ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
An Information Infrastructure for Coordinating Earth Science Observations
Authors: Robert A. Morris, Jennifer L. Dungan, John L. Bresina
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (2006)

Earth scientists require timely, coordinated access to remote sensing resources, either directly by requesting that the resource be targeted at a specific location, or indirectly through access to data that has been, or will be acquired and stored in data archives. The information infrastructure for effective coordinated observing does not currently exist. This paper describes a set of capabilities for enabling model-based observing, the idea of linking scheduling observation resources more directly to science goals. Modelbased observing is realized in this paper by an approach based on concepts of distributed planning and scheduling. The problem raises challenging issues related to planning under uncertainty, monitoring and repair of plans, and reasoning about human objectives and preferences.
On Practice-Oriented Software Engineering Education
Authors: Shihong Huang, Damiano Distante
Venue: Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training Workshops (2006)

The old saying "practice makes perfect" has been proven to be true in many fields when training new people to master the skills needed for a particular domain. It is even truer for software engineering education. Software engineering, by and large, is the application of engineering to software. Unlike other disciplines in the computer sciences, only by coupling theory and practice can students (who usually lack real-world working experience) understand some of the abstract concepts and principles taught in software engineering courses. This paper summarizes our experience in teaching software engineering courses in two different universities using a practice-oriented approach that guides students through learning the different, and yet abstract, aspects of the software engineering process.
BlogRank: ranking weblogs based on connectivity and similarity features
Authors: Apostolos Kritikopoulos, Martha Sideri, Iraklis Varlamis
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd international workshop on Advanced architectures and algorithms for internet delivery and applications (2006)

A large part of the hidden web resides in weblog servers; traditional search engines perform poorly on blogs. We present a method for ranking weblogs utilizing both link graph and similarity, and based on an enhanced and weighted graph of weblogs capturing crucial weblog features. Rankings are then assigned using our algorithm, BlogRank, which is a modified version of PageRank.To validate our method we ran experiments on a weblog dataset, processed and adapted to our search engine: http://spiderwave.aueb.gr/BlogwaveOur experiments suggest that our algorithm enhances the quality of returned results.
On the extraction of thematic and dramatic functions of content in educational videos
Authors: A. Natsev, S. Venkatesh, C. Dorai
Venue: Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Multimedia and Expo - Volume 1 (2003)

In this paper, we propose novel computational models for the extraction of high level expressive constructs related to, namely thematic and dramatic functions of the content shown in educational and training videos. Drawing on the existing knowledge of film theory, and media production rules and conventions used by the filmmakers, we hypothesize key aesthetic elements contributing to convey these functions of the content. Computational models to extract them are then formulated and their performance evaluated on a set of ten educational and training videos is presented.
Adaptive Scheduler to Improve QoS in IEEE 802.11e Wireless LANs
Authors: Rongbo Zhu, Yuhang Yang
Venue: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control - Volume 1 (2006)

An effective scheduler is proposed to improve the performance of IEEE 802.11e wireless local area networks (LANs), which adaptively adjusts the ratio of enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) duration to controlled access phase (CAP) duration by tracking the amounts of variable bit rate (VBR) and constant bit rate (CBR) traffics in a real-time manner. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves quality of service (QoS) in terms of throughput and delay metrics.
This side up!
Authors: Leah Epstein, Rob Van Stee
Venue: ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG) (2006)

We consider two- and three-dimensional bin-packing problems where 90&deg; rotations are allowed. We improve all known asymptotic performance bounds for these problems. In particular, we show how to combine ideas from strip packing and two-dimensional bin packing to give a new algorithm for the three-dimensional strip packing problem where boxes can only be rotated sideways. We propose to call this problem &ldquo;This side up&rdquo;. Our algorithm has an asymptotic performance bound of 9/4.
Multi-Object Tracking Through Simultaneous Long Occlusions and Split-Merge Conditions
Authors: A. G. Amitha Perera, Chukka Srinivas, Anthony Hoogs, Glen Brooksby, Wensheng Hu
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition - Volume 1 (2006)

A fundamental requirement for effective automated analysis of object behavior and interactions in video is that each object must be consistently identified over time. This is difficult when the objects are often occluded for long periods: nearly all tracking algorithms will terminate a track with loss of identity on a long gap. The problem is further confounded by objects in close proximity, tracking failures due to shadows, etc. Recently, some work has been done to address these issues using higher level reasoning, by linking tracks from multiple objects over long gaps. However, these efforts have assumed a one-to-one correspondence between tracks on either side of the gap. This is often not true in real scenarios of interest, where the objects are closely spaced and dynamically occlude each other, causing trackers to merge objects into single tracks. In this paper, we show how to efficiently handle splitting and merging during track linking. Moreover, we show that we can maintain the identities of objects that merge together and subsequently split. This enables the identity of objects to be maintained throughout long sequences with difficult conditions. We demonstrate our approach on a highly challenging, oblique-view video sequence of dense traffic of a highway interchange. We successfully track the large majority of the hundreds of moving vehicles in the scene, many in close proximity, through long occlusions and shadows.
Flexible Network Infrastructure for Wearable Computing Using Conductive Fabric and Its Evaluation
Authors: Junichi Akita, Toru Shinmura, Masashi Toda
Venue: Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International ConferenceWorkshops on Distributed Computing Systems (2006)

Numbers of devices are distributed in the environment in wearable and ubiquitous computing systems, and all of such devices need power supply and communication ways as well as flexibility of placement. Both wireless and wired communication systems intrinsically contain the problems in power supply or flexibility of placement. In this paper, we introduce the flexible network infrastructure for wearable computing systems, named as TextileNet, and experimental results of its evaluation. TextileNet uses the wear both of sides of which are made of conductive fabric as electrodes. On this year, the power is supplied from a battery, and the devices are attached by sticking so that electric contact can obtain the suficient power and communication way on the wear's surface. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of the TextileNet system.
Discrete event systems specification in systems biology - a discussion of stochastic pi calculus and DEVS
Authors: Adelinde M. Uhrmacher, Corrado Priami
Venue: Proceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation (2005)

The goal of Systems Biology is to analyze the behavior and interrelationships between entities of entire functional biological systems. Discrete event approaches are of particular interest if small numbers of entities, like DNA molecules, shall be modeled. Two general approaches toward discrete event modeling and simulation are presented. They provide rather different perspectives on the system to be modeled, as is illustrated based on a model of the Trypophan Operon. Whereas in Devs distinctions are emphasized, e.g. between system and its environment, between structural and non structural changes, between properties attributed to a system and the system itself, these distinctions become fluent in the compact description of the &pi;-Calculus. However, both share the problem that in order to support a comfortable modeling, adaptations and extensions according to the concrete requirements of this challenging application area are needed.
Analysis of errors in software reliability prediction systems and application of model uncertainty theory to provide better predictions
Authors: Carol Smidts
Venue:  (2006)

Models are the medium by which we reflect and express our understanding of some aspect of reality, a particular unknown of interest. As it is virtually impossible to grasp any situation in its entire complexity, models are representations of reality that are always partial resulting in a state of uncertainty or error. However the question of model error from a pragmatic point of view is not one of accounting for the difference between models and reality at a fundamental level, as such difference always exists. Rather the question is whether the prediction or performance of the model is correct at some practically acceptable level, within the model's domain of application. Here lays the importance of assessing the impact of uncertainties about predictions of a model, modeling the error and trying to reduce the uncertainties associated as much as possible to provide better estimations. While the methods for assessing the impact of errors on the performance of a model and error modeling are well established in various scientific and engineering disciplines, to the best of our knowledge no substantial work has been done in the field of Software Reliability Modeling despite the fact that the inadequacy of the present state and techniques of software reliability estimation has been recognized by industry and government agencies. In summary, even though hundreds of software reliability models have been developed, the software reliability discipline is still struggling to establish a software reliability prediction framework. This work intends to improve the performance of software reliability models through error modeling. It analyzes the errors associated with a set of five software Reliability Prediction Systems (RePSs) and attempts to improve their prediction accuracy using a model uncertainty framework. In the process, this work also statistically validates the performances of the RePSs. It also provides a time and cost effective alternative to performing experiments that are required to assess the error form which is integral to the process of application of the model uncertainty framework.
An Approximate Version of Kernel PCA
Authors: Shawn Martin
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (2006)

We propose an analog of kernel Principal Component Analysis (kernel PCA). Our algorithm is based on an approximation of PCA which uses Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization. We combine this approximation with Support Vector Machine kernels to obtain a nonlinear generalization of PCA. By using our approximation to PCA we are able to provide a more easily computed (in the case of many data points) and readily interpretable version of kernel PCA. After demonstrating our algorithm on some examples, we explore its use in applications to fluid flow and microarray data.
Debugging simulation models
Authors: David Krahl
Venue: Proceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation (2005)

While much has been written about model validation and verification, the actual process of correcting, or debugging, a model is presented as an afterthought. This paper will describe different types of bugs and will present techniques, drawn from both the simulation modeling and application programming worlds, for determining the cause of an error in the model.
An Approach to Provisioning E-Commerce Applications with Commercial Components
Authors: Lei Wang, Padmanabhan Krishnan
Venue: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (2006)

Component-based development is a trend towards building e-commerce applications. However, commercial components are rarely used during the development. The reason is that existing approaches to selecting and composing components suffer from the problem that the components retrieved usually do not exactly fit with other components in the system being developed. While formal methods can be used to describe and check semantic characteristics to better match components, there are practical limitations which restrict their adoption. We have proposed a framework to support a semantic description and selection of components. We used Simple Component Interface Language (SCIL) to describe user requirements and pre-built components from the current component sources. Specifications in SCIL can be translated to a variety of models including those that have a formal basis. In this paper, we preform a case study of searching commercial components for a generic e-commerce application. We specify the commercial components in SCIL and use two specific tools: jMocha and Alloy Analyser to identify the correct components that suit a particular task.
Robust, short and sensitive authentication tags using secure sketch
Authors: Qiming Li, Ee-Chien Chang
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th workshop on Multimedia and security (2006)

In order to apply cryptographic operations on noisy data, a recent approach employs some additional public data, known as secure sketch, to correct the noise so that consistent outcome can be obtained. This approach can be employed to extract authentication tags from noisy multimedia or biometric objects, by including the sketch in the tags. However, there are a few issues that need to be addressed. Firstly, those objects are typically represented in a continuous domain, and hence further quantization is required in order to obtain a short authentication tag. Secondly, for the purpose of authentication, forgery and preimage attacks are major concerns. However, such attacks are not considered in the notion of secure sketch. To handle the first issue, we give a construction using two levels of quantization. The second issue leads to the proposed additional requirement on sensitivity. We study how to choose the optimal parameters under the trade-off of robustness, size and sensitivity, and show that in many practical settings, the two-level quantization can be significantly more effective than a seemingly natural method of assigning one bit to each coefficient.
Lessons for Laptops for the 18th Century
Authors: Roland L. Trope, E. Michael Power
Venue: IEEE Security and Privacy (2006)

As governments attempt to prevent, investigate, or prosecute crimes by persons who use the Internetto plan and carry out terrorist acts, the protection of private, personal information stored on computershas recently become the subject of controversy.Inevitably, the home computer will become a target forsurveillance, search, and seizure by government agents. As a result, courts will be asked to determinewhether such agents have complied with applicable laws that condition such intrusions on meeting standardsset by constitutions or laws that did not anticipate the home computer as a focal point for suchcontroversies.
Adaptive Approach to Information Dissemination in Self-Organizing Grids
Authors: Deger Cenk Erdil, Michael J. Lewis, Nael B. B. Abu-Ghazaleh
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomic and Autonomous Systems (2006)

The size, complexity, heterogeneity, and dynamism of largescale computational grids make autonomic grid services and solutions necessary. In particular, grid schedulers must map applications onto resources whose state (1) influences the effectiveness of scheduling choices, and (2) changes frequently and considerably. A grid resource state information dissemination service must negotiate the inherent tradeoff between covering a large portion of the grid (so that all schedulers can make informed decisions with the largest number of options), and limiting the protocol's overhead (i.e. the number of packets sent). This paper argues that probabilistic forwarding protocols must adapt to state changes, because static assignments of forwarding probabilities lead to excessive overhead or lower-than-possible query satisfaction rates in some scenarios. We introduce an approach that compares a node's local utilization and query generation rates to corresponding rates in the node's vicinity, and in the grid as a whole. These comparisons, in turn, produce a score that is used to adjust forwarding probabilities. We show that even this simple initial adaptive approach can work better than protocols with static forwarding probability assignments.
A Riemann-Hilbert approach to some theorems on Toeplitz operators and orthogonal polynomials
Authors: Percy Deift, Jörgen Östensson
Venue: Journal of Approximation Theory (2006)

In this paper, the authors show how to use Riemann-Hilbert techniques to prove various results, some old, some new, in the theory of Toeplitz operators and orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle (OPUCs). There are four main results: the first concerns the approximation of the inverse of a Toeplitz operator by the inverses of its finite truncations. The second concerns a new proof of the 'hard' part of Baxter's theorem, and the third concerns the Born approximation for a scattering problem on the lattice Z+. The fourth and final result concerns a basic proposition of Golinskii-Ibragimov arising in their analysis of the Strong Szegö Limit Theorem.
Privacy-preserving payload-based correlation for accurate malicious traffic detection
Authors: Janak J. Parekh, Ke Wang, Salvatore J. Stolfo
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 SIGCOMM workshop on Large-scale attack defense (2006)

With the increased use of botnets and other techniques to obfuscate attackers' command-and-control centers, Distributed Intrusion Detection Systems (DIDS) that focus on attack source IP addresses or other header information can only portray a limited view of distributed scans and attacks. Packet payload sharing techniques hold far more promise, as they can convey exploit vectors and/or malcode used upon successful exploit of a target system, irrespective of obfuscated source addresses. However, payload sharing has had minimal success due to regulatory or business-based privacy concerns of transmitting raw or even sanitized payloads. The currently accepted form of content exchange has been limited to the exchange of known-suspicious content, e.g., packets captured by honeypots; however, signature generation assumes that each site receives enough traffic in order to correlate a meaningful set of payloads from which common content can be derived, and places fundamental and computationally stressful requirements on signature generators that may miss particularly stealthy or carefully-crafted polymorphic malcode.Instead, we propose a new approach to enable the sharing of suspicious payloads via privacy-preserving technologies. We detail the work we have done with two example payload anomaly detectors, PAYL and Anagram, to support generalized payload correlation and signature generation without releasing identifiable payload data and without relying on single-site signature generation. We present preliminary results of our approaches and suggest how such deployments may practically be used for not only cross-site, but also cross-domain alert sharing and its implications for profiling threats.
The busy beaver, the placid platypus and other crazy creatures
Authors: James Harland
Venue: Proceedings of the 12th Computing: The Australasian Theroy Symposium - Volume 51 (2006)

The busy beaver is an example of a function which is not computable. It is based on a particular class of Turing machines, and is defined as the largest number of 1's that can be printed by a terminating machine with n states. Whilst there have been various quests to determine the precise value of this function (which is known precisely only for n ≤ 4), our aim is not to determine this value per se, but to investigate the properties of this class of machines. On the one hand, these are remarkably simple (and, intuitively, form perhaps the simplest class of computationally complete machines); on the other hand, as some of the machines for n = 6 show, they are capable of representing phenomenally large numbers. We describe our quest to better understand these machines, including the placid platypus problem, ie. to determine the minimum number of states needed by a machine of this type to print a given number of 1's.
Recycling workflows and services through discovery and reuse: Research Articles
Authors: Chris Wroe, Carole Goble, Antoon Goderis, Phillip Lord, Simon Miles, Juri Papay, Pinar Alper, Luc Moreau
Venue: Concurrency and Computation: Practice Experience (2007)

Scientific workflows are becoming a valuable tool for scientists to capture and automate e-Science procedures. Their success brings the opportunity to publish, share, reuse and re-purpose this explicitly captured knowledge. Within the $^{my}$Grid project, we have identified key resources that can be shared including complete workflows, fragments of workflows and constituent services. We have examined the alternative ways that these resources can be described by their authors (and subsequent users) and developed a unified descriptive model to support their later discovery. By basing this model on existing standards, we have been able to extend existing Web service and Semantic Web service infrastructure whilst still supporting the specific needs of the e-Scientist. The $^{my}$Grid components enable a workflow life-cycle that extends beyond execution to include the discovery of previous relevant designs, the reuse of those designs and their subsequent publication. Experience with example groups of scientists indicates that this cycle is valuable. The growing number of workflows and services mean more work is needed to support the user in effective ranking of search results and to support the re-purposing process. Copyright &copy; 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Web Services Selection and Composition based on the Routing Algorithm
Authors: Yifei Wang, Hongbing Wang, Xun Xu
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th IEEE on International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshops (2006)

In recent years, a growing number of Web services have emerged as the Internet develops at a fast rate. With the growing number of Web services, it is necessary to compose existing Web services dynamically. Selecting and composing individual Web services into more complicated and more useful Web processes is an important challenge. This paper model those composition processes as a graph problem. Based on the model, routing algorithms are discussed for static and dynamic services selection. Experiment is conducted based on the model and the algorithm.