ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Rebalancing the Visual System of People with Amblyopia "Lazy Eye" by Using HMD and Image Enhancement
Authors: Sina Fateh, Claude Speeg
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Virtual and Mixed Reality: Held as Part of HCI International 2009 (2009)

Amblyopia or "lazy eye" occurs when during early childhood visual information from one eye is absent or poorly transmitted to the brain. This visual deprivation causes poor vision and the eye gradually becomes weaker (amblyope) relative to the other eye which becomes stronger. The visual imbalance is caused by the brain's preference for the strong eye. To restore vision, conventional treatments use occlusion and vision penalization of the strong eye to force the brain to use the amblyope eye. Conventional treatments are regarded as effective in young children but impractical in older subjects and patient compliance remains the main cause of treatment failure. This presentation describes our preliminary efforts to develop a convenient and viable binocular head mounted display (HMD) interface. The goal is to rebalance the vision by using a simultaneous enhancing/attenuation image adjustment. The image presented to the normal eye will be attenuated while the image presented to the amblyope eye will be enhanced. During this operation the user will be engage in recreational activities such as watching movies, using internet or playing video games.
An affect-sensitive intelligent tutor: Adapting to student emotions based on human empathy
Authors: Samuel Alexander
Venue:  (2009)

One of the established strengths of human tutors is their ability to recognise and adapt to the emotions of students. This is a skill that has traditionally been lacking from Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs); despite their ability to intelligently model and adapt to aspects of the student?s cognitive state, ITSs are generally completely unable to detect or adapt to aspects of the student?s affective state. In response to this shortcoming, this book explores the exciting development of an emotion-sensitive ITS. With the empathy of effective human tutors as our blueprint, we investigate how an artificial tutor should adapt to the affective state of students. To inform the tutor?s adaptation to student affect, a novel method for student modelling and emotion-sensitive tutoring strategies has been developed using a fuzzy, case-based reasoning approach. As a validation of the feasibility of an emotion-sensitive tutoring system, we implement and test our method in an Affective Tutoring System (ATS) for counting and addition, Easy with Eve, featuring an empathetic animated pedagogical agent, Eve. 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
Social Reference Model for Adaptive Web Learning
Authors: Fawaz Ghali, Alexandra I. Cristea
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Advances in Web Based Learning (2009)

In this paper, we describe the design steps of extending LAOS, a five-layer framework for generic adaptive web learning authoring, by adding a social layer to capture (and adapt) information from 1) collaborative authoring (i.e. editing the content of other learners, describing the content using tags, rating the content, and commenting on the content, etc); and 2) authoring for collaboration (i.e., adding authors' activities, such as defining groups of authors, subscribing to other authors, etc). Moreover, the paper presents MOT 2.0, an adaptive E-learning 2.0 system, which is built on the proposed reference model, and finally, we report on our evaluations to validate the new Social Layer by comparing MOT 2.0 with its predecessor, MOT 1.0.
Adaptive Dispatching of Incidences Based on Reputation for SCADA Systems
Authors: Cristina Alcaraz, Isaac Agudo, Carmen Fernandez-Gago, Rodrigo Roman, Gerardo Fernandez, Javier Lopez
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business (2009)

SCADA systems represent a challenging scenario where the management of critical alarms is crucial. Their response to these alarms should be efficient and fast in order to mitigate or contain undesired effects. This work presents a mechanism, the Adaptive Assignment Manager (AAM) that will aid to react to incidences in a more efficient way by dynamically assigning alarms to the most suitable human operator. The mechanism uses various inputs for identifying the operators such as their availability, workload and reputation. In fact, we also define a reputation component that stores the reputation of the human operators and uses feedback from past experiences.
Design and Implementation of a Virtual Salesclerk
Authors: Christopher Mumme, Niels Pinkwart, Frank Loll
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (2009)

This paper describes the design and implementation of a virtual agent that is capable of providing customers in a 3D online shop with advice. Based on a product knowledge base, a conversation model and a model of the shop, the agent communicates with the customer through text based dialogues and leads the customer through the virtual world using gestures.
Generating determiners and quantifiers in Hebrew
Authors: Yael Dahan Netzer, Michael Elhadad
Venue: Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Approaches to Semitic Languages (1998)

This paper presents a specific part of HUGG, a generation grammar for Hebrew. This part deals with determiners and quantifiers. Our main goal is to determine which set of features must be present in the input to the generation grammar to control the generation of complex determiners and quantifiers. Hebrew determiners are characterized by two properties: (1) definiteness is marked in several places in the NP and it interacts with compound constructs; (2) the order of appearance of determiners and quantifiers within a complex NP is flexible but still restricted. HUGG is developed with the goal to design an input specification language for syntactic realization as close as possible for English and Hebrew, to allow easy development of bilingual generation applications. We show in this paper how the original set of features controlling the generation of determiners in SURGE, a large generation grammar for English, has been enriched to account for the specificities of Hebrew determiners and how, in the process, SURGE has been modified and improved. We present a set of functional features -- organized around the categories of amount, partitive and identity -- and show how these features determine a variety of syntactic constructs.
Newton-conjugate-gradient methods for solitary wave computations
Authors: Jianke Yang
Venue: Journal of Computational Physics (2009)

In this paper, the Newton-conjugate-gradient methods are developed for solitary wave computations. These methods are based on Newton iterations, coupled with conjugate-gradient iterations to solve the resulting linear Newton-correction equation. When the linearization operator is self-adjoint, the preconditioned conjugate-gradient method is proposed to solve this linear equation. If the linearization operator is non-self-adjoint, the preconditioned biconjugate-gradient method is proposed to solve the linear equation. The resulting methods are applied to compute both the ground states and excited states in a large number of physical systems such as the two-dimensional NLS equations with and without periodic potentials, the fifth-order KdV equation, and the fifth-order KP equation. Numerical results show that these proposed methods are faster than the other leading numerical methods, often by orders of magnitude. In addition, these methods are very robust and always converge in all the examples being tested. Furthermore, they are very easy to implement. It is also shown that the nonlinear conjugate gradient methods are not robust and inferior to the proposed methods.
Workflow-Based Architecture for Collaborative Video Annotation
Authors: Cristian Hofmann, Nina Hollender, Dieter W. Fellner
Venue: Proceedings of the 3d International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing: Held as Part of HCI International 2009 (2009)

In video annotation research, the support of the video annotation workflow has been taken little into account, especially concerning collaborative use cases. Previous research projects focus each on a different essential part of the whole annotation process. We present a reference architecture model which is based on identified phases of the video annotation workflow. In a first step, the underlying annotation workflow is exemplified with respect to its single phases, tasks, and loops. Secondly, the system architecture is going to be exemplified with respect to its elements, their internal procedures, as well as the interaction between these elements. The goals of this paper are to provide the reader with a basic understanding of the specific characteristics and requirements of collaborative video annotation processes, and to define a reference framework for the design of video annotation systems that include a workflow management system.
Magic Bullet: a dual-purpose computer game
Authors: Jeff Yan, Su-Yang Yu
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Human Computation (2009)

In this demo, we showcase Magic Bullet, an online game that is designed to streamline the robustness evaluation of CAPTCHAs. This game can also train people's typing skills, and be used to aid the development of better machine learning algorithms for handwriting recognition.
Distributed agent environments in the Ambient Event Calculus
Authors: Stefano Bromuri, Kostas Stathis
Venue: Proceedings of the Third ACM International Conference on Distributed Event-Based Systems (2009)

We study the development of distributed agent environments as distributed event-based systems specified in the Ambient Event Calculus (AEC). The AEC is a logic-based formalism that is developed here to support the representation of a distributed agent environment as a persistent composite structure evolving over time. Such a complex structure supports the interaction between agents, objects, and containers, entities that have their own external observable state and can be distributed over a network. Interactions between these entities are specified in terms of events that represent actions executed by agents on objects and other agents in the environment. When events happen they are stored in containers and are notified to agent sensors that subscribe to event descriptions and as a result perceive the interactions. The AEC formalism also allows changes caused by events to be delivered across distributed containers, according to the topology of the application environment. We illustrate the use of AEC and we show how to specify interactions within the GOLEM agent platform applied to a specific agent scenario.
Analysis of a Password Strengthening Technique and Its Practical Use
Authors: Bogdan Groza
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 Third International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies (2009)

Besides commonly used password strengthening techniques such as salting or repeated applications of a one-way function on the password, we account a less common procedure: the truncation of the output from a one-way function on the password. This technique is used in a Norwegian ATM and a similar method is part of an authentication protocol from Anderson and Lomas which makes use of collision-full hash functions. We depict a probabilistic bound on the probability of guessing the password in the Anderson-Lomas protocol and we propose some improvements on the protocol. Further, the improved protocol proves to be a good solution for a password based authentication between two devices that authenticate in the absence of a previously known secret or of a trusted third party. The protocol proves to have all the desired properties for this scenario.
A Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Algorithm of Mobile Robot Based on Improved FastSLAM
Authors: Yi-min Xia, Yi-min Yang
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 WRI Global Congress on Intelligent Systems - Volume 03 (2009)

This paper takes the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) problem of mobile robot as research object and improves the FastSLAM algorithm. As the estimation precision of Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is low, we adopt Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) to approach the posterior distribution instead of EKF, at the same time use UKF to estimate the landmark position. We adopt adaptive resample method which resamples when needed by choosing suitable standard to reduce the depletion of samples. Theory analysis and simulation results prove that the improved algorithm can enhance the performance of SLAM effectively.
Generating Peptide Sequence Tags for Peptide Identification via Tandem Mass Spectrometry
Authors: Changyong Yu, Guoren Wang, Yuhai Zhao, Keming Mao, Junjie Wu, Wendan Zhai
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 Ninth IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering (2009)

Large-scale, rapid and accurate protein identification is the crucial basis for further protein analysis in computational proteomics. Searching protein database by use of the protein tandem mass spectra has been a standard solution for solving this problem.Though several algorithms have been proposed, more sensitive and accurate approaches are still needed. In this paper, an effective database search approach is proposed. Prior to searching sequence database, an approach based on a graph-theoretic model is proposed to infer the peptide sequence tag (PST) from the tandem mass spectra data which is the partial sequence of the peptide. Also, an index approach for the protein sequence database is proposed for speeding up the database search and filtering out the incorrect protein sequences. Then, a novel scoring method for evaluating the match between the peptide sequence tag and the protein sequence is proposed for improving the accuracy of the database search result.Finally, we develop an algorithm for solving the problem and implement it as a computer program PepCheck. All the results fore-Check are compared with those of the famous algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate that PepCheck is as accurate as or more accurate than them with the test datasets.
Extracting bilingual dictionary from comparable corpora with dependency heterogeneity
Authors: Kun Yu, Junichi Tsujii
Venue: Proceedings of Human Language Technologies: The 2009 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Companion Volume: Short Papers (2009)

This paper proposes an approach for bilingual dictionary extraction from comparable corpora. The proposed approach is based on the observation that a word and its translation share similar dependency relations. Experimental results using 250 randomly selected translation pairs prove that the proposed approach significantly outperforms the traditional context-based approach that uses bag-of-words around translation candidates.
FireScanner: A Browser Scanning Add-On for Users with Motor Impairments
Authors: Stavroula Ntoa, George Margetis, Constantine Stephanidis
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Part III: Applications and Services (2009)

The web has become the most commonly used gateway to information, commerce and entertainment. As a result, accessing online resources without any barriers has turned to be of utmost importance for all the citizens of the Information Society. One common obstacle faced by users with motor impairments of the upper limbs is their difficulty to interact with a computer application using standard input devices, such as the keyboard and the mouse. This paper presents a browser add-on, named FireScanner, providing access to the web for people with hand motor impairments, through the scanning technique.
Ubuntu Linux Secrets
Authors: Richard Blum
Venue:  (2009)

The everyday Linux user can easily get overwhelmed by the complexity of the new software that exists when creating an Ubuntu system. This book covers the basics of creating a new system from scratch and explains what software is installed. Youll take a tour of installing the Ubuntu Linux distribution system in most environments, including nontraditional situations such as dual-boot and text-based installations. Plus, clear explanations of each of the installed applications show you how to get the most out of each application, rather than simply using them as they exist.
WidSets: A Usability Study of Widget Sharing
Authors: Kristiina Karvonen, Theofanis Kilinkaridis, Olli Immonen
Venue: Proceedings of the 12th IFIP TC 13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Part II (2009)

In this paper, we describe a study conducted to better understand and improve the usability of the reputation elements on an online widget sharing site called WidSets. With a series of interviews and an online questionnaire with users of WidSets, we seek to understand the motivations and instigators of the actual usage, the level of understanding, and acceptance of current reputation elements. We analyse the impact of these factors on WidSets users' willingness to download and use the publicly available widgets. The outcomes show the visual elements of the user interface to predominate as the source for information for the decision to trust and download. However, the accuracy of the interpretation of these elements remains ambiguous. There also seems to be little awareness of the underlying security issues related to possible malicious widgets and developers.
On Structured Output Training: Hard Cases and an Efficient Alternative
Authors: Thomas Gärtner, Shankar Vembu
Venue: Proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases: Part I (2009)

State-of-the-art structured prediction algorithms can be applied using off-the-shelf tools by implementing a joint kernel for inputs and outputs, and an algorithm for inference. The kernel is used for mapping the data to an appropriate feature space, while the inference algorithm is used for successively adding violated constraints to the optimisation problem. While this approach leads to efficient learning algorithms for many important real world problems, there are also many cases in which successively adding violated constraints is infeasible. As a simple yet relevant problem, we consider the prediction of routes (cyclic permutations) over a given set of points of interest. Solving this problem has many potential applications. For car drivers, prediction of individual routes can be used for intelligent car sharing applications or help optimise a hybrid vehicle's charge/discharge schedule. We show that state-of-the-art structured prediction algorithms cannot guarantee polynomial runtime for this output set of cyclic permutations.
Mixing Telerobotics and Virtual Reality for Improving Immersion in Artwork Perception
Authors: Luca Brayda, Nicolas Mollet, Ryad Chellali
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on E-Learning and Games: Learning by Playing. Game-based Education System Design and Development (2009)

This paper aims at presenting a framework to achieve a higher degree of telepresence in environments rich of artistic content using mobile robots. We develop a platform which allows a more immersive and natural interaction between an operator and a remote environment; we make use of a multi-robot system as the mean to physically explore such environment and we adopt virtual reality as an interface to abstract it. The visitor is thus able to exploit the virtual environment both for keeping the sense of direction and for accessing a high-resolution content, while the immersion is achieved through the robot sensors. This study represents a starting point for overcoming the limits of the current use of virtual technology associated with artistic content. Long-term results of such study can be applied to tele-didactics, remote tele-visits for impaired users and active man-machine cooperation for efficient tele-surveillance.
Towards an Account of Sensorimotor Knowledge in Inclusive Product Design
Authors: Jörn Hurtienne, Patrick Langdon, P. John Clarkson
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Addressing Diversity. Part I: Held as Part of HCI International 2009 (2009)

By 2020, one in every two European adults will be over 50 years in age. As old age brings along reductions in sensory, cognitive, and motor abilities, product development methodologies have to adjust. While sensory and motor abilities are relatively straightforward to measure, cognitive abilities are more elusive. The paper discusses how different sources of prior knowledge can inspire inclusive design. Special emphasis is put on knowledge derived from basic sensorimotor experiences. This is proposed to complement previous studies investigating the effects of tool knowledge on inclusiveness. Image schema theory as an account of sensorimotor knowledge is introduced and its universality, robustness, and multimodality are discussed. Current evidence for the usefulness of applying image schemas in user interface design is reviewed and implications for inclusive design research are derived. More specifically, a research program is developed that includes theoretical, empirical, as well as practical studies to promote the ideas developed in this paper.
An Efficient P2P Range Query Processing Approach for Multi-dimensional Uncertain Data
Authors: Ye Yuan, Guoren Wang, Yongjiao Sun, Bin Wang, Xiaochun Yang, Ge Yu
Venue: Database Systems for Advanced Applications: DASFAA 2009 International Workshops: BenchmarX, MCIS, WDPP, PPDA, MBC, PhD, Brisbane, Australia, April 20 - 23, 2009 (2009)

In recent years, the management of uncertain data has received much attention in a centralized database. However, to our knowledge, no work has been done on this topic in the context of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems, and the existing techniques of P2P range queries cannot be suitable for uncertain data. In this paper, we study the problem of answering probabilistic threshold range queries on multi-dimensional uncertain data for P2P systems. Our novel solution of the problem, PeerUN, is based on a tree structure overlay which has the optimal diameter and can support efficient routing in highly dynamic scenarios. The issues (also faced with multi-dimensional uncertain data) of existing techniques for multi-dimensional indexing over a structure P2P network are (1) they process queries efficiently at the cost of huge maintenance overhead; (2) they have low maintenance costs, but they suffer poor routing efficiency or introduce huge network overhead. PeerUN can process range queries on multi-dimensional uncertain data efficiently with low maintenance costs. PeerUN achieves this by introducing a series of novel queries processing algorithms and a cost-based optimal data replication strategy. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Design of CAN/GPRS Gateway for Vehicle Remote Communications
Authors: Yong Xu, Qun-li Yang, Zhang-hua You
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Measuring Technology and Mechatronics Automation - Volume 01 (2009)

The solution of inter-vehicle networks platform based on CAN bus and GPRS is provided. Implementation of system software and hardware for the platform is also reported. Bridging the in-vehicle CAN bus network and mobile communication network to remote hosts, design of CAN-GPRS gateway is described and some details are presented. The system can be used for vehicle monitoring system and remote supervising management.