ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Segmentation of Single- or Multiple-Touching Handwritten Numeral String Using Background and Foreground Analysis
Authors: Yi-Kai Chen, Jhing-Fa Wang
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (2000)

A new approach of segmenting single- or multiple-touching handwritten numeral string (two-digits) is proposed. Most algorithms for segmenting connected digits mainly focus on the analysis of foreground pixels. Some concentrated on the analysis of background pixels only and others are based on a recognizer. In this paper, we combine background and foreground analysis to segment single- or multiple-touching handwritten numeral strings. Thinning of both foreground and background regions are first processed on the image of connected numeral strings and the feature points on foreground and background skeletons are extracted. Several possible segmentation paths are then constructed and useless strokes are removed. Finally, the parameters of geometric properties of each possible segmentation paths are determined and these parameters are analyzed by the mixture Gaussian probability function to decide the best segmentation path or reject it. Experimental results on NIST special database 19 (an update of NIST special database 3) and some other images collected by ourselves show that our algorithm can get a correct rate of 96 percent with rejection rate of 7.8 percent, which compares favorably with those reported in the literature.
Properties and Algorithms for Unfolding of Probabilistic Data-Flow Graphs
Authors: Sissades Tongsima, Timothy W. O'neil, Chantana Chantrapornchai, Edwin H.-M. Sha
Venue: Journal of VLSI Signal Processing Systems (2000)

It is known that any selection statement (e.g. if and switch-case statements) in an application is associated with a probability which could either be predetermined by user input or chosen at runtime. Such a statement can be regarded as a computation node whose computation time is represented by a random variable. This paper focuses on iterative applications (containing loops) reflecting those uncertainties. Such an application can then be transformed to a probabilistic data-flow graph.Two timing models, the time-invariant and time-variant models, are introduced to characterize the nature of these applications. Since there can be many unfolding factors associated with each of the possible graph outcomes, for the time-invariant model, we propose a means of selecting a constant minimum rate-optimal unfolding factor for unfolding the probabilistic graph. We demonstrate that this factor guarantees the best schedule length.We also suggest a good estimate for choosing an unfolding factor for a graph under the time-variant model. Experiments show that using our selection scheme results in an iteration period close to the theoretical iteration bound of the experimental graph. Furthermore, this paper discusses an alternative approach which selects a few optimal schedules (with respect to the graph outcomes) to be stored in the system. The other possibilities will be represented by a modified template graph.
Finding Quadratic Schedules for Affine Recurrence Equations Via Nonsmooth Optimization
Authors: Wolfgang Achtziger, Karl-Heinz Zimmermann
Venue: Journal of VLSI Signal Processing Systems (2000)

Frequently, affine recurrence equations can be scheduled more efficiently by quadratic scheduling functions than by linear scheduling functions. In this paper, the problem of finding optimal quadratic schedules for affine recurrence equations is formulated as a convex nonsmooth programming problem. In particular, sufficient constraints for causality are used generalizing Lamport's condition. In this way, the presented problem formulation becomes independent of the problem size. The research tool AQUAD is described implementing this problem formulation. Several nontrivial examples demonstrate that AQUAD can be effectively used to calculate quadratic schedules for affine recurrence equations. Finally, it is shown how array processors can be synthesized from affine recurrence equations which are scheduled by quadratic functions with a singular Hessian matrix.
Omni-face detection for video/image content description
Authors: Gang Wei, Ishwar K. Sethi
Venue: Proceedings of the 2000 ACM workshops on Multimedia (2000)

An omni-face detection scheme for image/video content description is proposed in this paper. It provides the ability to extract high-level features in terms of human activities rather than low-level features like color, texture and shape. The system relies on an omni-face detection system capable of locating human faces over a broad range of views in color images or videos with complex scenes. It uses the presence of skin-tone pixels coupled with shape, edge pattern and face-specific features to locate faces. The main distinguishing contribution of this work is being able to detect faces irrespective of their poses, including frontal-view and side-view, whereas contemporary systems deal with frontal-view faces only. The other novel aspects of the work lie in its iterative candidate filtering to segment objects from extraneous region, the use of Hausdorff distance-based normalized similarity measure to identify side-view facial profiles, and the exploration of hidden Markov model (HMM) to verify the presence of a side-view face. Image and video can be assigned with semantic descriptors based on human face information for later indexing and retrieval.
Smooth connection of trimmed NURBS surfaces
Authors: Pifu Zhang, Fuhua Cheng
Venue: Proceedings of the sixth ACM symposium on Solid modeling and applications (2001)

An automatic smooth surface connection method that has the capability of tension control is presented. Given two trimmed NURBS surfaces, the new method constructs a smooth connection surface to connect the trimming regions of the trimmed surfaces at the trimming curves. The connection satisfies the pseudo-G1 or pseudo-C1 smoothness requirement, a condition not as strong as G1 or C1, but smooth enough for most industrial applications. The construction process consists of four major steps: connection curves construction and alignment, initial blends construction, setting up continuity constraints, and internal and external boundary smoothing. The advantages of the new method include: (1) providing the users with more flexibility in adjusting the shape of the connection surface, (2) the representation of the connection surface is compatible with most of the current data-exchange standards, (3) including the classical blending as a special case but with more flexibility on the setting of the rail curves, and (4) smoother shape of the resulting connection surface through an energy optimization process. Test cases that cover important applications are included.
Experiments with distance learning in software engineering graduate courses
Authors: Michele Jacobsen, Rob Kremer, Mildred L. G. Shaw
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (2000)

This article reports on our experience to date with these two distance graduate courses in software engineering. We experimented with several technological tools to facilitate computer mediated communication: WebCT, electronic mail, a list server, and NetMeeting. We briefly discuss the methods used to evaluate the distance learning environments experienced by the graduate students, and make recommendations for future research and educational practice in distance learning environments.
Electro-Thermal Simulation with the SISSI Package
Authors: V. Székely, A. Páhi, A. Poppe, M. Rencz
Venue: Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (1999)

In this paper a brief overview of the electro-thermal simulation based on the method of simultaneous iteration is given, through the example of the SISSI (Simulator for Integrated Structures by Simultaneous Iteration) package. The modular approach used for the layout-based electro-thermal netlist generation is described. This approach allows an easy implementation of package model libraries. The capabilities of SISSI are introduced by simulation examples where in most cases the results are compared to measurement results.
Soft updates: a solution to the metadata update problem in file systems
Authors: Gregory R. Ganger, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Craig A. N. Soules, Yale N. Patt
Venue: ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS) (2000)

Metadata updates, such as file creation and block allocation, have consistently been identified as a source of performance, integrity, security, and availability problems for file systems. Soft updates is an implementation technique for low-cost sequencing of fine-grained updates to write-back cache blocks. Using soft updates to track and enforce metadata update dependencies, a file system can safely use delayed writes for almost all file operations. This article describes soft updates, their incorporation into the 4.4BSD fast file system, and the resulting effects on the sytem. We show that a disk-based file system using soft updates achieves memory-based file system performance while providing stronger integrity and security guarantees than most disk-based file systems. For workloads that frequently perform updates on metadata (such as creating and deleting files), this improves performance by more than a factor of two and up to a factor of 20 when compared to the conventional synchronous write approach and by 4-19% when compared to an aggressive write-ahead logging approach. In addition, soft updates can improve file system availablity by relegating crash-recovery assistance (e.g., the fsck utility) to an optional and background role, reducing file system recovery time to less than one second.
The impact of office automation on the organization: some implications for research and practice
Authors: Margrethe H. Olson, Henry C. Lucas,  Jr.
Venue: Communications of the ACM (1982)

Computer technology has recently been applied to the automation of office tasks and procedures. Much of the technology is aimed not at improving the efficiency of current office procedures, but at altering the nature of office work altogether. The development of automated office systems raises a number of issues for the organization. How will this technology be received by organization members? How will it affect the definition of traditional office work? What will be its impact on individuals, work groups, and the structure of the organization? This paper presents a descriptive model and propositions concerning the potential impacts of office automation on the organization and it stresses the need, when implementing automated office systems, to take a broad perspective of their potential positive and negative effects on the organization. The need for further research examining the potential effects of office automation is emphasized.
Exploiting Omissive Faults in Synchronous Approximate Agreement
Authors: M. H. Azadmanesh, R. M. Kieckhafer
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (2000)

In a fault-tolerant distributed system, it is often necessary for nonfaulty processes to agree on the value of a shared data item. The criterion of Approximate Agreement does not require processes to achieve exact agreement on a value; rather, they need only agree to within a predefined numerical tolerance. Approximate Agreement can be achieved through convergent voting algorithms. Previous research has studied convergent voting algorithms under mixed-mode or hybrid fault models, such as the Thambidurai and Park Hybrid fault model, comprised of three fault modes: asymmetric, symmetric, and benign. This paper makes three major contributions to the state of the art in fault-tolerant convergent voting. 1) We partition both the asymmetric and symmetric fault modes into disjoint omissive and transmissive submodes. The resulting five-mode hybrid fault model is a superset of previous hybrid fault models. 2) We present a new family of voting algorithms, called Omission Mean Subsequence Reduced (OMSR), which implicitly recognize and exploit omissive behavior in malicious faults while still maintaining full Byzantine fault tolerance. 3) We show that OMSR voting algorithms are more fault-tolerant than previous voting algorithms if any of the currently active faults is omissive.
Multidimensional divide-and-conquer
Authors: Jon Louis Bentley
Venue: Communications of the ACM (1980)

Most results in the field of algorithm design are single algorithms that solve single problems. In this paper we discuss multidimensional divide-and-conquer, an algorithmic paradigm that can be instantiated in many different ways to yield a number of algorithms and data structures for multidimensional problems. We use this paradigm to give best-known solutions to such problems as the ECDF, maxima, range searching, closest pair, and all nearest neighbor problems. The contributions of the paper are on two levels. On the first level are the particular algorithms and data structures given by applying the paradigm. On the second level is the more novel contribution of this paper: a detailed study of an algorithmic paradigm that is specific enough to be described precisely yet general enough to solve a wide variety of problems.
Approximation algorithms for data placement in arbitrary networks
Authors: Ivan D. Baev, Rajmohan Rajaraman
Venue: Proceedings of the twelfth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms (2001)

We study approximation algorithms for placing replicated data in arbitrary networks. Consider a network of nodes with individual storage capacities and a metric communication cost function, in which each node periodically issues a request for an object drawn from a collection of uniform-length objects. We consider the problem of placing copies of the objects among the nodes such that the average access cost is minimized. Our main result is a polynomial-time constant-factor approximation algorithm for this placement problem. Our algorithm is based on a careful rounding of a linear programming relaxation of the problem. We also show that the data placement problem is MAXSNP-hard. We extend our approximation result to a generalization of the data placement problem that models additional costs such as the cost of realizing the placement. We also show that when object lengths are non-uniform, a constant-factor approximation is achievable if the capacity at each node in the approximate solution is allowed to exceed that in the optimal solution by the length of the largest object.
Area/delay estimation for digital signal processor cores
Authors: Yuichiro Miyaoka, Yoshiharu Kataoka, Nozomu Togawa, Massao Yanagisawa, Tatsuo Ohtsuki
Venue: Proceedings of the 2001 Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (2001)

Hardware/software partitioning is one of the key processes in a hardware/software cosynthesis system for digital signal processor cores. In hardware/software partitioning, area and delay estimation of a processor core plays an important role since the hardware/software partitioning process must determine which part of a processor core should be realized by hardware units and which part should be realized by a sequence of instructions based on execution time of an input application program and area of a synthesized processor core. This paper proposes area and delay estimation equations for digital signal processor cores. For area estimation, we show that total area for a processor core can be derived from the sum of area for a processor kernel and area for additional hardware units. Area for processor kernel can be mainly obtained by minimum area for processor kernel and overheads for adding hardware units and registers. Area for a hardware unit can be mainly obtained by its type and operation bit width. For delay estimation, we show that critical path delay for a processor core can be derived from the delay of a hardware unit which is on the critical path in the processor core. Experimental results demonstrate that errors of area estimation are less than 2% and errors of delay estimation are less than 2ns when comparing estimated area and delay with logic-synthesized area and delay.
On XML integrity constraints in the presence of DTDs
Authors: Wenfei Fan, Leonid Libkin
Venue: Proceedings of the twentieth ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART symposium on Principles of database systems (2001)

The paper investigates XML document specifications with DTDs and integrity constraints, such as keys and foreign keys. We study the consistency problem of checking whether a given specification is meaningful: that is, whether there exists an XML document that both conforms to the DTD and satisfies the constraints. We show that DTDs interact with constraints in a highly intricate way and as a result, the consistency problem in general is undecidable. When it comes to unary keys and foreign keys, the consistency problem is shown to be NP-complete. This is done by coding DTDs and integrity constraints with linear constraints on the integers. We consider the variations of the problem (by both restricting and enlarging the class of constraints), and identify a number of tractable cases, as well as a number of additional NP-complete ones. By incorporating negations of constraints, we establish complexity bounds on the implication problem, which is shown to be coNP-complete for unary keys and foreign keys.
On the Use of Fully Specified Initial States for Testing of Synchronous Sequential Circuits
Authors: Irith Pomeranz, Sudhakar M. Reddy
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (2000)

Full scan design renders every combinationally irredundant fault in a synchronous sequential circuit testable. In this paper, we derive a similar result applicable to design-for-testability techniques that only control the initial state of the circuit in order to improve its testability. Examples of such techniques are parallel load, reset, and scan when it is used only to set the state of the circuit. We show that if the initial state can be set arbitrarily, a test sequence can be generated for every irredundant fault, i.e., for every fault that is not sequentially or combinationally redundant. Thus, the ability to control the state of the circuit is sufficient for detecting every irredundant fault and observability of the circuit state is not necessary for this purpose. When considering scan, this result implies that scan-out can be used to control the test length and test generation time, but it is not necessary for detecting irredundant faults. We also show that, of all the states of the circuit, it is sufficient to consider as possible initial states (or controllable states) only the states extracted from a complete combinational test set. We demonstrate the use of these observations by presenting experimental results of two applications. In the first application, initial states are selected out of a combinational test set to facilitate deterministic test generation for irredundant faults. In the second application, the ability to set the initial state is used to increase the effectiveness of built-in self-test.
V${\cal V}$-NET: A Versatile Network Architecture for Flexible Delay Guarantees in Real-Time Networks
Authors: Brian Field, Taieb F. Znati
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (2000)

This paper proposes a Versatile Network Architecture (${\cal V}$-net) to support flexible delay guarantees for applications in real-time networks. Applications communicate over the ${\cal V}$-net by using end-to-end network connections which support real-time and reliability characteristics tailored to meet the application's specified requirements. ${\cal V}$-net differs from other proposed architectures in that, in addition to addressing the issue of quality of service (QoS) feasibility for a wide spectrum of real-time applications, it also provides a mechanism to determine a network state dependent range of feasible delay values at each switching node along the routing path. These delay ranges can be used to assign per-node delays that reflect the resource availability of the node, thereby reducing the likelihood of bottlenecks along the routing path. The ${\cal V}$-net delay guarantees are provided for a variety of packet scheduling algorithms and traffic policing mechanisms. This flexibility is an important design consideration as a real-time network architecture must accommodate existing and future multimedia applications, with hard-, soft-, and non-real-time traffic. The performance evaluation results demonstrate the efficiency of this scheme in handling different traffic scenarios and QoS requirements. We have shown that it is possible, and indeed efficient, to determine an upper-bound on the delay of real-time traffic, when using our per-node delay assignment policies.
An auction-based method for decentralized train scheduling
Authors: David C. Parkes, Lyle H. Ungar
Venue: Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Autonomous agents (2001)

We present a computational study of an auction-based method for decentralized train scheduling. The method is well suited to the natural information and control structure of mod- ern railroads. We assume separate network territories, with an autonomous dispatch agent responsible for the ow of trains over each territory. Each train is represented by a self-interested agent that bids for the right to travel across the network from its source to destination, submitting bids to multiple dispatch agents along its route as necessary. The bidding language allows trains to bid for the right to enter and exit territories at particular times, and also to represent indifference over a range of times. Computational results on a simple network with straight-forward best-response bid- ding strategies demonstrate that the auction computes near- optimal system-wide schedules. In addition, the method appears to have useful scaling properties, both with the number of trains and with the number of dispatchers, and generates less extremal solutions than those obtained using traditional centralized optimization techniques.
An interactive display for approximation by linear programming
Authors: P. Lafata, J. B. Rosen
Venue: Communications of the ACM (1970)

An interactive program with a graphical display has been developed for the approximation of data by means of a linear combination of functions (including splines) selected by the user. The coffiecients of the approximation are determined by linear programming so as to minimize the error in either the L1 or L&infin; norm. Auxiliary conditions such as monotonicity or convexity of the approximation can also be imposed. This interactive system is described and several examples of its use are given.