ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Synchronous online help support with visual instruction aids for workflow-based MVC web applications
Authors: Marcel Karam, Maha Abou Ibrahim
Venue: Proceedings of the 27th ACM international conference on Design of communication (2009)

Existing web-based help systems that provide interactive real-time assistance to end-users exhibit considerable limitations. Some of these limitations are related to the presence of invasive features in these systems, the asynchronous activities between the end-user and the technical support staff during a task-related help session, and the application-specific nature of these systems. The latter limitation in particular restricts the portability of these web-based help systems to other web applications. Despite advances in web development paradigms such as the workflow-based Model View Controller (MVC), and key technology ingredients such as synchronous web annotation services, we have not found any work that combines these technologies to address the above mentioned limitations. In this work we have designed and implemented a web-based help system as an abstract layer that can be seamlessly integrated with the architectural layers of any web application that is instantiated using the workflow-based MVC development paradigm. This layer uses the use cases of the instantiated application to ensure that task-related activities are synchronized during a help session. Our web-based help system also includes features to deliver instructive aids to end-users in the form of visual web annotations. In this paper we describe, using an example, the design and implementation of our system, discuss its limitations, and recommend directions for future work.
A Sound Observational Semantics for Modal Transition Systems
Authors: Dario Fischbein, Victor Braberman, Sebastian Uchitel
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing (2009)

Modal Transition Systems (MTS) are an extension of Labelled Transition Systems (LTS) that distinguish between required, proscribed and unknown behaviour and come equipped with a notion of refinement that supports incremental modelling where unknown behaviour is iteratively elaborated into required or proscribed behaviour. The original formulation of MTS introduces two alternative semantics for MTS, strong and weak, which require MTS models to have the same communicating alphabet, the latter allowing the use of a distinguished unobservable action. In this paper we show that the requirement of fixing the alphabet for MTS semantics and the treatment of observable actions are limiting if MTS are to support incremental elaboration of partial behaviour models. We present a novel semantics, branching alphabet semantics, for MTS inspired by branching LTS equivalence, we show that some unintuitive refinements allowed by weak semantics are avoided, and prove a number of theorems that relate branching refinement with alphabet refinement and consistency. These theorems, which do not hold for other semantics, support the argument for considering branching implementation of MTS as the basis for a sound semantics to support behaviour model elaboration.
Visualizing the Competitive Structure of Online Auctions
Authors: Stephen France, Douglas Carroll
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th Industrial Conference on Advances in Data Mining. Applications and Theoretical Aspects (2009)

Visualizations of product competition are common in marketing research. Competitive product relationships can be modeled using data from a variety of sources, including questionnaires, surveys and brand switching data. Product competition applications based on brand switching data are usually restricted to high volume, frequent purchase products such as coffee and frozen foods. Analysis of competitive product structure requires data for multiple purchases from a single consumer, data that are not usually available for large value, rare purchase items such as cars and computers. We use bid information from online auctions as a source of competitive product structure information for these items. We develop a simple algorithm for creating a distance matrix representing market structure between brands and brand features from online auction data. We take data from eBay mobile phone auctions in the USA and based upon the auction data develop visualizations of product competition for brands and brand features.
New Lane Model and Distance Transform for Lane Detection and Tracking
Authors: Ruyi Jiang, Reinhard Klette, Tobi Vaudrey, Shigang Wang
Venue: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns (2009)

Particle filtering of boundary points is a robust way to estimate lanes. This paper introduces a new lane model in correspondence to this particle filter-based approach, which is flexible to detect all kinds of lanes. A modified version of an Euclidean distance transform is applied to an edge map of a road image from a birds-eye view to provide information for boundary point detection. An efficient lane tracking method is also discussed. The use of this distance transform exploits useful information in lane detection situations, and greatly facilitates the initialization of the particle filter, as well as lane tracking. Finally, the paper validates the algorithm with experimental evidence for lane detection and tracking. 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
Incremental tracking of multiple quantiles for network monitoring in cellular networks
Authors: Jin Cao, Li Erran Li, Aiyou Chen, Tian Bu
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Mobile internet through cellular networks (2009)

Network monitoring in cellular networks requires the tracking of quantiles for data distributions of many evolving network measurements (e.g. number of high signaling subscribers per minute). Most quantile estimation algorithms are based on a summary of the empirical data distribution, using either a representative sample or a global approximation of the entire distribution. In contrast, by viewing data as a quantity from a random distribution, the stochastic approximation (SA) for quantile estimation does not keep a global approximation, but rather local approximations at the quantiles of interest, and therefore uses negligible memory even for estimating tail quantiles. However, the current stochastic approximation algorithm for quantile estimation tracks each quantile separately, and this may lead to a violation of the monotone property of quantiles. In this paper, we propose a stochastic approximation technique that enables the simultaneous tracking of multiple quantiles. Our technique maintains the monotone property of different quantiles, and is adaptive to changes in the data distribution. We evaluate its performance using real cellular provider datasets. Our results show that the technique is very efficient.
On the Reachability of Trustworthy Information from Integrated Exploratory Biological Queries
Authors: Eithon Cadag, Peter Tarczy-Hornoch, Peter J. Myler
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Data Integration in the Life Sciences (2009)

Levels of curation across biological databases are widely recognized as being highly variable, depending on provenance and type. In spite of ambiguous quality, searches against biological sources, such as those for sequence homology, remain a frontline strategy for biomedical scientists studying molecular data. In the following, we investigate the accessibility of well-curated data retrieved from explorative queries across multiple sources. We present the architecture and design of a lightweight data integration platform conducible to graph-theoretic analysis. Using data collected via this framework, we examine the reachability of evidence-supported annotations across triangulated sources in the face of uncertainty, using a simple random sampling model oriented around fault tolerance. We characterize the accessibility of high-quality data from uncertain queries and levels of redundancy across data sources and find that generally encountering non-experimentally verified annotations are nearly as likely as encountering experimentally verified annotations, with the exception of a group of proteins whose link structure is dominated by experimental evidence. Finally, we discuss the prospect of determining overall accessibility of relevant information based on metadata about a query and its results.
New Calculational Method for Heat Transfer
Authors: Zhu Caixia, Ma Fuqin
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 International Forum on Information Technology and Applications - Volume 03 (2009)

A new calculational method for heat transfer is proposed in this paper, which can provide a broader problem-solving ideas for heat transfer. This method depends on the expansion of the temperature in the governing equation of transient heat conduction problem. The shape functions of this method are defined as a product of the radial basis functions and two angular basis functions. The radial basis functions are defined so that they possess the correct asymptotic decay as radius trends to infinite. Coupling with the standard finite element program, this method provides a capability for very efficiently modeling heat fields surrounding structures of virtually any practical shape. To test the feasibility of this method, the paper considers an example using the infinite/finite element method, which shows that new method is feasible.
Acquiring a Physical World and Serving Its Mirror World Simultaneously
Authors: Seungpyo Hong, Jong-Gil Ahn, Heedong Ko, Jinwook Kim
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Virtual and Mixed Reality: Held as Part of HCI International 2009 (2009)

A mirror world, which is a virtual space modeling a physical space, attracts enormous interests from VR community recently. Various applications such as Second Life, Google Earth and Virtual Earth have proven their usefulness and potentialities. We introduce a novel method to build a mirror world by acquiring environment data represented as a point cloud. Since our system provides a streaming service of the mirror world while gathering the environment information simultaneously, users located in an immersive display system can navigate and interact in the mirror world reflecting the physical world of the present state. Mobile agent which is a mobile robot carrying two laser rangefinder is responsible for exploring the physical world and creating an environment model. Environment modeling involves position tracking method to merge scattered geometric data. Optimizing method is also need to reduce space complexity of environment model.
Requirements for electronic note taking systems: A field study of note taking in university classrooms
Authors: Kibum Kim, Scott A. Turner, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones
Venue: Education and Information Technologies (2009)

Note taking is the core activity for students in a classroom. There has been a large amount of research conducted, both from industry and from academia, into facilitating the note-taking process. There is evidence that shows that note taking can be beneficial for the students' educational growth. There are also many available systems for taking notes electronically (e.g. Tablet PCs, PDAs). However, what has not been given as much attention is how these electronic devices affect (or support) the note taking task. In this paper, we study university students' current note taking behavior and the changes caused by the use of electronic systems for this activity. The goal of our work is to identify issues that should be considered when evaluating electronic note taking systems and to formulate requirements for future electronic note-taking systems. Our findings show that while the technological support for writing with pens on electronic surfaces is quite advanced, the task of note taking in the classroom is not well supported. We identify the limitations of typical note taking systems and discuss the implications for the design of future note taking systems. Our work consisted of three parts: a survey of current note-taking practices, an observational study in a classroom environment, and a semester long case study of students using electronic note-taking devices. All of these activities took place at a large 4-year university. We found that the people reacted to note-taking devices very differently and that their current practices were not always well supported. The users all wanted to input information as fast as possible, in the manner they wanted but they were not always able to achieve that. Hardware limitations (i.e. screen size, responsiveness) added to this issue. We also found that the features that are well supported in an electronic medium (i.e. modification, reorganizing, multiple pen colors/styles, handwriting recognition, sharing) were not commonly used or wanted.
Fully Decentralized, Collaborative Multilateration Primitives for Uniquely Localizing WSNs
Authors: Arda Cakiroglu, Cesim Erten
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications (2009)

We provide primitives for uniquely localizing WSN nodes. The goal is to maximize the number of uniquely localized nodes assuming a fully decentralized model of computation. Each node constructs a cluster of its own and applies unique localization primitives on it. These primitives are based on constructing a special order for multilaterating the nodes within the cluster. The proposed primitives are fully collaborative and thus the number of iterations required to compute the localization is fewer than that of the conventional iterative multilateration approaches. This further limits the messaging requirements. With relatively small clusters and iteration counts we can localize almost all the uniquely localizable nodes.
The Twelf Proof Assistant
Authors: Carsten Schürmann
Venue: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Theorem Proving in Higher Order Logics (2009)

Logical framework research is based on the philosophical point of view that it should be possible to capture mathematical concepts such as proofs, logics, and meaning in a formal system -- directly, adequately (in the sense that there are no spurious or exotic witnesses), and without having to commit to a particular logical theory. Instead of working with one general purpose representation language, we design special purpose logical frameworks for capturing reoccurring concepts for special domains, such as, for example, variable renaming, substitution application, and resource management for programming language theory. Most logical frameworks are based on constructive type theories, such as Isabelle (on the simply-typed ¿-calculus), LF [HHP93] (on the dependently typed ¿-calculus), and LLF (on a linearly typed ¿-calculus). The representational strength of the logical framework stems from the choice of definitional equality on terms. For example, ¿-conversion models the tacit renaming of variables, β-contraction models substitution application, and ¿-expansion guarantees the adequacy of encodings.
How to deal with malicious users in privacy-preserving distributed data mining
Authors: Yitao Duan, John Canny
Venue: Statistical Analysis and Data Mining (2009)

A major problem in current privacy-preserving data-mining research is the lack of practical mechanisms to deal with malicious users who may submit bogus data to bias the computation. In this paper we explore private computation built on vector addition and its applications in privacy-preserving data mining. We show that such a paradigm not only supports a large number of popular data-mining algorithms (including both linear and nonlinear ones such as SVD, k-means, ID3, machine-learning algorithms based on Expectation-Maximization (EM), etc., and all algorithms in the statistical query model) with efficiency comparable to that of a regular, nonprivate implementation, but also admits extremely efficient zero-knowledge (ZK) protocols for verifying properties of user data. These ZK protocols are based on random projection and use a linear number of inexpensive small field (e.g. 32 or 64 bits) operations, and only a logarithmic number of large-field (1024 bits or more) cryptographic operations, achieving orders of magnitude reduction in running time over standard techniques (from hours to seconds) for large-scale problems. Such ZK tools thus provide practical solutions for handling the malicious users problem for many real-world applications. &copy; 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining 1: 18-33, 2009 Part of the work was performed when the first author was a Ph.D. student at Computer Science Division, University of California, Berkeley.
Modeling and Testing Multi-Threaded Asynchronous Systems with Creol
Authors: Bernhard Aichernig, Andreas Griesmayer, Rudolf Schlatte, Andries Stam
Venue: Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS) (2009)

Modeling concurrent systems and testing multi-threaded implementations against the model is an exciting field of study. This paper presents work done on constructing and executing test cases for an industrial-size multi-threaded application against a model written in the Creol modeling language. Models written in Creol, an object-oriented, concurrent modeling language, can be structurally similar to the finished implementation; we show how to keep this desirable property when re-using Creol models as test oracles. Also, a conformance relation between model and system under test that needs less controllability than other relations that are based on automata is presented.
At the Virtual Frontier: Introducing Gunslinger, a Multi-Character, Mixed-Reality, Story-Driven Experience
Authors: Arno Hartholt, Jonathan Gratch, Lori Weiss, The Gunslinger Team
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (2009)

Gunslinger isan interactive-entertainment application of virtual humans that transforms an iconic Wild West movie scene into a vivid semblance of reality. The project combines virtual humans technology with Hollywood storytelling and set building into an engaging, mixed-reality, story-driven experience, where a single participant can interact verbally and non-verbally with multiple virtual characters that are imbedded in a real, physical saloon. The Gunslinger project pushes the frontier of virtual humans research by combining question-answering dialogue techniques with explicit story representation. It incorporates speech recognition techniques and visual sensing to recognize multimodal user input. It further extends existing behavior generation methods such as SmartBody to drive tightly coupled dialogue amongst characters. These capabilities strive to seek a balance between open ended dialogue interaction and carefully crafted narrative.
Emerging motor behaviors: Learning joint coordination in articulated mobile robots
Authors: Diego Pardo, Cecilio Angulo, Sergi del Moral, Andreu Catalí
Venue: Neurocomputing (2009)

In this paper, we analyze the insights behind the common approach to the assessment of robot motor behaviors in articulated mobile structures with compromised dynamic balance. We present a new approach to this problem and a methodology that implements it for motor behaviors encapsulated in rest-to-rest motions. As well as common methods, we assume the availability of kinematic information about the solution to the task, but reference is not made to the workspace, allowing the workspace to be free of restrictions. Our control framework, based on local control policies at the joint acceleration level, attracts actuated degrees of freedom (DOFs) to the desired final configuration; meanwhile, the resulting final states of the unactuated DOFs are viewed as an indirect consequence of the profile of the policies. Dynamical systems are used as acceleration policies, providing the actuated system with convenient attractor properties. The control policies, parameterized around imposed simple primitives, are deformed by means of changes in the parameters. This modulation is optimized, by means of a stochastic algorithm, in order to control the unactuated DOFs and thus carry out the desired motor behavior.
The recovery of a schema mapping: Bringing exchanged data back
Authors: Marcelo Arenas, Jorge Pérez, Cristian Riveros
Venue: ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) (2009)

A schema mapping is a specification that describes how data from a source schema is to be mapped to a target schema. Once the data has been transferred from the source to the target, a natural question is whether one can undo the process and recover the initial data, or at least part of it. In fact, it would be desirable to find a reverse schema mapping from target to source that specifies how to bring the exchanged data back. In this article, we introduce the notion of a recovery of a schema mapping: it is a reverse mapping, M&prime; for a mapping M, that recovers sound data with respect to M. We further introduce an order relation on recoveries. This allows us to choose mappings that recover the maximum amount of sound information. We call such mappings maximum recoveries. We study maximum recoveries in detail, providing a necessary and sufficient condition for their existence. In particular, we prove that maximum recoveries exist for the class of mappings specified by FO-to-CQ source-to-target dependencies. This class subsumes the class of source-to-target tuple-generating dependencies used in previous work on data exchange. For the class of mappings specified by FO-to-CQ dependencies, we provide an exponential-time algorithm for computing maximum recoveries, and a simplified version for full dependencies that works in quadratic time. We also characterize the language needed to express maximum recoveries, and we include a detailed comparison with the notion of inverse (and quasi-inverse) mapping previously proposed in the data exchange literature. In particular, we show that maximum recoveries strictly generalize inverses. We finally study the complexity of some decision problems related to the notions of recovery and maximum recovery.
Enabling Interactive Access to Web Tables
Authors: Xin Yang, Wenchang Xu, Yuanchun Shi
Venue: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Part I: New Trends (2009)

Tables are widely used in web pages. Unfortunately, most web tables can only be passively accessed but cannot be interactively accessed, that is, users can view information displayed in tables but cannot control the presentation of tables like sorting data and hiding or showing a column/row. Interactive access is especially useful when encountering large tables or browsing on small screens. In this paper, we propose to enable interactive access to genuine web tables based on automatic table detection and a good understanding of table contents. We designed and implemented a plug-in for the Microsoft Internet Explorer, called the iWebTable, which provides a customized user interface supporting interactive access to genuine web tables. Experimental results show that users are satisfied and really enjoy the interactive access mode to web tables, especially in such cases as they need to sort data in large tables or compare data in distant columns or rows.