ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
How to Bypass Two Anonymity Revocation Schemes
Authors: George Danezis, Len Sassaman
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th international symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (2008)

In recent years, there have been several proposals for anonymous communication systems that provide intentional weaknesses to allow anonymity to be circumvented in special cases. These anonymity revocation schemes attempt to retain the properties of strong anonymity systems while granting a special class of people the ability to selectively break through their protections. We evaluate the two dominant classes of anonymity revocation systems, and identify fundamental flaws in their architecture, leading to a failure to ensure proper anonymity revocation, as well as introducing additional weaknesses for users not targeted for anonymity revocation.
Using Virtual Agents for the Teaching of Requirements Elicitation in GSD
Authors: Miguel Romero, Aurora Vizcaíno, Mario Piattini
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (2008)

Requirements elicitation is particularly difficult in Global Software Development (GSD) environments owing principally to cultural differences and communication problems derived from the geographical distance that separates stakeholders. For this reason it is necessary to train professionals in the skills needed to confront a requirements elicitation in GSD. We have, therefore, designed a simulator which, by using virtual agents, will enable students and professionals to acquire a subset of the skills necessary for requirements elicitation in GSD.
Sharp Bounds for the Oriented Diameters of Interval Graphs and 2-Connected Proper Interval Graphs
Authors: Jing Huang, Dong Ye
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Computational Science, Part III: ICCS 2007 (2007)

The diameter diam(H) of a (directed) graph H is the maximum value computed over the lengths of all shortest (directed) paths in H. Given a bridgeless connected graph G, the oriented diameter OD(G) is given by $OD(G) = \mbox{min}\{diam(H):\ H\ \mbox{is\ an\ orientation\ of}\ G\}$. In this paper, we show that $OD(G) \leq \lceil \frac{3}{2} diam(G) \rceil + 1$ for every connected bridgeless interval graph G. Further, for every 2-connected proper interval graph G, we show $OD(G) \leq \lceil \frac{5}{4} diam(G) \rceil + 1$ if diam(G) ≤ 3 and $OD(G) \leq \lceil \frac{5}{4} diam(G) \rceil$, otherwise. All the bounds are sharp and improve earlier estimations obtained by Fomin et al.
Known Unknowns: Novelty Detection in Condition Monitoring
Authors: John A. Quinn, Christopher K. Williams
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd Iberian conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, Part I (2007)

In time-series analysis it is often assumed that observed data can be modelled as being derived from a number of regimes of dynamics, as e.g. in a Switching Kalman Filter (SKF) [8,2]. However, it may not be possible to model all of the regimes, and in this case it can be useful to represent explicitly a `novel' regime. We apply this idea to the Factorial Switching Kalman Filter (FSKF) by introducing an extra factor (the `X-factor') to account for the unmodelled variation. We apply our method to physiological monitoring data from premature infants receiving intensive care, and demonstrate that the model is effective in detecting abnormal sequences of observations that are not modelled by the known regimes.
A path finding implementation for multi-layer networks
Authors: Freek Dijkstra, Jeroen van der Ham, Paola Grosso, Cees de Laat
Venue: Future Generation Computer Systems (2009)

The goal of the OptIPuter project is to tightly couple research applications with dynamically allocated paths. Since OptIPuter is a multi-disciplinary project, the paths through the network often span multiple network domains, and the applications are challenged to find valid network connections through these domains. The challenge arises if the different network domains use different technologies. In this case, we have a multi-layer path finding problem. We will show that there are situations where algorithms as used in single layer networks, such as BGP, SS7 and OSPF-TE, cannot find the shortest path. A shortest path in a multi-layer network can contain loops, and a segment of a shortest path may not be a shortest path in itself. To solve this problem, both a multi-layer network representation as well as new path finding algorithms need to be developed. An additional challenge is to make a generic path finding algorithm that is technology-independent, and does not need to be modified as new technologies emerge. We show that it is possible to create solutions for all three problems. Using RDF-based techniques, we model multi-layer networks and describe incompatibilities for the path finding algorithm in technology-independent way. We also present a path finding algorithm that is able to use this information to find valid paths.
Multiobjective immune algorithm with nondominated neighbor-based selection
Authors: Maoguo Gong, Licheng Jiao, Haifeng Du, Liefeng Bo
Venue: Evolutionary Computation (2008)

Nondominated Neighbor Immune Algorithm (NNIA) is proposed for multiobjective optimization by using a novel nondominated neighbor-based selection technique, an immune inspired operator, two heuristic search operators, and elitism. The unique selection technique of NNIA only selects minority isolated nondominated individuals in the population. The selected individuals are then cloned proportionally to their crowding-distance values before heuristic search. By using the nondominated neighbor-based selection and proportional cloning, NNIA pays more attention to the less-crowded regions of the current trade-off front. We compare NNIA with NSGA-II, SPEA2, PESA-II, and MISA in solving five DTLZ problems, five ZDT problems, and three low-dimensional problems. The statistical analysis based on three performance metrics including the coverage of two sets, the convergence metric, and the spacing, show that the unique selection method is effective, and NNIA is an effective algorithm for solving multiobjective optimization problems. The empirical study on NNIA's scalability with respect to the number of objectives shows that the new algorithm scales well along the number of objectives.
The Complexity of Conjunctive Query Answering in Expressive Description Logics
Authors: Carsten Lutz
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th international joint conference on Automated Reasoning (2008)

Conjunctive query answering plays a prominent role in applications of description logics (DLs) that involve instance data, but its exact complexity was a long-standing open problem. We determine the complexity of conjunctive query answering in expressive DLs between $\mathcal{ALC}$ and $\mathcal{SHIQ}$, and thus settle the problem. In a nutshell, we show that conjunctive query answering is 2ExpTime-complete in the presence of inverse roles, and only ExpTime-complete without them.
Shall we apply paging technologies to proxy mobile IPv6?
Authors: Jong-Hyouk Lee, Tai-Myoung Chung, Sangheon Pack, Sri Gundavelli
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd international workshop on Mobility in the evolving internet architecture (2008)

Proxy Mobile IPv6 has been proposed to overcome limitations of host-based mobility protocols in IPv6 networks. In Proxy Mobile IPv6, mobility entities such as Mobile Access Gateway and Local Mobility Anchor have been newly introduced. These entities eliminate the burden of requiring host-based mobility stack and the signaling cost concentrated to a mobile host. However, there has been no attempt to apply paging technologies, which can also reduce the signaling cost focusing to Local Mobility Anchor, into Proxy Mobile IPv6. In this paper, we propose a paging extension scheme for Proxy Mobile IPv6 to enable an efficient mobility management that reduces the location update signaling cost for the mobile host in the idle mode. Performance analysis results demonstrate that our paging extension scheme improves the scalability by supporting large numbers of mobile hosts with decreased signaling cost under various system parameters.
An Iterative Reconstruction for Poly-energetic X-ray Computed Tomography
Authors: Ho-Shiang Chueh, Wen-Kai Tsai, Chih-Chieh Chang, Shu-Ming Chang, Kuan-Hao Su, Jyh-Cheng Chen
Venue: Medical Imaging and Informatics: 2nd International Conference, MIMI 2007, Beijing, China, August 14-16, 2007 Revised Selected Papers (2008)

A beam-hardening effect is a common problem affecting the quantitative ability of X-ray computed tomography. We develop a statistical reconstruction for a poly-energetic model, which can effectively reduce beam-hardening effects. A phantom test is used to evaluate our approach in comparison with traditional correction methods. Unlike previous methods, our algorithm utilizes multiple energy-corresponding blank scans to estimate attenuation map for a particular energy spectrum. Therefore, our algorithm has an energy-selective reconstruction. In addition to the benefits of other iterative reconstructions, our algorithm has the advantage in no requirement for prior knowledge about object material, energy spectrum of source and energy sensitivity of the detector. The results showed an improvement in the coefficient of variation, uniformity and signal-to-noise ratio demonstrating better beam hardening correction in our approach.
The impact of Internet use patterns on political engagement: A focus on online deliberation and virtual social capital
Authors: Ji-Young Kim
Venue: Information Polity (2006)

While numerous studies have examined the impact of the Internet on civic engagement in politics, inconclusive results have been revealed that optimistic and pessimistic accounts compete with each other. This study contends that the political effects of the medium depend upon the way it is used, and examines how different patterns of Internet use yield different political consequences in the case of South Korea, a country where political influence of the Internet is crucial. The primary modes of Internet use in focus are e-deliberation and e-social capital. By analyzing an online survey, we find that the former is a significant predictor of citizens' political engagement whereas the latter has only limited impacts. The study concludes that the proliferation of virtual communities over the net, in and of itself, is not an indicator of political revitalization, but deliberative practices of citizens could be an integral element to regenerate civic political life.
Towards Natural Gesture Synthesis: Evaluating Gesture Units in a Data-Driven Approach to Gesture Synthesis
Authors: Michael Kipp, Michael Neff, Kerstin H. Kipp, Irene Albrecht
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (2007)

Virtual humans still lack naturalness in their nonverbal behaviour. We present a data-driven solution that moves towards a more natural synthesis of hand and arm gestures by recreating gestural behaviour in the style of a human performer. Our algorithm exploits the concept of gesture units to make the produced gestures a continuous flow of movement. We empirically validated the use of gesture units in the generation and show that it causes the virtual human to be perceived as more natural.
Equivalence verification of arithmetic datapaths using finite ring algebra
Authors: Namrata Shekhar
Venue:  (2008)

With the increase in size and complexity of digital designs, it is imperative to address critical verification issues during early stages of the design cycle. This requires robust, automated tools that can prove equivalence of high-level design descriptions, such as those in HDL , Matlab, SystemC, and so on. The preferred verification approaches are those that can maintain a level of abstraction yet retain sufficient information so as to accurately account for the underlying functionality. This is especially necessary for arithmetic intensive designs, such as digital signal processing models, whose datapaths primarily perform a series of ADD, MULTIPLY and SHIFT type of operations. Polynomial representations are a natural choice for datapath modeling, satisfying this need for compactness. High-level descriptions of arithmetic operations are characterized by the fact that the word lengths of all signals are fixed, usually according to some desired precision. For correct modeling, it is important to account for the effect of bit vector sizes on the resulting polynomial abstraction. For instance, the largest (unsigned) integer value that a bit vector of size m can represent is 2m &minus; 1, implying that the corresponding integer values are reduced modulo 2 m (% 2m). Intuitively, this suggests that arithmetic over bit vectors can be modeled as polynomial algebra over finite integer rings, where the corresponding size (say, m) dictates the cardinality of the ring ( Z2m ). This dissertation formulates the problem of equivalence verification of arithmetic datapaths as that of testing for equivalence of polynomial functions from Z2n1 &times; Z2n2 &times; &middot;&middot;&middot; &times; Z2nd to Z2m . Contemporary verification and symbolic algebra tools provide a variety of approaches to solve the polynomial equivalence problem. However, these are mostly applicable to unique factorization domains (UFDs) such as finite fields, Euclidean, and integral domains. Finite integer rings of the form Z2m , unfortunately, do not fall into this category, rendering established techniques inapplicable. This dissertation develops novel decision procedures for polynomial equivalence based on concepts from number theory, commutative algebra, and other symbolic techniques. Systematic, complete algorithmic procedures are devised and implemented within an integrated, CAD-based verification framework. Experiments are performed on a variety of benchmarks and the results are compared against contemporary approaches, highlighting the efficiency of our techniques. Based on analysis of the experimental results, conclusions are drawn about the efficacy of polynomial representations and finite ring algebra for equivalence verification - reviewing the benefits and limitations of such techniques. Furthermore, suggestions are made for various other areas of application of these techniques beyond the work presented in this research.
BotTracer: Execution-Based Bot-Like Malware Detection
Authors: Lei Liu, Songqing Chen, Guanhua Yan, Zhao Zhang
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Information Security (2008)

Bot-like malware has posed an immense threat to computer security. Bot detection is still a challenging task since bot developers are continuously adopting advanced techniques to make bots more stealthy. A typical bot exhibits three invariant features along its onset: (1) the startup of a bot is automatic without requiring any user actions; (2) a bot must establish a command and control channel with its botmaster; and (3) a bot will perform local or remote attacks sooner or later. These invariants indicate three indispensable phases (startup, preparation, and attack) for a bot attack. In this paper, we propose BotTracer to detect these three phases with the assistance of virtual machine techniques. To validate BotTracer, we implement a prototype of BotTracer based on VMware and Windows XP Professional. The results show that BotTracer has successfully detected all the bots in the experiments without any false negatives.
Locating and Repairing Faults in a Network with Mobile Agents
Authors: Colin Cooper, Ralf Klasing, Tomasz Radzik
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th international colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity (2008)

We consider a fixed, undirected, known network and a number of "mobile agents" which can traverse the network in synchronized steps. Some nodes in the network may be faulty and the agents are to find the faults and repair them. The agents could be software agents, if the underlying network represents a computer network, or robots, if the underlying network represents some potentially hazardous physical terrain. Assuming that the first agent encountering a faulty node can immediately repair it, it is easy to see that the number of steps necessary and sufficient to complete this task is ¿(n/k + D), where n is the number of nodes in the network, D is the diameter of the network, and k is the number of agents. We consider the case where one agent can repair only one faulty node. After repairing the fault, the agent dies. We show that a simple deterministic algorithm for this problem terminates within O(n/k + Dlogf/loglogf) steps, where f = min {n/k, n/D}, assuming that the number of faulty nodes is at most k/2. We also demonstrate the worst-case asymptotic optimality of this algorithm by showing a network such that for any deterministic algorithm, there is a placement of k/2 faults forcing the algorithm to work for ¿(n/k + Dlogf/loglogf) steps.
Finding Optimum Similar Regions
Authors: Zhengguang Xu, Gu Yuan
Venue: Proceedings of the 2008 Congress on Image and Signal Processing, Vol. 2 - Volume 02 (2008)

In this paper we present a novel rotation- and affine-invariant image regions detector, coined OSR (Optimum Similar Regions). The two steps of OSR is: first, segment an image with thresholds based on graph theory, these regions of the segmentation results are so called similar regions. Second, the subset of similar regions is confirmed according to the regulation of the similar region’s cardinality. The paper presents experimental results on a standard evaluation set, as well as on application of wide baseline image matching. Both of them show OSR’s strong performance.
Programming with Effects in Coq
Authors: Greg Morrisett
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Mathematics of Program Construction (2008)

Next-generation programming languages will move beyond simple type systems to include support for formal specifications and mechanically- checked proofs of adherence to those requirements. Already, in the imperative world, languages such as ESC/Java and Spec# integrate Hoare- style pre- and post-conditions into the underlying type system. However, we argue that neither the program logics used in these systems, nor the decision procedures used to discharge verification conditions, are sufficient for establishing deep properties of modular software.In contrast, the Coq proof development environment provides a powerful program logic (CiC) coupled with an extensible, interactive environment that can combine deep insights from humans with automation to discharge deep proof obligations. Unfortunately, the language at the core of Coq is limited to purely functional programming.In the Ynot project, we are attempting to address this problem by extending Coq with a new type constructor (the Hoare-triple type), and a few carefully chosen axioms that can be used to build imperative programs in a style quite close to Haskell. I will report on our progress thus far, both in using Ynot to construct modular, extensible libraries for imperative programs, as well as our new compiler infrastructure for generating efficient code from Ynot programs.
SQUASH --- A New MAC with Provable Security Properties for Highly Constrained Devices Such as RFID Tags
Authors: Adi Shamir
Venue: Fast Software Encryption: 15th International Workshop, FSE 2008, Lausanne, Switzerland, February 10-13, 2008, Revised Selected Papers (2008)

We describe a new function called SQUASH (which is short for SQUare-hASH), which is ideally suited to challenge-response MAC applications in highly constrained devices such as RFID tags. It is exceptionally simple, requires no source of random bits, and can be efficiently implemented on processors with arbitrary word sizes. Unlike other ad-hoc proposals which have no security analysis, SQUASH is provably at least as secure as Rabin's public key encryption scheme in this application.
Design and Implementation of Adaptive Agents for Complex Manufacturing Systems
Authors: Jens Zimmermann, Lars Mönch
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems: Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems for Manufacturing (2007)

In this paper, we extend the Product-Resource-Order-Staff-Architecture (PROSA) for holonic manufacturing systems towards ensuring adaptive behavior of agent-based manufacturing control systems. PROSA suggests the usage of decision-making and staff agents. Staff agents support the decision-making agents. We introduce adaptive staff agents. Adaptive staff agents make sure that the parameters of production control algorithms are adjusted properly in a situation-dependent manner. We describe the architecture of adaptive staff agents and their interaction with the other agents of the manufacturing control system. We present an example for using adaptive staff agents in the semiconductor manufacturing domain.
OpCog: an industrial development approach for cognitive agent systems in military UAV applications
Authors: Kai Reichel, Nico Hochgeschwender, Holger Voos
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems: industrial track (2008)

Future applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) especially in military missions require the operation of UAVs with a high level of autonomy. Autonomous UAVs could be developed using agent technologies and therefore this paper investigates such an approach from an industrial perspective. Taking into account time, budget and available knowledge on the industrial side and need for UAV operators to understand the behavior of the autonomous system this paper proposes the application of cognitive agents and a design procedure that supports the transition of the pure operational requirements and functional specification into a cognitive agent system, called Operational driven development approach for Cognitive Systems (Op Cog).
Type-2 Fuzzy Summarization of Data: An Improved News Generating
Authors: Adam Niewiadomski
Venue: Proceedings of the international conference on Rough Sets and Intelligent Systems Paradigms (2007)

The paper introduces an improved method of intelligent summarization of large datasets. Previously, the author's solution for automated generating of textual news and comments, based on the standard Yager's method and ordinary fuzzy sets, has been published in [1]. In this paper, a type-2-fuzzy-set-based extension of the concept can be now introduced. Type-2 membership functions are originally applied to build new summarization methods. The approach generalizes the previous methods which are based on traditional fuzzy sets. Moreover, new quality measures of summaries are proposed and used in selecting the optimal and the most specific summaries as the components of textual news. Finally, the method is implemented and evaluated.
A Feasibility-Preserving Crossover and Mutation Operator for Constrained Combinatorial Problems
Authors: Martin Lukasiewycz, Michael Glaß, Jürgen Teich
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature: PPSN X (2008)

This paper presents a feasibility-preserving crossover and mutation operator for evolutionary algorithms for constrained combinatorial problems. This novel operator is driven by an adapted Pseudo-Boolean solver that guarantees feasible offspring solutions. Hence, this allows the evolutionary algorithm to focus on the optimization of the objectives instead of searching for feasible solutions. Based on a proposed scalable testsuite, six specific testcases are introduced that allow a sound comparison of the feasibility-preserving operator to known methods. The experimental results show that the introduced approach is superior to common methods and competitive to a recent state-of-the-art decoding technique.