ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
The effect of memory schemas on object recognition in virtual environments
Authors: Katerina Mania, Andrew Robinson, Karen R. Brandt
Venue: Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments (2005)

Prior theoretical work on memory schemas, an influential concept of memory from the field of cognitive psychology, is presented for application to fidelity of computer graphics simulations. The basic assumption is that an individual's prior experience will influence how he or she perceives, comprehends, and remembers new information in a scene. Schemas are knowledge structures; a scene could incorporate objects that fit into a specific context or schema (e.g., an academic's office) referred to as consistent objects. A scene could also include objects that are not related to the schema in place referred to as inconsistent objects. In this paper, we describe ongoing development of a rendering framework related to scene perception based on schemas. An experiment was carried out to explore the effect of object type and rendering quality on object memory recognition in a room. The computer graphics simulation was displayed on a Head Mounted Display (HMD) utilizing stereo imagery and head tracking. Thirty-six participants across three conditions of varied rendering quality of the same space were exposed to the computer graphics environment and completed a memory recognition task. Results revealed that schema consistent elements of the scene were more likely to be recognized than inconsistent information. Over-all higher confidence ratings were assigned for consistent objects compared to inconsistent ones. Total object recognition was better for the mid-quality condition compared to the low-quality one. The presence of shadow information, though, did not affect recognition of either consistent or inconsistent objects. Further explorations of the effect of schemas on spatial awareness in synthetic worlds could lead to identifying areas of a computer graphics scene that require better quality of rendering as well as areas for which lower fidelity could be sufficient. The ultimate goal of this work is to simulate a perceptual process rather than to simulate physics.
Reinforcement Matching Using Region Context
Authors: Hongli Deng, Eric N. Mortensen, Linda Shapiro, Thomas G. Dietterich
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop (2006)

Local feature-based matching is robust to both clutter and occlusion. However, a primary shortcoming of local features is a deficiency of global information that can cause ambiguities in matching. Local features combined with global relationships convey much more information, but global spatial information is often not robust to occlusion and/or non-rigid transformations. This paper proposes a new framework for including global context information into local feature matching, while still maintaining robustness to occlusion, clutter, and nonrigid transformations. To generate global context information, we extend previous fixed-scale, circular-bin methods by using affine-invariant log-polar elliptical bins. Further, we employ a reinforcement matching scheme that provides greater robustness to occlusion and clutter than previous methods that non-discriminately compare accumulated bins values over the entire context. We also present a more robust method of calculating a feature's dominant orientation. We compare reinforcement matching to nearest neighbor matching without region context and to robust matching methods (RANSAC and PROSAC).
Voice Conversion by Prosody and Vocal Tract Modification
Authors: K. Sreenivasa Rao, B. Yegnanarayana
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Information Technology (2006)

In this paper we proposed some flexible methods, which are useful in the process of voice conversion. The proposed methods modify the shape of the vocal tract system and the characteristics of the prosody according to the desired requirement. The shape of the vocal tract system is modified by shifting the major resonant frequencies (formants) of the short term spectrum, and altering their bandwidths accordingly. In the case of prosody modification, the required durational and intonational characteristics are imposed on the given speech signal. In the proposed method, the prosodic characteristics are manipulated using instants of significant excitation. The instants of significant excitation correspond to the instants of glottal closure (epochs) in the case of voiced speech, and to some random excitations like onset of burst in the case of nonvoiced speech. Instants of significant excitation are computed from the Linear Prediction (LP) residual of the speech signals by using the property of average group delay of minimum phase signals. The manipulations of durational characteristics and pitch contour (intonation pattern) are achieved by manipulating the LP residual with the help of the knowledge of the instants of significant excitation. The modified LP residual is used to excite the time varying filter. The filter parameters are updated according to the desired vocal tract characteristics. The proposed methods are evaluated using listening tests.
Data mining middleware for wide-area high-performance networks
Authors: Robert L. Grossman, Yunhong Gu, David Hanley, Michal Sabala, Joe Mambretti, Alex Szalay, Ani Thakar, Kazumi Kumazoe, Oie Yuji, Minsun Lee, Yoonjoo Kwon, Woojin Seok
Venue: Future Generation Computer Systems (2006)

In this paper, we describe two distributed, data intensive applications that were demonstrated at iGrid 2005 (iGrid Demonstration US 109 and iGrid Demonstration US121). One involves transporting astronomical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the other involves computing histograms from multiple high-volume data streams. Both rely on newly developed data transport and data mining middleware. Specifically, we describe a new version of the UDT network protocol called Composible-UDT, a file transfer utility based upon UDT called UDT-Gateway, and an application for building histograms on high-volume data flows called BESH (for Best Effort Streaming Histogram). For both demonstrations, we include a summary of the experimental studies performed at iGrid 2005.
Set- and Code-Specific Activation in the Frontal Cortex: An fMRI Study of Encoding and Retrieval of Faces and Words
Authors: Kathleen B. McDermott, Randy L. Buckner, Steven E. Petersen, William M. Kelley, Amy L. Sanders
Venue: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (1999)

The frontal cortex has been described as playing both ''setspecific'' and ''code-specific'' roles in human memory processing. Set specificity refers to the finding of goal-oriented differences in activation patterns (e.g., encoding relative to retrieval). Code specificity refers to the finding of different patterns of activation for different types of stimuli (e.g., verbal/nonverbal). Using a two (code: verbal, nonverbal) by two (set: encoding, retrieval) within-subjects design and fMRI, we explored the influence of type of code and mental set in two regions in the frontal cortex that have been previously shown to be involved in memory. A region in the dorsal extent of the inferior frontal gyrus (BA 6/44) demonstrated code-specific effects. Specifically, an interaction of material type with hemisphere was obtained, such that words produced predominantly left-lateralized activation, whereas unfamiliar faces elicited predominantly right-lateralized activation. A region of the right frontal polar cortex (in or near BA 10), which has been activated in many memory retrieval studies, showed set-specific activation in that it was more active during retrieval than encoding. These data demonstrate that distinct regions in the frontal cortex contribute in systematic yet different ways to human memory processing.
Nonlinear regression fits for simulated cycle time vs. throughput curves for semiconductor manufacturing
Authors: Rachel T. Johnson, Feng Yang, Bruce E. Ankenman, Barry L. Nelson
Venue: Proceedings of the 36th conference on Winter simulation (2004)

This paper illustrates an example of the use of a metamodeling approach to simulation through an example of two real world semiconductor manufacturing systems. The meta-model used was from Yang et al. (2004) and has similarities to Cheng and Kleijnen (1999). The approach aims at reducing the amount of simulation work necessary to generate high quality cycle time-throughput (CT-TH) curves. The paper specifically focuses on demonstrating that, in practice, CT-TH curves can deviate significantly from forms currently assumed in the literature (Cheng and Kleijnen 1999).
Video Stream Annotations for Energy Trade-offs in Multimedia Applications
Authors: Radu Cornea, Alex Nicolau, Nikil Dutt
Venue: Proceedings of the Proceedings of The Fifth International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (2006)

Recent applications for distributed mobile devices, including multimedia video/audio streaming, typically process streams of incoming data in a regular, predictable way. The behavior of these applications during runtime can be accurately predicted most of the time by analyzing the data to be processed and annotating the stream with the information collected. We introduce an annotation-based approach to power-quality trade-offs and demonstrate its application on CPU frequency scaling during video decoding, for an improved user experience on portable devices. Our experiments show that up to 50% of the power consumed by the CPU during video decoding can be saved with this approach.
Full oscillation cycle phase noise analysis of differential CMOS LC oscillators
Authors: Niklas Troedsson, Henrik Sjöland
Venue: Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (2006)

This paper analyzes the phase noise of the widely used differential LC oscillator topology and presents brief equations describing phase noise over the entire oscillation period. The findings show that if a capacitance is present at the source node of the differential pair, two phenomena occur that increase the phase noise: the switch time increases, lengthening the interval spent in a noisy balanced state and increasing the transistor noise excess factor; and at higher frequencies the unbalanced state starts to contribute phase noise. The analysis is based upon the superposition of piecewise linear equations using the EKV transistor model, which includes a concise formulation of the noise excess factor.
The emergence of global properties from local interactions: static properties and one-dimensional patterns
Authors: Daniel Yamins
Venue: Proceedings of the fifth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems (2006)

Groups of simple objects, interacting under local rules, can produce global properties of great complexity and rich functionality. In this paper, we address of whether a given global property can emerge from purely local interactions. We provide a necessary condition for the case of static properties, and provide complementary sufficient conditions for patterns on the special case of one-dimensional lattices. This work shows that two general considerations, local checkability and symmetry, are the main determinants of "emergeability," at least in these special cases. This work also shows that relatively unified constructions provide solutions to large classes of patterns.
Scalable Surveillance Software Architecture
Authors: Henry Detmold, Anthony Dick, Katrina Falkner, David S. Munro, Anton van den Hengel, Ron Morrison
Venue: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Video and Signal Based Surveillance (2006)

Video surveillance is a key technology for enhanced protection of facilities such as airports and power stations from various types of threat. Networks of thousands of IP-based cameras are now possible, but current surveillance methodologies become increasingly ineffective as the number of cameras grows. Constructing software that efficiently and reliably deals with networks of this size is a distributed information processing problem as much as it is a video interpretation challenge. This paper demonstrates a software architecture approach to the construction of large scale surveillance network software and explores the implications for instantiating surveillance algorithms at such a scale. A novel architecture for video surveillance is presented, and its efficacy demonstrated through application to an important class of surveillance algorithms.
Quantization effects on the equilibrium behavior of combined fuzzy cognitive maps: Research Articles
Authors: Rod Taber, Ronald R. Yager, Cathy M. Helgason
Venue: International Journal of Intelligent Systems (2007)

Fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) allow experts to express their knowledge by drawing weighted causal digraphs. Experts can pool or fuse their knowledge by adding the underlying FCM causal matrices. This naturally extends the ordered-weighted-averaging (OWA) technique to averaging dynamical systems and can create complex dynamical systems from several simpler ones. Edge quantization allows experts to state their knowledge in the simpler terms of causal increase (1), decrease (-1), or absence (0). We model the expert FCMs as a sequence of random fields to study the small-sample effects of quantizing both the causal edges and the fuzzy-set concept nodes. The averaged quantized random matrices exhibit large-sample convergence to the population means of the unquantized matrices in accordance with the Strong Law of Large Numbers. But the small-sample averages can show substantial diversity of equilibrium attractors (fixed points or limit cycles). We use statistical tests&mdash;chi-square tests, Spearman's rank coefficient, the Kolmogorov&ndash;Smirnov test, and the fuzzy equality of limit cycle histograms&mdash;to show that this small-sample equilibrium diversity increases as the node multivalence or fuzzy-set quantization increases. The appendix presents a new probabilistic convergence theorem that shows that edge quantization or thresholding does not affect FCM combination for large expert sample sizes: the sample mean of quantized expert causal edge values converges with probability one to the population mean causal edge values. &copy; 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 181&ndash;202, 2007.
Scenario planning for simulation-based probabilistic risk assessment
Authors: Hamed Nejad
Venue: Proceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation (2005)

Simulation is used for the probabilistic risk assessment of complex systems that include hardware, software, and human elements. Since assessing the risk of such systems requires that a large number of scenarios be considered, a Planner component has been added to the simulation environment. This component solicits high level information such as system's structure and functional behavior, and uses it to automatically generate and prioritize scenarios that will be used in risk assessment. Because of the hierarchical configuration of the Planner's knowledge-base, scenarios can easily be modified to assess system risks when parts of the system are modified for risk management. As such, the analyst is able to compare the results of risk assessment -end-state probabilities as well as worse case scenarios- in different settings. The planning process is dynamic and simulation feedback is used to update the list of scenarios and/or their level of priority as needed.
Exploiting cyclostationarity for range and bearing estimation
Authors: S. Shamsunder
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1993. ICASSP-93 Vol 4., 1993 IEEE International Conference on - Volume 04 (1993)

Novel bearing and range estimation algorithms are proposed using cyclostationarity of the underlying processes. By exploiting the higher-order temporal properties of communication signals, direction finding algorithms are proposed for narrowband non-Gaussian signals. These algorithms improve resolution and are tolerant to all Gaussian, as well as some non-Gaussian, interferences. In active radar situations, moving targets reflect signals whose statistics are periodically time-varying. By casting the target tracking problem in the cyclic domain, novel algorithms are developed for estimating the time-varying range; these methods are tolerant to any stationary noise as well as transients.
Knowledge Based Verification of Aggregate Specifications
Authors: Henrikas Pranevicius, Regina Miseviciene
Venue: Proceedings of the Fifth Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2006)

The paper considers the verification approach of Piece--Linear Aggregate models used for formalization and simulation of complex systems. The approach is based on constructing an aggregate specification and transforming the specification to the set of predicate logic formulas describing both aggregate specification and properties under investigation. The resolution method implemented in Prolog is applied to generate and analyze a decision tree. The presented approach is illustrated by example.
A Scan Chain Adjustment Technology for Test Power Reduction
Authors: Jia LI, Yu HU, Xiaowei LI
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th Asian Test Symposium (2006)

Recently test power dissipation has become a more and more challenging issue. This paper proposes a technique to solve this problem through scan chain adjustment to eliminate unnecessary transitions in scan chains. An extended WTM (EWTM) metric is proposed to estimate dynamic power dissipation in circuit under test caused by transitions in test stimulus and response vectors. And the routing overhead of this methodology can be reduced through scan chain adjustment guided with our Distance of EWTM (DEWTM) metric. Experimental results on ISCAS'89 benchmarks circuits show that the proposed approach can reduce average power dissipation during scan test by 72.2% on average, with negligible routing overhead.
A UML Profile and a Methodology for Real-Time Systems Design
Authors: Cesare Bartolini, Antonia Bertolino, Guglielmo De Angelis, Giuseppe Lipari
Venue: Proceedings of the 32nd EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (2006)

Modern real-time systems are increasingly complex and pervasive. Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is the emerging approach for the design of complex systems, strongly based on the usage of abstract models as key artifacts, from which an implementation is derived through a series of welldefined (automated) transformations. The widely adopted input notation in MDE is the Unified Modeling Language (UML). To express models in a particular domain, and notably for the modeling of real-time embedded systems, UML profiles have been proposed, which enrich the set of UML native elements with a consistent set of extensions. In this trend, this paper develops an approach to the design of realtime systems, based on a UML profile which is obtained from the OMG standard SPT-Profile, with a few necessary modifications.
Image Watermarking Based HVS Characteristic of Wavelet Transform
Authors: Cong Jin, Feng Tao, Yu Fu
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia (2006)

In a digital TV system, the Conditional Access (CA) system is essential to protect programs from unauthorized access. However, the encryption technique alone is not sufficient to protect or control the use of contents after decryption. To provide flexible and complete Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection on the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) programs, we propose a method that adapts the MPEG- 21 REL technology and integrates it into a DVB-T system. By extending the Service Information (SI) section of a DVB stream to include an REL license, the transmitted content can be conveniently consumed and legally protected. Our design is verified by an experimental hardware system. The results show that the proposed method can provide both the conditional access functionality and the usage control of broadcasted contents.
Critical area air defense (CAAD) homeland air defense architecture assessment
Authors: James M. Gill, Tom Sadeghi, Steven Boe, Hutch Davis, Kari Perez
Venue: Proceedings of the 36th conference on Winter simulation (2004)

The purpose of this presentation to familiarize the participants with the joint USAF/1st AF/Joint Theater Air and Missile Defense Organization initiative entitled "Critical Area Air Defense (CAAD) Architecture Assessment" that began in 2002. The CAAD briefing is in two parts: (1) the discussion of the CAAD purpose, objectives, architecture, infrastructure; and (2) a description of the events themselves. CAAD is a joint government initiative. Since its inception in January 2002, USAF ESC has taken the technical lead, joined with First Air Force operational lead and Joint Theater and Missile Defense Organization (JTAMDO), to design, construct, implement, and apply a simulation based infrastructure to assess Homeland Air Defense (HLAD) architectures against cruise missiles and terrorist threats similar to the 911 attacks. Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) provided the necessary support to ESC and 1st AF as the prime contractor and technical lead.
Classifier Building by Reduction of an Ensemble of Decision Trees to a Set of Rules
Authors: Ewa Szpunar-Huk
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Inteligence for Modelling Control and Automation and International Conference on Intelligent Agents Web Technologies and International Commerce (2006)

The paper presents a new approach for building classifiers by transforming an ensemble of classifiers into a single rule set. The proposed method improves generalization abilities of an ensemble with additional reduction of its complexity. It is dedicated to committees of decision trees and bases on transformation of a set of trees into a set of rules with a new, well-suited, weighed voting algorithm. The paper also presents experiments showing the properties and effectiveness of proposed method and direction of further research.
A Graph Based Approach for Naming Faces in News Photos
Authors: Derya Ozkan, Pynar Duygulu
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition - Volume 2 (2006)

We propose a method to associate names and faces for querying people in large news photo collections. On the assumption that a person's face is likely to appear when his/her name is mentioned in the caption, first all the faces associated with the query name are selected. Among these faces, there could be many faces corresponding to the queried person in different conditions, poses and times, but there could also be other faces corresponding to other people in the caption or some non-face images due to the errors in the face detection method used. However, in most cases, the number of corresponding faces of the queried person will be large, and these faces will be more similar to each other than to others. In this study, we propose a graph based method to find the most similar subset among the set of possible faces associated with the query name, where the most similar subset is likely to correspond to the faces of the queried person. When the similarity of faces are represented in a graph structure, the set of most similar faces will be the densest component in the graph. We represent the similarity of faces using SIFT descriptors. The matching interest points on two faces are decided after the application of two constraints, namely the geometrical constraint and the unique match constraint. The average distance of the matching points are used to construct the similarity graph. The most similar set of faces is then found based on a greedy densest component algorithm. The experiments are performed on thousands of news photographs taken in real life conditions and, therefore, having a large variety of poses, illuminations and expressions.