ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
A comparison of some confidence intervals for the mean quality-adjusted lifetime with censored data
Authors: Hongkun Wang, Yichuan Zhao
Venue: Computational Statistics Data Analysis (2009)

Quality-adjusted lifetime (QAL) has been playing an important role in clinical trials to evaluate treatments for chronic diseases. Much research has been focused on estimating the mean QAL when the data are subject to right censoring. The estimated mean QAL is often presented with a confidence interval, obtained by using either the available variance estimator or the bootstrapping method. However, no research has shown which method yields confidence intervals with better coverage probability and shorter length, especially when the sample size is not big. In this paper, we examine the confidence intervals obtained by some available methods for the mean QAL with censored data. Simulation studies are employed to compare the performance of these methods with various sample sizes and different censoring rates. Methods with the best performance will be identified. A data example from a breast cancer clinical trial study is used to illustrate the application of these methods.
Distributed agent-based simulation of construction projects with HLA
Authors: Hosein Taghaddos, Simaan M. AbouRizk, Yasser Mohamed, Ivan Ourdev
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Conference on Winter Simulation (2008)

Simulation techniques can provide a resource-driven schedule and answer many hypothetical scenarios before project execution to improve on conventional project management software applications for large-scale construction projects. However, the current process of simulation and optimization of resource utilization is a time consuming process especially for large-scale projects. This study employs High Level Architecture (HLA) to develop distributed agent based simulation models. These models are composed of several individual modeling components (federates) that can cooperate with each other for the simulation model (interoperability). These federates are developed in a generic way for reuse on future construction projects. A number of agent-based federates are considered for managing various aspects of the project and to enhance the performance of the simulation model. This framework is illustrated using two case studies, module assembly yard and tower crane, that investigate the feasibility of the proposed approach.
Entropy: a consolidation manager for clusters
Authors: Fabien Hermenier, Xavier Lorca, Jean-Marc Menaud, Gilles Muller, Julia Lawall
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS international conference on Virtual execution environments (2009)

Clusters provide powerful computing environments, but in practice much of this power goes to waste, due to the static allocation of tasks to nodes, regardless of their changing computational requirements. Dynamic consolidation is an approach that migrates tasks within a cluster as their computational requirements change, both to reduce the number of nodes that need to be active and to eliminate temporary overload situations. Previous dynamic consolidation strategies have relied on task placement heuristics that use only local optimization and typically do not take migration overhead into account. However, heuristics based on only local optimization may miss the globally optimal solution, resulting in unnecessary resource usage, and the overhead for migration may nullify the benefits of consolidation. In this paper, we propose the Entropy resource manager for homogeneous clusters, which performs dynamic consolidation based on constraint programming and takes migration overhead into account. The use of constraint programming allows Entropy to find mappings of tasks to nodes that are better than those found by heuristics based on local optimizations, and that are frequently globally optimal in the number of nodes. Because migration overhead is taken into account, Entropy chooses migrations that can be implemented efficiently, incurring a low performance overhead.
A survey of search methodologies and automated system development for examination timetabling
Authors: R. Qu, E. K. Burke, B. Mccollum, L. T. Merlot, S. Y. Lee
Venue: Journal of Scheduling (2009)

Examination timetabling is one of the most important administrative activities that takes place in all academic institutions. In this paper, we present a critical discussion of the research on exam timetabling which has taken place in the last decade or so. This last ten years has seen a significantly increased level of research attention for this important area. There has been a range of insightful contributions to the scientific literature both in terms of theoretical issues and practical aspects. The main aim of this survey is to highlight the new trends and key research achievements that have been carried out in the last decade. We also aim to outline a range of relevant important research issues and challenges that have been generated by this body of work.We first define the problem and discuss previous survey papers. Within our presentation of the state-of-the-art methodologies, we highlight recent research trends including hybridisations of search methodologies and the development of techniques which are motivated by raising the level of generality at which search methodologies can operate. Summarising tables are presented to provide an overall view of these techniques. We also present and discuss some important issues which have come to light concerning the public benchmark exam timetabling data. Different versions of problem datasets with the same name have been circulating in the scientific community for the last ten years and this has generated a significant amount of confusion. We clarify the situation and present a re-naming of the widely studied datasets to avoid future confusion. We also highlight which research papers have dealt with which dataset. Finally, we draw upon our discussion of the literature to present a (non-exhaustive) range of potential future research directions and open issues in exam timetabling research.
Using personas effectively
Authors: Peter Bagnall
Venue: Proceedings of the 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference on HCI 2008: People and Computers XXI: HCI...but not as we know it - Volume 2 (2007)

Personas are a powerful design and communication tool to help all those involved in the creation of interactive systems to better focus their efforts on their users. A persona is a fictional character made to represent an archetypal user, and is best derived from field research. They help direct design, and communicate both to marketing and engineering teams.
Updating weight values for function point counting
Authors: Wei Xia, Danny Ho, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Faheem Ahmed
Venue: International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems (2009)

While software development productivity has grown rapidly, the weight values assigned to count standard Function Point (FP) created at IBM twenty-five years ago have never been updated. This obsolescence raises critical questions about the validity of the weight values; it also creates other problems such as ambiguous classification, crisp boundary, as well as subjective and locally defined weight values. All of these challenges reveal the need to calibrate FP in order to reflect both the specific software application context and the trend of today's software development techniques more accurately. We have created a FP calibration model that incorporates the learning ability of neural networks as well as the capability of capturing human knowledge using fuzzy logic. The empirical validation using ISBSG Data Repository (release 8) shows an average improvement of 22% in the accuracy of software effort estimations with the new calibration.
From Binary Trust to Graded Trust in Information Sources: A Logical Perspective
Authors: Emiliano Lorini, Robert Demolombe
Venue: Trust in Agent Societies: 11th International Workshop, TRUST 2008, Estoril, Portugal, May 12 -13, 2008. Revised Selected and Invited Papers (2008)

We present a concept of trust that integrates the truster's goal, the trustee's action that ensures the achievement of the truster's goal, and the trustee's ability and intention to do this action. This concept of trust is formalized in modal logic and is applied to the particular domain of trust in information sources. In this context trust may be derived, in particular, from the truster's beliefs about some properties of the information source: validity, completeness, sincerity, competence, vigilance and cooperativity. In the last part of the paper we move beyond binary trust (i.e. either i trusts j or i does not trust j) in order to capture a concept of graded trust.
Implement real-time transmission mechanism for VBR Stream under 802.16 wireless networks
Authors: Chih-Peng Lin, Hsing-Lung Chen
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Applied informatics and communications (2008)

In this paper variable rate control strategies for real-time VBR stream service over IEEE 802.16 broad-band networks are investigated. This is done in the context of real-time streaming using variable bit rate technology. A data rate control mechanism is derived for the case where the downlink channel provides real time polling bandwidth allocation service and remains traffic rate parameter constant. The paper show that the common queuing scheduling algorithms have some fairness bandwidth allocation problems for real time polling on Wimax system (IEEE 802.16) MAC layer. That is said, Wimax system are using VBR real-time polling service resulted to additional access latency jitter and bandwidth allocation disorder for transmitted variable data rate of VBR stream, when the base station regular time interval polling to SSs for contention bandwidth request period. However, This scheduling algorithm opposed to solve SSs contented bandwidth resource problem, depending on real-time polling service (rtPS) quality of service function under ranging response non-contention polling period, as adopted fairness bandwidth allocation max-min algorithm only time constraint condition to transmit real-time multimedia video on 802.16 wireless broadband environment. In addition, for analysis of vedio stream capacity, we utilize NS2 simulation, and show that the rtPS by fairness Max-Min algorithm can support to service more multimedia stream users compared with the others rtPS scheduler algorithms, respectively.
The JBoss extensible server
Authors: Marc Fleury, Francisco Reverbel
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM/IFIP/USENIX 2003 International Conference on Middleware (2003)

JBoss is an extensible, reflective, and dynamically reconfigurable Java application server. It includes a set of components that implement the J2EE specification, but its scope goes well beyond J2EE. JBoss is open-ended middleware, in the sense that users can extend middleware services by dynamically deploying new components into a running server. We believe that no other application server currently offers such a degree of extensibility. This paper focuses on two major architectural parts of JBoss: its middleware component model, based on the JMX model, and its meta-level architecture for generalized EJBs. The former requires a novel class loading model, which JBoss implements. The latter includes a powerful and flexible remote method invocation model, based on dynamic proxies, and relies on systematic usage of interceptors as aspect-oriented programming artifacts.
Auctions for Resource Allocation in Overlay Networks
Authors: Pablo Belzarena, Andrés Ferragut, Fernando Paganini
Venue: Network Control and Optimization: Second Euro-NF Workshop, NET-COOP 2008 Paris, France, September 8-10, 2008. Revised Selected Papers (2009)

The paper studies the problem of allocating bandwidth resources of a Service Overlay Network, to optimize revenue. Clients bid for network capacity in periodically held auctions, under the condition that resources allocated in an auction are reserved for the entire duration of the connection, not subject to future contention. This makes the optimal allocation coupled over time, which we formulate as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). Studying first the single resource case, we develop a receding horizon approximation to the optimal MDP policy, using current revenue and the expected revenue in the next step to make bandwidth assignments. A second approximation is then found, suitable for generalization to the network case, where bids for different routes compete for shared resources. In that case we develop a distributed implementation of the auction, and demonstrate its performance through simulations.
Homogeneous and strictly homogeneous criteria for partial structures
Authors: Boris A. Romov
Venue: Discrete Applied Mathematics (2009)

The Galois closure on the set of relations invariant to all finite partial automorphisms (automorphisms) of a countable partial structure is established via quantifier-free infinite predicate languages (infinite languages with finite string of quantifiers respectively). Based on it the homogeneous and strictly homogeneous criteria for a countable partial structure as well as an ultrahomogeneous criterion for a countable relational structure are found. Next it is shown that infinite languages with a finite string of quantifiers cannot determine the corresponding Galois closure for relations invariant to all automorphisms of an uncountable partial structure.
Prime III: an innovative electronic voting interface
Authors: Shaneé Dawkins, Tony Sullivan, Greg Rogers, E. Vincent Cross,  II, Lauren Hamilton, Juan E. Gilbert
Venue: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces (2009)

Voting technology today has not addressed the issues that disabled voters are confronted with at the polls. Because approximately 17% of the voting population is disabled, their issues should be handled with a solution geared towards their needs. Disabled voters need to be able to cast their vote without the assistance of others. The Prime III multimodal voting system [2] addresses these issues. This demonstration will illustrate the use of the Prime III system, a virtual reality (VR) version (Prime V), and a similar version created using a voice user interface (VUI).
Specifying and Enforcing Norms in Artificial Institutions
Authors: Nicoletta Fornara, Marco Colombetti
Venue: Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies VI: 6th International Workshop, DALT 2008, Estoril, Portugal, May 12, 2008, Revised Selected and Invited Papers (2008)

In this paper we investigate two related aspects of the formalization of open interaction systems: how to specify norms, and how to enforce them by means of sanctions. The problem of specifying the sanctions associated with the violation of norms is crucial in an open system because, given that the compliance of autonomous agents to obligations and prohibitions cannot be taken for granted, norm enforcement is necessary to constrain the possible evolutions of the system, thus obtaining a degree of predictability that makes it rational for agents to interact with the system. In our model, we introduce a construct for the definition of norms in the design of artificial institutions, expressed in terms of roles and event times, which, when certain activating events take place, is transformed into commitments of the agents playing certain roles. Norms also specify different types of sanctions associated with their violation. In the paper, we analyze the concept of sanction in detail and propose a mechanism through which sanctions can be applied.
Perceptually consistent example-based human motion retrieval
Authors: Zhigang Deng, Qin Gu, Qing Li
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics and games (2009)

Large amount of human motion capture data have been increasingly recorded and used in animation and gaming applications. Efficient retrieval of logically similar motions from a large data repository thereby serves as a fundamental basis for these motion data based applications. In this paper we present a perceptually consistent, example-based human motion retrieval approach that is capable of efficiently searching for and ranking similar motion sequences given a query motion input. Our method employs a motion pattern discovery and matching scheme that breaks human motions into a part-based, hierarchical motion representation. Building upon this representation, a fast string match algorithm is used for efficient runtime motion query processing. Finally, we conducted comparative user studies to evaluate the accuracy and perceptual-consistency of our approach by comparing it with the state of the art example-based human motion search algorithms.
A new 3-CNF transformation by parallel-serial graphs
Authors: Uwe Bubeck, Hans Kleine Büning
Venue: Information Processing Letters (2009)

For propositional formulas we present a new transformation into satisfiability equivalent 3-CNF formulas of linear length. The main idea is to represent formulas as parallel-serial graphs. This is a subclass of directed acyclic multigraphs where the edges are labeled with literals and the AND operation (respectively, the OR operation) is expressed as parallel (respectively, serial) connection.
Design of Network Protocols for Distributed Virtual Environments
Authors: Dong-il Ko, Yanghee Choi
Venue: Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems - Volume 02 (1999)

Recently, the explosive popularity of Internet gave birth to researches on Distributed Virtual Environments(DVE). They aim at providing a shared application data environment at realtime for users participating in the same application session across Internet. As more users join the session, and as more multimedia data are shared, because of network resource limitation, it is more difficult to maintain the quality of DVE, i.e. the users' satisfaction level. Previous works mainly tried to solve the scalability, synchronization and data transport issues at the application level, with limited success. We suggest here a new network centric solution, that consists of a novel network architecture and protocols upon which any large-scale DVE application can be easily developed. The performance of the proposed scheme, called GAIA, is verified by simulation.
Hugh
Authors: Karim Khenissi, Emilie Clavel
Venue: ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2008 computer animation festival (2008)

An old shaman tells a legend to three young children. A long time ago, humans had big troubles because the sky was too low. Birds couldn't fly, and humans had to look forward. But one day, children decided to change things and lift up the sky with sticks.
The effect of PKI benefits on competitive advantage
Authors: Chi-I Hsu, Yu-Ching Tung
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Applied informatics and communications (2008)

In order to have better understanding about the implementation advantages of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) applications, this study attempts to identify PKI benefits and examined the effect of PKI benefits on competitive advantage. Four aspects of benefits are identified through the approach of multicase study. The CFA and regression analysis are used to check the factor structure and test the hypothetical relationships. The results suggest that the PKI benefits on saving cost, increasing security, and making profit have significant effect on obtaining the competitive advantage of a company.
Low-Field Microwave Phenomena in CoFeSiB Amorphous Magnetic Microwires
Authors: M. Vázquez, G. Badidni-Confalonieri, J. Torrejón, R. Valenzuela, H. Montiel, G. Alvarez
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 Third International Conference on Quantum, Nano and Micro Technologies (2009)

Metallic microwires with ferromagnetic nature and amorphous structure have been prepared by rapid solidification and drawing. Their alloy composition and thickness, 1 to 30 micron diameter, can be tailored to exhibit outstanding properties. Particularly, non-magnetostrictive CoFeSiB alloy microwires exhibit giant-magnetoimpedance effect while FeSiB alloy microwires show quite large Barkhausen magnetic jump. These properties make them very useful as sensing elements in particular magnetic, stress or temperature sensor devices. After presenting the general characteristics of investigated microwires, we introduce and analyse novel results about microwave absorption phenomena of such microwires in the low-DC field regime ( units or tens of Oe). We have used two alternative techniques: i) Absorption measurements as a function of DC applied low-field using a spectrometer operating at X-band frequency of 9.8 GHz, and ii) Ferromagnetic resonance measurements in a network analyzer in the frequency range up to 20 GHz for different DC applied fields. The interpretation of results obtained by combination of the two techniques confirm that low-field microwave phenomena are associated with the low-field magnetization processes observed at low-frequency, which are determined by the particular magnetic anisotropy present in the microwires. This conclusion is similar to giant magnetoimpedance phenomena typically observed at lower frequency range. Results are also discussed in terms of the suitability to extend the working frequency to employ these microwires as sensing elements up to the gigahertz range.
A probabilistic mental model for estimating disruption
Authors: Bowen Hui, Grant Partridge, Craig Boutilier
Venue: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces (2009)

Adaptive software systems are intended to modify their appearance, performance or functionality to the needs and preferences of different users. A key bottleneck in building effective adaptive systems is accounting for the cost of disruption to a user's mental model of the application caused by the system's adaptive behaviour. In this work, we propose a probabilistic approach to modeling the cost of disruption. This allows an adaptive system to tradeoff disruption cost with expected savings (or other benefits) induced by a potential adaptation in a principled, decision-theoretic fashion. We conducted two experiments with 48 participants to learn model parameters in an adaptive menu selection environment. We demonstrate the utility of our approach in simulation and usability studies. Usability results with 8 participants suggest that our approach is competitive with other adaptive menus w.r.t. task performance, while providing the ability to reduce disruption and adapt to user preferences.
Refining component description by leveraging user query logs
Authors: Yan Li, Lu Zhang, Bing Xie, Jiasu Sun
Venue: Journal of Systems and Software (2009)

How to help reusers retrieve components efficiently and conveniently is critical to the success of the component-based software development (CBSD). In the literature, many research efforts have been devoted to the improvement of component retrieval mechanisms. Although various retrieval methods have been proposed, nowadays retrieving software component by the description text is still prevalent in most real-world scenarios. Therefore, the quality of the component description text is vital for the component retrieval. Unfortunately, the descriptions of components often contain improper or even noisy information which could deteriorate the effectiveness of the retrieval mechanism. To alleviate the problem, in this paper, we propose an approach which can improve the component description by leveraging user query logs. The key idea of our approach is to refine the description of a component by extracting proper information from the user query logs. Two different strategies are proposed to carry out the information extraction. The first strategy extracts information for a component only from its own related query logs. Whereas our second strategy further takes logs from similar components into consideration. We performed an experimental study on two different data sets to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach. The experimental results demonstrate that by using either extraction strategy our approach can improve retrieval performance and our approach can be more effective by leveraging the second strategy which utilizes logs from similar components.