ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
An improved Fuzzy Kappa statistic that accounts for spatial autocorrelation
Authors: Alex Hagen-Zanker
Venue: International Journal of Geographical Information Science (2009)

The Fuzzy Kappa statistic expresses the agreement between two categorical raster maps. The statistic goes beyond cell-by-cell comparison and gives partial credit to cells based on the categories found in the neighborhood. When matching categories are found at shorter distances the agreement is higher. Like the well-established Kappa statistic the Fuzzy Kappa statistic expresses the mean agreement relative to the expected agreement. The model underlying the expected agreement assumes absence of spatial autocorrelation in both compared maps. In reality however, spatial autocorrelation does lower the expected agreement as matching categories become less likely to be found close-by. Since most maps have some degree of spatial autocorrelation, the calculated expected agreement is generally higher than the true expected agreement. This leads to counterintuitive results when maps that appear to have considerable agreement obtain negative Fuzzy Kappa values. Furthermore, the Fuzzy Kappa may be biased, as it systematically attributes lower agreement to maps with stronger spatial autocorrelation. This paper proposes an improved Fuzzy Kappa statistic that is based on the same local agreement and has the same attractive properties as the original Fuzzy Kappa. The novelty is that the new statistic accounts for spatial autocorrelation, such that the expected Fuzzy Kappa for maps that are not cross-correlated is equal to zero. The improved statistic is applied on two cases to demonstrate its properties.
Comparison of Visible, Thermal Infra-Red and Range Images for Face Recognition
Authors: Ajmal Mian
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd Pacific Rim Symposium on Advances in Image and Video Technology (2009)

Existing literature compares various biometric modalities of the face for human identification. The common criterion used for comparison is the recognition rate of different face modalities using the same recognition algorithms. Such comparisons are not completely unbiased as the same recognition algorithm or features may not be suitable for every modality of the face. Moreover, an important aspect which is overlooked in these comparisons is the amount of variation present in each modality which will ultimately effect the database size each modality can handle. This paper presents such a comparison between the most common biometric modalities of the face namely visible, thermal infra-red and range images. Experiments are performed on the Equinox and the FRGC databases with results indicating that visible images capture more interpersonal variations of the human face compared to thermal IR and range images. We conclude that under controlled conditions, visible face images have a greater potential of accommodating large databases compared to long-wave IR and range images.
Gaussian KD-trees for fast high-dimensional filtering
Authors: Andrew Adams, Natasha Gelfand, Jennifer Dolson, Marc Levoy
Venue: ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) (2009)

We propose a method for accelerating a broad class of non-linear filters that includes the bilateral, non-local means, and other related filters. These filters can all be expressed in a similar way: First, assign each value to be filtered a position in some vector space. Then, replace every value with a weighted linear combination of all values, with weights determined by a Gaussian function of distance between the positions. If the values are pixel colors and the positions are (x, y) coordinates, this describes a Gaussian blur. If the positions are instead (x, y, r, g, b) coordinates in a five-dimensional space-color volume, this describes a bilateral filter. If we instead set the positions to local patches of color around the associated pixel, this describes non-local means. We describe a Monte-Carlo kd-tree sampling algorithm that efficiently computes any filter that can be expressed in this way, along with a GPU implementation of this technique. We use this algorithm to implement an accelerated bilateral filter that respects full 3D color distance; accelerated non-local means on single images, volumes, and unaligned bursts of images for denoising; and a fast adaptation of non-local means to geometry. If we have n values to filter, and each is assigned a position in a d-dimensional space, then our space complexity is O(dn) and our time complexity is O(dn log n), whereas existing methods are typically either exponential in d or quadratic in n.
Rake cursor: improving pointing performance with concurrent input channels
Authors: Renaud Blanch, Michaël Ortega
Venue: Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems (2009)

We investigate the use of two concurrent input channels to perform a pointing task. The first channel is the traditional mouse input device whereas the second one is the gaze position. The rake cursor interaction technique combines a grid of cursors controlled by the mouse and the selection of the active cursor by the gaze. A controlled experiment shows that rake cursor pointing drastically outperforms mouse-only pointing and also significantly outperforms the state of the art of pointing techniques mixing gaze and mouse input. A theory explaining the improvement is proposed: the global difficulty of a task is split between those two channels, and the sub-tasks could partly be performed concurrently.
IT Auditing and Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance: Key Strategies for Business Improvement, 1st edition
Authors: Dimitris N. Chorafas
Venue:  (2008)

Information technology auditing and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance have several overlapping characteristics. They both require ethical accounting practices, focused auditing activities, a functioning system of internal control, and a close watch by the boards audit committee and CEO. Written as a contribution to the accounting and auditing professions as well as to IT practitioners, IT Auditing and Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance:Key Strategies for Business Improvement links these two key business strategies and explains how to perform IT auditing in a comprehensive and strategic manner.Based on 46 years of experience as a consultant to the boards of major corporations in manufacturing and banking, the author addresses objectives, practices, and business opportunities expected from auditing information systems. Topics discussed include the concept of internal control, auditing functions, internal and external auditors, and the responsibilities of the board of directors. The book uses several case studies to illustrate and clarify the material. Its chapters analyze the underlying reasons for failures in IT projects and how they can be avoided, examine critical technical questions concerning information technology, discuss problems related to system reliability and response time, and explore issues of compliance.The book concludes by presenting readers with a what if scenario. If Sarbannes-Oxley legislation had passed the U.S. Congress in the late 1990s or even 2000, how might this have influenced the financial statements of Enron and Worldcom? We can never truly know the answer, but if companies make use of the procedures in this book, debacles such as these and those which led to the 2007-2008 credit and banking crisis will remain a distant memory.
Conditional Edge-Fault Hamiltonicity of Matching Composition Networks
Authors: Sun-Yuan Hsieh, Chia-Wei Lee
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (2009)

A graph $G$ is called Hamiltonian if there is a Hamiltonian cycle in $G$. The conditional edge-fault Hamiltonicity of a Hamiltonian graph $G$ is the largest $k$ such that after removing $k$ faulty edges from $G$, provided that each node is incident to at least two fault-free edges, the resulting graph contains a Hamiltonian cycle. In this paper, we sketch common properties of a class of networks, called Matching Composition Networks (MCNs), such that the conditional edge-fault Hamiltonicity of MCNs can be determined from the found properties. We then apply our technical theorems to determine conditional edge-fault Hamiltonicities of several multiprocessor systems, including $n$-dimensional crossed cubes, $n$-dimensional twisted cubes, $n$-dimensional locally twisted cubes, $n$-dimensional generalized twisted cubes, and $n$-dimensional hyper Petersen networks. Moreover, we also demonstrate that our technical theorems can be applied to network construction.
An Overview of High Performance Computing and Challenges for the Future
Authors: Jack Dongarra
Venue: High Performance Computing for Computational Science - VECPAR 2008: 8th International Conference, Toulouse, France, June 24-27, 2008. Revised Selected Papers (2008)

In this talk we examine how high performance computing has changed over the last 10-year and look toward the future in terms of trends.These changes have had and will continue to have a major impact on our software. A new generation of software libraries and algorithms are needed for the effective and reliable use of (wide area) dynamic, distributed and parallel environments.Some of the software and algorithm challenges have already been encountered, such as management of communication and memory hierarchies through a combination of compile-time and run-time techniques, but the increased scale of computation, depth of memory hierarchies, range of latencies, and increased run-time environment variability will make these problems much harder.We will focus on the redesign of software to fit multicore architectures. 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
The Orb
Authors: James Nick Sears
Venue: ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2008 artgallery: emerging technologies (2008)

The Orb bridges the gap between the art object and functional information display, advancing desires for more sophisticated digital representations, while simultaneously establishing a dialogue between the new technology and the symbolic content of the display. Featuring an 18-inch-diameter display and aluminum and carbon-fiber construction, this version has a spherical resolution of 1024 X 216 with 24-bit colour. It explores visualisations of the phenomena of creation and destruction within the universe, evoking a "big bang" and eventual climate collapse.
Topographical mapping in littoral regions using the GPS backpack tideline tracing skill
Authors: G. -S. Song, P. -K. Liu
Venue: International Journal of Remote Sensing (2009)

Inter-tidal zone survey methods are varied and have progressed with the advancement of survey technology. The most significant features of a method are its restrictions on the topography to which it can be applied and the efficiency of the transition from fieldwork to processing or mapping of the dataset. This paper provides details of a GPS backpack method, indicates it is well matched with the altitude measurements obtained by the real-time kinematical positioning technique, and contrasts it to the use of echo-sounders when the littoral zone is submerged. A comparison of the results obtained by the tideline tracing method, varying by at least 20 cm, indicates that echo-sounder measurements were less accurate with poorer resolution, and more laborious in mapping the topography of the littoral region. In the inter-tidal zones inside Taichung Harbour and off the Pali coast, where gentle beaches have wide, flat low tide terraces crossed by a series of longshore bars and runnels, the tideline tracing method successfully provided topographical data on the centimetre scale. This method sampled denser data points distributed on the local slope, such as the slopes off the berm and the terrace in Taichung Harbour being all clearly defined with the gradients around 3-7°.
Discriminant Non-negative Matrix Factorization and Projected Gradients for Frontal Face Verification
Authors: Irene Kotsia, Stefanos Zafeiriou, Ioannis Pitas
Venue: Biometrics and Identity Management: First European Workshop, BIOID 2008, Roskilde, Denmark, May 7-9, 2008. Revised Selected Papers (2008)

A novel Discriminant Non-negative Matrix Factorization (DNMF) method that uses projected gradients, is presented in this paper. The proposed algorithm guarantees the algorithm's convergence to a stationary point, contrary to the methods introduced so far, that only ensure the non-increasing behavior of the algorithm's cost function. The proposed algorithm employs some extra modifications that make the method more suitable for classification tasks. The usefulness of the proposed technique to the frontal face verification problem is also demonstrated.
Find yourself in second life
Authors: Bill Childers
Venue: Linux Journal (2009)

Open source and MMOPRG meet in Second Life.
Prosper: developing web applications strongly integrated with prolog
Authors: Levente Hunyadi
Venue: Acta Cybernetica (2008)

Separating presentation and application logic, defining presentation in a declarative way and automating recurring tasks are fundamental issues in rapid web application development. Albeit Prolog is widely employed in intelligent systems and knowledge discovery, creating a web interface for Prolog has been a cumbersome task producing poorly maintainable code, which hinders harnessing the power of Prolog in information systems. This paper presents a framework called Prosper that facilitates developing new or extending existing Prolog applications with a presentation front-end. The framework relies on Prolog to the greatest possible extent, supports code re-use, and integrates easily with web servers. As a result, Prosper simplifies the creation of complex, maintainable web applications running either independently or as part of a heterogeneous system without leaving the Prolog domain.
Efficient and stateless deployment of VoIP services
Authors: N. Blefari-Melazzi, J. N. Daigle, M. Femminella
Venue: Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking (2009)

A critical issue for the convergence of telephone networks towards an all IP environment is the provisioning of an adequate QoS level to the telephone traffic. Following the guidelines detailed in RFC 2990, we recently proposed an admission control function, named Gauge & Gate Reservation with Independent Probing (GRIP), through which we are able to provide QoS guarantees by means of stateless procedures compliant within the Differentiated Service (DiffServ) paradigm, which is the de facto standard for QoS provisioning in Internet. The main goal of this paper is to present a specific implementation of GRIP optimized for supporting voice over IP (VoIP) services within a DiffServ cloud. In particular, we propose and analyze a simple measurement-based call admission control procedure for carrying VoIP traffic in a DiffServ environment. We assume voice sources are leaky bucket controlled with known leaky bucket parameters. We analyze the leaky bucket to derive the distribution of the times over which voice sources generate traffic at peak and regulated rates. We use the results of that analysis, which provides complete knowledge of the traffic generation characteristics of a single source, to derive a Markov chain model that characterizes the voice packet generation process of a single voice source. We then derive a simple stateless threshold policy for admission control; that is, our policy is of the form if, at admission request time,x=
Computing the Maximum Detour of a Plane Graph in Subquadratic Time
Authors: Christian Wulff-Nilsen
Venue: Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (2008)

Let G be a plane graph where each edge is a line segment. We consider the problem of computing the maximum detour of G, defined as the maximum over all pairs of distinct points p and q of G of the ratio between the distance between p and q in G and the distance |pq|. The fastest known algorithm for this problem has &theta;(n 2) running time where n is the number of vertices. We show how to obtain O(n 3/2log3 n) expected running time. We also show that if G has bounded treewidth, its maximum detour can be computed in O(nlog3 n) expected time.
The NP-Completeness of Reflected Fragments of Justification Logics
Authors: Samuel R. Buss, Roman Kuznets
Venue: Proceedings of the 2009 International Symposium on Logical Foundations of Computer Science (2009)

Justification Logic studies epistemic and provability phenomena by introducing justifications/proofs into the language in the form of justification terms. Pure justification logics serve as counterparts of traditional modal epistemic logics, and hybrid logics combine epistemic modalities with justification terms. The computational complexity of pure justification logics is typically lower than that of the corresponding modal logics. Moreover, the so-called reflected fragments, which still contain complete information about the respective justification logics, are known to be in NP for a wide range of justification logics, pure and hybrid alike. This paper shows that, under reasonable additional restrictions, these reflected fragments are NP-complete, thereby proving a matching lower bound.
Hypertextual Programming for Domain-Specific End-User Development
Authors: Sebastian Ortiz-Chamorro, Gustavo Rossi, Daniel Schwabe
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on End-User Development (2009)

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) have successfully been used for end-user development. However, dealing with language syntax poses significant learning challenges. In this paper, we introduce hypertextual programming, a technique that represents language syntax as hypertext. With this technique, instead of dealing with textual languages, users can inspect and construct their programs mainly by using navigation. Beyond merely representing the syntax, hypertext can be used to provide various views of a single program code. Nevertheless, to reap the benefits of this technique, adequate hypertextual editors must be built. This paper argues that many of the lessons learned in the web engineering area can be used to deal with this problem. Millions of users navigate the World Wide Web. Hypertextual programming leverages this widely available end-user skill to facilitate the construction of computer programs.
Onto-clust-A methodology for combining clustering analysis and ontological methods for identifying groups of comorbidities for developmental disorders
Authors: Mor Peleg, Nuaman Asbeh, Tsvi Kuflik, Mitchell Schertz
Venue: Journal of Biomedical Informatics (2009)

Children with developmental disorders usually exhibit multiple developmental problems (comorbidities). Hence, such diagnosis needs to revolve on developmental disorder groups. Our objective is to systematically identify developmental disorder groups and represent them in an ontology. We developed a methodology that combines two methods (1) a literature-based ontology that we created, which represents developmental disorders and potential developmental disorder groups, and (2) clustering for detecting comorbid developmental disorders in patient data. The ontology is used to interpret and improve clustering results and the clustering results are used to validate the ontology and suggest directions for its development. We evaluated our methodology by applying it to data of 1175 patients from a child development clinic. We demonstrated that the ontology improves clustering results, bringing them closer to an expert generated gold-standard. We have shown that our methodology successfully combines an ontology with a clustering method to support systematic identification and representation of developmental disorder groups.
Construction in a Simulated Environment Using Temporal Goal Sequencing and Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Anand Panangadan, Michael G. Dyer
Venue: Adaptive Behavior - Animals, Animats, Software Agents, Robots, Adaptive Systems (2009)

A behavior-based architecture (ConAg) with a connectionist action selection mechanism is introduced that enables a society of autonomous agents to construct arbitrary structures in their simulated two-dimensional world. Construction in this environment involves the agents picking up colored discs and dropping them at incomplete parts of the structure being built. The ConAg architecture provides both reactive behaviors which are used to maintain the viability of the agent and navigational planning behaviors that are used for construction. The action selection mechanism enables learning the sequence of behaviors required for construction by reinforcement learning. The navigational planning behaviors use a grid-based representation of the world. The shape of the structure to be built is also encoded on an internal spatial map. Path planning is implemented by spreading activations on sets of grid-based maps so that the agents perform the construction task efficiently. Construction of arbitrary structures is supported by temporal sequencing of goals. We present simulation results that demonstrate the performance of the architecture and algorithms.
Achievement of high planarization efficiency in CMP of copper at a reduced down pressure
Authors: S. Pandija, D. Roy, S. V. Babu
Venue: Microelectronic Engineering (2009)

We report improved planarization efficiency (ratio of step height reduction and removed layer thickness) in chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) of copper lines at a down pressure of 2 psi. The CMP slurry used to achieve these results contains fumed silica particles (abrasive), @b-alanine (surface complexing agent) and H"2O"2 (oxidizer), combined with dissolution inhibiting ammonium dodecyl sulfate (ADS) and/or low concentrations (@?1 mM) of benzotriazole (BTAH) at a solution pH of 4.0. When only ADS or BTAH is used, Cu dissolution rate is reduced, but at the cost of somewhat low planarization efficiency. Combination of ADS (typically 3mM) and BTAH (@?1mM) in the slurry significantly improves both the surface polish rates and the planarization efficiency. The processed surface (examined by optical profilometry) is noticeably defect-free for this particular system. The mechanisms of surface dissolution and passivation are discussed, and contact angle data are used to elucidate the surface passivating nature of the inhibitor films. The results presented here are relevant for further developments in the area of low pressure CMP of Cu lines overlying fragile low-k dielectrics in the new interconnect structures.
Modern Technologies in Web Services Research
Authors: Liang-Jie Zhang
Venue:  (2007)

Web service technologies are constantly being recreated, continuously challenging Web service professionals and examiners. Modern Technologies in Web Services Research facilitates communication and networking among Web services and e-business researchers and engineers in a period where considerable changes are taking place in Web services technologies innovation. Modern Technologies in Web Services Research provides mathematic foundations for service oriented computing, Web services architecture and security, frameworks for building Web service applications, and dynamic invocation mechanisms for Web services among other innovative approaches.