartolo, Cathy S. Lowe, Johannes Ruscheinski, Diane Bisom
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries (2007)

This poster describes a collaboration involving two NSDL projects: the Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) and the iVia Data Fountains Project. MatDL is testing and providing feedback for refinement of the iVia tools while streamlining its metadata assignment process.
Optimal Convergence for the Implicit Space-Time Discretization of Parabolic Systems with $p$-Structure
Authors: Lars Diening, Carsten Ebmeyer, Michael Ru&ring;z&caron;ic&caron;ka
Venue: SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis (2007)

Parabolic systems with $p$-structure are considered on convex polyhedral domains under Dirichlet boundary conditions. A fully discrete scheme is studied using $C^0$-piecewise linear finite elements in space and the backward Euler difference scheme in time. A priori error estimates in quasi norms are proved, and optimal convergence rates are obtained.
On the effect of test-suite reduction on automatically generated model-based tests
Authors: Mats P. Heimdahl, Devaraj George
Venue: Automated Software Engineering (2007)

Model checking techniques can be successfully employed as a test-case generation technique to generate tests from formal models. The number of tests-cases produced, however, is typically large for complex coverage criteria such as MC/DC. Test-suite reduction can provide us with a smaller set of test-cases that preserve the original coverage--often a dramatically smaller set. Nevertheless, one potential drawback with test-suite reduction is that this might affect the quality of the test-suite in terms of fault finding. Previous empirical studies provide conflicting evidence on this issue. To further investigate the problem and determine its effect when testing implementations derived from formal models of software we performed an experiment using a large case example of a Flight Guidance System, generated reduced test-suites for a variety of structural coverage criteria while preserving coverage, and recorded their fault finding effectiveness. Our results indicate that the size of the specification based test-suites can be dramatically reduced and that the fault detection of the reduced test-suites is adversely affected. In this report we describe our experiment, analyze the results, and discuss the implications for testing based on formal specifications.
A Constrained Executable Model of Dynamic System Reconfiguration
Authors: D'Arcy Walsh, Francis Bordeleau, Bran Selic
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

Explicit metaclass programming techniques are presented that enable domain-specific objects to dynamically change their run-time properties. The domain-specific objects are instantiations of a domain model of dynamic system reconfiguration. The domain model is the product of a model-based domain analysis that identified a set of concepts that reflect the types of reconfigurations possible and the system integrity characteristics that must be maintained during such reconfigurations. It is expressed using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) as a constrained representation of the domain-level specification and then realized as an executable model using a programming environment that supports explicit metaclass programming.
The Adapta Framework for Building Self-Adaptive Distributed Applications
Authors: Marcio Augusto Sekeff Sallem, Francisco Jose da Silva e Silva
Venue: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Autonomic and Autonomous Systems (2007)

Modern computing environments are characterized by a high degree of dynamism that, along with the heterogeneity of computational devices and communication infrastructure, demand the development of a new range of applications that must be able to self-adapt dynamically and transparently according to changes in its execution environment. On a computational Grid, for instance, it is common to notice a high variation on resource availability, node instability, variations on load distribution, and heterogeneity of computational devices and network technology. The Adapta framework is a reflective middleware that provides the means to develop self-adaptive component-based distributed applications, separating the business code from the one responsible for adaptation. Adapta also provides a runtime execution environment that monitors computational resources and notifies application components about the occurrence of important events that should trigger reconfiguration actions. Adapta provides a XML based reconfiguration language that defines how the application must adapt in response to environmental changes. Statements of the reconfiguration language can also be applied at runtime, which allows to dynamically change the reconfiguration mechanism itself. This paper describes Adapta architecture, implementation, and evaluation through a concrete case study, where a Grid infrastructure is augmented for incorporating autonomic mechanisms towards a self-healing and self-optimization infrastructure.
Long-term sea-level projections with two versions of a global climate model of intermediate complexity and the corresponding changes in the Earth's gravity field
Authors: O. Makarynskyy, M. Kuhn, W. E. Featherstone
Venue: Computers Geosciences (2007)

Approximate estimations of future climate change can be produced by implementing numerical global climate models. In this study, versions 2.6 and 2.7 of the University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (ESCM) were employed. Compared to other climatic projections, the novelty of this study consists in a significant extension of the projection period to the time-scale of 4200 years, and in comparisons of the results obtained with two sequential versions 2.6 and 2.7 of ESCM. Version 2.6 of ESCM couples the atmospheric, oceanic and ice processes. Version 2.7 of ESCM accounts for solar and ice-sheet forcing, as well as coupling land-vegetation-atmosphere-ocean carbon, and allows inclusion of ocean biology and dynamic vegetation modules. Our comparison exhibits essential quantitative and, moreover, qualitative differences in the parameters under consideration, which are surface air temperature, sea-ice and snow volumes, and surface pressure in a column of water averaged globally. The observed differences are attributed to the biological blocks added to ESCM version 2.7, changed numerics and explicit ice-sheet forcing. Furthermore, the non-steric sea-level change has been used to model corresponding gravity field changes (here in terms of geoid height) by evaluating Newton's volume integral and study the differences between the two software versions under consideration. In line with the model results, the estimated geoid height changes also exhibit a significant difference between the experiments' outcomes.
Future mobile devices: an overview of emerging device trends, and the impact on future converged services
Authors: M. Walker, R. Turnbull, N. Sim
Venue: BT Technology Journal (2007)

Converged services are attractive for both consumers and operators, as they can offer seamless access across a wide range of networks and devices. In order to support convergence, end-user devices must support a minimum set of hardware and software functionality. The growth of innovation within the hardware and software providers for mobile devices has moved us a step closer to such converged services for common, off-the-shelf devices. This paper describes the underlying trends supporting this, and highlights some key areas of focus for the industry. It also considers a case study of implementing a converged voice service on a current converged device. Finally, future developments are considered, including the contribution that different parts of the industry are making to ensure that users can consume converged services on a wide range of devices.