ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Automatic diagnosis of pathological voices
Authors: Gastón schlotthauer, María Eugenia Torres, Cristina Jackson-Menaldi
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Signal, Speech and Image Processing (2006)

Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a voice disorder characterized by voice breaks. Muscle tension dysphonia (MTD) is a form of voice misuse characterized by excessive muscular effort. While the first pathology is not a psychological condition and has a neurological origin, the last one does not include a neurological disorder and is correctable with voice therapy. Patients with SD are often not identified for treatment. These two pathologies are only correctly differentiated by experts. The importance of a correct diagnosis is directly related with the application of the suitable treatment. Our goal is to provide voice pathologists with a new tool to confirm their diagnosis. In the present work, we present a preliminary approach to this problem, building an automatic classifier using acoustical measurements on registered sustained vowels /a/ and pattern recognition tools based on neural networks. As long as we know, there are not previous published works in automatic classification of these two pathologies. However, there are works on automatic classification between normal and pathological voices. Our results overcome the best reported classification between pathological and normal voices, and have a good discrimination between SD and MTD.
Enhancing Microkernel Performance on VLIW DSP Processors via Multiset Context Switch
Authors: Kun-Yuan Hsieh, Yung-Chia Lin, Chien-Chin Huang, Jenq-Kuen Lee
Venue: Journal of Signal Processing Systems (2008)

High-performance and low-power VLIW DSP processors are increasingly being deployed in mobile devices to process video and multimedia applications. The diverse applications of such systems has led to recent research efforts focusing on their resource management and kernel scheduling. In this paper, we address the enhancing the performance of the microkernel for a VLIW DSP processor, called PAC architectures. In order to reduce the number of read and write ports in register files of VLIW architectures, so as to reduce both the power consumption and implementation costs, a distributed register file and multibank register architectures are being adopted in PAC architectures. These methods present challenges for microkernel designs in terms of reducing context switch overhead. In our work, we propose a multiset descriptor mechanism with compiler support to reduce the context switch overheads associated with the use of registers. The experiments were done with the microkernel system called pCore which has an efficient and tiny design that prunes its code size down under 11 Kbytes. Experimental results show that our multiset context-switching mechanism may reduce the context switch overhead up to 30%.
Numerical study of a steel sub-frame in fire
Authors: Aldina Santiago, Luís Simíes da Silva, Paulo Vila Real, Milan Veljkovic
Venue: Computers and Structures (2008)

Steel-framed buildings are generally designed with ''simple'' shear-resisting connections, and lateral forces are resisted by vertical bracing and shear walls. When a beam is considered then the effects of the longitudinal restraints by the adjacent structure and the rotational restraint by the connections has to be taken into account. Because of structural interaction, the beam behaviour at elevated temperature is rather complex. This paper presents a numerical parametric study of a structural system consisting of an exposed steel beam restrained between a pair of fire protected steel columns. The structural sub-frame is modelled using 3D shell elements, thereby taking into account the effect of the local failure modes, and the realistic behaviour of the sub-frame exposed to natural fire. The numerical model accounts for the initial geometrical imperfections, nonlinear temperature gradient over the cross-section, geometrical and material nonlinearity and temperature dependent material properties. Results obtained using a general Finite Element software - LUSAS and a fire dedicated software - SAFIR, are compared. The influence of following variables: beam span/depth ratio, lateral restraint, gradient temperature within the cross-section and mechanical load level is presented in the paper. The failure modes, the development of the internal forces and displacements throughout the analysis are considered to exemplify the effects of the variables considered.
Information Hiding Based on Image Morphing
Authors: Hiroyuki Nakamura, Qiangfu Zhao
Venue: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications - Workshops (2008)

Recently, we proposed a new technique for information hiding based on image morphing. Since the cover message can be changed after embedding the secret message, the cover rate of the new technique is much larger than that of existing techniques. However, this technique has two fatal problems. First, the stegodata may not look natural due to inaccurate definition of the feature lines. Second, the secret image might be estimated to some extent from the stegodata. In this paper, we propose several methods to solve these two problems. First, to make the stegodata more natural, we propose to scale down the secret message before calculating the stegodata. To solve the second problem, we propose to encrypt the secret message first, and then hide it into the warped cover image. To increase the security further, we also propose to separate the stego key and the secret message.
Design and fabrication of the suspended high-Q spiral inductors with X-beams
Authors: M. C. Hsieh, D. K. Jair, C. S. Lin
Venue: Microsystem Technologies (2008)

In this paper, deep sub-micron CMOS process compatible high Q on-chip spiral inductors with air gap structure were designed and fabricated. In the design the electromagnetic solver, SONNET, and the finite element program, ANSYS, were used for electrical-characteristics and maximum mechanical strength, respectively. The copper wires were capped with electroless Ni plating to prevent the copper from oxidizing. A Si3N4/SiO2 X-beam was designed to increase the mechanical strength of the inductor in air gap. The enhancement of maximum mechanical strength of a spiral inductor with X-beams is more than 4,500&#x00a0;times. Among these structures, the measured maximum quality factor (Q) of the suspending inductor and frequency at maximum Q are improved from 5.2 and 1.6&#x00a0;GHz of conventional spiral inductor to 7.3 and 2.1&#x00a0;GHz, respectively.
Agent based intelligent search framework for product information using ontology mapping
Authors: Wooju Kim, Dae Woo Choi, Sangun Park
Venue: Journal of Intelligent Information Systems (2008)

The Semantic Web and Web services provide many opportunities in various applications such as product search and comparison in electronic commerce. We implemented an intelligent meta-search and recommendation system for products through consideration of multiple attributes by using ontology mapping and Web services. Under the assumption that each shopping site offers product ontology and product search service with Web services, we proposed a meta-search framework to configure a customer's search intent, make and dispatch proper queries to each shopping site, evaluate search results from shopping sites, and show the customer the relevant product list with associated rankings. Ontology mapping is used for generating proper queries for shopping sites that have different product categories. We also implemented our framework and performed empirical evaluation of our approach with two leading shopping sites in the world.
Evolutionary Optimization of File Assignment for a Large-Scale Video-on-Demand System
Authors: Jun Guo, Yi Wang, Kit-Sang Tang, Sammy Chan, Eric W. M. Wong, Peter Taylor, Moshe Zukerman
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (2008)

We present a genetic algorithm to tackle a file assignment problem for a large scale video-on-demand system. The file assignment problem is to find the optimal replication and allocation of movie files to disks, so that the request blocking probability is minimized subject to capacity constraints. We adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy, where the entire solution space of file assignments is divided into subspaces. Each subspace is an exclusive set of solutions sharing a common file replication instance. This allows us to utilize a greedy file allocation method to find a sufficiently good quality heuristic solution within each subspace. Two performance indices are further designed to measure the quality of the heuristic solution on 1) its assignment of multi-copy movies and 2) its assignment of single-copy movies. We demonstrate that these techniques together with ad hoc population handling methods enable genetic algorithms to operate in a significantly reduced search space, and achieve good quality file assignments in a computationally efficient way.
End users as unwitting software developers
Authors: Maria Francesca Costabile, Piero Mussio, Loredana Parasiliti Provenza, Antonio Piccinno
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on End-user software engineering (2008)

The widespread use of personal software systems and the boom of the so-called Web 2.0 is erasing the distinctions between those who create software products and those who use or consume them. End users are increasingly involved in the design and development of the tools they use. Unfortunately, there is a high incidence of errors in applications developed by end users. In this paper, a view on end-user development is outlined, which identifies the communication gap between end users and professional software developers as one main source of errors. The spectrum of users that lie between pure end users and professional developers is examined. In particular, the focus is on a particular type of end users that are very active in shaping software tools to their needs without being aware that they are programming: in short, they are unwitting programmers. Their characteristics and their need of appropriate development techniques and environments are analyzed. Finally, the meta-design participatory approach we have developed is briefly described to show how it fills the communication gap and well supports the activities of unwitting programmers.
Joint and individual walking in an immersive collaborative virtual environment
Authors: Stephan Streuber, Astros Chatziastros, Betty J. Mohler, Heinrich H. Bülthoff
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th symposium on Applied perception in graphics and visualization (2008)

The aim of this experiment was to determine to which extent humans optimize their walking behavior in different conditions while navigating in a virtual maze. In two conditions participants either walked individually or jointly connected - carrying a physical stretcher. The results showed that an extra effort due to the task-required cooperation was split evenly within the group, even though the sensory feedback about the physical and social environment was significantly different for leader (e.g. was not able to see the follower) and follower (e.g. was able to see the leader). These results might indicate the emergence of a joint body: a phenomenon in which two individual action-perception loops are tuned towards each other in order to optimize a common goal.
A Theoretical Study on the Critical Difference between the Mechanism of DNA Alkylation by Nitrosamines and Nitrosoureas
Authors: Lijiao Zhao, Rugang Zhong, Yan Zhen
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on BioMedical Engineering and Informatics - Volume 01 (2008)

Ab initio calculations are carried out to study the anchimeric assistance of the nitroso group on the β-carbon electrophilic center of nitramines and nitrosoureas. The molecular structures are all optimized at the RHF/6-311G(d,p) theoretical level, and intrinsic reaction coordinate (IRC) and molecular orbital analysis are performed to investigate the reaction process. Because the C=O group delocalizes the π electrons in the molecular system, the negative charges on the nitroso oxygen atom of nitrosoureas are much lower than that of nitrosamines. Consequently, nitrosamines are more favorable to undergo the anchimeric assistant process. The activation energy and the relative energy of the intermediates are calculated, and the results show that the alkylating activity of nitrosamines is obviously higher than that of nitrosoureas. This result indicates that the difference of the carcinogenicity between nitrosamines and nitrosoureas can be attributed to the distinguishing anchimeric assistant activity of the nitroso group on the β-position carbon.
Power Delivery System: Sufficiency, Efficiency, and Stability
Authors: Zhen Mu
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th international symposium on Quality Electronic Design (2008)

This paper defines the three important aspects of Power Integrity (PI), sufficiency, efficiency, and stability; and presents how the power delivery system (PDS) can be designed, modeled, analyzed, and verified in a CAD environment.
An Approach towards Real-Time Data Exchange Platform System Architecture (concise contribution)
Authors: Bernd Resch, Francesco Calabrese, Assaf Biderman, Carlo Ratti
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 Sixth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (2008)

Recent developments in the technology industry and academia show that users are increasingly becoming the focus in technology development. Not only new applications capable of performing certain tasks are brought to potential users, but also technical innovations that are built around people in order to best fit their needs.Beyond standard web and desktop applications, an ideal use of this principle would be in a digital representation of a real-world city which allows city inhabitants to access, add, and modify information and thus use the city in a more informed way. The term WikiCity represents this concept. The development of a WikiCity requires answers to questions such as: how can a city be sensed, modeled, and actuated in real-time? How can inhabitants interact with information in the city? The paper presents this idea through a use-case scenario in which users can inform themselves about certain events in the city. They can retrieve real-time information related to the events such as nearby happenings, availability of public transportation, and traffic conditions, or create a personalized event route. Users can also feed information back into the WikiCity system before, during, and after attending events. This requires new developments in modeling of human behavior, flexible back-end infrastructures, and semantic-web. The architecture of such system including the relations between data sources and user services, and data flow procedures are explained in the paper. A first implementation of the WikiCity concept was presented at the White Night event in Rome, Italy on September 8, 2007.
Powers of Hamiltonian paths in interval graphs
Authors: Garth Isaak
Venue: Journal of Graph Theory (1998)

We give a simple proof that the obvious necessary conditions for a graph to contain the kth power of a Hamiltonian path are sufficient for the class of interval graphs. The proof is based on showing that a greedy algorithm tests for the existence of Hamiltonian path powers in interval graphs. We will also discuss covers by powers of paths and analogues of the Hamiltonian completion number. &copy; 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 28: 31&ndash;38, 1998
Learning lessons from evaluating eGovernment: Reflective case experiences that support transformational government
Authors: Zahir Irani, Peter E. D. Love, Stephen Jones
Venue: The Journal of Strategic Information Systems (2008)

Central Government strategy of e-inclusion is being manifested in the form of eGovernment. Given that it is the public purse that funds such investments, there is increasingly attention being paid to the evaluation of these investments, such that value for money and organisation learning can be realised. In this paper the authors report the findings from three interpretive in-depth organisational case studies that explore eGovernment evaluation within a UK public sector setting. The paper elicits insights to organisational and managerial aspects with the purpose of improving knowledge and understanding of eGovernment evaluation. The findings that are extrapolated from the case study analysis are presented in terms of lessons that gravitate around social factors, evaluation, adoption, ownership, prioritisation sponsorship and, responsibility. These lessons are extrapolated from the empirical enquiry to improve eGovernment evaluation practice. The paper concludes that eGovernment evaluation is an under developed area, with most work being developmental in nature and as a result calls for decision makers to engage with the eGovernment agenda and commission eGovernment evaluation exercises to improve evaluation practice such that transformational Government can realise its full potential. The paper ends by highlighting political, economic, technical and social issues as the drivers of the evaluation cycle.
On reversal complexity for alternating Turing machines
Authors: M. Liskiewicz, K. Lorys
Venue: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (1989)

The reversal complexity of alternating Turing machines (ATM) is investigated. The strict lower bounds on reversals for recognizing nonregular languages by Sigma /sub k/ machines are settled. Some results relating reversal and space complexities are obtained.
Memory management for self-adjusting computation
Authors: Matthew A. Hammer, Umut A. Acar
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international symposium on Memory management (2008)

The cost of reclaiming space with traversal-based garbage collection is inversely proportional to the amount of free memory, i.e., O(1/(1-f)), where f is the fraction of memory that is live. Consequently, the cost of garbage collection can be very high when the size of the live data remains large relative to the available free space. Intuitively, this is because allocating a small amount of memory space will require the garbage collector to traverse a significant fraction of the memory only to discover little garbage. This is unfortunate because in some application domains the size of the memory-resident data can be generally high. This can cause high GC overheads, especially when generational assumptions do not hold. One such application domain is self-adjusting computation, where computations use memory-resident execution traces in order to respond to changes to their state (e.g., inputs) efficiently. This paper proposes memory-management techniques for self-adjusting computation that remain efficient even when the size of the live data is large. More precisely, the proposed techniques guarantee O(1) amortized cost for each reclaimed memory object. We propose a set of primitives for self-adjusting computation that support the proposed memory management techniques. The primitives provide an operation for allocating memory; we reclaim unused memory automatically. We implement a library for supporting the primitives in the C language and perform an experimental evaluation. Our experiments show that the approach can be implemented with reasonably small constant-factor overheads and that the programs written using the library behave optimally. Compared to previous implementations, we measure up to an order of magnitude improvement in performance and up to a 75% reduction in space usage.
Maximizing area under ROC curve for biometric scores fusion
Authors: Kar-Ann Toh, Jaihie Kim, Sangyoun Lee
Venue: Pattern Recognition (2008)

The receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve has been extensively used for performance evaluation in multimodal biometrics fusion. However, the processes of fusion classifier design and the final ROC performance evaluation are usually conducted separately. This has been inevitable because the ROC, when taken from the error counting point of view, does not have a well-posed structure linking to the fusion classifier of interest. In this work, we propose to optimize the ROC performance directly according to the fusion classifier design. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) will be used as the optimization objective since it provides a good representation of the ROC performance. Due to the piecewise cumulative structure of the AUC, a smooth approximate formulation is proposed. This enables a direct optimization of the AUC with respect to the classifier parameters. When a fusion classifier has linear parameters, computation of the solution to optimize a quadratic AUC approximation is surprisingly simple and yet effective. Our empirical experiments on biometrics fusion show strong evidences regarding the potential of the proposed method.
Nonlinear adaptive control of underwater robot in horizontal motion
Authors: Jerzy Garus
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Systems Theory & Scientific Computation (2006)

The paper addresses nonlinear control of an underwater robot. The way-point line of sight scheme is incorporated for the tracking of a desired trajectory. Command signals are generated by an autopilot consisting of three controllers with parameter adaptation law implemented. Quality of control is concerned without and in presence of external disturbances. Some computer simulations are provided to demonstrate effectiveness, correctness and robustness of the approach.
Modelling the spectrum of the fourier transform of the texture in the solar EIT images
Authors: Konrad Bojar, Mariusz Nieniewski
Venue: Machine Graphics Vision International Journal (2006)

We present a phenomenological parametric model for the spectrum of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of the images obtained from the Extreme UV Imaging Telescope (EIT) of the SOHO mission. As this spectrum decays very fast, we model its logarithm rather than the original spectrum. The proposed model is rotation-invariant. The vicinity of the direct current (DC) component of the logarithm of the spectrum is modelled by the sum of two exponential functions, while the region of high frequencies is modelled by a single exponential function summed with a constant. We discuss a method for fitting the model to the experimental data, show the results of numerical experiments, and discuss various measures of goodness of the fit. The fitting of the described model was carried out for a sequence of images covering one year, and the time evolution of the measures of goodness of fit is also presented.
Knowledge discovery for adaptive negotiation agents in e-marketplaces
Authors: Raymond Y. K. Lau, Yuefeng Li, Dawei Song, Ron Chi Wai Kwok
Venue: Decision Support Systems (2008)

Intelligent software agents are promising in improving the effectiveness of e-marketplaces for e-commerce. Although a large amount of research has been conducted to develop negotiation protocols and mechanisms for e-marketplaces, existing negotiation mechanisms are weak in dealing with complex and dynamic negotiation spaces often found in e-commerce. This paper illustrates a novel knowledge discovery method and a probabilistic negotiation decision making mechanism to improve the performance of negotiation agents. Our preliminary experiments show that the probabilistic negotiation agents empowered by knowledge discovery mechanisms are more effective and efficient than the Pareto optimal negotiation agents in simulated e-marketplaces.