ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
A worst-case comparison between temporal difference and residual gradient with linear function approximation
Authors: Lihong Li
Venue: Proceedings of the 25th international conference on Machine learning (2008)

Residual gradient (RG) was proposed as an alternative to TD(0) for policy evaluation when function approximation is used, but there exists little formal analysis comparing them except in very limited cases. This paper employs techniques from online learning of linear functions and provides a worst-case (non-probabilistic) analysis to compare these two types of algorithms when linear function approximation is used. No statistical assumptions are made on the sequence of observations, so the analysis applies to non-Markovian and even adversarial domains as well. In particular, our results suggest that RG may result in smaller temporal differences, while TD(0) is more likely to yield smaller prediction errors. These phenomena can be observed even in two simple Markov chain examples that are non-adversarial.
Simulating mobile robots for undergraduate research
Authors: Suranga Hettiarachchi, Eli Cohen, Timothy Willey, Nathan Schmidt
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2008)

Our objective is to promote scientific research among undergraduate students at Eastern Oregon University through the development of mobile robots. Simulating mobile robots in research is not a novel technique, but using simulated robots that utilize virtual physics or "Physicomimetics" [2] as a tool to promote undergraduate research is unique. This paper addresses the undergraduate research experience of designing and implementing a simulated mobile robot environment using a physics-based control algorithm.
Sampling-based program locality approximation
Authors: Yutao Zhong, Wentao Chang
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international symposium on Memory management (2008)

Reuse signature, or reuse distance pattern, is an accurate model for program memory accessing behaviors. It has been studied and shown to be effective in program analysis and optimizations by many recent works. However, the high overhead associated with reuse distance measurement restricts the scope of its application. This paper explores applying sampling in reuse signature collection to reduce the time overhead. We compare different sampling strategies and show that an enhanced systematic sampling with a uniform coverage of all distance ranges can be used to extrapolate the reuse distance distribution. Based on that analysis, we present a novel sampling method with a measurement accuracy of more than 99%. Our average speedup of reuse signature collection is 7.5 while the best improvement observed is 34. This is the first attempt to utilize sampling in measuring reuse signatures. Experiments with varied programs and instrumentation tools show that sampling has great potential in promoting the practical uses of reuse signatures and enabling more optimization opportunities.
Discriminative parameter learning for Bayesian networks
Authors: Jiang Su, Harry Zhang, Charles X. Ling, Stan Matwin
Venue: Proceedings of the 25th international conference on Machine learning (2008)

Bayesian network classifiers have been widely used for classification problems. Given a fixed Bayesian network structure, parameters learning can take two different approaches: generative and discriminative learning. While generative parameter learning is more efficient, discriminative parameter learning is more effective. In this paper, we propose a simple, efficient, and effective discriminative parameter learning method, called Discriminative Frequency Estimate (DFE), which learns parameters by discriminatively computing frequencies from data. Empirical studies show that the DFE algorithm integrates the advantages of both generative and discriminative learning: it performs as well as the state-of-the-art discriminative parameter learning method ELR in accuracy, but is significantly more efficient.
Noise reduction and edge detection via kernel anisotropic diffusion
Authors: Jinhua Yu, Yuanyuan Wang, Yuzhong Shen
Venue: Pattern Recognition Letters (2008)

A novel kernel anisotropic diffusion (KAD) method is proposed for robust noise reduction and edge detection. The KAD incorporates a kernelized gradient operator in the diffusion, leading to more effective edge detection and providing a better control to the diffusion process. Adaptive diffusion threshold estimation and automatic diffusion termination criterion are also introduced to enhance the robustness of the KAD. The KAD outperforms several previous anisotropic diffusion-based methods for low SNR images.
A model for strengthening the software engineering research capacity
Authors: Roumen Nikolov, Sylvia Ilieva
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 international workshop on Software Engineering in east and south europe (2008)

Like all other New Member States (NMS) Bulgaria is experiencing a dramatic change in all areas of its society. These changes reflect very seriously on the research capacity of the country and, in particular to Sofia University (SU). The Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics (FMI) has experienced some serious problems closely related to the general socio-economic and the research environment in Bulgaria. This paper describes a model for strengthening the research capacity of FMI, especially the one in the area of Software Engineering. The case study of successful industry-university cooperation in the framework of European project is presented.
Logical Process Based Sequential Simulation Cloning
Authors: Patrick Peschlow, Martin Geuer, Peter Martini
Venue: Proceedings of the 41st Annual Simulation Symposium (anss-41 2008) (2008)

Discrete-event simulation is a widely used technique for the performance evaluation of systems. Recently, discrete-event simulation studies which explore alternative scenarios within a single simulation run have gained popularity. The simulation is branched at decision points, and the different branches are simulated one after another. In this paper, we show that concepts from parallel and distributed simulation can considerably speed up this type of discrete-event simulation study. We present a sequential branching mechanism, LPseq, which is based on the logical process paradigm and uses logical process cloning for efficient computation of branches. Our performance evaluation demonstrates that LPseq can achieve considerable speedup compared to the traditional branching approach.
3D Scene Reconstruction through a Fusion of Passive Video and Lidar Imagery
Authors: Prudhvi Gurram, Stephen Lach, Eli Saber, Harvey Rhody, John Kerekes
Venue: Proceedings of the 36th Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop (2007)

Geometric structure of a scene can be reconstructed using many methods. In recent years, two prominent approaches have been digital photogrammetric analysis using passive stereo imagery and feature extraction from lidar point clouds. In the first method, the traditional technique relies on finding common points in two or more 2D images that were acquired from different view perspectives. More recently, similar approaches have been proposed where stereo mosaics are built from aerial video using parallel ray interpolation, and surfaces are subsequently extracted from these mosaics using stereo geometry. Although the lidar data inherently contain 2.5 or 3 dimensional information, they also require processing to extract surfaces. In general, structure from stereo approaches work well when the scene surfaces are flat and have strong edges in the video frames. Lidar processing works well when the data is densely sampled. In this paper, we analyze and discuss the pros and cons of the two approaches. We also present three challenging situations that illustrate the benefits that could be derived from this data fusion: when one or more edges are not clearly visible in the video frames, when the lidar data sampling density is low, and when the object surface is not planar. Examples are provided from the processing of real airborne data gathered using a combination of lidar and passive imagery taken from separate aircraft platforms at different times.
Self-reconfigurable modular robot M-TRAN: distributed control and communication
Authors: Haruhisa Kurokawa, Kohji Tomita, Akiya Kamimura, Shigeru Kokaji, Takashi Hasuo, Satoshi Murata
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Robot communication and coordination (2007)

M-TRAN is a self-reconfigurable modular robot: each module has an independent battery, two-degree-of-freedom motion, six-surface-connection capability, and intelligence with inter-module communication. The M-TRAN system can perform flexible and adaptive locomotion in various configurations using coordination control based on a central pattern generator (CPG). Various structures of several modules can perform metamorphosis, such as that between a four-legged robot and a snake-like one. In addition to these self-reconfigurations with synchronous control, M-TRAN structures having regularity can move using parallel distributed control and message exchange via the network bus. Self-reconfiguration using infrared local communication has been attempted to improve the system's scalability.
Aspect-Oriented Executable UML Models for Context-Aware Pervasive Applications
Authors: Lidia Fuentes, Nadia Gamez, Pablo Sanchez
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 5th International Workshop on Model-based Methodologies for Pervasive and Embedded Software (2008)

Pervasive applications must be aware of the contextswhere they are executed. These contexts may vary greatlyfrom each other and may change quickly. Thus, pervasiveapplications should be highly reconfigurable in orderto deal with such context changes. There are twomain problems associated with this issue: (1) contextawareness is a crosscutting concern that can not be wellencapsulated in a single module using traditional technologies, which hinders application design maintenance and reusability; and (2) reasoning about application designcorrectness can be complex due to the number anddiversity of potential contexts where a pervasive application could be executed. In order to overcome these problems we propose the use of the Aspect-Oriented Executable Modelling (AOEM) UML 2.0 Profile for designing pervasive applications. Aspect-Oriented techniques contribute to the encapsulation of crosscutting concerns, such as contextawareness, into well-localized modules. Executable Modelling helps engineers to reason about application design by executing the design models in different contexts and situations. Finally, we will discuss how these aspect-oriented models would map into a middleware platform that provides built-in services to support pervasive applications. Services, such as context-awareness, are provided as a set of user-configurable aspects. These ideas are illustrated using a location-aware intelligent transportation system consisting of a set of cooperating sentient vehicles.
Scheduling of thermal power systems with emission constraints: a multiobjective approach
Authors: Victor Mendes, José Carlos Quadrado, João Catalão, Sílvio Mariano, Luís Ferreira
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th WSEAS International Conference on Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (2005)

This paper addresses the thermal power systems scheduling problem with emission constraints. Nowadays, renewable energy is a reality, but the level of renewable energy bring into play are not as much as needed and when it is needed to satisfy all the demand of electric energy in our society. Fossil fuels are necessary to ensure that this demand is satisfied. Also, an unprecedented change points to circumstances where it is necessary to provide the required electric energy taking into account concerns in order to preserve a proper environment. Power engineering has to merge technical and economic knowledge with environmental concerns for a proper environment. We propose a multiobjective approach to address the scheduling of thermal power systems with emission constraints. The trade-off curve between fuel cost and emission pollution, in a way to aid decisions concerning emission allowance trading, is obtained.
A Comparative Study on the Fretting Behaviors of Human Femur Compact Bone under Tangential and Radial Fretting Models in vitro
Authors: Cai Zhenbing, Zhu Minhao, Yu Haiyang
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on BioMedical Engineering and Informatics - Volume 02 (2008)

Testes of two fretting modes (i.e. tangential and radial fretting) of human femur cortical bone against TA2 ball in vitro have been carried out under the varied imposed normal loads. Much severer surface damage occurred at high displacement amplitudes under the testing of tangential fretting than that of radial fretting. Ploughs and detachment of particles were observed in the wear scars of tangential fretting specimens. Combination of abrasive wear and delamination was the mechanism of tangential fretting of cortical bone. The results under radial fretting condition show that circumferential lamella of osteon presented a better resistance than that of interstitial lamella. Micro-cracks and delamination occurred primarily at the edge of contact zone. It was found that Haversian system of cortical bone played an important role under the two fretting modes. The liquid exudant come from the degradation of bone was played an important role as a lubricant.
Proceedings of the ninth conference on Australasian user interface - Volume 76
Venue: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 314 (2008)

Welcome to the Ninth Australasian User Interface Conference (AUIC 2008). This conference is part of Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW 2008) held in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia from January 22nd to 25th January 2008. Each year AUIC provides a unique Australasian opportunity for those with a passion for improving the user experience by researching innovative technologies to gather together with the wider Computer Science community to present and exchange ideas. AUIC 2008 received 23 submissions, of which 11 (less than 50%) were accepted, giving a strong conference programme covering a wide range of topics. The programme has 8 long papers and 3 short papers, arranged into 4 sessions. The session themes are novel interaction, collaborative interaction, user interface analysis, and usability evaluation with papers addressing diverse topics ranging from god-like interaction techniques for augmented reality to the cognitive effects of different graph layout algorithms. The conference has traditionally mainly been attended by Australian and New Zealand researchers. This year we have presenters, attendees, reviewers, and a keynote from countries outside the region, making AUIC a truly international conference. This year we ran a double blind reviewing process with each paper reviewed by three members of the programme committee. The two paper categories: 10-page long papers and 4-page short papers are reviewed with the same process, but short papers are designed for new research results or techniques that can be described in the reduced format and do not require a full long paper.
DiTV and e-commerce among disadvantaged community groups
Authors: K. Keeling, L. A. Macaulay, P. McGoldrick
Venue: Behaviour & Information Technology (2007)

There is growing concern about the role of technological exclusion on deepening economic, political and social inequalities. Many people do not have PC-based Internet access either through geography, lack of money or other disadvantages. At the same time there is continued growth in the use of digital interactive television (DiTV) in the home, suggesting the potential for an alternative channel of Internet access. However, the case for DiTV is not proven, with some evidence of lack of awareness and interest among potential users. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of DiTV as an alternative platform for conducting e-commerce among people who might otherwise be at risk of e-exclusion. The paper is positioned against literature on adoption of DiTV and briefly presents the results of a qualitative study examining consumer beliefs and feelings about shopping via DiTV. Eight key issues arising from the study are used as the focus for a questionnaire distributed among residents in an area of economic deprivation. The main outcomes are a deeper understanding of the pros and cons of DiTV for e-commerce and recommendations for developers wishing to promote e-inclusion.
Quasi centralized clustering approach for an energy-efficient and vulnerability-aware routing in wireless sensor networks
Authors: Noor M. Khan, Ihsan Ali, Zubair Khalid, Ghufran Ahmed, Rodica Ramer, Alex A. Kavokin
Venue: Proceeding of the 1st ACM international workshop on Heterogeneous sensor and actor networks (2008)

In this paper, we propose a Quasi-Centralized Clustering Approach (QCCA), in which Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) partition into disjoint and equal-sized cells. Each cell has a powerful node, which acts as a cluster head. Hence, we consider a heterogeneous cluster-based WSN, which consists of two types of nodes: powerful clusterheads and ordinary sensor nodes. It leverages the advantages of small transmit distances for most nodes, requiring only a few nodes to transmit far distances to the base station. It completely eliminates redundant transmissions by ensuring, via carrier sensing (CSMA-CA), only one head sensor in each cell transmits and communicates with the sink, which can be either mobile or stationary. This approach reduces both energy consumption and communication bandwidth requirements, and prolongs the lifetime of the WSN. Simulation results show that a large amount of energy is saved using this strategy.
Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Cross-Institutional Mammograms Using Support Vector Machines with Feature Elimination
Authors: Saejoon Kim, Sejong Yoon, Donghyuk Shin
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 Frontiers in the Convergence of Bioscience and Information Technologies (2007)

In the analysis of digital or digitized mammographic images, a requirement is to learn to separate benign calcifications from malignant ones. Such an activity could form part of a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) tool. We present a CAD study of calcification lesions to demonstrate that CAD of same-institutional mammograms provides significantly higher accuracy compared to that of cross-institutional mammograms. Moreover, using only a subset of the widely used six BI-RADS features together with patient age and subtlety value describing each calcification lesion is shown to increase the accuracy of CAD.
Mathematical performance analysis of product networks
Authors: Reza Moraveji, Hamid Sarbazi-Azad
Venue: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems - Volume 02 (2007)

In this paper, we propose the first comprehensive mathematical performance model for product networks where fully adaptive routing is applied. Besides the generality of this model which makes it suitable to be used for any product graph, our analysis shows that the proposed model exhibits high accuracy. Simulation results show the validity and accuracy of the model even in heavy traffic and saturation region, where other models have severe problems for prediction.
Minimal universal library for n×n reversible circuits
Authors: Guowu Yang, Xiaoyu Song, Marek A. Perkowski, William N. N. Hung, Chang-Jun Seo
Venue: Computers Mathematics with Applications (2008)

Reversible logic plays an important role in quantum computing. Several papers have been recently published on universality of sets of reversible gates. However, a fundamental unsolved problem remains: ''what is the minimum set of gates that are universal forn-qubit circuits without ancillae bits''. We present a library of 2 gates which is sufficient to realize all reversible circuits of n variables. It is a minimal library of gates for binary reversible logic circuits. We also analyze the complexity of the syntheses.
Viewpoint-Based Ambient Occlusion
Authors: Francisco González, Mateu Sbert, Miquel Feixas
Venue: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (2008)

Ambient occlusion is a powerful technique that mimics indirect global illumination at a fraction of the cost. In this paper, we introduce a new ambient occlusion technique based on an information-theoretic framework. We define a viewpoint quality measure using information accessible through a channel built between a set of viewpoints and an object's polygons. By inverting this channel, we can access polygon information from all viewpoints. From this polygonal information, we obtain an occlusion map that we can use as a classic ambient occlusion technique, as well as in several other applications. We can, for example, use the map to guide viewpoint selection by highlighting the most informative object views; to enhance object features, such as its most salient parts; and to produce nonphotorealistic object visualizations.
Busy Tone Multi Channel (BTMC): A New Multi Channel MAC protocol for Ad Hoc Networks
Authors: Mohamed Elhawary, Zygmunt J. Haas
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 Sixth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (2008)

One of the main challenges in wireless networks is improving the network throughput and capacity. As commodity wireless network cards support the usage of orthogonal channels, allowing multiple simultaneous communications on these channels will improve the performance of wireless networks. Previous MAC protocols either were expensive to implement as they needed more than one packet radio per node or required synchronization or caused network partitioning. We propose a new MAC protocol that uses hash functions to distribute the control overhead over all the channels. In addition, it uses busy tones to reserve the channels and solve the hidden terminal and the channel rendezvous problems in multi channels. We compared our protocol with another multi-channel MAC protocol that uses more than one packet radio per node (DCA) and with 802.11. Our protocol produces comparable results with DCA and performs much better than 802.11. The results show that our protocol utilizes the multiple channels available to increase the capacity of the network. The proposed protocol is expected to improve the usage of ad hoc networks as it does not need synchronization like previous protocols.
Fuzzy Multi-Objective Order Allocation Model for Risk Management in a Supply Chain
Authors: Wei Pan, Shouyang Wang, Jinlong Zhang, Guowei Hua, Yong Fang
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 Second Asia International Conference on Modelling & Simulation (AMS) (2008)

Order allocation is one of the most critical activities of purchasing management in a supply chain. It is an unequally important multiple criteria decision making problem including cost, quality, delivery and service etc. In real situation, much input information is uncertain. In these cases the theory of fuzzy sets and stochastic theory are two of the best tools for handling this problem. Our fuzzy model that is formulated in such a way as to simultaneously consider the imprecision of information and stochastic demand, determine the order quantities to each supplier based on price breaks. The problem includes the three objective functions: minimizing the cost, minimizing the net rejected items, and minimizing the net late deliveries, while satisfying capacity and demand requirement constraints. In order to solve the problem, a fuzzy linear/nonlinear programming and scenario analysis are developed. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the proposed model.