ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Perceptually Enhanced Multimedia Processing, Visualization and Transmission
Authors: Irene Cheng, Randy Goebel
Venue: Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (2006)

Data reduction has long been a method for adaptation to limited computational and network resources. But one major concern is the tradeoff between preserving visual quality and reducing data size. Furthermore, the presence of multi-modal data, e.g. visual and aural, is common and therefore distributing competing resources among multi-modal data to achieve optimal visual quality becomes a major. Since humans are typically the penultimate viewer of multimedia data, it is reasonable to take human perception into consideration during the data reduction and resource distribution process, in order to estimate and control the resulting visual quality. Psychophysical experiments reported in the literature have shown that better performance can be achieved in multimedia processing, visualization and transmission, by incorporating perceptual factors. This paper gives an overview of how human perception plays a role in the development of multimedia applications, so as to inspire and inform future research in this direction.
The Optimization and Design of Procurement Strategy in E-commerce
Authors: Guangshu Chang
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Services Computing (2006)

Procurement management is one of the most valuable parts in supply chain management (SCM). In e-commerce era, the complexity and levity of procurement management become greatly outstanding because customer demands are changing faster and faster. Modern information technology (IT) plays an increasingly important role in procurement management and brings a global e-procurement /e-purchasing. In this paper, we establish a two-period replenishment model of (s, S) strategy to analyze the operation cost efficiency of the traditional procurement in strategic partnership, e-procurement and the mixed procurement strategy respectively. The model quantifies the effect of the Internet on procurement management. Then, the validity of the model is verified through a case study of a state-owned extra-large steel enterprise of China. The study concluded that the implementation of e-procurement technology can effectively reduce supply base and increase the profit margin of both the buyer and the supplier.
A Temporal Dissociation of Subliminal versus Supraliminal Fear Perception: An Event-related Potential Study
Authors: Belinda J. Liddell, Leanne M. Williams, Jennifer Rathjen, Howard Shevrin, Evian Gordon
Venue: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2004)

Current theories of emotion suggest that threat-related stimuli are first processed via an automatically engaged neural mechanism, which occurs outside conscious awareness. This mechanism operates in conjunction with a slower and more comprehensive process that allows a detailed evaluation of the potentially harmful stimulus (LeDoux, 1998). We drew on the Halgren and Marinkovic (1995) model to examine these processes using event-related potentials (ERPs) within a backward masking paradigm. Stimuli used were faces with fear and neutral (as baseline control) expressions, presented above (supraliminal) and below (subliminal) the threshold for conscious detection. ERP data revealed a double dissociation for the supraliminal versus subliminal perception of fear. In the subliminal condition, responses to the perception of fear stimuli were enhanced relative to neutral for the N2 "excitatory" component, which is thought to represent orienting and automatic aspects of face processing. By contrast, supraliminal perception of fear was associated with relatively enhanced responses for the late P3 "inhibitory" component, implicated in the integration of emotional processes. These findings provide evidence in support of Halgren and Marinkovic's temporal model of emotion processing, and indicate that the neural mechanisms for appraising signals of threat may be initiated, not only automatically, but also without the need for conscious detection of these signals.
Protecting privacy and anonymity in pervasive computing: trends and perspectives
Authors: Stelios Dritsas, Dimitris Gritzalis, Costas Lambrinoudakis
Venue: Telematics and Informatics (2006)

Pervasive computing is expected to enter our everyday life in the foreseeable future. The capabilities of the devices, which operate in such an environment, as well as the range of services offered to the end-users are expected to be significantly increased. However, this new era is expected to have a serious effect on privacy. In this paper, we first refer to the privacy threats identified in a pervasive environment; then, we present a set of principles for ensuring privacy in this context. In the sequel, we examine a number of privacy protection mechanisms for pervasive systems, with a focus on the level of anonymity offered to the end-users. We identify flaws, these mechanisms suffer by, in terms of the limited anonymity level they offer. We conclude by presenting a set of essential actions one should take into account, in order to ensure user's anonymity in a pervasive computing environment.
UniWireless: a distributed open access network
Authors: Danilo Severina, Mauro Brunato, Alessandro Ordine, Luca Veltri
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Wireless mobile applications and services on WLAN hotspots (2006)

In this paper we describe the UniWireless framework, a nationwide distributed Open Access testbed that involves different research units collaborating in the TWELVE national project. The Uni-Fy AAA system, used to manage the collection of involved hotspots, is also discussed.The most important aspect of the UniWireless framework is its compatibility with different authentication mechanisms; while most access networks enforce a particular authentication protocol upon their users, in the UniWireless system different mechanisms coexist, and each client can in principle use the one that it considers most suitable. Two different, independent and coexisting authentication protocols (capive portal and a SIP-based technique) have been implemented and are described in this paper.Besides its academic and scientific value for demonstrating results and supporting research activities, the UniWireless framework is actually used to grant access to nomadic users that belong to different research units in all the hotspots related to the project. Every nomadic user can access network resources from every hotspot in the testbed by his usual authentication credentials. Experience gathered from more than one year of continuative use of the system is also discussed.
Walking the grid: robotics in CS 2
Authors: Myles F. McNally
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th Austalian conference on Computing education - Volume 52 (2006)

This paper describes the use of inexpensive robotics platforms to create engaging student projects for a second course in computer programming. These projects employ the stack and queue data structures, reinforce basic concepts such as two dimensional arrays, and are situated in the context of modern, object-oriented programming. Advanced concepts from autonomous mobile robotics are introduced in a gentle manner, including occupancy grids, path planning, and sensor fusion. The fundamentals of depth and breadth first search are used in the solutions to the various projects described.
Logic-flow analysis of higher-order programs
Authors: Matthew Might
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (2007)

This work presents a framework for fusing flow analysis and theorem proving called logic-flow analysis (LFA). The framework itself is the reduced product of two abstract interpretations: (1) an abstract state machine and (2) a set of propositions in a restricted first-order logic. The motivating application for LFA is the safe removal of implicit array-bounds checks without type information, user interaction or program annotation. LFA achieves this by delegating a given task to either the prover or the flow analysis depending on which is best suited to discharge it. Described within are a concrete semantics for continuation-passing style; a restricted, first-order logic; a woven product of two abstract interpretations; proofs of correctness; and a worked example.
Usage Patterns of the Java Standard API
Authors: Homan Ma, Robert Amor, Ewan Tempero
Venue: Proceedings of the XIII Asia Pacific Software Engineering Conference (2006)

The Java Standard API has grown enormously since Java's beginnings, now consisting of over 3,000 classes and 20,000 methods. The intent of this API is to provide high quality components that can be easily reused and so increase the Java developer's productivity but does it? In this paper, we present a study that begins to answer this question. Specifically we take a corpus-based approach to help determine the "typical" usage of the Standard API. We find that, in an extensive corpus of open-source software, only about 50% of the classes in the Standard API are used at all, and around 21% of the methods are used. We discuss the implications this has for future development of both the API itself, and for tools to support the API.
More "normal" than normal: scaling distributions and complex systems
Authors: Walter Willinger, David Alderson, John C. Doyle, Lun Li
Venue: Proceedings of the 36th conference on Winter simulation (2004)

One feature of many naturally occurring or engineered complex systems is tremendous variability in event sizes. To account for it, the behavior of these systems is often described using power law relationships or scaling distributions, which tend to be viewed as "exotic" because of their unusual properties (e.g., infinite moments). An alternate view is based on mathematical, statistical, and data-analytic arguments and suggests that scaling distributions should be viewed as "more normal than Normal". In support of this latter view that has been advocated by Mandelbrot for the last 40 years, we review in this paper some relevant results from probability theory and illustrate a powerful statistical approach for deciding whether the variability associated with observed event sizes is consistent with an underlying Gaussian-type (finite variance) or scaling-type (infinite variance) distribution. We contrast this approach with traditional model fitting techniques and discuss its implications for future modeling of complex systems.
Designing CAMUS based Context-Awareness for Pervasive Home Environments
Authors: Aekyung Moon, Hyoungsun Kim, Kangwoo Lee, Hyun Kim
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Hybrid Information Technology - Volume 01 (2006)

With the advent of pervasive computing environments, the issue related to context-aware middleware is an emerging area of research. We propose proactive services on the basis of CAMUS(Context-Aware Middleware for URC Systems). First, this paper presents the system architecture of CAMUS. CAMUS is a middleware for providing context-aware applications with development and execution methodology. Accordingly, the applications developed by CAMUS respond in a timely fashion to contexts. Secondly, this paper illustrates the contents recommendation and control service agents with the property, operation, and task for the context-aware active services. Next, proposed active services is applied to the pervasive home environemnt for evaluation of our system. To do this, we implement the TV contents recommendation service agent, control service agent and context-aware task using CAMUS.
Perceptual antecedents of user attitude in electronic commerce
Authors: Yuan Gao, Marios Koufaris
Venue: ACM SIGMIS Database (2006)

This paper examines three cognitive antecedents of Web user attitude toward a commercial website -- perceived informativeness, perceived entertainment, and perceived irritation. We tested the theoretical relationships between the three cognitive antecedents, attitude toward the site, and intention to return to the site using Partial Least Squares (PLS) with data collected in a field study of three e-commerce websites. The model explains a high percentage of the variance in attitude toward the site and intention to return and all the coefficients in the model are significant. We conclude that both perceived informativeness and perceived entertain-ment are significantly and positively related to attitude toward the site, while perceived irritation is significantly and negatively related to attitude toward the site. We also conclude that attitude toward the site is significantly and positively related to a user's intention to return to the site.
To Look or Not to Look? Typical and Atypical Development of Oculomotor Control
Authors: Gaia Scerif, Annette Karmiloff-smith, Ruth Campos, Mayada Elsabbagh, Jon Driver, Kim Cornish
Venue: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2005)

The ability to inhibit saccades toward suddenly appearing peripheral stimuli (prosaccades) and direct them to contralateral locations instead (antisaccades) is a crucial marker of eye movement control. Typically developing infants as young as 4-month-olds can learn to inhibit reflexive saccades to peripheral stimuli, but they do not produce antisaccades, whose development later in infancy and its underlying neural computations remain unexplored. Here we tested oculomotor control in typically developing toddlers and toddlers with fragile X syndrome (FXS), a disorder of known genetic origin that allows the investigation of the neurocomputational properties contributing to the development of saccadic control. Typically developing toddlers decreased looking toward peripheral cues that predicted contralateral rewards, whose appearance they anticipated. Furthermore, this correlated with age, indicating a gradual development of saccadic control. In contrast with the typical case, toddlers with FXS did not decrease their looks to peripheral onsets that predicted contralateral events. Importantly, the atypical pattern of performance was also evident in the elimination of the correlation with mental or chronological age found in controls. Taken together, the findings suggest that control of saccades and its developmental trajectory is atypical in toddlers with FXS, consistent with inhibitory deficits previously shown at later ages in this condition. Potential implications for the neural mechanisms underlying the typical and atypical development of oculomotor control are discussed.
A Software Component Quality Model: A Preliminary Evaluation
Authors: Alexandre Alvaro, Eduardo Santana de Almeida, Silvio Lemos Meira
Venue: Proceedings of the 32nd EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (2006)

Component-based software development is becoming more generalized, representing a considerable market for the software industry. The perspective of reduced development costs and shorter life cycles acts as a motivation for this expansion. However, several technical issues remain unsolved before software component's industry reaches the maturity exhibited by other component industries. Problems such as the component selection by their integrators and the uncertain quality of third-party developed components, bring new challenges to the software engineering community. By the other hand, the software components certification area is still immature and further research is needed in order to obtain well-defined standards for certification. In this way, we aim to propose a component quality model, describing consistent and well-defined characteristics, quality attributes and related metrics for the components evaluation. A preliminary evaluation to analyze the results of using the component quality model proposed is also presented.
An efficient top-down search algorithm for learning Boolean networks of gene expression
Authors: Dougu Nam, Seunghyun Seo, Sangsoo Kim
Venue: Machine Learning (2006)

Boolean networks provide a simple and intuitive model for gene regulatory networks, but a critical defect is the time required to learn the networks. In recent years, efficient network search algorithms have been developed for a noise-free case and for a limited function class. In general, the conventional algorithm has the high time complexity of O(22k mn k+1) where m is the number of measurements, n is the number of nodes (genes), and k is the number of input parents. Here, we suggest a simple and new approach to Boolean networks, and provide a randomized network search algorithm with average time complexity O (mn k+1/ (log m)(k¿1)). We show the efficiency of our algorithm via computational experiments, and present optimal parameters. Additionally, we provide tests for yeast expression data.
Efficient simulations for capacity analysis and automated material handling system design in semiconductor wafer fabs
Authors: Jesus A. Jimenez, Gerald Mackulak, John Fowler
Venue: Proceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation (2005)

The Automated Material Handling System (AMHS) must be designed effectively so that it never becomes a limiting factor for the capacity of 300mm wafer fabs. Ideally, a fully integrated fab simulation model (i.e. a model containing detailed modeling constructs for the production operations, the tools, the AMHS, and tool AMHS interactions) should be used in order to design the AMHS. However, the problem is that it takes too much time to simulate and analyze these models. Experimentation has demonstrated that certain capacity models with less detailed AMHS representations can generate accurate system predictions in comparison to the values produced by fully integrated models. Because these less detailed models run faster, we can thus assess efficiently the effects of an AMHS design configuration on equipment capacity. A case study comparing the computational efficiency and the quality of the performance predictions at different levels of detail will be presented.
Understanding Dynamic Situations through Context Explanation
Authors: Romain Benard, Pierre De Loor, Jacques Tisseau
Venue: Proceedings of the Sixth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (2006)

This article presents advantages of using context to set up a pedagogical assistance for recognition of collective situations in Virtual Environment for Training (VET). We are focusing on generation of explanations to the learner. Two assistances types have been envisaged thanks to context using, the first one consists in guiding the learner before action and the second can be used during action. Those assistances have been set up thanks to contextual graph and consists of animations in the virtual environment..
Towards 100% reliability in wireless monitoring networks
Authors: Lance Doherty, Dana A. Teasdale
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM international workshop on Performance evaluation of wireless ad hoc, sensor and ubiquitous networks (2006)

High end-to-end reliability is a quality demanded by those with critical monitoring and actuation requirements. To date, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) users have often accepted sub-optimal reliability as being intrinsic to wireless technologies. We describe a centralized monitoring TDMA network with policies chosen to maximize the number of received packets while maintaining low power characteristics. The methods for detecting and diagnosing packet loss are presented along with expected bounds on their relative impacts. This diagnosis allows for a cataloguing of all the known loss mechanisms and for the analysis of loss in a 50-node network running at 99.99% steady-state end-to-end reliability
Neglect Between but Not Within Auditory Objects
Authors: Rhodri Cusack, Robert P. Carlyon, Ian H. Robertson
Venue: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2000)

Unilateral neglect is frequently characterized by the presence of extinction, which is a lack of awareness to contralesional visual stimuli in the presence of those further towards the ipsilesional side. It has been established that this visual extinction can be reduced if the stimuli are grouped together into a single object. However, attention between and within auditory objects has never before been studied. We demonstrate for the first time that unilateral neglect - hitherto thought primarily to be a disorder of visuospatial processing - involves a specific deficit in allocating attention between auditory objects separated only in time and not in space. Importantly, this deficit is restricted to comparisons between sounds: the patients' ability to make within-sound comparisons is similar to that of controls. These differences cannot be explained in terms of different time spans over which comparisons must be made. The results suggest unilateral neglect is linked to - if not actually determined by - a reduction in attentional capacity in both the visual and auditory domains, and across the dimensions of both space and time. The findings have potential clinical applications.
Real-Time Tracking with Non-Rigid Geometric Templates Using the GPU
Authors: Julius Fabian Ohmer, Frederic Maire, Ross Brown
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation (2006)

The tracking of features in real-time video streams forms the integral part of many important applications in human-computer interaction and computer vision. Unfortunately tracking is a computationally intensive task, since the video information used by the tracker is usually prepared by applying a series of image processing filters. Thus it is difficult to realize a real-time tracker using only the CPU of a standard PC. Over the last few years, commodity Graphics Processing Units (GPU) have evolved from fixed graphics pipeline processors into more flexible and powerful data-parallel processors. These stream processors are capable of sustaining computation rates of greater than ten times that of a single CPU. GPUs are inexpensive and are becoming ubiquitous (desktops, laptops, PDAs, cell phones). They are now capable to greatly relieve the CPU especially for large-scale parallel processing tasks, which map well to the architecture of the GPU. In this paper, we present a system, which uses a gradient vector field to track features with flexible geometric templates. Our implementation is specifically designed to suit the parallel processing architecture of the GPU. It is capable to achieve realtime performance with framerates of around 30 frames per second.
Linear prediction models with graph regularization for web-page categorization
Authors: Tong Zhang, Alexandrin Popescul, Byron Dom
Venue: Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining (2006)

We present a risk minimization formulation for learning from both text and graph structures which is motivated by the problem of collective inference for hypertext document categorization. The method is based on graph regularization formulated as a well-formed convex optimization problem. We present numerical algorithms for our formulation, and show that such combination of local text features and link information can lead to improved predictive accuracy.