ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
test: tools for evaluation of students' tests-a development experience
Authors: J. Protic
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference, 2001. 31st Annual - Volume 02 (2001)

The purpose of the project that we describe in this paper is to provide teachers with efficient means of generating and scoring tests with multiple choice answers, inevitable in evaluating student's knowledge at massive examinations. The idea is to maintain a database containing classified test questions, together with precisely defined criteria for selecting questions for an exam. A particular test can be composed automatically, or semiautomatically with active participation of the teacher. The final test document is produced in multiple versions, which represent various permutations of questions and answers. For each version, an answer key is also produced, which is used by an automatic scoring tool, that supports arbitrary hand-held or flat-bed scanner, for scanning answer sheets. This paper describes a set of software tools that we developed, in order to provide teachers with the efficient assistance in this process, on the commonly available PCs running Windows.
An Empirical Study of Collusion Behavior in the Maze P2P File-Sharing System
Authors: Qiao Lian, Zheng Zhang, Mao Yang, Ben Y. Zhao, Yafei Dai, Xiaoming Li
Venue: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (2007)

Peer-to-peer networks often use incentive policies to encourage cooperation between nodes. Such systems are generally susceptible to collusion by groups of users in order to gain unfair advantages over others. While techniques have been proposed to combat web spam collusion, there are few measurements of real collusion in deployed systems. In this paper, we report analysis and measurement results of user collusion in Maze, a large-scale peer-to-peer file sharing system with a non-net-zero point-based incentive policy. We search for colluding behavior by examining complete user logs, and incrementally refine a set of collusion detectors to identify common collusion patterns.We find collusion patterns similar to those found in web spamming. We evaluate how proposed reputation systems would perform on the Maze system. Our results can help guide the design of more robust incentive schemes.
Combining source-to-source transformations and processor instruction set extensions for the automated design-space exploration of embedded systems
Authors: Richard Vincent Bennett, Alastair Colin Murray, Björn Franke, Nigel Topham
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED conference on Languages, compilers, and tools for embedded systems (2007)

Industry's demand for flexible embedded solutions providing high performance and short time-to-market has led to the development of configurable and extensible processors. These pre-verified application-specific processors build on proven baseline cores while allowing for some degree of customization through user-defined instruction set extensions (ISE) implemented as functional units in an extended micro-architecture. The traditional design flow for ISE is based on plain C sources of the target application and, after some ISE identification and synthesis stages, a modified source file is produced with explicit handles to the new machine instructions. Further code optimization is left to the compiler. In this paper we develop a novel approach, namely the combined exploration of source-level transformations and ISE identification. We have combined automated code transformation and ISE generators to explore the potential benefits of such a combination. This applies up to 50 transformations from a selection of 70, and synthesizes ISEs for the resulting code. The resulting performance has been measured on 26 applications from the SNU-RT and UTDSP benchmarks. We show that the instruction extensions generated by automated tools are heavily influenced by source code structure. Our results demonstrate that a combination of source-level transformations and instruction set extensions can yield average performance improvements of 47%. This out performs instruction set extensions when applied in isolation, and in extreme cases yields a speedup of 2.85.
Space-Time Trade-offs in SW Evaluation of Boolean Functions
Authors: Vaclav Dvooak
Venue: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Systems (2007)

Fast evaluation of multiple-output Boolean functions with the smallest memory footprint is often required in embedded systems. The paper describes a novel method of linked tables for representation and evaluation of Boolean functions and compares it with traditional methods; PLAs from the MCS-51 microcontroller are used for comparison. Traditional methods use masks to emulate PLA one way or another. The suggested method of linked tables is based on iterative disjunctive decomposition and leads only to a series of table look-ups. Linked tables are also shown to be equivalent to specific "in-line" decision diagrams. They proved to be most flexible in making trade-offs between performance and memory space. The method of linked tables may be quite useful for embedded microprocessor or microcontroller software as well as for digital system simulation.
Modeling the Economic Cost of Transmission Bottlenecks
Authors: Timothy D. Mount, Jaeuk Ju
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

The purpose of this paper is to model the stochastic behavior of nodal prices and use the predicted price differences between zones as the basis for measuring the magnitude and riskiness of congestion costs using the New York State electricity market as an example. The first step uses a principal components analysis to simplify the structure of nodal electricity prices in New York State, reducing 405 hourly prices in 2005 to less than 10 factors that explain 99% of the total price variability and correspond closely to established zones in the State. The analysis focuses on the Hudson Valley and New York City because these two zones are linked by one of the most important transmission bottlenecks in the State. A multivariate time series model for hourly temperature in different zones is estimated using data from January 1st 2000 to December 31st 2005 to represent the primary source of variability due to the weather. Multivariate models for the hourly electricity load in different zones conditionally on the temperature, and the hourly spot price of electricity in different zones conditionally on temperature, the load and the price of natural gas. By focusing on the zonal prices in the Hudson Valley and New York City, it is possible to simulate different realizations of temperature and to determine the financial riskiness of revenues from the price differences due to transmission congestion between these two zones. This in turn is an essential piece of information for evaluating the incentives for investing in merchant transmission upgrades between these two zones.
Security of web browser scripting languages: vulnerabilities, attacks, and remedies
Authors: Vinod Anupam, Alain Mayer
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th conference on USENIX Security Symposium - Volume 7 (1998)

While conducting a security analysis of JavaScript and VBScript, the most popular scripting languages on the Web, we found some serious flaws. Motivated by this outcome, we propose steps towards a sound definition and design of a security framework for scripting languages on the Web. We show that if such a security framework had been integrated into the respective scripting languages from the very beginning, the probability of preventing the multiple security flaws, that we and other research groups identified, would have been greatly increased.
University-wide curriculum reform: two processes to aid in decision making
Authors: K. R. Wilkinson
Venue: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 01 (2000)

Reform of engineering education can take a variety of forms. At Kettering University, a primarily undergraduate engineering institution, the Faculty Senate decided that the curriculum structure needed to be critically evaluated and possibly reformed. The Senate appointed a task force to coordinate the evaluation of the existing curriculum structure and the consideration of a variety of alternatives. The task force used systematic processes for decision making which were also helpful in identifying reasons for change and developing faculty buy-in for curriculum reform. The paper describes the reasons why these processes were needed, the circumstances under which they were applied, how the processes work, and how the results were used. The first formal decision-making process is a modified version of the widely-accepted SWOT exercise. The technique involved identifying strengths and weaknesses of various curriculum structures. It was used in large group settings to which all faculty and administrators were invited. A principle advantage of this approach is that all opinions were heard and equally weighted. In a second formal decision-making process, a weighted criteria matrix was constructed to systematically evaluate the alternative curriculum structures. The matrix was developed via a series of brainstorming sessions by the task force. The task force used their personal opinions, data from the strength-weakness exercises, and the expertise of university administrators in ranking the attributes of each alternative. This process allowed the task force to identify positive attributes of a proposed curriculum structure and to develop a hybrid structure featuring the best characteristics of each alternative.
Population structure and particle swarm performance
Authors: J. Kennedy, R. Mendes
Venue: Proceedings of the Evolutionary Computation on 2002. CEC '02. Proceedings of the 2002 Congress - Volume 02 (2002)

The effects of various population topologies on the particle swarm algorithm were systematically investigated. Random graphs were generated to specifications, and their performance on several criteria was compared. What makes a good population structure? We discovered that previous assumptions may not have been correct.
Generating effective symmetry-breaking predicates for search problems
Authors: Ilya Shlyakhter
Venue: Discrete Applied Mathematics (2007)

Consider the problem of testing for existence of an n-node graph G satisfying some condition P, expressed as a Boolean constraint among the nxn Boolean entries of the adjacency matrix M. This problem reduces to satisfiability of P(M). If P is preserved by isomorphism, P(M) is satisfiable iff P(M)@?SB(M) is satisfiable, where SB(M) is a symmetry-breaking predicate-a predicate satisfied by at least one matrix M in each isomorphism class. P(M)@?SB(M) is more constrained than P(M), so it is solved faster by backtracking than P(M)-especially if SB(M) rules out most matrices in each isomorphism class. This method, proposed by Crawford et al., applies not just to graphs but to testing existence of a combinatorial object satisfying any property that respects isomorphism, as long as the property can be compactly specified as a Boolean constraint on the object's binary representation. We present methods for generating symmetry-breaking predicates for several classes of combinatorial objects: acyclic digraphs, permutations, functions, and arbitrary-arity relations (direct products). We define a uniform optimality measure for symmetry-breaking predicates, and evaluate our constraints according to this measure. Results indicate that these constraints are either optimal or near-optimal for their respective classes of objects.
Developing a Web-enhanced course: a case study
Authors: P. T. McCreanor
Venue: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 02 (2000)

This paper presents a case study on the incorporation of Web-based teaching tools into a senior level engineering course on solid waste management. This course was originally taught with two 75 minute weekly sessions in the traditional lecture and chalkboard format. The class progressed over seven semesters to become a Web-enhanced course which met once per week for 75 minutes. The primary phases of course evolution were development and teaching of the course in a lecture and chalkboard format, construction of a class Web site which included lecture notes and links to important Internet sites, development and incorporation of on-line interactive quizzes using CyberProf Internet software, relocation and re-organization of the existing site materials into the Web CT environment, and development of the final Web-enhanced course. This paper presents the course development history and a discussion of the successes and pitfalls encountered during the course evolution.
A Cross-layer Aware Imprinting Protocol for Personal Networks
Authors: Khaled MASMOUDI, Hossam AFIFI
Venue: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Networking and Services (2007)

Trust establishment in pervasive environments, where distributed and resource-limited devices need to establish secure connections, has triggered much effort in the last years. One way to bring trust into a Personal Network (PN) is the use of imprinting, which consists in an agreement on a shared secret without any prior knowledge, giving expression to the trust relationship that links a pair of devices. In this paper, we introduce the PN Formation Protocol (PFP), an imprinting protocol that is extensible to three parties. We considered the use of imprinting through an out-of-band channel performed by the user itself in the bipartite version and an autonomic and collaborative one in the tripartite version of the protocol. We describe its implementation, test results as well as the proof of its security goals through an automatic protocol analyzer.
A reduced-complexity and asymptotically efficient time-delay estimator
Authors: G. Seco
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2000. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 01 (2000)

This paper considers the problem of estimating the time delays of multiple replicas of a known signal received by an array of antennas. Under the assumptions that the noise and co-channel interference (CCI) are spatially colored Gaussian processes and that the spatial signatures are arbitrary, the maximum likelihood (ML) solution to the general time delay estimation problem is derived. The resulting criterion for the delays yields consistent and asymptotically efficient estimates. However, the criterion is highly non-linear, and not conducive to simple minimization procedures. We propose a new cost function that is shown to provide asymptotically efficient delay estimates. We also outline a heuristic way of deriving this cost function. The form of this new estimator lends itself to minimization by the computationally attractive iterative quadratic maximum likelihood (IQML) algorithm. The existence of simple yet accurate initialization schemes based on ESPRIT and identity weightings makes the approach viable for practical implementation.
Generating best-effort preservation metadata for web resources at time of dissemination
Authors: Joan A. Smith, Michael L. Nelson
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries (2007)

HTTP and MIME, while sufficient for contemporary webpage access, do not provide enough forensic information to enable the long-term preservation of the resources they describe and transport. But what if the originating web server automatically provided preservation metadata encapsulated with the resource at time of dissemination? Perhaps the ingestion process could be streamlined, with additional forensic metadata available to future information archeologists. We have adapted an Apache web server implementation of OAI-PMH which can utilize third-party metadata analysis tools to provide a metadata-rich description of each resource. The resource and its forensic metadata are packaged together as a complex object, expressed in plain ASCII and XML. The result is a CRATE: a self-contained preservation-ready version of the resource, created at time of dissemination.
Unsupervised prediction of citation influences
Authors: Laura Dietz, Steffen Bickel, Tobias Scheffer
Venue: Proceedings of the 24th international conference on Machine learning (2007)

Publication repositories contain an abundance of information about the evolution of scientific research areas. We address the problem of creating a visualization of a research area that describes the flow of topics between papers, quantifies the impact that papers have on each other, and helps to identify key contributions. To this end, we devise a probabilistic topic model that explains the generation of documents; the model incorporates the aspects of topical innovation and topical inheritance via citations. We evaluate the model's ability to predict the strength of influence of citations against manually rated citations.
Recovering clipped OFDM symbols with Bayesian inference
Authors: D. Declercq
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2000. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 01 (2000)

A major problem with multicarrier transmissions is the near Gaussian behavior of the data stream entering the high power amplifier (HPA). This causes distortion (some samples are clipped) that must be corrected at the transmit-or receive-end, in order to improve the detection performance. We propose a new approach that recovers the distorted samples at the receiver. It is based on an "augmented" Bayesian model which captures the nonlinear behavior of the HPA. Estimates of the input symbols are then obtained with a hybrid deterministic/stochastic algorithm. Simulations over frequency selective channels show that when clipping is severe, our method outperforms existing methods.
New relative multifractal dimension measures
Authors: R. Dansereau
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2001. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 03 (2001)

This paper introduces a new class of fractal dimension measure which we call relative multifractal measures. The relative multifractal measures developed are formed through a melding of the Renyi dimension spectrum, which is based on the Renyi generalized entropy, and relative entropy as given with the Kullback-Leibler distance. This new class of multifractal measure is then used to find the relative multifractal complexity differences between two signals, an image and its lossy approximation. It is proposed that relative multifractal measures can be used as the basis for a new form of signal and image quality measure based on signal complexity.
A Parsimonious Approach for Obtaining Resource-Efficient and Trustworthy Execution
Authors: HariGovind V. Ramasamy, Adnan Agbaria, William H. Sanders
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (2007)

We propose a resource-efficient way to execute requests in Byzantine-fault-tolerant replication that is particularly well-suited for services in which request processing is resource-intensive. Previous efforts took a failure masking all-active approach of using all execution replicas to execute all requests; at least 2t+1 execution replicas are needed to mask t Byzantine-faulty ones. We describe an asynchronous protocol that provides resource-efficient execution by combining failure masking with imperfect failure detection and checkpointing. Our protocol is parsimonious since it uses only t+1 execution replicas, called the primary committee or {\cal PC}, to execute the requests under normal conditions characterized by a stable network and no misbehavior by {\cal PC} replicas; thus, a trustworthy reply can be obtained with the same latency, but with only about half of the overall resource use of the all-active approach. However, a request that exposes faults among the {\cal PC} replicas will cause the protocol to switch to a recovery mode, in which all 2t+1 replicas execute the request and send their replies; then, after selecting a new {\cal PC}, the protocol switches back to parsimonious execution. Such a request will incur a higher latency using our approach than the all-active approach, mainly because of fault detection latency. Practical observations point to the fact that failures and instability are the exception rather than the norm. That motivated our decision to optimize resource efficiency for the common case, even if it means paying a slightly higher performance cost during periods of instability.
Is Current 6to4 Relay Deployment Adequate?
Authors: Monica Domingues, Carlos Friacas, David Malone
Venue: Proceedings of the International Multi-Conference on Computing in the Global Information Technology (2007)

6to4 is a mechanism for providing IPv6 connectivity where native IPv6 is still unavailable. 6to4 is based on relay routers deployment. The anycast technique is used to address relays, and each relay's advertisement may be seen globally or only within a limited scope. The number of available relays is important to this mechanism's robustness, as well as their geographic location. Due to the details of the mechanism, limited scope relays are not easy to find, despite the fact their location and existence is key to evaluate suitability of current deployment.
Towards Open-World Software: Issue and Challenges
Authors: Luciano Baresi, Elisabetta Di Nitto, Carlo Ghezzi
Venue: Proceedings of the 30th Annual IEEE/NASA Software Engineering Workshop (2006)

Traditional software development is based on the closed-world assumption that the boundary between system and environment is known and unchanging. However, this assumption no longer works within today's unpredictable open-world settings, which demands techniques that let software react to changes by self-organizing its structure and self-adapting its behavior.
An Energy-Efficient Data Collection Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks by Exploiting Spatiotemporal Correlation
Authors: Chong Liu, Kui Wu, Jian Pei
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (2007)

Limited energy supply is one of the major constraints in wireless sensor networks. A feasible strategy is to aggressively reduce the spatial sampling rate of sensors, that is, the density of the measure points in a field. By properly scheduling, we want to retain the high fidelity of data collection. In this paper, we propose a data collection method that is based on a careful analysis of the surveillance data reported by the sensors. By exploring the spatial correlation of sensing data, we dynamically partition the sensor nodes into clusters so that the sensors in the same cluster have similar surveillance time series. They can share the workload of data collection in the future since their future readings may likely be similar. Furthermore, during a short-time period, a sensor may report similar readings. Such a correlation in the data reported from the same sensor is called temporal correlation, which can be explored to further save energy. We develop a generic framework to address several important technical challenges, including how to partition the sensors into clusters, how to dynamically maintain the clusters in response to environmental changes, how to schedule the sensors in a cluster, how to explore temporal correlation, and how to restore the data in the sink with high fidelity. We conduct an extensive empirical study to test our method using both a real test bed system and a large-scale synthetic data set.
A Color Error Correcting Model for Scanning Input Image
Authors: Xinwu Li
Venue: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence--Workshops (2006)

Based on analyzing the color rendering principle of scanning objects and the causes of color error, a new algorithm of color space conversion for scanning image is proposed. First, some parameters of Neugebauer equation and Yule-Nielson equation are reinterpretsed which makes them able to be used for non-dot image and which can only be used for dot image originally. Then, the paper presents the deduction procedures of the color correction equation. Finally the experimental results show that the algorithm may result in more accurate approximation compared with some typical and mainstreams.