ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Writing competitive proposals for international exchange programs
Authors: T. R. Phillips
Venue: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 01 (1998)

One of the most critical moments in the life of an exchange program is the day when you submit the funding proposal. At that moment, your ambitions for the program must take the form of a credible and affordable action plan. This paper looks at common errors or omissions that can make a proposal less competitive, or create problems further downstream. The authors' observations are based upon experiences as a proposal reviewer, evaluator for four exchange programs and consultant to a consortium of European universities. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
Automated detection of surface defects on barked hardwood logs and stems using three-dimensional laser scanned data
Authors: Clifford A. Shaffer, Lamine M. Mili
Venue:  (2006)

This dissertation presents an automated detection algorithm that identifies severe external defects on the surfaces of barked hardwood logs and stems. The defects detected are at least 0.5 inch in height and at least 3 inches in diameter, which are severe, medium to large in size, and have external surface rises. Hundreds of real log defect samples were measured, photographed, and categorized to summarize the main defect features and to build a defect knowledge base. Three-dimensional laser-scanned range data capture the external log shapes and portray bark pattern, defective knobs, and depressions. The log data are extremely noisy, have missing data, and include severe outliers induced by loose bark that dangles from the log trunk. Because the circle model is nonlinear and presents both additive and non-additive errors, a new robust generalized M-estimator has been developed that is different from the ones proposed in the statistical literature for linear regression. Circle fitting is performed by standardizing the residuals via scale estimates calculated by means of projection statistics and incorporated in the Huber objective function to bound the influence of the outliers in the estimates. The projection statistics are based on 2-D radial-vector coordinates instead of the row vectors of the Jacobian matrix as proposed in the statistical literature dealing with linear regression. This approach proves effective in that it makes the GM-estimator to be influence bounded and thereby, robust against outliers. Severe defects are identified through the analysis of 3-D log data using decision rules obtained from analyzing the knowledge base. Contour curves are generated from radial distances, which are determined by robust 2-D circle fitting to the log-data cross sections. The algorithm detected 63 from a total of 68 severe defects. There were 10 non-defective regions falsely identified as defects. When these were calculated as areas, the algorithm locates 97.6% of the defect area, and falsely identifies 1.5% of the total clear area as defective.
Remote Class Loading for Mobile Devices
Authors: Laurentiu Lucian Petrea, Dan Grigoras
Venue: Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (2007)

The CLDC defines the base feature set of a Java Virtual Machine with limited application programming interfaces that aims to be deployed on the most restricted subset of hardware. This paper envisages the design of a platform that will allow remote class loading on mobile devices. Mobile networks are made up of mobile devices without underlying infrastructure, but their features make them intrinsically difficult to manage. Therefore a flexible mechanism is designed based on remote class loading. The proposed virtual machine, MODECO, allows remote class loading in contrast to the CLDC machine that has not such a feature. MODECO is evaluated in relation to the CLDC reference implementation. It is proved that the changes in the class loading mechanism have a small influence in the overall performance of the virtual machine.
Sawmill: a high-bandwidth logging file system
Authors: Ken Shirriff, John Ousterhout
Venue: Proceedings of the USENIX Summer 1994 Technical Conference on USENIX Summer 1994 Technical Conference - Volume 1 (1994)

This paper describes the implementation of Sawmill, a network file system using the RAID-II storage system. Sawmill takes advantage of the direct data path in RAID-II between the disks and the network, which bypasses the file server CPU. The key ideas in the implementation of Sawmill are combining logging (LFS) with RAID to obtain fast small writes, using new log layout techniques to improve bandwidth, and pipelining through the controller memory to reduce latency. The file system can currently read data at 21 MB/s and write data at 15 MB/s, close to the raw disk array bandwidth, while running on a relatively slow Sun-4. Performance measurements show that LFS improved performance of a stream of small writes by over a order of magnitude compared to writing directly to the RAID, and this improvement would be even larger with a faster CPU. Sawmill demonstrates that by using a storage system with a direct data path, a file system can provide data at bandwidths much higher than the file server itself could handle. However, processor speed is still an important factor, especially when handling many small requests in parallel.
Practical Binary Adaptive Block Coder
Authors: Yuriy A. Reznik
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 Data Compression Conference (2007)

We design a low-complexity algorithm for adaptive encoding/decoding of binary sequences produced by memoryless sources.
Mainstreaming an innovative 31-credit curriculum for first-year engineering majors
Authors: N. A. Pendergrass
Venue: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 02 (2000)

In September of 1998, the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth piloted an innovative, integrated, first-year curriculum that dramatically changed 31 credits across two semesters. Preliminary assessment data was very encouraging after the first semester of operation and the team started an effort to adopt it. A storm of intense resistance and controversy erupted, however, catching nearly everyone by surprise. Argument, rational and seemingly irrational, threatened to eclipse the benefits of the new program and could have easily led to its termination. In retrospect the nature of the controversy and opposition was predictable. With earlier understanding of responses, adoption would still have been resisted and people would have disagreed but the team would have been better able to respond productively. This paper will present the story of the adoption of the IMPULSE program so that others can learn from our experiences. It will focus on the process that led to rapid adoption of the new curriculum and will point out important steps and pitfalls. The paper will include discussion of the important, and predictable, human reactions that were seen. We could not make progress until these were appreciated. Human reactions had to be understood and worked with. We hope that our experiences will encourage and help others to become more aware of the human factors that often dominate change processes.
The Effects of Bounding Syntactic Resources on Presburger LTL
Authors: Stephane Demri, Regis Gascon
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (2007)

We study decidability and complexity issues for fragments of LTL with Presburger constraints by restricting the syntactic resources of the formulae (the class of constraints, the number of variables and the distance between two states for which counters can be compared) while preserving the strength of the logical operators. We provide a complete picture refining known results from the literature, in some cases pushing forward the known decidability limits. By way of example, we show that model-checking formulae from LTL with quantifier-free Presburger arithmetic over one-counter automata is only PSPACE-complete. In order to establish the PSPACE upper bound, we show that the nonemptiness problem for Buchi one-counter automata taking values in \mathbb{Z} and allowing zero tests and sign tests, is only NLOGSPACE-complete.
Nonlinear channel identification and performance analysis
Authors: N. Petrochilos
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2000. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 01 (2000)

Unlike the Schetzen method, this identification method proposed can process inputs with discrete distribution, accepts kernels of any length, tolerates signal-independent zero-mean additive noise irrespective of its color and distribution, and leads to a closed form solution. Identifiability is proved under assumptions on input moments; more accurate conditions are derived for particular discrete inputs (in particular in the complex plane, distributions symmetric about both axes). Several simulations demonstrate its efficiency and its speed for various discrete input distributions.
Women in computing: how does experience influence self-perception of computing careers?
Authors: Reena Pau, Wendy Hall, Su White
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (2007)

A preliminary survey of 680 UK school pupils was conducted in order to get an understanding of how experiences of computing out of school and at school influence the perception of computing careers and future career plans in computing. The study found that pupils perceive themselves in IT careers. This poster will demonstrate how these experiences influence future career choice.
Difference function based symbol timing recovery for OFDM systems
Authors: Chia-Horng Liu
Venue: Proceedings of the The 8th International Conference on Communication Systems - Volume 01 (2002)

A difference function based symbol timing recovery algorithm for OFDM systems in presented . The algorithm is derived according to maximum likelihood (ML) algorithm utilizing cyclic prefix (CP), which is appended in front of each OFDM symbol. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is better than conventional ML algorithm in an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Furthermore, the implementation complexity is lower than that of the ML algorithm. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
The strategy designed to improve the teaching materials in YZIT
Authors: Y. J. Huang
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference, on 1995. Proceedings., 1995 - Volume 02 (1995)

Summary form only given, as follows. To improve the quality of teaching is one of the major concerns among engineering colleges nationwide. Yuan-Ze Institute of Technology (YZIT) is a school with characteristic of a highly experimental specialty. The Office of Academic Affairs founded the "Teaching Resources Section" to work out the plans for promoting teaching quality. The term "teaching quality" is applied to the whole school and to each individual teacher Members from every department and the administrative offices in the school were invited to constitute the "Teaching-Resources Projecting Committee" (TRPC). TRS and TRPC have inquired into the possibilities and efficiency of every program, and have solved every difficult problem. The fundamental concept and practical methods used to help teachers improve their reaching materials are presented It involves the establishment of a system, management of financial aid, and administrative support. Unlike other schools, improving teaching materials is one of the primary policies in YZIT: The system has been applied to the school for two years. The result is demonstrated. The difficulties encountered are mainly: (1) the use of funds is not flexible, and (2) the existing uniform format of reports restricts the diversity of achievement of various projects. Through two years' experiment, it is believed that managing the financial aid for the amendment of teaching materials by TRS can indeed improve the teaching quality of teachers individually. It is hoped that the plan is brought into the Outstanding Teaching Award system to encourage more teachers to participate in the program. The result is satisfactory to the local need. It is believed that the course content plus the teaching techniques uses would be of great help to a successful teaching. The experimental experience has been delightful to YZIT and such a program may be a valuable reference for other engineering schools. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
Distance-from-boundary as a metric for texture image retrieval
Authors: Guodong Guo
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2001. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 03 (2001)

A new metric is proposed for texture image retrieval, which is based on the signed distance of the images in the database to a boundary chosen by the query. This novel metric has three advantages: (1) the boundary distance measures are relatively insensitive to the sample distributions; (2) the same retrieval results can be obtained with respect to different (but visually similar) queries; (3) retrieval performance can be improved. The boundaries are obtained by using a statistical learning algorithm called support vector machine (SVM), and hence the boundaries can be simply represented by some vectors and their combination coefficients. Experimental results on the Brodatz texture database indicate that a significantly better retrieval performance can be achieved as compared to the traditional Euclidean distance-based approach. This technique can be further developed to learn pattern similarities among different texture classes and used in relevance feedback.
Safe Tcl: a toolbox for constructing electronic meeting places
Authors: Jacob Y. Levy, John K. Ousterhout
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st conference on USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce - Volume 1 (1995)

Electronic commerce needs electronic meeting places to conduct business. To be useful, such meeting places must be safe for all participants and for hosts (owners of places). In this paper we discuss safety issues for participants and hosts. We then describe a system we are building, Safe Tcl, that will allow the construction of electronic meeting places with a range of safety properties. Safe Tcl has two attractive properties. First, it uses a simple security model based on "padded cells" that allows participants to coexist and interact safely. Second, Tcl makes it easy to integrate the numerous facilities required in an electronic meeting place such as integrity verification and authentication.
Interactive Collision Detection for Deformable Models Using Streaming AABBs
Authors: Xinyu Zhang, Young J. Kim
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2007)

We present an interactive and accurate collision detection algorithm for deformable, polygonal objects based on the streaming computational model. Our algorithm can detect all possible pairwise primitive-level intersections between two severely deforming models at highly interactive rates. In our streaming computational model, we consider a set of axis aligned bounding boxes (AABBs) that bound each of the given deformable objects as an input stream and perform massively-parallel pairwise, overlapping tests onto the incoming streams. As a result, we are able to prevent performance stalls in the streaming pipeline that can be caused by expensive indexing mechanism required by bounding volume hierarchy-based streaming algorithms. At runtime, as the underlying models deform over time, we employ a novel, streaming algorithm to update the geometric changes in the AABB streams. Moreover, in order to get only the computed result (i.e., collision results between AABBs) without reading back the entire output streams, we propose a streaming en/decoding strategy that can be performed in a hierarchical fashion. After determining overlapped AABBs, we perform a primitive-level (e.g., triangle) intersection checking on a serial computational model such as CPUs. We implemented the entire pipeline of our algorithm using off-the-shelf graphics processors (GPUs), such as nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX, for streaming computations, and Intel Dual Core 3.4G processors for serial computations. We benchmarked our algorithm with different models of varying complexities, ranging from 15K up to 50K triangles, under various deformation motions, and the timings were obtained as 30\sim 100 FPS depending on the complexity of models and their relative configurations. Finally, we made comparisons with a well-known GPU-based collision detection algorithm, CULLIDE [CHECK END OF SENTENCE] and observed about three times performance improvement over the earlier approach. We also made comparisons with a SW-based AABB culling algorithm [CHECK END OF SENTENCE] and observed about two times improvement.
Time series prediction with recurrent neural networks trained by a hybrid PSO-EA algorithm
Authors: Xindi Cai, Nian Zhang, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, Donald C. Wunsch,  II
Venue: Neurocomputing (2007)

To predict the 100 missing values from a time series of 5000 data points, given for the IJCNN 2004 time series prediction competition, recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are trained with a new learning algorithm. This training algorithm is based on a hybrid of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and evolutionary algorithm (EA). By combining the searching abilities of these two global optimization methods, the evolution of individuals is no longer restricted to be in the same generation, and better performing individuals may produce offspring to replace those with poor performance. Experimental results show that RNNs, trained by the hybrid algorithm, are able to predict the missing values in the time series with minimum error, in comparison with those trained with standard EA and PSO algorithms.
Direct joint source localization and propagation speed estimation
Authors: C. W. Reed
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1999. on 1999 IEEE International Conference - Volume 03 (1999)

This paper describes two new techniques for the joint estimation of source location and propagation speed using measured time difference of arrival (TDOA) for a sensor array. Previous methods for source location either assumed the array consisted of widely separated subarrays, or used an iterative procedure that required a good initial estimate. The first method directly estimates the source location and propagation speed by converting the solution of a system of nonlinear equations to an overdetermined system of linear equations with two supplemental variables. The second method provides improved estimates by using the solution of the first method as the initial condition for further iteration. The Cramer-Rao Bound (CRB) on the joint estimation is derived, and simulations show the new methods compare favorably to the bound.
Calibrating power supply signal measurements for process and probe card variations
Authors: D. Acharyya, J. Plusquellic
Venue: Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Workshop on Defect Based Testing (2004)

The power supply transient signal (I/sub DDT/) methods that we propose for defect detection and localization analyze regional signal variations introduced by defects at a set of the power supply ports on the chip under test (CUT). A significant detractor to the successful application of such methods is dealing with the signal variations introduced by process and probe card parameter variations. In this paper, we describe several calibration techniques designed to reduce the impact of these types of "non-defect" related chip and testing environment variations on the defect detection sensitivity of I/sub DDT/ testing methods. More specifically, calibration methods are proposed that calibrate for signal variations introduced by performance differences and by changes in the probe card RLC parameters. The calibration methodology is demonstrated through SPICE simulations and in hardware.
Swathbuckler: Real-Time Wide Swath Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Formation Using Embedded HPC
Authors: Richard W. Linderman, Joshua Corner, Scot Tucker
Venue: Proceedings of the HPCMP Users Group Conference (2006)

This high performance computing (HPC) system processed real-time X-band radar returns into continuous strip-map, high-resolution (\le 1m), wide-swath (37 km) imagery on-board a Convair 580 aircraft. The HPC system cost under 100K. The synthetic aperture radar SAR) image formation algorithm was optimized to achieve real-time processing 9000 times faster than the original algorithm specification. An information management system allowed real-time off-board exploitation of the on-board multi-terabyte database. Real-time SAR image formation was demonstrated on five flight tests. The completed flights provided 7.3 terabytes of raw and processed imagery.
Fundamental Mobility Properties for Realistic Performance Analysis of Intermittently Connected Mobile Networks
Authors: Apoorva Jindal, Konstantinos Psounis
Venue: Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (2007)

Traditional mobile ad hoc routing protocols fail to deliver any data in Intermittently Connected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (ICMN's) because of the absence of complete end-to-end paths in these networks. To overcome this issue, researchers have proposed to use node mobility to carry data around the network. These schemes are referred to as mobility-assisted routing schemes. A mobility-assisted routing scheme forwards data only when appropriate relays meet each other. The time it takes for them to first meet each other is referred to as the meeting time. The time duration they remain in contact with each other is called the contact time. If they fail to exchange the packet during the contact time (due to contention in the network), then they have to wait till they meet each other again. This time duration is referred to as the inter meeting time. A realistic performance analysis of any mobility-assisted routing scheme requires a knowledge of the statistics of these three quantities. These quantities vary largely depending on the mobility model at hand. This paper studies these three quantities for the three most popularly used mobility models: random direction, random waypoint and random walk models. Hence, this work allows for a realistic performance analysis of any routing scheme under any of these three mobility models.
Carnegie Mellon's entertainment technology center: combining the left and right brain
Authors: Randy Pausch, Don Marinelli
Venue: Communications of the ACM (2007)

This professional master's degree program puts artists and technologists together on interdisciplinary teams to create interactive experiences.