ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Enhancing server availability and security through failure-oblivious computing
Authors: Martin Rinard, Cristian Cadar, Daniel Dumitran, Daniel M. Roy, Tudor Leu, William S. Beebee,  Jr.
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Symposium on Opearting Systems Design & Implementation - Volume 6 (2004)

We present a new technique, failure-oblivious computing, that enables servers to execute through memory errors without memory corruption. Our safe compiler for C inserts checks that dynamically detect invalid memory accesses. Instead of terminating or throwing an exception, the generated code simply discards invalid writes and manufactures values to return for invalid reads, enabling the server to continue its normal execution path. We have applied failure-oblivious computing to a set of widely-used servers from the Linux-based open-source computing environment. Our results show that our techniques 1) make these servers invulnerable to known security attacks that exploit memory errors, and 2) enable the servers to continue to operate successfully to service legitimate requests and satisfy the needs of their users even after attacks trigger their memory errors. We observed several reasons for this successful continued execution. When the memory errors occur in irrelevant computations, failure-oblivious computing enables the server to execute through the memory errors to continue on to execute the relevant computation. Even when the memory errors occur in relevant computations, failure-oblivious computing converts requests that trigger unanticipated and dangerous execution paths into anticipated invalid inputs, which the error-handling logic in the server rejects. Because servers tend to have small error propagation distances (localized errors in the computation for one request tend to have little or no effect on the computations for subsequent requests), redirecting reads that would otherwise cause addressing errors and discarding writes that would otherwise corrupt critical data structures (such as the call stack) localizes the effect of the memory errors, prevents addressing exceptions from terminating the computation, and enables the server to continue on to successfully process subsequent requests. The overall result is a substantial extension of the range of requests that the server can successfully process.
Architecting a Dimensional Document Warehouse
Authors: Gregory Schymik, Karen Corral, David Schuff, Robert St. Louis
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

This paper examines how the concepts of dimensional data warehouses can be applied to document retrieval and storage. It then shows how the specifics of dimensional document warehouses differ from dimensional data warehouse and how these differences make it impractical to use existing engines for building and analyzing data cubes (such as SQL Server's Analysis Manager) in order to build and analyze a document warehouse. The paper further shows that readily available software can be used to build an engine to analyze a dimensional document mart. All of the steps required to design, build, and analyze a dimensional document mart are described and illustrated. Design features are suggested for improving the recall and precision of searches from dimensional document marts.
A digital preservation network appliance based on OpenBSD
Authors: David S. H. Rosenthal
Venue: Proceedings of the BSD Conference 2003 on BSD Conference (2003)

The LOCKSS program has developed and deployed in a world-wide test a system for preserving access to academic journals published on the Web. The fundamental problem for any digital preservation system is that it must be affordable for the long term. To reduce the cost of ownership, the LOCKSS system uses generic PC hardware, open source software, and peer-to-peer technology. It is packaged as a "network appliance", a single-function box that can be connected to the Internet, configured and left alone to do its job with minimal monitoring or administration. The first version of this system was based on a Linux boot floppy. After three years of testing it was replaced by a second version, based on OpenBSD and booting from CD-ROM. We focus in this paper on the design, implementation and deployment of a network appliance based on an open source operating system. We provide an overview of the LOCKSS application and describe the experience of deploying and supporting its first version. We list the requirements we took from this to drive the design of the second version, describe how we satisfied them in the OpenBSD environment, and report on the initial deployment of this second version of the appliance.
Interdependent Risk in Interacting Infrastructure Systems
Authors: B. A. Carreras, D. E. Newman, Paul Gradney, V. E. Lynch, I. Dobson
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

Critical infrastructures display many of the characteristic properties of complex systems. They exhibit infrequent large failures events that often obey a power law distribution in their probability versus size. This power law behavior suggests that conventional risk analysis does not apply to these systems. It is thought that some of this behavior comes from different parts of the systems interacting with each other both in space and time. While these complex infrastructure systems can exhibit these characteristics on their own, in reality these individual infrastructure systems interact with each other in even more complicated ways. This interaction can lead to increased or decreased risk of failure in the individual systems. To investigate this, we couple two complex system models and investigate the effect of the coupling on the characteristic properties of the systems such as the probability distribution of events.
Swarms and Swarm Intelligence
Authors: Michael G. Hinchey, Roy Sterritt, Chris Rouff
Venue: Computer (2007)

Intelligent swarm technologies solve complex problems that traditional approaches cannot.
Rank Order Filtering on an Array with Faulty Processors
Authors: Jose Salinas, Fabrizio Lombardi
Venue: Proceedings of the 1994 International Conference on Parallel Processing - Volume 01 (1994)

This paper presents a new approach for rank order filtering on a MasPar array architecture in the presence of faulty processors. This approach is based on offseting the loss of one or more faulty processors (due to either faults, or defects in the manufacturing process) using the available computational capacity of the neighbor fault-free processors. A parallel algorithm which is applicable to this fault-tolerant procedure, is proposed with a time complexity ofO(N), where N is the dimension of the array.
The effects of a computerized-algebra program on mathematics achievement of college and university freshmen enrolled in a developmental mathematics course
Authors: Robert M. Capraro
Venue:  (2006)

We face a world in which a college degree increasingly dictates the likelihood of life success. At the same time, there has been an ever-increasing population of students who have not been prepared adequately through their high school education to meet the rigors of college/university-level content. This problem can be seen in the number of students needing Intermediate Algebra. Students who complete remedial courses with a grade of C or better are more likely to pass their first college-level mathematics course and continue their education until they have completed all coursework needed for a degree. Students entering colleges and universities underprepared for collegiate mathematics, reading, and writing have reached epidemic proportions, with 30% of the students needing remediation in one of these areas. A portion of this problem has been identified as mathematics anxiety. Because students have habituated mathematics failure, they are aware of their deficiencies, but still desire a college education. They bring with them years of negative emotions from repeated mathematics failures. These years of negative feelings about mathematics precipitated by repeated failures are often manifested as mathematics anxiety that must be addressed in order to improve students' content knowledge. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of a web-based technology centric course, Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS), on the remediation of college freshmen enrolled in an Intermediate Algebra class as compared to college freshmen enrolled in an Intermediate Algebra class taught using a traditional lecture method. Mathematics anxiety and attitude toward mathematics will also be investigated to determine if ALEKS can lower the anxiety associated with mathematics, as well as improve attitudes. An algebra test, mathematics anxiety rating scale, and mathematics attitude test was given to both groups of students at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester. The overall findings of this research suggested that ALEKS Intermediate Algebra students performed as well as the Control group taking a class in Intermediate Algebra taught by lecture. The anxiety of the Experimental group decreased more than the Control group, and the Experimental group's attitude toward mathematics increased at a greater rate than did the Control group.
Euler characteristics and chromatic polynomials
Authors: Michael Eastwood, Stephen Huggett
Venue: European Journal of Combinatorics (2007)

Given a graph we show how to construct a family of manifolds whose Euler characteristics are the values of the chromatic polynomial of the graph at various integers. The manifolds are simple generalizations of configuration spaces.
How Do Investments in Enterprise Application Integration Drive Stock Prices?
Authors: Narcyz Roztocki, Heinz Roland Weistroffer
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

Enterprise application integration (EAI) technologies are critical to making diverse corporate computer systems work together properly, and as such should be expected to have a positive effect on business value. The event study presented and discussed in this paper seeks to ascertain the relevance of EAI to achieving tangible benefits from the investors' perspective by examining 81 corporate announcements of EAI implementations. The analysis of our data however suggests that EAI investments are not always greeted as good news by investors and do not generally result in positive stock price reactions. Furthermore, the data suggests negative market reaction to financially distressed companies investing in EAI. Particularly in a bear market, investors seem to view an investment in EAI more as a burden than as an asset.
Bayesian image restoration using a wavelet-based subband decomposition
Authors: R. Molina
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1999. on 1999 IEEE International Conference - Volume 06 (1999)

The subband decomposition of a single channel image restoration problem is examined. The decomposition is carried out in the image model (prior model) in order to take into account the frequency activity of each band of the original image. The hyperparameters associated with each band together with the original image are rigorously estimated within the Bayesian framework. Finally, the proposed method is tested and compared with other methods on real images.
Transformation: from teacher-centered to student-centered engineering education
Authors: G. D. Catalano
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference,1997. on 27th Annual Conference. Teaching and Learning in an Era of Change. - Volume 01 (1997)

A student-centered approach to engineering education is presented. Roles for the instructor/professor wishing to employ the student-centered model are identified and examples are given. Case studies from a Research 1 institution and a federal service academy are provided.
A simple, non-invasive probe for reconstructing signals inside a DSP
Authors: E. A. Suominen
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1999. on 1999 IEEE International Conference - Volume 04 (1999)

A simple, non-invasive probe is proposed that extracts digital samples of a signal of interest from a DSP and reconstructs the samples into an equivalent analog signal. The probe is useful for software design and debugging as well as troubleshooting and verification of DSP systems in the field. A sample buffering system ensures that the digital samples are reconstructed into analog samples at substantially constant intervals, even if the DSP generates the digital samples at varying intervals. The buffering system uses a control loop to generate the analog samples at a sample rate that is equivalent to the mean sample rate of the digital samples. Consequently, the reconstructed analog signal accurately represents the digital signal found within the DSP. This signal may then be sent to conventional test equipment suited for analysis of analog signals. 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
Evaluating Learning Algorithms Composed by a Constructive Meta-Learning Scheme for a Rule Evaluation Support Method
Authors: Hidenao Abe, Shusaku Tsumoto, Miho Ohsaki, Takahira Yamaguchi
Venue: Proceedings of the Sixth IEEE International Conference on Data Mining - Workshops (2006)

In this paper, we present an evaluation of learning algorithms of a novel rule evaluation support method for postprocessing of mined results with rule evaluation models based on objective indices. Post-processing of mined results is one of the key processes in a data mining process. However, it is difficult for human experts to completely evaluate several thousands of rules from a large dataset with noises. To reduce the costs in such rule evaluation task, we have developed the rule evaluation support method with rule evaluation models, which learn from objective indices for mined classification rules and evaluations by a human expert for each rule. To enhance adaptability of rule evaluation models, we introduced a constructive meta-learning system to choose proper learning algorithms. Then, we have done the case study on the meningitis data mining as an actual problem.
Generic scheduling methods for a linear QR array SoC processor
Authors: Zhaohui Liu
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 200. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 02 (2001)

A scheduling method for implementing a generic linear QR array processor architecture is presented. This improves on previous work. It also considerably simplifies the derivation of schedules for a folded linear system, where detailed account has to be taken of processor cell latency. The architecture and scheduling derived provide the basis of a generator for the rapid design of System-on-a-Chip (SoC) cores for QR decomposition.
Student self-assessment in upper level engineering courses
Authors: D. T. Rover
Venue: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 03 (1998)

Faculty cannot ensure that educational program objectives and course learning objectives are being met unless both students and faculty become involved in the process of assessment and evaluation. In two senior-level courses, the authors are addressing these issues through course learning models that directly involve students via reflection, discussion, empowerment and ownership in the course. The relevance of the learning model to real-life, industrial experiences is underscored as well. Their approach includes a student journal, an engineering workbook, a self-assessment report and a student management team, as well as periodic surveys throughout the semester. These various instruments form a set of self-assessment tools that provide documentation related to the following issues: do students have the correct background and preparation for the course?; do students understand the course learning objectives?; are students fulfilling these learning objectives?; are there ways to improve the course during the current semester?; and are there ways to improve the course in future semesters? This paper describes the processes used to develop and administer these student self-assessment instruments. It presents some results of this assessment process and it demonstrates how this assessment process is being used to improve these courses, as well as the electrical and computer engineering academic programs.
Real and virtual workshops in mathematics [engineering education]
Authors: G. E. Leon de la Barra
Venue: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 01 (1998)

It is well known that many engineering students, mainly freshmen have a lack of teamwork and effective communication skills. It is also apparent that the amazing development of multimedia computer software and communication technologies have made more evident those weaknesses and, at the same time, have shown that many freshman students need to be trained, in order to use more efficiently the computational technology. In order to overcome these weaknesses, the authors have designed a long-term program in mathematics organized in stages and oriented to freshman engineering and architecture students. In the first stage, they ran two workshops incorporated to the regular first year maths course of engineering and architecture and developed in the classroom. In both workshops, they used cooperative learning techniques and divergent thinking methods. They also have developed a new assessment scheme to evaluate the students' performance. In the second stage they have offered a special course in mathematics for freshman architecture students that combines a traditional lecture format with "hands on" student's activities, i.e., by using multimedia resources and Internet tools as instructional media.
Screening Mobile Devices to Examine Network Health
Authors: Grant A. Jacoby, J. Scot Ransbottom, Thadeus Hickman, Maxwell Potasznik
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

Screening mobile devices for changes to their local registries is a key vital sign that can provide comprehensive health examinations for the benefit of an enterprise network. Our research reveals that the registry can be modified with very little difficulty to include "protected" entries within the WinCE registry. Our testing demonstrated that in many commercial computing systems the default configuration permits all access in order to facilitate ease of use, thus exposing this perilous vulnerability. Critical changes to the registry from attacks or direct manipulation are detected by our work, providing increased protection and response time. Vital signs taken from the registry, along with other device data, is periodically reported back to a monitor using a registry short-list, delta-set update via agents we designed for effective reporting (ER) for further diagnosis of the health threat these changes pose to the mobile device(s) and, in the aggregate, the network.
Multi-server retrial queue with negative customers and disasters
Authors: Yang Woo Shin
Venue: Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications (2007)

We consider a multi-server retrial queue with waiting places in service area and four types of arrivals, positive customers, disasters and two types of negative customers, one for deleting customers in orbit and the other for deleting customers in service area. The four types of arrivals occur according to a Markovian arrival process with marked transitions (MMAP) which may induce the dependence among the arrival processes of the four types. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the system to be positive recurrent by comparing sample paths of auxiliary systems whose stability conditions can be obtained. We use a generalized truncated system that is obtained by modifying the retrial rates for an approximation of stationary queue length distribution and show the convergence of approximation to the original model. An algorithmic solution for the stationary queue length distribution and some numerical results are presented.
Capabilities Engineering: Constructing Change-Tolerant Systems
Authors: Ramya Ravichandar, James D. Arthur, Shawn A. Bohner
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

We propose a Capabilities-based approach for building long-lived, complex systems that have lengthy development cycles. User needs and technology evolve during these extended development periods, and thereby, inhibit a fixed requirements-oriented solution specification. In effect, for complex emergent systems, the traditional approach of baselining requirements results in an unsatisfactory system. Therefore, we present an alternative approach, Capabilities Engineering, which mathematically exploits the structural semantics of the Function Decomposition graph -- a representation of user needs -- to formulate Capabilities. For any given software system, the set of derived Capabilities embodies change-tolerant characteristics. More specifically, each individual Capability is a functional abstraction constructed to be highly cohesive and to be minimally coupled with its neighbors. Moreover, the Capability set is chosen to accommodate an incremental development approach, and to reflect the constraints of technology feasibility and implementation schedules. We discuss our validation activities to empirically prove that the Capabilities-based approach results in change-tolerant systems.
Joint source-channel decoding for variable-length encoded data by exact and approximate MAP sequence estimation
Authors: M. Park
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1999. on 1999 IEEE International Conference - Volume 05 (1999)

Joint source-channel decoding based on residual source redundancy is an effective paradigm for error-resilient data compression. While previous work only considered fixed rate systems, the extension of these techniques for variable-length encoded data was previously independently proposed by the authors, Park and Miller (see Proc. of Conf. on Info. Sciences and Systems, Princeton, N.J., 1998) and by Demir and Sayood (see Proc. of the Data Compression Conf., Snowbird, U.T., p.139-48, 1998). In this paper, we describe and compare the performance of a computationally complex exact maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoder, its efficient approximation, an alternative approximate MAP decoder, and an improved version of this decoder suggested here. Moreover, we evaluate several source and channel coding configurations. Our results show that the approximate MAP technique from Park et al. outperforms other approximate methods and provides substantial error protection to variable-length encoded data.
Resolution limits of blind multi-user multi-channel identification schemes-the bandlimited case
Authors: A.-J. van der Veen
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1996. on Conference Proceedings., 1996 IEEE International Conference - Volume 05 (1996)

Blind space-time equalization and separation of multi-user digital communication signals presumes that the number of antennas M and the oversampling rate P is sufficiently large to be able to detect the number of sources and all channel lengths, and that the channel matrix is sufficiently well conditioned to allow inversion. A singular value analysis of the channel matrix for bandwidth limited signals provides necessary conditions for sufficient resolution, and guidelines for the selection of suitable M, P and equalizer lengths in relation to the bandwidth.