ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Semantics-based code search
Authors: Steven P. Reiss
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE 31st International Conference on Software Engineering (2009)

Our goal is to use the vast repositories of available open source code to generate specific functions or classes that meet a user's specifications. The key words here are specifications and generate. We let users specify what they are looking for as precisely as possible using keywords, class or method signatures, test cases, contracts, and security constraints. Our system then uses an open set of program transformations to map retrieved code into what the user asked for. This approach is implemented in a prototype system for Java with a web interface.
Configuring SAP US Benefits
Authors: Satish Badgi
Venue:  (2007)

This guide provides a comprehensive, hands-on approach to configuring SAP's US Benefits module. It's written for payroll and benefits departments using SAP (power users), project teams, consultants, off-shore and outsourced benefit administrators, and benefit providers interacting with SAP customers. Coverage includes the complete employee lifecycle from enrollment, benefits changes, and FSA and Claims processing to termination and COBRA. In addition, it details the US-specific benefits plans and teaches benefits managers how to configure them. You'll learn about the entire U.S. benefits process for the employee lifecycle from enrollment to Cobra. 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
Modal logics for communicating rule-based agents
Authors: Natasha Alechina, Mark Jago, Brian Logan
Venue: Proceeding of the 2006 conference on ECAI 2006: 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence August 29 -- September 1, 2006, Riva del Garda, Italy (2006)

In this paper, we show how to establish correctness and time bounds (e.g., quality of service guarantees) for multi-agent systems composed of communicating rule-based agents. The formal models of multi-agent systems we study are transition systems where each transition corresponds to either a rule firing or an act of communication by an agent. We present a complete and sound modal logic which formalises how the beliefs of communicating rule-based agents change over time. Using a simple example, we show how this logic can be used to specify temporal properties of belief change in multi-agent systems in a precise and realistic way, and how existing modal logic techniques such as model-checking can be used to state and verify properties of agents.
A hybrid security protocol for sensor networks
Authors: Mohamed K. Watfa, Marwa El-Ghali, Hiba Halabi
Venue: International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems (2009)

Sensor nodes used to transmit sensitive data, especially in military applications, require securing the data transmitted through the WSNs to maintain the confidentiality of the data and authenticate the participating sensor nodes. Since sensor nodes suffer from limited resources, in memory storage, computing power, energy capabilities and transmission rates, available network security protocols are inadequate. Symmetric algorithms cannot provide the same degree of security as public key algorithms, leading us to devise a new algorithm SHESP that uses public keys within the limitations of sensor nodes. This paper presents a way to utilise existing public key algorithms such as RSA, Diffie-Hellmann and elliptic curve in the field of WSN security by dividing the network into clusters. Our algorithm supplies data confidentiality, node authentication and data integrity while remaining within acceptable memory, time and energy constraints. We provide theoretical and experimental evidence to validate our algorithms. Results reveal significant improvement in data availability, data confidentiality and authenticity while reducing the communication and computation overhead.
Photoshop Elements 7 After the Shoot
Authors: Lisa DaNae Dayley, Brad Dayley
Venue:  (2009)

Skyrocketing laptop sales combined with increased wireless connectivity across the US has made technology increasingly mobile. Photoshop Elements 7 After the Shoot will appeal to mobile users who want or need to edit and post their digital photographs while on the go. This full-color book on the latest version of Photoshop Elements will offer readers a firm understanding of the applications' tools and features and a strong education in the use of Elements to organize, correct, restore, and display digital photos and scanned images of all kinds. Using numbered steps to walk readers through the most common Photoshop Elements tasks, Photoshop Elements 7 After the Shoot will be the perfect guide for digital photographers who want a clear, concise, and portable guide to Photoshop Elements. Beautiful color examples and user-friendly procedures will help readers make the most of Elements' considerable tools, enabling them to improve their digital images in terms of color, content, and size, as well as giving readers inspiration in how they can use their images in printed publications or online.
Multichannel Blind Deconvolution Using the Conjugate Gradient
Authors: Bin Xia
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Neural Networks: Advances in Neural Networks - Part III (2009)

In this paper, we propose a conjugate gradient based algorithm for blind deconvolution. In general, blind deconvolution algorithms suffer from the speed of convergence. We make a further study of the geometrical structures on the manifold of finite impulse response (FIR) filters using lie group method. We derive the expressions of geodesic and parallel translation on the manifold of FIR filters. Using mutual information criteria, a feasible cost function is derived for blind deconvolution problem. Then we develop a conjugate gradient algorithm for multichannel blind deconvolution problem in finite impulse response (FIR) manifold. Computer simulations show the validity and effectiveness of this approach.
Collaborative virtual learning environments: design and evaluation
Authors: A. Konstantinidis, Th. Tsiatsos, A. Pomportsis
Venue: Multimedia Tools and Applications (2009)

E-learning systems have gone through a radical change from the initial text-based environments to more stimulating multimedia systems. Such systems are Collaborative Virtual Environments, which could be used in order to support collaborative e-learning scenarios. The main aim of this paper is to aid educational designers in selecting, designing and evaluating three dimensional collaborative virtual environments in order to gain the pedagogical benefits of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. Therefore, this paper initially discusses the potential of three dimensional networked virtual environments for supporting collaborative learning. Furthermore, based on a two-step platform selection process this paper (a) presents and compares three dimensional multi-user virtual environments for supporting collaborative learning and (b) validates the most promising solution against a set of design principles for educational virtual environments. According to these principles, an educational environment has been implemented on top of the selected platform in order to support collaborative e-learning scenarios. The design of this environment is also presented. In addition, this paper presents the results of three small scale studies carried out in a tertiary education department, to assess the educational environment. This environment has been evaluated based on a hybrid evaluation methodology for uncovering usability problems, collecting further requirements for additional functionality to support collaborative virtual learning environments, and determining the appropriateness of different kinds of learning scenarios.
Manipulation and gender neutrality in stable marriage procedures
Authors: Maria Silvia Pini, Francesca Rossi, K. Brent Venable, Toby Walsh
Venue: Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1 (2009)

The stable marriage problem is a well-known problem of matching men to women so that no man and woman who are not married to each other both prefer each other. Such a problem has a wide variety of practical applications ranging from matching resident doctors to hospitals to matching students to schools. A well-known algorithm to solve this problem is the Gale-Shapley algorithm, which runs in polynomial time. It has been proven that stable marriage procedures can always be manipulated. Whilst the Gale-Shapley algorithm is computationally easy to manipulate, we prove that there exist stable marriage procedures which are NP-hard to manipulate. We also consider the relationship between voting theory and stable marriage procedures, showing that voting rules which are NP-hard to manipulate can be used to define stable marriage procedures which are themselves NP-hard to manipulate. Finally, we consider the issue that stable marriage procedures like Gale-Shapley favour one gender over the other, and we show how to use voting rules to make any stable marriage procedure gender neutral.
An ontology-driven approach for semantic information retrieval on the Web
Authors: Antonio M. Rinaldi
Venue: ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT) (2009)

The concept of relevance is a hot topic in the information retrieval process. In recent years the extreme growth of digital documents brought to light the need for novel approaches and more efficient techniques to improve the accuracy of IR systems to take into account real users' information needs. In this article we propose a novel metric to measure the semantic relatedness between words. Our approach is based on ontologies represented using a general knowledge base for dynamically building a semantic network. This network is based on linguistic properties and it is combined with our metric to create a measure of semantic relatedness. In this way we obtain an efficient strategy to rank digital documents from the Internet according to the user's interest domain. The proposed methods, metrics, and techniques are implemented in a system for information retrieval on the Web. Experiments are performed on a test set built using a directory service having information about analyzed documents. The obtained results compared to other similar systems show an effective improvement.
OpenTella: A Peer-to-Peer Protocol for the Load Balancing in a System Formed by a Cluster from Clusters
Authors: Rodrigo F. Mello, Maria Stela Paiva, Luís Carlos Trevelin, Adilson Gonzaga
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on High Performance Computing (2009)

The search for the high performance in the traditional computing systems has been related to the development of specific applications executed over parallel machines. However, the cost of this kind of system, which is high due to the hardware involved in these projects, has limited the continuing development in these areas, as just a small part of the community has access to those systems. With the aim of using a low cost hardware to achieve a high performance, this paper presents the OpenTella, a protocol based on the peer-to-peer models to update the information related to the occupation of resources and an analysis of this occupation for a post migration of processes among computers of a cluster.
Automatically evolving rule induction algorithms tailored to the prediction of postsynaptic activity in proteins
Authors: Gisele L. Pappa, Alex A. Freitas
Venue: Intelligent Data Analysis (2009)

It is well-known that no classification algorithm is the best in all application domains. The conventional approach for coping with this problem consists of trying to select the best classification algorithm for the target application domain. We propose a refreshing departure from this approach, consisting of automatically creating a rule induction algorithm tailored to the target application domain. This work proposes a grammar-based genetic programming (GGP) system to perform "algorithm construction". The GGP is used to build a complete rule induction algorithm tailored to 5 well-known UCI data sets and a protein data set, where the goal is to predict whether or not a protein presents postsynaptic activity. The results show that the rule induction algorithms automatically constructed by the GGP are competitive with well-known human-designed rule induction algorithms. Moreover, in the postsynaptic case study, the GGP was more successful than the human-designed algorithms in discovering accurate rules predicting the minority class - whose prediction is more difficult and tends to be more important to the user than the prediction of the majority class.
On Competition for Market Share in a Dynamic ISP Market with Customer Loyalty: A Game-Theoretic Analysis
Authors: László Gyarmati, Tuan Anh Trinh
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Internet Charging and Qos Technologies: Network Economics for Next Generation Networks (2009)

Customer loyalty as part of user behaviour has significant impact on the Internet Service Providers' (ISPs) price setting strategies as shown recently in [1,2,3,4]. However, the issue of a dynamic ISP market, where new ISPs enter the market and try to increase their market shares by offering favourable access prices for incumbent ISPs' loyal customers, has not been addressed yet. Furthermore, the cost of entrance is not yet properly dealt with in the previous studies. In this paper, we use the tools from game theory to understand the competition for market share in a dynamic ISP market with customer loyalty. We model the situation by a Stackelberg leader-follower game, and use the model to compute the Nash/Stackelberg equilibria of the game with customer loyalty and different cost models. For simple cost models, we give explicit formulas for the equilibria of the games. For more complex cost models, we use approximation and simulations to illustrate the dynamics of market shares in these situations.
A proximal method for identifying active manifolds
Authors: W. L. Hare
Venue: Computational Optimization and Applications (2009)

The minimization of an objective function over a constraint set can often be simplified if the "active manifold" of the constraints set can be correctly identified. In this work we present a simple subproblem, which can be used inside of any (convergent) optimization algorithm, that will identify the active manifold of a "prox-regular partly smooth" constraint set in a finite number of iterations.
The interplay of students' software choices and their social locations in school
Authors: Xiaodong Lin
Venue:  (2008)

This study explored the relationship between students' software choices and their social locations within school. It was the main hypothesis that children brought specific expectations to their interactions with educational software. Some of these expectations were cognitively-driven, but lots of these expectations were also socially-driven. The purpose of the study is to investigate students' specific social reasons and expectations for educational software, and how their social locations within the peer networks affected their software choices in the classroom. A software catalog survey and a social network survey were used. The study revealed two major findings about children's mental models of educational software. Study I examined the specific goals and expectations students had with regard to educational software. The findings showed that students related themselves to four different goal choices when choosing software: cognitive goals, no goals, social goals, and affective goals. The students also appeared to have various expectations for the social interactions with peers when choosing software. Study 2 tested whether the students from different social locations would choose different kinds of software. According to the findings, the kinds of peer group where students are located (i.e., close friends, informative peers, and competing peers) appeared to significantly affect students' software choices. However, the findings did not show sufficient evidence to explain that students' social positions in the friendship network (i.e. central, peripheral, and isolated position) significantly differentiate their software choices. To a large extent, students' specific goals and expectations will determine which software or which features of given software motivates students to learn and interact. Sometimes, these students' expectations and goals for choosing and using certain software may conflict with the software designers' goals and expectations for student learning. Software designers and instructors should be attentive to the relationship between the elements of software they choose to design and those elements which children may find motivating for various reasons.
Artefacts and Roles: Modelling Strategies in a Multiplicative Ontology
Authors: Laure Vieu, Stefano Borgo, Claudio Masolo
Venue: Proceeding of the 2008 conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference (FOIS 2008) (2008)

The purpose of this paper is to examine different modelling strategies available in a multiplicative formal ontology, and the principles that drive their choice. This study is based on the results of recent work aiming at extending the foundational ontology DOLCE to grasp two quite different notions, that of artefact and that of role. These results, summarized in the paper, show that two multiplicative modelling strategies, entity stacking and property reification, are essential in both cases.
Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads
Authors: Lance Loveday, Sandra Niehaus
Venue:  (2007)

Your web site is a business--design it like one. Billions of dollars in spending decisions are influenced by web sites. So why aren't businesses laser-focused on designing their sites to maximize their Return on Investment (ROI)? Web design can do more than make a site look good--it can be a powerful strategic weapon that enhances financial returns and creates competitive advantage. It's time to make web sites accountable. It's time to make design decisions based on metrics and business goals. It's time for Web Design for ROI. In this book you'll learn: Why so many organizations think about web design the wrong way How small design changes can have a big impact on your bottom line Simple tips to increase web sales/leads by 10% - 50% (or more) Concrete design guidelines for: Landing pages Home pages Category pages Detail pages Forms Checkout processes Packed with helpful examples from a wide variety of sites!
Co-ordinated continuous and logical control via hybrid model predictive control: an experimental study
Authors: Jaroslav Hlava, Libor Tůma
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th WSEAS international conference on System science and simulation in engineering (2008)

Combination of logical and continuous controls is a typical feature of many power engineering plants. Logical and continuous control systems are usually designed separately and this design practice may lead to unpredictable interactions between logical and continuous control and deteriorate the overall control performance. On the other hand, it is sometimes claimed that the unified framework of hybrid systems and hybrid control enables us to design controllers that can handle both continuous and logical control tasks and to achieve a coordinated control that avoids undesirable continuous/logical interactions. This paper describes an attempt to test the validity of these claims in an experimental way. Laboratory scale plant that was designed for experiments with hybrid systems is used as an experimental testbed. Control performance achieved with separate design of logical and continuous control is compared with the performance achieved with an unified design of logical and continuous control based on hybrid model predictive control. The results of this comparison show that unified design can indeed achieve better control performance than standard separate design. On the other hand, the complexity of the hybrid control law is fairly high and its implementation using standard industrial control hardware would not be easy. In this way, the presented comparison indicates that hybrid model predictive control is a promising alternative to more traditional design approaches, however at its current state of development is not ripe for practical applications.
Take Your Photography to the Next Level: From Inspiration to Image
Authors: George Barr
Venue:  (2007)

This book is for the photographer who strives to achieve a higher level of results in their work. Take Your Photography to the Next Level is based on a series of essays originally featured on the popular Luminous Landscape website. Barr tackles some of the rarely discussed, yet essential aspects of successful photography. Here is where photographers will learn what is required in order to grow in their creativity and to gain a deeper understanding of their craft. With a foreward by Michael Reichmann. Topics include: Creativity Dealing with disappointment Developing an "eye" Making stronger images What photographs well Where to go looking for the best photographic subjects How to approach subject material A great image is just around the corner Dealing with failure Mind games Becoming a self-aware photographer Framing, cropping, & manipulating prints to create mood and transmit your message 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
A principled and flexible framework for finding alternative clusterings
Authors: ZiJie Qi, Ian Davidson
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining (2009)

The aim of data mining is to find novel and actionable insights in data. However, most algorithms typically just find a single (possibly non-novel/actionable) interpretation of the data even though alternatives could exist. The problem of finding an alternative to a given original clustering has received little attention in the literature. Current techniques (including our previous work) are unfocused/unrefined in that they broadly attempt to find an alternative clustering but do not specify which properties of the original clustering should or should not be retained. In this work, we explore a principled and flexible framework in order to find alternative clusterings of the data. The approach is principled since it poses a constrained optimization problem, so its exact behavior is understood. It is flexible since the user can formally specify positive and negative feedback based on the existing clustering, which ranges from which clusters to keep (or not) to making a trade-off between alternativeness and clustering quality.
Partial join order optimization in the paraccel analytic database
Authors: Yijou Chen, Richard L. Cole, William J. McKenna, Sergei Perfilov, Aman Sinha, Eugene Szedenits,  Jr.
Venue: Proceedings of the 35th SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (2009)

The ParAccel Analytic Database is a fast shared-nothing parallel relational database system with a columnar orientation, adaptive compression, memory-centric design, and an enhanced query optimizer. This modern object-oriented optimizer and its optimizer framework, known as Volt, provide efficient bulk and instance level query expression representation, multiple expression managers, and rule and cost-based expression transformation organized via multiple optimizer instances. Volt has been applied to the problem of ordering very large numbers of joins by partially ordering them for subsequent optimization using standard dynamic programming. Performance analyses show the framework's utility and the optimizer's effectiveness.