ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Personal identity verification by serial fusion of fingerprint and face matchers
Authors: Gian Luca Marcialis, Fabio Roli, Luca Didaci
Venue: Pattern Recognition (2009)

The use of personal identity verification systems with multi-modal biometrics has been proposed in order to increase the performance and robustness against environmental variations and fraudulent attacks. Usually multi-modal fusion of biometrics is performed in parallel at the score-level by combining the individual matching scores. This parallel strategy exhibits some drawbacks: (i) all available biometrics are necessary to perform fusion, thus the verification time depends on the slowest system; (ii) some users could be easily recognizable using a certain biometric instead of another one and (iii) the system invasiveness increases. A system characterized by the serial combination of multiple biometrics can be a good trade-off between verification time, performance and acceptability. However, these systems have been poorly investigated, and no support for designing the processing chain has been given so far. In this paper, we propose a novel serial scheme and a simple mathematical model able to predict the performance of two serially combined matchers as function of the selected processing chain. Our model helps the designer in finding the processing chain allowing a trade-off, in particular, between performance and matching time. Experiments carried out on well-known benchmark data sets made up of face and fingerprint images support the usefulness of the proposed methodology and compare it with standard parallel fusion.
From model checking to data management in pervasive computing: a location-based query-processing framework
Authors: Christian Hoareau, Ichiro Satoh
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 international conference on Pervasive services (2009)

This paper presents a query-processing framework for location-based services. The proposed approach aims at complementing existing context-aware services wherein locations of people, physical objects and services are modeled in a symbolic manner, independently of any sensing technology. To deliver contextual information to the various components of a pervasive computing platform, current systems tend to query the underlying location models in an ad-hoc manner. This makes it difficult to guarantee the quality of the results, and hence the reliability of context-aware services. The main idea behind our framework is to apply and adapt the principles of model checking to query the contextual data structures. Because such query mechanisms have to be sound, our approach is build upon a logic-based query language. We therefore ensure that the results of any query (i) do not miss any information that satisfy its necessary and sufficient conditions and (ii) do not contain any information that does not satisfy the conditions. We describe the implementation of or framework and discuss its applicability to existing graph-based location models.
Opportunities and challenges for Ge CMOS - Control of interfacing field on Ge is a key (Invited Paper)
Authors: Akira Toriumi, Toshiyuki Tabata, Choong Hyun Lee, Tomonori Nishimura, Koji Kita, Kosuke Nagashio
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2009)

Ge CMOS is very attractive for the post size-scaled Si-CMOS. However, we have to tackle a number of challenges with regard to materials and their interface control. In this paper, we discuss gate stack formation and source/drain engineering, as well as their implications for the performance of n- and p-MOSFETs. Because the Ge interface is significantly degraded by the GeO desorption occurring at a relatively low temperature (~500^oC), it is very hard to control Ge gate stack formation by a simple thermal budget control. In addition, strong Fermi-level pinning at the Ge/metal interface is a big problem in source/drain engineering. After discussing ways to control this desorption and Fermi-level pinning at the interface in both p-FETs and n-FETs, we discuss our current status of both electron and hole mobilities.
Improving haptic experience through biomechanical measurements
Authors: John John Kocherry, Govindarajan Srimathveeravalli, Ashirwad J. Chowriappa, Thenkurussi Kesavadas, Gwanseob Shin
Venue: Proceedings of the World Haptics 2009 - Third Joint EuroHaptics conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems (2009)

Haptic interfaces have been used as a surrogate for many real world applications such as rehabilitation, calligraphy, design and surgical training. While development of haptically enabled systems are opening new avenues in training, very few studies have explored if they provide realistic and matching muscle activations compared to real world activities. In this paper a novel methodology based on muscle activity is proposed for evaluation of haptic systems. To test this methodology experiments were performed on a haptic writing simulator and comparisons were made to corresponding real pen and paper task. The behavior of two muscles, flexor carpi ulnaris and extensor digitorum communis was studied with the help of surface EMG's, during the execution of similar real and haptic based tasks. Human participant studies were carried out and results indicate that in the majority of parameters studied, the haptics based writing simulator used in this study resulted in muscle exertion and excitation similar to that of pen and paper tasks. It was seen that the proposed methodology could be used to tune the haptic system to mimic real life writing more closely. This study showed that the proposed methodology can lead to improved haptic simulators by studying the bio-mechanical reaction in humans.
Koko: engineering affective applications
Authors: Derek J. Sollenberger, Munindar P. Singh
Venue: Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 2 (2009)

Representing and reasoning about affect (i.e. emotion) is essential for producing believable characters and empathic interactions with users, both of which are necessary for effective entertainment and education. Leading applications of interest include pedagogical tools [1], military training simulations [2], and educational games [3].
Determination of diclofenac in pharmaceuticals using a metalloporphyrin-based selective electrode
Authors: Dana Vlascici, Dorina Modra, Vasile Ostafe, Luminita Nica, Eugenia Fagadar-Cosma
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st WSEAS international conference on Nanotechnology (2009)

The construction and the potentiometric response characteristics of a new diclofenac-selective electrode based on rhodium(III)tetraphenylporphyrin (Rh(III)TPP-Cl) as an ionophore are presented. The ionophore was incorporated into a PVC matrix. The effect of lipophilic cationic and anionic additives on the potentiometric response was investigated. The best results were obtained for the membrane having the cationic additive trioctylmethylammonium chloride (TOMACl) added. The corresponding sensor exhibited a near-Nernstian response to diclofenac in the concentration range 5×10-6 - 1×10-2 M with a slope of -59.4 mV per concentration decade in a buffer solution of pH 7.1. The selectivity of the sensor relative to a lot of organic and inorganic anions is also reported. This electrode was applied for the direct determination of diclofenac in pharmaceutical formulations and the results were compared with those provided by the HPLC reference method.
The landscape of information science: 1996-2008
Authors: Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan, Eric SanJuan
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries (2009)

We propose a methodology combining symbolic and numeric information to map the structure of research in Information Science between 1996-2008. The visualization of the resulting maps showed that while the two-camp structure of Information Science observed in previous studies is still valid, other research poles like web and user-oriented studies are building bridges between the two hitherto isolated poles.
Word-Wise Thai and Roman Script Identification
Authors: Sukalpa Chanda, Umapada Pal, Oriol Ramos Terrades
Venue: ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing (TALIP) (2009)

In some Thai documents, a single text line of a printed document page may contain words of both Thai and Roman scripts. For the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of such a document page it is better to identify, at first, Thai and Roman script portions and then to use individual OCR systems of the respective scripts on these identified portions. In this article, an SVM-based method is proposed for identification of word-wise printed Roman and Thai scripts from a single line of a document page. Here, at first, the document is segmented into lines and then lines are segmented into character groups (words). In the proposed scheme, we identify the script of a character group combining different character features obtained from structural shape, profile behavior, component overlapping information, topological properties, and water reservoir concept, etc. Based on the experiment on 10,000 data (words) we obtained 99.62&percnt; script identification accuracy from the proposed scheme.
Plenary lecture 7: towards ethical aspects on artificial intelligence
Authors: Liliana Rogozea
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th WSEAS international conference on Artificial intelligence, knowledge engineering and data bases (2009)

Ethics become more and more important in our life. According to our development, a number of new dilemmas appear in ethical field, related to environment, e-communication, respecting human rights and, of course, artificial intelligence. Society development and all knowledge and tools used in this purpose put a number of ethics problems. This paper tries to present the role of ethics in developing artificial intelligence, and how the artificial intelligence could change our perspective, because artificial intelligence in fact is all around us. As human decision makers we try to determinate what the moral problems are and how we can use artificial intelligence to make good decision not only for one person, but also for the society. It could be an interesting challenge to develop a software for helping us to take the best decision, but we are sure that it could be inefficient and not enough powerful, because it can't appreciate all aspects and because a lot of mind properties can't be, yet, reproduced by artificial intelligence. Our conscious, our ethical judgment could develop the trap who could be establish in our world; it becomes more and more clear that not only the people must have ethical rights, but also the other creatures - natural or artificial who "live" on our planet. The important issues which must be respected are: honesty, selflessness, serenity, the right to be use in a peaceful way, respect and a decent "death". Also, it becomes more and more important to recognize the importance, the role and the place of this intelligence in our society, which is not a substitute for human intelligence. Even if the ethical issue have subjective and emotive components and it is obvious that is not possible to develop a pattern for all ethical dilemmas, we think that is possible to develop some standards not only for human behaviour, but also for artificial intelligence tools used in our life, standards which could be part of human rights. Artificial intelligence is an important part of our life, but we are sure that the possibility of acquiring the domination of AI over the humanity is only a myth. During the time, the progress helps society but also put a number of ethical problems. In the academic society, like in real life, the process of using different kind of power are complex, and even if it is about the robots, the computer or other artificial intelligence tools the ethical problems are not only theoretical but also practical, it is not only a concept, but it is also a practical support for our life.
Review of development of nonconventional neural architectures at the Czech technical university in Prague
Authors: Jiri Bila, Ivo Bukovsky, Jakub Jura
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS international conference on Neural networks (2009)

This paper reviews the background as well as the most contemporary developments and applications of nonconventional neural architectures (NNA) at the Department of Instrumentation and Control Engineering, at the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) with respect to continuous cooperation with our international collaborators [1] [2] [3]. First, the onset of the need for development of nonconventional neural units is introduced on the background of original research of evaluation and prediction of complex time series using neural networks and modeling and evaluation of complex dynamic systems - particularly focusing heart rate variability. Second, the classification of the recently developed new neural architectures is reviewed; mathematical structure of the NNA is discussed in comparison to a biological neuron involving parallels of nonsynaptic neural processing and thus revealing the need for extension of our general understanding to mathematical notation of artificial neurons. Then, founding principles of adaptive evaluation of complex high-dimensional dynamic systems using low-dimensional dynamic NNA are reviewed and achievements for both theoretical as well as real-world data are discussed.
Rough Sets Based Minimal Certain Rule Generation in Non-deterministic Information Systems: An Overview
Authors: Hiroshi Sakai, Michinori Nakata
Venue: Proceeding of the 2005 conference on Advances in Logic Based Intelligent Systems: Selected Papers of LAPTEC 2005 (2005)

Rough sets based minimal certain rule generation in Non-deterministic Information Systems (NISs) is presented. This is advancement from rule generation in Deterministic Information Systems (DISs). NISs were proposed by Pawlak, Orłowska and Lipski in order to handle information incompleteness in DISs. According to the previous research on rule generation in DISs, rules in NISs are defined by logical implications satisfying some constraints. Rough sets based algorithms for generating rules are also proposed. Especially in this paper, minimal certain rules are focused on, and discernibility functions are newly introduced into NISs. A minimal certain rule is generated by means of a solution of a discernibility function. This procedure is implemented on a workstation in prolog.
Proceedings of the 4th Annual International Conference on Wireless Internet
Venue: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (2008)

Wireless Internet is quickly emerging as a reality, thanks to the fast evolution of many wireless access technologies. Convergence of heterogeneous wireless networks and the next generation Internet further brings wireless Internet into a variety of application scenarios which provide mobile users with a wide range of highly demanding services, such as high speed data and real-time multimedia delivery. On the other hand, it is of critical importance to obtain a fundamental understanding of wireless Internet architectures and explore new services and solutions in order to achieve the ultimate goal of wireless Internet access anytime anywhere.
A Generic Scheme for Zero-Knowledge Sets
Authors: R. Xue, D. Song, Z. Zhang, D. Feng
Venue: Proceeding of the 2005 conference on Applied Public Key Infrastructure: 4th International Workshop: IWAP 2005 (2005)

Zero-Knowledge sets, proposed by Micali et al. in FOCS'03, allow the owner of a set S to publish a very short commitment CS to S, so that the owner can later prove or disprove, against CS, the membership of any (potential infinity many) elements chosen by the verifier, without leaking more about S than the membership of the elements. This new secure primitive is proved to be useful in private data queries, and other similar scenarios where depends on the trust and privacy. We investigate the theoretical primitives underline this new secure notion. The main contribution of this paper is to present a generic scheme for zero-knowledge sets which is as efficient as that in [1]. The new scheme is constructed by adopting the Merkle type of commitment under the assumption of existence of claw free pairs of trapdoor pseudo-permutations.
An effective sampling method for decision trees considering comprehensibility and accuracy
Authors: Hyontai Sug
Venue: WSEAS Transactions on Computers (2009)

Because the target domain of data mining using decision trees usually contains a lot of data, sampling is needed. But selecting proper samples for a given decision tree algorithm is not easy, because each decision tree algorithm has its own property in generating trees and selecting appropriate samples that represent given target data set well is difficult. As the size of samples grows, the size of generated decision trees grows with some improvement in error rates. But we cannot use larger and larger samples, because it's not easy to understand large decision trees and data overfitting problem can happen. This paper suggests a progressive approach in determining a proper sample size to generate good decision trees with respect to generated tree size and accuracy. Experiments with two representative decision tree algorithms, CART and C4.5 show very promising results.
Sequential partition mechanism for strongly budget-balanced redistribution
Authors: Yuko Sakurai, Yasumasa Saito, Atsushi Iwasaki, Makoto Yokoo
Venue: Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 2 (2009)

We propose a new class of strategy-proof and strongly budget-balanced redistribution mechanisms called the sequential partition mechanism (SPM). Recently, studies on redistribution mechanisms have attracted increased attention in the research area of mechanism design to achieve a desirable social decision among self-interested agents. However, since no redistribution mechanism can simultaneously satisfy Pareto efficiency, strategy-proofness, individual rationality, and is strongly budget-balanced, we need to sacrifice one of these properties. In the SPM, agents and items are divided into groups, and then a strategy-proof mechanism is sequentially applied to each group. The payments in each group are distributed among agents in the remaining groups in a predefined way. The auctioneer can dynamically determine how to divide agents and items and which mechanism to apply, based on the results of previous auctions. As an instance of the SPM, we introduce the redistribution mechanism based on a take-it-or-leave-it auction (RM-TLA) mechanism. The RM-TLA does not require agents to reveal a bidding price. Thus, the agents only have to accept/reject the offered price. Furthermore, we show that we can set the optimal reserve price so that the expected social surplus is maximized if an auctioneer knows the distribution of an agent's valuation in advance.
Affective and behavioral predictors of novice programmer achievement
Authors: Ma. Mercedes T. Rodrigo, Ryan S. Baker, Matthew C. Jadud, Anna Christine M. Amarra, Thomas Dy, Maria Beatriz V. Espejo-Lahoz, Sheryl Ann L. Lim, Sheila A.M.S. Pascua, Jessica O. Sugay, Emily S. Tabanao
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (2009)

We study which observable affective states and behaviors relate to students' achievement within a CS1 programming course. To this end, we use a combination of human observation, midterm test scores, and logs of student interactions with the compiler within an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). We find that confusion, boredom and engagement in IDE-related on-task conversation are associated with lower achievement. We find that a student's midterm score can be tractably predicted with simple measures such as the student's average number of errors, number of pairs of compilations in error, number pairs of compilations with the same error, pairs of compilations with the same edit location and pairs of compilations with the same error location. This creates the potential to respond to evidence that a student is at-risk for poor performance before they have even completed a programming assignment.
Optimal production policies with multistage stochastic demand lead times
Authors: Jung-hyun Kim, Hyun-soo Ahn, Rhonda Righter
Venue: Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences (2009)

We study the value of multistage advance demand information (MADI) in a production system in which customers place an order in advance of their actual need, and each order goes through multiple stages before it becomes due. Any order that is not immediately filled at its due date will be backordered. The producer must decide whether or not to produce based on real-time information regarding current and future orders. We formulate the problem as a Markov decision process and analyze the impact of the demand information on the production policy and the cost. We show that the optimal production policy is a state-dependent base-stock policy, and we show that it has certain monotonicity properties. We also introduce a simple heuristic policy that is significantly easier to compute and that inherits the structural properties of the optimal policy. In addition, we show that its base-stock levels bound those of the socially optimal policy. Numerical study identifies the conditions under which MADI is most beneficial and shows that the heuristic performs almost as well as the optimal policy when MADI is most beneficial.
A novel image transform based on potential-field source reverse for image analysis
Authors: X. D. Zhuang, N. E. Mastorakis
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th WSEAS international conference on Signal processing, robotics and automation (2009)

A novel source-reverse transform for digital images is presented for image structure representation and analysis based on an electro-static analogy. In this transform, the image is taken as the potential field and the virtual source is reversed imitating the Gauss's law. Region border detection is implemented based on the virtual field source representation of image structure. Moreover, the energy concentration property of this transform is investigated for promising application of lossy image compression. Experimental results prove that the source-reverse transform can obtain efficient representation of image structure, and has promising application in image processing tasks.
3D Representative Face and Clustering Based Illumination Estimation for Face Recognition and Expression Recognition
Authors: Zheng Zhang, Zheng Zhao, Gang Bai
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Neural Networks: Advances in Neural Networks - Part III (2009)

Eliminating the negative effect caused by variant pose and illumination is a very critical problem for expression recognition. In this paper we propose a 3D representative face (RF) and clustering based method, which can estimate 13 illumination conditions under certain poses. First, all faces are adaptively categorized into 31 facial types by k-means clustering, so people with similar facial appearance are clustered together; Then the representative face of each cluster is generated. Finally we select the most discriminative features to train a group of SVM classifiers and get 96.88% estimation accuracy when estimating the test set with frontal view. Compared with other related works, ours does not rely on 3D reconstruction, and to get the generalization ability, we use our RF and clustering technique.