ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
A firewall model for testing user-configurable software systems
Authors: Lee J. White
Venue:  (2008)

User-configurable software systems present many challenges to software testers. These systems are created to address a large number of possible uses, each of which is based on specific configurations. Configurations are made with combinations of configurable elements and settings, leading to a huge number of possible combinations. Since it is infeasible to test all combinations at release, many latent defects remain in the software once deployed. An incremental testing approach is presented, where each customer configuration change requires impact analysis and retesting. This incremental approach involves cooperation and communications between the customer and the software vendor. The process for this approach is presented along with detailed examples of how it can be used on various user-configurable systems in the field. The overall efficiency and effectiveness of this method is shown by a set of empirical studies conducted with real customer configuration changes running on two separate commercially released ABB software systems. These two systems together contained &sim;3000 configurable elements and &sim;1.4 million Executable Lines of Code. In these five case studies, 460 failures reported by 100 different customers were analyzed. These empirical studies show that this incremental testing method is effective at detecting latent defects which are exposed by customer configuration changes in user-configurable systems.
Towards Resilient Community Wireless Mesh Networks
Authors: Sara Bury, Nicholas J. Race
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Autonomous Infrastructure, Management and Security: Resilient Networks and Services (2008)

Wireless Mesh Networks are an increasingly common technology providing connectivity in many communities, particularly where Internet access is unavailable or restricted via more conventional means. Their comparative ease of installation and relatively low cost makes this especially true for communities which might previously have lacked the technical knowledge or skill to attempt such an endeavour. In such a situation it is important that the operation of the network should be easily manageable; to this end the overall resiliency of the network is a key factor, enabling the network to resolve and remediate problems as they arise without requiring external technical understanding or input. This research aims to improve the resilience of community mesh networks by improving their security, initially examining the use of risk analysis techniques in this environment to identify potential attack vectors. This understanding will then be used to investigate intrusion detection techniques for operation specifically in a community environment.
The combination of multiple classifiers using an evidential reasoning approach
Authors: Yaxin Bi, Jiwen Guan, David Bell
Venue: Artificial Intelligence (2008)

In many domains when we have several competing classifiers available we want to synthesize them or some of them to get a more accurate classifier by a combination function. In this paper we propose a 'class-indifferent' method for combining classifier decisions represented by evidential structures called triplet and quartet, using Dempster's rule of combination. This method is unique in that it distinguishes important elements from the trivial ones in representing classifier decisions, makes use of more information than others in calculating the support for class labels and provides a practical way to apply the theoretically appealing Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence to the problem of ensemble learning. We present a formalism for modelling classifier decisions as triplet mass functions and we establish a range of formulae for combining these mass functions in order to arrive at a consensus decision. In addition we carry out a comparative study with the alternatives of simplet and dichotomous structure and also compare two combination methods, Dempster's rule and majority voting, over the UCI benchmark data, to demonstrate the advantage our approach offers.
Preservation of Privacy in Thwarting the Ballot Stuffing Scheme
Authors: Wesley Brandi, Martin S. Olivier, Alf Zugenmaier
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business (2008)

Users of an online trading system rely on Reputation Systems to better judge whom should be trusted and to what degree. This is achieved through users building up reputations in the system. In these types of environments, it has been shown that users with good reputations do more business than users with bad reputations. The ballot stuffing scheme exploits this and has fraudulent users placing a number of false bids in an attempt to better the reputation of a single user.Though previous research has dealt with thwarting the one man ballot stuffing scheme, the issue of privacy was neglected. The solution proposed relied on looking up the coordinates of a user who is a cellular phone holder. Upon placing a bid, the user's geographical coordinates are compared to the coordinates of other users involved in the transaction. If the users were within a predefined distance to one another, the transaction was marked as suspicious. This mechanism relies on storing the coordinates of a user over time and, from a privacy perspective, is unacceptable.The intention of this paper is to propose several solutions that attempt to safeguard the privacy of all users involved when calculating the distance between two cellular phone holders, i.e., thwarting the one man ballot stuffing scheme. We discuss solutions that cater for service providers who may be willing or unwilling to participate in safeguarding the privacy of their users. These techniques include Secure Multi-party Computation, polynomial interpolation and the addition of untrusted third parties.
Investigating Learner Trust in Open Learner Models Using a 'Wizard of Oz' Approach
Authors: Alice Kerly, Norasnita Ahmad, Susan Bull
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (2008)

Open learner models (OLM) are learner models which are accessible to the learner, allowing them to view, and sometimes modify, their model. This openness may raise questions of learner trust in their learner model: if users do not agree with, or trust the information they can see about themselves, their trust in the interaction will likely be reduced. Using a Wizard-of-Oz approach, we consider learner trust and possibilities for developing trust in OLMs.
The bonding structure and dipole polarizability of two near-isoenergetic isomers of Si$_{3}$
Authors: Didier Bégué, Claude Pouchan, George Maroulis, Daisy Y. Zhang
Venue: Journal of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering (2006)

Theoretical studies were carried out on the ground state of Si$_{3}$. Two low-lying states were identified, namely, a singlet state of C$_{2v}$ symmetry with a bond angle of around 80&deg;, and a triplet state of D$_{3h}$ symmetry. The two spin states are predicted to be very close in energy at their optimized geometries, with, for example, the ab initio methods with CCSD(T) and CASSCF(12,12) predicting the singlet state to be lower in energy by between 0.06 and 4.6 kcal/mol, respectively; whereas the DFT methods at (U)B3LYP/cc-pVQZ level predicting the opposite order with an energy difference of 1.62 kcal/mol. Walsh diagram is presented to explain the preferred spin state at the two different bond angles; and the bonding structures for the two isomers are proposed in light of the natural bond order analysis results by using the resonance hybrids model. However, unlike the energies, the two spin states are predicted to have fairly different dipole polarizability values: the mean &alpha;&macr; =105.1 for the singlet and 100.4 for the triplet (in atomic units) at the (U)CCSD/Sadlej level of theory.
Localized Spanner Construction for Ad Hoc Networks with Variable Transmission Range
Authors: David Peleg, Liam Roditty
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Ad-hoc, Mobile and Wireless Networks (2008)

This paper presents an algorithm for constructing a spanner for ad hoc networks whose nodes have variable transmission range. Almost all previous spanner constructions for ad hoc networks assumed that all nodes in the network have the same transmission range. This allowed a succinct representation of the network as a unit disk graph, serving as the basis for the construction. In contrast, when nodes have variable transmission range, the ad hoc network must be modeled by a general disk graph. Whereas unit disk graphs are undirected, general disk graphs are directed. This complicates the construction of a spanner for the network, since currently there are no efficient constructions of low-stretch spanners for general directed graphs. Nevertheless, in this paper it is shown that the class of disk graphs enjoys (efficiently constructible) spanners of quality similar to that of unit disk graph spanners. Moreover, it is shown that the new construction can be done in a localized fashion.
Classification of 2-arc-transitive dihedrants
Authors: Shaofei Du, Aleksander Malnič, Dragan Marušič
Venue: Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B (2008)

A complete classification of 2-arc-transitive dihedrants, that is, Cayley graphs of dihedral groups is given, thus completing the study of these graphs initiated by the third author in [D. Marusic, On 2-arc-transitivity of Cayley graphs, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 87 (2003) 162-196]. The list consists of the following graphs:(i)cycles C"2"n, n>=3; (ii)complete graphs K"2"n, n>=3; (iii)complete bipartite graphs K"n","n, n>=3; (iv)complete bipartite graphs minus a matching K"n","n-nK"2, n>=3; (v)incidence and nonincidence graphs B(H"1"1) and B^'(H"1"1) of the Hadamard design on 11 points; (vi)incidence and nonincidence graphs B(PG(d,q)) and B^'(PG(d,q)), with d>=2 and q a prime power, of projective spaces; (vii)and an infinite family of regular Z"d-covers K"q"+"1^2^d of K"q"+"1","q"+"1-(q+1)K"2, where q>=3 is an odd prime power and d is a divisor of q-12 and q-1, respectively, depending on whether q=1(mod4) or q=3(mod4), obtained by identifying the vertex set of the base graph with two copies of the projective line PG(1,q), where the missing matching consists of all pairs of the form [i,i^'], i@?PG(1,q), and the edge [i,j^'] carries trivial voltage if i=~ or j=~, and carries voltage h@?@?Z"d, the residue class of h@?Z, if and only if i-j=@q^h, where @q generates the multiplicative group F"q^* of the Galois field F"q.
Conceptual Spider Diagrams
Authors: Frithjof Dau, Andrew Fish
Venue: Proceedings of the 16th international conference on Conceptual Structures: Knowledge Visualization and Reasoning (2008)

Conceptual Graphs are a common knowledge representation system which are used in conjunction with an explicit type hierarchy of the domain. However, this means the interpretation of information expressed in conceptual graphs requires the combined use of information from different sources, which is not always an easy cognitive task. Though it is possible to explicitly represent the type hierarchy with Conceptual Graphs with Cuts, this less natural expression of the type hierarchy information is not as easy to interpret and soon takes up a lot of space. Now, one of the main advantages of Euler diagram-based notations like Spider diagrams is the natural diagrammatic representation of hierarchies. However, Spider diagrams lack facilities such as the ability to represent general relationships between objects which is necessary for knowledge representation tasks. We bring together the most pertinent features of both of these notations, creating a new hybrid notation called Conceptual Spider Diagrams. We provide formal syntax and semantics of this new notation, together with examples demonstrating its capabilities.
PSH: A Private and Shared History-Based Incentive Mechanism
Authors: Thomas Bocek, Wang Kun, Fabio Victora Hecht, David Hausheer, Burkhard Stiller
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Autonomous Infrastructure, Management and Security: Resilient Networks and Services (2008)

Fully decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) systems do not have a central control mechanism. Thus, different forms of control mechanisms are required to deal with selfish peers. One type of selfish behavior is the consumption of resources without providing sufficient resources. Therefore, incentive schemes encourage peers to share resources while punishing selfish peers. A well-known example of an incentive scheme is Tit-for-Tat (TFT), as used in BitTorrent. With this scheme, a peer can only consume as much resources as it provides. TFT is resilient to collusion due to relying on private histories only. However, TFT can only be applied to peers with direct reciprocity.This paper presents a private and shared history (PSH) based incentive mechanism, which supports transitive relations (indirect reciprocity). Furthermore, it is resilient to collusion and it combines private and shared histories in an efficient manner. The PSH approach uses a shared history for identifying transitive relations. Those relations are verified using private histories. Simulations show that the PSH mechanism has a higher transaction success ratio than TFT.
Simulating wireless and mobile networks in OMNeT++ the MiXiM vision
Authors: A. Köpke, M. Swigulski, K. Wessel, D. Willkomm, P. T. Klein Haneveld, T. E. V. Parker, O. W. Visser, H. S. Lichte, S. Valentin
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Simulation tools and techniques for communications, networks and systems & workshops (2008)

Wireless communication has attracted considerable interest in the research community, and many wireless networks are evaluated using discrete event simulators like OMNeT++. Although OMNeT++ provides a powerful and clear simulation framework, it lacks of direct support and a concise modeling chain for wireless communication. Both is provided by MiXiM. MiXiM joins and extends several existing simulation frameworks developed for wireless and mobile simulations in OMNeT++. It provides detailed models of the wireless channel (fading, etc.), wireless connectivity, mobility models, models for obstacles and many communication protocols especially at the Medium Access Control (MAC) level. Further, it provides a user-friendly graphical representation of wireless and mobile networks in OMNeT++, supporting debugging and defining even complex wireless scenarios. Though still in development, MiXiM already is a powerful tool for performance analysis of wireless networks. Its extensive functionality and clear concept may motivate researches to contribute to this open-source project [4].
Supervised Classification Fuzzy Growing Hierarchical SOM
Authors: Rafael Del-Hoyo, Nicolás Medrano, Bonifacio Martín-Del-Brio, Francisco José Lacueva-Pérez
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd international workshop on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems (2008)

This paper introduces a fuzzy-extension of the Kohonen Self Organizing Map model called Fuzzy Growing Hierarchical SOM that is able to extract Fuzzy rules in hierarchical way. The main idea of the FGHSOM is to provide an architecture that can be initialized with prior knowledge and without, and can be trained directly using SOM learning methods. The training is carried out using competitive methods in such a way that the learning result is interpretable in the form of linguistic fuzzy if-then rules and rules are organized in a tree-like structure. The structure allows increasing the information using parent/child relationships. The FGHSOM is successfully compared with different neuro-fuzzy algorithms in different classification problems.
Is a Voting Approach Accurate for Opinion Mining?
Authors: Michel Plantié, Mathieu Roche, Gérard Dray, Pascal Poncelet
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery (2008)

In this paper, we focus on classifying documents according to opinion and value judgment they contain. The main originality of our approach is to combine linguistic pre-processing, classification and a voting system using several classification methods. In this context, the relevant representation of the documents allows to determine the features for storing textual data in data warehouses. The conducted experiments on very large corpora from a French challenge on text mining (DEFT) show the efficiency of our approach.
An optical character recognition approach to qualifying thresholding algorithms
Authors: Margaret Sturgill, Steven J. Simske
Venue: Proceeding of the eighth ACM symposium on Document engineering (2008)

Pre-processing for raster image based document segmentation begins with image thresholding, which is a binarization process separating foreground from background. In this paper, we compare an existing (Otsu), modified existing (Kittler-Illingworth) and simple peak-based thresholding approach on a set of 982 documents for which existing ground truth (full text) is available. We use the output of an open source OCR engine which incorporates an adaptive/dynamic thresholder that can be bypassed by one of the three global thresholds we tested. This allowed comparison of these three approaches in the aggregate. We then used an independently-generated dictionary as a means of characterizing thresholder efficacy. Such an approach, if successful, will provide the means for selecting an optimal thresholder in the absence of a large set of ground truthed documents. Our preliminary findings here indicate that this approach may provide a reliable means for thresholder comparison and eventually preclude the need for time-intensive human ground truthing.
Multi-cue Localization for Soccer Playing Humanoid Robots
Authors: Hauke Strasdat, Maren Bennewitz, Sven Behnke
Venue: RoboCup 2006: Robot Soccer World Cup X (2006)

An essential capability of a soccer playing robot is to robustly and accurately estimate its pose on the field. Tracking the pose of a humanoid robot is, however, a complex problem. The main difficulties are that the robot has only a constrained field of view, which is additionally often affected by occlusions, that the roll angle of the camera changes continously and can only be roughly estimated, and that dead reckoning provides only noisy estimates. In this paper, we present a technique that uses field lines, the center circle, corner poles, and goals extracted out of the images of a low-cost wide-angle camera as well as motion commands and a compass to localize a humanoid robot on the soccer field. We present a new approach to robustly extract lines using detectors for oriented line pints and the Hough transform. Since we first estimate the orientation, the individual line points are localized well in the Hough domain. In addition, while matching observed lines and model lines, we do not only consider their Hough parameters. Our similarity measure also takes into account the positions and lengths of the lines. In this way, we obtain a much more reliable estimate how well two lines fit. We apply Monte-Carlo localization to estimate the pose of the robot. The observation model used to evaluate the individual particles considers the differences of expected and measured distances and angles of the other landmarks. As we demonstrate in real-world experiments, our technique is able to robustly and accurately track the position of a humanoid robot on a soccer field. We also present experiments to evaluate the utility of using the different cues for pose estimation.
Abstract Argumentation Scheme Frameworks
Authors: Katie Atkinson, Trevor Bench-Capon
Venue: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, and Applications (2008)

This paper presents an approach to modelling and reasoning about arguments that exploits and combines two of the most popular mechanisms used within computational modelling of argumentation: argumentation schemes and abstract argumentation frameworks. Our proposal combines the desirable properties of each by representing the components of argumentation schemes as argumentation frameworks. This allows us to make use of the structure provided by the schemes to guide dialogues and provide contextual elements of evaluation, whilst retaining the desirable properties of abstract frameworks to enable evaluation with respect to the logical relations between arguments. Our proposal takes account of dialogical aspects within a debate, such as burden of proof, and we illustrate our approach through a particular argumentation scheme, namely argument from expert opinion.
Scheduling algorithms for conducting conflict-free measurements in overlay networks
Authors: M. Fraiwan, G. Manimaran
Venue: Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking (2008)

Network monitoring is essential to the correct and efficient operation of ISP networks and the kind of applications they support, and active measurement is a key design problem in network monitoring. Unfortunately, almost all active probing algorithms ignore the measurement conflict problem: Active measurements conflict with each other - due to the nature of these measurements, the associated overhead, and the network topology - which leads to reporting incorrect results. In this paper, we consider the problem of scheduling periodic QoS measurement tasks in overlay networks. We first show that this problem is NP-hard, and then propose two conflict-aware scheduling algorithms for uniform and non-uniform tasks whose goal is to maximize the number of measurement tasks that can run concurrently, based on a well-known approximation algorithm. We incorporate topological information to devise a topology-aware scheduling algorithm that reduces the number of time slots required to produce a feasible measurement schedule. Also, we study the conflict-causing overlap among overlay paths using various real-life Internet topologies of the two major service carriers in the US. Experiments conducted using the PlanetLab testbed confirm that measurement conflict is a real issue that needs to be addressed. Simulation results show that our algorithms achieve at least 25% better schedulability over an existing algorithm. Finally, we discuss various practical considerations, and identify several interesting research problems in this context.
Reachability Problems: An Update
Authors: Eric Allender
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Computability in Europe: Computation and Logic in the Real World (2007)

There has been a great deal of progress in the fifteen years that have elapsed since Wigderson published his survey on the complexity of the graph connectivity problem [Wig92]. Most significantly, Reingold solved the longstanding question of the complexity of the s-t connectivity problem in undirected graphs, showing that this is complete for logspace (L) [Rei05].This survey talk will focus on some of the remaining open questions dealing with graph reachability problems. Particular attention will be paid to these topics: Reachability in planar directed graphs (and more generally, in graphs of low genus) [ADR05, BTV07]. Reachability in different classes of grid graphs [ABC + 06]. Reachability in mangroves [AL98].