ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Gender and black boxes in the programming curriculum
Authors: Peter McKenna
Venue: Journal on Educational Resources in Computing (JERIC) (2004)

This paper summarizes the results of an investigation into whether women and men have different (concrete and abstract) styles of programming, and whether the standard computing curriculum is therefore biased against women. The theory underpinning the hypothesis is critically reviewed in practical programming contexts. A concrete means of testing attitudinal gender differences to black-boxed programming elements is reported and the results described and analyzed. A survey of 50 students, designed to test the hypothesis that women are more likely to reject the techniques and &ldquo;way of thinking&rdquo; of abstraction in programming, casts doubt on the idea that there is any significant difference between female and male attitudes to prepackaged routines. This paper distinguishes between programming and ways of learning to program --- between concrete learning strategies and the use of abstraction in programming --- and discusses pedagogical practice as well as curriculum content.
Usefulness of Software Architecture Description Languages for Modeling and Analysis of Federates and Federation Architectures
Authors: Frederic D. Mckenzie, Mikel D. Petty, Qingwen Xu
Venue: Simulation (2004)

Software architecture is high-level software design dealing with the structure and organization of large software systems. Architecture description languages (ADLs) are languages designed to represent software designs at the architecture level. ADLs are not widely used in the development of simulation systems. This research investigates the utility and effectiveness of ADLs for architecture-level design and analysis of simulation systems. Experimental applications of two ADLs to the specification and analysis of simulation architectures were conducted. Rapide was used to model the EnviroFed federation architecture and analyze data volume with and without interest management. Acme was used to model the ModSAF federate architecture and to analyze execution time at the component and federate levels in ModSAF. The experiments showed that ADLs could be used to discover important features of simulation system architectures.
Lower-stretch spanning trees
Authors: Michael Elkin, Yuval Emek, Daniel A. Spielman, Shang-Hua Teng
Venue: Proceedings of the thirty-seventh annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing (2005)

We show that every weighted connected graph G contains as a subgraph a spanning tree into which the edges of G can be embedded with average stretch O (log2 n log log n). Moreover, we show that this tree can be constructed in time O (m log2n) in general, and in time O (mlog n) if the input graph is unweighted. The main ingredient in our construction is a novel graph decomposition technique.Our new algorithm can be immediately used to improve the running time of the recent solver for symmetric diagonally dominant linear systems of Spielman and Teng from m2(O√lognlog log n) to m log O(1)n and to O (n log2n log log n) when the system is planar. Our result can also be used to improve several earlier approximation algorithms that use low-stretch spanning trees.
Design of a Satellite Cluster System in Distributed Simulation
Authors: Jong Sik Lee, Thong Luu, Vijay K. Konangi
Venue: Simulation (2005)

This article presents the design and development of a satellite cluster system that supports an interfederation communication in High Level Architecture (HLA)-compliant distributed simulation. The interfederation communication enables the execution of a complex, large-scale cluster system of distributed satellites that share the dispersed data assets among satellite components collaboratively. After a brief review of the HLA bridge for interfederation communication, the authors discuss the design issues related to a satellite cluster system that provides cluster management, interfederation communication, and communication data management. They analyze system performance and scalability for centralized and decentralized configurations. The empirical results on the heterogeneous OS distributed system indicate that the satellite cluster system is effective and scalable due to the use of interfederation communication and the reduction of data transmission.
Pattern-based architectural design process model
Authors: N. Lévy, F. Losavio
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Computer systems and technologies (2004)

The identification of quality requirements is crucial to develop modern software systems, especially when their underlying context is changing or depending over time. Much work has been done on functional requirements specification, however nonfunctional requirements have been only superficially considered. Moreover, methods for architectural design focus on quality requirements; however their specification and traceability with respect to the system's functionality is not clear. The goal of this work is to outline a pattern-based architectural design process model focused on quality requirements engineering.
Motion-Based Selection of Relevant Video Segments for Video Summarization
Authors: Nathalie Peyrard, Patrick Bouthemy
Venue: Multimedia Tools and Applications (2005)

We present a method for motion-based video segmentation and segment classification as a step towards video summarization. The sequential segmentation of the video is performed by detecting changes in the dominant image motion, assumed to be related to camera motion and represented by a 2D affine model. The detection is achieved by analysing the temporal variations of some coefficients of the 2D affine model (robustly) estimated. The obtained video segments supply reasonable temporal units to be further classified. For the second stage, we adopt a statistical representation of the residual motion content of the video scene, relying on the distribution of temporal co-occurrences of local motion-related measurements. Pre-identified classes of dynamic events are learned off-line from a training set of video samples of the genre of interest. Each video segment is then classified according to a Maximum Likelihood criterion. Finally, excerpts of the relevant classes can be selected for video summarization. Experiments regarding the two steps of the method are presented on different video genres leading to very encouraging results while only low-level motion information is considered.
Deploying Diffserv at the Network Edge for Tight SLAs, Part 2
Authors: John Evans, Clarence Filsfils
Venue: IEEE Internet Computing (2004)

In the second of a two-part series, the authors review industry best practices for designing, validating, deploying, and operating IP-based services at the network edge with tight service-level agreements (SLAs). Specifically, they present a case study that shows how Diffserv can be deployed to achieve these SLAs.
A local branching heuristic for mixed-integer programs with 2-level variables, with an application to a telecommunication network design problem
Venue: Networks (2004)

Effective heuristic solution methods for general Mixed-Integer Programs &lpar;MIPs&rpar; are strongly required in many practical applications, and have been the subject of an intensive research effort in the recent years. Fischetti and Lodi recently proposed an exact solution technique based on the use of branching conditions expressed through &lpar;invalid&rpar; linear inequalities called local branching cuts. In the concluding remarks of their article, these authors anticipated the possibility their method be used to design a genuine MIP metaheuristic framework akin to Tabu Search &lpar;TS&rpar; or Variable Neighborhood Search &lpar;VNS&rpar;, based on an external MIP solver. In the present article we introduce and analyze computationally a specific implementation of the above idea. In particular, we address MIPs with binary variables, and propose a variant of the classical VNS scheme that we call Diversification, Refining, and Tight-refining &lpar;DRT&rpar;. The new approach is intended to be of high generality, but exploits the specific structure of some MIPs where the set of binary variables partitions naturally into two levels, with the property that fixing the value of the first-level variables produces an easier-to-solve &lpar;but still hard&rpar; subproblem. This is often the case, for example, in hard facility location problems arising in telecommunication network design. Our method detects automatically the presence in the MIP model of the first-level binary variables, if any, according to simple heuristic criteria. This information is then exploited during the intensification phase of the local search, so as to explore nested solution neighborhoods defined by local branching cuts affecting the first- and second-level variables in a different way. Computational results for a hard facility location problem arising in telecommunication UMTS network design are presented, with a comparison among different heuristic methods: the general-purpose commercial ILOG-Cplex 7.0 MIP code, the original Fischetti-Lodi local branching heuristic scheme, the new DRT method, and &lpar;for some instances&rpar; ad hoc TS and VNS heuristics. The results show that the DRT method, though very simple to implement, provides better heuristic solutions than the alternative methods on all the instances of our test bed. &copy; 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 44&lpar;2&rpar;, 61&ndash;72 2004
Draft proposal for a binary normalized floating point standard
Authors: Mary Payne, William Strecker
Venue: ACM SIGNUM Newsletter (1979)

The information in this document is subject to change without notice and should not be construed as a commitment by Digital Equipment Corporation. Digital Equipment Corporation assumes no responsibility for any errors which may appear in this document.
The IT Career Builder's Toolkit
Authors: Matthew Moran
Venue:  (2004)

Your complete guide to building your information technology career in any economyThe IT Career Builder's Toolkit features market-focused skills and proven methods you can use to jump-start and advance your career. While other books cover just the mechanics of preparing your resume, writing a cover letter, and interviewing, this book provides all that plus additional insight from IT career development expert, Matt Moran, to help you plan and create a rewarding IT career over the long term.The toolkit approach allows you to use this book to suit your unique needs: Are you new to the IT field? Benefit by reading the book cover to cover. Just need to fine-tune your IT career? Choose a topic and dive in.Understand and prepare for the various and changing factors that affect your career in both positive and negative ways. Learn how to Present the value of your technical skills in the job market Position yourself as the primary commodity of your career Remove the guesswork out of job searches Highlight on-the-job skills and gain meaningful professional exposureThe companion CD-ROM includes career management tools such as resume and cover letter templates, forms to track important contacts, and self-assessment tools. Start or further your consulting career with sample proposals, opportunity tracking forms, and a time-tracking and billing database. Financial tools, including budget and cash-flow summary worksheets, help you gain financial well-being. Use the Value-Added Technologist presentation to gain a clear understanding of the career-building process and how to use the toolkit to build a dynamic career.Most of all, have fun! Every year, people advance along the path to career stardom. Let Matt help you to be one of them through his career philosophy "Do not accept mediocrity as a career objectiveï¾demand more of yourself."
An efficient and reliable object-oriented exception handling mechanism
Authors: Shujuan Jiang, Baowen Xu
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (2005)

This paper proposes an exception handling mechanism for developing reliable object-oriented systems based on analyzing some problems encountered in the C++ programming language. The exceptions are organized into a knowledge sharing inheritance hierarchy and the handlers can be defined within exception classes. This enables the information to be hidden. The separation between the normal codes and the exception handling codes makes the program neat and maintainable. It supports both the termination and the retry model. Binding the exception to the object responsible for its raise can solve the issue of matching the handler relying on only the exception type.
Barbara Liskov on Programming, Career, and the Future
Authors: Dejan S. Milojicic
Venue: IEEE Distributed Systems Online (2005)

A talk with Barbara Liskov, recipient of the 2004 IEEE John von Neumann Medal for her "fundamental contributions to programming languages, programming methodology, and distributed systems."
Perception and meaning: some contribution to web-based user interfaces ergonomics
Authors: Laure Léger, Thierry Baccino, Charles Tijus
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th French-speaking conference on human-computer interaction on 15eme Conference Francophone sur l'Interaction Homme-Machine (2003)

This paper summarizes studies on the effect of visual and semantic object properties on target detection. The results show that the search is oriented by the visual and semantic organization of the visual scene. These results show that visual discriminability, although it doest not always inhibit semantic difficulties, can be used to improve visual search in the design of web interfaces.
The Ring Star Problem: Polyhedral analysis and exact algorithm
Venue: Networks (2004)

In the Ring Star Problem, the aim is to locate a simple cycle through a subset of vertices of a graph with the objective of minimizing the sum of two costs: a ring cost proportional to the length of the cycle and an assignment cost from the vertices not in the cycle to their closest vertex on the cycle. The problem has several applications in telecommunications network design and in rapid transit systems planning. It is an extension of the classical location&ndash;allocation problem introduced in the early 1960s, and closely related versions have been recently studied by several authors. This article formulates the problem as a mixed-integer linear program and strengthens it with the introduction of several families of valid inequalities. These inequalities are shown to be facet-defining and are used to develop a branch-and-cut algorithm. Computational results show that instances involving up to 300 vertices can be solved optimally using the proposed methodology. &copy; 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Comparative analysis of the testis and ovary transcriptomes in zebrafish by combining experimental and computational tools: Research Articles
Authors: Yang Li, Jer Ming Chia, Richard Bartfai, Alan Christoffels, Gen Hua Yue, Ke Ding, Mei Yin Ho, James A. Hill, Elia Stupka, Laszlo Orban
Venue: Comparative and Functional Genomics (2004)

Studies on the zebrafish model have contributed to our understanding of several important developmental processes, especially those that can be easily studied in the embryo. However, our knowledge on late events such as gonad differentiation in the zebrafish is still limited. Here we provide an analysis on the gene sets expressed in the adult zebrafish testis and ovary in an attempt to identify genes with potential role in (zebra)fish gonad development and function. We produced 10 533 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from zebrafish testis or ovary and downloaded an additional 23 642 gonad-derived sequences from the zebrafish EST database. We clustered these sequences together with over 13 000 kidney-derived zebrafish ESTs to study partial transcriptomes for these three organs. We searched for genes with gonad-specific expression by screening macroarrays containing at least 2600 unique cDNA inserts with testis-, ovary- and kidney-derived cDNA probes. Clones hybridizing to only one of the two gonad probes were selected, and subsequently screened with computational tools to identify 72 genes with potentially testis-specific and 97 genes with potentially ovary-specific expression, respectively. PCR-amplification confirmed gonad-specificity for 21 of the 45 clones tested (all without known function). Our study, which involves over 47 000 EST sequences and specialized cDNA arrays, is the first analysis of adult organ transcriptomes of zebrafish at such a scale. The study of genes expressed in adult zebrafish testis and ovary will provide useful information on regulation of gene expression in teleost gonads and might also contribute to our understanding of the development and differentiation of reproductive organs in vertebrates. Copyright &copy; 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Functorial scaling of ordinal data
Authors: Silke Pollandt, Rudolf Wille
Venue: Discrete Applied Mathematics (2005)

In this paper we investigate how methods of deriving conceptual structures from ordinal data can be justified structurally. For the investigation we choose a categorical approach which is elaborated for suitable functors from the category of all ordinal structures to the category of all closure structures. The main result yields that the best functors are those which correspond to contra-ordinal scaling, a method developed in formal concept analysis (Formal Concept Analysis: Mathematical Foundations, Springer, Heidelberg, 1999).
Nonparametric regression analysis of functional brain images
Authors: Hiroshi Tsukimoto, Mitsuru Kakimoto, Chie Morita, Yoshiaki Kikuchi
Venue: Systems and Computers in Japan (2004)

There has recently been remarkable progress in noninvasive measurement of the brain (such as f-MRI, MEG, and PET), providing detailed functional brain images. Using this technique, the correspondence between the areas and functions of the brain can be precisely analyzed. Researchers in this field are now examining correspondences between areas and functions of the brain on the basis of functional brain images. The authors have been attempting to apply nonparametric regression analysis to f-MRI images, in an effort to develop an algorithm that identifies the areas of the brain automatically and objectively. Since the brain has a three-dimensional structure, it is desirable to apply three-dimensional nonparametric regression analysis, but that requires a tremendous amount of computation. The idea is applied to two-dimensional images as a first step. Satisfactory results are obtained compared to the results obtained by z-score, a typical technique; the results are reported in this paper. &copy; 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 35(1): 67&ndash;78, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI 10.1002&sol;scj.10244
Ranking a stream of news
Authors: Gianna M. Del Corso, Antonio Gullí, Francesco Romani
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web (2005)

According to a recent survey made by Nielsen NetRatings, searching on news articles is one of the most important activity online. Indeed, Google, Yahoo, MSN and many others have proposed commercial search engines for indexing news feeds. Despite this commercial interest, no academic research has focused on ranking a stream of news articles and a set of news sources. In this paper, we introduce this problem by proposing a ranking framework which models: (1) the process of generation of a stream of news articles, (2) the news articles clustering by topics, and (3) the evolution of news story over the time. The ranking algorithm proposed ranks news information, finding the most authoritative news sources and identifying the most interesting events in the different categories to which news article belongs. All these ranking measures take in account the time and can be obtained without a predefined sliding window of observation over the stream. The complexity of our algorithm is linear in the number of pieces of news still under consideration at the time of a new posting. This allow a continuous on-line process of ranking. Our ranking framework is validated on a collection of more than 300,000 pieces of news, produced in two months by more then 2000 news sources belonging to 13 different categories (World, U.S, Europe, Sports, Business, etc). This collection is extracted from the index of comeToMyHead, an academic news search engine available online.
The 2-path network problem
Venue: Networks (2004)

Given a graph with nonnegative edge weights and a set D of node pairs, the 2-path network problem requires a minimum weight set of edges such that the induced subgraph contains a path with one or two edges connecting each pair in D. The problem is NP-hard. We present two integer programming models for the problem and study properties of associated polytopes, including cutting planes. Two approximation algorithms are suggested and analyzed. Some computational experience is reported. &copy; 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Stateful Inspection Firewall Session Table Processing
Authors: Xin Li, Zheng-Zhou Ji, Ming-Zeng Hu
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing (ITCC'05) - Volume II - Volume 02 (2005)

Stateful Inspection is a key technology to network devices such as routers and firewalls. Existed session table architectures of Stateful Inspection devices store all session information in a single entry, which causes high time cost of session table timeout processing. In this paper we present a new architecture which divides a session entry into two parts, and designs different data structures for each other. The new architecture can improve the performance of session table greatly. A new PATRICIA algorithm is proposed to organize session table, which is proved to be an optimal 2-ary trie for fixed-length match. An ASIC is implemented for the architecture and corresponding algorithms. Both theoretical and experimental results show that the new architecture has better performance than existed architectures, and can work well in Gigabit Ethernet network.
P-A logic: a compositional proof system for distributed programs
Authors: Paritosh K. Pandya, Mathai Joseph
Venue: Distributed Computing (1991)

This paper describes a compositional proof system called P-A logic for establishing weak total correctness and weak divergence correctness of CSP-like distributed programs with synchronous and asynchronous communication. Each process in a network is specified using logical assertions in terms of a presupposition Pre and an affirmation Aff as a triple {Pre}S{Aff}. For purely sequential programs, these triples reduce to the familiar Hoare triples. In distributed programs, P-A triples allow the behaviour of a process to be specified in the context of assumptions about its communications with the other processes in the network. Safety properties of process communications, and progress properties such as finiteness and freedom from divergence can be proved. An extension of P-A logic allowing proof of deadlock freedom is outlined. Finally, proof rules for deriving some liveness properties of a program from its P-A logic specification are discussed; these properties have the form "Q until R", where Q, R are assertions over communication traces. Other liveness properties may be derived from these properties using the rules of temporal logic.
Characterization of compactly supported refinable splines whose shifts form a Riesz basis
Authors: Yujing Guan, Shuwang Lu, Yuan Yan Tang
Venue: Journal of Approximation Theory (2005)

Based on (J. Approx. Theory 86 (1996) 240), we prove that the integer shifts of a multivariate blockwise polynomial φ(x) which is compactly supported and m-refinable form a Riesz basis if and only if φ(x) = cB(x - n - l/m-1 |v1, v2, ..., vk). Here n, l ∈ Zs, c ≠ 0 is a constant, B(x|v1, v2,..., vk) is a multivariate box spline and the matrix (v1, v2 ..., vk) is unimodular.