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1211.1411
Hidden Variable Theories: Arguments for a Paradigm Shift
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
Usually the 'hidden variables' of Bell's theorem are supposed to describe the pair of Bell particles. Here a semantic shift is proposed, namely to attach the hidden variables to a stochastic medium or field in which the particles move. It appears that under certain conditions one of the premises of Bell's theorem, namely 'measurement independence', is not satisfied for such 'background-based' theories, even if these only involve local interactions. Such theories therefore do not fall under the restriction of Bell's no-go theorem. A simple version of such background-based models are Ising models, which we investigate here in the classical and quantum regime. We also propose to test background-based models by a straightforward extension of existing experiments. The present version corrects an error in the preceding version.
1211.1441
Lyapunov Method Based Online Identification of Nonlinear Systems Using Extreme Learning Machines
cs.SY
Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) is an emerging learning paradigm for nonlinear regression problems and has shown its effectiveness in the machine learning community. An important feature of ELM is that the learning speed is extremely fast thanks to its random projection preprocessing step. This feature is taken advantage of in designing an online parameter estimation algorithm for nonlinear dynamic systems in this paper. The ELM type random projection and a nonlinear transformation in the hidden layer and a linear output layer is considered as a generalized model structure for a given nonlinear system and a parameter update law is constructed based on Lyapunov principles. Simulation results on a DC motor and Lorentz oscillator show that the proposed algorithm is stable and has improved performance over the online-learning ELM algorithm.
1211.1467
Edge distribution in generalized graph products
cs.DM cs.IT math.CO math.IT
Given a graph $G=(V,E)$, an integer $k$, and a function $f_G:V^k \times V^k \to {0,1}$, the $k^{th}$ graph product of $G$ w.r.t $f_G$ is the graph with vertex set $V^k$, and an edge between two vertices $x=(x_1,...,x_k)$ and $y=(y_1,...,y_k)$ iff $f_G(x,y)=1$. Graph products are a basic combinatorial object, widely studied and used in different areas such as hardness of approximation, information theory, etc. We study graph products for functions $f_G$ of the form $f_G(x,y)=1$ iff there are at least $t$ indices $i \in [k]$ s.t. $(x_i,y_i)\in E$, where $t \in [k]$ is a fixed parameter in $f_G$. This framework generalizes the well-known graph tensor-product (obtained for $t=k$) and the graph or-product (obtained for $t=1$). The property that interests us is the edge distribution in such graphs. We show that if $G$ has a spectral gap, then the number of edges connecting "large-enough" sets in $G^k$ is "well-behaved", namely, it is close to the expected value, had the sets been random. We extend our results to bi-partite graph products as well. For a bi-partite graph $G=(X,Y,E)$, the $k^{th}$ bi-partite graph product of $G$ w.r.t $f_G$ is the bi-partite graph with vertex sets $X^k$ and $Y^k$ and edges between $x \in X^k$ and $y \in Y^k$ iff $f_G(x,y)=1$. Finally, for both types of graph products, optimality is asserted using the "Converse to the Expander Mixing Lemma" obtained by Bilu and Linial in 2006. A byproduct of our proof technique is a new explicit construction of a family of co-spectral graphs.
1211.1482
Gender Recognition in Walk Gait through 3D Motion by Quadratic Bezier Curve and Statistical Techniques
cs.CV
Motion capture is the process of recording the movement of objects or people. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications, and for validation of computer vision[2] and robotics. In filmmaking and video game development, it refers to recording actions of human actors, and using that information to animate digital character models in 2D or 3D computer animation. When it includes face and fingers or captures subtle
1211.1513
K-Plane Regression
cs.LG
In this paper, we present a novel algorithm for piecewise linear regression which can learn continuous as well as discontinuous piecewise linear functions. The main idea is to repeatedly partition the data and learn a liner model in in each partition. While a simple algorithm incorporating this idea does not work well, an interesting modification results in a good algorithm. The proposed algorithm is similar in spirit to $k$-means clustering algorithm. We show that our algorithm can also be viewed as an EM algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation of parameters under a reasonable probability model. We empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by comparing its performance with the state of art regression learning algorithms on some real world datasets.
1211.1526
Explosion prediction of oil gas using SVM and Logistic Regression
cs.CE cs.LG
The prevention of dangerous chemical accidents is a primary problem of industrial manufacturing. In the accidents of dangerous chemicals, the oil gas explosion plays an important role. The essential task of the explosion prevention is to estimate the better explosion limit of a given oil gas. In this paper, Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Logistic Regression (LR) are used to predict the explosion of oil gas. LR can get the explicit probability formula of explosion, and the explosive range of the concentrations of oil gas according to the concentration of oxygen. Meanwhile, SVM gives higher accuracy of prediction. Furthermore, considering the practical requirements, the effects of penalty parameter on the distribution of two types of errors are discussed.
1211.1544
Image denoising with multi-layer perceptrons, part 1: comparison with existing algorithms and with bounds
cs.CV cs.LG
Image denoising can be described as the problem of mapping from a noisy image to a noise-free image. The best currently available denoising methods approximate this mapping with cleverly engineered algorithms. In this work we attempt to learn this mapping directly with plain multi layer perceptrons (MLP) applied to image patches. We will show that by training on large image databases we are able to outperform the current state-of-the-art image denoising methods. In addition, our method achieves results that are superior to one type of theoretical bound and goes a large way toward closing the gap with a second type of theoretical bound. Our approach is easily adapted to less extensively studied types of noise, such as mixed Poisson-Gaussian noise, JPEG artifacts, salt-and-pepper noise and noise resembling stripes, for which we achieve excellent results as well. We will show that combining a block-matching procedure with MLPs can further improve the results on certain images. In a second paper, we detail the training trade-offs and the inner mechanisms of our MLPs.
1211.1550
A Riemannian geometry for low-rank matrix completion
cs.LG cs.NA math.OC
We propose a new Riemannian geometry for fixed-rank matrices that is specifically tailored to the low-rank matrix completion problem. Exploiting the degree of freedom of a quotient space, we tune the metric on our search space to the particular least square cost function. At one level, it illustrates in a novel way how to exploit the versatile framework of optimization on quotient manifold. At another level, our algorithm can be considered as an improved version of LMaFit, the state-of-the-art Gauss-Seidel algorithm. We develop necessary tools needed to perform both first-order and second-order optimization. In particular, we propose gradient descent schemes (steepest descent and conjugate gradient) and trust-region algorithms. We also show that, thanks to the simplicity of the cost function, it is numerically cheap to perform an exact linesearch given a search direction, which makes our algorithms competitive with the state-of-the-art on standard low-rank matrix completion instances.
1211.1552
Image denoising with multi-layer perceptrons, part 2: training trade-offs and analysis of their mechanisms
cs.CV cs.LG
Image denoising can be described as the problem of mapping from a noisy image to a noise-free image. In another paper, we show that multi-layer perceptrons can achieve outstanding image denoising performance for various types of noise (additive white Gaussian noise, mixed Poisson-Gaussian noise, JPEG artifacts, salt-and-pepper noise and noise resembling stripes). In this work we discuss in detail which trade-offs have to be considered during the training procedure. We will show how to achieve good results and which pitfalls to avoid. By analysing the activation patterns of the hidden units we are able to make observations regarding the functioning principle of multi-layer perceptrons trained for image denoising.
1211.1565
Data Shapes and Data Transformations
cs.DB
Nowadays, information management systems deal with data originating from different sources including relational databases, NoSQL data stores, and Web data formats, varying not only in terms of data formats, but also in the underlying data model. Integrating data from heterogeneous data sources is a time-consuming and error-prone engineering task; part of this process requires that the data has to be transformed from its original form to other forms, repeating all along the life cycle. With this report we provide a principled overview on the fundamental data shapes tabular, tree, and graph as well as transformations between them, in order to gain a better understanding for performing said transformations more efficiently and effectively.
1211.1572
Embedding grayscale halftone pictures in QR Codes using Correction Trees
cs.IT cs.CR cs.MM math.IT
Barcodes like QR Codes have made that encoded messages have entered our everyday life, what suggests to attach them a second layer of information: directly available to human receiver for informational or marketing purposes. We will discuss a general problem of using codes with chosen statistical constrains, for example reproducing given grayscale picture using halftone technique. If both sender and receiver know these constrains, the optimal capacity can be easily approached by entropy coder. The problem is that this time only the sender knows them - we will refer to these scenarios as constrained coding. Kuznetsov and Tsybakov problem in which only the sender knows which bits are fixed can be seen as a special case, surprisingly approaching the same capacity as if both sides would know the constrains. We will analyze Correction Trees to approach analogous capacity in the general case - use weaker: statistical constrains, what allows to apply them to all bits. Finding satisfying coding is similar to finding the proper correction in error correction problem, but instead of single ensured possibility, there are now statistically expected some. While in standard steganography we hide information in the least important bits, this time we create codes resembling given picture - hide information in the freedom of realizing grayness by black and white pixels using halftone technique. We will also discuss combining with error correction and application to rate distortion problem.
1211.1599
Low-dimensionality energy landscapes: Magnetic switching mechanisms and rates
cond-mat.mtrl-sci cs.CE
In this paper we propose a new method for the study and visualization of dynamic processes in magnetic nanostructures, and for the accurate calculation of rates for such processes. The method is illustrated for the case of switching of a grain of an exchange-coupled recording medium, which switches through domain wall nucleation and motion, but is generalizable to other rate processes such as vortex formation and annihilation. The method involves calculating the most probable (lowest energy) switching path and projecting the motion onto that path. The motion is conveniently visualized in a two-dimensional (2D) projection parameterized by the dipole and quadrupole moment of the grain. The motion along that path can then be described by a Langevin equation, and its rate can be computed by the classic method of Kramers. The rate can be evaluated numerically, or in an analytic approximation - interestingly, the analytic result for domain-wall switching is very similar to that obtained by Brown in 1963 for coherent switching, except for a factor proportional to the domain-wall volume. Thus in addition to its lower coercivity, an exchange-coupled medium has the additional advantage (over a uniform medium) of greater thermal stability, for a fixed energy barrier.
1211.1621
Cram\'er-Rao bounds for synchronization of rotations
cs.IT math.IT
Synchronization of rotations is the problem of estimating a set of rotations R_i in SO(n), i = 1, ..., N, based on noisy measurements of relative rotations R_i R_j^T. This fundamental problem has found many recent applications, most importantly in structural biology. We provide a framework to study synchronization as estimation on Riemannian manifolds for arbitrary n under a large family of noise models. The noise models we address encompass zero-mean isotropic noise, and we develop tools for Gaussian-like as well as heavy-tail types of noise in particular. As a main contribution, we derive the Cram\'er-Rao bounds of synchronization, that is, lower-bounds on the variance of unbiased estimators. We find that these bounds are structured by the pseudoinverse of the measurement graph Laplacian, where edge weights are proportional to measurement quality. We leverage this to provide interpretation in terms of random walks and visualization tools for these bounds in both the anchored and anchor-free scenarios. Similar bounds previously established were limited to rotations in the plane and Gaussian-like noise.
1211.1622
MISO Broadcast Channel with Delayed and Evolving CSIT
cs.IT math.IT
The work considers the two-user MISO broadcast channel with gradual and delayed accumulation of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), and addresses the question of how much feedback is necessary, and when, in order to achieve a certain degrees-of-freedom (DoF) performance. Motivated by limited-capacity feedback links that may not immediately convey perfect CSIT, and focusing on the block fading scenario, we consider a progressively increasing CSIT quality as time progresses across the coherence period (T channel uses - evolving current CSIT), or at any time after (delayed CSIT). Specifically, for any set of feedback quality exponents a_t, t=1,...,T, describing the high-SNR rates-of-decay of the mean square error of the current CSIT estimates at time t<=T (during the coherence period), the work describes the optimal DOF region in several different evolving CSIT settings, including the setting with perfect delayed CSIT, the asymmetric setting where the quality of feedback differs from user to user, as well as considers the DoF region in the presence of a imperfect delayed CSIT corresponding to having a limited number of overall feedback bits. These results are supported by novel multi-phase precoding schemes that utilize gradually improving CSIT. The approach here naturally incorporates different settings such as the perfect-delayed CSIT setting of Maddah-Ali and Tse, the imperfect current CSIT setting of Yang et al. and of Gou and Jafar, the asymmetric setting of Maleki et al., as well as the not-so-delayed CSIT setting of Lee and Heath.
1211.1634
Annotations for Supporting Collaboration through Artifacts
cs.HC cs.SI
Shared artifacts and environments play a prominent role in shaping the collaboration between their users. This article describes this role and explains how annotations can provide a bridge between direct communication and collaboration through artifacts. The various functions of annotations are discussed through examples that represent some of the important trends in annotation research. Ultimately, some of the research issues are briefly discussed, followed by my perspective on the future of asynchronous distributed collaborative systems with respect to annotations.
1211.1643
Hybrid Behaviour of Markov Population Models
cs.SY cs.MA cs.PF q-bio.QM
We investigate the behaviour of population models written in Stochastic Concurrent Constraint Programming (sCCP), a stochastic extension of Concurrent Constraint Programming. In particular, we focus on models from which we can define a semantics of sCCP both in terms of Continuous Time Markov Chains (CTMC) and in terms of Stochastic Hybrid Systems, in which some populations are approximated continuously, while others are kept discrete. We will prove the correctness of the hybrid semantics from the point of view of the limiting behaviour of a sequence of models for increasing population size. More specifically, we prove that, under suitable regularity conditions, the sequence of CTMC constructed from sCCP programs for increasing population size converges to the hybrid system constructed by means of the hybrid semantics. We investigate in particular what happens for sCCP models in which some transitions are guarded by boolean predicates or in the presence of instantaneous transitions.
1211.1650
Different Operating Systems Compatible for Image Prepress Process in Color Management: Analysis and Performance Testing
cs.CV
Image computing has become a real catchphrase over the past few years and the interpretations of the meaning of the term vary greatly. The Imagecomputing market is currently rapidly evolving with high growth prospects and almost daily announcements of new devices and application platforms, which results in an increasing diversification of devices, operating system and development platforms. Compared to more traditional information technology markets like the one of desktop computing, mobile computing is much less consolidated and neither standards nor even industry standards have yet been established. There are various platforms and interfaces which may be used to perform the desired tasks through the device. We have tried to compare the various mobile operating systems and their trade-offs.
1211.1654
A New Randomness Evaluation Method with Applications to Image Shuffling and Encryption
cs.CR cs.CV stat.AP
This letter discusses the problem of testing the degree of randomness within an image, particularly for a shuffled or encrypted image. Its key contributions are: 1) a mathematical model of perfectly shuffled images; 2) the derivation of the theoretical distribution of pixel differences; 3) a new $Z$-test based approach to differentiate whether or not a test image is perfectly shuffled; and 4) a randomized algorithm to unbiasedly evaluate the degree of randomness within a given image. Simulation results show that the proposed method is robust and effective in evaluating the degree of randomness within an image, and may often be more suitable for image applications than commonly used testing schemes designed for binary data like NIST 800-22. The developed method may be also useful as a first step in determining whether or not a shuffling or encryption scheme is suitable for a particular cryptographic application.
1211.1656
James-Stein Type Center Pixel Weights for Non-Local Means Image Denoising
cs.CV
Non-Local Means (NLM) and variants have been proven to be effective and robust in many image denoising tasks. In this letter, we study the parameter selection problem of center pixel weights (CPW) in NLM. Our key contributions are: 1) we give a novel formulation of the CPW problem from the statistical shrinkage perspective; 2) we introduce the James-Stein type CPWs for NLM; and 3) we propose a new adaptive CPW that is locally tuned for each image pixel. Our experimental results showed that compared to existing CPW solutions, the new proposed CPWs are more robust and effective under various noise levels. In particular, the NLM with the James-Stein type CPWs attain higher means with smaller variances in terms of the peak signal and noise ratio, implying they improve the NLM robustness and make it less sensitive to parameter selection.
1211.1660
Secret-Key Agreement Capacity over Reciprocal Fading Channels: A Separation Approach
cs.IT math.IT
Fundamental limits of secret-key agreement over reciprocal wireless channels are investigated. We consider a two-way block-fading channel where the channel gains in the forward and reverse links between the legitimate terminals are correlated. The channel gains between the legitimate terminals are not revealed to any terminal, whereas the channel gains of the eavesdropper are revealed to the eavesdropper. We propose a two-phase transmission scheme, that reserves a certain portion of each coherence block for channel estimation, and the remainder of the coherence block for correlated source generation. The resulting secret-key involves contributions of both channel sequences and source sequences, with the contribution of the latter becoming dominant as the coherence period increases. We also establish an upper bound on the secret-key capacity, which has a form structurally similar to the lower bound. Our upper and lower bounds coincide in the limit of high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) and large coherence period, thus establishing the secret-key agreement capacity in this asymptotic regime. Numerical results indicate that the proposed scheme achieves significant gains over training-only schemes, even for moderate SNR and small coherence periods, thus implying the necessity of randomness-sharing in practical secret-key generation systems.
1211.1680
S2LET: A code to perform fast wavelet analysis on the sphere
cs.IT astro-ph.IM math.IT
We describe S2LET, a fast and robust implementation of the scale-discretised wavelet transform on the sphere. Wavelets are constructed through a tiling of the harmonic line and can be used to probe spatially localised, scale-depended features of signals on the sphere. The scale-discretised wavelet transform was developed previously and reduces to the needlet transform in the axisymmetric case. The reconstruction of a signal from its wavelets coefficients is made exact here through the use of a sampling theorem on the sphere. Moreover, a multiresolution algorithm is presented to capture all information of each wavelet scale in the minimal number of samples on the sphere. In addition S2LET supports the HEALPix pixelisation scheme, in which case the transform is not exact but nevertheless achieves good numerical accuracy. The core routines of S2LET are written in C and have interfaces in Matlab, IDL and Java. Real signals can be written to and read from FITS files and plotted as Mollweide projections. The S2LET code is made publicly available, is extensively documented, and ships with several examples in the four languages supported. At present the code is restricted to axisymmetric wavelets but will be extended to directional, steerable wavelets in a future release.
1211.1690
Learning Monocular Reactive UAV Control in Cluttered Natural Environments
cs.RO cs.CV cs.LG cs.SY
Autonomous navigation for large Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is fairly straight-forward, as expensive sensors and monitoring devices can be employed. In contrast, obstacle avoidance remains a challenging task for Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) which operate at low altitude in cluttered environments. Unlike large vehicles, MAVs can only carry very light sensors, such as cameras, making autonomous navigation through obstacles much more challenging. In this paper, we describe a system that navigates a small quadrotor helicopter autonomously at low altitude through natural forest environments. Using only a single cheap camera to perceive the environment, we are able to maintain a constant velocity of up to 1.5m/s. Given a small set of human pilot demonstrations, we use recent state-of-the-art imitation learning techniques to train a controller that can avoid trees by adapting the MAVs heading. We demonstrate the performance of our system in a more controlled environment indoors, and in real natural forest environments outdoors.
1211.1694
Does a Daily Deal Promotion Signal a Distressed Business? An Empirical Investigation of Small Business Survival
cs.CE stat.AP
In the last four years, daily deals have emerged from nowhere to become a multi-billion dollar industry world-wide. Daily deal sites such as Groupon and Livingsocial offer products and services at deep discounts to consumers via email and social networks. As the industry matures, there are many questions regarding the impact of daily deals on the marketplace. Important questions in this regard concern the reasons why businesses decide to offer daily deals and their longer-term impact on businesses. In the present paper, we investigate whether the unobserved factors that make marketers run daily deals are correlated with the unobserved factors that influence the business, In particular, we employ the framework of seemingly unrelated regression to model the correlation between the errors in predicting whether a business uses a daily deal and the errors in predicting the business' survival. Our analysis consists of the survival of 985 small businesses that offered daily deals between January and July 2011 in the city of Chicago. Our results indicate that there is a statistically significant correlation between the unobserved factors that influence the business' decision to offer a daily deal and the unobserved factors that impact its survival. Furthermore, our results indicate that the correlation coefficient is significant in certain business categories (e.g. restaurants).
1211.1716
Blind Signal Separation in the Presence of Gaussian Noise
cs.LG cs.DS stat.ML
A prototypical blind signal separation problem is the so-called cocktail party problem, with n people talking simultaneously and n different microphones within a room. The goal is to recover each speech signal from the microphone inputs. Mathematically this can be modeled by assuming that we are given samples from an n-dimensional random variable X=AS, where S is a vector whose coordinates are independent random variables corresponding to each speaker. The objective is to recover the matrix A^{-1} given random samples from X. A range of techniques collectively known as Independent Component Analysis (ICA) have been proposed to address this problem in the signal processing and machine learning literature. Many of these techniques are based on using the kurtosis or other cumulants to recover the components. In this paper we propose a new algorithm for solving the blind signal separation problem in the presence of additive Gaussian noise, when we are given samples from X=AS+\eta, where \eta is drawn from an unknown, not necessarily spherical n-dimensional Gaussian distribution. Our approach is based on a method for decorrelating a sample with additive Gaussian noise under the assumption that the underlying distribution is a linear transformation of a distribution with independent components. Our decorrelation routine is based on the properties of cumulant tensors and can be combined with any standard cumulant-based method for ICA to get an algorithm that is provably robust in the presence of Gaussian noise. We derive polynomial bounds for the sample complexity and error propagation of our method.
1211.1722
Inverse problems in approximate uniform generation
cs.CC cs.DS cs.LG
We initiate the study of \emph{inverse} problems in approximate uniform generation, focusing on uniform generation of satisfying assignments of various types of Boolean functions. In such an inverse problem, the algorithm is given uniform random satisfying assignments of an unknown function $f$ belonging to a class $\C$ of Boolean functions, and the goal is to output a probability distribution $D$ which is $\epsilon$-close, in total variation distance, to the uniform distribution over $f^{-1}(1)$. Positive results: We prove a general positive result establishing sufficient conditions for efficient inverse approximate uniform generation for a class $\C$. We define a new type of algorithm called a \emph{densifier} for $\C$, and show (roughly speaking) how to combine (i) a densifier, (ii) an approximate counting / uniform generation algorithm, and (iii) a Statistical Query learning algorithm, to obtain an inverse approximate uniform generation algorithm. We apply this general result to obtain a poly$(n,1/\eps)$-time algorithm for the class of halfspaces; and a quasipoly$(n,1/\eps)$-time algorithm for the class of $\poly(n)$-size DNF formulas. Negative results: We prove a general negative result establishing that the existence of certain types of signature schemes in cryptography implies the hardness of certain inverse approximate uniform generation problems. This implies that there are no {subexponential}-time inverse approximate uniform generation algorithms for 3-CNF formulas; for intersections of two halfspaces; for degree-2 polynomial threshold functions; and for monotone 2-CNF formulas. Finally, we show that there is no general relationship between the complexity of the "forward" approximate uniform generation problem and the complexity of the inverse problem for a class $\C$ -- it is possible for either one to be easy while the other is hard.
1211.1728
Maximum Distance Separable Codes for Symbol-Pair Read Channels
cs.IT math.CO math.IT
We study (symbol-pair) codes for symbol-pair read channels introduced recently by Cassuto and Blaum (2010). A Singleton-type bound on symbol-pair codes is established and infinite families of optimal symbol-pair codes are constructed. These codes are maximum distance separable (MDS) in the sense that they meet the Singleton-type bound. In contrast to classical codes, where all known q-ary MDS codes have length O(q), we show that q-ary MDS symbol-pair codes can have length \Omega(q^2). In addition, we completely determine the existence of MDS symbol-pair codes for certain parameters.
1211.1733
Linear Antenna Array with Suppressed Sidelobe and Sideband Levels using Time Modulation
cs.NE
In this paper, the goal is to achieve an ultra low sidelobe level (SLL) and sideband levels (SBL) of a time modulated linear antenna array. The approach followed here is not to give fixed level of excitation to the elements of an array, but to change it dynamically with time. The excitation levels of the different array elements over time are varied to get the low sidelobe and sideband levels. The mathematics of getting the SLL and SBL furnished in detail and simulation is done using the mathematical results. The excitation pattern over time is optimized using Genetic Algorithm (GA). Since, the amplitudes of the excitations of the elements are varied within a finite limit, results show it gives better sidelobe and sideband suppression compared to previous time modulated arrays with uniform amplitude excitations.
1211.1752
3D Scene Grammar for Parsing RGB-D Pointclouds
cs.CV
We pose 3D scene-understanding as a problem of parsing in a grammar. A grammar helps us capture the compositional structure of real-word objects, e.g., a chair is composed of a seat, a back-rest and some legs. Having multiple rules for an object helps us capture structural variations in objects, e.g., a chair can optionally also have arm-rests. Finally, having rules to capture composition at different levels helps us formulate the entire scene-processing pipeline as a single problem of finding most likely parse-tree---small segments combine to form parts of objects, parts to objects and objects to a scene. We attach a generative probability model to our grammar by having a feature-dependent probability function for every rule. We evaluated it by extracting labels for every segment and comparing the results with the state-of-the-art segment-labeling algorithm. Our algorithm was outperformed by the state-or-the-art method. But, Our model can be trained very efficiently (within seconds), and it scales only linearly in with the number of rules in the grammar. Also, we think that this is an important problem for the 3D vision community. So, we are releasing our dataset and related code.
1211.1780
Annotations, Collaborative Tagging, and Searching Mathematics in E-Learning
cs.IR cs.DL
This paper presents a new framework for adding semantics into e-learning system. The proposed approach relies on two principles. The first principle is the automatic addition of semantic information when creating the mathematical contents. The second principle is the collaborative tagging and annotation of the e-learning contents and the use of an ontology to categorize the e-learning contents. The proposed system encodes the mathematical contents using presentation MathML with RDFa annotations. The system allows students to highlight and annotate specific parts of the e-learning contents. The objective is to add meaning into the e-learning contents, to add relationships between contents, and to create a framework to facilitate searching the contents. This semantic information can be used to answer semantic queries (e.g., SPARQL) to retrieve information request of a user. This work is implemented as an embedded code into Moodle e-learning system.
1211.1788
An Adaptive parameter free data mining approach for healthcare application
cs.DB
In today's world, healthcare is the most important factor affecting human life. Due to heavy work load it is not possible for personal healthcare. The proposed system acts as a preventive measure for determining whether a person is fit or unfit based on person's historical and real time data by applying clustering algorithms like K-means and D-stream. The Density-based clustering algorithm i.e. the D-stream algorithm overcomes drawbacks of K-Means algorithm. By calculating their performance measures we finally find out effectiveness and efficiency of both the algorithms. Both clustering algorithms are applied on patient's bio-medical historical database. To check the correctness of both the algorithms, we apply them on patient's current bio-medical data.
1211.1790
Link Prediction in Complex Networks by Multi Degree Preferential-Attachment Indices
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
In principle, the rules of links formation of a network model can be considered as a kind of link prediction algorithm. By revisiting the preferential attachment mechanism for generating a scale-free network, here we propose a class of preferential attachment indices which are different from the previous one. Traditionally, the preferential attachment index is defined by the product of the related nodes degrees, while the new indices will define the similarity score of a pair of nodes by either the maximum in the two nodes degrees or the summarization of their degrees. Extensive experiments are carried out on fourteen real-world networks. Compared with the traditional preferential attachment index, the new ones, especially the degree-summarization similarity index, can provide more accurate prediction on most of the networks. Due to the improved prediction accuracy and low computational complexity, these proposed preferential attachment indices may be of help to provide an instruction for mining unknown links in incomplete networks.
1211.1799
Algorithm for Missing Values Imputation in Categorical Data with Use of Association Rules
cs.LG
This paper presents algorithm for missing values imputation in categorical data. The algorithm is based on using association rules and is presented in three variants. Experimental shows better accuracy of missing values imputation using the algorithm then using most common attribute value.
1211.1800
A Comparative study of Arabic handwritten characters invariant feature
cs.CV
This paper is practically interested in the unchangeable feature of Arabic handwritten character. It presents results of comparative study achieved on certain features extraction techniques of handwritten character, based on Hough transform, Fourier transform, Wavelet transform and Gabor Filter. Obtained results show that Hough Transform and Gabor filter are insensible to the rotation and translation, Fourier Transform is sensible to the rotation but insensible to the translation, in contrast to Hough Transform and Gabor filter, Wavelets Transform is sensitive to the rotation as well as to the translation.
1211.1819
Accurate Sampling Timing Acquisition for Baseband OFDM Power-line Communication in Non-Gaussian Noise
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, a novel technique is proposed to address the joint sampling timing acquisition for baseband and broadband power-line communication (BB-PLC) systems using Orthogonal-Frequency-Division-Multiplexing (OFDM), including the sampling phase offset (SPO) and the sampling clock offset (SCO). Under pairwise correlation and joint Gaussian assumption of received signals in frequency domain, an approximated form of the log-likelihood function is derived. Instead of a high complexity two-dimension grid-search on the likelihood function, a five-step method is employed for accurate estimations. Several variants are presented in the same framework with different complexities. Unlike conventional pilot-assisted schemes using the extra phase rotations within one OFDM block, the proposed technique turns to the phase rotations between adjacent OFDM blocks. Analytical expressions of the variances and biases are derived. Extensive simulation results indicate significant performance improvements over conventional schemes. Additionally, effects of several noise models including non-Gaussianity, cyclo-stationarity, and temporal correlation are analyzed and simulated. Robustness of the proposed technique against violation of the joint Gaussian assumption is also verified by simulations.
1211.1830
Fine Residual Carrier Frequency and Sampling Frequency Estimation in Wireless OFDM Systems
cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents a novel algorithm for residual phase estimation in wireless OFDM systems, including the carrier frequency offset (CFO) and the sampling frequency offset (SFO). The subcarriers are partitioned into several regions which exhibit pairwise correlations. The phase increment between successive OFDM blocks is exploited which can be estimated by two estimators with different computational loads. Numerical results of estimation variance are presented. Simulations indicate performance improvement of the proposed technique over several conventional schemes in a multipath channel.
1211.1858
A Spectral Expression for the Frequency-Limited H2-norm
cs.SY math.DS
In this paper, a new simple but yet efficient spectral expression of the frequency-limited H2-norm, denoted H2w-norm, is introduced. The proposed new formulation requires the computation of the system eigenvalues and eigenvectors only, and provides thus an alternative to the well established Gramian-based approach. The interest of this new formulation is in three-folds: (i) it provides a new theoretical framework for the H2w-norm-based optimization approach, such as controller synthesis, filter design and model approximation, (ii) it improves the H2w-norm computation velocity and it applicability to models of higher dimension, and (iii) under some conditions, it allows to handle systems with poles on the imaginary axis. Both mathematical proofs and numerical illustrations are provided to assess this new H2w-norm expression.
1211.1861
Automating Legal Research through Data Mining
cs.IR
The term legal research generally refers to the process of identifying and retrieving appropriate information necessary to support legal decision making from past case records. At present, the process is mostly manual, but some traditional technologies such as keyword searching are commonly used to speed the process up. But a keyword search is not a comprehensive search to cater to the requirements of legal research as the search result includes too many false hits in terms of irrelevant case records. Hence the present generic tools cannot be used to automate legal research. This paper presents a framework which was developed by combining several Text Mining techniques to automate the process overcoming the difficulties in the existing methods. Further, the research also identifies the possible enhancements that could be done to enhance the effectiveness of the framework.
1211.1893
Tangent-based manifold approximation with locally linear models
cs.LG cs.CV
In this paper, we consider the problem of manifold approximation with affine subspaces. Our objective is to discover a set of low dimensional affine subspaces that represents manifold data accurately while preserving the manifold's structure. For this purpose, we employ a greedy technique that partitions manifold samples into groups that can be each approximated by a low dimensional subspace. We start by considering each manifold sample as a different group and we use the difference of tangents to determine appropriate group mergings. We repeat this procedure until we reach the desired number of sample groups. The best low dimensional affine subspaces corresponding to the final groups constitute our approximate manifold representation. Our experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and show its superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods for manifold approximation.
1211.1909
On the Convergence of the Hegselmann-Krause System
cs.DS cs.SI nlin.AO
We study convergence of the following discrete-time non-linear dynamical system: n agents are located in R^d and at every time step, each moves synchronously to the average location of all agents within a unit distance of it. This popularly studied system was introduced by Krause to model the dynamics of opinion formation and is often referred to as the Hegselmann-Krause model. We prove the first polynomial time bound for the convergence of this system in arbitrary dimensions. This improves on the bound of n^{O(n)} resulting from a more general theorem of Chazelle. Also, we show a quadratic lower bound and improve the upper bound for one-dimensional systems to O(n^3).
1211.1932
Codes with Local Regeneration
cs.IT math.IT
Regenerating codes and codes with locality are two schemes that have recently been proposed to ensure data collection and reliability in a distributed storage network. In a situation where one is attempting to repair a failed node, regenerating codes seek to minimize the amount of data downloaded for node repair, while codes with locality attempt to minimize the number of helper nodes accessed. In this paper, we provide several constructions for a class of vector codes with locality in which the local codes are regenerating codes, that enjoy both advantages. We derive an upper bound on the minimum distance of this class of codes and show that the proposed constructions achieve this bound. The constructions include both the cases where the local regenerating codes correspond to the MSR as well as the MBR point on the storage-repair-bandwidth tradeoff curve of regenerating codes. Also included is a performance comparison of various code constructions for fixed block length and minimum distance.
1211.1968
Fourier-Bessel rotational invariant eigenimages
cs.CV
We present an efficient and accurate algorithm for principal component analysis (PCA) of a large set of two dimensional images, and, for each image, the set of its uniform rotations in the plane and its reflection. The algorithm starts by expanding each image, originally given on a Cartesian grid, in the Fourier-Bessel basis for the disk. Because the images are bandlimited in the Fourier domain, we use a sampling criterion to truncate the Fourier-Bessel expansion such that the maximum amount of information is preserved without the effect of aliasing. The constructed covariance matrix is invariant to rotation and reflection and has a special block diagonal structure. PCA is efficiently done for each block separately. This Fourier-Bessel based PCA detects more meaningful eigenimages and has improved denoising capability compared to traditional PCA for a finite number of noisy images.
1211.1969
Fast Converging Algorithm for Weighted Sum Rate Maximization in Multicell MISO Downlink
cs.IT math.IT
The problem of maximizing weighted sum rates in the downlink of a multicell environment is of considerable interest. Unfortunately, this problem is known to be NP-hard. For the case of multi-antenna base stations and single antenna mobile terminals, we devise a low complexity, fast and provably convergent algorithm that locally optimizes the weighted sum rate in the downlink of the system. In particular, we derive an iterative second-order cone program formulation of the weighted sum rate maximization problem. The algorithm converges to a local optimum within a few iterations. Superior performance of the proposed approach is established by numerically comparing it to other known solutions.
1211.2007
Multi-input Multi-output Beta Wavelet Network: Modeling of Acoustic Units for Speech Recognition
cs.CV
In this paper, we propose a novel architecture of wavelet network called Multi-input Multi-output Wavelet Network MIMOWN as a generalization of the old architecture of wavelet network. This newel prototype was applied to speech recognition application especially to model acoustic unit of speech. The originality of our work is the proposal of MIMOWN to model acoustic unit of speech. This approach was proposed to overcome limitation of old wavelet network model. The use of the multi-input multi-output architecture will allows training wavelet network on various examples of acoustic units.
1211.2008
On multidimensional generalized Cram\'er-Rao inequalities, uncertainty relations and characterizations of generalized $q$-Gaussian distributions
math-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.IT math.IT math.MP
In the present work, we show how the generalized Cram\'er-Rao inequality for the estimation of a parameter, presented in a recent paper, can be extended to the mutidimensional case with general norms on $\mathbb{R}^{n}$, and to a wider context. As a particular case, we obtain a new multidimensional Cram\'er-Rao inequality which is saturated by generalized $q$-Gaussian distributions. We also give another related Cram\'er-Rao inequality, for a general norm, which is saturated as well by these distributions. Finally, we derive uncertainty relations from these Cram\'er-Rao inequalities. These uncertainty relations involve moments computed with respect to escort distributions, and we show that some of these relations are saturated by generalized $q$-Gaussian distributions. These results introduce extended versions of Fisher information, new Cram\'er-Rao inequalities, and new characterizations of generalized $q$-Gaussian distributions which are important in several areas of physics and mathematics.
1211.2037
Time Complexity Analysis of Binary Space Partitioning Scheme for Image Compression
cs.CV
Segmentation-based image coding methods provide high compression ratios when compared with traditional image coding approaches like the transform and sub band coding for low bit-rate compression applications. In this paper, a segmentation-based image coding method, namely the Binary Space Partition scheme, that divides the desired image using a recursive procedure for coding is presented. The BSP approach partitions the desired image recursively by using bisecting lines, selected from a collection of discrete optional lines, in a hierarchical manner. This partitioning procedure generates a binary tree, which is referred to as the BSP-tree representation of the desired image. The algorithm is extremely complex in computation and has high execution time. The time complexity of the BSP scheme is explored in this work.
1211.2041
MaTrust: An Effective Multi-Aspect Trust Inference Model
cs.DB cs.AI
Trust is a fundamental concept in many real-world applications such as e-commerce and peer-to-peer networks. In these applications, users can generate local opinions about the counterparts based on direct experiences, and these opinions can then be aggregated to build trust among unknown users. The mechanism to build new trust relationships based on existing ones is referred to as trust inference. State-of-the-art trust inference approaches employ the transitivity property of trust by propagating trust along connected users. In this paper, we propose a novel trust inference model (MaTrust) by exploring an equally important property of trust, i.e., the multi-aspect property. MaTrust directly characterizes multiple latent factors for each trustor and trustee from the locally-generated trust relationships. Furthermore, it can naturally incorporate prior knowledge as specified factors. These factors in turn serve as the basis to infer the unseen trustworthiness scores. Experimental evaluations on real data sets show that the proposed MaTrust significantly outperforms several benchmark trust inference models in both effectiveness and efficiency.
1211.2064
Distributed Learning and Multiaccess of On-Off Channels
math.OC cs.IT math.IT
The problem of distributed access of a set of N on-off channels by K<N users is considered. The channels are slotted and modeled as independent but not necessarily identical alternating renewal processes. Each user decides to either observe or transmit at the beginning of every slot. A transmission is successful only if the channel is at the on state and there is only one user transmitting. When a user observes, it identifies whether a transmission would have been successful had it decided to transmit. A distributed learning and access policy referred to as alternating sensing and access (ASA) is proposed. It is shown that ASA has finite expected regret when compared with the optimal centralized scheme with fixed channel allocation.
1211.2073
LAGE: A Java Framework to reconstruct Gene Regulatory Networks from Large-Scale Continues Expression Data
cs.LG cs.CE q-bio.QM stat.ML
LAGE is a systematic framework developed in Java. The motivation of LAGE is to provide a scalable and parallel solution to reconstruct Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs) from continuous gene expression data for very large amount of genes. The basic idea of our framework is motivated by the philosophy of divideand-conquer. Specifically, LAGE recursively partitions genes into multiple overlapping communities with much smaller sizes, learns intra-community GRNs respectively before merge them altogether. Besides, the complete information of overlapping communities serves as the byproduct, which could be used to mine meaningful functional modules in biological networks.
1211.2082
3D Surface Reconstruction of Underwater Objects
cs.CV
In this paper, we propose a novel technique to reconstruct 3D surface of an underwater object using stereo images. Reconstructing the 3D surface of an underwater object is really a challenging task due to degraded quality of underwater images. There are various reason of quality degradation of underwater images i.e., non-uniform illumination of light on the surface of objects, scattering and absorption effects. Floating particles present in underwater produces Gaussian noise on the captured underwater images which degrades the quality of images. The degraded underwater images are preprocessed by applying homomorphic, wavelet denoising and anisotropic filtering sequentially. The uncalibrated rectification technique is applied to preprocessed images to rectify the left and right images. The rectified left and right image lies on a common plane. To find the correspondence points in a left and right images, we have applied dense stereo matching technique i.e., graph cut method. Finally, we estimate the depth of images using triangulation technique. The experimental result shows that the proposed method reconstruct 3D surface of underwater objects accurately using captured underwater stereo images.
1211.2087
Secured Wireless Communication using Fuzzy Logic based High Speed Public-Key Cryptography (FLHSPKC)
cs.CR cs.AI
In this paper secured wireless communication using fuzzy logic based high speed public key cryptography (FLHSPKC) has been proposed by satisfying the major issues likes computational safety, power management and restricted usage of memory in wireless communication. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has several major constraints likes inadequate source of energy, restricted computational potentiality and limited memory. Though conventional Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) which is a sort of public key cryptography used in wireless communication provides equivalent level of security like other existing public key algorithm using smaller parameters than other but this traditional ECC does not take care of all these major limitations in WSN. In conventional ECC consider Elliptic curve point p, an arbitrary integer k and modulus m, ECC carry out scalar multiplication kP mod m, which takes about 80% of key computation time on WSN. In this paper proposed FLHSPKC scheme provides some novel strategy including novel soft computing based strategy to speed up scalar multiplication in conventional ECC and which in turn takes shorter computational time and also satisfies power consumption restraint, limited usage of memory without hampering the security level. Performance analysis of the different strategies under FLHSPKC scheme and comparison study with existing conventional ECC methods has been done.
1211.2116
Localisation of Numerical Date Field in an Indian Handwritten Document
cs.CV
This paper describes a method to localise all those areas which may constitute the date field in an Indian handwritten document. Spatial patterns of the date field are studied from various handwritten documents and an algorithm is developed through statistical analysis to identify those sets of connected components which may constitute the date. Common date patterns followed in India are considered to classify the date formats in different classes. Reported results demonstrate promising performance of the proposed approach
1211.2126
Dynamic Decision Support System Based on Bayesian Networks Application to fight against the Nosocomial Infections
cs.AI cs.DB
The improvement of medical care quality is a significant interest for the future years. The fight against nosocomial infections (NI) in the intensive care units (ICU) is a good example. We will focus on a set of observations which reflect the dynamic aspect of the decision, result of the application of a Medical Decision Support System (MDSS). This system has to make dynamic decision on temporal data. We use dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) to model this dynamic process. It is a temporal reasoning within a real-time environment; we are interested in the Dynamic Decision Support Systems in healthcare domain (MDDSS).
1211.2132
Accelerated Gradient Methods for Networked Optimization
math.OC cs.DC cs.SY
We develop multi-step gradient methods for network-constrained optimization of strongly convex functions with Lipschitz-continuous gradients. Given the topology of the underlying network and bounds on the Hessian of the objective function, we determine the algorithm parameters that guarantee the fastest convergence and characterize situations when significant speed-ups can be obtained over the standard gradient method. Furthermore, we quantify how the performance of the gradient method and its accelerated counterpart are affected by uncertainty in the problem data, and conclude that in most cases our proposed method outperforms gradient descent. Finally, we apply the proposed technique to three engineering problems: resource allocation under network-wide budget constraints, distributed averaging, and Internet congestion control. In all cases, we demonstrate that our algorithm converges more rapidly than alternative algorithms reported in the literature.
1211.2150
NF-SAVO: Neuro-Fuzzy system for Arabic Video OCR
cs.CV
In this paper we propose a robust approach for text extraction and recognition from video clips which is called Neuro-Fuzzy system for Arabic Video OCR. In Arabic video text recognition, a number of noise components provide the text relatively more complicated to separate from the background. Further, the characters can be moving or presented in a diversity of colors, sizes and fonts that are not uniform. Added to this, is the fact that the background is usually moving making text extraction a more intricate process. Video include two kinds of text, scene text and artificial text. Scene text is usually text that becomes part of the scene itself as it is recorded at the time of filming the scene. But artificial text is produced separately and away from the scene and is laid over it at a later stage or during the post processing time. The emergence of artificial text is consequently vigilantly directed. This type of text carries with it important information that helps in video referencing, indexing and retrieval.
1211.2155
Improved Modeling of the Correlation Between Continuous-Valued Sources in LDPC-Based DSC
cs.IT math.IT
Accurate modeling of the correlation between the sources plays a crucial role in the efficiency of distributed source coding (DSC) systems. This correlation is commonly modeled in the binary domain by using a single binary symmetric channel (BSC), both for binary and continuous-valued sources. We show that "one" BSC cannot accurately capture the correlation between continuous-valued sources; a more accurate model requires "multiple" BSCs, as many as the number of bits used to represent each sample. We incorporate this new model into the DSC system that uses low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes for compression. The standard Slepian-Wolf LDPC decoder requires a slight modification so that the parameters of all BSCs are integrated in the log-likelihood ratios (LLRs). Further, using an interleaver the data belonging to different bit-planes are shuffled to introduce randomness in the binary domain. The new system has the same complexity and delay as the standard one. Simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed model and system.
1211.2162
A Distributed Differential Space-Time Coding Scheme With Analog Network Coding in Two-Way Relay Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider general two-way relay networks (TWRNs) with two source and N relay nodes. A distributed differential space time coding with analog network coding (DDSTC-ANC) scheme is proposed. A simple blind estimation and a differential signal detector are developed to recover the desired signal at each source. The pairwise error probability (PEP) and block error rate (BLER) of the DDSTC-ANC scheme are analyzed. Exact and simplified PEP expressions are derived. To improve the system performance, the optimum power allocation (OPA) between the source and relay nodes is determined based on the simplified PEP expression. The analytical results are verified through simulations.
1211.2187
On Finite-Length Performance of Polar Codes: Stopping Sets, Error Floor, and Concatenated Design
cs.IT math.IT
This paper investigates properties of polar codes that can be potentially useful in real-world applications. We start with analyzing the performance of finite-length polar codes over the binary erasure channel (BEC), while assuming belief propagation as the decoding method. We provide a stopping set analysis for the factor graph of polar codes, where we find the size of the minimum stopping set. We also find the girth of the graph for polar codes. Our analysis along with bit error rate (BER) simulations demonstrate that finite-length polar codes show superior error floor performance compared to the conventional capacity-approaching coding techniques. In order to take advantage from this property while avoiding the shortcomings of polar codes, we consider the idea of combining polar codes with other coding schemes. We propose a polar code-based concatenated scheme to be used in Optical Transport Networks (OTNs) as a potential real-world application. Comparing against conventional concatenation techniques for OTNs, we show that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing methods by closing the gap to the capacity while avoiding error floor, and maintaining a low complexity at the same time.
1211.2190
Efficient Monte Carlo Methods for Multi-Dimensional Learning with Classifier Chains
cs.LG stat.CO stat.ML
Multi-dimensional classification (MDC) is the supervised learning problem where an instance is associated with multiple classes, rather than with a single class, as in traditional classification problems. Since these classes are often strongly correlated, modeling the dependencies between them allows MDC methods to improve their performance - at the expense of an increased computational cost. In this paper we focus on the classifier chains (CC) approach for modeling dependencies, one of the most popular and highest- performing methods for multi-label classification (MLC), a particular case of MDC which involves only binary classes (i.e., labels). The original CC algorithm makes a greedy approximation, and is fast but tends to propagate errors along the chain. Here we present novel Monte Carlo schemes, both for finding a good chain sequence and performing efficient inference. Our algorithms remain tractable for high-dimensional data sets and obtain the best predictive performance across several real data sets.
1211.2194
A Novel Anticlustering Filtering Algorithm for the Prediction of Genes as a Drug Target
cs.CE q-bio.GN
The high-throughput data generated by microarray experiments provides complete set of genes being expressed in a given cell or in an organism under particular conditions. The analysis of these enormous data has opened a new dimension for the researchers. In this paper we describe a novel algorithm to microarray data analysis focusing on the identification of genes that are differentially expressed in particular internal or external conditions and which could be potential drug targets. The algorithm uses the time-series gene expression data as an input and recognizes genes which are expressed differentially. This algorithm implements standard statistics-based gene functional investigations, such as the log transformation, mean, log-sigmoid function, coefficient of variations, etc. It does not use clustering analysis. The proposed algorithm has been implemented in Perl. The time-series gene expression data on yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae from the Stanford Microarray Database (SMD)consisting of 6154 genes have been taken for the validation of the algorithm. The developed method extracted 48 genes out of total 6154 genes. These genes are mostly responsible for the yeast's resistants at a high temperature.
1211.2197
What is the Nature of Chinese MicroBlogging: Unveiling the Unique Features of Tencent Weibo
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
China has the largest number of online users in the world and about 20% internet users are from China. This is a huge, as well as a mysterious, market for IT industry due to various reasons such as culture difference. Twitter is the largest microblogging service in the world and Tencent Weibo is one of the largest microblogging services in China. Employ the two data sets as a source in our study, we try to unveil the unique behaviors of Chinese users. We have collected the entire Tencent Weibo from 10th, Oct, 2011 to 5th, Jan, 2012 and obtained 320 million user profiles, 5.15 billion user actions. We study Tencent Weibo from both macro and micro levels. From the macro level, Tencent users are more active on forwarding messages, but with less reciprocal relationships than Twitter users, their topic preferences are very different from Twitter users from both content and time consuming; besides, information can be diffused more efficient in Tencent Weibo. From the micro level, we mainly evaluate users' social influence from two indexes: "Forward" and \Follower", we study how users' actions will contribute to their social influences, and further identify unique features of Tencent users. According to our studies, Tencent users' actions are more personalized and diversity, and the influential users play a more important part in the whole networks. Based on the above analysis, we design a graphical model for predicting users' forwarding behaviors. Our experimental results on the large Tencent Weibo data validate the correctness of the discoveries and the effectiveness of the proposed model. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first quantitative study on the entire Tencentsphere and information diffusion on it.
1211.2198
Results on Finite Wireless Sensor Networks: Connectivity and Coverage
cs.IT math.IT
Many analytic results for the connectivity, coverage, and capacity of wireless networks have been reported for the case where the number of nodes, $n$, tends to infinity (large-scale networks). The majority of these results have not been extended for small or moderate values of $n$; whereas in many practical networks, $n$ is not very large. In this paper, we consider finite (small-scale) wireless sensor networks. We first show that previous asymptotic results provide poor approximations for such networks. We provide a set of differences between small-scale and large-scale analysis and propose a methodology for analysis of finite sensor networks. Furthermore, we consider two models for such networks: unreliable sensor grids, and sensor networks with random node deployment. We provide easily computable expressions for bounds on the coverage and connectivity of these networks. With validation from simulations, we show that the derived analytic expressions give very good estimates of such quantities for finite sensor networks. Our investigation confirms the fact that small-scale networks possesses unique characteristics different from the large-scale counterparts, necessitating the development of a new framework for their analysis and design.
1211.2227
Efficient learning of simplices
cs.LG cs.DS stat.ML
We show an efficient algorithm for the following problem: Given uniformly random points from an arbitrary n-dimensional simplex, estimate the simplex. The size of the sample and the number of arithmetic operations of our algorithm are polynomial in n. This answers a question of Frieze, Jerrum and Kannan [FJK]. Our result can also be interpreted as efficiently learning the intersection of n+1 half-spaces in R^n in the model where the intersection is bounded and we are given polynomially many uniform samples from it. Our proof uses the local search technique from Independent Component Analysis (ICA), also used by [FJK]. Unlike these previous algorithms, which were based on analyzing the fourth moment, ours is based on the third moment. We also show a direct connection between the problem of learning a simplex and ICA: a simple randomized reduction to ICA from the problem of learning a simplex. The connection is based on a known representation of the uniform measure on a simplex. Similar representations lead to a reduction from the problem of learning an affine transformation of an n-dimensional l_p ball to ICA.
1211.2245
Composite Strategy for Multicriteria Ranking/Sorting (methodological issues, examples)
math.OC cs.AI cs.SE
The paper addresses the modular design of composite solving strategies for multicriteria ranking (sorting). Here a 'scale of creativity' that is close to creative levels proposed by Altshuller is used as the reference viewpoint: (i) a basic object, (ii) a selected object, (iii) a modified object, and (iv) a designed object (e.g., composition of object components). These levels maybe used in various parts of decision support systems (DSS) (e.g., information, operations, user). The paper focuses on the more creative above-mentioned level (i.e., composition or combinatorial synthesis) for the operational part (i.e., composite solving strategy). This is important for a search/exploration mode of decision making process with usage of various procedures and techniques and analysis/integration of obtained results. The paper describes methodological issues of decision technology and synthesis of composite strategy for multicriteria ranking. The synthesis of composite strategies is based on 'hierarchical morphological multicriteria design' (HMMD) which is based on selection and combination of design alternatives (DAs) (here: local procedures or techniques) while taking into account their quality and quality of their interconnections (IC). A new version of HMMD with interval multiset estimates for DAs is used. The operational environment of DSS COMBI for multicriteria ranking, consisting of a morphology of local procedures or techniques (as design alternatives DAs), is examined as a basic one.
1211.2260
No-Regret Algorithms for Unconstrained Online Convex Optimization
cs.LG
Some of the most compelling applications of online convex optimization, including online prediction and classification, are unconstrained: the natural feasible set is R^n. Existing algorithms fail to achieve sub-linear regret in this setting unless constraints on the comparator point x^* are known in advance. We present algorithms that, without such prior knowledge, offer near-optimal regret bounds with respect to any choice of x^*. In particular, regret with respect to x^* = 0 is constant. We then prove lower bounds showing that our guarantees are near-optimal in this setting.
1211.2265
Optimal Detection For Sparse Mixtures
cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.TH
Detection of sparse signals arises in a wide range of modern scientific studies. The focus so far has been mainly on Gaussian mixture models. In this paper, we consider the detection problem under a general sparse mixture model and obtain an explicit expression for the detection boundary. It is shown that the fundamental limits of detection is governed by the behavior of the log-likelihood ratio evaluated at an appropriate quantile of the null distribution. We also establish the adaptive optimality of the higher criticism procedure across all sparse mixtures satisfying certain mild regularity conditions. In particular, the general results obtained in this paper recover and extend in a unified manner the previously known results on sparse detection far beyond the conventional Gaussian model and other exponential families.
1211.2280
A Novel Architecture For Network Coded Electronic Health Record Storage System
cs.IT math.IT
The use of network coding for large scale content distribution improves download time. This is demonstrated in this work by the use of network coded Electronic Health Record Storage System (EHR-SS). An architecture of 4-layer to build the EHR-SS is designed. The application integrates the data captured for the patient from three modules namely administrative data, medical records of consultation and reports of medical tests. The lower layer is the data capturing layer using RFID reader. The data is captured in the lower level from different nodes. The data is combined with some linear coefficients using linear network coding. At the lower level the data from different tags are combined and stored and at the level 2 coding combines the data from multiple readers and a corresponding encoding vector is generated. This network coding is done at the server node through small mat lab net-cod interface software. While accessing the stored data, the user data has the data type represented in the form of decoding vector. For storing and retrieval the primary key is the patient id. The results obtained were observed with a reduction of download time of about 12% for our case study set up.
1211.2290
Dating Texts without Explicit Temporal Cues
cs.CL cs.AI
This paper tackles temporal resolution of documents, such as determining when a document is about or when it was written, based only on its text. We apply techniques from information retrieval that predict dates via language models over a discretized timeline. Unlike most previous works, we rely {\it solely} on temporal cues implicit in the text. We consider both document-likelihood and divergence based techniques and several smoothing methods for both of them. Our best model predicts the mid-point of individuals' lives with a median of 22 and mean error of 36 years for Wikipedia biographies from 3800 B.C. to the present day. We also show that this approach works well when training on such biographies and predicting dates both for non-biographical Wikipedia pages about specific years (500 B.C. to 2010 A.D.) and for publication dates of short stories (1798 to 2008). Together, our work shows that, even in absence of temporal extraction resources, it is possible to achieve remarkable temporal locality across a diverse set of texts.
1211.2291
Sequentiality and Adaptivity Gains in Active Hypothesis Testing
cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.TH
Consider a decision maker who is responsible to collect observations so as to enhance his information in a speedy manner about an underlying phenomena of interest. The policies under which the decision maker selects sensing actions can be categorized based on the following two factors: i) sequential vs. non-sequential; ii) adaptive vs. non-adaptive. Non-sequential policies collect a fixed number of observation samples and make the final decision afterwards; while under sequential policies, the sample size is not known initially and is determined by the observation outcomes. Under adaptive policies, the decision maker relies on the previous collected samples to select the next sensing action; while under non-adaptive policies, the actions are selected independent of the past observation outcomes. In this paper, performance bounds are provided for the policies in each category. Using these bounds, sequentiality gain and adaptivity gain, i.e., the gains of sequential and adaptive selection of actions are characterized.
1211.2292
Hybrid MPI-OpenMP Paradigm on SMP Clusters: MPEG-2 Encoder and N-Body Simulation
cs.DC cs.CE cs.PF
Clusters of SMP nodes provide support for a wide diversity of parallel programming paradigms. Combining both shared memory and message passing parallelizations within the same application, the hybrid MPI-OpenMP paradigm is an emerging trend for parallel programming to fully exploit distributed shared-memory architecture. In this paper, we improve the performance of MPEG-2 encoder and n-body simulation by employing the hybrid MPI-OpenMP programming paradigm on SMP clusters. The hierarchical image data structure of the MPEG bit-stream is eminently suitable for the hybrid model to achieve multiple levels of parallelism: MPI for parallelism at the group of pictures level across SMP nodes and OpenMP for parallelism within pictures at the slice level within each SMP node. Similarly, the work load of the force calculation which accounts for upwards of 90% of the cycles in typical computations in the n-body simulation is shared among OpenMP threads after ORB domain decomposition among MPI processes. Besides, loop scheduling of OpenMP threads is adopted with appropriate chunk size to provide better load balance of work, leading to enhanced performance. With the n-body simulation, experimental results demonstrate that the hybrid MPI-OpenMP program outperforms the corresponding pure MPI program by average factors of 1.52 on a 4-way cluster and 1.21 on a 2-way cluster. Likewise, the hybrid model offers a performance improvement of 18% compared to the MPI model for the MPEG-2 encoder.
1211.2293
Performance Evaluation of Treecode Algorithm for N-Body Simulation Using GridRPC System
cs.DC cs.CE cs.PF
This paper is aimed at improving the performance of the treecode algorithm for N-Body simulation by employing the NetSolve GridRPC programming model to exploit the use of multiple clusters. N-Body is a classical problem, and appears in many areas of science and engineering, including astrophysics, molecular dynamics, and graphics. In the simulation of N-Body, the specific routine for calculating the forces on the bodies which accounts for upwards of 90% of the cycles in typical computations is eminently suitable for obtaining parallelism with GridRPC calls. It is divided among the compute nodes by simultaneously calling multiple GridRPC requests to them. The performance of the GridRPC implementation is then compared to that of the MPI version and hybrid MPI-OpenMP version for the treecode algorithm on individual clusters.
1211.2304
Probabilistic Combination of Classifier and Cluster Ensembles for Non-transductive Learning
cs.LG stat.ML
Unsupervised models can provide supplementary soft constraints to help classify new target data under the assumption that similar objects in the target set are more likely to share the same class label. Such models can also help detect possible differences between training and target distributions, which is useful in applications where concept drift may take place. This paper describes a Bayesian framework that takes as input class labels from existing classifiers (designed based on labeled data from the source domain), as well as cluster labels from a cluster ensemble operating solely on the target data to be classified, and yields a consensus labeling of the target data. This framework is particularly useful when the statistics of the target data drift or change from those of the training data. We also show that the proposed framework is privacy-aware and allows performing distributed learning when data/models have sharing restrictions. Experiments show that our framework can yield superior results to those provided by applying classifier ensembles only.
1211.2333
Predicting the sources of an outbreak with a spectral technique
math-ph cs.SI math.MP physics.soc-ph
The epidemic spreading of a disease can be described by a contact network whose nodes are persons or centers of contagion and links heterogeneous relations among them. We provide a procedure to identify multiple sources of an outbreak or their closer neighbors. Our methodology is based on a simple spectral technique requiring only the knowledge of the undirected contact graph. The algorithm is tested on a variety of graphs collected from outbreaks including fluency, H5N1, Tbc, in urban and rural areas. Results show that the spectral technique is able to identify the source nodes if the graph approximates a tree sufficiently.
1211.2340
Time and harmonic study of strongly controllable group systems, group shifts, and group codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we give a complementary view of some of the results on group systems by Forney and Trott. We find an encoder of a group system which has the form of a time convolution. We consider this to be a time domain encoder while the encoder of Forney and Trott is a spectral domain encoder. We study the outputs of time and spectral domain encoders when the inputs are the same, and also study outputs when the same input is used but time runs forward and backward. In an abelian group system, all four cases give the same output for the same input, but this may not be true for a nonabelian system. Moreover, time symmetry and harmonic symmetry are broken for the same reason. We use a canonic form, a set of tensors, to show how the outputs are related. These results show there is a time and harmonic theory of group systems.
1211.2354
Privacy Preserving Web Query Log Publishing: A Survey on Anonymization Techniques
cs.DB cs.CR
Releasing Web query logs which contain valuable information for research or marketing, can breach the privacy of search engine users. Therefore rendering query logs to limit linking a query to an individual while preserving the data usefulness for analysis, is an important research problem. This survey provides an overview and discussion on the recent studies on this direction.
1211.2361
Genetic Algorithm for Designing a Convenient Facility Layout for a Circular Flow Path
cs.NE
In this paper, we present a heuristic for designing facility layouts that are convenient for designing a unidirectional loop for material handling. We use genetic algorithm where the objective function and crossover and mutation operators have all been designed specifically for this purpose. Our design is made under flexible bay structure and comparisons are made with other layouts from the literature that were designed under flexible bay structure.
1211.2367
IS-LABEL: an Independent-Set based Labeling Scheme for Point-to-Point Distance Querying on Large Graphs
cs.DB
We study the problem of computing shortest path or distance between two query vertices in a graph, which has numerous important applications. Quite a number of indexes have been proposed to answer such distance queries. However, all of these indexes can only process graphs of size barely up to 1 million vertices, which is rather small in view of many of the fast-growing real-world graphs today such as social networks and Web graphs. We propose an efficient index, which is a novel labeling scheme based on the independent set of a graph. We show that our method can handle graphs of size three orders of magnitude larger than those existing indexes.
1211.2378
Hybrid methodology for hourly global radiation forecasting in Mediterranean area
cs.NE cs.LG physics.ao-ph stat.AP
The renewable energies prediction and particularly global radiation forecasting is a challenge studied by a growing number of research teams. This paper proposes an original technique to model the insolation time series based on combining Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Auto-Regressive and Moving Average (ARMA) model. While ANN by its non-linear nature is effective to predict cloudy days, ARMA techniques are more dedicated to sunny days without cloud occurrences. Thus, three hybrids models are suggested: the first proposes simply to use ARMA for 6 months in spring and summer and to use an optimized ANN for the other part of the year; the second model is equivalent to the first but with a seasonal learning; the last model depends on the error occurred the previous hour. These models were used to forecast the hourly global radiation for five places in Mediterranean area. The forecasting performance was compared among several models: the 3 above mentioned models, the best ANN and ARMA for each location. In the best configuration, the coupling of ANN and ARMA allows an improvement of more than 1%, with a maximum in autumn (3.4%) and a minimum in winter (0.9%) where ANN alone is the best.
1211.2379
Belief Propagation Reconstruction for Discrete Tomography
cs.NA cond-mat.stat-mech cs.IT math.IT
We consider the reconstruction of a two-dimensional discrete image from a set of tomographic measurements corresponding to the Radon projection. Assuming that the image has a structure where neighbouring pixels have a larger probability to take the same value, we follow a Bayesian approach and introduce a fast message-passing reconstruction algorithm based on belief propagation. For numerical results, we specialize to the case of binary tomography. We test the algorithm on binary synthetic images with different length scales and compare our results against a more usual convex optimization approach. We investigate the reconstruction error as a function of the number of tomographic measurements, corresponding to the number of projection angles. The belief propagation algorithm turns out to be more efficient than the convex-optimization algorithm, both in terms of recovery bounds for noise-free projections, and in terms of reconstruction quality when moderate Gaussian noise is added to the projections.
1211.2399
Mining Determinism in Human Strategic Behavior
cs.GT cs.AI
This work lies in the fusion of experimental economics and data mining. It continues author's previous work on mining behaviour rules of human subjects from experimental data, where game-theoretic predictions partially fail to work. Game-theoretic predictions aka equilibria only tend to success with experienced subjects on specific games, what is rarely given. Apart from game theory, contemporary experimental economics offers a number of alternative models. In relevant literature, these models are always biased by psychological and near-psychological theories and are claimed to be proven by the data. This work introduces a data mining approach to the problem without using vast psychological background. Apart from determinism, no other biases are regarded. Two datasets from different human subject experiments are taken for evaluation. The first one is a repeated mixed strategy zero sum game and the second - repeated ultimatum game. As result, the way of mining deterministic regularities in human strategic behaviour is described and evaluated. As future work, the design of a new representation formalism is discussed.
1211.2441
Exact and Stable Recovery of Rotations for Robust Synchronization
cs.IT math.IT
The synchronization problem over the special orthogonal group $SO(d)$ consists of estimating a set of unknown rotations $R_1,R_2,...,R_n$ from noisy measurements of a subset of their pairwise ratios $R_{i}^{-1}R_{j}$. The problem has found applications in computer vision, computer graphics, and sensor network localization, among others. Its least squares solution can be approximated by either spectral relaxation or semidefinite programming followed by a rounding procedure, analogous to the approximation algorithms of \textsc{Max-Cut}. The contribution of this paper is three-fold: First, we introduce a robust penalty function involving the sum of unsquared deviations and derive a relaxation that leads to a convex optimization problem; Second, we apply the alternating direction method to minimize the penalty function; Finally, under a specific model of the measurement noise and for both complete and random measurement graphs, we prove that the rotations are exactly and stably recovered, exhibiting a phase transition behavior in terms of the proportion of noisy measurements. Numerical simulations confirm the phase transition behavior for our method as well as its improved accuracy compared to existing methods.
1211.2459
Measures of Entropy from Data Using Infinitely Divisible Kernels
cs.LG cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
Information theory provides principled ways to analyze different inference and learning problems such as hypothesis testing, clustering, dimensionality reduction, classification, among others. However, the use of information theoretic quantities as test statistics, that is, as quantities obtained from empirical data, poses a challenging estimation problem that often leads to strong simplifications such as Gaussian models, or the use of plug in density estimators that are restricted to certain representation of the data. In this paper, a framework to non-parametrically obtain measures of entropy directly from data using operators in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces defined by infinitely divisible kernels is presented. The entropy functionals, which bear resemblance with quantum entropies, are defined on positive definite matrices and satisfy similar axioms to those of Renyi's definition of entropy. Convergence of the proposed estimators follows from concentration results on the difference between the ordered spectrum of the Gram matrices and the integral operators associated to the population quantities. In this way, capitalizing on both the axiomatic definition of entropy and on the representation power of positive definite kernels, the proposed measure of entropy avoids the estimation of the probability distribution underlying the data. Moreover, estimators of kernel-based conditional entropy and mutual information are also defined. Numerical experiments on independence tests compare favourably with state of the art.
1211.2476
Random Utility Theory for Social Choice
cs.MA cs.LG stat.ML
Random utility theory models an agent's preferences on alternatives by drawing a real-valued score on each alternative (typically independently) from a parameterized distribution, and then ranking the alternatives according to scores. A special case that has received significant attention is the Plackett-Luce model, for which fast inference methods for maximum likelihood estimators are available. This paper develops conditions on general random utility models that enable fast inference within a Bayesian framework through MC-EM, providing concave loglikelihood functions and bounded sets of global maxima solutions. Results on both real-world and simulated data provide support for the scalability of the approach and capability for model selection among general random utility models including Plackett-Luce.
1211.2487
Power Control and Interference Management in Dense Wireless Networks
cs.IT math.IT math.OC
We address the problem of interference management and power control in terms of maximization of a general utility function. For the utility functions under consideration, we propose a power control algorithm based on a fixed-point iteration; further, we prove local convergence of the algorithm in the neighborhood of the optimal power vector. Our algorithm has several benefits over the previously studied works in the literature: first, the algorithm can be applied to problems other than network utility maximization (NUM), e.g., power control in a relay network; second, for a network with $N$ wireless transmitters, the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is $\mathcal{O}(N^2)$ calculations per iteration (significantly smaller than the $\mathcal{O}(N^3) $ calculations for Newton's iterations or gradient descent approaches). Furthermore, the algorithm converges very fast (usually in less than 15 iterations), and in particular, if initialized close to the optimal solution, the convergence speed is much faster. This suggests the potential of tracking variations in slowly fading channels. Finally, when implemented in a distributed fashion, the algorithm attains the optimal power vector with a signaling/computational complexity of only $\mathcal{O}(N)$ at each node.
1211.2497
A Note on the Deletion Channel Capacity
cs.IT math.IT
Memoryless channels with deletion errors as defined by a stochastic channel matrix allowing for bit drop outs are considered in which transmitted bits are either independently deleted with probability $d$ or unchanged with probability $1-d$. Such channels are information stable, hence their Shannon capacity exists. However, computation of the channel capacity is formidable, and only some upper and lower bounds on the capacity exist. In this paper, we first show a simple result that the parallel concatenation of two different independent deletion channels with deletion probabilities $d_1$ and $d_2$, in which every input bit is either transmitted over the first channel with probability of $\lambda$ or over the second one with probability of $1-\lambda$, is nothing but another deletion channel with deletion probability of $d=\lambda d_1+(1-\lambda)d_2$. We then provide an upper bound on the concatenated deletion channel capacity $C(d)$ in terms of the weighted average of $C(d_1)$, $C(d_2)$ and the parameters of the three channels. An interesting consequence of this bound is that $C(\lambda d_1+(1-\lambda))\leq \lambda C(d_1)$ which enables us to provide an improved upper bound on the capacity of the i.i.d. deletion channels, i.e., $C(d)\leq 0.4143(1-d)$ for $d\geq 0.65$. This generalizes the asymptotic result by Dalai as it remains valid for all $d\geq 0.65$. Using the same approach we are also able to improve upon existing upper bounds on the capacity of the deletion/substitution channel.
1211.2500
A New Algorithm Based Entropic Threshold for Edge Detection in Images
cs.CV
Edge detection is one of the most critical tasks in automatic image analysis. There exists no universal edge detection method which works well under all conditions. This paper shows the new approach based on the one of the most efficient techniques for edge detection, which is entropy-based thresholding. The main advantages of the proposed method are its robustness and its flexibility. We present experimental results for this method, and compare results of the algorithm against several leading edge detection methods, such as Canny, LOG, and Sobel. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves better result than some classic methods and the quality of the edge detector of the output images is robust and decrease the computation time.
1211.2502
New Edge Detection Technique based on the Shannon Entropy in Gray Level Images
cs.CV
Edge detection is an important field in image processing. Edges characterize object boundaries and are therefore useful for segmentation, registration, feature extraction, and identification of objects in a scene. In this paper, an approach utilizing an improvement of Baljit and Amar method which uses Shannon entropy other than the evaluation of derivatives of the image in detecting edges in gray level images has been proposed. The proposed method can reduce the CPU time required for the edge detection process and the quality of the edge detector of the output images is robust. A standard test images, the real-world and synthetic images are used to compare the results of the proposed edge detector with the Baljit and Amar edge detector method. In order to validate the results, the run time of the proposed method and the pervious method are presented. It has been observed that the proposed edge detector works effectively for different gray scale digital images. The performance evaluation of the proposed technique in terms of the measured CPU time and the quality of edge detector method are presented. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieve better result than the relevant classic method.
1211.2512
Minimal cost feature selection of data with normal distribution measurement errors
cs.AI cs.LG
Minimal cost feature selection is devoted to obtain a trade-off between test costs and misclassification costs. This issue has been addressed recently on nominal data. In this paper, we consider numerical data with measurement errors and study minimal cost feature selection in this model. First, we build a data model with normal distribution measurement errors. Second, the neighborhood of each data item is constructed through the confidence interval. Comparing with discretized intervals, neighborhoods are more reasonable to maintain the information of data. Third, we define a new minimal total cost feature selection problem through considering the trade-off between test costs and misclassification costs. Fourth, we proposed a backtracking algorithm with three effective pruning techniques to deal with this problem. The algorithm is tested on four UCI data sets. Experimental results indicate that the pruning techniques are effective, and the algorithm is efficient for data sets with nearly one thousand objects.
1211.2532
Iterative Thresholding Algorithm for Sparse Inverse Covariance Estimation
stat.CO cs.LG stat.ML
The L1-regularized maximum likelihood estimation problem has recently become a topic of great interest within the machine learning, statistics, and optimization communities as a method for producing sparse inverse covariance estimators. In this paper, a proximal gradient method (G-ISTA) for performing L1-regularized covariance matrix estimation is presented. Although numerous algorithms have been proposed for solving this problem, this simple proximal gradient method is found to have attractive theoretical and numerical properties. G-ISTA has a linear rate of convergence, resulting in an O(log e) iteration complexity to reach a tolerance of e. This paper gives eigenvalue bounds for the G-ISTA iterates, providing a closed-form linear convergence rate. The rate is shown to be closely related to the condition number of the optimal point. Numerical convergence results and timing comparisons for the proposed method are presented. G-ISTA is shown to perform very well, especially when the optimal point is well-conditioned.
1211.2555
Viral spreading of daily information in online social networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We explain a possible mechanism of an information spreading on a network which spreads extremely far from a seed node, namely the viral spreading. On the basis of a model of the information spreading in an online social network, in which the dynamics is expressed as a random multiplicative process of the spreading rates, we will show that the correlation between the spreading rates enhances the chance of the viral spreading, shifting the tipping point at which the spreading goes viral.
1211.2556
A Comparative Study of Gaussian Mixture Model and Radial Basis Function for Voice Recognition
cs.LG cs.CV stat.ML
A comparative study of the application of Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and Radial Basis Function (RBF) in biometric recognition of voice has been carried out and presented. The application of machine learning techniques to biometric authentication and recognition problems has gained a widespread acceptance. In this research, a GMM model was trained, using Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, on a dataset containing 10 classes of vowels and the model was used to predict the appropriate classes using a validation dataset. For experimental validity, the model was compared to the performance of two different versions of RBF model using the same learning and validation datasets. The results showed very close recognition accuracy between the GMM and the standard RBF model, but with GMM performing better than the standard RBF by less than 1% and the two models outperformed similar models reported in literature. The DTREG version of RBF outperformed the other two models by producing 94.8% recognition accuracy. In terms of recognition time, the standard RBF was found to be the fastest among the three models.
1211.2647
Determining a Loop Material Flow Pattern for Automatic Guided Vehicle Systems on a Facility Layout
cs.SY
In this paper, we present a heuristic procedure for designing a loop material flow pattern on a given facility layout with the aim of minimizing the total material handling distances. We present an approximation of the total material handling costs and greatly drop the required computational time by minimizing the approximation instead of the original objective function.
1211.2651
Correlation dimension of complex networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
We propose a new measure to characterize the dimension of complex networks based on the ergodic theory of dynamical systems. This measure is derived from the correlation sum of a trajectory generated by a random walker navigating the network, and extends the classical Grassberger-Procaccia algorithm to the context of complex networks. The method is validated with reliable results for both synthetic networks and real-world networks such as the world air-transportation network or urban networks, and provides a computationally fast way for estimating the dimensionality of networks which only relies on the local information provided by the walkers.
1211.2696
Metastability of Asymptotically Well-Behaved Potential Games
cs.GT cs.DS cs.SI
One of the main criticisms to game theory concerns the assumption of full rationality. Logit dynamics is a decentralized algorithm in which a level of irrationality (a.k.a. "noise") is introduced in players' behavior. In this context, the solution concept of interest becomes the logit equilibrium, as opposed to Nash equilibria. Logit equilibria are distributions over strategy profiles that possess several nice properties, including existence and uniqueness. However, there are games in which their computation may take time exponential in the number of players. We therefore look at an approximate version of logit equilibria, called metastable distributions, introduced by Auletta et al. [SODA 2012]. These are distributions that remain stable (i.e., players do not go too far from it) for a super-polynomial number of steps (rather than forever, as for logit equilibria). The hope is that these distributions exist and can be reached quickly by logit dynamics. We identify a class of potential games, called asymptotically well-behaved, for which the behavior of the logit dynamics is not chaotic as the number of players increases so to guarantee meaningful asymptotic results. We prove that any such game admits distributions which are metastable no matter the level of noise present in the system, and the starting profile of the dynamics. These distributions can be quickly reached if the rationality level is not too big when compared to the inverse of the maximum difference in potential. Our proofs build on results which may be of independent interest, including some spectral characterizations of the transition matrix defined by logit dynamics for generic games and the relationship of several convergence measures for Markov chains.
1211.2699
A Non-Blind Watermarking Scheme for Gray Scale Images in Discrete Wavelet Transform Domain using Two Subbands
cs.MM cs.CV
Digital watermarking is the process to hide digital pattern directly into a digital content. Digital watermarking techniques are used to address digital rights management, protect information and conceal secrets. An invisible non-blind watermarking approach for gray scale images is proposed in this paper. The host image is decomposed into 3-levels using Discrete Wavelet Transform. Based on the parent-child relationship between the wavelet coefficients the Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT) compression algorithm is performed on the LH3, LH2, HL3 and HL2 subbands to find out the significant coefficients. The most significant coefficients of LH2 and HL2 bands are selected to embed a binary watermark image. The selected significant coefficients are modulated using Noise Visibility Function, which is considered as the best strength to ensure better imperceptibility. The approach is tested against various image processing attacks such as addition of noise, filtering, cropping, JPEG compression, histogram equalization and contrast adjustment. The experimental results reveal the high effectiveness of the method.
1211.2717
Proximal Stochastic Dual Coordinate Ascent
stat.ML cs.LG math.OC
We introduce a proximal version of dual coordinate ascent method. We demonstrate how the derived algorithmic framework can be used for numerous regularized loss minimization problems, including $\ell_1$ regularization and structured output SVM. The convergence rates we obtain match, and sometimes improve, state-of-the-art results.
1211.2719
Quantum Consciousness Soccer Simulator
cs.AI cs.MA
In cognitive sciences it is not uncommon to use various games effectively. For example, in artificial intelligence, the RoboCup initiative was to set up to catalyse research on the field of autonomous agent technology. In this paper, we introduce a similar soccer simulation initiative to try to investigate a model of human consciousness and a notion of reality in the form of a cognitive problem. In addition, for example, the home pitch advantage and the objective role of the supporters could be naturally described and discussed in terms of this new soccer simulation model.
1211.2723
On the Relationships among Optimal Symmetric Fix-Free Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Symmetric fix-free codes are prefix condition codes in which each codeword is required to be a palindrome. Their study is motivated by the topic of joint source-channel coding. Although they have been considered by a few communities they are not well understood. In earlier work we used a collection of instances of Boolean satisfiability problems as a tool in the generation of all optimal binary symmetric fix-free codes with n codewords and observed that the number of different optimal codelength sequences grows slowly compared with the corresponding number for prefix condition codes. We demonstrate that all optimal symmetric fix-free codes can alternatively be obtained by sequences of codes generated by simple manipulations starting from one particular code. We also discuss simplifications in the process of searching for this set of codes.
1211.2736
Hybrid Systems for Knowledge Representation in Artificial Intelligence
cs.AI
There are few knowledge representation (KR) techniques available for efficiently representing knowledge. However, with the increase in complexity, better methods are needed. Some researchers came up with hybrid mechanisms by combining two or more methods. In an effort to construct an intelligent computer system, a primary consideration is to represent large amounts of knowledge in a way that allows effective use and efficiently organizing information to facilitate making the recommended inferences. There are merits and demerits of combinations, and standardized method of KR is needed. In this paper, various hybrid schemes of KR were explored at length and details presented.
1211.2737
An Exploration on Brain Computer Interface and Its Recent Trends
cs.HC cs.ET cs.SY
Detailed exploration on Brain Computer Interface (BCI) and its recent trends has been done in this paper. Work is being done to identify objects, images, videos and their color compositions. Efforts are on the way in understanding speech, words, emotions, feelings and moods. When humans watch the surrounding environment, visual data is processed by the brain, and it is possible to reconstruct the same on the screen with some appreciable accuracy by analyzing the physiological data. This data is acquired by using one of the non-invasive techniques like electroencephalography (EEG) in BCI. The acquired signal is to be translated to produce the image on to the screen. This paper also lays suitable directions for future work.
1211.2741
A Hindi Speech Actuated Computer Interface for Web Search
cs.CL cs.HC cs.IR
Aiming at increasing system simplicity and flexibility, an audio evoked based system was developed by integrating simplified headphone and user-friendly software design. This paper describes a Hindi Speech Actuated Computer Interface for Web search (HSACIWS), which accepts spoken queries in Hindi language and provides the search result on the screen. This system recognizes spoken queries by large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR), retrieves relevant document by text retrieval, and provides the search result on the Web by the integration of the Web and the voice systems. The LVCSR in this system showed enough performance levels for speech with acoustic and language models derived from a query corpus with target contents.