ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
The Effectiveness of Knowledge Building through Computer Supported Collaborative Learning among Elementary Students: A Case Study
Authors: Wing Cheung Alex Tse, Fong Lok Lee, Yong Ou
Venue: Proceeding of the 2006 conference on Learning by Effective Utilization of Technologies: Facilitating Intercultural Understanding (2006)

This paper presents the third phase of a research project on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) involving students from 81 schools in Hong Kong and mainland China working on the topic of environmental protection. Instead of capturing an overall picture of all the participating schools, this phase of research focused on the effectiveness of knowledge building through CSCL by an in-depth investigation of the learning processes of students in two of the participating elementary schools. Scardamalia's principles of knowledge building were adopted to evaluate the effectiveness of knowledge building and 1,298 messages of online discussions posted by 153 students over six months were systematically classified, analyzed, synthesized and evaluated. Though some overseas research reported that even young children can meaningfully engage in knowledge building and benefit from the process through CSCL, this study found that the knowledge building was not as effective as expected, still students were found to have the potential of knowledge building in certain dimensions. This study recommends that teachers can provide better support for their students to facilitate them to turn their own ideas into researchable questions for investigation, improve ideas by criticizing the contributions of others, contribute to a wide variety of ideas and build up their own ideas by critically referring and comparing authoritative sources.
Manifold Reconstruction in Arbitrary Dimensions Using Witness Complexes
Authors: Jean-Daniel Boissonnat, Leonidas J. Guibas, Steve Y. Oudot
Venue: Discrete Computational Geometry (2009)

It is a well-established fact that the witness complex is closely related to the restricted Delaunay triangulation in low dimensions. Specifically, it has been proved that the witness complex coincides with the restricted Delaunay triangulation on curves, and is still a subset of it on surfaces, under mild sampling conditions. In this paper, we prove that these results do not extend to higher-dimensional manifolds, even under strong sampling conditions such as uniform point density. On the positive side, we show how the sets of witnesses and landmarks can be enriched, so that the nice relations that exist between restricted Delaunay triangulation and witness complex hold on higher-dimensional manifolds as well. We derive from our structural results an algorithm that reconstructs manifolds of any arbitrary dimension or co-dimension at different scales. The algorithm combines a farthest-point refinement scheme with a vertex pumping strategy. It is very simple conceptually, and it does not require the input point sample to be sparse. Its running time is bounded by c(d)n 2, where n is the size of the input point cloud, and c(d) is a constant depending solely (yet exponentially) on the dimension d of the ambient space. Although this running time makes our reconstruction algorithm rather theoretical, recent work has shown that a variant of our approach can be made tractable in arbitrary dimensions, by building upon the results of this paper.
Optimizing Student Models for Causality
Authors: Benjamin Shih, Kenneth Koedinger, Richard Scheines
Venue: Proceeding of the 2007 conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education: Building Technology Rich Learning Contexts That Work (2007)

Complex student models often include key parameters critical to their behavior and effectiveness. For example, one meta-cognitive model of student help-seeking in intelligent tutors includes 15 rules and 10 parameters. We explore whether or not this model can be improved both in accuracy and generalization by using a variety of techniques to select and tune parameters. We show that such techniques are important by demonstrating that the normal method of fitting parameters on an initial data set generalizes poorly to new test data sets. We then show that stepwise regression can improve generalization, but at a cost to initial performance. Finally, we show that causal search algorithms can yield simpler models that perform comparably on test data, but without the loss in training set performance. The resulting help-seeking model is easier to understand and classifies a more realistic number of student actions as help-seeking errors.
Creating Animations in SVG format for Visualizing Program Execution
Authors: Koji Kagawa
Venue: Proceeding of the 2006 conference on Learning by Effective Utilization of Technologies: Facilitating Intercultural Understanding (2006)

Web-based education environments for learning programming have several advantages in assisting learners. Especially, it is easy to use graphics and animations both as teaching materials and as the output format of programs. Novice learners often have difficulties in following the control flow of programs, especially when programs involve complicated control structures such as nested loops and recursion. Animations can help learners understand how computers execute programs by visualizing programs step by step. This paper presents a component to create SVG animations for explaining behaviour of Java programs. This component can be used as a part of a Web-based environment. It allows learners to avoid learning usage of additional software such as debuggers and keeps advantages of Web-based education environments.
Energy-bounding algorithm for stable haptic interaction and bilateral teleoperation
Authors: Changhoon Seo, Jong-Phil Kim, Jaeha Kim, Jeha Ryu
Venue: Proceedings of the World Haptics 2009 - Third Joint EuroHaptics conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems (2009)

This demonstration shows the effectiveness of the energy-bounding algorithm (EBA) for stable haptic interaction and bilateral teleoperation. The EBA proposed for stable haptic interaction based on the passivity theory and extended to stabilize the bilateral teleoperation system that has the time delay in communication channel. In this demo, a virtual wall test for haptic interaction and bilateral teleoperation through internet connection between USA to Korea will be demonstrated.
BearCam: automated wildlife monitoring at the arctic circle
Authors: Jens Wawerla, Shelley Marshall, Greg Mori, Kristina Rothley, Payam Sabzmeydani
Venue: Machine Vision and Applications (2009)

In this paper we describe the development of the BearCam, a camera system which was deployed in Fall 2005 to monitor the behaviour of grizzly bears at a remote location near the arctic circle. The system aided biologists in collecting the data for their study on bears&#x2019; behavioural responses to ecotourists. We developed a camera system for operating in the challenging arctic conditions. We describe a novel &#x201c;motion shapelet&#x201d; algorithm for automatically detecting bears in the video captured by this camera system. This algorithm is an extension of the shapelet features (Sabzmeydani and Mori in CVPR 2007), which are mid-level features capturing pieces of shape. Our extension of this technique incorporates motion information and proves effective at automatically detecting the occurrence of bears. We present quantitative results demonstrating that our algorithm can reliably detect bears in the vast amounts of video footage collected by our system.
Paralinguistic Discussion in an Online Educational Setting: A Preliminary Study
Authors: Karin Sixl-Daniell, Jeremy Williams
Venue: Proceeding of the 2005 conference on Towards Sustainable and Scalable Educational Innovations Informed by the Learning Sciences: Sharing Good Practices of Research, Experimentation and Innovation (2005)

One of the perceived drawbacks of e-learning is the absence of non-verbal communication. This leads one to conclude that e-learning in general, and fully online education in particular, is inferior to its on-campus counterpart in terms of its communicative capability. This paper challenges this viewpoint, arguing that not only is non-verbal communication 'alive and well' in an online educational setting, it is becoming more robust as the various information and communication technologies (ICTs) in common usage act to redefine non-verbal forms of communication. Reporting on a preliminary study conducted within a Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme at a completely online business school, the authors outline the importance of incorporating the opportunity for non-verbal communication in the learning environment, particularly in an international or cross-cultural setting. Then, focusing on the use of 'emoticons' in a longitudinal study of Organisational Behaviour classes, they analyse the frequency of use of specific categories of emoticons, and their significance for effective cross-cultural communication. The paper concludes that emoticons facilitate a depth and range of non-verbal communication which, in this preliminary study at least, appear comparable to that in the non-virtual world, enhancing the quality of interaction and minimising the potential for friction and misunderstanding between learners.
A new CBR approach to the oil spill problem
Authors: Juan Manuel Corchado, Aitor Mata, Juan Francisco De Paz, David Del Pozo
Venue: Proceeding of the 2008 conference on ECAI 2008: 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2008)

Oil spills represent one of the most destructing environmental disasters. Predicting the possibility of finding oil slicks in a certain area after an oil spill can be crucial in order to reduce the environmental risks. The system presented here forecasts the presence or not of oil slicks in a certain area of the open sea after an oil spill using Case-Based Reasoning methodology. CBR is a computational methodology designed to generate solutions to a certain problem by analysing previous solutions given to previous solved problems. The proposed system wraps other artificial intelligence techniques such as a Radial Basis Function Networks, Growing Cell Structures and Principal Components Analysis in order to develop the different phases of the CBR cycle. CBR systems have never been used before to solve oil slicks problems. The proposed system uses information obtained from various satellites such as salinity, temperature, pressure, number and area of the slicks... OSCBR system has been able to accurately predict the presence of oil slicks in the north west of the Galician coast, using historical data.
Grammar-based robot control
Authors: Richard Kelley, Monica Nicolescu, Mircea Nicolescu
Venue: Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 2 (2009)

To allow a robot to function in unstructured environments, a control architecture should be flexible and should facilitate the creation and representation of arbitrarily complex sequences of actions. Such an architecture should also facilitate simple and natural interaction between a robot and its human collaborators. Human language has both representational flexibility and naturalness to human operators; in this paper we show how the structures of natural language can serve as the basis of an effective robot control architecture.
Array-based reader anti-collision scheme for highly efficient RFID network applications
Authors: Nong-Kun Chen, Jiann-Liang Chen, Cheng-Chun Lee
Venue: Wireless Communications Mobile Computing (2009)

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology for identifying objects by radio signal. The reader collision problem is caused by the interrogation zones overlap of multiple readers, and leading to incorrect and unreliable data. This study proposes an array-based reader anti-collision scheme (ARCS) for solving the reader-to-tag interference problem. This mechanism uses array and grouping techniques to schedule the active readers to reduce the read cycle (RC) time. The &lsquo;RC&rsquo; and &lsquo;collision ratio (CR)&rsquo; measures serve as performance indexes in the proposed scheme. From &lsquo;RC&rsquo; comparison, the ARCS mechanism has the maximum improvement of 55&thinsp;per&thinsp;cent as compared with the existing mechanisms. Furthermore, take &lsquo;CR&rsquo; index, ARCS has the maximum improvement of 42&thinsp;per&thinsp;cent as compared to the others. Copyright &copy; 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Application of a model to the evaluation of flood damage
Authors: F. Luino, C. G. Cirio, M. Biddoccu, A. Agangi, W. Giulietto, F. Godone, G. Nigrelli
Venue: Geoinformatica (2009)

This paper presents the initial results of a common methodology for the evaluation of damage produced by a flood. A model has been developed for flood damage estimation based on a geographic information system (GIS). It could be used by land administration bodies and insurance companies to manage flood-related damage data. The model simulates flood scenarios and evaluates expected economic losses from the impact of floodwaters on exposed elements, through the application of a computational model elaborated by GIS. During the development of the model, the Boesio Stream, a small watercourse flowing into Lake Maggiore (Lombardy, northern Italy) which was recently affected by a flash flood, was used as case study to test and calibrate the methodology. The method could be used either as a forecasting tool to define event scenarios, utilizing data from events simulated with a hydraulic model, or for real-time damage assessment after a disaster. The approach is suitable to large-area damage assessment and could be appropriate for land use planning, civil protection and risk mitigation.
Interactively optimizing information retrieval systems as a dueling bandits problem
Authors: Yisong Yue, Thorsten Joachims
Venue: Proceedings of the 26th Annual International Conference on Machine Learning (2009)

We present an on-line learning framework tailored towards real-time learning from observed user behavior in search engines and other information retrieval systems. In particular, we only require pairwise comparisons which were shown to be reliably inferred from implicit feedback (Joachims et al., 2007; Radlinski et al., 2008b). We will present an algorithm with theoretical guarantees as well as simulation results.
Keyword search on structured and semi-structured data
Authors: Yi Chen, Wei Wang, Ziyang Liu, Xuemin Lin
Venue: Proceedings of the 35th SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (2009)

Empowering users to access databases using simple keywords can relieve the users from the steep learning curve of mastering a structured query language and understanding complex and possibly fast evolving data schemas. In this tutorial, we give an overview of the state-of-the-art techniques for supporting keyword search on structured and semi-structured data, including query result definition, ranking functions, result generation and top-k query processing, snippet generation, result clustering, query cleaning, performance optimization, and search quality evaluation. Various data models will be discussed, including relational data, XML data, graph-structured data, data streams, and workflows. We also discuss applications that are built upon keyword search, such as keyword based database selection, query generation, and analytical processing. Finally we identify the challenges and opportunities of future research to advance the field.
The Application Research of Learning Based on Websites
Authors: Jiaying Tong, Shaochun Zhong, Xiying Wang, Yao Wang
Venue: Proceeding of the 2006 conference on Advances in Intelligent IT: Active Media Technology 2006 (2006)

This article introduces the understanding of the topic learning websites and the technology used in the topic learning websites in China. It compared the similarities and differences between China and other countries according to the current application research circumstances of the learning based on websites. This article also pointes out the development tendency of the learning based on websites and the insufficiency of topic learnin websites in China.
A new edge detection algorithm in TRUS images
Authors: Ali Rafiee, Ahad Salimi, Ali Reza Roosta
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th WSEAS international conference on Artificial intelligence, knowledge engineering and data bases (2009)

In many diagnostic and treatment procedures for prostate disease accurate detection of prostate boundaries in transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) images is required. This is a challenging and difficult task due to weak prostate boundaries, speckle noise and the short range of gray levels. In this paper a novel edge detection method for automatic prostate segmentation in TRUS images is presented. This method involves preprocessing (edge preserving noise reduction and smoothing) and prostate segmentation. The speckle reduction has been achieved by using stick filter and top-hat transform has been implemented for smoothing. A feed forward neural network and local binary pattern together have been use to find a point inside prostate object. Finally the boundary of prostate is extracted by the inside point and an active contour algorithm. A numbers of experiments are conducted to validate this method and results showed that this new algorithm extracted the prostate boundary with MSE less than 3.9% relative to boundary provided manually by physicians.
Software Complexity Analysis for Multitasking Systems Implemented in the Programming Language C
Authors: Krzysztof Trocki, Mariusz Czyz
Venue: Proceeding of the 2005 conference on Software Engineering: Evolution and Emerging Technologies (2005)

The paper investigates the use of two of the most popular software complexity measurement theories, the Halstead's Software Science metrics and McCabe's cyclomatic complexity, to analyze basic characteristics of multitasking systems implemented in the programming language C. Additional extensions of both systems of metrics are proposed to increase the level of obtained information connected with the typical characteristics of multitasking systems.
A Statistical Reduced-Reference Approach to Digital Image Quality Assessment
Authors: Krzysztof Okarma, Piotr Lech
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision and Graphics: Revised Papers (2008)

In the paper a fast method of the digital image quality estimation is proposed. Our approach is based on the Monte Carlo method applied for some classical and modern full-reference image quality assessment methods, such as Structural Similarity and SVD-based measure. Obtained results are compared to the effects achieved using the full analysis techniques. Significant reduction of the number of analysed pixels or blocks leads to fast and efficient estimation of image quality especially in low performance systems where the processing speed is much more important than the accuracy of the quality assessment.
Programmable concurrency in a pure and lazy language
Authors: Steve Zdancewic
Venue:  (2008)

This dissertation presents a number of methods to build massively concurrent network applications in Haskell, a pure, lazy and functional programming language. The key challenge is to combine threads and events , two seemingly opposing programming models, into one single application, so the programmer can get both the ease of multithreaded programming and the performance of event-driven systems. This dissertation first shows a purely application-level solution using monadic, continuation-passing style threads and evaluates its performance using benchmarking programs. It then shows a more generic solution obtained by re-designing the Haskell runtime system with lightweight concurrency primitives that can be used to implement high-level concurrency features in Haskell libraries. The new runtime system allows massive concurrency to be implemented using any of the following configurations: OS threads, user-level threads, or application-level, monadic threads. This dissertations presents the prototype implementation of the new runtime system and two concurrency libraries. It also compares the I/O performance of different concurrency configurations using benchmark programs and discusses their trade-offs. The conclusion of this dissertation is summarized from three different perspectives. For systems programmers, it compares the two solutions to combine events and threads in Haskell. For developers of the Haskell runtime system, it discusses the trade-offs involved to adopt the new runtime system design. For language designers, it summarizes the lessons learned in the programming experience of using the Haskell language.
Improving the round complexity of VSS in point-to-point networks
Authors: Jonathan Katz, Chiu-Yuen Koo, Ranjit Kumaresan
Venue: Information and Computation (2009)

We revisit the following question: what is the optimal round complexity of verifiable secret sharing (VSS)? We focus here on the case of perfect VSS where the number of corrupted parties t satisfies t
Adapting the ELO rating system to competing subpopulations in a “man-hill”
Authors: Grégory Valigiani, Evelyne Lutton, Pierre Collet
Venue: Proceeding of the 2006 conference on Leading the Web in Concurrent Engineering: Next Generation Concurrent Engineering (2006)

Paraschool (the French leading e-learning company, with more than 250,000 registered students), wanted an intelligent software to guide students in their graph of pedagogic items. The very large number of students suggested to use students as artificial ants, leaving stigmergic information on the web-site graph to optimise pedagogical paths. The differences between artificial ants and students led to describe a new concurrent paradigm called “man-hill optimization”, where optimization emerges from the behaviour of humans exploring a web site. At this stage, the need of rating pedagogical items showed up in order to direct students towards items adapted to their level. A solution was found in the ELO [12] automatic rating process, that also provides (as a side-effect) a powerful audit system that can track syntactic and semantic problems in exercises. For an effective use, this paper shows how the ELO rating process has been modified to overcome the Deflation problem.
The Option Value of Returns: Theory and Empirical Evidence
Authors: Eric T. Anderson, Karsten Hansen, Duncan Simester
Venue: Marketing Science (2009)

When a firm allows the return of previously purchased merchandise, it provides customers with an option that has measurable value. Whereas the option to return merchandise leads to an increase in gross revenue, it also creates additional costs. Selecting an optimal return policy requires balancing both demand and cost implications. In this paper, we develop a structural model of a consumer's decision to purchase and return an item that nests extant choice models as a special case. The model enables a firm to both measure the value to consumers of the return option and balance the costs and benefits of different return policies. We apply the model to a sample of data provided by a mail-order catalog company. We find considerable variation in the value of returns across customers and categories. When the option value is large, there are large increases in demand. For example, the option to return women's footwear is worth an average of more than $15 per purchase to customers and increases average purchase rates by more than 50%. We illustrate how the model can be used by a retailer to optimize his return policies across categories and customers.