ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Web-based quotation system for stereolithography parts
Authors: Hongbo Lan, Yucheng Ding, Jun Hong, Hailiang Huang, Bingheng Lu
Venue: Computers in Industry (2008)

RP service bureaus or providers constantly face urgent requirements for price and delivery quotations on complicated RP parts. They are challenged to respond quickly and accurately with bids that are tailored to each customer's specifications. In order to satisfy the current quotation requirements of RP service bureaus and providers, this paper investigates and develops a web-based automated quotation system which can provide instant price quotations for stereolithography (SL) parts. Two quoting approaches which include the rough quotation based on weight and precise quotation based on build-time were proposed to determine the price quotation for SL parts. Furthermore, a Java-enabled solution together with web techniques was employed to develop the on-line price quotation system. Implementation of precise quotation method, as a typical module, was used to demonstrate the development of the system. The system offers a new choice for RP customers to allow them to quote instantly and compare multiple rapid prototyping processes.
Complex Systems and Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
Authors: Juan Pavón, Francisco Garijo, Jorge Gómez-Sanz
Venue: Engineering Environment-Mediated Multi-Agent Systems: International Workshop, EEMMAS 2007, Dresden, Germany, October 5, 2007. Selected Revised and Invited Papers (2008)

Although there is a huge amount of work and valuable proposals about agent oriented software engineering, it seems that the paradigm has not been yet widely adopted by software industry. Some claim that there is a need for a killer application showing clearly the benefits of multi-agent systems with respect to other techniques. Others may consider the approach as too academic to be applied in real projects. However, in our opinion, the answer may be found in the simple explanation of lessons learned while developing applications with agent-orientation, and confronting these with object and component oriented solutions, especially when faced to the development of complex systems. This paper discusses contributions of multi-agent systems from a software engineering perspective, as a way to put in value some of the properties of the agent paradigm in the development of complex software systems.
Anisotropic Haralick Edge Detection Scheme with Application to Vessel Segmentation
Authors: Ali Gooya, Takeyoshi Dohi, Ichiro Sakuma, Hongen Liao
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Medical Imaging and Augmented Reality (2008)

In this paper, detection of edges in oriented fields is addressed. Haralick edge detection is an accurate scheme for estimation of the edge in a Euclidean space. However, in some applications such as edge detection for vessel segmentation because of the intrinsic orientation of structures, accuracy is only demanded in a particular subspace. This is specially usefull when a curve evolution is chosen for segmentation since gradients in parallel to vessel orientation stops evolution. Haralick edge detection is generalized on a Riemannian space using the inner product of the vectors under a space metric tensor. This eliminates the spurious gradients and preserves the accuracy on the vessel border. Examples are given and the comparison is made with the state-of-the-art flux maximizing flow indicating that significant improvements in terms of leakage minimization and thiner vessel delineation is achievable using our methodology.
Sketching-Out Virtual Humans: A Smart Interface for Human Modelling and Animation
Authors: Chen Mao, Sheng Feng Qin, David Wright
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th international symposium on Smart Graphics (2007)

In this paper, we present a fast and intuitive interface for sketching out 3D virtual humans and animation. The user draws stick figure key frames first and chooses one for "fleshing-out" with freehand body contours. The system automatically constructs a plausible 3D skin surface from the rendered figure, and maps it onto the posed stick figures to produce the 3D character animation. A "creative model-based method" is developed, which performs a human perception process to generate 3D human bodies of various body sizes, shapes and fat distributions. In this approach, an anatomical 3D generic model has been created with three distinct layers: skeleton, fat tissue, and skin. It can be transformed sequentially through rigid morphing, fatness morphing, and surface fitting to match the original 2D sketch. An auto-beautification function is also offered to regularise the 3D asymmetrical bodies from users' imperfect figure sketches. Our current system delivers character animation in various forms, including articulated figure animation, 3D mesh model animation, 2D contour figure animation, and even 2D NPR animation with personalised drawing styles. The system has been formally tested by various users on Tablet PC. After minimal training, even a beginner can create vivid virtual humans and animate them within minutes.
A Study on Self Practice Navigation System for the "Kana" Strings
Authors: Kenta Kouyama, Naoto Hara, Toshiaki Kuroiwa, Seiu Yamashita, Akiko Ono, Isao J. Ohsugi, Junichi Yoshino, Hiroshi Ichimura
Venue: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, Part I (2008)

The "kana" strings are an indigenous character to Japan. Chinese characters were simplified and made into the original phonograms. The culture of the "kana" strings was intended in commuting lessons under the master. Meanwhile, IT devices are greatly improved and they are now applied in various fields (For example: In the art field, preservation of the cultural heritage and e-Leaning etc.). Therefore, it was examined whether an IT device can be applied to practice in the "kana" strings. A method of outputting a beautiful model was already studied [1]. But it was considered whether the practice by the navigation support method is effective [2]. This paper describes the construction method of self "kana" strings practice system that adopts the navigation support method.
OGRE-Multimedia: An API for the Design of Multimedia and Virtual Reality Applications
Authors: Paulo N. Sampaio, Roberto Ivo Freitas, Gonçalo Nuno Cardoso
Venue: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, Part III (2008)

Most of the tools and languages for modeling Virtual Reality environments, such as VRML, X3D, Java3D, etc. do not provide means of describing the synchronized presentation of multimedia content inside these environments. Multimedia has demonstrated its capabilities of motivating users and capturing their attention, which is an interesting characteristic when we want to provide a higher degree of immersion inside Virtual Reality applications. This paper presents a robust and generic solution for the integrated presentation of different kinds of media objects inside virtual environments based on the Graphical Engine OGRE.
Adapting the COSMIC Method for Evaluating the Functional Size in PRiM
Authors: Gemma Grau
Venue: Software Process and Product Measurement: International Conference, IWSM-Mensura 2007, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, November 5-8, 2007. Revised Papers (2007)

The COSMIC method is a standard that has been proven effective for measuring the functional size of business applications and real-time software systems from their functional user requirements specification. Despite of this, the approaches based on the COSMIC method usually require a mapping between the concepts in the requirements specification and their own terms and do not take into account non-functional requirements. On the other hand, PRiM is a method that aims at assessing non-functional properties at the early stages of the development process. PRiM uses the i* framework to model the functional and non-functional requirements in terms of actors and dependencies among them. In this paper we present how the i* constructs proposed in PRiM can be adapted to measure the functional size using the COSMIC method and, as PRiM works with requirements and allows the evaluation of non-functional properties, there is a remarkable benefit when using both methods altogether.
Suicidal Risk Evaluation Using a Similarity-Based Classifier
Authors: S. Chattopadhyay, P. Ray, H. S. Chen, M. B. Lee, H. C. Chiang
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications (2008)

Suicide remains one of the leading causes of death in the world and it is showing an increasing trend. Suicide is preventable by early screening of the risks. But the risk assessment is a complex task due to involvement of multiple predictors, which are highly subjective in nature and varies from one case to another. Moreover, none of the available suicide intent scales (SIS) are found to be sufficient to evaluate the risk patterns in a group of patients. Given this scenario, the present paper applies similarity-based pattern-matching technique for mining suicidal risks in vulnerable groups of patients. At first, medical data of groups of suicidal patients have been collected and modeled according to Pierce's Suicide Intent Scale (PSIS) and then engineered using a JAVA-based pattern-matching tool that performs as an intelligent classifier. Results show that addition of more factors, for example, age and sex of the patients brings more clarity to identify the suicidal risk patterns.
Exploiting RFIDs and Tilt-Based Interaction for Mobile Museum Guides Accessible to Vision-Impaired Users
Authors: Giuseppe Ghiani, Barbara Leporini, Fabio Paternò, Carmen Santoro
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (2008)

In this paper, we present a study aiming to investigate how tilt-based interaction, along with RFIDs for localization, can be exploited to support blind users in interacting with mobile guides. We describe the design proposed and report on a first user study, which also compared two different ways to provide audio feedback (short sounds or vocal messages) for the tilt-based interaction.
Long-term stability of Ni-silicide ohmic contact to n-type 4H-SiC
Authors: A. V. Kuchuk, M. Guziewicz, R. Ratajczak, M. Wzorek, V. P. Kladko, A. Piotrowska
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2008)

The thermal stability of Ni"2Si/n-SiC ohmic contacts with Au overlayer without or with Ta-Si-N diffusion barrier was investigated after long anneals at 400^oC in air. Current-voltage characteristics, sheet resistance measurements, Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy were used to characterize the contacts before and after aging. It is shown that aging of Au/Ni"2Si/n-SiC contact at 400^oC for 50h resulted in electrical failure, as well as complete contact degradation for 150h due to interdiffusion/reaction processes in the contact. The Au/Ta"3"5Si"1"5N"5"0/Ni"2Si/n-SiC contact is thermally stable after 150h of aging at 400^oC and has great potential for use in SiC-based devices for high-temperature operation.
An Improved Random Sampling LDA for Face Recognition
Authors: Yunfei Jiang, Xinyu Chen, Ping Guo, Hanqing Lu
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 Congress on Image and Signal Processing, Vol. 2 - Volume 02 (2008)

Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) is one of the most used feature extraction techniques for face recognition. However, it often suffers from the small sample size problem with high dimension setting. Random Subspace Method (RSM) is a popular combining technique to improve weak classifier. Nevertheless, it remains a problem how to construct an optimal random subspace for discriminant analysis. In this paper, we propose an improved random sampling LDA for face recognition. Firstly, AdaBoost is adopted to select Gabor feature and remove redundant information. Secondly, in the selected Gabor feature space, we combine principal component analysis and RSM approaches to construct optimal random subspaces for LDA. After that, direct LDA (D-LDA) and R-LDA is applied in each subspace, respectively. Final results are obtained by combining all the LDA classifiers using a fusion rule. Experiments with both the ORL and FERET face databases demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method, and it shows promising results compared with previous approaches.
A multicriteria approach to two-level hierarchy scheduling in grids
Authors: Krzysztof Kurowski, Jarek Nabrzyski, Ariel Oleksiak, Jan Węglarz
Venue: Journal of Scheduling (2008)

In this paper we address a multicriteria scheduling problem for computational Grid systems. We focus on the two-level hierarchical Grid scheduling problem, in which at the first level (the Grid level) a Grid broker makes scheduling decisions and allocates jobs to Grid nodes. Jobs are then sent to the Grid nodes, where local schedulers generate local schedules for each node accordingly. A general approach is presented taking into account preferences of all the stakeholders of Grid scheduling (end-users, Grid administrators, and local resource providers) and assuming a lack of knowledge about job time characteristics. A single-stakeholder, single-criterion version of the approach has been compared experimentally with the existing approaches.
A Boost Voting Strategy for Knowledge Integration and Decision Making
Authors: Haibo He, Yuan Cao, Jinyu Wen, Shijie Cheng
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th international symposium on Neural Networks: Advances in Neural Networks (2008)

This paper proposes a voting strategy for knowledge integration and decision making systems with information uncertainty. As ensemble learning methods have recently attracted growing attention from both academia and industry, it is critical to understand the fundamental problem of voting strategy for such learning methodologies. Motivated by the signal to noise ratio (SNR) concept, we propose a method that can vote optimally according to the knowledge level of each hypothesis. The mathematical framework based on gradient analysis is used to find the optimal weights, and a voting algorithm, BoostVote, is presented in detail in this paper. Simulation analyses based on synthetic data and real-world data sets with comparison to the existing voting rules demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.
Combining Formal Verification and Testing for Correct Legacy Component Integration in Mechatronic UML
Authors: Holger Giese, Stefan Henkler, Martin Hirsch
Venue: Architecting Dependable Systems V (2008)

One of the main benefits of component-based architectures is their support for reuse. The port and interface definitions of architectural components facilitate the construction of complex functionality by composition of existing components. For such a composition means for a sufficient verification either by testing or formal verification are necessary. However, the overwhelming complexity of the interaction of distributed real-time components usually excludes that testing alone can provide the required coverage when integrating a legacy component. In this paper we present a scheme on how embedded legacy components can be tackled. For the embedded legacy components initially a behavioral model is derived from the interface description of the architectural model. This is in the subsequent steps enriched by an incremental synthesis using formal verification techniques for the systematic generation of component tests. The proposed scheme results in an effective combination of testing and formal verification. While verification is employed to tackle the inherently subtle interaction of the distributed real-time components which could not be covered by testing, local testing of the components guided by the verification results is employed to derive refined behavioral models. The approach further has two outstanding benefits. It can pin-point real failures without false negatives right from the beginning. It can also prove the correctness of the integration without learning the whole legacy component (using the restrictions of the integration context).
A SOA statistical engine for biomedical data
Authors: Pierpaolo Vittorini, Monica Michetti, Ferdinando di Orio
Venue: Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine (2008)

Currently, large efforts are spent to develop standards and architectures useful to achieve more effective interoperability among medical information systems. Despite such efforts, there are no researches produced so far to directly analyse, with statistical methods, biomedical data represented as eXtensible Markup Language (XML) documents. Thus, the paper proposes an architecture which offers a twofold approach to the statistical analysis of XML data, i.e. via a web service and by extending the query languages used in XML databases. To show how the architecture can be used, a sample system is also reported. Finally, the paper ends by reporting the advantages and drawbacks of the proposed approach in comparison with classic statistical packages.
A Complete Realisability Semantics for Intersection Types and Arbitrary Expansion Variables
Authors: Fairouz Kamareddine, Karim Nour, Vincent Rahli, J. B. Wells
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th international colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing (2008)

Expansion was introduced at the end of the 1970s for calculating principal typings for ¿-terms in intersection type systems. Expansion variables (E-variables) were introduced at the end of the 1990s to simplify and help mechanise expansion. Recently, E-variables have been further simplified and generalised to also allow calculating other type operators than just intersection. There has been much work on semantics for intersection type systems, but only one such work on intersection type systems with E-variables. That work established that building a semantics for E-variables is very challenging. Because it is unclear how to devise a space of meanings for E-variables, that work developed instead a space of meanings for types that is hierarchical in the sense of having many degrees (denoted by indexes). However, although the indexed calculus helped identify the serious problems of giving a semantics for expansion variables, the sound realisability semantics was only complete when one single E-variable is used and furthermore, the universal type ¿ was not allowed. In this paper, we are able to overcome these challenges. We develop a realisability semantics where we allow an arbitrary (possibly infinite) number of expansion variables and where ¿ is present. We show the soundness and completeness of our proposed semantics.
Svm and a novel pool method coupled with thematics for protein active site prediction
Authors: Ronald J. Williams, Mary J. Ondrechen
Venue:  (2008)

Protein active site prediction is a very important problem in bioinformatics. THEMATICS is a simple and effective method based on the special electrostatic properties of ionizable residues to predict such sites from protein three-dimensional structure alone. The process involves distinguishing computed titration curves with perturbed shape from normal ones; the differences are subtle in many cases. In this dissertation, I develop and apply special machine learning techniques to automate the process and achieve higher sensitivity than results from other methods while maintaining high specificity. I first present application of support vector machines (SVM) to automate the active site prediction using THEMATICS; at the time this work was developed, it achieved better performance than any other 3D structure based methods. I then present the more recently developed Partial Order Optimal Likelihood (POOL) method, which estimates the probabilities of residues being active under certain natural monotonicity assumptions. The dissertation shows that applying the POOL method just on THEMATICS features outperforms the SVM results. Furthermore, since the overall approach is based on estimating certain probabilities from labeled training data, it provides a principled way to combine the use of THEMATICS features with other non-electrostatic features proposed by others. In particular, I consider the use of geometric features as well, and the resulting classifiers are the best structure-only predictors yet found. Finally, I show that adding in sequence-based conservation scores where applicable yields a method that outperforms all existing method while using only whatever combination of structure-based or sequence-based features is available.
How to Solve Consensus in the Smallest Window of Synchrony
Authors: Dan Alistarh, Seth Gilbert, Rachid Guerraoui, Corentin Travers
Venue: Proceedings of the 22nd international symposium on Distributed Computing (2008)

This paper addresses the following question: what is the minimum-sized synchronous window needed to solve consensus in an otherwise asynchronous system? In answer to this question, we present the first optimally-resilient algorithm ASAP that solves consensus as soon as possible in an eventually synchronous system, i.e., a system that from some time GST onwards, delivers messages in a timely fashion. ASAP guarantees that, in an execution with at most f failures, every process decides no later than round GST + f + 2, which is optimal.
Open Source Software Product Lines
Authors: Frank van der Linden, Björn Lundell, Gary Chastek
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 12th International Software Product Line Conference (2008)

Embedded industries have invested a lot in the introduction of software product lines in their software development. In addition, using open source software appears to be a profitable way to obtain good software. This is also applicable for organizations doing product line engineering. On the other hand, because of the diverse use of open source software, product line development is an attractive way of working in open source communities.
Exploiting Loop-Level Parallelism for SIMD Arrays Using OpenMP
Authors: Con Bradley, Benedict R. Gaster
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd international workshop on OpenMP: A Practical Programming Model for the Multi-Core Era (2007)

Programming SIMD arrays in languages such as C or FORTRAN is difficult and although work on automatic parallelizing programs has achieved much, it is far from satisfactory. In particular, almost all `fully' automatic parallelizing compilers place fundamental restrictions on the input language.Alternatively OpenMP provides an approach to parallel programming that supports incremental improvements to applications that places restrictions in the context of preserving semantics of a parallelized section. OpenMP is limited to a thread based model that does not define a mapping for other parallel programming models.In this paper, we describe an alternative approach to programming SIMD machines using an extended subset of OpenMP (OpenMP SIMD), allowing us to model naturally the programming of arbitrary sized SIMD arrays while retaining the semantic completeness of both OpenMP and the parent languages.Using the CSX architecture we show how OpenMP SIMD can be implemented and discuss future extensions to both the language and SIMD architectures to better support explicit parallel programming.