ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Passive photography from a creative perspective: "If I would just shoot the same thing for seven days, it's like... What's the point?"
Authors: Sara Ljungblad
Venue: Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems (2009)

This paper aims to contribute with an understanding of meaningful experiences of photography, to support reflection upon the design of future camera devices. We have conducted a study of a passive camera device called Sensecam, which previously has been investigated as a memory aid, a combination of life-logging and memory tool and as a resource for digital narratives. We take a creative perspective and show that even if a camera is designed to be forgotten in use (i.e. is worn as a necklace and takes pictures automatically) it can still be part of an engaging or active photographic experience. Because Sensecam is different from film cameras, camera phones and other digital cameras, it involves a different type of photographic experience, for example when moving through different social contexts and how the resulting pictures are appreciated. The findings stem from people who used the camera for a week. This is complemented with reflections from the researcher, who has been using the camera for a month.
SnowFlock: rapid virtual machine cloning for cloud computing
Authors: Horacio Andrés Lagar-Cavilla, Joseph Andrew Whitney, Adin Matthew Scannell, Philip Patchin, Stephen M. Rumble, Eyal de Lara, Michael Brudno, Mahadev Satyanarayanan
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th ACM European conference on Computer systems (2009)

Virtual Machine (VM) fork is a new cloud computing abstraction that instantaneously clones a VM into multiple replicas running on different hosts. All replicas share the same initial state, matching the intuitive semantics of stateful worker creation. VM fork thus enables the straightforward creation and efficient deployment of many tasks demanding swift instantiation of stateful workers in a cloud environment, e.g. excess load handling, opportunistic job placement, or parallel computing. Lack of instantaneous stateful cloning forces users of cloud computing into ad hoc practices to manage application state and cycle provisioning. We present SnowFlock, our implementation of the VM fork abstraction. To evaluate SnowFlock, we focus on the demanding scenario of services requiring on-the-fly creation of hundreds of parallel workers in order to solve computationally-intensive queries in seconds. These services are prominent in fields such as bioinformatics, finance, and rendering. SnowFlock provides sub-second VM cloning, scales to hundreds of workers, consumes few cloud I/O resources, and has negligible runtime overhead.
Learning e-portfolio facilities and functions
Authors: Andreja Istenič Starčič
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th WSEAS international conference on Distance learning and web engineering (2008)

The e-portfolio has been recognised as s flexible tool for learning which assist wide range of educational applications. In the paper focus is on e-portfolio functionalities in professional development. E-portfolio can support improvement of work-based professional learning. Working life environments are explored as an individual and social context for professional learning. The adaptation of e-portfolio as a tool for professional learning is a web-based community is presented. The design and development of e-portfolio system is outlined.
Utilisabilit&eacute; et discrimination: &eacute;tude pr&eacute;liminaire des machines &agrave; voter fran&ccedil;aises
Authors: Gabriel Michel, Mathieu Klein
Venue: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference of the Association Francophone d'Interaction Homme-Machine (2008)

The purpose of this article is to provide an update on the ergonomics of voting machines currently being used in the world. In fact, these technologies are an obstacle for certain vulnerable populations: the elderly, people with disabilities, people who are illiterate and more generally those who are socially and culturally excluded. As a first step we take stock of the usability problems of different voting systems. Then we describe the ergonomic assessment that we have carried out on one of the voting machines currently being used in France. It concerns assessing the compliance with the guidelines and user tests carried out on people who are blind and who are aging. This study shows that the lack of usability of the voting machines is an important factor of discrimination and we offer some ideas to think about.
Design of a Multiagent System over Mobile Devices for the Planning of Touristic Travels
Authors: Miguel Valdés, Claudio Cubillos
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th Pacific Rim International Conference on Multi-Agents: Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (2008)

This work presents the results of designing a multiagent system for the tourism sector, whose objective is to give support to the tourist before and during his travel by means of mobile devices. The system focuses on the creation of itineraries, but besides allows the booking, publication and notification of changes in the services. The system was designed with the PASSI methodology and a prototype is being implemented over Jade.
Real-time turbine maintenance system
Authors: Tung-Liang Chen
Venue: Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal (2009)

Reliable power generation and low maintenance costs are the major goals of power plant administration. This goal, in fact, can be achieved by a proper turbine maintenance policy. This study presents a model for total productive maintenance to enhance the efficiency of power plant equipment. A probabilistic failure analysis model is used to determine the optimal turbine maintenance cycle. Additionally, the costs savings achieved by using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is demonstrated in an operational maintenance model.
Human-Centered Development of an AR Handheld Display
Authors: Raphael Grasset, Andreas Dunser, Mark Billinghurst
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 6th IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (2007)

In this paper we present the process of designing and developing a fully functional and interactive AR handheld device. Based on a human-centered approach we describe the results of our exploration; from the contextual usage to the different rapid prototyped models and the evaluation activities. We also discuss some recommendations for how to use similar methods for developing future new AR physical interfaces.
Plenary lecture VI: change point in time series data
Authors: Azami Zaharim
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Simulation, modelling and optimization (2008)

In building a statistical model for time series data the primary concern is to know whether all the observations can be represented by one particular model or whether the parameters in the model change at some known or unknown time point, called the change point. Subsequently, change points are defined as the points in data where two adjacent segments of the time series are connected. However, there are real-world applications in which only the position of the change is required and not the fitting functions. A change point can occur as a change in mean; change in variance or covariance or both; change in parameter; change in the structural model; or change in the trend in the model at certain known or unknown time point. Time series change point can be classified into two main categories; those which infer in a change when the statistics exceed a control limit; and those which directly estimate the time of change. In each category, the time point is a main factor, where the construction of the statistics and estimation are based on whether the time of occurrence is not known or not. Practically in most cases the time of change is unknown. From the simulation, it can be conclude that the larger the difference of the parameter estimates before and after the given change point, the higher will be the probability of the detection of the change point, the models that do not include a regular differencing operator, tends to be slightly higher in the probability of detection than the others, similar results occur for seasonal and non-seasonal models but the detection for the change point will be slightly lower for the seasonal models, and the procedure does not perform well when the point of change is at the beginning or at the end of the series.
Cultural difference and adaptation of communication styles in computer-mediated group brainstorming
Authors: Hao-Chuan Wang, Susan F. Fussell, Leslie D. Setlock
Venue: Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems (2009)

Supporting creativity via collaborative group brainstorming is a prevalent practice in organizations. Today's technology makes it easy for international and intercultural group members to brainstorm together remotely, but surprisingly little is known about how culture and medium shape the underlying brainstorming process. In a laboratory study, we examined the influences of individual cultural background (American versus Chinese), group cultural composition (same- versus mixed-culture groups), and communication medium (text-only versus video-enabled chatrooms) on group brainstorming conversations. Cultural differences and adaptation in conversational talkativeness and responsiveness were identified. The text-only medium reduced cultural differences in talkativeness. Working in a mixed-culture group led to cultural adaptation in the communication style of Chinese but not American participants. We discuss implications for international group brainstorming.
Future challenges of flash memory technologies
Authors: Chih-Yuan Lu, Kuang-Yeu Hsieh, Rich Liu
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2009)

Flash memory application has seen explosive growth in recent years and this trend is likely to continue because new and more demanding applications are constantly added partly due to the need for low power solid-state storage and partly due to rapidly declining prices. Conventional floating gate flash memories, no matter in NOR or NAND architecture, however, face steep challenges. For NOR flash, the junction breakdown and short channel effects have essentially squeezed out the device design space below 45nm node. For NAND flash, the tight spacing, floating gate interference and the need for sufficient gate control (gate coupling ratio) have also ruled out the continuation of the conventional floating gate device below approximately 32nm node. Charge trapping devices, exploiting high-K inter-poly dielectric (IPD) or by innovative tunneling barrier engineering, are proposed to continue scaling flash memories. Eventually, when too few electrons are stored and the logic level retention becomes smeared by statistical fluctuation over the life time of the device, 3-D layering of devices may provide the ultimate solution.
Extension of Secret Handshake Protocols with Multiple Groups in Monotone Condition
Authors: Yutaka Kawai, Shotaro Tanno, Takahiro Kondo, Kazuki Yoneyama, Noboru Kunihiro, Kazuo Ohta
Venue: Information Security Applications: 9th International Workshop, WISA 2008, Jeju Island, Korea, September 23-25, 2008, Revised Selected Papers (2009)

Secret Handshake protocol allows members of the same group to authenticate each other secretly, that is, two members who belong to the same group can learn counterpart is in the same group, while non-member of the group cannot determine whether the counterpart is a member of the group or not. Yamashita and Tanaka proposed Secret Handshake Scheme with Multiple Groups (SHSMG). They extended a single group setting to a multiple groups setting where two members output "accept" iff both member's affiliations of the multiple groups are identical. In this paper, we first show the flaw of their SHSMG, and we construct a new secure SHSMG. Second, we introduce a new concept of Secret Handshake scheme, "monotone condition Secret Handshake with Multiple Groups (mc-SHSMG)", in order to extend the condition of "accept". In our new setting of handshake protocol, members can authenticate each other in monotone condition (not only both member's affiliations are identical but also the affiliations are not identical). The communication costs and computational costs of our proposed mc-SHSMG are fewer than the trivial construction of mc-SHSMG.
OpenDocument Format: The Standard for Office Documents
Authors: Rob Weir
Venue: IEEE Internet Computing (2009)

For many years, when you used a word-processing application, your files were stored in a format that was fully understood only by the application you used. WordPerfect stored WordPerfect files, Microsoft Word stored Word files, and so on—and, while developers often included ad-hoc support for their competitors' formats, that was a hit-and-miss thing, vulnerable to changes in the proprietary formats. The same went for presentation slides and spreadsheets. We all have experience with the results of this, with the difficulties in exchanging files between different applications. OpenDocument Format (ODF) is an XML-based open standard file format for office documents such as these. ODF is application-, platform- and vendor-neutral, and thereby facilitates broad interoperability of office documents. In this issue's "Standards" department, IBM's Rob Weir, who worked on the ODF standard, will take us through some of the history and details of it.
Monitoring data dependencies in concurrent process execution through delta-enabled grid services
Authors: Susan D. Urban, Yang Xiao, Luther Blake, Suzanne W. Dietrich
Venue: International Journal of Web and Grid Services (2009)

This paper presents our results with monitoring data dependencies among concurrently executing, distributed processes that execute over grid services. The research has been conducted in the context of the DeltaGrid project, focusing on the development of a semantically robust execution environment for the composition of grid services. Delta-Enabled Grid Services (DEGS) are a foundational aspect of the DeltaGrid environment, extending grid services with the capability of recording incremental data changes, known as deltas. Deltas generated by DEGS are forwarded to a Process History Capture System (PHCS) that organises deltas from distributed sources into a global, time-sequenced schedule of data changes. The design and construction of DEGS is presented, along with the storage and indexing techniques for merging deltas from multiple DEGS to create a global schedule of data changes that can be analysed to determine how the failure and recovery of one process can potentially affect other data-dependent processes. The paper also summarises the performance results for the global history construction and retrieval process.
The progress of the national first-rate course "computer networks" in NUDT
Authors: Xu Ming, Yao Dan-lin, Cai Kai-yu, Zhu Pei-dong, Chen Ying-wen
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st ACM Summit on Computing Education in China on First ACM Summit on Computing Education in China (2008)

Computer network has been in active development for several decades. It has been dramatically influenced by progress both in computer and communication technologies. In modern times, nearly everyone needs to use computer networks every day, and many students are very interested in computer networks. Hence, more and more universities are offering computer network courses in addition to classical computer science curricula. This paper introduces the computer network course background and history in our university, focuses on the systematic approaches for teaching activities, as well as the creative aspects in the professional cultivation. Specifically, we summarize our efforts in designing the teaching--aided platforms and the experiments in the laboratory. Our experiences gained are a good source of information and reference for other educators in this field.
An Immune Multi-agent System for Network Intrusion Detection
Authors: Dian Gang Wang, Tao Li, Sun Jun Liu, Gang Liang, Kui Zhao
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Advances in Computation and Intelligence (2008)

Inspired by the immune theory and multi-agent systems, an immune multi-agent system for network intrusion detection is established. The concept of immune agent is introduced. And its logical structure and running mechanism are established. This model implements the multi-layer and distributed mechanism for network intrusion detection. The experimental results show that the new model not only reduces the False-Negative rate and False-Positive rate effectively but also has the feature to adapt to continuous changing network environments.
Group Input Machine
Authors: Ruslans Tarasovs, Rūsiņš Freivalds
Venue: Proceedings of the 35th Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science (2009)

We introduce a new type of internal memory for finite automata and real-time automata. Instead of using tapes with a prescribed Euclidean structure (one-dimensional or two-dimensional tapes) we allow arbitrary group structure of the internal memory of the automata.
Emotional Intervention on an Action Selection Mechanism Based on Artificial Immune Networks for Navigation of Autonomous Agents
Authors: Diana D. Tsankova
Venue: Adaptive Behavior - Animals, Animats, Software Agents, Robots, Adaptive Systems (2009)

This article investigates the effects of emotional intervention on artificial immune networks used for navigation of autonomous agents (simulated autonomous mobile robots). It is known from psychoneuroimmunology that stress influences the immune system response. From the various models of emotions related to stress available in literature, the computational model of the amygdala reported by Mochida, Ishiguro, Aoki, and Uchikawa (1995) is used in this article. The emotional intervention is implemented as a frustration signal coming from an artificial amygdala that influences the dynamics of antibody selection. A series of experiments with an autonomous agent implementing a collision-free goal-following behavior is presented in five simulated environments with different levels of difficulty. Two types of immune network based action selection mechanism are examined: (a) independently acting and (b) emotionally influenced. They are compared with each other in MATLAB simulations; their performance is estimated on the basis of time steps and their success in collision-free goal attainment. The artificial emotion mechanism modifies the immune response to overcome some difficult situations and to improve the performance of the behavior arbitration as a whole.
Residue Level Three-dimensional Workspace Maps for Conformational Trajectory Planning of Proteins
Authors: Christopher Madden, Peter Bohnenkamp, Kazem Kazerounian, Horea T. Ilieş
Venue: International Journal of Robotics Research (2009)

The function of a protein macromolecule often requires conformational transitions between two native conformations. Understanding these transitions is essential to the understanding of how proteins function, as well as to the ability to design and manipulate protein-based nanomechanical systems. In this paper we propose a set of 3D Cartesian workspace maps for exploring protein pathways. These 3D maps are constructed in the Euclidean space for triads of chain segments of protein molecules that have been shown to have a high probability of occurrence in naturally observed proteins based on data obtained from more than 38,600 proteins from the Protein Data Bank (PDB). We show that the proposed 3D propensity maps are more effective navigation tools than the propensity maps constructed in the angle space. We argue that the main reason for this improved efficiency is the fact that, although there is a one-to-one mapping between the 2D dihedral angle maps and the 3D Cartesian maps, the propensity distributions are significantly different in the two spaces. Hence, the 3D maps allow the pathway planning to be performed directly in the 3D Euclidean space based on propensities computed in the same space, which is where protein molecules change their conformations.
Two improved range-efficient algorithms for F0 estimation
Authors: He Sun, Chung Keung Poon
Venue: Theoretical Computer Science (2009)

We present two new algorithms for the range-efficient F"0 estimating problem and improve the previously best known result, proposed by Pavan and Tirthapura in 2005. Furthermore, our algorithms can be applied to improve the previously best known result for the Max-Dominance Norm Problem.
Teaching VHDL for students in computing at the University of Rousse
Authors: Anelia Ivanova, Nikolay Kostadinov, Galina Ivanova
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies and Workshop for PhD Students in Computing (2008)

The paper discusses the evolution of the "Design Technology" course, provoked by the necessity to prepare specialists, with competitive knowledge and skills to design digital systems, using up-to-date technologies. The need for change is outlined and the process of course design is discussed. A description of the course organization is provided, the motivation for selection of lab equipment is considered and some of the practical labs are presented. At the end, some ideas for future improvements are mentioned.
Fast communication: No-reference visually significant blocking artifact metric for natural scene images
Authors: Shan Suthaharan
Venue: Signal Processing (2009)

Quantifying visually annoying blocking artifacts is essential for image and video quality assessment. This paper presents a no-reference technique that uses the multi neural channels aspect of human visual system (HVS) to quantify visual impairment by altering the outputs of these sensory channels independently using statistical ''standard score'' formula in the Fourier domain. It also uses the bit patterns of the least significant bits (LSB) to extract blocking artifacts. Simulation results show that the blocking artifact extracted using this approach follows subjective visual interpretation of blocking artifacts. This paper also presents a visually significant blocking artifact metric (VSBAM) along with some experimental results.
Ruin theory for classical risk process that is perturbed by diffusion with risky investments
Authors: Xiang Lin
Venue: Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry (2009)

In this paper, we study the ruin theory for classical risk process that is perturbed by diffusion with risky investments. We obtain the upper bound for the minimal ruin probability. We also investigate the relationships between the adjustment coefficient and the diffusion volatility parameter, the risk-free rate and the correlation coefficient by numerical calculation. We give the relationships between ruin and investment. Copyright &copy; 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Strategy planning for mirosot soccer's robot
Authors: Cristina Floriana Pana, Nicu George Bizdoaca, Ionut Cristian Rescanu, Marius Niculescu
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Applied informatics and communications (2008)

In robot soccer game each of the robots (or agents) must know how to dribble, shoot, pass, and recover the ball from an opponent. Each agent must also be able to evaluate its position with respect to its teammates and opponents, and then decide whether to wait for a pass, run for the ball, cover an opponent's attack, or go to help a teammate; while at the same time following the rules of the game. In the present article explored the strategy planning for cooperative robots. There are three types of soccer playing position that a robot can be: goal keeper, defender and forward. The role that a robot plays on the field influences the robot's perception of the environment and its playing strategy on the field. While each robot has different motivations and goals, they all share the same general architecture and basic hardware.