ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Optimization of multi-domain queries on the web
Authors: Daniele Braga, Stefano Ceri, Florian Daniel, Davide Martinenghi
Venue: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (2008)

Where can I attend an interesting database workshop close to a sunny beach? Who are the strongest experts on service computing based upon their recent publication record and accepted European projects? Can I spend an April weekend in a city served by a low-cost direct flight from Milano offering a Mahler's symphony? We regard the above queries as multi-domain queries, i.e., queries that can be answered by combining knowledge from two or more domains (such as: seaside locations, flights, publications, accepted projects, conference offerings, and so on). This information is available on the Web, but no general-purpose software system can accept the above queries nor compute the answer. At the most, dedicated systems support specific multi-domain compositions (e.g., Google-local locates information such as restaurants and hotels upon geographic maps). This paper presents an overall framework for multi-domain queries on the Web. We address the following problems: (a) expressing multi-domain queries with an abstract formalism, (b) separating the treatment of "search" services within the model, by highlighting their differences from "exact" Web services, (c) explaining how the same query can be mapped to multiple "query plans", i.e., a well-defined scheduling of service invocations, possibly in parallel, which complies with their access limitations and preserves the ranking order in which search services return results; (d) introducing cross-domain joins as first-class operation within plans; (e) evaluating the query plans against several cost metrics so as to choose the most promising one for execution. This framework adapts to a variety of application contexts, ranging from end-user-oriented mash-up scenarios up to complex application integration scenarios.
A scheme for ship detection in inhomogeneous regions based on segmentation of SAR images
Authors: F. Zhang, B. Wu
Venue: International Journal of Remote Sensing (2008)

Ship detection in inhomogeneous regions using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is usually confronted with the severe heterogeneities of the oceans; this paper proposes a new detection scheme to overcome this problem. At first, an object-oriented segmentation algorithm is employed to partition the whole SAR image into several uniform regions. Then, for each partitioned region within water areas, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is applied to select the optimal background distribution model, and ship detection is carried out using the adaptive constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detector based on the selected probability density function. Finally, the detection results of each region are merged. An experiment based on an ENVISAT ASAR image of the Yangtze estuary show that the proposed strategy can effectively deal with heterogeneous scenarios in inhomogenous regions and greatly improves the detection results.
Fuzzy axiomatic design-based performance evaluation model for docking facilities in shipbuilding industry: The case of Turkish shipyards
Authors: Metin Celik, Cengiz Kahraman, Selcuk Cebi, I. Deha Er
Venue: Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal (2009)

The closest relationships between ship management companies and shipyards begin with the initial design process of new ships and they continue during the life cycle of operating ships. Periodic docking facilities which can be recognized as the biggest logistical issue in the content of ship maintenance program are the critical processes from the viewpoint of ship owners. Hence, this process should be well-planned and organized to satisfy the various expectations such as quality of service, capacity limitations, and geographical advantages, by taking cost and time constraints into account. Hence, the selection problem with respect to several criteria to find the most suitable shipyards is getting more important for ship management companies. This paper investigates a systematic evaluation model on docking facilities of shipyards to provide a decision aid for technical ship managers and to perform this responsibility in an efficient manner. Multiple criteria fuzzy axiomatic design (FAD) approach is used for selection among shipyards since FAD lets us define the design interval of each criterion. The original contributions of the paper are seemed in both enhancing the theoretical frame of FAD in terms of managing group consensus and performing an application to a real case in maritime industry.
Leaf level early assessment of ozone injuries by passive fluorescence and photochemical reflectance index
Authors: M. Meroni, V. Picchi, M. Rossini, S. Cogliati, C. Panigada, C. Nali, G. Lorenzini, R. Colombo
Venue: International Journal of Remote Sensing (2008)

Excess energy dissipation pathways (heat and fluorescence) were monitored, at leaf level as indicators of plant physiological status, with field spectroscopy techniques on poplar clones subjected to ozone fumigation. Measurements of spectral radiance emerging from a leaf provide a fast, non-destructive method for the assessment of excess energy dissipation: xanthophyll-related heat dissipation was estimated with the photochemical reflectance index (PRI) calculated from a traditional field spectrometer, and steady-state fluorescence (Fs) under natural illumination conditions was estimated by exploiting a variation of the Fraunhofer line-depth principle, where the radiance collected with very high resolution spectrometers (FWHM = 0.13 nm) was spectrally modelled. Both remotely-sensed dissipation pathways responded to fumigation. During a 26-day fumigation experiment, four diurnal cycles of spectral measurements were collected in parallel to meteorological and key physiological variables (active fluorescence, net photosynthesis) and leaf sample collection for pigment extraction. We outline evidence of a link between the remotely-sensed Fs and PRI and leaf physiological status. These results open up new possibilities for assessment of plant stress by means of hyperspectral remote sensing.
The dynamics of functioning investigating societal transitions with partial differential equations
Authors: Hans Haan
Venue: Computational Mathematical Organization Theory (2008)

In this article a mathematical framework is introduced and explored for the study of processes in societal transitions. A transition is conceptualised as a fundamental shift in the functioning of a societal system. The framework views functioning as a real-valued field defined upon a real variable. The initial status quo prior to a transition is captured in a field called the regime and the alternative that possibly takes over is represented in a field called a niche. Think for example of a transition in an energy supply system, where the regime could be centrally produced, fossil fuel based energy supply and a niche decentralised renewable energy production. The article then proceeds to translate theoretical notions on the interactions and dynamics of regimes and niches from transition literature into the language of this framework. This is subsequently elaborated in some simple models and studied analytically or by means of computer simulation.
Error analysis for a temperature and emissivity retrieval algorithm for hyperspectral imaging data
Authors: C. Borel
Venue: International Journal of Remote Sensing (2008)

In hyperspectral thermal data analysis, temperature-emissivity separation (TES) has the same function as reflectance retrieval in the visible and shortwave infrared. The problem, however, is more complicated because, in the thermal infrared (TIR), the surface emits and reflects radiation. The measured radiance is a function of the material's surface emissivity and temperature, reflected down-welling radiance (clear sky, cloud environment) and the path radiance (temperature and water vapour or ozone profiles). The current implementation of the Automatic Retrieval of Temperature and EMIssivity using Spectral Smoothness (ARTEMISS) uses a look-up table (LUT) to determine the best-fitting atmosphere that results in the smallest residual to our own version ARTemiss ISAC (ARTISAC) of the In-Scene Atmospheric Compensation (ISAC) estimated transmission. Over the past few years, we have developed an end-to-end simulation of the hyperspectral exploitation process by generating synthetic data to simulate datasets with 'known' ground truth, modelling propagation through the atmosphere, adding sensor effects (telescope, detector, readout electronics) and radiometric and spectral calibration, and testing the TES algorithm. We present an error analysis in which we shifted the band centres, varied the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the spectral response function, changed the spectral resolution, added noise, and varied the atmospheric model. We also discuss a general method to retrieve the spectral smile as a function of wavelength and the FWHM from hyperspectral data with only approximate spectral calibration. We found that our algorithm has problems finding a unique solution when the water vapour exceeds about 3 g cm-2 and we discuss remedies for this situation. To speed up the LUT generation we have developed fast and robust initial atmospheric parameter estimators (water vapour, ozone, near-surface atmospheric layer temperature) based on channel ratios and brightness temperatures in atmospheric absorption regions for the longwave infrared.
Finite Element Approximation of a Three Dimensional Phase Field Model for Void Electromigration
Authors: L'ubomír Baňas, Robert Nürnberg
Venue: Journal of Scientific Computing (2008)

We consider a finite element approximation of a phase field model for the evolution of voids by surface diffusion in an electrically conducting solid. The phase field equations are given by the nonlinear degenerate parabolic system $$\gamma\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}-\nabla.(b(u)\nabla[w+\alpha\phi])=0,\qquad w=-\gamma\Delta u+\gamma^{-1}\Psi'(u),\qquad\nabla.(c(u)\nabla\phi)=0$$ subject to an initial condition u 0(¿)¿[¿1,1] on u and flux boundary conditions on all three equations. Here ¿¿¿>0, ¿¿¿¿0, ¿ is a non-smooth double well potential, and c(u):=1+u, b(u):=1¿u 2 are degenerate coefficients. On extending existing results for the simplified two dimensional phase field model, we show stability bounds for our approximation and prove convergence, and hence existence of a solution to this nonlinear degenerate parabolic system in three space dimensions. Furthermore, a new iterative scheme for solving the resulting nonlinear discrete system is introduced and some numerical experiments are presented.
A PRAM and NAND flash hybrid architecture for high-performance embedded storage subsystems
Authors: Jin Kyu Kim, Hyung Gyu Lee, Shinho Choi, Kyoung Il Bahng
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th ACM international conference on Embedded software (2008)

NAND flash-based storage is widely used in embedded systems due to its numerous benefits: low cost, high density, small form factor and so on. However, NAND flash-based storage is still suffering from serious performance degradation for random or small size write access. This degradation mainly comes from the physical constraints of NAND flash: erase-before-program and different unit size of erase and program operations. To overcome these constraints, we propose to use PRAM (Phase-change RAM) which supports advanced features: fast byte access capability and no requirement for erase-before-program. In this paper, we focus on developing a high-performance NAND flash-based storage system by maximally exploiting the advanced feature of PRAM, in terms of performance and wearing out. To do this, we first propose a new hybrid storage architecture which consists of PRAM and NAND flash. Second, we devise two novel software schemes for the proposed hybrid storage architecture; FSMS (File System Metadata Separation) and hFTL (hybrid Flash Translation Layer). Finally, we demonstrate that our hybrid architecture increases the performance up to 290% and doubles the lifespan compared to the existing NAND flash only storage systems.
An independent platform for the monitoring, analysis and adaptation of web sites
Authors: Marcos Aurélio Domingues
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Recommender systems (2008)

The analysis, design and maintenance of Web sites involves two significant challenges: managing the services and content available, and secondly, making the site dynamically adequate to user's needs. These challenges can be addressed by automating several of the management activities of a Web site. In this work we propose to develop a platform that can be used for that purpose, which is independent of the Web site. We started by developing a data warehouse that stores data about the usage, content and structure of a Web site. We have also developed a tool that uses the data in the data warehouse and provides information to the editor to monitor the activity on the Web site as well as the site itself. We have recently begun to develop multidimensional recommender systems that take advantage of the wealth of the data in the data warehouse. Both simulated and live tests are carried out to test the platform.
Keynote: Primitives for Physical Trust
Authors: Anish Arora
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems (2008)

This talk explores the question of whether wireless communication can achieve security - confidentiality (unicast and broadcast), authentication, non-repudiation, anonymity - without assuming any shared secrets and using only low-cost computation primitives. The key idea is to exploit physical characteristics of the network medium to develop a basis of physical primitives that suffice for rethinking a security protocol suite.
Sorting hierarchical data in external memory for archiving
Authors: Ioannis Koltsidas, Heiko Müller, Stratis D. Viglas
Venue: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (2008)

Sorting hierarchical data in external memory is necessary for a wide variety of applications including archiving scientific data and dealing with large XML datasets. The topic of sorting hierarchical data, however, has received little attention from the research community so far. In this paper we focus on sorting arbitrary hierarchical data that far exceed the size of physical memory. We propose HErMeS, an algorithm that generalizes the most widely-used techniques for sorting flat data in external memory. HErMeS efficiently exploits the hierarchical structure to minimize the number of disk accesses and optimize the use of available memory. We extract the theoretical bounds of the algorithm with respect to the structure of the hierarchical dataset. We then show how the algorithm can be used to support efficient archiving. We have conducted an experimental study using several workloads and comparing HErMeS to the state-of-the-art approaches. Our results show that our algorithm (a) meets its theoretical expectations, (b) allows for scalable database archiving, and (c) outperforms the competition by a significant factor. These results, we believe, prove our technique to be a viable and scalable solution to the problem of sorting hierarchical data in external memory.
How to parameterize models with bursty workloads
Authors: Giuliano Casale, Ningfang Mi, Ludmila Cherkasova, Evgenia Smirni
Venue: ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review (2008)

Although recent advances in theory indicate that burstiness in the service time process can be handled effectively by queueing models (e.g.,MAP queueing networks [2]), there is a lack of understanding and of practical results on how to perform model parameterization, especially when this parameterization must be derived from limited coarse measurements. We propose a new parameterization methodology based on the index of dispersion of the service process at a server, which is inferred by observing the number of completions within the concatenated busy periods of that server. The index of dispersion together with other measurements that reflect the "estimated" mean and the 95th percentile of service times are used to derive a MAP process that captures well burstiness of the true service process. Detailed experimentation on a TPC-W testbed where all measurements are obtained via a commercially available tool, the HP (Mercury) Diagnostics, shows that the proposed technique offers a simple yet powerful solution to the difficult problem of inferring accurate descriptors of the service time process from coarse measurements. Experimental and model prediction results are in excellent agreement and argue strongly for the effectiveness of the proposed methodology under bursty or simply variable workloads.
The Impact of Contextual Information on the Accuracy of Existing Recommender Systems for Web Personalization
Authors: Marcos A. Domingues, Alípio M. Jorge, Carlos Soares
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 01 (2008)

Traditionally, recommender systems for the Web deal with applications that have two types of entities/dimensions, users and items. With these dimensions, a recommendation model can be built and used to identify a set of N items that will be of interest to a certain user. In this paper we propose a direct method that enriches the information in the access logs with new dimensions. We empirically test this method with two recommender systems, an item-based collaborative filtering technique and association rules, on three data sets. Our results show that while collaborative filtering is not able to take advantage of the new dimensions added, association rules are capable of profiting from our direct method.
Three recommender approaches to interface controls reduction
Authors: Nathan Oostendorp, Paul Resnick
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Recommender systems (2008)

Interface Controls Reduction is the design task of generating simplified interface controls for setting a larger, more complex set of controls. We explore three different empirical approaches to the task: preset sharing, point clustering, and principal component analysis. All three draw on the experience of lead users to recommend simplified controls for others. A case study where they were applied as part of an iterative development cycle with hundreds of users reveals the advantages and challenges of each approach.
Spectral probing, crosstalk and frequency multiplexing in internet paths
Authors: Partha Kanuparthy, Constantine Dovrolis, Mostafa Ammar
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGCOMM conference on Internet measurement (2008)

We present an end-to-end active probing methodology that creates frequency-domain signals in IP network paths. The signals are generated by periodic packet trains that cause short-lived queueing delay spikes. Different probers can be multiplexed in the frequency-domain on the same path. Further, a signal that is introduced by a "prober" in one path can cause a crosstalk effect, inducing a signal of the same frequency into another path (the "sampler") as long as the two paths share one or more bottleneck queues. Applications of the proposed methodology include the detection of shared store-and-forward devices among two or more paths, the creation of covert channels, and the modulation of voice or video periodic packet streams in less noisy frequencies. In this paper we focus on the first application. Our goal is to detect shared bottleneck(s) between a "sampler" and one or more "prober" paths. We present a spectral probing methodology as well as the corresponding signal processing/detection process. The accuracy of the method has been evaluated with controlled and repeatable simulation experiments, and it has also been tested on some Internet paths.
Knowledge-based linguistic equations for defect detection through functional testing of printed circuit boards
Authors: Sébastien Gebus, Esko Juuso, Kauko Leiviskä
Venue: Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal (2009)

Increasing globalization of the economy is imposing tough challenges to manufacturing companies. The ability to produce highly customized products, in order to satisfy market niches, requires the introduction of new features in automation systems. Flexible manufacturing processes must be able to handle unforeseen events, but their complexity makes the supervision and maintenance task difficult to perform by human operators. This paper describes how linguistic equations (LE), an intelligent method derived from Fuzzy Algorithms, has been used in a decision-helping tool for electronic manufacturing. In our case the company involved in the project is mainly producing control cards for the automotive industry. In their business, nearly 70% of the cost of a product is material cost. Detecting defects and repairing the printed circuit boards is therefore a necessity. With an ever increasing complexity of the products, defects are very likely to occur, no matter how much attention is put into their prevention. Therefore, the system described in this paper comes into use only during the final testing of the product and is purely oriented towards the detection and localization of defects. Final control is based on functional testing. Using linguistic equations and expert knowledge, the system is able to analyze that data and successfully detect and trace a defect in a small area of the printed circuit board. If sufficient amount of data is provided, self-tuning and self-learning methods can be used. Diagnosis effectiveness can therefore be improved from detection of a functional area towards component level analysis.
MA1: Ada for real-time and parallel processing
Authors: John W. McCormick
Venue: ACM SIGAda Ada Letters (2008)

Level - Intermediate. This tutorial assumes basic knowledge or experience with the Ada programming language. This tutorial covers two of the major problems with parallel and real-time programming - time management and storage management. Parallel processing, whether on single-processor machines or multiple processors, has many pitfalls. We will examine these potential pitfalls, and discuss ways to avoid common problems, such as deadlocks and race conditions. We will also discuss how to write code that efficiently passes data with other parallel processes. The basics of parallel processing are covered, leading to a discussion and examples using Ada tasking. In addition, the Ada Real-Time Systems Annex is also covered.
Direct manipulation interfaces
Authors: Edwin L. Hutchins, James D. Hollan, Donald A. Norman
Venue: Human-computer interaction (1985)

Direct manipulation has been lauded as a good form of interface design, and some interfaces that have this property have been well received by users. In this article we seek a cognitive account of both the advantages and disadvantages of direct manipulation interfaces. We identify two underlying phenomena that give rise to the feeling of directness. One deals with the information processing distance between the user's intentions and the facilities provided by the machine. Reduction of this distance makes the interface feel direct by reducing the effort required of the user to accomplish goals. The second phenomenon concerns the relation between the input and output vocabularies of the interface language. In particular, direct manipulation requires that the system provide representations of objects that behave as if they are the objects themselves. This provides the feeling of directness of manipulation.