ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Strongly Instrumented Generic Mobility Architecture (SIGMA)
Authors: Misbah Mubarak, Sara Sultana, Zarrar Khan, H. Farooq Ahmad, Hajra Batool Asghar, Hiroki Suguri
Venue: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications - Workshops (2008)

Strong mobility is the movement of code, data and execution state of distributed entities from one computational unit to another. General issues related to strong mobility are inefficiency and increased code overhead. Our main concern is to optimize the implementation of strong mobility so that it can lead to improved performance and reliability. We argue that separation of concerns when applied to strong mobility leads to improved system architecture. This paper proposes an architecture namely “Strongly Instrumented Generic Mobility Architecture (SIGMA)” that significantly increases efficiency and thereby reduces code overheads. This helps to achieve reliability and fault tolerance. Java network programming language is the choice of implementation for the proposed architecture but it restricts access to the execution state of a thread. Therefore, achieving strong mobility in a way that software quality parameters like portability, efficiency, and reliability are preserved becomes a challenging task. To achieve these parameters, the paper realizes the implementation of strong mobility using byte code instrumentation technique in the form of a generic plug-in named SIGMA. The plug-in can be integrated with any FIPA compliant Multi-agent system and can also be used as a standalone Application Programming Interface (API). Performance evaluation of the proposed system shows significant efficiency improvement and reduced code overhead
A Hierarchical Resource Management Scheme Enabled by the TMO Programming Scheme
Authors: K. H. (Kane) Kim, Yuqing Li, Kee-Wook Rim, Eltefaat Shokri
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 11th IEEE Symposium on Object Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing (2008)

For cost-effective realization of sizable real-time distributed computing application systems, significant advances in resource allocation are in critical needs. An advanced practical scheme for high-level programming of real-time distributed computing software such as the TMO (Time-triggered Message-triggered Object) scheme introduces the potential for realizing new improved resource allocation approaches. The main reason is because it provides information-rich intuitively appealing timing specifications. However, to properly exploit the potential, a number of issues need to be resolved via extensive research involving both analytical and experimental efforts. A hierarchical resource allocation scheme that becomes enabled by use of the TMO programming model is discussed along with the remaining research issues.
Microbubble Suspensions Prepared via Electrohydrodynamic Jetting Process
Authors: Yang Li, Jun Li, Hongbo Zhang, Yongsheng Su
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on BioMedical Engineering and Informatics - Volume 02 (2008)

In this work, a co-axial electrohydrodynamic jetting system was reported to manufacture Microbubble Ultrasound Contrast Agents (mUCA) in the aim of fundamentally changing the way of drugs and genes attached to the microbubbles, hereto strongly enhance the efficiency of microbubbles as drug and gene carrier. Co-axial electrospray method has a high degree of quality control over size simply by changing the properties of the coating liquids and the operating parameters. The mixture of glycerol and polyethylene glycol (PEG) 400 were used as the microbubbles shell material. Compared with the glycerol/air microbubbles, the addition of PEG 400 has dramatically reduced the microbubbles size and also strongly increased the microbubbles life time, therefore, it can greatly improve the microbubbles stability. This method has shed a light on realizing the microbubbles as drug delivery vehicle and gene therapy to a potential clinical use.
Relations between de-facto criteria in the evaluation of a spoken dialogue system
Authors: Zoraida Callejas, Ramón López-Cózar
Venue: Speech Communication (2008)

Evaluation of spoken dialogue systems has been traditionally carried out in terms of instrumentally or expert-derived measures (usually called ''objective'' evaluation) and quality judgments of users who have previously interacted with the system (also called ''subjective'' evaluation). Different research efforts have been made to extract relationships between these evaluation criteria. In this paper we report empirical results obtained from statistical studies, which were carried out on interactions of real users with our spoken dialogue system. These studies have rarely been exploited in the literature. Our results show that they can indicate important relationships between criteria, which can be used as guidelines for refinement of the systems under evaluation, as well as contributing to the state-of-the-art knowledge about how quantitative aspects of the systems affect the user's perceptions about them.
Measurement of the gauge factor of carbon fiber and its application to sensors
Authors: J. K. Kim, C. S. Park, D. W. Lee, S. M. Cho, C. R. Han
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2008)

The electrical properties of carbon fiber (CF), an attractive material for strain gauges that can also be applied to resonating sensors, are reported in this paper. The CFs were manufactured from polyactylonitrile (PAN). The fabricated CFs had a 10@mm diameter and a length of several cm. The electrical resistivity of the CFs was found to be about 3x10^-^3@Wcm. The gauge factor of the CF was also observed, and it was found to be about 100-400, depending on the structure of the CF. For the resonating sensor applications of the CF, it was selectively placed in the gaps between the Al electrodes through dielectrophoresis. When the CF was resonated at the 5th resonance mode, a large change of its resistance was observed through an electrical system. The results of the experiment were found to coincide with the calculation results.
Information-theoretic integration of sensing and communication for active robot networks
Authors: Eric W. Frew
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Robot communication and coordination (2007)

This paper presents an information-theoretic approach to sensor placement that incorporates communication capacity into an optimal formulation. A new formulation is presented that maximizes the information rate achievable by a set of sensors communicating wirelessly to a single collection node. Shannon capacity and the standard radio propagation model are used to model the throughput achievable by a sensor configuration. Likewise, the d-optimality criterion from the active sensing literature is used to model information gain provided by range and bearing sensors. The combiniation of information-theoretic measures leads to a metric equivalent to the expected information rate achievable by the system. Sensor positions are selected that optimize this measure.
RainSim: A spatial-temporal stochastic rainfall modelling system
Authors: A. Burton, C. G. Kilsby, H. J. Fowler, P. S. P. Cowpertwait, P. E. O'Connell
Venue: Environmental Modelling Software (2008)

RainSim V3 is a robust and well tested stochastic rainfall field generator used successfully in a broad range of climates and end-user applications. Rainfall fields or multi-site time series can be sampled from a spatial-temporal Neyman-Scott rectangular pulses process: storm events occur as a temporal Poisson process; each triggers raincell generation using a stationary spatial Poisson process; raincells are clustered in time lagging the storm event; each raincell contributes rainfall uniformly across its circular extent and throughout its lifetime; raincell lag, duration, radius and intensity are random variables; orographic effects are accounted for by non-uniform scaling of the rainfall field. Robust and efficient numerical optimization schemes for model calibration are identified following the evaluation of five schemes with optional log-transformation of the parameters. The log-parameter Shuffled Complex Evolution (lnSCE) algorithm with a convergence criterion is chosen for single site applications and an effort limited restarted lnSCE algorithm is selected for spatial applications. The new objective function is described and shown to improve model calibration. Linear and quadratic expressions are identified which can reduce the bias between the fitted and simulated probabilities of both dry hours and dry days as used in calibration. Exact fitting of mean rainfall statistics is also implemented and demonstrated. An application to the Dommel catchment on the Netherlands/Belgian border illustrates the ability of the improved model to match observed statistics and extremes.
Proceedings of the 2008 international workshop on Scrutinizing agile practices or shoot-out at the agile corral
Venue: International Conference on Software Engineering (2008)

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the Scrutinizing Agile Practices or Shoot-Out at the Agile Corral workshop. The agile software development movement brings both new energy and new hype to the software methods discussion. The mission of the workshop is identifying what is established knowledge, what is dubious knowledge, where research could potentially help validate or invalidate some of the agile practices, and some strategies to get there. The call for papers attracted 13 submissions from Asia, North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East. The program committee accepted 8 papers that cover a variety of topics, including deconstructing and characterizing the agile process, calculating business value, improving communications, a case study of failure, and a behavioural study of pair programming. We hope that these proceedings will spark thoughtful debate.
Modeling of large area hot embossing
Authors: M. Worgull, K. K. Kabanemi, J.-P. Marcotte, J.-F. H&#x00e9;tu, M. Heckele
Venue: Microsystem Technologies (2008)

Today, hot embossing and injection molding belong to the established plastic molding processes in microengineering. Based on experimental findings, a variety of microstructures have been replicated so far using the processes. However, with increasing requirements regarding the embossing surface and the simultaneous decrease of the structure size down into the nanorange, increasing know-how is needed to adapt hot embossing to industrial standards. To reach this objective, a German&#x2013;Canadian cooperation project has been launched to study hot embossing theoretically by a process simulation and experimentally. The present publication shall report about the first results of the simulation&#x2014;the modeling and simulation of large area replication based on an eight in. microstructured mold.
Efficient Algorithms for Maximum Regression Depth
Authors: Marc van Kreveld, Joseph S. B. Mitchell, Peter Rousseeuw, Micha Sharir, Jack Snoeyink, Bettina Speckmann
Venue: Discrete Computational Geometry (2008)

We investigate algorithmic questions that arise in the statistical problem of computing lines or hyperplanes of maximum regression depth among a set of n points. We work primarily with a dual representation and find points of maximum undirected depth in an arrangement of lines or hyperplanes. An O(n d ) time and O(n d&#x2212;1) space algorithm computes undirected depth of all points in d&#x00a0;dimensions. Properties of undirected depth lead to an O(nlog&#x2009;2 n) time and O(n) space algorithm for computing a point of maximum depth in two dimensions, which has been improved to an O(nlog&#x2009;n) time algorithm by Langerman and Steiger (Discrete Comput. Geom. 30(2):299&#x2013;309, [2003]). Furthermore, we describe the structure of depth in the plane and higher dimensions, leading to various other geometric and algorithmic results.
Lattice rule algorithms for multivariate approximation in the average case setting
Authors: Frances Y. Kuo, Ian H. Sloan, Henryk Woźniakowski
Venue: Journal of Complexity (2008)

We study multivariate approximation for continuous functions in the average case setting. The space of d variate continuous functions is equipped with the zero mean Gaussian measure whose covariance function is the reproducing kernel of a weighted Korobov space with the smoothness parameter @a>1 and weights @c"d","j for j=1,2,...,d. The weight @c"d","j moderates the behavior of functions with respect to the jth variable, and small @c"d","j means that functions depend weakly on the jth variable. We study lattice rule algorithms which approximate the Fourier coefficients of a function based on function values at lattice sample points. The generating vector for these lattice points is constructed by the component-by-component algorithm, and it is tailored for the approximation problem. Our main interest is when d is large, and we study tractability and strong tractability of multivariate approximation. That is, we want to reduce the initial average case error by a factor @e by using a polynomial number of function values in @e^-^1 and d in the case of tractability, and only polynomial in @e^-^1 in the case of strong tractability. Necessary and sufficient conditions on tractability and strong tractability are obtained by applying known general tractability results for the class of arbitrary linear functionals and for the class of function values. Strong tractability holds for the two classes in the average case setting iff sup"d">="1@?"j"="1^d@c"d","j^s="1@?"j"="1^d@c"d","j^t/log(d+1)
ROBUSTNESS AND DYNAMIC INTERACTION
Authors: Alexander Weinmann
Venue: Cybernetics and Systems (2007)

The article addresses the dynamic interaction of a perturbed multivariable process under control and the systematic reduction of the interaction. As a basis, gradient-oriented steps of the controller are used. The influence of spherical uncertainties is included as the main issue. The controllability Gramian operates for analyzing the interaction, i.e., the interaction is expressed in terms of the energy of selected outputs when the system is excited by selected input impulses. For a given upper bound of the Frobenius norm of the uncertainties, the structural details of their maximum influence is determined. A special type of a selection matrix is defined for the main step in the analytical derivation. Both continuous-time and discrete-time problems, large-scale and small uncertainties are taken into consideration.
Large-scale gyrokinetic particle simulation of microturbulence in magnetically confined fusion plasmas
Authors: S. Ethier, W. M. Tang, R. Walkup, L. Oliker
Venue: IBM Journal of Research and Development (2008)

As the global energy economy makes the transition from fossil fuels toward cleaner alternatives, nuclear fusion becomes an attractive potential solution for satisfying growing needs. Fusion, the power source of the stars, has been the focus of active research since the early, 1950s. While progress has been impressive--especially for magnetically confined plasma devices called tokamaks--the design of a practical power plant remains an outstanding challenge. A key topic of current interest is microturbulence, which is believed to be responsible for the unacceptably large leakage of energy and particles out of the hot plasma core. Understanding and controlling this process is of utmost importance for operating current devices and designing future ones. In addressing such issues, the Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code (GTC) was developed to study the global influence of microturbulence on particle and energy confinement. It has been optimized on the IBM Blue Gene/L™ (BG/L) computer, achieving essentially linear scaling on more than 30,000 processors. A full simulation of unprecedented phase-space resolution was carried out with 32,768 processors on the BG/L supercomputer located at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, providing new insights on the influence of collisions on microturbulence.
Simple is beautiful
Authors: Marianne M. Lee, Michael K. Chan, Ralf Bundschuh
Venue: Bioinformatics (2008)

Motivation: The deluge of biological information from different genomic initiatives and the rapid advancement in biotechnologies have made bioinformatics tools an integral part of modern biology. Among the widely used sequence alignment tools, BLAST and PSI-BLAST are arguably the most popular. PSI-BLAST, which uses an iterative profile position specific score matrix (PSSM)-based search strategy, is more sensitive than BLAST in detecting weak homologies, thus making it suitable for remote homolog detection. Many refinements have been made to improve PSI-BLAST, and its computational efficiency and high specificity have been much touted. Nevertheless, corruption of its profile via the incorporation of false positive sequences remains a major challenge. Results: We have developed a simple and elegant approach to resolve the problem of model corruption in PSI-BLAST searches. We hypothesized that combining results from the first (least-corrupted) profile with results from later (most sensitive) iterations of PSI-BLAST provides a better discriminator for true and false hits. Accordingly, we have derived a formula that utilizes the E-values from these two PSI-BLAST iterations to obtain a figure of merit for rank-ordering the hits. Our verification results based on a ‘gold-standard’ test set indicate that this figure of merit does indeed delineate true positives from false positives better than PSI-BLAST E-values. Perhaps what is most notable about this strategy is that it is simple and straightforward to implement. Contact: bundschuh@mps.ohio-state.edu
ViewpointEnvisioning the future of computing research
Authors: Ed Lazowska
Venue: Communications of the ACM (2008)

Advances in computing have changed our lives---the Computing Community Consortium aims to help the research community continue that lineage.
Towards a Multilevel Simulation Approach Based on Holonic Multiagent Systems
Authors: Nicolas Gaud, Stéphane Galland, Abderrafiâa Koukam
Venue: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Computer Modeling and Simulation (2008)

Simulation is an appropriate approach for studying complex systems that are inacessible through direct observations and measurements. In a simulation involving a great number of interacting entities, it is difficult to create a reliable and tractable abstraction of the real reference system. One of the involved problems is amount of computational resources required to handle microscopic simulation of large number of entities. One solution is to use macroscopic models. However, this type of models may be at hand unavailable or not reliable, or it doesn’t allow observations of individual behaviours. In this paper a multilevel simulation model is proposed to dynamically adapt the level of simulated behaviours while being as faithful as possible to the reference model. Our approach is based on Holonic Multi-Agent Systems and provides a generic scheduling model for multilevel simulations.
Mental models, consistency and programming aptitude
Authors: Richard Bornat, Saeed Dehnadi, Simon
Venue: Proceedings of the tenth conference on Australasian computing education - Volume 78 (2008)

Learning to program is notoriously difficult. Substantial failure rates plague introductory programming courses the world over, and have increased rather than decreased over the years. Despite a great deal of research into teaching methods and student responses, there have been to date no strong predictors of success in learning to program. Two years ago we appeared to have discovered an exciting and enigmatic new predictor of success in a first programming course. We now report that after six experiments, involving more than 500 students at six institutions in three countries, the predictive effect of our test has failed to live up to that early promise. We discuss the strength of the effects that have been observed and the reasons for some apparent failures of prediction.
Reducing wakeup latency and energy of MTCMOS circuits via keeper insertion
Authors: Charbel J. Akl, Magdy A. Bayoumi
Venue: Proceeding of the 13th international symposium on Low power electronics and design (2008)

A simple yet effective technique that aims at reducing the energy and latency overheads incurred during the wakeup period of MTCMOS circuits is presented in this paper. One or more high-Vth keepers are inserted in MTCMOS combinational logic to reduce the metastability time that causes excessive short circuit current during mode transition and to minimize spurious glitches at internal circuit nodes. Employing the proposed keeper insertion technique in a 16-bit MTCMOS adder, up to 17.5% average wakeup energy and 54.6% wakeup latency reductions are achieved with negligible runtime power and latency overheads, while maintaining the standby energy efficiency of the original MTCMOS design.
On the Performance of Power and Rate Control in STDMA Multihop Networks with Advanced Antennas
Authors: Marvin Sánchez G., Jens Zander, Bo Hagerman
Venue: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Networking (2008)

The introduction of advanced radio resource management features such as directional antennas, power control and variable data rates have been proposed to increase the performance of multihop wireless networks. In this paper we study the combined effects of adaptive rate selection and power control in Spatial Time Division Multiple Access (STDMA) networks where nodes are equipped with advanced (beamforming) antennas. In our evaluation, the rates are selected from a discrete set. To assess the optimum performance of the various techniques, joint scheduling, rate and power control is done by solving a non-linear optimization problem. The results show that variable rates schemes can significantly improve the end-to-end network throughput compared to fixed rate schemes, whereas power control adds only a limited additional gain. The latter effect becomes even more pronounced as more narrow-beam antennas are used.
Evolutionary approach to combined multiple models tuning
Authors: Gregor Stiglic, Peter Kokol
Venue: International Journal of Knowledge-based and Intelligent Engineering Systems (2007)

This paper presents a combination of Combined Multiple Models (CMM) technique and evolutionary approach that is used for tuning of multiple parameters. Proposed hybrid classifier was tested in microarray gene expression analysis domain. This domain was chosen intentionally, because of the nature of Combined Multiple Models classifiers that are specialized in solving problems with high dimensionality and contain low number of samples. Evolutionary tuning of parameters in combination with validation dataset enables fine tuning of parameters that are usually set to pre-defined values. Using this technique another step in leveling the accuracy of comprehensible classifiers to those represented by ensembles of classifiers was made.
An efficient method to generate feasible paths for basis path testing
Authors: Jun Yan, Jian Zhang
Venue: Information Processing Letters (2008)

Basis path testing is a very powerful structural testing criterion. The number of test paths equals to the cyclomatic complexity of program defined by McCabe. Traditional test generation methods select the paths either without consideration of the constraints of variables or interactively. In this note, an efficient method is presented to generate a set of feasible basis paths. The experiments show that this method can generate feasible basis paths for real-world C programs automatically in acceptable time.