ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Software and Patents in Europe, 1st edition
Authors: Philip Leith
Venue:  (2007)

The computer program exclusion from Article 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) proved impossible to uphold as industry moved over to digital technology, and the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Organisation (EPO) felt emboldened to circumvent the EPC in Vicom by creating the legal fiction of 'technical effect'. This 'engineer's solution' emphasised that protection should be available for a device, a situation which has led to software and business methods being protected throughout Europe when the form of application, rather than the substance, is acceptable. Since the Article 52 exclusion has effectively vanished, it is timely to reconsider what makes examination of software invention difficult and what leads to such energetic opposition to protecting inventive activity in the software field. Leith advocates a more programming-centric approach, which recognises that software examination requires different strategies from that of other technical fields. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player
Robust audio watermarking using improved TS echo hiding
Authors: Yousof Erfani, Shadi Siahpoush
Venue: Digital Signal Processing (2009)

A novel and content based improved time spread echo hiding method (ITS) is presented. The system decoder relies upon distinguishing a watermarked bit based on a correlation amount quantity and also the echo kernel embeds the watermark bit into the whole signal. The presented system is cepstral content based in which the original signal cepstral portion of error at the decoder is removed and thus the performance of the decoder detection rate is improved considerably. Experimental results show the good results for the system robustness against the common signal processing attacks through calculating error detection rates in comparison with conventional echo hiding methods. Also good results were obtained for watermark inaudibility through mean opinion test (MOS) test and SNR value comparisons.
Investment in advanced manufacturing technology difficulties from the management point of view
Authors: Josef Hynek, Václav Janeček, Libuše Svobodová
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th WSEAS international conference on Robotics, control and manufacturing technology (2009)

It is believed that manufacturing companies in economically developed countries tend to use advanced manufacturing technology. Such technology should help them to reduce the cost of manufacturing, improve the quality of their products, increase the throughput as well as production flexibility and altogether it should help them to maintain or even enhance their competitiveness on global markets. These ascertainments are reckoned to be truth and that is why it comes as a surprise if we realize that managers show rather reserved attitude and admit many difficulties when deciding about investment into a particular advance manufacturing project in their companies. We will describe selected results of two surveys that we did in the Czech Republic and we will compare our results with outcomes of the similar surveys in other countries too. Moreover, we will make an attempt to explain the motives of managers for such behavior and the possible ways to change their attitudes towards advanced manufacturing investment too.
TIM/WIM: a set of tools to interface modelling in biology
Authors: François Vallée, Marie Beurton-Aimar, Nicolas Parisey, Florent Collot, Sophie Colombié
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th European Lisp Workshop (2009)

Modelling in biology is a complex task. Many types of information are used by biologists but there is a lack of tools for integrating heterogeneous data in a core interface. TIM (Tools to Input Models) is a tool which allows to put in the same interface data which describe biological objects like enzymes, metabolites, DNA, ... and information about biological process modelling like those coming from NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) experiments and used to simulate flux through metabolic networks. TIM is able to manage the widely used database format, PGDB (BioCyc format), and uses a large part of a biological ontology, BioPAX format, to store information about biological processes. To manage all these data, WIM (Web Interface for Modelling) provides a set of web pages. The WIM package generates dynamic html sources using CL-WHO library and integrates an Hunchen-toot web server. At present, the application is used by a biologist group to store data about the carbon metabolism of the tomato fruit. They have released the first version of the TomaCyc database and currently used the WIM interface to create automatically input files for softwares that simulate the activity of their metabolism network.
Google Blogger For Dummies
Authors: Susan Gunelius
Venue: For Dummies (2009)

Are you bemused by blogs? Eager to become a blogger? Google Blogger For Dummies can help you start blogging sooner than you think. More than 14 million people are promoting a business, connecting with family and friends, and sharing opinions with Google Blogger. This book helps you start a Blogger account, create content, build an audience, make money from your blog, and more, all without learning to program. Youll be able to: Learn the parts of a blog, what Blogger does, and how to choose goals and blog topics Choose a domain name, learn to use the dashboard, pick a template, and configure settings Dress up your blog with themes and find out where to get plenty of free ones Learn blogging etiquette and some secrets for long-term success Make money from your blog with Google Adsense, contextual and text link ads, and merchandising with CafePress Set up multi-user blogs or branch into mobile blogging, podcasting, or video blogging Take advantage of social networking sites and learn simple search engine optimization techniques Maintain your blog with tools like Blog This! and Quick Edit Moderate comments effectively, track your stats, and more Google Blogger is a great choice for beginning bloggers, and Google Blogger For Dummies gives you the know-how to venture confidently into the blogosphere.
Accurate text localization in images based on SVM output scores
Authors: Cheolkon Jung, Qifeng Liu, Joongkyu Kim
Venue: Image and Vision Computing (2009)

In this paper, we propose a new approach for accurate text localization in images based on SVM (support vector machine) output scores. In general, SVM output scores for the verification of text candidates provide a measure of the closeness to the text. Up to the present, most researchers used the score for verifying the text candidate region whether it is text or not. However, we use the output score for refining the initial localized text lines and selecting the best localization result from the different pyramid levels. By means of the proposed approach, we can obtain more accurate text localization results. Our method has three modules: (1) text candidate detection based on edge-CCA (connected component analysis), (2) text candidate verification based on the classifier fusion of N-gray (normalized gray intensity) and CGV (constant gradient variance), and (3) text line refinement based on the SVM output score, color distribution and prior geometric knowledge. By means of experiments on a large news database, we demonstrate that our method achieves impressive performance with respect to the accuracy, robustness and efficiency.
Mathematical model of the reversing two-phase induction machine
Authors: Alecsandru Simion, Leonard Livadaru, Dorin Lucache
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS international conference on Mathematical and computational methods in science and engineering (2008)

The paper presents a new high level mathematical model of the two-phase induction machine, called "in total fluxes". The equations of the model, which are very appropriate for the study of the machine operating under imposed voltage, including reversing operation, do not contain explicitly the rotor speed and the winding currents. The quantities used in the equations, which are the rotation angle and the total fluxes of the windings, allow the obtaining of the instantaneous electromagnetic torque in a similar expression with the well known and wide spread equation that contains winding currents. Finally, the movement equation (equilibrium of the torques) is valid both for dynamic regimes with important variations of the speed and stationary regime. The computer simulated results of the "in total fluxes" model for different regimes, and particularly for reversing operation, are more accurate in comparison with the results given by the traditional model called "in currents". These latter models contain equations which include the speed among variable quantities. The speed is supposed to be constant along infinitesimal time domains but this presumption is not exactly valid in practice for reversing operation.
Multi-layer Background Change Detection Based on Spatiotemporal Texture Projections
Authors: Roland Miezianko, Dragoljub Pokrajac
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision and Graphics: Revised Papers (2008)

In this paper we explore a multi-layer background change detection method based on projections of spatiotemporal 3D texture maps. The aim of this method is to provide a background change detection of a region viewed by multiple cameras. Camera views are projected onto a common ground plane, thus creating a spatially aligned multi-layer background. The aligned multi-layer background is subdivided into non-overlapping texture blocks, and block data is dimensionally reduced by principal component analysis. Motion detection is performed on each block, and non-moving sections of the block are clustered into multiple hyperspheres. An analysis of the clusters from spatially aligned multi-layer blocks reveal regions of changed background. This method is evaluated on surveillance videos available from PETS2006 and PETS2007 datasets.
Information structure in African languages: corpora and tools
Authors: Christian Chiarcos, Ines Fiedler, Mira Grubic, Andreas Haida, Katharina Hartmann, Julia Ritz, Anne Schwarz, Amir Zeldes, Malte Zimmermann
Venue: Proceedings of the First Workshop on Language Technologies for African Languages (2009)

In this paper, we describe tools and resources for the study of African languages developed at the Collaborative Research Centre "Information Structure". These include deeply annotated data collections of 25 subsaharan languages that are described together with their annotation scheme, and further, the corpus tool ANNIS that provides a unified access to a broad variety of annotations created with a range of different tools. With the application of ANNIS to several African data collections, we illustrate its suitability for the purpose of language documentation, distributed access and the creation of data archives.
Piezoelectric device with volume elastic wave for ultrasonic pulses generating
Authors: Marian Pearsica, Ciprian Racuciu, Nicolae Jula, Dan Raducanu
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th WSEAS international conference on Computational intelligence, man-machine systems and cybernetics (2008)

The device constitutes a specific application of piezoelectric transducers, which allows the generation of impulses series with constant or pseudo-aleatory frequency, and constant or variable pause. The device work is based on the process of achieving inverse piezoelectric effect, meaning the deformation of the crystalline network of the piezoelectric device caused by an external electrical field. The equipment was physically realized and it constituted the object of a research contract of the Optical-Electronic Institute of Bucharest. In this paper is also presented a PSpice simulation of the projected equipment.
Alternating group explicit-implicit method and Crank-Nicolson method for convection-diffusion equation
Authors: Qinghua Feng, Bin Zheng
Venue: WSEAS Transactions on Computers (2009)

Based on the concept of alternating group and domain decomposition, we present a class of alternating group explicit-implicit method and an alternating group Crank-Nicolson method for solving convection-diffusion equation. Both of the two methods are effective in convection dominant cases. The concept of the construction of the methods is also be applied to 2D convection-diffusion equations. Numerical results show the present methods are superior to the known methods in [6,11,16].
Of robot ants and elephants
Authors: Asaf Shiloni, Noa Agmon, Gal A. Kaminka
Venue: Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1 (2009)

Investigations of multi-robot systems often make implicit assumptions concerning the computational capabilities of the robots. Despite the lack of explicit attention to the computational capabilities of robots, two computational classes of robots emerge as focal points of recent research: Robot Ants and robot Elephants. Ants have poor memory and communication capabilities, but are able to communicate using pheromones, in effect turning their work area into a shared memory. By comparison, elephants are computationally stronger, have large memory, and are equipped with strong sensing and communication capabilities. Unfortunately, not much is known about the relation between the capabilities of these models in terms of the tasks they can address. In this paper, we present formal models of both ants and elephants, and investigate if one dominates the other. We present two algorithms: AntEater, which allows elephant robots to execute ant algorithms; and ElephantGun, which converts elephant algorithms---specified as Turing machines---into ant algorithms. By exploring the computational capabilities of these algorithms, we reach interesting conclusions regarding the computational power of both models.
Fast visualization of complex 3D models using displacement mapping
Authors: The-Kiet Lu, Kok-Lim Low, Jianmin Zheng
Venue: Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2009 (2009)

We present a simple method to render complex 3D models at interactive rates using real-time displacement mapping. We use an octree to decompose the 3D model into a set of height fields and display the model by rendering the height fields using per-pixel displacement mapping. By simply rendering the faces of the octree voxels to produce fragments for ray-casting on the GPU, and with straightforward transformation of view rays to the displacement map's local space, our method is able to accurately render the object's silhouettes with very little special handling. The algorithm is especially suitable for fast visualization of high-detail point-based models, and models made up of unprocessed triangle meshes that come straight from range scanning. This is because our method requires much less preprocessing time compared to the traditional triangle-based rendering approach, which usually needs a large amount of computation to preprocess the input model into one that can be rendered more efficiently. Unlike the point-based rendering approach, the rendering efficiency of our method is not limited by the number of input points. Our method can achieve interactive rendering of models with more than 300 millions points on standard graphics hardware.
Leveraging smart phones to reduce mobility footprints
Authors: Stephen Smaldone, Benjamin Gilbert, Nilton Bila, Liviu Iftode, Eyal de Lara, Mahadev Satyanarayanan
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services (2009)

Mobility footprint refers to the size, weight, and energy demand of the hardware that must be carried by a mobile user to be effective at any time and place. The ideal of a zero mobility footprint is achievable by encapsulating personal computing state in a virtual machine (VM) and delivering it over the Internet to a locally-obtained computer close to the user. In locations with poor Internet connectivity, the demands placed on WAN bandwidth can result in unacceptable user experience. We show how this challenge can be overcome by using nascent smart phone technology as a trusted personal assistant called Horatio that serves as a self-cleaning portable cache for VM state. Since most users already carry cell phones for voice calls and texting, Horatio does not increase the size or weight aspects of a user's mobility footprint - there is only a small increase in the energy aspect. We have built an experimental prototype of Horatio, and measurements confirm its ability to improve user experience even with current smart phone limitations.
Numerical Simulation of Endoscopic Images in Photodynamic Diagnosis
Authors: Andrzej Zacher
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision and Graphics: Revised Papers (2008)

This paper introduces a photon subsurface scattering method to simulate light transport in human colon tissue. First the theoretical model and parameters of human tissue including autofluorescence phenomenon was presented. Then it was described the Monte-Carlo model of steady-state light transport in multi-layered colon. The goal of this investigation is to simulate the light propagation in tissue and to collect the data containing the effect of fluorescence. This information will be used to generate images. Pictures taken for different adjustment of light parameters should define a configuration for which cancerous structures are visible quickly and precisely. Real medical devices can adjust their parameters to the simulated ones and help with efficient diagnosis and recognition of diseased structures.
Communities real and imagined: designing a communication system for zimbabwean activists
Authors: Tad Hirsch
Venue: Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Communities and technologies (2009)

In this paper, I describe how various understandings of community activated the design of Dialup Radio, a mobile phone-based independent media distribution system for Zimbabwean civil society and human rights activists. I identify three distinct communities and discuss their influence on the design process. Finally, I consider the challenges activist designers face in simultaneously addressing the needs of present-day users and the imagined future communities their projects hope to create.
Comparative study case for interpolative-type synthetic input controllers on a ball and beam system
Authors: Sanda Dale, Alexandru Bara, Gabor Gianina
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS international conference on Fuzzy systems (2009)

The paper presents some aspects related to implementation of two interpolative-type control solutions: fuzzy and interpolative controllers based on synthetic input. As synthetic input, the signed distance to the switching line - in the phase plane - is considered. For the ball and beam system, as a study case, two control structures are implemented: a complete state feedback TP4 and a simplified translation feedback control structure TP2, from both fuzzy and interpolative approach. The study is made under some restrained assumptions in different scenarios and the results are discussed comparatively.
On the Quantization Error in SOM vs. VQ: A Critical and Systematic Study
Authors: Teuvo Kohonen, Ilari T. Nieminen, Timo Honkela
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Advances in Self-Organizing Maps (2009)

The self-organizing map (SOM) is related to the classical vector quantization (VQ). Like in the VQ, the SOM represents a distribution of input data vectors using a finite set of models. In both methods, the quantization error (QE) of an input vector can be expressed, e.g., as the Euclidean norm of the difference of the input vector and the best-matching model. Since the models are usually optimized in the VQ so that the sum of the squared QEs is minimized for the given set of training vectors, a common notion is that it will be impossible to find models that produce a smaller rms QE. Therefore it has come as a surprise that in some cases the rms QE of a SOM can be smaller than that of a VQ with the same number of models and the same input data. This effect may manifest itself if the number of training vectors per model is on the order of small integers and the testing is made with an independent set of test vectors. An explanation seems to ensue from statistics. Each model vector in the VQ is determined as the average of those training vectors that are mapped into the same Voronoi domain as the model vector. On the contrary, each model vector of the SOM is determined as a weighted average of all of those training vectors that are mapped into the "topological" neighborhood around the corresponding model. The number of training vectors mapped into the neighborhood of a SOM model is generally much larger than that mapped into a Voronoi domain around a model in the VQ. Since the SOM model vectors are then determined with a significantly higher statistical accuracy, the Voronoi domains of the SOM are significantly more regular, and the resulting rms QE may then be smaller than in the VQ. However, the effective dimensionality of the vectors must also be sufficiently high.
Interactive storytelling in pre-school: a case-study
Authors: Nicoletta Di Blas, Bianca Boretti
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (2009)

This paper presents a successful case-study of introduction of an authoring tool for multimedia storytelling in a class of 27 preschool children. Unlike more sophisticated and demanding approaches, the tool requires basic technology and is very easy to use: in spite of this simplicity, the results are highly rewarding in terms of creativity, media literacy and "traditional" educational benefits (above all the ability to narrate). We deem this extreme simplicity a pre-requisite for large-scale deployment of computational systems for kids in standard, low-tech environments.
A translation aid system with a stratified lookup interface
Authors: Takeshi Abekawa, Kyo Kageura
Venue: Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the ACL on Interactive Poster and Demonstration Sessions (2007)

We are currently developing a translation aid system specially designed for English-to-Japanese volunteer translators working mainly online. In this paper we introduce the stratified reference lookup interface that has been incorporated into the source text area of the system, which distinguishes three user awareness levels depending on the type and nature of the reference unit. The different awareness levels are assigned to reference units from a variety of reference sources, according to the criteria of "composition", "difficulty", "speciality" and "resource type".
Science Net: Effects of an e-Learning System on Elementary School Students' Self-Regulated Learning in Science Classes
Authors: Takeshi Kitazawa, Masahiro Nagai, Hiroshi Kato, Kanji Akahori
Venue: Proceeding of the 2006 conference on Learning by Effective Utilization of Technologies: Facilitating Intercultural Understanding (2006)

This paper describes the evaluation of our science e-learning site 'Science Net' which elementary school students have used it for one year. First, the findings show that it is not only being used it for checking lesson content but also for asking questions, lesson revision, and searching for science information via a bulletin board system (BBS). Second, the users who have used it for checking lessons tend to score higher in the self-regulated learning strategies than the non users from the results of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich · De Groot 1990), in terms of 2 of the cognitive strategies (When I study for a test, I try to put together the information from class and from the book, and so on), and 4 of the self-regulations (I work on practice exercises and answer end of chapter questions even when I don't have to; when I'm reading I stop once in a while and go over what I have read, and so on.).