ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Learning empathy: a data-driven framework for modeling empathetic companion agents
Authors: Scott W. McQuiggan, James C. Lester
Venue: Proceedings of the fifth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems (2006)

Affective reasoning plays an increasingly important role in cognitive accounts of social interaction. Humans continuously assess one another's situational context, modify their own affective state accordingly, and then respond to these outcomes by expressing empathetic behaviors. Synthetic agents serving as companions should respond similarly. However, empathetic reasoning is riddled with the complexities stemming from the myriad factors bearing upon situational assessment. A key challenge posed by affective reasoning in synthetic agents is devising empirically informed models of empathy that accurately respond in social situations. This paper presents Care, a data-driven affective architecture and methodology for learning models of empathy by observing human-human social interactions. First, in CARE training sessions, one trainer directs synthetic agents to perform a sequence of tasks while another trainer manipulates companion agents' affective states to produce empathetic behaviors (spoken language, gesture, posture). Care tracks situational data including locational, intentional, and temporal information to induce a model of empathy. At runtime, CARE uses the model of empathy to drive situation-appropriate empathetic behaviors. CARE has been used in a virtual environment testbed, and an evaluation suggests that the CARE paradigm can provide the basis for effective empathetic behavior control for companion agents.
Mitigating the Effects of Variable Illumination for Tracking across Disjoint Camera Views
Authors: E. D. Cheng, C. Madden, M. Piccardi
Venue: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Video and Signal Based Surveillance (2006)

Tracking people by their appearance across disjoint camera views is challenging since appearance may vary significantly across such views. This problem has been tackled in the past by computing intensity transfer functions between each camera pair during an initial training stage. However, in real-life situations, intensity transfer functions depend not only on the camera pair, but also on the actual illumination at pixel-wise resolution and may prove impractical to estimate to a satisfactory extent. For this reason, in this paper we propose an appearance representation for people tracking capable of coping with the typical illumination changes occurring in a surveillance scenario. Our appearance representation is based on an online K-means color clustering algorithm, a fixed, data-dependent intensity transformation, and the incremental use of frames. Moreover, a similarity measurement is proposed to match the appearance representations of any two given moving objects along sequences of frames. Experimental results presented in this paper show that the proposed methods provides a viable while effective approach for tracking people across disjoint camera views in typical surveillance scenarios.
An MPEG-4 performance study for non-SIMD, general purpose architectures
Authors: S. A. McKee, Zhen Fang, M. Valero
Venue: Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (2003)

MPEG-4 is an important international standard with wide applicability. This paper focuses on MPEG-4's main profile, video, whose approach allows more efficiency in coding and more flexibility in managing heterogeneous media objects than previous MPEG standards. This study presents evidence to support the assertion that for non-SIMD architectures and computational models, most memory-system optimizations will have little effect on MPEG-4 performance. This paper makes two contributions. First, it serves as an independent confirmation that for current, general-purpose architectures, MPEG-4 video is computation bound (just like most other media processing applications). Second, our findings should prove useful to other researchers and practitioners considering how to (or how not to) optimize MPEG-4 performance.
Dynamic Environment Matting Using Radiance
Authors: Jingxiang Li, Shuangjiu Xiao, Xubo Yang, Lizhuang Ma
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Inteligence for Modelling Control and Automation and International Conference on Intelligent Agents Web Technologies and International Commerce (2006)

Environment matting captures not only a foreground object and its opacity matte, but also a description of how that object refracts and reflects light. As radiance value is more accurate than color value when sampling a real scene and displaying it on digital devices, a method of dynamic environment matting in radiance space is presented to decrease the error caused by the nonlinearity of the optical system. The results of the approach can get more accurate and detailed realities compared to the composite images in color space. An image sequence is generated using two images taken with two different viewpoints. Then a simulation of the backdrop moving along the line which is parallel to the line connecting the two optical centers could be obtained as we composite all of these frames with the matte of the foreground object.
Logical aspects of events: quantification, sorts, composition and disjointness
Authors: Ken Kaneiwa, Satoshi Tojo
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 Australasian Ontology Workshop - Volume 58 (2005)

An event, as opposed to an atemporal property, has its own time and location and occurs once. Although the notion of events has been found in researches on ontology, logic, linguistics, artifcial intelligence and deductive databases, the different approaches to this notion do not seem to capture the various logical aspects of events. This paper proposes an event logic with expressions such as quantification over events, event sort-hierarchy, and composition and disjointness of events. In the logic, events are regarded as constants, sorts, predicates and variables in an order-sorted second-order language, which provides knowledge representation and reasoning for event assertions. In order to implement a query answering system, we present a sorted tableau calculus for the refutation of event formulas in logic.
CBRRoboSoc: An Efficient Planning Strategy for Robotic Soccer Using Case Based Reasoning
Authors: T. Srinivasan, K. Aarthi, S. Aishwarya Meenakshi, M. Kausalya
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Inteligence for Modelling Control and Automation and International Conference on Intelligent Agents Web Technologies and International Commerce (2006)

Over the past decade the field of Robotic Soccer has been the focus of intensive research. This paper proposes 'An Efficient Planning Strategy for Robotic Soccer using Case based Reasoning (CBRRoboSoc)' to build prototypes for a team of two soccer playing robots in the RoboCup small size league. The proposed CBRRoboSoc system develops an efficient strategy to plan both offense and defense team behavior. The system along with its field simulation, prediction and command generation phases, employing Bayesian Classifier, help the robots to plan individual moves, recognize game states, as well as to model the world of the playing field. Our model supports game play selection in key game situations, which should in turn significantly advantage the team. Further more by incorporating case base for offense team, simulation of four keep away trials illustrate optimized offense behavior.
How to obtain full privacy in auctions
Authors: Felix Brandt
Venue: International Journal of Information Security (2006)

Privacy has become a factor of increasing importance in auction design. We propose general techniques for cryptographic first-price and (M+1)st-price auction protocols that only yield the winners' identities and the selling price. Moreover, if desired, losing bidders learn no information at all, except that they lost. Our security model is merely based on computational intractability. In particular, our approach does not rely on trusted third parties, e.g., auctioneers. We present an efficient implementation of the proposed techniques based on El Gamal encryption whose security only relies on the intractability of the decisional Diffie&#x2014;Hellman problem. The resulting protocols require just three rounds of bidder broadcasting in the random oracle model. Communication complexity is linear in the number of possible bids.
A note on unique games
Authors: Adi Avidor, Ricky Rosen
Venue: Information Processing Letters (2006)

We give a tighter analysis of the algorithm of Khot [S. Khot, On the power of unique 2-prover 1-round games, in: Proceedings of the 34th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2002, pp. 767-775] which shows that given a unique 2-prover-1-round game with value 1 - ε, one can find in polynomial time an assignment to the game with an expected weight of 1 - O(k6/5ε1/5 (log 1/εk)2/5), where k is the size of the answer domain. This shows that if the Unique Games Conjecture is true then the domain size k, must be at least Ω((ε1/6 log1/3(1/ε)) -1), which is an improvement over the previous Ω((ε1/10 log1/4(1/ε))-1) bound.
Gridding Multivariate Positive Data for Real Time Visualization
Authors: Ghulam Mustafa, Abad Ali Shah, Muhammad Rafiq Asim
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation (2006)

Common visualization methods require an underlying grid. For visualization of scattered data samples it is required to approximate the data at the same grid using some interpolation technique. It is common that the data samples are positive and representing the quantities for which negative value is meaningless. For example mass, volume and density are meaningless when negative. Modified Quadratic Shepard method is a commonly used method for gridding purposes. However it does not preserve positivity for inherently positive data sets. This paper discusses the problem of gridding inherently positive data sets for real time visualization applications using Modified Quadratic Shepard's method. Key requirement for an algorithm to be used for real time application is its predictable timing behavior. We present an efficient and deterministic alternative Quadratic Shepard Method as a solution to the problem of visualization of multivariate positive data in real time.
Gradient clock synchronization
Authors: Rui Fan, Nancy Lynch
Venue: Distributed Computing (2006)

We introduce the distributed gradient clock synchronization problem. As in traditional distributed clock synchronization, we consider a network of nodes equipped with hardware clocks with bounded drift. Nodes compute logical clock values based on their hardware clocks and message exchanges, and the goal is to synchronize the nodes' logical clocks as closely as possible, while satisfying certain validity conditions. The new feature of gradient clock synchronization (GCS for short) is to require that the skew between any two nodes' logical clocks be bounded by a nondecreasing function of the uncertainty in message delay (call this the distance) between the two nodes, and other network parameters. That is, we require nearby nodes to be closely synchronized, and allow faraway nodes to be more loosely synchronized. We contrast GCS with traditional clock synchronization, and discuss several practical motivations for GCS, mostly arising in sensor and ad-hoc networks. Our main result is that the worst case clock skew between two nodes at distance d or less from each other is Ω (d+log D/log log D), where D is the diameter1 of the network. This means that clock synchronization is not a local property, in the sense that the clock skew between two nodes depends not only on the distance between the nodes, but also on the size of the network. Our lower bound implies, for example, that the TDMA protocol with a fixed slot granularity will fail as the network grows, even if the maximum degree of each node stays constant.
Visual-motor adaptation to stabilize perceptual world: its generality and specificity
Authors: Michiteru Kitazaki, Akira Shimizu
Venue: Proceedings of the 2005 international conference on Augmented tele-existence (2005)

Though the retinal image changes drastically with the movement of our head or eyes, our perceptual world is stable. It is called visual stability or position constancy. When we observe a virtual-reality environment through a head-mounted display with moving our head, the perceptual world is stabilized by the appropriate visual-motor gain without significant system delay. It is known that when the gain is changed the visual stability adaptively changes. We aimed to know the generality and specificity of this adaptation to stabilize the perceptual world: What is limitation for the ability of our adaptive visual-motor system? We found that the visual-motor adaptation occurred irrespective of the amount of visual information or active/passive movement. Even though the eye for adapting and that for test were different, the adaptation was intact. When the retinal location (left or right hemi-field) for test was different from that for adaptation, the adaptation still occurred, but it was less than in the case of same retinal location. Thus, the visual-motor adaptation for visual stability is concerned with relatively higher information processing, at least after the fusion of binocular sources, but is specific to or modulated by the retinal location.
Scan and tilt: towards natural interaction for mobile museum guides
Authors: Jani Mantyjarvi, Fabio Paternò, Zigor Salvador, Carmen Santoro
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services (2006)

This paper presents a new interaction technique - scan and tilt - aiming to enable a more natural interaction with mobile museum guides. Our work combines multiple modalities - gestures, physical selection, location, graphical and voice. In particular, physical selection is obtained by scanning RFID tags associated with the artworks, and tilt gestures are used to control and navigate the user interface and multimedia information. We report on how it has been applied to a mobile museum guide in order to enhance the user experience, providing details on a first user test carried out on our prototype.
Detection of weak signals using adaptive stochastic resonance
Authors: A. S. Asdi, A. H. Tewfik
Venue: Proceedings of the Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1995. on International Conference - Volume 02 (1995)

We present a novel nonlinear filtering approach for detecting weak signals in heavy noise from short data records. Such detection problems arise in many applications including communications, radar, sonar, medical imaging, seismology, industrial measurements, etc. The performance of a matched filter detector of a weak signal in heavy noise is directly proportional to the observation time. We discuss an alternative detection approach that relies on a nonlinear filtering of the input signal using a bistable system. We show that by adaptively selecting the parameters of the system, it is possible to increase the ratio of the square of the amplitude of a sinusoid to that of the noise intensity around the frequency of the sinusoid (stochastic resonance). The sinusoid can then be reliably detected at the output of the nonlinear system using a suitable matched filter even when the data record is short.
Early Register Deallocation Mechanisms Using Checkpointed Register Files
Authors: Oguz Ergin Deniz Balkan, Dmitry Ponomarev, Kanad Ghose
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (2006)

Modern superscalar microprocessors need sizable register files to support a large number of in-flight instructions for exploiting instruction level parallelism (ILP). An alternative to building large register files is to use a smaller number of registers, but manage them more effectively. More efficient management of registers can also result in higher performance if the reduction of the register file size is not the goal. Traditional register file management mechanisms deallocate a physical register only when the next instruction writing to the same destination architectural register commits. In this paper, we propose several techniques for deallocating physical registers much earlier. Our designs rely on the use of a checkpointed register file (CRF), where a local shadow copy of each bitcell is used to temporarily save the values of the early deallocated registers should they be needed to recover from branch mispredictions or to reconstruct the precise state after exceptions or interrupts. The proposed techniques try to release registers as soon as possible and are more aggressive than the previously proposed schemes for early deallocation of registers.
Contents Sharing Framework Using CCCI Model for Intra-University Network
Authors: Keiko Shimazu, Isao Saito, Koichi Furukawa
Venue: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Web-Age Information Management Workshops (2006)

In this paper, we propose a contents sharing framework using 3D Model named Context Cube for Contents Indexing (CCCI). The CCCI model is obtained by introducing the research results of a specific sociological study into the subject of our experimental study. It helps to extract semantics from various disciplines contents where some terms are used for different meanings and different terms are used for the same meanings. We developed an Enterprise Contents Management System for an academic domain, in order to validate our model. We conducted an experimental study of this system against the existing digital contents of our university, and succeeded in efficiently obtaining suitable contents along given contexts which were obtained through previous searches. By performing this experiment, we confirmed that context mining is one of the most important research issues to be further developed to promote knowledge circulation through digital contents.
Extension Set and the Dependent Function of System Model
Authors: Yinai Sun, Yongquan Yu, Wen Cai, Guangqiang Li
Venue: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control - Volume 1 (2006)

Describing the dynamic system is an important subject in engineering. Many methods are used in it, such as classical math. This text presents uses a method based on extension set and dependent function to express a system. This method can describe the relationship between point and range through extension set, offering a general means of setting-up of the dependent function in various systems. It is of great help to recognize the system model by the dependent degree.
Online Method and Environment for Elaborate the Project-Based Learning Specifications in Higher Education
Authors: Mohammed Bousmah, Najib Elkamoun, Abdelghafour Berraissoul, Abdelhak Aqqal
Venue: Proceedings of the Sixth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (2006)

In this paper, we present a method and a computer environment called Smart-Project that can support online student-centered project-based learning (PBL) activities. This environment can also facilitate communication and collaboration between distant actors. We have used a multi-agent system in order to provide a support and an assistance for technicalteaching team. We have proposed a method called OFTP that can help technical-teaching team to elaborate PBL specifications, a matrix called LRP where a project must be obligatorily located in it and finally, we have also proposed a simple model called RDV which describes the realization process of an elementary task of project.
Perceptive Middleware and Intelligent Agents Enhancing Service Autonomy in Smart Spaces
Authors: Nikolaos Dimakis, John Soldatos, Lazaros Polymenakos, Manfred Schenk, Uwe Pfirrmann, Axel Burkle
Venue: Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (2006)

The emerging ubiquitous computing services integrate numerous distributed and heterogeneous components, which incur significantly high costs for their development, maintenance and administration. In this paper we introduce a middleware architecture for ubiquitous contextaware services which eases integration, while also including a wide range of features that maximize service autonomy. Autonomy is addressed at various levels, including context-acquisition components, situation modeling components and services. Several of these components are implemented as software agents given the advantages of agent technologies for realizing service autonomy. Along with these agents, adaptive perceptive interfaces ensuring autonomy at the context-acquisition level have been developed and integrated with the agent societies. The introduced architecture deals primarily with self-healing (recovery) and self-configuration (adaptation) characteristics of the typical autonomic systems. Following the illustration of the framework, we elaborate on how it has been used to support realistic prototype context-aware human centric and non-obtrusive services.
CCML: A Novel Service Composition Language
Authors: Xiuguo Zhang, Weishi Zhang
Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (2006)

This paper presents a novel service composition language called CCML. Its distinct advantage from conventional composition languages is its ability to describe behaviors of interacting services and the composition of these behaviors. Interaction rules among services rely on a cooperative computation model, i.e. KPN (Kahn Process Network), which adopts dataflow and channel based asynchronous communication pattern among process nodes. The employment of dataflow based computation model of KPN enables CCML to avoid complicated control flow mechanisms. Formal model for behavioral semantics of CCML is based on CCS process algebra which presents a high expressive power, capable of capturing CCML behavioral semantics. We give an operational semantics to CCML in the form of a labeled transition system (LTS). Finally, we introduce an application case to show how to describe service composition using CCML.
PRINS: Optimizing Performance of Reliable Internet Storages
Authors: Qing Yang, Weijun Xiao, Jin Ren
Venue: Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (2006)

Distributed storage systems employ replicas or erasure code to ensure high reliability and availability of data. Such replicas create great amount of network traffic that negatively impacts storage performance, particularly for distributed storage systems that are geographically dispersed over a wide area network (WAN). This paper presents a performance study of our new data replication methodology that minimizes network traffic for data replications. The idea is to replicate the parity of a data block upon each write operation instead of the data block itself. The data block will be recomputed back at the replica storage site upon receiving the parity. We name the new methodology PRINS (Parity Replication in IP-Network Storages). PRINS trades off highspeed computation for communication that is costly and more likely to be the performance bottleneck for distributed storages. By leveraging the parity computation that exists in common storage systems (RAID), our PRINS does not introduce additional overhead but dramatically reduces network traffic. We have implemented PRINS using iSCSI protocol over a TCP/IP network interconnecting a cluster of PCs as storage nodes. We carried out performance measurements on Oracle database, Postgres database, MySQL database, and Ext2 file system using TPC-C, TPC-W, and Micro benchmarks. Performance measurements show up to 2 orders of magnitudes bandwidth savings of PRINS compared to traditional replicas. A queueing network model is developed to further study network performance for large networks. It is shown that PRINS reduces response time of the distributed storage systems dramatically.