ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Complexity theory and collaboration: An agent-based simulator for a space mission design team
Authors: Narjès Bellamine-Ben Saoud, Gloria Mark
Venue: Computational Mathematical Organization Theory (2007)

In this paper, we investigate how complexity theory can benefit collaboration by applying an agent-based computer simulation approach to a new form of synchronous real-time collaborative engineering design. Fieldwork was conducted with a space mission design team during their actual design sessions, to collect data on their group conversations, team interdependencies, and error monitoring and recovery practices. Based on the fieldwork analysis, an agent-based simulator was constructed. The simulation shows how error recovery and monitoring is affected by the number of small group, or sidebar, conversations, and consequent noise in the room environment. This simulation shows that it is possible to create a virtual environment with cooperating agents interacting in a dynamic environment. This simulation approach is useful for identifying the best scenarios and eliminating potential catastrophic combinations of parameters and values, where error recovery and workload in collaborative engineering design could be significantly impacted. This approach is also useful for defining strategies for integrating solutions into organizations.
Distinctive features of structural programming of synchronous sorting algorithms
Authors: V. P. Kozhemiako, T. B. Martyniuk, V. V. Khomyuk
Venue: Cybernetics and Systems Analysis (2006)

Parallel (synchronous) algorithms of sorting arrays are considered. A modified synchronous sorting algorithm based on the pairwise exchange method is proposed and simulated.
Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide
Authors: Steve Schwartz
Venue:  (2007)

Completely redesigned to help users finish tasks more quickly and manage information more effectively, Microsoft Office 2007 will offer users a new look and smarter ways of getting things done. From the expanded depth and power of Excel 2007 to the new graphics capabilities and formatting tools of PowerPoint, Microsoft has rethought and reworked the entire suite. And in this new edition of our Office Visual QuickStart Guide, author Steve Schwartz has rewritten from the ground up the entire book to better aid readers as they get up to speed with the new Office tools. The book is essential reference tool for the home and small business user, covering everything in the Office Basic, Home & Student, Standard, and Small Business suites. Software covered includes: Word, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Publisher. Easy visual approach uses pictures to guide you through Microsoft Office and show you what to do. Concise steps and explanations let you get up and running in no time. Page for page, the best content and value around. Table of Contents: Part I:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Introducing Microsoft Office 2007 Chapter 1:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ What's New in Office 2007? Chapter 2:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Office Basics Part II:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Microsoft Word Chapter 3:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Getting Started with Word 2007 Chapter 4:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Formatting Documents Chapter 5:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Creating Outlines Chapter 6:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Tables, Charts, and Art Chapter 7:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Sharing Word Documents Part III:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Microsoft Excel Chapter 8:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Getting Started with Excel 2007 Chapter 9:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Formatting Worksheets and Data Chapter 10:ï¾ ï¾ Formulas and Functions Chapter 11:ï¾ ï¾ Working with Tables Chapter 12:ï¾ ï¾ Creating Charts Part IV:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Microsoft PowerPoint Chapter 13:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Getting Started with PowerPoint 2007 Chapter 14:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Creating a Presentation Chapter 15:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Completing a Presentation Part V:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Microsoft Outlook Chapter 16:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Getting Started with Outlook 2007 Chapter 17:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Using the Address Book Chapter 18:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Composing and Sending Mail Chapter 19:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Receiving Mail Chapter 20:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Managing the Mail Chapter 21:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Tasks and Appointments Part VI:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Microsoft OneNote Chapter 22:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Getting Started with OneNote 2007 Chapter 23:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Creating Notes Chapter 24:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Embellishing and Editing Notes Chapter 25:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Managing Notes Part VII:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Microsoft Publisher Chapter 26:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Getting Started with Publisher 2007 Chapter 27:ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Distributing and Printing Index
A game-theoretic study of CSMA/CA under a backoff attack
Authors: Jerzy Konorski
Venue: IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON) (2006)

CSMA/CA, the contention mechanism of the IEEE 802.11 DCF medium access protocol, has recently been found vulnerable to selfish backoff attacks consisting in nonstandard configuration of the constituent backoff scheme. Such attacks can greatly increase a selfish station's bandwidth share at the expense of honest stations applying a standard configuration. The paper investigates the distribution of bandwidth among anonymous network stations, some of which are selfish. A station's obtained bandwidth share is regarded as a payoff in a noncooperative CSMA/CA game. Regardless of the IEEE 802.11 parameter setting, the payoff function is found similar to a multiplayer Prisoners' Dilemma; moreover, the number (though not the identities) of selfish stations can be inferred by observation of successful transmission attempts. Further, a repeated CSMA/CA game is defined, where a station can toggle between standard and nonstandard backoff configurations with a view of maximizing a long-term utility. It is argued that a desirable station strategy should yield a fair, Pareto efficient, and subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. One such strategy, called CRISP, is described and evaluated.
Self-Adaptive Mobile Agent Population Control in Dynamic Networks Based on the Single Species Population Model
Authors: Tomoko Suzuki, Taisuke Izumi, Fukuhito Ooshita, Toshimitsu Masuzawa
Venue: IEICE - Transactions on Information and Systems (2007)

Mobile-agent-based distributed computing is one of the most promising paradigms to support autonomic computing in a large-scale of distributed system with dynamics and diversity: mobile agents traverse the distributed system and carry out a sophisticated task at each node adaptively. In mobile-agent-based systems, a larger number of agents generally require shorter time to complete the whole task but consume more resources (e.g., processing power and network bandwidth). Therefore, it is indispensable to keep an appropriate number of agents for the application on the mobile-agent-based system. This paper considers the mobile agent population control problem in dynamic networks: it requires adjusting the number of agents to a constant fraction of the current network size. This paper proposes algorithms inspired by the single species population model, which is a well-known population ecology model. These two algorithms are different in knowledge of networks each node requires. The first algorithm requires global information at each node, while the second algorithm requires only the local information. This paper shows by simulations that the both algorithms realize self-adaptation of mobile agent population in dynamic networks, but the second algorithm attains slightly lower accuracy than the first one.
The organ allocation process: a natural extension of the Carrel Agent-Mediated Electronic Institution
Authors: Javier Vázquez-Salceda, Ulises Cortés, Julian Padget, Antonio López-Navidad, Francisco Caballero
Venue: AI Communications (2003)

In this paper we extend the formalization of Carrel, a virtual organization for the procurement of tissues for transplant, to deal also with organs. We focus on the organ allocation process to show how it can be formalized with the ISLANDER specification language and we also present the first version of a mechanism to federate several geographically-distributed Carrel platforms with the objective of addressing some of the technical issues in the establishment of a pan-European tissue and organ distribution service.
A testbed of simulation-optimization problems
Authors: Raghu Pasupathy, Shane G. Henderson
Venue: Proceedings of the 38th conference on Winter simulation (2006)

We propose a testbed of simulation-optimization problems. The purpose of the testbed is to encourage development and constructive comparison of simulation-optimization techniques and algorithms. We are particularly interested in increasing attention to the finite-time performance of algorithms, rather than the asymptotic results that one often finds in the literature.
Process Improvement Essentials: CMMI, Six SIGMA, and ISO 9001
Authors: James R. Persse
Venue:  (2006)

Today, technology has become too much a part of overall corporate success for its effectiveness to be left to chance. The stakes are too high. Fortunately, the idea of 'quality management' is being reinvigorated. In the last decade process programs have become more and more prevalent. And, out of all the available options, three have moved to the top of the chain. These three are:The 9001:2000 Quality Management Standard from the International Standards Organization;The Capability Maturity Model Integration from the Software Engineering Institute; andSix Sigma, a methodology for improvement shaped by companies such as Motorola, Honeywell, and General Electric.These recognized and proven quality programs are rising in popularity as more technology managers are looking for ways to help remove degrees of risk and uncertainty from their business equations, and to introduce methods of predictability that better ensure success.Process Improvement Essentials combines the foundation needed to understand process improvement theory with the best practices to help individuals implement process improvement initiatives in their organization. The three leading programs: ISO 9001:2000, CMMI, and Six Sigma--amidst the buzz and hype--tend to get lumped together under a common label. This book delivers a combined guide to all three programs, compares their applicability, and then sets the foundation for further exploration. It's a one-stop-shop designed to give you a working orientation to what the field is all about.
An integrated two-stage model for intelligent information routing
Authors: Weiguo Fan, Michael D. Gordon, Praveen Pathak
Venue: Decision Support Systems (2006)

A recent surge of subscriptions to online news services exemplifies the fact that people and organizations constantly need up-to-date information to stay competitive and make better informed decisions. However, many of these news services often require users to either manually input their profiles or subscribe to existing news channels. This results in lack of intelligence and personalization, and thus make these services less attractive to users. In this paper, an integrated model that combines query expansion with ranking function adaptation for online information routing is proposed and tested using two different large scale corpora. The experimental results show that this new model can deliver much better quality information than existing models.
Real World Mac Maintenance and Backups (Real World)
Authors: Joe Kissell
Venue:  (2006)

Are you making reliable backups and performing regular maintenance on your Mac? Too few Mac users take the time to do so, and they regret it when something goes wrong. That's where Macintosh expert Joe Kissell can help. You'll learn how to keep your Mac running smoothly with a set of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks, plus get advice on preparing for Mac OS X updates. You'll also find out how to monitor your Mac to detect problems early and where to turn if trouble raises its ugly head. But the most important aspect of maintenance is a rock-solid backup strategy that protects all your important data in the event of catastrophe. To that end, Joe provides an at-a-glance comparison of different strategies, explains the pros and cons of each type of media, and helps you pick the best backup program for your needs. You'll find time-tested recommendations that help you set up, test, and maintain your backups, complete with instructions on how to restore after a crash. Important lessons you'll learn along the way include the utility of having both a duplicate and an archive, the necessity of testing backups, and the importance of offsite backups. In this book you'll find the answers to questions like these: When is my Mac likely to have trouble? How can I find out which unnecessary files are taking up space on my disk? Should I defragment my hard disk and repair permissions regularly? What is the best backup software and hardware? How can I make sure I can restore from my backups?
Feature-based approach to semi-supervised similarity learning
Authors: Philippe H. Gosselin, Matthieu Cord
Venue: Pattern Recognition (2006)

For the management of digital document collections, automatic database analysis still has difficulties to deal with semantic queries and abstract concepts that users are looking for. Whenever interactive learning strategies may improve the results of the search, system performances still depend on the representation of the document collection. We introduce in this paper a weakly supervised optimization of a feature vector set. According to an incomplete set of partial labels, the method improves the representation of the collection, even if the size, the number, and the structure of the concepts are unknown. Experiments have been carried out on synthetic and real data in order to validate our approach.
Solving SAT and SAT Modulo Theories: From an abstract Davis--Putnam--Logemann--Loveland procedure to DPLL(T)
Authors: Robert Nieuwenhuis, Albert Oliveras, Cesare Tinelli
Venue: Journal of the ACM (JACM) (2006)

We first introduce Abstract DPLL, a rule-based formulation of the Davis--Putnam--Logemann--Loveland (DPLL) procedure for propositional satisfiability. This abstract framework allows one to cleanly express practical DPLL algorithms and to formally reason about them in a simple way. Its properties, such as soundness, completeness or termination, immediately carry over to the modern DPLL implementations with features such as backjumping or clause learning.We then extend the framework to Satisfiability Modulo background Theories (SMT) and use it to model several variants of the so-called lazy approach for SMT. In particular, we use it to introduce a few variants of a new, efficient and modular approach for SMT based on a general DPLL(X) engine, whose parameter X can be instantiated with a specialized solver SolverT for a given theory T, thus producing a DPLL(T) system. We describe the high-level design of DPLL(X) and its cooperation with SolverT, discuss the role of theory propagation, and describe different DPLL(T) strategies for some theories arising in industrial applications.Our extensive experimental evidence, summarized in this article, shows that DPLL(T) systems can significantly outperform the other state-of-the-art tools, frequently even in orders of magnitude, and have better scaling properties.
On Ramsey numbers of uniform hypergraphs with given maximum degree
Authors: A. V. Kostochka, V. Rödl
Venue: Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A (2006)

For every ε > 0 and every positive integers Δ and r, there exists C = C(ε, Δ, r) such that the Ramsey number, R (H, H) of any r-uniform hypergraph H with maximum degree at most Δ is at most C|V(H)|1+ε.
Adaptive fully implicit multi-scale finite-volume method for multi-phase flow and transport in heterogeneous porous media
Authors: P. Jenny, S. H. Lee, H. A. Tchelepi
Venue: Journal of Computational Physics (2006)

We describe a sequential fully implicit (SFI) multi-scale finite volume (MSFV) algorithm for nonlinear multi-phase flow and transport in heterogeneous porous media. The method extends the recently developed multiscale approach, which is based on an IMPES (IMplicit Pressure, Explicit Saturation) scheme [P. Jenny, S.H. Lee, H.A. Tchelepi, Adaptive multi-scale finite volume method for multi-phase flow and transport, Multiscale, Model. Simul. 3 (2005) 50-64]. That previous method was tested extensively and with a series of difficult test cases, where it was clearly demonstrated that the multiscale results are in excellent agreement with reference fine-scale solutions and that the computational efficiency of the MSFV algorithm is much higher than that of standard reservoir simulators. However, the level of detail and range of property variability included in reservoir characterization models continues to grow. For such models, the explicit treatment of the transport problem (i.e. saturation equations) in the IMPES-based multiscale method imposes severe restrictions on the time step size, and that can become the major computational bottleneck. Here we show how this problem is resolved with our sequential fully implicit (SFI) MSFV algorithm. Simulations of large (million cells) and highly heterogeneous problems show that the results obtained with the implicit multi-scale method are in excellent agreement with reference fine-scale solutions. Moreover, we demonstrate the robustness of the coupling scheme for nonlinear flow and transport, and we show that the MSFV algorithm offers great gains in computational efficiency compared to standard reservoir simulation methods.
Computer-based techniques for solving problems of applied and computational mathematics with given quality characteristics
Authors: I. V. Sergienko, V. K. Zadiraka, M. D. Babich, A. I. Berezovskii P. N. Besarab V. A. Lyudvichenko
Venue: Cybernetics and Systems Analysis (2006)

The paper is concerned with computer-based techniques for the choice and development of computational resources and their efficient use to find an approximate solution with a given accuracy in a limited processor time.
ALSBIR: A local-structure-based image retrieval
Authors: Yanling Chi, Maylor K. H. Leung
Venue: Pattern Recognition (2007)

The general-purpose shape retrieval problem is a challenging task. Particularly, an ideal technique, which can work in clustered environment, meet the requirements of perceptual similarity measure on partial query and overcoming dimensionality curse and adverse environment, is in demand. This paper reports our study on one local structural approach that addresses these issues. Shape representation and indexing are two key points in shape retrieval. The proposed approach combines a novel local-structure-based shape representation and a new histogram indexing structure. The former makes possible partial shape matching of objects without the requirement of segmentation (separation) of objects from complex background, while the latter has an advantage on indexing performance. The search time is linearly proportional to the input complexity. In addition, the method is relatively robust under adverse environments. It is able to infer retrieval results from incomplete information of an input by first extracting consistent and structurally unique local neighborhood information from inputs or models, and then voting on the optimal matches. Thousands of images have been used to test the proposed concepts on sensitivity analysis, similarity-based retrieval, partial query and mixed object query. Very encouraging experimental results with respect to efficiency and effectiveness have been obtained.
Google Maps Hacks: Tips & Tools for Geographic Searching and Remixing (Hacks)
Authors: Rich Gibson, Schuyler Erle
Venue:  (2006)

Want to find every pizza place within a 15-mile radius? Where the dog parks are in a new town? The most central meeting place for your class, club or group of friends? The cheapest gas stations on a day-to-day basis? The location of convicted sex offenders in an area to which you may be considering moving? The applications, serendipitous and serious, seem to be infinite, as developers find ever more creative ways to add to and customize the satellite images and underlying API of Google Maps. Written by Schuyler Erle and Rich Gibson, authors of the popular Mapping Hacks, Google Maps Hacks shares dozens of tricks for combining the capabilities of Google Maps with your own datasets. Such diverse information as apartment listings, crime reporting or flight routes can be integrated with Google's satellite imagery in creative ways, to yield new and useful applications.The authors begin with a complete introduction to the "standard" features of Google Maps. The adventure continues with 60 useful and interesting mapping projects that demonstrate ways developers have added their own features to the maps. After that's given you ideas of your own, you learn to apply the techniques and tools to add your own data to customize and manipulate Google Maps. Even Google seems to be tacitly blessing what might be seen as unauthorized use, but maybe they just know a good thing when they see one.With the tricks and techniques you'll learn from Google Maps Hacks, you'll be able to adapt Google's satellite map feature to create interactive maps for personal and commercial applications for businesses ranging from real estate to package delivery to home services, transportation and more. Includes a foreword by Google Maps tech leads, Jens and Lars Rasmussen.
News and notices
Authors: Stanley Habib
Venue: ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter (1973)

The News and Notices in this issue include reprints from recent journals. The following is a list of the items included in this section
Rapid and brief communication: The LLE and a linear mapping
Authors: F. C. Wu, Z. Y. Hu
Venue: Pattern Recognition (2006)

The locally linear embedding (LLE) is considered an effective algorithm for dimensionality reduction. In this short note, some of its key properties are studied. In particular, we show that: (1) there always exists a linear mapping from the high-dimensional space to the low-dimensional space such that all the constraint conditions in the LLE can be satisfied. The implication of the existence of such a linear mapping is that the LLE cannot guarantee a one-to-one mapping from the high-dimensional space to the low-dimensional space for a given data set; (2) if the LLE is required to globally preserve distance, it must be a PCA mapping; (3) for a given high-dimensional data set, there always exists a local distance-preserving LLE. The above results can bring some new insights into a better understanding of the LLE.
Deriving distribution of thread service time in layered queueing networks
Authors: Tariq Omari, Salem Derisavi, Greg Franks
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th international workshop on Software and performance (2007)

Replication is a technique used in distributed systems to improve performance, availability, and reliability. In replication schemes, often a J out of $N$ voting pattern (also called quorum) is used in which the quorum waits for J replies to arrive. Integrating a quorum scheme into the Layered Queueing Network (LQN) performance modeling language necessitates the computation of the quorum response time as the Jth order statistic. To do so, we need the exact (or an accurate estimation of the) time distribution of individual replies. This distribution was estimated in previous work but only for the special case of (J=N) and yields large errors for J « N. This paper presents a new analytic approach for the derivation of the distributions. Under a number of assumptions, we derive closed form expressions for the probability distribution functions of the replies. The application of our new approach on a number of LQN models shows that, even for models that violate those assumptions, it is far more accurate than previous approaches and it yields an error less than 10% for most example models.