ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Design for an Extensible Croquet-Based Framework to Deliver a Persistent, Unified, Massively Multi-User, and Self-Organizing Virtual Environment
Authors: Mark P. McCahill, Julian Lombardi
Venue: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating through Computing (2004)

We describe a design for a collaborative VirtualLearning Environment (VLE) to support massivelymulti-user and multi-institutional learningcommunities. This architecture extends Croquet toencompass a tier of distributed cache servers thatallow intelligent caching and pre-fetching of objects,scene definitions, and textures. The design alsoprovides for Interactivity servers tied to specificregions in the VLE. Interactivity servers providepersistence for neighborhoods, coordinatemodification and transient phenomena for locales inthe virtual space, and ensure trust relations bymanaging user identification, authentication, andauthorization via integration with existing institutionalauthentication infrastructure. This system supportsreal-time interactions that promote a self-organizing,interdisciplinary knowledge sharing system within ascalable VLE in a manner that ensures accountabilityand trust relations.
Contour integration and segmentation with self-organized lateral connections
Authors: Yoonsuck Choe, Risto Miikkulainen
Venue: Biological Cybernetics (2004)

Contour integration in low-level vision is believed to occur based on lateral interaction between neurons with similar orientation tuning. How such interactions could arise in the brain has been an open question. Our model suggests that the interactions can be learned through input-driven self-organization, i.e., through the same mechanism that underlies many other developmental and functional phenomena in the visual cortex. The model also shows how synchronized firing mediated by these lateral connections can represent the percept of a contour, resulting in performance similar to that of human contour integration. The model further demonstrates that contour integration performance can differ in different parts of the visual field, depending on what kinds of input distributions they receive during development. The model thus grounds an important perceptual phenomenon onto detailed neural mechanisms so that various structural and functional properties can be measured and predictions can be made to guide future experiments.
The conceptualization and empirical validation of web site user satisfaction
Authors: Steve Muylle, Rudy Moenaert, Marc Despontin
Venue: Information and Management (2004)

This article addresses the concern for effective web site design by means of the conceptualization and empirical validation of a web site user satisfaction construct. Based on IS success theory, hypermedia design theory, a qualitative exploratory pilot study, and a quantitative online critical incident technique, we introduce and define the construct of web site user satisfaction, explore its dimensionality, provide empirical validation of the construct and its underlying dimensionality, develop a standardized instrument with desirable psychometric properties for measuring WUS, and explore the measure's theoretical and practical application.
Embedded Computation of Maximum-Likelihood Phylogeny Inference Using Platform FPGA
Authors: Terrence S. T. Mak, K. P. Lam
Venue: Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE Computational Systems Bioinformatics Conference (2004)

Our previous work to accelerate phylogeny inference using HW/SW(Hardware/Software) co-design has recently been extended to a more powerful embedded computing platform. In this platform, a microprocessor is immersed into field programmable gate array (FPGA) fabric for realizing an effective environment for HW/SW co-design implementation. Significant improvements in data transmission between hardware and software and higher clock frequency of FPGA have been realized when compared to the JBits interface in the previous design. In addition, the embedded platform provides a greater flexibility in partitioning hardware and software tasks. These new features lead to much faster computation speed for phylogeny inference. In this paper, the architecture for HW/SW co-design in the embedded platform is presented. The FPGA logic design for the tree likelihood evaluation has also been improved to tackle problem of larger scale by adopting the idea of partial likelihood.
Recommended: a Minimum Standard Software Toolset
Authors: Robert L. Glass
Venue: ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (1982)

Tools and toolsets for the software builder are receiving increased attention. Research into new-concept tools is progressing. However, the use of tools in the software workplace is not. This paper asserts that what is needed is a Minimum Standard Software Toolset which is available to all professional programmers in all workplaces. The functional content of such a toolset is proposed, based heavily on the work of the U.S. Department of Defense in its Ada Programming Support Environment.
A Bigot by Any Other Name...
Authors: Josh Coates
Venue: Queue (2004)

I've been responsible for hiring many software engineers. I tend to ask lots of elaborate technical questions so I can really get to know how the candidate thinks and works with me while solving hard problems. QA (quality assurance) engineers will appreciate this one (it's a "negative test" for intellectual honesty): "Explain the relative strengths and weaknesses of FreeBSD, Windows NT, Solaris, and Linux."
On the 45-th Smarandache's problem
Authors: Gao Jing, Liu Huaning
Venue: Smarandache Notions Journal (2004)

For any positive integer n, let k(n) be the smallest integer such that nk(n) is a factorial number. In this paper, we study the hybrid mean value of k(n) and the Mangoldt function, and give a sharp asymptotic formula.
Use of annotated schemes for developing prototype programs
Authors: J. Ramanathan, C. J. Shubra
Venue: Proceedings of the workshop on Rapid prototyping (1982)

Reusable components or patterns of programming are used here as a means of generating prototypes. The challenge in identifying existing patterns was in striking a balance between a few patterns that are too flexible to really save programmer effort, and numerous patterns that are too narrowly applicable. A further challenge was to find a way of tuning a pattern to reflect the details of a specific application.A <u>pattern</u> is defined to have a) an I/O specification, b) control structure, c) and a generic problem/solution description. The domain dependent generic problem/solution description serves to communicate general semantic information to the prototype developer familiar with the domain. The patterns presented here were culled from case studies involving over 200 programs in the file processing domain. These patterns have been demonstrated to be useful.
Approximating Bounded, Non-Orientable Surfaces from Points
Venue: Proceedings of the Shape Modeling International 2004 (2004)

We present an approach to surface approximation frompoints that allows reconstructing surfaces with boundaries,including globally non-orientable surfaces. The surface isdefined implicitly using directions of weighted co-variancesand weighted averages of the points. Specifically, a pointbelongs to the surface, if its direction to the weighted averagehas no component into the direction of smallest covariance.For bounded surfaces, we require in addition thatany point on the surface is close to the weighted average ofthe input points. We compare this definition to alternativesand discuss the details and parameter choices. Points onthe surface can be determined by intersection computations.We show that the computation is local and, therefore, noglobally consistent orientation of normals is needed. Continuityof the surfaces is not affected by the particular choiceof local orientation. We demonstrate our approach by renderingseveral bounded (and non-orientable) surfaces usingray casting.
Automated Generation of Resource Configurations through Policies
Venue: Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Workshop on Policies for Distributed Systems and Networks (2004)

Resource Management systems have been attemptingto undertake automated configuration management.Automated configuration management involvesconsidering user requirements, operator constraints andtechnical constraints of the system to create a suitableconfiguration, and to create a workflow to deploy it. Inthis article we propose a policy-based model that wehave used for automating these configurationmanagement aspects.
Relaxed currency and consistency: how to say "good enough" in SQL
Authors: Hongfei Guo, Per-Åke Larson, Raghu Ramakrishnan, Jonathan Goldstein
Venue: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (2004)

Despite the widespread and growing use of asynchronous copies to improve scalability, performance and availability, this practice still lacks a firm semantic foundation. Applications are written with some understanding of which queries can use data that is not entirely current and which copies are "good enough"; however, there are neither explicit requirements nor guarantees. We propose to make this knowledge available to the DBMS through explicit currency and consistency (C&C) constraints in queries and develop techniques so the DBMS can guarantee that the constraints are satisfied. In this paper we describe our model for expressing C&C constraints, define their semantics, and propose SQL syntax. We explain how C&C constraints are enforced in MTCache, our prototype mid-tier database cache, including how constraints and replica update policies are elegantly integrated into the cost-based query optimizer. Consistency constraints are enforced at compile time while currency constraints are enforced at run time by dynamic plans that check the currency of each local replica before use and select sub-plans accordingly. This approach makes optimal use of the cache DBMS while at the same time guaranteeing that applications always get data that is "good enough" for their purpose.
Replication for Web-Based Collaboration
Authors: Jordi Bataller, Hendrik Decker, Luis Irun, Francesc Munoz
Venue: Proceedings of the Database and Expert Systems Applications, 15th International Workshop (2004)

We suggest to increase the dependability of web-based collaboration systems by the distributed replication of underlying data. We describe the architecture of the middle-ware package DIRECS. It supports the consistency of replicated data and thereby increases responsiveness, availability and failure resilience of collaborative systems.
Enhancing the AvrX Kernel with Efficient Secure Communication Using Software Thread Integration
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (2004)

This paper presents methods to add efficient cryptographicsupport to low-performance embedded processorswith embedded networks (e.g. sensor networks). Softwarethread integration (STI) is used to create efficient threadswhich can perform cryptographic operations during time-slice(TDMA) communication, eliminating most context-switchingoverhead. The AvrX kernel is enhanced to automaticallyselect the most efficient threads based upon availablework, saving processor cycles and power.The results show that an STI-based implementation enablescommunication at higher rates while also performingmore cryptographic work compared with traditional ISR(interrupt service routine) or busy-wait schemes. Significantperformance improvements are found for both the RC4 andRC5 ciphers. First, STI enables cryptographic processing tooccur during communication at a bit rate of f{cpu}/8, whichis not possible with an ISR approach. Second, cryptographicthroughput at lower communication rates increases by up to200% for both RC4 and RC5.
SOI Transistor Model for Fast Transient Simulation
Authors: D. Nadezhin, S. Gavrilov, A. Glebov, Y. Egorov, V. Zolotov, D. Blaauw, R. Panda, M. Becer, A. Ardelea, A. Patel
Venue: Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE/ACM international conference on Computer-aided design (2003)

Progress in semiconductor process technology has made SOItransistors one of the most promising candidates for high performanceand low power designs. With smaller diffusion capacitances,SOI transistors switch significantly faster than theirtraditional bulk MOS counterparts and consume less power perswitching. However, design and simulation of SOI MOS circuits ismore challenging due to more complex behavior of an SOI transistorinvolving floating body effects, delay dependence on history oftransistor switching, bipolar effect and others. This paper isdevoted to developing a fast table model of SOI transistors, suitablefor use in fast transistor level simulators. We propose usingbody charge instead of body potential as an independent variableof the model to improve convergence of circuit simulation integrationalgorithm. SOI transistor has one additional terminal comparedwith the bulk MOSFET and hence requires larger tables tomodel. We propose a novel transformation to reduce number oftable dimensions and as a result to make the size of the tables reasonable.The paper also presents efficient implementation of ourSOI transistor table model using piece-wise polynomial approximation,nonuniform grid discretization, and splitting the transistormodel into the model of its equilibrium and non equilibrium states.The effectiveness of the proposed model is demonstrated byemploying it in a fast transistor level simulator to simulate highperformance industrial SOI microprocessor circuits.
Master-slave hand system of different structures, grasp recognition by neural network and grasp mapping
Authors: Tytus Wojtara, Kenzo Nonami, Hui Shao, Ryohei Yuasa, Shingo Amano, Yasukazu Nobumoto
Venue: Robotica (2004)

This article is proposing a grasp recognition and grasp mapping method for a land mine clearance master-slave system. The system consists of a data glove and a powerful hydraulic hand. Because of the different structure of the master and slave hand a mapping from master grasp to slave grasp has to be implemented. The paper presents a grasp recognition method by Neural Network (NN) and a mapping method. The introduced mapping method allows the operator more intuitive grasping.
How to route and tax selfish unsplittable traffic
Authors: Vincenzo Auletta, Roberto De Prisco, Paolo Penna, Pino Persiano
Venue: Proceedings of the sixteenth annual ACM symposium on Parallelism in algorithms and architectures (2004)

We study the problem of assigning unsplittable traffic to a set of m links so to minimize the maximum link congestion (i.e., the makespan). We consider the case of selfish agents owning pieces of the traffic. In particular, we introduce a variant of the model by Koutsopias and Papadimitriou [1999] in which owners of the traffic cannot directly choose which link to use; instead, the assignment is performed by a scheduler. The agents can manipulate the scheduler by reporting falseinformation regarding the size of each piece of unsplittable traffic.We provide upper and ower bounds on the approximation achievable by mechanisms that induce a Nash equilibrium when all agents report their true values.For the case of each agent owning one job, our positive results for m identical links show the effectiveness of introducing such a scheduler since, in this case, (1+ε)-approximate solutions are guaranteed in polynomial time. In contrast, the result by Koutsopias and Papadimitriou [1999] shows that, without payments and allowing selfish routing, Nash equilibria yield (in the worst case) Ω(log m over log log m)-approximate solutions, even for unitary weighted traffic. When links have different speeds we prove lower and upper bounds on the approximation achievable by a mechanism inducing a Nash equilibrium.Similar approximability results for identical machines have been achieved by Feldman et al. [2003]. However these results do not hold in our setting because their model assumes that the algorithm is provided with the correct traffic weights. For the case of agents owning more than one job, we give mechanisms that achieve constant approximation and prove lower bounds on the approximation ratio that can be achieved by a mechanism.
Architectural Views through Collapsing Strategies
Venue: Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Workshop on Program Comprehension (2004)

Architectural views help to better understand and analyzesoftware from particular stakeholder perspectives. Viewsare abstractions that are generated in an architecturereconstruction effort with collapsing strategies. Collapsingis the mechanism to aggregate detailed source informationinto architectural elements that constitute the architecturalviews. The elements are presented in a particular viewtypeand style. Traditional software architecture reconstructiontools assume that source elements are collapsed into mostlyone container. However, the Satellite Tracking System casestudy, outlined in this paper, required the introduction ofmulti-collapses. Multi-collapses allow the aggregation ofone element into multiple containers. Multi-collapses areeither the result of applying incorrect collapsing strategiesor an excellent starting point for software analysis to gainbetter understanding of existing software. We describeimplementation and visualization aspects of multi-collapseswithin an architecture reconstruction environment.
High-Field 4.23 Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Initial Experience in Turbo-Inversion Recovery Imaging and fMRI Physics
Authors: Rakesh Sharma
Venue: Proceedings of the 17th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (2004)

High-field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) offers functional, biochemical and physiological information. High field is advantageous for both fMRI signal generated from deoxyhemoglobin and blood oxygen, and intracellular sodium by inversion recovery MRI imaging. High field MRI was used to image human and primates for sodium MRI imaging.
Cuckoo hashing
Authors: Rasmus Pagh, Flemming Friche Rodler
Venue: Journal of Algorithms (2004)

We present a simple dictionary with worst case constant lookup time, equaling the theoretical performance of the classic dynamic perfect hashing scheme of Dietzfelbinger et al. [SIAM J. Comput. 23 (4) (1994) 738-761]. The space usage is similar to that of binary search trees. Besides being conceptually much simpler than previous dynamic dictionaries with worst case constant lookup time, our data structure is interesting in that it does not use perfect hashing, but rather a variant of open addressing where keys can be moved back in their probe sequences. An implementation inspired by our algorithm, but using weaker hash functions, is found to be quite practical. It is competitive with the best known dictionaries having an average case (but no nontrivial worst case) guarantee on lookup time.
Joining interval data in relational databases
Authors: Jost Enderle, Matthias Hampel, Thomas Seidl
Venue: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (2004)

The increasing use of temporal and spatial data in present-day relational systems necessitates an efficient support of joins on interval-valued attributes. Standard join algorithms do not support those data types adequately, whereas special approaches for interval joins usually require an augmentation of the internal access methods which is not supported by existing relational systems. To overcome these problems we introduce new join algorithms for interval data. Based on the Relational Interval Tree, these algorithms can easily be implemented on top of any relational database system while providing excellent performance on joining intervals. As experimental results on an Oracle9i server show, the new techniques outperform existing relational methods for joining intervals significantly.
Aspects of adaptive reconfiguration in a scalable intrusion tolerant system
Authors: Stephanie Bryant, Feiyi Wang
Venue: Complexity (2003)

SITAR architecture integrates basic fault tolerant concepts along with adaptive reconfiguration in a security setting. It enables commercial-off-the-shelf servers to continue operating despite intrusion or partial compromise. The adaptive reconfiguration dynamically changes the system configuration in response to environment threats to maintain service availability. The discussion covers important aspects of SITAR's adaptive reconfiguration mechanism, including its central algorithm, and mitigation of the oscillation problem. The mechanism uses a feedback loop model and techniques of mutual exclusion, steady state monitoring, and system observation to implement cooperative control. The adaptive mechanism is implemented and demonstrated as part of the SITAR prototype system.
Frequent Pattern Mining on Message Passing Multiprocessor Systems
Authors: Asif Javed, Ashfaq Khokhar
Venue: Distributed and Parallel Databases (2004)

Extraction of frequent patterns in transaction-oriented database is crucial to several data mining tasks such as association rule generation, time series analysis, classification, etc. Most of these mining tasks require multiple passes over the database and if the database size is large, which is usually the case, scalable high performance solutions involving multiple processors are required. This paper presents an efficient scalable parallel algorithm for mining frequent patterns on parallel shared nothing platforms. The proposed algorithm is based on one of the best known sequential techniques referred to as Frequent Pattern (FP) Growth algorithm. Unlike most of the earlier parallel approaches based on different variants of the Apriori Algorithm, the algorithm presented in this paper does not explicitly result in having entire counting data structure duplicated on each processor. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm introduces minimum communication (and hence synchronization) overheads by efficiently partitioning the list of frequent elements list over processors. The experimental results show scalable performance over different machine and problem sizes. The comparison of implementation results with existing parallel approaches show significant gains in the speedup. On an 8-processor machine, we report an average speedup of 6 for different problem sizes.
Surface Models of Tube Trees
Authors: Petr Felkel, Rainer Wegenkittl, Katja Buhler
Venue: Proceedings of the Computer Graphics International (2004)

This paper describes a new method for generating surfacesof branching tubular structures with given centerlinesand radii. As the centerlines are not straight lines,the cross-sections are not parallel and well-known algorithmsfor surface tiling from parallel cross-sections cannotbe used. Non-parallel cross-sections can be tiled by meansof the maximal-disc interpolation method; special methodsfor branching-structures modeling by means of convolutionsurfaces produce excellent results, but these methodsare more complex than our approach. The proposedmethod tiles non-parallel circular cross-sections and constructsa topologically-correct surface mesh. The method isnot artifact-free, but it is fast and simple. The surface meshserves as a data representation of a vessel tree suitable forreal-time Virtual Reality operation planning and operationsupport within a medical application. Proposed method extractsa "classical" polygonal representation, which can beused in common surface-oriented graphic accelerators.
Decomposition of differential polynomials with constant coefficients
Authors: Xiao-Shan Gao, Mingbo Zhang
Venue: Proceedings of the 2004 international symposium on Symbolic and algebraic computation (2004)

In this paper, we present an algorithm to decompose differential polynomials in one variable and with rational number as coefficients. Besides arithmetic operations, the algorithm needs only factorization of multi-variable polynomials and solution of linear equation systems. Experimental results show that our method is quite efficient.