ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Tracking and MAP Reconstruction of line scratches in degraded motion pictures
Authors: Laurent Joyeux, Samia Boukir, Bernard Besserer
Venue: Machine Vision and Applications (2002)

A suitable detection and reconstruction approach is proposed for removing line scratches from degraded motion picture films. The detection procedure consists of two steps. First, a simple 1D-extrema detector provides line scratch candidates. Unlike impulsive distortions, which appear randomly in an image, line artifacts persist across several frames. Furthermore, the detection process is complicated by the fact that lines occur as a natural part in interesting scenes. Therefore, we add a validation step for separating possible line defects from false detections. It consists in tracking the potential line artifacts over the frames using a Kalman filter. A new Bayesian restoration technique, dealing with both low and high frequencies around and inside the detected deteriorations, is investigated to achieve a nearly invisible reconstruction of damaged areas.
You're getting warmer!: how proximity information affects search behavior in physical spaces
Authors: Leila Takayama, Lawrence Leung, Xiaodong Jiang, Jason I. Hong
Venue: CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (2003)

This paper describes the results of a Wizard of Oz study of people's search behavior using BuddySystem, a proximity-sensing system designed to help end-users locate people, places, and things. BuddySystem uses distance estimation based on signal strength alone, since direction is difficult to obtain in ad-hoc radio-based systems. Overall findings indicate that the BuddySystem changed people's search behavior to reduce walking area, but may increase search times if the system demands too much of the user's attention, suggesting that reducing distractions and adjusting search strategies could improve search effectiveness of proximity-based tracking systems in physical spaces.
Line-locked concurrent file access with XML
Authors: Patrick Lioi
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2002)

Versioning systems like RCS and CVS represent two extremes in the approach to the problem of concurrent file access. One extreme is to lock files from other users while they are being used. The other approach is to allow complete access to all users, forcing them to sort out conflicts upon submitting files back to the system. The consequences of both approaches are undesirable. Users must either deal with restricted access or with manually resolving submissionconflicts. This paper outlines the design and implementation of a concurrent access system that combines the safety and simplicity of exclusive file locking with the ease of unrestricted access. Instead of adhering to either extreme, exclusive line locking is implemented as a compromise. Users may checkout unique spans of lines from a file, allowing concurrent access to a single file with no textual conflicts. XML is used both to maintain a file's access state as well as to simplify network communication via XML-RPC.
Providing elegant peripheral awareness
Authors: JJ Cadiz, Mary Czerwinski, Scott McCrickard, John Stasko
Venue: CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (2003)

In a one-day workshop, we strive to build community in this emerging research area, specifically targeting interfaces that are designed to provide awareness in a peripheral and elegant manner. We focus on improving consensus of basic and fundamental issues and developing a structural framework--critical parameters, design themes, and evaluation procedures--for research on these types of user interfaces.
Agility in Retail Banking: A Numerical Taxonomy of Strategic Service Groups
Authors: Larry J. Menor, Aleda V. Roth, Charlotte H. Mason
Venue: Manufacturing Service Operations Management (2001)

This research demonstrates that operations agility--defined as the ability to excel simultaneously on operations capabilities of quality, delivery, flexibility, and cost in a coordinated fashion--is a viable option for retail banks encountering increasing environmental change. The question of whether there is empirical evidence that services, specifically retail banks, display the characteristics of agility like their manufacturing counterparts is open to debate. Conventional wisdom in operations management posits that most successful services trade off one capability for another. Drawing from the resource-based view of the firm, combinative capabilities view, and the cybernetics work of Ashby (1958), theoretical arguments suggest the contrary. The agility paradigm is viable in environments calling for a mix of strategic responses. Applying cluster analytic techniques to a sample of retail banks, using capabilities as taxons, we identify four strategic service groups: agile, traditionalists, niche, and straddlers. Our empirical results provide thematic explanations consistent with theory that account for how the agile strategic group offers a unique configuration of service concept, resource competencies, strategic choices, and business orientation. Profiles of the operations strategies of each strategic service group suggest that each group has found a fit between what certain segments of the market may want and what they have to offer. In particular, we found that the agile group exhibited greater resource competencies than its counterparts, requiring greater investments in infrastructure and technology. Consistent with theory, agile banks performed better over time on an absolute measure of return on assets.
Shaping interconnect for uniform current density
Authors: Muzhou Shao, D. F. Wong, Youxin Gao, Li-Pen Yuan, Huijing Cao
Venue: Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE/ACM international conference on Computer-aided design (2002)

As the VLSI technology scaling down, the electromigration problem becomes one of the major concerns in high-performance IC design for both power network and signal interconnects. For a uniform width metal interconnect, the current flows through the driving point is much larger than that flows through the fan-out point since much of current bypasses to the ground through the parasitic capacitance. This causes the lifetime of driving point to be quite shorter than that of fan-out point due to electromigration. In order to avoid breakdown at the driving point, wire sizing is an effective solution. Thus we present a wire shape, of which the current density as well as the lifetime is uniform along the wire. SPICE simulation results show the uniformity of current density of this wire shape. Under the same current density bound, we demonstrate that chip area and power consumption are significantly reduced for this wire shape compared to the uniform width wire. The wire shape functions we derived are continuous. However, it is not necessary to ultra-accurately reproduce the continuous shape on the silicon, since we can round the continuous shape to the nearest available litho width and this will not degrade the uniformity of current density.
Resource Partitioning, the Founding of Specialist Firms, and Innovation: The American Feature Film Industry, 1912--1929
Authors: John M. Mezias, Stephen J. Mezias
Venue: Organization Science (2000)

Past research has established that large bureaucratic firms are less innovative than other firms. This reduced innovativeness is likely to be exacerbated when large firms engage in market control. In cultural industries, the effects can be especially pernicious, resulting in the failure to provide audiences with artistic quality or product diversity. We investigate the population dynamics of one cultural industry: the early American feature film industry. Specifically, we examine the hypothesis that concentration among large generalist firms will be associated with higher rates of foundings of specialist producers and specialist distributors. We also investigate the question of whether these specialists are more innovative. Specifically, we examine the hypothesis that specialists were more active than were generalists in the creation of new film genres in the early years of the American film industry. We find that increased concentration among generalists had a positive effect on foundings of specialist producers and specialist distributors, and that the specialists were more active in the creation of new film genres. Implications of these findings for future research, both on cultural industries and on the population dynamics of the founding of specialist firms, are discussed.
Visualizing trees with a hyperbolic projection in one dimension
Authors: Alexander Kolliopoulos
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2003)

There has been great progress in detail-in-context visualization techniques for large trees relying on hyperbolic projections. The benefit of this viewing paradigm is the ability to view the entire structure of an arbitrarily large tree while simultaneously viewing local detail in context. However, current techniques require a circular drawing area, which wastes screen space and is often inconvenient for embedding within interfaces. It is possible to use a modified technique, which projects a tree's structure onto a surface which is hyperbolic in one dimension, rather than two as is normally the case. This allows the tree visualization component to be embedded within a rectangular area, while still showing an arbitrary amount of structure in one dimension. This is particularly useful for navigating large filesystems and the like with limited screen real estate. Using this projection, it is possible to view a directory structure with no need for a vertical scrollbar and little vertical screen space. Two techniques are presented, where perspective may or may not be utilized, depending upon the intended application.
Impact of Uncertainty and Risk Aversion on Price and Order Quantity in the Newsvendor Problem
Authors: Vipul Agrawal, Sridhar Seshadri
Venue: Manufacturing Service Operations Management (2000)

We consider a single-period inventory model in which a risk-averse retailer faces uncertain customer demand and makes a purchasing-order-quantity and a selling-price decision with the objective of maximizing expected utility. This problem is similar to the classic newsvendor problem, except: (a) the distribution of demand is a function of the selling price, which is determined by the retailer; and (b) the objective of the retailer is to maximize his/her expected utility. We consider two different ways in which price affects the distribution of demand. In the first model, we assume that a change in price affects the scale of the distribution. In the second model, a change in price only affects the location of the distribution. We present methodology by which this problem with two decision variables can be simplified by reducing it to a problem in a single variable. We show that in comparison to a risk-neutral retailer, a risk-averse retailer in the first model will charge a higher price and order less; where as, in the second model a risk-averse retailer will charge a lower price. The implications of these findings for supply-chain strategy and channel design are discussed. Our research provides a better understanding of retailers' pricing behavior that could lead to improved price contracts and channel-management policies.
A model course for teaching database administration with personal oracle 8i
Authors: Ramon A. Mata-Toledo, Carlos A. Reyes-Garcia
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2002)

With the Internet and the increasing use of interactive web sites, databases have become almost ubiquitous. Although a well-planned design, implementation and testing are essential to the well being of the database, one of the most critical tasks that is often neglected is that of the administration of the database. Administration of a database in its widest sense, in addition to its creation, includes tasks such as maintenance, the management of users and the implementation of a diverse range of security mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access or intentional or unintentional damage to the data. Up to now, very few tools have been available to train professionals in this important and decisive aspect of database management. In this paper, the authors present their experiences in teaching computer science undergraduate and graduate students database administration while allowing the students to have hand-on experience using Personal Oracle 8iTM
Portfolio Construction Through Mixed-Integer Programming at Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo and Company
Authors: Dimitris Bertsimas, Christopher Darnell, Robert Soucy
Venue: Interfaces (1999)

Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo and Company LLC (GMO)uses mixed-integer-programming (MIP) methods to construct portfolios that are close (in terms of sector and security exposure) to target portfolios, have the same liquidity, turnover, and expected return as the target portfolios, control frictional costs, and do so with fewer dist inct stocks and with fewer transactions. It also applies MIP methods to portfolios consisting of several subportfolios. It uses the MIP approach to construct 11 quantitatively managed portfolios representing over $8 billion in assets. The benefits from this implementation include (1) keeping the existing client business; (2) making possible important new growth opportunities; (3) reducing the number of stock names by an average 40 to 60 percent; (4) reducing the annual cost of trading the portfolios by at least $4 million by reducing the number of trading tickets written by 75 to 85 percent; (5) improving the trading process; and (6) improving performance in simulation in a US fund consisting of growth stocks with small market capitalization.
Virtual reality in Web-based training programs
Authors: P. Leibl
Venue: Proceedings of the workshop on Virtual environments 2003 (2003)

This paper illustrates the use of a virtual environment (VE) in universities and private industry educational programs and training. The principles are demonstrated in the field of the design of plastic moulded parts under special consideration of product manufacturability and cost. The main focus of this paper is to illustrate how those in education can understand the concepts associated with such projects more easily.
3D rendering with C++ and openGL in undergraduate projects
Authors: Bruce Mechtly, Eric Rooker, Konrad Mast
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2001)

Rendering and animation involve a number of very interesting programming problems that provide an excellent challenge for advanced undergraduate students. Furthermore, the topic itself has wide appeal among that group. Over the past three semesters independent study classes were conducted with three different undergraduate students. In these classes we used Microsoft's Visual C++ and OpenGL, a 3D graphics library. The educational focus was on learning Visual C++ and techniques of Object-Oriented Programming. This paper will present an outline of the basics of 3D rendering and animation, and a description of the classes we developed to formulate the problem in an object-oriented framework. Several programs produced by these students will be discussed to show their pedagogical value.
Newman polynomials with prescribed vanishing and integer sets with distinct subset sums
Authors: Peter Borwein, Michael J. Mossinghoff
Venue: Mathematics of Computation (2003)

We study the problem of determining the minimal degree d(m) of a polynomial that has all coefficients in {0, 1) and a zero of multiplicity m at -1. We show that a greedy solution is optimal precisely when m ≤ 5, mirroring a result of Boyd on polynomials with ±1 coefficients. We then examine polynomials of the form Πe∈E(xe +1), where E is a set of m positive odd integers with distinct subset sums, and we develop algorithms to determine the minimal degree of such a polynomial. We determine that d(m) satisfies inequalities of the form 2m +c1m ≤ d(m) ≤ 103/96 . 2m+c2. Last, we consider the related problem of finding a set of m positive integers with distinct subset sums and minimal largest element and show that the Conway-Guy sequence yields the optimal solution for m ≤ 9. extending some computations of Lunnon.
Design Considerations for Generic Grouping in Vision
Authors: Erik A. Engbers, Arnold W. M. Smeulders
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (2003)

Grouping in vision can be seen as the process that organizes image entities into higher-level structures. Despite its importance, there is little consistency in the statement of the grouping problem in literature. In addition, most grouping algorithms in vision are inspired on a specific technique, rather than being based on desired characteristics, making it cumbersome to compare the behavior of various methods. This paper discusses six precisely formulated considerations for the design of generic grouping algorithms in vision: proper definition, invariance, multiple interpretations, multiple solutions, simplicity and robustness. We observe none of the existing algorithms for grouping in vision meet all the considerations. We present a simple algorithm as an extension of a classical algorithm, where the extension is based on taking the considerations into account. The algorithm is applied to three examples: grouping point sets, grouping poly-lines, and grouping flow-field vectors. The complexity of the greedy algorithm is{\cal{O}}(n{\cal O}_G) , where{\cal{O}}_Gis the complexity of the grouping measure.
Temporal granulation and its application to signal analysis
Authors: Witold Pedrycz, Adam Gacek
Venue: Information Sciences&mdash;Informatics and Computer Science: An International Journal (2002)

In this study, we elaborate on the role of information granulation and the ensuing information granules in description of time series and signal analysis, in general. Information granules are entities of elements (quite commonly, numeric data) that are combined together (aggregated) owing to their vicinity, similarity and alike. Proceeding with a given window of granulation (that is an initial collection of numeric data), we propose an algorithm that produces a complete information granule - fuzzy set. The principle supported by the method leads to the formation of fuzzy sets that are legitimate in terms of experimental data being at the same time maximized with regard to their specificity (compactness). It has been shown that information granules can be are regarded as generic conceptual entities contributing to the description of numeric time series. In this capacity, they are used as building blocks aimed at achieving high level, compact, and comprehensible models of signals. More importantly, the phase of information granulation could be viewed as a prerequisite to more synthetic and abstract processing such as the one witnessed in syntactic pattern recognition.
On the Role of the Law of Large Numbers in the Theory of Randomness
Authors: An. A. Muchnik, A. L. Semenov
Venue: Problems of Information Transmission (2003)

In the first part of this article, we answer Kolmogorov's question (stated in 1963 in [1]) about exact conditions for the existence of random generators. Kolmogorov theory of complexity permits of a precise definition of the notion of randomness for an individual sequence. For infinite sequences, the property of randomness is a binary property, a sequence can be random or not. For finite sequences, we can solely speak about a continuous property, a measure of randomness. Is it possible to measure randomness of a sequence t by the extent to which the law of large numbers is satisfied in all subsequences of t obtained in an &ldquo;admissible way&rdquo;? The case of infinite sequences was studied in [2]. As a measure of randomness (or, more exactly, of nonrandomness) of a finite sequence, we consider the specific deficiency of randomness &delta; (Definition 5). In the second part of this paper, we prove that the function &delta;/ln(1/&delta;) characterizes the connections between randomness of a finite sequence and the extent to which the law of large numbers is satisfied.
Designing Stable Finite State Machine Behaviors Using Phase Plane Analysis and Variable Structure Control
Authors: John T. Feddema, Rush D. Robinett, Brian J. Driessen
Venue: Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems (2003)

This paper discusses how phase plane analysis can be used to describe the overall behavior of single and multiple autonomous robotic vehicles with finite state machine rules. The importance of this result is that we can begin to design provably stable group behaviors from a set of simple control laws and appropriate switching points with decentralized variable structure control. The ability to prove stable group behavior is especially important for applications such as locating military targets or land mines. In this paper, we demonstrate how phase plane analysis has been used to explain the behavior of a 16 cm3 autonomous line-tracking robot with four finite states. After which, the analysis is extended to include the design of a decentralized variable structure controller that guides multiple vehicles to a goal while avoiding each other.
Scalable Image Coding by Spline Approximation for a Gray-scale Image
Authors: Ryoji Haruki, Takahiko Horiuchi
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (1997)

The proposed method expresses a gray-scale image by parametric spline functions for edge components and by two-variable spline functions for low frequency components. So it can reconstruct the image with keeping its quality for basic shape transformation. If a binary image is input as a special case, the proposed method can make a scalable vector font automatically. The performance of the proposed method is verified by some experiments.
Information technology in the developing world
Authors: Michael Olan
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2003)

This paper describes a general studies course designed to expose students to a unique aspect of information technology: its impact on the developing world. The course has the multiple goals of introducing students to other cultures and how those cultures are affected by modern technological advancements; using computer technology as a research and communication tool; and using the knowledge gained as a positive force for bridging the gaps between societies. In its initial offering, the course was delivered via online learning.
Technology Requirements and Work Group Communication for Telecommuters
Authors: France Belanger, Rosann Webb Collins, Paul H. Cheney
Venue: Information Systems Research (2001)

As organizations implement more and more distributed work arrangements such as telecommuting, there is a need to understand the determinants of success of this new work setting. This research investigated three variables believed to impact outcomes in telecommuting: the availability of information system technology, the availability of communication technologies, and the communication patterns of telecommuters within their work groups. Two perspectives are used in this study. The direct effects of these three variables on perceived productivity, performance, and satisfaction were tested. A second perspective, based on the concept of fit and contingency theory, posits that successful telecommuting outcomes, measured by perceived productivity, performance, and satisfaction, are predicted by interactions between these independent variables. The study was conducted by surveying multiple respondents from different organizations who were members of work groups in which some or all employees were telecommuters. The results indicate that technology variables positively impact productivity, performance, and satisfaction of telecommuters, while the interaction between the technology variables is significant in predicting perceived productivity. Work group communication, as measured by the centrality of individuals, negatively affects perceived productivity and performance. The paper presents a discussion of the theoretical significance of these findings, and offers recommendations for future research.