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1211.2742
Sketch Recognition using Domain Classification
cs.CV cs.HC
Conceptualizing away the sketch processing details in a user interface will enable general users and domain experts to create more complex sketches. There are many domains for which sketch recognition systems are being developed. But they entail image-processing skill if they are to handle the details of each domain, and also they are lengthy to build. The implemented system goal is to enable user interface designers and domain experts who may not have proficiency in sketch recognition to be able to construct these sketch systems. This sketch recognition system takes in rough sketches from user drawn with the help of mouse as its input. It then recognizes the sketch using segmentation and domain classification, the properties of the user drawn sketch and segments are searched heuristically in the domains and each figures of each domain, and finally it shows its domain, the figure name and properties. It also draws the sketch smoothly. The work is resulted through extensive research and study of many existing image processing and pattern matching algorithms.
1211.2743
Systematic and Integrative Analysis of Proteomic Data using Bioinformatics Tools
cs.CE
The analysis and interpretation of relationships between biological molecules is done with the help of networks. Networks are used ubiquitously throughout biology to represent the relationships between genes and gene products. Network models have facilitated a shift from the study of evolutionary conservation between individual gene and gene products towards the study of conservation at the level of pathways and complexes. Recent work has revealed much about chemical reactions inside hundreds of organisms as well as universal characteristics of metabolic networks, which shed light on the evolution of the networks. However, characteristics of individual metabolites have been neglected in this network. The current paper provides an overview of bioinformatics software used in visualization of biological networks using proteomic data, their main functions and limitations of the software.
1211.2756
BayesHammer: Bayesian clustering for error correction in single-cell sequencing
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.DS q-bio.GN
Error correction of sequenced reads remains a difficult task, especially in single-cell sequencing projects with extremely non-uniform coverage. While existing error correction tools designed for standard (multi-cell) sequencing data usually come up short in single-cell sequencing projects, algorithms actually used for single-cell error correction have been so far very simplistic. We introduce several novel algorithms based on Hamming graphs and Bayesian subclustering in our new error correction tool BayesHammer. While BayesHammer was designed for single-cell sequencing, we demonstrate that it also improves on existing error correction tools for multi-cell sequencing data while working much faster on real-life datasets. We benchmark BayesHammer on both $k$-mer counts and actual assembly results with the SPAdes genome assembler.
1211.2838
The evolution of cooperation by social exclusion
physics.soc-ph cs.SI nlin.AO q-bio.PE
The exclusion of freeriders from common privileges or public acceptance is widely found in the real world. Current models on the evolution of cooperation with incentives mostly assume peer sanctioning, whereby a punisher imposes penalties on freeriders at a cost to itself. It is well known that such costly punishment has two substantial difficulties. First, a rare punishing cooperator barely subverts the asocial society of freeriders, and second, natural selection often eliminates punishing cooperators in the presence of non-punishing cooperators (namely, "second-order" freeriders). We present a game-theoretical model of social exclusion in which a punishing cooperator can exclude freeriders from benefit sharing. We show that such social exclusion can overcome the above-mentioned difficulties even if it is costly and stochastic. The results do not require a genetic relationship, repeated interaction, reputation, or group selection. Instead, only a limited number of freeriders are required to prevent the second-order freeriders from eroding the social immune system.
1211.2853
Coding 35GB of Data in 35 Pages of Numbers
cs.IT math.IT
Usual information theoretical results show a logarithmic coding factor of value spaces to digital binary spaces using p-adic numbering systems. The following paper discusses a less commonly used case. It applies the same results to the difference space of bijective mappings of n-dimensional spaces to the line. It discusses a method where the logarithmic coding factor is provided over the Hamming radius of the code. An example is provided using the 35GB data dump of the Wikipedia website. This technique was initially developed for the study and computation of large permutation matrices on small clusters.
1211.2854
Using ontology for resume annotation
cs.IR
Employers collect a large number of resumes from job portals, or from the company's own website. These documents are used for an automated selection of candidates satisfying the requirements and therefore reducing recruitment costs. Various approaches for process documents have already been developed for recruitment. In this paper we present an approach based on semantic annotation of resumes for e-recruitment process. The most important task consists on modelling the semantic content of these documents using ontology. The ontology is built taking into account the most significant components of resumes inspired from the structure of EUROPASS CV. This ontology is thereafter used to annotate automatically the resumes.
1211.2863
Multi-Sensor Fusion via Reduction of Dimensionality
cs.CV
Large high-dimensional datasets are becoming more and more popular in an increasing number of research areas. Processing the high dimensional data incurs a high computational cost and is inherently inefficient since many of the values that describe a data object are redundant due to noise and inner correlations. Consequently, the dimensionality, i.e. the number of values that are used to describe a data object, needs to be reduced prior to any other processing of the data. The dimensionality reduction removes, in most cases, noise from the data and reduces substantially the computational cost of algorithms that are applied to the data. In this thesis, a novel coherent integrated methodology is introduced (theory, algorithm and applications) to reduce the dimensionality of high-dimensional datasets. The method constructs a diffusion process among the data coordinates via a random walk. The dimensionality reduction is obtained based on the eigen-decomposition of the Markov matrix that is associated with the random walk. The proposed method is utilized for: (a) segmentation and detection of anomalies in hyper-spectral images; (b) segmentation of multi-contrast MRI images; and (c) segmentation of video sequences. We also present algorithms for: (a) the characterization of materials using their spectral signatures to enable their identification; (b) detection of vehicles according to their acoustic signatures; and (c) classification of vascular vessels recordings to detect hyper-tension and cardio-vascular diseases. The proposed methodology and algorithms produce excellent results that successfully compete with current state-of-the-art algorithms.
1211.2874
Diversity of individual mobility patterns and emergence of aggregated scaling laws
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
Uncovering human mobility patterns is of fundamental importance to the understanding of epidemic spreading, urban transportation and other socioeconomic dynamics embodying spatiality and human travel. According to the direct travel diaries of volunteers, we show the absence of scaling properties in the displacement distribution at the individual level,while the aggregated displacement distribution follows a power law with an exponential cutoff. Given the constraint on total travelling cost, this aggregated scaling law can be analytically predicted by the mixture nature of human travel under the principle of maximum entropy. A direct corollary of such theory is that the displacement distribution of a single mode of transportation should follow an exponential law, which also gets supportive evidences in known data. We thus conclude that the travelling cost shapes the displacement distribution at the aggregated level.
1211.2881
Deep Attribute Networks
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
Obtaining compact and discriminative features is one of the major challenges in many of the real-world image classification tasks such as face verification and object recognition. One possible approach is to represent input image on the basis of high-level features that carry semantic meaning which humans can understand. In this paper, a model coined deep attribute network (DAN) is proposed to address this issue. For an input image, the model outputs the attributes of the input image without performing any classification. The efficacy of the proposed model is evaluated on unconstrained face verification and real-world object recognition tasks using the LFW and the a-PASCAL datasets. We demonstrate the potential of deep learning for attribute-based classification by showing comparable results with existing state-of-the-art results. Once properly trained, the DAN is fast and does away with calculating low-level features which are maybe unreliable and computationally expensive.
1211.2891
Boosting Simple Collaborative Filtering Models Using Ensemble Methods
cs.IR cs.LG stat.ML
In this paper we examine the effect of applying ensemble learning to the performance of collaborative filtering methods. We present several systematic approaches for generating an ensemble of collaborative filtering models based on a single collaborative filtering algorithm (single-model or homogeneous ensemble). We present an adaptation of several popular ensemble techniques in machine learning for the collaborative filtering domain, including bagging, boosting, fusion and randomness injection. We evaluate the proposed approach on several types of collaborative filtering base models: k- NN, matrix factorization and a neighborhood matrix factorization model. Empirical evaluation shows a prediction improvement compared to all base CF algorithms. In particular, we show that the performance of an ensemble of simple (weak) CF models such as k-NN is competitive compared with a single strong CF model (such as matrix factorization) while requiring an order of magnitude less computational cost.
1211.2897
Interference Channels with Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission: Degrees of Freedom, Message Assignment, and Fractional Reuse
cs.IT math.IT
Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission is an infrastructural enhancement under consideration for next generation wireless networks. In this work, the capacity gain achieved through CoMP transmission is studied in various models of wireless networks that have practical significance. The capacity gain is analyzed through the degrees of freedom (DoF) criterion. The DoF available for communication provides an analytically tractable way to characterize the capacity of interference channels. The considered channel model has K transmitter/receiver pairs, and each receiver is interested in one unique message from a set of K independent messages. Each message can be available at more than one transmitter. The maximum number of transmitters at which each message can be available, is defined as the cooperation order M. For fully connected interference channels, it is shown that the asymptotic per user DoF, as K goes to infinity, remains at 1/2 as M is increased from 1 to 2. Furthermore, the same negative result is shown to hold for all M > 1 for any message assignment that satisfies a local cooperation constraint. On the other hand, when the assumption of full connectivity is relaxed to local connectivity, and each transmitter is connected only to its own receiver as well as L neighboring receivers, it is shown that local cooperation is optimal. The asymptotic per user DoF is shown to be at least max {1/2,2M/(2M+L)} for locally connected channels, and is shown to be 2M/(2M+1) for the special case of Wyner's asymmetric model where L=1. An interesting feature of the proposed achievability scheme is that it relies on simple zero-forcing transmit beams and does not require symbol extensions. Also, to achieve the optimal per user DoF for Wyner's model, messages are assigned to transmitters in an asymmetric fashion unlike traditional assignments where message i has to be available at transmitter i.
1211.2926
Enumeration of sequences with large alphabets
cs.DS cs.DM cs.IT math.IT
This study focuses on efficient schemes for enumerative coding of $\sigma$--ary sequences by mainly borrowing ideas from \"Oktem & Astola's \cite{Oktem99} hierarchical enumerative coding and Schalkwijk's \cite{Schalkwijk72} asymptotically optimal combinatorial code on binary sequences. By observing that the number of distinct $\sigma$--dimensional vectors having an inner sum of $n$, where the values in each dimension are in range $[0...n]$ is $K(\sigma,n) = \sum_{i=0}^{\sigma-1} {{n-1} \choose {\sigma-1-i}} {{\sigma} \choose {i}}$, we propose representing $C$ vector via enumeration, and present necessary algorithms to perform this task. We prove $\log K(\sigma,n)$ requires approximately $ (\sigma -1) \log (\sigma-1) $ less bits than the naive $(\sigma-1)\lceil \log (n+1) \rceil$ representation for relatively large $n$, and examine the results for varying alphabet sizes experimentally. We extend the basic scheme for the enumerative coding of $\sigma$--ary sequences by introducing a new method for large alphabets. We experimentally show that the newly introduced technique is superior to the basic scheme by providing experiments on DNA sequences.
1211.2945
The application of a perceptron model to classify an individual's response to a proposed loading dose regimen of Warfarin
stat.AP cs.NE
The dose regimen of Warfarin is separated into two phases. Firstly a loading dose is given, which is designed to bring the International Normalisation Ratio (INR) to within therapeutic range. Then a stable maintenance dose is given to maintain the INR within therapeutic range. In the United Kingdom (UK) the loading dose is usually given as three individual daily doses, the standard loading dose being 10mg on days one and two and 5mgs on day three, which can be varied at the discretion of the clinician. However, due to the large inter-individual variation in the response to Warfarin therapy, it is difficult to identify which patients will reach the narrow therapeutic window for target INR, and which will be above or below the therapeutic window. The aim of this research was to develop a methodology using a neural networks classification algorithm and data mining techniques to predict for a given loading dose and patient characteristics if the patient is more likely to achieve target INR or more likely to be above or below therapeutic range. Multilayer perceptron (MLP) and 10-fold stratified cross validation algorithms were used to determine an artificial neural network to classify patients' response to their initial Warfarin loading dose. The resulting neural network model correctly classifies an individual's response to their Warfarin loading dose over 80% of the time. As well as taking into account the initial loading dose, the final model also includes demographic, genetic and a number of other potential confounding factors. With this model clinicians can predetermine whether a given loading regimen, along with specific patient characteristics will achieve a therapeutic response for a particular patient. Thus tailoring the loading dose regimen to meet the individual needs of the patient and reducing the risk of adverse drug reactions associated with Warfarin.
1211.2960
Iterative decoding of Generalized Parallel Concatenated Block codes using cyclic permutations
cs.IT cs.DS math.IT
Iterative decoding techniques have gain popularity due to their performance and their application in most communications systems. In this paper, we present a new application of our iterative decoder on the GPCB (Generalized Parallel Concatenated Block codes) which uses cyclic permutations. We introduce a new variant of the component decoder. After extensive simulation; the obtained result is very promising compared with several existing methods. We evaluate the effects of various parameters component codes, interleaver size, block size, and the number of iterations. Three interesting results are obtained; the first one is that the performances in terms of BER (Bit Error Rate) of the new constituent decoder are relatively similar to that of original one. Secondly our turbo decoding outperforms another turbo decoder for some linear block codes. Thirdly the proposed iterative decoding of GPCB-BCH (75, 51) is about 2.1dB from its Shannon limit.
1211.2963
Flexible composition and execution of high performance, high fidelity multiscale biomedical simulations
cs.DC cs.CE
Multiscale simulations are essential in the biomedical domain to accurately model human physiology. We present a modular approach for designing, constructing and executing multiscale simulations on a wide range of resources, from desktops to petascale supercomputers, including combinations of these. Our work features two multiscale applications, in-stent restenosis and cerebrovascular bloodflow, which combine multiple existing single-scale applications to create a multiscale simulation. These applications can be efficiently coupled, deployed and executed on computers up to the largest (peta) scale, incurring a coupling overhead of 1 to 10% of the total execution time.
1211.2972
Segregating event streams and noise with a Markov renewal process model
cs.AI
We describe an inference task in which a set of timestamped event observations must be clustered into an unknown number of temporal sequences with independent and varying rates of observations. Various existing approaches to multi-object tracking assume a fixed number of sources and/or a fixed observation rate; we develop an approach to inferring structure in timestamped data produced by a mixture of an unknown and varying number of similar Markov renewal processes, plus independent clutter noise. The inference simultaneously distinguishes signal from noise as well as clustering signal observations into separate source streams. We illustrate the technique via a synthetic experiment as well as an experiment to track a mixture of singing birds.
1211.2980
Shattering-Extremal Systems
math.CO cs.CG cs.DM cs.LG
The Shatters relation and the VC dimension have been investigated since the early seventies. These concepts have found numerous applications in statistics, combinatorics, learning theory and computational geometry. Shattering extremal systems are set-systems with a very rich structure and many different characterizations. The goal of this thesis is to elaborate on the structure of these systems.
1211.2985
Optimal Transmission Policy for Cooperative Transmission with Energy Harvesting and Battery Operated Sensor Nodes
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider a scenario where one energy harvesting and one battery operated sensor cooperatively transmit a common message to a distant base station. The goal is to find the jointly optimal transmission (power allocation) policy which maximizes the total throughput for a given deadline. First, we address the case in which the storage capacity of the energy harvesting sensor is infinite. In this context, we identify the necessary conditions for such optimal transmission policy. On their basis, we first show that the problem is convex. Then we go one step beyond and prove that (i) the optimal power allocation for the energy harvesting sensor can be computed independently; and (ii) it unequivocally determines (and allows to compute) that of the battery operated one. Finally, we generalize the analysis for the case of finite storage capacity. Performance is assessed by means of computer simulations. Particular attention is paid to the impact of finite storage capacity and long-term battery degradation on the achievable throughput.
1211.3010
Time-series Scenario Forecasting
stat.ML cs.LG stat.AP
Many applications require the ability to judge uncertainty of time-series forecasts. Uncertainty is often specified as point-wise error bars around a mean or median forecast. Due to temporal dependencies, such a method obscures some information. We would ideally have a way to query the posterior probability of the entire time-series given the predictive variables, or at a minimum, be able to draw samples from this distribution. We use a Bayesian dictionary learning algorithm to statistically generate an ensemble of forecasts. We show that the algorithm performs as well as a physics-based ensemble method for temperature forecasts for Houston. We conclude that the method shows promise for scenario forecasting where physics-based methods are absent.
1211.3016
The View Update Problem Revisited
cs.DB
In this paper, we revisit the view update problem in a relational setting and propose a framework based on the notion of determinacy under constraints. Within such a framework, we characterise when a view mapping is invertible, establishing that this is the case precisely when each database symbol has an exact rewriting in terms of the view symbols under the given constraints, and we provide a general effective criterion to understand whether the changes introduced by a view update can be propagated to the underlying database relations in a unique and unambiguous way. Afterwards, we show how determinacy under constraints can be checked, and rewritings effectively found, in three different relevant scenarios in the absence of view constraints. First, we settle the long-standing open issue of how to solve the view update problem in a multi-relational database with views that are projections of joins of relations, and we do so in a more general setting where views are defined by arbitrary conjunctive queries and database constraints are stratified embedded dependencies. Next, we study a setting based on horizontal decompositions of a single database relation, where views are defined by selections on possibly interpreted attributes (e.g., arithmetic comparisons) in the presence of domain constraints over the database schema. Lastly, we look into another multi-relational database setting, where views are defined in an expressive "Type" Relational Algebra based on the n-ary Description Logic DLR and database constraints are inclusions of expressions in that algebra.
1211.3020
Optimal Sequence-Based LQG Control over TCP-like Networks Subject to Random Transmission Delays and Packet Losses
cs.SY
This paper addresses the problem of sequence-based controller design for Networked Control Systems (NCS), where control inputs and measurements are transmitted over TCP-like network connections that are subject to stochastic packet losses and time-varying packet delays. At every time step, the controller sends a sequence of predicted control inputs to the actuator in addition to the current control input. In this sequence-based setup, we derive an optimal solution to the Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control problem and prove that the separation principle holds. Simulations demonstrate the improved performance of this optimal controller compared to other sequence-based approaches.
1211.3046
Recovering the Optimal Solution by Dual Random Projection
cs.LG
Random projection has been widely used in data classification. It maps high-dimensional data into a low-dimensional subspace in order to reduce the computational cost in solving the related optimization problem. While previous studies are focused on analyzing the classification performance of using random projection, in this work, we consider the recovery problem, i.e., how to accurately recover the optimal solution to the original optimization problem in the high-dimensional space based on the solution learned from the subspace spanned by random projections. We present a simple algorithm, termed Dual Random Projection, that uses the dual solution of the low-dimensional optimization problem to recover the optimal solution to the original problem. Our theoretical analysis shows that with a high probability, the proposed algorithm is able to accurately recover the optimal solution to the original problem, provided that the data matrix is of low rank or can be well approximated by a low rank matrix.
1211.3063
From Angular Manifolds to the Integer Lattice: Guaranteed Orientation Estimation with Application to Pose Graph Optimization
cs.RO math.OC
Estimating the orientations of nodes in a pose graph from relative angular measurements is challenging because the variables live on a manifold product with nontrivial topology and the maximum-likelihood objective function is non-convex and has multiple local minima; these issues prevent iterative solvers to be robust for large amounts of noise. This paper presents an approach that allows working around the problem of multiple minima, and is based on the insight that the original estimation problem on orientations is equivalent to an unconstrained quadratic optimization problem on integer vectors. This equivalence provides a viable way to compute the maximum likelihood estimate and allows guaranteeing that such estimate is almost surely unique. A deeper consequence of the derivation is that the maximum likelihood solution does not necessarily lead to an estimate that is "close" to the actual nodes orientations, hence it is not necessarily the best choice for the problem at hand. To alleviate this issue, our algorithm computes a set of estimates, for which we can derive precise probabilistic guarantees. Experiments show that the method is able to tolerate extreme amounts of noise (e.g., {\sigma} = 30{\deg} on each measurement) that are above all noise levels of sensors commonly used in mapping. For most range-finder-based scenarios, the multi-hypothesis estimator returns only a single hypothesis, because the problem is very well constrained. Finally, using the orientations estimate provided by our method to bootstrap the initial guess of pose graph optimization methods improves their robustness and makes them avoid local minima even for high levels of noise.
1211.3089
ET-LDA: Joint Topic Modeling for Aligning Events and their Twitter Feedback
cs.SI cs.AI cs.CY
During broadcast events such as the Superbowl, the U.S. Presidential and Primary debates, etc., Twitter has become the de facto platform for crowds to share perspectives and commentaries about them. Given an event and an associated large-scale collection of tweets, there are two fundamental research problems that have been receiving increasing attention in recent years. One is to extract the topics covered by the event and the tweets; the other is to segment the event. So far these problems have been viewed separately and studied in isolation. In this work, we argue that these problems are in fact inter-dependent and should be addressed together. We develop a joint Bayesian model that performs topic modeling and event segmentation in one unified framework. We evaluate the proposed model both quantitatively and qualitatively on two large-scale tweet datasets associated with two events from different domains to show that it improves significantly over baseline models.
1211.3128
Non-asymptotic Upper Bounds for Deletion Correcting Codes
cs.IT math.CO math.IT math.NT math.OC
Explicit non-asymptotic upper bounds on the sizes of multiple-deletion correcting codes are presented. In particular, the largest single-deletion correcting code for $q$-ary alphabet and string length $n$ is shown to be of size at most $\frac{q^n-q}{(q-1)(n-1)}$. An improved bound on the asymptotic rate function is obtained as a corollary. Upper bounds are also derived on sizes of codes for a constrained source that does not necessarily comprise of all strings of a particular length, and this idea is demonstrated by application to sets of run-length limited strings. The problem of finding the largest deletion correcting code is modeled as a matching problem on a hypergraph. This problem is formulated as an integer linear program. The upper bound is obtained by the construction of a feasible point for the dual of the linear programming relaxation of this integer linear program. The non-asymptotic bounds derived imply the known asymptotic bounds of Levenshtein and Tenengolts and improve on known non-asymptotic bounds. Numerical results support the conjecture that in the binary case, the Varshamov-Tenengolts codes are the largest single-deletion correcting codes.
1211.3169
The relation between Granger causality and directed information theory: a review
cs.IT math.IT
This report reviews the conceptual and theoretical links between Granger causality and directed information theory. We begin with a short historical tour of Granger causality, concentrating on its closeness to information theory. The definitions of Granger causality based on prediction are recalled, and the importance of the observation set is discussed. We present the definitions based on conditional independence. The notion of instantaneous coupling is included in the definitions. The concept of Granger causality graphs is discussed. We present directed information theory from the perspective of studies of causal influences between stochastic processes. Causal conditioning appears to be the cornerstone for the relation between information theory and Granger causality. In the bivariate case, the fundamental measure is the directed information, which decomposes as the sum of the transfer entropies and a term quantifying instantaneous coupling. We show the decomposition of the mutual information into the sums of the transfer entropies and the instantaneous coupling measure, a relation known for the linear Gaussian case. We study the multivariate case, showing that the useful decomposition is blurred by instantaneous coupling. The links are further developed by studying how measures based on directed information theory naturally emerge from Granger causality inference frameworks as hypothesis testing.
1211.3174
On the Delay Advantage of Coding in Packet Erasure Networks
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the delay of network coding compared to routing with retransmissions in packet erasure networks with probabilistic erasures. We investigate the sub-linear term in the block delay required for unicasting $n$ packets and show that there is an unbounded gap between network coding and routing. In particular, we show that delay benefit of network coding scales at least as $\sqrt{n}$. Our analysis of the delay function for the routing strategy involves a major technical challenge of computing the expectation of the maximum of two negative binomial random variables. This problem has been studied previously and we derive the first exact characterization which may be of independent interest. We also use a martingale bounded differences argument to show that the actual coding delay is tightly concentrated around its expectation.
1211.3189
A characterization of two-weight projective cyclic codes
cs.IT math.IT math.NT
We give necessary conditions for a two-weight projective cyclic code to be the direct sum of two one-weight irreducible cyclic subcodes of the same dimension, following the work of Wolfmann and Vega. This confirms Vega's conjecture that all the two-weight cyclic codes of this type are the known ones in the projective case.
1211.3193
Collective Adoption of Max-Min Strategy in an Information Cascade Voting Experiment
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We consider a situation where one has to choose an option with multiplier m. The multiplier is inversely proportional to the number of people who have chosen the option and is proportional to the return if it is correct. If one does not know the correct option, we call him a herder, and then there is a zero-sum game between the herder and other people who have set the multiplier. The max-min strategy where one divides one's choice inversely proportional to m is optimal from the viewpoint of the maximization of expected return. We call the optimal herder an analog herder. The system of analog herders takes the probability of correct choice to one for any value of the ratio of herders, p<1, in the thermodynamic limit if the accuracy of the choice of informed person q is one. We study how herders choose by a voting experiment in which 50 to 60 subjects sequentially answer a two-choice quiz. We show that the probability of selecting a choice by the herders is inversely proportional to m for 4/3 < m < 4 and they collectively adopt the max-min strategy in that range.
1211.3200
An Analytic Approach to People Evaluation in Crowdsourcing Systems
cs.IR cs.SI
Worker selection is a significant and challenging issue in crowdsourcing systems. Such selection is usually based on an assessment of the reputation of the individual workers participating in such systems. However, assessing the credibility and adequacy of such calculated reputation is a real challenge. In this paper, we propose an analytic model which leverages the values of the tasks completed, the credibility of the evaluators of the results of the tasks and time of evaluation of the results of these tasks in order to calculate an accurate and credible reputation rank of participating workers and fairness rank for evaluators. The model has been implemented and experimentally validated.
1211.3212
Distributed Non-Stochastic Experts
cs.LG cs.AI
We consider the online distributed non-stochastic experts problem, where the distributed system consists of one coordinator node that is connected to $k$ sites, and the sites are required to communicate with each other via the coordinator. At each time-step $t$, one of the $k$ site nodes has to pick an expert from the set ${1, ..., n}$, and the same site receives information about payoffs of all experts for that round. The goal of the distributed system is to minimize regret at time horizon $T$, while simultaneously keeping communication to a minimum. The two extreme solutions to this problem are: (i) Full communication: This essentially simulates the non-distributed setting to obtain the optimal $O(\sqrt{\log(n)T})$ regret bound at the cost of $T$ communication. (ii) No communication: Each site runs an independent copy : the regret is $O(\sqrt{log(n)kT})$ and the communication is 0. This paper shows the difficulty of simultaneously achieving regret asymptotically better than $\sqrt{kT}$ and communication better than $T$. We give a novel algorithm that for an oblivious adversary achieves a non-trivial trade-off: regret $O(\sqrt{k^{5(1+\epsilon)/6} T})$ and communication $O(T/k^{\epsilon})$, for any value of $\epsilon \in (0, 1/5)$. We also consider a variant of the model, where the coordinator picks the expert. In this model, we show that the label-efficient forecaster of Cesa-Bianchi et al. (2005) already gives us strategy that is near optimal in regret vs communication trade-off.
1211.3233
New algorithm for footstep localization using seismic sensors in an indoor environment
cs.CE
In this study, we consider the use of seismic sensors for footstep localization in indoor environments. A popular strategy of localization is to use the measured differences in arrival times of source signals at multiple pairs of receivers. In the literature, most algorithms that are based on time differences of arrival (TDOA) assume that the propagation velocity is a constant as a function of the source position, which is valid for air propagation or even for narrow band signals. However a bounded medium such as a concrete slab (encountered in indoor environement) is usually dispersive and damped. In this study, we demonstrate that under such conditions, the concrete slab can be assimilated to a thin plate; considering a Kelvin-Voigt damping model, we introduce the notion of {\em perceived propagation velocity}, which decreases when the source-sensor distance increases. This peculiar behaviour precludes any possibility to rely on existing localization methods in indoor environment. Therefore, a new localization algorithm that is adapted to a damped and dispersive medium is proposed, using only on the sign of the measured TDOA (SO-TDOA). A simulation and some experimental results are included, to define the performance of this SO-TDOA algorithm.
1211.3238
The Robustness of Scale-free Networks Under Edge Attacks with the Quantitative Analysis
cs.SI nlin.AO physics.soc-ph
Previous studies on the invulnerability of scale-free networks under edge attacks supported the conclusion that scale-free networks would be fragile under selective attacks. However, these studies are based on qualitative methods with obscure definitions on the robustness. This paper therefore employs a quantitative method to analyze the invulnerability of the scale-free networks, and uses four scale-free networks as the experimental group and four random networks as the control group. The experimental results show that some scale-free networks are robust under selective edge attacks, different to previous studies. Thus, this paper analyzes the difference between the experimental results and previous studies, and suggests reasonable explanations.
1211.3295
Order-independent constraint-based causal structure learning
stat.ML cs.LG
We consider constraint-based methods for causal structure learning, such as the PC-, FCI-, RFCI- and CCD- algorithms (Spirtes et al. (2000, 1993), Richardson (1996), Colombo et al. (2012), Claassen et al. (2013)). The first step of all these algorithms consists of the PC-algorithm. This algorithm is known to be order-dependent, in the sense that the output can depend on the order in which the variables are given. This order-dependence is a minor issue in low-dimensional settings. We show, however, that it can be very pronounced in high-dimensional settings, where it can lead to highly variable results. We propose several modifications of the PC-algorithm (and hence also of the other algorithms) that remove part or all of this order-dependence. All proposed modifications are consistent in high-dimensional settings under the same conditions as their original counterparts. We compare the PC-, FCI-, and RFCI-algorithms and their modifications in simulation studies and on a yeast gene expression data set. We show that our modifications yield similar performance in low-dimensional settings and improved performance in high-dimensional settings. All software is implemented in the R-package pcalg.
1211.3302
Rational Instability in the Natural Coalition Forming
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We are investigating a paradigm of instability in coalition forming among countries, which indeed is intrinsic to any collection of individual groups or other social aggregations. Coalitions among countries are formed by the respective attraction or repulsion caused by the historical bond propensities between the countries, which produced an intricate circuit of bilateral bonds. Contradictory associations into coalitions occur due to the independent evolution of the bonds. Those coalitions tend to be unstable and break down frequently. The model extends some features of the physical theory of Spin Glasses. Within the frame of this model, the instability is viewed as a consequence of decentralized maximization processes searching for the best coalition allocations. In contrast to the existing literature, a rational instability is found to result from forecast rationality of countries. Using a general theoretical framework allowing to analyze the countries' decision making in coalition forming, we feature a system where stability can eventually be achieved as a result of the maximization processes. We provide a formal implementation of the maximization principles and illustrate it in the multi-thread simulation of the coalition forming. The results shed a new light on the prospect of searches for the best coalition allocations in the networks of social, political or economical entities.
1211.3322
The Degrees of Freedom Region of Temporally-Correlated MIMO Networks with Delayed CSIT
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the temporally-correlated Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) broadcast channels (BC) and interference channels (IC) where the transmitter(s) has/have (i) delayed channel state information (CSI) obtained from a latency-prone feedback channel as well as (ii) imperfect current CSIT, obtained, e.g., from prediction on the basis of these past channel samples based on the temporal correlation. The degrees of freedom (DoF) regions for the two-user broadcast and interference MIMO networks with general antenna configuration under such conditions are fully characterized, as a function of the prediction quality indicator. Specifically, a simple unified framework is proposed, allowing to attain optimal DoF region for the general antenna configurations and current CSIT qualities. Such a framework builds upon block-Markov encoding with interference quantization, optimally combining the use of both outdated and instantaneous CSIT. A striking feature of our work is that, by varying the power allocation, every point in the DoF region can be achieved with one single scheme. As a result, instead of checking the achievability of every corner point of the outer bound region, as typically done in the literature, we propose a new systematic way to prove the achievability.
1211.3371
A Comparison of Meta-heuristic Search for Interactive Software Design
cs.AI cs.NE
Advances in processing capacity, coupled with the desire to tackle problems where a human subjective judgment plays an important role in determining the value of a proposed solution, has led to a dramatic rise in the number of applications of Interactive Artificial Intelligence. Of particular note is the coupling of meta-heuristic search engines with user-provided evaluation and rating of solutions, usually in the form of Interactive Evolutionary Algorithms (IEAs). These have a well-documented history of successes, but arguably the preponderance of IEAs stems from this history, rather than as a conscious design choice of meta-heuristic based on the characteristics of the problem at hand. This paper sets out to examine the basis for that assumption, taking as a case study the domain of interactive software design. We consider a range of factors that should affect the design choice including ease of use, scalability, and of course, performance, i.e. that ability to generate good solutions within the limited number of evaluations available in interactive work before humans lose focus. We then evaluate three methods, namely greedy local search, an evolutionary algorithm and ant colony optimization, with a variety of representations for candidate solutions. Results show that after suitable parameter tuning, ant colony optimization is highly effective within interactive search and out-performs evolutionary algorithms with respect to increasing numbers of attributes and methods in the software design problem. However, when larger numbers of classes are present in the software design, an evolutionary algorithm using a naive grouping integer-based representation appears more scalable.
1211.3375
High-Performance Reachability Query Processing under Index Size Restrictions
cs.DB cs.SI
In this paper, we propose a scalable and highly efficient index structure for the reachability problem over graphs. We build on the well-known node interval labeling scheme where the set of vertices reachable from a particular node is compactly encoded as a collection of node identifier ranges. We impose an explicit bound on the size of the index and flexibly assign approximate reachability ranges to nodes of the graph such that the number of index probes to answer a query is minimized. The resulting tunable index structure generates a better range labeling if the space budget is increased, thus providing a direct control over the trade off between index size and the query processing performance. By using a fast recursive querying method in conjunction with our index structure, we show that in practice, reachability queries can be answered in the order of microseconds on an off-the-shelf computer - even for the case of massive-scale real world graphs. Our claims are supported by an extensive set of experimental results using a multitude of benchmark and real-world web-scale graph datasets.
1211.3384
An Efficient Soft Decoder of Block Codes Based on Compact Genetic Algorithm
cs.IT math.IT
Soft-decision decoding is NP-hard problem of great interest to developers of communication system. We present an efficient soft-decision decoding of linear block codes based on compact genetic algorithm (cGA) and compare its performance with various other decoding algorithms including Shakeel algorithms. The proposed algorithm uses the dual code in contrast to Shakeel algorithm that uses the code itself. Hence, this new approach reduces the decoding complexity of high rates codes. The complexity and an optimized version of this new algorithm is also presented and discussed.
1211.3402
Genetic Optimization of Keywords Subset in the Classification Analysis of Texts Authorship
cs.IR cs.CL
The genetic selection of keywords set, the text frequencies of which are considered as attributes in text classification analysis, has been analyzed. The genetic optimization was performed on a set of words, which is the fraction of the frequency dictionary with given frequency limits. The frequency dictionary was formed on the basis of analyzed text array of texts of English fiction. As the fitness function which is minimized by the genetic algorithm, the error of nearest k neighbors classifier was used. The obtained results show high precision and recall of texts classification by authorship categories on the basis of attributes of keywords set which were selected by the genetic algorithm from the frequency dictionary.
1211.3412
Network Sampling: From Static to Streaming Graphs
cs.SI cs.DS cs.LG physics.soc-ph stat.ML
Network sampling is integral to the analysis of social, information, and biological networks. Since many real-world networks are massive in size, continuously evolving, and/or distributed in nature, the network structure is often sampled in order to facilitate study. For these reasons, a more thorough and complete understanding of network sampling is critical to support the field of network science. In this paper, we outline a framework for the general problem of network sampling, by highlighting the different objectives, population and units of interest, and classes of network sampling methods. In addition, we propose a spectrum of computational models for network sampling methods, ranging from the traditionally studied model based on the assumption of a static domain to a more challenging model that is appropriate for streaming domains. We design a family of sampling methods based on the concept of graph induction that generalize across the full spectrum of computational models (from static to streaming) while efficiently preserving many of the topological properties of the input graphs. Furthermore, we demonstrate how traditional static sampling algorithms can be modified for graph streams for each of the three main classes of sampling methods: node, edge, and topology-based sampling. Our experimental results indicate that our proposed family of sampling methods more accurately preserves the underlying properties of the graph for both static and streaming graphs. Finally, we study the impact of network sampling algorithms on the parameter estimation and performance evaluation of relational classification algorithms.
1211.3444
Spectral Clustering: An empirical study of Approximation Algorithms and its Application to the Attrition Problem
cs.LG math.NA stat.ML
Clustering is the problem of separating a set of objects into groups (called clusters) so that objects within the same cluster are more similar to each other than to those in different clusters. Spectral clustering is a now well-known method for clustering which utilizes the spectrum of the data similarity matrix to perform this separation. Since the method relies on solving an eigenvector problem, it is computationally expensive for large datasets. To overcome this constraint, approximation methods have been developed which aim to reduce running time while maintaining accurate classification. In this article, we summarize and experimentally evaluate several approximation methods for spectral clustering. From an applications standpoint, we employ spectral clustering to solve the so-called attrition problem, where one aims to identify from a set of employees those who are likely to voluntarily leave the company from those who are not. Our study sheds light on the empirical performance of existing approximate spectral clustering methods and shows the applicability of these methods in an important business optimization related problem.
1211.3451
Memory Capacity of a Random Neural Network
cs.NE
This paper considers the problem of information capacity of a random neural network. The network is represented by matrices that are square and symmetrical. The matrices have a weight which determines the highest and lowest possible value found in the matrix. The examined matrices are randomly generated and analyzed by a computer program. We find the surprising result that the capacity of the network is a maximum for the binary random neural network and it does not change as the number of quantization levels associated with the weights increases.
1211.3484
The Feasibility Conditions for Interference Alignment in MIMO Networks
cs.IT math.IT
Interference alignment (IA) has attracted great attention in the last few years for its breakthrough performance in interference networks. However, despite the numerous works dedicated to IA, the feasibility conditions of IA remains unclear for most network topologies. The IA feasibility analysis is challenging as the IA constraints are sets of high-degree polynomials, for which no systematic tool to analyze the solvability conditions exists. In this work, by developing a new mathematical framework that maps the solvability of sets of polynomial equations to the linear independence of their first-order terms, we propose a sufficient condition that applies to MIMO interference networks with general configurations. We have further proved that this sufficient condition matches with the necessary conditions under a wide range of configurations. These results further consolidate the theoretical basis of IA.
1211.3497
Ontology Based Information Extraction for Disease Intelligence
cs.AI cs.DL cs.IR
Disease Intelligence (DI) is based on the acquisition and aggregation of fragmented knowledge of diseases at multiple sources all over the world to provide valuable information to doctors, researchers and information seeking community. Some diseases have their own characteristics changed rapidly at different places of the world and are reported on documents as unrelated and heterogeneous information which may be going unnoticed and may not be quickly available. This research presents an Ontology based theoretical framework in the context of medical intelligence and country/region. Ontology is designed for storing information about rapidly spreading and changing diseases with incorporating existing disease taxonomies to genetic information of both humans and infectious organisms. It further maps disease symptoms to diseases and drug effects to disease symptoms. The machine understandable disease ontology represented as a website thus allows the drug effects to be evaluated on disease symptoms and exposes genetic involvements in the human diseases. Infectious agents which have no known place in an existing classification but have data on genetics would still be identified as organisms through the intelligence of this system. It will further facilitate researchers on the subject to try out different solutions for curing diseases.
1211.3500
Accelerated Canonical Polyadic Decomposition by Using Mode Reduction
cs.NA cs.LG math.NA
Canonical Polyadic (or CANDECOMP/PARAFAC, CP) decompositions (CPD) are widely applied to analyze high order tensors. Existing CPD methods use alternating least square (ALS) iterations and hence need to unfold tensors to each of the $N$ modes frequently, which is one major bottleneck of efficiency for large-scale data and especially when $N$ is large. To overcome this problem, in this paper we proposed a new CPD method which converts the original $N$th ($N>3$) order tensor to a 3rd-order tensor first. Then the full CPD is realized by decomposing this mode reduced tensor followed by a Khatri-Rao product projection procedure. This way is quite efficient as unfolding to each of the $N$ modes are avoided, and dimensionality reduction can also be easily incorporated to further improve the efficiency. We show that, under mild conditions, any $N$th-order CPD can be converted into a 3rd-order case but without destroying the essential uniqueness, and theoretically gives the same results as direct $N$-way CPD methods. Simulations show that, compared with state-of-the-art CPD methods, the proposed method is more efficient and escape from local solutions more easily.
1211.3503
Spectral Efficiency in Large-Scale MIMO-OFDM Systems with Per-Antenna Power Cost
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, resource allocation for multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) downlink networks with large numbers of base station antennas is studied. Assuming perfect channel state information at the transmitter, the resource allocation algorithm design is modeled as a non-convex optimization problem which takes into account the joint power consumption of the power amplifiers, antenna unit, and signal processing circuit unit. Subsequently, by exploiting the law of large numbers and dual decomposition, an efficient suboptimal iterative resource allocation algorithm is proposed for maximization of the system capacity (bit/s). In particular, closed-form power allocation and antenna allocation policies are derived in each iteration. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed iterative resource allocation algorithm achieves a close-to-optimal performance in a small number of iterations and unveil a trade-off between system capacity and the number of activated antennas: Activating all antennas may not be a good solution for system capacity maximization when a system with a per antenna power cost is considered.
1211.3624
Lending Petri nets and contracts
cs.LO cs.MA cs.SE
Choreography-based approaches to service composition typically assume that, after a set of services has been found which correctly play the roles prescribed by the choreography, each service respects his role. Honest services are not protected against adversaries. We propose a model for contracts based on a extension of Petri nets, which allows services to protect themselves while still realizing the choreography. We relate this model with Propositional Contract Logic, by showing a translation of formulae into our Petri nets which preserves the logical notion of agreement, and allows for compositional verification.
1211.3643
A Principled Approach to Grammars for Controlled Natural Languages and Predictive Editors
cs.CL
Controlled natural languages (CNL) with a direct mapping to formal logic have been proposed to improve the usability of knowledge representation systems, query interfaces, and formal specifications. Predictive editors are a popular approach to solve the problem that CNLs are easy to read but hard to write. Such predictive editors need to be able to "look ahead" in order to show all possible continuations of a given unfinished sentence. Such lookahead features, however, are difficult to implement in a satisfying way with existing grammar frameworks, especially if the CNL supports complex nonlocal structures such as anaphoric references. Here, methods and algorithms are presented for a new grammar notation called Codeco, which is specifically designed for controlled natural languages and predictive editors. A parsing approach for Codeco based on an extended chart parsing algorithm is presented. A large subset of Attempto Controlled English (ACE) has been represented in Codeco. Evaluation of this grammar and the parser implementation shows that the approach is practical, adequate and efficient.
1211.3668
Local Pinsker inequalities via Stein's discrete density approach
math.PR cs.IT math.IT
Pinsker's inequality states that the relative entropy $d_{\mathrm{KL}}(X, Y)$ between two random variables $X$ and $Y$ dominates the square of the total variation distance $d_{\mathrm{TV}}(X,Y)$ between $X$ and $Y$. In this paper we introduce generalized Fisher information distances $\mathcal{J}(X, Y)$ between discrete distributions $X$ and $Y$ and prove that these also dominate the square of the total variation distance. To this end we introduce a general discrete Stein operator for which we prove a useful covariance identity. We illustrate our approach with several examples. Whenever competitor inequalities are available in the literature, the constants in ours are at least as good, and, in several cases, better.
1211.3711
Sequence Transduction with Recurrent Neural Networks
cs.NE cs.LG stat.ML
Many machine learning tasks can be expressed as the transformation---or \emph{transduction}---of input sequences into output sequences: speech recognition, machine translation, protein secondary structure prediction and text-to-speech to name but a few. One of the key challenges in sequence transduction is learning to represent both the input and output sequences in a way that is invariant to sequential distortions such as shrinking, stretching and translating. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are a powerful sequence learning architecture that has proven capable of learning such representations. However RNNs traditionally require a pre-defined alignment between the input and output sequences to perform transduction. This is a severe limitation since \emph{finding} the alignment is the most difficult aspect of many sequence transduction problems. Indeed, even determining the length of the output sequence is often challenging. This paper introduces an end-to-end, probabilistic sequence transduction system, based entirely on RNNs, that is in principle able to transform any input sequence into any finite, discrete output sequence. Experimental results for phoneme recognition are provided on the TIMIT speech corpus.
1211.3719
Partitioning of Distributed MIMO Systems based on Overhead Considerations
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Distributed-Multiple Input Multiple Output (DMIMO) networks is a promising enabler to address the challenges of high traffic demand in future wireless networks. A limiting factor that is directly related to the performance of these systems is the overhead signaling required for distributing data and control information among the network elements. In this paper, the concept of orthogonal partitioning is extended to D-MIMO networks employing joint multi-user beamforming, aiming to maximize the effective sum-rate, i.e., the actual transmitted information data. Furthermore, in order to comply with practical requirements, the overhead subframe size is considered to be constrained. In this context, a novel formulation of constrained orthogonal partitioning is introduced as an elegant Knapsack optimization problem, which allows the derivation of quick and accurate solutions. Several numerical results give insight into the capabilities of D-MIMO networks and the actual sum-rate scaling under overhead constraints.
1211.3729
Data-Efficient Quickest Change Detection in Minimax Settings
math.ST cs.IT math.IT math.OC math.PR stat.TH
The classical problem of quickest change detection is studied with an additional constraint on the cost of observations used in the detection process. The change point is modeled as an unknown constant, and minimax formulations are proposed for the problem. The objective in these formulations is to find a stopping time and an on-off observation control policy for the observation sequence, to minimize a version of the worst possible average delay, subject to constraints on the false alarm rate and the fraction of time observations are taken before change. An algorithm called DE-CuSum is proposed and is shown to be asymptotically optimal for the proposed formulations, as the false alarm rate goes to zero. Numerical results are used to show that the DE-CuSum algorithm has good trade-off curves and performs significantly better than the approach of fractional sampling, in which the observations are skipped using the outcome of a sequence of coin tosses, independent of the observation process. This work is guided by the insights gained from an earlier study of a Bayesian version of this problem.
1211.3754
Recursive Robust PCA or Recursive Sparse Recovery in Large but Structured Noise
cs.IT math.IT
This work studies the recursive robust principal components' analysis(PCA) problem. Here, "robust" refers to robustness to both independent and correlated sparse outliers. If the outlier is the signal-of-interest, this problem can be interpreted as one of recursively recovering a time sequence of sparse vectors, St, in the presence of large but structured noise, Lt. The structure that we assume on Lt is that Lt is dense and lies in a low dimensional subspace that is either fixed or changes "slowly enough". A key application where this problem occurs is in video surveillance where the goal is to separate a slowly changing background (Lt) from moving foreground objects (St) on-the-fly. To solve the above problem, we introduce a novel solution called Recursive Projected CS (ReProCS). Under mild assumptions, we show that, with high probability (w.h.p.), ReProCS can exactly recover the support set of St at all times; and the reconstruction errors of both St and Lt are upper bounded by a time-invariant and small value at all times.
1211.3776
Radio Resource Allocation Algorithms for Multi-Service OFDMA Networks: The Uniform Power Loading Scenario
cs.IT math.IT
Adaptive Radio Resource Allocation is essential for guaranteeing high bandwidth and power utilization as well as satisfying heterogeneous Quality-of-Service requests regarding next generation broadband multicarrier wireless access networks like LTE and Mobile WiMAX. A downlink OFDMA single-cell scenario is considered where heterogeneous Constant-Bit-Rate and Best-Effort QoS profiles coexist and the power is uniformly spread over the system bandwidth utilizing a Uniform Power Loading (UPL) scenario. We express this particular QoS provision scenario in mathematical terms, as a variation of the well-known generalized assignment problem answered in the combinatorial optimization field. Based on this concept, we propose two heuristic search algorithms for dynamically allocating subchannels to the competing QoS classes and users which are executed under polynomially-bounded cost. We also propose an Integer Linear Programming model for optimally solving and acquiring a performance upper bound for the same problem at reasonable yet high execution times. Through extensive simulation results we show that the proposed algorithms exhibit high close-to-optimal performance, thus comprising attractive candidates for implementation in modern OFDMA-based systems.
1211.3828
Construction of High-Rate Regular Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes Based on Cyclic Difference Families
cs.IT math.IT
For a high-rate case, it is difficult to randomly construct good low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes of short and moderate lengths because their Tanner graphs are prone to making short cycles. Also, the existing high-rate quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes can be constructed only for very restricted code parameters. In this paper, a new construction method of high-rate regular QC LDPC codes with parity-check matrices consisting of a single row of circulants with the column-weight 3 or 4 is proposed based on special classes of cyclic difference families. The proposed QC LDPC codes can be constructed for various code rates and lengths including the minimum achievable length for a given design rate, which cannot be achieved by the existing high-rate QC LDPC codes. It is observed that the parity-check matrices of the proposed QC LDPC codes have full rank. It is shown that the error correcting performance of the proposed QC LDPC codes of short and moderate lengths is almost the same as that of the existing ones through numerical analysis.
1211.3831
Objective Improvement in Information-Geometric Optimization
cs.LG cs.AI math.OC stat.ML
Information-Geometric Optimization (IGO) is a unified framework of stochastic algorithms for optimization problems. Given a family of probability distributions, IGO turns the original optimization problem into a new maximization problem on the parameter space of the probability distributions. IGO updates the parameter of the probability distribution along the natural gradient, taken with respect to the Fisher metric on the parameter manifold, aiming at maximizing an adaptive transform of the objective function. IGO recovers several known algorithms as particular instances: for the family of Bernoulli distributions IGO recovers PBIL, for the family of Gaussian distributions the pure rank-mu CMA-ES update is recovered, and for exponential families in expectation parametrization the cross-entropy/ML method is recovered. This article provides a theoretical justification for the IGO framework, by proving that any step size not greater than 1 guarantees monotone improvement over the course of optimization, in terms of q-quantile values of the objective function f. The range of admissible step sizes is independent of f and its domain. We extend the result to cover the case of different step sizes for blocks of the parameters in the IGO algorithm. Moreover, we prove that expected fitness improves over time when fitness-proportional selection is applied, in which case the RPP algorithm is recovered.
1211.3845
A Bayesian Interpretation of the Particle Swarm Optimization and Its Kernel Extension
cs.NE
Particle swarm optimization is a popular method for solving difficult optimization problems. There have been attempts to formulate the method in formal probabilistic or stochastic terms (e.g. bare bones particle swarm) with the aim to achieve more generality and explain the practical behavior of the method. Here we present a Bayesian interpretation of the particle swarm optimization. This interpretation provides a formal framework for incorporation of prior knowledge about the problem that is being solved. Furthermore, it also allows to extend the particle optimization method through the use of kernel functions that represent the intermediary transformation of the data into a different space where the optimization problem is expected to be easier to be resolved, such transformation can be seen as a form of prior knowledge about the nature of the optimization problem. We derive from the general Bayesian formulation the commonly used particle swarm methods as particular cases.
1211.3869
Transform coder identification based on quantization footprints and lattice theory
cs.IT math.IT
Transform coding is routinely used for lossy compression of discrete sources with memory. The input signal is divided into N-dimensional vectors, which are transformed by means of a linear mapping. Then, transform coefficients are quantized and entropy coded. In this paper we consider the problem of identifying the transform matrix as well as the quantization step sizes. We study the challenging case in which the only available information is a set of P transform decoded vectors. We formulate the problem in terms of finding the lattice with the largest determinant that contains all observed vectors. We propose an algorithm that is able to find the optimal solution and we formally study its convergence properties. Our analysis shows that it is possible to identify successfully both the transform and the quantization step sizes when P >= N + d where d is a small integer, and the probability of failure decreases exponentially to zero as P - N increases.
1211.3871
Multi Relational Data Mining Approaches: A Data Mining Technique
cs.DB
The multi relational data mining approach has developed as an alternative way for handling the structured data such that RDBMS. This will provides the mining in multiple tables directly. In MRDM the patterns are available in multiple tables (relations) from a relational database. As the data are available over the many tables which will affect the many problems in the practice of the data mining. To deal with this problem, one either constructs a single table by Propositionalisation, or uses a Multi-Relational Data Mining algorithm. MRDM approaches have been successfully applied in the area of bioinformatics. Three popular pattern finding techniques classification, clustering and association are frequently used in MRDM. Multi relational approach has developed as an alternative for analyzing the structured data such as relational database. MRDM allowing applying directly in the data mining in multiple tables. To avoid the expensive joining operations and semantic losses we used the MRDM technique. This paper focuses some of the application areas of MRDM and feature directions as well as the comparison of ILP, GM, SSDM and MRDM
1211.3882
Gliders2012: Development and Competition Results
cs.AI cs.MA cs.RO
The RoboCup 2D Simulation League incorporates several challenging features, setting a benchmark for Artificial Intelligence (AI). In this paper we describe some of the ideas and tools around the development of our team, Gliders2012. In our description, we focus on the evaluation function as one of our central mechanisms for action selection. We also point to a new framework for watching log files in a web browser that we release for use and further development by the RoboCup community. Finally, we also summarize results of the group and final matches we played during RoboCup 2012, with Gliders2012 finishing 4th out of 19 teams.
1211.3886
Maximum Eigenmode Relaying with statistical Channel State Information at the Relay
cs.IT math.IT
Optimal precoding in the relay is investigated to maximize ergodic capacity of a multiple antenna relay channel. The source and the relay nodes are equipped with multiple antennas and the destination with a single antenna. It is assumed that the channel covariance matrices of the relay's receive and transmit channels are available to the relay, and optimal precoding at the relay is investigated. It is shown that the optimal transmission from the relay should be conducted in the direction of the eigenvectors of the transmit-channel covariance matrix. Then, we derive the necessary and sufficient conditions under which the relay transmission only from the strongest eigenvector achieves capacity; this method is called Maximum Eigenmode Relaying (MER).
1211.3901
Visual Recognition of Isolated Swedish Sign Language Signs
cs.CV
We present a method for recognition of isolated Swedish Sign Language signs. The method will be used in a game intended to help children training signing at home, as a complement to training with a teacher. The target group is not primarily deaf children, but children with language disorders. Using sign language as a support in conversation has been shown to greatly stimulate the speech development of such children. The signer is captured with an RGB-D (Kinect) sensor, which has three advantages over a regular RGB camera. Firstly, it allows complex backgrounds to be removed easily. We segment the hands and face based on skin color and depth information. Secondly, it helps with the resolution of hand over face occlusion. Thirdly, signs take place in 3D; some aspects of the signs are defined by hand motion vertically to the image plane. This motion can be estimated if the depth is observable. The 3D motion of the hands relative to the torso are used as a cue together with the hand shape, and HMMs trained with this input are used for classification. To obtain higher robustness towards differences across signers, Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis is used to find the combinations of features that are most descriptive for each sign, regardless of signer. Experiments show that the system can distinguish signs from a challenging 94 word vocabulary with a precision of up to 94% in the signer dependent case and up to 47% in the signer independent case.
1211.3934
Patterns, entropy, and predictability of human mobility and life
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Cellular phones are now offering an ubiquitous means for scientists to observe life: how people act, move and respond to external influences. They can be utilized as measurement devices of individual persons and for groups of people of the social context and the related interactions. The picture of human life that emerges shows complexity, which is manifested in such data in properties of the spatiotemporal tracks of individuals. We extract from smartphone-based data for a set of persons important locations such as "home", "work" and so forth over fixed length time-slots covering the days in the data-set. This set of typical places is heavy-tailed, a power-law distribution with an exponent close to -1.7. To analyze the regularities and stochastic features present, the days are classified for each person into regular, personal patterns. To this are superimposed fluctuations for each day. This randomness is measured by "life" entropy, computed both before and after finding the clustering so as to subtract the contribution of a number of patterns. The main issue, that we then address, is how predictable individuals are in their mobility. The patterns and entropy are reflected in the predictability of the mobility of the life both individually and on average. We explore the simple approaches to guess the location from the typical behavior, and of exploiting the transition probabilities with time from location or activity A to B. The patterns allow an enhanced predictability, at least up to a few hours into the future from the current location. Such fixed habits are most clearly visible in the working-day length.
1211.3951
Composite Centrality: A Natural Scale for Complex Evolving Networks
stat.ME cs.SI physics.data-an physics.soc-ph
We derive a composite centrality measure for general weighted and directed complex networks, based on measure standardisation and invariant statistical inheritance schemes. Different schemes generate different intermediate abstract measures providing additional information, while the composite centrality measure tends to the standard normal distribution. This offers a unified scale to measure node and edge centralities for complex evolving networks under a uniform framework. Considering two real-world cases of the world trade web and the world migration web, both during a time span of 40 years, we propose a standard set-up to demonstrate its remarkable normative power and accuracy. We illustrate the applicability of the proposed framework for large and arbitrary complex systems, as well as its limitations, through extensive numerical simulations.
1211.3955
On Calibrated Predictions for Auction Selection Mechanisms
cs.GT cs.LG
Calibration is a basic property for prediction systems, and algorithms for achieving it are well-studied in both statistics and machine learning. In many applications, however, the predictions are used to make decisions that select which observations are made. This makes calibration difficult, as adjusting predictions to achieve calibration changes future data. We focus on click-through-rate (CTR) prediction for search ad auctions. Here, CTR predictions are used by an auction that determines which ads are shown, and we want to maximize the value generated by the auction. We show that certain natural notions of calibration can be impossible to achieve, depending on the details of the auction. We also show that it can be impossible to maximize auction efficiency while using calibrated predictions. Finally, we give conditions under which calibration is achievable and simultaneously maximizes auction efficiency: roughly speaking, bids and queries must not contain information about CTRs that is not already captured by the predictions.
1211.3966
Lasso Screening Rules via Dual Polytope Projection
cs.LG stat.ML
Lasso is a widely used regression technique to find sparse representations. When the dimension of the feature space and the number of samples are extremely large, solving the Lasso problem remains challenging. To improve the efficiency of solving large-scale Lasso problems, El Ghaoui and his colleagues have proposed the SAFE rules which are able to quickly identify the inactive predictors, i.e., predictors that have $0$ components in the solution vector. Then, the inactive predictors or features can be removed from the optimization problem to reduce its scale. By transforming the standard Lasso to its dual form, it can be shown that the inactive predictors include the set of inactive constraints on the optimal dual solution. In this paper, we propose an efficient and effective screening rule via Dual Polytope Projections (DPP), which is mainly based on the uniqueness and nonexpansiveness of the optimal dual solution due to the fact that the feasible set in the dual space is a convex and closed polytope. Moreover, we show that our screening rule can be extended to identify inactive groups in group Lasso. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no "exact" screening rule for group Lasso. We have evaluated our screening rule using synthetic and real data sets. Results show that our rule is more effective in identifying inactive predictors than existing state-of-the-art screening rules for Lasso.
1211.4000
The Performance of Betting Lines for Predicting the Outcome of NFL Games
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We investigated the performance of the collective intelligence of NFL fans predicting the outcome of games as realized through the Vegas betting lines. Using data from 2560 games (all post-expansion, regular- and post-season games from 2002-2011), we investigated the opening and closing lines, and the margin of victory. We found that the line difference (the difference between the opening and closing line) could be used to retroactively predict divisional winners with no less accuracy than 75% accuracy (i.e., "straight up" predictions). We also found that although home teams only beat the spread 47% of the time, a strategy of betting the home team underdogs (from 2002-2011) would have produced a cumulative winning strategy of 53.5%, above the threshold of 52.38% needed to break even.
1211.4014
Intermediate Performance Analysis of Growth Codes
cs.IT cs.MM cs.NI math.IT
Growth codes are a subclass of Rateless codes that have found interesting applications in data dissemination problems. Compared to other Rateless and conventional channel codes, Growth codes show improved intermediate performance which is particularly useful in applications where performance increases with the number of decoded data units. In this paper, we provide a generic analytical framework for studying the asymptotic performance of Growth codes in different settings. Our analysis based on Wormald method applies to any class of Rateless codes that does not include a precoding step. We evaluate the decoding probability model for short codeblocks and validate our findings by experiments. We then exploit the decoding probability model in an illustrative application of Growth codes to error resilient video transmission. The video transmission problem is cast as a joint source and channel rate allocation problem that is shown to be convex with respect to the channel rate. This application permits to highlight the main advantage of Growth codes that is improved performance (hence distortion in video) in the intermediate loss region.
1211.4038
Stochastic receding horizon control of nonlinear stochastic systems with probabilistic state constraints
cs.SY cs.RO math.OC
The paper describes a receding horizon control design framework for continuous-time stochastic nonlinear systems subject to probabilistic state constraints. The intention is to derive solutions that are implementable in real-time on currently available mobile processors. The approach consists of decomposing the problem into designing receding horizon reference paths based on the drift component of the system dynamics, and then implementing a stochastic optimal controller to allow the system to stay close and follow the reference path. In some cases, the stochastic optimal controller can be obtained in closed form; in more general cases, pre-computed numerical solutions can be implemented in real-time without the need for on-line computation. The convergence of the closed loop system is established assuming no constraints on control inputs, and simulation results are provided to corroborate the theoretical predictions.
1211.4041
Modeling, Analysis and Design for Carrier Aggregation in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
Carrier aggregation (CA) and small cells are two distinct features of next-generation cellular networks. Cellular networks with small cells take on a very heterogeneous characteristic, and are often referred to as HetNets. In this paper, we introduce a load-aware model for CA-enabled \textit{multi}-band HetNets. Under this model, the impact of biasing can be more appropriately characterized; for example, it is observed that with large enough biasing, the spectral efficiency of small cells may increase while its counterpart in a fully-loaded model always decreases. Further, our analysis reveals that the peak data rate does not depend on the base station density and transmit powers; this strongly motivates other approaches e.g. CA to increase the peak data rate. Last but not least, different band deployment configurations are studied and compared. We find that with large enough small cell density, spatial reuse with small cells outperforms adding more spectrum for increasing user rate. More generally, universal cochannel deployment typically yields the largest rate; and thus a capacity loss exists in orthogonal deployment. This performance gap can be reduced by appropriately tuning the HetNet coverage distribution (e.g. by optimizing biasing factors).
1211.4056
Two Approaches to the Construction of Deletion Correcting Codes: Weight Partitioning and Optimal Colorings
cs.IT cs.DM math.CO math.IT
We consider the problem of constructing deletion correcting codes over a binary alphabet and take a graph theoretic view. An $n$-bit $s$-deletion correcting code is an independent set in a particular graph. We propose constructing such a code by taking the union of many constant Hamming weight codes. This results in codes that have additional structure. Searching for codes in constant Hamming weight induced subgraphs is computationally easier than searching the original graph. We prove a lower bound on size of a codebook constructed this way for any number of deletions and show that it is only a small factor below the corresponding lower bound on unrestricted codes. In the single deletion case, we find optimal colorings of the constant Hamming weight induced subgraphs. We show that the resulting code is asymptotically optimal. We discuss the relationship between codes and colorings and observe that the VT codes are optimal in a coloring sense. We prove a new lower bound on the chromatic number of the deletion channel graphs. Colorings of the deletion channel graphs that match this bound do not necessarily produce asymptotically optimal codes.
1211.4077
Technical Report: Observability with Random Observations
cs.SY
Recovery of the initial state of a high-dimensional system can require a large number of measurements. In this paper, we explain how this burden can be significantly reduced when randomized measurement operators are employed. Our work builds upon recent results from Compressive Sensing (CS). In particular, we make the connection to CS analysis for random block diagonal matrices. By deriving Concentration of Measure (CoM) inequalities, we show that the observability matrix satisfies the Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) (a sufficient condition for stable recovery of sparse vectors) under certain conditions on the state transition matrix. For example, we show that if the state transition matrix is unitary, and if independent, randomly-populated measurement matrices are employed, then it is possible to uniquely recover a sparse high-dimensional initial state when the total number of measurements scales linearly in the sparsity level (the number of non-zero entries) of the initial state and logarithmically in the state dimension. We further extend our RIP analysis for scaled unitary and symmetric state transition matrices. We support our analysis with a case study of a two-dimensional diffusion process.
1211.4081
Network Equivalence in the Presence of an Eavesdropper
cs.IT math.IT
We consider networks of noisy degraded wiretap channels in the presence of an eavesdropper. For the case where the eavesdropper can wiretap at most one channel at a time, we show that the secrecy capacity region, for a broad class of channels and any given network topology and communication demands, is equivalent to that of a corresponding network where each noisy wiretap channel is replaced by a noiseless wiretap channel. Thus in this case there is a separation between wiretap channel coding on each channel and secure network coding on the resulting noiseless network. We show with an example that such separation does not hold when the eavesdropper can access multiple channels at the same time, for which case we provide upper and lower bounding noiseless networks.
1211.4094
Implementing the Stochastics Brane Calculus in a Generic Stochastic Abstract Machine
cs.CE cs.LO
In this paper, we deal with the problem of implementing an abstract machine for a stochastic version of the Brane Calculus. Instead of defining an ad hoc abstract machine, we consider the generic stochastic abstract machine introduced by Lakin, Paulev\'e and Phillips. The nested structure of membranes is flattened into a set of species where the hierarchical structure is represented by means of names. In order to reduce the overhead introduced by this encoding, we modify the machine by adding a copy-on-write optimization strategy. We prove that this implementation is adequate with respect to the stochastic structural operational semantics recently given for the Brane Calculus. These techniques can be ported also to other stochastic calculi dealing with nested structures.
1211.4095
RNA interference and Register Machines (extended abstract)
cs.LO cs.CE q-bio.MN
RNA interference (RNAi) is a mechanism whereby small RNAs (siRNAs) directly control gene expression without assistance from proteins. This mechanism consists of interactions between RNAs and small RNAs both of which may be single or double stranded. The target of the mechanism is mRNA to be degraded or aberrated, while the initiator is double stranded RNA (dsRNA) to be cleaved into siRNAs. Observing the digital nature of RNAi, we represent RNAi as a Minsky register machine such that (i) The two registers hold single and double stranded RNAs respectively, and (ii) Machine's instructions are interpreted by interactions of enzyme (Dicer), siRNA (with RISC com- plex) and polymerization (RdRp) to the appropriate registers. Interpreting RNAi as a computational structure, we can investigate the computational meaning of RNAi, especially its complexity. Initially, the machine is configured as a Chemical Ground Form (CGF), which generates incorrect jumps. To remedy this problem, the system is remodeled as recursive RNAi, in which siRNA targets not only mRNA but also the machine instructional analogues of Dicer and RISC. Finally, probabilistic termination is investigated in the recursive RNAi system.
1211.4116
The Algebraic Combinatorial Approach for Low-Rank Matrix Completion
cs.LG cs.NA math.AG math.CO stat.ML
We present a novel algebraic combinatorial view on low-rank matrix completion based on studying relations between a few entries with tools from algebraic geometry and matroid theory. The intrinsic locality of the approach allows for the treatment of single entries in a closed theoretical and practical framework. More specifically, apart from introducing an algebraic combinatorial theory of low-rank matrix completion, we present probability-one algorithms to decide whether a particular entry of the matrix can be completed. We also describe methods to complete that entry from a few others, and to estimate the error which is incurred by any method completing that entry. Furthermore, we show how known results on matrix completion and their sampling assumptions can be related to our new perspective and interpreted in terms of a completability phase transition.
1211.4122
Cost-sensitive C4.5 with post-pruning and competition
cs.AI
Decision tree is an effective classification approach in data mining and machine learning. In applications, test costs and misclassification costs should be considered while inducing decision trees. Recently, some cost-sensitive learning algorithms based on ID3 such as CS-ID3, IDX, \lambda-ID3 have been proposed to deal with the issue. These algorithms deal with only symbolic data. In this paper, we develop a decision tree algorithm inspired by C4.5 for numeric data. There are two major issues for our algorithm. First, we develop the test cost weighted information gain ratio as the heuristic information. According to this heuristic information, our algorithm is to pick the attribute that provides more gain ratio and costs less for each selection. Second, we design a post-pruning strategy through considering the tradeoff between test costs and misclassification costs of the generated decision tree. In this way, the total cost is reduced. Experimental results indicate that (1) our algorithm is stable and effective; (2) the post-pruning technique reduces the total cost significantly; (3) the competition strategy is effective to obtain a cost-sensitive decision tree with low cost.
1211.4123
Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering: Concepts and Principles
cs.SE cs.MA
Following established tradition, software engineering today is rooted in a conceptually centralized way of thinking. The primary SE artifact is a specification of a machine -- a computational artifact -- that would meet the (elicited and) stated requirements. Therein lies a fundamental mismatch with (open) sociotechnical systems, which involve multiple autonomous social participants or principals who interact with each other to further their individual goals. No central machine governs the behaviors of the various principals. We introduce Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering (IOSE) as an approach expressly suited to the needs of open sociotechnical systems. In IOSE, specifying a system amounts to specifying the interactions among the principals as protocols. IOSE reinterprets the classical software engineering principles of modularity, abstraction, separation of concerns, and encapsulation in a manner that accords with the realities of sociotechnical systems. To highlight the novelty of IOSE, we show where well-known SE methodologies, especially those that explicitly aim to address either sociotechnical systems or the modeling of interactions among autonomous principals, fail to satisfy the IOSE principles.
1211.4125
Some new similarity measures for hesitant fuzzy sets and their applications in multiple attribute decision making
cs.IT math.IT
Similarity measure is a very important topic in fuzzy set theory. Torra (2010) proposed the notion of hesitant fuzzy set(HFS), which is a generalization of the notion of Zadeh' fuzzy set. In this paper, some new similarity measures for HFSs are developed. Based on the proposed similarity measures, a method of multiple attribute decision making under hesitant fuzzy environment is also introduced. Additionally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the application of the proposed similarity measures of HFSs to decision-making.
1211.4133
A Logic and Adaptive Approach for Efficient Diagnosis Systems using CBR
cs.AI
Case Based Reasoning (CBR) is an intelligent way of thinking based on experience and capitalization of already solved cases (source cases) to find a solution to a new problem (target case). Retrieval phase consists on identifying source cases that are similar to the target case. This phase may lead to erroneous results if the existing knowledge imperfections are not taken into account. This work presents a novel solution based on Fuzzy logic techniques and adaptation measures which aggregate weighted similarities to improve the retrieval results. To confirm the efficiency of our solution, we have applied it to the industrial diagnosis domain. The obtained results are more efficient results than those obtained by applying typical measures.
1211.4142
Data Clustering via Principal Direction Gap Partitioning
stat.ML cs.LG
We explore the geometrical interpretation of the PCA based clustering algorithm Principal Direction Divisive Partitioning (PDDP). We give several examples where this algorithm breaks down, and suggest a new method, gap partitioning, which takes into account natural gaps in the data between clusters. Geometric features of the PCA space are derived and illustrated and experimental results are given which show our method is comparable on the datasets used in the original paper on PDDP.
1211.4150
Efficiently Learning from Revealed Preference
cs.GT cs.DS cs.LG
In this paper, we consider the revealed preferences problem from a learning perspective. Every day, a price vector and a budget is drawn from an unknown distribution, and a rational agent buys his most preferred bundle according to some unknown utility function, subject to the given prices and budget constraint. We wish not only to find a utility function which rationalizes a finite set of observations, but to produce a hypothesis valuation function which accurately predicts the behavior of the agent in the future. We give efficient algorithms with polynomial sample-complexity for agents with linear valuation functions, as well as for agents with linearly separable, concave valuation functions with bounded second derivative.
1211.4161
Semantic Polarity of Adjectival Predicates in Online Reviews
cs.CL
Web users produce more and more documents expressing opinions. Because these have become important resources for customers and manufacturers, many have focused on them. Opinions are often expressed through adjectives with positive or negative semantic values. In extracting information from users' opinion in online reviews, exact recognition of the semantic polarity of adjectives is one of the most important requirements. Since adjectives have different semantic orientations according to contexts, it is not satisfying to extract opinion information without considering the semantic and lexical relations between the adjectives and the feature nouns appropriate to a given domain. In this paper, we present a classification of adjectives by polarity, and we analyze adjectives that are undetermined in the absence of contexts. Our research should be useful for accurately predicting semantic orientations of opinion sentences, and should be taken into account before relying on an automatic methods.
1211.4174
Energy-Efficient Nonstationary Spectrum Sharing
cs.IT cs.GT math.IT
We develop a novel design framework for energy-efficient spectrum sharing among autonomous users who aim to minimize their energy consumptions subject to minimum throughput requirements. Most existing works proposed stationary spectrum sharing policies, in which users transmit at fixed power levels. Since users transmit simultaneously under stationary policies, to fulfill minimum throughput requirements, they need to transmit at high power levels to overcome interference. To improve energy efficiency, we construct nonstationary spectrum sharing policies, in which the users transmit at time-varying power levels. Specifically, we focus on TDMA (time-division multiple access) policies in which one user transmits at each time (but not in a round-robin fashion). The proposed policy can be implemented by each user running a low-complexity algorithm in a decentralized manner. It achieves high energy efficiency even when the users have erroneous and binary feedback about their interference levels. Moreover, it can adapt to the dynamic entry and exit of users. The proposed policy is also deviation-proof, namely autonomous users will find it in their self-interests to follow it. Compared to existing policies, the proposed policy can achieve an energy saving of up to 90% when the number of users is high.
1211.4191
Secondary Constructions of Bent Functions and Highly Nonlinear Resilient Functions
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we first present a new secondary construction of bent functions (building new bent functions from two already defined ones). Furthermore, we apply the construction using as initial functions some specific bent functions and then provide several concrete constructions of bent functions. The second part of the paper is devoted to the constructions of resilient functions. We give a generalization of the indirect sum construction for constructing resilient functions with high nonlinearity. In addition, we modify the generalized construction to ensure a high nonlinearity of the constructed function.
1211.4198
Degrees of Freedom of the 3-User Rank-Deficient MIMO Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
We provide the degrees of freedom (DoF) characterization for the $3$-user $M_T\times M_R$ multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel (IC) with \emph{rank-deficient} channel matrices, where each transmitter is equipped with $M_T$ antennas and each receiver with $M_R$ antennas, and the interfering channel matrices from each transmitter to the other two receivers are of ranks $D_1$ and $D_2$, respectively. One important intermediate step for both the converse and achievability arguments is to convert the fully-connected rank-deficient channel into an equivalent partially-connected full-rank MIMO-IC by invertible linear transformations. As such, existing techniques developed for full-rank MIMO-IC can be incorporated to derive the DoF outer and inner bounds for the rank-deficient case. Our result shows that when the interfering links are weak in terms of the channel ranks, i.e., $D_1+D_2\leq \min(M_T, M_R)$, zero forcing is sufficient to achieve the optimal DoF. On the other hand, when $D_1+D_2> \min(M_T, M_R)$, a combination of zero forcing and interference alignment is in general required for DoF optimality. The DoF characterization obtained in this paper unifies several existing results in the literature.
1211.4213
On the Pareto-Optimal Beam Structure and Design for Multi-User MIMO Interference Channels
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, the Pareto-optimal beam structure for multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channels is investigated and a necessary condition for any Pareto-optimal transmit signal covariance matrix is presented for the K-pair Gaussian (N,M_1,...,M_K) interference channel. It is shown that any Pareto-optimal transmit signal covariance matrix at a transmitter should have its column space contained in the union of the eigen-spaces of the channel matrices from the transmitter to all receivers. Based on this necessary condition, an efficient parameterization for the beam search space is proposed. The proposed parameterization is given by the product manifold of a Stiefel manifold and a subset of a hyperplane and enables us to construct a very efficient beam design algorithm by exploiting its rich geometrical structure and existing tools for optimization on Stiefel manifolds. Reduction in the beam search space dimension and computational complexity by the proposed parameterization and the proposed beam design approach is significant when the number of transmit antennas is larger than the sum of the numbers of receive antennas, as in upcoming cellular networks adopting massive MIMO technologies. Numerical results validate the proposed parameterization and the proposed cooperative beam design method based on the parameterization for MIMO interference channels.
1211.4218
Modeling Earthen Dike Stability: Sensitivity Analysis and Automatic Calibration of Diffusivities Based on Live Sensor Data
cs.CE physics.geo-ph
The paper describes concept and implementation details of integrating a finite element module for dike stability analysis Virtual Dike into an early warning system for flood protection. The module operates in real-time mode and includes fluid and structural sub-models for simulation of porous flow through the dike and for dike stability analysis. Real-time measurements obtained from pore pressure sensors are fed into the simulation module, to be compared with simulated pore pressure dynamics. Implementation of the module has been performed for a real-world test case - an earthen levee protecting a sea-port in Groningen, the Netherlands. Sensitivity analysis and calibration of diffusivities have been performed for tidal fluctuations. An algorithm for automatic diffusivities calibration for a heterogeneous dike is proposed and studied. Analytical solutions describing tidal propagation in one-dimensional saturated aquifer are employed in the algorithm to generate initial estimates of diffusivities.
1211.4235
Dissemination of Health Information within Social Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In this paper, we investigate, how information about a common food born health hazard, known as Campylobacter, spreads once it was delivered to a random sample of individuals in France. The central question addressed here is how individual characteristics and the various aspects of social network influence the spread of information. A key claim of our paper is that information diffusion processes occur in a patterned network of social ties of heterogeneous actors. Our percolation models show that the characteristics of the recipients of the information matter as much if not more than the characteristics of the sender of the information in deciding whether the information will be transmitted through a particular tie. We also found that at least for this particular advisory, it is not the perceived need of the recipients for the information that matters but their general interest in the topic.
1211.4246
What Regularized Auto-Encoders Learn from the Data Generating Distribution
cs.LG stat.ML
What do auto-encoders learn about the underlying data generating distribution? Recent work suggests that some auto-encoder variants do a good job of capturing the local manifold structure of data. This paper clarifies some of these previous observations by showing that minimizing a particular form of regularized reconstruction error yields a reconstruction function that locally characterizes the shape of the data generating density. We show that the auto-encoder captures the score (derivative of the log-density with respect to the input). It contradicts previous interpretations of reconstruction error as an energy function. Unlike previous results, the theorems provided here are completely generic and do not depend on the parametrization of the auto-encoder: they show what the auto-encoder would tend to if given enough capacity and examples. These results are for a contractive training criterion we show to be similar to the denoising auto-encoder training criterion with small corruption noise, but with contraction applied on the whole reconstruction function rather than just encoder. Similarly to score matching, one can consider the proposed training criterion as a convenient alternative to maximum likelihood because it does not involve a partition function. Finally, we show how an approximate Metropolis-Hastings MCMC can be setup to recover samples from the estimated distribution, and this is confirmed in sampling experiments.
1211.4254
Minimum CSIT to achieve Maximum Degrees of Freedom for the MISO BC
cs.IT math.IT
Channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is a key ingredient in realizing the multiplexing gain provided by distributed MIMO systems. For a downlink multiple-input single output (MISO) broadcast channel, with M antennas at the transmitters and K single antenna receivers, the maximum multiplexing gain or the maximum degrees of freedom (DoF) is min(M,K). The optimal DoF of min(M,K) is achievable if the transmitter has access to perfect, instantaneous CSIT from all receivers. In this paper, we pose the question that what is minimum amount of CSIT required per user in order to achieve the maximum DoF of min(M,K). By minimum amount of CSIT per user, we refer to the minimum fraction of time that the transmitter has access to perfect and instantaneous CSIT from a user. Through a novel converse proof and an achievable scheme, it is shown that the minimum fraction of time, perfect CSIT is required per user in order to achieve the DoF of min(M,K) is given by min(M,K)/K.
1211.4264
Non-Local Patch Regression: Robust Image Denoising in Patch Space
cs.CV
It was recently demonstrated in [Chaudhury et al.,Non-Local Euclidean Medians,2012] that the denoising performance of Non-Local Means (NLM) can be improved at large noise levels by replacing the mean by the robust Euclidean median. Numerical experiments on synthetic and natural images showed that the latter consistently performed better than NLM beyond a certain noise level, and significantly so for images with sharp edges. The Euclidean mean and median can be put into a common regression (on the patch space) framework, in which the l_2 norm of the residuals is considered in the former, while the l_1 norm is considered in the latter. The natural question then is what happens if we consider l_p (0<p<1) regression? We investigate this possibility in this paper.
1211.4266
A Dynamical System for PageRank with Time-Dependent Teleportation
cs.SI cs.IR math.DS physics.soc-ph
We propose a dynamical system that captures changes to the network centrality of nodes as external interest in those nodes vary. We derive this system by adding time-dependent teleportation to the PageRank score. The result is not a single set of importance scores, but rather a time-dependent set. These can be converted into ranked lists in a variety of ways, for instance, by taking the largest change in the importance score. For an interesting class of the dynamic teleportation functions, we derive closed form solutions for the dynamic PageRank vector. The magnitude of the deviation from a static PageRank vector is given by a PageRank problem with complex-valued teleportation parameters. Moreover, these dynamical systems are easy to evaluate. We demonstrate the utility of dynamic teleportation on both the article graph of Wikipedia, where the external interest information is given by the number of hourly visitors to each page, and the Twitter social network, where external interest is the number of tweets per month. For these problems, we show that using information from the dynamical system helps improve a prediction task and identify trends in the data.
1211.4272
On Achievable Schemes of Interference Alignment in Constant Channels via Finite Amplify-and-Forward Relays
cs.IT math.IT
This paper elaborates on the achievable schemes of interference alignment in constant channels via finite amplify-and-forward (AF) relays. Consider $K$ sources communicating with $K$ destinations without direct links besides the relay connections. The total number of relays is finite. The objective is to achieve interference alignment for all user pairs to obtain half of their interference-free degrees of freedom. In general, two strategies are employed: coding at the edge and coding in the middle, in which relays show different roles. The contributions are that two fundamental and critical elements are captured to enable interference alignment in this network: channel randomness or relativity; subspace dimension suppression.
1211.4275
Close-Form Design of Antenna-Constrained Multi-Cell Multi-User Downlink Interference Alignment
cs.IT math.IT
This paper investigates the downlink channels in multi-cell multi-user interfering networks. The goal is to propose close-form designs to obtain degrees of freedom (DoF) in high SNR region for the network composed of base stations (BS) as transmitters and mobile stations (MS) as receivers. Consider the realistic system, both BS and MS have finite antennas, so that the design of interference alignment is highly constrained by the feasibility conditions. The focus of design is to explore potential opportunities of alignment in the subspace both from the BS transmit side and from the MS receive side. The new IA schemes for cellular downlink channels are in the form of causal dynamic processes in contrary to conventional static IA schemes. For different implementations, system conditions are compared from all aspects, which include antenna usage, CSI overhead and computational complexity. This research scope covers a wide range of typical multi-cell multi-user network models. The first one is a $K$-cell fully connected cellular network; the second one is a Wyner cyclic cellular network with two adjacent interfering links; the third one is a Wyner cyclic cellular network with single adjacent interfering link considering cell-edge and cell-interior users respectively.
1211.4276
On Achievable Schemes of Interference Alignment with Double-Layered Symbol Extensions in Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
This paper looks into the $K$-user interference channel. Interference Alignment is much likely to be applied with double-layered symbol extensions, either for constant channels in the H$\o$st-Madsen-Nosratinia conjecture or slowly changing channels. In our work, the core idea relies on double-layered symbol extensions to artificially construct equivalent time-variant channels to provide crucial \textit{channel randomness or relativity} required by conventional Cadambe-Jafar scheme in time-variant channels \cite{IA-DOF-Kuser-Interference}.
1211.4289
Application of three graph Laplacian based semi-supervised learning methods to protein function prediction problem
cs.LG cs.CE q-bio.QM stat.ML
Protein function prediction is the important problem in modern biology. In this paper, the un-normalized, symmetric normalized, and random walk graph Laplacian based semi-supervised learning methods will be applied to the integrated network combined from multiple networks to predict the functions of all yeast proteins in these multiple networks. These multiple networks are network created from Pfam domain structure, co-participation in a protein complex, protein-protein interaction network, genetic interaction network, and network created from cell cycle gene expression measurements. Multiple networks are combined with fixed weights instead of using convex optimization to determine the combination weights due to high time complexity of convex optimization method. This simple combination method will not affect the accuracy performance measures of the three semi-supervised learning methods. Experiment results show that the un-normalized and symmetric normalized graph Laplacian based methods perform slightly better than random walk graph Laplacian based method for integrated network. Moreover, the accuracy performance measures of these three semi-supervised learning methods for integrated network are much better than the best accuracy performance measures of these three methods for the individual network.
1211.4293
Exact Recovery of Sparse Signals via Orthogonal Matching Pursuit: How Many Iterations Do We Need?
cs.IT math.IT
Orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) is a greedy algorithm widely used for the recovery of sparse signals from compressed measurements. In this paper, we analyze the number of iterations required for the OMP algorithm to perform exact recovery of sparse signals. Our analysis shows that OMP can accurately recover all $K$-sparse signals within $\lceil 2.8 K \rceil$ iterations when the measurement matrix satisfies a restricted isometry property (RIP). Our result improves upon the recent result of Zhang and also bridges the gap between Zhang's result and the fundamental limit of OMP at which exact recovery of $K$-sparse signals cannot be uniformly guaranteed.
1211.4307
Efficient Superimposition Recovering Algorithm
cs.CV
In this article, we address the issue of recovering latent transparent layers from superimposition images. Here, we assume we have the estimated transformations and extracted gradients of latent layers. To rapidly recover high-quality image layers, we propose an Efficient Superimposition Recovering Algorithm (ESRA) by extending the framework of accelerated gradient method. In addition, a key building block (in each iteration) in our proposed method is the proximal operator calculating. Here we propose to employ a dual approach and present our Parallel Algorithm with Constrained Total Variation (PACTV) method. Our recovering method not only reconstructs high-quality layers without color-bias problem, but also theoretically guarantees good convergence performance.