ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Designing social interactions with animated avatars and speech output for product recommendation agents in electronic commerce
Authors: Lingyun Qiu
Venue:  (2006)

Product Recommendation Agents (PRAs) and other web-based decision aids are deployed extensively by online vendors, to provide virtual advising services to their customers. While the design of PRA functionality has received increasing amount of attention in academic studies, the social aspects of human-PRA interactions are comparatively less studied. This dissertation investigates the potential of enhancing users' social experiences with PRAs by developing and analyzing an anthropomorphic interface, which has humanoid embodiment and voice output. This dissertation first investigates the importance of choosing appropriate demographic embodiments for a humanoid PRA. The two demographic variables that have been assessed are ethnicity and gender. As suggested by similarity-attraction theories and social-identity theories, results of a laboratory experiment have revealed that users apply similar social stereotypes in human-human communications as they apply to evaluate humanoid agents. PRAs that match the ethnicity of users are perceived by the users as more sociable, more competent, and more enjoyable to interact with than PRAs that do not match users' ethnicity; as well, same-gender PRAs are perceived as more competent and more honest than opposite-gender agents. In addition, the "match-up" effects of ethnicity appear to be more significant among female users than among males.Two interface components are also empirically investigated in this dissertation: (1) presence of a humanoid embodiment and (2) output modalities (text, computer-synthesized voice, or human voice). Results from a laboratory experiment demonstrate that humanoid embodiments increase consumers' perception of a PRA's social presence, their beliefs in its competence, and the enjoyment they derive from interaction with the PRA. A human voice also appears to be significantly more effective than on-screen text and computer-synthesized voice in improving the PRA's perceived social presence and enjoyment.Furthermore, the important role of social relationships in influencing user adoption of agents is tested by integrating social presence, trust, and perceived enjoyment with the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Social presence appears to be a common antecedent of both trust and perceived enjoyment. Trust exerts a direct impact on user intentions to adopt PRAs, as well as an indirect impact via user perceptions of PRAs' usefulness. Perceived enjoyment also influences adoption intentions through perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use.
Why markets could (but don't currently) solve resource allocation problems in systems
Authors: Jeffrey Shneidman, Chaki Ng, David C. Parkes, Alvin AuYoung, Alex C. Snoeren, Amin Vahdat, Brent Chun
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th conference on Hot Topics in Operating Systems - Volume 10 (2005)

Using market mechanisms for resource allocation in distributed systems is not a new idea, nor is it one that has caught on in practice or with a large body of computer science research. Yet, projects that use markets for distributed resource allocation recur every few years [1, 2, 3], and a new generation of research is exploring market-based resource allocation mechanisms [4, 5, 6, 7, 8] for distributed environments such as Planetlab, Netbed, and computational grids. This paper has three goals. The first goal is to explore why markets can be appropriate to use for allocation, when simpler allocation mechanisms exist. The second goal is to demonstrate why a new look at markets for allocation could be timely, and not a re-hash of previous research. The third goal is to point out some of the thorny problems inherent in market deployment and to suggest action items both for market designers and for the greater research community. We are optimistic about the power of market design, but we also believe that key challenges exist for a markets/systems integration that must be overcome for market-based computer resource allocation systems to succeed.
Array processing estimation of sound velocity for non-linearly superimposed acoustic waves
Authors: G. Pinero
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2000. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 06 (2000)

Acoustic pressure waves are non-linearly superimposed when a periodic gas flow is perturbing the propagating medium, as it arises in exhaust systems. In such an environment, to estimate a certain set of source parameters from the pressure measures taken by an array of sensors is non-trivial. In this paper two possible linearization methods for the wave superposition are given. Moreover, a new problem formulation including the noise corruption of the source data is presented. Based on this linear approach, three different sound speed estimates are compared for a numerical experiment generated by thermodynamics modeling software. Results have shown that good performance of sound speed estimates mainly depends on the limited array aperture imposed by the linear model feasibility, being ML-like estimates more robust than those based in subspace decomposition methods.
Olfactory Display: Development and Application in Virtual Reality Therapy
Authors: Yang Chen
Venue: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence--Workshops (2006)

The inclusion of visual and auditory senses into virtual reality is widespread, but the sense of smell has been largely ignored. Olfactory information available from the olfactory display will increase the user's sense of presence in virtual reality, it is necessary to incorporate the sense of smell to virtual reality, especially in virtual reality therapy. This paper reviews the current research in olfactory display, and its existed application in virtual reality therapy. In addition, the potential use of olfactory display is also discussed.
Imaging the World: The State of Online Mapping
Authors: Tom Geller
Venue: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (2007)

Consumer sites such as MapQuest, Yahoo! Maps, and Google Maps compete to improve their interfaces and data relevance to better appeal to the browsing public. But innovation in online mapping isn't limited to these household names. Sites for the public good, such as those the US government manages, provide graphical access to data buried in such sources as the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the decennial census. Meanwhile, community mapping sites let the public provide local details, find nearby colleagues, and organize information in ways unknown 10 years ago.
Lossless coding of audio signals using cascaded prediction
Authors: G. Schuller
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2001. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 05 (2001)

A novel predictive lossless coding scheme is proposed. The prediction is based on a new weighted cascaded least mean squared (WCLMS) method. WCLMS is especially designed for music/speech signals. It can be used either in combination with psycho-acoustically pre-filtered signals to obtain perceptually lossless coding, or as a stand-alone lossless coder. Experiments on a database of moderate size and a variety of pre-filtered mono-signals show that the proposed lossless coder (which needs about 2 bit/sample for pre-filtered signals) outperforms competing lossless coders, WaveZip, Shorten, LTAC and LPAC, in terms of compression ratios.
A collaborative approach to the design of interactive systems for the documentation of dance
Authors: Natalie Erika Ebenreuter
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity cognition (2007)

This research relates to a doctoral project for the development of LabanAssist as a prototype application [2]. To facilitate its development participatory design methods that involve users in the design process assist in capturing a subjective account of user needs and requirements. The research considers an approach that enables the knowledge of mutual design decisions during task analysis workshops, to be made explicit, based on the collaboration and agreement between potential users of the system and designer. It is suggested that a combination of visual tools may be utilized to facilitate the representation of this information and communicate knowledge of the underlying design rationale and decision-making process. In this way methods of participatory design may be enhanced to enable a shared knowledge of design criteria to be made explicit for productive interaction and its evaluation.
Internet auctions
Authors: Manoj Kumar, Stuart I. Feldman
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd conference on USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce - Volume 3 (1998)

We describe an application for auctioning goods on the Internet. A variety of commonly used auction mechanisms that are supported by the application, security requirements, and pre-auction and post-auction interactions needed to complete auction based trading are discussed. Then we present a software architecture and describe the various processes that comprise the auction application. Finally, we discuss how the delay, security, and easy collaboration aspects of the Internet will cause auctions on the Internet to be different than the traditional auctions.
On Toeplitz Matrices Minimal Eigenvalues in Moving Object Description
Authors: Khalid Saeed, Krzysztof Piekarski
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management Applications (2007)

In this paper we apply Töeplitz matrices minimal eigenvalues approach to represent two-dimensional images. The problem of moving object identification is considered on an example and some theoretical results are derived.
Evaluating freshmen retention efforts in engineering housing
Authors: M. R. Anderson-Rowland
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference, 2001. 31st Annual - Volume 02 (2001)

Freshman engineering retention is a national problem. At Arizona State University, freshmen retention is a major focus of the Office of Student Affairs in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS). The CEAS Fall 2000 freshmen class numbered 969 students. Major programs that have been developed to increase CEAS freshmen retention include engineering residence hall floors and academic and career mentoring through an Inclusive Learning Communities Program. The success of the engineering residence halls program is evaluated through the use of a survey of the Fall 2000 students participating in this program. The successes and challenges in running these programs are discussed.
Local saddle point and a class of convexification methods for nonconvex optimization problems
Authors: Tao Li, Yanjun Wang, Zhian Liang, Panos M. Pardalos
Venue: Journal of Global Optimization (2007)

A class of general transformation methods are proposed to convert a nonconvex optimization problem to another equivalent problem. It is shown that under certain assumptions the existence of a local saddle point or local convexity of the Lagrangian function of the equivalent problem (EP) can be guaranteed. Numerical experiments are given to demonstrate the main results geometrically.
Supporting the growth of CS leading teachers
Authors: Tami Lapidot
Venue: Proceedings of the 12th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education (2007)

As a response to curricular changes in Israel and high school teachers' requests, a special leading teachers' course was created. The course has three main goals: deepen participants understanding of the object oriented paradigm; strengthen the group as a professional community; and foster leadership growth.
Matplotlib: A 2D Graphics Environment
Authors: John D. Hunter
Venue: Computing in Science and Engineering (2007)

Matplotlib is a 2D graphics package for Python for application development, interactive scripting, and publication-quality image generation across user interfaces and operating systems.
Integrating engineering courses with calculus and physics to motivate learning of fundamental concepts
Authors: R. N. Laoulache
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference, 2001. 31st Annual - Volume 02 (2001)

In September of 1998, the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth began an innovative, integrated, curriculum that dramatically changed first-year instruction. This new program is called IMPULSE (Integrated Math, Physics and Undergraduate Laboratory Science, and Engineering). The program is technology-based so courses have been offered in specially designed, technology-oriented classrooms. The program's pedagogy includes: (1) integrating the introductory course sequences in physics, calculus and engineering; (2) teaching and using teamwork among students and faculty; (3) using active and cooperative learning methods; and, (4) encouraging formation of a community of students by block-scheduling classes and grouping students in the dorms. The IMPULSE program has been very successful. For example, assessment in the first year showed that it more than halved the attrition rate of first-year engineering students, and nearly doubled the percentage of students passing two semesters of physics on schedule. This paper looks at the integration of subjects from the perspective of the engineering courses. It focuses on the interaction between engineering, physics and calculus and how this evolved as the program matured. It describes the types of problems that have been used to motivate learning in all three subjects. It also explains how problems have been posed and coordinated successfully.
Architecture design and performance evaluation of RFID object tracking systems
Authors: Jiann-Liang Chen, Ming-Chiao Chen, Chien-Wu Chen, Yao-Chung Chang
Venue: Computer Communications (2007)

The network architecture of an RFID system affects the operating performance and scalability of the entire system. The related researches about RFID system could be made easier as the bridge-based and the gateway-based network architecture. This study considers a scenario for an RFID object tracking system designs a hierarchical RFID network system and evaluates the operating performance of different RFID system architectures. The results of performance evaluations demonstrate that the proposed hierarchical RFID network architecture reduces the network and database system loading by 41.8% and 83.2%, respectively. The operation of RFID object tracking over the hierarchical network architecture is indicated to be highly efficient and scalable.
Fluid Model for eMule File Sharing System
Authors: Sanja Petrovic, Patrick Brown
Venue: Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Universal Multiservice Networks (2007)

We propose a fluid model for eMule-like file sharing systems. The analytical analysis of a two file system is presented followed by the numerical analysis of a n-file system. We show the influence of the parameters such as the storage probability of a file and the request rate for a file on the system performance, i.e., on average downloading times. Our results reveal that the uploading policy, which equally treats each request, is not appropriate and that it introduces unfairness in the system. Afterwards, we discuss the optimal uploading policy on peers, i.e., which part of the uploading bandwidth should be dedicated to each shared file on a peer in order to improve the fairness in the system.
Improving engineering communication through the long-distance classroom
Authors: M. G. Barchilon
Venue: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 03 (1998)

The nature of the engineering workplace is changing rapidly. Due to technology and the globalization of the marketplace, engineers must often work with diverse colleagues on team projects from a distance. Yet, given the logistics of today's traditional classroom, many instructors establish local student teams to solve engineering problems. While these local teams certainly improve student team-building skills, they do not "force" engineers to communicate in writing at the highest level, since face-to-face communication enables one to provide oral explanations to local team members. This paper discusses a successful collaborative classroom effort begun in 1994 between faculty at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, AZ and Temple University (Temple) in Philadelphia, PA, USA. The result has been a dynamic, long-distance classroom that has helped diverse engineering and technology students work in teams to solve engineering problems and improve written communication using electronic technology. Through this unique classroom effort, students learn about the value of clear, precise and frequent technical and interpersonal communication.
Multipath-Doppler diversity of OFDM signals in an underwater acoustic channel
Authors: Y. V. Zakharov
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2000. on IEEE International Conference - Volume 05 (2000)

High-speed communications over the underwater acoustic channel are difficult due to time-varying multipath propagation and Doppler scattering. These phenomena, however, can be effectively used for joint multipath-Doppler diversity of received signals similarly to multipath diversity in a conventional RAKE receiver. We present a new signal processing technique for data transmission over fast fading underwater acoustic channel by using OFDM signals. This technique exploits multipath-Doppler diversity which is based on the channel model as a sum of macro-rays characterised by delays, Doppler parameters and transfer functions. Delay and Doppler estimation involves calculation of the cross-ambiguity function for a pilot signal; transfer function estimation exploits frequency domain B-spline approximation. Experimental results demonstrate high BER performance of the proposed algorithm for various propagation scenarios.
Merging Intra-Planetary Index Structures: Decentralized Bootstrapping of Overlays
Authors: Anwitaman Datta
Venue: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (2007)

Peer-to-Peer index structures distributed and managed over the planet, commonly known as structured overlays (e.g., Distributed Hash Tables), are posed to play the role of a fundamental building block for internet-scale distributed applications and information systems. One of the biggest impediment in realizing index distributed at intra-planetary scales is to be able to merge distinct indices that might have been constructed independently and separately, or have resulted from network partitions. By facilitating merger of such isolated index-structures, decentralized bootstrapping of structured overlays is made possible. We argue that such a self-organizational attribute of decentralized bootstrapping is of paramount importance for large scale systems. In this paper we provide algorithms and simulation based evaluation of merger of two tree-structured overlay networks. The experiments validate some intuitions, particularly we see how the merger operation can be carried out transparently from the end users in the sense that all keys that are accessible to any peer prior to the merger process continue to be accessible during and after the merger. Surprising at a first glance, we also observe that the overhead of data movement during merger of two overlays which originally partition the key-spaces arbitrarily is higher if there is more common content stored in the two networks. This counterintuitive behavior is on account of the fact that the assignment of partitions to peers change during the merger process, which in turn leads to movement of data. Since peers act based on local knowledge, the data already present in the other network is still unnecessarily moved, adding to the data transfer overhead.
Constructing digital library interfaces
Authors: David M. Nichols, David Bainbridge, Michael B. Twidale
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries (2007)

The software technologies used to create web interfaces for digital libraries are discussed using examples from Greenstone 3.
Interpolating V/UV mixture functions of a harmonic model for concatenative speech synthesis
Authors: King-Fai Lam, Cheung-Fat Chan
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1996. on Conference Proceedings., 1996 IEEE International Conference - Volume 01 (1996)

A high quality speech synthesis method based on interpolating the voiced/unvoiced (V/UV) mixture functions of the multiband excitation model (MBE) is proposed. In the MBE model, each harmonic band of the fundamental frequency in an excitation spectrum is rigidly declared as either voiced or unvoiced and the harmonic band is pitch-dependent. In the proposed method, each harmonic band in a short time spectrum is synthesized by mixing both voiced and unvoiced energies. The ratio of the V/UV energies in a spectrum is determined by the V/UV mixture function which is subsequently parametrized by an all-zero model. Since the V/UV decision in the proposed method is not rigidly declared and the V/UV mixture function is pitch-independent, interpolating the V/UV excitation spectrum becomes possible. Smooth transition of excitation between acoustic units can be achieved by interpolating the V/UV mixture functions of adjacent frames. Simulation results show that by incorporating the V/UV mixture function for concatenative synthesis, significant improvement in synthetic speech quality can be achieved.
Compiling Efficient Programs for Tightly-Coupled Distributed Memory Computers
Authors: PeiZong Lee, Tzung-Bow Tsai
Venue: Proceedings of the 1993 International Conference on Parallel Processing - Volume 02 (1993)

In this paper, we present a systhetic method for compiling programs on distributed memory parallel computers.
Creating constructivist learning scenarios using an educative modeling language
Authors: M. Rodriguez-Artacho
Venue: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference, 2001. 31st Annual - Volume 02 (2001)

This paper illustrates the use of PALO, a general-purpose educative modeling language (EML), to embed constructivist features in distance learning scenarios. Educative modeling languages allow describing learning content using an XML-based representation independent from the final delivery format, thus providing a higher level of abstraction in the authoring process. We have defined a subset of elements and attributes of PALO language to describe constructivist properties, in order to improve knowledge construction process in distance learning educational environments.
Behavior-based spyware detection
Authors: Engin Kirda, Christopher Kruegel, Greg Banks, Giovanni Vigna, Richard A. Kemmerer
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th conference on USENIX Security Symposium - Volume 15 (2006)

Spyware is rapidly becoming a major security issue. Spyware programs are surreptitiously installed on a user's workstation to monitor his/her actions and gather private information about a user's behavior. Current antispyware tools operate in a way similar to traditional antivirus tools, where signatures associated with known spyware programs are checked against newly-installed applications. Unfortunately, these techniques are very easy to evade by using simple obfuscation transformations. This paper presents a novel technique for spyware detection that is based on the characterization of spywarelike behavior. The technique is tailored to a popular class of spyware applications that use Internet Explorer's Browser Helper Object (BHO) and toolbar interfaces to monitor a user's browsing behavior. Our technique uses a composition of static and dynamic analysis to determine whether the behavior of BHOs and toolbars in response to simulated browser events should be considered malicious. The evaluation of our technique on a representative set of spyware samples show that it is possible to reliably identify malicious components using an abstract behavioral characterization.