ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Entropy Minimization for Shadow Removal
Authors: Graham D. Finlayson, Mark S. Drew, Cheng Lu
Venue: International Journal of Computer Vision (2009)

Recently, a method for removing shadows from colour images was developed (Finlayson et al. in IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 28:59---68, 2006) that relies upon finding a special direction in a 2D chromaticity feature space. This "invariant direction" is that for which particular colour features, when projected into 1D, produce a greyscale image which is approximately invariant to intensity and colour of scene illumination. Thus shadows, which are in essence a particular type of lighting, are greatly attenuated. The main approach to finding this special angle is a camera calibration: a colour target is imaged under many different lights, and the direction that best makes colour patch images equal across illuminants is the invariant direction. Here, we take a different approach. In this work, instead of a camera calibration we aim at finding the invariant direction from evidence in the colour image itself. Specifically, we recognize that producing a 1D projection in the correct invariant direction will result in a 1D distribution of pixel values that have smaller entropy than projecting in the wrong direction. The reason is that the correct projection results in a probability distribution spike, for pixels all the same except differing by the lighting that produced their observed RGB values and therefore lying along a line with orientation equal to the invariant direction. Hence we seek that projection which produces a type of intrinsic, independent of lighting reflectance-information only image by minimizing entropy, and from there go on to remove shadows as previously. To be able to develop an effective description of the entropy-minimization task, we go over to the quadratic entropy, rather than Shannon's definition. Replacing the observed pixels with a kernel density probability distribution, the quadratic entropy can be written as a very simple formulation, and can be evaluated using the efficient Fast Gauss Transform. The entropy, written in this embodiment, has the advantage that it is more insensitive to quantization than is the usual definition. The resulting algorithm is quite reliable, and the shadow removal step produces good shadow-free colour image results whenever strong shadow edges are present in the image. In most cases studied, entropy has a strong minimum for the invariant direction, revealing a new property of image formation.
Towards fully integrated Lab-on-Chip: design, assembly and experimental results
Authors: Ebrahim Ghafar-Zadeh, Mohamad Sawan
Venue: International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication (2009)

We present a direct-write CMOS-based platform for Lab-on-Chip (LoC) applications. A fully automated LoC consists of several active and passive components such as biosensors and microchannels integrated on a single chip for single purpose. In this paper, we describe a low-complexity platform consisting of capacitive biosensor and microfluidic structure. The capacitive biosensor is incorporated with nonolayers of polyelectrolyte molecules for creating sensing probes where the passive components such as microchannels are implemented through a direct-write assembly technique. We demonstrate the formation of Polyelectrolyte Sensing Layer (PSL) atop a Microfabricated Gold Electrode (MGE) and CMOS sensor using Chitosan and Alginate. This is an expanded version of a paper presented at the 3rd IEEE International Workshop on Medical Measurements and Applications, 9 10 May 2008, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Age Classification System with ICA Based Local Facial Features
Authors: Hang Qi, Liqing Zhang
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Neural Networks: Advances in Neural Networks - Part II (2009)

This paper proposes an automatic age classification system that distinguishes kid faces from adult faces in real time. The system consists of three parts: face detection, face alignment and normalization, and age classification. We use standard face detection and face alignment method to generate face samples by automatically locating, cropping and aligning faces from images. We use ICA to extract statistically independent basis images which contain local facial components. Therefore, an image can be represented as a linear combination of those basis images. Then we choose a subset of basis images based on mutual information between them and class labels. Finally, we perform classification by SVM. Our experiment results show that our method provides better classification accuracy than conventional 1D or 2D projecting method.
Extending the motion ranges of magnetic levitation for haptic interaction
Authors: Peter Berkelman, Michael Dzadovsky
Venue: Proceedings of the World Haptics 2009 - Third Joint EuroHaptics conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems (2009)

We have developed two different magnetic levitation devices which provide unprecedented ranges of motion in both translation and rotation to a levitated handle to be used for tool-based haptic interaction. The first device levitates a handle attached to a thin spherical shell of flat coils suspended in permanent magnet fields using Lorentz forces. A novel coil type and magnet configuration provides motion ranges of 50 mm and 60 degrees in all directions, double the translation and triple the rotation ranges of the current maximum range Lorentz levitation haptic devices developed at Carnegie Mellon University. The second device uses a planar array of cylindrical coils to levitate a platform of one or more magnets. By using redundant control methods and an experimentally measured high resolution model of the forces and torques generated on the levitated magnets from each coil, the translation range of the magnet in horizontal directions and its rotation in all directions and can be extended potentially indefinitely. The present prototype uses 10 coils to levitate a single magnet over a 80times60 mm planar range, a 30 mm vertical range, and a tilt range of 40 degrees, or to control the yaw rotation of a pair of magnets over 360 degrees. Design and control methods are presented with preliminary motion trajectory results from both devices.
A possible mechanism of stochastic resonance in the light of an extra-classical receptive field model of retinal ganglion cells
Authors: Kuntal Ghosh, Sandip Sarkar, Kamales Bhaumik
Venue: Biological Cybernetics (2009)

Traditionally the intensity discontinuities in an image are detected as zero-crossings of the second derivative with the help of a Laplacian of Gaussian (LOG) operator that models the receptive field of retinal Ganglion cells. Such zero-crossings supposedly form a raw primal sketch edge map of the external world in the primary visual cortex of the brain. Based on a new operator which is a linear combination of the LOG and a Dirac-delta function that models the extra-classical receptive field of the ganglion cells, we find that zero-crossing points thus generated, store in presence of noise, apart from the edge information, the shading information of the image in the form of density variation of these points. We have also shown that an optimal image contrast produces best mapping of the shading information to such zero-crossing density variation for a given amount of noise contamination. Furthermore, we have observed that an optimal amount of noise contamination reproduces the minimum optimal contrast and hence gives rise to the best representation of the original image. We show that this phenomenon is similar in nature to that of stochastic resonance phenomenon observed in psychophysical experiments.
Photorealistic models for pupil light reflex and iridal pattern deformation
Authors: Vitor F. Pamplona, Manuel M. Oliveira, Gladimir V. G. Baranoski
Venue: ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) (2009)

We introduce a physiologically-based model for pupil light reflex (PLR) and an image-based model for iridal pattern deformation. Our PLR model expresses the pupil diameter as a function of the lighting of the environment, and is described by a delay-differential equation, naturally adapting the pupil diameter even to abrupt changes in light conditions. Since the parameters of our PLR model were derived from measured data, it correctly simulates the actual behavior of the human pupil. Another contribution of our work is a model for realistic deformation of the iris pattern as a function of pupil dilation and constriction. Our models produce high-fidelity appearance effects and can be used to produce real-time predictive animations of the pupil and iris under variable lighting conditions. We assess the predictability and quality of our simulations through comparisons of modeled results against measured data derived from experiments also described in this work. Combined, our models can bring facial animation to new photorealistic standards.
Formal Semantics and OntologiesTowards an Ontological Account of Formal Semantics
Authors: Frank Loebe, Heinrich Herre
Venue: Proceeding of the 2008 conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference (FOIS 2008) (2008)

Formal ontology relies on representation languages for expressing ontologies. This involves the formal semantics of these languages which is typically based on a limited set of abstract mathematical notions. In this paper, we discuss the interplay between formal semantics and the intended role of ontologies as semantic foundation. In this connection a circularity is identified if ontologies are to determine the conceptual equivalence of expressions. This is particularly relevant for ontologies which are to be provided in multiple formalisms. In order to overcome this situation, ontological semantics is generally defined as a novel kind of semantics which is purely and directly based on ontological entities. We sketch a specific application of this semantics to the syntax of first order logic. In order to beneficially rely on theoretical results and reasoning systems, an approximation of the proposed semantics in terms of the conventional approach is established. This results in a formalization method for first order logic and a translation-based variant of ontological semantics. Both variants involve an ontology for their application. In the context of developing a top-level ontology, we outline an ontology which serves as a meta-ontology in applying ontological semantics to the formalization of ontologies. Finally, resolved and remaining issues as well as related approaches are briefly discussed.
Beyond Minutiae: A Fingerprint Individuality Model with Pattern, Ridge and Pore Features
Authors: Yi Chen, Anil K. Jain
Venue: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Advances in Biometrics (2009)

Fingerprints are considered to be unique because they contain various distinctive features, including minutiae, ridges, pores, etc. Some attempts have been made to model the minutiae in order to get a quantitative measure for uniqueness or individuality of fingerprints. However, these models do not fully exploit information contained in non-minutiae features that is utilized for matching fingerprints in practice. We propose an individuality model that incorporates all three levels of fingerprint features: pattern or class type (Level 1), minutiae and ridges (Level 2), and pores (Level 3). Correlations among these features and their distributions are also taken into account in our model. Experimental results show that the theoretical estimates of fingerprint individuality using our model consistently follow the empirical values based on the public domain NIST-4 database.
Routing Mechanism for Static Load Balancing in a Partitioned Computer System with a Fully Connected Network
Authors: Oi Hitoshi, Tsai Bing-Rung
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on High Performance Computing (2009)

System partitioning provides the users of high-performance parallel servers with the flexibility in resource allocation and dynamic reconfiguration as well as fault isolation. However, the bandwidth of links that connect different domains can be wasted while links within the same domains are congested. In this paper, we present a routing mechanism that can utilize the bandwidth of otherwise unused links to balance the message traffic and lead to lower message latencies for the latency-sensitive transactions. The performance of the proposed routing mechanism was studied using an analytical model with on-line transaction processing type workload parameters. The results indicated the proposed routing mechanism reduced the congestion on the direct paths significantly and lowered the queuing delay for the links. For example, when a 4-cluster system with a fully connected network with the bandwidth of 3.2GB/s per link is partitioned into two 2-cluster domains, the queuing delay was reduced from 53ns to 37ns and resulted in the improvement of CPI by 2%.
A Generic and Configurable Source-Code Instrumentation Component
Authors: Markus Geimer, Sameer S. Shende, Allen D. Malony, Felix Wolf
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computational Science (2009)

A common prerequisite for a number of debugging and performance-analysis techniques is the injection of auxiliary program code into the application under investigation, a process called instrumentation. To accomplish this task, source-code preprocessors are often used. Unfortunately, existing preprocessing tools either focus only on a very specific aspect or use hard-coded commands for instrumentation. In this paper, we examine which basic constructs are required to specify a user-defined routine entry/exit instrumentation. This analysis serves as a basis for a generic instrumentation component working on the source-code level where the instructions to be inserted can be flexibly configured. We evaluate the identified constructs with our prototypical implementation and show that these are sufficient to fulfill the needs of a number of todays' performance-analysis tools.
OGJ gone wild
Authors: Nicholas Cameron, James Noble
Venue: International Workshop on Aliasing, Confinement and Ownership in Object-Oriented Programming (2009)

Ownership types structure the heap, and can enforce encapsulation properties which improve security, provide more information for the programmer, and allow for better reasoning about programs. Ownership Generic Java (OGJ) implements ownership types using Java generics and some additional type checking. This allows the programmer to use generics and ownership types in the same programs with little addtional syntactic overhead. We combine Java wildcards (represented formally as existential types) with OGJ to enforce an ownership topology using only features of the Java type system. We demonstrate how the owners-as-dominators encapsulation property can be enforced by a minimal addition to the well-formedness rules for types and classes. We show that the type parameterisation of Java generics --- with wildcards --- is sufficient to enforce ownership.
Blue-Fi: enhancing Wi-Fi performance using bluetooth signals
Authors: Ganesh Ananthanarayanan, Ion Stoica
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services (2009)

Mobile devices are increasingly equipped with multiple network interfaces with complementary characteristics. In particular, the Wi-Fi interface has high throughput and transfer power efficiency, but its idle power consumption is prohibitive. In this paper we present, Blue-Fi, a sytem that predicts the availability of the Wi-Fi connectivity by using a combination of bluetooth contact-patterns and cell-tower information. This allows the device to intelligently switch the Wi-Fi interface on only when there is Wi-Fi connectivity available, thus avoiding the long periods in idle state and significantly reducing the the number of scans for discovery. Our prediction results on traces collected from real users show an average coverage of 94% and an average accuracy of 84%, a 47% accuracy improvement over pure cell-tower based prediction, and a 57% coverage improvement over the pure bluetooth based prediction. For our workload, Blue-Fi is up to 62% more energy efficient, which results in increasing our mobile device's lifetime by more than a day.
3DE_var: Energy-Efficient Cluster-Based Routing Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Jinsu Kim, Junghyun Lee, Keewook Rim
Venue: Proceedings of the Third KES International Symposium on Agent and Multi-Agent Systems: Technologies and Applications (2009)

The traditional cluster-based routing method is a typical method for enhancing an energy efficiency, which selects cluster head in order to send the aggregated data arriving from the nodes in cluster to a sink. However, caused by the frequent information exchange between selected cluster head and nodes of cluster in setup phase of the cluster formation and direct transmission between isolated nodes which are excluded from the all clusters and sink in steady-state phase, it is necessary to minimize the unnecessary energy dissipation using the equal distribution of cluster heads. We propose an efficient cluster-based routing scheme, called 3DE_var. In order to configure the optimum distribution of cluster, it selects new cluster head using the information such as direction obtained from upper level cluster head, distance among nodes in the cluster, residual energy and density. Thus this study prolongs the network lifetime and provides equal opportunity for being cluster head.
Improving the performance of software defined radio by employing digital feedback of radio frequency properties
Authors: L. Wilson Pearson
Venue:  (2007)

This dissertation provides tools for the analysis and integration of the hardware and software components of a software defined radio for optimum radio frequency performance. A device is introduced that is able to give baseband feedback of radio frequency properties suitable for analysis in software. Three applications for the device are devised. The first is an image rejection upconverter that achieves greater than 65 dB of image rejection over a broad frequency range without the use of a radio frequency filter. The second application is a baseband correction scheme for extending the bandwidth and improving the magnitude and phase match of an off-the-shelf IQ mixer. The third application is a receive filter that can reject a near-band, high-power interferer again without the use of a radio frequency filter. The theoretical development and experimental verification of each system is included.
Intra-communication for banking using bluetooth communication
Authors: P. Swarnalatha, P. Srinivasan, G. Kishore
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th WSEAS international conference on evolutionary computing (2009)

Intra-communication for banking by using Bluetooth Communication is a wireless communication method for make easy the banking transaction like depositing, withdraw and balance enquiry. The Software's main goal is to save time and avoid queuing inside the bank campus. If we implement this system, people within a campus of the bank can access the server for the transaction purpose. Intra-communication for banking by using Bluetooth Communication is a wireless communication is implemented in Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) platform. Bluetooth technology for networking purpose it cannot support long range transaction. Our product will do only temporary update. The unique request number obtained from our product is used for permanent update. People should have their basic knowledge of this system's functionalities for the operation.
WhereNext: a location predictor on trajectory pattern mining
Authors: Anna Monreale, Fabio Pinelli, Roberto Trasarti, Fosca Giannotti
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining (2009)

The pervasiveness of mobile devices and location based services is leading to an increasing volume of mobility data.This side eect provides the opportunity for innovative methods that analyse the behaviors of movements. In this paper we propose WhereNext, which is a method aimed at predicting with a certain level of accuracy the next location of a moving object. The prediction uses previously extracted movement patterns named Trajectory Patterns, which are a concise representation of behaviors of moving objects as sequences of regions frequently visited with a typical travel time. A decision tree, named T-pattern Tree, is built and evaluated with a formal training and test process. The tree is learned from the Trajectory Patterns that hold a certain area and it may be used as a predictor of the next location of a new trajectory finding the best matching path in the tree. Three dierent best matching methods to classify a new moving object are proposed and their impact on the quality of prediction is studied extensively. Using Trajectory Patterns as predictive rules has the following implications: (I) the learning depends on the movement of all available objects in a certain area instead of on the individual history of an object; (II) the prediction tree intrinsically contains the spatio-temporal properties that have emerged from the data and this allows us to define matching methods that striclty depend on the properties of such movements. In addition, we propose a set of other measures, that evaluate a priori the predictive power of a set of Trajectory Patterns. This measures were tuned on a real life case study. Finally, an exhaustive set of experiments and results on the real dataset are presented.
Positive solutions of nonlinear m-point BVP for an increasing homeomorphism and homomorphism with sign changing nonlinearity on time scales
Authors: Yanbin Sang, Hua Su, Fuyi Xu
Venue: Computers Mathematics with Applications (2009)

In this paper, several existence theorems of positive solutions are established for nonlinear m-point boundary value problem for the following dynamic equations on time scales (@f(u^@D))^@?+a(t)f(t,u(t))=0,t@?[0,T],@f(u^@D(0))=@?i=1m-2a"i@f(u^@D(@x"i)),u(T)=@?i=1m-2b"iu(@x"i), where @f:R@?R is an increasing homeomorphism and homomorphism and @f(0)=0. The nonlinear term f may change sign. As an application, an example to demonstrate our results is given.