ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Wikipedians are born, not made: a study of power editors on Wikipedia
Authors: Katherine Panciera, Aaron Halfaker, Loren Terveen
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM 2009 international conference on Supporting group work (2009)

Open content web sites depend on users to produce information of value. Wikipedia is the largest and most well-known such site. Previous work has shown that a small fraction of editors --Wikipedians -- do most of the work and produce most of the value. Other work has offered conjectures about how Wikipedians differ from other editors and how Wikipedians change over time. We quantify and test these conjectures. Our key findings include: Wikipedians' edits last longer; Wikipedians invoke community norms more often to justify their edits; on many dimensions of activity, Wikipedians start intensely, tail off a little, then maintain a relatively high level of activity over the course of their career. Finally, we show that the amount of work done by Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians differs significantly from their very first day. Our results suggest a design opportunity: customizing the initial user experience to improve retention and channel new users' intense energy.
Stochastic thermal simulation considering spatial correlated within-die process variations
Authors: Pei-Yu Huan, Jia-Hong Wu, Yu-Min Lee
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (2009)

In this work, we develop a statistical thermal simulator including the effect of spatial correlation under within-die process variations. This method utilizes the Karhunen-Lo&egrave;ve (KL) expansion to model the physical parameters, and apply the Polynomial Chaoses (PCs) and the stochastic Galerkin method to tackle stochastic heat transfer equations. We demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of our simulator by comparing with the Monte Carlo simulation, and point out that the stochastic thermal analysis is essential to provide a robust estimation of temperature distribution for the thermal-aware design flow.
MPTE: Multimedia Programming Training Environmnet
Authors: Yuh-Huei Shyu, Peng-Wen Chen
Venue: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems - Volume 2 (1999)

Software productivity has been a big problem in software engineering. We believe that having high quality skilled members join the project team will dramatically increase the odds of project's success. Nevertheless, high skilled software programmers have long been in the state of great shortage. Conventional programming teaching/learning activities is rather ineffective and time consumming. To teach effectively next generation the programming language, we need to create a more effective and active learning environment. MPTE provides us such a kind of new learning environment. If supplied by a well-designed course content, this system will become a rather time efficient multimedia programming training environment.
Not All Packets Are Equal, Part 2: The Impact of Network Packet Loss on Video Quality
Authors: Jason Greengrass, John Evans, Ali C. Begen
Venue: IEEE Internet Computing (2009)

In this second part of a two-part article, the authors highlight the impact that different durations of IP packet loss have on the quality of experience for IP-based video streaming services. They describe the visual impairments that result from such packet losses and present the results of testing and analysis to compare impairments for different loss durations for both MPEG-2-encoded standard and high-definition services.
Discrete Curve Evolution Based Skeleton Pruning for Character Recognition
Authors: Binu P. Chacko, Babu Anto P
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 Seventh International Conference on Advances in Pattern Recognition (2009)

This paper deals with the recognition of handwritten Malayalam characters using discrete features. The features are extracted from skeletonizsed images. But the presence of parasitic components in the image will degrade the performance of the pattern recognition system. So there arise needs for a pruning method to produce skeletons that are in accordance with human visual perception. The skeleton pruning by contour portioning with discrete curve evolution (DCE) showed that it never produce spurious branches. Moreover, this method doesn’t displace skeleton points. Consequently, all skeleton points are centers of maximal disks. Even in the presence of significant noise and shape variations, this approach gave same topology as that of original skeletons. As a result, we have obtained excellent results in feature extraction which in turn gave a better recognition accuracy of 90.18 percent for 33 classes.
AIR out your desktop with Adobe
Authors: Shawn Powers
Venue: Linux Journal (2009)

Desktop apps for everyone.
Note: A sufficient connectivity condition for generic rigidity in the plane
Authors: Bill Jackson, Tibor Jordán
Venue: Discrete Applied Mathematics (2009)

A graph G=(V,E) is said to be 6-mixed-connected if G-U-D is connected for all sets U@?V and D@?E which satisfy 2|U|+|D|@?5. In this note we prove that 6-mixed-connected graphs are (redundantly globally) rigid in the plane. This improves on a previous result of Lovasz and Yemini.
Computer Generated Self-Care Advice via Web-Based Triage of Complaints in Primary Care
Authors: Nicol Nijland, Karlijn Cranen, Stef F. F. Verlinden, Saskia M. Kelders, Henk Boer, Julia E. W. C. van Gemert-Pijnen
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine (2009)

Computer generated self-care advice systems are used in health care to support self-management and to respond to an increasing demand for care. Web-based triage is an innovative system aimed at empowering patients and saving costs while maintaining the same or better quality of care. Such systems consist of a symptom driven questionnaire for minor ailments based on the criteria: high frequency, no physical contact required to assess medical situation, and the possibility to rule out emergencies. We evaluated the feasibility of such a system for self-care. A retrospective analysis was carried out among 6538 patients by investigating the frequencies of complaints that have been entered to the system and the frequencies of the kinds of generated advice; online surveys (n=192) based on behavioral theories were held to determine factors influencing compliance with generated self-care advice. Web-based triage can promote self-management for minor ailments, especially for patients who have a positive attitude towards computer-generated advice. This positive attitude leads to intentions to follow up the advice and to actual follow up. To reduce unnecessary doctors' visits and to lower health care costs the system has to be brought more in to line with users' needs because the systems are more medical driven than user-centered.
Computer Aided Detection and Measurement of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Using Computed Tomography Digital Images
Authors: J. Dehmeshki, H. Amin, M. Ebadian-Dehkordi, A. Jouannic, S. Qanadli
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 Third International Conference on Digital Society (2009)

Computer-aided detection (CAD) systems, which automatically detect and indicate location of potential abnormalities in scan digital images, have the capacity to increase the accuracy of the radiologists’ interpretations and finding. This paper presents an efficient new CAD .for automatic and accurate detection and quantification of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA). The system first detects and extracts the lumen and then identifies the location of the abdominal aortic from the total lumen. The extracted abdominal aortic lumen is then used as an initial surface to segment the abdominal aorta which might contain aneurysm. The geometrical and morphological features of both lumen and aorta are examined for the presence of aneurysm based on predefined criteria set by incorporating prior understanding of the normal expected variation of aorta. The experimental result of the proposed system on 60 CTA datasets indicated a 98% success in detection (CAD) and a 95% in segmentation results (CAM).
Verified speaker localization utilizing voicing level in split-bands
Authors: Afsaneh Asaei, Mohammad Javad Taghizadeh, Marjan Bahrololum, Mohammed Ghanbari
Venue: Signal Processing (2009)

This paper proposes a joint verification-localization structure based on split-band analysis of speech signal and the mixed voicing level. To address the problems in reverberant acoustic environments, a new fundamental frequency estimation algorithm is proposed based on high resolution spectral estimation. In the reconstruction of the distorted speech this information is utilized to reduce the side effect of acoustic noise on the voicing parts. A speaker verification system examines the features of the reconstructed speech in order to authorize the speaker before localization. This procedure prevents localization and beamforming for non-speech and specially the unwanted speakers in multi-speaker scenarios. The verification is implemented with the Gaussian Mixture Model and a new filtering scheme is proposed based on the voicing likelihood of each frequency band measured in the previous steps for efficient localization of the authorized speaker. The performance of the proposed VSL (verified speaker localization) front-end is evaluated in various reverberant and noisy environments. The VSL is utilized in the development of distant-talking automatic speech recognition by microphone array where the system can lock on a specific source and hence the recognition quality improves noticeably.
SemanGist: A Local Semantic Image Representation
Authors: Dong Wang, Xiaobing Liu, Duanpeng Wang, Jianmin Li, Bo Zhang
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia: Advances in Multimedia Information Processing (2008)

Although various kinds of image features have been proposed, there exists no single optimal feature which can save the effort of all other features for multimedia analysis applications, e.g. image annotation. In this paper, we propose a novel image representation, Semantic Gist (SemanGist), to combine the merit of multiple features automatically. Given a local image patch, SemanGist converts multiple low-level features of the patch into compact prediction scores of a few predefined semantic categories. To this end, a discriminative multi-label boosting algorithm is adopted. This local SemanGist output allows for incorporating semantic spatial context among adjacent patches. For applications like image annotation, this may further reduce possible annotation errors by considering the label compatibility. The same boosting algorithm is applied to the SemanGist representation, together with low-level features, to ensure the label compatibility. Experiments on an image annotation task show that SemanGist not only achieves compact representation but also incorporates spatial context at low run-time computational cost.
Combinatorial and spectral aspects of nearest neighbor graphs in doubling dimensional and nearly-Euclidean spaces
Authors: Yingchao Zhao, Shang-hua Teng
Venue: Theoretical Computer Science (2009)

Miller, Teng, Thurston, and Vavasis proved a geometric separator theorem which implies that the k-nearest neighbor graph (k-NNG) of every set of n points in R^d has a balanced vertex separator of size O(n^1^-^1^/^dk^1^/^d). Spielman and Teng then proved that the Fiedler value - the second smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix - of the k-NNG of any n points in R^d is O((k/n)^2^/^d). In this paper, we extend these two results to nearest neighbor graphs in a metric space with a finite doubling dimension and in a metric space that is nearly-Euclidean. We prove that for every l>0, if (X,dist) forms a metric space with doubling dimension @c, then the k-NNG of every set P of n points in X has a vertex separator of size O(k^2l(64l+8)^2^@clog^2LSlogn+nl), where L and S are, respectively, the maximum and minimum distances between any two points in P. We show how to use the singular value decomposition method to approximate a k-NNG in a nearly-Euclidean space by a Euclidean k-NNG. This approximation enables us to obtain an upper bound on the Fiedler value of k-NNGs in a nearly-Euclidean space.
Discovering 3D Surface Information Values from Gameplayers
Authors: Priyesh N. Dixit, G. Michael Youngblood
Venue: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (2009)

A novel algorithm discovers surface information values from collected player data. Designers can use this information to place artifacts so as to improve or obscure observation, as intended. In a validation user study that implemented this approach, players viewed 84 percent of artifacts placed in high-value information locations.
Modelling Spatio-Temporal Saliency to Predict Gaze Direction for Short Videos
Authors: Sophie Marat, Tien Ho Phuoc, Lionel Granjon, Nathalie Guyader, Denis Pellerin, Anne Guérin-Dugué
Venue: International Journal of Computer Vision (2009)

This paper presents a spatio-temporal saliency model that predicts eye movement during video free viewing. This model is inspired by the biology of the first steps of the human visual system. The model extracts two signals from video stream corresponding to the two main outputs of the retina: parvocellular and magnocellular. Then, both signals are split into elementary feature maps by cortical-like filters. These feature maps are used to form two saliency maps: a static and a dynamic one. These maps are then fused into a spatio-temporal saliency map. The model is evaluated by comparing the salient areas of each frame predicted by the spatio-temporal saliency map to the eye positions of different subjects during a free video viewing experiment with a large database (17000 frames). In parallel, the static and the dynamic pathways are analyzed to understand what is more or less salient and for what type of videos our model is a good or a poor predictor of eye movement.
Process Mediation of OWL-S Web Services
Authors: Katia Sycara, Roman Vaculín
Venue: Advances in Web Semantics I: Ontologies, Web Services and Applied Semantic Web (2008)

The ability to deal with incompatibilities of service requesters and providers is a critical factor for achieving smooth interoperability in dynamic environments. Achieving interoperability of existing web services is a costly process including a lot of development and integration effort which is far from being automated. Semantic Web Services frameworks strive to facilitate flexible dynamic web services discovery, invocation and composition and to support automation of these processes. In this paper we focus on mediation and brokering mechanisms of OWL-S Web Services which we see as the main means to overcome various types of problems and incompatibilities. We describe the process mediation component and the hybrid broker component that present two different approaches to bridge incompatibilities between the requester's and provider's interaction protocols.
Particle swarm optimization: Tabu search approach to constrained engineering optimization problems
Authors: Ritchie Mae Gamot, Armacheska Mesa
Venue: WSEAS Transactions on Mathematics (2008)

Constraint handling is one of the most difficult parts encountered in practical engineering design optimizations. Different kinds of methods were proposed for handling constraints namely, genetic algorithm, self-adaptive penalty approach and other evolutionary algorithms. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) efficiently solved most nonlinear optimization problems with inequity constraints. This study hybridizes PSO with a meta-heuristic algorithm called Tabu Search (TS) to solve the same engineering design problems. The algorithm starts with a population of particles or solution generated randomly and is updated using the update equations of PSO. The updated particles are then subjected to Tabu Search for further refinement. The PSO algorithm handles the global search for the solution while TS facilitates the local search. With embedded hyrbridization, this study which we call PSO-TS, showed better results compared to algorithms reported in Hu et al's study as applied to four benchmark engineering problems. Specifically, this study beat the results of Coello, Deb and Hu.
A Comparative Study between LFGC and GC Schemes with QoS Guarantees in Different Models Using Call Admission Control Protocol in Cellular Networks
Authors: Kalpana (Roy) Saha, Iti Saha Misra
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 WRI International Conference on Communications and Mobile Computing - Volume 03 (2009)

In this paper we consider a Call Admission Control (CAC) Protocol for a Cellular System which supports both voice and data traffic. CAC is needed to meet the challenges of how to support the guarantees of Quality of Service (QoS) with the limited capacity. CAC protocol for cellular system should efficiently support handoff and maintain high resource utilization. Our paper provides a comparative study between Limited Fractional Guard Channel (LFGC) scheme and the Guard Channel (GC) scheme in terms of QoS guarantees and system capacity. The mathematical expressions are derived for the performance measures and for better QoS provisioning. It was found from Numerical results and graphical representation that LFGC scheme performs well in terms of QoS guarantees and better system capacity compare to GC scheme.
A self-organizing neural network using ideas from the immune system to solve the traveling salesman problem
Authors: Thiago A. S. Masutti, Leandro N. de Castro
Venue: Information Sciences: an International Journal (2009)

Most combinatorial optimization problems belong to the NP-complete or NP-hard classes, which means that they may require an infeasible processing time to be solved by an exhaustive search method. Thus, less expensive heuristics in respect to the processing time are commonly used. These heuristics can obtain satisfactory solutions in short running times, but there is no guarantee that the optimal solution will be found. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been widely studied to solve combinatorial problems, presenting encouraging results. This paper proposes some modifications on RABNET-TSP, an immune-inspired self-organizing neural network, for the solution of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). The modified algorithm is compared with other neural methods from the literature and the results obtained suggest that the proposed method is competitive in relation to the other ones, outperforming them in many cases with regards to the quality (cost) of the solutions found, though demanding a greater time for convergence in many cases.
On Spatial Orders and Location Codes
Authors: L. J. Stocco, G. Schrack
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (2009)

Spatial orders such as the Morton (Z) order, Uorder, or X-order have applications in matrix manipulation, graphic rendering and data encryption. It is shown that these spatial orders are single examples of entire classes of spatial orders which can be defined in arbitrary numbers of dimensions and base values. Secondly, an algorithm is proposed which can be used to transform between these spatial orders and cartesian coordinates. It is shown that the efficiency of the algorithm improves with a larger base value. By choosing a base value that corresponds to the available memory page size, the computational effort required to perform operations such as matrix multiplication can be optimized.
CellSs: Scheduling techniques to better exploit memory hierarchy
Authors: Pieter Bellens, Josep M. Perez, Felipe Cabarcas, Alex Ramirez, Rosa M. Badia, Jesus Labarta
Venue: Scientific Programming (2009)

Cell Superscalar's (CellSs) main goal is to provide a simple, flexible and easy programming approach for the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) that automatically exploits the inherent concurrency of the applications at a task level. The CellSs environment is based on a source-to-source compiler that translates annotated C or Fortran code and a runtime library tailored for the Cell/B.E. that takes care of the concurrent execution of the application. The first efforts for task scheduling in CellSs derived from very simple heuristics. This paper presents new scheduling techniques that have been developed for CellSs for the purpose of improving an application's performance. Additionally, the design of a new scheduling algorithm is detailed and the algorithm evaluated. The CellSs scheduler takes an extension of the memory hierarchy for Cell/B.E. into account, with a cache memory shared between the SPEs. All new scheduling practices have been evaluated showing better behavior of our system.
Fast high-quality line visibility
Authors: Forrester Cole, Adam Finkelstein
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics and games (2009)

Lines drawn over or in place of shaded 3D models can often provide greater comprehensibility and stylistic freedom that shading alone. A substantial challenge for making stylized line drawings from 3D models is the visibility computation. Current algorithms for computing line visibility in models of moderate complexity are either too slow for interactive rendering, or too brittle for coherent animation. We present a method that exploits graphics hardware to provide fast and robust line visibility. Rendering speed for our system is usually within a factor of two of an optimized rendering pipeline using conventional lines, and our system provides much higher visual quality and flexibility for stylization.
Differential evolution solution to the SLAM problem
Authors: Luis Moreno, Santiago Garrido, Dolores Blanco, M. Luisa Muñoz
Venue: Robotics and Autonomous Systems (2009)

A new solution to the Simultaneous Localization and Modelling problem is presented in this paper. The algorithm is based on the stochastic search for solutions in the state space to the global localization problem by means of a differential evolution algorithm. This non linear evolutive filter, called Evolutive Localization Filter (ELF), searches stochastically along the state space for the best robot pose estimate. The set of pose solutions (the population) focuses on the most likely areas according to the perception and up to date motion information. The population evolves using the log-likelihood of each candidate pose according to the observation and the motion errors derived from the comparison between observed and predicted data obtained from the probabilistic perception and motion model. The proposed SLAM algorithm operates in two steps: in the first step the ELF filter is used at local level to re-localize the robot based on the robot odometry, the laser scan at a given position and a local map where only a low number of the last scans have been integrated. In the second step, the aligned laser measures and the corrected robot poses are used to detect whether the robot is revisiting a previously crossed area (i.e., a cycle in the robot trajectory exists). Once a cycle is detected, the Evolutive Localization Filter is used again to estimate the accumulated residual drift in the detected loop and then to re-estimate the robot poses in order to integrate the sensor measures in the global map of the environment. The algorithm has been tested in different environments to demonstrate the effectiveness, robustness and computational efficiency of the proposed approach.