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  • Deep Learning Super Sampling

    Deep Learning Super Sampling

    Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is a suite of real-time deep learning image enhancement and upscaling technologies developed by Nvidia that are available in a number of video games. The goal of these technologies is to allow the majority of the graphics pipeline to run at a lower resolution for increased performance, and then infer a higher resolution image from this that approximates the same level of detail as if the image had been rendered at this higher resolution. This allows for higher graphical settings or frame rates for a given output resolution, depending on user preference. All generations of DLSS are available on all RTX-branded cards from Nvidia in supported titles. However, the Frame Generation feature is only supported on RTX 40 series GPUs or newer and Multi Frame Generation is only available on 50 series GPUs. == History == Nvidia advertised DLSS as a key feature of GeForce RTX 20 series GPUs when they launched in September 2018. At that time, the results were limited to a few video games, namely Battlefield V, or Metro Exodus, because the algorithm had to be trained specifically on each game on which it was applied and the results were usually not as good as simple resolution upscaling. In 2019, Control shipped with ray tracing and an image processing algorithm that approximated DLSS, which did not use the Tensor Cores. In April 2020, Nvidia advertised and shipped an improved version of DLSS named DLSS 2 with driver version 445.75. DLSS 2.0 was available for a few existing games including Control and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and would later be added to many newly released games and game engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity. This time Nvidia said that it used the Tensor Cores again, and that the AI did not need to be trained specifically on each game. Despite sharing the DLSS branding, the two iterations of DLSS differ significantly and are not backwards-compatible. In January 2025, Nvidia stated that there are over 540 games and apps supporting DLSS, and that over 80% of Nvidia RTX users activate DLSS. In March 2025, there were more than 100 games that support DLSS 4, according to Nvidia. By May 2025, over 125 games supported DLSS 4. The first video game console to use DLSS, the Nintendo Switch 2, was released on June 5, 2025. Nvidia announced DLSS 4.5 at CES 2026. In January 2026, Nvidia stated that over 250 games and applications support Multi Frame Generation. On March 16, 2026, at GTC 2026, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang presented DLSS 5, a real-time AI model based on neural rendering that realistically enhances lighting and material surfaces at up to 4K resolution while retaining the developer's intended art style. It is planned to release in fall of 2026. In a blog post on its website, Nvidia has announced that DLSS 5 will be available in such games as Assassin's Creed Shadows, Delta Force, Hogwarts Legacy, Naraka: Bladepoint, Phantom Blade Zero, Resident Evil Requiem, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and more. On May 31, 2026, Nvidia announced an updated version of Ray Reconstruction for DLSS 4.5 in a blog post, scheduled for release on all RTX GPUs in August of the same year. They said it is designed to better embed spatial awareness into scenes and analyze engine data on movements and lighting conditions, resulting in a sharper, more stable, and less noisy image. === Release timeline === == Technology == === DLSS 1 === The first iteration of DLSS is a predominantly spatial image upscaler with two stages, both relying on convolutional auto-encoder neural networks. The first step is an image enhancement network which uses the current frame and motion vectors to perform edge enhancement, and spatial anti-aliasing. The second stage is an image upscaling step which uses the single raw, low-resolution frame to upscale the image to the desired output resolution. Using just a single frame for upscaling means the neural network itself must generate a large amount of new information to produce the high-resolution output, which can result in slight hallucinations such as leaves that differ in style to the source content. The neural networks are trained on a per-game basis by generating a "perfect frame" using traditional supersampling to 64 samples per pixel, as well as the motion vectors for each frame. The data collected must be as comprehensive as possible, including as many levels, times of day, graphical settings, resolutions, etc. as possible. This data is also augmented using common augmentations such as rotations, colour changes, and random noise to help generalize the test data. Training is performed on Nvidia's Saturn V supercomputer. This first iteration received a mixed response, with many criticizing the often soft appearance and artifacts along with glitches in certain situations; likely a side effect of the limited data from only using a single frame input to the neural networks which could not be trained to perform optimally in all scenarios and edge-cases. Nvidia also demonstrated the ability for the auto-encoder networks to learn the ability to recreate depth-of-field and motion blur, although this functionality has never been included in a publicly released product. === DLSS 2 === DLSS 2 is a temporal anti-aliasing upsampling (TAAU) implementation, using data from previous frames extensively through sub-pixel jittering to resolve fine detail and reduce aliasing. The data DLSS 2 collects includes: the raw low-resolution input, motion vectors, depth buffers, and exposure / brightness information. It can also be used as a simpler TAA implementation where the image is rendered at 100% resolution, rather than being upsampled by DLSS, Nvidia brands this as DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing). TAA(U) is used in many modern video games and game engines; however, all previous implementations have used some form of manually written heuristics to prevent temporal artifacts such as ghosting and flickering. One example of this is neighborhood clamping which forcefully prevents samples collected in previous frames from deviating too much compared to nearby pixels in newer frames. This helps to identify and fix many temporal artifacts, but deliberately removing fine details in this way is analogous to applying a blur filter, and thus the final image can appear blurry when using this method. DLSS 2 uses a convolutional auto-encoder neural network trained to identify and fix temporal artifacts, instead of manually programmed heuristics as mentioned above. Because of this, DLSS 2 can generally resolve detail better than other TAA and TAAU implementations, while also removing most temporal artifacts. This is why DLSS 2 can sometimes produce a sharper image than rendering at higher, or even native resolutions using traditional TAA. However, no temporal solution is perfect, and artifacts (ghosting in particular) are still visible in some scenarios when using DLSS 2. Because temporal artifacts occur in most art styles and environments in broadly the same way, the neural network that powers DLSS 2 does not need to be retrained when being used in different games. Despite this, Nvidia does frequently ship new minor revisions of DLSS 2 with new titles, so this could suggest some minor training optimizations may be performed as games are released, although Nvidia does not provide changelogs for these minor revisions to confirm this. The main advancements compared to DLSS 1 include: Significantly improved detail retention, a generalized neural network that does not need to be re-trained per-game, and ~2x less overhead (~1–2 ms vs ~2–4 ms). It should also be noted that forms of TAAU such as DLSS 2 are not upscalers in the same sense as techniques such as ESRGAN or DLSS 1, which attempt to create new information from a low-resolution source; instead, TAAU works to recover data from previous frames, rather than creating new data. In practice, this means low resolution textures in games will still appear low-resolution when using current TAAU techniques. This is why Nvidia recommends game developers use higher resolution textures than they would normally for a given rendering resolution by applying a mip-map bias when DLSS 2 is enabled. === DLSS 3 === Augments DLSS 2 with improved image quality and the introduction of a new motion interpolation feature, called Frame Generation. The DLSS Frame Generation algorithm takes two rendered frames from the rendering pipeline and generates a new frame that smoothly transitions between them. For every frame rendered, one additional frame is generated. DLSS 3.0 makes use of a new generation Optical Flow Accelerator (OFA) included in the Ada Lovelace architecture of GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs and with that is exclusive to them. The new OFA is said to be faster and more accurate than the one already available in previous Turing and Ampere RTX GPUs. === DLSS 3.5 === DLSS 3.5 adds Ray Reconstruction, replacing multiple denoising algorithms with a single AI model trained o

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  • Research data archiving

    Research data archiving

    Research data archiving is the long-term storage of scholarly research data, including the natural sciences, social sciences, and life sciences. The various academic journals have differing policies regarding how much of their data and methods researchers are required to store in a public archive, and what is actually archived varies widely between different disciplines. Similarly, the major grant-giving institutions have varying attitudes towards public archiving of data. In general, the tradition of science has been for publications to contain sufficient information to allow fellow researchers to replicate and therefore test the research. In recent years this approach has become increasingly strained as research in some areas depends on large datasets which cannot easily be replicated independently. Data archiving is more important in some fields than others. In a few fields, all of the data necessary to replicate the work is already available in the journal article. In drug development, a great deal of data is generated and must be archived so researchers can verify that the reports the drug companies publish accurately reflect the data. Often used interchangeably, Data preservation and data archiving are both about protecting data for the long term, but they serve different purposes. Data preservation focuses on preventing data from being lost, damaged, or destroyed by creating backups, storing data in secure locations, and ensuring it remains accessible when needed. Data archiving, on the other hand, involves moving data that is no longer actively used to a separate storage location for long-term keeping. Archived data is often combined and compressed, and while it can still be accessed, it is not intended for regular use or frequent updates. The requirement of data archiving is a recent development in the history of science. It was made possible by advances in information technology allowing large amounts of data to be stored and accessed from central locations. For example, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) adopted their first policy on data archiving in 1993, about three years after the beginning of the WWW. This policy mandates that datasets cited in AGU papers must be archived by a recognised data center; it permits the creation of "data papers"; and it establishes AGU's role in maintaining data archives. But it makes no requirements on paper authors to archive their data. Prior to organized data archiving, researchers wanting to evaluate or replicate a paper would have to request data and methods information from the author. The academic community expects authors to share supplemental data. This process was recognized as wasteful of time and energy and obtained mixed results. Information could become lost or corrupted over the years. In some cases, authors simply refuse to provide the information. The need for data archiving and due diligence is greatly increased when the research deals with health issues or public policy formation. == Selected policies by journals == === Biotropica === Biotropica requires, as a condition for publication, that the data supporting the results in the paper and metadata describing them must be archived in an appropriate public archive such as Dryad, Figshare, GenBank, TreeBASE, or NCBI. Authors may elect to make the data publicly available as soon as the article is published or, if the technology of the archive allows, embargo access to the data up to three years after article publication. A statement describing Data Availability will be included in the manuscript as described in the instructions to authors. Exceptions to the required archiving of data may be granted at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief for studies that include sensitive information (e.g., the location of endangered species). Our Editorial explaining the motivation for this policy can be found here. A more comprehensive list of data repositories is available here. Promoting a culture of collaboration with researchers who collect and archive data: The data collected by tropical biologists are often long-term, complex, and expensive to collect. The Board of Editors of Biotropica strongly encourages authors who re-use data archives archived data sets to include as fully engaged collaborators the scientists who originally collected them. We feel this will greatly enhance the quality and impact of the resulting research by drawing on the data collector’s profound insights into the natural history of the study system, reducing the risk of errors in novel analyses, and stimulating the cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration and training for which the ATBC and Biotropica are widely recognized. NB: Biotropica is one of only two journals that pays the fees for authors depositing data at Dryad. === The American Naturalist === The American Naturalist requires authors to deposit the data associated with accepted papers in a public archive. For gene sequence data and phylogenetic trees, deposition in GenBank or TreeBASE, respectively, is required. There are many possible archives that may suit a particular data set, including the Dryad repository for ecological and evolutionary biology data. All accession numbers for GenBank, TreeBASE, and Dryad must be included in accepted manuscripts before they go to Production. If the data is deposited somewhere else, please provide a link. If the data is culled from published literature, please deposit the collated data in Dryad for the convenience of your readers. Any impediments to data sharing should be brought to the attention of the editors at the time of submission so that appropriate arrangements can be worked out. === Journal of Heredity === The primary data underlying the conclusions of an article are critical to the verifiability and transparency of the scientific enterprise, and should be preserved in usable form for decades in the future. For this reason, Journal of Heredity requires that newly reported nucleotide or amino acid sequences, and structural coordinates, be submitted to appropriate public databases (e.g., GenBank; the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database; DNA Database of Japan; the Protein Data Bank; and Swiss-Prot). Accession numbers must be included in the final version of the manuscript. For other forms of data (e.g., microsatellite genotypes, linkage maps, images), the Journal endorses the principles of the Joint Data Archiving Policy (JDAP) in encouraging all authors to archive primary datasets in an appropriate public archive, such as Dryad, TreeBASE, or the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity. Authors are encouraged to make data publicly available at time of publication or, if the technology of the archive allows, opt to embargo access to the data for a period up to a year after publication. The American Genetic Association also recognizes the vast investment of individual researchers in generating and curating large datasets. Consequently, we recommend that this investment be respected in secondary analyses or meta-analyses in a gracious collaborative spirit. === Molecular Ecology === Molecular Ecology expects that data supporting the results in the paper should be archived in an appropriate public archive, such as GenBank, Gene Expression Omnibus, TreeBASE, Dryad, the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity, your own institutional or funder repository, or as Supporting Information on the Molecular Ecology web site. Data are important products of the scientific enterprise, and they should be preserved and usable for decades in the future. Authors may elect to have the data publicly available at time of publication, or, if the technology of the archive allows, may opt to embargo access to the data for a period up to a year after publication. Exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the editor, especially for sensitive information such as human subject data or the location of endangered species. === Nature === Such material must be hosted on an accredited independent site (URL and accession numbers to be provided by the author), or sent to the Nature journal at submission, either uploaded via the journal's online submission service, or if the files are too large or in an unsuitable format for this purpose, on CD/DVD (five copies). Such material cannot solely be hosted on an author's personal or institutional web site. Nature requires the reviewer to determine if all of the supplementary data and methods have been archived. The policy advises reviewers to consider several questions, including: "Should the authors be asked to provide supplementary methods or data to accompany the paper online? (Such data might include source code for modelling studies, detailed experimental protocols or mathematical derivations.) === Science === Science supports the efforts of databases that aggregate published data for the use of the scientific community. Therefore, before publication, large data sets (including microarray data, protein or DNA sequences, and atomic c

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  • Maritime Informatics

    Maritime Informatics

    Maritime Informatics is a thematic topic within the broader discipline of informatics. It can be considered as both a field of study and domain of application. As an application domain, it is the outlet of innovations originating from data science and artificial intelligence; as a field of study, it is positioned between computer science and marine engineering. == Beginnings of maritime informatics == As a result of the increasing levels of digitalisation occurring in the maritime sector starting around 2010 and stimulated by the EU-endorsed MonaLisa project for sea traffic management (STM), a number of academics and shipping industry leaders recognised that the maritime transportation sector would benefit from a specific field of study and application to be known as Maritime Informatics - the use of information systems, data sharing and data analytics in the business and operations of maritime transportation. They considered that it would lead to improvements in efficiency, safety, resilience, and ecological sustainability - all of which are currently lacking for many aspects of sea transport. One of the first public airings of the concept of Maritime Informatics was a presentation delivered on 11 September 2014 in Gothenburg, Sweden. A proposal for an inaugural minitrack on Maritime Informatics was accepted for the 2015 Americas Conference on Information Systems in Puerto Rico where three papers were presented. Since then numerous publications has been brought forward captured at www.maritimeinformatics.org and in late 2020 the first reference book on Maritime Informatics was co-written by 81 expert contributors (47 practitioners and 34 researchers) from 20 countries. Most impactful authors and journals in the domain have been documented in a review paper. Dimitrios Zissis, Luca Cazzanti and Leonardo M. Millefiori are the top three authors; top journals and conferences include Ocean Engineering, Proceedings of the 12th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-based Systems, Sensors, the international Conference On Engineering, Technology And Innovation, Expert Systems With Applications, IEEE Access, and Journal of Navigation. == Background == The shipping industry has several particular organisational aspects that are recognised and taken into account in maritime informatics: It is predominantly a self-organising ecosystem Many activities are undertaken as part of episodic tight coupling There is a so-called maritime stack There is increasing pressure to balance capital productivity and energy efficiency There is the potential virtuous interplay between different types of systems == Data sharing == Digital data sharing is key to the all-important, arguably fundamental, data analytics aspects of maritime informatics because it opens the way for better access to relevant and reliable data. As in land-based commerce, digital data sharing is a growing phenomenon in maritime operations - though there is a way to go. It is enabling greater transparency for all those involved in the transportation of goods and passengers, not least being the end-customer. This leads to better and more informed decision-making and planning by all those involved. The push for digitalisation and data sharing is being pursued both by governments and the commercial sector. For example, the Member States of the IMO agreed a mandatory requirement for their governments to introduce electronic information exchange between ships and ports as from 8 April 2019. Meanwhile, commercial operators, particularly in the container lines are putting systems in place for sharing data for mutual benefit in their operations. Data sharing is an important aspect of the Port Collaborative Decision Making (PortCDM) and Port Call Optimization initiatives, both of which seek to improve the coordination, synchronization and efficiency of the port call process by enabling a common and shared situational awareness among all those involved. == Standardisation == The availability and sharing of relevant digital data underpins maritime informatics and is key to more effective and efficient coordination and synchronisation in the predominantly self-organising ecosystem that is maritime transportation. For this to occur, a high priority underpinning maritime informatics is the encouragement of standardised digital data exchange and data sharing, leading, in turn, to improvements in shipping analytics. Improved availability of data will support better historical analysis, now-casting and forecasting. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) FAL Committee is taking the lead in ensuring that the common terms used in the various standards being developed or in use in the maritime sector are compatible and therefore interoperable as far as is practicable, by creating and maintaining The IMO Compendium on Facilitation and Electronic Business. The IMO Compendium consists of an IMO Data Set and IMO Reference Data Model agreed by the main organisations involved in the development of standards for the electronic exchange of information related to the FAL Convention: the World Customs Organization (WCO), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). There are several other prominent international governmental and non-governmental organisations actively contributing to the ongoing standardisation and harmonisation process including the UN Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN EDIFACT), the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), the International Harbour Masters Association (IHMA) and BIMCO - the world's largest direct-membership organisation for shipowners, charterers, shipbrokers and agents.

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  • Timeline of algorithms

    Timeline of algorithms

    The following timeline of algorithms outlines the development of algorithms (mainly "mathematical recipes") since their inception. == Antiquity == Before – writing about "recipes" (on cooking, rituals, agriculture and other themes) c. 1700–2000 BC – Egyptians develop earliest known algorithms for multiplying two numbers c. 1600 BC – Babylonians develop earliest known algorithms for factorization and finding square roots c. 300 BC – Euclid's algorithm c. 200 BC – the Sieve of Eratosthenes 263 AD – Gaussian elimination described by Liu Hui == Medieval Period == 628 – Chakravala method described by Brahmagupta c. 820 – Al-Khawarizmi described algorithms for solving linear equations and quadratic equations in his Algebra; the word algorithm comes from his name 825 – Al-Khawarizmi described the algorism, algorithms for using the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, in his treatise On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, which was translated into Latin as Algoritmi de numero Indorum, where "Algoritmi", the translator's rendition of the author's name gave rise to the word algorithm (Latin algorithmus) with a meaning "calculation method" c. 850 – cryptanalysis and frequency analysis algorithms developed by Al-Kindi (Alkindus) in A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages, which contains algorithms on breaking encryptions and ciphers c. 1025 – Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), was the first mathematician to derive the formula for the sum of the fourth powers, and in turn, he develops an algorithm for determining the general formula for the sum of any integral powers c. 1400 – Ahmad al-Qalqashandi gives a list of ciphers in his Subh al-a'sha which include both substitution and transposition, and for the first time, a cipher with multiple substitutions for each plaintext letter; he also gives an exposition on and worked example of cryptanalysis, including the use of tables of letter frequencies and sets of letters which can not occur together in one word == Before 1940 == 1540 – Lodovico Ferrari discovered a method to find the roots of a quartic polynomial 1545 – Gerolamo Cardano published Cardano's method for finding the roots of a cubic polynomial 1614 – John Napier develops method for performing calculations using logarithms 1671 – Newton–Raphson method developed by Isaac Newton 1690 – Newton–Raphson method independently developed by Joseph Raphson 1706 – John Machin develops a quickly converging inverse-tangent series for π and computes π to 100 decimal places 1768 – Leonhard Euler publishes his method for numerical integration of ordinary differential equations in problem 85 of Institutiones calculi integralis 1789 – Jurij Vega improves Machin's formula and computes π to 140 decimal places, 1805 – FFT-like algorithm known by Carl Friedrich Gauss 1842 – Ada Lovelace writes the first algorithm for a computing engine 1903 – A fast Fourier transform algorithm presented by Carle David Tolmé Runge 1918 - Soundex 1926 – Borůvka's algorithm 1926 – Primary decomposition algorithm presented by Grete Hermann 1927 – Hartree–Fock method developed for simulating a quantum many-body system in a stationary state. 1934 – Delaunay triangulation developed by Boris Delaunay 1936 – Turing machine, an abstract machine developed by Alan Turing, with others developed the modern notion of algorithm. == 1940s == 1942 – A fast Fourier transform algorithm developed by G.C. Danielson and Cornelius Lanczos 1945 – Merge sort developed by John von Neumann 1947 – Simplex algorithm developed by George Dantzig == 1950s == 1950 – Hamming codes developed by Richard Hamming 1952 – Huffman coding developed by David A. Huffman 1953 – Simulated annealing introduced by Nicholas Metropolis 1954 – Radix sort computer algorithm developed by Harold H. Seward 1964 – Box–Muller transform for fast generation of normally distributed numbers published by George Edward Pelham Box and Mervin Edgar Muller. Independently pre-discovered by Raymond E. A. C. Paley and Norbert Wiener in 1934. 1956 – Kruskal's algorithm developed by Joseph Kruskal 1956 – Ford–Fulkerson algorithm developed and published by R. Ford Jr. and D. R. Fulkerson 1957 – Prim's algorithm developed by Robert Prim 1957 – Bellman–Ford algorithm developed by Richard E. Bellman and L. R. Ford, Jr. 1959 – Dijkstra's algorithm developed by Edsger Dijkstra 1959 – Shell sort developed by Donald L. Shell 1959 – De Casteljau's algorithm developed by Paul de Casteljau 1959 – QR factorization algorithm developed independently by John G.F. Francis and Vera Kublanovskaya 1959 – Rabin–Scott powerset construction for converting NFA into DFA published by Michael O. Rabin and Dana Scott == 1960s == 1960 – Karatsuba multiplication 1961 – CRC (Cyclic redundancy check) invented by W. Wesley Peterson 1962 – AVL trees 1962 – Quicksort developed by C. A. R. Hoare 1962 – Bresenham's line algorithm developed by Jack E. Bresenham 1962 – Gale–Shapley 'stable-marriage' algorithm developed by David Gale and Lloyd Shapley 1964 – Heapsort developed by J. W. J. Williams 1964 – multigrid methods first proposed by R. P. Fedorenko 1965 – Cooley–Tukey algorithm rediscovered by James Cooley and John Tukey 1965 – Levenshtein distance developed by Vladimir Levenshtein 1965 – Cocke–Younger–Kasami (CYK) algorithm independently developed by Tadao Kasami 1965 – Buchberger's algorithm for computing Gröbner bases developed by Bruno Buchberger 1965 – LR parsers invented by Donald Knuth 1966 – Dantzig algorithm for shortest path in a graph with negative edges 1967 – Viterbi algorithm proposed by Andrew Viterbi 1967 – Cocke–Younger–Kasami (CYK) algorithm independently developed by Daniel H. Younger 1968 – A graph search algorithm described by Peter Hart, Nils Nilsson, and Bertram Raphael 1968 – Risch algorithm for indefinite integration developed by Robert Henry Risch 1969 – Strassen algorithm for matrix multiplication developed by Volker Strassen == 1970s == 1970 – Dinic's algorithm for computing maximum flow in a flow network by Yefim (Chaim) A. Dinitz 1970 – Knuth–Bendix completion algorithm developed by Donald Knuth and Peter B. Bendix 1970 – BFGS method of the quasi-Newton class 1970 – Needleman–Wunsch algorithm published by Saul B. Needleman and Christian D. Wunsch 1972 – Edmonds–Karp algorithm published by Jack Edmonds and Richard Karp, essentially identical to Dinic's algorithm from 1970 1972 – Graham scan developed by Ronald Graham 1972 – Red–black trees and B-trees discovered 1973 – RSA encryption algorithm discovered by Clifford Cocks 1973 – Jarvis march algorithm developed by R. A. Jarvis 1973 – Hopcroft–Karp algorithm developed by John Hopcroft and Richard Karp 1974 – Pollard's p − 1 algorithm developed by John Pollard 1974 – Quadtree developed by Raphael Finkel and J.L. Bentley 1975 – Genetic algorithms popularized by John Holland 1975 – Pollard's rho algorithm developed by John Pollard 1975 – Aho–Corasick string matching algorithm developed by Alfred V. Aho and Margaret J. Corasick 1975 – Cylindrical algebraic decomposition developed by George E. Collins 1976 – Salamin–Brent algorithm independently discovered by Eugene Salamin and Richard Brent 1976 – Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm developed by Donald Knuth and Vaughan Pratt and independently by J. H. Morris 1977 – Boyer–Moore string-search algorithm for searching the occurrence of a string into another string. 1977 – RSA encryption algorithm rediscovered by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman 1977 – LZ77 algorithm developed by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv 1977 – multigrid methods developed independently by Achi Brandt and Wolfgang Hackbusch 1978 – LZ78 algorithm developed from LZ77 by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv 1978 – Bruun's algorithm proposed for powers of two by Georg Bruun 1979 – Khachiyan's ellipsoid method developed by Leonid Khachiyan 1979 – ID3 decision tree algorithm developed by Ross Quinlan == 1980s == 1980 – Brent's Algorithm for cycle detection Richard P. Brendt 1981 – Quadratic sieve developed by Carl Pomerance 1981 – Smith–Waterman algorithm developed by Temple F. Smith and Michael S. Waterman 1983 – Simulated annealing developed by S. Kirkpatrick, C. D. Gelatt and M. P. Vecchi 1983 – Classification and regression tree (CART) algorithm developed by Leo Breiman, et al. 1984 – LZW algorithm developed from LZ78 by Terry Welch 1984 – Karmarkar's interior-point algorithm developed by Narendra Karmarkar 1984 – ACORN PRNG discovered by Roy Wikramaratna and used privately 1985 – Simulated annealing independently developed by V. Cerny 1985 – Car–Parrinello molecular dynamics developed by Roberto Car and Michele Parrinello 1985 – Splay trees discovered by Sleator and Tarjan 1986 – Blum Blum Shub proposed by L. Blum, M. Blum, and M. Shub 1986 – Push relabel maximum flow algorithm by Andrew Goldberg and Robert Tarjan 1986 – Barnes–Hut tree method developed by Josh Barnes and Piet Hut for fast approximate simulation of n-body problems 1987 – Fast multipole method developed by Leslie Greengard and Vladimir

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  • Example-based machine translation

    Example-based machine translation

    Example-based machine translation (EBMT) is a method of machine translation often characterized by its use of a bilingual corpus with parallel texts as its main knowledge base at run-time. It is essentially a translation by analogy and can be viewed as an implementation of a case-based reasoning approach to machine learning. == Translation by analogy == At the foundation of example-based machine translation is the idea of translation by analogy. When applied to the process of human translation, the idea that translation takes place by analogy is a rejection of the idea that people translate sentences by doing deep linguistic analysis. Instead, it is founded on the belief that people translate by first decomposing a sentence into certain phrases, then by translating these phrases, and finally by properly composing these fragments into one long sentence. Phrasal translations are translated by analogy to previous translations. The principle of translation by analogy is encoded to example-based machine translation through the example translations that are used to train such a system. Other approaches to machine translation, including statistical machine translation, also use bilingual corpora to learn the process of translation. == History == Example-based machine translation was first suggested by Makoto Nagao in 1984. He pointed out that it is especially adapted to translation between two totally different languages, such as English and Japanese. In this case, one sentence can be translated into several well-structured sentences in another language, therefore, it is no use to do the deep linguistic analysis characteristic of rule-based machine translation. == Example == Example-based machine translation systems are trained from bilingual parallel corpora containing sentence pairs like the example shown in the table above. Sentence pairs contain sentences in one language with their translations into another. The particular example shows an example of a minimal pair, meaning that the sentences vary by just one element. These sentences make it simple to learn translations of portions of a sentence. For example, an example-based machine translation system would learn three units of translation from the above example: How much is that X ? corresponds to Ano X wa ikura desu ka. red umbrella corresponds to akai kasa small camera corresponds to chiisai kamera Composing these units can be used to produce novel translations in the future. For example, if we have been trained using some text containing the sentences: President Kennedy was shot dead during the parade. and The convict escaped on July 15th., then we could translate the sentence The convict was shot dead during the parade. by substituting the appropriate parts of the sentences. == Phrasal verbs == Example-based machine translation is best suited for sub-language phenomena like phrasal verbs. Phrasal verbs have highly context-dependent meanings. They are common in English, where they comprise a verb followed by an adverb and/or a preposition, which are called the particle to the verb. Phrasal verbs produce specialized context-specific meanings that may not be derived from the meaning of the constituents. There is almost always an ambiguity during word-to-word translation from source to the target language. As an example, consider the phrasal verb "put on" and its Hindustani translation. It may be used in any of the following ways: Ram put on the lights. (Switched on) (Hindustani translation: Jalana) Ram put on a cap. (Wear) (Hindustani translation: Pahenna)

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  • Reservoir sampling

    Reservoir sampling

    Reservoir sampling is a family of randomized algorithms for choosing a simple random sample, without replacement, of k items from a population of unknown size n in a single pass over the items. The size of the population n is not known to the algorithm and is typically too large for all n items to fit into main memory. The population is revealed to the algorithm over time, and the algorithm cannot look back at previous items. At any point, the current state of the algorithm must permit extraction of a simple random sample without replacement of size k over the part of the population seen so far. == Motivation == Suppose we see a sequence of items, one at a time. We want to keep 10 items in memory, and we want them to be selected at random from the sequence. If we know the total number of items n and can access the items arbitrarily, then the solution is easy: select 10 distinct indices i between 1 and n with equal probability, and keep the i-th elements. The problem is that we do not always know the exact n in advance. == Simple: Algorithm R == A simple and popular but slow algorithm, Algorithm R, was created by Jeffrey Vitter. Initialize an array R {\displaystyle R} indexed from 1 {\displaystyle 1} to k {\displaystyle k} , containing the first k items of the input x 1 , . . . , x k {\displaystyle x_{1},...,x_{k}} . This is the reservoir. For each new input x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} , generate a random number j uniformly in { 1 , . . . , i } {\displaystyle \{1,...,i\}} . If j ∈ { 1 , . . . , k } {\displaystyle j\in \{1,...,k\}} , then set R [ j ] := x i . {\displaystyle R[j]:=x_{i}.} Otherwise, discard x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} . Return R {\displaystyle R} after all inputs are processed. This algorithm works by induction on i ≥ k {\displaystyle i\geq k} . While conceptually simple and easy to understand, this algorithm needs to generate a random number for each item of the input, including the items that are discarded. The algorithm's asymptotic running time is thus O ( n ) {\displaystyle O(n)} . Generating this amount of randomness and the linear run time causes the algorithm to be unnecessarily slow if the input population is large. This is Algorithm R, implemented as follows: == Optimal: Algorithm L == If we generate n {\displaystyle n} random numbers u 1 , . . . , u n ∼ U [ 0 , 1 ] {\displaystyle u_{1},...,u_{n}\sim U[0,1]} independently, then the indices of the smallest k {\displaystyle k} of them is a uniform sample of the k {\displaystyle k} -subsets of { 1 , . . . , n } {\displaystyle \{1,...,n\}} . The process can be done without knowing n {\displaystyle n} : Keep the smallest k {\displaystyle k} of u 1 , . . . , u i {\displaystyle u_{1},...,u_{i}} that has been seen so far, as well as w i {\displaystyle w_{i}} , the index of the largest among them. For each new u i + 1 {\displaystyle u_{i+1}} , compare it with u w i {\displaystyle u_{w_{i}}} . If u i + 1 < u w i {\displaystyle u_{i+1} Read more →

  • Informationist

    Informationist

    An informationist (or information specialist in context) provides research and knowledge management services in the context of clinical care or biomedical research. Although there is no one educational pathway or formalized set of skills or knowledge for informationists, one way to think of the informationist is as one who possesses the knowledge and skill of a medical librarian with extensive research specialization and some formal clinical or public health education that goes beyond on-the-job osmosis. Medical librarians and other biomedical professional organizations have been exploring the possibilities for evaluating how informationists are being used and whether their activities supplement or replace medical library activity. More generally, an informationist is a professional who works with information within a particular business, analytic or scientific context to drive toward outcomes based on evidence, analysis, prediction and execution. For example, an extension of the term is increasingly emerging in financial services, life sciences and health care industries. Though still nascently in use, its adoption applies to individuals with extensive industry expertise, acute familiarity with organizational structures and processes, deep domain level information mastery and information systems technical savvy. Informationists in this context support transformational initiatives within and across functional areas of an enterprise as architects, governance experts, continuous improvement advocates and strategists. == Background == The term was proposed in 2000 by Davidoff & Florance. Their editorial suggested that physicians should be delegating their information needs to informationists, just as they currently order CT scans from radiologists or cardiac catheterizations from cardiologists. They conceived of an information professional who was embedded in (and indeed, supported by) the clinical departments. Supporters of the concept see it as a means for librarians to reinvigorate connections with the faculty/clinicians, as well as provide superior service by dint of informationists' biomedical training. Critics complained that the idea is nothing new; librarians already provide in-depth, high quality information services and clinical medical librarians have been working alongside physicians, nurses and other clinicians for years. Large informationist programs in the U.S. exist at the National Institutes of Health and at Vanderbilt University. Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) is developing an informationist service model in which its 10 clinical and public health librarians are moving from serving as liaison librarians for assigned departments toward becoming embedded informationists within their departments. To prepare for the embedded informationist role, librarians are undertaking education as needed to supplement their backgrounds. For example, librarians bring experience in clinical behavior counseling, public health, nursing, and more. Informationist training can then focus upon filling gaps in research methods knowledge more so than on gaining additional knowledge in the librarian's area of expertise. Courses, seminars and workshops being undertaken include those covering systematic reviews, evidence-based medicine, critical appraisal, medical language, anatomy and physiology, biostatistics, and clinical research. The term informationist is related to that of informatician—also informaticist—and many informationists do possess skills in clinical topics, bioinformatics, and biomedical informatics. Harvard University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Washington University in St. Louis are examples of institutional libraries which have hired PhD-level scientists (who may or may not have library degrees) to provide informatics support for biomedical research.

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  • Brian Deer Classification System

    Brian Deer Classification System

    The Brian Deer Classification System (BDC) is a library classification system used to organize materials in libraries with specialized Indigenous collections. The system was created in the mid-1970s by Canadian librarian A. Brian Deer, a Kahnawake Mohawk. It has been adapted for use in a British Columbia version, and also by a small number of First Nations libraries in Canada. == History and usage == Deer designed his classification system while working in the library of the National Indian Brotherhood (now the Assembly of First Nations) from 1974 to 1976. Instead of using a standard library classification scheme, such as that of the Library of Congress, he created a new system to organize the library's historic indigenous research materials and papers. He later worked at the library of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, where he developed a system for its holdings. He returned to Kahnawake, working at its Cultural Centre at Kahnawake and the Kahnawake Branch branch of the Mohawk Nation Office. His system was flexible, and he created new forms for their collections. The new systems Deer created were designed specifically for the materials in each collection according to the concerns of local Indigenous people at the time (for example, categories included land claims, treaty rights, resource management, and Elders' stories). Between 1978 and 1980, the system was adapted for use in British Columbia by Gene Joseph and Keltie McCall while they were working at the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, becoming known as BDC-BC. Joseph later adapted it further for use in the Xwi7xwa Library at University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Though the Brian Deer Classification was not created as a universal classification solution for Indigenous resources, the system has provided a foundation for specialized libraries to create their own localized classification schemes. Variations of the Brian Deer Classification System are used in a small number of Canadian libraries. One prominent library using BDC is the X̱wi7x̱wa Library at the University of British Columbia, which uses a British Columbia-focused version of BDC along with First Nations House of Learning subject headings. The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs Resource Centre issued a revised BDC-BC in 2014, with the goal of providing users with a more flexible and culturally appropriate approach to organizing their resources. The Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute in Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec, implemented a local adaptation of BDC when they opened in 2012. In 2020 the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council in Prince George, British Columbia, shifted from organizing its library with the Dewey Decimal Classification to using a version of the BDC. They added new subject heading categories for topics of local interest such as the crisis of Missing and murdered Indigenous women. Simon Fraser University Library began developing the Indigenous Curriculum Resource Centre (ICRC) in 2020, with the physical space opening in 2023. The ICRC is Call to Action 21 of SFU's Aboriginal Reconciliation Council's final report, Walk This Path With Us. Through its collection, the ICRC supports those interested in learning about how and why decolonizing pedagogy and teaching practices are important. The physical items in the collection are catalogued using a modified Brian Deer Classification system. In 2022 Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s χʷəχʷéy̓əm Indigenous Collection released a revised BDC-BC System. This BDC contains works exclusively with Indigenous authored materials and expands the cuttering systems of previous BDC, with the result that much of the collection reflects a spatial relationality. The implementation of this BDC was possible due to the tireless work at Xwi7xwa Library, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs Resource Centre, and Simon Fraser University Library's Indigenous Curriculum Resource Centre. == Structure == The high-level organizational structure of BDC reflects a First Nations worldview, with an emphasis on relationships between and among people, animals, and the land. Subcategories demonstrate the relationships among First Nations by grouping them geographically as opposed to alphabetically; the latter is a practice frequently used for specific topics in the Library of Congress Classification. The top-level hierarchy of the X̱wi7x̱wa Library adaptation of BDC-BC demonstrates the emphasis on access to subjects prioritized by a First Nation collection: Reference Materials Local History History International Education Economic Development Housing and Community Development Criminal Justice System Constitution (Canada) and First Nations Self Government Rights and Title Natural Resources Community Resources Health World View Fine Arts Languages Literature The system is not designed to provide a comprehensive description of all topics of interest to North American Indigenous peoples; in addition, its use is limited in scope, being intended for small and specialized libraries. While English is used in the classification scheme as a common language among First Nations peoples and non-Indigenous library users, Indigenous spellings and terminology that local library users would expect to find are used to provide access. Short and easily remembered call numbers are used to facilitate use by both library workers and patrons, with the recognition that Indigenous libraries often have a small staff and limited resources to devote to cataloging. Beyond its simplicity, one potential drawback of the system is its shortage of clear guidelines for application, which provides flexibility but can also result in inconsistencies within and between library catalogs. Because few libraries use the BDC and there are limited examples for use as case studies, implementing the system and keeping it up-to-date can prove a challenge for libraries with limited resources. However, X̱wi7x̱wa Library head librarian Ann Doyle describes the system as "an important part of the body of Indigenous scholarship" that should be retained as a reflection of Indigenous worldviews, as well as for ease of access for Indigenous library users.

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  • Deep Learning Super Sampling

    Deep Learning Super Sampling

    Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is a suite of real-time deep learning image enhancement and upscaling technologies developed by Nvidia that are available in a number of video games. The goal of these technologies is to allow the majority of the graphics pipeline to run at a lower resolution for increased performance, and then infer a higher resolution image from this that approximates the same level of detail as if the image had been rendered at this higher resolution. This allows for higher graphical settings or frame rates for a given output resolution, depending on user preference. All generations of DLSS are available on all RTX-branded cards from Nvidia in supported titles. However, the Frame Generation feature is only supported on RTX 40 series GPUs or newer and Multi Frame Generation is only available on 50 series GPUs. == History == Nvidia advertised DLSS as a key feature of GeForce RTX 20 series GPUs when they launched in September 2018. At that time, the results were limited to a few video games, namely Battlefield V, or Metro Exodus, because the algorithm had to be trained specifically on each game on which it was applied and the results were usually not as good as simple resolution upscaling. In 2019, Control shipped with ray tracing and an image processing algorithm that approximated DLSS, which did not use the Tensor Cores. In April 2020, Nvidia advertised and shipped an improved version of DLSS named DLSS 2 with driver version 445.75. DLSS 2.0 was available for a few existing games including Control and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and would later be added to many newly released games and game engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity. This time Nvidia said that it used the Tensor Cores again, and that the AI did not need to be trained specifically on each game. Despite sharing the DLSS branding, the two iterations of DLSS differ significantly and are not backwards-compatible. In January 2025, Nvidia stated that there are over 540 games and apps supporting DLSS, and that over 80% of Nvidia RTX users activate DLSS. In March 2025, there were more than 100 games that support DLSS 4, according to Nvidia. By May 2025, over 125 games supported DLSS 4. The first video game console to use DLSS, the Nintendo Switch 2, was released on June 5, 2025. Nvidia announced DLSS 4.5 at CES 2026. In January 2026, Nvidia stated that over 250 games and applications support Multi Frame Generation. On March 16, 2026, at GTC 2026, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang presented DLSS 5, a real-time AI model based on neural rendering that realistically enhances lighting and material surfaces at up to 4K resolution while retaining the developer's intended art style. It is planned to release in fall of 2026. In a blog post on its website, Nvidia has announced that DLSS 5 will be available in such games as Assassin's Creed Shadows, Delta Force, Hogwarts Legacy, Naraka: Bladepoint, Phantom Blade Zero, Resident Evil Requiem, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and more. On May 31, 2026, Nvidia announced an updated version of Ray Reconstruction for DLSS 4.5 in a blog post, scheduled for release on all RTX GPUs in August of the same year. They said it is designed to better embed spatial awareness into scenes and analyze engine data on movements and lighting conditions, resulting in a sharper, more stable, and less noisy image. === Release timeline === == Technology == === DLSS 1 === The first iteration of DLSS is a predominantly spatial image upscaler with two stages, both relying on convolutional auto-encoder neural networks. The first step is an image enhancement network which uses the current frame and motion vectors to perform edge enhancement, and spatial anti-aliasing. The second stage is an image upscaling step which uses the single raw, low-resolution frame to upscale the image to the desired output resolution. Using just a single frame for upscaling means the neural network itself must generate a large amount of new information to produce the high-resolution output, which can result in slight hallucinations such as leaves that differ in style to the source content. The neural networks are trained on a per-game basis by generating a "perfect frame" using traditional supersampling to 64 samples per pixel, as well as the motion vectors for each frame. The data collected must be as comprehensive as possible, including as many levels, times of day, graphical settings, resolutions, etc. as possible. This data is also augmented using common augmentations such as rotations, colour changes, and random noise to help generalize the test data. Training is performed on Nvidia's Saturn V supercomputer. This first iteration received a mixed response, with many criticizing the often soft appearance and artifacts along with glitches in certain situations; likely a side effect of the limited data from only using a single frame input to the neural networks which could not be trained to perform optimally in all scenarios and edge-cases. Nvidia also demonstrated the ability for the auto-encoder networks to learn the ability to recreate depth-of-field and motion blur, although this functionality has never been included in a publicly released product. === DLSS 2 === DLSS 2 is a temporal anti-aliasing upsampling (TAAU) implementation, using data from previous frames extensively through sub-pixel jittering to resolve fine detail and reduce aliasing. The data DLSS 2 collects includes: the raw low-resolution input, motion vectors, depth buffers, and exposure / brightness information. It can also be used as a simpler TAA implementation where the image is rendered at 100% resolution, rather than being upsampled by DLSS, Nvidia brands this as DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing). TAA(U) is used in many modern video games and game engines; however, all previous implementations have used some form of manually written heuristics to prevent temporal artifacts such as ghosting and flickering. One example of this is neighborhood clamping which forcefully prevents samples collected in previous frames from deviating too much compared to nearby pixels in newer frames. This helps to identify and fix many temporal artifacts, but deliberately removing fine details in this way is analogous to applying a blur filter, and thus the final image can appear blurry when using this method. DLSS 2 uses a convolutional auto-encoder neural network trained to identify and fix temporal artifacts, instead of manually programmed heuristics as mentioned above. Because of this, DLSS 2 can generally resolve detail better than other TAA and TAAU implementations, while also removing most temporal artifacts. This is why DLSS 2 can sometimes produce a sharper image than rendering at higher, or even native resolutions using traditional TAA. However, no temporal solution is perfect, and artifacts (ghosting in particular) are still visible in some scenarios when using DLSS 2. Because temporal artifacts occur in most art styles and environments in broadly the same way, the neural network that powers DLSS 2 does not need to be retrained when being used in different games. Despite this, Nvidia does frequently ship new minor revisions of DLSS 2 with new titles, so this could suggest some minor training optimizations may be performed as games are released, although Nvidia does not provide changelogs for these minor revisions to confirm this. The main advancements compared to DLSS 1 include: Significantly improved detail retention, a generalized neural network that does not need to be re-trained per-game, and ~2x less overhead (~1–2 ms vs ~2–4 ms). It should also be noted that forms of TAAU such as DLSS 2 are not upscalers in the same sense as techniques such as ESRGAN or DLSS 1, which attempt to create new information from a low-resolution source; instead, TAAU works to recover data from previous frames, rather than creating new data. In practice, this means low resolution textures in games will still appear low-resolution when using current TAAU techniques. This is why Nvidia recommends game developers use higher resolution textures than they would normally for a given rendering resolution by applying a mip-map bias when DLSS 2 is enabled. === DLSS 3 === Augments DLSS 2 with improved image quality and the introduction of a new motion interpolation feature, called Frame Generation. The DLSS Frame Generation algorithm takes two rendered frames from the rendering pipeline and generates a new frame that smoothly transitions between them. For every frame rendered, one additional frame is generated. DLSS 3.0 makes use of a new generation Optical Flow Accelerator (OFA) included in the Ada Lovelace architecture of GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs and with that is exclusive to them. The new OFA is said to be faster and more accurate than the one already available in previous Turing and Ampere RTX GPUs. === DLSS 3.5 === DLSS 3.5 adds Ray Reconstruction, replacing multiple denoising algorithms with a single AI model trained o

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  • How to Solve it by Computer

    How to Solve it by Computer

    How to Solve it by Computer is a computer science book by R. G. Dromey, first published by Prentice-Hall in 1982. It is occasionally used as a textbook, especially in India. It is an introduction to the whys of algorithms and data structures. Features of the book: The design factors associated with problems, The creative process behind coming up with innovative solutions for algorithms and data structures, The line of reasoning behind the constraints, factors and the design choices made. The very fundamental algorithms portrayed by this book are mostly presented in pseudocode and/or Pascal notation.

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  • Enumeration algorithm

    Enumeration algorithm

    In computer science, an enumeration algorithm is an algorithm that enumerates the answers to a computational problem. Formally, such an algorithm applies to problems that take an input and produce a list of solutions, similarly to function problems. For each input, the enumeration algorithm must produce the list of all solutions, without duplicates, and then halt. The performance of an enumeration algorithm is measured in terms of the time required to produce the solutions, either in terms of the total time required to produce all solutions, or in terms of the maximal delay between two consecutive solutions and in terms of a preprocessing time, counted as the time before outputting the first solution. This complexity can be expressed in terms of the size of the input, the size of each individual output, or the total size of the set of all outputs, similarly to what is done with output-sensitive algorithms. == Formal definitions == An enumeration problem P {\displaystyle P} is defined as a relation R {\displaystyle R} over strings of an arbitrary alphabet Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } : R ⊆ Σ ∗ × Σ ∗ {\displaystyle R\subseteq \Sigma ^{}\times \Sigma ^{}} An algorithm solves P {\displaystyle P} if for every input x {\displaystyle x} the algorithm produces the (possibly infinite) sequence y {\displaystyle y} such that y {\displaystyle y} has no duplicate and z ∈ y {\displaystyle z\in y} if and only if ( x , z ) ∈ R {\displaystyle (x,z)\in R} . The algorithm should halt if the sequence y {\displaystyle y} is finite. == Common complexity classes == Enumeration problems have been studied in the context of computational complexity theory, and several complexity classes have been introduced for such problems. A very general such class is EnumP, the class of problems for which the correctness of a possible output can be checked in polynomial time in the input and output. Formally, for such a problem, there must exist an algorithm A which takes as input the problem input x, the candidate output y, and solves the decision problem of whether y is a correct output for the input x, in polynomial time in x and y. For instance, this class contains all problems that amount to enumerating the witnesses of a problem in the class NP. Other classes that have been defined include the following. In the case of problems that are also in EnumP, these problems are ordered from least to most specific: Output polynomial, the class of problems whose complete output can be computed in polynomial time. Incremental polynomial time, the class of problems where, for all i, the i-th output can be produced in polynomial time in the input size and in the number i. Polynomial delay, the class of problems where the delay between two consecutive outputs is polynomial in the input (and independent from the output). Strongly polynomial delay, the class of problems where the delay before each output is polynomial in the size of this specific output (and independent from the input or from the other outputs). The preprocessing is generally assumed to be polynomial. Constant delay, the class of problems where the delay before each output is constant, i.e., independent from the input and output. The preprocessing phase is generally assumed to be polynomial in the input. == Common techniques == Backtracking: The simplest way to enumerate all solutions is by systematically exploring the space of possible results (partitioning it at each successive step). However, performing this may not give good guarantees on the delay, i.e., a backtracking algorithm may spend a long time exploring parts of the space of possible results that do not give rise to a full solution. Flashlight search: This technique improves on backtracking by exploring the space of all possible solutions but solving at each step the problem of whether the current partial solution can be extended to a partial solution. If the answer is no, then the algorithm can immediately backtrack and avoid wasting time, which makes it easier to show guarantees on the delay between any two complete solutions. In particular, this technique applies well to self-reducible problems. Closure under set operations: If we wish to enumerate the disjoint union of two sets, then we can solve the problem by enumerating the first set and then the second set. If the union is non disjoint but the sets can be enumerated in sorted order, then the enumeration can be performed in parallel on both sets while eliminating duplicates on the fly. If the union is not disjoint and both sets are not sorted then duplicates can be eliminated at the expense of a higher memory usage, e.g., using a hash table. Likewise, the cartesian product of two sets can be enumerated efficiently by enumerating one set and joining each result with all results obtained when enumerating the second step. == Examples of enumeration problems == The vertex enumeration problem, where we are given a polytope described as a system of linear inequalities and we must enumerate the vertices of the polytope. Enumerating the minimal transversals of a hypergraph. This problem is related to monotone dualization and is connected to many applications in database theory and graph theory. Enumerating the answers to a database query, for instance a conjunctive query or a query expressed in monadic second-order. There have been characterizations in database theory of which conjunctive queries could be enumerated with linear preprocessing and constant delay. The problem of enumerating maximal cliques in an input graph, e.g., with the Bron–Kerbosch algorithm Listing all elements of structures such as matroids and greedoids Several problems on graphs, e.g., enumerating independent sets, paths, cuts, etc. Enumerating the satisfying assignments of representations of Boolean functions, e.g., a Boolean formula written in conjunctive normal form or disjunctive normal form, a binary decision diagram such as an OBDD, or a Boolean circuit in restricted classes studied in knowledge compilation, e.g., NNF. == Connection to computability theory == The notion of enumeration algorithms is also used in the field of computability theory to define some high complexity classes such as RE, the class of all recursively enumerable problems. This is the class of sets for which there exist an enumeration algorithm that will produce all elements of the set: the algorithm may run forever if the set is infinite, but each solution must be produced by the algorithm after a finite time.

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  • Semantic query

    Semantic query

    Semantic queries allow for queries and analytics of associative and contextual nature. Semantic queries enable the retrieval of both explicitly and implicitly derived information based on syntactic, semantic and structural information contained in data. They are designed to deliver precise results (possibly the distinctive selection of one single piece of information) or to answer more fuzzy and wide open questions through pattern matching and digital reasoning. Semantic queries work on named graphs, linked data or triples. This enables the query to process the actual relationships between information and infer the answers from the network of data. This is in contrast to semantic search, which uses semantics (meaning of language constructs) in unstructured text to produce a better search result. (See natural language processing.) From a technical point of view, semantic queries are precise relational-type operations much like a database query. They work on structured data and therefore have the possibility to utilize comprehensive features like operators (e.g. >, < and =), namespaces, pattern matching, subclassing, transitive relations, semantic rules and contextual full text search. The semantic web technology stack of the W3C is offering SPARQL to formulate semantic queries in a syntax similar to SQL. Semantic queries are used in triplestores, graph databases, semantic wikis, natural language and artificial intelligence systems. == Background == Relational databases represent all relationships between data in an implicit manner only. For example, the relationships between customers and products (stored in two content-tables and connected with an additional link-table) only come into existence in a query statement (SQL in the case of relational databases) written by a developer. Writing the query demands exact knowledge of the database schema. Linked-Data represent all relationships between data in an explicit manner. In the above example, no query code needs to be written. The correct product for each customer can be fetched automatically. Whereas this simple example is trivial, the real power of linked-data comes into play when a network of information is created (customers with their geo-spatial information like city, state and country; products with their categories within sub- and super-categories). Now the system can automatically answer more complex queries and analytics that look for the connection of a particular location with a product category. The development effort for this query is omitted. Executing a semantic query is conducted by walking the network of information and finding matches (also called Data Graph Traversal). Another important aspect of semantic queries is that the type of the relationship can be used to incorporate intelligence into the system. The relationship between a customer and a product has a fundamentally different nature than the relationship between a neighbourhood and its city. The latter enables the semantic query engine to infer that a customer living in Manhattan is also living in New York City whereas other relationships might have more complicated patterns and "contextual analytics". This process is called inference or reasoning and is the ability of the software to derive new information based on given facts. == Articles == Velez, Golda (2008). "Semantics Help Wall Street Cope With Data Overload". Wall Street & Technology. wallstreetandtech.com. Zhifeng, Xiao (2009). "Spatial information semantic query based on SPARQL". In Liu, Yaolin; Tang, Xinming (eds.). International Symposium on Spatial Analysis, Spatial-Temporal Data Modeling, and Data Mining. Vol. 7492. SPIE. pp. 74921P. Bibcode:2009SPIE.7492E..60X. doi:10.1117/12.838556. S2CID 62191842. Aquin, Mathieu (2010). "Watson, more than a Semantic Web search engine" (PDF). Semantic Web Journal. Dworetzky, Tom (2011). "How Siri Works: iPhone's 'Brain' Comes from Natural Language Processing". International Business Times. Horwitt, Elisabeth (2011). "The semantic Web gets down to business". computerworld.com. Rodriguez, Marko (2011). "Graph Pattern Matching with Gremlin". Marko A. Rodriguez. markorodriguez.com on Graph Computing. Sequeda, Juan (2011). "SPARQL Nuts & Bolts". Cambridge Semantics. Freitas, Andre (2012). "Querying Heterogeneous Datasets on the Linked Data Web" (PDF). IEEE Internet Computing. Kauppinen, Tomi (2012). "Using the SPARQL Package in R to handle Spatial Linked Data". linkedscience.org. Lorentz, Alissa (2013). "With Big Data, Context is a Big Issue". Wired.

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  • Software design

    Software design

    Software design is the process of conceptualizing how a software system will work before it is implemented or modified. Software design also refers to the direct result of the design process – the concepts of how the software will work which may be formally documented or may be maintained less formally, including via oral tradition. The design process enables a designer to model aspects of a software system before it exists with the intent of making the effort of writing the code more efficiently. Creativity, past experience, a sense of what makes "good" software, and a commitment to quality are success factors for a competent design. A software design can be compared to an architected plan for a house. High-level plans represent the totality of the house (e.g., a three-dimensional rendering of the house). Lower-level plans provide guidance for constructing each detail (e.g., the plumbing lay). Similarly, the software design model provides a variety of views of the proposed software solution. == Part of the overall process == In terms of the waterfall development process, software design is the activity that occurs after requirements analysis and before coding. Requirements analysis determines what the system needs to do without determining how it will do it, and thus, multiple designs can be imagined that satisfy the requirements. The design can be created while coding, without a plan or requirements analysis, but for more complex projects this is less feasible. Completing a design prior to coding allows for multidisciplinary designers and subject-matter experts to collaborate with programmers to produce software that is useful and technically sound. Sometimes, a simulation or prototype is created to model the system in an effort to determine a valid and good design. == Code as design == A common point of confusion with the term design in software is that the process applies at multiple levels of abstraction such as a high-level software architecture and lower-level components, functions and algorithms. A relatively formal process may occur at high levels of abstraction but at lower levels, the design process is almost always less formal where the only artifact of design may be the code itself. To the extent that this is true, software design refers to the design of the design. Edsger W. Dijkstra referred to this layering of semantic levels as the "radical novelty" of computer programming, and Donald Knuth used his experience writing TeX to describe the futility of attempting to design a program prior to implementing it: TEX would have been a complete failure if I had merely specified it and not participated fully in its initial implementation. The process of implementation constantly led me to unanticipated questions and to new insights about how the original specifications could be improved. == Artifacts == A design process may include the production of art Software design documentation such as flow chart, use case, Pseudocode, Unified Modeling Language model and other Fundamental modeling concepts. For user centered software, design may involve user experience design yielding a storyboard to help determine those specifications. Documentation may be reviewed to allow constraints, specifications and even requirements to be adjusted prior to coding. == Iterative design == Software systems inherently deal with uncertainties, and the size of software components can significantly influence a system's outcomes, both positively and negatively. Neal Ford and Mark Richards propose an iterative approach to address the challenge of identifying and right-sizing components. This method emphasizes continuous refinement as teams develop a more nuanced understanding of system behavior and requirements. The approach typically involves a cycle with several stages: A high-level partitioning strategy is established, often categorized as technical or domain-based. Guidelines for the smallest meaningful deployable unit, referred to as "quanta," are defined. While these foundational decisions are made early, they may be revisited later in the cycle if necessary. Initial components are identified based on the established strategy. Requirements are assigned to the identified components. The roles and responsibilities of each component are analyzed to ensure clarity and minimize overlap. Architectural characteristics, such as scalability, fault tolerance, and maintainability, are evaluated. Components may be restructured based on feedback from development teams. This cycle serves as a general framework and can be adapted to different domains. == Design principles == Design principles enable a software engineer to navigate the design process. Davis suggested principles which have been refined over time as: The design process should not suffer from "tunnel vision" A good designer should consider alternative approaches, judging each based on the requirements of the problem, the resources available to do the job. The design should be traceable to the analysis model Because a single element of the design model can often be traced back to multiple requirements, it is necessary to have a means for tracking how requirements have been satisfied by the design model. The design should not reinvent the wheel Systems are constructed using a set of design patterns, many of which have likely been encountered before. These patterns should always be chosen as an alternative to reinvention. Time is short and resources are limited; design time should be invested in representing (truly new) ideas by integrating patterns that already exist (when applicable). The design should "minimize the intellectual distance" between the software and the problem as it exists in the real world That is, the structure of the software design should, whenever possible, mimic the structure of the problem domain. The design should exhibit uniformity and integration A design is uniform if it appears fully coherent. In order to achieve this outcome, rules of style and format should be defined for a design team before design work begins. A design is integrated if care is taken in defining interfaces between design components. The design should be structured to accommodate change The design concepts discussed in the next section enable a design to achieve this principle. The design should be structured to degrade gently, even when aberrant data, events, or operating conditions are encountered Well-designed software should never "bomb"; it should be designed to accommodate unusual circumstances, and if it must terminate processing, it should do so in a graceful manner. Design is not coding, coding is not design Even when detailed procedural designs are created for program components, the level of abstraction of the design model is higher than the source code. The only design decisions made at the coding level should address the small implementation details that enable the procedural design to be coded. The design should be assessed for quality as it is being created, not after the fact A variety of design concepts and design measures are available to assist the designer in assessing quality throughout the development process. The design should be reviewed to minimize conceptual (semantic) errors There is sometimes a tendency to focus on minutiae when the design is reviewed, missing the forest for the trees. A design team should ensure that major conceptual elements of the design (omissions, ambiguity, inconsistency) have been addressed before worrying about the syntax of the design model. == Design concepts == Design concepts provide a designer with a foundation from which more sophisticated methods can be applied. Design concepts include: Abstraction Reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically to retain only information that is relevant for a particular purpose. It is an act of Representing essential features without including the background details or explanations. Architecture The overall structure of the software and the ways in which that structure provides conceptual integrity for a system. Good software architecture will yield a good return on investment with respect to the desired outcome of the project, e.g. in terms of performance, quality, schedule and cost. Control hierarchy A program structure that represents the organization of a program component and implies a hierarchy of control. Data structure Representing the logical relationship between elements of data. Design pattern A designer may identify a design aspect of the system that has solved in the past. The reuse of such patterns can increase software development velocity. Information hiding Modules should be specified and designed so that information contained within a module is inaccessible to other modules that have no need for such information. Modularity Dividing the solution into parts (modules). Refinement The process of elaboration. A hierarchy is developed by decomposing a macrosco

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  • Master data management

    Master data management

    Master data management (MDM) is a discipline in which business and information technology collaborate to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency, and accountability of the enterprise's official shared master data assets. == Reasons for master data management == Data consistency and accuracy: MDM ensures that the organization's critical data is consistent and accurate across all systems, reducing discrepancies and errors caused by multiple, siloed copies of the same data. Improved decision-making: By providing a single version of the truth (SVOT), MDM enables organizations to deliver the right data to decision makers, allowing them to clearly understand business performance and make informed, data-driven decisions. Operational efficiency: With the consistent and accurate data provided by an MDM, operational processes such as reporting and inventory management can be automated to improve efficiency. Employee learning, onboarding, and customer service also become more efficient, as MDM data facilitates rapid, accurate, and thorough information retrieval, permitting more employee time to be spent on work. Regulatory compliance: MDM tries to help organizations comply with industry standards and regulations by ensuring that master data is accurately recorded, maintained, and audited. However, issues with data quality, classification, and reconciliation may require data transformation. As with other Extract, Transform, Load-based data movements, these processes are expensive and inefficient, reducing return on investment for a project. == Business unit and product line segmentation == As a result of business unit and product line segmentation, the same entity (whether a customer, supplier, or product) will be included in different product lines. This leads to data redundancy and even confusion. For example, a customer takes out a mortgage at a bank. If the marketing and customer service departments have separate databases, advertisements might still be sent to the customer, even though they've already signed up. The two parts of the bank are unaware, and the customer is sent irrelevant communications. Record linkage can associate different records corresponding to the same entity, mitigating this issue. == Mergers and acquisitions == One of the most common problems for master data management is company growth through mergers or acquisitions. Reconciling these separate master data systems can present difficulties, as existing applications have dependencies on the master databases. Ideally, database administrators resolve this problem through deduplication of the master data as part of the merger. Over time, as further mergers and acquisitions occur, the problem can multiply. Data reconciliation processes can become extremely complex or even unreliable. Some organizations end up with 10, 15, or even 100 separate and poorly integrated master databases. This can cause serious problems in customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, decision support, and regulatory compliance. Another problem involves determining the proper degrees of detail and normalization to include in the master data schema. For example, in a federated Human Resources environment, the enterprise software may focus on storing people's data as current status, adding a few fields to identify the date of hire, date of last promotion, etc. However, this simplification can introduce business-impacting errors into dependent systems for planning and forecasting. The stakeholders of such systems may be forced to build a parallel network of new interfaces to track the onboarding of new hires, planned retirements, and divestment, which works against one of the aims of master data management. == People, processes and technology == Master data management is enabled by technology, but is more than the technologies that enable it. An organization's master data management capability will also include people and processes in its definition. === People === Several roles should be staffed within MDM. Most prominently, the Data Owner and the Data Steward. Several people would likely be allocated to each role and each person responsible for a subset of Master Data (e.g. one data owner for employee master data, another for customer master data). The Data Owner is responsible for the requirements for data definition, data quality, data security, etc. as well as for compliance with data governance and data management procedures. The Data Owner should also be funding improvement projects in case of deviations from the requirements. The Data Steward is running the master data management on behalf of the data owner and probably also being an advisor to the Data Owner. === Processes === Master data management can be viewed as a "discipline for specialized quality improvement" defined by the policies and procedures put in place by a data governance organization. It has the objective of providing processes for collecting, aggregating, matching, consolidating, quality-assuring, persisting and distributing master data throughout an organization to ensure a common understanding, consistency, accuracy and control, in the ongoing maintenance and application use of that data. Processes commonly seen in master data management include source identification, data collection, data transformation, normalization, rule administration, error detection and correction, data consolidation, data storage, data distribution, data classification, taxonomy services, item master creation, schema mapping, product codification, data enrichment, hierarchy management, business semantics management and data governance. === Technology === A master data management tool can be used to support master data management by removing duplicates, standardizing data (mass maintaining), and incorporating rules to eliminate incorrect data from entering the system to create an authoritative source of master data. Master data are the products, accounts, and parties for which the business transactions are completed. Where the technology approach produces a "golden record" or relies on a "source of record" or "system of record", it is common to talk of where the data is "mastered". This is accepted terminology in the information technology industry, but care should be taken, both with specialists and with the wider stakeholder community, to avoid confusing the concept of "master data" with that of "mastering data". ==== Implementation models ==== There are several models for implementing a technology solution for master data management. These depend on an organization's core business, its corporate structure, and its goals. These include: Source of record Registry Consolidation Coexistence Transaction/centralized ===== Source of record ===== This model identifies a single application, database, or simpler source (e.g. a spreadsheet) as being the "source of record" (or "system of record" where solely application databases are relied on). The benefit of this model is its conceptual simplicity, but it may not fit with the realities of complex master data distribution in large organizations. The source of record can be federated, for example by groups of attributes (so that different attributes of a master data entity may have different sources of record) or geographically (so that different parts of an organization may have different master sources). Federation is only applicable in certain use cases, where there is a clear delineation of which subsets of records will be found in which sources. The source of record model can be applied more widely than simply to master data, for example to reference data. ==== Transmission of master data ==== There are several ways in which master data may be collated and distributed to other systems. This includes: Data consolidation – The process of capturing master data from multiple sources and integrating it into a single hub (operational data store) for replication to other destination systems. Data federation – The process of providing a single virtual view of master data from one or more sources to one or more destination systems. Data propagation – The process of copying master data from one system to another, typically through point-to-point interfaces in legacy systems. == Change management in implementation == Challenges in adopting master data management within large organizations often arise when stakeholders disagree on a "single version of the truth" concept is not affirmed by stakeholders, who believe that their local definition of the master data is necessary. For example, the product hierarchy used to manage inventory may be entirely different from the product hierarchies used to support marketing efforts or pay sales representatives. It is above all necessary to identify if different master data is genuinely required. If it is required, then the solution implemented (technology and process) must be able to allow multiple versions of the truth to exist but will prov

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  • Navigational database

    Navigational database

    A navigational database is a type of database in which records or objects are found primarily by following references from other objects. The term was popularized by the title of Charles Bachman's 1973 Turing Award paper, The Programmer as Navigator. This paper emphasized the fact that the new disk-based database systems allowed the programmer to choose arbitrary navigational routes following relationships from record to record, contrasting this with the constraints of earlier magnetic-tape and punched card systems where data access was strictly sequential. One of the earliest navigational databases was Integrated Data Store (IDS), which was developed by Bachman for General Electric in the 1960s. IDS became the basis for the CODASYL database model in 1969. Although Bachman described the concept of navigation in abstract terms, the idea of navigational access came to be associated strongly with the procedural design of the CODASYL Data Manipulation Language. Writing in 1982, for example, Tsichritzis and Lochovsky state that "The notion of currency is central to the concept of navigation." By the notion of currency, they refer to the idea that a program maintains (explicitly or implicitly) a current position in any sequence of records that it is processing, and that operations such as GET NEXT and GET PRIOR retrieve records relative to this current position, while also changing the current position to the record that is retrieved. Navigational database programming thus came to be seen as intrinsically procedural; and moreover to depend on the maintenance of an implicit set of global variables (currency indicators) holding the current state. As such, the approach was seen as diametrically opposed to the declarative programming style used by the relational model. The declarative nature of relational languages such as SQL offered better programmer productivity and a higher level of data independence (that is, the ability of programs to continue working as the database structure evolves.) Navigational interfaces, as a result, were gradually eclipsed during the 1980s by declarative query languages. During the 1990s it started becoming clear that for certain applications handling complex data (for example, spatial databases and engineering databases), the relational calculus had limitations. At that time, a reappraisal of the entire database market began, with several companies describing the new systems using the marketing term NoSQL. Many of these systems introduced data manipulation languages which, while far removed from the CODASYL DML with its currency indicators, could be understood as implementing Bachman's "navigational" vision. Some of these languages are procedural; others (such as XPath) are entirely declarative. Offshoots of the navigational concept, such as the graph database, found new uses in modern transaction processing workloads. == Description == Navigational access is traditionally associated with the network model and hierarchical model of database, and conventionally describes data manipulation APIs in which records (or objects) are processed one at a time, iteratively. The essential characteristic as described by Bachman, however, is finding records by virtue of their relationship to other records: so an interface can still be navigational if it has set-oriented features. From this viewpoint, the key difference between navigational data manipulation languages and relational languages is the use of explicit named relationships rather than value-based joins: for department with name="Sales", find all employees in set department-employees versus find employees, departments where employee.department-code = department.code and department.name="Sales". In practice, however, most navigational APIs have been procedural: the above query would be executed using procedural logic along the lines of the following pseudo-code: On this viewpoint, the key difference between navigational APIs and the relational model (implemented in relational databases) is that relational APIs use "declarative" or logic programming techniques that ask the system what to fetch, while navigational APIs instruct the system in a sequence of steps how to reach the required records. Most criticisms of navigational APIs fall into one of two categories: Usability: application code quickly becomes unreadable and difficult to debug Data independence: application code needs to change whenever the data structure changes For many years the primary defence of navigational APIs was performance. Database systems that support navigational APIs often use internal storage structures that contain physical links or pointers from one record to another. While such structures may allow very efficient navigation, they have disadvantages because it becomes difficult to reorganize the physical placement of data. It is quite possible to implement navigational APIs without low-level pointer chasing (Bachman's paper envisaged logical relationships being implemented just as in relational systems, using primary keys and foreign keys), so the two ideas should not be conflated. But without the performance benefits of low-level pointers, navigational APIs become harder to justify. Hierarchical models often construct primary keys for records by concatenating the keys that appear at each level in the hierarchy. Such composite identifiers are found in computer file names (/usr/david/docs/index.txt), in URIs, in the Dewey decimal system, and for that matter in postal addresses. Such a composite key can be considered as representing a navigational path to a record; but equally, it can be considered as a simple primary key allowing associative access. As relational systems came to prominence in the 1980s, navigational APIs (and in particular, procedural APIs) were criticized and fell out of favour. The 1990s, however, brought a new wave of object-oriented databases that often provided both declarative and procedural interfaces. One explanation for this is that they were often used to represent graph-structured information (for example spatial data and engineering data) where access is inherently recursive: the mathematics originally underpinning SQL (specifically, first-order predicate calculus) does not have sufficient power to support recursive queries, even those as simple as a transitive closure. More recent SQL implementations do support hierarchical and recursive queries. A current example of a popular navigational API can be found in the Document Object Model (DOM) often used in web browsers and closely associated with JavaScript. The DOM is essentially an in-memory hierarchical database with an API that is both procedural and navigational. By contrast, the same data (XML or HTML) can be accessed using XPath, which can be categorized as declarative and navigational: data is accessed by following relationships, but the calling program does not issue a sequence of instructions to be followed in order. Languages such as SPARQL used to retrieve Linked Data from the Semantic Web are also simultaneously declarative and navigational. == Examples == IBM Information Management System IDMS

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