ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Kernel approach to possibilistic C-means clustering
Authors: Frank Chung-Hoon Rhee, Kil-Soo Choi, Byung-In Choi
Venue: International Journal of Intelligent Systems (2009)

Kernel approaches can improve the performance of conventional clustering or classification algorithms for complex distributed data. This is achieved by using a kernel function, which is defined as the inner product of two values obtained by a transformation function. In doing so, this allows algorithms to operate in a higher dimensional space (i.e., more degrees of freedom for data to be meaningfully partitioned) without having to compute the transformation. As a result, the fuzzy kernel C-means (FKCM) algorithm, which uses a distance measure between patterns and cluster prototypes based on a kernel function, can obtain more desirable clustering results than fuzzy C-means (FCM) for not only spherical data but also nonspherical data. However, it can still be sensitive to noise as in the FCM algorithm. In this paper, to improve the drawback of FKCM, we propose a kernel possibilistic C-means (KPCM) algorithm that applies the kernel approach to the possibilistic C-means (PCM) algorithm. The method includes a variance updating method for Gaussian kernels for each clustering iteration. Several experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can outperform other algorithms for general data with additive noise. &copy; 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Defect detection in patterned wafers using multichannel Scanning Electron Microscope
Authors: Maria Zontak, Israel Cohen
Venue: Signal Processing (2009)

Recent computational methods of wafer defect detection often inspect Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images of the wafer. In this paper, we propose a kernel-based approach to multichannel defect detection, which relies on simultaneous acquisition of three different images for each sample in a SEM tool. The reconstruction of a source patch from reference patches in the three channels is constrained by a similarity criterion across the three SEM images. The improved performance of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated, compared to a single-channel kernel-based defect detection method.
Finding frequent co-occurring terms in relational keyword search
Authors: Yufei Tao, Jeffrey Xu Yu
Venue: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Extending Database Technology: Advances in Database Technology (2009)

Given a set Q of keywords, conventional keyword search (KS) returns a set of tuples, each of which (i) is obtained from a single relation, or by joining multiple relations, and (ii) contains all the keywords in Q. This paper proposes a relevant problem called frequent co-occurring term (FCT) retrieval. Specifically, given a keyword set Q and an integer k, a FCT query reports the k terms that are not in Q, but appear most frequently in the result of a KS query with the same Q. FCT search is able to discover the concepts that are closely related to Q. Furthermore, it is also an effective tool for refining the keyword set Q of traditional keyword search. While a FCT query can be trivially supported by solving the corresponding KS query, we provide a faster algorithm that extracts the correct results without evaluating any KS query at all. The effectiveness and efficiency of our techniques are verified with extensive experiments on real data.
Towards trajectory anonymization: a generalization-based approach
Authors: Mehmet Ercan Nergiz, Maurizio Atzori, Yucel Saygin
Venue: Proceedings of the SIGSPATIAL ACM GIS 2008 International Workshop on Security and Privacy in GIS and LBS (2008)

Trajectory datasets are becoming more and more popular due to the massive usage of GPS and other location-based devices and services. In this paper, we address privacy issues regarding the identification of individuals in static trajectory datasets. We provide privacy protection by definig trajectory k-anonymity, meaning every released information refers to at least k users/trajectories. We propose a novel generalization-based approach that applies to trajectories and sequences in general. We also suggest the use of a simple random reconstruction of the original dataset from the anonymization, to overcome possible drawbacks of generalization approaches. We present a utility metric that maximizes the probability of a good representation and propose trajectory anonymization techniques to address time and space sensitive applications. The experimental results over synthetic trajectory datasets show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Semantic Exchange of Medicinal Data: A Way Towards Open Healthcare Systems
Authors: Juha Puustjärvi, Leena Puustjärvi
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 Third International Conference on Digital Society (2009)

Recently several organizations in the healthcare sector have produced standards and representation forms using XML. However, the introduction of these XML-based technologies is not enough to provide a means to interpret the semantics of the exchanged messages. Instead communicating medicinal information systems are hard-coded to only work together. As a result extending the systems by new parties as well as introducing new message types is inconvenient typically requiring long lasting standardization processes. How to replace hard-coded medicinal information systems by the open healthcare information systems that support semantic interoperability, are extensible and maintainable is the topic of this paper. In particular, we described our work on using RDF-statements in exchanging messages. In such a setting, the semantics of the exchanged data is available with the data, which makes the data machine processable. We also describe how communicating medicinal information systems can use XSLT-transformations in picking out their needed information from the exchanged messages.
A step-wise refinement approach for enhancing e-voting acceptance
Authors: Christos Manolopoulos, Dimitris Sofotassios, Polyxeni Nakou, Yannis Stamatiou, Anastasia Panagiotaki, Paul Spirakis
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (2008)

The successful transformation of e-Government from a nice idea into a successful reality had been hindered by a variety of factors ranging from bureaucratic and legislative inertia to the inability of countries to achieve a sufficient IT penetration in their societies. Nowadays, the fall in IT prices, the development of innovative IT solutions and the rise in IT literacy in a number of countries has, at least tackled the latter issue. However, people still are not as enthusiastic, as it was envisaged by technocrats and politicians, in using IT solutions to pass from e-Government to e-Governance, a notable example of which is e-Voting. In this paper we argue that efforts to introduce complex e-Government and e-Participation applications should be gradual and develop solutions hand-in-hand with in-field trials that increase (also gradually) in complexity and people inclusiveness, so as to handle the various forms of social inertia successfully. We present our experience in the e-Voting domain and suggest that a similar approach in e-Voting (and other demanding e-Government/e-Participation applications) could fare better to success than introducing to people a system that suddenly appears and claims to be the "perfect", all-in-one, solution.
Dynamic SLAs management in service oriented environments
Authors: Giuseppe Di Modica, Orazio Tomarchio, Lorenzo Vita
Venue: Journal of Systems and Software (2009)

The increasing adoption of service oriented architectures across different administrative domains, forces service providers to use effective mechanisms and strategies of resource management in order for them to be able to guarantee the quality levels their customers demands during service provisioning. Service level agreements (SLA) are the most common mechanism used to establish agreements on the quality of a service (QoS) between a service provider and a service consumer. The WS-Agreement specification, developed by the Open Grid Forum, is a Web Service protocol to establish agreements on the QoS level to be guaranteed in the provision of a service. The committed agreement cannot be modified during service provision and is effective until all activities pertaining to it are finished or until one of the signing party decides to terminate it. In B2B scenarios where several service providers are involved in the composition of a service, and each of them plays both the parts of provider and customer, several one-to-one SLAs need to be signed. In such a rigid context the global QoS of the final service can be strongly affected by any violation on each single SLA. In order to prevent such violations, SLAs need to adapt to any possible needs that might come up during service provision. In this work we focus on the WS-Agreement specification and propose to enhance the flexibility of its approach. We integrate new functionality to the protocol that enable the parties of a WS-Agreement to re-negotiate and modify its terms during the service provision, and show how a typical scenario of service composition can benefit from our proposal.
Identifying strategic management concepts: An analytic network process approach
Authors: Umut Asan, Ayberk Soyer
Venue: Computers and Industrial Engineering (2009)

This paper presents an approach to the identification of an organization's strategic management concepts (SMCs) - mission, vision, values and competences. The highly qualitative relationships among these concepts are operationalized using the Analytic Network Process (ANP). As ANP captures the outcome of dependence and feedback between components of elements, the proposed approach enables us to handle indirect relationships and complex interactions existing among the SMCs. The alternatives with the highest overall priorities, resulting from the ANP, are selected as the organization's most dominant SMC set. To improve the quality of the decision further analysis of the ANP results is suggested. Accordingly, alternative concept sets are derived by applying two approaches - bottom-up and top-down. The bottom-up approach indicates an explorative perspective where only common values and core competences held by the organization are used to identify the corresponding mission and vision statements. On the other hand, the top-down approach indicates a normative perspective where the necessary values and competences are determined according to a given desired vision statement. The proposed ANP approach has been applied to the Industrial Engineering Department (IED) of Istanbul Technical University. In light of the dominant, bottom-up and top-down sets, a final set of SMCs has been suggested for the IED.
Virtual Shinto Shrine
Authors: A. Plante, S. Tanaka, Y. Iwadate
Venue: Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems - Volume 02 (1999)

The Virtual Shinto Shrine is an extensive image-based virtual tour of the Fushimi Inari Shrine located in the Kyoto's mountains. Its ascending maze-like lay-out and the thousands of vermilion Torii Gates used to guide pilgrims to the summit make the visit to this shrine a unique experience. We have created this Virtual Tour to preserve and share the sacred beauty of this site with others.
Group projects in software engineering education
Authors: Jiang Guo
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2009)

Software engineering is a very important course in computer science program. In our software engineering education, we have adopted group-based projects as an approach to improve students' learning experience. The group-based collaborative projects will not only enhance student problem solving and critical thinking skills, but also will increase student motivation, confidence and resilience. This paper discusses our small-group-based approach in our software engineering course.
Bounded model checking of software using SMT solvers instead of SAT solvers
Authors: Alessandro Armando, Jacopo Mantovani, Lorenzo Platania
Venue: International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT) (2009)

C bounded model checking (cbmc) has proved to be a successful approach to automatic software analysis. The key idea is to (i) build a propositional formula whose models correspond to program traces (of bounded length) that violate some given property and (ii) use state-of-the-art SAT solvers to check the resulting formulae for satisfiability. In this paper, we propose a generalisation of the cbmc approach on the basis of an encoding into richer (but still decidable) theories than propositional logic. We show that our approach may lead to considerably more compact formulae than those obtained with cbmc. We have built a prototype implementation of our technique that uses a satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solver to solve the resulting formulae. Computer experiments indicate that our approach compares favourably with&#x2014;and on some significant problems outperforms&#x2014;cbmc.
A Fully Dynamic Algorithm to Test the Upward Planarity of Single-Source Embedded Digraphs
Authors: Aimal Rextin, Patrick Healy
Venue: Graph Drawing: 16th International Symposium, GD 2008, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, September 21-24, 2008. Revised Papers (2009)

In this paper, we present a dynamic algorithm that checks if a single-source embedded digraph is upward planar in the presence of edge insertions and edge deletions. Let G &phi; be an upward planar single-source embedded digraph and let G&prime; &phi;&prime; be a single-source embedded digraph obtained by updating G &phi; . We show that the upward planarity of G&prime; &phi;&prime; can be checked in O(logn) amortized time when the external face is fixed.
Study on particle swarm algorithm and its application in mechanical design based on MATLAB
Authors: Xiao Qimin, Liu Liwei, Xiao Qili
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd WSEAS international conference on Computer engineering and applications (2009)

Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm is a good method in solving optimal problem. Mechanical springs are used in machines to exert force, to provide flexibility, and to store or absorb energy. The weight of spring is an important measure of quality. In this paper, we mainly introduce the Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm and its application in helical spring based on MATLAB. Directed by the theory of Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm, the complex helical spring optimal design model with three design variables and eleven inequality constraints conditions is established. When the model is simulated in MATLAB the minimal optimal value of variables and weight of helical spring can be obtained. Simulating Result shows that Particle Swarm Optimization is practical in solving complicated optimal design problems and effectively on avoiding constraint of solution.
Sub-warhead Impact Point Sampling Simulation Under Ellipse Ring Dispersion
Authors: Daqiao Zhang, Yong Xian, Minghai Wang, Jian Wang, Shuangka Yan
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Electronic Computer Technology (2009)

Considering diverse dispersion characteristics of sub-warhead in accordance with the existing documents, the property of ellipse ring dispersion was specific by sub-warhead trajectory simulation. According to this specific property, adopting three kinds of sampling methods, such as rectangle, bound and reverse-transform etc, to get sub-warhead impact point sampling formula under ellipse ring dispersion. By Pearson uniformity test, the good uniformity of simulation impact point was found. Taking trajectory simulation result as the standard, more real simulation result was got when adopting ellipse ring dispersion in sub-warhead impact point dispersion simulation.
Cross-layer optimization for end-to-end rate allocation in multi-radio wireless mesh networks
Authors: Jian Tang, Guoliang Xue, Weiyi Zhang
Venue: Wireless Networks (2009)

In this paper, we study rate allocation for a set of end-to-end communication sessions in multi-radio wireless mesh networks. We propose cross-layer schemes to solve the joint rate allocation, routing, scheduling, power control and channel assignment problems with the goals of maximizing network throughput and achieving certain fairness. Fairness is addressed using both a simplified max-min fairness model and the well-known proportional fairness model. Our schemes can also offer performance upper bounds such as an upper bound on the maximum throughput. Numerical results show that our proportional fair rate allocation scheme achieves a good tradeoff between throughput and fairness.
Semantic-Aware Service Quality Negotiation
Authors: Marco Comuzzi, Kyriakos Kritikos, Pierluigi Plebani
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on Towards a Service-Based Internet (2008)

The goal of Web service (WS) discovery is to select WSs that satisfy both the users' functional and non functional requirements. Focusing on non functional requirements, a matchmaking algorithm usually takes place to verify if the quality offered by the WS provider overlaps the quality requested by the user. Since quality, in a provider perspective, is costly, a further step, a negotiation, should be performed to identify a mutually agreed quality level. In this work, we join previous work on a semantic-based quality definition model and WS negotiation, to provide a framework enabling semantic-aware automated WS negotiation. More specifically, OWL-Q, a semantic QoS-based WS description language, is extended with appropriate negotiation concepts and properties.
Approximate Retrieval Approaches for Incremental Similarity Searches
Authors: Alessandra Lumini, Dario Maio
Venue: Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems - Volume 02 (1999)

Similarity selections of objects in a very large database can be executed by an incremental search on the basis of their distance from a given point. To cope with this problem, indexing support and retrieval strategies, that are able to ensure good performance for different kinds of queries, need to be developed. In this work we propose incremental and approximate retrieval approaches for searching points in a d-dimensional metric space. Four new retrieval algorithms coupled with dynamical disk-based spatial structures are discussed and some experimental results are presented. In particular, two strategies, named Chessboard and City Block respectively, implement approximate incremental searches on a Grid File data structure and the others, Heap Queue and Virtual Tree, apply to hierarchical data structures such as the R-tree.
Greedy Algorithm for Attribute Reduction
Authors: Beata Zielosko, Marcin Piliszczuk
Venue: Fundamenta Informaticae (2008)

In the paper the accuracy of greedy algorithmfor construction of partial tests (superreducts) and partial decision rules is considered. Results of experiments with greedy algorithm are described.
A flexible visual inspection system based on neural networks
Authors: P. Liatsis, J. Y. Goulermas, X. -J. Zeng, E. Milonidis
Venue: International Journal of Systems Science (2009)

In this work, we propose a neural networks-based machine vision system, which is intended to act as a reconfigurable inspection tool, for use in manufacturing environments. The processing engine of the system is a second-order neural network, which extracts geometric features invariant to translation and rotation. A major issue with the use of higher-order neural networks is the combinatorial explosion of the higher-order terms, which is addressed here with the use of the alternative image representation strategy of coarse coding. We developed a genetic algorithms tool, which allows the automated determination of the optimal number of hidden units in the neural networks architecture. The inspection system is tested in two application areas, namely inspection of axisymmetric components and classification of rivets. Numerous tests are carried out to evaluate the robustness of the proposed system to complex noise sources.
Hybrid dissemination: adding determinism to probabilistic multicasting in large-scale P2P systems
Authors: Spyros Voulgaris, Maarten van Steen
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM/IFIP/USENIX 2007 International Conference on Middleware (2007)

Epidemic protocols have demonstrated remarkable scalability and robustness in disseminating information on internet-scale, dynamic P2P systems. However, popular instances of such protocols suffer from a number of significant drawbacks, such as increased message overhead in push-based systems, or low dissemination speed in pull-based ones. In this paper we study push-based epidemic dissemination algorithms, in terms of hit ratio, communication overhead, dissemination speed, and resilience to failures and node churn. We devise a hybrid push-based dissemination algorithm, combining probabilistic with deterministic properties, which limits message overhead to an order of magnitude lower than that of the purely probabilistic dissemination model, while retaining strong probabilistic guarantees for complete dissemination of messages. Our extensive experimentation shows that our proposed algorithm outperforms that model both in static and dynamic network scenarios, as well as in the face of large-scale catastrophic failures. Moreover, the proposed algorithm distributes the dissemination load uniformly on all participating nodes.
Failure detectors for wireless sensor-actuator systems
Authors: Hamza A. Zia, Nigamanth Sridhar, Shivakumar Sastry
Venue: Ad Hoc Networks (2009)

Wireless sensor-actuator systems (WSAS) offer exciting opportunities for emerging applications by facilitating fine-grained monitoring and control, and dense instrumentation. The large scale of such systems increases the need for such systems to tolerate and cope with failures, in a localized and decentralized manner. We present abstractions for detecting node failures and link failures caused by topology changes in a WSAS. These abstractions were designed and implemented as a set of reusable components in nesC under TinyOS. Results, which demonstrate the performance and viability of the abstractions, based on experiments on an 80 node testbed are presented. In the future, these abstractions can be extended to detect and cope with larger classes of failures in WSAS.
Learning terrain segmentation with classifier ensembles for autonomous robot navigation in unstructured environments
Authors: Michael J. Procopio, Jane Mulligan, Greg Grudic
Venue: Journal of Field Robotics (2009)

Autonomous robot navigation in unstructured outdoor environments is a challenging area of active research and is currently unsolved. The navigation task requires identifying safe, traversable paths that allow the robot to progress toward a goal while avoiding obstacles. Stereo is an effective tool in the near field, but used alone leads to a common failure mode in autonomous navigation in which suboptimal trajectories are followed due to nearsightedness, or the robot's inability to distinguish obstacles and safe terrain in the far field. This can be addressed through the use of machine learning methods to accomplish near-to-far learning, in which near-field terrain appearance and stereo readings are used to train models able to predict far-field terrain. This paper proposes to enhance existing, memoryless near-to-far learning approaches through the use of classifier ensembles that allow terrain models trained on data seen at different points in time to be preserved and referenced later. These stored models serve as memory, and we show that they can be leveraged for more effective far-field terrain classification on future images seen by the robot. A five-factor, full-factorial, repeated-measures experimental evaluation is performed on hand-labeled data sets taken directly from the problem domain. The experiments result in many statistically significant findings, the most important being that the proposed near-to-far Best-K Ensemble Algorithm, with appropriate parameter selection, outperforms the single-model, nonensemble baseline approach in far-field terrain classification. Several other findings that inform the use of near-to-far ensemble methods are also presented. &copy; 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.