ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Escaping local minima through hierarchical model selection: Automatic object discovery, segmentation, and tracking in video
Authors: Nebojsa Jojic, John Winn, Larry Zitnick
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition - Volume 1 (2006)

Recently, the generative modeling approach to video segmentation has been gaining popularity in the computer vision community. For example, the flexible sprites framework has been studied in, among other references, [11,13,14,24]. In general, detailed generative models are vulnerable to intractability of inference and local minima problems when approximations are made (see, e.g., [25]). Recent approaches to dealing with these problems focused on inference techniques for increasingly more expressive models. Simpler models, on the other hand, while less precise, are often not just faster, but less prone to local minima. In addition, while many different models may be based on similar hidden variables, some models may be more amenable to inference of some of the shared variables, while other models lead to efficient and accurate inference of other components of the hierarchical data description. In this paper, we empirically illustrate that forcing multiple models to share the posterior distribution leads to inference less prone to local minima. We define a set of key hidden variables that describe aspects of the data that we care about. The relationships among these key variables are defined through multiple conditional distribution models on the same pairs of variables, controlled by switch variables. The posterior distribution over the key hidden variables is shared, and inference of the switch variables serves as a mechanism for combinatorial model selection. The key observation here is that while the most expressive model often ends up a winner by the end of the iterative learning of model parameters, early iterations are dominated by simpler model components, and upon convergence, the free energy is lower than the ones reached by switching on all the most complex components from the beginning of the learning. We illustrate the performance of this approach on the unsupervised video segmentation task.
Data-Driven Multithreading Using Conventional Microprocessors
Authors: Costas Kyriacou Paraskevas Evripidou, Pedro Trancoso
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (2006)

This paper describes the Data-Driven Multithreading (DDM) model and how it may be implemented using off-the-shelf microprocessors. Data-Driven Multithreading is a nonblocking multithreading execution model that tolerates internode latency by scheduling threads for execution based on data availability. Scheduling based on data availability can be used to exploit cache management policies that reduce significantly cache misses. Such policies include firing a thread for execution only if its data is already placed in the cache. We call this cache management policy the CacheFlow policy. The core of the DDM implementation presented is a memory mapped hardware module that is attached directly to the processor's bus. This module is responsible for thread scheduling and is known as the Thread Synchronization Unit (TSU). The evaluation of DDM was performed using simulation of the Data-Driven Network of Workstations ({\rm{D}}^2{\rm{NOW}}). {\rm{D}}^2{\rm{NOW}} is a DDM implementation built out of regular workstations augmented with the TSU. The simulation was performed for nine scientific applications, seven of which belong to the SPLASH-2 suite. The results show that DDM can tolerate well both the communication and synchronization latency. Overall, for 16 and 32-node {\rm{D}}^2{\rm{NOW}} machines the speedup observed was 14.4 and 26.0, respectively.
An Alignment Equation for Using Mind Maps to Filter Learning Queries from Google
Authors: Imran A. Zualkernan, Mohammed A. AbuJayyab, Yaser A. Ghanam
Venue: Proceedings of the Sixth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (2006)

Search engines like Google play a critical role in life-long learning. However, the query capabilities of such engines remain simple and often yield a result set that is too large. In addition, search engines like Google rely on page ranking algorithm that represents the "collective consciousness" of millions of users. Learning about specifics often involves context. This paper shows how mind maps can be used as a contextual mechanism to specify what needs to be learned and to filter and retrieve the relevant sources of learning from the internet. In specific, a concept of "alignment" is introduced that filters only those information sources that are globally aligned to the mind map. The filter is implemented as a combinatorial optimization algorithm using Simulated Annealing.
Will Mobiles Dream of Electric Sheep? Expectations of the New Generation of Mobile Users: Misfits with Practice and Research.
Authors: Paul Fox, Davar Rezania, Jonathan Wareham, Ellen Christiaanse
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Business (2006)

Ubiquitous computing is the result when the technology becomes an inseparable part of our lives, but is so embedded that it disappears (Weiser, 1991). While ubiquitous computing represents a vision of the future, this vision has yet to be corroborated by the users themselves. This article investigates future expectations for ubiquitous computing according to a selection of young adults, compares this vision with prior research, and proposes a theoretical model which extends prior research. Semi-structured interviews were conducted; then the data was coded and organized according to a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), and compared with prior theory. Four overall themes emerged from the data: Device Independence, Awareness, Automation and Location Independence. The relationships between these themes were analyzed and gaps with prior research were examined. The study concludes that ubiquitous computing will require a new form of interaction as the technology becomes more pervasive and decision making becomes more automatic, that is, performed by the device/software itself. In addition to person-to-person and person-todevice interaction, ubiquitous computing, or ucommerce, means increased levels of device-todevice interaction. This will require different behaviors on the part of the user compared to that those in traditional commerce, e-commerce, and even m-commerce. How will users react to the idea that detailed personal information is being gathered about them, and that they are being "typified" by the software? Furthermore, the software must then make decisions based on its understanding of the situation, but what if these decisions are inappropriate? What types of intervention will the user require in order to feel comfortable with these automated processes? How can the user be compensated with new, value-added services for the resulting loss of control? Further empirical studies are necessary in order to explore these questions and understand their implications for future technology development and user adoption.
Guest Editors' Introduction: PC Software--Word Processing for Everyone
Authors: Paul E. Ceruzzi, Burton Grad
Venue: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (2006)

In January 1975, Popular Electronics featured on its cover a photograph of the Altair computer and, inside the magazine, an article announcing Altair's availability in kit form. One may quibble over whether it was that precise article that inaugurated personal computing, but in any case, within a few short years the PC era had arrived.
Factory automation support technology (FAST)
Authors: Jennifer J. Ockerman, Lawrence J. Najjar, J. Christopher Thompson
Venue: Proceedings of the 1996 international conference on Learning sciences (1996)

Factory Automation Support Technology (FAST) is a new project for Georgia Tech researchers. FAST is intended to: 1) train employees as they perform their jobs, rather than before they perform their jobs, and 2) meet the needs of today's mobile work force. To meet these needs, FAST combines performance support software with wearable hardware. We hope that this will decrease the amount of nonproductive training time while improving worker performance.
An Application of Question Answering System for Collaborative Learning
Authors: Chun-Chia Wang, Jason C. Hung, Che-Yu Yang, Timothy K. Shih
Venue: Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International ConferenceWorkshops on Distributed Computing Systems (2006)

With the rapid development of E-learning, collaborative learning is an important kind of group learning mode. It emphasizes the communication and information sharing among group members. Current collaborative learning systems haven't reached a high interaction degree between the students and the instructor to gain knowledge. In order to solve this problem, this paper introduces a semantic-based automated question answering (Q&A) system like a virtual teacher to respond to student questions online. Through the proposed mechanism, the Q&A knowledge base will be enriched in the future process of Q&A. Furthermore, not only the students can get answers to their questions, but also the instructors could know what problems students encountered in learning. This would be a great help for both the instructor and the students in collaborative learning environment. Keywords: automated question answering system, natural language processing, collaborative learning, distance learning.
Capability-based Project Scheduling with Genetic Algorithms
Authors: Yujia Ge, Carl Chang
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Inteligence for Modelling Control and Automation and International Conference on Intelligent Agents Web Technologies and International Commerce (2006)

Task assignments and scheduling have always been crucial to the software development process, and the quality of those assignments will greatly influence the success of a project. During the software project management process, it is intuitive but often neglected to assign the right people to do the right task. Our earlier models, task-based model and timeline-based model, applied genetic algorithms (GAs) to software project scheduling problems. This paper extends those works by proposing a capability-based scheduling framework, in which personnel/team capability, is simulated. The new model is described along with a new GA that produces optimal or near-optimal schedules. Simulation results show that this new model enhances the ability of GA-based approaches and provides decision support under more realistic conditions.
Mental map preserving graph drawing using simulated annealing
Authors: Yi-Yi Lee, Chun-Cheng Lin, Hsu-Chun Yen
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 Asia-Pacific Symposium on Information Visualisation - Volume 60 (2006)

Information visualization has attracted much attention in recent years in many fields of science and engineering. In many applications, graphs are 'dynamic' in the sense that changes are constantly applied to a graph to reflect the evolution of the system behaviour represented by the graph. In the past, the concept of the so-called "mental map" has largely been ignored. Users often have to spend a lot of time relearning the redrawn graphs. This paper proposes an effective way to release the user from such kind of a distasteful job by maintaining a high degree of the "mental map" for general graphs when graphs are redrawn. Our experimental results suggest this new approach to be promising.
An alternative approach for neural network evolution with a genetic algorithm: Crossover by combinatorial optimization
Authors: Nicolás García-Pedrajas, Domingo Ortiz-Boyer, César Hervás-Martínez
Venue: Neural Networks (2006)

In this work we present a new approach to crossover operator in the genetic evolution of neural networks. The most widely used evolutionary computation paradigm for neural network evolution is evolutionary programming. This paradigm is usually preferred due to the problems caused by the application of crossover to neural network evolution. However, crossover is the most innovative operator within the field of evolutionary computation. One of the most notorious problems with the application of crossover to neural networks is known as the permutation problem. This problem occurs due to the fact that the same network can be represented in a genetic coding by many different codifications. Our approach modifies the standard crossover operator taking into account the special features of the individuals to be mated. We present a new model for mating individuals that considers the structure of the hidden layer and redefines the crossover operator. As each hidden node represents a non-linear projection of the input variables, we approach the crossover as a problem on combinatorial optimization. We can formulate the problem as the extraction of a subset of near-optimal projections to create the hidden layer of the new network. This new approach is compared to a classical crossover in 25 real-world problems with an excellent performance. Moreover, the networks obtained are much smaller than those obtained with classical crossover operator.
An integrated improved CCII topology for resistive sensor application
Authors: Giuseppe Ferri, Vincenzo Stornelli, Mauro Fragnoli
Venue: Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (2006)

In this paper a novel low voltage low power topology of second generation current conveyor (CCII) is presented. The internal CCII stages have been designed to obtain, at X and Z nodes, reduced parasitic impedances, so improving CCII performance. As an application example, the here proposed CCII, designed in standard CMOS technology (AMS 0.35 ¿m), has been used to design an integrated resistive sensor interface, showing the capability of compensating the non idealities of passive and active components. Preliminary and post-layout simulations show an excellent linearity for what concerns sensor sensitivity.
An Analytical Model for DDoS Attacks and Defense
Authors: Yang Xiang, Zhongwen Li
Venue: Proceedings of the International Multi-Conference on Computing in the Global Information Technology (2006)

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack has been identified as one of the most serious problems on the Internet. While much of the current research focus on DDoS countermeasures, little attention has been paid on DDoS modeling, which is one of the important aspects that can help provide better solutions against DDoS attacks. This paper proposes an analytical model for the interactions between DDoS attack party and defense party, which allows us to have a deep insight of the interactions between the attack and defense parties. Many refinements of the basic analytical model such as reinforcement of the defense party and loss in defense party are given in the paper, which suit for many real DDoS scenarios. Moreover, the applications of this model demonstrate that the model can precisely estimate the effectiveness of a DDoS defense system before it encounters different attacks and quantitatively estimate the optimal level of investment on DDoS defense system. Additionally, it can also be applied to model some other network security problems such as virus and spam defense.
Parameterized additive neat OWA operators with different orness levels: Research Articles
Authors: Xinwang Liu, Hongwei Lou
Venue: International Journal of Intelligent Systems (2006)

The article proposes an extension of the BADD OWA operator&mdash;ANOWA (additive neat OWA) operator&mdash;and defines its orness measure. Some properties of the weighting function associated with orness level are analyzed. Then two special classes of ANOWA operator with maximum entropy and minimum variance are proposed, and the orness of the BADD OWA operator is discussed. For a given orness level, these ANOWA operators can be uniquely determined. Their aggregation values for any aggregation elements set always monotonically increase with their orness levels. Therefore they can be used as a parameterized aggregation method with orness as its control parameter and to represent the decision maker's preference. &copy; 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 21: 1045&ndash;1072, 2006.
Chaotic BP Neural Network Based Case Retrieval Method
Authors: Chun-Guang Chang, Ding-Wei Wang, Ya-Chen Liu
Venue: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control - Volume 2 (2006)

The principle of chaotic BP neural network is described, the control strategy of annealing strategy is introduced so as to control the chaotic movementduring the later training, and some related conclusions are proved. Then, the implement steps of chaotic BP neural network based case rerieval (CR/CBPNN) methodare introduced.An improved Delphi approach based algorithm is proposed to determine output sample set so as to improved the quality of training.To validate theefficiency of CR/CBPNN method, the time complexity is calculated. The simulation result shows that compared with the nearest neighbor (NN) algorithm it can improvecase retrieval precision for complex system such as dynamic scheduling system for steel-making.
A set of courses for teaching secure software development
Authors: Eduardo B. Fernandez, Shihong Huang, Maria M. Larrondo-Petrie
Venue: Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training Workshops (2006)

A good percentage of the software deployed in industrial/commercial applications is of poor quality, it is unnecessarily complex, and contains numerous flaws that can be exploited by attackers. Every day the press reports of attacks to web sites or databases around the world, resulting in millions of dollars in direct or indirect losses. This situation does not appear to improve. There are several reasons for this situation, including the pressure to bring products to the market quickly, the complexity of modern software, the lack of knowledge about security of most developers, and others. Until recently the only vendors' response to problems of security was to provide patches to fix the latest vulnerability found. However, patches are clearly not the best solution: it is hard for system administrators to keep up with the latest patches and the patch itself may open new possibilities for attack. There are two basic approaches to improve application security: 1) examine final production code and look for possible problems, e.g., buffer overflow conditions [How03] or 2) plan for security from the beginning. We believe that the solution lies in developing secure software from the beginning, applying security principles along the whole lifecycle. As indicated, a good part of the problem is that developers are not, in general, acquainted with security development methods. We see the use of patterns as a fundamental way, even for developers with little experience, to implicitly apply security principles.
Enabling Object Based In-Content Placement for Digital Video Television Systems
Authors: Rudolf Jaeger, Peter Dunker, Andreas Hanusch
Venue: Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (2006)

This paper presents a framework for object based interactivity in Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) Television systems. Based upon pre-recorded MPEG-2 video material an object annotation and synchronization scheme has been designed and implemented enabling the viewer to actively interact on previously marked video objects. The framework comprises an authoring process which extracts the necessary Meta data the introduction of a new timeline in the transport stream and the synchronization process at the client site. To show its feasibility at the client site the MHP platform was used. Obtained results of various content samples indicate that our approach is promising and effective thus offering new service models such as e.g. automatic in-program content placements.
Maximising the information gained from an experimental analysis of code inspection and static analysis for concurrent java components
Authors: Margaret A. Wojcicki, Paul Strooper
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM/IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering (2006)

The results of empirical studies are limited to particular contexts, difficult to generalise and the studies themselves are expensive to perform. Despite these problems, empirical studies in software engineering can be made effective and they are important to both researchers and practitioners. The key to their effectiveness lies in the maximisation of the information that can be gained by examining existing studies, conducting power analyses for an accurate minimum sample size and benefiting from previous studies through replication. This approach was applied in a controlled experiment examining the combination of automated static analysis tools and code inspection in the context of verification and validation (V&V) of concurrent Java components. The combination of these V&V technologies was shown to be cost-effective despite the size of the study, which thus contributes to research in V&V technology evaluation.
Ontologies for modeling and simulation: issues and approaches
Authors: Paul A. Fishwick, John A. Miller
Venue: Proceedings of the 36th conference on Winter simulation (2004)

Ontologies represent the next important phase of the World Wide Web, creating a semantic web which links together disparate pieces of information and knowledge. Creating ontologies within computer simulation can be seen as a logical next phase of the web-based modeling and simulation thrust, where the emphasis is on knowledge and its representation rather than on run-time network characteristics. We introduce the concept of an ontology and then survey two groups performing research in this area at the Universities of Florida and Georgia, respectively.
VIPACES, Verification Interface Primitives for the Development of AXI Compliant Elements and Systems
Authors: Armando Sanchez-Pena, Pedro P. Carballo, Luz Garcia, Antonio Nunez
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th EUROMICRO Conference on Digital System Design (2006)

This paper presents VIPACES (Verification Interface Primitives for the development of AXI Compliant Elements and Systems), a simple environment for the verification of AMBA 3 AXI systems in Verification IP (VIP) production. The elements come from the necessity of creating generic modules, in the verification phase, for this widely used protocol. These primitives are presented as a not compiled library written in SystemC where interfaces are the core of the library. The definition of interfaces instead of generic modules let the user construct custom modules improving the resources spent during the verification phase as well as easily adapting his own modules to the AMBA 3 AXI protocol. As validation scenario, results obtained for an AXI bus connecting IDCT and other processing resources for MPEG4 video decoding are presented.
Backward representation of Markov jump processes and related problems. I. Optimal linear estimation
Authors: A. V. Borisov
Venue: Automation and Remote Control (2006)

The Martingale representation for a class of special Markov jump processes in reverse time is derived and applied to study optimal linear filtering and smoothing of states of nonlinear observation systems.
(t, k) - Diagnosis for Matching Composition Networks under the MM* Model
Authors: Guey-Yun Chang, Gen-Huey Chen, Gerard J. Chang
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (2007)

(t, k) - diagnosis, which is a generalization of sequential diagnosis, requires at least k faulty processors identified and repaired in each iteration provided there are at most t faulty processors, where t\geq k. In this paper, a (t,k){\hbox{-}}\rm diagnosis algorithm under the MM* model is proposed for matching composition networks, which include many well-known interconnection networks, such as hypercubes, crossed cubes, twisted cubes, and Möbius cubes. It is shown that a matching composition network of n dimensions is (\Omega({\frac{2^{n}\ast\log n}{n}}),n){\hbox{-}}\rm diagnosable.