ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Engineering Safety - and Security-Related Requirements for Software-Intensive Systems
Authors: Don Firesmith
Venue: Proceedings of the Sixth International IEEE Conference on Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS)-Based Software Systems (2007)

Many software-intensive systems have significant safety ramifications and need to have their associated safety-related requirements properly engineered. It has been observed by several consultants, researchers, and authors that inadequate requirements are a major cause of accidents involving software-intensive systems. Yet in practice, there is very little interaction between the requirements and safety disciplines and little collaboration between their respective communities. Most requirements engineers know little about safety engineering, and most safety engineers know little about requirements engineering. Also, safety engineering typically concentrates on architectures and designs rather than requirements because hazard analysis typically depends on the identification of hardware and software components, the failure of which can cause accidents. This leads to safety-related requirements that are often ambiguous, incomplete, and even missing. The tutorial begins with a single common realistic example of a safety critical system that will be used throughout to provide good examples of safety-related requirements. The tutorial then provides an introduction to requirements engineering for safety engineers and an introduction to safety engineering for requirements engineers. The tutorial then provides clear definitions and descriptions of the different kinds of safety-related requirements and finishes with a practical process for producing them.
Development and Verification of a Collaborative Printing Environment
Authors: Takeshi Matsumoto, Daisuke Ando, Tasuku Nishihara, Masahiro Fujita
Venue: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating through Computing (2007)

In this paper, we propose a printing environment utilizing collaboration to offer more reliable printing environment. In the proposed environment, printers are clustered, and collaborative printing is carried out among clusters if one cluster is very busy and others are not. We also work on the formal verification problem of such collaborative environment, since a number of properties must be satisfied in the environment to guarantee the secure and safe printing. To prove such properties, we apply model checking methods to the developed environment. We have developed a simulator of the proposed environment, and show that it can work effectively even if some printers are out of order, or out of paper. Also, applying model checking, we successfully prove the properties that must be satisfied in such printing environments.
Asymptotic distribution of recursive subspace estimators
Authors: Bin Yang
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1996. on Conference Proceedings., 1996 IEEE International Conference - Volume 05 (1996)

We derive the asymptotic distribution of recursive subspace estimators. In particular, we study the PAST algorithm for tracking the signal subspace and the Oja (1982) rule for updating the eigenvector corresponding to the largest eigenvalue. Both the decreasing gain and the constant gain case are considered. It turns out that their asymptotic distributions differ from that of the batch eigenvalue decomposition. The asymptotic rate of convergence is also addressed.
Matrix filters for passive sonar
Authors: R. J. Vaccaro
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2001. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 05 (2001)

This paper introduces matrix filters as a tool for localization and detection problems in passive sonar. The outputs of an array of sensors, at some given frequency, can be represented by a vector of complex numbers. A linear filtering operation on the sensor outputs can be expressed as the multiplication of a matrix (called a matrix filter) times this vector. The purpose of a matrix filter is to attenuate unwanted components in the measured sensor data while passing desired components with minimal distortion. Matrix filters are designed by defining an appropriate pass band and stop band and solving a convex optimization problem. This paper formulates the design of matrix filters for passive sonar and gives two examples.
Glamour and Honor: Going Online and Reading in West African Culture
Authors: Wendy Griswold, Erin Metz McDonnell, Terence Emmett McDonnell
Venue: Information Technologies and International Development (2007)

In the fragile reading cultures of the developing world, will people abandon print as they embrace the Internet? Whether media compete or collaborate depends on place-specific factors. West Africans insert online practices into a local context of material circumstances, social roles, and cultural values. In Nigeria and Ghana these include (1) unreliable electricity and execrable telephone service; (2) overworked women, jobless young men, scammers, and ambitious teenagers; and (3) a reading culture of limited penetration but enormous prestige. Internet access via cybercafés has intensified personal communications, reinforced gender inequality, and enabled petty crooks to go global. It has not, however, encroached on reading's all-but-sacred status. Both netsavvy youth and the adult “reading class” protect reading practices through spatial and temporal separation, time management, and functional differentiation. These preserve the honored position of reading despite West Africans' enthusiasm for the glamour of going online.
Efficient query subscription processing for prospective search engines
Authors: Utku Irmak, Svilen Mihaylov, Torsten Suel, Samrat Ganguly, Rauf Izmailov
Venue: Proceedings of the annual conference on USENIX '06 Annual Technical Conference (2006)

Current web search engines are retrospective in that they limit users to searches against already existing pages. Prospective search engines, on the other hand, allow users to upload queries that will be applied to newly discovered pages in the future. Some examples of prospective search are the subscription features in Google News and in RSS-based blog search engines. In this paper, we study the problem of efficiently processing large numbers of keyword query subscriptions against a stream of newly discovered documents, and propose several query processing optimizations for prospective search. Our experimental evaluation shows that these techniques can improve the throughput of a well known algorithm by more than a factor of 20, and allow matching hundreds or thousands of incoming documents per second against millions of subscription queries per node.
Generic electronic payment services: framework and functional specification
Authors: Alireza Bahreman
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Proceedings of the Second USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce - Volume 2 (1996)

We present a framework for integrating electronic payments with applications. We call it the Generic Electronic Payment Services (GEPS). There are five payment services identified in our framework. The model provides maximum transparency to the application developer, while maintaining maximum consistency for the end-user. This is achieved by a layered model where the application (top layer) is isolated from the details of the payment services (lower layer). We also believe that this framework makes it possible for new and innovative payment solutions to more easily integrate with existing applications, resulting in increased competition without stifling innovation. This ultimately leads to higher quality and cost effective solutions which the market will chose.
TclSolver: an algebraic constraint manager for Tcl
Authors: Kevin B. Kenny
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th conference on USENIX Tcl/Tk Workshop, 1996 - Volume 4 (1996)

TclSolver is a simple algebraic constraint manager for use in Tcl applications. It enforces two-way declarative relationships among variables. If, for example, it is provided with a formula like A / B = C / D, it can determine the value of any of the four variables A, B, C, and D when the user supplies values for the other three. It is not a general-purpose equation solver; it is limited to solving for variables that appear only once in their formulae. This paper presents the design and implementation of TclSolver, and an example application that uses TclSolver to perform simple engineering calculations on the World-Wide Web.
Distributed garbage collection for wide area replicated memory
Authors: Alfonso Sánchez, Luís Veiga, Paulo Ferreira
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th conference on USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems - Volume 6 (2001)

It is well known that distributed systems pose serious difficulties concerning memory management: when done manually, it leads to memory leaks and dangling references causing applications to fail. We address this problem by presenting a distributed garbage collection (DGC) algorithm for distributed systems supporting replicated data over wide area networks. Current DGC algorithms are not well suited for such systems because either (i) they do not consider the existence of replication, or (ii) they impose severe constraints on scalability by requiring causal delivery to be provided by the underlying communication layer. Our algorithm solves these problems by (i) adapting classical reference-counting DGC algorithms that were conceived for non-replicated systems (e.g. indirect reference-counting, SSP chains, etc.), and (ii) improving our previous algorithm for replicated systems (i.e. Larchant). The result is a DGC algorithm that, besides being correct in presence of replicated data and independent of the protocol that maintains such replicas coherent among processes, it does not require causal delivery to be ensured by the underlying communications support. In addition, it has minimal performance impact on applications.
A heuristic approach to the development of frequency response characteristics in the design of feedback amplifiers
Authors: P. H. Zang
Venue: Proceedings of the 26th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 01 (1996)

One of the most significant benefits in the application of feedback in the design of electronic amplifiers is an increase in the midband frequency bandwidth. Because of the complexity of the mathematics involved in modeling feedback amplifier performance characteristics, several simplifying techniques are typically introduced. Among these in the frequency domain are single-pole approximations and the concept of dominant poles. While these techniques can reasonably approximate many amplifiers, they fail to adequately address some of the significant phenomena invoked when feedback is applied. In addition, it is often difficult for the typical student of electronics to understand the fundamental reasoning behind each approximation and its realm of validity. A unique approach to understanding feedback amplifier frequency response through the use of simple graphical heuristics is introduced. Primary among these is a display of pole migration using a plot of the pole polynomial as a function of the amount of feedback. General pole migration and the formation of pole pairs can easily be seen using this technique. The graphical nature of the approach brings particular significance to understanding pole dominance throughout the possible range of feedback. It can also be seen that the two-pole approximation to multipole feedback amplifiers has a significant region of validity while the validity of single-pole approximations is questionable. 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 Bayesian evolutionary approach to the design and learning of heterogeneous neural trees
Authors: Byoung-Tak Zhang
Venue: Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering (2002)

Evolutionary algorithms have been successfully applied to the design and training of neural networks, such as in optimization of network architecture, learning connection weights, and selecting training data. While most of existing evolutionary methods are focused on one of these aspects, we present in this paper an integrated approach that employs evolutionary mechanisms for the optimization of these components simultaneously. This approach is especially effective when evolving irregular, not-strictly-layered networks of heterogeneous neurons with variable receptive fields. The core of our method is the neural tree representation scheme combined with the Bayesian evolutionary learning framework. The generality and flexibility of neural trees make it easy to express and modify complex neural architectures by means of standard crossover and mutation operators. The Bayesian evolutionary framework provides a theoretical foundation for finding compact neural networks using a small data set by principled exploitation of background knowledge available in the problem domain. Performance of the presented method is demonstrated on a suite of benchmark problems and compared with those of related methods.
The compressibility of stationary random processes
Authors: Yingbo Hua
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1996. on Conference Proceedings., 1996 IEEE International Conference - Volume 05 (1996)

There are two types of inefficiencies in the time domain representation of a digitized random process. One is the time correlation between samples that causes one sample to be predictable based on the previous samples. Another is the non-uniform distribution of sample amplitudes. Maximum lossless compression of a stationary random process occurs when a sequence is completely decorrelated without loss and the decorrelated sequence is encoded at its entropy rate. This paper presents a mathematical description of theoretical limit of the compressibility of Gaussian stationary random processes.
Maximum mutual information codebook mapping for discrete hidden Markov models
Authors: V. Fontaine
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1996. on Conference Proceedings., 1996 IEEE International Conference - Volume 02 (1996)

This paper presents a new algorithm of supervised vector quantization based on codebook mapping and maximization of mutual information. Classical VQ algorithms are usually based on minimization of a distortion criterion and hence, the phonetic classification of the acoustic vectors is not taken into account during the design of the codebooks. Moreover, the regions defined by classical VQ algorithms are generally limited to Voronoi regions. We show how the MMI mapping can design more complex class regions while taking the phonetic information associated to the input vectors into account. Recognition experiments have been conducted on an isolated word recognition task. These experiments show that the MMI mapping outperforms and is more robust to test conditions than classical VQ algorithms.
Monocular Range Estimation through a Double-Sided Half-Mirror Plate
Authors: Masao Shimizu, Masatoshi Okutomi
Venue: Proceedings of the Fourth Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (2007)

This paper proposes a novel single-camera range estimation method using images transmitted through a double-sided half-mirror plate. The exit-side halfmirror reflects and transmits the transmitted light through the incident-side half-mirror. The transmitted light directly reaches to the camera through the exit-side half-mirror, but some of the reflected light at the exitside half-mirror is then reflected again at the incidentside half-mirror and reaches the camera. Those multiple paths create a layered image in which displacement between the images differs with object distance. The constraint in the layered image is presented. The range to the object can be derived by finding correspondences on constraint lines using the autocorrelation of the layered image with similarity indices. The correspondence position is estimated using a parabola fitting with systematic error cancellation to enhance the accuracy without iteration. Ray tracing enables computation of a rigorous range to the object. This paper presents a theoretical formulation and experimental results obtained using an actual system with a doublesided half-mirror, which is realized using a transparent acrylic plate and two half-mirrors on thin glass-plate.
Geometric alignment of two overlapping range images
Authors: M. A. Rodrigues
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2001. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 03 (2001)

We propose a novel geometric method for the alignment of two overlapping range images. The method first employs the traditional iterative closest point (ICP) criterion to establish a set of possible correspondences and then refine these correspondences using geometric constraints derived from properties of reflected correspondence vectors. In this way, the method overcomes a major limitation of the traditional ICP criterion which is the introduction of false matches in almost every iteration of the alignment. For an accurate estimation of the geometric parameters of interest, the Monte Carlo method is used in conjunction with a median filter. Finally, the quaternion method is used to estimate the motion parameters based on the refined correspondences. Experimental results based on both synthetic data and real images show that the proposed method can effectively align two overlapping range images with a small motion.
Improved image quilting
Authors: Jeremy Long, David Mould
Venue: Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2007 (2007)

In this paper, we present an improvement to the minimum error boundary cut, a method of shaping texture patches for non-parametric texture synthesis from example algorithms such as Efros and Freeman's Image Quilting [4]. Our method uses an alternate distance metric for Dijkstra's algorithm [3], and as a result we are able to prevent the path from taking short cuts through high cost areas, as can sometimes be seen in traditional image quilting. Furthermore, our method is able to reduce both the maximum error in the resulting texture and the visibility of the remaining defects by spreading them over a longer path. Post-process methods such as pixel re-synthesis [9] can easily be modified and applied to our minimum boundary cut to increase the quality of the results.
High performance xpath evaluation in xml streams
Authors: Sudarshan S. Chawathe
Venue:  (2006)

This thesis presents methods for efficiently evaluating structural queries over tree-structured data streams. A data stream usually consists of a sequence of items that arrive in an order determined by the source. An application that uses such data cannot revisit an earlier item in the stream unless it buffers the item itself. Naive buffering methods are not practical due to the high throughput and indefinite length of data streams. Compared with the flat, relational-like data model for data streams that has received recent attention, processing a tree-structured XML data stream poses additional challenges, since a data item cannot, in general, be interpreted without taking structural information into account. In this thesis, we focus on the evaluation of XPath queries on streaming XML. As a W3C standard, XPath has become a core XML technology not only as a standalone query language but also as the foundation of XQuery and XSLT. Features such as subqueries and reverse axes make XPath a powerful query language but they also complicate XPath query processing. We present our work on XSQ, a streaming XPath query engine. Our methods are based on a novel segment-based evaluation scheme. XSQ uses very little memory and is able to process unbounded and unsegmented streaming data because it does not build a DOM tree in memory. It also provides high throughput by only processing the relevant portions of the data and low response time by returning results as early as possible. XSQ is the first streaming system to support complex XPath features such as multiple predicates, closure axes, aggregations, reverse axes, and subqueries. We also describe our work on XPaSS, an XPath-based publish-subscribe system that simultaneously evaluates a large number of XPath queries over XML streams. Unlike other similar systems that filter pre-segmented documents as results, XPaSS returns only the precisely delineated data specified by a user query. It uses a segment-sharing scheme instead of prefix- and suffix-sharing that are commonly used. In our experiments, XPaSS supports up to one million XPath subscriptions using a modest PC-class server, with a throughput comparable to that of the simpler filtering systems.
A special-purpose language for picture-drawing
Authors: Samuel N. Kamin, David Hyatt
Venue: Proceedings of the Conference on Domain-Specific Languages on Conference on Domain-Specific Languages (DSL), 1997 (1997)

Special purpose languages are typically characterized by a type of primitive data and domain-specific operations on this data. One approach to special purpose language design is to embed the data and operations of the language within an existing functional language. The data can be defined using the type constructions provided by the functional language, and the special purpose language then inherits all of the features of the more general language. In this paper we outline a domain-specific language, FPIC, for the representation of two-dimensional pictures. The primitive data and operations are defined in ML. We outline the operations provided by the language, illustrate the power of the language with examples, and discuss the design process.
Automated Protection of PHP Applications Against SQL-injection Attacks
Authors: Ettore Merlo, Dominic Letarte, Giuliano Antoniol
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (2007)

Web sites may be static sites, programs, or databases, and very often a combination of the three integrating relational databases as a back-end. Web sites require care in configuration and programming to assure security, confidentiality, and trustworthiness of the published information. SQL-injection attacks exploit weak validation of textual input used to build database queries. Maliciously crafted input may threaten the confidentiality and the security policies of Web sites relying on a database to store and retrieve information. This paper presents an original approach that combines static analysis, dynamic analysis, and code reengineering to automatically protect applications written in PHP from SQL-injection attacks. The paper also reports preliminary results of experiments performed on an old SQL-injection prone version of phpBB (version 2.0.0, 37193 LOC of PHP version 4.2.2 code). Results show that our approach successfully improved phpBB-2.0.0 resistance to SQLinjection attacks.