ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
On the scalability of network management information for inter-domain light-path assessment
Authors: Guanglei Liu, Chuanyi Ji, Vincent W. S. Chan
Venue: IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON) (2005)

We investigate the necessary amount of network management information for light-path assessment to dynamically set up end-to-end light-paths across administrative domains in optical networks. Our focus is on the scalability of partial management information. We pose light-path assessment as a decision problem, and define the performance as the Bayes probability of an erroneous decision. We then characterize the scalability of management information as its growth rate with respect to the total resources of the network to achieve a desired performance. Scalability is achieved if the management information needed is only a negligible fraction of the total network resources. Specifically, we consider in this work one type of partial information that grows only logarithmically with the number of wavelengths supported per link. We derive an upper bound for the Bayes error in terms of the blocking probability when a new call is presented at the entrance of the network. We evaluate the upper bound using both independent and dependent models of wavelength usage for intra- and inter-domain calls. Our study shows that there exists a "threshold effect": The Bayes error decreases to zero exponentially with respect to the load when the load is either below or above a threshold value; and is nonnegligible when the load is in a small duration around the threshold. This suggests that the partial information considered can indeed provide the desired performance, and a small percentage of erroneous decisions can be traded off to achieve a large saving in the amount of management information.
ICT in History Education-- Scotland and Europe
Authors: Peter Hillis Bob Munro
Venue: Social Science Computer Review (2005)

Advances in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in history teaching and an increase in the deployment of ICT for history teaching and learning have been reflected in all European countries, albeit with varying degrees of success. Developments in the university and school sectors are characterized by a growing integration of specific ICT facilities and tools. The growing importance of ICT in history teaching and learning has been fostered by national government investment and a variety of cross-Europe support initiatives; however, research indicates that its potential has yet to be fully realized. Research into the impact of ICT on teaching and learning in Scottish schools shows a similarly patchy picture to that in other European countries; however, the evaluation of a series of CD-ROMs confirms the arguments of history educators that effective history software must problematize the past, so helping pupils develop their research and thinking skills.
Three-level caching for efficient query processing in large Web search engines
Authors: Xiaohui Long, Torsten Suel
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web (2005)

Large web search engines have to answer thousands of queries per second with interactive response times. Due to the sizes of the data sets involved, often in the range of multiple terabytes, a single query may require the processing of hundreds of megabytes or more of index data. To keep up with this immense workload, large search engines employ clusters of hundreds or thousands of machines, and a number of techniques such as caching, index compression, and index and query pruning are used to improve scalability. In particular, two-level caching techniques cache results of repeated identical queries at the frontend, while index data for frequently used query terms are cached in each node at a lower level.We propose and evaluate a three-level caching scheme that adds an intermediate level of caching for additional performance gains. This intermediate level attempts to exploit frequently occurring pairs of terms by caching intersections or projections of the corresponding inverted lists. We propose and study several offline and online algorithms for the resulting weighted caching problem, which turns out to be surprisingly rich in structure. Our experimental evaluation based on a large web crawl and real search engine query log shows significant performance gains for the best schemes, both in isolation and in combination with the other caching levels. We also observe that a careful selection of cache admission and eviction policies is crucial for best overall performance.
Join operations in temporal databases
Authors: Dengfeng Gao, S. Jensen, T. Snodgrass, D. Soo
Venue: The VLDB Journal &mdash; The International Journal on Very Large Data Bases (2005)

Joins are arguably the most important relational operators. Poor implementations are tantamount to computing the Cartesian product of the input relations. In a temporal database, the problem is more acute for two reasons. First, conventional techniques are designed for the evaluation of joins with equality predicates rather than the inequality predicates prevalent in valid-time queries. Second, the presence of temporally varying data dramatically increases the size of a database. These factors indicate that specialized techniques are needed to efficiently evaluate temporal joins.We address this need for efficient join evaluation in temporal databases. Our purpose is twofold. We first survey all previously proposed temporal join operators. While many temporal join operators have been defined in previous work, this work has been done largely in isolation from competing proposals, with little, if any, comparison of the various operators. We then address evaluation algorithms, comparing the applicability of various algorithms to the temporal join operators and describing a performance study involving algorithms for one important operator, the temporal equijoin. Our focus, with respect to implementation, is on non-index-based join algorithms. Such algorithms do not rely on auxiliary access paths but may exploit sort orderings to achieve efficiency.
Detecting Indirect Coupling
Authors: Hong Yul Yang, Ewan Tempero, Rebecca Berrigan
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 Australian conference on Software Engineering (2005)

Coupling is considered by many to be an important concept in measuring design quality. There is still much to be learned about which aspects of coupling affect design quality or other external attributes of software. Much of the existing work concentrates on direct coupling, that is, forms of coupling that exists between entities that are directly related to each other. A form of coupling that has so far received little attention is indirect coupling, that is, coupling between entities that are not directly related. What little discussion there is in the literature suggests that any form of indirect coupling is simple the transitive closure of a form of direct coupling. We will demonstrate that this is not the case, that there are forms of indirect coupling that cannot be represented in this way, and suggest ways to measure it. We will present a tool that identifies a particular form of indirect coupling that is integrated in the Eclipse IDE.
Fault tolerant algorithm based on dynamic and active load balancing for redundant services
Authors: Jun-Feng Tian, Jun-Wei Zhang, Feng-Xian Wang
Venue: Journal of Computer Science and Technology (2004)

A new Some-Read-Any-Write (SRAW) fault tolerant algorithm for redundant services is presented that allows a system to adjust failures dynamically in order to keep the availability and improve the performance. SRAW is based upon dynamic and active load balancing. By introducing dynamic and active load balancing scheme into redundant services, not only the processing speed of requests can be greatly improved, but also the load balancing can be simply and efficiently achieved. Integrated with consistency protocol in this paper, SRAW can also be applied to state services. The performance of SRAW algorithm is also analyzed, and comparisons with other fault tolerant algorithms, especially with RAWA, indicate that SRAW efficiently improves the performance of redundant services with guaranteeing system availability.
A syntax for solving linear equations
Authors: C. L. Lawson
Venue: ACM SIGNUM Newsletter (1972)

There are a number of well known reasons to prefer solving a system of linear equations, Ax = b, directly rather than first computing C = A-1 and then computing x = Cb. Nevertheless some programming languages provide a special operator for matrix inversion but no equally convenient way to request the direct solution of Ax = b. This situation probably has the effect of reinforcing in the user the unfortunate idea that since x = A-1b is a convenient mathematical notation for the solution of Ax = b it is also the appropriate operational prescription.
Evolutionary molecular structure determination using grid-enabled data mining
Authors: Mark L. Green, Russ Miller
Venue: Parallel Computing (2004)

A new computational framework is developed for the evolutionary determination of molecular crystal structures using the Shake-and-Bake methodology. Genetic algorithms are performed on the SnB results of known structures in order to optimize critical parameters of the SnB computer program. The determination of efficient SnB input parameters can significantly reduce the time required to solve unknown molecular structures. Further, the grid-enabled data mining approach that we introduce exploits computational cycles that would otherwise go unused.
Design of Middleware Platform to Enhance Abilities of Application Systems Integration
Authors: Vincent Chang
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing (ITCC'05) - Volume II - Volume 02 (2005)

This research describes a Linux/Unix base middleware platform and GUI operating interface that has been created to help developer overcome the difficulties associated with existing software editing, upgrading, updating and integration. With growing in size and complexity of systems using in current organizations, the developing and maintaining existing or new systems can be really cost-and-time consuming. Even, the present new system might be a burden for the future new system development. We present methods for creating a route for data transmission between multiple platforms. Also, we use less than three API to connect with different application software and communication protocol. For example, TCP/IP communicates with X.25, TCP/IP communicates with SNA. The solution is benefit to an application designer to reduce the effort and time when editing or developing system. The major objective of this research is making breakthrough of providing technique for integrating different system while they consist of different OS, application software, protocol and programming language.
A mechanism for natural language access to database systems: U. of Cincinnati
Authors: Lawrence J. Mazlack, Richard A. Feinauer, William E. Leigh, Neomi Paz
Venue: Issue 79 (January 1982) (1982)

This reports on an investigation focused on a transform mechanism for a natural language database query system being undertaken at the University of Cincinnati. The mechanism studies the questions involved in a natural language interface between the human environment and the database query languages used to access machine stored data. A major product of the research would be a methodology for the transformation of database queries in a natural language into database queries stated in the data manipulation language of a DBMS.
The SOI planar photonic crystal fabrication: patterning of Cr using Cl2/O2 plasma etching
Authors: A. P. Milenin, C. Jamois, R. B. Wehrspohn, M. Reiche
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2005)

RIE-plasma etching of sub-micron structures in 150-200-nm thick Cr layers deposited on 4-inch SiO"2/Si/SiO"2 wafers was investigated as a function of the gas composition, RF power, and resist type. An optimal recipe is obtained yielding a Cr etching rate of about 7 nm/min and a ratio of the resist to the Cr etching rates of about 2 in case of etching the sub-micron structures in Cr with a ZEP 520 resist mask. SEM investigations show nearly vertical sidewalls of features etched in Cr layers with a lateral size ranging from 0.3 to 0.5 @mm.
Local fuzzy PCA based GMM with dimension reduction on speaker identification
Authors: Ki Yong Lee
Venue: Pattern Recognition Letters (2004)

To reduce the high dimensionality required for training of feature vectors in speaker identification, we propose an efficient GMM based on local PCA with fuzzy clustering. The proposed method firstly partitions the data space into several disjoint clusters by fuzzy clustering, and then performs PCA using the fuzzy covariance matrix on each cluster. Finally, the GMM for speaker is obtained from the transformed feature vectors with reduced dimension in each cluster. Compared to the conventional GMM with diagonal covariance matrix, the proposed method shows faster result with less storage maintaining same performance.
Improving Web search efficiency via a locality based static pruning method
Authors: Edleno S. de Moura, Célia F. dos Santos, Daniel R. Fernandes, Altigran S. Silva, Pavel Calado, Mario A. Nascimento
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web (2005)

The unarguably fast, and continuous, growth of the volume of indexed (and indexable) documents on the Web poses a great challenge for search engines. This is true regarding not only search effectiveness but also time and space efficiency. In this paper we present an index pruning technique targeted for search engines that addresses the latter issue without disconsidering the former. To this effect, we adopt a new pruning strategy capable of greatly reducing the size of search engine indices. Experiments using a real search engine show that our technique can reduce the indices' storage costs by up to 60% over traditional lossless compression methods, while keeping the loss in retrieval precision to a minimum. When compared to the indices size with no compression at all, the compression rate is higher than 88%, i.e., less than one eighth of the original size. More importantly, our results indicate that, due to the reduction in storage overhead, query processing time can be reduced to nearly 65% of the original time, with no loss in average precision. The new method yields significative improvements when compared against the best known static pruning method for search engine indices. In addition, since our technique is orthogonal to the underlying search algorithms, it can be adopted by virtually any search engine.
Multitarget Tracking with Split and Merged Measurements
Authors: Zia Khan, Tucker Balch, Frank Dellaert
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05) - Volume 1 - Volume 01 (2005)

In many multitarget tracking applications in computer vision, a detection algorithm provides locations of potential targets. Subsequently, the measurements are associated with previously estimated target trajectories in a data association step. The output of the detector is often imperfect and the detection data may include multiple, split measurements from a single target or a single merged measurement from several targets. To address this problem, we introduce a multiple hypothesis tracker for interacting targets that generate split and merged measurements. The tracker is based on an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based auxiliary variable particle filter. The particle filter is Rao-Blackwellized such that the continuous target state parameters are estimated analytically, and an MCMC sampler generates samples from the large discrete space of data associations. In addition, we include experimental results in a scenario where we track several interacting targets that generate these split and merged measurements.
DUP: Dynamic-Tree Based Update Propagation in Peer-to-Peer Networks
Authors: Liangzhong Yin, Guohong Cao
Venue: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Data Engineering (2005)

In peer-to-peer networks, indices are used to map data id to nodes that host the data. The performance of data access can be improved by actively pushing indices to interested nodes. This paper proposes the Dynamic-tree based Update Propagation (DUP) scheme, which builds the update propagation tree to facilitate the propagation of indices. Because the update propagation tree only involves nodes that are essential for update propagation, the overhead of DUP is very small and the query latency is significantly reduced.
Snap-and-go: helping users align objects without the modality of traditional snapping
Authors: Patrick Baudisch, Edward Cutrell, Ken Hinckley, Adam Eversole
Venue: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (2005)

Snapping is a widely used technique that helps users position graphical objects precisely, e.g., to align them with a grid or other graphical objects. Unfortunately, whenever users want to position a dragged object close to such an aligned location, they first need to deactivate snapping. We propose snap-and-go, a snapping technique that overcomes this limitation. By merely stopping dragged objects at aligned positions, rather than "warping" them there, snap-and-go helps users align objects, yet still allows placing dragged objects anywhere else. While this approach of inserting additional motor space renders snap-and-go slightly slower than traditional snapping, snap-and-go simplifies the user interface by eliminating the need for a deactivation option and thereby allows introducing snapping to application scenarios where traditional snapping is inapplicable. In our user studies, participants were able to align objects up to 138% (1D) and 231% (2D) faster with snap-and-go than without and snap-and-go proved robust against the presence of distracting snap targets.
Camera field rendering for static and dynamic scenes
Authors: Minglun Gong, Yee-Hong Yang
Venue: Graphical Models (2005)

Most of the previously proposed image-based rendering approaches rely on a large number of samples, accurate depth information, or 3D geometric proxies. It is, therefore, a challenge to apply them to render novel views for dynamic scenes as the required information is difficult to obtain in real-time. The proposed approach requires only sparely sampled data. Two new interpolation techniques are presented in this paper, the combination of which can produce reasonable rendering results for sparsely sampled real scenes. The first one, which is a color-matching based interpolation, searches for a possible physical point along the testing ray using color information in nearby reference images. The second technique, which is a disparity-matching based interpolation, tries to find the closest intersection between the testing ray and the disparity surfaces defined by nearby reference images. Both approaches are designed as backward rendering techniques and can be combined to produce robust results. Our experiments suggest that the proposed approach is capable of handling complex dynamic real scenes offline.
Maximum Pressure Policies in Stochastic Processing Networks
Authors: J. G. Dai, Wuqin Lin
Venue: Operations Research (2005)

Complex systems like semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities (fabs), networks of data switches, and large-scale call centers all demand efficient resource allocation. Deterministic models like linear programs (LP) have been used for capacity planning at both the design and expansion stages of such systems. LP-based planning is critical in setting a medium range or long-term goal for many systems, but it does not translate into a day-to-day operational policy that must deal with discreteness of jobs and the randomness of the processing environment.A stochastic processing network, advanced by J. Michael Harrison (2000, 2002, 2003), is a system that takes inputs of materials of various kinds and uses various processing resources to produce outputs of materials of various kinds. Such a network provides a powerful abstraction of a wide range of real-world systems. It provides high-fidelity stochastic models in diverse economic sectors including manufacturing, service, and information technology.We propose a family of maximum pressure service policies for dynamically allocating service capacities in a stochastic processing network. Under a mild assumption on network structure, we prove that a network operating under a maximum pressure policy achieves maximum throughput predicted by LPs. These policies are semilocal in the sense that each server makes its decision based on the buffer content in its serviceable buffers and their immediately downstream buffers. In particular, their implementation does not use arrival rate information, which is difficult to collect in many applications. We also identify a class of networks for which the nonpreemptive, non-processor-splitting version of a maximum pressure policy is still throughput optimal. Applications to queueing networks with alternate routes and networks of data switches are presented.
Using DISE to protect return addresses from attack
Authors: Marc L. Corliss, E. Christopher Lewis, Amir Roth
Venue: ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News (2005)

Stack-smashing by buffer overflow is a common tactic used by viruses and worms to crash or hijack systems. Exploiting a bounds-unchecked copy into a stack buffer, an attacker can---by supplying a specially-crafted and unexpectedly long input---overwrite a stored return address and trigger the execution of code of her choosing. In this paper, we propose to protect code from this common form of attack using dynamic instruction stream editing (DISE), a previously proposed hardware mechanism that implements binary rewriting in a transparent, efficient, and convenient way by rewriting the dynamic instruction stream rather than the static executable. Simply, we define productions (rewriting rules) that instrument program calls and returns to maintain and verify a "shadow" stack of return addresses in a protected region of memory. When invalid return addresses are detected, the application is terminated.The DISE implementation resembles previous software schemes like StackGuard and the Return Address Defender (RAD), but it can operate without source code and in dynamically-linked libraries and dynamically-generated code. It also has natural facilities for protecting the shadow stack, which provides little security if it itself is vulnerable. Finally, unlike software instrumentation, DISE checks---which are inserted by the processor at runtime---cannot be bypassed or subverted.
Security in autonomic computing
Authors: David M. Chess
Venue: ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News (2005)

Over the last fifteen years the world has experienced a wide variety of computer virus and general computer security problems, against which a wide variety of countermeasures have been deployed. The record tells us that what most strongly determines the size and nature of the worldwide virus and security problem is not any particular countermeasure or security technology, but rather the characteristics of the underlying platform (the operating system, macro execution environment, and so on). Autonomic computing is a new effort, intended to make IT systems more self-managing. Since it undertakes to change the nature of the underlying computing platform, it is likely to change the size and nature of the world's virus and security problem as well. This paper briefly describes both the relevant historical record and some current architectural approaches to autonomic computing, and offers a few thoughts on how autonomic computing relates to computer security and virus prevention.