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1210.2195
Annotating Answer-Set Programs in LANA?
cs.SE cs.AI
While past research in answer-set programming (ASP) mainly focused on theory, ASP solver technology, and applications, the present work situates itself in the context of a quite recent research trend: development support for ASP. In particular, we propose to augment answer-set programs with additional meta-information formulated in a dedicated annotation language, called LANA. This language allows the grouping of rules into coherent blocks and to specify language signatures, types, pre- and postconditions, as well as unit tests for such blocks. While these annotations are invisible to an ASP solver, as they take the form of program comments, they can be interpreted by tools for documentation, testing, and verification purposes, as well as to eliminate sources of common programming errors by realising syntax checking or code completion features. To demonstrate its versatility, we introduce two such tools, viz. (i) ASPDOC, for generating an HTML documentation for a program based on the annotated information, and (ii) ASPUNIT, for running and monitoring unit tests on program blocks. LANA is also exploited in the SeaLion system, an integrated development environment for ASP based on Eclipse. To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming
1210.2211
Network Null Model based on Maximal Entropy and the Rich-Club
physics.soc-ph cs.SI stat.ME
We present a method to construct a network null-model based on the maximum entropy principle and where the restrictions that the rich-club and the degree sequence impose are conserved. We show that the probability that two nodes share a link can be described with a simple probability function. The null-model closely approximates the assortative properties of the network.
1210.2259
Degrees of freedom in vector interference channels
cs.IT math.IT
This paper continues the Wu-Shamai-Verdu program [3] on characterizing the degrees of freedom (DoF) of interference channels (ICs) through Renyi information dimension. Specifically, we find a single-letter formula for the DoF of vector ICs, encompassing multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) ICs, time- and/or frequency-selective ICs, and combinations thereof, as well as scalar ICs as considered in [3]. The DoF-formula we obtain lower-bounds the DoF of all channels--with respect to the choice of the channel matrix--and upper-bounds the DoF of almost all channels. It applies to a large class of noise distributions, and its proof is based on an extension of a result by Guionnet and Shlyakthenko [3] to the vector case in combination with the Ruzsa triangle inequality for differential entropy introduced by Kontoyiannis and Madiman [4]. As in scalar ICs, achieving full DoF requires the use of singular input distributions. Strikingly, in the vector case it suffices to enforce singularity on the joint distribution of each individual transmit vector. This can be realized through signaling in subspaces of the ambient signal space, which is in accordance with the idea of interference alignment, and, most importantly, allows the scalar entries of the transmit vectors to have non-singular distributions. The DoF-formula for vector ICs we obtain enables a unified treatment of "classical" interference alignment a la Cadambe and Jafar [5], and Maddah-Ali et al. [6], and the number-theoretic schemes proposed in [7], [8]. Moreover, it allows to calculate the DoF achieved by new signaling schemes for vector ICs. We furthermore recover the result by Cadambe and Jafar on the non-separability of parallel ICs [9] and we show that almost all parallel ICs are separable in terms of DoF. Finally, our results apply to complex vector ICs, thereby extending the main findings of [2] to the complex case.
1210.2272
Joint Sparsity with Different Measurement Matrices
cs.IT math.IT
We consider a generalization of the multiple measurement vector (MMV) problem, where the measurement matrices are allowed to differ across measurements. This problem arises naturally when multiple measurements are taken over time, e.g., and the measurement modality (matrix) is time-varying. We derive probabilistic recovery guarantees showing that---under certain (mild) conditions on the measurement matrices---l2/l1-norm minimization and a variant of orthogonal matching pursuit fail with a probability that decays exponentially in the number of measurements. This allows us to conclude that, perhaps surprisingly, recovery performance does not suffer from the individual measurements being taken through different measurement matrices. What is more, recovery performance typically benefits (significantly) from diversity in the measurement matrices; we specify conditions under which such improvements are obtained. These results continue to hold when the measurements are subject to (bounded) noise.
1210.2276
A Map-Reduce Parallel Approach to Automatic Synthesis of Control Software
cs.DC cs.SY
Many Control Systems are indeed Software Based Control Systems, i.e. control systems whose controller consists of control software running on a microcontroller device. This motivates investigation on Formal Model Based Design approaches for automatic synthesis of control software. Available algorithms and tools (e.g., QKS) may require weeks or even months of computation to synthesize control software for large-size systems. This motivates search for parallel algorithms for control software synthesis. In this paper, we present a Map-Reduce style parallel algorithm for control software synthesis when the controlled system (plant) is modeled as discrete time linear hybrid system. Furthermore we present an MPI-based implementation PQKS of our algorithm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first parallel approach for control software synthesis. We experimentally show effectiveness of PQKS on two classical control synthesis problems: the inverted pendulum and the multi-input buck DC/DC converter. Experiments show that PQKS efficiency is above 65%. As an example, PQKS requires about 16 hours to complete the synthesis of control software for the pendulum on a cluster with 60 processors, instead of the 25 days needed by the sequential algorithm in QKS.
1210.2283
Unfolding accessibility provides a macroscopic approach to temporal networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
An accessibility graph of a network contains a link, wherever there is a path of arbitrary length between two nodes. We generalize the concept of accessibility to temporal networks. Building an accessibility graph by consecutively adding paths of growing length (unfolding), we obtain information about the distribution of shortest path durations and characteristic time-scales in temporal networks. Moreover, we define causal fidelity to measure the goodness of their static representation. The practicability of our proposed methods is demonstrated for three examples: networks of social contacts, livestock trade and sexual contacts.
1210.2289
A Fast Distributed Proximal-Gradient Method
cs.DC cs.LG stat.ML
We present a distributed proximal-gradient method for optimizing the average of convex functions, each of which is the private local objective of an agent in a network with time-varying topology. The local objectives have distinct differentiable components, but they share a common nondifferentiable component, which has a favorable structure suitable for effective computation of the proximal operator. In our method, each agent iteratively updates its estimate of the global minimum by optimizing its local objective function, and exchanging estimates with others via communication in the network. Using Nesterov-type acceleration techniques and multiple communication steps per iteration, we show that this method converges at the rate 1/k (where k is the number of communication rounds between the agents), which is faster than the convergence rate of the existing distributed methods for solving this problem. The superior convergence rate of our method is also verified by numerical experiments.
1210.2316
Disjunctive Datalog with Existential Quantifiers: Semantics, Decidability, and Complexity Issues
cs.AI cs.LO
Datalog is one of the best-known rule-based languages, and extensions of it are used in a wide context of applications. An important Datalog extension is Disjunctive Datalog, which significantly increases the expressivity of the basic language. Disjunctive Datalog is useful in a wide range of applications, ranging from Databases (e.g., Data Integration) to Artificial Intelligence (e.g., diagnosis and planning under incomplete knowledge). However, in recent years an important shortcoming of Datalog-based languages became evident, e.g. in the context of data-integration (consistent query-answering, ontology-based data access) and Semantic Web applications: The language does not permit any generation of and reasoning with unnamed individuals in an obvious way. In general, it is weak in supporting many cases of existential quantification. To overcome this problem, Datalogex has recently been proposed, which extends traditional Datalog by existential quantification in rule heads. In this work, we propose a natural extension of Disjunctive Datalog and Datalogex, called Datalogexor, which allows both disjunctions and existential quantification in rule heads and is therefore an attractive language for knowledge representation and reasoning, especially in domains where ontology-based reasoning is needed. We formally define syntax and semantics of the language Datalogexor, and provide a notion of instantiation, which we prove to be adequate for Datalogexor. A main issue of Datalogex and hence also of Datalogexor is that decidability is no longer guaranteed for typical reasoning tasks. In order to address this issue, we identify many decidable fragments of the language, which extend, in a natural way, analog classes defined in the non-disjunctive case. Moreover, we carry out an in-depth complexity analysis, deriving interesting results which range from Logarithmic Space to Exponential Time.
1210.2346
Blending Learning and Inference in Structured Prediction
cs.LG
In this paper we derive an efficient algorithm to learn the parameters of structured predictors in general graphical models. This algorithm blends the learning and inference tasks, which results in a significant speedup over traditional approaches, such as conditional random fields and structured support vector machines. For this purpose we utilize the structures of the predictors to describe a low dimensional structured prediction task which encourages local consistencies within the different structures while learning the parameters of the model. Convexity of the learning task provides the means to enforce the consistencies between the different parts. The inference-learning blending algorithm that we propose is guaranteed to converge to the optimum of the low dimensional primal and dual programs. Unlike many of the existing approaches, the inference-learning blending allows us to learn efficiently high-order graphical models, over regions of any size, and very large number of parameters. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, while presenting state-of-the-art results in stereo estimation, semantic segmentation, shape reconstruction, and indoor scene understanding.
1210.2352
A notion of continuity in discrete spaces and applications
math.MG cs.CV math.CO math.GN
We propose a notion of continuous path for locally finite metric spaces, taking inspiration from the recent development of A-theory for locally finite connected graphs. We use this notion of continuity to derive an analogue in Z^2 of the Jordan curve theorem and to extend to a quite large class of locally finite metric spaces (containing all finite metric spaces) an inequality for the \ell^p-distortion of a metric space that has been recently proved by Pierre-Nicolas Jolissaint and Alain Valette for finite connected graphs.
1210.2354
Fisher information distance: a geometrical reading
stat.ME cs.IT math-ph math.IT math.MP
This paper is a strongly geometrical approach to the Fisher distance, which is a measure of dissimilarity between two probability distribution functions. The Fisher distance, as well as other divergence measures, are also used in many applications to establish a proper data average. The main purpose is to widen the range of possible interpretations and relations of the Fisher distance and its associated geometry for the prospective applications. It focuses on statistical models of the normal probability distribution functions and takes advantage of the connection with the classical hyperbolic geometry to derive closed forms for the Fisher distance in several cases. Connections with the well-known Kullback-Leibler divergence measure are also devised.
1210.2376
Interdependence and Predictability of Human Mobility and Social Interactions
physics.soc-ph cs.SI nlin.CD
Previous studies have shown that human movement is predictable to a certain extent at different geographic scales. Existing prediction techniques exploit only the past history of the person taken into consideration as input of the predictors. In this paper, we show that by means of multivariate nonlinear time series prediction techniques it is possible to increase the forecasting accuracy by considering movements of friends, people, or more in general entities, with correlated mobility patterns (i.e., characterised by high mutual information) as inputs. Finally, we evaluate the proposed techniques on the Nokia Mobile Data Challenge and Cabspotting datasets.
1210.2380
Stable and robust sampling strategies for compressive imaging
cs.CV cs.IT math.IT math.NA
In many signal processing applications, one wishes to acquire images that are sparse in transform domains such as spatial finite differences or wavelets using frequency domain samples. For such applications, overwhelming empirical evidence suggests that superior image reconstruction can be obtained through variable density sampling strategies that concentrate on lower frequencies. The wavelet and Fourier transform domains are not incoherent because low-order wavelets and low-order frequencies are correlated, so compressive sensing theory does not immediately imply sampling strategies and reconstruction guarantees. In this paper we turn to a more refined notion of coherence -- the so-called local coherence -- measuring for each sensing vector separately how correlated it is to the sparsity basis. For Fourier measurements and Haar wavelet sparsity, the local coherence can be controlled and bounded explicitly, so for matrices comprised of frequencies sampled from a suitable inverse square power-law density, we can prove the restricted isometry property with near-optimal embedding dimensions. Consequently, the variable-density sampling strategy we provide allows for image reconstructions that are stable to sparsity defects and robust to measurement noise. Our results cover both reconstruction by $\ell_1$-minimization and by total variation minimization. The local coherence framework developed in this paper should be of independent interest in sparse recovery problems more generally, as it implies that for optimal sparse recovery results, it suffices to have bounded \emph{average} coherence from sensing basis to sparsity basis -- as opposed to bounded maximal coherence -- as long as the sampling strategy is adapted accordingly.
1210.2381
The Power of Linear Reconstruction Attacks
cs.DS cs.CR cs.LG math.PR
We consider the power of linear reconstruction attacks in statistical data privacy, showing that they can be applied to a much wider range of settings than previously understood. Linear attacks have been studied before (Dinur and Nissim PODS'03, Dwork, McSherry and Talwar STOC'07, Kasiviswanathan, Rudelson, Smith and Ullman STOC'10, De TCC'12, Muthukrishnan and Nikolov STOC'12) but have so far been applied only in settings with releases that are obviously linear. Consider a database curator who manages a database of sensitive information but wants to release statistics about how a sensitive attribute (say, disease) in the database relates to some nonsensitive attributes (e.g., postal code, age, gender, etc). We show one can mount linear reconstruction attacks based on any release that gives: a) the fraction of records that satisfy a given non-degenerate boolean function. Such releases include contingency tables (previously studied by Kasiviswanathan et al., STOC'10) as well as more complex outputs like the error rate of classifiers such as decision trees; b) any one of a large class of M-estimators (that is, the output of empirical risk minimization algorithms), including the standard estimators for linear and logistic regression. We make two contributions: first, we show how these types of releases can be transformed into a linear format, making them amenable to existing polynomial-time reconstruction algorithms. This is already perhaps surprising, since many of the above releases (like M-estimators) are obtained by solving highly nonlinear formulations. Second, we show how to analyze the resulting attacks under various distributional assumptions on the data. Specifically, we consider a setting in which the same statistic (either a) or b) above) is released about how the sensitive attribute relates to all subsets of size k (out of a total of d) nonsensitive boolean attributes.
1210.2388
Video De-fencing
cs.CV cs.MM
This paper describes and provides an initial solution to a novel video editing task, i.e., video de-fencing. It targets automatic restoration of the video clips that are corrupted by fence-like occlusions during capture. Our key observation lies in the visual parallax between fences and background scenes, which is caused by the fact that the former are typically closer to the camera. Unlike in traditional image inpainting, fence-occluded pixels in the videos tend to appear later in the temporal dimension and are therefore recoverable via optimized pixel selection from relevant frames. To eventually produce fence-free videos, major challenges include cross-frame sub-pixel image alignment under diverse scene depth, and "correct" pixel selection that is robust to dominating fence pixels. Several novel tools are developed in this paper, including soft fence detection, weighted truncated optical flow method and robust temporal median filter. The proposed algorithm is validated on several real-world video clips with fences.
1210.2406
Quick Search for Rare Events
cs.IT math.IT
Rare events can potentially occur in many applications. When manifested as opportunities to be exploited, risks to be ameliorated, or certain features to be extracted, such events become of paramount significance. Due to their sporadic nature, the information-bearing signals associated with rare events often lie in a large set of irrelevant signals and are not easily accessible. This paper provides a statistical framework for detecting such events so that an optimal balance between detection reliability and agility, as two opposing performance measures, is established. The core component of this framework is a sampling procedure that adaptively and quickly focuses the information-gathering resources on the segments of the dataset that bear the information pertinent to the rare events. Particular focus is placed on Gaussian signals with the aim of detecting signals with rare mean and variance values.
1210.2421
Simulated Tom Thumb, the Rule Of Thumb for Autonomous Robots
cs.RO cs.AI
For a mobile robot to be truly autonomous, it must solve the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem. We develop a new metaheuristic algorithm called Simulated Tom Thumb (STT), based on the detailed adventure of the clever Tom Thumb and advances in researches relating to path planning based on potential functions. Investigations show that it is very promising and could be seen as an optimization of the powerful solution of SLAM with data association and learning capabilities. STT outperform JCBB. The performance is 100 % match.
1210.2429
Mining Permission Request Patterns from Android and Facebook Applications (extended author version)
cs.CR cs.AI stat.ML
Android and Facebook provide third-party applications with access to users' private data and the ability to perform potentially sensitive operations (e.g., post to a user's wall or place phone calls). As a security measure, these platforms restrict applications' privileges with permission systems: users must approve the permissions requested by applications before the applications can make privacy- or security-relevant API calls. However, recent studies have shown that users often do not understand permission requests and lack a notion of typicality of requests. As a first step towards simplifying permission systems, we cluster a corpus of 188,389 Android applications and 27,029 Facebook applications to find patterns in permission requests. Using a method for Boolean matrix factorization for finding overlapping clusters, we find that Facebook permission requests follow a clear structure that exhibits high stability when fitted with only five clusters, whereas Android applications demonstrate more complex permission requests. We also find that low-reputation applications often deviate from the permission request patterns that we identified for high-reputation applications suggesting that permission request patterns are indicative for user satisfaction or application quality.
1210.2440
Group Model Selection Using Marginal Correlations: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
math.ST cs.IT math.IT stat.ML stat.TH
Group model selection is the problem of determining a small subset of groups of predictors (e.g., the expression data of genes) that are responsible for majority of the variation in a response variable (e.g., the malignancy of a tumor). This paper focuses on group model selection in high-dimensional linear models, in which the number of predictors far exceeds the number of samples of the response variable. Existing works on high-dimensional group model selection either require the number of samples of the response variable to be significantly larger than the total number of predictors contributing to the response or impose restrictive statistical priors on the predictors and/or nonzero regression coefficients. This paper provides comprehensive understanding of a low-complexity approach to group model selection that avoids some of these limitations. The proposed approach, termed Group Thresholding (GroTh), is based on thresholding of marginal correlations of groups of predictors with the response variable and is reminiscent of existing thresholding-based approaches in the literature. The most important contribution of the paper in this regard is relating the performance of GroTh to a polynomial-time verifiable property of the predictors for the general case of arbitrary (random or deterministic) predictors and arbitrary nonzero regression coefficients.
1210.2448
Modelling Implicit Communication in Multi-Agent Systems with Hybrid Input/Output Automata
cs.FL cs.MA
We propose an extension of Hybrid I/O Automata (HIOAs) to model agent systems and their implicit communication through perturbation of the environment, like localization of objects or radio signals diffusion and detection. To this end we decided to specialize some variables of the HIOAs whose values are functions both of time and space. We call them world variables. Basically they are treated similarly to the other variables of HIOAs, but they have the function of representing the interaction of each automaton with the surrounding environment, hence they can be output, input or internal variables. Since these special variables have the role of simulating implicit communication, their dynamics are specified both in time and space, because they model the perturbations induced by the agent to the environment, and the perturbations of the environment as perceived by the agent. Parallel composition of world variables is slightly different from parallel composition of the other variables, since their signals are summed. The theory is illustrated through a simple example of agents systems.
1210.2449
Rapid Recovery for Systems with Scarce Faults
cs.SY
Our goal is to achieve a high degree of fault tolerance through the control of a safety critical systems. This reduces to solving a game between a malicious environment that injects failures and a controller who tries to establish a correct behavior. We suggest a new control objective for such systems that offers a better balance between complexity and precision: we seek systems that are k-resilient. In order to be k-resilient, a system needs to be able to rapidly recover from a small number, up to k, of local faults infinitely many times, provided that blocks of up to k faults are separated by short recovery periods in which no fault occurs. k-resilience is a simple but powerful abstraction from the precise distribution of local faults, but much more refined than the traditional objective to maximize the number of local faults. We argue why we believe this to be the right level of abstraction for safety critical systems when local faults are few and far between. We show that the computational complexity of constructing optimal control with respect to resilience is low and demonstrate the feasibility through an implementation and experimental results.
1210.2453
Automata-based Static Analysis of XML Document Adaptation
cs.DB cs.DS cs.FL
The structure of an XML document can be optionally specified by means of XML Schema, thus enabling the exploitation of structural information for efficient document handling. Upon schema evolution, or when exchanging documents among different collections exploiting related but not identical schemas, the need may arise of adapting a document, known to be valid for a given schema S, to a target schema S'. The adaptation may require knowledge of the element semantics and cannot always be automatically derived. In this paper, we present an automata-based method for the static analysis of user-defined XML document adaptations, expressed as sequences of XQuery Update update primitives. The key feature of the method is the use of an automatic inference method for extracting the type, expressed as a Hedge Automaton, of a sequence of document updates. The type is computed starting from the original schema S and from rewriting rules that formally define the operational semantics of a sequence of document updates. Type inclusion can then be used as conformance test w.r.t. the type extracted from the target schema S'.
1210.2473
Enhanced Community Structure Detection in Complex Networks with Partial Background Information
cs.SI physics.comp-ph physics.data-an
Community structure detection in complex networks is important since it can help better understand the network topology and how the network works. However, there is still not a clear and widely-accepted definition of community structure, and in practice, different models may give very different results of communities, making it hard to explain the results. In this paper, different from the traditional methodologies, we design an enhanced semi-supervised learning framework for community detection, which can effectively incorporate the available prior information to guide the detection process and can make the results more explainable. By logical inference, the prior information is more fully utilized. The experiments on both the synthetic and the real-world networks confirm the effectiveness of the framework.
1210.2474
Level Set Estimation from Compressive Measurements using Box Constrained Total Variation Regularization
cs.CV stat.AP stat.ML
Estimating the level set of a signal from measurements is a task that arises in a variety of fields, including medical imaging, astronomy, and digital elevation mapping. Motivated by scenarios where accurate and complete measurements of the signal may not available, we examine here a simple procedure for estimating the level set of a signal from highly incomplete measurements, which may additionally be corrupted by additive noise. The proposed procedure is based on box-constrained Total Variation (TV) regularization. We demonstrate the performance of our approach, relative to existing state-of-the-art techniques for level set estimation from compressive measurements, via several simulation examples.
1210.2484
Semi-Quantitative Group Testing: A Unifying Framework for Group Testing with Applications in Genotyping
cs.IT math.IT
We propose a novel group testing method, termed semi-quantitative group testing, motivated by a class of problems arising in genome screening experiments. Semi-quantitative group testing (SQGT) is a (possibly) non-binary pooling scheme that may be viewed as a concatenation of an adder channel and an integer-valued quantizer. In its full generality, SQGT may be viewed as a unifying framework for group testing, in the sense that most group testing models are special instances of SQGT. For the new testing scheme, we define the notion of SQ-disjunct and SQ-separable codes, representing generalizations of classical disjunct and separable codes. We describe several combinatorial and probabilistic constructions for such codes. While for most of these constructions we assume that the number of defectives is much smaller than total number of test subjects, we also consider the case in which there is no restriction on the number of defectives and they may be as large as the total number of subjects. For the codes constructed in this paper, we describe a number of efficient decoding algorithms. In addition, we describe a belief propagation decoder for sparse SQGT codes for which no other efficient decoder is currently known. Finally, we define the notion of capacity of SQGT and evaluate it for some special choices of parameters using information theoretic methods.
1210.2502
Structured Dispersion Matrices from Space-Time Block Codes for Space-Time Shift Keying
cs.IT math.IT
Coherent Space-Time Shift Keying (CSTSK) is a recently developed generalized shift-keying framework for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output systems, which uses a set of Space-Time matrices termed as Dispersion Matrices (DM). CSTSK may be combined with a classic signaling set (eg. QAM, PSK) in order to strike a flexible tradeoff between the achievable diversity and multiplexing gain. One of the key benefits of the CSTSK scheme is its Inter-Channel Interference (ICI) free system that makes single-stream Maximum Likelihood detection possible at low-complexity. In the existing CSTSK scheme, DMs are chosen by maximizing the mutual information over a large set of complex valued, Gaussian random matrices through numerical simulations. We refer to them as Capacity-Optimized (CO) DMs. In this contribution we establish a connection between the STSK scheme as well as the Space-Time Block Codes (STBC) and show that a class of STBCs termed as Decomposable Dispersion Codes (DDC) enjoy all the benefits that are specific to the STSK scheme. Two STBCs belonging to this class are proposed, a rate-one code from Field Extensions and a full-rate code from Cyclic Division Algebras, that offer structured DMs with desirable properties such as full-diversity, and a high coding gain. We show that the DMs derived from these codes are capable of achieving a performance than CO-DMs, and emphasize the importance of DMs having a higher coding gain than CO-DMs in scenarios having realistic, imperfect channel state information at the receiver.
1210.2515
Protein Inference and Protein Quantification: Two Sides of the Same Coin
cs.CE cs.DS q-bio.QM
Motivation: In mass spectrometry-based shotgun proteomics, protein quantification and protein identification are two major computational problems. To quantify the protein abundance, a list of proteins must be firstly inferred from the sample. Then the relative or absolute protein abundance is estimated with quantification methods, such as spectral counting. Until now, researchers have been dealing with these two processes separately. In fact, they are two sides of same coin in the sense that truly present proteins are those proteins with non-zero abundances. Then, one interesting question is if we regard the protein inference problem as a special protein quantification problem, is it possible to achieve better protein inference performance? Contribution: In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of using protein quantification methods to solve the protein inference problem. Protein inference is to determine whether each candidate protein is present in the sample or not. Protein quantification is to calculate the abundance of each protein. Naturally, the absent proteins should have zero abundances. Thus, we argue that the protein inference problem can be viewed as a special case of protein quantification problem: present proteins are those proteins with non-zero abundances. Based on this idea, our paper tries to use three very simple protein quantification methods to solve the protein inference problem effectively. Results: The experimental results on six datasets show that these three methods are competitive with previous protein inference algorithms. This demonstrates that it is plausible to take the protein inference problem as a special case of protein quantification, which opens the door of devising more effective protein inference algorithms from a quantification perspective.
1210.2529
Performance Analysis of Two-Step Bi-Directional Relaying with Multiple Antennas
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we study decode-and-forward multi-antenna relay systems that achieve bi-directional communication in two time slots. We investigate different downlink broadcast schemes which employ binary or analog network coding at the relay. We also analyze and compare their performances in terms of diversity order and symbol error probability. It is shown that if exact downlink channel state information is available at the relay, using analog network coding in the form of multi-antenna maximal-ratio transmit beamforming to precode the information vectors at the relay gives the best performance. Then, we propose a Max-Min antenna selection with binary network coding scheme that can approach this performance with only partial channel state information.
1210.2582
Degrees of Freedom Region of the MIMO X channel with an Arbitrary Number of Antennas
cs.IT math.IT
We characterize the total degrees of freedom (DoF) of the full-rank MIMO X channel with arbitrary number of antennas at each node. We elucidate that the existing outer bound is tight for any antenna configuration and provide transmit and receive filter designs that attain this outer bound. The proposed achievable scheme exploits channel extensions in terms of both, symbol and asymmetric complex signaling when the communication is carried out over a constant channel case, and is also applicable to time varying channels. The proposed scheme represents a general framework for the derivation of the total DoF of any two-by-two multiuser channels. Furthermore, the rank-deficient MIMO channels case is naturally addressed, and it is shown that the total DoF of the interference (IC) and MIMO X channels are in general superior to the full rank MIMO case
1210.2592
New Generalizations of the Bethe Approximation via Asymptotic Expansion
cs.IT cond-mat.stat-mech math.IT
The Bethe approximation, discovered in statistical physics, gives an efficient algorithm called belief propagation (BP) for approximating a partition function. BP empirically gives an accurate approximation for many problems, e.g., low-density parity-check codes, compressed sensing, etc. Recently, Vontobel gives a novel characterization of the Bethe approximation using graph cover. In this paper, a new approximation based on the Bethe approximation is proposed. The new approximation is derived from Vontobel's characterization using graph cover, and expressed by using the edge zeta function, which is related with the Hessian of the Bethe free energy as shown by Watanabe and Fukumizu. On some conditions, it is proved that the new approximation is asymptotically better than the Bethe approximation.
1210.2613
Measuring the Influence of Observations in HMMs through the Kullback-Leibler Distance
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT math.PR
We measure the influence of individual observations on the sequence of the hidden states of the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) by means of the Kullback-Leibler distance (KLD). Namely, we consider the KLD between the conditional distribution of the hidden states' chain given the complete sequence of observations and the conditional distribution of the hidden chain given all the observations but the one under consideration. We introduce a linear complexity algorithm for computing the influence of all the observations. As an illustration, we investigate the application of our algorithm to the problem of detecting outliers in HMM data series.
1210.2629
Optimization in Differentiable Manifolds in Order to Determine the Method of Construction of Prehistoric Wall-Paintings
cs.CV cs.AI cs.CG
In this paper a general methodology is introduced for the determination of potential prototype curves used for the drawing of prehistoric wall-paintings. The approach includes a) preprocessing of the wall-paintings contours to properly partition them, according to their curvature, b) choice of prototype curves families, c) analysis and optimization in 4-manifold for a first estimation of the form of these prototypes, d) clustering of the contour parts and the prototypes, to determine a minimal number of potential guides, e) further optimization in 4-manifold, applied to each cluster separately, in order to determine the exact functional form of the potential guides, together with the corresponding drawn contour parts. The introduced methodology simultaneously deals with two problems: a) the arbitrariness in data-points orientation and b) the determination of one proper form for a prototype curve that optimally fits the corresponding contour data. Arbitrariness in orientation has been dealt with a novel curvature based error, while the proper forms of curve prototypes have been exhaustively determined by embedding curvature deformations of the prototypes into 4-manifolds. Application of this methodology to celebrated wall-paintings excavated at Tyrins, Greece and the Greek island of Thera, manifests it is highly probable that these wall-paintings had been drawn by means of geometric guides that correspond to linear spirals and hyperbolae. These geometric forms fit the drawings' lines with an exceptionally low average error, less than 0.39mm. Hence, the approach suggests the existence of accurate realizations of complicated geometric entities, more than 1000 years before their axiomatic formulation in Classical Ages.
1210.2640
Multi-view constrained clustering with an incomplete mapping between views
cs.LG cs.AI
Multi-view learning algorithms typically assume a complete bipartite mapping between the different views in order to exchange information during the learning process. However, many applications provide only a partial mapping between the views, creating a challenge for current methods. To address this problem, we propose a multi-view algorithm based on constrained clustering that can operate with an incomplete mapping. Given a set of pairwise constraints in each view, our approach propagates these constraints using a local similarity measure to those instances that can be mapped to the other views, allowing the propagated constraints to be transferred across views via the partial mapping. It uses co-EM to iteratively estimate the propagation within each view based on the current clustering model, transfer the constraints across views, and then update the clustering model. By alternating the learning process between views, this approach produces a unified clustering model that is consistent with all views. We show that this approach significantly improves clustering performance over several other methods for transferring constraints and allows multi-view clustering to be reliably applied when given a limited mapping between the views. Our evaluation reveals that the propagated constraints have high precision with respect to the true clusters in the data, explaining their benefit to clustering performance in both single- and multi-view learning scenarios.
1210.2646
A General Methodology for the Determination of 2D Bodies Elastic Deformation Invariants. Application to the Automatic Identification of Parasites
cs.CV cs.AI
A novel methodology is introduced here that exploits 2D images of arbitrary elastic body deformation instances, so as to quantify mechano-elastic characteristics that are deformation invariant. Determination of such characteristics allows for developing methods offering an image of the undeformed body. General assumptions about the mechano-elastic properties of the bodies are stated, which lead to two different approaches for obtaining bodies' deformation invariants. One was developed to spot deformed body's neutral line and its cross sections, while the other solves deformation PDEs by performing a set of equivalent image operations on the deformed body images. Both these processes may furnish a body undeformed version from its deformed image. This was confirmed by obtaining the undeformed shape of deformed parasites, cells (protozoa), fibers and human lips. In addition, the method has been applied to the important problem of parasite automatic classification from their microscopic images. To achieve this, we first apply the previous method to straighten the highly deformed parasites and then we apply a dedicated curve classification method to the straightened parasite contours. It is demonstrated that essentially different deformations of the same parasite give rise to practically the same undeformed shape, thus confirming the consistency of the introduced methodology. Finally, the developed pattern recognition method classifies the unwrapped parasites into 6 families, with an accuracy rate of 97.6 %.
1210.2687
Deconvolving Images with Unknown Boundaries Using the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers
math.OC cs.CV
The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) has recently sparked interest as a flexible and efficient optimization tool for imaging inverse problems, namely deconvolution and reconstruction under non-smooth convex regularization. ADMM achieves state-of-the-art speed by adopting a divide and conquer strategy, wherein a hard problem is split into simpler, efficiently solvable sub-problems (e.g., using fast Fourier or wavelet transforms, or simple proximity operators). In deconvolution, one of these sub-problems involves a matrix inversion (i.e., solving a linear system), which can be done efficiently (in the discrete Fourier domain) if the observation operator is circulant, i.e., under periodic boundary conditions. This paper extends ADMM-based image deconvolution to the more realistic scenario of unknown boundary, where the observation operator is modeled as the composition of a convolution (with arbitrary boundary conditions) with a spatial mask that keeps only pixels that do not depend on the unknown boundary. The proposed approach also handles, at no extra cost, problems that combine the recovery of missing pixels (i.e., inpainting) with deconvolution. We show that the resulting algorithms inherit the convergence guarantees of ADMM and illustrate its performance on non-periodic deblurring (with and without inpainting of interior pixels) under total-variation and frame-based regularization.
1210.2688
Similarity and bisimilarity notions appropriate for characterizing indistinguishability in fragments of the calculus of relations
cs.LO cs.DB
Motivated by applications in databases, this paper considers various fragments of the calculus of binary relations. The fragments are obtained by leaving out, or keeping in, some of the standard operators, along with some derived operators such as set difference, projection, coprojection, and residuation. For each considered fragment, a characterization is obtained for when two given binary relational structures are indistinguishable by expressions in that fragment. The characterizations are based on appropriately adapted notions of simulation and bisimulation.
1210.2704
On the Capacity of the One-Bit Deletion and Duplication Channel
cs.IT math.IT
The one-bit deletion and duplication channel is investigated. An input to this channel consists of a block of bits which experiences either a deletion, or a duplication, or remains unchanged. For this channel a capacity expression is obtained in a certain asymptotic regime where the deletion and duplication probabilities tend to zero. As a corollary, we obtain an asymptotic expression for the capacity of the segmented deletion and duplication channel where the input now consists of several blocks and each block independently experiences either a deletion, or a duplication, or remains unchanged.
1210.2715
AI in arbitrary world
cs.AI
In order to build AI we have to create a program which copes well in an arbitrary world. In this paper we will restrict our attention on one concrete world, which represents the game Tick-Tack-Toe. This world is a very simple one but it is sufficiently complicated for our task because most people cannot manage with it. The main difficulty in this world is that the player cannot see the entire internal state of the world so he has to build a model in order to understand the world. The model which we will offer will consist of final automata and first order formulas.
1210.2748
Quantifying Causal Coupling Strength: A Lag-specific Measure For Multivariate Time Series Related To Transfer Entropy
physics.data-an cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
While it is an important problem to identify the existence of causal associations between two components of a multivariate time series, a topic addressed in Runge et al. (2012), it is even more important to assess the strength of their association in a meaningful way. In the present article we focus on the problem of defining a meaningful coupling strength using information theoretic measures and demonstrate the short-comings of the well-known mutual information and transfer entropy. Instead, we propose a certain time-delayed conditional mutual information, the momentary information transfer (MIT), as a measure of association that is general, causal and lag-specific, reflects a well interpretable notion of coupling strength and is practically computable. MIT is based on the fundamental concept of source entropy, which we utilize to yield a notion of coupling strength that is, compared to mutual information and transfer entropy, well interpretable, in that for many cases it solely depends on the interaction of the two components at a certain lag. In particular, MIT is thus in many cases able to exclude the misleading influence of autodependency within a process in an information-theoretic way. We formalize and prove this idea analytically and numerically for a general class of nonlinear stochastic processes and illustrate the potential of MIT on climatological data.
1210.2752
Statistical Properties of Inter-arrival Times Distribution in Social Tagging Systems
physics.soc-ph cs.IR cs.SI
Folksonomies provide a rich source of data to study social patterns taking place on the World Wide Web. Here we study the temporal patterns of users' tagging activity. We show that the statistical properties of inter-arrival times between subsequent tagging events cannot be explained without taking into account correlation in users' behaviors. This shows that social interaction in collaborative tagging communities shapes the evolution of folksonomies. A consensus formation process involving the usage of a small number of tags for a given resources is observed through a numerical and analytical analysis of some well-known folksonomy datasets.
1210.2771
Cost-Sensitive Tree of Classifiers
stat.ML cs.LG
Recently, machine learning algorithms have successfully entered large-scale real-world industrial applications (e.g. search engines and email spam filters). Here, the CPU cost during test time must be budgeted and accounted for. In this paper, we address the challenge of balancing the test-time cost and the classifier accuracy in a principled fashion. The test-time cost of a classifier is often dominated by the computation required for feature extraction-which can vary drastically across eatures. We decrease this extraction time by constructing a tree of classifiers, through which test inputs traverse along individual paths. Each path extracts different features and is optimized for a specific sub-partition of the input space. By only computing features for inputs that benefit from them the most, our cost sensitive tree of classifiers can match the high accuracies of the current state-of-the-art at a small fraction of the computational cost.
1210.2776
Contagion dynamics in time-varying metapopulation networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
The metapopulation framework is adopted in a wide array of disciplines to describe systems of well separated yet connected subpopulations. The subgroups or patches are often represented as nodes in a network whose links represent the migration routes among them. The connections have been so far mostly considered as static, but in general evolve in time. Here we address this case by investigating simple contagion processes on time-varying metapopulation networks. We focus on the SIR process and determine analytically the mobility threshold for the onset of an epidemic spreading in the framework of activity-driven network models. We find profound differences from the case of static networks. The threshold is entirely described by the dynamical parameters defining the average number of instantaneously migrating individuals and does not depend on the properties of the static network representation. Remarkably, the diffusion and contagion processes are slower in time-varying graphs than in their aggregated static counterparts, the mobility threshold being even two orders of magnitude larger in the first case. The presented results confirm the importance of considering the time-varying nature of complex networks.
1210.2806
Risk-Sensitive Mean Field Games
math.OC cs.GT cs.SY
In this paper, we study a class of risk-sensitive mean-field stochastic differential games. We show that under appropriate regularity conditions, the mean-field value of the stochastic differential game with exponentiated integral cost functional coincides with the value function described by a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation with an additional quadratic term. We provide an explicit solution of the mean-field best response when the instantaneous cost functions are log-quadratic and the state dynamics are affine in the control. An equivalent mean-field risk-neutral problem is formulated and the corresponding mean-field equilibria are characterized in terms of backward-forward macroscopic McKean-Vlasov equations, Fokker-Planck-Kolmogorov equations, and HJB equations. We provide numerical examples on the mean field behavior to illustrate both linear and McKean-Vlasov dynamics.
1210.2826
An anisotropy preserving metric for DTI processing
cs.CV math.DG
Statistical analysis of Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) data requires a computational framework that is both numerically tractable (to account for the high dimensional nature of the data) and geometric (to account for the nonlinear nature of diffusion tensors). Building upon earlier studies that have shown that a Riemannian framework is appropriate to address these challenges, the present paper proposes a novel metric and an accompanying computational framework for DTI data processing. The proposed metric retains the geometry and the computational tractability of earlier methods grounded in the affine invariant metric. In addition, and in contrast to earlier methods, it provides an interpolation method which preserves anisotropy, a central information carried by diffusion tensor data.
1210.2838
Kinects and Human Kinetics: A New Approach for Studying Crowd Behavior
cs.CV physics.soc-ph
Modeling crowd behavior relies on accurate data of pedestrian movements at a high level of detail. Imaging sensors such as cameras provide a good basis for capturing such detailed pedestrian motion data. However, currently available computer vision technologies, when applied to conventional video footage, still cannot automatically unveil accurate motions of groups of people or crowds from the image sequences. We present a novel data collection approach for studying crowd behavior which uses the increasingly popular low-cost sensor Microsoft Kinect. The Kinect captures both standard camera data and a three-dimensional depth map. Our human detection and tracking algorithm is based on agglomerative clustering of depth data captured from an elevated view - in contrast to the lateral view used for gesture recognition in Kinect gaming applications. Our approach transforms local Kinect 3D data to a common world coordinate system in order to stitch together human trajectories from multiple Kinects, which allows for a scalable and flexible capturing area. At a testbed with real-world pedestrian traffic we demonstrate that our approach can provide accurate trajectories from three Kinects with a Pedestrian Detection Rate of up to 94% and a Multiple Object Tracking Precision of 4 cm. Using a comprehensive dataset of 2240 captured human trajectories we calibrate three variations of the Social Force model. The results of our model validations indicate their particular ability to reproduce the observed crowd behavior in microscopic simulations.
1210.2856
Quantum Hyperdense Coding for Distributed Communications
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
Superdense coding proved that entanglement-assisted quantum communications can improve the data transmission rates compared to classical systems. It allows sending 2 classical bits between the parties in exchange of 1 quantum bit and a pre-shared entangled Bell pair. This paper introduces a new protocol which is intended for distributed communication. Using a pre-shared entangled Bell pair and 1 classical bit 2,5 classical bits can be transmitted in average. This means not only valuable increase in capacity but the two-way distributed operation opens new fields of investigation.
1210.2872
Data Mining and Its Applications for Knowledge Management: A Literature Review from 2007 to 2012
cs.DB
Data mining is one of the most important steps of the knowledge discovery in databases process and is considered as significant subfield in knowledge management. Research in data mining continues growing in business and in learning organization over coming decades. This review paper explores the applications of data mining techniques which have been developed to support knowledge management process. The journal articles indexed in ScienceDirect Database from 2007 to 2012 are analyzed and classified. The discussion on the findings is divided into 4 topics: (i) knowledge resource; (ii) knowledge types and/or knowledge datasets; (iii) data mining tasks; and (iv) data mining techniques and applications used in knowledge management. The article first briefly describes the definition of data mining and data mining functionality. Then the knowledge management rationale and major knowledge management tools integrated in knowledge management cycle are described. Finally, the applications of data mining techniques in the process of knowledge management are summarized and discussed.
1210.2877
Efficient Solution to the 3D Problem of Automatic Wall Paintings Reassembly
cs.CV math.DG
This paper introduces a new approach for the automated reconstruction - reassembly of fragmented objects having one surface near to plane, on the basis of the 3D representation of their constituent fragments. The whole process starts by 3D scanning of the available fragments. The obtained representations are properly processed so that they can be tested for possible matches. Next, four novel criteria are introduced, that lead to the determination of pairs of matching fragments. These criteria have been chosen so as the whole process imitates the instinctive reassembling method dedicated scholars apply. The first criterion exploits the volume of the gap between two properly placed fragments. The second one considers the fragments' overlapping in each possible matching position. Criteria 3,4 employ principles from calculus of variations to obtain bounds for the area and the mean curvature of the contact surfaces and the length of contact curves, which must hold if the two fragments match. The method has been applied, with great success, both in the reconstruction of objects artificially broken by the authors and, most importantly, in the virtual reassembling of parts of wall paintings belonging to the Mycenaic civilization (c. 1300 B.C.), excavated in a highly fragmented condition in Tyrins, Greece.
1210.2882
Online Adaptive Fault Tolerant based Feedback Control Scheduling Algorithm for Multiprocessor Embedded Systems
cs.SY cs.OS
Since some years ago, use of Feedback Control Scheduling Algorithm (FCSA) in the control scheduling co-design of multiprocessor embedded system has increased. FCSA provides Quality of Service (QoS) in terms of overall system performance and resource allocation in open and unpredictable environment. FCSA uses quality control feedback loop to keep CPU utilization under desired unitization bound by avoiding overloading and deadline miss ratio. Integrated Fault tolerance (FT) based FCSA design methodology guarantees that the Safety Critical (SC) tasks will meet their deadlines in the presence of faults. However, current FCSA design model does not provide the optimal solution with dynamic load fluctuation. This paper presented a novel methodology of designing an online adaptive fault tolerant based feedback control algorithm for multiprocessor embedded systems. This procedure is important for control scheduling co-design for multiprocessor embedded systems.
1210.2897
A Proposed General Method for Parameter Estimation of Noise Corrupted Oscillator Systems
cs.SY physics.data-an
This paper provides a proposed means to estimate parameters of noise corrupted oscillator systems. An application for a submarine combat control systems (CCS) rack is described as exemplary of the method.
1210.2935
Local Bifurcations in DC-DC Converters
cs.SY math.DS nlin.CD
Three local bifurcations in DC-DC converters are reviewed. They are period-doubling bifurcation, saddle-node bifurcation, and Neimark bifurcation. A general sampled-data model is employed to study the types of loss of stability of the nominal (periodic) solution and their connection with local bifurcations. More accurate prediction of instability and bifurcation than using the averaging approach is obtained. Examples of bifurcations associated with instabilities in DC-DC converters are given.
1210.2967
Robust Analog Function Computation via Wireless Multiple-Access Channels
cs.IT cs.DC cs.MA math.IT
Various wireless sensor network applications involve the computation of a pre-defined function of the measurements without the need for reconstructing each individual sensor reading. Widely-considered examples of such functions include the arithmetic mean and the maximum value. Standard approaches to the computation problem separate computation from communication: quantized sensor readings are transmitted interference-free to a fusion center that reconstructs each sensor reading and subsequently computes the sought function value. Such separation-based computation schemes are generally highly inefficient as a complete reconstruction of individual sensor readings is not necessary for the fusion center to compute a function of them. In particular, if the mathematical structure of the wireless channel is suitably matched (in some sense) to the function, then channel collisions induced by concurrent transmissions of different nodes can be beneficially exploited for computation purposes. Therefore, in this paper a practically relevant analog computation scheme is proposed that allows for an efficient estimate of linear and nonlinear functions over the wireless multiple-access channel. After analyzing the asymptotic properties of the estimation error, numerical simulations are presented to show the potential for huge performance gains when compared with time-division multiple-access based computation schemes.
1210.2984
Learning Onto-Relational Rules with Inductive Logic Programming
cs.AI cs.DB cs.LG cs.LO
Rules complement and extend ontologies on the Semantic Web. We refer to these rules as onto-relational since they combine DL-based ontology languages and Knowledge Representation formalisms supporting the relational data model within the tradition of Logic Programming and Deductive Databases. Rule authoring is a very demanding Knowledge Engineering task which can be automated though partially by applying Machine Learning algorithms. In this chapter we show how Inductive Logic Programming (ILP), born at the intersection of Machine Learning and Logic Programming and considered as a major approach to Relational Learning, can be adapted to Onto-Relational Learning. For the sake of illustration, we provide details of a specific Onto-Relational Learning solution to the problem of learning rule-based definitions of DL concepts and roles with ILP.
1210.3012
Coding for Fast Content Download
cs.IT cs.DC math.IT
We study the fundamental trade-off between storage and content download time. We show that the download time can be significantly reduced by dividing the content into chunks, encoding it to add redundancy and then distributing it across multiple disks. We determine the download time for two content access models - the fountain and fork-join models that involve simultaneous content access, and individual access from enqueued user requests respectively. For the fountain model we explicitly characterize the download time, while in the fork-join model we derive the upper and lower bounds. Our results show that coding reduces download time, through the diversity of distributing the data across more disks, even for the total storage used.
1210.3075
On Walsh code assignment
cs.IT math.IT
The paper considers the problem of orthogonal variable spreading Walsh-code assignments. The aim of the paper is to provide assignments that can avoid both complicated signaling from the BS to the users and blind rate and code detection amongst a great number of possible codes. The assignments considered here use a partition of all users into several pools. Each pool can use its own codes that are different for different pools. Each user has only a few codes assigned to it within the pool. We state the problem as a combinatorial one expressed in terms of a binary n x k matrix M where is the number n of users, and k is the number of Walsh codes in the pool. A solution to the problem is given as a construction of M, which has the assignment property defined in the paper. Two constructions of such M are presented under different conditions on n and k. The first construction is optimal in the sense that it gives the minimal number of Walsh codes assigned to each user for given n and k. The optimality follows from a proved necessary condition for the existence of M with the assignment property. In addition, we propose a simple algorithm of optimal assignment for the first construction.
1210.3098
Near-optimal compressed sensing guarantees for total variation minimization
math.NA cs.CV cs.IT math.IT
Consider the problem of reconstructing a multidimensional signal from an underdetermined set of measurements, as in the setting of compressed sensing. Without any additional assumptions, this problem is ill-posed. However, for signals such as natural images or movies, the minimal total variation estimate consistent with the measurements often produces a good approximation to the underlying signal, even if the number of measurements is far smaller than the ambient dimensionality. This paper extends recent reconstruction guarantees for two-dimensional images to signals of arbitrary dimension d>1 and to isotropic total variation problems. To be precise, we show that a multidimensional signal x can be reconstructed from O(sd*log(N^d)) linear measurements using total variation minimization to within a factor of the best s-term approximation of its gradient. The reconstruction guarantees we provide are necessarily optimal up to polynomial factors in the spatial dimension d.
1210.3101
Unique Decoding of General AG Codes
cs.IT math.IT
A unique decoding algorithm for general AG codes, namely multipoint evaluation codes on algebraic curves, is presented. It is a natural generalization of the previous decoding algorithm which was only for one-point AG codes. As such, it retains the same advantages of fast speed and regular structure with the previous algorithm. Compared with other known decoding algorithms for general AG codes, it is much simpler in its description and implementation.
1210.3121
A simple model clarifies the complicated relationships of complex networks
cs.SI nlin.AO physics.soc-ph
Real-world networks such as the Internet and WWW have many common traits. Until now, hundreds of models were proposed to characterize these traits for understanding the networks. Because different models used very different mechanisms, it is widely believed that these traits origin from different causes. However, we find that a simple model based on optimisation can produce many traits, including scale-free, small-world, ultra small-world, Delta-distribution, compact, fractal, regular and random networks. Moreover, by revising the proposed model, the community-structure networks are generated. By this model and the revised versions, the complicated relationships of complex networks are illustrated. The model brings a new universal perspective to the understanding of complex networks and provide a universal method to model complex networks from the viewpoint of optimisation.
1210.3131
A Survey on Web Spam Detection Methods: Taxonomy
cs.IR cs.CR
Web spam refers to some techniques, which try to manipulate search engine ranking algorithms in order to raise web page position in search engine results. In the best case, spammers encourage viewers to visit their sites, and provide undeserved advertisement gains to the page owner. In the worst case, they use malicious contents in their pages and try to install malware on the victims machine. Spammers use three kinds of spamming techniques to get higher score in ranking. These techniques are Link based techniques, hiding techniques and content-based techniques. Existing spam pages cause distrust to search engine results. This not only wastes the time of visitors, but also wastes lots of search engine resources. Hence spam detection methods have been proposed as a solution for web spam in order to reduce negative effects of spam pages. Experimental results show that some of these techniques are working well and can find spam pages more accurate than the others. This paper classifies web spam techniques and the related detection methods.
1210.3139
A Benchmark to Select Data Mining Based Classification Algorithms For Business Intelligence And Decision Support Systems
cs.DB cs.LG
DSS serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization and help to make decisions, which may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance. Data mining has a vital role to extract important information to help in decision making of a decision support system. Integration of data mining and decision support systems (DSS) can lead to the improved performance and can enable the tackling of new types of problems. Artificial Intelligence methods are improving the quality of decision support, and have become embedded in many applications ranges from ant locking automobile brakes to these days interactive search engines. It provides various machine learning techniques to support data mining. The classification is one of the main and valuable tasks of data mining. Several types of classification algorithms have been suggested, tested and compared to determine the future trends based on unseen data. There has been no single algorithm found to be superior over all others for all data sets. The objective of this paper is to compare various classification algorithms that have been frequently used in data mining for decision support systems. Three decision trees based algorithms, one artificial neural network, one statistical, one support vector machines with and without ada boost and one clustering algorithm are tested and compared on four data sets from different domains in terms of predictive accuracy, error rate, classification index, comprehensibility and training time. Experimental results demonstrate that Genetic Algorithm (GA) and support vector machines based algorithms are better in terms of predictive accuracy. SVM without adaboost shall be the first choice in context of speed and predictive accuracy. Adaboost improves the accuracy of SVM but on the cost of large training time.
1210.3165
Computationally Efficient Implementation of Convolution-based Locally Adaptive Binarization Techniques
cs.CV
One of the most important steps of document image processing is binarization. The computational requirements of locally adaptive binarization techniques make them unsuitable for devices with limited computing facilities. In this paper, we have presented a computationally efficient implementation of convolution based locally adaptive binarization techniques keeping the performance comparable to the original implementation. The computational complexity has been reduced from O(W2N2) to O(WN2) where WxW is the window size and NxN is the image size. Experiments over benchmark datasets show that the computation time has been reduced by 5 to 15 times depending on the window size while memory consumption remains the same with respect to the state-of-the-art algorithmic implementation.
1210.3187
An asymptotically optimal push-pull method for multicasting over a random network
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
We consider allcast and multicast flow problems where either all of the nodes or only a subset of the nodes may be in session. Traffic from each node in the session has to be sent to every other node in the session. If the session does not consist of all the nodes, the remaining nodes act as relays. The nodes are connected by undirected links whose capacities are independent and identically distributed random variables. We study the asymptotics of the capacity region (with network coding) in the limit of a large number of nodes, and show that the normalized sum rate converges to a constant almost surely. We then provide a decentralized push-pull algorithm that asymptotically achieves this normalized sum rate without network coding.
1210.3210
Fitness Landscape-Based Characterisation of Nature-Inspired Algorithms
cs.NE
A significant challenge in nature-inspired algorithmics is the identification of specific characteristics of problems that make them harder (or easier) to solve using specific methods. The hope is that, by identifying these characteristics, we may more easily predict which algorithms are best-suited to problems sharing certain features. Here, we approach this problem using fitness landscape analysis. Techniques already exist for measuring the "difficulty" of specific landscapes, but these are often designed solely with evolutionary algorithms in mind, and are generally specific to discrete optimisation. In this paper we develop an approach for comparing a wide range of continuous optimisation algorithms. Using a fitness landscape generation technique, we compare six different nature-inspired algorithms and identify which methods perform best on landscapes exhibiting specific features.
1210.3234
Risks of Friendships on Social Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In this paper, we explore the risks of friends in social networks caused by their friendship patterns, by using real life social network data and starting from a previously defined risk model. Particularly, we observe that risks of friendships can be mined by analyzing users' attitude towards friends of friends. This allows us to give new insights into friendship and risk dynamics on social networks.
1210.3241
Distributional Framework for Emergent Knowledge Acquisition and its Application to Automated Document Annotation
cs.AI cs.IR
The paper introduces a framework for representation and acquisition of knowledge emerging from large samples of textual data. We utilise a tensor-based, distributional representation of simple statements extracted from text, and show how one can use the representation to infer emergent knowledge patterns from the textual data in an unsupervised manner. Examples of the patterns we investigate in the paper are implicit term relationships or conjunctive IF-THEN rules. To evaluate the practical relevance of our approach, we apply it to annotation of life science articles with terms from MeSH (a controlled biomedical vocabulary and thesaurus).
1210.3265
Multi-threaded ASP Solving with clasp
cs.LO cs.AI cs.DC
We present the new multi-threaded version of the state-of-the-art answer set solver clasp. We detail its component and communication architecture and illustrate how they support the principal functionalities of clasp. Also, we provide some insights into the data representation used for different constraint types handled by clasp. All this is accompanied by an extensive experimental analysis of the major features related to multi-threading in clasp.
1210.3266
Detecting dense communities in large social and information networks with the Core & Peel algorithm
cs.SI cs.DS physics.soc-ph
Detecting and characterizing dense subgraphs (tight communities) in social and information networks is an important exploratory tool in social network analysis. Several approaches have been proposed that either (i) partition the whole network into clusters, even in low density region, or (ii) are aimed at finding a single densest community (and need to be iterated to find the next one). As social networks grow larger both approaches (i) and (ii) result in algorithms too slow to be practical, in particular when speed in analyzing the data is required. In this paper we propose an approach that aims at balancing efficiency of computation and expressiveness and manageability of the output community representation. We define the notion of a partial dense cover (PDC) of a graph. Intuitively a PDC of a graph is a collection of sets of nodes that (a) each set forms a disjoint dense induced subgraphs and (b) its removal leaves the residual graph without dense regions. Exact computation of PDC is an NP-complete problem, thus, we propose an efficient heuristic algorithms for computing a PDC which we christen Core and Peel. Moreover we propose a novel benchmarking technique that allows us to evaluate algorithms for computing PDC using the classical IR concepts of precision and recall even without a golden standard. Tests on 25 social and technological networks from the Stanford Large Network Dataset Collection confirm that Core and Peel is efficient and attains very high precison and recall.
1210.3269
The role of distances in the World Trade Web
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-fin.GN
In the economic literature, geographic distances are considered fundamental factors to be included in any theoretical model whose aim is the quantification of the trade between countries. Quantitatively, distances enter into the so-called gravity models that successfully predict the weight of non-zero trade flows. However, it has been recently shown that gravity models fail to reproduce the binary topology of the World Trade Web. In this paper a different approach is presented: the formalism of exponential random graphs is used and the distances are treated as constraints, to be imposed on a previously chosen ensemble of graphs. Then, the information encoded in the geographical distances is used to explain the binary structure of the World Trade Web, by testing it on the degree-degree correlations and the reciprocity structure. This leads to the definition of a novel null model that combines spatial and non-spatial effects. The effectiveness of spatial constraints is compared to that of nonspatial ones by means of the Akaike Information Criterion and the Bayesian Information Criterion. Even if it is commonly believed that the World Trade Web is strongly dependent on the distances, what emerges from our analysis is that distances do not play a crucial role in shaping the World Trade Web binary structure and that the information encoded into the reciprocity is far more useful in explaining the observed patterns.
1210.3288
Unsupervised Detection and Tracking of Arbitrary Objects with Dependent Dirichlet Process Mixtures
stat.ML cs.CV cs.LG
This paper proposes a technique for the unsupervised detection and tracking of arbitrary objects in videos. It is intended to reduce the need for detection and localization methods tailored to specific object types and serve as a general framework applicable to videos with varied objects, backgrounds, and image qualities. The technique uses a dependent Dirichlet process mixture (DDPM) known as the Generalized Polya Urn (GPUDDPM) to model image pixel data that can be easily and efficiently extracted from the regions in a video that represent objects. This paper describes a specific implementation of the model using spatial and color pixel data extracted via frame differencing and gives two algorithms for performing inference in the model to accomplish detection and tracking. This technique is demonstrated on multiple synthetic and benchmark video datasets that illustrate its ability to, without modification, detect and track objects with diverse physical characteristics moving over non-uniform backgrounds and through occlusion.
1210.3307
Modelling an Automatic Proof Generator for Functional Dependency Rules Using Colored Petri Net
cs.DB cs.FL cs.SE
Database administrators need to compute closure of functional dependencies (FDs) for normalization of database systems and enforcing integrity rules. Colored Petri net (CPN) is a powerful formal method for modelling and verification of various systems. In this paper, we modelled Armstrong's axioms for automatic proof generation of a new FD rule from initial FD rules using CPN. For this purpose, a CPN model of Armstrong's axioms presents and initial FDs considered in the model as initial color set. Then we search required FD in the state space of the model via model checking. If it exists in the state space, then a recursive ML code extracts the proof of this FD rule using further searches in the state space of the model.
1210.3312
Artex is AnotheR TEXt summarizer
cs.IR cs.AI cs.CL
This paper describes Artex, another algorithm for Automatic Text Summarization. In order to rank sentences, a simple inner product is calculated between each sentence, a document vector (text topic) and a lexical vector (vocabulary used by a sentence). Summaries are then generated by assembling the highest ranked sentences. No ruled-based linguistic post-processing is necessary in order to obtain summaries. Tests over several datasets (coming from Document Understanding Conferences (DUC), Text Analysis Conferences (TAC), evaluation campaigns, etc.) in French, English and Spanish have shown that summarizer achieves interesting results.
1210.3326
Three dimensional tracking of gold nanoparticles using digital holographic microscopy
physics.optics cs.CV
In this paper we present a digital holographic microscope to track gold colloids in three dimensions. We report observations of 100nm gold particles in motion in water. The expected signal and the chosen method of reconstruction are described. We also discuss about how to implement the numerical calculation to reach real-time 3D tracking.
1210.3350
Enhanced Compressed Sensing Recovery with Level Set Normals
cs.CV
We propose a compressive sensing algorithm that exploits geometric properties of images to recover images of high quality from few measurements. The image reconstruction is done by iterating the two following steps: 1) estimation of normal vectors of the image level curves and 2) reconstruction of an image fitting the normal vectors, the compressed sensing measurements and the sparsity constraint. The proposed technique can naturally extend to non local operators and graphs to exploit the repetitive nature of textured images in order to recover fine detail structures. In both cases, the problem is reduced to a series of convex minimization problems that can be efficiently solved with a combination of variable splitting and augmented Lagrangian methods, leading to fast and easy-to-code algorithms. Extended experiments show a clear improvement over related state-of-the-art algorithms in the quality of the reconstructed images and the robustness of the proposed method to noise, different kind of images and reduced measurements.
1210.3354
Averting group failures in collective-risk social dilemmas
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.PE
Free-riding on a joint venture bears the risk of losing personal endowment as the group may fail to reach the collective target due to insufficient contributions. A collective-risk social dilemma emerges, which we here study in the realm of the spatial public goods game with group-performance-dependent risk levels. Instead of using an overall fixed value, we update the risk level in each group based on the difference between the actual contributions and the declared target. A single parameter interpolates between a step-like risk function and virtual irrelevance of the group's performance in averting the failure, thus bridging the two extremes constituting maximal and minimal feedback. We show that stronger feedback between group performance and risk level is in general more favorable for the successful evolution of public cooperation, yet only if the collective target to be reached is moderate. Paradoxically, if the goals are overambitious, intermediate feedback strengths yield optimal conditions for cooperation. This can be explained by the propagation of players that employ identical strategies but experience different individual success while trying to cope with the collective-risk social dilemma.
1210.3375
An Agent-based framework for cooperation in Supply Chain
cs.AI
Supply Chain coordination has become a critical success factor for Supply Chain management (SCM) and effectively improving the performance of organizations in various industries. Companies are increasingly located at the intersection of one or more corporate networks which are designated by "Supply Chain". Managing this chain is mainly based on an 'information sharing' and redeployment activities between the various links that comprise it. Several attempts have been made by industrialists and researchers to educate policymakers about the gains to be made by the implementation of cooperative relationships. The approach presented in this paper here is among the works that aim to propose solutions related to information systems distributed Supply Chains to enable the different actors of the chain to improve their performance. We propose in particular solutions that focus on cooperation between actors in the Supply Chain.
1210.3384
Inferring clonal evolution of tumors from single nucleotide somatic mutations
cs.LG q-bio.PE q-bio.QM stat.ML
High-throughput sequencing allows the detection and quantification of frequencies of somatic single nucleotide variants (SNV) in heterogeneous tumor cell populations. In some cases, the evolutionary history and population frequency of the subclonal lineages of tumor cells present in the sample can be reconstructed from these SNV frequency measurements. However, automated methods to do this reconstruction are not available and the conditions under which reconstruction is possible have not been described. We describe the conditions under which the evolutionary history can be uniquely reconstructed from SNV frequencies from single or multiple samples from the tumor population and we introduce a new statistical model, PhyloSub, that infers the phylogeny and genotype of the major subclonal lineages represented in the population of cancer cells. It uses a Bayesian nonparametric prior over trees that groups SNVs into major subclonal lineages and automatically estimates the number of lineages and their ancestry. We sample from the joint posterior distribution over trees to identify evolutionary histories and cell population frequencies that have the highest probability of generating the observed SNV frequency data. When multiple phylogenies are consistent with a given set of SNV frequencies, PhyloSub represents the uncertainty in the tumor phylogeny using a partial order plot. Experiments on a simulated dataset and two real datasets comprising tumor samples from acute myeloid leukemia and chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients demonstrate that PhyloSub can infer both linear (or chain) and branching lineages and its inferences are in good agreement with ground truth, where it is available.
1210.3395
The Restricted Isometry Property for Random Block Diagonal Matrices
cs.IT math.IT math.PR
In Compressive Sensing, the Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) ensures that robust recovery of sparse vectors is possible from noisy, undersampled measurements via computationally tractable algorithms. It is by now well-known that Gaussian (or, more generally, sub-Gaussian) random matrices satisfy the RIP under certain conditions on the number of measurements. Their use can be limited in practice, however, due to storage limitations, computational considerations, or the mismatch of such matrices with certain measurement architectures. These issues have recently motivated considerable effort towards studying the RIP for structured random matrices. In this paper, we study the RIP for block diagonal measurement matrices where each block on the main diagonal is itself a sub-Gaussian random matrix. Our main result states that such matrices can indeed satisfy the RIP but that the requisite number of measurements depends on certain properties of the basis in which the signals are sparse. In the best case, these matrices perform nearly as well as dense Gaussian random matrices, despite having many fewer nonzero entries.
1210.3404
A polygon-based interpolation operator for super-resolution imaging
cs.CV
We outline the super-resolution reconstruction problem posed as a maximization of probability. We then introduce an interpolation method based on polygonal pixel overlap, express it as a linear operator, and use it to improve reconstruction. Polygon interpolation outperforms the simpler bilinear interpolation operator and, unlike Gaussian modeling of pixels, requires no parameter estimation. A free software implementation that reproduces the results shown is provided.
1210.3420
Contrasting Multiple Social Network Autocorrelations for Binary Outcomes, With Applications To Technology Adoption
cs.SI physics.soc-ph stat.ME
The rise of socially targeted marketing suggests that decisions made by consumers can be predicted not only from their personal tastes and characteristics, but also from the decisions of people who are close to them in their networks. One obstacle to consider is that there may be several different measures for "closeness" that are appropriate, either through different types of friendships, or different functions of distance on one kind of friendship, where only a subset of these networks may actually be relevant. Another is that these decisions are often binary and more difficult to model with conventional approaches, both conceptually and computationally. To address these issues, we present a hierarchical model for individual binary outcomes that uses and extends the machinery of the auto-probit method for binary data. We demonstrate the behavior of the parameters estimated by the multiple network-regime auto-probit model (m-NAP) under various sensitivity conditions, such as the impact of the prior distribution and the nature of the structure of the network, and demonstrate on several examples of correlated binary data in networks of interest to Information Systems, including the adoption of Caller Ring-Back Tones, whose use is governed by direct connection but explained by additional network topologies.
1210.3427
On Multi-rate Sequential Data Transmission
cs.IT math.IT
In this report, we investigate the data transmission model in which a sequence of data is broadcasted to a number of receivers. The receivers, which have different channel capacities, wish to decode the data sequentially at different rates. Our results are applicable to a wide range of scenarios. For instance, it can be employed in the broadcast streaming of a video clip through the internet, so that receivers with different bandwidths can play the video at different speed. Receivers with greater bandwidths can provide a smooth playback, while receivers with smaller bandwidths can play the video at a slower speed, or with short pauses or rebuffering.
1210.3435
Multiple Service providers sharing Spectrum using Cognitive Radio in Wireless Communication Networks
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
The current utilization of the spectrum is quite inefficient; consequently, if properly used, there is no shortage of the spectrum that is at present available. Therefore, it is anticipated that more flexible use of spectrum and spectrum sharing between radio systems will be key enablers to facilitate the successful implementation of future systems. Cognitive radio, however, is known as the most intelligent and promising technique in solving the problem of spectrum sharing. In this paper, we consider the technique of spectrum sharing among users of service providers to share the licensed spectrum of licensed service providers. It is shown that the proposed technique reduces the call blocking rate and improves the spectrum utilization.
1210.3437
Comparing Spectrum Utilization using Fuzzy Logic System for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks via Cognitive Radio
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
At present, lots of works focus on spectrum allocation of wireless networks. In this paper, we proposed a Cognitive based spectrum access by opportunistically approach of Heterogeneous Wireless networks based on Fuzzy Logic system. The Cognitive Radio is a technology where a network or a wireless system changes its environment parameters to communicate efficiently by avoiding the interference with the users. By applying FLS (Fuzzy Logic System), the available spectrum utilization is effectively utilized with the help of the three antecedents namely Spectrum utilization efficiency, Degree of mobility, Distance from primary user to the secondary users. The proposed work is compared with normal Spectrum Utilization method. Finally, Simulation results of the proposed work Fuzzy Logic System shows more efficient than the normal Spectrum utilization method.
1210.3438
Stochastic Surveillance Strategies for Spatial Quickest Detection
cs.RO cs.MA
We design persistent surveillance strategies for the quickest detection of anomalies taking place in an environment of interest. From a set of predefined regions in the environment, a team of autonomous vehicles collects noisy observations, which a control center processes. The overall objective is to minimize detection delay while maintaining the false alarm rate below a desired threshold. We present joint (i) anomaly detection algorithms for the control center and (ii) vehicle routing policies. For the control center, we propose parallel cumulative sum (CUSUM) algorithms (one for each region) to detect anomalies from noisy observations. For the vehicles, we propose a stochastic routing policy, in which the regions to be visited are chosen according to a probability vector. We study stationary routing policy (the probability vector is constant) as well as adaptive routing policies (the probability vector varies in time as a function of the likelihood of regional anomalies). In the context of stationary policies, we design a performance metric and minimize it to design an efficient stationary routing policy. Our adaptive policy improves upon the stationary counterpart by adaptively increasing the selection probability of regions with high likelihood of anomaly. Finally, we show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms through numerical simulations and a persistent surveillance experiment.
1210.3448
Notes on image annotation
cs.CV cs.HC
We are under the illusion that seeing is effortless, but frequently the visual system is lazy and makes us believe that we understand something when in fact we don't. Labeling a picture forces us to become aware of the difficulties underlying scene understanding. Suddenly, the act of seeing is not effortless anymore. We have to make an effort in order to understand parts of the picture that we neglected at first glance. In this report, an expert image annotator relates her experience on segmenting and labeling tens of thousands of images. During this process, the notes she took try to highlight the difficulties encountered, the solutions adopted, and the decisions made in order to get a consistent set of annotations. Those annotations constitute the SUN database.
1210.3449
Construction of Block Orthogonal STBCs and Reducing Their Sphere Decoding Complexity
cs.IT math.IT
Construction of high rate Space Time Block Codes (STBCs) with low decoding complexity has been studied widely using techniques such as sphere decoding and non Maximum-Likelihood (ML) decoders such as the QR decomposition decoder with M paths (QRDM decoder). Recently Ren et al., presented a new class of STBCs known as the block orthogonal STBCs (BOSTBCs), which could be exploited by the QRDM decoders to achieve significant decoding complexity reduction without performance loss. The block orthogonal property of the codes constructed was however only shown via simulations. In this paper, we give analytical proofs for the block orthogonal structure of various existing codes in literature including the codes constructed in the paper by Ren et al. We show that codes formed as the sum of Clifford Unitary Weight Designs (CUWDs) or Coordinate Interleaved Orthogonal Designs (CIODs) exhibit block orthogonal structure. We also provide new construction of block orthogonal codes from Cyclic Division Algebras (CDAs) and Crossed-Product Algebras (CPAs). In addition, we show how the block orthogonal property of the STBCs can be exploited to reduce the decoding complexity of a sphere decoder using a depth first search approach. Simulation results of the decoding complexity show a 30% reduction in the number of floating point operations (FLOPS) of BOSTBCs as compared to STBCs without the block orthogonal structure.
1210.3456
Bayesian Analysis for miRNA and mRNA Interactions Using Expression Data
stat.AP cs.LG q-bio.GN q-bio.MN stat.ML
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules composed of 19-22 nt, which play important regulatory roles in post-transcriptional gene regulation by inhibiting the translation of the mRNA into proteins or otherwise cleaving the target mRNA. Inferring miRNA targets provides useful information for understanding the roles of miRNA in biological processes that are potentially involved in complex diseases. Statistical methodologies for point estimation, such as the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) algorithm, have been proposed to identify the interactions of miRNA and mRNA based on sequence and expression data. In this paper, we propose using the Bayesian LASSO (BLASSO) and the non-negative Bayesian LASSO (nBLASSO) to analyse the interactions between miRNA and mRNA using expression data. The proposed Bayesian methods explore the posterior distributions for those parameters required to model the miRNA-mRNA interactions. These approaches can be used to observe the inferred effects of the miRNAs on the targets by plotting the posterior distributions of those parameters. For comparison purposes, the Least Squares Regression (LSR), Ridge Regression (RR), LASSO, non-negative LASSO (nLASSO), and the proposed Bayesian approaches were applied to four public datasets. We concluded that nLASSO and nBLASSO perform best in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Compared to the point estimate algorithms, which only provide single estimates for those parameters, the Bayesian methods are more meaningful and provide credible intervals, which take into account the uncertainty of the inferred interactions of the miRNA and mRNA. Furthermore, Bayesian methods naturally provide statistical significance to select convincing inferred interactions, while point estimate algorithms require a manually chosen threshold, which is less meaningful, to choose the possible interactions.
1210.3512
Digital Network Coding Aided Two-way Relaying: Energy Minimization and Queue Analysis
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider a three node, two-way relay system with digital network coding over static channels where all link gains are assumed to be constant during transmission. The aim is to minimize total energy consumption while ensuring queue stability at all nodes, for a given pair of random packet arrival rates. Specifically, we allow for a set of transmission modes and solve for the optimal fraction of resources allocated to each mode, including multiaccess uplink transmission mode and network coding broadcasting mode. In addition, for the downlink, we find the condition to determine whether superposition coding with excess data over the better link and network coded data for both users is energy efficient and the corresponding optimization is formulated and solved. To tackle the queue evolution in this network, we present a detailed analysis of the queues at each node using a random scheduling method that closely approximates the theoretical design, through a two-dimensional Markov chain model.
1210.3563
Degrees of Freedom of Multi-hop MIMO Broadcast Networks with Delayed CSIT
cs.IT math.IT
We study the sum degrees of freedom (DoF) of a class of multi-layer relay-aided MIMO broadcast networks with delayed channel state information at transmitters (CSIT). In the assumed network a K-antenna source intends to communicate to K single-antenna destinations, with the help of N-2 layers of K full-duplex single-antenna relays. We consider two practical delayed CSIT feedback scenarios. If the source can obtain the CSI feedback signals from all layers, we prove the optimal sum DoF of the network to be K/(1+1/2+...+1/K). If the CSI feedback is only within each hop, we show that when K=2 the optimal sum DoF is 4/3, and when K >= 3 the sum DoF 3/2 is achievable. Our results reveal that the sum DoF performance in the considered class of N-layer MIMO broadcast networks with delayed CSIT may depend not on N, the number of layers in the network, but only on K, the number of antennas/terminals in each layer.
1210.3569
Autonomous Reinforcement of Behavioral Sequences in Neural Dynamics
cs.NE
We introduce a dynamic neural algorithm called Dynamic Neural (DN) SARSA(\lambda) for learning a behavioral sequence from delayed reward. DN-SARSA(\lambda) combines Dynamic Field Theory models of behavioral sequence representation, classical reinforcement learning, and a computational neuroscience model of working memory, called Item and Order working memory, which serves as an eligibility trace. DN-SARSA(\lambda) is implemented on both a simulated and real robot that must learn a specific rewarding sequence of elementary behaviors from exploration. Results show DN-SARSA(\lambda) performs on the level of the discrete SARSA(\lambda), validating the feasibility of general reinforcement learning without compromising neural dynamics.
1210.3583
Adaptive Quantizers for Estimation
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, adaptive estimation based on noisy quantized observations is studied. A low complexity adaptive algorithm using a quantizer with adjustable input gain and offset is presented. Three possible scalar models for the parameter to be estimated are considered: constant, Wiener process and Wiener process with deterministic drift. After showing that the algorithm is asymptotically unbiased for estimating a constant, it is shown, in the three cases, that the asymptotic mean squared error depends on the Fisher information for the quantized measurements. It is also shown that the loss of performance due to quantization depends approximately on the ratio of the Fisher information for quantized and continuous measurements. At the end of the paper the theoretical results are validated through simulation under two different classes of noise, generalized Gaussian noise and Student's-t noise.
1210.3587
Inferring the Underlying Structure of Information Cascades
cs.SI cs.AI physics.soc-ph
In social networks, information and influence diffuse among users as cascades. While the importance of studying cascades has been recognized in various applications, it is difficult to observe the complete structure of cascades in practice. Moreover, much less is known on how to infer cascades based on partial observations. In this paper we study the cascade inference problem following the independent cascade model, and provide a full treatment from complexity to algorithms: (a) We propose the idea of consistent trees as the inferred structures for cascades; these trees connect source nodes and observed nodes with paths satisfying the constraints from the observed temporal information. (b) We introduce metrics to measure the likelihood of consistent trees as inferred cascades, as well as several optimization problems for finding them. (c) We show that the decision problems for consistent trees are in general NP-complete, and that the optimization problems are hard to approximate. (d) We provide approximation algorithms with performance guarantees on the quality of the inferred cascades, as well as heuristics. We experimentally verify the efficiency and effectiveness of our inference algorithms, using real and synthetic data.
1210.3609
Optimal Power Allocation Policy over Two Identical Gilbert-Elliott Channels
cs.IT math.IT
We study the fundamental problem of optimal power allocation over two identical Gilbert-Elliott (Binary Markov) communication channels. Our goal is to maximize the expected discounted number of bits transmitted over an infinite time span by judiciously choosing one of the four actions for each time slot: 1) allocating power equally to both channels, 2) allocating all the power to channel 1, 3) allocating all the power to channel 2, and 4) allocating no power to any of the channels. As the channel state is unknown when power allocation decision is made, we model this problem as a partially observable Markov decision process(POMDP), and derive the optimal policy which gives the optimal action to take under different possible channel states. Two different structures of the optimal policy are derived analytically and verified by linear programming simulation. We also illustrate how to construct the optimal policy by the combination of threshold calculation and linear programming simulation once system parameters are known.
1210.3634
Quick Summary
cs.CL cs.AI
Quick Summary is an innovate implementation of an automatic document summarizer that inputs a document in the English language and evaluates each sentence. The scanner or evaluator determines criteria based on its grammatical structure and place in the paragraph. The program then asks the user to specify the number of sentences the person wishes to highlight. For example should the user ask to have three of the most important sentences, it would highlight the first and most important sentence in green. Commonly this is the sentence containing the conclusion. Then Quick Summary finds the second most important sentence usually called a satellite and highlights it in yellow. This is usually the topic sentence. Then the program finds the third most important sentence and highlights it in red. The implementations of this technology are useful in a society of information overload when a person typically receives 42 emails a day (Microsoft). The paper also is a candid look at difficulty that machine learning has in textural translating. However, it speaks on how to overcome the obstacles that historically prevented progress. This paper proposes mathematical meta-data criteria that justify the place of importance of a sentence. Just as tools for the study of relational symmetry in bio-informatics, this tool seeks to classify words with greater clarity. "Survey Finds Workers Average Only Three Productive Days per Week." Microsoft News Center. Microsoft. Web. 31 Mar. 2012.
1210.3652
A Flexible Mixed Integer Programming framework for Nurse Scheduling
cs.DS cs.NE
In this paper, a nurse-scheduling model is developed using mixed integer programming model. It is deployed to a general care ward to replace and automate the current manual approach for scheduling. The developed model differs from other similar studies in that it optimizes both hospitals requirement as well as nurse preferences by allowing flexibility in the transfer of nurses from different duties. The model also incorporated additional policies which are part of the hospitals requirement but not part of the legislations. Hospitals key primary mission is to ensure continuous ward care service with appropriate number of nursing staffs and the right mix of nursing skills. The planning and scheduling is done to avoid additional non essential cost for hospital. Nurses preferences are taken into considerations such as the number of night shift and consecutive rest days. We will also reformulate problems from another paper which considers the penalty objective using the model but without the flexible components. The models are built using AIMMS which solves the problem in very short amount of time.
1210.3664
Secure Cooperative Regenerating Codes for Distributed Storage Systems
cs.IT math.IT
Regenerating codes enable trading off repair bandwidth for storage in distributed storage systems (DSS). Due to their distributed nature, these systems are intrinsically susceptible to attacks, and they may also be subject to multiple simultaneous node failures. Cooperative regenerating codes allow bandwidth efficient repair of multiple simultaneous node failures. This paper analyzes storage systems that employ cooperative regenerating codes that are robust to (passive) eavesdroppers. The analysis is divided into two parts, studying both minimum bandwidth and minimum storage cooperative regenerating scenarios. First, the secrecy capacity for minimum bandwidth cooperative regenerating codes is characterized. Second, for minimum storage cooperative regenerating codes, a secure file size upper bound and achievability results are provided. These results establish the secrecy capacity for the minimum storage scenario for certain special cases. In all scenarios, the achievability results correspond to exact repair, and secure file size upper bounds are obtained using min-cut analyses over a suitable secrecy graph representation of DSS. The main achievability argument is based on an appropriate pre-coding of the data to eliminate the information leakage to the eavesdropper.
1210.3667
A New Analysis of the DS-CDMA Cellular Downlink Under Spatial Constraints
cs.IT math.IT
The direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) cellular downlink is modeled by a constrained random spatial model involving a fixed number of base stations placed over a finite area with a minimum separation. The analysis is driven by a new closed-form expression for the conditional outage probability at each mobile, where the conditioning is with respect to the network realization. The analysis features a flexible channel model, accounting for path loss, Nakagami fading, and shadowing. By generating many random networks and applying a given resource allocation policy, the distribution of the rates provided to each user is obtained. In addition to determining the average rate, the analysis can determine the transmission capacity of the network and can characterize fairness in terms of the fraction of users that achieve a specified rate. The analysis is used to compare a rate-control policy against a power-control policy and investigate the influence of the minimum base-station separation.
1210.3709
A Rank-Corrected Procedure for Matrix Completion with Fixed Basis Coefficients
math.OC cs.IT cs.NA math.IT stat.ML
For the problems of low-rank matrix completion, the efficiency of the widely-used nuclear norm technique may be challenged under many circumstances, especially when certain basis coefficients are fixed, for example, the low-rank correlation matrix completion in various fields such as the financial market and the low-rank density matrix completion from the quantum state tomography. To seek a solution of high recovery quality beyond the reach of the nuclear norm, in this paper, we propose a rank-corrected procedure using a nuclear semi-norm to generate a new estimator. For this new estimator, we establish a non-asymptotic recovery error bound. More importantly, we quantify the reduction of the recovery error bound for this rank-corrected procedure. Compared with the one obtained for the nuclear norm penalized least squares estimator, this reduction can be substantial (around 50%). We also provide necessary and sufficient conditions for rank consistency in the sense of Bach (2008). Very interestingly, these conditions are highly related to the concept of constraint nondegeneracy in matrix optimization. As a byproduct, our results provide a theoretical foundation for the majorized penalty method of Gao and Sun (2010) and Gao (2010) for structured low-rank matrix optimization problems. Extensive numerical experiments demonstrate that our proposed rank-corrected procedure can simultaneously achieve a high recovery accuracy and capture the low-rank structure.
1210.3718
On the Role of Contrast and Regularity in Perceptual Boundary Saliency
cs.CV stat.AP
Mathematical Morphology proposes to extract shapes from images as connected components of level sets. These methods prove very suitable for shape recognition and analysis. We present a method to select the perceptually significant (i.e., contrasted) level lines (boundaries of level sets), using the Helmholtz principle as first proposed by Desolneux et al. Contrarily to the classical formulation by Desolneux et al. where level lines must be entirely salient, the proposed method allows to detect partially salient level lines, thus resulting in more robust and more stable detections. We then tackle the problem of combining two gestalts as a measure of saliency and propose a method that reinforces detections. Results in natural images show the good performance of the proposed methods.
1210.3729
Inference of Fine-grained Attributes of Bengali Corpus for Stylometry Detection
cs.CL cs.CV
Stylometry, the science of inferring characteristics of the author from the characteristics of documents written by that author, is a problem with a long history and belongs to the core task of Text categorization that involves authorship identification, plagiarism detection, forensic investigation, computer security, copyright and estate disputes etc. In this work, we present a strategy for stylometry detection of documents written in Bengali. We adopt a set of fine-grained attribute features with a set of lexical markers for the analysis of the text and use three semi-supervised measures for making decisions. Finally, a majority voting approach has been taken for final classification. The system is fully automatic and language-independent. Evaluation results of our attempt for Bengali author's stylometry detection show reasonably promising accuracy in comparison to the baseline model.
1210.3735
On the Analysis of a Label Propagation Algorithm for Community Detection
cs.DC cs.SI physics.soc-ph
This paper initiates formal analysis of a simple, distributed algorithm for community detection on networks. We analyze an algorithm that we call \textsc{Max-LPA}, both in terms of its convergence time and in terms of the "quality" of the communities detected. \textsc{Max-LPA} is an instance of a class of community detection algorithms called \textit{label propagation} algorithms. As far as we know, most analysis of label propagation algorithms thus far has been empirical in nature and in this paper we seek a theoretical understanding of label propagation algorithms. In our main result, we define a clustered version of \er random graphs with clusters $V_1, V_2,..., V_k$ where the probability $p$, of an edge connecting nodes within a cluster $V_i$ is higher than $p'$, the probability of an edge connecting nodes in distinct clusters. We show that even with fairly general restrictions on $p$ and $p'$ ($p = \Omega(\frac{1}{n^{1/4-\epsilon}})$ for any $\epsilon > 0$, $p' = O(p^2)$, where $n$ is the number of nodes), \textsc{Max-LPA} detects the clusters $V_1, V_2,..., V_n$ in just two rounds. Based on this and on empirical results, we conjecture that \textsc{Max-LPA} can correctly and quickly identify communities on clustered \er graphs even when the clusters are much sparser, i.e., with $p = \frac{c\log n}{n}$ for some $c > 1$.