ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Objectives and technological approach to the development of the multifunctional MANUS upper limb prosthesis
Authors: J. L. Pons, R. Ceres, E. Rocon, D. Reynaerts, B. Saro, S. Levin, W. Van Moorleghem
Venue: Robotica (2005)

The design of multifunctional upper limb prosthetics has been investigated in recent years. In 1998, the MANUS consortium was set up on the basis of multidisciplinary skills of the partners in order to provide a global approach to the problem of upper limb prosthetics. In the framework of this approach, the consortium addressed the development of appropriate hand mechanics, the analysis and implementation of control electronics, the development of advanced control strategies and the implementation of broad band command interfaces based on EMG.As a result, the prototype of a multifunctional prosthesis was developed, integrated and clinically evaluated. This paper describes the objectives, technological approach and results of the MANUS prosthesis prototype.
Extracting grammar from programs: brute force approach
Authors: Matej Črepinšek, Marjan Mernik, Viljem Žumer
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (2005)

Extracting grammar from programs attracts researchers from several fields such as software engineering, pattern recognition, computational linguistic and natural language acquisition. So far, only regular grammar induction has been successful, while purposeful context-free grammar induction is still elusive. We discuss the search space of context-free grammar induction and propose the Brute Force approach to the problem which, along with its various enhancements, can be further used in collaboration with the Evolutionary approach, as described in the accompanying paper.
ReVirt: enabling intrusion analysis through virtual-machine logging and replay
Authors: George W. Dunlap, Samuel T. King, Sukru Cinar, Murtaza A. Basrai, Peter M. Chen
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th symposium on Operating systems design and implementationDue to copyright restrictions we are not able to make the PDFs for this conference available for downloading (2002)

Current system loggers have two problems: they depend on the integrity of the operating system being logged, and they do not save sufficient information to replay and analyze attacks that include any non-deterministic events. ReVirt removes the dependency on the target operating system by moving it into a virtual machine and logging below the virtual machine. This allows ReVirt to replay the system's execution before, during, and after an intruder compromises the system, even if the intruder replaces the target operating system. ReVirt logs enough information to replay a long-term execution of the virtual machine instruction-by-instruction. This enables it to provide arbitrarily detailed observations about what transpired on the system, even in the presence of non-deterministic attacks and executions. ReVirt adds reasonable time and space overhead. Overheads due to virtualization are imperceptible for interactive use and CPU-bound workloads, and 13--58% for kernel-intensive workloads. Logging adds 0--8% overhead, and logging traffic for our workloads can be stored on a single disk for several months.
Development of Usable and Accessible Web-Portals Using W3C Standards
Authors: Constantine A. Murenin, Mohammad H. N. Tabrizi
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing (ITCC'05) - Volume II - Volume 02 (2005)

In this paper, we are going to analyse a specific re-design of a system that offers course-listing services for university students and faculty members. The guidelines identified within this paper shall moreover be useful for any interactive web-site that involves user registrations and searching features within static fields of a database.
Web-crawling reliability
Authors: Viv Cothey
Venue: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (2004)

In this article, I investigate the reliability, in the social science sense, of collecting informetric data about the World Wide Web by Web crawling. The investigation includes a critical examination of the practice of Web crawling and contrasts the results of content crawling with the results of link crawling. It is shown that Web crawling by search engines is intentionally biased and selective. I also report the results of a large-scale experimental simulation of Web crawling that illustrates the effects of different crawling policies on data collection. It is concluded that the reliability of Web crawling as a data collection technique is improved by fuller reporting of relevant crawling policies.
New Results on the Mixed General Routing Problem
Authors: Angel Corberán, Gustavo Mejía, José M. Sanchis
Venue: Operations Research (2005)

In this paper, we deal with the polyhedral description and the resolution of the Mixed General Routing Problem. This problem, in which the service activity occurs both at some of the nodes and at some of the arcs and edges of a mixed graph, contains a large number of important arc and node routing problems as special cases. Here, a large family of facet-defining inequalities, the Honeycomb inequalities, is described. Furthermore, a cutting-plane algorithm for this problem that incorporates new separation procedures for the K-C, Regular Path-Bridge, and Honeycomb inequalities is presented. Branch and bound is invoked when the final solution of the cutting-plane procedure is fractional. Extensive computational experiments over different sets of instances are included.
Learning smooth objects by probing
Authors: Jean-Daniel Boissonnat, Leonidas J. Guibas, Steve Oudot
Venue: Proceedings of the twenty-first annual symposium on Computational geometry (2005)

We consider the problem of discovering a smooth unknown surface S bounding an object O in R3. The discovery process consists of moving a point probing device in the free space around O so that it repeatedly comes in contact with S. We propose a probing strategy for generating a sequence of surface samples on S from which a triangulated surface can be generated which approximates S within any desired accuracy. We bound the number of probes and the number of elementary moves of the probing device. Our solution is an extension of previous work on Delaunay refinement techniques for surface meshing. The approximating surface we generate enjoys the many nice properties of the meshes obtained by those techniques, e.g. exact topological type, normal approximation, etc.
An interactive braille-recognition system for the visually impaired based on a portable camera
Authors: Yoshiyuki Mihara, Akihiro Sugimoto, Etsuya Shibayama, Shin Takahashi
Venue: CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (2005)

We develop an interactive Braille-recognition system using a portable camera for visually impaired persons who cannot read Braille. Our system helps them to find and then push a desired button, as is necessary when using an elevator or a ticket vending machine, for example. It is natural to think that the information provided, in Braille, with specific buttons is sufficient for successful operation in using an elevator or a ticket vending machine. Most visually impaired persons, however, cannot read Braille. To push a desired button, the user needs to hear only the word or letter associated with the specific Braille character so that s/he can correctly relate the buttons to Braille characters. If the user is informed of all the Braille characters in front of her/him, s/he will be unable to relate the buttons to Braille characters. In our system, the user interactively specifies the location of a particular Braille character to be read by using hand gestures. The system recognizes the user's gestures and reads the desired Braille aloud. In our preliminary experiment, six blindfolded subjects were all able to interact with our system, and recognized the meaning of the buttons that s/he identified.
Learning How to Engage Students Online in Hard Times
Authors: Andrew Vandenberg
Venue: Education and Information Technologies (2005)

In a context of financial restraint and enterprising university managers, teacher-researchers have reason to be sceptical about the trend towards online teaching and away from learning for its own sake. This article departs from both economic and technological determinism and turns instead to ideas about technology embedded in social and political institutions. Activity theory offers a useful means of analysing such embeddedness. Its Marxian assumptions about human nature specify a non-deterministic approach to technology. Its dynamic model of the subjects, tools, and objects of activity within a context of rules, a community, and a division of labour helps to specify aspects of the author's process of learning how to use electronic conferencing effectively. A full deployment of activity theory would also analyse the activity of students. Here the evidence comes mainly from the activity of researcher-teachers engaging greater activity among students. The numbers of students involved precludes reliable quantitative analysis but qualitative evidence from students does support conclusions about researcher-teachers learning how to make best use of electronic conferencing.
Face as Mouse Through Visual Face Tracking
Authors: Jilin Tu, Thomas Huang, Hai Tao
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd Canadian conference on Computer and Robot Vision (2005)

This paper introduces a novel camera mouse driven by 3D model based visual face tracking technique. While camera becomes standard configuration for personal computer(PC) and computer speed becomes faster and faster, achieving human machine interaction through visual face tracking becomes a feasible solution to hand-free control. The human facial movement can be decomposed into rigid movement, e.g. rotation and translation, and non-rigid movement, such as the open/close of mouth, eyes, and facial expressions, etc. We introduce our visual face tracking system that can robustly and accurately retrieve these motion parameters from video at real-time. After calibration, the retrieved head orientation and translation can be employed to navigate the mouse cursor, and the detection of mouth movement can be utilized to trigger mouse events. 3 mouse control modes are investigated and compared. Experiments in Windows XP environment verifies the convenience of navigation and operations using our face mouse. This technique can be an alternative input device for people with hand and speech disability and for futuristic vision-based game and interface.
Comparison of various threshold modulation techniques used in pulse stuffing synchronizers
Authors: Saman S. Abeysekera
Venue: Signal Processing (2005)

It is shown that the technique of pulse stuffing in synchronizers and the method of data compression in sigma--delta modulators (Σ-Δ) are very similar in operation. In particular, it is identified that the conventional stuff threshold modulation and adaptive threshold modulation schemes used in digital communications are as same as the dithering and multi-loop architectures of sigma-delta modulators. Using the similarity between pulse stuffing synchronizers and Σ-Δ modulators, various alternative circuits that are suitable for jitter reduction in pulse stuffing synchronizers are proposed in the paper. The performances of these circuits, i.e. the use of multi-loop Σ-Δ modulators, higher-order Σ-Δ modulators, look ahead decision feedback (LADF) and multi-stage (MASH) Σ-Δ modulators are compared. It is shown that the performances of proposed alternative synchronizer circuits surpasses the performance of the conventional threshold modulation type jitter reduction techniques currently used in pulse stuffing synchronizers.
Itemset classified clustering
Authors: Jun Sese, Shinichi Morishita
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (2004)

Clustering results could be comprehensible and usable if individual groups are associated with characteristic descriptions. However, characterization of clusters followed by clustering may not always produce clusters associated with special features, because the first clustering process and the second classification step are done independently, demanding an elegant way that combines clustering and classification and executes both simultaneously.In this paper, we focus on itemsets as the feature for characterizing groups, and present a technique called itemset classified clustering, which divides data into groups given the restriction that only divisions expressed using a common itemset are allowed and computes the optimal itemset maximizing the interclass variance between the groups. Although this optimization problem is generally intractable, we develop techniques that effectively prune the search space and efficiently compute optimal solutions in practice. We remark that itemset classified clusters are likely to be overlooked by traditional clustering algorithms such as two-clustering or k-means, and demonstrate the scalability of our algorithm with respect to the amount of data by the application of our method to real biological datasets.
Making snapshot isolation serializable
Authors: Alan Fekete, Dimitrios Liarokapis, Elizabeth O'Neil, Patrick O'Neil, Dennis Shasha
Venue: ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) (2005)

Snapshot Isolation (SI) is a multiversion concurrency control algorithm, first described in Berenson et al. [1995]. SI is attractive because it provides an isolation level that avoids many of the common concurrency anomalies, and has been implemented by Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server (with certain minor variations). SI does not guarantee serializability in all cases, but the TPC-C benchmark application [TPC-C], for example, executes under SI without serialization anomalies. All major database system products are delivered with default nonserializable isolation levels, often ones that encounter serialization anomalies more commonly than SI, and we suspect that numerous isolation errors occur each day at many large sites because of this, leading to corrupt data sometimes noted in data warehouse applications. The classical justification for lower isolation levels is that applications can be run under such levels to improve efficiency when they can be shown not to result in serious errors, but little or no guidance has been offered to application programmers and DBAs by vendors as to how to avoid such errors. This article develops a theory that characterizes when nonserializable executions of applications can occur under SI. Near the end of the article, we apply this theory to demonstrate that the TPC-C benchmark application has no serialization anomalies under SI, and then discuss how this demonstration can be generalized to other applications. We also present a discussion on how to modify the program logic of applications that are nonserializable under SI so that serializability will be guaranteed.
Annotating 3D electronic books
Authors: Lichan Hong, Ed H. Chi, Stuart K. Card
Venue: CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (2005)

The importance of annotations, as a by-product of the reading activity, cannot be overstated. Annotations help users in the process of analyzing, re-reading, and recalling detailed facts such as prior analyses and relations to other works. As elec-tronic reading become pervasive, digital annotations will become part of the essential records of the reading activity. But creating and rendering annotations on a 3D book and other objects in a 3D workspace is non-trivial. In this paper, we present our exploration of how to use 3D graphics techniques to create realistic annotations with acceptable frame rates. We discuss the pros and cons of several techniques and detail our hybrid solution.
Adaptive sampling for geometric problems over data streams
Authors: John Hershberger, Subhash Suri
Venue: Proceedings of the twenty-third ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART symposium on Principles of database systems (2004)

Geometric coordinates are an integral part of many data streams. Examples include sensor locations in environmental monitoring, vehicle locations in traffic monitoring or battlefield simulations, scientific measurements of earth or atmospheric phenomena, etc. How can one summarize such data streams using limited storage so that many natural geometric queries can be answered faithfully? Some examples of such queries are: report the smallest convex region in which a chemical leak has been sensed, or track the diameter of the dataset. One can also pose queries over multiple streams: track the minimum distance between the convex hulls of two data streams; or report when datasets A and B are no longer linearly separable.In this paper, we propose an adaptive sampling scheme that gives provably optimal error bounds for extremal problems of this nature. All our results follow from a single technique for computing the approximate convex hull of a point stream in a single pass. Our main result is this: given a stream of two-dimensional points and an integer r, we can maintain an adaptive sample of at most 2r + 1 points such that the distance between the true convex hull and the convex hull of the sample points is O(D/r2), where D is the diameter of the sample set. With our sample convex hull, all the queries mentioned above can be answered in either O(log r) or O(r) time.
Constructing Jacobi matrices with prescribed ordered defective eigenpairs and a principal submatrix
Authors: Zhen-yun Peng, Xu-li Han
Venue: Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics (2005)

This paper considers the problem of constructing a Jacobi matrix from prescribed ordered defective eigenpairs and the leading principal submatrix. According to the relationship between the eigenvalue ordered and the number of variations in signs of the corresponding eigenvector, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the solvability of the problem are derived, and the numerical algorithm is developed. Numerical examples show that the algorithm is quite efficient.
Book review: Oracle Programmer's Guide by David Pepin (Que Corporation)
Venue: ACM SIGSMALL/PC Notes (1991)

These chapters are not accidental, they are very necessary for the user. Oracle for the PC is a direct clone of Oracle for the VAX, IBM mainframe or any other copy that they have. This system is designed to handle multiple users, from multiple terminals, all at the same time. It was designed with the intention that a professional data base administrator would run and manage it. Thus it is not for the faint hearted, or casual user. 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
Partition analysis and symmetrizing operators
Authors: Amy M. Fu, Alain Lascoux
Venue: Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A (2005)

Using a symmetrizing operator, we give a new expression for the Omega operator used by MacMahon in Partition Analysis, and given a new life by Andrews, Paule and Riese. Our result is stated in terms of Schur functions.
Hierarchical TS fuzzy system and its universal approximation
Authors: Puyin Liu, Hongxing Li
Venue: Information Sciences&mdash;Informatics and Computer Science: An International Journal (2005)

An efficient tool to deal with the 'rule explosion' problem is the hierarchical system by which a fuzzy system can be decomposed into a number of hierarchically connected low-dimensional systems. In this paper a generalized hierarehical Tagaki-Sugeno (TS) system is built. It is shown that the input-output (I/O) relationship of this generalized hierarehical system can be represented as one of a standard TS fuzzy system. And the system approximation capability is analyzed by taking piecewise linear functions as a bridge. By constructive method it is proven that the hierarchical fuzzy systems (HFS's) can be universal approximators. For the given approximation accuracy, an estimation formula about the number of the rules needed in the HFS is established. Finally some simulation examples confirm that the HFS's with smaller size rule base can approximate the given functions with high accuracy. The results obtained here provide us with the theoretical basis for various applications of HFS's.
User Transparent Parallel Processing of the 2004 NIST TRECVID Data Set
Authors: F. J. Seinstra, C. G. M. Snoek, D. Koelma, J. M. Geusebroek, M. Worring
Venue: Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'05) - Papers - Volume 01 (2005)

The Parallel-Horus framework, developed at the University of Amsterdam, is a unique software architecture that allows non-expert parallel programmers to develop fully sequential multimedia applications for efficient execution on homogeneous Beowulf-type commodity clusters. Previously obtained results for realistic, but relatively small-sized applications have shown the feasibility of the Parallel-Horus approach, with parallel performance consistently being found to be optimal with respect to the abstraction level of message passing programs. In this paper we discuss the most serious challenge Parallel-Horus has had to deal with so far: the processing of over 184 hours of video included in the 2004 NIST TRECVID evaluation, i.e. the de facto international standard benchmark for content-based video retrieval. Our results and experiences confirm that Parallel-Horus is a very powerful support-tool for state-of-the-art research and applications in multimedia processing.
Theory for Variational Area-Based Segmentation Using Non-Quadratic Penalty Functions
Authors: Adam Karlsson, Niels Chr. Overgaard
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05) - Volume 2 - Volume 02 (2005)

In this paper a theory is developed for variational segmentation of images using area-based segmentation functionals with non-quadratic penalty functions in the fidelity term. Two small theorems, which we believe are new to the vision community, allow us to compute the Gâteaux derivative of the considered functional, and to construct the corresponding gradient descent flow. The functional is minimized by evolving an initial curve using this gradient descent flow. If the penalty function is sub-quadratic, i.e. behaves like the pýth power of the error for p
Speech recognition in a noisy environment using a speech signal estimation method based on the Kalman filter
Authors: Masakiyo Fujimoto, Yasuo Ariki
Venue: Systems and Computers in Japan (2004)

This paper proposes a speech signal estimation method based on the Kalman filter, as preprocessing for speech recognition in a noisy environment. Hitherto, the Kalman filter has been considered unsuited to real-time processing, since it requires a tremendous amount of computation. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to reduce the amount of computation in the Kalman filter and to propose a speech signal estimation method for real-time processing, using high-speed operation. In order to evaluate the proposed method, a word recognition experiment was performed, using a speech signal extracted from speed with superposed noise. The accuracy of the word recognition tests is compared to the conventional spectral subtraction method and the parallel model combination method in order to demonstrate that the proposed method can deal automatically with various kinds of stationary noise without manual adjustment of the filter parameters for the conditions, such as the speaker, the kind of noise, and the SNR. For this purpose, the range of noise compensation by the proposed method is investigated. It is verified that the proposed method achieves a high word recognition rate, even in the presence of noise that degraded the recognition rate in the conventional method. In particular, the proposed method is effective in environments with a low SNR. &copy; 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 35(3): 46&ndash;57, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI 10.1002&sol;scj.10257