ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Influence of the familiarization with "scratch" on future teachers' opinions and attitudes about programming and ICT in education
Authors: Georgios Fesakis, Kiriaki Serafeim
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (2009)

Computer programming is considered a very important competence which is usually quite difficult to learn. Teaching computer programming to novices has to overcome important obstacles in order to be successful. The problem is even greater for non computer science majors. In order to overcome the difficulties and increase the rate of students that adopt positive views towards computer science, several educational programming environments have been proposed. Scratch educational programming environment offers innovative programming techniques and enables the rather easy development of games, animations, interactive stories etc. In this paper the effects of using Scratch in an introductory computer programming course for future teachers' attitudes and opinions are explored.
Multi-agent agreements about actions through argumentation
Authors: Paolo Torroni
Venue: Proceeding of the 2006 conference on Computational Models of Argument: Proceedings of COMMA 2006 (2006)

In this work, we propose a declarative multi-agent argumentation framework for reasoning and argument about actions, equipped with a sound operational model. The foundations of this framework rely on previous results from ALP and from Dung's studies on argumentation. Our approach features declarative knowledge representation and logic based reasoning, agent interaction by argumentation dialogues, and a notion of agreement about actions.
Performance analysis of reliable transport schemes joint with the optimal frequency and optimal packet length in underwater sensor networks
Authors: Liu Bin, Wen Hao, Ren Fengyuan, Lin Chuang
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (2008)

In underwater sensor networks (UWSNs), high-delay acoustic channels are used for communications, which introduces new challenges for analyzing and choosing proper reliable transport mechanisms. In this paper, we investigate four key parameters (node distance, communication frequency, packet length and SNR) influencing the transport of UWSNs. Since treating all the four factors equally will make the analysis almost intractable, we propose a four-step analytical framework. In this framework, by optimizing both the communication frequency and packet length, we firstly show that the average energy consumption and the average communication delay of different transport schemes are only related to node distance and SNR. Then when considering practical scenarios, we further demonstrate that the scheme performances are mainly determined by SNR, which rather simplifies the analysis process. In addition, an important metric PEDP is proposed, which is only related to SNR but has the capability of evaluating the performance of transport schemes roundly and effectively. Finally, the numeric results offer us some profound insights for choosing proper transport schemes in UWSNs.
Techniques for leakage energy reduction in deep submicrometer cache memories
Authors: Fabio Frustaci, Pasquale Corsonello, Stefania Perri, Giuseppe Cocorullo
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems (2006)

The techniques known in literature for the design of SRAM structures with low standby leakage typically exploit an additional operation mode, named the sleep mode or the standby mode. In this paper, existing low leakage SRAM structures are analyzed by several SPEC2000 benchmarks. As expected, the examined SRAM architectures have static power consumption lower than the conventional 6-T SRAM cell. However, the additional activities performed to enter and to exit the sleep mode also lead to higher dynamic energy. Our study demonstrates that, due to this, the overall energy consumption achieved by the known low-leakage techniques is greater than the conventional approach. In the second part of this paper, a novel low-leakage SRAM cell is presented. The proposed structure establishes when to enter and to exit the sleep mode, on the basis of the data stored in it, without introducing time and energy penalties with respect to the conventional 6-T cell. The new SRAM structure was realized using the UMC 0.18-µm, 1.8-V, and the ST 90-nm 1-V CMOS technologies. Tests performed with a set of SPEC2000 benchmarks have shown that the proposed approach is actually energy efficient.
Analysis on a Non-repudiable Threshold Proxy Signature Scheme with Known Signers
Authors: Gang Li, Yanling Li, Chuanda Qi
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Neural Networks: Advances in Neural Networks - Part II (2009)

In 2000, Hwang et al. made an improvement on Sun's threshold proxy signature scheme. In 2004, Tzeng et al. present that Hwang et al.'s scheme is vulnerable against attack. A malicious original signer can forge the threshold proxy signatures without the agreement of the proxy signers. Tzeng et al. also constructed a nonrepudiable threshold proxy signature scheme with known signers and claimed the proposed scheme improved the security of Hwang et al.'s scheme. In this paper, we pointed that reasoning in THY-scheme exist severity error. Since it is repaired hardly possible that this reasoning in secret share generation phase of THY-scheme existed error, therefore THY-scheme is not useful even though changed some formulae.
Object-oriented design with trace modeler and Trace4J
Authors: Yanic Inghelbrecht
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (2009)

We present two tools that make students more productive during various object-oriented design activities. The first one, Trace Modeler, is a smart UML sequence diagram editor that helps students understand and apply responsibility-driven design. The second tool, Trace4J, is used to record and process the execution of a java program. Both tools are complementary. Students use Trace4J to produce focused sequence diagrams for (part of) a program's execution. Trace Modeler's support for huge diagrams lets them navigate and understand the large results in the initial stages of their processing experiments.
Nonnegative-Least-Square Classifier for Face Recognition
Authors: Nhat Vo, Bill Moran, Subhash Challa
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Neural Networks: Advances in Neural Networks - Part III (2009)

In this paper, we propose a novel classification method, based on Nonnegative-Least-Square (NNLS) algorithm, for face recognition. Different from traditional classifiers, in our classifier, we consider each new sample (face) as a nonnegative linear combination of training samples (faces). By forcing the nonnegative constraint on linear coefficients, we obtain the nonnegative sparse representation that automatically discriminates between those classes present in the training set. Experimental results show the promising aspects of new classifier when comparing with the most popular classifiers such as Nearest Neighborhood (NN), Nearest Centroid (NC), and Nearest Subspace (NS) in terms of recognition accuracy, efficiency, and numerical stability. Eigenfaces, Fisherfaces, and Laplacianfaces are performed on Yale and ORL databases as feature extraction in these experiments.
Definition of geometry of variable radius arch dam with degree of polynomial in the 3D finite element analysis
Authors: Susan Abraham, K. V. Narayanan
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS international conference on Mathematical and computational methods in science and engineering (2008)

The shape of an arch dam has of paramount importance in its ultimate behavior and eventually settles all design criteria. Variable curvature arch dams evolved to be economical in shape optimization studies. In Finite Element Analysis, the arch dam geometry is to be modeled very accurately. But the arch dam geometry may be varying in the three dimensions and with irregular boundaries depending on the design of profile according to site conditions; extrados intrados curves mainly in the horizontal and vertical directions need to be of higher order. Here in this paper, how effectively this type of complex arch dam geometry can be modeled by means of higher order hexahedral elements using Langrange polynomial of required degree in the respective directions is presented.
Noether normalization guided by monomial cone decompositions
Authors: Daniel Robertz
Venue: Journal of Symbolic Computation (2009)

This paper explains the relevance of partitioning the set of standard monomials into cones for constructing a Noether normalization for an ideal in a polynomial ring. Such a decomposition of the complement of the corresponding initial ideal in the set of all monomials-also known as a Stanley decomposition-is constructed in the context of Janet bases, in order to come up with sparse coordinate changes which achieve Noether normal position for the given ideal.
Software Architecture and Design Illuminated, 1st edition
Authors: Kai Qian, Xiang Fu, LiXin Tao, Chong-wei Xu, Jorge Diaz-Herrera
Venue:  (2009)

The SE 2004 of the ACM/IEEE computing curriculum project recommends software design and architecture as one of its ten essential areas of study. Software Architecture and Design Illuminated is the ideal text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students delving into this important area of the software development process. This text offers a coherent and integrated approach to the discipline of software architectural design and covers a complete set of important methodologies, architectural styles, design guidelines, and design tools. The Java language is used throughout the book to explain design principles and present case studies. Review questions, exercises, and design assignments round out each chapter and allow students to test themselves on key material.
Gait enhancing mobile shoe (GEMS) for rehabilitation
Authors: Allison de Groot, Ryan Decker, Kyle B. Reed
Venue: Proceedings of the World Haptics 2009 - Third Joint EuroHaptics conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems (2009)

Individuals with certain types of central nervous system damage, such as stroke, have an asymmetric walking gait. Using a split-belt treadmill, where each leg walks at a different speed, has been shown to help rehabilitate walking impaired individuals, but there is one distinct drawback; the corrected gait does not transfer well to walking over ground. To increase the gait transference to another environment, we designed and built a passive shoe that admits a motion similar to that felt when walking on a split-belt treadmill. Our gait enhancing mobile shoe (GEMS) alters the wearer's gait by causing one foot to move backward during the stance phase while walking over ground. No external power is required since the shoe mechanically converts the wearers downward and horizontal forces into a backward motion. This shoe would allow a patient to walk over ground while experiencing the same gait altering effects as felt on a split-belt treadmill, which should aid in transferring the corrected gait to walking in natural environments.
CDL: an Integrated Framework for Context Specification and Recognition
Authors: Fulvio Mastrogiovanni, Antonello Scalmato, Antonio Sgorbissa, Renato Zaccaria
Venue: Proceeding of the 2008 conference on ECAI 2008: 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2008)

A framework is introduced that is aimed at integrating ontology and logic approaches for context-awareness, suitable for use in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) scenarios. In particular, the context description language CDL is described, which allows to easily specify patterns of events which occurrences must be monitored by actual systems. As long as systems evolve, symbolic data originating from heterogeneous sources are first aggregated and then classified according to formulas described in CDL. Experimental results performed in a Smart Home environment are presented and discussed.
The effect of CS unplugged on middle-school students' views of CS
Authors: Rivka Taub, Mordechai Ben-Ari, Michal Armoni
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (2009)

Many students hold incorrect views of what computer science (CS) is, and they have negative attitudes towards the field. In order to address these difficulties, a series of learning activities called Computer Science Unplugged was developed by Bell et al. [3]. These activities expose young people to central concepts in CS in an entertaining way, without requiring a computer. Using questionnaires and interviews, we examined the effect of the activities on middle-school students' views of CS, specifically, on their views of: (a) the nature of CS; (b) the characteristics of computer scientists and work in CS; (c) the variety of employment in CS. The results indicate that 'although the students generally understood what CS is' they perceived the computer as the essence of CS and not primarily as a tool, contrary to the intention of the CS Unplugged activities. We suggest additions to the activities intended to increase the change in the views of CS that students have.
Abstraction pathologies in extensive games
Authors: Kevin Waugh, David Schnizlein, Michael Bowling, Duane Szafron
Venue: Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 2 (2009)

Extensive games can be used to model many scenarios in which multiple agents interact with an environment. There has been considerable recent research on finding strong strategies in very large, zero-sum extensive games. The standard approach in such work is to employ abstraction techniques to derive a more tractably sized game. An extensive game solver is then employed to compute an equilibrium in that abstract game, and the resulting strategy is presumed to be strong in the full game. Progress in this line of research has focused on solving larger abstract games, which more closely resemble the full game. However, there is an underlying assumption that by abstracting less, and solving a larger game, an agent will have a stronger strategy in the full game. In this work we show that this assumption is not true in general. Refining an abstraction can actually lead to a weaker strategy. We show examples of these abstraction pathologies in a small game of poker that can be analyzed exactly. These examples show that pathologies arise when abstracting both chance nodes as well as a player's actions. In summary, this paper shows that the standard approach to finding strong strategies for large extensive games rests on shaky ground.
Optimal maintenance policy for a multi-state deteriorating system with two types of failures under general repair
Authors: Michael Jong Kim, Viliam Makis
Venue: Computers and Industrial Engineering (2009)

We present a general repair model for a multi-state deteriorating system subject to major and minor failures. The process is modeled as a semi-Markov decision process with the optimality criterion being the minimization of the long-run expected average cost per unit time. A modified policy-iteration algorithm using the embedded technique is developed as the computational approach used to find the optimal maintenance policy. The advantage of using the embedded technique is that it reduces the size of the linear system in the value-determination step of the algorithm resulting in reduced computational efforts for large state spaces. Numerical examples are given which illustrate the implementation of the computational approach.
Handbook of Digital and Multimedia Forensic Evidence, 1st edition
Authors: John J. Barbara
Venue:  (2007)

Handbook of Digital and Multimedia Forensic Evidence presents an overview of computer forensics perfect for beginners. This volume will serve as a foundation and guide for: (a) students considering a career in this field; (b) the law enforcement investigator assigned to work cybercrimes; (c) establishing training programs for forensic examiners; (d) the IT professional; (e) the veteran forensic examiner; (f) the prosecutor faced with litigating cybercrime cases brought before a trier of fact. A distinguished group of specialist authors have crafted chapters rich with detail yet accessible for readers who are not experts in the field. Tying together topics as diverse as applicable laws on search and seizure, investigating cybercrime, and preparation for courtroom tesitmony, Handbook of Digital and Multimedia Forensic Evidence is the ideal overall reference for this multi-faceted discipline. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
HERG Effects on Ventricular Action Potential Duration and Tissue Vulnerability: A Computational Study
Authors: Alan P. Benson, Moza Al-Owais, Wing C. Tong, Arun V. Holden
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Functional Imaging and Modeling of the Heart (2009)

The mutations to hERG (the human Ether-a-go-go Related Gene) that cause long QT syndromes produce effects on the rapid delayed rectifier K + current I Kr and, therefore, action potential duration (APD). These mutations can affect various properties that determine I Kr kinetics. We used computational models of human ventricular myocytes to identify which of these properties, when altered, cause profound changes to APD and transmural dispersion of repolarisation (TDR). Such increases in both APD and TDR is caused by a positive shift of activation V 0.5, a negative shift of inactivation V 0.5, or by reducing maximal conductance. The largest reduction in APD is achieved by a positive shift of inactivation V 0.5. Altering the time constant of activation had relatively little effect. When two or more parameters were altered simultaneously, shifting inactivation V 0.5 had the dominant effect on APD, except for some extreme shifts of activation V 0.5 or moderate reductions of maximal conductance. HERG mutations observed clinically lie in the parameter range where maximal conductance has the dominant effect. Bifurcation analysis showed stable steady states (corresponding to physiological resting membrane potential) at all parameter values, and no APD alternans. We conclude that increased APD due to hERG mutations seen clinically are a combined effect of alterations to I Kr kinetic parameters that, in isolation, cause either shortening or prolongation of the AP. Therapeutics that alter I Kr conductance are potentially most beneficial.
Knowing When To BargainThe roles of negotiation and persuasion in dialogue
Authors: Simon Wells, Chris Reed
Venue: Proceeding of the 2006 conference on Computational Models of Argument: Proceedings of COMMA 2006 (2006)

In this paper two formal dialectic systems are described, a persuasion protocol (PP0) and a negotiation protocol (NP0), together with a method for shifting from an instance of a persuasion dialogue to an instance of a negotiation dialogue. The rationale for this kind of shift is explored in the context of the fallacy of bargaining. Such a dialectical shift is proposed as a valuable way to enable the participants in an argumentative dialogue to proceed towards a practical settlement when they are otherwise unable to persuade each other.
Color Enhancement in Image Fusion
Authors: Chao Zhang, Azhar A. Sufi
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision (2008)

We propose an innovative approach to enhance the color in image fusion. Previous work in color fusion has focused on the pseudo-color fusion. The color components are directly related to or linearly combined with the luminance images in different modalities. However, no work has been done to study the effects on the chrominance in the fused image when the luminance is significantly changed. For example, when objects in the visible image are dark but bright in the IR image, the fused objects become brighter. The color in the fused image looks pale. If the IR signal is strong enough such that the fused objects become saturated, the color is washed out. To solve these problems, we propose a gamma correction function to the normalized color components. The gamma function is a function of the difference between the fused result and the luminance of the visible image. In order to recover the chrominance in saturated region, we designed a damping function to drag the pixels in the saturated region closer to the visible image. We also discuss the orthogonalization of color bands in the correlated color space. The orthogonalization helps reduce the color skew during color enhancement.
Understanding the potential and limitations of HfAlO as interpoly dielectric in floating-gate Flash memory
Authors: B. Govoreanu, R. Degraeve, M. B. Zahid, L. Nyns, M. Cho, B. Kaczer, M. Jurczak, J. A. Kittl, J. Van Houdt
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2009)

Introduction of high-k dielectrics in Flash memory is seen as a must for the upcoming technology nodes. Hafnium aluminate (HfAlO) has been identified as a possible candidate for implementing the interpoly dielectric in floating gate memory. In this work, we establish a link between the material morphology and its electrical response, allowing to understand memory device behavior and to consequently assess the potential and limitations of HfAlO as IPD in a memory cell.
An LMI condition for robust stability of discrete-time state-delayed systems using quantization/overflow nonlinearities
Authors: V. Krishna Rao Kandanvli, Haranath Kar
Venue: Signal Processing (2009)

A linear matrix inequality (LMI)-based new criterion for the global asymptotic stability of a class of uncertain discrete-time state-delayed systems using combinations of quantization and overflow nonlinearities is presented. The parameter uncertainties are assumed to be norm-bounded. Some examples highlighting the usefulness of the presented criterion are given.
Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining
Venue: International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (2009)

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the Fifteenth ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD'09). This year is special in that it marks the first time that KDD is held in Europe, and where better to host it than beautiful Paris! As the flagship conference in the field, KDD continues to provide a highly competitive forum for reporting the latest and the best developments in the research and application of data mining and knowledge discovery worldwide. KDD'09 received a record number of 659 submissions, more than 10% up from last year. The Research Track received 537 submissions and the Industrial and Government Applications Track received 122 submissions (an increase of nearly half over last year). For the Research Track, the program committee accepted 105 papers, 50 of which (9.3% of the submitted papers) were chosen for a 25 minute oral presentation and the remaining 55 (10.2%) for a 15 minute presentation. The corresponding numbers for the Industrial Track are 12 (9.8%) and 22 (18.0%). All accepted papers are given up to 9 pages in the proceedings, and all accepted papers are also given poster presentation opportunities in one of the two evening poster sessions during the conference. In addition to the paper presentations, the conference features nine tutorials, eleven workshops, one panel, the hugely successful KDD-Cup competition, a demo session, an exhibition, evening industry sessions (new!), and three invited talks by David Hand (Imperial College London, UK), Heikki Mannila (University of Helsinki, Finland) and Stanley Wasserman (Indiana University, USA). The Industrial Track includes two additional invited presentations by Ravi Kumar (Yahoo! Research, USA) and Ashok Srivastava (NASA Ames, USA).