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1212.0467
Low-rank Matrix Completion using Alternating Minimization
stat.ML cs.LG math.OC
Alternating minimization represents a widely applicable and empirically successful approach for finding low-rank matrices that best fit the given data. For example, for the problem of low-rank matrix completion, this method is believed to be one of the most accurate and efficient, and formed a major component of the winning entry in the Netflix Challenge. In the alternating minimization approach, the low-rank target matrix is written in a bi-linear form, i.e. $X = UV^\dag$; the algorithm then alternates between finding the best $U$ and the best $V$. Typically, each alternating step in isolation is convex and tractable. However the overall problem becomes non-convex and there has been almost no theoretical understanding of when this approach yields a good result. In this paper we present first theoretical analysis of the performance of alternating minimization for matrix completion, and the related problem of matrix sensing. For both these problems, celebrated recent results have shown that they become well-posed and tractable once certain (now standard) conditions are imposed on the problem. We show that alternating minimization also succeeds under similar conditions. Moreover, compared to existing results, our paper shows that alternating minimization guarantees faster (in particular, geometric) convergence to the true matrix, while allowing a simpler analysis.
1212.0493
Multi-user Diversity in Spectrum Sharing Systems over Fading Channels with Average Power Constraints
cs.IT math.IT
The multi-user diversity in spectrum sharing cognitive radio systems with average power constraints over fading channels is investigated. Average power constraints are imposed for both the transmit power at the secondary transmitter and the interference power received at the primary receiver in order to provide optimal power allocation for capacity maximization at the secondary system and protection at the primary system respectively. Multiple secondary and primary receivers are considered and the corresponding fading distributions for the Rayleigh and Nakagami-m fading channels are derived. Based on the derived formulation of the fading distributions, the average achievable channel capacity and the outage probability experienced at the secondary system are obtained, revealing the impact of the average power constraints on optimal power allocation in multi-user diversity technique in fading environments with multiple secondary and primary receivers that share the same channel. The obtained results highlight the advantage of having on one hand more secondary receivers and on the other hand fewer primary receivers manifested as an increase in the achievable capacity.
1212.0494
Identification Via Quantum Channels
quant-ph cs.IT math-ph math.IT math.MP
We review the development of the quantum version of Ahlswede and Dueck's theory of identification via channels. As is often the case in quantum probability, there is not just one but several quantizations: we know at least two different concepts of identification of classical information via quantum channels, and three different identification capacities for quantum information. In the present summary overview we concentrate on conceptual points and open problems, referring the reader to the small set of original articles for details.
1212.0504
Machine learning prediction of cancer cell sensitivity to drugs based on genomic and chemical properties
q-bio.GN cs.CE cs.LG q-bio.CB
Predicting the response of a specific cancer to a therapy is a major goal in modern oncology that should ultimately lead to a personalised treatment. High-throughput screenings of potentially active compounds against a panel of genomically heterogeneous cancer cell lines have unveiled multiple relationships between genomic alterations and drug responses. Various computational approaches have been proposed to predict sensitivity based on genomic features, while others have used the chemical properties of the drugs to ascertain their effect. In an effort to integrate these complementary approaches, we developed machine learning models to predict the response of cancer cell lines to drug treatment, quantified through IC50 values, based on both the genomic features of the cell lines and the chemical properties of the considered drugs. Models predicted IC50 values in a 8-fold cross-validation and an independent blind test with coefficient of determination R2 of 0.72 and 0.64 respectively. Furthermore, models were able to predict with comparable accuracy (R2 of 0.61) IC50s of cell lines from a tissue not used in the training stage. Our in silico models can be used to optimise the experimental design of drug-cell screenings by estimating a large proportion of missing IC50 values rather than experimentally measure them. The implications of our results go beyond virtual drug screening design: potentially thousands of drugs could be probed in silico to systematically test their potential efficacy as anti-tumour agents based on their structure, thus providing a computational framework to identify new drug repositioning opportunities as well as ultimately be useful for personalized medicine by linking the genomic traits of patients to drug sensitivity.
1212.0511
Design of Experiments for Calibration of Planar Anthropomorphic Manipulators
cs.RO
The paper presents a novel technique for the design of optimal calibration experiments for a planar anthropomorphic manipulator with n degrees of freedom. Proposed approach for selection of manipulator configurations allows essentially improving calibration accuracy and reducing parameter identification errors. The results are illustrated by application examples that deal with typical anthropomorphic manipulators.
1212.0518
Sublinear but Never Superlinear Preferential Attachment by Local Network Growth
cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We investigate a class of network growth rules that are based on a redirection algorithm wherein new nodes are added to a network by linking to a randomly chosen target node with some probability 1-r or linking to the parent node of the target node with probability r. For fixed 0<r<1, the redirection algorithm is equivalent to linear preferential attachment. We show that when r is a decaying function of the degree of the parent of the initial target, the redirection algorithm produces sublinear preferential attachment network growth. We also argue that no local redirection algorithm can produce superlinear preferential attachment.
1212.0520
A modular framework for randomness extraction based on Trevisan's construction
cs.IT cs.MS math.IT quant-ph
Informally, an extractor delivers perfect randomness from a source that may be far away from the uniform distribution, yet contains some randomness. This task is a crucial ingredient of any attempt to produce perfectly random numbers---required, for instance, by cryptographic protocols, numerical simulations, or randomised computations. Trevisan's extractor raised considerable theoretical interest not only because of its data parsimony compared to other constructions, but particularly because it is secure against quantum adversaries, making it applicable to quantum key distribution. We discuss a modular, extensible and high-performance implementation of the construction based on various building blocks that can be flexibly combined to satisfy the requirements of a wide range of scenarios. Besides quantitatively analysing the properties of many combinations in practical settings, we improve previous theoretical proofs, and give explicit results for non-asymptotic cases. The self-contained description does not assume familiarity with extractors.
1212.0575
Sparse and Optimal Acquisition Design for Diffusion MRI and Beyond
physics.med-ph cs.CE math.OC physics.comp-ph
The focus of this paper is on the development of a sparse and optimal acquisition (SOA) design for diffusion MRI multiple-shell acquisition and beyond. A novel optimality criterion is proposed for sparse multiple-shell acquisition and quasi multiple-shell designs in diffusion MRI and a novel and effective semi-stochastic and moderately greedy combinatorial search strategy with simulated annealing to locate the optimum design or configuration. Even though the number of distinct configurations for a given set of diffusion gradient directions is very large in general---e.g., in the order of 10^{232} for a set of 144 diffusion gradient directions, the proposed search strategy was found to be effective in finding the optimum configuration. It was found that the square design is the most robust (i.e., with stable condition numbers and A-optimal measures under varying experimental conditions) among many other possible designs of the same sample size. Under the same performance evaluation, the square design was found to be more robust than the widely used sampling schemes similar to that of 3D radial MRI and of diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI).
1212.0578
Max-plus algebra models of queueing networks
math.OC cs.SY
A class of queueing networks which may have an arbitrary topology, and consist of single-server fork-join nodes with both infinite and finite buffers is examined to derive a representation of the network dynamics in terms of max-plus algebra. For the networks, we present a common dynamic state equation which relates the departure epochs of customers from the network nodes in an explicit vector form determined by a state transition matrix. It is shown how the matrices inherent in particular networks may be calculated from the service times of customers. Since, in general, an explicit dynamic equation may not exist for a network, related existence conditions are established in terms of the network topology.
1212.0582
Compositional Stochastic Modeling and Probabilistic Programming
cs.AI cs.PL
Probabilistic programming is related to a compositional approach to stochastic modeling by switching from discrete to continuous time dynamics. In continuous time, an operator-algebra semantics is available in which processes proceeding in parallel (and possibly interacting) have summed time-evolution operators. From this foundation, algorithms for simulation, inference and model reduction may be systematically derived. The useful consequences are potentially far-reaching in computational science, machine learning and beyond. Hybrid compositional stochastic modeling/probabilistic programming approaches may also be possible.
1212.0610
Building Confidential and Efficient Query Services in the Cloud with RASP Data Perturbation
cs.DB cs.CR
With the wide deployment of public cloud computing infrastructures, using clouds to host data query services has become an appealing solution for the advantages on scalability and cost-saving. However, some data might be sensitive that the data owner does not want to move to the cloud unless the data confidentiality and query privacy are guaranteed. On the other hand, a secured query service should still provide efficient query processing and significantly reduce the in-house workload to fully realize the benefits of cloud computing. We propose the RASP data perturbation method to provide secure and efficient range query and kNN query services for protected data in the cloud. The RASP data perturbation method combines order preserving encryption, dimensionality expansion, random noise injection, and random projection, to provide strong resilience to attacks on the perturbed data and queries. It also preserves multidimensional ranges, which allows existing indexing techniques to be applied to speedup range query processing. The kNN-R algorithm is designed to work with the RASP range query algorithm to process the kNN queries. We have carefully analyzed the attacks on data and queries under a precisely defined threat model and realistic security assumptions. Extensive experiments have been conducted to show the advantages of this approach on efficiency and security.
1212.0639
Evaluation of Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithms for Weighted Max-Sat Problem: Technical Report
cs.NE
An experimental evaluation is conducted to asses the performance of 4 different Particle Swarm Optimization neighborhood structures in solving Max-Sat problem. The experiment has shown that none of the algorithms achieves statistically significant performance over the others under confidence level of 0.05.
1212.0655
G-invariant Persistent Homology
math.AT cs.CG cs.CV
Classical persistent homology is a powerful mathematical tool for shape comparison. Unfortunately, it is not tailored to study the action of transformation groups that are different from the group Homeo(X) of all self-homeomorphisms of a topological space X. This fact restricts its use in applications. In order to obtain better lower bounds for the natural pseudo-distance d_G associated with a subgroup G of Homeo(X), we need to adapt persistent homology and consider G-invariant persistent homology. Roughly speaking, the main idea consists in defining persistent homology by means of a set of chains that is invariant under the action of G. In this paper we formalize this idea, and prove the stability of the persistent Betti number functions in G-invariant persistent homology with respect to the natural pseudo-distance d_G. We also show how G-invariant persistent homology could be used in applications concerning shape comparison, when the invariance group is a proper subgroup of the group of all self-homeomorphisms of a topological space. In this paper we will assume that the space X is triangulable, in order to guarantee that the persistent Betti number functions are finite without using any tameness assumption.
1212.0657
Modeling Risk Perception in Networks with Community Structure
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We study the influence of global, local and community-level risk perception on the extinction probability of a disease in several models of social networks. In particular, we study the infection progression as a susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model on several modular networks, formed by a certain number of random and scale-free communities. We find that in the scale-free networks the progression is faster than in random ones with the same average connectivity degree. For what concerns the role of perception, we find that the knowledge of the infection level in one's own neighborhood is the most effective property in stopping the spreading of a disease, but at the same time the more expensive one in terms of the quantity of required information, thus the cost/effectiveness optimum is a tradeoff between several parameters.
1212.0689
Multiscale Community Mining in Networks Using Spectral Graph Wavelets
physics.soc-ph cs.DM cs.SI
For data represented by networks, the community structure of the underlying graph is of great interest. A classical clustering problem is to uncover the overall ``best'' partition of nodes in communities. Here, a more elaborate description is proposed in which community structures are identified at different scales. To this end, we take advantage of the local and scale-dependent information encoded in graph wavelets. After new developments for the practical use of graph wavelets, studying proper scale boundaries and parameters and introducing scaling functions, we propose a method to mine for communities in complex networks in a scale-dependent manner. It relies on classifying nodes according to their wavelets or scaling functions, using a scale-dependent modularity function. An example on a graph benchmark having hierarchical communities shows that we estimate successfully its multiscale structure.
1212.0692
An Empirical Evaluation of Portfolios Approaches for solving CSPs
cs.AI cs.LG
Recent research in areas such as SAT solving and Integer Linear Programming has shown that the performances of a single arbitrarily efficient solver can be significantly outperformed by a portfolio of possibly slower on-average solvers. We report an empirical evaluation and comparison of portfolio approaches applied to Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs). We compared models developed on top of off-the-shelf machine learning algorithms with respect to approaches used in the SAT field and adapted for CSPs, considering different portfolio sizes and using as evaluation metrics the number of solved problems and the time taken to solve them. Results indicate that the best SAT approaches have top performances also in the CSP field and are slightly more competitive than simple models built on top of classification algorithms.
1212.0695
Training Support Vector Machines Using Frank-Wolfe Optimization Methods
cs.LG cs.CV math.OC stat.ML
Training a Support Vector Machine (SVM) requires the solution of a quadratic programming problem (QP) whose computational complexity becomes prohibitively expensive for large scale datasets. Traditional optimization methods cannot be directly applied in these cases, mainly due to memory restrictions. By adopting a slightly different objective function and under mild conditions on the kernel used within the model, efficient algorithms to train SVMs have been devised under the name of Core Vector Machines (CVMs). This framework exploits the equivalence of the resulting learning problem with the task of building a Minimal Enclosing Ball (MEB) problem in a feature space, where data is implicitly embedded by a kernel function. In this paper, we improve on the CVM approach by proposing two novel methods to build SVMs based on the Frank-Wolfe algorithm, recently revisited as a fast method to approximate the solution of a MEB problem. In contrast to CVMs, our algorithms do not require to compute the solutions of a sequence of increasingly complex QPs and are defined by using only analytic optimization steps. Experiments on a large collection of datasets show that our methods scale better than CVMs in most cases, sometimes at the price of a slightly lower accuracy. As CVMs, the proposed methods can be easily extended to machine learning problems other than binary classification. However, effective classifiers are also obtained using kernels which do not satisfy the condition required by CVMs and can thus be used for a wider set of problems.
1212.0748
Twisted Radio Waves and Twisted Thermodynamics
physics.class-ph cs.IT math.IT
We present and analyze a gedanken experiment and show that the assumption that an antenna operating at a single frequency can transmit more than two independent information channels to the far field violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Transmission of a large number of channels, each associated with an angular momentum "twisted wave" mode, to the far field in free space is therefore not possible.
1212.0749
A large-scale study of the World Wide Web: network correlation functions with scale-invariant boundaries
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We performed a large-scale crawl of the World Wide Web, covering 6.9 Million domains and 57 Million subdomains, including all high-traffic sites of the Internet. We present a study of the correlations found between quantities measuring the structural relevance of each node in the network (the in- and out-degree, the local clustering coefficient, the first-neighbor in-degree and the Alexa rank). We find that some of these properties show strong correlation effects and that the dependencies occurring out of these correlations follow power laws not only for the averages, but also for the boundaries of the respective density distributions. In addition, these scale-free limits do not follow the same exponents as the corresponding averages. In our study we retain the directionality of the hyperlinks and develop a statistical estimate for the clustering coefficient of directed graphs. We include in our study the correlations between the in-degree and the Alexa traffic rank, a popular index for the traffic volume, finding non-trivial power-law correlations. We find that sites with more/less than about one Thousand links from different domains have remarkably different statistical properties, for all correlation functions studied, indicating towards an underlying hierarchical structure of the World Wide Web.
1212.0750
Problem Solving and Computational Thinking in a Learning Environment
cs.AI
Computational thinking is a new problem soling method named for its extensive use of computer science techniques. It synthesizes critical thinking and existing knowledge and applies them in solving complex technological problems. The term was coined by J. Wing, but the relationship between computational and critical thinking, the two modes of thiking in solving problems, has not been yet learly established. This paper aims at shedding some light into this relationship. We also present two classroom experiments performed recently at the Graduate Technological Educational Institute of Patras in Greece. The results of these experiments give a strong indication that the use of computers as a tool for problem solving enchances the students' abilities in solving real world problems involving mathematical modelling. This is also crossed by earlier findings of other researchers for the problem solving process in general (not only for mathematical problems).
1212.0763
Dynamic recommender system : using cluster-based biases to improve the accuracy of the predictions
cs.LG cs.DB cs.IR
It is today accepted that matrix factorization models allow a high quality of rating prediction in recommender systems. However, a major drawback of matrix factorization is its static nature that results in a progressive declining of the accuracy of the predictions after each factorization. This is due to the fact that the new obtained ratings are not taken into account until a new factorization is computed, which can not be done very often because of the high cost of matrix factorization. In this paper, aiming at improving the accuracy of recommender systems, we propose a cluster-based matrix factorization technique that enables online integration of new ratings. Thus, we significantly enhance the obtained predictions between two matrix factorizations. We use finer-grained user biases by clustering similar items into groups, and allocating in these groups a bias to each user. The experiments we did on large datasets demonstrated the efficiency of our approach.
1212.0767
Robust Predictor Feedback for Discrete-Time Systems with Input Delays
math.OC cs.SY
This work studies the design problem of feedback stabilizers for discrete-time systems with input delays. A backstepping procedure is proposed for disturbance-free discrete-time systems. The feedback law designed by using backstepping coincides with the predictor-based feedback law used in continuous-time systems with input delays. However, simple examples demonstrate that the sensitivity of the closed-loop system with respect to modeling errors increases as the value of the delay increases. The paper proposes a Lyapunov redesign procedure which can minimize the effect of the uncertainty. Specific results are provided for linear single-input discrete-time systems with multiplicative uncertainty. The feedback law that guarantees robust global exponential stability is a nonlinear, homogeneous of degree 1 feedback law.
1212.0768
An ontology-based approach to relax traffic regulation for autonomous vehicle assistance
cs.AI
Traffic regulation must be respected by all vehicles, either human- or computer- driven. However, extreme traffic situations might exhibit practical cases in which a vehicle should safely and reasonably relax traffic regulation, e.g., in order not to be indefinitely blocked and to keep circulating. In this paper, we propose a high-level representation of an automated vehicle, other vehicles and their environment, which can assist drivers in taking such "illegal" but practical relaxation decisions. This high-level representation (an ontology) includes topological knowledge and inference rules, in order to compute the next high-level motion an automated vehicle should take, as assistance to a driver. Results on practical cases are presented.
1212.0819
A Topological Code for Plane Images
cs.CV math.GT
It is proposed a new code for contours of plane images. This code was applied for optical character recognition of printed and handwritten characters. One can apply it to recognition of any visual images.
1212.0873
Parallel Coordinate Descent Methods for Big Data Optimization
math.OC cs.AI stat.ML
In this work we show that randomized (block) coordinate descent methods can be accelerated by parallelization when applied to the problem of minimizing the sum of a partially separable smooth convex function and a simple separable convex function. The theoretical speedup, as compared to the serial method, and referring to the number of iterations needed to approximately solve the problem with high probability, is a simple expression depending on the number of parallel processors and a natural and easily computable measure of separability of the smooth component of the objective function. In the worst case, when no degree of separability is present, there may be no speedup; in the best case, when the problem is separable, the speedup is equal to the number of processors. Our analysis also works in the mode when the number of blocks being updated at each iteration is random, which allows for modeling situations with busy or unreliable processors. We show that our algorithm is able to solve a LASSO problem involving a matrix with 20 billion nonzeros in 2 hours on a large memory node with 24 cores.
1212.0877
Toeplitz Matrix Based Sparse Error Correction in System Identification: Outliers and Random Noises
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider robust system identification under sparse outliers and random noises. In our problem, system parameters are observed through a Toeplitz matrix. All observations are subject to random noises and a few are corrupted with outliers. We reduce this problem of system identification to a sparse error correcting problem using a Toeplitz structured real-numbered coding matrix. We prove the performance guarantee of Toeplitz structured matrix in sparse error correction. Thresholds on the percentage of correctable errors for Toeplitz structured matrices are also established. When both outliers and observation noise are present, we have shown that the estimation error goes to 0 asymptotically as long as the probability density function for observation noise is not "vanishing" around 0.
1212.0884
Maximizing Social Influence in Nearly Optimal Time
cs.DS cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Diffusion is a fundamental graph process, underpinning such phenomena as epidemic disease contagion and the spread of innovation by word-of-mouth. We address the algorithmic problem of finding a set of k initial seed nodes in a network so that the expected size of the resulting cascade is maximized, under the standard independent cascade model of network diffusion. Runtime is a primary consideration for this problem due to the massive size of the relevant input networks. We provide a fast algorithm for the influence maximization problem, obtaining the near-optimal approximation factor of (1 - 1/e - epsilon), for any epsilon > 0, in time O((m+n)k log(n) / epsilon^2). Our algorithm is runtime-optimal (up to a logarithmic factor) and substantially improves upon the previously best-known algorithms which run in time Omega(mnk POLY(1/epsilon)). Furthermore, our algorithm can be modified to allow early termination: if it is terminated after O(beta(m+n)k log(n)) steps for some beta < 1 (which can depend on n), then it returns a solution with approximation factor O(beta). Finally, we show that this runtime is optimal (up to logarithmic factors) for any beta and fixed seed size k.
1212.0888
Unmixing of Hyperspectral Data Using Robust Statistics-based NMF
cs.CV
Mixed pixels are presented in hyperspectral images due to low spatial resolution of hyperspectral sensors. Spectral unmixing decomposes mixed pixels spectra into endmembers spectra and abundance fractions. In this paper using of robust statistics-based nonnegative matrix factorization (RNMF) for spectral unmixing of hyperspectral data is investigated. RNMF uses a robust cost function and iterative updating procedure, so is not sensitive to outliers. This method has been applied to simulated data using USGS spectral library, AVIRIS and ROSIS datasets. Unmixing results are compared to traditional NMF method based on SAD and AAD measures. Results demonstrate that this method can be used efficiently for hyperspectral unmixing purposes.
1212.0892
An Intuitive Approach to Inertial Sensor Bias Estimation
cs.SY math.OC
A simple approach to gyro and accelerometer bias estimation is proposed. It does not involve Kalman filtering or similar formal techniques. Instead, it is based on physical intuition and exploits a duality between gimbaled and strapdown inertial systems. The estimation problem is decoupled into two separate stages. At the first stage, inertial system attitude errors are corrected by means of a feedback from an external aid. In the presence of uncompensated biases, the steady-state feedback rebalances those biases and can be used to estimate them. At the second stage, the desired bias estimates are expressed in a closed form in terms of the feedback signal. The estimator has only three tunable parameters and is easy to implement and use. The tests proved the feasibility of the proposed approach for the estimation of low-cost MEMS inertial sensor biases on a moving land vehicle.
1212.0895
The max-plus algebra approach in modelling of queueing networks
math.OC cs.SY
A class of queueing networks which consist of single-server fork-join nodes with infinite buffers is examined to derive a representation of the network dynamics in terms of max-plus algebra. For the networks, we present a common dynamic state equation which relates the departure epochs of customers from the network nodes in an explicit vector form determined by a state transition matrix. We show how the matrix may be calculated from the service time of customers in the general case, and give examples of matrices inherent in particular networks.
1212.0901
Advances in Optimizing Recurrent Networks
cs.LG
After a more than decade-long period of relatively little research activity in the area of recurrent neural networks, several new developments will be reviewed here that have allowed substantial progress both in understanding and in technical solutions towards more efficient training of recurrent networks. These advances have been motivated by and related to the optimization issues surrounding deep learning. Although recurrent networks are extremely powerful in what they can in principle represent in terms of modelling sequences,their training is plagued by two aspects of the same issue regarding the learning of long-term dependencies. Experiments reported here evaluate the use of clipping gradients, spanning longer time ranges with leaky integration, advanced momentum techniques, using more powerful output probability models, and encouraging sparser gradients to help symmetry breaking and credit assignment. The experiments are performed on text and music data and show off the combined effects of these techniques in generally improving both training and test error.
1212.0927
Two Algorithms for Finding $k$ Shortest Paths of a Weighted Pushdown Automaton
cs.CL cs.DS cs.FL
We introduce efficient algorithms for finding the $k$ shortest paths of a weighted pushdown automaton (WPDA), a compact representation of a weighted set of strings with potential applications in parsing and machine translation. Both of our algorithms are derived from the same weighted deductive logic description of the execution of a WPDA using different search strategies. Experimental results show our Algorithm 2 adds very little overhead vs. the single shortest path algorithm, even with a large $k$.
1212.0935
Computing Consensus Curves
cs.CG cs.CV cs.GT cs.MA
We consider the problem of extracting accurate average ant trajectories from many (possibly inaccurate) input trajectories contributed by citizen scientists. Although there are many generic software tools for motion tracking and specific ones for insect tracking, even untrained humans are much better at this task, provided a robust method to computing the average trajectories. We implemented and tested several local (one ant at a time) and global (all ants together) method. Our best performing algorithm uses a novel global method, based on finding edge-disjoint paths in an ant-interaction graph constructed from the input trajectories. The underlying optimization problem is a new and interesting variant of network flow. Even though the problem is NP-hard, we implemented two heuristics, which work very well in practice, outperforming all other approaches, including the best automated system.
1212.0945
Multiclass Diffuse Interface Models for Semi-Supervised Learning on Graphs
stat.ML cs.LG math.ST physics.data-an stat.TH
We present a graph-based variational algorithm for multiclass classification of high-dimensional data, motivated by total variation techniques. The energy functional is based on a diffuse interface model with a periodic potential. We augment the model by introducing an alternative measure of smoothness that preserves symmetry among the class labels. Through this modification of the standard Laplacian, we construct an efficient multiclass method that allows for sharp transitions between classes. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach is competitive with the state of the art among other graph-based algorithms.
1212.0950
A General Formulation for the Stiffness Matrix of Parallel Mechanisms
physics.class-ph cs.RO
Starting from the definition of a stiffness matrix, the authors present a new formulation of the Cartesian stiffness matrix of parallel mechanisms. The proposed formulation is more general than any other stiffness matrix found in the literature since it can take into account the stiffness of the passive joints, it can consider additional compliances in the joints or in the links and it remains valid for large displacements. Then, the validity, the conservative property, the positive definiteness and the relation with other formulations of stiffness matrices are discussed theoretically. Finally, a numerical example is given in order to illustrate the correctness of this matrix.
1212.0952
Self-Organizing Flows in Social Networks
cs.SI cs.GT cs.NI physics.soc-ph
Social networks offer users new means of accessing information, essentially relying on "social filtering", i.e. propagation and filtering of information by social contacts. The sheer amount of data flowing in these networks, combined with the limited budget of attention of each user, makes it difficult to ensure that social filtering brings relevant content to the interested users. Our motivation in this paper is to measure to what extent self-organization of the social network results in efficient social filtering. To this end we introduce flow games, a simple abstraction that models network formation under selfish user dynamics, featuring user-specific interests and budget of attention. In the context of homogeneous user interests, we show that selfish dynamics converge to a stable network structure (namely a pure Nash equilibrium) with close-to-optimal information dissemination. We show in contrast, for the more realistic case of heterogeneous interests, that convergence, if it occurs, may lead to information dissemination that can be arbitrarily inefficient, as captured by an unbounded "price of anarchy". Nevertheless the situation differs when users' interests exhibit a particular structure, captured by a metric space with low doubling dimension. In that case, natural autonomous dynamics converge to a stable configuration. Moreover, users obtain all the information of interest to them in the corresponding dissemination, provided their budget of attention is logarithmic in the size of their interest set.
1212.0960
Evaluating Classifiers Without Expert Labels
cs.LG cs.IR stat.ML
This paper considers the challenge of evaluating a set of classifiers, as done in shared task evaluations like the KDD Cup or NIST TREC, without expert labels. While expert labels provide the traditional cornerstone for evaluating statistical learners, limited or expensive access to experts represents a practical bottleneck. Instead, we seek methodology for estimating performance of the classifiers which is more scalable than expert labeling yet preserves high correlation with evaluation based on expert labels. We consider both: 1) using only labels automatically generated by the classifiers (blind evaluation); and 2) using labels obtained via crowdsourcing. While crowdsourcing methods are lauded for scalability, using such data for evaluation raises serious concerns given the prevalence of label noise. In regard to blind evaluation, two broad strategies are investigated: combine & score and score & combine methods infer a single pseudo-gold label set by aggregating classifier labels; classifiers are then evaluated based on this single pseudo-gold label set. On the other hand, score & combine methods: 1) sample multiple label sets from classifier outputs, 2) evaluate classifiers on each label set, and 3) average classifier performance across label sets. When additional crowd labels are also collected, we investigate two alternative avenues for exploiting them: 1) direct evaluation of classifiers; or 2) supervision of combine & score methods. To assess generality of our techniques, classifier performance is measured using four common classification metrics, with statistical significance tests. Finally, we measure both score and rank correlations between estimated classifier performance vs. actual performance according to expert judgments. Rigorous evaluation of classifiers from the TREC 2011 Crowdsourcing Track shows reliable evaluation can be achieved without reliance on expert labels.
1212.0967
Compiling Relational Database Schemata into Probabilistic Graphical Models
cs.AI cs.DB cs.LG stat.ML
Instead of requiring a domain expert to specify the probabilistic dependencies of the data, in this work we present an approach that uses the relational DB schema to automatically construct a Bayesian graphical model for a database. This resulting model contains customized distributions for columns, latent variables that cluster the data, and factors that reflect and represent the foreign key links. Experiments demonstrate the accuracy of the model and the scalability of inference on synthetic and real-world data.
1212.0975
Cost-Sensitive Support Vector Machines
cs.LG stat.ML
A new procedure for learning cost-sensitive SVM(CS-SVM) classifiers is proposed. The SVM hinge loss is extended to the cost sensitive setting, and the CS-SVM is derived as the minimizer of the associated risk. The extension of the hinge loss draws on recent connections between risk minimization and probability elicitation. These connections are generalized to cost-sensitive classification, in a manner that guarantees consistency with the cost-sensitive Bayes risk, and associated Bayes decision rule. This ensures that optimal decision rules, under the new hinge loss, implement the Bayes-optimal cost-sensitive classification boundary. Minimization of the new hinge loss is shown to be a generalization of the classic SVM optimization problem, and can be solved by identical procedures. The dual problem of CS-SVM is carefully scrutinized by means of regularization theory and sensitivity analysis and the CS-SVM algorithm is substantiated. The proposed algorithm is also extended to cost-sensitive learning with example dependent costs. The minimum cost sensitive risk is proposed as the performance measure and is connected to ROC analysis through vector optimization. The resulting algorithm avoids the shortcomings of previous approaches to cost-sensitive SVM design, and is shown to have superior experimental performance on a large number of cost sensitive and imbalanced datasets.
1212.1002
Stochastic Models of Misinformation Distribution in Online Social Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
This report contains results of an experimental study of the distribution of misinformation in online social networks (OSNs). We consider the classification of the topologies of OSNs and analyze the parameters identified in order to relate the topology of a real network with one of the classes. We propose an algorithm for conducting a search for the percolation cluster in the social graph.
1212.1037
Modeling Movements in Oil, Gold, Forex and Market Indices using Search Volume Index and Twitter Sentiments
cs.CE cs.SI q-fin.GN
Study of the forecasting models using large scale microblog discussions and the search behavior data can provide a good insight for better understanding the market movements. In this work we collected a dataset of 2 million tweets and search volume index (SVI from Google) for a period of June 2010 to September 2011. We perform a study over a set of comprehensive causative relationships and developed a unified approach to a model for various market securities like equity (Dow Jones Industrial Average-DJIA and NASDAQ-100), commodity markets (oil and gold) and Euro Forex rates. We also investigate the lagged and statistically causative relations of Twitter sentiments developed during active trading days and market inactive days in combination with the search behavior of public before any change in the prices/ indices. Our results show extent of lagged significance with high correlation value upto 0.82 between search volumes and gold price in USD. We find weekly accuracy in direction (up and down prediction) uptil 94.3% for DJIA and 90% for NASDAQ-100 with significant reduction in mean average percentage error for all the forecasting models.
1212.1046
Latency Bounding by Trading off Consistency in NoSQL Store: A Staging and Stepwise Approach
cs.DB cs.DC
Latency is a key service factor for user satisfaction. Consistency is in a trade-off relation with operation latency in the distributed and replicated scenario. Existing NoSQL stores guarantee either strong or weak consistencies but none provides the best consistency based on the response latency. In this paper, we introduce dConssandra, a NoSQL store enabling users to specify latency bounds for data access operations. dConssandra dynamically bounds data access latency by trading off replica consistency. dConssandra is based on Cassandra. In comparison to Cassandra's implementation, dConssandra has a staged replication strategy enabling synchronous or asynchronous replication on demand. The main idea to bound latency by trading off consistency is to decompose the replication process into minute steps and bound latency by executing only a subset of these steps. dConssandra also implements a different in-memory storage architecture to support the above features. Experimental results for dConssandra over an actual cluster demonstrate that (1) the actual response latency is bounded by the given latency constraint; (2) greater write latency bounds lead to a lower latency in reading the latest value; and, (3) greater read latency bounds lead to the return of more recently written values.
1212.1061
Study of a Market Model with Conservative Exchanges on Complex Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-fin.GN
Many models of market dynamics make use of the idea of conservative wealth exchanges among economic agents. A few years ago an exchange model using extremal dynamics was developed and a very interesting result was obtained: a self-generated minimum wealth or poverty line. On the other hand, the wealth distribution exhibited an exponential shape as a function of the square of the wealth. These results have been obtained both considering exchanges between nearest neighbors or in a mean field scheme. In the present paper we study the effect of distributing the agents on a complex network. We have considered archetypical complex networks: Erd\"{o}s-R\'enyi random networks and scale-free networks. The presence of a poverty line with finite wealth is preserved but spatial correlations are important, particularly between the degree of the node and the wealth. We present a detailed study of the correlations, as well as the changes in the Gini coefficient, that measures the inequality, as a function of the type and average degree of the considered networks.
1212.1068
Spectral properties of Google matrix of Wikipedia and other networks
cs.IR cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We study the properties of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the Google matrix of the Wikipedia articles hyperlink network and other real networks. With the help of the Arnoldi method we analyze the distribution of eigenvalues in the complex plane and show that eigenstates with significant eigenvalue modulus are located on well defined network communities. We also show that the correlator between PageRank and CheiRank vectors distinguishes different organizations of information flow on BBC and Le Monde web sites.
1212.1073
Kernel Estimation from Salient Structure for Robust Motion Deblurring
cs.CV
Blind image deblurring algorithms have been improving steadily in the past years. Most state-of-the-art algorithms, however, still cannot perform perfectly in challenging cases, especially in large blur setting. In this paper, we focus on how to estimate a good kernel estimate from a single blurred image based on the image structure. We found that image details caused by blurring could adversely affect the kernel estimation, especially when the blur kernel is large. One effective way to eliminate these details is to apply image denoising model based on the Total Variation (TV). First, we developed a novel method for computing image structures based on TV model, such that the structures undermining the kernel estimation will be removed. Second, to mitigate the possible adverse effect of salient edges and improve the robustness of kernel estimation, we applied a gradient selection method. Third, we proposed a novel kernel estimation method, which is capable of preserving the continuity and sparsity of the kernel and reducing the noises. Finally, we developed an adaptive weighted spatial prior, for the purpose of preserving sharp edges in latent image restoration. The effectiveness of our method is demonstrated by experiments on various kinds of challenging examples.
1212.1098
Extremes of Error Exponents
cs.IT math.IT
This paper determines the range of feasible values of standard error exponents for binary-input memoryless symmetric channels of fixed capacity $C$ and shows that extremes are attained by the binary symmetric and the binary erasure channel. The proof technique also provides analogous extremes for other quantities related to Gallager's $E_0$ function, such as the cutoff rate, the Bhattacharyya parameter, and the channel dispersion.
1212.1100
Making Early Predictions of the Accuracy of Machine Learning Applications
cs.LG cs.AI stat.ML
The accuracy of machine learning systems is a widely studied research topic. Established techniques such as cross-validation predict the accuracy on unseen data of the classifier produced by applying a given learning method to a given training data set. However, they do not predict whether incurring the cost of obtaining more data and undergoing further training will lead to higher accuracy. In this paper we investigate techniques for making such early predictions. We note that when a machine learning algorithm is presented with a training set the classifier produced, and hence its error, will depend on the characteristics of the algorithm, on training set's size, and also on its specific composition. In particular we hypothesise that if a number of classifiers are produced, and their observed error is decomposed into bias and variance terms, then although these components may behave differently, their behaviour may be predictable. We test our hypothesis by building models that, given a measurement taken from the classifier created from a limited number of samples, predict the values that would be measured from the classifier produced when the full data set is presented. We create separate models for bias, variance and total error. Our models are built from the results of applying ten different machine learning algorithms to a range of data sets, and tested with "unseen" algorithms and datasets. We analyse the results for various numbers of initial training samples, and total dataset sizes. Results show that our predictions are very highly correlated with the values observed after undertaking the extra training. Finally we consider the more complex case where an ensemble of heterogeneous classifiers is trained, and show how we can accurately estimate an upper bound on the accuracy achievable after further training.
1212.1107
Twitter Sentiment Analysis: How To Hedge Your Bets In The Stock Markets
cs.CE
Emerging interest of trading companies and hedge funds in mining social web has created new avenues for intelligent systems that make use of public opinion in driving investment decisions. It is well accepted that at high frequency trading, investors are tracking memes rising up in microblogging forums to count for the public behavior as an important feature while making short term investment decisions. We investigate the complex relationship between tweet board literature (like bullishness, volume, agreement etc) with the financial market instruments (like volatility, trading volume and stock prices). We have analyzed Twitter sentiments for more than 4 million tweets between June 2010 and July 2011 for DJIA, NASDAQ-100 and 11 other big cap technological stocks. Our results show high correlation (upto 0.88 for returns) between stock prices and twitter sentiments. Further, using Granger's Causality Analysis, we have validated that the movement of stock prices and indices are greatly affected in the short term by Twitter discussions. Finally, we have implemented Expert Model Mining System (EMMS) to demonstrate that our forecasted returns give a high value of R-square (0.952) with low Maximum Absolute Percentage Error (MaxAPE) of 1.76% for Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). We introduce a novel way to make use of market monitoring elements derived from public mood to retain a portfolio within limited risk state (highly improved hedging bets) during typical market conditions.
1212.1108
On the Convergence Properties of Optimal AdaBoost
cs.LG cs.AI stat.ML
AdaBoost is one of the most popular ML algorithms. It is simple to implement and often found very effective by practitioners, while still being mathematically elegant and theoretically sound. AdaBoost's interesting behavior in practice still puzzles the ML community. We address the algorithm's stability and establish multiple convergence properties of "Optimal AdaBoost," a term coined by Rudin, Daubechies, and Schapire in 2004. We prove, in a reasonably strong computational sense, the almost universal existence of time averages, and with that, the convergence of the classifier itself, its generalization error, and its resulting margins, among many other objects, for fixed data sets under arguably reasonable conditions. Specifically, we frame Optimal AdaBoost as a dynamical system and, employing tools from ergodic theory, prove that, under a condition that Optimal AdaBoost does not have ties for best weak classifier eventually, a condition for which we provide empirical evidence from high dimensional real-world datasets, the algorithm's update behaves like a continuous map. We provide constructive proofs of several arbitrarily accurate approximations of Optimal AdaBoost; prove that they exhibit certain cycling behavior in finite time, and that the resulting dynamical system is ergodic; and establish sufficient conditions for the same to hold for the actual Optimal-AdaBoost update. We believe that our results provide reasonably strong evidence for the affirmative answer to two open conjectures, at least from a broad computational-theory perspective: AdaBoost always cycles and is an ergodic dynamical system. We present empirical evidence that cycles are hard to detect while time averages stabilize quickly. Our results ground future convergence-rate analysis and may help optimize generalization ability and alleviate a practitioner's burden of deciding how long to run the algorithm.
1212.1115
Energy-efficient transmission for wireless energy harvesting nodes
cs.IT math.IT
Energy harvesting is increasingly gaining importance as a means to charge battery powered devices such as sensor nodes. Efficient transmission strategies must be developed for Wireless Energy Harvesting Nodes (WEHNs) that take into account both the availability of energy and data in the node. We consider a scenario where data and energy packets arrive to the node where the time instants and amounts of the packets are known (offline approach). In this paper, the best data transmission strategy is found for a finite battery capacity WEHN that has to fulfill some Quality of Service (QoS) constraints, as well as the energy and data causality constraints. As a result of our analysis, we can state that losing energy due to overflows of the battery is inefficient unless there is no more data to transmit and that the problem may not have a feasible solution. Finally, an algorithm that computes the data transmission curve minimizing the total transmission time that satisfies the aforementioned constraints has been developed.
1212.1131
Using Wikipedia to Boost SVD Recommender Systems
cs.LG cs.IR stat.ML
Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) has been used successfully in recent years in the area of recommender systems. In this paper we present how this model can be extended to consider both user ratings and information from Wikipedia. By mapping items to Wikipedia pages and quantifying their similarity, we are able to use this information in order to improve recommendation accuracy, especially when the sparsity is high. Another advantage of the proposed approach is the fact that it can be easily integrated into any other SVD implementation, regardless of additional parameters that may have been added to it. Preliminary experimental results on the MovieLens dataset are encouraging.
1212.1139
Efficient Majority-Logic Decoding of Short-Length Reed--Muller Codes at Information Positions
cs.IT cs.DM cs.ET math.CO math.IT
Short-length Reed--Muller codes under majority-logic decoding are of particular importance for efficient hardware implementations in real-time and embedded systems. This paper significantly improves Chen's two-step majority-logic decoding method for binary Reed--Muller codes $\text{RM}(r,m)$, $r \leq m/2$, if --- systematic encoding assumed --- only errors at information positions are to be corrected. Some general results on the minimal number of majority gates are presented that are particularly good for short codes. Specifically, with its importance in applications as a 3-error-correcting, self-dual code, the smallest non-trivial example, $\text{RM}(2,5)$ of dimension 16 and length 32, is investigated in detail. Further, the decoding complexity of our procedure is compared with that of Chen's decoding algorithm for various Reed--Muller codes up to length $2^{10}$.
1212.1143
Multiscale Markov Decision Problems: Compression, Solution, and Transfer Learning
cs.AI cs.SY math.OC stat.ML
Many problems in sequential decision making and stochastic control often have natural multiscale structure: sub-tasks are assembled together to accomplish complex goals. Systematically inferring and leveraging hierarchical structure, particularly beyond a single level of abstraction, has remained a longstanding challenge. We describe a fast multiscale procedure for repeatedly compressing, or homogenizing, Markov decision processes (MDPs), wherein a hierarchy of sub-problems at different scales is automatically determined. Coarsened MDPs are themselves independent, deterministic MDPs, and may be solved using existing algorithms. The multiscale representation delivered by this procedure decouples sub-tasks from each other and can lead to substantial improvements in convergence rates both locally within sub-problems and globally across sub-problems, yielding significant computational savings. A second fundamental aspect of this work is that these multiscale decompositions yield new transfer opportunities across different problems, where solutions of sub-tasks at different levels of the hierarchy may be amenable to transfer to new problems. Localized transfer of policies and potential operators at arbitrary scales is emphasized. Finally, we demonstrate compression and transfer in a collection of illustrative domains, including examples involving discrete and continuous statespaces.
1212.1180
On Some Integrated Approaches to Inference
stat.ML cs.LG
We present arguments for the formulation of unified approach to different standard continuous inference methods from partial information. It is claimed that an explicit partition of information into a priori (prior knowledge) and a posteriori information (data) is an important way of standardizing inference approaches so that they can be compared on a normative scale, and so that notions of optimal algorithms become farther-reaching. The inference methods considered include neural network approaches, information-based complexity, and Monte Carlo, spline, and regularization methods. The model is an extension of currently used continuous complexity models, with a class of algorithms in the form of optimization methods, in which an optimization functional (involving the data) is minimized. This extends the family of current approaches in continuous complexity theory, which include the use of interpolatory algorithms in worst and average case settings.
1212.1185
Semidefinite programming for permutation codes
math.CO cs.IT math.IT
We initiate study of the Terwilliger algebra and related semidefinite programming techniques for the conjugacy scheme of the symmetric group Sym$(n)$. In particular, we compute orbits of ordered pairs on Sym$(n)$ acted upon by conjugation and inversion, explore a block diagonalization of the associated algebra, and obtain improved upper bounds on the size $M(n,d)$ of permutation codes of lengths up to 7. For instance, these techniques detect the nonexistence of the projective plane of order six via $M(6,5)<30$ and yield a new best bound $M(7,4) \le 535$ for a challenging open case. Each of these represents an improvement on earlier Delsarte linear programming results.
1212.1187
Compressed Sensing Recoverability In Imaging Modalities
cs.IT math.IT
The paper introduces a framework for the recoverability analysis in compressive sensing for imaging applications such as CI cameras, rapid MRI and coded apertures. This is done using the fact that the Spherical Section Property (SSP) of a sensing matrix provides a lower bound for unique sparse recovery condition. The lower bound is evaluated for different sampling paradigms adopted from the aforementioned imaging modalities. In particular, a platform is provided to analyze the well-posedness of sub-sampling patterns commonly used in practical scenarios. The effectiveness of the various designed patterns for sparse image recovery is studied through numerical experiments.
1212.1192
Using external sources of bilingual information for on-the-fly word alignment
cs.CL
In this paper we present a new and simple language-independent method for word-alignment based on the use of external sources of bilingual information such as machine translation systems. We show that the few parameters of the aligner can be trained on a very small corpus, which leads to results comparable to those obtained by the state-of-the-art tool GIZA++ in terms of precision. Regarding other metrics, such as alignment error rate or F-measure, the parametric aligner, when trained on a very small gold-standard (450 pairs of sentences), provides results comparable to those produced by GIZA++ when trained on an in-domain corpus of around 10,000 pairs of sentences. Furthermore, the results obtained indicate that the training is domain-independent, which enables the use of the trained aligner 'on the fly' on any new pair of sentences.
1212.1198
Lattice Coding for the Two-way Two-relay Channel
cs.IT math.IT
Lattice coding techniques may be used to derive achievable rate regions which outperform known independent, identically distributed (i.i.d.) random codes in multi-source relay networks and in particular the two-way relay channel. Gains stem from the ability to decode the sum of codewords (or messages) using lattice codes at higher rates than possible with i.i.d. random codes. Here we develop a novel lattice coding scheme for the Two-way Two-relay Channel: 1 <-> 2 <-> 3 <-> 4, where Node 1 and 4 simultaneously communicate with each other through two relay nodes 2 and 3. Each node only communicates with its neighboring nodes. The key technical contribution is the lattice-based achievability strategy, where each relay is able to remove the noise while decoding the sum of several signals in a Block Markov strategy and then re-encode the signal into another lattice codeword using the so-called "Re-distribution Transform". This allows nodes further down the line to again decode sums of lattice codewords. This transform is central to improving the achievable rates, and ensures that the messages traveling in each of the two directions fully utilize the relay's power, even under asymmetric channel conditions. All decoders are lattice decoders and only a single nested lattice codebook pair is needed. The symmetric rate achieved by the proposed lattice coding scheme is within 0.5 log 3 bit/Hz/s of the symmetric rate capacity.
1212.1223
Throughput Analysis of Primary and Secondary Networks in a Shared IEEE 802.11 System
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we analyze the coexistence of a primary and a secondary (cognitive) network when both networks use the IEEE 802.11 based distributed coordination function for medium access control. Specifically, we consider the problem of channel capture by a secondary network that uses spectrum sensing to determine the availability of the channel, and its impact on the primary throughput. We integrate the notion of transmission slots in Bianchi's Markov model with the physical time slots, to derive the transmission probability of the secondary network as a function of its scan duration. This is used to obtain analytical expressions for the throughput achievable by the primary and secondary networks. Our analysis considers both saturated and unsaturated networks. By performing a numerical search, the secondary network parameters are selected to maximize its throughput for a given level of protection of the primary network throughput. The theoretical expressions are validated using extensive simulations carried out in the Network Simulator 2. Our results provide critical insights into the performance and robustness of different schemes for medium access by the secondary network. In particular, we find that the channel captures by the secondary network does not significantly impact the primary throughput, and that simply increasing the secondary contention window size is only marginally inferior to silent-period based methods in terms of its throughput performance.
1212.1224
Random load fluctuations and collapse probability of a power system operating near codimension 1 saddle-node bifurcation
physics.soc-ph cs.SY stat.AP
For a power system operating in the vicinity of the power transfer limit of its transmission system, effect of stochastic fluctuations of power loads can become critical as a sufficiently strong such fluctuation may activate voltage instability and lead to a large scale collapse of the system. Considering the effect of these stochastic fluctuations near a codimension 1 saddle-node bifurcation, we explicitly calculate the autocorrelation function of the state vector and show how its behavior explains the phenomenon of critical slowing-down often observed for power systems on the threshold of blackout. We also estimate the collapse probability/mean clearing time for the power system and construct a new indicator function signaling the proximity to a large scale collapse. The new indicator function is easy to estimate in real time using PMU data feeds as well as SCADA information about fluctuations of power load on the nodes of the power grid. We discuss control strategies leading to the minimization of the collapse probability.
1212.1245
Distributed Adaptive Networks: A Graphical Evolutionary Game-Theoretic View
cs.GT cs.LG
Distributed adaptive filtering has been considered as an effective approach for data processing and estimation over distributed networks. Most existing distributed adaptive filtering algorithms focus on designing different information diffusion rules, regardless of the nature evolutionary characteristic of a distributed network. In this paper, we study the adaptive network from the game theoretic perspective and formulate the distributed adaptive filtering problem as a graphical evolutionary game. With the proposed formulation, the nodes in the network are regarded as players and the local combiner of estimation information from different neighbors is regarded as different strategies selection. We show that this graphical evolutionary game framework is very general and can unify the existing adaptive network algorithms. Based on this framework, as examples, we further propose two error-aware adaptive filtering algorithms. Moreover, we use graphical evolutionary game theory to analyze the information diffusion process over the adaptive networks and evolutionarily stable strategy of the system. Finally, simulation results are shown to verify the effectiveness of our analysis and proposed methods.
1212.1269
Approximate Dynamic Programming via Sum of Squares Programming
math.OC cs.SY
We describe an approximate dynamic programming method for stochastic control problems on infinite state and input spaces. The optimal value function is approximated by a linear combination of basis functions with coefficients as decision variables. By relaxing the Bellman equation to an inequality, one obtains a linear program in the basis coefficients with an infinite set of constraints. We show that a recently introduced method, which obtains convex quadratic value function approximations, can be extended to higher order polynomial approximations via sum of squares programming techniques. An approximate value function can then be computed offline by solving a semidefinite program, without having to sample the infinite constraint. The policy is evaluated online by solving a polynomial optimization problem, which also turns out to be convex in some cases. We experimentally validate the method on an autonomous helicopter testbed using a 10-dimensional helicopter model.
1212.1283
A Tractable Framework for Exact Probability of Node Isolation and Minimum Node Degree Distribution in Finite Multi-hop Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
This paper presents a tractable analytical framework for the exact calculation of probability of node isolation and minimum node degree distribution when $N$ sensor nodes are independently and uniformly distributed inside a finite square region. The proposed framework can accurately account for the boundary effects by partitioning the square into subregions, based on the transmission range and the node location. We show that for each subregion, the probability that a random node falls inside a disk centered at an arbitrary node located in that subregion can be expressed analytically in closed-form. Using the results for the different subregions, we obtain the exact probability of node isolation and minimum node degree distribution that serves as an upper bound for the probability of $k$-connectivity. Our theoretical framework is validated by comparison with the simulation results and shows that the minimum node degree distribution serves as a tight upper bound for the probability of $k$-connectivity. The proposed framework provides a very useful tool to accurately account for the boundary effects in the design of finite wireless networks.
1212.1296
Distributed Model Predictive Consensus via the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers
math.OC cs.SY
We propose a distributed optimization method for solving a distributed model predictive consensus problem. The goal is to design a distributed controller for a network of dynamical systems to optimize a coupled objective function while respecting state and input constraints. The distributed optimization method is an augmented Lagrangian method called the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM), which was introduced in the 1970s but has seen a recent resurgence in the context of dramatic increases in computing power and the development of widely available distributed computing platforms. The method is applied to position and velocity consensus in a network of double integrators. We find that a few tens of ADMM iterations yield closed-loop performance near what is achieved by solving the optimization problem centrally. Furthermore, the use of recent code generation techniques for solving local subproblems yields fast overall computation times.
1212.1298
On Abelian Group Representability of Finite Groups
math.GR cs.IT math.IT
A set of quasi-uniform random variables $X_1,...,X_n$ may be generated from a finite group $G$ and $n$ of its subgroups, with the corresponding entropic vector depending on the subgroup structure of $G$. It is known that the set of entropic vectors obtained by considering arbitrary finite groups is much richer than the one provided just by abelian groups. In this paper, we start to investigate in more detail different families of non-abelian groups with respect to the entropic vectors they yield. In particular, we address the question of whether a given non-abelian group $G$ and some fixed subgroups $G_1,...,G_n$ end up giving the same entropic vector as some abelian group $A$ with subgroups $A_1,...,A_n$, in which case we say that $(A, A_1,..., A_n)$ represents $(G, G_1, ..., G_n)$. If for any choice of subgroups $G_1,...,G_n$, there exists some abelian group $A$ which represents $G$, we refer to $G$ as being abelian (group) representable for $n$. We completely characterize dihedral, quasi-dihedral and dicyclic groups with respect to their abelian representability, as well as the case when $n=2$, for which we show a group is abelian representable if and only if it is nilpotent. This problem is motivated by understanding non-linear coding strategies for network coding, and network information theory capacity regions.
1212.1313
Autonomous Navigation by Robust Scan Matching Technique
cs.CV cs.AI
For effective autonomous navigation,estimation of the pose of the robot is essential at every sampling time. For computing an accurate estimation,odometric error needs to be reduced with the help of data from external sensor. In this work, a technique has been developed for accurate pose estimation of mobile robot by using Laser Range data. The technique is robust to noisy data, which may contain considerable amount of outliers. A grey image is formed from laser range data and the key points from this image are extracted by Harris corner detector. The matching of the key points from consecutive data sets have been done while outliers have been rejected by RANSAC method. Robot state is measured by the correspondence between the two sets of keypoints. Finally, optimal robot state is estimated by Extended Kalman Filter. The technique has been applied to an operational robot in the laboratory environment to show the robustness of the technique in presence of noisy sensor data. The performance of this new technique has been compared with that of conventional ICP method. Through this method, effective and accurate navigation has been achieved even in presence of substantial noise in the sensor data at the cost of a small amount of additional computational complexity.
1212.1329
Automatic Detection of Texture Defects Using Texture-Periodicity and Gabor Wavelets
cs.CV
In this paper, we propose a machine vision algorithm for automatically detecting defects in textures belonging to 16 out of 17 wallpaper groups using texture-periodicity and a family of Gabor wavelets. Input defective images are subjected to Gabor wavelet transformation in multi-scales and multi-orientations and a resultant image is obtained in L2 norm. The resultant image is split into several periodic blocks and energy of each block is used as a feature space to automatically identify defective and defect-free blocks using Ward's hierarchical clustering. Experiments on defective fabric images of three major wallpaper groups, namely, pmm, p2 and p4m, show that the proposed method is robust in finding fabric defects without human intervention and can be used for automatic defect detection in fabric industries.
1212.1340
Spatial Modulation in Zero-Padded Single Carrier Communication
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider the Spatial Modulation (SM) system in a frequency selective channel under single carrier (SC) communication scenario and propose zero-padding instead of cyclic prefix considered in the existing literature. We show that the zero-padded single carrier (ZP-SC) SM system offers full multipath diversity under maximum-likelihood (ML) detection, unlike the cyclic prefixed SM system. Further, we show that the order of ML decoding complexity in the proposed ZP-SC SM system is independent of the frame length and depends only on the number of multipath links between the transmitter and the receiver. Thus, we show that the zero-padding in the SC SM system has two fold advantage over cyclic prefixing: 1) gives full multipath diversity, and 2) offers relatively low ML decoding complexity. Furthermore, we extend the partial interference cancellation receiver (PIC-R) proposed by Guo and Xia for the decoding of STBCs in order to convert the ZP-SC system into a set of flat-fading subsystems. We show that the transmission of any full rank STBC over these subsystems achieves full transmit, receive as well as multipath diversity under PIC-R. With the aid of this extended PIC-R, we show that the ZP-SC SM system achieves receive and multipath diversity with a decoding complexity same as that of the SM system in flat-fading scenario.
1212.1360
Physics inspired algorithms for (co)homology computation
cs.CE math.GT
The issue of computing (co)homology generators of a cell complex is gaining a pivotal role in various branches of science. While this issue can be rigorously solved in polynomial time, it is still overly demanding for large scale problems. Drawing inspiration from low-frequency electrodynamics, this paper presents a physics inspired algorithm for first cohomology group computations on three-dimensional complexes. The algorithm is general and exhibits orders of magnitude speed up with respect to competing ones, allowing to handle problems not addressable before. In particular, when generators are employed in the physical modeling of magneto-quasistatic problems, this algorithm solves one of the most long-lasting problems in low-frequency computational electromagnetics. In this case, the effectiveness of the algorithm and its ease of implementation may be even improved by introducing the novel concept of \textit{lazy cohomology generators}.
1212.1362
Stochastic model for the vocabulary growth in natural languages
physics.soc-ph cs.CL physics.data-an
We propose a stochastic model for the number of different words in a given database which incorporates the dependence on the database size and historical changes. The main feature of our model is the existence of two different classes of words: (i) a finite number of core-words which have higher frequency and do not affect the probability of a new word to be used; and (ii) the remaining virtually infinite number of noncore-words which have lower frequency and once used reduce the probability of a new word to be used in the future. Our model relies on a careful analysis of the google-ngram database of books published in the last centuries and its main consequence is the generalization of Zipf's and Heaps' law to two scaling regimes. We confirm that these generalizations yield the best simple description of the data among generic descriptive models and that the two free parameters depend only on the language but not on the database. From the point of view of our model the main change on historical time scales is the composition of the specific words included in the finite list of core-words, which we observe to decay exponentially in time with a rate of approximately 30 words per year for English.
1212.1449
Exploring associations between micro-level models of innovation diffusion and emerging macro-level adoption patterns
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
A micro-level agent-based model of innovation diffusion was developed that explicitly combines (a) an individual's perception of the advantages or relative utility derived from adoption, and (b) social influence from members of the individual's social network. The micro-model was used to simulate macro-level diffusion patterns emerging from different configurations of micro-model parameters. Micro-level simulation results matched very closely the adoption patterns predicted by the widely-used Bass macro-level model (Bass, 1969). For a portion of the domain, results from micro-simulations were consistent with aggregate-level adoption patterns reported in the literature. Induced Bass macro-level parameters and responded to changes in micro-parameters: (1) increased with the number of innovators and with the rate at which innovators are introduced; (2) increased with the probability of rewiring in small-world networks, as the characteristic path length decreases; and (3) an increase in the overall perceived utility of an innovation caused a corresponding increase in induced and values. Understanding micro to macro linkages can inform the design and assessment of marketing interventions on micro-variables - or processes related to them - to enhance adoption of future products or technologies.
1212.1464
Structure and Dynamics of Information Pathways in Online Media
cs.SI cs.DS cs.IR physics.soc-ph
Diffusion of information, spread of rumors and infectious diseases are all instances of stochastic processes that occur over the edges of an underlying network. Many times networks over which contagions spread are unobserved, and such networks are often dynamic and change over time. In this paper, we investigate the problem of inferring dynamic networks based on information diffusion data. We assume there is an unobserved dynamic network that changes over time, while we observe the results of a dynamic process spreading over the edges of the network. The task then is to infer the edges and the dynamics of the underlying network. We develop an on-line algorithm that relies on stochastic convex optimization to efficiently solve the dynamic network inference problem. We apply our algorithm to information diffusion among 3.3 million mainstream media and blog sites and experiment with more than 179 million different pieces of information spreading over the network in a one year period. We study the evolution of information pathways in the online media space and find interesting insights. Information pathways for general recurrent topics are more stable across time than for on-going news events. Clusters of news media sites and blogs often emerge and vanish in matter of days for on-going news events. Major social movements and events involving civil population, such as the Libyan's civil war or Syria's uprise, lead to an increased amount of information pathways among blogs as well as in the overall increase in the network centrality of blogs and social media sites.
1212.1469
mqr-tree: A 2-dimensional Spatial Access Method
cs.DB
In this paper, we propose the mqr-tree, a two-dimensional spatial access method that organizes spatial objects in a two-dimensional node and based on their spatial relationships. Previously proposed spatial access methods that attempt to maintain spatial relationships between objects in their structures are limited in their incorporation of existing one-dimensional spatial access methods, or have lower space utilization in its nodes, and higher tree height, overcoverage and overlap than is necessary. The mqr-tree utilizes a node organization, set of spatial relationship rules and insertion strategy in order to gain significant improvements in overlap and overcoverage. In addition, other desirable properties are identified as a result of the chosen node organization and insertion strategies. In particular, zero overlap is achieved when the mqr-tree is used to index point data. A comparison of the mqr-tree insertion strategy versus the R-tree shows significant improvements in overlap and overcoverage, with comparable space utilization. In addition, a comparison of region searching shows that the mqr-tree achieves a lower number of disk accesses in many cases
1212.1478
The Clustering of Author's Texts of English Fiction in the Vector Space of Semantic Fields
cs.CL cs.DL cs.IR
The clustering of text documents in the vector space of semantic fields and in the semantic space with orthogonal basis has been analysed. It is shown that using the vector space model with the basis of semantic fields is effective in the cluster analysis algorithms of author's texts in English fiction. The analysis of the author's texts distribution in cluster structure showed the presence of the areas of semantic space that represent the author's ideolects of individual authors. SVD factorization of the semantic fields matrix makes it possible to reduce significantly the dimension of the semantic space in the cluster analysis of author's texts.
1212.1496
Excess risk bounds for multitask learning with trace norm regularization
stat.ML cs.LG
Trace norm regularization is a popular method of multitask learning. We give excess risk bounds with explicit dependence on the number of tasks, the number of examples per task and properties of the data distribution. The bounds are independent of the dimension of the input space, which may be infinite as in the case of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. A byproduct of the proof are bounds on the expected norm of sums of random positive semidefinite matrices with subexponential moments.
1212.1521
Bounds on mean cycle time in acyclic fork-join queueing networks
math.OC cs.SY
Simple lower and upper bounds on mean cycle time in stochastic acyclic fork-join networks are derived using the $(\max,+)$-algebra approach. The behaviour of the bounds under various assumptions concerning the service times in the networks is discussed, and related numerical examples are presented.
1212.1522
Mechanism Design for Fair Division
cs.GT cs.DS cs.MA
We revisit the classic problem of fair division from a mechanism design perspective, using {\em Proportional Fairness} as a benchmark. In particular, we aim to allocate a collection of divisible items to a set of agents while incentivizing the agents to be truthful in reporting their valuations. For the very large class of homogeneous valuations, we design a truthful mechanism that provides {\em every agent} with at least a $1/e\approx 0.368$ fraction of her Proportionally Fair valuation. To complement this result, we show that no truthful mechanism can guarantee more than a $0.5$ fraction, even for the restricted class of additive linear valuations. We also propose another mechanism for additive linear valuations that works really well when every item is highly demanded. To guarantee truthfulness, our mechanisms discard a carefully chosen fraction of the allocated resources; we conclude by uncovering interesting connections between our mechanisms and known mechanisms that use money instead.
1212.1524
Layer-wise learning of deep generative models
cs.NE cs.LG stat.ML
When using deep, multi-layered architectures to build generative models of data, it is difficult to train all layers at once. We propose a layer-wise training procedure admitting a performance guarantee compared to the global optimum. It is based on an optimistic proxy of future performance, the best latent marginal. We interpret auto-encoders in this setting as generative models, by showing that they train a lower bound of this criterion. We test the new learning procedure against a state of the art method (stacked RBMs), and find it to improve performance. Both theory and experiments highlight the importance, when training deep architectures, of using an inference model (from data to hidden variables) richer than the generative model (from hidden variables to data).
1212.1527
Learning Mixtures of Arbitrary Distributions over Large Discrete Domains
cs.LG cs.DS
We give an algorithm for learning a mixture of {\em unstructured} distributions. This problem arises in various unsupervised learning scenarios, for example in learning {\em topic models} from a corpus of documents spanning several topics. We show how to learn the constituents of a mixture of $k$ arbitrary distributions over a large discrete domain $[n]=\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ and the mixture weights, using $O(n\polylog n)$ samples. (In the topic-model learning setting, the mixture constituents correspond to the topic distributions.) This task is information-theoretically impossible for $k>1$ under the usual sampling process from a mixture distribution. However, there are situations (such as the above-mentioned topic model case) in which each sample point consists of several observations from the same mixture constituent. This number of observations, which we call the {\em "sampling aperture"}, is a crucial parameter of the problem. We obtain the {\em first} bounds for this mixture-learning problem {\em without imposing any assumptions on the mixture constituents.} We show that efficient learning is possible exactly at the information-theoretically least-possible aperture of $2k-1$. Thus, we achieve near-optimal dependence on $n$ and optimal aperture. While the sample-size required by our algorithm depends exponentially on $k$, we prove that such a dependence is {\em unavoidable} when one considers general mixtures. A sequence of tools contribute to the algorithm, such as concentration results for random matrices, dimension reduction, moment estimations, and sensitivity analysis.
1212.1570
A simple method for decision making in robocup soccer simulation 3d environment
cs.AI cs.RO
In this paper new hierarchical hybrid fuzzy-crisp methods for decision making and action selection of an agent in soccer simulation 3D environment are presented. First, the skills of an agent are introduced, implemented and classified in two layers, the basicskills and the highlevel skills. In the second layer, a twophase mechanism for decision making is introduced. In phase one, some useful methods are implemented which check the agent's situation for performing required skills. In the next phase, the team str ategy, team for mation, agent's role and the agent's positioning system are introduced. A fuzzy logical approach is employed to recognize the team strategy and further more to tell the player the best position to move. At last, we comprised our implemented algor ithm in the Robocup Soccer Simulation 3D environment and results showed th eefficiency of the introduced methodology.
1212.1603
Model Reduction using a Frequency-Limited H2-Cost
cs.SY math.DS
We propose a method for model reduction on a given frequency range, without the use of input and output filter weights. The method uses a nonlinear optimization approach to minimize a frequency limited H2 like cost function. An important contribution in the paper is the derivation of the gradient of the proposed cost function. The fact that we have a closed form expression for the gradient and that considerations have been taken to make the gradient computationally efficient to compute enables us to efficiently use off-the-shelf optimization software to solve the optimization problem.
1212.1611
Nonlinearity of quartic rotation symmetric Boolean functions
cs.IT math.CO math.IT
Nonlinearity of rotation symmetric Boolean functions is an important topic on cryptography algorithm. Let $e\ge 1$ be any given integer. In this paper, we investigate the following question: Is the nonlinearity of the quartic rotation symmetric Boolean function generated by the monomial $x_0x_ex_{2e}x_{3e}$ equal to its weight? We introduce some new simple sub-functions and develop new technique to get several recursive formulas. Then we use these recursive formulas to show that the nonlinearity of the quartic rotation symmetric Boolean function generated by the monomial $x_0x_ex_{2e}x_{3e}$ is the same as its weight. So we answer the above question affirmatively. Finally, we conjecture that if $l\ge 4$ is an integer, then the nonlinearity of the rotation symmetric Boolean function generated by the monomial $x_0x_ex_{2e}...x_{le}$ equals its weight.
1212.1617
Similarity of Polygonal Curves in the Presence of Outliers
cs.CG cs.CV cs.GR
The Fr\'{e}chet distance is a well studied and commonly used measure to capture the similarity of polygonal curves. Unfortunately, it exhibits a high sensitivity to the presence of outliers. Since the presence of outliers is a frequently occurring phenomenon in practice, a robust variant of Fr\'{e}chet distance is required which absorbs outliers. We study such a variant here. In this modified variant, our objective is to minimize the length of subcurves of two polygonal curves that need to be ignored (MinEx problem), or alternately, maximize the length of subcurves that are preserved (MaxIn problem), to achieve a given Fr\'{e}chet distance. An exact solution to one problem would imply an exact solution to the other problem. However, we show that these problems are not solvable by radicals over $\mathbb{Q}$ and that the degree of the polynomial equations involved is unbounded in general. This motivates the search for approximate solutions. We present an algorithm, which approximates, for a given input parameter $\delta$, optimal solutions for the \MinEx\ and \MaxIn\ problems up to an additive approximation error $\delta$ times the length of the input curves. The resulting running time is upper bounded by $\mathcal{O} \left(\frac{n^3}{\delta} \log \left(\frac{n}{\delta} \right)\right)$, where $n$ is the complexity of the input polygonal curves.
1212.1625
Testing the AgreementMaker System in the Anatomy Task of OAEI 2012
cs.IR cs.AI
The AgreementMaker system was the leading system in the anatomy task of the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI) competition in 2011. While AgreementMaker did not compete in OAEI 2012, here we report on its performance in the 2012 anatomy task, using the same configurations of AgreementMaker submitted to OAEI 2011. Additionally, we also test AgreementMaker using an updated version of the UBERON ontology as a mediating ontology, and otherwise identical configurations. AgreementMaker achieved an F-measure of 91.8% with the 2011 configurations, and an F-measure of 92.2% with the updated UBERON ontology. Thus, AgreementMaker would have been the second best system had it competed in the anatomy task of OAEI 2012, and only 0.1% below the F-measure of the best system.
1212.1629
Modeling for Control of Symmetric Aerial Vehicles Subjected to Aerodynamic Forces
cs.SY
This paper participates in the development of a unified approach to the control of aerial vehicles with extended flight envelopes. More precisely, modeling for control purposes of a class of thrust-propelled aerial vehicles subjected to lift and drag aerodynamic forces is addressed assuming a rotational symmetry of the vehicle's shape about the thrust force axis. A condition upon aerodynamic characteristics that allows one to recast the control problem into the simpler case of a spherical vehicle is pointed out. Beside showing how to adapt nonlinear controllers developed for this latter case, the paper extends a previous work by the authors in two directions. First, the 3D case is addressed whereas only motions in a single vertical plane was considered. Secondly, the family of models of aerodynamic forces for which the aforementioned transformation holds is enlarged.
1212.1633
Inferring Attitude in Online Social Networks Based On Quadratic Correlation
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The structure of an online social network in most cases cannot be described just by links between its members. We study online social networks, in which members may have certain attitude, positive or negative toward each other, and so the network consists of a mixture of both positive and negative relationships. Our goal is to predict the sign of a given relationship based on the evidences provided in the current snapshot of the network. More precisely, using machine learning techniques we develop a model that after being trained on a particular network predicts the sign of an unknown or hidden link. The model uses relationships and influences from peers as evidences for the guess, however, the set of peers used is not predefined but rather learned during the training process. We use quadratic correlation between peer members to train the predictor. The model is tested on popular online datasets such as Epinions, Slashdot, and Wikipedia. In many cases it shows almost perfect prediction accuracy. Moreover, our model can also be efficiently updated as the underlaying social network evolves.
1212.1638
Achieving Optimal Throughput and Near-Optimal Asymptotic Delay Performance in Multi-Channel Wireless Networks with Low Complexity: A Practical Greedy Scheduling Policy
cs.NI cs.IT cs.PF math.IT
In this paper, we focus on the scheduling problem in multi-channel wireless networks, e.g., the downlink of a single cell in fourth generation (4G) OFDM-based cellular networks. Our goal is to design practical scheduling policies that can achieve provably good performance in terms of both throughput and delay, at a low complexity. While a class of $O(n^{2.5} \log n)$-complexity hybrid scheduling policies are recently developed to guarantee both rate-function delay optimality (in the many-channel many-user asymptotic regime) and throughput optimality (in the general non-asymptotic setting), their practical complexity is typically high. To address this issue, we develop a simple greedy policy called Delay-based Server-Side-Greedy (D-SSG) with a \lower complexity $2n^2+2n$, and rigorously prove that D-SSG not only achieves throughput optimality, but also guarantees near-optimal asymptotic delay performance. Specifically, we show that the rate-function attained by D-SSG for any delay-violation threshold $b$, is no smaller than the maximum achievable rate-function by any scheduling policy for threshold $b-1$. Thus, we are able to achieve a reduction in complexity (from $O(n^{2.5} \log n)$ of the hybrid policies to $2n^2 + 2n$) with a minimal drop in the delay performance. More importantly, in practice, D-SSG generally has a substantially lower complexity than the hybrid policies that typically have a large constant factor hidden in the $O(\cdot)$ notation. Finally, we conduct numerical simulations to validate our theoretical results in various scenarios. The simulation results show that D-SSG not only guarantees a near-optimal rate-function, but also empirically is virtually indistinguishable from delay-optimal policies.
1212.1684
Assessing the Bias in Communication Networks Sampled from Twitter
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We collect and analyse messages exchanged in Twitter using two of the platform's publicly available APIs (the search and stream specifications). We assess the differences between the two samples, and compare the networks of communication reconstructed from them. The empirical context is given by political protests taking place in May 2012: we track online communication around these protests for the period of one month, and reconstruct the network of mentions and re-tweets according to the two samples. We find that the search API over-represents the more central users and does not offer an accurate picture of peripheral activity; we also find that the bias is greater for the network of mentions. We discuss the implications of this bias for the study of diffusion dynamics and collective action in the digital era, and advocate the need for more uniform sampling procedures in the study of online communication.
1212.1703
Non-Systematic Complex Number RS Coded OFDM by Unique Word Prefix
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we expand our recently introduced concept of UW-OFDM (unique word orthogonal frequency division multiplexing). In UW-OFDM the cyclic prefixes (CPs) are replaced by deterministic sequences, the so-called unique words (UWs). The UWs are generated by appropriately loading a set of redundant subcarriers. By that a systematic complex number Reed Solomon (RS) code construction is introduced in a quite natural way, because an RS code may be defined as the set of vectors, for which a block of successive zeros occurs in the other domain w.r.t. a discrete Fourier transform. (For a fixed block different to zero, i.e., a UW, a coset code of an RS code is generated.) A remaining problem in the original systematic coded UW-OFDM concept is the fact that the redundant subcarrier symbols disproportionately contribute to the mean OFDM symbol energy. In this paper we introduce the concept of non-systematic coded UW-OFDM, where the redundancy is no longer allocated to dedicated subcarriers, but distributed over all subcarriers. We derive optimum complex valued code generator matrices matched to the BLUE (best linear unbiased estimator) and to the LMMSE (linear minimum mean square error) data estimator, respectively. With the help of simulations we highlight the advantageous spectral properties and the superior BER (bit error ratio) performance of non-systematic coded UW-OFDM compared to systematic coded UW-OFDM as well as to CP-OFDM in AWGN (additive white Gaussian noise) and in frequency selective environments.
1212.1707
Lossy Compression via Sparse Linear Regression: Computationally Efficient Encoding and Decoding
cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
We propose computationally efficient encoders and decoders for lossy compression using a Sparse Regression Code. The codebook is defined by a design matrix and codewords are structured linear combinations of columns of this matrix. The proposed encoding algorithm sequentially chooses columns of the design matrix to successively approximate the source sequence. It is shown to achieve the optimal distortion-rate function for i.i.d Gaussian sources under the squared-error distortion criterion. For a given rate, the parameters of the design matrix can be varied to trade off distortion performance with encoding complexity. An example of such a trade-off as a function of the block length n is the following. With computational resource (space or time) per source sample of O((n/\log n)^2), for a fixed distortion-level above the Gaussian distortion-rate function, the probability of excess distortion decays exponentially in n. The Sparse Regression Code is robust in the following sense: for any ergodic source, the proposed encoder achieves the optimal distortion-rate function of an i.i.d Gaussian source with the same variance. Simulations show that the encoder has good empirical performance, especially at low and moderate rates.
1212.1709
Evolution of the most common English words and phrases over the centuries
physics.soc-ph cs.CL cs.DL
By determining which were the most common English words and phrases since the beginning of the 16th century, we obtain a unique large-scale view of the evolution of written text. We find that the most common words and phrases in any given year had a much shorter popularity lifespan in the 16th than they had in the 20th century. By measuring how their usage propagated across the years, we show that for the past two centuries the process has been governed by linear preferential attachment. Along with the steady growth of the English lexicon, this provides an empirical explanation for the ubiquity of the Zipf's law in language statistics and confirms that writing, although undoubtedly an expression of art and skill, is not immune to the same influences of self-organization that are known to regulate processes as diverse as the making of new friends and World Wide Web growth.
1212.1710
The information and its observer: external and internal information processes, information cooperation, and the origin of the observer intellect
nlin.AO cs.IT math.IT
The aim is formal principles of origin information and information process creating information observer self-creating information in interactive observations. The interactive phenomenon creates Yes-No actions of information Bits in its information observer. Information emerges from interacting random field of Kolmogorov probabilities, which link Kolmogorov 0-1 law probabilities and Bayesian probabilities observing Markov diffusion process by probabilistic 0-1 impulses. Each No-0 action cuts maximum of impulse minimal entropy while following Yes-1 action transfers maxim between impulses performing dual principle of converting process entropy to information. Merging Yes-No actions generate microprocess within bordered impulse producing Bit with free information when the microprocess probability approaches 1. Interacting bits memorize free information which attracts multiple Bits moving macroprocess self joining triplet macrounits. Memorized information binds reversible microprocess with irreversible macroprocess. The observation converts cutting entropy to information macrounits. Macrounits logically self-organize information networks encoding the units in geometrical structures enclosing triplet code. Multiple IN binds their ending triplets enclosing observer information cognition and intelligence. The observer cognition assembles common units through multiple attraction and resonances at forming IN triplet hierarchy which accept only units that recognizes each IN node. Maximal number of accepted triplet levels in multiple IN measures the observer maximum comparative information intelligence. The observation process carries probabilistic and certain wave functions which self-organize the space hierarchical structures. These information regularities create integral logic and intelligence self-requesting needed information.
1212.1735
Towards Design of System Hierarchy (research survey)
math.OC cs.AI cs.NI cs.SY
The paper addresses design/building frameworks for some kinds of tree-like and hierarchical structures of systems. The following approaches are examined: (1) expert-based procedures, (2) hierarchical clustering; (3) spanning problems (e.g., minimum spanning tree, minimum Steiner tree, maximum leaf spanning tree problem; (4) design of organizational 'optimal' hierarchies; (5) design of multi-layer (e.g., three-layer) k-connected network; (6) modification of hierarchies or networks: (i) modification of tree via condensing of neighbor nodes, (ii) hotlink assignment, (iii) transformation of tree into Steiner tree, (iv) restructuring as modification of an initial structural solution into a solution that is the most close to a goal solution while taking into account a cost of the modification. Combinatorial optimization problems are considered as basic ones (e.g., classification, knapsack problem, multiple choice problem, assignment problem). Some numerical examples illustrate the suggested problems and solving frameworks.
1212.1740
A Graph Partitioning Approach to Predict Patterns in Lateral Inhibition Systems
math.DS cs.SY
We analyze pattern formation on a network of cells where each cell inhibits its neighbors through cell-to-cell contact signaling. The network is modeled as an interconnection of identical dynamical subsystems each of which represents the signaling reactions in a cell. We search for steady state patterns by partitioning the graph vertices into disjoint classes, where the cells in the same class have the same final fate. To prove the existence of steady states with this structure, we use results from monotone systems theory. Finally, we analyze the stability of these patterns with a block decomposition based on the graph partition.
1212.1744
Computational Capabilities of Random Automata Networks for Reservoir Computing
nlin.AO cond-mat.dis-nn cs.NE
This paper underscores the conjecture that intrinsic computation is maximal in systems at the "edge of chaos." We study the relationship between dynamics and computational capability in Random Boolean Networks (RBN) for Reservoir Computing (RC). RC is a computational paradigm in which a trained readout layer interprets the dynamics of an excitable component (called the reservoir) that is perturbed by external input. The reservoir is often implemented as a homogeneous recurrent neural network, but there has been little investigation into the properties of reservoirs that are discrete and heterogeneous. Random Boolean networks are generic and heterogeneous dynamical systems and here we use them as the reservoir. An RBN is typically a closed system; to use it as a reservoir we extend it with an input layer. As a consequence of perturbation, the RBN does not necessarily fall into an attractor. Computational capability in RC arises from a trade-off between separability and fading memory of inputs. We find the balance of these properties predictive of classification power and optimal at critical connectivity. These results are relevant to the construction of devices which exploit the intrinsic dynamics of complex heterogeneous systems, such as biomolecular substrates.
1212.1752
Hybrid Optimized Back propagation Learning Algorithm For Multi-layer Perceptron
cs.NE
Standard neural network based on general back propagation learning using delta method or gradient descent method has some great faults like poor optimization of error-weight objective function, low learning rate, instability .This paper introduces a hybrid supervised back propagation learning algorithm which uses trust-region method of unconstrained optimization of the error objective function by using quasi-newton method .This optimization leads to more accurate weight update system for minimizing the learning error during learning phase of multi-layer perceptron.[13][14][15] In this paper augmented line search is used for finding points which satisfies Wolfe condition. In this paper, This hybrid back propagation algorithm has strong global convergence properties & is robust & efficient in practice.
1212.1798
IK-PSO, PSO Inverse Kinematics Solver with Application to Biped Gait Generation
cs.RO cs.AI
This paper describes a new approach allowing the generation of a simplified Biped gait. This approach combines a classical dynamic modeling with an inverse kinematics' solver based on particle swarm optimization, PSO. First, an inverted pendulum, IP, is used to obtain a simplified dynamic model of the robot and to compute the target position of a key point in biped locomotion, the Centre Of Mass, COM. The proposed algorithm, called IK-PSO, Inverse Kinematics PSO, returns and inverse kinematics solution corresponding to that COM respecting the joints constraints. In This paper the inertia weight PSO variant is used to generate a possible solution according to the stability based fitness function and a set of joints motions constraints. The method is applied with success to a leg motion generation. Since based on a pre-calculated COM, that satisfied the biped stability, the proposal allowed also to plan a walk with application on a small size biped robot.
1212.1800
Toward Intelligent Biped-Humanoids Gaits Generation
cs.RO
In this chapter we will highlight our experimental studies on natural human walking analysis and introduce a biologically inspired design for simple bipedal locomotion system of humanoid robots. Inspiration comes directly from human walking analysis and human muscles mechanism and control. A hybrid algorithm for walking gaits generation is then proposed as an innovative alternative to classically used kinematics and dynamic equations solving, the gaits include knee, ankle and hip trajectories. The proposed algorithm is an intelligent evolutionary based on particle swarm optimization paradigm. This proposal can be used for small size humanoid robots, with a knee an ankle and a hip and at least six Degrees of Freedom (DOF).
1212.1801
Sequential Testing for Sparse Recovery
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies sequential methods for recovery of sparse signals in high dimensions. When compared to fixed sample size procedures, in the sparse setting, sequential methods can result in a large reduction in the number of samples needed for reliable signal support recovery. Starting with a lower bound, we show any coordinate-wise sequential sampling procedure fails in the high dimensional limit provided the average number of measurements per dimension is less then log s/D(P_0||P_1) where s is the level of sparsity and D(P_0||P_1) the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the underlying distributions. A series of Sequential Probability Ratio Tests (SPRT) which require complete knowledge of the underlying distributions is shown to achieve this bound. Motivated by real world experiments and recent work in adaptive sensing, we introduce a simple procedure termed Sequential Thresholding which can be implemented when the underlying testing problem satisfies a monotone likelihood ratio assumption. Sequential Thresholding guarantees exact support recovery provided the average number of measurements per dimension grows faster than log s/ D(P_0||P_1), achieving the lower bound. For comparison, we show any non-sequential procedure fails provided the number of measurements grows at a rate less than log n/D(P_1||P_0), where n is the total dimension of the problem.
1212.1819
A fair comparison of many max-tree computation algorithms (Extended version of the paper submitted to ISMM 2013
cs.CV
With the development of connected filters for the last decade, many algorithms have been proposed to compute the max-tree. Max-tree allows to compute the most advanced connected operators in a simple way. However, no fair comparison of algorithms has been proposed yet and the choice of an algorithm over an other depends on many parameters. Since the need of fast algorithms is obvious for production code, we present an in depth comparison of five algorithms and some variations of them in a unique framework. Finally, a decision tree will be proposed to help user in choosing the right algorithm with respect to their data.