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1210.5677
Local Correction with Constant Error Rate
cs.CC cs.DS cs.IT math.IT
A Boolean function f of n variables is said to be q-locally correctable if, given a black-box access to a function g which is "close" to an isomorphism f_sigma(x)=f_sigma(x_1, ..., x_n) = f(x_sigma(1), ..., x_sigma(n)) of f, we can compute f_sigma(x) for any x in {0,1}^n with good probability using q queries to g. It is known that degree d polynomials are O(2^d)-locally correctable, and that most k-juntas are O(k log k)-locally correctable, where the closeness parameter, or more precisely the distance between g and f_sigma, is required to be exponentially small (in d and k respectively). In this work we relax the requirement for the closeness parameter by allowing the distance between the functions to be a constant. We first investigate the family of juntas, and show that almost every k-junta is O(k log^2 k)-locally correctable for any distance epsilon < 0.001. A similar result is shown for the family of partially symmetric functions, that is functions which are indifferent to any reordering of all but a constant number of their variables. For both families, the algorithms provided here use non-adaptive queries and are applicable to most but not all functions of each family (as it is shown to be impossible to locally correct all of them). Our approach utilizes the measure of symmetric influence introduced in the recent analysis of testing partial symmetry of functions.
1210.5693
Hierarchical clustering for graph visualization
stat.AP cs.SI physics.soc-ph
This paper describes a graph visualization methodology based on hierarchical maximal modularity clustering, with interactive and significant coarsening and refining possibilities. An application of this method to HIV epidemic analysis in Cuba is outlined.
1210.5694
Visual Mining of Epidemic Networks
stat.AP cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We show how an interactive graph visualization method based on maximal modularity clustering can be used to explore a large epidemic network. The visual representation is used to display statistical tests results that expose the relations between the propagation of HIV in a sexual contact network and the sexual orientation of the patients.
1210.5706
The construction of characteristic matrixes of dynamic coverings using an incremental approach
cs.IT math.IT
The covering approximation space evolves in time due to the explosion of the information, and the characteristic matrixes of coverings viewed as an effective approach to approximating the concept should update with time for knowledge discovery. This paper further investigates the construction of characteristic matrixes without running the matrix acquisition algorithm repeatedly. First, we present two approaches to computing the characteristic matrixes of the covering with lower time complexity. Then, we investigate the construction of the characteristic matrixes of the dynamic covering using the incremental approach. We mainly address the characteristic matrix updating from three aspects: the variations of elements in the covering, the immigration and emigration of objects and the changes of attribute values. Afterwards, several illustrative examples are employed to show that the proposed approach can effectively compute the characteristic matrixes of the dynamic covering for approximations of concepts.
1210.5725
Coding for the Lee and Manhattan Metrics with Weighing Matrices
cs.IT math.IT
This paper has two goals. The first one is to discuss good codes for packing problems in the Lee and Manhattan metrics. The second one is to consider weighing matrices for some of these coding problems. Weighing matrices were considered as building blocks for codes in the Hamming metric in various constructions. In this paper we will consider mainly two types of weighing matrices, namely conference matrices and Hadamard matrices, to construct codes in the Lee (and Manhattan) metric. We will show that these matrices have some desirable properties when considered as generator matrices for codes in these metrics. Two related packing problems will be considered. The first is to find good codes for error-correction (i.e. dense packings of Lee spheres). The second is to transform the space in a way that volumes are preserved and each Lee sphere (or conscribed cross-polytope), in the space, will be transformed to a shape inscribed in a small cube.
1210.5732
Developing ICC Profile Using Gray Level Control In Offset Printing Process
cs.CV
In prepress department RGB image has to be converted to CMYK image. To control that amount of black, cyan, magenta and yellow has to be controlled by using color separation method. Graycolor separation method is selected to control the amounts of these colors because it increase the quality of printing also. A single printer used for printing the same image on different paper also results in different printed images. To remove this problem a different ICC profile based on gray level control is developedand a sheet offset printer is calibrated using that profile and a subjective evaluation shows satisfactory results for different quality papers.
1210.5751
Extraction of domain-specific bilingual lexicon from comparable corpora: compositional translation and ranking
cs.CL
This paper proposes a method for extracting translations of morphologically constructed terms from comparable corpora. The method is based on compositional translation and exploits translation equivalences at the morpheme-level, which allows for the generation of "fertile" translations (translation pairs in which the target term has more words than the source term). Ranking methods relying on corpus-based and translation-based features are used to select the best candidate translation. We obtain an average precision of 91% on the Top1 candidate translation. The method was tested on two language pairs (English-French and English-German) and with a small specialized comparable corpora (400k words per language).
1210.5752
Optimal Linear Transceiver Designs for Cognitive Two-Way Relay Networks
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies a cooperative cognitive radio network where two primary users (PUs) exchange information with the help of a secondary user (SU) that is equipped with multiple antennas and in return, the SU superimposes its own messages along with the primary transmission. The fundamental problem in the considered network is the design of transmission strategies at the secondary node. It involves three basic elements: first, how to split the power for relaying the primary signals and for transmitting the secondary signals; second, what two-way relay strategy should be used to assist the bidirectional communication between the two PUs; third, how to jointly design the primary and secondary transmit precoders. This work aims to address this problem by proposing a transmission framework of maximizing the achievable rate of the SU while maintaining the rate requirements of the two PUs. Three well-known and practical two-way relay strategies are considered: amplify-and-forward (AF), bit level XOR based decode-and-forward (DF-XOR) and symbol level superposition coding based DF (DF-SUP). For each relay strategy, although the design problem is non-convex, we find the optimal solution by using certain transformation techniques and optimization tools such as semidefinite programming (SDP) and second-order cone programming (SOCP). Closed-form solutions are also obtained under certain conditions. Simulation results show that when the rate requirements of the two PUs are symmetric, by using the DF-XOR strategy and applying the proposed optimal precoding, the SU requires the least power for relaying and thus reserves the most power to transmit its own signal. In the asymmetric scenario, on the other hand, the DF-SUP strategy with the corresponding optimal precoding is the best.
1210.5755
Eigenvalue Based Sensing and SNR Estimation for Cognitive Radio in Presence of Noise Correlation
cs.IT cs.ET math.IT
Herein, we present a detailed analysis of an eigenvalue based sensing technique in the presence of correlated noise in the context of a Cognitive Radio (CR). We use a Standard Condition Number (SCN) based decision statistic based on asymptotic Random Matrix Theory (RMT) for decision process. Firstly, the effect of noise correlation on eigenvalue based Spectrum Sensing (SS) is studied analytically under both the noise only and the signal plus noise hypotheses. Secondly, new bounds for the SCN are proposed for achieving improved sensing in correlated noise scenarios. Thirdly, the performance of Fractional Sampling (FS) based SS is studied and a method for determining the operating point for the FS rate in terms of sensing performance and complexity is suggested. Finally, an SNR estimation technique based on the maximum eigenvalue of the received signal's covariance matrix is proposed. It is shown that proposed SCN-based threshold improves sensing performance in the presence of correlated noise and SNRs upto 0 dB can be reliably estimated without the knowledge of noise variance.
1210.5802
What if CLIQUE were fast? Maximum Cliques in Information Networks and Strong Components in Temporal Networks
cs.SI cs.DC cs.DM physics.soc-ph
Exact maximum clique finders have progressed to the point where we can investigate cliques in million-node social and information networks, as well as find strongly connected components in temporal networks. We use one such finder to study a large collection of modern networks emanating from biological, social, and technological domains. We show inter-relationships between maximum cliques and several other common network properties, including network density, maximum core, and number of triangles. In temporal networks, we find that the largest temporal strong components have around 20-30% of the vertices of the entire network. These components represent groups of highly communicative individuals. In addition, we discuss and improve the performance and utility of the maximum clique finder itself.
1210.5813
Coordinated Multicast Beamforming in Multicell Networks
cs.IT math.IT
We study physical layer multicasting in multicell networks where each base station, equipped with multiple antennas, transmits a common message using a single beamformer to multiple users in the same cell. We investigate two coordinated beamforming designs: the quality-of-service (QoS) beamforming and the max-min SINR (signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio) beamforming. The goal of the QoS beamforming is to minimize the total power consumption while guaranteeing that received SINR at each user is above a predetermined threshold. We present a necessary condition for the optimization problem to be feasible. Then, based on the decomposition theory, we propose a novel decentralized algorithm to implement the coordinated beamforming with limited information sharing among different base stations. The algorithm is guaranteed to converge and in most cases it converges to the optimal solution. The max-min SINR (MMS) beamforming is to maximize the minimum received SINR among all users under per-base station power constraints. We show that the MMS problem and a weighted peak-power minimization (WPPM) problem are inverse problems. Based on this inversion relationship, we then propose an efficient algorithm to solve the MMS problem in an approximate manner. Simulation results demonstrate significant advantages of the proposed multicast beamforming algorithms over conventional multicasting schemes.
1210.5814
Robust Beamforming for Wireless Information and Power Transmission
cs.IT math.IT
In this letter, we study the robust beamforming problem for the multi-antenna wireless broadcasting system with simultaneous information and power transmission, under the assumption of imperfect channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter. Following the worst-case deterministic model, our objective is to maximize the worst-case harvested energy for the energy receiver while guaranteeing that the rate for the information receiver is above a threshold for all possible channel realizations. Such problem is nonconvex with infinite number of constraints. Using certain transformation techniques, we convert this problem into a relaxed semidefinite programming problem (SDP) which can be solved efficiently. We further show that the solution of the relaxed SDP problem is always rank-one. This indicates that the relaxation is tight and we can get the optimal solution for the original problem. Simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
1210.5830
Choice of V for V-Fold Cross-Validation in Least-Squares Density Estimation
math.ST cs.LG stat.TH
This paper studies V-fold cross-validation for model selection in least-squares density estimation. The goal is to provide theoretical grounds for choosing V in order to minimize the least-squares loss of the selected estimator. We first prove a non-asymptotic oracle inequality for V-fold cross-validation and its bias-corrected version (V-fold penalization). In particular, this result implies that V-fold penalization is asymptotically optimal in the nonparametric case. Then, we compute the variance of V-fold cross-validation and related criteria, as well as the variance of key quantities for model selection performance. We show that these variances depend on V like 1+4/(V-1), at least in some particular cases, suggesting that the performance increases much from V=2 to V=5 or 10, and then is almost constant. Overall, this can explain the common advice to take V=5---at least in our setting and when the computational power is limited---, as supported by some simulation experiments. An oracle inequality and exact formulas for the variance are also proved for Monte-Carlo cross-validation, also known as repeated cross-validation, where the parameter V is replaced by the number B of random splits of the data.
1210.5839
Sparse Stochastic Processes and Discretization of Linear Inverse Problems
cs.IT math.IT
We present a novel statistically-based discretization paradigm and derive a class of maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimators for solving ill-conditioned linear inverse problems. We are guided by the theory of sparse stochastic processes, which specifies continuous-domain signals as solutions of linear stochastic differential equations. Accordingly, we show that the class of admissible priors for the discretized version of the signal is confined to the family of infinitely divisible distributions. Our estimators not only cover the well-studied methods of Tikhonov and $\ell_1$-type regularizations as particular cases, but also open the door to a broader class of sparsity-promoting regularization schemes that are typically nonconvex. We provide an algorithm that handles the corresponding nonconvex problems and illustrate the use of our formalism by applying it to deconvolution, MRI, and X-ray tomographic reconstruction problems. Finally, we compare the performance of estimators associated with models of increasing sparsity.
1210.5840
Supervised Learning with Similarity Functions
cs.LG stat.ML
We address the problem of general supervised learning when data can only be accessed through an (indefinite) similarity function between data points. Existing work on learning with indefinite kernels has concentrated solely on binary/multi-class classification problems. We propose a model that is generic enough to handle any supervised learning task and also subsumes the model previously proposed for classification. We give a "goodness" criterion for similarity functions w.r.t. a given supervised learning task and then adapt a well-known landmarking technique to provide efficient algorithms for supervised learning using "good" similarity functions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model on three important super-vised learning problems: a) real-valued regression, b) ordinal regression and c) ranking where we show that our method guarantees bounded generalization error. Furthermore, for the case of real-valued regression, we give a natural goodness definition that, when used in conjunction with a recent result in sparse vector recovery, guarantees a sparse predictor with bounded generalization error. Finally, we report results of our learning algorithms on regression and ordinal regression tasks using non-PSD similarity functions and demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms, especially that of the sparse landmark selection algorithm that achieves significantly higher accuracies than the baseline methods while offering reduced computational costs.
1210.5859
Determination the Parameters of Markowitz Portfolio Optimization Model
q-fin.PM cs.CE q-fin.ST
The main purpose of this study is the determination of the optimal length of the historical data for the estimation of statistical parameters in Markowitz Portfolio Optimization. We present a trading simulation using Markowitz method, for a portfolio consisting of foreign currency exchange rates and selected assets from the Istanbul Stock Exchange ISE 30, over the period 2001-2009. In the simulation, the expected returns and the covariance matrix are computed from historical data observed for past n days and the target returns are chosen as multiples of the return of the market index. The trading strategy is to buy a stock if the simulation resulted in a feasible solution and sell the stock after exactly m days, independently from the market conditions. The actual returns are computed for n and m being equal to 21, 42, 63, 84 and 105 days and we have seen that the best return is obtained when the observation period is 2 or 3 times the investment period.
1210.5863
A Generalization of Lee Codes
cs.DM cs.IT math.CO math.IT
Motivated by a problem in computer architecture we introduce a notion of the perfect distance-dominating set, PDDS, in a graph. PDDSs constitute a generalization of perfect Lee codes, diameter perfect codes, as well as other codes and dominating sets. In this paper we initiate a systematic study of PDDSs. PDDSs related to the application will be constructed and the non-existence of some PDDSs will be shown. In addition, an extension of the long-standing Golomb-Welch conjecture, in terms of PDDS, will be stated. We note that all constructed PDDSs are lattice-like which is a very important feature from the practical point of view as in this case decoding algorithms tend to be much simpler.
1210.5873
Initialization of Self-Organizing Maps: Principal Components Versus Random Initialization. A Case Study
stat.ML cs.LG
The performance of the Self-Organizing Map (SOM) algorithm is dependent on the initial weights of the map. The different initialization methods can broadly be classified into random and data analysis based initialization approach. In this paper, the performance of random initialization (RI) approach is compared to that of principal component initialization (PCI) in which the initial map weights are chosen from the space of the principal component. Performance is evaluated by the fraction of variance unexplained (FVU). Datasets were classified into quasi-linear and non-linear and it was observed that RI performed better for non-linear datasets; however the performance of PCI approach remains inconclusive for quasi-linear datasets.
1210.5898
Some Chances and Challenges in Applying Language Technologies to Historical Studies in Chinese
cs.CL cs.DL cs.IR
We report applications of language technology to analyzing historical documents in the Database for the Study of Modern Chinese Thoughts and Literature (DSMCTL). We studied two historical issues with the reported techniques: the conceptualization of "huaren" (Chinese people) and the attempt to institute constitutional monarchy in the late Qing dynasty. We also discuss research challenges for supporting sophisticated issues using our experience with DSMCTL, the Database of Government Officials of the Republic of China, and the Dream of the Red Chamber. Advanced techniques and tools for lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic processing of language information, along with more thorough data collection, are needed to strengthen the collaboration between historians and computer scientists.
1210.5902
Shared Information -- New Insights and Problems in Decomposing Information in Complex Systems
cs.IT math.IT
How can the information that a set ${X_{1},...,X_{n}}$ of random variables contains about another random variable $S$ be decomposed? To what extent do different subgroups provide the same, i.e. shared or redundant, information, carry unique information or interact for the emergence of synergistic information? Recently Williams and Beer proposed such a decomposition based on natural properties for shared information. While these properties fix the structure of the decomposition, they do not uniquely specify the values of the different terms. Therefore, we investigate additional properties such as strong symmetry and left monotonicity. We find that strong symmetry is incompatible with the properties proposed by Williams and Beer. Although left monotonicity is a very natural property for an information measure it is not fulfilled by any of the proposed measures. We also study a geometric framework for information decompositions and ask whether it is possible to represent shared information by a family of posterior distributions. Finally, we draw connections to the notions of shared knowledge and common knowledge in game theory. While many people believe that independent variables cannot share information, we show that in game theory independent agents can have shared knowledge, but not common knowledge. We conclude that intuition and heuristic arguments do not suffice when arguing about information.
1210.5908
Living is information processing: from molecules to global systems
cs.IT math.IT physics.bio-ph q-bio.OT
We extend the concept that life is an informational phenomenon, at every level of organisation, from molecules to the global ecological system. According to this thesis: (a) living is information processing, in which memory is maintained by both molecular states and ecological states as well as the more obvious nucleic acid coding; (b) this information processing has one overall function - to perpetuate itself; and (c) the processing method is filtration (cognition) of, and synthesis of, information at lower levels to appear at higher levels in complex systems (emergence). We show how information patterns, are united by the creation of mutual context, generating persistent consequences, to result in `functional information'. This constructive process forms arbitrarily large complexes of information, the combined effects of which include the functions of life. Molecules and simple organisms have already been measured in terms of functional information content; we show how quantification may be extended to each level of organisation up to the ecological. In terms of a computer analogy, life is both the data and the program and its biochemical structure is the way the information is embodied. This idea supports the seamless integration of life at all scales with the physical universe. The innovation reported here is essentially to integrate these ideas, basing information on the `general definition' of information, rather than simply the statistics of information, thereby explaining how functional information operates throughout life.
1210.5932
Physical Layer Network Coding for the K-user Multiple Access Relay Channel
cs.IT math.IT
A Physical layer Network Coding (PNC) scheme is proposed for the $K$-user wireless Multiple Access Relay Channel (MARC), in which $K$ source nodes transmit their messages to the destination node $D$ with the help of a relay node $R.$ The proposed PNC scheme involves two transmission phases: (i) Phase 1 during which the source nodes transmit, the relay node and the destination node receive and (ii) Phase 2 during which the source nodes and the relay node transmit, and the destination node receives. At the end of Phase 1, the relay node decodes the messages of the source nodes and during Phase 2 transmits a many-to-one function of the decoded messages. Wireless networks in which the relay node decodes, suffer from loss of diversity order if the decoder at the destination is not chosen properly. A novel decoder is proposed for the PNC scheme, which offers the maximum possible diversity order of $2,$ for a proper choice of certain parameters and the network coding map. Specifically, the network coding map used at the relay is chosen to be a $K$-dimensional Latin Hypercube, in order to ensure the maximum diversity order of $2.$ Also, it is shown that the proposed decoder can be implemented by a fast decoding algorithm. Simulation results presented for the 3-user MARC show that the proposed scheme offers a large gain over the existing scheme for the $K$-user MARC.
1210.5936
Mod\'elisation multi-niveaux dans AA4MM
cs.MA
In this article, we propose to represent a multi-level phenomenon as a set of interacting models. This perspective makes the levels of representation and their relationships explicit. To deal with coherence, causality and coordination issues between models, we rely on AA4MM, a metamodel dedicated to such a representation. We illustrate our proposal and we show the interest of our approach on a flocking phenomenon.
1210.5940
Properties of perfect transitive binary codes of length 15 and extended perfect transitive binary codes of length 16
math.CO cs.DM cs.IT math.IT
Some properties of perfect transitive binary codes of length 15 and extended perfect transitive binary codes of length 16 are presented for reference purposes.
1210.5965
Classification Analysis Of Authorship Fiction Texts in The Space Of Semantic Fields
cs.CL
The use of naive Bayesian classifier (NB) and the classifier by the k nearest neighbors (kNN) in classification semantic analysis of authors' texts of English fiction has been analysed. The authors' works are considered in the vector space the basis of which is formed by the frequency characteristics of semantic fields of nouns and verbs. Highly precise classification of authors' texts in the vector space of semantic fields indicates about the presence of particular spheres of author's idiolect in this space which characterizes the individual author's style.
1210.5980
The Ontological Key: Automatically Understanding and Integrating Forms to Access the Deep Web
cs.DB
Forms are our gates to the web. They enable us to access the deep content of web sites. Automatic form understanding provides applications, ranging from crawlers over meta-search engines to service integrators, with a key to this content. Yet, it has received little attention other than as component in specific applications such as crawlers or meta-search engines. No comprehensive approach to form understanding exists, let alone one that produces rich models for semantic services or integration with linked open data. In this paper, we present OPAL, the first comprehensive approach to form understanding and integration. We identify form labeling and form interpretation as the two main tasks involved in form understanding. On both problems OPAL pushes the state of the art: For form labeling, it combines features from the text, structure, and visual rendering of a web page. In extensive experiments on the ICQ and TEL-8 benchmarks and a set of 200 modern web forms OPAL outperforms previous approaches for form labeling by a significant margin. For form interpretation, OPAL uses a schema (or ontology) of forms in a given domain. Thanks to this domain schema, it is able to produce nearly perfect (more than 97 percent accuracy in the evaluation domains) form interpretations. Yet, the effort to produce a domain schema is very low, as we provide a Datalog-based template language that eases the specification of such schemata and a methodology for deriving a domain schema largely automatically from an existing domain ontology. We demonstrate the value of the form interpretations in OPAL through a light-weight form integration system that successfully translates and distributes master queries to hundreds of forms with no error, yet is implemented with only a handful translation rules.
1210.5984
AMBER: Automatic Supervision for Multi-Attribute Extraction
cs.DB
The extraction of multi-attribute objects from the deep web is the bridge between the unstructured web and structured data. Existing approaches either induce wrappers from a set of human-annotated pages or leverage repeated structures on the page without supervision. What the former lack in automation, the latter lack in accuracy. Thus accurate, automatic multi-attribute object extraction has remained an open challenge. AMBER overcomes both limitations through mutual supervision between the repeated structure and automatically produced annotations. Previous approaches based on automatic annotations have suffered from low quality due to the inherent noise in the annotations and have attempted to compensate by exploring multiple candidate wrappers. In contrast, AMBER compensates for this noise by integrating repeated structure analysis with annotation-based induction: The repeated structure limits the search space for wrapper induction, and conversely, annotations allow the repeated structure analysis to distinguish noise from relevant data. Both, low recall and low precision in the annotations are mitigated to achieve almost human quality (more than 98 percent) multi-attribute object extraction. To achieve this accuracy, AMBER needs to be trained once for an entire domain. AMBER bootstraps its training from a small, possibly noisy set of attribute instances and a few unannotated sites of the domain.
1210.5987
Stability analysis of financial contagion due to overlapping portfolios
q-fin.GN cs.SI physics.soc-ph q-fin.RM
Common asset holdings are widely believed to have been the primary vector of contagion in the recent financial crisis. We develop a network approach to the amplification of financial contagion due to the combination of overlapping portfolios and leverage, and we show how it can be understood in terms of a generalized branching process. By studying a stylized model we estimate the circumstances under which systemic instabilities are likely to occur as a function of parameters such as leverage, market crowding, diversification, and market impact. Although diversification may be good for individual institutions, it can create dangerous systemic effects, and as a result financial contagion gets worse with too much diversification. Under our model there is a critical threshold for leverage; below it financial networks are always stable, and above it the unstable region grows as leverage increases. The financial system exhibits "robust yet fragile" behavior, with regions of the parameter space where contagion is rare but catastrophic whenever it occurs. Our model and methods of analysis can be calibrated to real data and provide simple yet powerful tools for macroprudential stress testing.
1210.5991
Online Recovery Guarantees and Analytical Results for OMP
cs.IT math.IT
Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) is a simple, yet empirically competitive algorithm for sparse recovery. Recent developments have shown that OMP guarantees exact recovery of K-sparse signals with K or more than K iterations if the observation matrix satisfies the restricted isometry property (RIP) with some conditions. We develop RIP-based online guarantees for recovery of a K-sparse signal with more than K OMP iterations. Though these guarantees cannot be generalized to all sparse signals a priori, we show that they can still hold online when the state-of-the-art K-step recovery guarantees fail. In addition, we present bounds on the number of correct and false indices in the support estimate for the derived condition to be less restrictive than the K-step guarantees. Under these bounds, this condition guarantees exact recovery of a K-sparse signal within 3K/2 iterations, which is much less than the number of steps required for the state-of-the-art exact recovery guarantees with more than K steps. Moreover, we present phase transitions of OMP in comparison to basis pursuit and subspace pursuit, which are obtained after extensive recovery simulations involving different sparse signal types. Finally, we empirically analyse the number of false indices in the support estimate, which indicates that these do not violate the developed upper bound in practice.
1210.6001
Reducing statistical time-series problems to binary classification
cs.LG stat.ML
We show how binary classification methods developed to work on i.i.d. data can be used for solving statistical problems that are seemingly unrelated to classification and concern highly-dependent time series. Specifically, the problems of time-series clustering, homogeneity testing and the three-sample problem are addressed. The algorithms that we construct for solving these problems are based on a new metric between time-series distributions, which can be evaluated using binary classification methods. Universal consistency of the proposed algorithms is proven under most general assumptions. The theoretical results are illustrated with experiments on synthetic and real-world data.
1210.6024
Motion Estimation and Imaging of Complex Scenes with Synthetic Aperture Radar
math.NA cs.IT math.IT
We study synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and motion estimation of complex scenes consisting of stationary and moving targets. We use the classic SAR setup with a single antenna emitting signals and receiving the echoes from the scene. The known motion estimation methods for such setups work only in simple cases, with one or a few targets in the same motion. We propose to extend the applicability of these methods to complex scenes, by complementing them with a data pre-processing step intended to separate the echoes from the stationary targets and the moving ones. We present two approaches. The first is an iteration designed to subtract the echoes from the stationary targets one by one. It estimates the location of each stationary target from a preliminary image, and then uses it to define a filter that removes its echo from the data. The second approach is based on the robust principle component analysis (PCA) method. The key observation is that with appropriate pre-processing and windowing, the discrete samples of the stationary target echoes form a low rank matrix, whereas the samples of a few moving target echoes form a high rank sparse matrix. The robust PCA method is designed to separate the low rank from the sparse part, and thus can be used for the SAR data separation. We present a brief analysis of the two methods and explain how they can be combined to improve the data separation for extended and complex imaging scenes. We also assess the performance of the methods with extensive numerical simulations.
1210.6044
Multistable binary decision making on networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI stat.AP
We propose a simple model for a binary decision making process on a graph, motivated by modeling social decision making with cooperative individuals. The model is similar to a random field Ising model or fiber bundle model, but with key differences on heterogeneous networks. For many types of disorder and interactions between the nodes, we predict discontinuous phase transitions with mean field theory which are largely independent of network structure. We show how these phase transitions can also be understood by studying microscopic avalanches, and describe how network structure enhances fluctuations in the distribution of avalanches. We suggest theoretically the existence of a "glassy" spectrum of equilibria associated with a typical phase, even on infinite graphs, so long as the first moment of the degree distribution is finite. This behavior implies that the model is robust against noise below a certain scale, and also that phase transitions can switch from discontinuous to continuous on networks with too few edges. Numerical simulations suggest that our theory is accurate.
1210.6052
Leveraging Peer Centrality in the Design of Socially-Informed Peer-to-Peer Systems
cs.SI cs.DC
Social applications mine user social graphs to improve performance in search, provide recommendations, allow resource sharing and increase data privacy. When such applications are implemented on a peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, the social graph is distributed on the P2P system: the traversal of the social graph translates into a socially-informed routing in the peer-to-peer layer. In this work we introduce the model of a projection graph that is the result of decentralizing a social graph onto a peer-to-peer network. We focus on three social network metrics: degree, node betweenness and edge betweenness centrality and analytically formulate the relation between metrics in the social graph and in the projection graph. Through experimental evaluation on real networks, we demonstrate that when mapping user communities of sizes up to 50-150 users on each peer, the association between the properties of the social graph and the projection graph is high, and thus the properties of the (dynamic) projection graph can be inferred from the properties of the (slower changing) social graph. Furthermore, we demonstrate with two application scenarios on large-scale social networks the usability of the projection graph in designing social search applications and unstructured P2P overlays.
1210.6070
Urban characteristics attributable to density-driven tie formation
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Motivated by empirical evidence on the interplay between geography, population density and societal interaction, we propose a generative process for the evolution of social structure in cities. Our analytical and simulation results predict both super-linear scaling of social tie density and information flow as a function of the population. We demonstrate that our model provides a robust and accurate fit for the dependency of city characteristics with city size, ranging from individual-level dyadic interactions (number of acquaintances, volume of communication) to population-level variables (contagious disease rates, patenting activity, economic productivity and crime) without the need to appeal to modularity, specialization, or hierarchy.
1210.6076
An Automated Petri-Net Based Approach for Change Management in Distributed Telemedicine Environment
cs.SE cs.SY
The worldwide healthcare industry is facing a number of daunting challenges which are forcing healthcare systems worldwide to adapt and transform, and will ultimately completely redefine the way they do business and deliver care for patients. In this paper, we present a distributed telemedicine environement reaping from both the benefits of Service Oriented Approach (SOA) and the strong telecoms capabilities. We propose an automated approach to handle changes in a distributed telemedicine environement. A combined Petri nets model to handle changes and Reconfigurable Petri nets model to react to these changes are used to fulfill telemedicine functional and non functional requirements.
1210.6082
Interplay: Dispersed Activation in Neural Networks
cs.NE q-bio.NC
This paper presents a multi-point stimulation of a Hebbian neural network with investigation of the interplay between the stimulus waves through the neurons of the network. Equilibrium of the resulting memory is achieved for recall of specific memory data at a rate faster than single point stimulus. The interplay of the intersecting stimuli appears to parallel the clarification process of recall in biological systems.
1210.6095
Interference Coordination: Random Clustering and Adaptive Limited Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
Interference coordination improves data rates and reduces outages in cellular networks. Accurately evaluating the gains of coordination, however, is contingent upon using a network topology that models realistic cellular deployments. In this paper, we model the base stations locations as a Poisson point process to provide a better analytical assessment of the performance of coordination. Since interference coordination is only feasible within clusters of limited size, we consider a random clustering process where cluster stations are located according to a random point process and groups of base stations associated with the same cluster coordinate. We assume channel knowledge is exchanged among coordinating base stations, and we analyze the performance of interference coordination when channel knowledge at the transmitters is either perfect or acquired through limited feedback. We apply intercell interference nulling (ICIN) to coordinate interference inside the clusters. The feasibility of ICIN depends on the number of antennas at the base stations. Using tools from stochastic geometry, we derive the probability of coverage and the average rate for a typical mobile user. We show that the average cluster size can be optimized as a function of the number of antennas to maximize the gains of ICIN. To minimize the mean loss in rate due to limited feedback, we propose an adaptive feedback allocation strategy at the mobile users. We show that adapting the bit allocation as a function of the signals' strength increases the achievable rate with limited feedback, compared to equal bit partitioning. Finally, we illustrate how this analysis can help solve network design problems such as identifying regions where coordination provides gains based on average cluster size, number of antennas, and number of feedback bits.
1210.6113
Using the DOM Tree for Content Extraction
cs.IR
The main information of a webpage is usually mixed between menus, advertisements, panels, and other not necessarily related information; and it is often difficult to automatically isolate this information. This is precisely the objective of content extraction, a research area of widely interest due to its many applications. Content extraction is useful not only for the final human user, but it is also frequently used as a preprocessing stage of different systems that need to extract the main content in a web document to avoid the treatment and processing of other useless information. Other interesting application where content extraction is particularly used is displaying webpages in small screens such as mobile phones or PDAs. In this work we present a new technique for content extraction that uses the DOM tree of the webpage to analyze the hierarchical relations of the elements in the webpage. Thanks to this information, the technique achieves a considerable recall and precision. Using the DOM structure for content extraction gives us the benefits of other approaches based on the syntax of the webpage (such as characters, words and tags), but it also gives us a very precise information regarding the related components in a block, thus, producing very cohesive blocks.
1210.6119
Time After Time: Notes on Delays In Spiking Neural P Systems
cs.NE cs.DC cs.ET
Spiking Neural P systems, SNP systems for short, are biologically inspired computing devices based on how neurons perform computations. SNP systems use only one type of symbol, the spike, in the computations. Information is encoded in the time differences of spikes or the multiplicity of spikes produced at certain times. SNP systems with delays (associated with rules) and those without delays are two of several Turing complete SNP system variants in literature. In this work we investigate how restricted forms of SNP systems with delays can be simulated by SNP systems without delays. We show the simulations for the following spike routing constructs: sequential, iteration, join, and split.
1210.6128
Improved Local Search in Artificial Bee Colony using Golden Section Search
cs.AI cs.CE
Artificial bee colony (ABC), an optimization algorithm is a recent addition to the family of population based search algorithm. ABC has taken its inspiration from the collective intelligent foraging behavior of honey bees. In this study we have incorporated golden section search mechanism in the structure of basic ABC to improve the global convergence and prevent to stick on a local solution. The proposed variant is termed as ILS-ABC. Comparative numerical results with the state-of-art algorithms show the performance of the proposal when applied to the set of unconstrained engineering design problems. The simulated results show that the proposed variant can be successfully applied to solve real life problems.
1210.6142
Cooperating epidemics of foodborne diseases with diverse trade networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.PE
The frequent outbreak of severe foodborne diseases warns of a potential threat that the global trade networks could spread fatal pathogens. The global trade network is a typical overlay network, which compounds multiple standalone trade networks representing the transmission of a single product and connecting the same set of countries and territories through their own set of trade interactions. Although the epidemic dynamic implications of overlay networks have been debated in recent studies, some general answers for the overlay of multiple and diverse standalone networks remain elusive, especially the relationship between the heterogeneity and diversity of a set of standalone networks and the behavior of the overlay network. In this paper, we establish a general analysis framework for multiple overlay networks based on diversity theory. The framework could reveal the critical epidemic mechanisms beyond overlay processes. Applying the framework to global trade networks, we found that, although the distribution of connectivity of standalone trade networks was highly heterogeneous, epidemic behavior on overlay networks is more dependent on cooperation among standalone trade networks rather than on a few high-connectivity networks as the general property of complex systems with heterogeneous distribution. Moreover, the analysis of overlay trade networks related to 7 real pathogens also suggested that epidemic behavior is not controlled by high-connectivity goods but that the actual compound mode of overlay trade networks plays a critical role in spreading pathogens. Finally, we study the influence of cooperation mechanisms on the stability of overlay networks and on the control of global epidemics. The framework provides a general tool to study different problems on overlay networks.
1210.6147
Traction, deformation and velocity of deformation in a viscoelastic string
math-ph cs.SY math.MP
In this paper we consider a viscoelastic string whose deformation is controlled at one end. We study the relations and the controllability of the couples traction/velocity and traction/deformation and we show that the first couple behaves very like as in the purely elastic case, while new phenomena appears when studying the couple of the traction and the deformation. Namely, while traction and velocity are independent (for large time), traction and deformation are related at each time but the relation is not so strict. In fact we prove that an arbitrary number of "Fourier" components of the traction and, independently, of the deformation can be assigned at any time.
1210.6157
Novel Architecture for 3D model in virtual communities from detected face
cs.CV
In this research paper we suggest how to extract a face from an image, modify it, characterize it in terms of high-level properties, and apply it to the creation of a personalized avatar. In this research work we tested, we implemented the algorithm on several hundred facial images, including many taken under uncontrolled acquisition conditions, and found to exhibit satisfactory performance for immediate practical use.
1210.6168
Accelerating Iterative Detection for Spatially Coupled Systems by Collaborative Training
cs.IT math.IT
This letter proposes a novel method for accelerating iterative detection for spatially coupled (SC) systems. An SC system is constructed by one-dimensional coupling of many subsystems, which are classified into training and propagation parts. An irregular structure is introduced into the subsystems in the training part so that information in that part can be detected successfully. The obtained reliable information may spread over the whole system via the subsystems in the propagation part. In order to allow the subsystems in the training part to collaborate, shortcuts between them are created to accelerate iterative detection for that part. As an example of SC systems, SC code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems are considered. Density Evolution for the SC CDMA systems shows that the proposed method can provide a significant reduction in the number of iterations for highly loaded systems.
1210.6192
Textural Approach to Palmprint Identification
cs.CV cs.CR cs.GR
Biometrics which use of human physiological characteristics for identifying an individual is now a widespread method of identification and authentication. Biometric identification is a technology which uses several image processing techniques and describes the general procedure for identification and verification using feature extraction, storage and matching from the digitized image of biometric characters such as Finger Print, Face, Iris or Palm Print. The current paper uses palm print biometrics. Here we have presented an identification approach using textural properties of palm print images. The elegance of the method is that the conventional edge detection technique is extended to suitably describe the texture features. In this technique all the characteristics of the palm such as principal lines, edges and wrinkles are considered with equal importance.
1210.6198
Network Localization by Shadow Edges
cs.SY cs.NI
Localization is a fundamental task for sensor networks. Traditional network construction approaches allow to obtain localized networks requiring the nodes to be at least tri-connected (in 2D), i.e., the communication graph needs to be globally rigid. In this paper we exploit, besides the information on the neighbors sensed by each robot/sensor, also the information about the lack of communication among nodes. The result is a framework where the nodes are required to be bi-connected and the communication graph has to be rigid. This is possible considering a novel typology of link, namely Shadow Edges, that account for the lack of communication among nodes and allow to reduce the uncertainty associated to the position of the nodes.
1210.6209
Characteristic of partition-circuit matroid through approximation number
cs.AI
Rough set theory is a useful tool to deal with uncertain, granular and incomplete knowledge in information systems. And it is based on equivalence relations or partitions. Matroid theory is a structure that generalizes linear independence in vector spaces, and has a variety of applications in many fields. In this paper, we propose a new type of matroids, namely, partition-circuit matroids, which are induced by partitions. Firstly, a partition satisfies circuit axioms in matroid theory, then it can induce a matroid which is called a partition-circuit matroid. A partition and an equivalence relation on the same universe are one-to-one corresponding, then some characteristics of partition-circuit matroids are studied through rough sets. Secondly, similar to the upper approximation number which is proposed by Wang and Zhu, we define the lower approximation number. Some characteristics of partition-circuit matroids and the dual matroids of them are investigated through the lower approximation number and the upper approximation number.
1210.6230
A Self-Organized Neural Comparator
q-bio.NC cond-mat.dis-nn cs.NE
Learning algorithms need generally the possibility to compare several streams of information. Neural learning architectures hence need a unit, a comparator, able to compare several inputs encoding either internal or external information, like for instance predictions and sensory readings. Without the possibility of comparing the values of prediction to actual sensory inputs, reward evaluation and supervised learning would not be possible. Comparators are usually not implemented explicitly, necessary comparisons are commonly performed by directly comparing one-to-one the respective activities. This implies that the characteristics of the two input streams (like size and encoding) must be provided at the time of designing the system. It is however plausible that biological comparators emerge from self-organizing, genetically encoded principles, which allow the system to adapt to the changes in the input and in the organism. We propose an unsupervised neural circuitry, where the function of input comparison emerges via self-organization only from the interaction of the system with the respective inputs, without external influence or supervision. The proposed neural comparator adapts, unsupervised, according to the correlations present in the input streams. The system consists of a multilayer feed-forward neural network which follows a local output minimization (anti-Hebbian) rule for adaptation of the synaptic weights. The local output minimization allows the circuit to autonomously acquire the capability of comparing the neural activities received from different neural populations, which may differ in the size of the population and in the neural encoding used. The comparator is able to compare objects never encountered before in the sensory input streams and to evaluate a measure of their similarity, even when differently encoded.
1210.6234
Experiments and Direct Numerical Simulations of binary collisions of miscible liquid droplets with different viscosities
physics.flu-dyn cs.CE
Binary droplet collisions are of importance in a variety of practical applications comprising dispersed two-phase flows. The background of our research is the prediction of properties of particulate products formed in spray processes. To gain a more thorough understanding of the elementary sub-processes inside a spray, experiments and direct numerical simulations of binary droplet collisions are used. The aim of these investigations is to develop semi-analytical descriptions for the outcome of droplet collisions. Such collision models can then be employed as closure terms for scale-reduced simulations. In the present work we focus on the collision of droplets of different liquids. These kinds of collisions take place in every spray drying process when droplets with different solids contents collide in recirculation zones. A new experimental method has been developed allowing for high spatial and time resolved recordings via Laser-induced fluorescence. The results obtained with the proposed method will be compared with DNS simulations. The viscosities of the droplets are different whereas the interfacial tension and density are equal. The liquids are miscible and no surface tension is acting between the two liquids. Our intention is to discover elementary phenomena caused by the viscosity ratio of the droplets.
1210.6241
Transforming Monitoring Structures with Resilient Encoders. Application to Repeated Games
cs.IT cs.GT math.IT
An important feature of a dynamic game is its monitoring structure namely, what the players effectively see from the played actions. We consider games with arbitrary monitoring structures. One of the purposes of this paper is to know to what extent an encoder, who perfectly observes the played actions and sends a complementary public signal to the players, can establish perfect monitoring for all the players. To reach this goal, the main technical problem to be solved at the encoder is to design a source encoder which compresses the action profile in the most concise manner possible. A special feature of this encoder is that the multi-dimensional signal (namely, the action profiles) to be encoded is assumed to comprise a component whose probability distribution is not known to the encoder and the decoder has a side information (the private signals received by the players when the encoder is off). This new framework appears to be both of game-theoretical and information-theoretical interest. In particular, it is useful for designing certain types of encoders that are resilient to single deviations and provide an equilibrium utility region in the proposed setting; it provides a new type of constraints to compress an information source (i.e., a random variable). Regarding the first aspect, we apply the derived result to the repeated prisoner's dilemma.
1210.6242
Enhancing Algebraic Query Relaxation with Semantic Similarity
cs.DB
Cooperative database systems support a database user by searching for answers that are closely related to his query and hence are informative answers. Common operators to relax the user query are Dropping Condition, Anti-Instantiation and Goal Replacement. In this article, we provide an algebraic version of these operators. Moreover we propose some heuristics to assign a degree of similarity to each tuple of an answer table; this degree can help the user to determine whether this answer is relevant for him or not.
1210.6267
Phase Noise Estimation for Uncoded/Coded SISO and MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
Non-ideal oscillators both at the transmitter and the receiver introduces time varying phase noise which interacts with the transmitted data in a non-linear fashion. Phase noise becomes a detrimental problem and needs to be estimated and compensated. In this thesis receiver algorithms are derived and evaluated to mitigate the effects of the phase noise in digital communication systems. In Chapter 3 phase noise estimation in single-input single-output (SISO) systems is investigated. First, a hard decision directed extended Kalman filter (EKF) is applied to an uncoded system. Next, an iterative receiver algorithm performing code-aided turbo synchronization is derived using the expectation maximization (EM) framework for a coded system. Two soft-decision directed estimators in the literature based on Kalman filtering are evaluated. Low density parity check (LDPC) codes are proposed to calculate marginal a posteriori probabilities and to construct soft decision symbols. Error rate performance of both estimators are compared through simulations. In Chapter 4 phase noise estimation in multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems is investigated. First, a low complexity hard decision directed EKF is applied to an uncoded system. Next, a new receiver algorithm based on the EM framework for joint estimation and detection in coded MIMO systems is proposed. A low complexity soft decision directed extended Kalman filter and smoother (EKFS) that tracks the phase noise parameters over a frame is proposed in order to carry out the maximization step. The proposed EKFS based approach is combined with an iterative detector that utilizes bit interleaved coded modulation and employs LDPC codes. Finally, simulation results confirm that the error rate performance of the proposed EM-based approach is close to the scenario of perfect knowledge of phase noise at low-to-medium signal-to-noise ratios.
1210.6272
Affinity-based XML Fragmentation
cs.DB
In this paper we tackle the fragmentation problem for highly distributed databases. In such an environment, a suitable fragmentation strategy may provide scalability and availability by minimizing distributed transactions. We propose an approach for XML fragmentation that takes as input both the application's expected workload and a storage threshold, and produces as output an XML fragmentation schema. Our workload-aware method aims to minimize the execution of distributed transactions by packing up related data in a small set of fragments. We present experiments that compare alternative fragmentation schemas, showing that the one produced by our technique provides a finer-grained result and better system throughput.
1210.6275
Ambiente de Planejamento Ip\^e
cs.AI
In this work we investigate the systems that implements algorithms for the planning problem in Artificial Intelligence, called planners, with especial attention to the planners based on the plan graph. We analyze the problem of comparing the performance of the different algorithms and we propose an environment for the development and analysis of planners.
1210.6284
Reify Your Collection Queries for Modularity and Speed!
cs.PL cs.DB
Modularity and efficiency are often contradicting requirements, such that programers have to trade one for the other. We analyze this dilemma in the context of programs operating on collections. Performance-critical code using collections need often to be hand-optimized, leading to non-modular, brittle, and redundant code. In principle, this dilemma could be avoided by automatic collection-specific optimizations, such as fusion of collection traversals, usage of indexing, or reordering of filters. Unfortunately, it is not obvious how to encode such optimizations in terms of ordinary collection APIs, because the program operating on the collections is not reified and hence cannot be analyzed. We propose SQuOpt, the Scala Query Optimizer--a deep embedding of the Scala collections API that allows such analyses and optimizations to be defined and executed within Scala, without relying on external tools or compiler extensions. SQuOpt provides the same "look and feel" (syntax and static typing guarantees) as the standard collections API. We evaluate SQuOpt by re-implementing several code analyses of the Findbugs tool using SQuOpt, show average speedups of 12x with a maximum of 12800x and hence demonstrate that SQuOpt can reconcile modularity and efficiency in real-world applications.
1210.6287
Fast Exact Max-Kernel Search
cs.DS cs.IR cs.LG
The wide applicability of kernels makes the problem of max-kernel search ubiquitous and more general than the usual similarity search in metric spaces. We focus on solving this problem efficiently. We begin by characterizing the inherent hardness of the max-kernel search problem with a novel notion of directional concentration. Following that, we present a method to use an $O(n \log n)$ algorithm to index any set of objects (points in $\Real^\dims$ or abstract objects) directly in the Hilbert space without any explicit feature representations of the objects in this space. We present the first provably $O(\log n)$ algorithm for exact max-kernel search using this index. Empirical results for a variety of data sets as well as abstract objects demonstrate up to 4 orders of magnitude speedup in some cases. Extensions for approximate max-kernel search are also presented.
1210.6292
A density-sensitive hierarchical clustering method
cs.LG
We define a hierarchical clustering method: $\alpha$-unchaining single linkage or $SL(\alpha)$. The input of this algorithm is a finite metric space and a certain parameter $\alpha$. This method is sensitive to the density of the distribution and offers some solution to the so called chaining effect. We also define a modified version, $SL^*(\alpha)$, to treat the chaining through points or small blocks. We study the theoretical properties of these methods and offer some theoretical background for the treatment of chaining effects.
1210.6293
MLPACK: A Scalable C++ Machine Learning Library
cs.MS cs.CV cs.LG
MLPACK is a state-of-the-art, scalable, multi-platform C++ machine learning library released in late 2011 offering both a simple, consistent API accessible to novice users and high performance and flexibility to expert users by leveraging modern features of C++. MLPACK provides cutting-edge algorithms whose benchmarks exhibit far better performance than other leading machine learning libraries. MLPACK version 1.0.3, licensed under the LGPL, is available at http://www.mlpack.org.
1210.6321
High quality topic extraction from business news explains abnormal financial market volatility
stat.ML cs.LG cs.SI physics.soc-ph q-fin.ST
Understanding the mutual relationships between information flows and social activity in society today is one of the cornerstones of the social sciences. In financial economics, the key issue in this regard is understanding and quantifying how news of all possible types (geopolitical, environmental, social, financial, economic, etc.) affect trading and the pricing of firms in organized stock markets. In this article, we seek to address this issue by performing an analysis of more than 24 million news records provided by Thompson Reuters and of their relationship with trading activity for 206 major stocks in the S&P US stock index. We show that the whole landscape of news that affect stock price movements can be automatically summarized via simple regularized regressions between trading activity and news information pieces decomposed, with the help of simple topic modeling techniques, into their "thematic" features. Using these methods, we are able to estimate and quantify the impacts of news on trading. We introduce network-based visualization techniques to represent the whole landscape of news information associated with a basket of stocks. The examination of the words that are representative of the topic distributions confirms that our method is able to extract the significant pieces of information influencing the stock market. Our results show that one of the most puzzling stylized fact in financial economies, namely that at certain times trading volumes appear to be "abnormally large," can be partially explained by the flow of news. In this sense, our results prove that there is no "excess trading," when restricting to times when news are genuinely novel and provide relevant financial information.
1210.6334
Resilient Source Coding
cs.IT cs.GT math-ph math.IT math.MP
This paper provides a source coding theorem for multi-dimensional information signals when, at a given instant, the distribution associated with one arbitrary component of the signal to be compressed is not known and a side information is available at the destination. This new framework appears to be both of information-theoretical and game-theoretical interest: it provides a new type of constraints to compress an information source; it is useful for designing certain types of mediators in games and characterize utility regions for games with signals. Regarding the latter aspect, we apply the derived source coding theorem to the prisoner's dilemma and the battle of the sexes.
1210.6341
An Achievable Rate Region for the Broadcast Wiretap Channel with Asymmetric Side Information
cs.IT cs.GT math.IT
The communication scenario under consideration in this paper corresponds to a multiuser channel with side information and consists of a broadcast channel with two legitimate receivers and an eavesdropper. Mainly, the results obtained are as follows. First, an achievable rate region is provided for the (general) case of discrete-input discrete-output channels, generalizing existing results. Second, the obtained theorem is used to derive achievable transmission rates for two practical cases of Gaussian channels. It is shown that known perturbations can enlarge the rate region of broadcast wiretap channels with side information and having side information at the decoder as well can increase the secrecy rate of channels with side information. Third, we establish for the first time an explicit connection between multiuser channels and observation structures in dynamic games. In this respect, we show how to exploit the proved achievability theorem (discrete case) to derive a communication-compatible upper bound on the minmax level of a player.
1210.6365
The price of re-establishing perfect, almost perfect or public monitoring in games with arbitrary monitoring
cs.IT cs.GT math.IT
This paper establishes a connection between the notion of observation (or monitoring) structure in game theory and the one of communication channels in Shannon theory. One of the objectives is to know under which conditions an arbitrary monitoring structure can be transformed into a more pertinent monitoring structure. To this end, a mediator is added to the game. The objective of the mediator is to choose a signalling scheme that allows the players to have perfect, almost perfect or public monitoring and all of this, at a minimum cost in terms of signalling. Graph coloring, source coding, and channel coding are exploited to deal with these issues. A wireless power control game is used to illustrate these notions but the applicability of the provided results and, more importantly, the framework of transforming monitoring structures go much beyond this example.
1210.6370
"To sense" or "not to sense" in energy-efficient power control games
cs.GT cs.IT math.IT
A network of cognitive transmitters is considered. Each transmitter has to decide his power control policy in order to maximize energy-efficiency of his transmission. For this, a transmitter has two actions to take. He has to decide whether to sense the power levels of the others or not (which corresponds to a finite sensing game), and to choose his transmit power level for each block (which corresponds to a compact power control game). The sensing game is shown to be a weighted potential game and its set of correlated equilibria is studied. Interestingly, it is shown that the general hybrid game where each transmitter can jointly choose the hybrid pair of actions (to sense or not to sense, transmit power level) leads to an outcome which is worse than the one obtained by playing the sensing game first, and then playing the power control game. This is an interesting Braess-type paradox to be aware of for energy-efficient power control in cognitive networks.
1210.6382
Data Survivability in Networks of Mobile Robots in Urban Disaster Environments
cs.RO cs.DC cs.NI
Mobile multi-robot teams deployed for monitoring or search-and-rescue missions in urban disaster areas can greatly improve the quality of vital data collected on-site. Analysis of such data can identify hazards and save lives. Unfortunately, such real deployments at scale are cost prohibitive and robot failures lead to data loss. Moreover, scaled-down deployments do not capture significant levels of interaction and communication complexity. To tackle this problem, we propose novel mobility and failure generation frameworks that allow realistic simulations of mobile robot networks for large scale disaster scenarios. Furthermore, since data replication techniques can improve the survivability of data collected during the operation, we propose an adaptive, scalable data replication technique that achieves high data survivability with low overhead. Our technique considers the anticipated robot failures and robot heterogeneity to decide how aggressively to replicate data. In addition, it considers survivability priorities, with some data requiring more effort to be saved than others. Using our novel simulation generation frameworks, we compare our adaptive technique with flooding and broadcast-based replication techniques and show that for failure rates of up to 60% it ensures better data survivability with lower communication costs.
1210.6395
Diversity Limits of Compact Broadband Multi-Antenna Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In order to support multiple antennas on compact wireless devices, transceivers are often designed with matching networks that compensate for mutual coupling. Some works have suggested that when optimal matching is applied to such a system, performance at the center frequency can be improved at the expense of an apparent reduction in the system bandwidth. This paper addresses the question of how coupling impacts bandwidth in the context of circular arrays. It will be shown that mutual coupling creates eigen-modes (virtual antennas) with diverse frequency responses, using the standard matching techniques. We shall also demonstrate how common communications techniques such as Diversity-OFDM would need to be optimized in order to compensate for these effects.
1210.6398
Implicit cooperation in distributed energy-efficient networks
cs.GT cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
We consider the problem of cooperation in distributed wireless networks of selfish and free transmitters aiming at maximizing their energy-efficiency. The strategy of each transmitter consists in choosing his power control (PC) policy. Two scenarios are considered: the case where transmitters can update their power levels within time intervals less than the channel coherence time (fast PC) and the case where it is updated only once per time interval (slow PC). One of our objectives is to show how cooperation can be stimulated without assuming cooperation links between the transmitters but only by repeating the corresponding PC game and by signals from the receiver. In order to design efficient PC policies, standard and stochastic repeated games are respectively exploited to analyze the fast and slow PC problems. In the first case a cooperation plan between transmitters, that is both efficient and relies on mild information assumptions, is proposed. In the second case, the region of equilibrium utilities is derived from very recent and powerful results in game theory.
1210.6415
Lex-Partitioning: A New Option for BDD Search
cs.AI
For the exploration of large state spaces, symbolic search using binary decision diagrams (BDDs) can save huge amounts of memory and computation time. State sets are represented and modified by accessing and manipulating their characteristic functions. BDD partitioning is used to compute the image as the disjunction of smaller subimages. In this paper, we propose a novel BDD partitioning option. The partitioning is lexicographical in the binary representation of the states contained in the set that is represented by a BDD and uniform with respect to the number of states represented. The motivation of controlling the state set sizes in the partitioning is to eventually bridge the gap between explicit and symbolic search. Let n be the size of the binary state vector. We propose an O(n) ranking and unranking scheme that supports negated edges and operates on top of precomputed satcount values. For the uniform split of a BDD, we then use unranking to provide paths along which we partition the BDDs. In a shared BDD representation the efforts are O(n). The algorithms are fully integrated in the CUDD library and evaluated in strongly solving general game playing benchmarks.
1210.6423
On the Transfer of Information and Energy in Multi-User Systems
cs.IT math.IT
The problem of joint transfer of information and energy for wireless links has been recently investigated in light of emerging applications such as RFID and body area networks. Specifically, recent work has shown that the additional requirements of providing sufficient energy to the receiver significantly affects the design of the optimal communication strategy. In contrast to most previous works, this letter focuses on baseline multi-user systems, namely multiple access and multi-hop channels, and demonstrates that energy transfer constraints call for additional coordination among distributed nodes of a wireless network. The analysis is carried out using information theoretic tools, and specific examples are worked out to illustrate the main conclusions.
1210.6459
A note on binary completely regular codes with large minimum distance
math.CO cs.IT math.IT
We classify all binary error correcting completely regular codes of length $n$ with minimum distance $\delta>n/2$.
1210.6465
Black-Box Complexity: Breaking the $O(n \log n)$ Barrier of LeadingOnes
cs.DS cs.NE
We show that the unrestricted black-box complexity of the $n$-dimensional XOR- and permutation-invariant LeadingOnes function class is $O(n \log (n) / \log \log n)$. This shows that the recent natural looking $O(n\log n)$ bound is not tight. The black-box optimization algorithm leading to this bound can be implemented in a way that only 3-ary unbiased variation operators are used. Hence our bound is also valid for the unbiased black-box complexity recently introduced by Lehre and Witt (GECCO 2010). The bound also remains valid if we impose the additional restriction that the black-box algorithm does not have access to the objective values but only to their relative order (ranking-based black-box complexity).
1210.6488
A New Identification Framework For Off-Line Computation of Moving-Horizon Observers
cs.SY
In this paper, a new nonlinear identification framework is proposed to address the issue of off-line computation of moving-horizon observer estimate. The proposed structure merges the advantages of nonlinear approximators with the efficient computation of constrained quadratic programming problems. A bound on the estimation error is proposed and the efficiency of the resulting scheme is illustrated using two state estimation examples.
1210.6497
Topic-Level Opinion Influence Model(TOIM): An Investigation Using Tencent Micro-Blogging
cs.SI cs.CY cs.LG
Mining user opinion from Micro-Blogging has been extensively studied on the most popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook in the U.S., but few studies have been done on Micro-Blogging websites in other countries (e.g. China). In this paper, we analyze the social opinion influence on Tencent, one of the largest Micro-Blogging websites in China, endeavoring to unveil the behavior patterns of Chinese Micro-Blogging users. This paper proposes a Topic-Level Opinion Influence Model (TOIM) that simultaneously incorporates topic factor and social direct influence in a unified probabilistic framework. Based on TOIM, two topic level opinion influence propagation and aggregation algorithms are developed to consider the indirect influence: CP (Conservative Propagation) and NCP (None Conservative Propagation). Users' historical social interaction records are leveraged by TOIM to construct their progressive opinions and neighbors' opinion influence through a statistical learning process, which can be further utilized to predict users' future opinions on some specific topics. To evaluate and test this proposed model, an experiment was designed and a sub-dataset from Tencent Micro-Blogging was used. The experimental results show that TOIM outperforms baseline methods on predicting users' opinion. The applications of CP and NCP have no significant differences and could significantly improve recall and F1-measure of TOIM.
1210.6508
An algebraic approach to project schedule development under precedence constraints
math.OC cs.SY
An approach to schedule development in project management is developed within the framework of idempotent algebra. The approach offers a way to represent precedence relationships among activities in projects as linear vector equations in terms of an idempotent semiring. As a result, many issues in project scheduling reduce to solving computational problems in the idempotent algebra setting, including linear equations and eigenvalue-eigenvector problems. The solutions to the problems are given in a compact vector form that provides the basis for the development of efficient computation procedures and related software applications.
1210.6510
A measure of similarity between scientific journals and of diversity of a list of publications
cs.DL cs.IR physics.soc-ph
The aim of this note is to propose a definition of the scientific diversity and corollarly, a measure of the "interdisciplinarity" of collaborations. With respect to previous studies, the proposed approach consists of 2 steps : first, the definition of similarity between journals and second, these similarities are used to characterize the homogeneity (or, on the contrary the diversity) of a publication list (that can be for one individual or a team).
1210.6511
Neural Networks for Complex Data
cs.NE cs.LG stat.ML
Artificial neural networks are simple and efficient machine learning tools. Defined originally in the traditional setting of simple vector data, neural network models have evolved to address more and more difficulties of complex real world problems, ranging from time evolving data to sophisticated data structures such as graphs and functions. This paper summarizes advances on those themes from the last decade, with a focus on results obtained by members of the SAMM team of Universit\'e Paris 1
1210.6539
Towards Swarm Calculus: Urn Models of Collective Decisions and Universal Properties of Swarm Performance
cs.NE cs.AI
Methods of general applicability are searched for in swarm intelligence with the aim of gaining new insights about natural swarms and to develop design methodologies for artificial swarms. An ideal solution could be a `swarm calculus' that allows to calculate key features of swarms such as expected swarm performance and robustness based on only a few parameters. To work towards this ideal, one needs to find methods and models with high degrees of generality. In this paper, we report two models that might be examples of exceptional generality. First, an abstract model is presented that describes swarm performance depending on swarm density based on the dichotomy between cooperation and interference. Typical swarm experiments are given as examples to show how the model fits to several different results. Second, we give an abstract model of collective decision making that is inspired by urn models. The effects of positive feedback probability, that is increasing over time in a decision making system, are understood by the help of a parameter that controls the feedback based on the swarm's current consensus. Several applicable methods, such as the description as Markov process, calculation of splitting probabilities, mean first passage times, and measurements of positive feedback, are discussed and applications to artificial and natural swarms are reported.
1210.6578
LMMSE Filtering in Feedback Systems with White Random Modes: Application to Tracking in Clutter
cs.IT math.IT
A generalized state space representation of dynamical systems with random modes switching according to a white random process is presented. The new formulation includes a term, in the dynamics equation, that depends on the most recent linear minimum mean squared error (LMMSE) estimate of the state. This can model the behavior of a feedback control system featuring a state estimator. The measurement equation is allowed to depend on the previous LMMSE estimate of the state, which can represent the fact that measurements are obtained from a validation window centered about the predicted measurement and not from the entire surveillance region. The LMMSE filter is derived for the considered problem. The approach is demonstrated in the context of target tracking in clutter and is shown to be competitive with several popular nonlinear methods.
1210.6581
An entropy argument for counting matroids
math.CO cs.IT math.IT
We show how a direct application of Shearers' Lemma gives an almost optimum bound on the number of matroids on $n$ elements.
1210.6631
Risk-driven migration and the collective-risk social dilemma
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.PE
A collective-risk social dilemma implies that personal endowments will be lost if contributions to the common pool within a group are too small. Failure to reach the collective target thus has dire consequences for all group members, independently of their strategies. Wanting to move away from unfavorable locations is therefore all but surprising. Inspired by these observations, we here propose and study a collective-risk social dilemma where players are allowed to move if the collective failure becomes too probable. More precisely, this so-called risk-driven migration is launched depending on the difference between the actual contributions and the declared target. Mobility therefore becomes an inherent property that is utilized in an entirely self-organizing manner. We show that under these assumptions cooperation is promoted much more effectively than under the action of manually determined migration rates. For the latter, we in fact identify parameter regions where the evolution of cooperation is incredibly inhibited. Moreover, we find unexpected spatial patterns where cooperators that do not form compact clusters outperform those that do, and where defectors are able to utilize strikingly different ways of invasion. The presented results support the recently revealed importance of percolation for the successful evolution of public cooperation, while at the same time revealing surprisingly simple ways of self-organization towards socially desirable states.
1210.6649
Extended object reconstruction in adaptive-optics imaging: the multiresolution approach
astro-ph.IM cs.CV math.NA
We propose the application of multiresolution transforms, such as wavelets (WT) and curvelets (CT), to the reconstruction of images of extended objects that have been acquired with adaptive optics (AO) systems. Such multichannel approaches normally make use of probabilistic tools in order to distinguish significant structures from noise and reconstruction residuals. Furthermore, we aim to check the historical assumption that image-reconstruction algorithms using static PSFs are not suitable for AO imaging. We convolve an image of Saturn taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) with AO PSFs from the 5-m Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory and add both shot and readout noise. Subsequently, we apply different approaches to the blurred and noisy data in order to recover the original object. The approaches include multi-frame blind deconvolution (with the algorithm IDAC), myopic deconvolution with regularization (with MISTRAL) and wavelets- or curvelets-based static PSF deconvolution (AWMLE and ACMLE algorithms). We used the mean squared error (MSE) and the structural similarity index (SSIM) to compare the results. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the two metrics. We found that CT produces better results than WT, as measured in terms of MSE and SSIM. Multichannel deconvolution with a static PSF produces results which are generally better than the results obtained with the myopic/blind approaches (for the images we tested) thus showing that the ability of a method to suppress the noise and to track the underlying iterative process is just as critical as the capability of the myopic/blind approaches to update the PSF.
1210.6673
Semantically Secure Lattice Codes for the Gaussian Wiretap Channel
cs.IT math.IT
We propose a new scheme of wiretap lattice coding that achieves semantic security and strong secrecy over the Gaussian wiretap channel. The key tool in our security proof is the flatness factor which characterizes the convergence of the conditional output distributions corresponding to different messages and leads to an upper bound on the information leakage. We not only introduce the notion of secrecy-good lattices, but also propose the {flatness factor} as a design criterion of such lattices. Both the modulo-lattice Gaussian channel and the genuine Gaussian channel are considered. In the latter case, we propose a novel secrecy coding scheme based on the discrete Gaussian distribution over a lattice, which achieves the secrecy capacity to within a half nat under mild conditions. No \textit{a priori} distribution of the message is assumed, and no dither is used in our proposed schemes.
1210.6685
Distributed Optimization: Convergence Conditions from a Dynamical System Perspective
cs.SY cs.DC math.OC
This paper explores the fundamental properties of distributed minimization of a sum of functions with each function only known to one node, and a pre-specified level of node knowledge and computational capacity. We define the optimization information each node receives from its objective function, the neighboring information each node receives from its neighbors, and the computational capacity each node can take advantage of in controlling its state. It is proven that there exist a neighboring information way and a control law that guarantee global optimal consensus if and only if the solution sets of the local objective functions admit a nonempty intersection set for fixed strongly connected graphs. Then we show that for any tolerated error, we can find a control law that guarantees global optimal consensus within this error for fixed, bidirectional, and connected graphs under mild conditions. For time-varying graphs, we show that optimal consensus can always be achieved as long as the graph is uniformly jointly strongly connected and the nonempty intersection condition holds. The results illustrate that nonempty intersection for the local optimal solution sets is a critical condition for successful distributed optimization for a large class of algorithms.
1210.6705
Modified Rice-Golomb Code for Predictive Coding of Integers with Real-valued Predictions
cs.IT math.IT
Rice-Golomb codes are widely used in practice to encode integer-valued prediction residuals. However, in lossless coding of audio, image, and video, specially those involving linear predictors, the predictions are from the real domain. In this paper, we have modified and extended the Rice-Golomb code so that it can operate at fractional precision to efficiently exploit the real-valued predictions. Coding at arbitrarily small precision allows the residuals to be modeled with the Laplace distribution instead of its discrete counterpart, namely the two-sided geometric distribution (TSGD). Unlike the Rice-Golomb code, which maps equally probable opposite-signed residuals to different integers, the proposed coding scheme is symmetric in the sense that, at arbitrarily small precision, it assigns codewords of equal length to equally probable residual intervals. The symmetry of both the Laplace distribution and the code facilitates the analysis of the proposed coding scheme to determine the average code-length and the optimal value of the associated coding parameter. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme, by making efficient use of real-valued predictions, achieves better compression as compared to the conventional scheme.
1210.6707
Clustering hidden Markov models with variational HEM
cs.LG cs.CV stat.ML
The hidden Markov model (HMM) is a widely-used generative model that copes with sequential data, assuming that each observation is conditioned on the state of a hidden Markov chain. In this paper, we derive a novel algorithm to cluster HMMs based on the hierarchical EM (HEM) algorithm. The proposed algorithm i) clusters a given collection of HMMs into groups of HMMs that are similar, in terms of the distributions they represent, and ii) characterizes each group by a "cluster center", i.e., a novel HMM that is representative for the group, in a manner that is consistent with the underlying generative model of the HMM. To cope with intractable inference in the E-step, the HEM algorithm is formulated as a variational optimization problem, and efficiently solved for the HMM case by leveraging an appropriate variational approximation. The benefits of the proposed algorithm, which we call variational HEM (VHEM), are demonstrated on several tasks involving time-series data, such as hierarchical clustering of motion capture sequences, and automatic annotation and retrieval of music and of online hand-writing data, showing improvements over current methods. In particular, our variational HEM algorithm effectively leverages large amounts of data when learning annotation models by using an efficient hierarchical estimation procedure, which reduces learning times and memory requirements, while improving model robustness through better regularization.
1210.6719
Construction of Multiple Access Channel Codes Based on Hash Property
cs.IT math.IT
The aim of this paper is to introduce the construction of codes for a general discrete stationary memoryless multiple access channel based on the the notion of the hash property. Since an ensemble of sparse matrices has a hash property, we can use sparse matrices for code construction. Our approach has a potential advantage compared to the conventional random coding because it is expected that we can use some approximation algorithms by using the sparse structure of codes.
1210.6722
Feng-Rao decoding of primary codes
cs.IT math.IT
We show that the Feng-Rao bound for dual codes and a similar bound by Andersen and Geil [H.E. Andersen and O. Geil, Evaluation codes from order domain theory, Finite Fields Appl., 14 (2008), pp. 92-123] for primary codes are consequences of each other. This implies that the Feng-Rao decoding algorithm can be applied to decode primary codes up to half their designed minimum distance. The technique applies to any linear code for which information on well-behaving pairs is available. Consequently we are able to decode efficiently a large class of codes for which no non-trivial decoding algorithm was previously known. Among those are important families of multivariate polynomial codes. Matsumoto and Miura in [R. Matsumoto and S. Miura, On the Feng-Rao bound for the L-construction of algebraic geometry codes, IEICE Trans. Fundamentals, E83-A (2000), pp. 926-930] (See also [P. Beelen and T. H{\o}holdt, The decoding of algebraic geometry codes, in Advances in algebraic geometry codes, pp. 49-98]) derived from the Feng-Rao bound a bound for primary one-point algebraic geometric codes and showed how to decode up to what is guaranteed by their bound. The exposition by Matsumoto and Miura requires the use of differentials which was not needed in [Andersen and Geil 2008]. Nevertheless we demonstrate a very strong connection between Matsumoto and Miura's bound and Andersen and Geil's bound when applied to primary one-point algebraic geometric codes.
1210.6724
A Structured Systems Approach for Optimal Actuator-Sensor Placement in Linear Time-Invariant Systems
cs.SY cs.MA math.OC
In this paper we address the actuator/sensor allocation problem for linear time invariant (LTI) systems. Given the structure of an autonomous linear dynamical system, the goal is to design the structure of the input matrix (commonly denoted by $B$) such that the system is structurally controllable with the restriction that each input be dedicated, i.e., it can only control directly a single state variable. We provide a methodology that addresses this design question: specifically, we determine the minimum number of dedicated inputs required to ensure such structural controllability, and characterize, and characterizes all (when not unique) possible configurations of the \emph{minimal} input matrix $B$. Furthermore, we show that the proposed solution methodology incurs \emph{polynomial complexity} in the number of state variables. By duality, the solution methodology may be readily extended to the structural design of the corresponding minimal output matrix (commonly denoted by $C$) that ensures structural observability.
1210.6730
Measure What Should be Measured: Progress and Challenges in Compressive Sensing
cs.IT math.IT
Is compressive sensing overrated? Or can it live up to our expectations? What will come after compressive sensing and sparsity? And what has Galileo Galilei got to do with it? Compressive sensing has taken the signal processing community by storm. A large corpus of research devoted to the theory and numerics of compressive sensing has been published in the last few years. Moreover, compressive sensing has inspired and initiated intriguing new research directions, such as matrix completion. Potential new applications emerge at a dazzling rate. Yet some important theoretical questions remain open, and seemingly obvious applications keep escaping the grip of compressive sensing. In this paper I discuss some of the recent progress in compressive sensing and point out key challenges and opportunities as the area of compressive sensing and sparse representations keeps evolving. I also attempt to assess the long-term impact of compressive sensing.
1210.6738
Nested Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes
stat.ML cs.LG
We develop a nested hierarchical Dirichlet process (nHDP) for hierarchical topic modeling. The nHDP is a generalization of the nested Chinese restaurant process (nCRP) that allows each word to follow its own path to a topic node according to a document-specific distribution on a shared tree. This alleviates the rigid, single-path formulation of the nCRP, allowing a document to more easily express thematic borrowings as a random effect. We derive a stochastic variational inference algorithm for the model, in addition to a greedy subtree selection method for each document, which allows for efficient inference using massive collections of text documents. We demonstrate our algorithm on 1.8 million documents from The New York Times and 3.3 million documents from Wikipedia.
1210.6740
An upper bound on relaying over capacity based on channel simulation
cs.IT math.IT
The upper bound on the capacity of a 3-node discrete memoryless relay channel is considered, where a source X wants to send information to destination Y with the help of a relay Z. Y and Z are independent given X, and the link from Z to Y is lossless with rate $R_0$. A new inequality is introduced to upper-bound the capacity when the encoding rate is beyond the capacities of both individual links XY and XZ. It is based on generalization of the blowing-up lemma, linking conditional entropy to decoding error, and channel simulation, to the case with side information. The achieved upper-bound is strictly better than the well-known cut-set bound in several cases when the latter is $C_{XY}+R_0$, with $C_{XY}$ being the channel capacity between X and Y. One particular case is when the channel is statistically degraded, i.e., either Y is a statistically degraded version of Z with respect to X, or Z is a statistically degraded version of Y with respect to X. Moreover in this case, the bound is shown to be explicitly computable. The binary erasure channel is analyzed in detail and evaluated numerically.
1210.6746
Shared Execution of Path Queries on Road Networks
cs.DB
The advancement of mobile technologies and the proliferation of map-based applications have enabled a user to access a wide variety of services that range from information queries to navigation systems. Due to the popularity of map-based applications among the users, the service provider often requires to answer a large number of simultaneous queries. Thus, processing queries efficiently on spatial networks (i.e., road networks) have become an important research area in recent years. In this paper, we focus on path queries that find the shortest path between a source and a destination of the user. In particular, we address the problem of finding the shortest paths for a large number of simultaneous path queries in road networks. Traditional systems that consider one query at a time are not suitable for many applications due to high computational and service costs. These systems cannot guarantee required response time in high load conditions. We propose an efficient group based approach that provides a practical solution with reduced cost. The key concept for our approach is to group queries that share a common travel path and then compute the shortest path for the group. Experimental results show that our approach is on an average ten times faster than the traditional approach in return of sacrificing the accuracy by 0.5% in the worst case, which is acceptable for most of the users.
1210.6764
Universal decoding for arbitrary channels relative to a given class of decoding metrics
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of universal decoding for arbitrary unknown channels in the random coding regime. For a given random coding distribution and a given class of metric decoders, we propose a generic universal decoder whose average error probability is, within a sub-exponential multiplicative factor, no larger than that of the best decoder within this class of decoders. Since the optimum, maximum likelihood (ML) decoder of the underlying channel is not necessarily assumed to belong to the given class of decoders, this setting suggests a common generalized framework for: (i) mismatched decoding, (ii) universal decoding for a given family of channels, and (iii) universal coding and decoding for deterministic channels using the individual-sequence approach. The proof of our universality result is fairly simple, and it is demonstrated how some earlier results on universal decoding are obtained as special cases. We also demonstrate how our method extends to more complicated scenarios, like incorporation of noiseless feedback, and the multiple access channel.
1210.6766
Structured Sparsity Models for Multiparty Speech Recovery from Reverberant Recordings
cs.LG cs.SD
We tackle the multi-party speech recovery problem through modeling the acoustic of the reverberant chambers. Our approach exploits structured sparsity models to perform room modeling and speech recovery. We propose a scheme for characterizing the room acoustic from the unknown competing speech sources relying on localization of the early images of the speakers by sparse approximation of the spatial spectra of the virtual sources in a free-space model. The images are then clustered exploiting the low-rank structure of the spectro-temporal components belonging to each source. This enables us to identify the early support of the room impulse response function and its unique map to the room geometry. To further tackle the ambiguity of the reflection ratios, we propose a novel formulation of the reverberation model and estimate the absorption coefficients through a convex optimization exploiting joint sparsity model formulated upon spatio-spectral sparsity of concurrent speech representation. The acoustic parameters are then incorporated for separating individual speech signals through either structured sparse recovery or inverse filtering the acoustic channels. The experiments conducted on real data recordings demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for multi-party speech recovery and recognition.
1210.6777
Multiple-antenna fading coherent channels with arbitrary inputs: Characterization and optimization of the reliable information transmission rate
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate the constrained capacity of multiple-antenna fading coherent channels, where the receiver knows the channel state but the transmitter knows only the channel distribution, driven by arbitrary equiprobable discrete inputs in a regime of high signal-to-noise ratio (${\sf snr}$). In particular, we capitalize on intersections between information theory and estimation theory to conceive expansions to the average minimum-mean squared error (MMSE) and the average mutual information, which leads to an expansion of the constrained capacity, that capture well their behavior in the asymptotic regime of high ${\sf snr}$. We use the expansions to study the constrained capacity of various multiple-antenna fading coherent channels, including Rayleigh fading models, Ricean fading models and antenna-correlated models. The analysis unveils in detail the impact of the number of transmit and receive antennas, transmit and receive antenna correlation, line-of-sight components and the geometry of the signalling scheme on the reliable information transmission rate. We also use the expansions to design key system elements, such as power allocation and precoding schemes, as well as to design space-time signalling schemes for multiple-antenna fading coherent channels. Simulations results demonstrate that the expansions lead to very sharp designs.
1210.6800
Reconciling complex organizations and data management: the Panopticon paradigm
cs.CY cs.SI
These last years, main IT companies have build software solutions and change management plans promoting data quality management within organizations concerned by the enhancement of their business intelligence system. These offers are closely similar data governance schemes based on a common paradigm called Master Data Management. These schemes appear generally inappropriate to the context of complex extended organizations. On the other hand, the community-based data governance schemes have shown their own efficiency to contribute to the reliability of data in digital social networks, as well as their ability to meet user expectations. After a brief analysis of the very specific constraints weighting on extended organization s data governance, and of peculiarities of monitoring and regulatory processes associated to management control and IT within these, we propose a new scheme inspired by Foucaldian analysis on governmentality: the Panopticon data governance paradigm.
1210.6819
On Feasibility of Generalized Interference Alignment with Partial Interference Cancelation
cs.IT math.IT
We study a new IA strategy which is referred to as "Partial Interference Cancelation-based Interference Alignment" (PIC-IA). Unlike the conventional IA strategy, PIC-IA does not strive to eliminate interference from all users. Instead, it aims to remove the most significant interference signals. This PIC-IA strategy generalizes the conventional IA concept by addressing partial, instead of complete, interference cancelation. The feasibility of this new strategy is studied in this paper. Our results show that for a symmetric, single-stream system with $N_t$ transmit antennas and $N_r$ receive antennas, the PIC-IA is feasible when the number of significant interference signals to be removed at each receiver is no more than $N_t+N_r-2$, no matter how many users are in the network. This is in sharp contrast to the conventional IA whose feasibility is severely limited by the number of users $K$.
1210.6855
Asynchronous Decentralized Algorithm for Space-Time Cooperative Pathfinding
cs.AI cs.DC cs.RO
Cooperative pathfinding is a multi-agent path planning problem where a group of vehicles searches for a corresponding set of non-conflicting space-time trajectories. Many of the practical methods for centralized solving of cooperative pathfinding problems are based on the prioritized planning strategy. However, in some domains (e.g., multi-robot teams of unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous underwater vehicles, or unmanned ground vehicles) a decentralized approach may be more desirable than a centralized one due to communication limitations imposed by the domain and/or privacy concerns. In this paper we present an asynchronous decentralized variant of prioritized planning ADPP and its interruptible version IADPP. The algorithm exploits the inherent parallelism of distributed systems and allows for a speed up of the computation process. Unlike the synchronized planning approaches, the algorithm allows an agent to react to updates about other agents' paths immediately and invoke its local spatio-temporal path planner to find the best trajectory, as response to the other agents' choices. We provide a proof of correctness of the algorithms and experimentally evaluate them on synthetic domains.
1210.6883
Jointly they edit: examining the impact of community identification on political interaction in Wikipedia
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
In their 2005 study, Adamic and Glance coined the memorable phrase "divided they blog", referring to a trend of cyberbalkanization in the political blogosphere, with liberal and conservative blogs tending to link to other blogs with a similar political slant, and not to one another. As political discussion and activity increasingly moves online, the power of framing political discourses is shifting from mass media to social media. Continued examination of political interactions online is critical, and we extend this line of research by examining the activities of political users within the Wikipedia community. First, we examined how users in Wikipedia choose to display (or not to display) their political affiliation. Next, we more closely examined the patterns of cross-party interaction and community participation among those users proclaiming a political affiliation. In contrast to previous analyses of other social media, we did not find strong trends indicating a preference to interact with members of the same political party within the Wikipedia community. Our results indicate that users who proclaim their political affiliation within the community tend to proclaim their identity as a "Wikipedian" even more loudly. It seems that the shared identity of "being Wikipedian" may be strong enough to triumph over other potentially divisive facets of personal identity, such as political affiliation.
1210.6891
Predicting Near-Future Churners and Win-Backs in the Telecommunications Industry
cs.CE cs.LG
In this work, we presented the strategies and techniques that we have developed for predicting the near-future churners and win-backs for a telecom company. On a large-scale and real-world database containing customer profiles and some transaction data from a telecom company, we first analyzed the data schema, developed feature computation strategies and then extracted a large set of relevant features that can be associated with the customer churning and returning behaviors. Our features include both the original driver factors as well as some derived features. We evaluated our features on the imbalance corrected dataset, i.e. under-sampled dataset and compare a large number of existing machine learning tools, especially decision tree-based classifiers, for predicting the churners and win-backs. In general, we find RandomForest and SimpleCart learning algorithms generally perform well and tend to provide us with highly competitive prediction performance. Among the top-15 driver factors that signal the churn behavior, we find that the service utilization, e.g. last two months' download and upload volume, last three months' average upload and download, and the payment related factors are the most indicative features for predicting if churn will happen soon. Such features can collectively tell discrepancies between the service plans, payments and the dynamically changing utilization needs of the customers. Our proposed features and their computational strategy exhibit reasonable precision performance to predict churn behavior in near future.
1210.6910
Adaptive Modulation in OSA-based Cognitive Radio Networks
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Opportunistic spectrum access is based on channel state information and can lead to important performance improvements for the underlying communication systems. On the other hand adaptive modulation is also based on channel state information and can achieve increased transmission rates in fading channels. In this work we propose the combination of adaptive modulation with opportunistic spectrum access and we study the anticipated effects on the performance of wireless communication systems in terms of achieved spectral efficiency and power consumption.