ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
An analytical model for requirements activities and software product quality
Authors: Khalid A. Buragga
Venue: Journal of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering (2006)

The quality of software is a real concern that can be seen in almost any organization where software results contribute to success. However, a gap is perceived in the efforts that have being carried out to improve the software quality. System requirements are recognized as a critical step in the development of quality software. Being the first step in the process of software engineering, the effort has potential to shape the direction for all subsequent software development project activities. In this paper, the researcher analyzes the effects of requirements uncertainty and task uncertainty on outcomes in software development projects, limiting the attention to quality of software product. A cross-sectional survey of one hundred and twenty-three participants in thirty-four organizations was employed to prove the research model. The findings were drawn from an examination of the research propositions. Analyzed data provided evidence of a significant negative association between requirements uncertainty and software product quality. Moreover, the data provided evidence of a negative significant association between task uncertainty and software product quality. Furthermore, requirements uncertainty and task uncertainty do not interact with one another to influence the software development outcomes. This means that requirements uncertainty and task uncertainty act independently of each other.
Access to archival material in context
Authors: Khairun Nisa Fachry, Jaap Kamps, Junte Zhang
Venue: Proceedings of the second international symposium on Information interaction in context (2008)

Archival finding aids are long and complexly structured documents describing archival material---the paper trails of the lives of corporate bodies, persons, and families. Currently, finding aids are encoded in XML using the standard Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and made available to the public on web-sites of archival institutions. But how to provide access to such long and complexly structured documents? On the one hand, users tend to look for specific archival material that may be deeply nested inside the archive. On the other hand, interpreting the meaning of an item is crucially dependent on its context. Using insights from the field of XML retrieval---a subfield of information retrieval that has recently attracted a lot of attention, mainly through the annual evaluation effort in INEX---we developed three different systems for searching in collections of digital finding aids corresponding to three fundamental choices about archival access. The first system provides access to the fonds or archive as a whole; the second system provides direct access to individual archival material at any level of description; the third system retrieves archival material while preserving the original context. This paper reports on the results of an extensive user study with the three systems. Our main finding is that test persons have a preference for the third system that retrieves archival material in their original context, with test persons indicating that the system assisted them in assessing relevancy, navigation and direct access to relevant parts of the finding aids.
Natural selection in relation to complexity
Authors: Stanley N. Salthe
Venue: Artificial Life (2008)

Structural complexity characterizes our representations of dissipative structures. As a mechanistic concept, when referred to natural systems it generates perplexity in the face of logically sound models. Natural selection is a simple mechanistic concept, whose logic is well exemplified in genetic algorithms. While biological traits and functions do appear to have been subjected to selective culling, current neo-Darwinian theory is unable to account for the evolution of traits or functions when many of these are taken as the separate objects of independent fitness functions. Soft selection, acting in a phenotypically holistic manner, does model selection acting upon structurally complex systems with many traits and functions, but does not account for the evolution of specific traits or functions. It is further suggested that selection cannot be other than a weak force in the early, generative stages of complex life histories, and that this is a good thing, preserving their generativity. I conclude that natural selection theory by itself cannot account for increases in structural complexity.
Comparing Linear Feature Space Transformations for Correlated Features
Authors: Daniel Vásquez, Rainer Gruhn, Raymond Brueckner, Wolfgang Minker
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th IEEE tutorial and research workshop on Perception and Interactive Technologies for Speech-Based Systems: Perception in Multimodal Dialogue Systems (2008)

In automatic speech recognition, a common method to decorrelate features and to reduce feature space dimensionality is Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). In this paper, the performance of LDA has been compared with other linear feature space transformation schemes, as many alternative methods have been suggested and lead to higher recognition accuracy in some cases. Different approaches such as MLLT, HLDA, SHLDA, PCA, and combined schemes were implemented and compared. Experiments show that all methods lead to similar results.In addition, recent research has shown that the LDA algorithm is unreliable if the input features of LDA are strongly correlated. In this paper a stable solution to the correlated feature problem, consisting of a concatenation scheme with PCA and LDA, is proposed and verified. Finally, several transformation algorithms are evaluated on uncorrelated and strongly correlated features.
Non-linear Robust Identification: Application to a Thermal Process
Authors: J. M. Herrero, X. Blasco, M. Martínez, J. V. Salcedo
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd international work-conference on The Interplay Between Natural and Artificial Computation, Part I: Bio-inspired Modeling of Cognitive Tasks (2007)

In this article, a methodology to obtain the Feasible Parameter Set (FPS) and a nominal model in a non-linear robust identification problem is presented. Several norms are taken into account simultaneously to define the FPS which improves the model quality but, as counterpart, it increases the optimization problem complexity. To determine the FPS a multimodal optimization problem with an infinite number of minima, which constitute the FPS, is presented and a special evolutionary algorithm (¿¿GA) is used to characterize it. Finally, an application to a thermal process identification, where ||·|| ¿ and ||·||1 norms have been considered simultaneously, is presented to illustrate the technique.
Fixed point solutions of variational inequalities for a finite family of asymptotically nonexpansive mappings without common fixed point assumption
Authors: Lu-Chuan Ceng, Ngai-Ching Wong, Jen-Chih Yao
Venue: Computers Mathematics with Applications (2008)

Let E be a real Banach space with a uniformly Gateaux differentiable norm and which possesses uniform normal structure, K a nonempty bounded closed convex subset of E, {T"i}"i"="1^N a finite family of asymptotically nonexpansive self-mappings on K with common sequence {k"n}"n"="1^~@?[1,~), {t"n},{s"n} be two sequences in (0, 1) such that s"n+t"n=1(n>=1) and f be a contraction on K. Under suitable conditions on the sequences {s"n},{t"n}, we show the existence of a sequence {x"n} satisfying the relation x"n=(1-1k"n)x"n+s"nk"nf(x"n)+t"nk"nT"r"""n^nx"n where n=l"nN+r"n for some unique integers l"n>=0 and 1@?r"n@?N. Further we prove that {x"n} converges strongly to a common fixed point of {T"i}"i"="1^N, which solves some variational inequality, provided @?x"n-T"ix"n@?->0 as n->~ for i=1,2,...,N. As an application, we prove that the iterative process defined by z"0@?K,z"n"+"1=(1-1k"n)z"n+s"nk"nf(z"n)+t"nk"nT"r"""n^nz"n, converges strongly to the same common fixed point of {T"i}"i"="1^N.
Could SFLASH be Repaired?
Authors: Jintai Ding, Vivien Dubois, Bo-Yin Yang, Owen Chia-Hsin Chen, Chen-Mou Cheng
Venue: Proceedings of the 35th international colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, Part II (2008)

The SFLASH signature scheme stood for a decade as the most successful cryptosystem based on multivariate polynomials, before an efficient attack was finally found in 2007. In this paper, we review its recent cryptanalysis and we notice that its weaknesses can all be linked to the fact that the cryptosystem is built on the structure of a large field. As the attack demonstrates, this richer structure can be accessed by an attacker by using the specific symmetry of the core function being used. Then, we investigate the effect of restricting this large field to a purely linear subset and we find that the symmetries exploited by the attack are no longer present. At a purely defensive level, this defines a countermeasure which can be used at a moderate overhead. On the theoretical side, this informs us of limitations of the recent attack and raises interesting remarks about the design itself of multivariate schemes.
SoNa: A Multi-agent System to Support Human Navigation in a Community, Based on Social Network Analysis
Authors: Shizuka Kumokawa, Victor V. Kryssanov, Hitoshi Ogawa
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (2008)

When one joins an existing community, she or he may have little-to-no knowledge of what other members already know. "Traditional" and electronic media are useful to collect information, but when the request is related to social experience, it is hard to locate and extract social knowledge from essentially subjective individual accounts. Asking somebody would then be a better way to search information, but it has disadvantages, too: the practicable area of potential contacts is limited by the range of one's personal network, the contacted individuals' knowledge, time limitations, etc. Communication on a personal basis in a new community is always trial-and-error driven, and it does not guarantee obtaining the information of interest even when such information is freely available from some of the community members. As a result of this, newcomers usually experience significant difficulties in adaptation to the community. In an attempt to help overcome this problem, the presented study proposes a system to assist personalized knowledge sharing. The system allows the user to navigate a social space of a community and to locate members who would address the user's needs.
A Modified Quantum-Behaved Particle Swarm Optimization
Authors: Jun Sun, C. -H. Lai, Wenbo Xu, Yanrui Ding, Zhilei Chai
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Computational Science, Part I: ICCS 2007 (2007)

Based on the previously introduced Quantum-behaved Particle Swarm Optimization (QPSO), a revised QPSO with Gaussian disturbance on the mean best position of the swarm is proposed. The reason for the introduction of this novel method is that the disturbance can effectively prevent the stagnation of the particles and therefore make them escape the local optima and sub-optima more easily. Before proposing the Revised QPSO (RQPSO), we introduce the origin and the development of the original PSO and QPSO. To evaluate the performance of the new method, the Revised QPSO, along with QPSO and Standard PSO, is tested on several well-known benchmark functions. The experimental results show that the Revised QPSO has better performance than QPSO and Standard PSO generally.
How to Restore Compactness into Probabilistic Logics?
Authors: Aleksandar Perović, Zoran Ognjanović, Miodrag Rašković, Zoran Marković
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th European conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence (2008)

The paper offers a proof of the compactness theorem for the $^*\mathbb R$-valued polynomial weight formulas. We also provide a complete axiomatization for the polynomial weight formulas.
Polycyclic and Bicyclic Valence Automata
Authors: Elaine Render, Mark Kambites
Venue: Language and Automata Theory and Applications: Second International Conference, LATA 2008, Tarragona, Spain, March 13-19, 2008. Revised Papers (2008)

We study the classes of languages defined by valence automata with rational target sets (or equivalently, regular valence grammars with rational target sets), where the valence monoid is drawn from the important class of polycyclic monoids. We show that for polycyclic monoids of rank 2 or more, such automata accept exactly the context-free languages. For the polycyclic monoid of rank 1 (that is, the bicyclic monoid), they accept a class of languages strictly including the partially blind one-counter languages. Key to the proofs is a description of the rational subsets of polycyclic and bicyclic monoids, other consequences of which include the decidability of the rational subset membership problem for these monoids, and the closure of the class of rational subsets under intersection and complement.
Using Expressive Dialogues and Gradient Information to Improve Trade-Offs in Bilateral Negotiations
Authors: Ivan Marsa-Maestre, Miguel A. Lopez-Carmona, Juan R. Velasco, Bernardo Alarcos
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on E-Commerce and Web Technologies (2008)

A bilateral negotiation may be seen as an interaction between two parties with the goal of reaching an agreement over a given range of issues which usually involves solving a conflict of interests between the parties involved. In our previous work, we address the problem of automatic bilateral negotiation by using fuzzy constraints as a mean to express participant's preferences, focusing in purchase negotiation scenarios. Other research works have used similarity criteria to perform trade-offs in bilateral bargaining scenarios, without any expressive mechanisms between participants. In this paper, we combine our expressive approach with the traditional positional bargaining schema. In particular, we explore the possibility of using the derivatives of each agent's valuation function to issue direction requests to narrow the solution search space of its counterpart, thus improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the negotiation over traditional positional approaches.
Quasi-randomness Is Determined by the Distribution of Copies of a Fixed Graph in Equicardinal Large Sets
Authors: Raphael Yuster
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th international workshop, APPROX 2008, and 12th international workshop, RANDOM 2008 on Approximation, Randomization and Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Techniques (2008)

For every fixed graph H and every fixed 0 < ¿< 1, we show that if a graph G has the property that all subsets of size ¿n contain the "correct" number of copies of H one would expect to find in the random graph G(n,p) then G behaves like the random graph G(n,p); that is, it is p-quasi-random in the sense of Chung, Graham, and Wilson [4].This solves a conjecture raised by Shapira [8] and solves in a strong sense an open problem of Simonovits and Sós [9].
Engineering a Policy-Based System for Federated Healthcare Databases
Authors: Rafae Bhatti, Arjmand Samuel, Mohamed Eltabakh, Haseeb Amjad, Arif Ghafoor
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (2007)

Policy-based management for federated healthcare systems have recently gained increasing attention due to strict privacy and disclosure rules. While the work on privacy languages and enforcement mechanisms, such as Hippocratic databases, has advanced our understanding of designing privacy-preserving policies for healthcare databases, the need to integrate these policies in practical healthcare framework is becoming acute. Additionally, while most work in this area has been organization-oriented, dealing with exchange of information between healthcare organizations (such as referrals), the requirements for the emerging area of personal healthcare information management have so far not been adequately addressed. These shortcomings arise from the lack of a sophisticated policy specification language and enforcement architecture that can capture the requirement for (i) integration of privacy and disclosure policies with well-known healthcare standards used in the industry in order to specify the precise requirements of a practical healthcare system, and (ii) provision of ubiquitous healthcare services to patients using the same infrastructure that enables federated healthcare management for organizations. In this paper, we have designed a policy-based system to mitigate these concerns. One, we have designed our disclosure and privacy policies using a requirements specification based on a set of use cases for the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) standard proposed by the community. Two, we present a context-aware policy specification language which allows encoding of CDA-based requirements use-cases into privacy and disclosure policy rules. We have shown that our policy specification language is effective in terms of handling a variety of expressive constraints on CDA-encoded document contents. Our language enables specification of privacy-aware access control for federated healthcare information across organizational boundaries, while the use of contextual constraints allows the incorporation of user and environment context in the access control mechanism for personal healthcare information management. Moreover, the declarative syntax of the policy rules makes the policy adaptable to changes in privacy regulations or patient preferences. We also present an enforcement architecture for the federated healthcare framework proposed in this paper.
Algorithm for TSS Mapping Using Satellite Data for Penang Island, Malaysia
Authors: H. S. Lim, M. Z. MatJafri, K. Abdullah, A. N. Alias, J. M. Rajab, N. Mohd. Saleh
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 Fifth International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation (2008)

The traditional sampling method for environmental monitoring of aerosols is time consuming and expensive. Remote sensing data have been widely used in environmental studies like land cover change, flood observation, environmental pollution monitoring. This study is dealing with obtaining water pollution using Landsat TM data over Penang Strait, Malaysia. With the availability of remotely sensed and in situ data sets the derivable geophysical parameters is sediment (suspended matter) concentration. The proposed algorithm is based on the reflectance model that is a function of the inherent optical properties of water, which can be related to its constituent's concentrations. Regression and accuracy analysis is performed using SPSS analysis software. Water samples locations were determined using a handheld GPS. The digital numbers were extracted corresponding to the ground-truth locations for each band was converted into radiance and reflectance and later used for the calibration of the developed algorithm. The efficiency of the present proposed algorithm, in comparison to other forms of algorithm, was also investigated. Based on the values of the correlation coefficient (R) and root-mean-square deviation (RMS), the proposed algorithm is considered superior. The proposed algorithm is considered superior to other tested algorithms based on the values of the correlation coefficient, R=0.94 and root-mean-square error, RMS=5 mg/l. The calibrated TSS algorithm was used to generate the water quality map. The TSS map was color-coded and geometrically corrected for visual interpretation.
Talking Head as Life Blog
Authors: Ladislav Kunc, Jan Kleindienst, Pavel Slavík
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Text, Speech and Dialogue (2008)

The paper describes an experimental presentation system that can automatically generate dynamic ECA-based presentations from structured data including text context, images, music and sounds, videos, etc. Thus the Embodied Conversational Agent acts as a moderator in the chosen presentation context, typically personal diaries. Since an ECA represents a rich channel for conveying both verbal and non-verbal messages, we are researching ECAs as facilitators that transpose "dry" data such as diaries and blogs into more lively and dynamic presentations based on ontologies. We constructed our framework on an existing toolkit ECAF that supports runtime generation of ECA agents. We describe the extensions of the toolkit and give an overview of the current system architecture. We describe the particular Grandma TV scenario, where a family uses the ECA automatic presentation engine to deliver weekly family news to distant grandparents. Recently conducted usability studies suggest the pros and cons of the presented approach.
On the Duality of Information-Centric and Activity-Centric Models of Business Processes
Authors: Santhosh Kumaran, Rong Liu, Frederick Y. Wu
Venue: Proceedings of the 20th international conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (2008)

Most of the work in modeling business processes is activity-centric. Recently, an information-centric approach to business process modeling has emerged, where a business process is modeled as the interacting life cycles of information entities. The benefits of this approach are documented in a number of case studies. The goal of this paper is to formalize the information-centric approach and derive the relationships between the two approaches. We do this by formally defining the notion of a business entity from first principles and using this definition to derive an algorithm that generates an information-centric process model from an activity-centric model. We illustrate the two models using a real-world business process and provide an analysis of the respective strengths and weaknesses of the two modeling approaches.
Source Separation with Gaussian Process Models
Authors: Sunho Park, Seungjin Choi
Venue: Proceedings of the 18th European conference on Machine Learning (2007)

In this paper we address a method of source separation in the case where sources have certain temporal structures. The key contribution in this paper is to incorporate Gaussian process (GP) model into source separation, representing the latent function which characterizes the temporal structure of a source by a random process with Gaussian prior. Marginalizing out the latent function leads to the Gaussian marginal likelihood of source that is plugged in the mutual information-based loss function for source separation. In addition, we also consider the leave-one-out predictive distribution of source, instead of the marginal likelihood, in the same framework. Gradient-based optimization is applied to estimate the demixing matrix through the mutual information minimization, where the marginal distribution of source is replaced by the marginal likelihood of the source or its leave-one-out predictive distribution. Numerical experiments confirm the useful behavior of our method, compared to existing source separation methods.
The Multidisciplinary Facets of Research on Humour
Authors: Rada Mihalcea
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international workshop on Fuzzy Logic and Applications: Applications of Fuzzy Sets Theory (2007)

Humour is one of the most interesting and puzzling aspects of human behaviour, and it has been rightfully argued that it plays an important role in an individual's development, as well as in interpersonal communication. Research on this topic has received a significant amount of attention from fields as diverse as linguistics, philosophy, psychology and sociology, and recent years have also seen attempts to build computational models for humour generation and recognition.