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1109.6618
Multiple-Goal Heuristic Search
cs.AI
This paper presents a new framework for anytime heuristic search where the task is to achieve as many goals as possible within the allocated resources. We show the inadequacy of traditional distance-estimation heuristics for tasks of this type and present alternative heuristics that are more appropriate for multiple-goal search. In particular, we introduce the marginal-utility heuristic, which estimates the cost and the benefit of exploring a subtree below a search node. We developed two methods for online learning of the marginal-utility heuristic. One is based on local similarity of the partial marginal utility of sibling nodes, and the other generalizes marginal-utility over the state feature space. We apply our adaptive and non-adaptive multiple-goal search algorithms to several problems, including focused crawling, and show their superiority over existing methods.
1109.6621
FluCaP: A Heuristic Search Planner for First-Order MDPs
cs.AI
We present a heuristic search algorithm for solving first-order Markov Decision Processes (FOMDPs). Our approach combines first-order state abstraction that avoids evaluating states individually, and heuristic search that avoids evaluating all states. Firstly, in contrast to existing systems, which start with propositionalizing the FOMDP and then perform state abstraction on its propositionalized version we apply state abstraction directly on the FOMDP avoiding propositionalization. This kind of abstraction is referred to as first-order state abstraction. Secondly, guided by an admissible heuristic, the search is restricted to those states that are reachable from the initial state. We demonstrate the usefulness of the above techniques for solving FOMDPs with a system, referred to as FluCaP (formerly, FCPlanner), that entered the probabilistic track of the 2004 International Planning Competition (IPC2004) and demonstrated an advantage over other planners on the problems represented in first-order terms.
1109.6638
The Statistical Inefficiency of Sparse Coding for Images (or, One Gabor to Rule them All)
cs.CV cs.AI
Sparse coding is a proven principle for learning compact representations of images. However, sparse coding by itself often leads to very redundant dictionaries. With images, this often takes the form of similar edge detectors which are replicated many times at various positions, scales and orientations. An immediate consequence of this observation is that the estimation of the dictionary components is not statistically efficient. We propose a factored model in which factors of variation (e.g. position, scale and orientation) are untangled from the underlying Gabor-like filters. There is so much redundancy in sparse codes for natural images that our model requires only a single dictionary element (a Gabor-like edge detector) to outperform standard sparse coding. Our model scales naturally to arbitrary-sized images while achieving much greater statistical efficiency during learning. We validate this claim with a number of experiments showing, in part, superior compression of out-of-sample data using a sparse coding dictionary learned with only a single image.
1109.6642
Encoding dynamics for multiscale community detection: Markov time sweeping for the Map equation
physics.soc-ph cs.IT cs.SI math.IT
The detection of community structure in networks is intimately related to finding a concise description of the network in terms of its modules. This notion has been recently exploited by the Map equation formalism (M. Rosvall and C.T. Bergstrom, PNAS, 105(4), pp.1118--1123, 2008) through an information-theoretic description of the process of coding inter- and intra-community transitions of a random walker in the network at stationarity. However, a thorough study of the relationship between the full Markov dynamics and the coding mechanism is still lacking. We show here that the original Map coding scheme, which is both block-averaged and one-step, neglects the internal structure of the communities and introduces an upper scale, the `field-of-view' limit, in the communities it can detect. As a consequence, Map is well tuned to detect clique-like communities but can lead to undesirable overpartitioning when communities are far from clique-like. We show that a signature of this behavior is a large compression gap: the Map description length is far from its ideal limit. To address this issue, we propose a simple dynamic approach that introduces time explicitly into the Map coding through the analysis of the weighted adjacency matrix of the time-dependent multistep transition matrix of the Markov process. The resulting Markov time sweeping induces a dynamical zooming across scales that can reveal (potentially multiscale) community structure above the field-of-view limit, with the relevant partitions indicated by a small compression gap.
1109.6646
A Non-MDS Erasure Code Scheme For Storage Applications
cs.IT cs.DC cs.NI math.IT
This paper investigates the use of redundancy and self repairing against node failures in distributed storage systems, using various strategies. In replication method, access to one replication node is sufficient to reconstruct a lost node, while in MDS erasure coded systems which are optimal in terms of redundancy-reliability tradeoff, a single node failure is repaired after recovering the entire stored data. Moreover, regenerating codes yield a tradeoff curve between storage capacity and repair bandwidth. The current paper aims at investigating a new storage code. Specifically, we propose a non-MDS (2k, k) code that tolerates any three node failures and more importantly, it is shown using our code a single node failure can be repaired through access to only three nodes.
1109.6665
Distributed and Cascade Lossy Source Coding with a Side Information "Vending Machine"
cs.IT math.IT
Source coding with a side information "vending machine" is a recently proposed framework in which the statistical relationship between the side information and the source, instead of being given and fixed as in the classical Wyner-Ziv problem, can be controlled by the decoder. This control action is selected by the decoder based on the message encoded by the source node. Unlike conventional settings, the message can thus carry not only information about the source to be reproduced at the decoder, but also control information aimed at improving the quality of the side information. In this paper, the analysis of the trade-offs between rate, distortion and cost associated with the control actions is extended from the previously studied point-to-point set-up to two basic multiterminal models. First, a distributed source coding model is studied, in which two encoders communicate over rate-limited links to a decoder, whose side information can be controlled. The control actions are selected by the decoder based on the messages encoded by both source nodes. For this set-up, inner bounds are derived on the rate-distortion-cost region for both cases in which the side information is available causally and non-causally at the decoder. These bounds are shown to be tight under specific assumptions, including the scenario in which the sequence observed by one of the nodes is a function of the source observed by the other and the side information is available causally at the decoder. Then, a cascade scenario in which three nodes are connected in a cascade and the last node has controllable side information, is also investigated. For this model, the rate-distortion-cost region is derived for general distortion requirements and under the assumption of causal availability of side information at the last node.
1109.6698
Improving Recommendation Quality by Merging Collaborative Filtering and Social Relationships
cs.SI cs.IR physics.soc-ph
Matrix Factorization techniques have been successfully applied to raise the quality of suggestions generated by Collaborative Filtering Systems (CFSs). Traditional CFSs based on Matrix Factorization operate on the ratings provided by users and have been recently extended to incorporate demographic aspects such as age and gender. In this paper we propose to merge CFS based on Matrix Factorization and information regarding social friendships in order to provide users with more accurate suggestions and rankings on items of their interest. The proposed approach has been evaluated on a real-life online social network; the experimental results show an improvement against existing CFSs. A detailed comparison with related literature is also present.
1109.6714
A Novel Two-stage Entropy-based Robust Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Scheme with Two-bit Decision in Cognitive Radio
cs.IT math.IT
Spectrum sensing is a key problem in cognitive radio. However, traditional detectors become ineffective when noise uncertainty is severe. It is shown that the entropy of Gauss white noise is constant in the frequency domain, and a robust detector based on the entropy of spectrum amplitude was proposed. In this paper a novel detector is proposed based on the entropy of spectrum power density, and its performance is better than the previous scheme with less computational complexity. Furthermore, to improve the reliability of the detection, a two-stage entropy-based cooperative spectrum sensing scheme using two-bit decision is proposed, and simulation results show its superior performance with relatively low computational complexity.
1109.6717
Lamarckism and mechanism synthesis: approaching constrained optimization with ideas from biology
math.OC cs.NE
Nonlinear constrained optimization problems are encountered in many scientific fields. To utilize the huge calculation power of current computers, many mathematic models are also rebuilt as optimization problems. Most of them have constrained conditions which need to be handled. Borrowing biological concepts, a study is accomplished for dealing with the constraints in the synthesis of a four-bar mechanism. Biologically regarding the constrained condition as a form of selection for characteristics of a population, four new algorithms are proposed, and a new explanation is given for the penalty method. Using these algorithms, three cases are tested in differential-evolution based programs. Better, or comparable, results show that the presented algorithms and methodology may become common means for constraint handling in optimization problems.
1109.6719
Separation Number and Generalized Clustering Coefficient in Small World Networks based on String Formalism
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We reformulated the string formalism given by Aoyama, using an adjacent matrix of a network and introduced a series of generalized clustering coefficients based on it. Furthermore we numerically evaluated Milgram condition proposed by their article in order to explore $q$-$th$ degrees of separation in scale free networks. In this article, we apply the reformulation to small world networks and numerically evaluate Milgram condition, especially the separation number of small world networks and its relation to cycle structures are discussed. Considering the number of non-zero elements of an adjacent matrix, the average path length and Milgram condition, we show that the formalism proposed by us is effective to analyze the six degrees of separation, especially effective for analyzing the relation between the separation number and cycle structures in a network. By this analysis of small world networks, it proves that a sort of power low holds between $M_n$, which is a key quantity in Milgram condition, and the generalized clustering coefficients. This property in small world networks stands in contrast to that of scale free networks.
1109.6726
A Fuzzy Co-Clustering approach for Clickstream Data Pattern
cs.IR
Web Usage mining is a very important tool to extract the hidden business intelligence data from large databases. The extracted information provides the organizations with the ability to produce results more effectively to improve their businesses and increasing of sales. Co-clustering is a powerful bipartition technique which identifies group of users associated to group of web pages. These associations are quantified to reveal the users' interest in the different web pages' clusters. In this paper, Fuzzy Co-Clustering algorithm is proposed for clickstream data to identify the subset of users of similar navigational behavior /interest over a subset of web pages of a website. Targeting the users group for various promotional activities is an important aspect of marketing practices. Experiments are conducted on real dataset to prove the efficiency of proposed algorithm. The results and findings of this algorithm could be used to enhance the marketing strategy for directing marketing, advertisements for web based businesses and so on.
1109.6757
New entropic uncertainty relations for prime power dimensions
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
We consider the question of entropic uncertainty relations for prime power dimensions. In order to improve upon such uncertainty relations for higher dimensional quantum systems, we derive a tight lower bound amount of entropy for multiple probability distributions under the constraint that the sum of the collision probabilities for all distributions is fixed. This is purely a classical information theoretical result, however using an interesting result by Larsen \cite{Larsen90} allows us to connect this to an entropic uncertainty relation.
1109.6776
Behaviors of $\phi$-exponential distributions in Wasserstein geometry and an evolution equation
math.MG cs.IT math.IT
A $\phi$-exponential distribution is a generalization of an exponential distribution associated to functions $\phi$ in an appropriate class, and the space of $\phi$-exponential distributions has a dually flat structure. We study features of the space of $\phi$-exponential distributions, such as the convexity in Wasserstein geometry and the stability under an evolution equation. From this study, we provide the new characterizations to the space of Gaussian measures and the space of $q$-Gaussian measures.
1109.6838
Distributed Air Traffic Control : A Human Safety Perspective
cs.MA cs.AI
The issues in air traffic control have so far been addressed with the intent to improve resource utilization and achieve an optimized solution with respect to fuel comsumption of aircrafts, efficient usage of the available airspace with minimal congestion related losses under various dynamic constraints. So the focus has almost always been more on smarter management of traffic to increase profits while human safety, though achieved in the process, we believe, has remained less seriously attended. This has become all the more important given that we have overburdened and overstressed air traffic controllers managing hundreds of airports and thousands of aircrafts per day. We propose a multiagent system based distributed approach to handle air traffic ensuring complete human (passenger) safety without removing any humans (ground controllers) from the loop thereby also retaining the earlier advantages in the new solution. The detailed design of the agent system, which will be easily interfacable with the existing environment, is described. Based on our initial findings from simulations, we strongly believe the system to be capable of handling the nuances involved, to be extendable and customizable at any later point in time.
1109.6840
A Novel comprehensive method for real time Video Motion Detection Surveillance
cs.CV
This article describes a comprehensive system for surveillance and monitoring applications. The development of an efficient real time video motion detection system is motivated by their potential for deployment in the areas where security is the main concern. The paper presents a platform for real time video motion detection and subsequent generation of an alarm condition as set by the parameters of the control system. The prototype consists of a mobile platform mounted with RF camera which provides continuous feedback of the environment. The received visual information is then analyzed by user for appropriate control action, thus enabling the user to operate the system from a remote location. The system is also equipped with the ability to process the image of an object and generate control signals which are automatically transmitted to the mobile platform to track the object.
1109.6841
Learning Dependency-Based Compositional Semantics
cs.AI
Suppose we want to build a system that answers a natural language question by representing its semantics as a logical form and computing the answer given a structured database of facts. The core part of such a system is the semantic parser that maps questions to logical forms. Semantic parsers are typically trained from examples of questions annotated with their target logical forms, but this type of annotation is expensive. Our goal is to learn a semantic parser from question-answer pairs instead, where the logical form is modeled as a latent variable. Motivated by this challenging learning problem, we develop a new semantic formalism, dependency-based compositional semantics (DCS), which has favorable linguistic, statistical, and computational properties. We define a log-linear distribution over DCS logical forms and estimate the parameters using a simple procedure that alternates between beam search and numerical optimization. On two standard semantic parsing benchmarks, our system outperforms all existing state-of-the-art systems, despite using no annotated logical forms.
1109.6845
Optimal Power Allocation for Two-Way Decode-and-Forward OFDM Relay Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
This paper presents a novel two-way decode-and-forward (DF) relay strategy for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) relay networks. This DF relay strategy employs multi-subcarrier joint channel coding to leverage frequency selective fading, and thus can achieve a higher data rate than the conventional per-subcarrier DF relay strategies. We further propose a low-complexity, optimal power allocation strategy to maximize the data rate of the proposed relay strategy. Simulation results suggest that our strategy obtains a substantial gain over the per-subcarrier DF relay strategies, and also outperforms the amplify-and-forward (AF) relay strategy in a wide signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) region.
1109.6862
Video OCR for Video Indexing
cs.IR cs.MM
Video OCR is a technique that can greatly help to locate the topics of interest in video via the automatic extraction and reading of captions and annotations. Text in video can provide key indexing information. Recognizing such text for search application is critical. Major difficult problem for character recognition for videos is degraded and deformated characters, low resolution characters or very complex background. To tackle the problem preprocessing on text image plays vital role. Most of the OCR engines are working on the binary image so to find a better binarization procedure for image to get a desired result is important.Accurate binarization process minimizes the error rate of video OCR.
1109.6874
#h00t: Censorship Resistant Microblogging
cs.CR cs.SI
Microblogging services such as Twitter are an increasingly important way to communicate, both for individuals and for groups through the use of hashtags that denote topics of conversation. However, groups can be easily blocked from communicating through blocking of posts with the given hashtags. We propose #h00t, a system for censorship resistant microblogging. #h00t presents an interface that is much like Twitter, except that hashtags are replaced with very short hashes (e.g., 24 bits) of the group identifier. Naturally, with such short hashes, hashtags from different groups may collide and #h00t users will actually seek to create collisions. By encrypting all posts with keys derived from the group identifiers, #h00t client software can filter out other groups' posts while making such filtering difficult for the adversary. In essence, by leveraging collisions, groups can tunnel their posts in other groups' posts. A censor could not block a given group without also blocking the other groups with colliding hashtags. We evaluate the feasibility of #h00t through traces collected from Twitter, showing that a single modern computer has enough computational throughput to encrypt every tweet sent through Twitter in real time. We also use these traces to analyze the bandwidth and anonymity tradeoffs that would come with different variations on how group identifiers are encoded and hashtags are selected to purposefully collide with one another.
1109.6880
Explanation-Based Auditing
cs.DB
To comply with emerging privacy laws and regulations, it has become common for applications like electronic health records systems (EHRs) to collect access logs, which record each time a user (e.g., a hospital employee) accesses a piece of sensitive data (e.g., a patient record). Using the access log, it is easy to answer simple queries (e.g., Who accessed Alice's medical record?), but this often does not provide enough information. In addition to learning who accessed their medical records, patients will likely want to understand why each access occurred. In this paper, we introduce the problem of generating explanations for individual records in an access log. The problem is motivated by user-centric auditing applications, and it also provides a novel approach to misuse detection. We develop a framework for modeling explanations which is based on a fundamental observation: For certain classes of databases, including EHRs, the reason for most data accesses can be inferred from data stored elsewhere in the database. For example, if Alice has an appointment with Dr. Dave, this information is stored in the database, and it explains why Dr. Dave looked at Alice's record. Large numbers of data accesses can be explained using general forms called explanation templates. Rather than requiring an administrator to manually specify explanation templates, we propose a set of algorithms for automatically discovering frequent templates from the database (i.e., those that explain a large number of accesses). We also propose techniques for inferring collaborative user groups, which can be used to enhance the quality of the discovered explanations. Finally, we have evaluated our proposed techniques using an access log and data from the University of Michigan Health System. Our results demonstrate that in practice we can provide explanations for over 94% of data accesses in the log.
1109.6881
Human-powered Sorts and Joins
cs.DB
Crowdsourcing markets like Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) make it possible to task people with small jobs, such as labeling images or looking up phone numbers, via a programmatic interface. MTurk tasks for processing datasets with humans are currently designed with significant reimplementation of common workflows and ad-hoc selection of parameters such as price to pay per task. We describe how we have integrated crowds into a declarative workflow engine called Qurk to reduce the burden on workflow designers. In this paper, we focus on how to use humans to compare items for sorting and joining data, two of the most common operations in DBMSs. We describe our basic query interface and the user interface of the tasks we post to MTurk. We also propose a number of optimizations, including task batching, replacing pairwise comparisons with numerical ratings, and pre-filtering tables before joining them, which dramatically reduce the overall cost of running sorts and joins on the crowd. In an experiment joining two sets of images, we reduce the overall cost from $67 in a naive implementation to about $3, without substantially affecting accuracy or latency. In an end-to-end experiment, we reduced cost by a factor of 14.5.
1109.6882
Verifying Computations with Streaming Interactive Proofs
cs.DB
When computation is outsourced, the data owner would like to be assured that the desired computation has been performed correctly by the service provider. In theory, proof systems can give the necessary assurance, but prior work is not sufficiently scalable or practical. In this paper, we develop new proof protocols for verifying computations which are streaming in nature: the verifier (data owner) needs only logarithmic space and a single pass over the input, and after observing the input follows a simple protocol with a prover (service provider) that takes logarithmic communication spread over a logarithmic number of rounds. These ensure that the computation is performed correctly: that the service provider has not made any errors or missed out some data. The guarantee is very strong: even if the service provider deliberately tries to cheat, there is only vanishingly small probability of doing so undetected, while a correct computation is always accepted. We first observe that some theoretical results can be modified to work with streaming verifiers, showing that there are efficient protocols for problems in the complexity classes NP and NC. Our main results then seek to bridge the gap between theory and practice by developing usable protocols for a variety of problems of central importance in streaming and database processing. All these problems require linear space in the traditional streaming model, and therefore our protocols demonstrate that adding a prover can exponentially reduce the effort needed by the verifier. Our experimental results show that our protocols are practical and scalable.
1109.6883
A MovingObject Index for Efficient Query Processing with Peer-Wise Location Privacy
cs.DB
With the growing use of location-based services, location privacy attracts increasing attention from users, industry, and the research community. While considerable effort has been devoted to inventing techniques that prevent service providers from knowing a user's exact location, relatively little attention has been paid to enabling so-called peer-wise privacy--the protection of a user's location from unauthorized peer users. This paper identifies an important efficiency problem in existing peer-privacy approaches that simply apply a filtering step to identify users that are located in a query range, but that do not want to disclose their location to the querying peer. To solve this problem, we propose a novel, privacy-policy enabled index called the PEB-tree that seamlessly integrates location proximity and policy compatibility. We propose efficient algorithms that use the PEB-tree for processing privacy-aware range and kNN queries. Extensive experiments suggest that the PEB-tree enables efficient query processing.
1109.6884
ERA: Efficient Serial and Parallel Suffix Tree Construction for Very Long Strings
cs.DB
The suffix tree is a data structure for indexing strings. It is used in a variety of applications such as bioinformatics, time series analysis, clustering, text editing and data compression. However, when the string and the resulting suffix tree are too large to fit into the main memory, most existing construction algorithms become very inefficient. This paper presents a disk-based suffix tree construction method, called Elastic Range (ERa), which works efficiently with very long strings that are much larger than the available memory. ERa partitions the tree construction process horizontally and vertically and minimizes I/Os by dynamically adjusting the horizontal partitions independently for each vertical partition, based on the evolving shape of the tree and the available memory. Where appropriate, ERa also groups vertical partitions together to amortize the I/O cost. We developed a serial version; a parallel version for shared-memory and shared-disk multi-core systems; and a parallel version for shared-nothing architectures. ERa indexes the entire human genome in 19 minutes on an ordinary desktop computer. For comparison, the fastest existing method needs 15 minutes using 1024 CPUs on an IBM BlueGene supercomputer.
1109.6885
Fast Updates on Read-Optimized Databases Using Multi-Core CPUs
cs.DB
Read-optimized columnar databases use differential updates to handle writes by maintaining a separate write-optimized delta partition which is periodically merged with the read-optimized and compressed main partition. This merge process introduces significant overheads and unacceptable downtimes in update intensive systems, aspiring to combine transactional and analytical workloads into one system. In the first part of the paper, we report data analyses of 12 SAP Business Suite customer systems. In the second half, we present an optimized merge process reducing the merge overhead of current systems by a factor of 30. Our linear-time merge algorithm exploits the underlying high compute and bandwidth resources of modern multi-core CPUs with architecture-aware optimizations and efficient parallelization. This enables compressed in-memory column stores to handle the transactional update rate required by enterprise applications, while keeping properties of read-optimized databases for analytic-style queries.
1109.6886
A Data-Based Approach to Social Influence Maximization
cs.DB
Influence maximization is the problem of finding a set of users in a social network, such that by targeting this set, one maximizes the expected spread of influence in the network. Most of the literature on this topic has focused exclusively on the social graph, overlooking historical data, i.e., traces of past action propagations. In this paper, we study influence maximization from a novel data-based perspective. In particular, we introduce a new model, which we call credit distribution, that directly leverages available propagation traces to learn how influence flows in the network and uses this to estimate expected influence spread. Our approach also learns the different levels of influenceability of users, and it is time-aware in the sense that it takes the temporal nature of influence into account. We show that influence maximization under the credit distribution model is NP-hard and that the function that defines expected spread under our model is submodular. Based on these, we develop an approximation algorithm for solving the influence maximization problem that at once enjoys high accuracy compared to the standard approach, while being several orders of magnitude faster and more scalable.
1110.0020
Causes of Ineradicable Spurious Predictions in Qualitative Simulation
cs.AI
It was recently proved that a sound and complete qualitative simulator does not exist, that is, as long as the input-output vocabulary of the state-of-the-art QSIM algorithm is used, there will always be input models which cause any simulator with a coverage guarantee to make spurious predictions in its output. In this paper, we examine whether a meaningfully expressive restriction of this vocabulary is possible so that one can build a simulator with both the soundness and completeness properties. We prove several negative results: All sound qualitative simulators, employing subsets of the QSIM representation which retain the operating region transition feature, and support at least the addition and constancy constraints, are shown to be inherently incomplete. Even when the simulations are restricted to run in a single operating region, a constraint vocabulary containing just the addition, constancy, derivative, and multiplication relations makes the construction of sound and complete qualitative simulators impossible.
1110.0023
Properties and Applications of Programs with Monotone and Convex Constraints
cs.AI
We study properties of programs with monotone and convex constraints. We extend to these formalisms concepts and results from normal logic programming. They include the notions of strong and uniform equivalence with their characterizations, tight programs and Fages Lemma, program completion and loop formulas. Our results provide an abstract account of properties of some recent extensions of logic programming with aggregates, especially the formalism of lparse programs. They imply a method to compute stable models of lparse programs by means of off-the-shelf solvers of pseudo-boolean constraints, which is often much faster than the smodels system.
1110.0024
How the Landscape of Random Job Shop Scheduling Instances Depends on the Ratio of Jobs to Machines
cs.AI
We characterize the search landscape of random instances of the job shop scheduling problem (JSP). Specifically, we investigate how the expected values of (1) backbone size, (2) distance between near-optimal schedules, and (3) makespan of random schedules vary as a function of the job to machine ratio (N/M). For the limiting cases N/M approaches 0 and N/M approaches infinity we provide analytical results, while for intermediate values of N/M we perform experiments. We prove that as N/M approaches 0, backbone size approaches 100%, while as N/M approaches infinity the backbone vanishes. In the process we show that as N/M approaches 0 (resp. N/M approaches infinity), simple priority rules almost surely generate an optimal schedule, providing theoretical evidence of an "easy-hard-easy" pattern of typical-case instance difficulty in job shop scheduling. We also draw connections between our theoretical results and the "big valley" picture of JSP landscapes.
1110.0026
Preference-based Search using Example-Critiquing with Suggestions
cs.AI
We consider interactive tools that help users search for their most preferred item in a large collection of options. In particular, we examine example-critiquing, a technique for enabling users to incrementally construct preference models by critiquing example options that are presented to them. We present novel techniques for improving the example-critiquing technology by adding suggestions to its displayed options. Such suggestions are calculated based on an analysis of users current preference model and their potential hidden preferences. We evaluate the performance of our model-based suggestion techniques with both synthetic and real users. Results show that such suggestions are highly attractive to users and can stimulate them to express more preferences to improve the chance of identifying their most preferred item by up to 78%.
1110.0027
Anytime Point-Based Approximations for Large POMDPs
cs.AI
The Partially Observable Markov Decision Process has long been recognized as a rich framework for real-world planning and control problems, especially in robotics. However exact solutions in this framework are typically computationally intractable for all but the smallest problems. A well-known technique for speeding up POMDP solving involves performing value backups at specific belief points, rather than over the entire belief simplex. The efficiency of this approach, however, depends greatly on the selection of points. This paper presents a set of novel techniques for selecting informative belief points which work well in practice. The point selection procedure is combined with point-based value backups to form an effective anytime POMDP algorithm called Point-Based Value Iteration (PBVI). The first aim of this paper is to introduce this algorithm and present a theoretical analysis justifying the choice of belief selection technique. The second aim of this paper is to provide a thorough empirical comparison between PBVI and other state-of-the-art POMDP methods, in particular the Perseus algorithm, in an effort to highlight their similarities and differences. Evaluation is performed using both standard POMDP domains and realistic robotic tasks.
1110.0028
Solving Factored MDPs with Hybrid State and Action Variables
cs.AI
Efficient representations and solutions for large decision problems with continuous and discrete variables are among the most important challenges faced by the designers of automated decision support systems. In this paper, we describe a novel hybrid factored Markov decision process (MDP) model that allows for a compact representation of these problems, and a new hybrid approximate linear programming (HALP) framework that permits their efficient solutions. The central idea of HALP is to approximate the optimal value function by a linear combination of basis functions and optimize its weights by linear programming. We analyze both theoretical and computational aspects of this approach, and demonstrate its scale-up potential on several hybrid optimization problems.
1110.0029
Combination Strategies for Semantic Role Labeling
cs.AI
This paper introduces and analyzes a battery of inference models for the problem of semantic role labeling: one based on constraint satisfaction, and several strategies that model the inference as a meta-learning problem using discriminative classifiers. These classifiers are developed with a rich set of novel features that encode proposition and sentence-level information. To our knowledge, this is the first work that: (a) performs a thorough analysis of learning-based inference models for semantic role labeling, and (b) compares several inference strategies in this context. We evaluate the proposed inference strategies in the framework of the CoNLL-2005 shared task using only automatically-generated syntactic information. The extensive experimental evaluation and analysis indicates that all the proposed inference strategies are successful -they all outperform the current best results reported in the CoNLL-2005 evaluation exercise- but each of the proposed approaches has its advantages and disadvantages. Several important traits of a state-of-the-art SRL combination strategy emerge from this analysis: (i) individual models should be combined at the granularity of candidate arguments rather than at the granularity of complete solutions; (ii) the best combination strategy uses an inference model based in learning; and (iii) the learning-based inference benefits from max-margin classifiers and global feedback.
1110.0061
Learning image transformations without training examples
cs.LG cs.CV
The use of image transformations is essential for efficient modeling and learning of visual data. But the class of relevant transformations is large: affine transformations, projective transformations, elastic deformations, ... the list goes on. Therefore, learning these transformations, rather than hand coding them, is of great conceptual interest. To the best of our knowledge, all the related work so far has been concerned with either supervised or weakly supervised learning (from correlated sequences, video streams, or image-transform pairs). In this paper, on the contrary, we present a simple method for learning affine and elastic transformations when no examples of these transformations are explicitly given, and no prior knowledge of space (such as ordering of pixels) is included either. The system has only access to a moderately large database of natural images arranged in no particular order.
1110.0073
Hamming Compressed Sensing
cs.IT math.IT
Compressed sensing (CS) and 1-bit CS cannot directly recover quantized signals and require time consuming recovery. In this paper, we introduce \textit{Hamming compressed sensing} (HCS) that directly recovers a k-bit quantized signal of dimensional $n$ from its 1-bit measurements via invoking $n$ times of Kullback-Leibler divergence based nearest neighbor search. Compared with CS and 1-bit CS, HCS allows the signal to be dense, takes considerably less (linear) recovery time and requires substantially less measurements ($\mathcal O(\log n)$). Moreover, HCS recovery can accelerate the subsequent 1-bit CS dequantizer. We study a quantized recovery error bound of HCS for general signals and "HCS+dequantizer" recovery error bound for sparse signals. Extensive numerical simulations verify the appealing accuracy, robustness, efficiency and consistency of HCS.
1110.0084
Wireless Bidirectional Relaying and Latin Squares
cs.IT math.IT
The design of modulation schemes for the physical layer network-coded two way relaying scenario is considered with the protocol which employs two phases: Multiple access (MA) Phase and Broadcast (BC) Phase. It was observed by Koike-Akino et al. that adaptively changing the network coding map used at the relay according to the channel conditions greatly reduces the impact of multiple access interference which occurs at the relay during the MA Phase and all these network coding maps should satisfy a requirement called the {\it exclusive law}. We highlight the issues associated with the scheme proposed by Koike-Akino et al. and propose a scheme which solves these issues. We show that every network coding map that satisfies the exclusive law is representable by a Latin Square and conversely, and this relationship can be used to get the network coding maps satisfying the exclusive law. Using the structural properties of the Latin Squares for a given set of parameters, the problem of finding all the required maps is reduced to finding a small set of maps for $M-$PSK constellations. This is achieved using the notions of isotopic and transposed Latin Squares. Even though, the completability of partially filled $M \times M$ Latin Square using $M$ symbols is an open problem, two specific cases where such a completion is always possible are identified and explicit construction procedures are provided. The Latin Squares constructed using the first procedure, helps towards reducing the total number of network coding maps used. The second procedure helps in the construction of certain Latin Squares for $M$-PSK signal set from the Latin squares obtained for $M/2$-PSK signal set.
1110.0100
Long Distance Continuous-Variable Quantum Key Distribution with a Gaussian Modulation
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
We designed high-efficiency error correcting codes allowing to extract an errorless secret key in a continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocol using a Gaussian modulation of coherent states and a homodyne detection. These codes are available for a wide range of signal-to-noise ratios on an AWGN channel with a binary modulation and can be combined with a multidimensional reconciliation method proven secure against arbitrary collective attacks. This improved reconciliation procedure considerably extends the secure range of a continuous-variable quantum key distribution with a Gaussian modulation, giving a secret key rate of about 10^{-3} bit per pulse at a distance of 120 km for reasonable physical parameters.
1110.0105
Multi-Agent Programming Contest 2011 - The Python-DTU Team
cs.MA
We provide a brief description of the Python-DTU system, including the overall design, the tools and the algorithms that we plan to use in the agent contest.
1110.0107
Learning to relate images: Mapping units, complex cells and simultaneous eigenspaces
cs.CV cs.AI nlin.AO stat.ML
A fundamental operation in many vision tasks, including motion understanding, stereopsis, visual odometry, or invariant recognition, is establishing correspondences between images or between images and data from other modalities. We present an analysis of the role that multiplicative interactions play in learning such correspondences, and we show how learning and inferring relationships between images can be viewed as detecting rotations in the eigenspaces shared among a set of orthogonal matrices. We review a variety of recent multiplicative sparse coding methods in light of this observation. We also review how the squaring operation performed by energy models and by models of complex cells can be thought of as a way to implement multiplicative interactions. This suggests that the main utility of including complex cells in computational models of vision may be that they can encode relations not invariances.
1110.0124
Capacity Bounds for State-Dependent Broadcast Channels
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we derive information-theoretic performance limits for three classes of two-user state-dependent discrete memoryless broadcast channels, with noncausal side-information at the encoder. The first class of channels comprises a sender broadcasting two independent messages to two non-cooperating receivers; for channels of the second class, each receiver is given the message it need not decode; and the third class comprises channels where the sender is constrained to keep each message confidential from the unintended receiver. We derive inner bounds for all the three classes of channels. For the first and second class of channels, we discuss the rate penalty on the achievable region for having to deal with side-information. For channels of third class, we characterize the rate penalties for having to deal not only with side-information, but also to satisfy confidentiality constraints. We then derive outer bounds, where we present an explicit characterization of sum-rate bounds for the first and third class of channels. For channels of the second class, we show that our outer bounds are within a fixed gap away from the achievable rate region, where the gap is independent of the distribution characterizing this class of channels. The channel models presented in this paper are useful variants of the classical broadcast channel, and provide fundamental building blocks for cellular downlink communications with side-information, such as fading in the wireless medium, interference caused by neighboring nodes in the network, {\etc}. at the encoder; two-way relay communications; and secure wireless broadcasting.
1110.0169
Robust artificial neural networks and outlier detection. Technical report
math.OC cs.CV cs.NA cs.NE math.NA stat.ME
Large outliers break down linear and nonlinear regression models. Robust regression methods allow one to filter out the outliers when building a model. By replacing the traditional least squares criterion with the least trimmed squares criterion, in which half of data is treated as potential outliers, one can fit accurate regression models to strongly contaminated data. High-breakdown methods have become very well established in linear regression, but have started being applied for non-linear regression only recently. In this work, we examine the problem of fitting artificial neural networks to contaminated data using least trimmed squares criterion. We introduce a penalized least trimmed squares criterion which prevents unnecessary removal of valid data. Training of ANNs leads to a challenging non-smooth global optimization problem. We compare the efficiency of several derivative-free optimization methods in solving it, and show that our approach identifies the outliers correctly when ANNs are used for nonlinear regression.
1110.0194
Rate-Dependent Analysis of the Asymptotic Behavior of Channel Polarization
cs.IT math.IT
For a binary-input memoryless symmetric channel $W$, we consider the asymptotic behavior of the polarization process in the large block-length regime when transmission takes place over $W$. In particular, we study the asymptotics of the cumulative distribution $\mathbb{P}(Z_n \leq z)$, where $\{Z_n\}$ is the Bhattacharyya process defined from $W$, and its dependence on the rate of transmission. On the basis of this result, we characterize the asymptotic behavior, as well as its dependence on the rate, of the block error probability of polar codes using the successive cancellation decoder. This refines the original bounds by Ar{\i}kan and Telatar. Our results apply to general polar codes based on $\ell \times \ell$ kernel matrices. We also provide lower bounds on the block error probability of polar codes using the MAP decoder. The MAP lower bound and the successive cancellation upper bound coincide when $\ell=2$, but there is a gap for $\ell>2$.
1110.0207
Analysing complexity of XML Schemas in geospatial web services
cs.DB
XML Schema is the language used to define the structure of messages exchanged between OGC-based web service clients and providers. The size of these schemas has been growing with time, reaching a state that makes its understanding and effective application a hard task. A first step to cope with this situation is to provide different ways to measure the complexity of the schemas. In this regard, we present in this paper an analysis of the complexity of XML schemas in OGC web services. We use a group of metrics found in the literature and introduce new metrics to measure size and/or complexity of these schemas. The use of adequate metrics allows us to quantify the complexity, quality and other properties of the schemas, which can be very useful in different scenarios.
1110.0209
Dealing with large schema sets in mobile SOS-based applications
cs.DB
Although the adoption of OGC Web Services for server, desktop and web applications has been successful, its penetration in mobile devices has been slow. One of the main reasons is the performance problems associated with XML processing as it consumes a lot of memory and processing time, which are scarce resources in a mobile device. In this paper we propose an algorithm to generate efficient code for XML data binding for mobile SOS-based applications. The algorithm take advantage of the fact that individual implementations use only some portions of the standards' schemas, which allows the simplification of large XML schema sets in an application-specific manner by using a subset of XML instance files conforming to these schemas.
1110.0214
Eclectic Extraction of Propositional Rules from Neural Networks
cs.LG cs.AI cs.CV cs.NE
Artificial Neural Network is among the most popular algorithm for supervised learning. However, Neural Networks have a well-known drawback of being a "Black Box" learner that is not comprehensible to the Users. This lack of transparency makes it unsuitable for many high risk tasks such as medical diagnosis that requires a rational justification for making a decision. Rule Extraction methods attempt to curb this limitation by extracting comprehensible rules from a trained Network. Many such extraction algorithms have been developed over the years with their respective strengths and weaknesses. They have been broadly categorized into three types based on their approach to use internal model of the Network. Eclectic Methods are hybrid algorithms that combine the other approaches to attain more performance. In this paper, we present an Eclectic method called HERETIC. Our algorithm uses Inductive Decision Tree learning combined with information of the neural network structure for extracting logical rules. Experiments and theoretical analysis show HERETIC to be better in terms of speed and performance.
1110.0215
Completion Time in Broadcast Channel and Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
In a multi-user channel, completion time refers to the number of channel uses required for users, each with some given fixed bit pool, to complete the transmission of all their data bits. This paper extends the information theoretic formulation of multi-access completion time to broadcast channel and interference channel, enabling us to obtain the so-called completion time region (CTR), which, analogous to capacity region, characterizes all possible trade-offs between users' completion times. Specifically, for Gaussian broadcast channel (GBC) and Gaussian interference channel (GIC) in the strong/very strong regime, the exact CTR is obtained. For GIC in the weak/mixed regime, an achievable CTR based on the Etkin-Tse-Wang scheme and an outer-bound are obtained.
1110.0235
The Stanford RNA Mapping Database for sharing and visualizing RNA structure mapping experiments
q-bio.BM cs.DB
We have established an RNA Mapping Database (RMDB) to enable a new generation of structural, thermodynamic, and kinetic studies from quantitative single-nucleotide-resolution RNA structure mapping (freely available at http://rmdb.stanford.edu). Chemical and enzymatic mapping is a rapid, robust, and widespread approach to RNA characterization. Since its recent coupling with high-throughput sequencing techniques, accelerated software pipelines, and large-scale mutagenesis, the volume of mapping data has greatly increased, and there is a critical need for a database to enable sharing, visualization, and meta-analyses of these data. Through its on-line front-end, the RMDB allows users to explore single-nucleotide-resolution chemical accessibility data in heat-map, bar-graph, and colored secondary structure graphics; to leverage these data to generate secondary structure hypotheses; and to download the data in standardized and computer-friendly files, including the RDAT and community-consensus SNRNASM formats. At the time of writing, the database houses 38 entries, describing 2659 RNA sequences and comprising 355,084 data points, and is growing rapidly.
1110.0244
Analysis of Laser & Detector Placement in MIMO Multimode Optical Fiber Systems
physics.optics cs.IT math.IT
Multimode fibers (MMFs) offer a cost-effective connection solution for small and medium length networks. However, data rates through multimode fibers are traditionally limited by modal dispersion. Signal processing and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) have been shown to be effective at combating these limitations, but device design for the specific purpose of MIMO in MMFs is still an open issue. This paper utilizes a statistical field propagation model for MMFs to aid the analysis and designs of MMF laser and detector arrays, and aims to improve data rates of the fiber. Simulations reveal that optimal device designs could possess 2-3 times the data carrying capacity of suboptimal ones.
1110.0248
A Behavioral Distance for Fuzzy-Transition Systems
cs.AI
In contrast to the existing approaches to bisimulation for fuzzy systems, we introduce a behavioral distance to measure the behavioral similarity of states in a nondeterministic fuzzy-transition system. This behavioral distance is defined as the greatest fixed point of a suitable monotonic function and provides a quantitative analogue of bisimilarity. The behavioral distance has the important property that two states are at zero distance if and only if they are bisimilar. Moreover, for any given threshold, we find that states with behavioral distances bounded by the threshold are equivalent. In addition, we show that two system combinators---parallel composition and product---are non-expansive with respect to our behavioral distance, which makes compositional verification possible.
1110.0252
Universal Codes for the Gaussian MAC via Spatial Coupling
cs.IT math.IT
We consider transmission of two independent and separately encoded sources over a two-user binary-input Gaussian multiple-access channel. The channel gains are assumed to be unknown at the transmitter and the goal is to design an encoder-decoder pair that achieves reliable communication for all channel gains where this is theoretically possible. We call such a system \emph{universal} with respect to the channel gains. Kudekar et al. recently showed that terminated low-density parity-check convolutional codes (a.k.a. spatially-coupled low-density parity-check ensembles) have belief-propagation thresholds that approach their maximum a-posteriori thresholds. This was proven for binary erasure channels and shown empirically for binary memoryless symmetric channels. It was conjectured that the principle of spatial coupling is very general and the phenomenon of threshold saturation applies to a very broad class of graphical models. In this work, we derive an area theorem for the joint decoder and empirically show that threshold saturation occurs for this problem. As a result, we demonstrate near-universal performance for this problem using the proposed spatially-coupled coding system.
1110.0264
Face Recognition using Optimal Representation Ensemble
cs.CV
Recently, the face recognizers based on linear representations have been shown to deliver state-of-the-art performance. In real-world applications, however, face images usually suffer from expressions, disguises and random occlusions. The problematic facial parts undermine the validity of the linear-subspace assumption and thus the recognition performance deteriorates significantly. In this work, we address the problem in a learning-inference-mixed fashion. By observing that the linear-subspace assumption is more reliable on certain face patches rather than on the holistic face, some Bayesian Patch Representations (BPRs) are randomly generated and interpreted according to the Bayes' theory. We then train an ensemble model over the patch-representations by minimizing the empirical risk w.r.t the "leave-one-out margins". The obtained model is termed Optimal Representation Ensemble (ORE), since it guarantees the optimality from the perspective of Empirical Risk Minimization. To handle the unknown patterns in test faces, a robust version of BPR is proposed by taking the non-face category into consideration. Equipped with the Robust-BPRs, the inference ability of ORE is increased dramatically and several record-breaking accuracies (99.9% on Yale-B and 99.5% on AR) and desirable efficiencies (below 20 ms per face in Matlab) are achieved. It also overwhelms other modular heuristics on the faces with random occlusions, extreme expressions and disguises. Furthermore, to accommodate immense BPRs sets, a boosting-like algorithm is also derived. The boosted model, a.k.a Boosted-ORE, obtains similar performance to its prototype. Besides the empirical superiorities, two desirable features of the proposed methods, namely, the training-determined model-selection and the data-weight-free boosting procedure, are also theoretically verified.
1110.0279
Coding-Theoretic Methods for Sparse Recovery
cs.IT cs.DM math.IT
We review connections between coding-theoretic objects and sparse learning problems. In particular, we show how seemingly different combinatorial objects such as error-correcting codes, combinatorial designs, spherical codes, compressed sensing matrices and group testing designs can be obtained from one another. The reductions enable one to translate upper and lower bounds on the parameters attainable by one object to another. We survey some of the well-known reductions in a unified presentation, and bring some existing gaps to attention. New reductions are also introduced; in particular, we bring up the notion of minimum "L-wise distance" of codes and show that this notion closely captures the combinatorial structure of RIP-2 matrices. Moreover, we show how this weaker variation of the minimum distance is related to combinatorial list-decoding properties of codes.
1110.0289
Repr\'esentation de donn\'ees et m\'etadonn\'ees dans une biblioth\`eque virtuelle pour une ad\'equation avec l'usager et les outils de glanage ou moissonnage scientifique
cs.IR
The vehicles for official knowledge, as well as university libraries, suffer from an increasingly visible lack of interest. This is due to the advent of fully digital practices. By studying the psychological and cognitive models in information retrieval initiated in the 1980s, it is possible to use these theories and apply them practically to the Information Retrieval System, taking into account the requirements of virtual libraries. New metadata standards along with modern tools that help managing references should help automating the process of scientific research. We offer a practical implementation of the given theories to test them when they are applied to the information retrieval in computer sciences. This case under study will highlight good practices in gleaning and harvesting scientific literature.
1110.0305
Significant communities in large sparse networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Researchers use community-detection algorithms to reveal large-scale organization in biological and social networks, but community detection is useful only if the communities are significant and not a result of noisy data. To assess the statistical significance of the network communities, or the robustness of the detected structure, one approach is to perturb the network structure by removing links and measure how much the communities change. However, perturbing sparse networks is challenging because they are inherently sensitive; they shatter easily if links are removed. Here we propose a simple method to perturb sparse networks and assess the significance of their communities. We generate resampled networks by adding extra links based on local information, then we aggregate the information from multiple resampled networks to find a coarse-grained description of significant clusters. In addition to testing our method on benchmark networks, we use our method on the sparse network of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law, to detect significant and insignificant areas of law. We use our significance analysis to draw a map of the ECJ case law network that reveals the relations between the areas of law.
1110.0336
OntologyNavigator: WEB 2.0 scalable ontology based CLIR portal to IT scientific corpus for researchers
cs.IR cs.DL cs.HC
This work presents the architecture used in the ongoing OntologyNavigator project. It is a research tool to help advanced learners to find adapted IT papers to create scientific bibliographies. The purpose is the use of an IT representation as educational research software for researchers. We use an ontology based on the ACM's Computing Classification System in order to find scientific papers directly related to the new researcher's domain without any formal request. An ontology translation in French is automatically proposed and can be based on Web 2.0 enhanced by a community of users. A visualization and navigation model is proposed to make it more accessible and examples are given to show the interface of the tool. This model offers the possibility of cross language query. Users deeply interact with the translation by providing alternative translation of the node label. Customers also enrich the ontology node labels with implicit descriptors.
1110.0347
Accelerating consensus on co-evolving networks: the effect of committed individuals
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
Social networks are not static but rather constantly evolve in time. One of the elements thought to drive the evolution of social network structure is homophily - the need for individuals to connect with others who are similar to them. In this paper, we study how the spread of a new opinion, idea, or behavior on such a homophily-driven social network is affected by the changing network structure. In particular, using simulations, we study a variant of the Axelrod model on a network with a homophilic rewiring rule imposed. First, we find that the presence of homophilic rewiring within the network, in general, impedes the reaching of consensus in opinion, as the time to reach consensus diverges exponentially with network size $N$. We then investigate whether the introduction of committed individuals who are rigid in their opinion on a particular issue, can speed up the convergence to consensus on that issue. We demonstrate that as committed agents are added, beyond a critical value of the committed fraction, the consensus time growth becomes logarithmic in network size $N$. Furthermore, we show that slight changes in the interaction rule can produce strikingly different results in the scaling behavior of $T_c$. However, the benefit gained by introducing committed agents is qualitatively preserved across all the interaction rules we consider.
1110.0376
Common Organizing Mechanisms in Ecological and Socio-economic Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an q-bio.PE
Previous work has shown that species interacting in an ecosystem and actors transacting in an economic context may have notable similarities in behavior. However, the specific mechanism that may underlie similarities in nature and human systems has not been analyzed. Building on stochastic food-web models, we propose a parsimonious bipartite-cooperation model that reproduces the key features of mutualistic networks - degree distribution, nestedness and modularity -- for both ecological networks and socio-economic networks. Our analysis uses two diverse networks. Mutually-beneficial interactions between plants and their pollinators, and cooperative economic exchanges between designers and their contractors. We find that these mutualistic networks share a key hierarchical ordering of their members, along with an exponential constraint in the number and type of partners they can cooperate with. We use our model to show that slight changes in the interaction constraints can produce either extremely nested or random structures, revealing that these constraints play a key role in the evolution of mutualistic networks. This could also encourage a new systematic approach to study the functional and structural properties of networks. The surprising correspondence across mutualistic networks suggests their broadly representativeness and their potential role in the productive organization of exchange systems, both ecological and social.
1110.0378
Exact Dynamic Support Tracking with Multiple Measurement Vectors using Compressive MUSIC
cs.IT math.IT
Dynamic tracking of sparse targets has been one of the important topics in array signal processing. Recently, compressed sensing (CS) approaches have been extensively investigated as a new tool for this problem using partial support information obtained by exploiting temporal redundancy. However, most of these approaches are formulated under single measurement vector compressed sensing (SMV-CS) framework, where the performance guarantees are only in a probabilistic manner. The main contribution of this paper is to allow \textit{deterministic} tracking of time varying supports with multiple measurement vectors (MMV) by exploiting multi-sensor diversity. In particular, we show that a novel compressive MUSIC (CS-MUSIC) algorithm with optimized partial support selection not only allows removal of inaccurate portion of previous support estimation but also enables addition of newly emerged part of unknown support. Numerical results confirm the theory.
1110.0381
Synchronicity, Instant Messaging and Performance among Financial Traders
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an q-bio.PE
Successful animal systems often manage risk through synchronous behavior that spontaneously arises without leadership. In critical human systems facing risk, such as financial markets or military operations, our understanding of the benefits associated to synchronicity is nascent but promising. Building on previous work illuminating commonalities between ecological and human systems, we compare the activity patterns of individual financial traders with the simultaneous activity of other traders---an individual and spontaneous characteristic we call synchronous trading. Additionally, we examine the association of synchronous trading with individual performance and communication patterns. Analyzing empirical data on day traders' second-to-second trading and instant messaging, we find that the higher the traders' synchronous trading, the less likely they lose money at the end of the day. We also find that the daily instant messaging patterns of traders are closely associated with their level of synchronous trading. This suggests that synchronicity and vanguard technology may help cope with risky decisions in complex systems and furnish new prospects for achieving collective and individual goals.
1110.0413
Group Lasso with Overlaps: the Latent Group Lasso approach
stat.ML cs.LG
We study a norm for structured sparsity which leads to sparse linear predictors whose supports are unions of prede ned overlapping groups of variables. We call the obtained formulation latent group Lasso, since it is based on applying the usual group Lasso penalty on a set of latent variables. A detailed analysis of the norm and its properties is presented and we characterize conditions under which the set of groups associated with latent variables are correctly identi ed. We motivate and discuss the delicate choice of weights associated to each group, and illustrate this approach on simulated data and on the problem of breast cancer prognosis from gene expression data.
1110.0425
Hybrid Codes Needed for Coordination over the Point-to-Point Channel
cs.IT math.IT
We consider a new fundamental question regarding the point-to-point memoryless channel. The source-channel separation theorem indicates that random codebook construction for lossy source compression and channel coding can be independently constructed and paired to achieve optimal performance for coordinating a source sequence with a reconstruction sequence. But what if we want the channel input to also be coordinated with the source and reconstruction? Such situations arise in network communication problems, where the correlation inherent in the information sources can be used to correlate channel inputs. Hybrid codes have been shown to be useful in a number of network communication problems. In this work we highlight their advantages over purely digital codebook construction by applying them to the point-to-point setting, coordinating both the channel input and the reconstruction with the source.
1110.0428
A Power Efficient Sensing/Communication Scheme: Joint Source-Channel-Network Coding by Using Compressive Sensing
cs.IT math.IT
We propose a joint source-channel-network coding scheme, based on compressive sensing principles, for wireless networks with AWGN channels (that may include multiple access and broadcast), with sources exhibiting temporal and spatial dependencies. Our goal is to provide a reconstruction of sources within an allowed distortion level at each receiver. We perform joint source-channel coding at each source by randomly projecting source values to a lower dimensional space. We consider sources that satisfy the restricted eigenvalue (RE) condition as well as more general sources for which the randomness of the network allows a mapping to lower dimensional spaces. Our approach relies on using analog random linear network coding. The receiver uses compressive sensing decoders to reconstruct sources. Our key insight is the fact that, compressive sensing and analog network coding both preserve the source characteristics required for compressive sensing decoding.
1110.0477
Distributed Evolutionary Graph Partitioning
cs.NE cs.DC
We present a novel distributed evolutionary algorithm, KaFFPaE, to solve the Graph Partitioning Problem, which makes use of KaFFPa (Karlsruhe Fast Flow Partitioner). The use of our multilevel graph partitioner KaFFPa provides new effective crossover and mutation operators. By combining these with a scalable communication protocol we obtain a system that is able to improve the best known partitioning results for many inputs in a very short amount of time. For example, in Walshaw's well known benchmark tables we are able to improve or recompute 76% of entries for the tables with 1%, 3% and 5% imbalance.
1110.0517
Distance Preserving Graph Simplification
cs.SI
Large graphs are difficult to represent, visualize, and understand. In this paper, we introduce "gate graph" - a new approach to perform graph simplification. A gate graph provides a simplified topological view of the original graph. Specifically, we construct a gate graph from a large graph so that for any "non-local" vertex pair (distance higher than some threshold) in the original graph, their shortest-path distance can be recovered by consecutive "local" walks through the gate vertices in the gate graph. We perform a theoretical investigation on the gate-vertex set discovery problem. We characterize its computational complexity and reveal the upper bound of minimum gate-vertex set using VC-dimension theory. We propose an efficient mining algorithm to discover a gate-vertex set with guaranteed logarithmic bound. We further present a fast technique for pruning redundant edges in a gate graph. The detailed experimental results using both real and synthetic graphs demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.
1110.0532
Strange Beta: An Assistance System for Indoor Rock Climbing Route Setting Using Chaotic Variations and Machine Learning
cs.AI cs.HC stat.AP
This paper applies machine learning and the mathematics of chaos to the task of designing indoor rock-climbing routes. Chaotic variation has been used to great advantage on music and dance, but the challenges here are quite different, beginning with the representation. We present a formalized system for transcribing rock climbing problems, then describe a variation generator that is designed to support human route-setters in designing new and interesting climbing problems. This variation generator, termed Strange Beta, combines chaos and machine learning, using the former to introduce novelty and the latter to smooth transitions in a manner that is consistent with the style of the climbs This entails parsing the domain-specific natural language that rock climbers use to describe routes and movement and then learning the patterns in the results. We validated this approach with a pilot study in a small university rock climbing gym, followed by a large blinded study in a commercial climbing gym, in cooperation with experienced climbers and expert route setters. The results show that {\sc Strange Beta} can help a human setter produce routes that are at least as good as, and in some cases better than, those produced in the traditional manner.
1110.0535
Modeling the adoption of innovations in the presence of geographic and media influences
cs.SI nlin.AO physics.soc-ph
While there has been much work examining the affects of social network structure on innovation adoption, models to date have lacked important features such as meta-populations reflecting real geography or influence from mass media forces. In this article, we show these are features crucial to producing more accurate predictions of a social contagion and technology adoption at the city level. Using data from the adoption of the popular micro-blogging platform, Twitter, we present a model of adoption on a network that places friendships in real geographic space and exposes individuals to mass media influence. We show that homopholy both amongst individuals with similar propensities to adopt a technology and geographic location are critical to reproduce features of real spatiotemporal adoption. Furthermore, we estimate that mass media was responsible for increasing Twitter's user base two to four fold. To reflect this strength, we extend traditional contagion models to include an endogenous mass media agent that responds to those adopting an innovation as well as influencing agents to adopt themselves.
1110.0543
A high performance scientific cloud computing environment for materials simulations
physics.comp-ph cond-mat.mtrl-sci cs.CE
We describe the development of a scientific cloud computing (SCC) platform that offers high performance computation capability. The platform consists of a scientific virtual machine prototype containing a UNIX operating system and several materials science codes, together with essential interface tools (an SCC toolset) that offers functionality comparable to local compute clusters. In particular, our SCC toolset provides automatic creation of virtual clusters for parallel computing, including tools for execution and monitoring performance, as well as efficient I/O utilities that enable seamless connections to and from the cloud. Our SCC platform is optimized for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). We present benchmarks for prototypical scientific applications and demonstrate performance comparable to local compute clusters. To facilitate code execution and provide user-friendly access, we have also integrated cloud computing capability in a JAVA-based GUI. Our SCC platform may be an alternative to traditional HPC resources for materials science or quantum chemistry applications.
1110.0560
Easily Computed Lower Bounds on the Information Rate of Intersymbol Interference Channels
cs.IT math.IT
Provable lower bounds are presented for the information rate I(X; X+S+N) where X is the symbol drawn independently and uniformly from a finite-size alphabet, S is a discrete-valued random variable (RV) and N is a Gaussian RV. It is well known that with S representing the precursor intersymbol interference (ISI) at the decision feedback equalizer (DFE) output, I(X; X+S+N) serves as a tight lower bound for the symmetric information rate (SIR) as well as capacity of the ISI channel corrupted by Gaussian noise. When evaluated on a number of well-known finite-ISI channels, these new bounds provide a very similar level of tightness against the SIR to the conjectured lower bound by Shamai and Laroia at all signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ranges, while being actually tighter when viewed closed up at high SNRs. The new lower bounds are obtained in two steps: First, a "mismatched" mutual information function is introduced which can be proved as a lower bound to I(X; X+S+N). Secondly, this function is further bounded from below by an expression that can be computed easily via a few single-dimensional integrations with a small computational load.
1110.0564
Diversity Order Vs Rate in an AWGN Channel
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
We study the diversity order vs rate of an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel in the whole capacity region. We show that for discrete input as well as for continuous input, Gallager's upper bounds on error probability have exponential diversity in low and high rate region but only subexponential in the mid-rate region. For the best available lower bounds and for the practical codes one observes exponential diversity throughout the capacity region. However we also show that performance of practical codes is close to Gallager's upper bounds and the mid-rate subexponential diversity has a bearing on the performance of the practical codes. Finally we show that the upper bounds with Gaussian input provide good approximation throughout the capacity region even for finite constellation.
1110.0578
Open Input: A New Way for Websites to Grow
cs.HC cs.CY cs.SI
Regardless of current web 2.0 and 3.0 trends, there are still a lot of websites made in web 1.0 style. These websites have fixed pages which are editable only by owner and not by community. It is normal for a lot of cases, but looks like not modern and engaging approach. Are there any ways to make these sites closer to life? This paper is devoted to open input technique, a way for websites of web 1.0 era to grow and evolve community. The idea of open input, in general, means that anybody from the web can add information to any section of the website even without registration on that website. People can add news, billboard announcements, testimonials, questions, pictures, videos etc - whatever site owner permitted. We have tested this idea in practice and have positive results approving that open input is a vital approach for collaboration on the web.
1110.0585
Discriminately Decreasing Discriminability with Learned Image Filters
cs.CV
In machine learning and computer vision, input images are often filtered to increase data discriminability. In some situations, however, one may wish to purposely decrease discriminability of one classification task (a "distractor" task), while simultaneously preserving information relevant to another (the task-of-interest): For example, it may be important to mask the identity of persons contained in face images before submitting them to a crowdsourcing site (e.g., Mechanical Turk) when labeling them for certain facial attributes. Another example is inter-dataset generalization: when training on a dataset with a particular covariance structure among multiple attributes, it may be useful to suppress one attribute while preserving another so that a trained classifier does not learn spurious correlations between attributes. In this paper we present an algorithm that finds optimal filters to give high discriminability to one task while simultaneously giving low discriminability to a distractor task. We present results showing the effectiveness of the proposed technique on both simulated data and natural face images.
1110.0593
Two Projection Pursuit Algorithms for Machine Learning under Non-Stationarity
cs.LG cs.AI
This thesis derives, tests and applies two linear projection algorithms for machine learning under non-stationarity. The first finds a direction in a linear space upon which a data set is maximally non-stationary. The second aims to robustify two-way classification against non-stationarity. The algorithm is tested on a key application scenario, namely Brain Computer Interfacing.
1110.0594
Practical Wireless Network Coding and Decoding Methods for Multiple Unicast Transmissions
cs.IT math.IT
We propose a simple yet effective wireless network coding and decoding technique. It utilizes spatial diversity through cooperation between nodes which carry out distributed encoding operations dictated by generator matrices of linear block codes. For this purpose, we make use of greedy codes over the binary field and show that desired diversity orders can be flexibly assigned to nodes in a multiple unicast network, contrary to the previous findings in the literature. Furthermore, we present the optimal detection rule for the given model that accounts for intermediate node errors and suggest a network decoder using the sum-product algorithm. The proposed sum-product detector exhibits near optimal performance.
1110.0623
On the Parameterized Complexity of Default Logic and Autoepistemic Logic
cs.CC cs.AI
We investigate the application of Courcelle's Theorem and the logspace version of Elberfeld etal. in the context of the implication problem for propositional sets of formulae, the extension existence problem for default logic, as well as the expansion existence problem for autoepistemic logic and obtain fixed-parameter time and space efficient algorithms for these problems. On the other hand, we exhibit, for each of the above problems, families of instances of a very simple structure that, for a wide range of different parameterizations, do not have efficient fixed-parameter algorithms (even in the sense of the large class XPnu), unless P=NP.
1110.0624
Autonomous Agents Coordination: Action Languages meet CLP(FD) and Linda
cs.LO cs.AI cs.PL
The paper presents a knowledge representation formalism, in the form of a high-level Action Description Language for multi-agent systems, where autonomous agents reason and act in a shared environment. Agents are autonomously pursuing individual goals, but are capable of interacting through a shared knowledge repository. In their interactions through shared portions of the world, the agents deal with problems of synchronization and concurrency; the action language allows the description of strategies to ensure a consistent global execution of the agents' autonomously derived plans. A distributed planning problem is formalized by providing the declarative specifications of the portion of the problem pertaining a single agent. Each of these specifications is executable by a stand-alone CLP-based planner. The coordination among agents exploits a Linda infrastructure. The proposal is validated in a prototype implementation developed in SICStus Prolog. To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).
1110.0631
Well-Definedness and Efficient Inference for Probabilistic Logic Programming under the Distribution Semantics
cs.AI cs.LO cs.PL
The distribution semantics is one of the most prominent approaches for the combination of logic programming and probability theory. Many languages follow this semantics, such as Independent Choice Logic, PRISM, pD, Logic Programs with Annotated Disjunctions (LPADs) and ProbLog. When a program contains functions symbols, the distribution semantics is well-defined only if the set of explanations for a query is finite and so is each explanation. Well-definedness is usually either explicitly imposed or is achieved by severely limiting the class of allowed programs. In this paper we identify a larger class of programs for which the semantics is well-defined together with an efficient procedure for computing the probability of queries. Since LPADs offer the most general syntax, we present our results for them, but our results are applicable to all languages under the distribution semantics. We present the algorithm "Probabilistic Inference with Tabling and Answer subsumption" (PITA) that computes the probability of queries by transforming a probabilistic program into a normal program and then applying SLG resolution with answer subsumption. PITA has been implemented in XSB and tested on six domains: two with function symbols and four without. The execution times are compared with those of ProbLog, cplint and CVE, PITA was almost always able to solve larger problems in a shorter time, on domains with and without function symbols.
1110.0641
Identifying relationships between drugs and medical conditions: winning experience in the Challenge 2 of the OMOP 2010 Cup
stat.ML cs.CV stat.AP
There is a growing interest in using a longitudinal observational databases to detect drug safety signal. In this paper we present a novel method, which we used online during the OMOP Cup. We consider homogeneous ensembling, which is based on random re-sampling (known, also, as bagging) as a main innovation compared to the previous publications in the related field. This study is based on a very large simulated database of the 10 million patients records, which was created by the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP). Compared to the traditional classification problem, the given data are unlabelled. The objective of this study is to discover hidden associations between drugs and conditions. The main idea of the approach, which we used during the OMOP Cup is to compare the numbers of observed and expected patterns. This comparison may be organised in several different ways, and the outcomes (base learners) may be quite different as well. It is proposed to construct the final decision function as an ensemble of the base learners. Our method was recognised formally by the Organisers of the OMOP Cup as a top performing method for the Challenge N2.
1110.0678
Interference Alignment and Neutralization in a Cognitive 3-User MAC-Interference Channel: Degrees of Freedom
cs.IT math.IT
A network consisting of a point-to-point (P2P) link and a multiple access channel (MAC) sharing the same medium is considered. The resulting interference network, with three transmitters and two receivers is studied from degrees of freedom (DoF) perspective, with and without cognition. Several cognition variants are examined. Namely, the setup is studied with (1) no cognitive transmitters, (2) a cognitive P2P transmitter, (3) one cognitive MAC transmitter, and (4) with two cognitive MAC transmitters. It is shown that having a cognitive P2P transmitter does not bring any DoF gain to the network. This is obtained by showing that the DoF of the two former cases (1) and (2) is 1. However, it is shown that a cognitive MAC transmitter is more beneficial since the latter two cases (3) and (4) have 3/2 DoF. The achievability of 3/2 DoF is guaranteed by using a combination of interference neutralization and interference alignment.
1110.0693
The Complexity of Rooted Phylogeny Problems
cs.CC cs.CE
Several computational problems in phylogenetic reconstruction can be formulated as restrictions of the following general problem: given a formula in conjunctive normal form where the literals are rooted triples, is there a rooted binary tree that satisfies the formula? If the formulas do not contain disjunctions, the problem becomes the famous rooted triple consistency problem, which can be solved in polynomial time by an algorithm of Aho, Sagiv, Szymanski, and Ullman. If the clauses in the formulas are restricted to disjunctions of negated triples, Ng, Steel, and Wormald showed that the problem remains NP-complete. We systematically study the computational complexity of the problem for all such restrictions of the clauses in the input formula. For certain restricted disjunctions of triples we present an algorithm that has sub-quadratic running time and is asymptotically as fast as the fastest known algorithm for the rooted triple consistency problem. We also show that any restriction of the general rooted phylogeny problem that does not fall into our tractable class is NP-complete, using known results about the complexity of Boolean constraint satisfaction problems. Finally, we present a pebble game argument that shows that the rooted triple consistency problem (and also all generalizations studied in this paper) cannot be solved by Datalog.
1110.0704
Hierarchical Composable Optimization of Web Pages
cs.IR
The process of creating modern Web media experiences is challenged by the need to adapt the content and presentation choices to dynamic real-time fluctuations of user interest across multiple audiences. We introduce FAME - a Framework for Agile Media Experiences - which addresses this scalability problem. FAME allows media creators to define abstract page models that are subsequently transformed into real experiences through algorithmic experimentation. FAME's page models are hierarchically composed of simple building blocks, mirroring the structure of most Web pages. They are resolved into concrete page instances by pluggable algorithms which optimize the pages for specific business goals. Our framework allows retrieving dynamic content from multiple sources, defining the experimentation's degrees of freedom, and constraining the algorithmic choices. It offers an effective separation of concerns in the media creation process, enabling multiple stakeholders with profoundly different skills to apply their crafts and perform their duties independently, composing and reusing each other's work in modular ways.
1110.0718
Directed information and Pearl's causal calculus
cs.IT cs.LG cs.SY math.IT
Probabilistic graphical models are a fundamental tool in statistics, machine learning, signal processing, and control. When such a model is defined on a directed acyclic graph (DAG), one can assign a partial ordering to the events occurring in the corresponding stochastic system. Based on the work of Judea Pearl and others, these DAG-based "causal factorizations" of joint probability measures have been used for characterization and inference of functional dependencies (causal links). This mostly expository paper focuses on several connections between Pearl's formalism (and in particular his notion of "intervention") and information-theoretic notions of causality and feedback (such as causal conditioning, directed stochastic kernels, and directed information). As an application, we show how conditional directed information can be used to develop an information-theoretic version of Pearl's "back-door" criterion for identifiability of causal effects from passive observations. This suggests that the back-door criterion can be thought of as a causal analog of statistical sufficiency.
1110.0725
A Survey of Distributed Data Aggregation Algorithms
cs.DC cs.DS cs.IR cs.NI
Distributed data aggregation is an important task, allowing the decentralized determination of meaningful global properties, that can then be used to direct the execution of other applications. The resulting values result from the distributed computation of functions like COUNT, SUM and AVERAGE. Some application examples can found to determine the network size, total storage capacity, average load, majorities and many others. In the last decade, many different approaches have been proposed, with different trade-offs in terms of accuracy, reliability, message and time complexity. Due to the considerable amount and variety of aggregation algorithms, it can be difficult and time consuming to determine which techniques will be more appropriate to use in specific settings, justifying the existence of a survey to aid in this task. This work reviews the state of the art on distributed data aggregation algorithms, providing three main contributions. First, it formally defines the concept of aggregation, characterizing the different types of aggregation functions. Second, it succinctly describes the main aggregation techniques, organizing them in a taxonomy. Finally, it provides some guidelines toward the selection and use of the most relevant techniques, summarizing their principal characteristics.
1110.0748
Compress-Forward without Wyner-Ziv Binning for the One-Way and Two-Way Relay Channels
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the role of Wyner-Ziv binning in compress-forward for relay channels. In the one-way relay channel, we analyze a compress-forward scheme without Wyner- Ziv binning but with joint decoding of both the message and compression index. It achieves the same rate as the original compress-forward scheme with binning and successive decoding. Therefore, binning helps reduce decoding complexity by allowing successive decoding, but has no impact on achievable rate for the one-way relay channel. On the other hand, no binning simplifies relay operation. By extending compress-forward without binning to the two-way relay channel, we can achieve a larger rate region than the original compress-forward scheme when the channel is asymmetric for the two users. Binning and successive decoding limits the compression rate to match the weaker of the channels from relay to two users, whereas without binning, this restriction no longer applies. Compared with noisy network coding, compress-forward without binning achieves the same rate region in certain Gaussian channel configurations, and it has much less delay. This work is a step toward understanding the role of Wyner-Ziv binning in compress-forward relaying.
1110.0751
Power-law weighted networks from local attachments
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
This letter introduces a mechanism for constructing, through a process of distributed decision-making, substrates for the study of collective dynamics on extended power-law weighted networks with both a desired scaling exponent and a fixed clustering coefficient. The analytical results show that the connectivity distribution converges to the scaling behavior often found in social and engineering systems. To illustrate the approach of the proposed framework we generate network substrates that resemble steady state properties of the empirical citation distributions of (i) publications indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information from 1981 to 1997; (ii) patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from 1975 to 1999; and (iii) opinions written by the Supreme Court and the cases they cite from 1754 to 2002.
1110.0784
Optimal rotation of a qubit under dynamic measurement and velocity control
quant-ph cs.SY math.OC
In this article we explore a modification in the problem of controlling the rotation of a two level quantum system from an initial state to a final state in minimum time. Specifically we consider the case where the qubit is being weakly monitored -- albeit with an assumption that both the measurement strength as well as the angular velocity are assumed to be control signals. This modification alters the dynamics significantly and enables the exploitation of the measurement backaction to assist in achieving the control objective. The proposed method yields a significant speedup in achieving the desired state transfer compared to previous approaches. These results are demonstrated via numerical solutions for an example problem on a single qubit.
1110.0819
Analytical Forms for Most Likely Matrices Derived from Incomplete Information
cs.IT math.IT
Consider a rectangular matrix describing some type of communication or transportation between a set of origins and a set of destinations, or a classification of objects by two attributes. The problem is to infer the entries of the matrix from limited information in the form of constraints, generally the sums of the elements over various subsets of the matrix, such as rows, columns, etc, or from bounds on these sums, down to individual elements. Such problems are routinely addressed by applying the maximum entropy method to compute the matrix numerically, but in this paper we derive analytical, closed-form solutions. For the most complicated cases we consider the solution depends on the root of a non-linear equation, for which we provide an analytical approximation in the form of a power series. Some of our solutions extend to 3-dimensional matrices. Besides being valid for matrices of arbitrary size, the analytical solutions exhibit many of the appealing properties of maximum entropy, such as precise use of the available data, intuitive behavior with respect to changes in the constraints, and logical consistency.
1110.0872
Non-Gaussian Scale Space Filtering with 2 by 2 Matrix of Linear Filters
cs.CV
Construction of a scale space with a convolution filter has been studied extensively in the past. It has been proven that the only convolution kernel that satisfies the scale space requirements is a Gaussian type. In this paper, we consider a matrix of convolution filters introduced in [1] as a building kernel for a scale space, and shows that we can construct a non-Gaussian scale space with a $2\times 2$ matrix of filters. The paper derives sufficient conditions for the matrix of filters for being a scale space kernel, and present some numerical demonstrations.
1110.0879
Linearized Additive Classifiers
cs.CV cs.AI cs.LG
We revisit the additive model learning literature and adapt a penalized spline formulation due to Eilers and Marx, to train additive classifiers efficiently. We also propose two new embeddings based two classes of orthogonal basis with orthogonal derivatives, which can also be used to efficiently learn additive classifiers. This paper follows the popular theme in the current literature where kernel SVMs are learned much more efficiently using a approximate embedding and linear machine. In this paper we show that spline basis are especially well suited for learning additive models because of their sparsity structure and the ease of computing the embedding which enables one to train these models in an online manner, without incurring the memory overhead of precomputing the storing the embeddings. We show interesting connections between B-Spline basis and histogram intersection kernel and show that for a particular choice of regularization and degree of the B-Splines, our proposed learning algorithm closely approximates the histogram intersection kernel SVM. This enables one to learn additive models with almost no memory overhead compared to fast a linear solver, such as LIBLINEAR, while being only 5-6X slower on average. On two large scale image classification datasets, MNIST and Daimler Chrysler pedestrians, the proposed additive classifiers are as accurate as the kernel SVM, while being two orders of magnitude faster to train.
1110.0881
Partition Function Expansion on Region-Graphs and Message-Passing Equations
cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.dis-nn cs.IT math.IT
Disordered and frustrated graphical systems are ubiquitous in physics, biology, and information science. For models on complete graphs or random graphs, deep understanding has been achieved through the mean-field replica and cavity methods. But finite-dimensional `real' systems persist to be very challenging because of the abundance of short loops and strong local correlations. A statistical mechanics theory is constructed in this paper for finite-dimensional models based on the mathematical framework of partition function expansion and the concept of region-graphs. Rigorous expressions for the free energy and grand free energy are derived. Message-passing equations on the region-graph, such as belief-propagation and survey-propagation, are also derived rigorously.
1110.0886
Two-User Interference Channels with Local Views: On Capacity Regions of TDM-Dominating Policies
cs.IT math.IT
We study the capacity regions of two-user interference channels where transmitters base their transmission schemes on local views of the channel state. Under the local view model, each transmitter knows only a subset of the four channel gains, which may be mismatched from the other transmitter. We consider a set of seven local views, and find that for five out of the seven local views, TDM is sufficient to achieve the qualified notion of capacity region for the linear deterministic interference channel which approximates the Gaussian interference channel. For these five local views, the qualified capacity result implies that no policy can achieve a rate point outside the TDM region without inducing a corner case of sub-TDM performance in another channel state. The common trait shared by the two remaining local views - those with the potential to outperform TDM - is transmitter knowledge of the outgoing interference link accompanied by some common knowledge of state, emphasizing their importance in creating opportunities to coordinate usage of more advanced schemes. Our conclusions are extended to bounded gap characterizations of the capacity region for the Gaussian interference channel.
1110.0895
Robust inversion via semistochastic dimensionality reduction
cs.CE cs.NA
We consider a class of inverse problems where it is possible to aggregate the results of multiple experiments. This class includes problems where the forward model is the solution operator to linear ODEs or PDEs. The tremendous size of such problems motivates dimensionality reduction techniques based on randomly mixing experiments. These techniques break down, however, when robust data-fitting formulations are used, which are essential in cases of missing data, unusually large errors, and systematic features in the data unexplained by the forward model. We survey robust methods within a statistical framework, and propose a semistochastic optimization approach that allows dimensionality reduction. The efficacy of the methods are demonstrated for a large-scale seismic inverse problem using the robust Student's t-distribution, where a useful synthetic velocity model is recovered in the extreme scenario of 60% data missing at random. The semistochastic approach achieves this recovery using 20% of the effort required by a direct robust approach.
1110.0897
Block-Orthogonal Space-Time Code Structure and Its Impact on QRDM Decoding Complexity Reduction
cs.IT math.IT
Full-rate space time codes (STC) with rate = number of transmit antennas have high multiplexing gain, but high decoding complexity even when decoded using reduced-complexity decoders such as sphere or QRDM decoders. In this paper, we introduce a new code property of STC called block-orthogonal property, which can be exploited by QR-decomposition-based decoders to achieve significant decoding complexity reduction without performance loss. We show that such complexity reduction principle can benefit the existing algebraic codes such as Perfect and DjABBA codes due to their inherent (but previously undiscovered) block-orthogonal property. In addition, we construct and optimize new full-rate BOSTC (Block-Orthogonal STC) that further maximize the QRDM complexity reduction potential. Simulation results of bit error rate (BER) performance against decoding complexity show that the new BOSTC outperforms all previously known codes as long as the QRDM decoder operates in reduced-complexity mode, and the code exhibits a desirable complexity saturation property.
1110.0911
Estimates on the Size of Symbol Weight Codes
cs.IT math.IT
The study of codes for powerlines communication has garnered much interest over the past decade. Various types of codes such as permutation codes, frequency permutation arrays, and constant composition codes have been proposed over the years. In this work we study a type of code called the bounded symbol weight codes which was first introduced by Versfeld et al. in 2005, and a related family of codes that we term constant symbol weight codes. We provide new upper and lower bounds on the size of bounded symbol weight and constant symbol weight codes. We also give direct and recursive constructions of codes for certain parameters.
1110.0957
Dictionary Learning for Deblurring and Digital Zoom
cs.LG cs.CV
This paper proposes a novel approach to image deblurring and digital zooming using sparse local models of image appearance. These models, where small image patches are represented as linear combinations of a few elements drawn from some large set (dictionary) of candidates, have proven well adapted to several image restoration tasks. A key to their success has been to learn dictionaries adapted to the reconstruction of small image patches. In contrast, recent works have proposed instead to learn dictionaries which are not only adapted to data reconstruction, but also tuned for a specific task. We introduce here such an approach to deblurring and digital zoom, using pairs of blurry/sharp (or low-/high-resolution) images for training, as well as an effective stochastic gradient algorithm for solving the corresponding optimization task. Although this learning problem is not convex, once the dictionaries have been learned, the sharp/high-resolution image can be recovered via convex optimization at test time. Experiments with synthetic and real data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, leading to state-of-the-art performance for non-blind image deblurring and digital zoom.
1110.0983
Self-organizing magnetic beads for biomedical applications
physics.bio-ph cs.CE physics.flu-dyn
In the field of biomedicine magnetic beads are used for drug delivery and to treat hyperthermia. Here we propose to use self-organized bead structures to isolate circulating tumor cells using lab-on-chip technologies. Typically blood flows past microposts functionalized with antibodies for circulating tumor cells. Creating these microposts with interacting magnetic beads makes it possible to tune the geometry in size, position and shape. We developed a simulation tool that combines micromagnetics and discrete particle dynamics, in order to design micropost arrays made of interacting beads. The simulation takes into account the viscous drag of the blood flow, magnetostatic interactions between the magnetic beads and gradient forces from external aligned magnets. We developed a particle-particle particle-mesh method for effective computation of the magnetic force and torque acting on the particles.
1110.0995
A tunable cancer cell filter using magnetic beads: cellular and fluid dynamic simulations
physics.flu-dyn cs.CE physics.bio-ph
In the field of biomedicine magnetic beads are used for drug delivery and to treat hyperthermia. Here we propose to use self-organized bead structures to isolate circulating tumor cells using lab-on-chip technologies. Typically blood flows past microposts functionalized with antibodies for circulating tumor cells. Creating these microposts with interacting magnetic beads makes it possible to tune the geometry in size, position and shape. We develop a simulation tool that combines micromagnetics, discrete particle dynamics and fluid dynamics, in order to design micropost arrays made of interacting beads. For the simulation of blood flow we use the Lattice-Boltzmann method with immersed elastic blood cell models. Parallelization distributes large fluid and particle dynamic simulations over available resources to reduce overall calculation time.
1110.0999
Generalization Strategies for the Verification of Infinite State Systems
cs.LO cs.AI cs.SE
We present a method for the automated verification of temporal properties of infinite state systems. Our verification method is based on the specialization of constraint logic programs (CLP) and works in two phases: (1) in the first phase, a CLP specification of an infinite state system is specialized with respect to the initial state of the system and the temporal property to be verified, and (2) in the second phase, the specialized program is evaluated by using a bottom-up strategy. The effectiveness of the method strongly depends on the generalization strategy which is applied during the program specialization phase. We consider several generalization strategies obtained by combining techniques already known in the field of program analysis and program transformation, and we also introduce some new strategies. Then, through many verification experiments, we evaluate the effectiveness of the generalization strategies we have considered. Finally, we compare the implementation of our specialization-based verification method to other constraint-based model checking tools. The experimental results show that our method is competitive with the methods used by those other tools. To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).
1110.1016
Engineering Benchmarks for Planning: the Domains Used in the Deterministic Part of IPC-4
cs.AI
In a field of research about general reasoning mechanisms, it is essential to have appropriate benchmarks. Ideally, the benchmarks should reflect possible applications of the developed technology. In AI Planning, researchers more and more tend to draw their testing examples from the benchmark collections used in the International Planning Competition (IPC). In the organization of (the deterministic part of) the fourth IPC, IPC-4, the authors therefore invested significant effort to create a useful set of benchmarks. They come from five different (potential) real-world applications of planning: airport ground traffic control, oil derivative transportation in pipeline networks, model-checking safety properties, power supply restoration, and UMTS call setup. Adapting and preparing such an application for use as a benchmark in the IPC involves, at the time, inevitable (often drastic) simplifications, as well as careful choice between, and engineering of, domain encodings. For the first time in the IPC, we used compilations to formulate complex domain features in simple languages such as STRIPS, rather than just dropping the more interesting problem constraints in the simpler language subsets. The article explains and discusses the five application domains and their adaptation to form the PDDL test suites used in IPC-4. We summarize known theoretical results on structural properties of the domains, regarding their computational complexity and provable properties of their topology under the h+ function (an idealized version of the relaxed plan heuristic). We present new (empirical) results illuminating properties such as the quality of the most wide-spread heuristic functions (planning graph, serial planning graph, and relaxed plan), the growth of propositional representations over instance size, and the number of actions available to achieve each fact; we discuss these data in conjunction with the best results achieved by the different kinds of planners participating in IPC-4.
1110.1038
Using Genetic Algorithm in the Evolutionary Design of Sequential Logic Circuits
cs.NE
Evolvable hardware (EHW) is a set of techniques that are based on the idea of combining reconfiguration hardware systems with evolutionary algorithms. In other word, EHW has two sections; the reconfigurable hardware and evolutionary algorithm where the configurations are under the control of an evolutionary algorithm. This paper, suggests a method to design and optimize the synchronous sequential circuits. Genetic algorithm (GA) was applied as evolutionary algorithm. In this approach, for building input combinational logic circuit of each DFF, and also output combinational logic circuit, the cell arrays have been used. The obtained results show that our method can reduce the average number of generations by limitation the search space.
1110.1073
Active Learning with Multiple Views
cs.LG
Active learners alleviate the burden of labeling large amounts of data by detecting and asking the user to label only the most informative examples in the domain. We focus here on active learning for multi-view domains, in which there are several disjoint subsets of features (views), each of which is sufficient to learn the target concept. In this paper we make several contributions. First, we introduce Co-Testing, which is the first approach to multi-view active learning. Second, we extend the multi-view learning framework by also exploiting weak views, which are adequate only for learning a concept that is more general/specific than the target concept. Finally, we empirically show that Co-Testing outperforms existing active learners on a variety of real world domains such as wrapper induction, Web page classification, advertisement removal, and discourse tree parsing.