ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Global asymptotic behavior and boundedness of positive solutions to an odd-order rational difference equation
Authors: Maoxin Liao, Xianyi Li, Xianhua Tang
Venue: Computers Mathematics with Applications (2008)

In this note we consider the following high-order rational difference equation x"n=1+@?i=1k(1-x"n"-"i)@?i=1kx"n"-"i,n=0,1,..., where k>=3 is odd number, x"-"k,x"-"k"+"1,x"-"k"+"2,...,x"-"1 is positive numbers. We obtain the boundedness of positive solutions for the above equation, and with the perturbation of initial values, we mainly use the transformation method to prove that the positive equilibrium point of this equation is globally asymptotically stable.
Novel Biomaterial Study I: N, N-Dilong Chain Alkyl Chitosan (NCS) for Self-Assembled Nanovesicle and NCS/PLLA Blend for Tissue Engineering Scaffold
Authors: Mingchun Li, Meihua Xin, Sheng Su, Wei Gao
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on BioMedical Engineering and Informatics - Volume 01 (2008)

A novel amphiphilic chitosan, N, N-dilong chainalkyl chitosan (NCS), was applied to prepare self-assembled vesicles for DDS and NCS/PLLA blend for tissue engineering scaffold. The morphology of NCS self-assembled vesicles was investigated by SEM. Drug-releasing rates of vesicles made from longer alkyl chain and/or larger backbone molecular weight of N, N-dialkyl chitosan are slower than shorter and smaller ones, and equilibrium drug-releasing ratios as well as releasing rates. The bio-experimental results indicate that NCS/PLLA blends are biodegradable and nontoxic. NCS is benefit to improve the cell affinity of PLLA.
Prefilter: predicate pushdown at streaming speeds
Authors: Lukasz Golab, Theodore Johnson, Oliver Spatscheck
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd international workshop on Scalable stream processing system (2008)

This paper presents the prefilter: a predicate pushdown framework for a Data Stream Management System (DSMS). Though early predicate evaluation is a well-known query optimization strategy, novel problems arise in a high-performance DSMS. In particular, (i) query invocation costs are high as compared to the cost of evaluating simple predicates that are often used in high-speed stream analysis; (ii) selectivity estimates may become inaccurate over time; and (iii) multiple queries, possibly containing common subexpressions, must be processed continuously. The prefilter addresses these issues by constructing appropriate predicates for early evaluation as soon as new data arrive and before any queries are invoked. It also compresses the bit vector representing the outcomes of pushed-down predicates over newly arrived tuples, and uses the compressed bitmap to efficiently check which queries do not have to be invoked. Using a set of network monitoring queries, we show that the performance of the Gigascope DSMS is significantly improved by the prefilter.
GeneTrack—a genomic data processing and visualization framework
Authors: Istvan Albert, Shinichiro Wachi, Cizhong Jiang, B. Franklin Pugh
Venue: Bioinformatics (2008)

Motivation: High-throughput ‘ChIP-chip’ and ‘ChIP-seq’ methodologies generate sufficiently large data sets that analysis poses significant informatics challenges, particularly for research groups with modest computational support. To address this challenge, we devised a software platform for storing, analyzing and visualizing high resolution genome-wide binding data. GeneTrack automates several steps of a typical data processing pipeline, including smoothing and peak detection, and facilitates dissemination of the results via the web. Our software is freely available via the Google Project Hosting environment at http://genetrack.googlecode.com Contact: iual@psu.edu
Sparse Graphs which Decompose into Closed Trails of Arbitrary Lengths
Authors: Elizabeth J. Billington, Nicholas J. Cavenagh
Venue: Graphs and Combinatorics (2008)

A simple, connected even graph G with vertex set V(G) and edge set E(G) is said to be ADCT (Arbitrarily Decomposable into Closed Trails) if for any collection of positive integers x 1, x 2,...,x m with $$\sum_{i=1}^m x_i = |E(G)|$$ and x i &#x2265; 3 for 1 &#x2264; i &#x2264; m, there exists a decomposition of G into closed trails (circuits) of lengths x 1, x 2,...,x m . In this note we construct an 8-regular ADCT graph on 6n vertices, for each each n&#x00a0;&#x2265;&#x00a0;3. On the other hand, we also show that there are only finitely many 4-regular graphs which are ADCT.
Analysis of architecture evaluation data
Authors: Len Bass, Robert Nord, William Wood, David Zubrow, Ipek Ozkaya
Venue: Journal of Systems and Software (2008)

The output of 18 software architecture evaluations is analyzed. The goal of the analysis is to find patterns in the important quality attributes and risk themes identified in the evaluations. The major results are*A categorization of risk themes. *The observation that twice as many risk themes are risks of ''omission'' as are risks of ''commission''. *A failure to find a relationship between the business and mission goals of a system and the risk themes from an evaluation of that system. *A failure to find a correlation between the domain of a system being evaluated and the important quality attributes for that system. *A wide diversity of names used for various quality attributes. The results of this investigation have application to practitioners by suggesting activities on which developers should put greater focus. They also have application to researchers by suggesting further areas of investigation.
Efficient dynamic heap allocation of scratch-pad memory
Authors: Ross McIlroy, Peter Dickman, Joe Sventek
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international symposium on Memory management (2008)

An increasing number of processor architectures support scratch-pad memory - software managed on-chip memory. Scratch-pad memory provides low latency data storage, like on-chip caches, but under explicit software control. The simple design and predictable nature of scratchpad memories has seen them incorporated into a number of embedded and real-time system processors. They are also employed by multi-core architectures to isolate processor core local data and act as low latency inter-core shared memory. Managing scratch-pad memory by hand is time consuming, error prone and potentially wasteful; tools that automatically manage this memory are essential for its use by general purpose software. While there has been promising work in compile time allocation of scratch-pad memory, there will always be applications which require run-time allocation. Modern dynamic memory management techniques are too heavy-weight for scratch-pad management. This paper presents the Scratch-Pad Memory Allocator, a light-weight memory management algorithm, specifically designed to manage small on-chip memories. This algorithm uses a variety of techniques to reduce its memory footprint while still remaining effective, including: representing memory both as fixed-sized blocks and variable-sized regions within these blocks; coding of memory state in bitmap structures; and exploiting the layout of adjacent regions to dispense with boundary tags for split and coalesce operations. We compare the performance of this allocator against Doug Lea's malloc implementation for the management of core-local and inter-core shared scratchpad memories under real world memory traces. This algorithm manages small memories efficiently and scales well under load when multiple competing cores access shared memory.
Higher-order Mond-Weir duality for set-valued optimization
Authors: S. J. Li, K. L. Teo, X. Q. Yang
Venue: Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics (2008)

In this paper, we introduce a higher-order Mond-Weir dual for a set-valued optimization problem by virtue of higher-order contingent derivatives and discuss their weak duality, strong duality and converse duality properties.
On the quantitative analysis of deep belief networks
Authors: Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Iain Murray
Venue: Proceedings of the 25th international conference on Machine learning (2008)

Deep Belief Networks (DBN's) are generative models that contain many layers of hidden variables. Efficient greedy algorithms for learning and approximate inference have allowed these models to be applied successfully in many application domains. The main building block of a DBN is a bipartite undirected graphical model called a restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM). Due to the presence of the partition function, model selection, complexity control, and exact maximum likelihood learning in RBM's are intractable. We show that Annealed Importance Sampling (AIS) can be used to efficiently estimate the partition function of an RBM, and we present a novel AIS scheme for comparing RBM's with different architectures. We further show how an AIS estimator, along with approximate inference, can be used to estimate a lower bound on the log-probability that a DBN model with multiple hidden layers assigns to the test data. This is, to our knowledge, the first step towards obtaining quantitative results that would allow us to directly assess the performance of Deep Belief Networks as generative models of data.
A nonmonotone semismooth inexact Newton method
Authors: Silvia Bonettini, Federica Tinti
Venue: Optimization Methods Software (2007)

In this article, we propose a variant of the inexact Newton method for the solution of semismooth nonlinear systems of equations. We introduce a nonmonotone scheme, which couples the inexact features with the nonmonotone strategies. For the nonmonotone scheme, we present the convergence theorems. Finally, we show how we can apply these strategies in the variational inequalities context and we present some numerical examples.
DFT techniques and automation for asynchronous NULL conventional logic circuits
Authors: Venkat Satagopan, Bonita Bhaskaran, Waleed K. Al-Assadi, Scott C. Smith, Sindhu Kakarla
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems (2007)

Conventional automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) algorithms fail when applied to asynchronous NULL Convention Logic (NCL) circuits due to the absence of a global clock and presence of more state-holding elements, leading to poor fault coverage. This paper presents a design-for-test (DFT) approach aimed at making asynchronous NCL designs testable using conventional ATPG programs. We propose an automatic DFT insertion flow (ADIF) methodology that performs scan and test point insertion on NCL designs to improve test coverage, using a custom ATPG library. Experimental results show significant increase in fault coverage for NCL cyclic and acyclic pipelined designs.
Multiple non-interactive zero knowledge proofs based on a single random string
Authors: U. Feige, D. Lapidot, A. Shamir
Venue: Proceedings of the 31st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (1990)

The authors solve the two major open problems associated with noninteractive zero-knowledge proofs: how to enable polynomially many provers to prove in writing polynomially many theorems based on the basis of a single random string, and how to construct such proofs under general (rather than number-theoretic) assumptions. The constructions can be used in cryptographic applications in which the prover is restricted to polynomial time, and they are much simpler than earlier (and less capable) proposals.
Diffusion Equations over Arbitrary Triangulated Surfaces for Filtering and Texture Applications
Authors: Chunlin Wu, Jiansong Deng, Falai Chen
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2008)

In computer graphics, triangular mesh representations of surfaces have become very popular. Compared with parametric and implicit forms of surfaces, triangular mesh surfaces have many advantages, such as easy to render, convenient to store and the ability to model geometric objects with arbitrary topology. In this paper, we are interested in data processing over triangular mesh surfaces through PDEs (partial differential equations). We study several diffusion equations over triangular mesh surfaces, and present corresponding numerical schemes to solve them. Our methods work for triangular mesh surfaces with arbitrary geometry (the angles of each triangle are arbitrary) and topology (open meshes or closed meshes of arbitrary genus). Besides the flexibility, our methods are efficient due to the implicit/semi-implicit time discretization. We finally apply our methods to several filtering and texture applications such as image processing, texture generating and regularization of harmonic maps over triangular mesh surfaces. The results demonstrate the flexibility and effectiveness of our methods.
Introducing interaction-based auctions into a model agent-based e-commerce system: preliminary considerations
Authors: Maciej Gawinecki, Pawel Kobzdej, Maria Ganzha, Marcin Paprzycki
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 Euro American conference on Telematics and information systems (2007)

In our work we have proposed an agent-based model e-commerce system. In this system buyer agents negotiate prices with seller agents. Thus far our attention was devoted "one sided" price negotiation mechanisms, i.e. mechanisms in which one side is active, while the other side is passive (possibly other than initiating the process). Examples of such negotiations are, among others, English and Dutch Auctions, as well as a number of sealed-bid auctions. Here, we focus our attention on auctions in which both sides take active part. We discuss how these auctions can be incorporated into our system and present their UML formalizations.
A Bioinfomatics Grid Alignment Toolkit
Authors: Maria Mirto, Sandro Fiore, Italo Epicoco, Massimo Cafaro, Silvia Mocavero, Euro Blasi, Giovanni Aloisio
Venue: Future Generation Computer Systems (2008)

Even though many useful tools for sequence alignment are available, such as BLAST and PSI-BLAST by NCBI and FASTA by the University of Virginia, a key issue regarding sequence databases is their size, growing at an exponential rate. Grid and parallel computing are crucial techniques to maintain and improve the effectiveness of sequence comparison tools, whilst the Web Services approach may guarantee the interoperability among large collections of programs and data. This paper describes BioGAT, Bioinformatics Grid Alignment Toolkit, that offers optimized brokering and a data management system to exploit various bioinformatics alignment tools wrapped as Web Services in a Grid architecture.
A fault-free Hamiltonian cycle passing through prescribed edges in a hypercube with faulty edges
Authors: Wen-Qing Wang, Xie-Bin Chen
Venue: Information Processing Letters (2008)

In this paper, we consider the problem of a fault-free Hamiltonian cycle passing through prescribed edges in an n-dimensional hypercube Q"n with some faulty edges. We obtain the following result: Let n>=2, F@?E(Q"n), E"0@?E(Q"n)\F with 1=
A Profile Anonymization Model for Privacy in a Personalized Location Based Service Environment
Authors: Heechang Shin, Vijayalakshmi Atluri, Jaideep Vaidya
Venue: Proceedings of the The Ninth International Conference on Mobile Data Management (2008)

Location based services (LBS) aim at delivering point of need information. Personalization and customization of such services, based on the profiles of mobile users, would ignificantly increase the value of these services. Since profiles may include sensitive information of mobile users and moreover can help identify a person, customization is allowed only when the security and privacy policies dictated by them are respected. While LBS are often presumed as untrusted entities, the location services that capture and maintain mobile users' location to enable communication are considered trusted, and therefore can capture and manage the profile information. In this paper, we address the problem of privacy preservation via anonymization. Prior research in this area attempts to ensure k-anonymity by generalizing the location. However, a person may still be identified based on his/her profile if the profiles of all k people are not the same. We extend the notion of k-anonymity by proposing a profile based k-anonymization model that guarantees anonymity even when profiles of mobile users are known to untrusted entities. Specifically, our proposed approaches generalize both location and profiles to the extent specified by the user. We support three types of queries -- mobile users requesting stationary resources, stationary users requesting mobile resources, and mobile users requesting mobile resources. We propose a novel unified index structure, called the (P-TPR-tree), which organizes both the locations of mobile users as well as their profiles using a single index, and as a result, offers significant performance gain during anonymization as well as query processing.
User assignment strategies for throughput maximisation in hierarchical wireless networks
Authors: Seung-Jae Han, Thierry E. Klein
Venue: International Journal of Wireless and Mobile Computing (2007)

Hierarchical wireless networks such as the 3G/WLAN integrated networks are considered as a promising solution to effectively support next-generation wireless applications. We investigate the problem of assigning mobiles to the different layers in such networks. In this paper, we focus on the real-time application users, while the case of non-real-time users is treated in a separate paper. By real-time applications, we mean the applications which can adapt their data transmission rate (i.e. throughput) depending on the current channel conditions. The connection time (i.e. the call holding time) of these elastic applications is typically independent of their throughput. Such applications would for example include multimedia applications that can adjust the quality of the audio/video signal in order to adapt to lower network capacities. We present a generic framework under which different assignment strategies can be formulated and evaluated. Specifically, three assignment schemes which utilise the estimated velocity and/or the requested data rate of the mobiles are studied. The relative merits of these schemes are compared and it is in particular shown that, under various circumstances, the joint velocity-rate decision scheme significantly outperforms the other two schemes (i.e. velocity- and rate-only decision schemes). Extensive numerical results are presented to quantify the respective performances and to study the influence of relevant system parameters. Our main contribution is to build a generic framework for optimal user assignments, into which various wireless technologies can be plugged.
ScBioGrid: a commodity supercomputing environment supporting bioinformatics research
Authors: B. F. Niu, X. Y. Lang, Z. H. Lu, X. B. Chi
Venue: International Journal of Computer Mathematics (2007)

We have developed a commodity supercomputing environment, ScBioGrid, for supporting bioinformatics research. As an application-specific grid, ScBioGrid is based on ScGrid, which is a scientific computing environment provided by the Supercomputing Centre, Computer Network Information Centre, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SCCAS). The ScBioGrid portal provides a convenient and uniform interface to the bioinformatics resources available on the heterogeneous high-performance computers (HPCs) in SCCAS. In this paper we describe the architecture and services provided by ScBioGrid in detail, and present future work with ScBioGrid.
The upper and lower bounds of the information-hiding capacity of digital images
Authors: Fan Zhang, Zhigeng Pan, Kui Cao, Fengbin Zheng, Fangming Wu
Venue: Information Sciences: an International Journal (2008)

The information-hiding capacity of a digital image is the maximum information that can be hidden in that image, while the lower limit of information hiding is the minimum detectable information capacity. This paper proposes a new method of information-hiding capacity bounds analysis that is based on the neural network theories of attractors and attraction basins. With this method, the processes for determining upper and lower limits of information hiding, are unified within a single theoretical framework. Results of research show that the theory of attraction basins of neural networks can be used to determine the upper limit of information hiding and the theory of attractors of neural networks can be used to determine the lower limit of information hiding.
A multiple object tracking approach that combines colour and depth information using a confidence measure
Authors: Rafael Muñoz-Salinas, Eugenio Aguirre, Miguel García-Silvente, Antonio Gonzalez
Venue: Pattern Recognition Letters (2008)

Multiple object tracking is a difficult task, especifically when there is not an explicit model of the object being tracked or when it is not possible to estimate the background of the scene. This paper proposes a novel approach for multiple target tracking. It works without background information and uses an original method that merges colour and depth information. The fusion of both pieces of information is created taking into account a confidence measure about the depth information. The method proposed employs a multiple particle filter approach in which particle weights are modified by an interaction factor in order to avoid the ''coalescence'' problem. In addition, the method performs as a pure colour-based technique when no disparity information is available, and takes advantage of depth information to enhance tracking whenever it is possible. Our technique is compared with two pure colour-based tracking approaches (the particle filtering method proposed by Nummiaro et al. [Nummiaro, K., Koller-Meier, E., Van Gool, L., 2003. An adaptive color-based particle filter. Image and Vision Computing, 21, 99-110] and the Kalman/mean-shift tracker [Comaniciu, D., Ramesh, V. 2000. Mean shift and optimal prediction for efficient object tracking. In: IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP'00), vol. 3, pp. 70-73]) and a pure stereo-based approach derived from our problem formulation. The performance of the four algorithms is tested using several colour-with-depth sequences of images showing different coloured targets in complex situations. The results show that our proposal is able to track the targets in case of complex backgrounds and to properly determine the size of their projections in the camera image (while the other methods fail). Besides, the proposed method is fast enough for real-time applications and the use of 3D information helps to track several targets simultaneously without confusing their identities.
Study of the QoS of video traffic over integrated 3G-WLAN systems
Authors: Ilias Politis, Michail Tsagkaropoulos, Tasos Dagiuklas, Stavros Kotsopoulos
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Mobile multimedia communications (2006)

This paper studies the effects on the Quality of Service (QoS) of video across integrated 3G-WLAN networks. QoS has been qualitatively evaluated in terms of packet loss and perceived video quality (PSNR). The video traffic is simulated in this converged environment as a two dimensional Markov chain model. This model has been validated by comparing packet loss of the model with that obtained from real video data. In order to sustain QoS in 3G network, a forced handover policy mechanism is employed instructing video sources with highest bit rate to switch towards the WLAN networks. The simulation results that both packet loss within the converged network is reduced and loss occurrence affecting the perceived video quality is reduced.
Serious fun: peer-led team learning in CS
Authors: Steven Huss-Lederman, Donald Chinn, James Skrentny
Venue: Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (2008)

In this special session, participants will learn how to use Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) effectively in computer science courses. This technique has been successful in reducing drop rates and increasing satisfaction among students. Therefore, it holds promise as a way to boost sagging computer science enrollments in general, and to increase participation of under-represented groups in particular. The goal of the session is to give participants practical information and hands-on experience.