ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Those 1-credit special project courses: motivating your best freshmen
Authors: R. E. Montgomery, L. A. Nottingham
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference on 1995. Proceedings., 1995 vol 1. - Volume 01 (1995)

Every school has them, in some form or another. The variable-title, variable-credit course is ubiquitous; but, what do we use them for? Often they become a vehicle for teaching material not yet having a permanent course number. In some cases, professors use them for obtaining inexpensive low-level help for their research, thus providing an undergraduate research opportunity. They are sometimes used to provide a student with an opportunity To overcome a lack of preparation in some area vital to his/her area of study. At Purdue University, the Freshman Engineering Honors Program uses ENGR 195 as a motivational tool. When time and current interests permit the Honors Director offers students the opportunity to participate in special projects that offer experience outside the range of regular coursework available to the student. These projects often enhance the students' resumes as well. During the spring semester of 1994-95, eight students undertook a software design and development project based on an assignment from the Honors Computer Programming class they took the prior semester. These students operated as a software development team, with two groups of four students each taking on a different part of the project. They were supervised by a senior computer engineering student and the Honors Program Director. The project was development of basketball statistics software, and the students were enthused from the start. They were especially excited that they were to complete the development of the software to the point that it could be made available for distribution as a shareware or freeware product, including user manuals and program documentation. The development platform was a realistic (for this problem) 486-based notebook computer. What is needed to provide this type of experience to more students? First, there must exist a problem to be solved, preferably of interest to several students. Second, the means to solve the problem, in terms of hardware, software, and sufficient expertise to begin solving it must be near at hand. Third, there must be an audience, that is, a group of students from which to draw those looking for an additional challenge. Finally, there must be an interested faculty member to serve the students as teacher/mentor in doing the project. Motivation is virtually assured.
Scheduling and Data Redistribution Strategies on Star Platforms
Authors: Loris Marchal, Veronika Rehn, Yves Robert, Frederic Vivien
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-Based Processing (2007)

In this work we are interested in the problem of scheduling and redistributing data on master-slave platforms. We consider the case were the workers possess initial loads, some of which having to be redistributed in order to balance their completion times. We assume that the data consists of independent and identical tasks. As the general case is NP-complete in the strong sense, we propose three heuristics. Simulations consolidate the theoretical results.
A comparison of FFS disk allocation policies
Authors: Keith A. Smith, Margo Seltzer
Venue: Proceedings of the 1996 annual conference on USENIX Annual Technical Conference (1996)

The 4.4BSD file system includes a new algorithm for allocating disk blocks to files. The goal of this algorithm is to improve file clustering, increasing the amount of sequential I/O when reading or writing files, thereby improving file system performance. In this paper we study the effectiveness of this algorithm at reducing file system fragmentation. We have created a program that artificially ages a file system by replaying a workload similar to that experienced by a real file system. We used this program to evaluate the effectiveness of the new disk allocation algorithm by replaying ten months of activity on two file systems that differed only in the disk allocation algorithms that they used. At the end of the ten month simulation, the file system using the new allocation algorithm had approximately half the fragmentation of a similarly aged file system that used the traditional disk allocation algorithm. Measuring the performance difference between the two file systems by reading and writing the same set of files on the two systems showed that this decrease in fragmentation improved file write throughput by 20% and read throughput by 32%. In certain test cases, the new allocation algorithm provided a performance improvement of greater than 50%.
Simse: a software engineering simulation environment for software process education
Authors: Andre Van Hoek
Venue:  (2006)

The typical software engineering education lacks a practical treatment of the processes of software engineering---students are presented with relevant process theory in lectures, but have only limited opportunity to put these concepts into practice in an associated class project. Simulation is a powerful educational tool that is commonly used to teach processes that are infeasible to practice in the real world. The work described in this dissertation is based on the hypothesis that simulation can bring to software engineering education the same kinds of benefits that it has brought to other domains. In particular, we believe that software process education can be improved by allowing students to practice, through a simulator, the activity of managing different kinds of quasi-realistic software engineering processes. To investigate this hypothesis, we used a three-part approach: (1) design and build SimSE, a graphical, interactive, educational, customizable, game-based simulation environment for software processes, (2) develop a set of simulation models to be used in seeding the environment, (3) evaluate the usage of the environment, both in actual software engineering courses, and in a series of formal, out-of-class experiments to gain an understanding of its various educational aspects. Some of the educational aspects explored in these experiments included how SimSE compares to traditional teaching techniques, and which learning theories are employed by students who play SimSE. Our evaluations strongly suggest that SimSE is a useful and educationally effective approach to teaching software process concepts. Students who play SimSE tend to learn the intended concepts, and find it a relatively enjoyable experience. These statements apply to students of different genders, academic performance levels, and industrial experience backgrounds. However, in order for SimSE to be used in the most effective way possible, our experience has demonstrated that it is crucial that it be used complementary to other educational techniques and accompanied by an adequate amount of direction and guidance given to the student. Our evaluations also suggested a number of promising directions for future research that can potentially increase the effectiveness of SimSE and be applied to educational simulation environments in general.
Quasi-static antenna array processing for rapidly time-varying channels
Authors: T. A. Thomas
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2001. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 05 (2001)

This paper explores the use of quasi-static frequency-domain antenna combining weights for multi-user (e.g., SDMA) or multi-stream (e.g., MIMO) communication systems operating in rapidly time-varying frequency-selective channels. By implementing combining weights that are constant across a time slot but are updated from slot-to-slot (i.e., "quasi-static"), great computational complexity savings can be realized compared to calculating new weights at each data block within a time slot. The quasi-static weights are computed by first modeling, the time-varying channel for each user as the superposition of multiple time-invariant channels, called Doppler channels. The weights are then calculated based on all users' Doppler channels. These new weights work by using some of the degrees of freedom of the antenna array to suppress time variations as well as multiple access interference. Despite being fixed across a time slot, these weights can equalize and suppress SDMA interference even when the channel varies significantly over the slot. Simulation results show the effectiveness of these weights for equalization and interference suppression.
Minimising Task Migration and Priority Changes in Mode Transitions
Authors: Paul Emberson, Iain Bate
Venue: Proceedings of the 13th IEEE Real Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (2007)

Handling mode changes is one of the most complex and important problems for real-time systems designers. The challenge is to move a system from running one set of software to another while still achieving the quality of service guarantees necessary. There has been previous work which concentrated on how to perform scheduling and timing analysis of mode changes. However, a common theme of all this research is that if the system's schedule and allocation is chosen to minimise the set of differences between modes then the mode transition problem can be performed more easily and quickly. This paper investigates how this can be achieved.
Deterministic-based performance modeling of a cluster of nodes handling subscriber profile query and update in CDMA mobile switching center: Research Articles
Authors: David C. Ma
Venue: Bell Labs Technical Journal (2007)

This paper presents performance modeling of processor occupancy in a cluster of nodes handling subscriber profile query and update in a code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile switching center (MSC). It also presents a simplified method to determine the profile update ratio that represents the fraction of autonomous registration (AR) and call events requiring subscriber profile updates. Four models are presented. The performance models developed offer a number of advantages, including enabling prediction of the home visitor location register (HVLR) capacity in a deterministic fashion to facilitate subscriber profile management and planning and to provide a simple method to determine the subscriber profile update ratio. The models are simple to use and provide accurate predictions. The models are platform-independent and can be easily applied to other platforms by substituting a new set of costs per message. Performance improvement by update bundling is also demonstrated, and future work on modeling update bundling is presented. &copy; 2007 Alcatel-Lucent.
Speedups in embedded systems with a high-performance coprocessor datapath
Authors: Michalis D. Galanis, Gregory Dimitroulakos, Spyros Tragoudas, Costas E. Goutis
Venue: ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES) (2007)

This article presents the speedups achieved in a generic single-chip microprocessor system by employing a high-performance datapath. The datapath acts as a coprocessor that accelerates computational-intensive kernel sections thereby increasing the overall performance. We have previously introduced the datapath which is composed of Flexible Computational Components (FCCs). These components can realize any two-level template of primitive operations. The automated coprocessor synthesis method from high-level software description and its integration to a design flow for executing applications on the system is presented. For evaluating the effectiveness of our coprocessor approach, analytical study in respect to the type of the custom datapath and to the microprocessor architecture is performed. The overall application speedups of several real-life applications relative to the software execution on the microprocessor are estimated using the design flow. These speedups range from 1.75 to 5.84, with an average value of 3.04, while the overhead in circuit area is small. The design flow achieved the acceleration of the applications near to theoretical speedup bounds. A comparison with another high-performance datapath showed that the proposed coprocessor achieves smaller area-time products by an average of 23&percnt; for the generated datapaths. Additionally, the FCC coprocessor achieves better performance in accelerating kernels relative to software-programmable DSP cores.
Who does not succeed in engineering at the University of Cape Town? What can one tell from the retention rate?
Authors: J. Jawitz
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference,1997. on 27th Annual Conference. Teaching and Learning in an Era of Change. - Volume 01 (1997)

The results of a quantitative investigation into the retention rates of engineering students at the University of Cape Town are presented. The authors show how longitudinal retention studies can be used to monitor the throughput efficiency of university degree programs and to identify groups of students that display poor retention rates over a period of time. Statistical methods are used to identify factors that have a significant effect on retention. The investigation is done in the context of attempts to identify programs that can address the imbalances in the numbers of black engineers as a consequence of their deliberate exclusion under Apartheid. The study focuses on the retention rate of students who registered for their first year between 1988 and 1993. The Academic Support Program for Engineering in Cape Town (ASPECT) was established in 1988 with the aim of increasing the number of black engineering graduates at UCT. Differences in retention rate are explored across factors such as gender, population classification (race), engineering discipline, school-leaving examination and participation in ASPECT. Special attention is paid to the retention rate of African and female engineering students.
Isochords: visualizing structure in music
Authors: Tony Bergstrom, Karrie Karahalios, John C. Hart
Venue: Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2007 (2007)

Isochords is a visualization of music that aids in the classification of musical structure. The Isochords visualization highlights the consonant intervals between notes and common chords in music. It conveys information about interval quality, chord quality, and the chord progression synchronously during playback of digital music. Isochords offers listeners a means to grasp the underlying structure of music that, without extensive training, would otherwise remain unobserved or unnoticed. In this paper we present the theory of the Isochords structure, the visualization, and comments from novice and experienced users.
Approximated Computationally Bounded Simulation Relations for Probabilistic Automata
Authors: Roberto Segala, Andrea Turrini
Venue: Proceedings of the 20th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (2007)

We study simulation relations for Probabilistic Automata that require transitions to be matched up to negligible sets provided that computation lengths are polynomially bounded. These relations are meant to provide rigorous grounds to parts of correctness proofs for cryptographic protocols that are usually carried out by semi-formal arguments. We illustrate our ideas by recasting a correctness proof of Bellare and Rogaway based on the notion of matching conversation.
Some Methods of Problem Solving in Elementary Geometry
Authors: Thomas C. Hales
Venue: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (2007)

Many elementary problems in geometry arise as part of the proof of the Kepler conjecture on sphere packings. In the original proof, most of these problems were solved by hand. This article investigates the methods that were used in the original proof and describes a number of other methods that might be used to automate the proofs of these problems. A companion article presents the collection of elementary problems in geometry for which automated proofs are sought. This article is a contribution to the Flyspeck project, which aims to give a complete formal proof of the Kepler conjecture.
Engineering Trust Management into Software Models
Authors: Mark Reith, Jianwei Niu, William H. Winsborough
Venue: Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops (2007)

Security in software is often considered a nonfunctional requirement because it is often interpreted as an emergent feature of the system. Too often it is introduced as a lastminute requirement over an otherwise completed product rather than properly integrated during the early stages of software design and development. One significant aspect of security involves access control. This paper proposes a multi-layer model detailing the integration of trust management access control with an application's model behavior. Our previous work focused on modeling the dynamic changes of a trust management policy for the purpose of verifying security properties using model checking. We are working toward integrating both the trust management policy and the mechanisms that enforce that policy for the purpose of verifying security properties. We focus on the Rolebased Trust Management (RT) language and suggest concerns specific to it.
NFS and SMB data sharing within a heterogeneous environment: a real world study
Authors: Alan Epps, Glenn Bailey, Douglas Glatz
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Large Installation System Administration of Windows NT - Volume 2 (1999)

A common problem encountered in a heterogeneous computing environment which includes both Unix & PC/Windows hosts is sharing data between the different operating systems. Any approach must take into account the different methods of authenticating users, file permissions, and network protocols. With 2000 PC desktops & 800 Unix users employing a variety of NT & Unix servers, the Unix support group at the Color Printing and Imaging Division (CPID) of Tektronix needed a robust system that was inexpensive, easy to administer, simple and effective to use for both PC and Unix users. Administering separate installations of local NFS clients on the PCs had proven to be problematic, causing us to look at a centralized server-based solution that could provide native PC file sharing via the SMB protocol suite. The potential solutions we looked at were: TotalNet by Syntax (sold by Sun as SunPC), Samba v1.9.18p10, NetServices v.1 & v.2 by Auspex, Network Appliance F230 series servers, and Sun's Sun-Link Server software v1 & v1.1. We compared performance, ease of use by end users, ease of administration, cost, support, training, scalability, and ease of integration into our current environment. As of this writing the conclusion was to use Samba.
Where Analog meets Digital and Beyond
Authors: Ahmad Bahai
Venue: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on VLSI Design held jointly with 6th International Conference: Embedded Systems (2007)

Achieving high performance yet low power requirements of modern electronic systems such as communications and instrumentation demands a careful optimization of process technology, circuit design, and system architecture. Remarkable progress in Sub-micron VLSI technology during last two decades has enabled us to explore innovative analog and digital signal processing techniques which were previously unrealizable.
Java takes flight: time-portable real-time programming with exotasks
Authors: Joshua Auerbach, David F. Bacon, Daniel T. Iercan, Christoph M. Kirsch, V. T. Rajan, Harald Roeck, Rainer Trummer
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (2007)

Existing programming methodologies for real-time systems suffer from a low level of abstraction and non-determinism in both the timing and the functional domains. As a result, real-time systems are difficult to test and must be re-certified every time changes are made to either the software or hardware environment. Exotasks are a novel Java programming construct that achievedeterministic timing, even in the presence of other Java threads, and across changes of hardware and software platform. They are deterministic functional data-flow tasks written in Java, combined with an orthogonal scheduling policy based on the logical execution time (LET) model. We have built a quad-rotor model helicopter, the JAviator, which we use as a testbed for this work. We evaluate our implementation of exotasks in IBM's J9 real-time virtual machine using actual flights of the helicopter. Our experiments show that we are able to maintain deterministic behavior in the face of variations in both software load and hardware platform.
Weakest Preconditions for Applied \pi-Calculus
Authors: Decai Jiao, David Sinclair
Venue: Proceedings of the International Multi-Conference on Computing in the Global Information Technology (2007)

In this paper, we develop a logic for reasoning about applied \pi-calculus processes based on the concept of weakest precondition and Hoare's logic. We propose a set of weakest precondition (wp) rules for applied \pi-calculus and give the soundness proof of these rules. The intention behind this work is to be able to provide a formal basis for analyzing properties of mobile and distributed systems formalized in applied \pi- calculus. Let S be the system formalized in applied \pi-calculus, its functionality is specified as Hoare triple [pre]S[post], where pre and post are precondition and post condition, respectively. By applying wp rules recursively, we can deduce the weakest precondition of system S with respect to post condition post. One possible application of this method is analyzing properties of Web Service compositions or other component-based software composition.
Some properties of ordered eigenvalues of a Wishart matrix: application in detection test and model order selection
Authors: J. Grouffaud
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1996. on Conference Proceedings., 1996 IEEE International Conference - Volume 05 (1996)

High resolution methods for estimation of parameters in signal processing (bearing angles in array processing or frequencies in spectral analysis for example) can suffer from a bad selection of the model order. This paper proposes an algorithm based on the properties of the eigenvalues of the covariance matrix. In the noise only case, this matrix is a Wishart matrix. For white noise the profile of ordered eigenvalues fits an exponential law. The proposed algorithm uses this property and looks for a mismatch between the observed profile and the model in order to detect the presence of a signal. Under estimation may result from the occurrence of small signal eigenvalues. Performances is greatly improved by the use of deflation for recursive detection-estimation test. Results of simulations are provided in order to show the capabilities of the algorithm.
A New Evaluation Approach for Video Processing Algorithms
Authors: A. T. NGHIEM, F. BREMOND, M. THONNAT, R. MA
Venue: Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Motion and Video Computing (2007)

We present a new evaluation methodology to better evaluate video processing performance. Recent evaluation methods [10], [9], [11] depend heavily on the benchmark dataset. The result may be different if we change the testing video sequences. The difference is mainly due to the video sequence content which usually includes many video processing problems (illumination changes, weak contrast etc.) at different difficulty levels. Hence it is difficult to extrapolate the evaluation result on new sequences. In this paper, we propose an evaluation methodology that help to reuse the evaluation result. We try to isolate each video processing problem and define quantitative measures to compute the difficulty level of a video relatively to the given problem. The maximum difficulty level of the videos at which the algorithm is performing good enough is defined as the upper bound of the algorithm capacity for handling the problem. To illustrate this methodology, we present metrics that evaluate the algorithm performance relatively to the problems of handling weakly contrasted objects and shadows.