ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Managing iterative projects more effectively: theories, techniques and heuristics for HCI practitioners
Authors: John Long, Steve Cummaford
Venue: Proceedings of the 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference on HCI 2008: People and Computers XXI: HCI...but not as we know it - Volume 2 (2007)

Most HCI specialists are involved, in one way or another, with iterative project management (IPM), as opposed to HCI, on a day-to-day basis. However, few specialists have any systematic training or exposure to IPM. Further, market pressures highlight the importance of HCI iterative and adaptive planning and development to meet changing conditions, associated with novel technology and customer change. This tutorial is intended to fill these gaps. IPM is characterised in terms of its theory, its methods and heuristics to support its practice. Exercises and mini-practicals support the integration of HCI into the heuristics, methods and theory of IPM. In the light of our recent experience, participants' IPM effectiveness, as either managers or as team members, is expected to increase as a result.
Accelerating phase unwrapping and affine transformations for optical quadrature microscopy using CUDA
Authors: Perhaad Mistry, Sherman Braganza, David Kaeli, Miriam Leeser
Venue: Proceedings of 2nd Workshop on General Purpose Processing on Graphics Processing Units (2009)

Optical Quadrature Microscopy (OQM) is a process which uses phase data to capture information about the sample being studied. OQM is part of an imaging framework developed by the Optical Science Laboratory at Northeastern University. In one particular application of interest, the framework is used to extract phase information from the image of an embryo to determine embryo viability. Phase Unwrapping is the process of reconstructing the real phase shift (propagation delay) of a sample from the measured "wrapped" representation which is between -&pi; and +&pi;. Unwrapping can be done using the Minimum LP Norm Phase Unwrap algorithm. Images are first preprocessed using an Affine Transform before they are unwrapped. Both of these steps are time consuming and would benefit greatly from parallelization and acceleration. Faster processing would lower many research barriers (in terms of throughput and performance) present when using OQM. In this paper we report on accelerating Phase Unwrapping and Affine Transformations using NVIDIA's CUDA programming model. We also run elementary noise removal on the GPU using NVIDIA's CUBLAS (CUDA Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) library. We integrate GPU execution into a Matlab environment to seamlessly interface to the pre-existing image acquisition system. By mapping the unwrap and noise removal to a GPU, and by also reducing the amount of I/O overhead, we are able to accelerate the end-to-end process by more than 7.3x. This enables our imaging framework to perform high speed image acquisition and visualization at near real-time rates.
Utilization a courseware WEB portal for virtual university requirements
Authors: P. Smutny, L. Smutny, R. Farana, J. Smutná
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Applied informatics and communications (2008)

Paper deals with the convergence of the Internet technologies and education, which create Internet-enabled learning. New challenge "Virtual University" eliminates barriers of time, distance, and socioeconomic status, allowing people to take charge of their own lifelong learning. Paper shows a special vertical portal for virtual university support as a site with comprehensive content from the area of automation and applied informatics and links to other web sites, built around a single topic. Virtual technologies connected with these new trends will cover topics as the shared collaborative learning environment architectures, WEB portals for actual hot links to the main information sources including links to the intranet/internet virtual laboratories, mobile learning systems ("m-Learning") dealing with mobile users, wireless systems, mobile devices and location awareness etc. The specialized portal "e-Automation" (see http://www.e-automatizace.cz) will be shown as an example of virtual technologies with WEB solution for virtual university purposes.
Scientific scripting for the java platform with a matlab-like scripting engine
Authors: Stergios Papadimitriou, Dimosthenis Pappas, Konstantinos Terzidis
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Systems theory and scientific computation (2008)

The jLab environment extends the potential of Java for scientific computing. It provides a Matlab/Scilab like scripting language that is executed by an interpreter implemented in the Java language. The paper concentrates on the topic of using the jLab scripting engine from within a pure Java application, in order to allow the application to utilize the scientific scripting potential of jLab and its large scientific libraries. The implementation is inspired by the JSR 223 standard but it is much simpler. To our knowledge, this is the first full Matlab like scientific scripting for Java. The jLab environment is open source and can be downloaded from https://jlab.dev.java.net
On the Role of Technical Standards for Learning Technologies
Authors: Erik Duval, Katrien Verbert
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies (2008)

This paper presents some of the lessons that we have learned during our involvement with the development of learning technology standards. We believe that the decision to develop a new standards is sometimes taken too quickly and that, when possible, existing generic standards should be profiled for the domain of learning. At this point in time, the development of tools, technologies and methodologies that fully exploit the affordances of existing standards is more relevant than the development of new standards. Moreover, we believe that the relationship between technical standardization and research is often misunderstood: the main role of standards for research is to enable a large-scale technological infrastructure that promotes innovation through its open nature.
Peer-exchange schemes to handle mismatch in peer-to-peer systems
Authors: Tongqing Qiu, Edward Chan, Mao Ye, Guihai Chen, Ben Y. Zhao
Venue: The Journal of Supercomputing (2009)

A self-organizing peer-to-peer system is built upon an application level overlay, whose topology is independent of an underlying physical network. A well-routed message path in such systems may result in a long delay and excessive traffic due to the mismatch between logical and physical networks. In order to solve this problem, we present a family of Peer-exchange Routing Optimization Protocols (PROP) to reconstruct the overlay. It includes two policies: PROP-G for generic condition and PROP-O for optimized one. Both theoretical analysis and simulation experiments show that these two protocols greatly reduce the average latency of the overlay and achieve a better logical topology with low overhead. Their overall performance can be further improved if combined with other recent approaches. Specifically, PROP-G can be easily applied to both structured and unstructured systems without the loss of their primary characteristics, such as efficient routing and anonymity. PROP-O, on the other hand, is more efficient, especially in a heterogenous environment where nodes have different processing capabilities.
Upper bounds and algorithms for parallel knock-out numbers
Authors: Hajo Broersma, Matthew Johnson, Daniël Paulusma
Venue: Theoretical Computer Science (2009)

We study parallel knock-out schemes for graphs. These schemes proceed in rounds in each of which each surviving vertex simultaneously eliminates one of its surviving neighbours; a graph is reducible if such a scheme can eliminate every vertex in the graph. We resolve the square-root conjecture, first posed at MFCS 2004, by showing that for a reducible graph G, the minimum number of required rounds is O(n); in fact, our result is stronger than the conjecture as we show that the minimum number of required rounds is O(@a), where @a is the independence number of G. This upper bound is tight. We also show that for reducible K"1","p-free graphs at most p-1 rounds are required. It is already known that the problem of whether a given graph is reducible is NP-complete. For claw-free graphs, however, we show that this problem can be solved in polynomial time. We also pinpoint a relationship with (locally bijective) graph homomorphisms.
e-governance and digital divide: a case study of mainland China and Macao SAR
Authors: Lue Li
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (2008)

Good e-Governance should encourage as many individuals as possible to have access to government information through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Unfortunately, digital divide does exist. According to the survey of Mainland China and Macao SAR, we found that the main reason for people not using Internet is the lack of computer/Internet skills. Therefore, we suggest that overcoming the digital divide requires not only to provide necessary equipments but also, more important, to provide computer education for non-netizens.
Penny Arcade Volume 3: The Warsun Prophecies
Authors: Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik
Venue:  (2007)

So it was written, so it shall be. The coming foretold, sealed into the hands of fate by the lips of the prophets from another time. The mystery is revealed and the great plan will now come to its fruition! Its number shall be three. From the far horizons, across the deepest reaches of the ethereal gulf, the thunderous echo of its name shall be heard! PENNY ARCADE! Penny Arcade, the most powerful webcomic in the universe, returns! The third volume of this cultural and supernatural phenomenon, The Warsun Prophecies, brings you every Penny Arcade strip published online in 2002 A.D., encased with the dark secrets of the mad prophets known as Gabe and Tycho. Behold! It has been foretold!
Simulation-based verification of Lean improvement for emergency room process
Authors: Nancy Khurma, Gheorghe M. Bacioiu, Zbigniew J. Pasek
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Conference on Winter Simulation (2008)

One of the key challenges to health care access in Canadian hospitals is growing overcrowding of the Emergency Departments (EDs), leading to the medical personnel overload, and the excessive waiting times to receive proper care. These adverse effects directly impact the patient satisfaction levels, the ability of the medical professionals to attend promptly to patients' health issues, and generate unnecessary costs. Addressing the sources of waste and improving the process provides better care and higher patient satisfaction, as well as increases operational efficiency and the ability of the medical professionals to intervene on time. This paper describes an effort aimed at improvement of patients' experience over their ED stay. A combination of Lean tools were used to analyze, assess and improve the current situation. Simulation models based on current and future (desired) states were developed. Comparative analysis of both enabled verification of feasibility of proposed solutions, and provided quantifiable results.
An Efficient Rerouting Mechanism for Dynamic Network Resource Management
Authors: K. Mahesh, S. Lakshminarayanan, S. V. Raghavan
Venue: Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems - Volume 02 (1999)

Modern multimedia applications require new services from communication systems. Quality of Service(QoS)[6] is one of the core issues in multimedia systems. QoS is established through negotiation between users and service providers. The negotiation typically involves allocation and management of resources in order to attain a desired level of quality. Unfortunately, in present day systems, the network utilization in terms of the number of requests serviced is far from the optimum. In this paper we propose an efficient network resource management mechanism for dynamically handling the requests over a network. We exhibit a method of rerouting existing connections and accommodating new connections through this route in order to maximize the number of connections serviced and the net data transfer through the network. The algorithm also includes renegotiation of QoS parameters for existing connections with the end system to increase the utilization of the network. Simulation experiments indicate that the network utilization, in terms of number of connections served and the amount of data transferred in the network, increases substantially in comparison to existing procedures.
A novel distributed architecture of large-scale multimedia storage system using autonomous object-based storage devices
Authors: Zeng Zeng, Bharadwaj Veeravalli
Venue: Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (2009)

In a large-scale multimedia storage system (LMSS) where the user requests for different multimedia objects may have different demands, placement and replication of the objects is an important factor, as it may result in an imbalance in loading across the system. Since replica management and load balancing is a crucial issue in multimedia systems, normally this problem is handled by centralized servers, e.g., metadata servers (MDS) in distributed file systems. Each object-based storage device (OSD) responds to the requests coming from the centralized servers independently and has no communication with other OSDs among the system. In this paper, we design a novel distributed architecture of LMSS, in which the OSDs have some kind of intelligences and can cooperate to achieve a high performance. Such an OSD, named as autonomous object-based storage device (AOSD), can replicate the objects to and balance the requests among other AOSDs, and handle fail-over and recovery autonomously. In the proposed architecture, we move the request balancing from centralized MDS to AOSDs and make the system more scalable, flexible, and robust. Based on the proposed architecture, we propose two different object replication and load balancing algorithms, named as ''Minimum Average Waiting Time'' (MAWT) and ''One of the Best Two Choices'' (OBTC), respectively. We validate the performance of the algorithms via rigorous simulations with respect to several influencing factors. Our findings conclusively demonstrate that the proposed architecture minimizes the average waiting time and at the same time carries out load balancing across servers.
Linear reconfiguration of cube-style modular robots
Authors: Greg Aloupis, Sébastien Collette, Mirela Damian, Erik D. Demaine, Robin Flatland, Stefan Langerman, Joseph O'Rourke, Suneeta Ramaswami, Vera Sacristán, Stefanie Wuhrer
Venue: Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications (2009)

In this paper we propose a novel algorithm that, given a source robot S and a target robot T, reconfigures S into T. Both S and T are robots composed of n atoms arranged in 2x2x2 meta-modules. The reconfiguration involves a total of O(n) atomic operations (expand, contract, attach, detach) and is performed in O(n) parallel steps. This improves on previous reconfiguration algorithms [D. Rus, M. Vona, Crystalline robots: Self-reconfiguration with compressible unit modules, Autonomous Robots 10 (1) (2001) 107-124; S. Vassilvitskii, M. Yim, J. Suh, A complete, local and parallel reconfiguration algorithm for cube style modular robots, in: Proc. of the IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, 2002, pp. 117-122; Z. Butler, D. Rus, Distributed planning and control for modular robots with unit-compressible modules, Intl. J. Robotics Res. 22 (9) (2003) 699-715, doi:10.1177/02783649030229002], which require O(n^2) parallel steps. Our algorithm is in-place; that is, the reconfiguration takes place within the union of the bounding boxes of the source and target robots. We show that the algorithm can also be implemented in a synchronous, distributed fashion.
Design and implementation of the rough relational database system
Authors: Scott Grimes, Ghassan Alkadi, Theresa Beaubouef
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2009)

This paper details the implementation of rough set theory techniques with Structured Query Language (SQL) into a relational database model with the purpose of introducing uncertainty into crisp data. It discusses design decisions made for choice of programming languages and development environments. The dynamics of effective teamwork are briefly explored, including design issues that had to be overcome and the strategies employed in solving them. The problems encountered during the design and the implementation phases are also detailed.
Interaction of technology and system architecture
Authors: Ugo Gagliardi
Venue: Proceedings of the May 19-22, 1975, national computer conference and exposition (1975)

Major hardware technology advances have and will have significant impact on system architecture by shifting feasibility constraints and causing new optimum structures to emerge.
Zero-a blend of static typing and dynamic metaprogramming
Authors: Sašo Greiner, Janez Brest, Viljem umer
Venue: Computer Languages, Systems and Structures (2009)

Zero is an experimental statically typed, fully object-oriented reflective programming language. Reflective features cover introspection as well as structural and behavioural reflection. The reflective facilities include safe method and class replacements and detailed modification of methods. These enable Zero programs to quickly accommodate to run-time requirements. Behavioural reflection is realised using handlers (hooks), which may be attached to all language constructs based on closures. Zero provides an efficient static typing system with run-time extensions. Methods are first class values and are represented as objects when such representation is required. By using such representation, Zero provides elegant use of statically typed higher-order methods.
Online hybrid traffic classifier for Peer-to-Peer systems based on network processors
Authors: Zhenxiang Chen, Bo Yang, Yuehui Chen, Ajith Abraham, Crina Grosan, Lizhi Peng
Venue: Applied Soft Computing (2009)

It is estimated that 70% or more of broadband bandwidth is consumed by transmitting music, games, video and other content through Peer-to-Peer (P2P) clients. In order to detect, identify, and manage P2P traffic, some port, payload and transport layer feature based methods were proposed. Most of them were applied to offline traffic classification mainly due to the performance reason. In this paper, a network processors (NPs) based online hybrid traffic classifier is proposed. The designed hardware classifier is able to classify P2P traffic based on the static characteristic namely on line speed, and the Flexible Neural Tree(FNT) based software classifier helps learning and selecting P2P traffic attributes from the statistical characteristics of the P2P traffic. Experiment results illustrate that the hybrid classifier performs well for online classification of P2P traffic from gigabit network. The proposed framework also depicts good expansion capabilities to add new P2P features and to adapt to new P2P applications online.
Testing independence in nonparametric regression
Authors: Natalie Neumeyer
Venue: Journal of Multivariate Analysis (2009)

We propose a new test for independence of error and covariate in a nonparametric regression model. The test statistic is based on a kernel estimator for the L"2-distance between the conditional distribution and the unconditional distribution of the covariates. In contrast to tests so far available in literature, the test can be applied in the important case of multivariate covariates. It can also be adjusted for models with heteroscedastic variance. Asymptotic normality of the test statistic is shown. Simulation results and a real data example are presented.
An efficient design for fast memory registration in RDMA
Authors: Li Ou, Xubin He, Jizhong Han
Venue: Journal of Network and Computer Applications (2009)

Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) improves network bandwidth and reduces latency by eliminating unnecessary copies from network interface card to application buffers, but the communication buffer management to reduce memory registration and deregistration cost is a significant challenge to be addressed. Previous studies use pin-down cache and batched deregistration, but only simple LRU is used as a replacement algorithm to manage cache space. In this paper, we evaluate the cost of memory registration in both user and kernel spaces. Based on our analysis, we reduce the overhead of communication buffer management in two aspects simultaneously: utilize a Memory Registration Region Cache (MRRC), and optimize the RDMA communication process of clients and servers with Fast RDMA Read and Write Process (FRRWP). MRRC manages memory in terms of memory region, and replaces old memory regions according to both their sizes and recency. FRRWP overlaps memory registrations between a client and a server, and allows applications to submit RDMA write operations without being blocked by message synchronization. We compare the performance of MRRC and FRRWP with traditional RDMA operations. The results show that our new design improves the total cost of memory registrations and overall communication latency by up to 70%.
Anthropomorphization method using attachable humanoid parts
Authors: Hirotaka Osawa, Ren Ohmura, Michita Imai
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction (2009)

With this video, we propose a new human-robot interaction that anthropomorphizes a target common object and transform it into a communicative agent using attachable humanoid parts. The user perceives the target to have its own intentions and body image through the attached body parts. This video shows examples of anthropomorphization method as below. First, the video shows the setup process of our method in which a demonstrator attaches each part, such as eye-like parts, arm-like parts, and camera to a common electric oven. The oven becomes a communicative robot by attaching these parts. Second, the video explains three applications - self advertisement, self presentation, and interactive manual - that are achieved by anthropomorphized objects. In the self advertisement situation, the anthropomorphized oven attracts customers and explains its function by itself. This situation assumes that these devices are used in shops in future. In the self presentation situation, an anthropomorphized poster explains its contents by itself. There is no other explainer. This situation assumes that these devices are used on a poster presentation. In the interactive manual situation, an anthropomorphized printer explains its function interactively. This explanation is intuitive and understandable for children and elderly people. After third situation, this anthropomorphized printer is compared to an explanation from the humanoid robot Robovie throught gaze direction analysis. In the Robovie situation, the guidance fails because the robot distracts from the target itself. However in the anthropomorphized printer situation, users can concentrate on the interaction. Last, we use an anthropomorphized shredder using eye-like parts, arm-like parts, and skin sensor. The shredder explains its interactive manual like in the printer situation. However in this interaction, this shredder detects the user's touch and proceeds with the interaction instead of waiting to detect voice.