ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Stretch 'n' shrink: resizing queries to user preferences
Authors: Chaitanya Mishra, Nick Koudas
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (2008)

We present Stretch 'n' Shrink, a query design framework that explicitly takes into account user preferences about the desired answer size, and subsequently modifies the query with user feedback to meet this target. Our system has been prototyped inside an open source data manager, and requires minimal modifications to the database engine.
Next generation wireless-multimedia devices: who is up for the challenge?
Authors: Juan C. Rey, Andreas Kuehlmann, Jan Rabaey, Cormac Conroy, Ted Vucurevich, Ikuya Kawasaki, Tuna B. Tarim
Venue: Proceedings of the 45th annual Design Automation Conference (2008)

Yesterday's cell phones have rapidly evolved into versatile multi-media computers heavily loaded with a wide spectrum of technologies to support many functions and use modes. Designing and verifying such complex devices becomes increasingly challenging due to the need to: incorporate larger number of functions and diverse use modes, increased bandwidth, provide support for multimedia devices with high resolution, offer new methods for user interactions, and all of this at a fixed power budget and with high reliability. In addition, teams need to keep up with the convergence of wireless radio algorithms and be able to support more functionality moving into the software layer.
Loewy decomposition of third-order linear aPDE's in the plane
Authors: Dima Grigoriev, Fritz Schwarz
Venue: Proceedings of the twenty-first international symposium on Symbolic and algebraic computation (2008)

Loewy's decomposition of a linear ordinary differential operator as the product of largest completely reducible components is generalized to partial differential operators of order three in two variables. This is made possible by considering the problem in the ring of partial differential operators where both left intersections and right divisors of left ideals are not necessarily principal. Listings of possible decomposition types are given. Many of them are illustraded by worked out examples. Algorithmic questions and questions of uniqueness are discussed in the Summary.
Bad Words: Finding Faults in Spirit's Syslogs
Authors: Jon Stearley, Adam J. Oliner
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (2008)

Accurate fault detection is a key element of resilient computing. Syslogs provide key information regarding faults, and are found on nearly all computing systems. Discovering new fault types requires expert human effort, however, as no previous algorithm has been shown to localize faults in time and space with an operationally acceptable false positive rate. We present experiments on three weeks of syslogs from Sandia's 512-node "Spirit"' Linux cluster, showing one algorithm that localizes 50% of faults with 75% precision, corresponding to an excellent false positive rate of 0.05%. The salient characteristics of this algorithm are (1) calculation of nodewise information entropy, and (2) encoding of word position. The key observation is that similar computers correctly executing similar work should produce similar logs.
Unfoldings: A Partial-Order Approach to Model Checking (Monographs in Theoretical Computer Science. An EATCS Series), 1 edition
Authors: Javier Esparza, Keijo Heljanko
Venue:  (2008)

Model checking is a prominent technique used in the hardware and software industries for automatic verification. While it is very successful in finding subtle bugs in distributed systems, it faces the state explosion problem - the number of reachable states grows exponentially in the number of concurrent components. In this book the authors introduce unfoldings, an approach to model checking which alleviates the state explosion problem by means of concurrency theory. They offer a gentle introduction to the basics of the method, and in particular they detail an unfolding-based algorithm for model checking concurrent systems against properties specified as formulas of linear temporal logic (LTL). Self-contained chapters cover transition systems and their products; unfolding products; search procedures for basic verification problems, such as reachability and livelocks; and model checking LTL. The final chapter summarizes the results of the book, and points the reader to tools and case studies. The book will be of value to researchers and graduate students engaged in automatic verification and concurrency theory.
A learning theory approach to non-interactive database privacy
Authors: Avrim Blum, Katrina Ligett, Aaron Roth
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing (2008)

We demonstrate that, ignoring computational constraints, it is possible to release privacy-preserving databases that are useful for all queries over a discretized domain from any given concept class with polynomial VC-dimension. We show a new lower bound for releasing databases that are useful for halfspace queries over a continuous domain. Despite this, we give a privacy-preserving polynomial time algorithm that releases information useful for all halfspace queries, for a slightly relaxed definition of usefulness. Inspired by learning theory, we introduce a new notion of data privacy, which we call distributional privacy, and show that it is strictly stronger than the prevailing privacy notion, differential privacy.
A Search-Free Intersection Algorithm
Authors: Akadej Udomchaiporn, Veera Boonjing
Venue: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations (2008)

This paper proposes a new intersection algorithm of sorted sets. The new algorithm employs a comparison-and-elimination approach to the intersection problem instead of using search algorithms as existing intersection solutions. It takes (1) O(1) times for the best case; (2) O(λ) times for the average case, where λ is an average size of sorted sets; and (3) O(kn) times for the worst case, where k is the number of sorted sets and n is the total elements of k sorted sets.
Transient analysis of multi-state dc&ndash;dc converters using system energy characteristics
Authors: Miao Zhu, Fang Lin Luo
Venue: International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications (2008)

The study of multi-state dc&ndash;dc power conversion techniques is restricted by the complicated inner switching behaviors. This paper presents a general and unified transient analysis for various sorts of multi-state dc&ndash;dc converters from a viewpoint of their system energy characteristics. With the applications to the boost converters, the proposed analytical method has indicated its advantages of high convenience and practicability to the multi-state converters. The generalized concepts of system energy parameters of dc&ndash;dc converters are introduced and applied to the transient analysis. Consequently, the expressions of system model parameters of multi-state dc&ndash;dc converters are deduced. The new 2nd order transfer functions are obtained to describe the large- and small-signal mathematical models accurately. The model simulation and experimental results are provided to support the theoretical analysis. Copyright &copy; 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Printed Circuit Board Assembly Test Process and Design for Testability
Authors: Thao Nguyen, Navid Rezvani
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th international symposium on Quality Electronic Design (2008)

The trend in Printed Circuit Board Assembly technology is towards higher complexity, many boards have significantly more components and solder joints today than just a few years ago. In addition, board assembly process variations may lead to board failures due to the change of process parameters. The sooner process and electrical defects are caught, the lower the total cost of ownership will be. Defect finding and analysis at early manufacturing stages are critical to lower cycle time and cost for high-volume production. Therefore, a key challenge facing electronics manufacturers of high complexity boards is the issue of board test strategy. An effective board test strategy can be critical in determining a company’s ability to succeed in an environment of extreme cost and time to market pressures, and requirement to faster volume ramp with higher yield and quality. Design for testability is a key to lower life cycle cost of the product from design, manufacturing, and field support. Poor design for testability makes product testing difficult and with low test coverage. More and more failures escape to the field and would create a larger bone-pile of boards that need to be debugged and repaired. In order to improve quality, a special attention should be given to design for testability at early design stages while defining good test process strategy for the high-volume production.
Rate-based congestion control mechanism for multicast communication
Authors: Muhammad Niswar, Ahmad Husni Thamrin
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th WSEAS International Conference on Telecommunications and Informatics (2005)

This paper presents a multicast congestion control mechanism using combination of both sender and receiver-based approach for multicast communication. We focus on mechanism that the protocol can adapt with network condition by adjusting the transmission rate (RAP) based on ACK/NACK and detect a loss based on NACK transmitted by receivers. We add ACK/NACK suppression mechanism at receivers to avoid feedback implosion at sender. Our simulation result shows that packet flow with small path delay is able to increase transmission rate aggressively due to small feedback delay and the number of packet loss is decrease as an increasing the path delay. By adding ACK/NACK suppression mechanism at receiver, packet loss can be reduced as well as feedback implosion can be avoided.
Just-in-time query retrieval over partially indexed data on structured P2P overlays
Authors: Sai Wu, Jianzhong Li, Beng Chin Ooi, Kian-Lee Tan
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (2008)

Structured peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays have been successfully employed in many applications to locate content. However, they have been less effective in handling massive amounts of data because of the high overhead of maintaining indexes. In this paper, we propose PISCES, a Peer-based system that Indexes Selected Content for Efficient Search. Unlike traditional approaches that index all data, PISCES identifies a subset of tuples to index based on some criteria (such as query frequency, update frequency, index cost, etc.). In addition, a coarse-grained range index is built to facilitate the processing of queries that cannot be fully answered by the tuple-level index. More importantly, PISCES can adaptively self-tune to optimize the subset of tuples to be indexed. That is, the (partial) index in PISCES is built in a Just-In-Time (JIT) manner. Beneficial tuples for current users are pulled for indexing while indexed tuples with infrequent access and high maintenance cost are discarded. We also introduce a light-weight monitoring scheme for structured networks to collect the necessary statistics. We have conducted an extensive experimental study on PlanetLab to illustrate the feasibility, practicality and efficiency of PISCES. The results show that PISCES incurs lower maintenance cost and offers better search and query efficiency compared to existing methods.
ET-MAC: An Energy-Efficient and High Throughput MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Hadi S. Aghdasi, Maghsoud Abbaspour
Venue: Proceedings of the Communication Networks and Services Research Conference (2008)

The efficient use of energy in wireless sensor networks is a critical issue as the sensor nodes typically operate with limited power sources. Most consumption energy of the sensor nodes is used for communication parts. MAC protocols directly control the communications in network; therefore, in this paper we design an innovative contention-based MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks to provide long network lifetime. Our MAC protocol embeds some extra information in long wake up preamble frame and it also uses collision avoidance signaling and handshaking. These ideas help wireless nodes to stay at sleep mode as much as possible. This protocol avoids major energy waste causes, such as idle listening, collision and overhearing, without compromising other network performance measures like latency. Our simulation results and analyses show that with dynamic traffic load, ET-MAC protocol achieves significant improvement in energy-efficiency and throughput, over well known MAC protocols like B-MAC.
Touch-based user interface for elderly users
Authors: Juha Häikiö, Arto Wallin, Minna Isomursu, Heikki Ailisto, Tapio Matinmikko, Tua Huomo
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Human computer interaction with mobile devices and services (2007)

This paper reports the results of a field experiment where a Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled mobile phone was used as a user interface element so as to enable home-dwelling elderly people to choose their meals to be delivered by means of a home care service. The primary research focus was on examining the suitability of a touch-based user interface in the everyday life activities of elderly users. The eight-week experiment took place in the autumn of 2006. The results show that the touch-based user interface was easy to learn and adopt and the users were able to successfully use it regardless of their physical or cognitive weaknesses.
Survival Analysis Modeling of Phylogenetic and Coalescent Trees
Authors: Zhanshan (Sam) Ma, Axel W. Krings
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on BioMedical Engineering and Informatics - Volume 01 (2008)

Both phylogenetic and coalescent trees are the recordings of evolution over time. In other words, each distinguishable node on the tree, either interior or exterior, represents an evolutionary event. Ignoring the complexity involved in evolution, these events are time-to-events, which means that they can be described with a special type of positive random variables — time-to-event random variables (also known as survival, lifetime, or failure time). There is a branch of mathematical statistics, known as survival analysis, which is advanced to study time-to-event random variables. In this paper, after a brief review of the issues in phylogenetic and coalescent data analysis and modeling, we suggest that survival analysis holds great potential in the modeling of phylogenetic and coalescent trees. To the best of our knowledge, there have been only a very small handful of applications of survival analysis in phylogenetics (we only found seven ad hoc application papers in literature). It appears that there have never been any comprehensive tutorials or reviews on the potential of survival analysis in phylogenetics and coalescent research. We hope that this concise review of state-of-the-art research in survival analysis and the perspective of its applications in phylogenetics and coalescence research will fill the gap.
An automatically-generated run-time instrumenter to reduce coverage testing overhead
Authors: J. Jenny Li, David M. Weiss, Howell Yee
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd international workshop on Automation of software test (2008)

Coverage testing is often used as a quantified measurement of testing progress. One important issue of code coverage testing is the overhead of program execution monitoring that inserts probes into programs, either at run-time or off-line, to record program execution code coverage information (e.g., "1" for covered and "0" for not-covered). For time sensitive systems, such overhead may alter the program execution behavior or impact its performance, which is an even more critical problem for embedded systems where memory and CPU resources are limited. This paper proposes a new Super Nested Block (SNB) method to reduce instrumentation run-time overhead. The method improves upon two existing technologies: 1) program analysis for selecting instrumentation points, and 2) on-line run-time instrumentation eliminating repeated probes. We implemented the SNB method on an automatic generated on-line instrumenter of a code coverage testing tool and found that the instrumentation overhead was minor, less than 1% of overall execution time, and all real-time execution external behaviors were preserved.
Study of a parallel system with applications in micromechanics
Authors: Graciela Velasco-Herrera
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th WSEAS International Conference on Systems (2005)

This paper proposes a new mechanic design of a parallel system. It gives original contributions guide to tasks of the microassembles and micromachine-making of high precision.
A tight lower bound for k-set agreement
Authors: S. Chaudhuri
Venue: Proceedings of the 1993 IEEE 34th Annual Foundations of Computer Science (1993)

We prove tight bounds on the time needed to solve k-set agreement, a natural generalization of consensus. We analyze this problem in a synchronous, message-passing model where processors fail by crashing. We prove a lower bound of [f/k]+1 rounds of communication for solutions to k-set agreement that tolerate f failures. This bound is tight, and shows that there is an inherent tradeoff between the running time, the degree of coordination required, and the number of faults tolerated, even in idealized models like the synchronous model. The proof of this result is interesting because it is a geometric combination of other well-known proof techniques.
The distribution of nodes of given degree in random trees
Authors: Michael Drmota, Bernhard Gittenberger
Venue: Journal of Graph Theory (1999)

Let Tn denote the set of unrooted unlabeled trees of size n and let k &ge; 1 be given. By assuming that every tree of Tn is equally likely, it is shown that the limiting distribution of the number of nodes of degree k is normal with mean value ~&mu;kn and variance ~&sigma;[stack2k] n with positive constants &mu;k and &sigma;k. Besides, the asymptotic behavior of &mu;k and &sigma;k for k ➝ &infin; as well as the corresponding multivariate distributions are derived. Furthermore, similar results can be proved for plane trees, for labeled trees, and for forests. &copy; 1999 John Wiley Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 31: 227253, 1999
A multi-scale segmentation approach to filling gaps in Landsat ETM+ SLC-off images
Authors: S. K. Maxwell, G. L. Schmidt, J. C. Storey
Venue: International Journal of Remote Sensing (2007)

On 31 May 2003, the Landsat Enhanced Thematic Plus (ETM+) Scan Line Corrector (SLC) failed, causing the scanning pattern to exhibit wedge-shaped scan-to-scan gaps. We developed a method that uses coincident spectral data to fill the image gaps. This method uses a multi-scale segment model, derived from a previous Landsat SLC-on image (image acquired prior to the SLC failure), to guide the spectral interpolation across the gaps in SLC-off images (images acquired after the SLC failure). This paper describes the process used to generate the segment model, provides details of the gap-fill algorithm used in deriving the segment-based gap-fill product, and presents the results of the gap-fill process applied to grassland, cropland, and forest landscapes. Our results indicate this product will be useful for a wide variety of applications, including regional-scale studies, general land cover mapping (e.g. forest, urban, and grass), crop-specific mapping and monitoring, and visual assessments. Applications that need to be cautious when using pixels in the gap areas include any applications that require per-pixel accuracy, such as urban characterization or impervious surface mapping, applications that use texture to characterize landscape features, and applications that require accurate measurements of small or narrow landscape features such as roads, farmsteads, and riparian areas.
A fourth-order compact finite difference method for higher-order Lidstone boundary value problems
Authors: Yuan-Ming Wang, Hai-Yun Jiang, Ravi P. Agarwal
Venue: Computers Mathematics with Applications (2008)

A compact finite difference method is proposed for a general class of 2nth-order Lidstone boundary value problems. The existence and uniqueness of the finite difference solution is investigated by the method of upper and lower solutions, without any monotone requirement on the nonlinear term. A monotone iteration process is provided for solving the resulting discrete system efficiently, and a simple and easily verified condition is obtained to guarantee a geometric convergence of the iterations. The convergence of the finite difference solution and the fourth-order accuracy of the proposed method are proved. Numerical results demonstrate the high efficiency and advantages of this new approach.
VideOlympics: Real-Time Evaluation of Multimedia Retrieval Systems
Authors: Cees G. M. Snoek, Marcel Worring, Ork de Rooij, Koen E. A. van de Sande, Rong Yan, Alexander G. Hauptmann
Venue: IEEE MultiMedia (2008)

Video search is an experience for the senses. As a result, traditional information retrieval metrics can't fully measure the quality of a video search system. To provide a more interactive assessment of today's video search engines, the authors have organized the VideOlympics as a real-time evaluation showcase where systems compete to answer specific video searches in front of a live audience. At VideOlympics, seeing and hearing is believing.
The incremental agreement
Authors: M. L. Chiang, S. C. Wang, L. Y. Tseng
Venue: Information Processing Letters (2008)

To achieve reliable distributed systems, the fault-tolerance must be studied. One of the most important problems of fault-tolerance issues lies in the Byzantine Agreement (BA) problem. The primary issue surrounding BA is that fault-free processors must obtain common agreement even in cases where faults persist. In this field, the fault diagnosis protocol has been proposed so that each fault-free processor detects/locates a common set of faulty processors. However, in this study, the incremental agreement is invoked to make each processor able to agreement upon executing the fault diagnosis protocol using minimal rounds of message exchange in the presence of dual failure characteristics of processors.