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1107.4470
Symmetry Breaking in Neuroevolution: A Technical Report
cs.NE
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) comprise important symmetry properties, which can influence the performance of Monte Carlo methods in Neuroevolution. The problem of the symmetries is also known as the competing conventions problem or simply as the permutation problem. In the literature, symmetries are mainly addressed in Genetic Algoritm based approaches. However, investigations in this direction based on other Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) are rare or missing. Furthermore, there are different and contradictionary reports on the efficacy of symmetry breaking. By using a novel viewpoint, we offer a possible explanation for this issue. As a result, we show that a strategy which is invariant to the global optimum can only be successfull on certain problems, whereas it must fail to improve the global convergence on others. We introduce the \emph{Minimum Global Optimum Proximity} principle as a generalized and adaptive strategy to symmetry breaking, which depends on the location of the global optimum. We apply the proposed principle to Differential Evolution (DE) and Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategies (CMA-ES), which are two popular and conceptually different global optimization methods. Using a wide range of feedforward ANN problems, we experimentally illustrate significant improvements in the global search efficiency by the proposed symmetry breaking technique.
1107.4491
Enhancing topology adaptation in information-sharing social networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
The advent of Internet and World Wide Web has led to unprecedent growth of the information available. People usually face the information overload by following a limited number of sources which best fit their interests. It has thus become important to address issues like who gets followed and how to allow people to discover new and better information sources. In this paper we conduct an empirical analysis on different on-line social networking sites, and draw inspiration from its results to present different source selection strategies in an adaptive model for social recommendation. We show that local search rules which enhance the typical topological features of real social communities give rise to network configurations that are globally optimal. These rules create networks which are effective in information diffusion and resemble structures resulting from real social systems.
1107.4496
Cartesian stiffness matrix of manipulators with passive joints: analytical approach
cs.RO
The paper focuses on stiffness matrix computation for manipulators with passive joints. It proposes both explicit analytical expressions and an efficient recursive procedure that are applicable in general case and allow obtaining the desired matrix either in analytical or numerical form. Advantages of the developed technique and its ability to produce both singular and non-singular stiffness matrices are illustrated by application examples that deal with stiffness modeling of two Stewart-Gough platforms.
1107.4498
Singular surfaces and cusps in symmetric planar 3-RPR manipulators
cs.RO
We study in this paper a class of 3-RPR manipulators for which the direct kinematic problem (DKP) is split into a cubic problem followed by a quadratic one. These manipulators are geometrically characterized by the fact that the moving triangle is the image of the base triangle by an indirect isometry. We introduce a specific coordinate system adapted to this geometric feature and which is also well adapted to the splitting of the DKP. This allows us to obtain easily precise descriptions of the singularities and of the cusp edges. These latter second order singularities are important for nonsingular assembly mode changing. We show how to sort assembly modes and use this sorting for motion planning in the joint space.
1107.4500
Short Huffman Codes Producing 1s Half of the Time
cs.IT math.IT
The design of the channel part of a digital communication system (e.g., error correction, modulation) is heavily based on the assumption that the data to be transmitted forms a fair bit stream. However, simple source encoders such as short Huffman codes generate bit streams that poorly match this assumption. As a result, the channel input distribution does not match the original design criteria. In this work, a simple method called half Huffman coding (halfHc) is developed. halfHc transforms a Huffman code into a source code whose output is more similar to a fair bit stream. This is achieved by permuting the codewords such that the frequency of 1s at the output is close to 0.5. The permutations are such that the optimality in terms of achieved compression ratio is preserved. halfHc is applied in a practical example, and the resulting overall system performs better than when conventional Huffman coding is used.
1107.4502
MeLinDa: an interlinking framework for the web of data
cs.AI
The web of data consists of data published on the web in such a way that they can be interpreted and connected together. It is thus critical to establish links between these data, both for the web of data and for the semantic web that it contributes to feed. We consider here the various techniques developed for that purpose and analyze their commonalities and differences. We propose a general framework and show how the diverse techniques fit in the framework. From this framework we consider the relation between data interlinking and ontology matching. Although, they can be considered similar at a certain level (they both relate formal entities), they serve different purposes, but would find a mutual benefit at collaborating. We thus present a scheme under which it is possible for data linking tools to take advantage of ontology alignments.
1107.4524
An Analysis of Anonymity in the Bitcoin System
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and public-keys and associate information external to the system with the users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars.
1107.4530
Remarks on generalized toric codes
cs.IT math.AG math.IT
This note presents some new information on how the minimum distance of the generalized toric code corresponding to a fixed set of integer lattice points S in R^2 varies with the base field. The main results show that in some cases, over sufficiently large fields, the minimum distance of the code corresponding to a set S will be the same as that of the code corresponding to the convex hull of S. In an example, we will also discuss a [49,12,28] generalized toric code over GF(8), better than any previously known code according to M. Grassl's online tables, as of July 2011.
1107.4540
Non-adaptive probabilistic group testing with noisy measurements: Near-optimal bounds with efficient algorithms
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of detecting a small subset of defective items from a large set via non-adaptive "random pooling" group tests. We consider both the case when the measurements are noiseless, and the case when the measurements are noisy (the outcome of each group test may be independently faulty with probability q). Order-optimal results for these scenarios are known in the literature. We give information-theoretic lower bounds on the query complexity of these problems, and provide corresponding computationally efficient algorithms that match the lower bounds up to a constant factor. To the best of our knowledge this work is the first to explicitly estimate such a constant that characterizes the gap between the upper and lower bounds for these problems.
1107.4553
Solving Linear Constraints in Elementary Abelian p-Groups of Symmetries
cs.AI
Symmetries occur naturally in CSP or SAT problems and are not very difficult to discover, but using them to prune the search space tends to be very challenging. Indeed, this usually requires finding specific elements in a group of symmetries that can be huge, and the problem of their very existence is NP-hard. We formulate such an existence problem as a constraint problem on one variable (the symmetry to be used) ranging over a group, and try to find restrictions that may be solved in polynomial time. By considering a simple form of constraints (restricted by a cardinality k) and the class of groups that have the structure of Fp-vector spaces, we propose a partial algorithm based on linear algebra. This polynomial algorithm always applies when k=p=2, but may fail otherwise as we prove the problem to be NP-hard for all other values of k and p. Experiments show that this approach though restricted should allow for an efficient use of at least some groups of symmetries. We conclude with a few directions to be explored to efficiently solve this problem on the general case.
1107.4557
Finding Deceptive Opinion Spam by Any Stretch of the Imagination
cs.CL cs.CY
Consumers increasingly rate, review and research products online. Consequently, websites containing consumer reviews are becoming targets of opinion spam. While recent work has focused primarily on manually identifiable instances of opinion spam, in this work we study deceptive opinion spam---fictitious opinions that have been deliberately written to sound authentic. Integrating work from psychology and computational linguistics, we develop and compare three approaches to detecting deceptive opinion spam, and ultimately develop a classifier that is nearly 90% accurate on our gold-standard opinion spam dataset. Based on feature analysis of our learned models, we additionally make several theoretical contributions, including revealing a relationship between deceptive opinions and imaginative writing.
1107.4570
Consistent Query Answering via ASP from Different Perspectives: Theory and Practice
cs.DB cs.AI
A data integration system provides transparent access to different data sources by suitably combining their data, and providing the user with a unified view of them, called global schema. However, source data are generally not under the control of the data integration process, thus integrated data may violate global integrity constraints even in presence of locally-consistent data sources. In this scenario, it may be anyway interesting to retrieve as much consistent information as possible. The process of answering user queries under global constraint violations is called consistent query answering (CQA). Several notions of CQA have been proposed, e.g., depending on whether integrated information is assumed to be sound, complete, exact or a variant of them. This paper provides a contribution in this setting: it uniforms solutions coming from different perspectives under a common ASP-based core, and provides query-driven optimizations designed for isolating and eliminating inefficiencies of the general approach for computing consistent answers. Moreover, the paper introduces some new theoretical results enriching existing knowledge on decidability and complexity of the considered problems. The effectiveness of the approach is evidenced by experimental results. To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).
1107.4573
Analogy perception applied to seven tests of word comprehension
cs.AI cs.CL cs.LG
It has been argued that analogy is the core of cognition. In AI research, algorithms for analogy are often limited by the need for hand-coded high-level representations as input. An alternative approach is to use high-level perception, in which high-level representations are automatically generated from raw data. Analogy perception is the process of recognizing analogies using high-level perception. We present PairClass, an algorithm for analogy perception that recognizes lexical proportional analogies using representations that are automatically generated from a large corpus of raw textual data. A proportional analogy is an analogy of the form A:B::C:D, meaning "A is to B as C is to D". A lexical proportional analogy is a proportional analogy with words, such as carpenter:wood::mason:stone. PairClass represents the semantic relations between two words using a high-dimensional feature vector, in which the elements are based on frequencies of patterns in the corpus. PairClass recognizes analogies by applying standard supervised machine learning techniques to the feature vectors. We show how seven different tests of word comprehension can be framed as problems of analogy perception and we then apply PairClass to the seven resulting sets of analogy perception problems. We achieve competitive results on all seven tests. This is the first time a uniform approach has handled such a range of tests of word comprehension.
1107.4581
Hybrid Noncoherent Network Coding
cs.IT math.IT
We describe a novel extension of subspace codes for noncoherent networks, suitable for use when the network is viewed as a communication system that introduces both dimension and symbol errors. We show that when symbol erasures occur in a significantly large number of different basis vectors transmitted through the network and when the min-cut of the networks is much smaller then the length of the transmitted codewords, the new family of codes outperforms their subspace code counterparts. For the proposed coding scheme, termed hybrid network coding, we derive two upper bounds on the size of the codes. These bounds represent a variation of the Singleton and of the sphere-packing bound. We show that a simple concatenated scheme that represents a combination of subspace codes and Reed-Solomon codes is asymptotically optimal with respect to the Singleton bound. Finally, we describe two efficient decoding algorithms for concatenated subspace codes that in certain cases have smaller complexity than subspace decoders.
1107.4600
On the Capacity of the Interference Channel with a Cognitive Relay
cs.IT math.IT
The InterFerence Channel with a Cognitive Relay (IFC-CR) consists of the classical interference channel with two independent source-destination pairs whose communication is aided by an additional node, referred to as the cognitive relay, that has a priori knowledge of both sources' messages. This a priori message knowledge is termed cognition and idealizes the relay learning the messages of the two sources from their transmissions over a wireless channel. This paper presents new inner and outer bounds for the capacity region of the general memoryless IFC-CR that are shown to be tight for a certain class of channels. The new outer bound follows from arguments originally devised for broadcast channels among which Sato's observation that the capacity region of channels with non-cooperative receivers only depends on the channel output conditional marginal distributions. The new inner bound is shown to include all previously proposed coding schemes and it is thus the largest known achievable rate region to date. The new inner and outer bounds coincide for a subset of channel satisfying a strong interference condition. For these channels there is no loss in optimality if both destinations decode both messages. This result parallels analogous results for the classical IFC and for the cognitive IFC and is the first known capacity result for the general IFC-CR. Numerical evaluations of the proposed inner and outer bounds are presented for the Gaussian noise case.
1107.4606
The Divergence of Reinforcement Learning Algorithms with Value-Iteration and Function Approximation
cs.LG
This paper gives specific divergence examples of value-iteration for several major Reinforcement Learning and Adaptive Dynamic Programming algorithms, when using a function approximator for the value function. These divergence examples differ from previous divergence examples in the literature, in that they are applicable for a greedy policy, i.e. in a "value iteration" scenario. Perhaps surprisingly, with a greedy policy, it is also possible to get divergence for the algorithms TD(1) and Sarsa(1). In addition to these divergences, we also achieve divergence for the Adaptive Dynamic Programming algorithms HDP, DHP and GDHP.
1107.4613
Percolation in the Secrecy Graph
math.PR cs.IT math.IT
The secrecy graph is a random geometric graph which is intended to model the connectivity of wireless networks under secrecy constraints. Directed edges in the graph are present whenever a node can talk to another node securely in the presence of eavesdroppers, which, in the model, is determined solely by the locations of the nodes and eavesdroppers. In the case of infinite networks, a critical parameter is the maximum density of eavesdroppers that can be accommodated while still guaranteeing an infinite component in the network, i.e., the percolation threshold. We focus on the case where the locations of the nodes and eavesdroppers are given by Poisson point processes, and present bounds for different types of percolation, including in-, out- and undirected percolation.
1107.4617
Constant-time filtering using shiftable kernels
cs.CV cs.DS
It was recently demonstrated in [5] that the non-linear bilateral filter [14] can be efficiently implemented using a constant-time or O(1) algorithm. At the heart of this algorithm was the idea of approximating the Gaussian range kernel of the bilateral filter using trigonometric functions. In this letter, we explain how the idea in [5] can be extended to few other linear and non-linear filters [14, 17, 2]. While some of these filters have received a lot of attention in recent years, they are known to be computationally intensive. To extend the idea in [5], we identify a central property of trigonometric functions, called shiftability, that allows us to exploit the redundancy inherent in the filtering operations. In particular, using shiftable kernels, we show how certain complex filtering can be reduced to simply that of computing the moving sum of a stack of images. Each image in the stack is obtained through an elementary pointwise transform of the input image. This has a two-fold advantage. First, we can use fast recursive algorithms for computing the moving sum [15, 6], and, secondly, we can use parallel computation to further speed up the computation. We also show how shiftable kernels can also be used to approximate the (non-shiftable) Gaussian kernel that is ubiquitously used in image filtering.
1107.4619
On the Hilbert transform of wavelets
math.FA cs.CV
A wavelet is a localized function having a prescribed number of vanishing moments. In this correspondence, we provide precise arguments as to why the Hilbert transform of a wavelet is again a wavelet. In particular, we provide sharp estimates of the localization, vanishing moments, and smoothness of the transformed wavelet. We work in the general setting of non-compactly supported wavelets. Our main result is that, in the presence of some minimal smoothness and decay, the Hilbert transform of a wavelet is again as smooth and oscillating as the original wavelet, whereas its localization is controlled by the number of vanishing moments of the original wavelet. We motivate our results using concrete examples.
1107.4623
A Unifying Analysis of Projected Gradient Descent for $\ell_p$-constrained Least Squares
math.NA cs.IT math.IT math.OC stat.ML
In this paper we study the performance of the Projected Gradient Descent(PGD) algorithm for $\ell_{p}$-constrained least squares problems that arise in the framework of Compressed Sensing. Relying on the Restricted Isometry Property, we provide convergence guarantees for this algorithm for the entire range of $0\leq p\leq1$, that include and generalize the existing results for the Iterative Hard Thresholding algorithm and provide a new accuracy guarantee for the Iterative Soft Thresholding algorithm as special cases. Our results suggest that in this group of algorithms, as $p$ increases from zero to one, conditions required to guarantee accuracy become stricter and robustness to noise deteriorates.
1107.4637
Efficient variational inference in large-scale Bayesian compressed sensing
cs.CV cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
We study linear models under heavy-tailed priors from a probabilistic viewpoint. Instead of computing a single sparse most probable (MAP) solution as in standard deterministic approaches, the focus in the Bayesian compressed sensing framework shifts towards capturing the full posterior distribution on the latent variables, which allows quantifying the estimation uncertainty and learning model parameters using maximum likelihood. The exact posterior distribution under the sparse linear model is intractable and we concentrate on variational Bayesian techniques to approximate it. Repeatedly computing Gaussian variances turns out to be a key requisite and constitutes the main computational bottleneck in applying variational techniques in large-scale problems. We leverage on the recently proposed Perturb-and-MAP algorithm for drawing exact samples from Gaussian Markov random fields (GMRF). The main technical contribution of our paper is to show that estimating Gaussian variances using a relatively small number of such efficiently drawn random samples is much more effective than alternative general-purpose variance estimation techniques. By reducing the problem of variance estimation to standard optimization primitives, the resulting variational algorithms are fully scalable and parallelizable, allowing Bayesian computations in extremely large-scale problems with the same memory and time complexity requirements as conventional point estimation techniques. We illustrate these ideas with experiments in image deblurring.
1107.4649
Mandelbrot Law of Evolving Networks
physics.data-an cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Degree distributions of many real networks are known to follow the Mandelbrot law, which can be considered as an extension of the power law and is determined by not only the power-law exponent, but also the shifting coefficient. Although the shifting coefficient highly affects the shape of distribution, it receives less attention in the literature and in fact, mainstream analytical method based on backward or forward difference will lead to considerable deviations to its value. In this Letter, we show that the degree distribution of a growing network with linear preferential attachment approximately follows the Mandelbrot law. We propose an analytical method based on a recursive formula that can obtain a more accurate expression of the shifting coefficient. Simulations demonstrate the advantages of our method. This work provides a possible mechanism leading to the Mandelbrot law of evolving networks, and refines the mainstream analytical methods for the shifting coefficient.
1107.4651
Higher Order Programming to Mine Knowledge for a Modern Medical Expert System
cs.LO cs.AI
Knowledge mining is the process of deriving new and useful knowledge from vast volumes of data and background knowledge. Modern healthcare organizations regularly generate huge amount of electronic data stored in the databases. These data are a valuable resource for mining useful knowledge to help medical practitioners making appropriate and accurate decision on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In this paper, we propose the design of a novel medical expert system based on a logic-programming framework. The proposed system includes a knowledge-mining component as a repertoire of tools for discovering useful knowledge. The implementation of classification and association mining tools based on the higher order and meta-level programming schemes using Prolog has been presented to express the power of logic-based language. Such language also provides a pattern matching facility, which is an essential function for the development of knowledge-intensive tasks. Besides the major goal of medical decision support, the knowledge discovered by our logic-based knowledge-mining component can also be deployed as background knowledge to pre-treatment data from other sources as well as to guard the data repositories against constraint violation. A framework for knowledge deployment is also presented.
1107.4652
On the Achievability of Interference Alignment for Three-Cell Constant Cellular Interfering Networks
cs.IT math.IT
For a three-cell constant cellular interfering network, a new property of alignment is identified, i.e., interference alignment (IA) solution obtained in an user-cooperation scenario can also be applied in a non-cooperation environment. By using this property, an algorithm is proposed by jointly designing transmit and receive beamforming matrices. Analysis and numerical results show that more degree of freedom (DoF) can be achieved compared with conventional schemes in most cases.
1107.4667
Correlation Estimation from Compressed Images
cs.CV
This paper addresses the problem of correlation estimation in sets of compressed images. We consider a framework where images are represented under the form of linear measurements due to low complexity sensing or security requirements. We assume that the images are correlated through the displacement of visual objects due to motion or viewpoint change and the correlation is effectively represented by optical flow or motion field models. The correlation is estimated in the compressed domain by jointly processing the linear measurements. We first show that the correlated images can be efficiently related using a linear operator. Using this linear relationship we then describe the dependencies between images in the compressed domain. We further cast a regularized optimization problem where the correlation is estimated in order to satisfy both data consistency and motion smoothness objectives with a Graph Cut algorithm. We analyze in detail the correlation estimation performance and quantify the penalty due to image compression. Extensive experiments in stereo and video imaging applications show that our novel solution stays competitive with methods that implement complex image reconstruction steps prior to correlation estimation. We finally use the estimated correlation in a novel joint image reconstruction scheme that is based on an optimization problem with sparsity priors on the reconstructed images. Additional experiments show that our correlation estimation algorithm leads to an effective reconstruction of pairs of images in distributed image coding schemes that outperform independent reconstruction algorithms by 2 to 4 dB.
1107.4687
Fence - An Efficient Parser with Ambiguity Support for Model-Driven Language Specification
cs.CL
Model-based language specification has applications in the implementation of language processors, the design of domain-specific languages, model-driven software development, data integration, text mining, natural language processing, and corpus-based induction of models. Model-based language specification decouples language design from language processing and, unlike traditional grammar-driven approaches, which constrain language designers to specific kinds of grammars, it needs general parser generators able to deal with ambiguities. In this paper, we propose Fence, an efficient bottom-up parsing algorithm with lexical and syntactic ambiguity support that enables the use of model-based language specification in practice.
1107.4705
A unified graphical approach to random coding for multi-terminal networks
cs.IT math.IT
A unified approach to the derivation of rate regions for single-hop memoryless networks is presented. A general transmission scheme for any memoryless, single-hop, k-user channel with or without common information, is defined through two steps. The first step is user virtualization: each user is divided into multiple virtual sub-users according to a chosen rate-splitting strategy which preserves the rates of the original messages. This results in an enhanced channel with a possibly larger number of users for which more coding possibilities are available. Moreover, user virtualization provides a simple mechanism to encode common messages to any subset of users. Following user virtualization, the message of each user in the enhanced model is coded using a chosen combination of coded time-sharing, superposition coding and joint binning. A graph is used to represent the chosen coding strategies: nodes in the graph represent codewords while edges represent coding operations. This graph is used to construct a graphical Markov model which illustrates the statistical dependency among codewords that can be introduced by the superposition coding or joint binning. Using this statistical representation of the overall codebook distribution, the error probability of the code is shown to vanish via a unified analysis. The rate bounds that define the achievable rate region are obtained by linking the error analysis to the properties of the graphical Markov model. This proposed framework makes it possible to numerically obtain an achievable rate region by specifying a user virtualization strategy and describing a set of coding operations. The largest achievable rate region can be obtained by considering all the possible rate-splitting strategies and taking the union over all the possible ways to superimpose or bin codewords.
1107.4709
Applications of Derandomization Theory in Coding
cs.DM cs.CC cs.IT math.IT
Randomized techniques play a fundamental role in theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, in particular for the design of efficient algorithms and construction of combinatorial objects. The basic goal in derandomization theory is to eliminate or reduce the need for randomness in such randomized constructions. In this thesis, we explore some applications of the fundamental notions in derandomization theory to problems outside the core of theoretical computer science, and in particular, certain problems related to coding theory. First, we consider the wiretap channel problem which involves a communication system in which an intruder can eavesdrop a limited portion of the transmissions, and construct efficient and information-theoretically optimal communication protocols for this model. Then we consider the combinatorial group testing problem. In this classical problem, one aims to determine a set of defective items within a large population by asking a number of queries, where each query reveals whether a defective item is present within a specified group of items. We use randomness condensers to explicitly construct optimal, or nearly optimal, group testing schemes for a setting where the query outcomes can be highly unreliable, as well as the threshold model where a query returns positive if the number of defectives pass a certain threshold. Finally, we design ensembles of error-correcting codes that achieve the information-theoretic capacity of a large class of communication channels, and then use the obtained ensembles for construction of explicit capacity achieving codes. [This is a shortened version of the actual abstract in the thesis.]
1107.4723
A Semantic Relatedness Measure Based on Combined Encyclopedic, Ontological and Collocational Knowledge
cs.CL
We describe a new semantic relatedness measure combining the Wikipedia-based Explicit Semantic Analysis measure, the WordNet path measure and the mixed collocation index. Our measure achieves the currently highest results on the WS-353 test: a Spearman rho coefficient of 0.79 (vs. 0.75 in (Gabrilovich and Markovitch, 2007)) when applying the measure directly, and a value of 0.87 (vs. 0.78 in (Agirre et al., 2009)) when using the prediction of a polynomial SVM classifier trained on our measure. In the appendix we discuss the adaptation of ESA to 2011 Wikipedia data, as well as various unsuccessful attempts to enhance ESA by filtering at word, sentence, and section level.
1107.4730
Empirical analysis of collective human behavior for extraordinary events in blogosphere
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
To uncover underlying mechanism of collective human dynamics, we survey more than 1.8 billion blog entries and observe the statistical properties of word appearances. We focus on words that show dynamic growth and decay with a tendency to diverge on a certain day. After careful pretreatment and fitting method, we found power laws generally approximate the functional forms of growth and decay with various exponents values between -0.1 and -2.5. We also observe news words whose frequency increase suddenly and decay following power laws. In order to explain these dynamics, we propose a simple model of posting blogs involving a keyword, and its validity is checked directly from the data. The model suggests that bloggers are not only responding to the latest number of blogs but also suffering deadline pressure from the divergence day. Our empirical results can be used for predicting the number of blogs in advance and for estimating the period to return to the normal fluctuation level.
1107.4734
Design of Arabic Diacritical Marks
cs.CL
Diacritical marks play a crucial role in meeting the criteria of usability of typographic text, such as: homogeneity, clarity and legibility. To change the diacritic of a letter in a word could completely change its semantic. The situation is very complicated with multilingual text. Indeed, the problem of design becomes more difficult by the presence of diacritics that come from various scripts; they are used for different purposes, and are controlled by various typographic rules. It is quite challenging to adapt rules from one script to another. This paper aims to study the placement and sizing of diacritical marks in Arabic script, with a comparison with the Latin's case. The Arabic script is cursive and runs from right-to-left; its criteria and rules are quite distinct from those of the Latin script. In the beginning, we compare the difficulty of processing diacritics in both scripts. After, we will study the limits of Latin resolution strategies when applied to Arabic. At the end, we propose an approach to resolve the problem for positioning and resizing diacritics. This strategy includes creating an Arabic font, designed in OpenType format, along with suitable justification in TEX.
1107.4747
The PITA System: Tabling and Answer Subsumption for Reasoning under Uncertainty
cs.AI cs.LO cs.PL
Many real world domains require the representation of a measure of uncertainty. The most common such representation is probability, and the combination of probability with logic programs has given rise to the field of Probabilistic Logic Programming (PLP), leading to languages such as the Independent Choice Logic, Logic Programs with Annotated Disjunctions (LPADs), Problog, PRISM and others. These languages share a similar distribution semantics, and methods have been devised to translate programs between these languages. The complexity of computing the probability of queries to these general PLP programs is very high due to the need to combine the probabilities of explanations that may not be exclusive. As one alternative, the PRISM system reduces the complexity of query answering by restricting the form of programs it can evaluate. As an entirely different alternative, Possibilistic Logic Programs adopt a simpler metric of uncertainty than probability. Each of these approaches -- general PLP, restricted PLP, and Possibilistic Logic Programming -- can be useful in different domains depending on the form of uncertainty to be represented, on the form of programs needed to model problems, and on the scale of the problems to be solved. In this paper, we show how the PITA system, which originally supported the general PLP language of LPADs, can also efficiently support restricted PLP and Possibilistic Logic Programs. PITA relies on tabling with answer subsumption and consists of a transformation along with an API for library functions that interface with answer subsumption.
1107.4763
Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping of High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging based on Riemannian Structure of Orientation Distribution Functions
cs.CV
In this paper, we propose a novel large deformation diffeomorphic registration algorithm to align high angular resolution diffusion images (HARDI) characterized by orientation distribution functions (ODFs). Our proposed algorithm seeks an optimal diffeomorphism of large deformation between two ODF fields in a spatial volume domain and at the same time, locally reorients an ODF in a manner such that it remains consistent with the surrounding anatomical structure. To this end, we first review the Riemannian manifold of ODFs. We then define the reorientation of an ODF when an affine transformation is applied and subsequently, define the diffeomorphic group action to be applied on the ODF based on this reorientation. We incorporate the Riemannian metric of ODFs for quantifying the similarity of two HARDI images into a variational problem defined under the large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping (LDDMM) framework. We finally derive the gradient of the cost function in both Riemannian spaces of diffeomorphisms and the ODFs, and present its numerical implementation. Both synthetic and real brain HARDI data are used to illustrate the performance of our registration algorithm.
1107.4796
Use Pronunciation by Analogy for text to speech system in Persian language
cs.CL
The interest in text to speech synthesis increased in the world .text to speech have been developed formany popular languages such as English, Spanish and French and many researches and developmentshave been applied to those languages. Persian on the other hand, has been given little attentioncompared to other languages of similar importance and the research in Persian is still in its infancy.Persian language possess many difficulty and exceptions that increase complexity of text to speechsystems. For example: short vowels is absent in written text or existence of homograph words. in thispaper we propose a new method for persian text to phonetic that base on pronunciations by analogy inwords, semantic relations and grammatical rules for finding proper phonetic. Keywords:PbA, text to speech, Persian language, FPbA
1107.4797
Multiple Access Demodulation in the Lifted Signal Graph with Spatial Coupling
cs.IT math.IT
Demodulation in a random multiple access channel is considered where the signals are chosen uniformly randomly with unit energy, a model applicable to several modern transmission systems. It is shown that by lifting (replicating) the graph of this system and randomizing the graph connections, a simple iterative cancellation demodulator can be constructed which achieves the same performance as an optimal symbol-by-symbol detector of the original system. The iterative detector has a complexity that is linear in the number of users, while the direct optimal approach is known to be NP-hard. However, the maximal system load of this lifted graph is limited to \alpha<2.07, even for signal-to-noise ratios going to infinity - the system is interference limited. We then show that by introducing spatial coupling between subsequent lifted graphs, and anchoring the initial graphs, this limitation can be avoided and arbitrary system loads are achievable. Our results apply to several well-documented system proposals, such as IDMA, partitioned spreading, and certain forms of MIMO communications.
1107.4822
Optimal Selective Feedback Policies for Opportunistic Beamforming
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the structure of downlink sum-rate maximizing selective decentralized feedback policies for opportunistic beamforming under finite feedback constraints on the average number of mobile users feeding back. Firstly, it is shown that any sum-rate maximizing selective decentralized feedback policy must be a threshold feedback policy. This result holds for all fading channel models with continuous distribution functions. Secondly, the resulting optimum threshold selection problem is analyzed in detail. This is a non-convex optimization problem over finite dimensional Euclidean spaces. By utilizing the theory of majorization, an underlying Schur-concave structure in the sum-rate function is identified, and the sufficient conditions for the optimality of homogenous threshold feedback policies are obtained. Applications of these results are illustrated for well known fading channel models such as Rayleigh, Nakagami and Rician fading channels, along with various engineering and design insights. Rather surprisingly, it is shown that using the same threshold value at all mobile users is not always a rate-wise optimal feedback strategy, even for a network with identical mobile users experiencing statistically the same channel conditions. For the Rayleigh fading channel model, on the other hand, homogenous threshold feedback policies are proven to be rate-wise optimal if multiple orthonormal data carrying beams are used to communicate with multiple mobile users simultaneously.
1107.4838
Payoff-based Inhomogeneous Partially Irrational Play for Potential Game Theoretic Cooperative Control of Multi-agent Systems
cs.SY math.OC
This paper handles a kind of strategic game called potential games and develops a novel learning algorithm Payoff-based Inhomogeneous Partially Irrational Play (PIPIP). The present algorithm is based on Distributed Inhomogeneous Synchronous Learning (DISL) presented in an existing work but, unlike DISL,PIPIP allows agents to make irrational decisions with a specified probability, i.e. agents can choose an action with a low utility from the past actions stored in the memory. Due to the irrational decisions, we can prove convergence in probability of collective actions to potential function maximizers. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the present algorithm through experiments on a sensor coverage problem. It is revealed through the demonstration that the present learning algorithm successfully leads agents to around potential function maximizers even in the presence of undesirable Nash equilibria. We also see through the experiment with a moving density function that PIPIP has adaptability to environmental changes.
1107.4865
Actual Causation in CP-logic
cs.AI
Given a causal model of some domain and a particular story that has taken place in this domain, the problem of actual causation is deciding which of the possible causes for some effect actually caused it. One of the most influential approaches to this problem has been developed by Halpern and Pearl in the context of structural models. In this paper, I argue that this is actually not the best setting for studying this problem. As an alternative, I offer the probabilistic logic programming language of CP-logic. Unlike structural models, CP-logic incorporates the deviant/default distinction that is generally considered an important aspect of actual causation, and it has an explicitly dynamic semantics, which helps to formalize the stories that serve as input to an actual causation problem.
1107.4900
Threshold Improvement of Low-Density Lattice Codes via Spatial Coupling
cs.IT math.IT
Spatially-coupled low-density lattice codes (LDLC) are constructed using protographs. Using Monte Carlo density evolution using single-Gaussian messages, we observe that the threshold of the spatially-coupled LDLC is within 0.22 dB of capacity of the unconstrained power channel. This is in contrast with a 0.5 dB noise threshold for the conventional LDLC lattice construction.
1107.4918
Fluid Flow Complexity in Fracture Networks: Analysis with Graph Theory and LBM
cs.CE
Through this research, embedded synthetic fracture networks in rock masses are studied. To analysis the fluid flow complexity in fracture networks with respect to the variation of connectivity patterns, two different approaches are employed, namely, the Lattice Boltzmann method and graph theory. The Lattice Boltzmann method is used to show the sensitivity of the permeability and fluid velocity distribution to synthetic fracture networks' connectivity patterns. Furthermore, the fracture networks are mapped into the graphs, and the characteristics of these graphs are compared to the main spatial fracture networks. Among different characteristics of networks, we distinguish the modularity of networks and sub-graphs distributions. We map the flow regimes into the proper regions of the network's modularity space. Also, for each type of fluid regime, corresponding motifs shapes are scaled. Implemented power law distributions of fracture length in spatial fracture networks yielded the same node's degree distribution in transformed networks. Two general spatial networks are considered: random networks and networks with "hubness" properties mimicking a spatial damage zone (both with power law distribution of fracture length). In the first case, the fractures are embedded in uniformly distributed fracture sets; the second case covers spatial fracture zones. We prove numerically that the abnormal change (transition) in permeability is controlled by the hub growth rate. Also, comparing LBM results with the characteristic mean length of transformed networks' links shows a reverse relationship between the aforementioned parameters. In addition, the abnormalities in advection through nodes are presented.
1107.4924
Discovering Attractive Products based on Influence Sets
cs.DB
Skyline queries have been widely used as a practical tool for multi-criteria decision analysis and for applications involving preference queries. For example, in a typical online retail application, skyline queries can help customers select the most interesting, among a pool of available, products. Recently, reverse skyline queries have been proposed, highlighting the manufacturer's perspective, i.e. how to determine the expected buyers of a given product. In this work we develop novel algorithms for two important classes of queries involving customer preferences. We first propose a novel algorithm, termed as RSA, for answering reverse skyline queries. We then introduce a new type of queries, namely the k-Most Attractive Candidates k-MAC query. In this type of queries, given a set of existing product specifications P, a set of customer preferences C and a set of new candidate products Q, the k-MAC query returns the set of k candidate products from Q that jointly maximizes the total number of expected buyers, measured as the cardinality of the union of individual reverse skyline sets (i.e., influence sets). Applying existing approaches to solve this problem would require calculating the reverse skyline set for each candidate, which is prohibitively expensive for large data sets. We, thus, propose a batched algorithm for this problem and compare its performance against a branch-and-bound variant that we devise. Both of these algorithms use in their core variants of our RSA algorithm. Our experimental study using both synthetic and real data sets demonstrates that our proposed algorithms outperform existing, or naive solutions to our studied classes of queries.
1107.4935
Public Announcement Logic in Geometric Frameworks
cs.LO cs.GT cs.MA
In this paper we introduce public announcement logic in different geometric frameworks. First, we consider topological models, and then extend our discussion to a more expressive model, namely, subset space models. Furthermore, we prove the completeness of public announcement logic in those frameworks. Moreover, we apply our results to different issues: announcement stabilization, backward induction and persistence.
1107.4937
Instantiation Schemes for Nested Theories
cs.AI
This paper investigates under which conditions instantiation-based proof procedures can be combined in a nested way, in order to mechanically construct new instantiation procedures for richer theories. Interesting applications in the field of verification are emphasized, particularly for handling extensions of the theory of arrays.
1107.4958
Efficient and Accurate Gaussian Image Filtering Using Running Sums
cs.CV
This paper presents a simple and efficient method to convolve an image with a Gaussian kernel. The computation is performed in a constant number of operations per pixel using running sums along the image rows and columns. We investigate the error function used for kernel approximation and its relation to the properties of the input signal. Based on natural image statistics we propose a quadratic form kernel error function so that the output image l2 error is minimized. We apply the proposed approach to approximate the Gaussian kernel by linear combination of constant functions. This results in very efficient Gaussian filtering method. Our experiments show that the proposed technique is faster than state of the art methods while preserving a similar accuracy.
1107.4965
Polar codes for q-ary channels, q=2^r
cs.IT math.IT
We study polarization for nonbinary channels with input alphabet of size q=2^r,r=2,3,... Using Arikan's polarizing kernel H_2, we prove that the virtual channels that arise in the process of polarization converge to q-ary channels with capacity 1,2,...,r bits, and that the total transmission rate approaches the symmetric capacity of the channel. This leads to an explicit transmission scheme for q-ary channels. The error probability of decoding using successive cancellation behaves as exp(-N^\alpha), where N is the code length and {\alpha} is any constant less than 0.5.
1107.4966
Lifted Graphical Models: A Survey
cs.AI cs.LG
This article presents a survey of work on lifted graphical models. We review a general form for a lifted graphical model, a par-factor graph, and show how a number of existing statistical relational representations map to this formalism. We discuss inference algorithms, including lifted inference algorithms, that efficiently compute the answers to probabilistic queries. We also review work in learning lifted graphical models from data. It is our belief that the need for statistical relational models (whether it goes by that name or another) will grow in the coming decades, as we are inundated with data which is a mix of structured and unstructured, with entities and relations extracted in a noisy manner from text, and with the need to reason effectively with this data. We hope that this synthesis of ideas from many different research groups will provide an accessible starting point for new researchers in this expanding field.
1107.4967
Normative design using inductive learning
cs.LO cs.AI cs.LG
In this paper we propose a use-case-driven iterative design methodology for normative frameworks, also called virtual institutions, which are used to govern open systems. Our computational model represents the normative framework as a logic program under answer set semantics (ASP). By means of an inductive logic programming approach, implemented using ASP, it is possible to synthesise new rules and revise the existing ones. The learning mechanism is guided by the designer who describes the desired properties of the framework through use cases, comprising (i) event traces that capture possible scenarios, and (ii) a state that describes the desired outcome. The learning process then proposes additional rules, or changes to current rules, to satisfy the constraints expressed in the use cases. Thus, the contribution of this paper is a process for the elaboration and revision of a normative framework by means of a semi-automatic and iterative process driven from specifications of (un)desirable behaviour. The process integrates a novel and general methodology for theory revision based on ASP.
1107.4969
An end-to-end machine learning system for harmonic analysis of music
cs.SD cs.AI cs.MM
We present a new system for simultaneous estimation of keys, chords, and bass notes from music audio. It makes use of a novel chromagram representation of audio that takes perception of loudness into account. Furthermore, it is fully based on machine learning (instead of expert knowledge), such that it is potentially applicable to a wider range of genres as long as training data is available. As compared to other models, the proposed system is fast and memory efficient, while achieving state-of-the-art performance.
1107.4985
Variational Gaussian Process Dynamical Systems
stat.ML cs.AI cs.CV math.PR
High dimensional time series are endemic in applications of machine learning such as robotics (sensor data), computational biology (gene expression data), vision (video sequences) and graphics (motion capture data). Practical nonlinear probabilistic approaches to this data are required. In this paper we introduce the variational Gaussian process dynamical system. Our work builds on recent variational approximations for Gaussian process latent variable models to allow for nonlinear dimensionality reduction simultaneously with learning a dynamical prior in the latent space. The approach also allows for the appropriate dimensionality of the latent space to be automatically determined. We demonstrate the model on a human motion capture data set and a series of high resolution video sequences.
1107.5000
An iterative feature selection method for GRNs inference by exploring topological properties
cs.CV cs.AI cs.IT math.IT q-bio.MN
An important problem in bioinformatics is the inference of gene regulatory networks (GRN) from temporal expression profiles. In general, the main limitations faced by GRN inference methods is the small number of samples with huge dimensionalities and the noisy nature of the expression measurements. In face of these limitations, alternatives are needed to get better accuracy on the GRNs inference problem. This work addresses this problem by presenting an alternative feature selection method that applies prior knowledge on its search strategy, called SFFS-BA. The proposed search strategy is based on the Sequential Floating Forward Selection (SFFS) algorithm, with the inclusion of a scale-free (Barab\'asi-Albert) topology information in order to guide the search process to improve inference. The proposed algorithm explores the scale-free property by pruning the search space and using a power law as a weight for reducing it. In this way, the search space traversed by the SFFS-BA method combines a breadth-first search when the number of combinations is small (<k> <= 2) with a depth-first search when the number of combinations becomes explosive (<k> >= 3), being guided by the scale-free prior information. Experimental results show that the SFFS-BA provides a better inference similarities than SFS and SFFS, keeping the robustness of the SFS and SFFS methods, thus presenting very good results.
1107.5108
Cooperative Estimation of 3D Target Motion via Networked Visual Motion Observer
cs.SY math.OC
This paper investigates cooperative estimation of 3D target object motion for visual sensor networks. In particular, we consider the situation where multiple smart vision cameras see a group of target objects. The objective here is to meet two requirements simultaneously: averaging for static objects and tracking to moving target objects. For this purpose, we present a cooperative estimation mechanism called networked visual motion observer. We then derive an upper bound of the ultimate error between the actual average and the estimates produced by the present networked estimation mechanism. Moreover, we also analyze the tracking performance of the estimates to moving target objects. Finally the effectiveness of the networked visual motion observer is demonstrated through simulation.
1107.5114
Fast and Scalable Analysis of Massive Social Graphs
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Graph analysis is a critical component of applications such as online social networks, protein interactions in biological networks, and Internet traffic analysis. The arrival of massive graphs with hundreds of millions of nodes, e.g. social graphs, presents a unique challenge to graph analysis applications. Most of these applications rely on computing distances between node pairs, which for large graphs can take minutes to compute using traditional algorithms such as breadth-first-search (BFS). In this paper, we study ways to enable scalable graph processing on today's massive graphs. We explore the design space of graph coordinate systems, a new approach that accurately approximates node distances in constant time by embedding graphs into coordinate spaces. We show that a hyperbolic embedding produces relatively low distortion error, and propose Rigel, a hyperbolic graph coordinate system that lends itself to efficient parallelization across a compute cluster. Rigel produces significantly more accurate results than prior systems, and is naturally parallelizable across compute clusters, allowing it to provide accurate results for graphs up to 43 million nodes. Finally, we show that Rigel's functionality can be easily extended to locate (near-) shortest paths between node pairs. After a one- time preprocessing cost, Rigel answers node-distance queries in 10's of microseconds, and also produces shortest path results up to 18 times faster than prior shortest-path systems with similar levels of accuracy.
1107.5123
Achievable Secrecy Sum-Rate in a Fading MAC-WT with Power Control and without CSI of Eavesdropper
cs.IT math.IT
We consider a two user fading Multiple Access Channel with a wire-tapper (MAC-WT) where the transmitter has the channel state information (CSI) to the intended receiver but not to the eavesdropper (eve). We provide an achievable secrecy sum-rate with optimal power control. We next provide a secrecy sum-rate with optimal power control and cooperative jamming (CJ). We then study an achievable secrecy sum rate by employing an ON/OFF power control scheme which is more easily computable. We also employ CJ over this power control scheme. Results show that CJ boosts the secrecy sum-rate significantly even if we do not know the CSI of the eve's channel. At high SNR, the secrecy sum-rate (with CJ) without CSI of the eve exceeds the secrecy sum-rate (without CJ) with full CSI of the eve.
1107.5186
Fast multi-scale edge-detection in medical ultrasound signals
cs.CV physics.med-ph
In this article we suggest a fast multi-scale edge-detection scheme for medical ultrasound signals. The edge-detector is based on well-known properties of the continuous wavelet trans- form. To achieve both good localization of edges and detect only significant edges, we study the maxima-lines of the wavelet transform. One can obtain the maxima-lines between two scales by computing the wavelet transform at several intermediate scales. To reduce computational effort and time we suggest a time-scale filtering procedure which uses only few scales to connect modulus-maxima across time-scale plane. The design of this procedure is based on a study of maxima-lines corresponding to edges typical for medical ultrasound signals. This study allows us to construct an algorithm for medical ultrasound signals which meets the demand for speed, but not on expense of reliability. The edge-detection algorithm has been applied to a large class of medical ultrasound sig- nals including tumour-, liver- and artery-images. Our results show that the proposed algorithm effectively detects major features in such signals, including edges with low contrast.
1107.5187
Solvability of the $H^\infty$ algebraic Riccati equation in Banach algebras
math.OC cs.SY math.AP math.FA math.RA
Let $R$ be a commutative complex unital semisimple Banach algebra with the involution $\cdot ^\star$. Sufficient conditions are given for the existence of a stabilizing solution to the $H^\infty$ Riccati equation when the matricial data has entries from $R$. Applications to spatially distributed systems are discussed.
1107.5203
Sparse approximation property and stable recovery of sparse signals from noisy measurements
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we introduce a sparse approximation property of order $s$ for a measurement matrix ${\bf A}$: $$\|{\bf x}_s\|_2\le D \|{\bf A}{\bf x}\|_2+ \beta \frac{\sigma_s({\bf x})}{\sqrt{s}} \quad {\rm for\ all} \ {\bf x},$$ where ${\bf x}_s$ is the best $s$-sparse approximation of the vector ${\bf x}$ in $\ell^2$, $\sigma_s({\bf x})$ is the $s$-sparse approximation error of the vector ${\bf x}$ in $\ell^1$, and $D$ and $\beta$ are positive constants. The sparse approximation property for a measurement matrix can be thought of as a weaker version of its restricted isometry property and a stronger version of its null space property. In this paper, we show that the sparse approximation property is an appropriate condition on a measurement matrix to consider stable recovery of any compressible signal from its noisy measurements. In particular, we show that any compressible signalcan be stably recovered from its noisy measurements via solving an $\ell^1$-minimization problem if the measurement matrix has the sparse approximation property with $\beta\in (0,1)$, and conversely the measurement matrix has the sparse approximation property with $\beta\in (0,\infty)$ if any compressible signal can be stably recovered from its noisy measurements via solving an $\ell^1$-minimization problem.
1107.5236
Submodular Optimization for Efficient Semi-supervised Support Vector Machines
cs.LG cs.AI
In this work we present a quadratic programming approximation of the Semi-Supervised Support Vector Machine (S3VM) problem, namely approximate QP-S3VM, that can be efficiently solved using off the shelf optimization packages. We prove that this approximate formulation establishes a relation between the low density separation and the graph-based models of semi-supervised learning (SSL) which is important to develop a unifying framework for semi-supervised learning methods. Furthermore, we propose the novel idea of representing SSL problems as submodular set functions and use efficient submodular optimization algorithms to solve them. Using this new idea we develop a representation of the approximate QP-S3VM as a maximization of a submodular set function which makes it possible to optimize using efficient greedy algorithms. We demonstrate that the proposed methods are accurate and provide significant improvement in time complexity over the state of the art in the literature.
1107.5241
Flooding Time in Opportunistic Networks under Power Law and Exponential Inter-Contact Times
cs.SI
Performance bounds for opportunistic networks have been derived in a number of recent papers for several key quantities, such as the expected delivery time of a unicast message, or the flooding time (a measure of how fast information spreads). However, to the best of our knowledge, none of the existing results is derived under a mobility model which is able to reproduce the power law+exponential tail dichotomy of the pairwise node inter-contact time distribution which has been observed in traces of several real opportunistic networks. The contributions of this paper are two-fold: first, we present a simple pairwise contact model -- called the Home-MEG model -- for opportunistic networks based on the observation made in previous work that pairs of nodes in the network tend to meet in very few, selected locations (home locations); this contact model is shown to be able to faithfully reproduce the power law+exponential tail dichotomy of inter-contact time. Second, we use the Home-MEG model to analyze flooding time in opportunistic networks, presenting asymptotic bounds on flooding time that assume different initial conditions for the existence of opportunistic links. Finally, our bounds provide some analytical evidences that the speed of information spreading in opportunistic networks can be much faster than that predicted by simple geometric mobility models.
1107.5242
ALPprolog --- A New Logic Programming Method for Dynamic Domains
cs.LO cs.AI
Logic programming is a powerful paradigm for programming autonomous agents in dynamic domains, as witnessed by languages such as Golog and Flux. In this work we present ALPprolog, an expressive, yet efficient, logic programming language for the online control of agents that have to reason about incomplete information and sensing actions.
1107.5266
Identifying Overlapping and Hierarchical Thematic Structures in Networks of Scholarly Papers: A Comparison of Three Approaches
physics.soc-ph cs.DL cs.SI
We implemented three recently proposed approaches to the identification of overlapping and hierarchical substructures in graphs and applied the corresponding algorithms to a network of 492 information-science papers coupled via their cited sources. The thematic substructures obtained and overlaps produced by the three hierarchical cluster algorithms were compared to a content-based categorisation, which we based on the interpretation of titles and keywords. We defined sets of papers dealing with three topics located on different levels of aggregation: h-index, webometrics, and bibliometrics. We identified these topics with branches in the dendrograms produced by the three cluster algorithms and compared the overlapping topics they detected with one another and with the three pre-defined paper sets. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of applying the three approaches to paper networks in research fields.
1107.5279
Information-theoretically Secure Regenerating Codes for Distributed Storage
cs.IT cs.DC cs.NI math.IT
Regenerating codes are a class of codes for distributed storage networks that provide reliability and availability of data, and also perform efficient node repair. Another important aspect of a distributed storage network is its security. In this paper, we consider a threat model where an eavesdropper may gain access to the data stored in a subset of the storage nodes, and possibly also, to the data downloaded during repair of some nodes. We provide explicit constructions of regenerating codes that achieve information-theoretic secrecy capacity in this setting.
1107.5348
Decision Making for Rapid Information Acquisition in the Reconnaissance of Random Fields
cs.SY math.OC
Research into several aspects of robot-enabled reconnaissance of random fields is reported. The work has two major components: the underlying theory of information acquisition in the exploration of unknown fields and the results of experiments on how humans use sensor-equipped robots to perform a simulated reconnaissance exercise. The theoretical framework reported herein extends work on robotic exploration that has been reported by ourselves and others. Several new figures of merit for evaluating exploration strategies are proposed and compared. Using concepts from differential topology and information theory, we develop the theoretical foundation of search strategies aimed at rapid discovery of topological features (locations of critical points and critical level sets) of a priori unknown differentiable random fields. The theory enables study of efficient reconnaissance strategies in which the tradeoff between speed and accuracy can be understood. The proposed approach to rapid discovery of topological features has led in a natural way to to the creation of parsimonious reconnaissance routines that do not rely on any prior knowledge of the environment. The design of topology-guided search protocols uses a mathematical framework that quantifies the relationship between what is discovered and what remains to be discovered. The quantification rests on an information theory inspired model whose properties allow us to treat search as a problem in optimal information acquisition. A central theme in this approach is that "conservative" and "aggressive" search strategies can be precisely defined, and search decisions regarding "exploration" vs. "exploitation" choices are informed by the rate at which the information metric is changing.
1107.5349
Multi Layer Analysis
cs.CV cs.DS cs.LG q-bio.QM
This thesis presents a new methodology to analyze one-dimensional signals trough a new approach called Multi Layer Analysis, for short MLA. It also provides some new insights on the relationship between one-dimensional signals processed by MLA and tree kernels, test of randomness and signal processing techniques. The MLA approach has a wide range of application to the fields of pattern discovery and matching, computational biology and many other areas of computer science and signal processing. This thesis includes also some applications of this approach to real problems in biology and seismology.
1107.5354
Replicator Dynamics of Co-Evolving Networks
cs.GT cs.SI q-bio.PE
We propose a simple model of network co-evolution in a game-dynamical system of interacting agents that play repeated games with their neighbors, and adapt their behaviors and network links based on the outcome of those games. The adaptation is achieved through a simple reinforcement learning scheme. We show that the collective evolution of such a system can be described by appropriately defined replicator dynamics equations. In particular, we suggest an appropriate factorization of the agents' strategies that results in a coupled system of equations characterizing the evolution of both strategies and network structure, and illustrate the framework on two simple examples.
1107.5355
A Practical Approach to Polar Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we study polar codes from a practical point of view. In particular, we study concatenated polar codes and rate-compatible polar codes. First, we propose a concatenation scheme including polar codes and Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes. We will show that our proposed scheme outperforms conventional concatenation schemes formed by LDPC and Reed-Solomon (RS) codes. We then study two rate-compatible coding schemes using polar codes. We will see that polar codes can be designed as universally capacity achieving rate-compatible codes over a set of physically degraded channels. We also study the effect of puncturing on polar codes to design rate-compatible codes.
1107.5387
Controlling wheelchairs by body motions: A learning framework for the adaptive remapping of space
cs.RO cs.AI cs.NE
Learning to operate a vehicle is generally accomplished by forming a new cognitive map between the body motions and extrapersonal space. Here, we consider the challenge of remapping movement-to-space representations in survivors of spinal cord injury, for the control of powered wheelchairs. Our goal is to facilitate this remapping by developing interfaces between residual body motions and navigational commands that exploit the degrees of freedom that disabled individuals are most capable to coordinate. We present a new framework for allowing spinal cord injured persons to control powered wheelchairs through signals derived from their residual mobility. The main novelty of this approach lies in substituting the more common joystick controllers of powered wheelchairs with a sensor shirt. This allows the whole upper body of the user to operate as an adaptive joystick. Considerations about learning and risks have lead us to develop a safe testing environment in 3D Virtual Reality. A Personal Augmented Reality Immersive System (PARIS) allows us to analyse learning skills and provide users with an adequate training to control a simulated wheelchair through the signals generated by body motions in a safe environment. We provide a description of the basic theory, of the development phases and of the operation of the complete system. We also present preliminary results illustrating the processing of the data and supporting of the feasibility of this approach.
1107.5448
Importance Sampling for Multiscale Diffusions
math.PR cs.SY math.OC
We construct importance sampling schemes for stochastic differential equations with small noise and fast oscillating coefficients. Standard Monte Carlo methods perform poorly for these problems in the small noise limit. With multiscale processes there are additional complications, and indeed the straightforward adaptation of methods for standard small noise diffusions will not produce efficient schemes. Using the subsolution approach we construct schemes and identify conditions under which the schemes will be asymptotically optimal. Examples and simulation results are provided.
1107.5462
HyFlex: A Benchmark Framework for Cross-domain Heuristic Search
cs.AI
Automating the design of heuristic search methods is an active research field within computer science, artificial intelligence and operational research. In order to make these methods more generally applicable, it is important to eliminate or reduce the role of the human expert in the process of designing an effective methodology to solve a given computational search problem. Researchers developing such methodologies are often constrained on the number of problem domains on which to test their adaptive, self-configuring algorithms; which can be explained by the inherent difficulty of implementing their corresponding domain specific software components. This paper presents HyFlex, a software framework for the development of cross-domain search methodologies. The framework features a common software interface for dealing with different combinatorial optimisation problems, and provides the algorithm components that are problem specific. In this way, the algorithm designer does not require a detailed knowledge the problem domains, and thus can concentrate his/her efforts in designing adaptive general-purpose heuristic search algorithms. Four hard combinatorial problems are fully implemented (maximum satisfiability, one dimensional bin packing, permutation flow shop and personnel scheduling), each containing a varied set of instance data (including real-world industrial applications) and an extensive set of problem specific heuristics and search operators. The framework forms the basis for the first International Cross-domain Heuristic Search Challenge (CHeSC), and it is currently in use by the international research community. In summary, HyFlex represents a valuable new benchmark of heuristic search generality, with which adaptive cross-domain algorithms are being easily developed, and reliably compared.
1107.5469
A small world of citations? The influence of collaboration networks on citation practices
physics.soc-ph cs.DL cs.SI
This paper examines the proximity of authors to those they cite using degrees of separation in a co-author network, essentially using collaboration networks to expand on the notion of self-citations. While the proportion of direct self-citations (including co-authors of both citing and cited papers) is relatively constant in time and across specialties in the natural sciences (10% of citations) and the social sciences (20%), the same cannot be said for citations to authors who are members of the co-author network. Differences between fields and trends over time lie not only in the degree of co-authorship which defines the large-scale topology of the collaboration network, but also in the referencing practices within a given discipline, computed by defining a propensity to cite at a given distance within the collaboration network. Overall, there is little tendency to cite those nearby in the collaboration network, excluding direct self-citations. By analyzing these social references, we characterize the social capital of local collaboration networks in terms of the knowledge production within scientific fields. These results have implications for the long-standing debate over biases common to most types of citation analysis, and for understanding citation practices across scientific disciplines over the past 50 years. In addition, our findings have important practical implications for the availability of 'arm's length' expert reviewers of grant applications and manuscripts.
1107.5474
Selecting Attributes for Sport Forecasting using Formal Concept Analysis
cs.AI
In order to address complex systems, apply pattern recongnition on their evolution could play an key role to understand their dynamics. Global patterns are required to detect emergent concepts and trends, some of them with qualitative nature. Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is a theory whose goal is to discover and to extract Knowledge from qualitative data. It provides tools for reasoning with implication basis (and association rules). Implications and association rules are usefull to reasoning on previously selected attributes, providing a formal foundation for logical reasoning. In this paper we analyse how to apply FCA reasoning to increase confidence in sports betting, by means of detecting temporal regularities from data. It is applied to build a Knowledge-Based system for confidence reasoning.
1107.5520
Axioms for Rational Reinforcement Learning
cs.LG
We provide a formal, simple and intuitive theory of rational decision making including sequential decisions that affect the environment. The theory has a geometric flavor, which makes the arguments easy to visualize and understand. Our theory is for complete decision makers, which means that they have a complete set of preferences. Our main result shows that a complete rational decision maker implicitly has a probabilistic model of the environment. We have a countable version of this result that brings light on the issue of countable vs finite additivity by showing how it depends on the geometry of the space which we have preferences over. This is achieved through fruitfully connecting rationality with the Hahn-Banach Theorem. The theory presented here can be viewed as a formalization and extension of the betting odds approach to probability of Ramsey and De Finetti.
1107.5523
An Algebraic Approach for Decoding Spread Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we study spread codes: a family of constant-dimension codes for random linear network coding. In other words, the codewords are full-rank matrices of size (k x n) with entries in a finite field F_q. Spread codes are a family of optimal codes with maximal minimum distance. We give a minimum-distance decoding algorithm which requires O((n-k)k^3) operations over an extension field F_{q^k}. Our algorithm is more efficient than the previous ones in the literature, when the dimension k of the codewords is small with respect to n. The decoding algorithm takes advantage of the algebraic structure of the code, and it uses original results on minors of a matrix and on the factorization of polynomials over finite fields.
1107.5528
Time Consistent Discounting
cs.AI cs.SY math.OC
A possibly immortal agent tries to maximise its summed discounted rewards over time, where discounting is used to avoid infinite utilities and encourage the agent to value current rewards more than future ones. Some commonly used discount functions lead to time-inconsistent behavior where the agent changes its plan over time. These inconsistencies can lead to very poor behavior. We generalise the usual discounted utility model to one where the discount function changes with the age of the agent. We then give a simple characterisation of time-(in)consistent discount functions and show the existence of a rational policy for an agent that knows its discount function is time-inconsistent.
1107.5531
Universal Prediction of Selected Bits
cs.LG cs.IT math.IT
Many learning tasks can be viewed as sequence prediction problems. For example, online classification can be converted to sequence prediction with the sequence being pairs of input/target data and where the goal is to correctly predict the target data given input data and previous input/target pairs. Solomonoff induction is known to solve the general sequence prediction problem, but only if the entire sequence is sampled from a computable distribution. In the case of classification and discriminative learning though, only the targets need be structured (given the inputs). We show that the normalised version of Solomonoff induction can still be used in this case, and more generally that it can detect any recursive sub-pattern (regularity) within an otherwise completely unstructured sequence. It is also shown that the unnormalised version can fail to predict very simple recursive sub-patterns.
1107.5537
Asymptotically Optimal Agents
cs.AI cs.LG
Artificial general intelligence aims to create agents capable of learning to solve arbitrary interesting problems. We define two versions of asymptotic optimality and prove that no agent can satisfy the strong version while in some cases, depending on discounting, there does exist a non-computable weak asymptotically optimal agent.
1107.5541
Closed Form Secrecy Capacity of MIMO Wiretap Channels with Two Transmit Antennas
cs.IT math.IT
A Gaussian multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel model is considered. The input is a two-antenna transmitter, while the outputs are the legitimate receiver and an eavesdropper, both equipped with multiple antennas. All channels are assumed to be known. The problem of obtaining the optimal input covariance matrix that achieves secrecy capacity subject to a power constraint is addressed, and a closed-form expression for the secrecy capacity is obtained.
1107.5543
Coevolution of Network Structure and Content
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
As individuals communicate, their exchanges form a dynamic network. We demonstrate, using time series analysis of communication in three online settings, that network structure alone can be highly revealing of the diversity and novelty of the information being communicated. Our approach uses both standard and novel network metrics to characterize how unexpected a network configuration is, and to capture a network's ability to conduct information. We find that networks with a higher conductance in link structure exhibit higher information entropy, while unexpected network configurations can be tied to information novelty. We use a simulation model to explain the observed correspondence between the evolution of a network's structure and the information it carries.
1107.5605
Singular Perturbation Approximations for a Class of Linear Quantum Systems
cs.SY math.OC quant-ph
This paper considers the use of singular perturbation approximations for a class of linear quantum systems arising in the area of linear quantum optics. The paper presents results on the physical realizability properties of the approximate system arising from singular perturbation model reduction.
1107.5607
Low Frequency Approximation for a class of Linear Quantum Systems using Cascade Cavity Realization
cs.SY math.OC quant-ph
This paper presents a method for approximating a class of complex transfer function matrices corresponding to physically realizable complex linear quantum systems. The class of linear quantum systems under consideration includes interconnections of passive optical components such as cavities, beam-splitters, phase-shifters and interferometers. This approximation method builds on a previous result for cascade realization and gives good approximations at low frequencies.
1107.5615
Lagrange Stabilization of Pendulum-like Systems: A Pseudo H-infinity Control Approach
cs.SY math.OC
This paper studies the Lagrange stabilization of a class of nonlinear systems whose linear part has a singular system matrix and which have multiple periodic (in state) nonlinearities. Both state and output feedback Lagrange stabilization problems are considered. The paper develops a pseudo H-infinity control theory to solve these stabilization problems. In a similar fashion to the Strict Bounded Real Lemma in classic H-infinity control theory, a Pseudo Strict Bounded Real Lemma is established for systems with a single unstable pole. Sufficient conditions for the synthesis of state feedback and output feedback controllers are given to ensure that the closed-loop system is pseudo strict bounded real. The pseudo H-infinity control approach is applied to solve state feedback and output feedback Lagrange stabilization problems for nonlinear systems with multiple nonlinearities. An example is given to illustrate the proposed method.
1107.5620
A bounded confidence approach to understanding user participation in peer production systems
physics.soc-ph cs.CY cs.SI
Commons-based peer production does seem to rest upon a paradox. Although users produce all contents, at the same time participation is commonly on a voluntary basis, and largely incentivized by achievement of project's goals. This means that users have to coordinate their actions and goals, in order to keep themselves from leaving. While this situation is easily explainable for small groups of highly committed, like-minded individuals, little is known about large-scale, heterogeneous projects, such as Wikipedia. In this contribution we present a model of peer production in a large online community. The model features a dynamic population of bounded confidence users, and an endogenous process of user departure. Using global sensitivity analysis, we identify the most important parameters affecting the lifespan of user participation. We find that the model presents two distinct regimes, and that the shift between them is governed by the bounded confidence parameter. For low values of this parameter, users depart almost immediately. For high values, however, the model produces a bimodal distribution of user lifespan. These results suggest that user participation to online communities could be explained in terms of group consensus, and provide a novel connection between models of opinion dynamics and commons-based peer production.
1107.5637
Quantization of Binary-Input Discrete Memoryless Channels
cs.IT math.IT
The quantization of the output of a binary-input discrete memoryless channel to a smaller number of levels is considered. An algorithm which finds an optimal quantizer, in the sense of maximizing mutual information between the channel input and the quantizer output is given. This result holds for arbitrary channels, in contrast to previous results for restricted channels or a restricted number of quantizer outputs. In the worst case, the algorithm complexity is cubic $M^3$ in the number of channel outputs $M$. Optimality is proved using the theorem of Burshtein, Della Pietra, Kanevsky, and N\'adas for mappings which minimize average impurity for classification and regression trees.
1107.5638
Model Based Synthesis of Control Software from System Level Formal Specifications
cs.SE cs.SY
Many Embedded Systems are indeed Software Based Control Systems, that is control systems whose controller consists of control software running on a microcontroller device. This motivates investigation on Formal Model Based Design approaches for automatic synthesis of embedded systems control software. We present an algorithm, along with a tool QKS implementing it, that from a formal model (as a Discrete Time Linear Hybrid System) of the controlled system (plant), implementation specifications (that is, number of bits in the Analog-to-Digital, AD, conversion) and System Level Formal Specifications (that is, safety and liveness requirements for the closed loop system) returns correct-by-construction control software that has a Worst Case Execution Time (WCET) linear in the number of AD bits and meets the given specifications. We show feasibility of our approach by presenting experimental results on using it to synthesize control software for a buck DC-DC converter, a widely used mixed-mode analog circuit, and for the inverted pendulum.
1107.5645
Minimization of Storage Cost in Distributed Storage Systems with Repair Consideration
cs.IT cs.DC math.IT
In a distributed storage system, the storage costs of different storage nodes, in general, can be different. How to store a file in a given set of storage nodes so as to minimize the total storage cost is investigated. By analyzing the min-cut constraints of the information flow graph, the feasible region of the storage capacities of the nodes can be determined. The storage cost minimization can then be reduced to a linear programming problem, which can be readily solved. Moreover, the tradeoff between storage cost and repair-bandwidth is established.
1107.5646
Temporal motifs in time-dependent networks
physics.data-an cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Temporal networks are commonly used to represent systems where connections between elements are active only for restricted periods of time, such as networks of telecommunication, neural signal processing, biochemical reactions and human social interactions. We introduce the framework of temporal motifs to study the mesoscale topological-temporal structure of temporal networks in which the events of nodes do not overlap in time. Temporal motifs are classes of similar event sequences, where the similarity refers not only to topology but also to the temporal order of the events. We provide a mapping from event sequences to colored directed graphs that enables an efficient algorithm for identifying temporal motifs. We discuss some aspects of temporal motifs, including causality and null models, and present basic statistics of temporal motifs in a large mobile call network.
1107.5654
Interest-Based vs. Social Person-Recommenders in Social Networking Platforms
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
Social network based approaches to person recommendations are compared to interest based approaches with the help of an empirical study on a large German social networking platform. We assess and compare the performance of different basic variants of the two approaches by precision / recall based performance with respect to reproducing known friendship relations and by an empirical questionnaire based study. In accordance to expectation, the results show that interest based person recommenders are able to produce more novel recommendations while performing less well with respect to friendship reproduction. With respect to the user's assessment of recommendation quality all approaches perform comparably well, while combined social-interest-based variants are slightly ahead in performance. The overall results qualify those combined approaches as a good compromise.
1107.5661
On the Impact of Random Index-Partitioning on Index Compression
cs.IR
The performance of processing search queries depends heavily on the stored index size. Accordingly, considerable research efforts have been devoted to the development of efficient compression techniques for inverted indexes. Roughly, index compression relies on two factors: the ordering of the indexed documents, which strives to position similar documents in proximity, and the encoding of the inverted lists that result from the ordered stream of documents. Large commercial search engines index tens of billions of pages of the ever growing Web. The sheer size of their indexes dictates the distribution of documents among thousands of servers in a scheme called local index-partitioning, such that each server indexes only several millions pages. Due to engineering and runtime performance considerations, random distribution of documents to servers is common. However, random index-partitioning among many servers adversely impacts the resulting index sizes, as it decreases the effectiveness of document ordering schemes. We study the impact of random index-partitioning on document ordering schemes. We show that index-partitioning decreases the aggregated size of the inverted lists logarithmically with the number of servers, when documents within each server are randomly reordered. On the other hand, the aggregated partitioned index size increases logarithmically with the number of servers, when state-of-the-art document ordering schemes, such as lexical URL sorting and clustering with TSP, are applied. Finally, we justify the common practice of randomly distributing documents to servers, as we qualitatively show that despite its ill-effects on the ensuing compression, it decreases key factors in distributed query evaluation time by an order of magnitude as compared with partitioning techniques that compress better.
1107.5671
Automatic Network Reconstruction using ASP
cs.LG
Building biological models by inferring functional dependencies from experimental data is an im- portant issue in Molecular Biology. To relieve the biologist from this traditionally manual process, various approaches have been proposed to increase the degree of automation. However, available ap- proaches often yield a single model only, rely on specific assumptions, and/or use dedicated, heuris- tic algorithms that are intolerant to changing circumstances or requirements in the view of the rapid progress made in Biotechnology. Our aim is to provide a declarative solution to the problem by ap- peal to Answer Set Programming (ASP) overcoming these difficulties. We build upon an existing approach to Automatic Network Reconstruction proposed by part of the authors. This approach has firm mathematical foundations and is well suited for ASP due to its combinatorial flavor providing a characterization of all models explaining a set of experiments. The usage of ASP has several ben- efits over the existing heuristic algorithms. First, it is declarative and thus transparent for biological experts. Second, it is elaboration tolerant and thus allows for an easy exploration and incorporation of biological constraints. Third, it allows for exploring the entire space of possible models. Finally, our approach offers an excellent performance, matching existing, special-purpose systems.
1107.5676
Structural Analysis of Laplacian Spectral Properties of Large-Scale Networks
math.OC cs.CE cs.DM cs.SI cs.SY physics.data-an physics.soc-ph
Using methods from algebraic graph theory and convex optimization, we study the relationship between local structural features of a network and spectral properties of its Laplacian matrix. In particular, we derive expressions for the so-called spectral moments of the Laplacian matrix of a network in terms of a collection of local structural measurements. Furthermore, we propose a series of semidefinite programs to compute bounds on the spectral radius and the spectral gap of the Laplacian matrix from a truncated sequence of Laplacian spectral moments. Our analysis shows that the Laplacian spectral moments and spectral radius are strongly constrained by local structural features of the network. On the other hand, we illustrate how local structural features are usually not enough to estimate the Laplacian spectral gap.
1107.5708
Perfect Codes for Uniform Chains Poset Metrics
cs.IT math.CO math.IT
The class of poset metrics is very large and contains some interesting families of metrics. A family of metrics, based on posets which are formed from disjoint chains which have the same size, is examined. A necessary and sufficient condition, for the existence of perfect single-error-correcting codes for such poset metrics, is proved.
1107.5728
The network of global corporate control
q-fin.GN cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic "super-entity" that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.
1107.5730
On the Role of Diversity in Sparsity Estimation
cs.IT math.IT
A major challenge in sparsity pattern estimation is that small modes are difficult to detect in the presence of noise. This problem is alleviated if one can observe samples from multiple realizations of the nonzero values for the same sparsity pattern. We will refer to this as "diversity". Diversity comes at a price, however, since each new realization adds new unknown nonzero values, thus increasing uncertainty. In this paper, upper and lower bounds on joint sparsity pattern estimation are derived. These bounds, which improve upon existing results even in the absence of diversity, illustrate key tradeoffs between the number of measurements, the accuracy of estimation, and the diversity. It is shown, for instance, that diversity introduces a tradeoff between the uncertainty in the noise and the uncertainty in the nonzero values. Moreover, it is shown that the optimal amount of diversity significantly improves the behavior of the estimation problem for both optimal and computationally efficient estimators.
1107.5742
Complex Optimization in Answer Set Programming
cs.LO cs.AI
Preference handling and optimization are indispensable means for addressing non-trivial applications in Answer Set Programming (ASP). However, their implementation becomes difficult whenever they bring about a significant increase in computational complexity. As a consequence, existing ASP systems do not offer complex optimization capacities, supporting, for instance, inclusion-based minimization or Pareto efficiency. Rather, such complex criteria are typically addressed by resorting to dedicated modeling techniques, like saturation. Unlike the ease of common ASP modeling, however, these techniques are rather involved and hardly usable by ASP laymen. We address this problem by developing a general implementation technique by means of meta-programming, thus reusing existing ASP systems to capture various forms of qualitative preferences among answer sets. In this way, complex preferences and optimization capacities become readily available for ASP applications.
1107.5743
NEMO: Extraction and normalization of organization names from PubMed affiliation strings
cs.CL
We propose NEMO, a system for extracting organization names in the affiliation and normalizing them to a canonical organization name. Our parsing process involves multi-layered rule matching with multiple dictionaries. The system achieves more than 98% f-score in extracting organization names. Our process of normalization that involves clustering based on local sequence alignment metrics and local learning based on finding connected components. A high precision was also observed in normalization. NEMO is the missing link in associating each biomedical paper and its authors to an organization name in its canonical form and the Geopolitical location of the organization. This research could potentially help in analyzing large social networks of organizations for landscaping a particular topic, improving performance of author disambiguation, adding weak links in the co-author network of authors, augmenting NLM's MARS system for correcting errors in OCR output of affiliation field, and automatically indexing the PubMed citations with the normalized organization name and country. Our system is available as a graphical user interface available for download along with this paper.
1107.5744
BioSimplify: an open source sentence simplification engine to improve recall in automatic biomedical information extraction
cs.CL
BioSimplify is an open source tool written in Java that introduces and facilitates the use of a novel model for sentence simplification tuned for automatic discourse analysis and information extraction (as opposed to sentence simplification for improving human readability). The model is based on a "shot-gun" approach that produces many different (simpler) versions of the original sentence by combining variants of its constituent elements. This tool is optimized for processing biomedical scientific literature such as the abstracts indexed in PubMed. We tested our tool on its impact to the task of PPI extraction and it improved the f-score of the PPI tool by around 7%, with an improvement in recall of around 20%. The BioSimplify tool and test corpus can be downloaded from https://biosimplify.sourceforge.net.
1107.5752
An Effective Approach to Biomedical Information Extraction with Limited Training Data
cs.CL
Overall, the two main contributions of this work include the application of sentence simplification to association extraction as described above, and the use of distributional semantics for concept extraction. The proposed work on concept extraction amalgamates for the first time two diverse research areas -distributional semantics and information extraction. This approach renders all the advantages offered in other semi-supervised machine learning systems, and, unlike other proposed semi-supervised approaches, it can be used on top of different basic frameworks and algorithms. http://gradworks.umi.com/34/49/3449837.html
1107.5766
Information, Utility & Bounded Rationality
cs.AI
Perfectly rational decision-makers maximize expected utility, but crucially ignore the resource costs incurred when determining optimal actions. Here we employ an axiomatic framework for bounded rational decision-making based on a thermodynamic interpretation of resource costs as information costs. This leads to a variational "free utility" principle akin to thermodynamical free energy that trades off utility and information costs. We show that bounded optimal control solutions can be derived from this variational principle, which leads in general to stochastic policies. Furthermore, we show that risk-sensitive and robust (minimax) control schemes fall out naturally from this framework if the environment is considered as a bounded rational and perfectly rational opponent, respectively. When resource costs are ignored, the maximum expected utility principle is recovered.
1107.5774
Carleman Estimate for Stochastic Parabolic Equations and Inverse Stochastic Parabolic Problems
math.OC cs.SY
In this paper, we establish a global Carleman estimate for stochastic parabolic equations. Based on this estimate, we solve two inverse problems for stochastic parabolic equations. One is concerned with a determination problem of the history of a stochastic heat process through the observation at the final time $T$, for which we obtain a conditional stability estimate. The other is an inverse source problem with observation on the lateral boundary. We derive the uniqueness of the source.
1107.5782
Codes as fractals and noncommutative spaces
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the CSS algorithm relating self-orthogonal classical linear codes to q-ary quantum stabilizer codes and we show that to such a pair of a classical and a quantum code one can associate geometric spaces constructed using methods from noncommutative geometry, arising from rational noncommutative tori and finite abelian group actions on Cuntz algebras and fractals associated to the classical codes.
1107.5806
On Computing a Function of Correlated Sources
cs.IT math.IT
A receiver wants to compute a function f of two correlated sources X and Y and side information Z. What is the minimum number of bits that needs to be communicated by each transmitter? In this paper, we derive inner and outer bounds to the rate region of this problem which coincide in the cases where f is partially invertible and where the sources are independent given the side information. These rate regions point to an important difference with the single source case. Whereas for the latter it is sufficient to consider independent sets of some suitable characteristic graph, for multiple sources such a restriction is suboptimal and multisets are necessary.