ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
simVar: A Similarity-Influenced Question Selection Criterion for e-Sales Dialogs
Authors: Sascha Schmitt
Venue: Artificial Intelligence Review (2002)

Even though AI technologies like CBR have proved their strengths for intelligent sales support in EC applications, on-line customers often encounter e-sales systems that are hard to use. Before a search process is started, they either have to answer many annoying or irrelevant questions or they are faced with technical jargon of manufacturers they are not able to understand. On-line customers want personalised advice and adequate product offerings. Gaining sufficient information from the customer but also providing her with information at the right place is the key. Resulting from this fact, an automated communication process is needed that simulates the sales dialog between customers and human sales persons. This article proposes a method for question selection in e-sales dialogs based on the variance of the CBR system's inherent similarities. The method uses a similarity-influenced measure to reduce the number of questions required to find satisfactory products. Additionally, it is shown how questions can be selected on the level of abstraction appropriate to the customer's knowledge.
Combining Loop Transformations Considering Caches and Scheduling
Authors: Michael E. Wolf, Dror E. Maydan, Ding-Kai Chen
Venue: International Journal of Parallel Programming (1998)

The performance of modern microprocessors is greatly affected by cache behavior, instruction scheduling, register allocation and loop overhead. High-level loop transformations such as fission, fusion, tiling, interchanging and outer loop unrolling (e.g., unroll and jam) are well known to be capable of improving all these aspects of performance. Difficulties arise because these machine characteristics and these optimizations are highly interdependent. Interchanging two loops might, for example, improve cache behavior but make it impossible to allocate registers in the inner loop. Similarly, unrolling or interchanging a loop might individually hurt performance but doing both simultaneously might help performance. Little work has been published on how to combine these transformations into an efficient and effective compiler algorithm. In this paper, we present a model that estimates total machine cycle time taking into account cache misses, software pipelining, register pressure and loop overhead. We then develop an algorithm to intelligently search through the various, possible transformations, using our machine model to select the set of transformations leading to the best overall performance. We have implemented this algorithm as part of the MIPSPro commercial compiler system. We give experimental results showing that our approach is both effective and efficient in optimizing numerical programs.
Counter-Based Compaction: Delay and Stuck-Open Faults
Authors: Kevin J. Wiebe, Slawomir Pilarski
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1995)

In this paper, we study the properties of all major counter-based compaction schemes when the circuit under test is affected by delay or stuck-open faults. We present an error model that accurately describes the behavior of such circuits. The error model inherits from the asymmetric error model [1] and the model used in [2]. Using this model, we compute exact aliasing probability for any test session length; we also determine the asymptotic aliasing probability. Examples that compare aliasing in counter-based compaction with aliasing in LFSRs indicate that the latter is more ¿predictable.¿
Guest Editors' Introduction: Embedded Security"Challenges and Concerns
Authors: William A. Arbaugh, Leendert van Doorn
Venue: Computer (2001)

The proliferation of embedded devices is bringing security and privacy issues to the fore. We must ensure that we have learned from past problems and proactively attempt to prevent them in the future.
Interprocess communications in the AN/BSY-2 distributed computer system: a case study
Authors: David Andrews, Paul Austin, Peter Costello, David LeVan
Venue: Journal of Systems and Software (2002)

This paper presents a case study of the design and implementation of the interprocess communications facility developed for the AN/BSY-2 distributed computer system, the computer system for the Seawolf submarine. The interprocess communications facility was identified as a critical design challenge for the AN/BSY-2 system, as the system incorporated new component and network technology along with new run time system services as well as application programs. The requirements specified for the interprocess communications included aggressive performance, as well as functional capabilities that had not been previously fielded. The AN/ BSY-2 computer system is comprised of over 100 processors interconnected in multiple fault tolerant fiber optic rings. First, a description of the AN/BSY-2 distributed architecture is presented. The message passing semantics are then presented. A key feature of the IPC facility is its support for both synchronous and asynchronous communications based on logical addressing. Logical addressing within the AN/BSY-2 system supports point-to-point as well as group communications, and also supports the fault tolerant requirements of the system. The hardware developed to support fast real time messaging, and support fault tolerance is discussed. Finally, the low level semantics of a message transfer through the system is outlined.
Performance analysis and comparison of blind to non-blind least-squares equalization with respect to effective channel overmodeling
Authors: A. D. Beikos, A. P. Liavas
Venue: Signal Processing (2002)

The object of this work is the study of a direct blind equalization algorithm which appeared recently in the literature. It is a least-squares (LS) equalization method in the blind context, assuming a linear FIR communication channel and a linear equalizer. If channel order is known, blind LS equalizers can be constructed that entirely suppress intersymbol interference in noiseless signal transmission. In practice, though, channels may be comprised of a few "big" consecutive taps, which we call "significant part", surrounded by a lot of smaller leading and/or trailing "tail" terms. In such an environment, channel order is harder to define while the value used by the algorithm is critical to its performance. We carry out both theoretical analysis, making use of perturbation theory arguments, and simulations for the cases where channel order determination procedure has yielded an estimate greater than ("effective overmodeling") or equal to the order of the significant part. Our purpose is to compare the performance of blind LS algorithm with that of its non-blind counterpart. We conclude that (a) when channel does not possess leading tail terms, blind LS is robust to effective overmodeling, meaning that it behaves very much like non-blind LS, and (b) when leading tail terms are present, blind LS will generally not work satisfactorily in the effective overmodeling scenario. In either case, when the order of the significant part is identified correctly and the actual significant parts of subchannels are sufficiently diverse, the algorithm behaves well.
Conceptual Representation of Waveforms for Temporal Reasoning
Authors: W. R. Cyre
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1994)

Addresses the problem of comparing and unifying temporal relationships between activities expressed in timing diagrams and natural language narrative (English). This problem often occurs in specifications expressing behavioral requirements and constraints. The approach followed is to translate both diagrams and text into a common knowledge representation (conceptual graphs) employing temporal relations developed for temporal interval logic. In this knowledge representation, the requirements may be integrated, checked for inconsistencies, and subjected to additional temporal reasoning. An algorithm of polynomial complexity for generating a compact representation of temporal relationships from timing diagrams is presented. Generation of comparable conceptual graphs from English statements is described by using examples. Integrating conceptual graphs from timing diagrams and sentences while checking for inconsistencies is also of polynomial complexity.
Enumerative Coding for Constant-Weight Binary Sequences with Constrained Run-Length of Zeros
Authors: O. F. Kurmaev
Venue: Problems of Information Transmission (2002)

We suggest a method for computing the number of dklr-sequences with given number of ones. Based on these results and the well-known method of Babkin and Cover, enumerative encoding and decoding for constant-weight dklr-sequences is obtained.
What Technology Is Doing to Music
Authors: Bob Colwell
Venue: Computer (2002)

A surprisingly high percent-age of engineers are also avid musicians. Notice that if I don't actually quote a number for "high," that sentence seems irrefutable. Surely vagueness is a small price to pay for irrefutability.Perhaps the concept of engineers-as-musicians surprises us mostly because we engineers take pride in our rational, positivist view of the world, and we don't quite know how to explain why we also participate in an activity as emotional, messy, uncertain, and generally nonlucrative as music. So any percentage that is nonnegligible will strike us as interesting, and would probably tell us something important about ourselves if only we knew what it meant. My guess is it means our intellect tells us the obvious: It's much more feasible to do engineering for a career and dabble in music than to be a professional musician and dabble in engineering.
RAPS: A Rule-Based Language for Specifying Resource Allocation and Time-Tabling Problems
Authors: G. Solotorevsky, E. Gudes, A. Meisels
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (1994)

A general language for specifying resource allocation and time-tabling problems is presented. The language is based on an expert system paradigm that was developed previously by the authors and that enables the solution of resource allocation problems by using experts' knowledge and heuristics. The language enables the specification of a problem in terms of resources, activities, allocation rules, and constraints, and thus provides a convenient knowledge acquisition tool. The language syntax is powerful and allows the specification of rules and constraints that are very difficult to formulate with traditional approaches, and it also supports the specification of various control and backtracking strategies. We constructed a generalized inference engine that runs compiled resource allocation problem specification language (RAPS) programs and provides all necessary control structures. This engine acts as an expert system shell and is called expert system for resource allocation (ESRA). The performance of RAPS combined with ESRA is demonstrated by analyzing its solution of a typical resource allocation problem.
The Challenges of Wearable Computing: Part 2
Authors: Thad Starner
Venue: IEEE Micro (2001)

Web Extra: The Challenges of Wearable Computing: BibliographyWearable computing pursues an interface ideal of a continuously worn, intelligent assistant that augments memory, intellect, creativity, communication, and physical senses and abilities. Many challenges await wearable designers as they balance innovative interfaces, power requirements, network resources, and privacy concerns. This survey describes the possibilities offered by wearable systems and, in doing so, demonstrates unique attributes to this class of computing.
DPM: A Measurement System for Distributed Programs
Authors: B. P. Miller
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1988)

A framework for measuring the performance of distributed programs is presented. This framework includes a model of distributed programs, a description of the measurement principles and methods, and a guideline for implementing these ideas. The author describes a measurement system called the Distributed Programs Monitor (DPM), which he has constructed on the basis of these concepts. DPM has been implemented and used for measurement studies on two different operating systems, DEMOS/MP and Berkeley Unix.
Routing in Queues with Delayed Information
Authors: Nelly Litvak, Uri Yechiali
Venue: Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications (2003)

We compare two routing-control strategies in a high-speed communication network with c parallel channels (routes), where information on service completions in down-stream servers is randomly delayed. The controller can either hold arriving messages in a common buffer, dispatching them to servers only when the delayed information becomes available (Wait option), or route jobs to the various channels, in a round-robin fashion, immediately upon their arrival. Interpreting the delays as servers's vacations and considering overall queue sizes as a measure of performance, we show that the Wait strategy is superior as long as the mean information delay is below a threshold. We calculate threshold values for various combinations of load and c and show that, for a given load, the threshold increases with c and, for fixed c, the threshold decreases with an increasing load. If information is delayed on arrival instants, rather than on service completions, we show that the system can be viewed as a tandem queue and derive a generalization of a queue-decomposition result obtained by Altman, Kofman and Yechiali.
Exploiting Spatial Indexes for Semijoin-Based Join Processing in Distributed Spatial Databases
Authors: Kian-Lee Tan, Beng Chin Ooi, David J. Abel
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (2000)

In a distributed spatial database system, a user may issue a query that relates two spatial relations not stored at the same site. Because of the sheer volume and complexity of spatial data, spatial joins between two spatial relations at different sites are expensive in terms of computation and transmission cost. In this paper, we address the problems of processing spatial joins in a distributed environment. We propose a semijoin-like operator, called the spatial semijoin, to prune away objects that will not contribute to the join result. This operator also reduces both the transmission and local processing costs for a later join operation. However, the cost of the elimination process must be taken into account, and we consider approaches to minimize these overheads. We also studied and compared two families of distributed join algorithms that are based on the spatial semijoin operator. The first is based on multidimensional approximations obtained from an index such as the R-tree, and the second is based on single-dimensional approximations obtained from object mapping. We conducted experiments on real data sets and report the results in this paper.
Well-posedness of the Dirichlet problem in non-elliptic isotropic elasticity
Authors: Emil Ernst
Venue: Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Angewandte Mathematik und Physik (ZAMP) (2002)

The well-posedness of the Dirichlet boundary value problem for an isotropic homogeneous linear elastic material is established for non-elliptic equilibrium systems. Mechanical properties of elastic materials with negative shear modulus are also deduced.
Efficient computation of the topology of level sets
Authors: V. Pascucci, K. Cole-McLaughlin
Venue: Proceedings of the conference on Visualization '02 (2002)

This paper introduces two efficient algorithms that compute the Contour Tree of a 3D scalar field F and its augmented version with the Betti numbers of each isosurface. The Contour Tree is a fundamental data structure in scientific visualization that is used to preprocess the domain mesh to allow optimal computation of isosurfaces with minimal overhead storage. The Contour Tree can also be used to build user interfaces reporting the complete topological characterization of a scalar field, as shown in Figure 1.The first part of the paper presents a new scheme that augments the Contour Tree with the Betti numbers of each isocontour in linear time. We show how to extend the scheme introduced in [3] with the Betti number computation without increasing its complexity. Thus, we improve on the time complexity from our previous approach [10] from O(m log m) to O(n log n + m), where m is the number of tetrahedra and n is the number of vertices in the domain of F.The second part of the paper introduces a new divide-and-conquer algorithm that computes the Augmented Contour Tree with improved efficiency. The central part of the scheme computes the output Contour Tree by merging two intermediate Contour Trees and is independent of the interpolant. In this way we confine any knowledge regarding a specific interpolant to an oracle that computes the tree for a single cell. We have implemented this oracle for the trilinear interpolant and plan to replace it with higher order interpolants when needed. The complexity of the scheme is O(n + t log n), where t is the number of critical points of F. For the first time we can compute the Contour Tree in linear time in many practical cases when t = O(n1 - &epsilon;).Lastly, we report the running times for a parallel implementation of our algorithm, showing good scalability with the number of processors.
Fast IR Si/SiGe superlattice MSM photodetectors with buried CoSi2 contacts
Authors: S. Winnerl, D. Buca, S. Lenk, Ch. Buchal, S. Mantl, D.-X. Xu
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2002)

We fabricated vertical metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) detectors with Si/Si1-xGex (x = 0.39 and 0.45) superlattices as active detector regions. An epitaxial buried CoSi2 contact served as the bottom electrode and a Cr contact as the top electrode. The superlattices, grown by molecular beam epitaxy, showed vertically ordered SiGe islands. With the MSM detectors we obtained quantum efficiencies of 5% for the wavelength of 1.32 µm and 1% for 1.55 µm. Using a Ti:sapphire laser and an optical parametric oscillator which generates ultrafast pulses at IR wavelengths, the temporal response of the MSM detectors was measured. The detectors showed response times of 12 ps.
Combining Image Compression and Classification Using Vector Quantization
Authors: Karen L. Oehler, Robert M. Gray
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (1995)

Statistical clustering methods have long been used for a variety of signal processing applications, including both classification and vector quantization for signal compression. We describe a method of combining classification and compression into a single vector quantizer by incorporating a Bayes risk term into the distortion measure used in the quantizer design algorithm. Once trained, the quantizer can operate to minimize the Bayes risk weighted distortion measure if there is a model providing the required posterior probabilities, or it can operate in a suboptimal fashion by minimizing only squared error. Comparisons are made with other vector quantizer based classifiers, including the independent design of quantization and minimum Bayes risk classification and Kohonen¿s LVQ. A variety of examples demonstrate that the proposed method can provide classification ability close to or superior to LVQ while simultaneously providing superior compression performance.
An accurate two-dimensional CAD-oriented model of retrograde doped MOSFETs for improved short channel performance
Authors: Abhinav Kranti, Rashmi, S. Haldar, R. S. Gupta
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2002)

An analytical CAD-oriented model for short channel threshold voltage of retrograde doped MOSFETs is developed. The model is extended to evaluate the drain induced barrier lowering parameter (R) and gradient of threshold voltage. The dependence of short channel threshold voltage and R on thickness of lightly doped layer (d) has also been analyzed in detail. It is shown that a retrograde doping profile reduces short channel effects to a considerable extent. A technique is developed to optimize the device parameters for minimizing short channel effects. The results so obtained are in close proximity with published data.
Polygon recognition in sketch-based interfaces with immediate and continuous feedback
Authors: Peter Agar, Kevin Novins
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques in Australasia and South East Asia (2003)

Sketch-based drawing interfaces attempt to combine the ease of freehand drawing with the advantages of computer processing by analysing hand-drawn pen strokes in real time and replacing them with perfect geometric representations. This paper describes the development of a sketch-based interface for drawing polygons. An investigation into how people draw polygons revealed that it is possible to detect the corners of a polygon while it is being drawn by examining the time stamps of the sample points on the user's stroke. Results of a pilot user study suggest that this method is more pleasant and convenient to use than conventional polygon drawing tools and would be useful for composing drawings quickly. However, users still prefer the traditional method of clicking in the location of each corner for drawing accurately.
MUTABOR, a Coprocessor Supporting Memory Management in an Object-Oriented Architecture
Authors: Jorg Kaiser
Venue: IEEE Micro (1988)

The author describes MUTABOR, a micro-programmable coprocessor that works with a 68020 CPU to control and update a 4096-entry address translation cache that achieves an excellent hit rate. He defines the requirements for an object-oriented memory-management unit, and outlines the architecture of MUTABOR and the object-addressing mechanism. He also discusses the design decisions concerning the address translation cache, which were based on simulation results.
q-Enumeration of alternating sign matrices with exactly one -1
Authors: Pierre Lalonde
Venue: Discrete Mathematics (2002)

We enumerate the alternating sign matrices that contain exactly one -1 according to their number of inversions (possibly taking into account the position of the unique non-zero entry in the first row). In conformity with the Mills, Robbins and Rumsey conjectures, this is the same as the enumeration, according to the number of parts, of descending plane partitions with exactly one special part. This is shown by finding a determinantal expression for the generating function of descending plane partitions, transforming it algebraically and extracting recurrences for those with one special part. Finally, we show that the generating function of alternating sign matrices that contain exactly one -1 follows the same recurrences.