ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Coherent Regions for Concise and Stable Image Description
Authors: Jason J. Corso, Gregory D. Hager
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05) - Volume 2 - Volume 02 (2005)

We present a new method for summarizing images for the purposes of matching and registration. We take the point of view that large, coherent regions in the image provide a concise and stable basis for image description. We develop a new algorithm for image segmentation that operates on several projections (feature spaces) of the image, using kernel-based optimization techniques to locate local extrema of a continuous scale-space of image regions. Descriptors of these image regions and their relative geometry then form the basis of an image description. We present experimental results of these methods applied to the problem of image retrieval. On a moderate sized database, we find that our method performs comparably to two published techniques: Blobworld and SIFT features. However, compared to these techniques two significant advantages of our method are its 1) stability under large changes in the images and 2) its representationalefficiency. As a result we argue our proposed method will scale well with larger image sets.
Distortion Analysis on Discrete Laplacian Operators by Introducing Random Images
Authors: Fujiki Morii
Venue: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Image and Graphics (2004)

The expected distortions of discrete Laplacian operators by random images, whose operators play important roles in image processing and diffusion equations, are investigated on a hexagonal grid and a squared grid. By introducing continuous two-dimensional random images, whose images are approximated by polynomials with finite degrees, those distortions are evaluated by taking the expectations for squared distortions. We can obtain the expected distortions with simple expressions, and the obtained results offer a guide for the evaluation of discrete Laplacian operators. Moreover, based on the results of discrete two-dimensional Laplacian operators, the distortion of a discrete three-dimensional Laplacian operator is investigated.
Mountain Clustering on Nonuniform Grids
Authors: John T. Rickard, Ronald R. Yager, Wendy Miller
Venue: Proceedings of the 33rd Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop (2004)

We describe an improvement on the mountain method (MM) of clustering originally proposed by Yager and Filev. The new technique employs a data-driven, hierarchical partitioning of the data set to be clustered, using a "p-tree" algorithm. The centroids of data subsets in the terminal nodes of the p-tree are the set of candidate cluster centers to which the iterative candidate cluster center selection process of MM is applied. As the data dimension and/or the number of uniform grid lines used in the original MM increases, our approach requires exponentially fewer cluster centers to be evaluated by the MM selection algorithm. Sample data sets illustrate the performance of this new technique.
The Realities of Deploying Desktop Linux
Authors: Bevis King, Roger Webb, Graeme Wilford
Venue: Proceedings of the 17th USENIX conference on System administration (2003)

The School of Electronics and Physical Sciences has developed and deployed a Linux-based Desktop solution with thousands of users across many hundreds of machines. We have successfully delivered this solution across the whole range of staff and students within a large organization. It has reduced per-desktop support issues to a minimum and given a stable, reliable, up-to-date and flexible environment to our user community. What's more, it also provides Windows.Our second generation variant is now deployed, and a third generation is in development. We've based our work on standard distributions and software tools and achieved a number of key objectives: Zero intervention network-based installation Full Remote Administration including complete unattended re-install Dataless clients with no need to back them up Extremely configurable: extensive support for different peripherals, varying software installations, and diverse hardware Automatic updating of all software: multiple simultaneous technologies providing a flexible solution Centralized authentication and authorization Exceptional levels of user choice: Linux, Windows and Hybrid environment Our environment is based upon RedHat Linux 7.3, Ximian GNOME 1.4 and VMware 3.2 providing Windows NT 4.0. Our first generation environment was based upon RedHat Linux 6.2, Ximian GNOME 1.2 and VMware 2.0 providing Windows NT 4.0. This paper discusses those technologies we have have deployed with particular focus on the implications of each choice made. All of the scripts mentioned will be available as a tarball from our web site to aid others.
An Algorithm for Melnikov Functions and Application to a Chaotic Rotor
Authors: Jian-Xin Xu, Rui Yan, Weinian Zhang
Venue: SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (2005)

In this work we study a dynamical system with a complicated nonlinearity, which describes oscillation of a turbine rotor, and give an algorithm to compute Melnikov functions for analysis of its chaotic behavior. We first derive the rotor model whose nonlinear term brings difficulties to investigating the distribution and qualitative properties of its equilibria. This nonlinear model provides a typical example of a system for which the homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits cannot be analytically determined. In order to apply Melnikov's method to make clear the underlying conditions for chaotic motion, we present a generic algorithm that provides a systematic procedure to compute Melnikov functions numerically. Substantial analysis is done so that the numerical approximation precision at each phase of the computation can be guaranteed. Using the algorithm developed in this paper, it is straightforward to obtain a sufficient condition for chaotic motion under damping and periodic external excitation, whenever the rotor parameters are given.
A COLLABORATIVE NEGOTIATION TOOL
Authors: Beth Adelson
Venue: ACM SIGCHI Bulletin (1991)

The system, implemented in Malone, Lei, et al's Object Lens (88; 89), is designed to support the negotiation that is part of any collaborative endeavor. Although it will not be discussed here (see Adelson, in The Social Creation of Knowledge. Ed: E. Barrett; MIT Press), the system is intended to be used with a collaborative authoring system which accommodates needs for privacy and supports project planning/scheduling. By accommodating users' needs for negotiation and privacy the two systems together offer the kind of psychological support that bolsters successful collaboration.
Proving refinement using transduction
Authors: Bengt Jonsson, Amir Pnueli, Camilla Rump
Venue: Distributed Computing (1999)

When designing distributed systems, one is faced with the problem of verifying a refinement between two specifications, given at different levels of abstraction. Suggested verification techniques in the literature include refinement mappings and various forms of simulation. We present a verification method, in which refinement between two systems is proven by constructing a transducer that inputs a computation of a concrete system and outputs a matching computation of the abstract system. The transducer uses a FIFO queue that holds segments of the concrete computation that have not been matched yet. This allows a finite delay between the occurrence of a concrete event and the determination of the corresponding abstract event. This delay often makes the use of prophecy variables or backward simulation unnecessary.An important generalization of the method is to prove refinement modulo some transformation on the observed sequences of events. The method is adapted by replacing the FIFO queue by a component that allows the appropriate transformation on sequences of events. A particular case is partial-order refinement, i.e., refinement that preserves only a subset of the orderings between events of a system. Examples are sequential consistency and serializability. The case of sequential consistency is illustrated on a proof of sequential consistency of a cache protocol.
Transitivity in coercive subtyping
Authors: Zhaohui Luo, Yong Luo
Venue: Information and Computation (2005)

Coercive subtyping is a general approach to abbreviation and subtyping in dependent type theories with inductive types. Coherence and admissibility of transitivity are important both for understanding of the framework and for its correct implementation. In this paper, we study the issue of transitivity in the context of subtyping for parameterised inductive types. In particular, we propose and study the notion of weak transitivity and show that, for a large class of parameterised inductive types, the natural subtyping rules are coherent and weak transitivity is admissible in an intensional type theory. A possible extension of type theory with certain extensional computation rules is also discussed for achieving admissibility of transitivity in general.
Automatic identification of user goals in Web search
Authors: Uichin Lee, Zhenyu Liu, Junghoo Cho
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web (2005)

There has been recent interests in studying the "goal" behind a user's Web query, so that this goal can be used to improve the quality of a search engine's results. Previous studies have mainly focused on using manual query-log investigation to identify Web query goals. In this paper we study whether and how we can automate this goal-identification process. We first present our results from a human subject study that strongly indicate the feasibility of automatic query-goal identification. We then propose two types of features for the goal-identification task: user-click behavior and anchor-link distribution. Our experimental evaluation shows that by combining these features we can correctly identify the goals for 90% of the queries studied.
SemanticWeb enabled web accessibility evaluation tools
Authors: Shadi Abou-Zahra
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A) (2005)

Evaluating Web sites for accessibility remains an effort intensive process. Potentially, evaluation tools can significantly improve the efficiency and quality of Web accessibility evaluations but the currently available tool market only provides little or no consistency in the reliability and performance amongst these tools. In fact, in some cases evaluation tools may be confusing or misleading to users with little or no experience in Web accessibility. This paper will highlight how the utilization of Semantic Web technologies in evaluation tools can facilitate the exchange of evaluation data between tools and hence provide new approaches to support designers, content authors, programmers, quality assurance reviewers, project managers, or other users in accomplishing their respective tasks during the development and maintenance of accessible Web sites. Furthermore, this paper will also highlight some additional usages of Semantic Web enabled Web accessibility evaluation tools beyond the scope of evaluation processes.
Agent-based negotiation in cooperative processes: automatic support to underwriting insurance policies
Authors: Marco Comuzzi, Chiara Francalanci
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Electronic commerce (2004)

In a cooperative context, negotiation represents the process that allows organizations to create a base of common knowledge. Organizations have at the same time shared and divergent objectives and, thus, negotiating the characteristics of a common knowledge base cannot be fully cooperative, but inevitably raises competitive behaviours. The coopetition paradigm has been introduced in the literature to model relationships between companies that are simultaneously cooperative and competitive. The academic research has proposed several solutions for automated negotiation. A common characteristic of the protocols and algorithms that have been previously proposed is that they study negotiation only from a transactional and competitive point of view. This paper provides a model of the coopetitive negotiation process leading to underwriting a business insurance policy. Negotiation is modeled as an iterative question and answer process through which the parties create a common knowledge base of client's requirements and supplier's quality of service. This common knowledge defines the characteristics of the insurance policy and, hence, of the cooperative process that will follow the underwriting of the policy. The model has been implemented as an agent-based negotiation environment and analyzed through simulation.
Automatic discovery of API-level exploits
Authors: Vinod Ganapathy, Sanjit A. Seshia, Somesh Jha, Thomas W. Reps, Randal E. Bryant
Venue: Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Software engineering (2005)

We argue that finding vulnerabilities in software components is different from finding exploits against them. Exploits that compromise security often use several low-level details of the component, such as layouts of stack frames. Existing software analysis tools, while effective at identifying vulnerabilities, fail to model low-level details, and are hence unsuitable for exploit-finding.We study the issues involved in exploit-finding by considering application programming interface (API) level exploits. A software component is vulnerable to an API-level exploit if its security can be compromised by invoking a sequence of API operations allowed by the component. We present a framework to model low-level details of APIs, and develop an automatic technique based on bounded, infinite-state model checking to discover API-level exploits.We present two instantiations of this framework. We show that format-string exploits can be modeled as API-level exploits, and demonstrate our technique by finding exploits against vulnerabilities in widely-used software. We also use the framework to model a cryptographic-key management API (the IBM CCA) and demonstrate a tool that identifies a previously known exploit.
A new space and time sensor fusion method for mobile robot navigation
Authors: TaeSeok Jin, JangMyung Lee, S. K. Tso
Venue: Journal of Robotic Systems (2004)

To fully utilize the information from the sensors of mobile robot, this paper proposes a new sensor-fusion technique where the sample data set obtained at a previous instant is properly transformed and fused with the current data sets to produce a reliable estimate for navigation control. Exploration of an unknown environment is an important task for the new generation of mobile service robots. The mobile robots may navigate by means of a number of monitoring systems such as the sonar-sensing system or the visual-sensing system. Notice that in the conventional fusion schemes, the measurement is dependent on the current data sets only. Therefore, more sensors are required to measure a given physical parameter or to improve the reliability of the measurement. However, in this approach, instead of adding more sensors to the system, the temporal sequences of the data sets are stored and utilized for the purpose. The basic principle is illustrated by examples and the effectiveness is proved through simulations and experiments. The newly proposed STSF (space and time sensor fusion) scheme is applied to the navigation of a mobile robot in an environment using landmarks, and the experimental results demonstrate the effective performance of the system. &copy; 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Two-View Multibody Structure-and-Motion with Outliers
Authors: Konrad Schindler, David Suter
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05) - Volume 2 - Volume 02 (2005)

Multi-body structure-and-motion (MSaM) is the problem to establish the multiple-view geometry of several views of a 3D scene taken at different times, where the scene consists of multiple rigid objects moving relative to each other. We examine the case of two views. The setting is the following: given are a set of corresponding image points in two images, which originate from an unknown number of moving scene objects, each giving rise to a motion model. Furthermore, the measurement noise is unknown, and there are a number of gross errors, which are outliers to all models. The task to find an optimal set of motion models for the measurements is solved through Monte-Carlo sampling, careful statistical analysis of the data and simultaneous selection of multiple motion models.
Adlib: A Self-Tuning Index for Dynamic Peer-to-Peer Systems
Authors: Prasanna Ganesan, Qixiang Sun, Hector Garcia-Molina
Venue: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Data Engineering (2005)

Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems enable queries over a large database horizontally partitioned across a dynamic set of nodes. We devise a self-tuning index for such systems that can trade off index maintenance cost against queryefficiency, in order to optimize the overall system cost. The index, Adlib, dynamically adapts itself to operate at the optimal trade-off point, even as the optimal configuration changes with nodes joining and leaving the system. We use experiments on realistic workloads to demonstrate that Adlib can reduce the overall system cost by a factor of four.
Revisiting the role of web assurance seals in consumer trust
Authors: Dan J. Kim, Charles Steinfield, Ying-ju Lai
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Electronic commerce (2004)

There is conflicting evidence as to the current level of awareness and impact of Web assurance seal services (WASSs). This study examines consumers' awareness of WASSs and consumers' perceived importance of assurance seals found on business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce websites. We further examine whether an intervention to increase consumers' knowledge of security and privacy threats, as well as informing them of the function of WASSs increases perceived importance of web assurance seals. We find that educating consumers about security and privacy threats, as well as the role of web assurance seals does increase awareness and perceived importance the seals, but interestingly consumers still are not likely to use these seals as an indicator of the trustworthiness of site. Moreover, there is no difference after the intervention in perceived security and privacy of a vendor's site, suggesting that consumers obtain these cues from other factors. After the intervention, the strongest predictor of perceived security remains consumers' assessment of the quality of the information provided on the site. However, the perceived privacy afforded by a vendor was no longer predicated by perceived information quality.
Asymmetric Batch Incremental View Maintenance
Authors: Hao He, Junyi Xie, Jun Yang, Hai Yu
Venue: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Data Engineering (2005)

Incremental view maintenance has found a growing number of applications recently, including data warehousing, continuous query processing, publish/subscribe systems, etc. Batch processing of base table modifications, when applicable, can be much more efficient than processing individual modifications one at a time. In this paper, we tackle the problem of finding the most efficient batch incremental maintenance strategy under a refresh response time constraint; that is, at any point in time, the system, upon request, must be able to bring the view up to date within a specified amount of time. The traditional approach is to process all batched modifications relevant to the view whenever the constraint is violated. However, we observe that there often exists natural asymmetry among different components of the maintenance cost; for example,modifications on one base table might be cheaper to process than those on another base table because of some index. We exploit such asymmetries using an unconventional strategy that selectively processes modifications on some base tables while keeping batching others. We present a series of analytical results leading to the development of practical algorithms that approximate an "oracle algorithm" with perfect knowledge of the future. With experiments on a TPC-R database, we demonstrate that our strategy offers substantial performance gains over traditional deferred view maintenance techniques.
Seeking Closure in an Open World: A Behavioral Agent Approach to Configuration Management
Authors: Alva Couch, John Hart, Elizabeth G. Idhaw, Dominic Kallas
Venue: Proceedings of the 17th USENIX conference on System administration (2003)

We present a new model of configuration management based upon a hierarchy of simple communicating autonomous agents. Each of these agents is responsible for a "closure": a domain of "semantic predictability" in which declarative commands to the agent have a simple, persistent, portable, and documented effect upon subsequent observable behavior. Closures are built bottom-up to form a management hierarchy based upon the pre-existing dependencies between subsystems in a complex system. Closure agents decompose configuration management via a modularity of effect and behavior that promises to eventually lead to self-organizing systems driven entirely by behavioral specifications, where a system's configuration is free of details that have no observable effect upon system.
Book review: Neural Networks: Theory and Applications Edited by Richard J. Mannone And Yehoshua Zeevi (Academic Press, 1991)
Venue: ACM SIGART Bulletin (1992)

This book leaves you with the impression that neural networks are a diverse collection of computational techniques that have only a thin shell of mutual relationships. Basically the book is a collection of papers from those who came to a certain workshop in 1990. The editors hoped to "review salient features of neural net systems and to present the most promising approaches of addressing the issues involved in designing a neural system," a worthy goal for a textbook perhaps but not a goal that is achieved by this book.
Auspicious Computing?
Authors: Genevieve Bell
Venue: IEEE Internet Computing (2004)

Anthropologists in the technology industry work to make sense of everyday activities and cultural practices while challenging the implicit assumptions that underwrite our very notions of what technology could or should do.
Analysis of a Wi-Fi hotspot network
Authors: David P. Blinn, Tristan Henderson, David Kotz
Venue: Papers presented at the 2005 workshop on Wireless traffic measurements and modeling (2005)

Wireless hotspot networks have become increasingly popular in recent years as a means of providing Internet access in public areas such as restaurants and airports. In this paper we present the first study of such a hotspot network. We examine five weeks of SNMP traces from the Verizon Wi-Fi HotSpot network in Manhattan. We find that far more cards associated to the network than logged into it. Most clients used the network infrequently and visited few APs. AP utilization was uneven and the network displayed some unusual patterns in traffic load. Some characteristics were similar to those previously observed in studies of campus WLANs.
Skin-Color Detection Based on Adaptive Thresholds
Authors: Ming-Ji Zhang, Wei-Qiang Wang, Qing-Fang Zheng, Wen Gao
Venue: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Image and Graphics (2004)

In this paper a new skin detection method based on adaptive thresholds is proposed. Compared with the fixed threshold histogram method used widely, ours can find optimal thresholds to the different complex backgrounds. Four clues are summarized from the skin probability distribution histogram (SPDH) to help search candidates of optimum thresholds, and an ANN classifier is trained to select the final optimum threshold. A novel image relation operation is also proposed to eliminate confusing backgrounds. The method is fast thus appropriate for real-time applications since no iterative operation is involved. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve better performance than the fixed threshold histogram method.