ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
The Internalization of Exports: Firm- and Location-Specific Factors in a Middle-Income Country
Authors: José Manuel Campa, Mauro F. Guillén
Venue: Management Science (1999)

Firms make strategic choices about foreign market access on the basis of location factors in the home and export countries, as well as on their ownership advantages. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 837 manufacturing companies in a typical middle-income country (Spain), in which firms are starting to internationalize through investments or alliances in distribution. Following theoretical expectations, the greater the level of such ownership factors as intangible technological assets, product variability, and resource availability, the higher the likelihood of internalization, and in particular internalization by proprietary distribution instead of by commercial alliance. But most importantly, location factors in the home country and in the export market have an independent effect on the likelihood and mode of internalization. Proprietary distribution channels are preferred when the firm's competitors are based in richer countries than the home country, and when the export market is well known to the firm.
Criticality- and QoS-Based Multiresource Negotiation andAdaptation
Authors: J. Huang, P.-J. Wan, D.-Z. Du
Venue: Real-Time Systems (1998)

This paper presents design, analysis, and implementation of a multiresource management system that enables criticality- and QoS-based resource negotiation and adaptation for mission-critical multimedia applications. With the goal of maximizing the number of high-criticality multimedia streams and the degree of their QoS, it introduces a dynamic scheduling approach using on-line QoS adjustment and multiresource preemption. An integrated multiresource management infrastructure and a set of scheduling algorithms for multiresource preemption and on-line QoS adjustment are presented. The optimality and execution efficiency of two preemption algorithms are analyzed. A primal-dual-algorithm-based approximation solution is shown (1) to be comparable to the linear-programming-based solution, which is near optimal; (2) to outperform a criticality-cognitive baseline algorithm; and (3) to be feasible for on-line scheduling. In addition, the dynamic QoS adjustment scheme is shown to greatly improve the quality of service for video streams. The multiresource management system is part of the Presto multimedia system environment prototyped at Honeywell for mission-critical applications.
Program path analysis to bound cache-related preemption delay in preemptive real-time systems
Authors: Hiroyuki Tomiyama, Nikil D. Dutt
Venue: Proceedings of the eighth international workshop on Hardware/software codesign (2000)

Unpredictable behavior of cache memory males it difficult to statically analyze the worst-case performance of real-time systems. This problem is exacerbated in case of preemptive multitask systems due to intertask cache in terference, called Cache-Related Preemption Delay (CRPD). This paper proposes an approach to analysis of the tight upper bound on CRPD which a task might impose on lower-priority tasks. Our method determines the program execution path of the task which requires the maximum number of cache blocks using an integer linear programming technique. Experimental results show that our approach provides up to 69% tighter bounds on CRPD than a previous approach.
LDAP directory services- just another database application? (tutorial session)
Authors: Shridhar Shukla, Anand Deshpande
Venue: ACM SIGMOD Record (2000)

The key driving force behind general-purpose enterprise directory services is for providing a central repository for commonly and widely used information such as users, groups, network service access information and profiles, security information, etc. Acceptance of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) as an access protocol has facilitated widespread integration of these directory services into the network infrastructure and applications. Both directory and relational databases are data repositories sharing the characteristic that they have mechanisms for dealing with schema and structure of information and are suitable for systematically organized data. This tutorial describes characteristics of directories such as schema information, query language and support, storage mechanisms required, typical requirements imposed by applications, etc. We then explain the differences between a directory and relational database, and show how the two are required to co-exist in a typical enterprise. An essential characteristic assumed for information stored in directories is that it is relatively static and that the queries are mostly read only. We describe typical directory applications to validate this assumption and project the requirements imposed on them as these applications evolve. We then describe areas of overlap between traditional databases and directories, describe some database and directory integration solutions adopted in the market, and identify areas in which directory deployment can benefit from the experience gathered by the database community.
Complexity and uncertainty in genetics
Authors: Gary A. Churchill
Venue: ACM SIGBIO Newsletter (1999)

In this article, we discuss issues that arise in the statistical analysis of complex genetic traits using inbred line crosses. Current methods of analysis that are in widespread use often fail to detect gene x gene interactions and thus can present an overly simplified view of a complex genetic system. Uncertainty regarding estimated parameters and model specification is inherent in any statistical analysis of data. Our goal is to fully determine the component genes and their potential interactions based on information derived from an experimental cross. It is important for statisticians and geneticists alike to recognize both the power and the limitations of this approach.
Sequence comparison to graph comparison&mdash;a new generation of algorithms for network analysis of interacting molecules (abstract only)
Authors: Minoru Kanehisa
Venue: Proceedings of the fourth annual international conference on Computational molecular biology (2000)

The sequence comparison has been the most fundamental method for understanding molecular functions encoded in the sequence data of proteins and nucleic acids. In general, however, the biological function results from an ordered network of interacting molecules in the cell; it cannot be attributed to just a single protein or a single gene. With the availability of complete genome sequences, it is now necessary to analyze multiple proteins or multiple genes at a time in order to understand higher level cellular functions, such as metabolism, signal transduction, cell cycle, apoptosis, and development. We have been computerizing current knowledge on cellular processes in KEGG (http://www.genome.ad.jp/kegg/) in terms of the network of interacting molecules. For simplicity of correlating with the genomic information, we abstract the interactions at the level of gene products- mostly proteins but including RNAs. Thus, the `generalized' protein-protein interactions include direct interactions, such as binding and phosphorylation in the signal transduction pathway, enzyme-enzyme relations in two successive reaction steps in the metabolic pathway, and the relations of transcription factors and transcribed gene products in the gene regulatory network. The latter two type of interactions are termed `indirect' protein-protein interactions. The generalized protein-protein interaction network is represented as a graph with gene products as nodes and interactions as edges. The genome is also represented as a graph where genes are nodes and they are considered to be linked one-dimensionally. Then, the functional prediction (reconstruction) from the genome is a process of mapping gene nodes in the genome to gene product nodes in the interaction network, which is a conversion of one graph to another graph. To help this mapping or conversion, additional graphs can also be considered, such clusters of coregulated genes by gene expression profile experiments or groups of orthologous and paralogous genes by sequence similarity searches. I will discuss graph comparison and path computation algorithms and their practical applications in functional reconstruction problems.
Mixture Density Estimation Based on Maximum Likelihood and Sequential Test Statistics
Authors: N. A. Vlassis, G. Papakonstantinou, P. Tsanakas
Venue: Neural Processing Letters (1999)

We address the problem of estimating an unknown probability density function from a sequence of input samples. We approximate the input density with a weighted mixture of a finite number of Gaussian kernels whose parameters and weights we estimate iteratively from the input samples using the Maximum Likelihood (ML) procedure. In order to decide on the correct total number of kernels we employ simple statistical tests involving the mean, variance, and the kurtosis, or fourth moment, of a particular kernel. We demonstrate the validity of our method in handling both pattern classification (stationary) and time series (nonstationary) problems.
The relation of agenda creation and use to group support system experience
Authors: Fred Niederman, Roger J. Volkema
Venue: ACM SIGMIS Database (1999)

The meeting agenda is often recommended as a critical element for conducting successful meetings. However, assertions about the value of meeting agendas are rarely explained or empirically tested. This study surveyed 238 group facilitators, including 113 who reported facilitating at least one meeting using group support systems (GSS), to examine their views on the use of agendas in meetings.Analyses are based on overall responses by group facilitators and by responses of the subset of facilitators who have used GSS. In addition, correlation analyses between the amount of GSS experience and the responses of the full group of facilitators and the subset with GSS experience are reported. Frequency of agenda use and of evaluation of the "goodness of the agenda" both correlated with GSS experience. Pre-meeting sessions with the group sponsors correlated significantly with GSS experience as did the frequency of varying from the agenda. Finally, quality of meeting deliverables, satisfaction with outcomes, and satisfaction with process were viewed as most important benefits of using an agenda; but they did not correlate with GSS experience. Meeting efficiency as a benefit of agenda use was negatively correlated with GSS experience. The implications of these findings for GSS facilitation and for future research are discussed.
Klare's &ldquo;useful information&rdquo; is useful for Web designers
Authors: Kristin Zibell
Venue: ACM Journal of Computer Documentation (JCD) (2000)

In many ways the writing principles that Klare recommended 37 years ago to promote high readability scores still apply to web-site design. Behind the pursuit of readability lies audience analysis, a concern with the intellectual level, previous experience, motivation, and reading goals of ones intended audience. Suitably adjusted to take account of online interactivity, those same concerns should guide design work on web structure and interfaces today.
Patron-augmented digital libraries
Authors: Dion Goh, John Leggett
Venue: Proceedings of the fifth ACM conference on Digital libraries (2000)

Digital library research is mostly focused on the generation of large collections of multimedia resources and state-of-the-art tools for their indexing and retrieval. However, digital libraries should provide more than advanced collection maintenance and retrieval services since the ultimate goal of any (academic) library is to serve the scholarly needs of its users. This paper begins by presenting a case for digital scholarship in which patrons perform all scholarly work electronically. A proposal is then made for patron-augmented digital libraries (PADLs), a class of digital libraries that supports the digital scholarship of its patrons. Finally, a prototype PADL (called Synchrony) providing access to video segments and associated textual transcripts is described. Synchrony allows patrons to search the library for artifacts, create annotations/original compositions, integrate these artifacts to form synchronized mixed text and video presentations and, after suitable review, publish these presentations into the digital library if desired. A study to evaluate the PADL concept and the usability of Synchrony is also discussed. The study revealed that participants were able to use Synchrony for the authoring and publishing of presentations and that attitudes toward PADLs were generally positive.
Analog Hardware Implementation of Continuous-Time Adaptive Filter Structures
Authors: John G. Harris, Jui-Kuo Juan, Jose C. Principe
Venue: Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (1999)

We have implemented a four-tap adaptive filter in a continuous-time analog VLSI circuit. Since an ideal delay is impossible to implement in continuous-time hardware, we implemented the delay line as a cascade of low-pass filters (called the gamma filter). Since many years of research in our lab has shown that the gamma filter outperforms the ideal delay line for a wide range of applications, the gamma filter should not be considered merely a crude approximation of the ideal delay line. We show measured results from an analog chip that solves the problem of system identification&ndash;identifying an unknown linear circuit from its input/output relationship. Furthermore, we believe that a cascade of all-pass filters (called the Laguerre filter) will potentially outperform the gamma. We have built an adaptive Laguerre filter and show that its measured convergence rate is superior to that of the gamma. Finally, rather than perform gradient descent on a multimodal error function to determine a single optimal time constant, we propose multi-scale realizations of these delay line structures.
Supporting Scalable Performance Monitoring and Analysis of Parallel Programs
Authors: Kei-Chun Li, Kang Zhang
Venue: The Journal of Supercomputing (1999)

Tools for performance monitoring and analysis become indispensable parts of programming environments for parallel computers. As the number of processors increases, the conventional techniques for monitoring the performance of parallel programs will produce large amounts of data in the form of event trace files. On the other hand, this wealth of information is a problem for the programmer who is forced to navigate through it, and for the tools that must store and process it. What makes this situation worse is that most of the time, a large amount of the data are irrelevant to understanding the performance of an application. In this paper, we present a new approach for collecting performance data. By tracing all the events but storing only the statistics of the performance, our approach can provide accurate and useful performance information yet require far less data to be stored. In addition, this approach also supports real-time performance monitoring.
Decentralized BIST Methodology for System Level Interconnects
Authors: Chauchin Su, Shyh-Jye Jou
Venue: Journal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications (1999)

This paper presents an architecture for the local generation of global test vectors for interconnects in a multiple scan chain environment. A unified BIST module is inserted as the gateway for each scan chain to transform the hierarchy of backplane, boards, and scan chains into a one-dimensional array of scan chains. The BIST modules are identical for all the scan chains except for the programmable personalized memories. The personalized memory contains a scan stage type table for the test generation, response compression, and driver contention avoidance. It also contains a scan chain identification number which serves as the seed for the generation of globally distinct serial vectors. The proposed methodology achieves 100% coverage on stuck-at and short faults.
V-Cycle Multigrid for Cell-Centered Finite Differences
Authors: Do Y. Kwak
Venue: SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (1999)

We introduce and analyze a V-cycle multigrid algorithm for cell-centered finite difference methods applied to second-order elliptic boundary value problems. Unlike conventional cell-centered multigrid algorithms that use the natural injection operator for prolongation, we use a new prolongation operator whose energy norm we prove is bounded by 1 in the constant coefficient case and 1+Ch in the nonconstant case. We are thus able to use general finite element multigrid theory to conclude that the V-cycle either converges well or serves as a reasonably good preconditioner, respectively. While our theory does not establish optimal performance, our numerical experiments do show that the resulting algorithm converges much faster than the conventional schemes. In fact, these results show that the energy norm convergence factor is small and remains bounded uniformly in the finest mesh size, while that of the conventional algorithm grows.
Two-phase Heuristic Algorithm for Delay Constrained Minimal Cost Loop Problem
Authors: Yong-Jin J. Lee, Tai-Yun J. Kim
Venue: International Journal of Network Management (1996)

This article presents a heuristic algorithm that consists of two phases for the DMCLP under the constraints that the number of nodes served by a single loop is limited and networks mean delay is within the desired time.
A generalized transitive closure for relational queries
Authors: Seppo Sippu, Eljas Soisalon-Soininen
Venue: Proceedings of the seventh ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART symposium on Principles of database systems (1988)

We augment relational algebra with a generalized transitive closure operator that allows for the efficient evaluation of a subclass of recursive queries. The operator is based on a composition operator which is as general as possible when the operator is required to be associative and when only relational algebra operators are used in its definition. The closure of such a composition can be computed using the well-known efficient algorithms designed for the computation of the usual transitive closure. Besides the case in which complete materialization of recursive relations are required, our strategy also yields an efficient solution in the case in which a selection is applied to the closure.
A Winnow-Based Approach to Context-Sensitive Spelling Correction
Authors: Andrew R. Golding, Dan Roth
Venue: Machine Learning (1999)

A large class of machine-learning problems in natural language require the characterization of linguistic context. Two characteristic properties of such problems are that their feature space is of very high dimensionality, and their target concepts depend on only a small subset of the features in the space. Under such conditions, multiplicative weight-update algorithms such as Winnow have been shown to have exceptionally good theoretical properties. In the work reported here, we present an algorithm combining variants of Winnow and weighted-majority voting, and apply it to a problem in the aforementioned class: context-sensitive spelling correction. This is the task of fixing spelling errors that happen to result in valid words, such as substituting to for too, casual for causal, and so on. We evaluate our algorithm, WinSpell, by comparing it against BaySpell, a statistics-based method representing the state of the art for this task. We find: (1) When run with a full (unpruned) set of features, WinSpell achieves accuracies significantly higher than BaySpell was able to achieve in either the pruned or unpruned condition&semi; (2) When compared with other systems in the literature, WinSpell exhibits the highest performance&semi; (3) While several aspects of WinSpell&lsquo;s architecture contribute to its superiority over BaySpell, the primary factor is that it is able to learn a better linear separator than BaySpell learns&semi; (4) When run on a test set drawn from a different corpus than the training set was drawn from, WinSpell is better able than BaySpell to adapt, using a strategy we will present that combines supervised learning on the training set with unsupervised learning on the (noisy) test set.
A Noise-Adaptive Discriminant Function and Its Application to Blurred Machine-Printed Kanji Recognition
Authors: Shin'ichiro Omachi, Fang Sun, Hirotomo Aso
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (2000)

Accurate recognition of blurred images is a practical but previously to mostly overlooked problem. In this paper, we quantify the level of noise in blurred images and propose a new modification of discriminant functions that adapts to the level of noise. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method actually enhances the existing statistical methods and has impressive ability to recognize blurred image patterns.
Adaptive channel allocation for wireless PCN
Authors: Selma Boumerdassi, André-Luc Beylot
Venue: Mobile Networks and Applications (1999)

In cellular networks, forced call terminations due to handoff call blocking are generally more objectionable than new call blocking. In order to maintain an acceptable call dropping probability rate, we propose, in this paper, two new guard channel schemes: an adaptive one &ndash; New Adaptive Channel Reservation (NACR) &ndash; and a dynamic one &ndash; Predictive Reservation Policy (PRP). In NACR, for a given period of time, a given number of channels is guarded in each cell for handoff traffic. In PRP, the number of reserved channels depends on the actual number of calls in progress in the neighboring cells. An approximate analytical model of NACR is presented. A Tabu search method has been implemented in order to optimize the Grade of Service. Discrete event simulations of PRP and NACR were run. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is emphasized on a complex configuration.
A Very High-Frequency Transistor-Only Linear Tunable Companding Current-Mode Integrator
Authors: Apisak Worapishet, Jirayuth Mahattanakul, Chris Toumazou
Venue: Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (2000)

A low-distortion tunable transistor-only integrator suitable for applications in the frequency range approaching the f_{T} of transistors is presented. The circuit is a modified version of the recently introduced companding current-mode integrator utilizing the non-linear base-emitter diffusion capacitance of the BJT. A first-order approximation of the circuit characteristics is explained, followed by a brief discussion on the departure from ideal characteristics due to transistor nonidealities. Experimental and simulated results of practical integrators are given to verify the feasibility of the proposed modified circuit.
CS1 using Java language features gently
Authors: Elliot Koffman, Ursula Wolz
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (1999)

Teaching a new programming language in CS1 requires the instructor to make several important decisions regarding sequencing of topics. In teaching Java, the basic decisions center around how to perform input and output, when to teach the AWT (Abstract Window Toolkit) and threads, whether to begin with applets or applications, and how much detail about object-oriented programming and Java language features is required in the beginning. This paper describes a "language features gently" approach to teaching CS1 in Java.