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1302.0272
A Study of Influential Factors in the Adoption and Diffusion of B2C E-Commerce
cs.CY cs.SI
This paper looks at the present standing of ecommerce in Saudi Arabia, as well as the challenges and strengths of Business to Customers (B2C) electronic commerce. Many studies have been conducted around the world in order to gain a better understanding of the demands, needs and effectiveness of online commerce. A study was undertaken to review the literature identifying the factors influencing the adoption and diffusion of B2C e-commerce. It found four distinct categories: businesses, customers, environmental and governmental support, which must all be considered when creating an e-commerce infrastructure. A concept matrix was used to provide a comparison of important factors in different parts of the world. The study found that e-commerce in Saudi Arabia was lacking in Governmental support as well as relevant involvement by both customers and retailers.
1302.0274
Directedness of information flow in mobile phone communication networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Without having direct access to the information that is being exchanged, traces of information flow can be obtained by looking at temporal sequences of user interactions. These sequences can be represented as causality trees whose statistics result from a complex interplay between the topology of the underlying (social) network and the time correlations among the communications. Here, we study causality trees in mobile-phone data, which can be represented as a dynamical directed network. This representation of the data reveals the existence of super-spreaders and super-receivers. We show that the tree statistics, respectively the information spreading process, are extremely sensitive to the in-out degree correlation exhibited by the users. We also learn that a given information, e.g., a rumor, would require users to retransmit it for more than 30 hours in order to cover a macroscopic fraction of the system. Our analysis indicates that topological node-node correlations of the underlying social network, while allowing the existence of information loops, they also promote information spreading. Temporal correlations, and therefore causality effects, are only visible as local phenomena and during short time scales. These results are obtained through a combination of theory and data analysis techniques.
1302.0286
Stochastic maximum principle for optimal control of SPDEs
math.OC cs.SY math.PR
We prove a version of the maximum principle, in the sense of Pontryagin, for the optimal control of a stochastic partial differential equation driven by a finite dimensional Wiener process. The equation is formulated in a semi-abstract form that allows direct applications to a large class of controlled stochastic parabolic equations. We allow for a diffusion coefficient dependent on the control parameter, and the space of control actions is general, so that in particular we need to introduce two adjoint processes. The second adjoint process takes values in a suitable space of operators on $L^4$.
1302.0296
Interference Networks with No CSIT: Impact of Topology
cs.IT math.IT
We consider partially-connected $K$-user interference networks, where the transmitters have no knowledge about the channel gain values, but they are aware of network topology (or connectivity). We introduce several linear algebraic and graph theoretic concepts to derive new topology-based outer bounds and inner bounds on the symmetric degrees-of-freedom (DoF) of these networks. We evaluate our bounds for two classes of networks to demonstrate their tightness for most networks in these classes, quantify the gain of our inner bounds over benchmark interference management strategies, and illustrate the effect of network topology on these gains.
1302.0309
Highly Available Transactions: Virtues and Limitations (Extended Version)
cs.DB
To minimize network latency and remain online during server failures and network partitions, many modern distributed data storage systems eschew transactional functionality, which provides strong semantic guarantees for groups of multiple operations over multiple data items. In this work, we consider the problem of providing Highly Available Transactions (HATs): transactional guarantees that do not suffer unavailability during system partitions or incur high network latency. We introduce a taxonomy of highly available systems and analyze existing ACID isolation and distributed data consistency guarantees to identify which can and cannot be achieved in HAT systems. This unifies the literature on weak transactional isolation, replica consistency, and highly available systems. We analytically and experimentally quantify the availability and performance benefits of HATs--often two to three orders of magnitude over wide-area networks--and discuss their necessary semantic compromises.
1302.0315
Sparse Multiple Kernel Learning with Geometric Convergence Rate
cs.LG stat.ML
In this paper, we study the problem of sparse multiple kernel learning (MKL), where the goal is to efficiently learn a combination of a fixed small number of kernels from a large pool that could lead to a kernel classifier with a small prediction error. We develop an efficient algorithm based on the greedy coordinate descent algorithm, that is able to achieve a geometric convergence rate under appropriate conditions. The convergence rate is achieved by measuring the size of functional gradients by an empirical $\ell_2$ norm that depends on the empirical data distribution. This is in contrast to previous algorithms that use a functional norm to measure the size of gradients, which is independent from the data samples. We also establish a generalization error bound of the learned sparse kernel classifier using the technique of local Rademacher complexity.
1302.0317
Distributed simulation of city inundation by coupled surface and subsurface porous flow for urban flood decision support system
cs.CE
We present a decision support system for flood early warning and disaster management. It includes the models for data-driven meteorological predictions, for simulation of atmospheric pressure, wind, long sea waves and seiches; a module for optimization of flood barrier gates operation; models for stability assessment of levees and embankments, for simulation of city inundation dynamics and citizens evacuation scenarios. The novelty of this paper is a coupled distributed simulation of surface and subsurface flows that can predict inundation of low-lying inland zones far from the submerged waterfront areas, as observed in St. Petersburg city during the floods. All the models are wrapped as software services in the CLAVIRE platform for urgent computing, which provides workflow management and resource orchestration.
1302.0321
Signal reconstruction in linear mixing systems with different error metrics
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of reconstructing a signal from noisy measurements in linear mixing systems. The reconstruction performance is usually quantified by standard error metrics such as squared error, whereas we consider any additive error metric. Under the assumption that relaxed belief propagation (BP) can compute the posterior in the large system limit, we propose a simple, fast, and highly general algorithm that reconstructs the signal by minimizing the user-defined error metric. For two example metrics, we provide performance analysis and convincing numerical results. Finally, our algorithm can be adjusted to minimize the $\ell_\infty$ error, which is not additive. Interestingly, $\ell_{\infty}$ minimization only requires to apply a Wiener filter to the output of relaxed BP.
1302.0324
A New Constructive Method to Optimize Neural Network Architecture and Generalization
cs.NE
In this paper, after analyzing the reasons of poor generalization and overfitting in neural networks, we consider some noise data as a singular value of a continuous function - jump discontinuity point. The continuous part can be approximated with the simplest neural networks, which have good generalization performance and optimal network architecture, by traditional algorithms such as constructive algorithm for feed-forward neural networks with incremental training, BP algorithm, ELM algorithm, various constructive algorithm, RBF approximation and SVM. At the same time, we will construct RBF neural networks to fit the singular value with every error in, and we prove that a function with jumping discontinuity points can be approximated by the simplest neural networks with a decay RBF neural networks in by each error, and a function with jumping discontinuity point can be constructively approximated by a decay RBF neural networks in by each error and the constructive part have no generalization influence to the whole machine learning system which will optimize neural network architecture and generalization performance, reduce the overfitting phenomenon by avoid fitting the noisy data.
1302.0328
Bayesian Entropy Estimation for Countable Discrete Distributions
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of estimating Shannon's entropy $H$ from discrete data, in cases where the number of possible symbols is unknown or even countably infinite. The Pitman-Yor process, a generalization of Dirichlet process, provides a tractable prior distribution over the space of countably infinite discrete distributions, and has found major applications in Bayesian non-parametric statistics and machine learning. Here we show that it also provides a natural family of priors for Bayesian entropy estimation, due to the fact that moments of the induced posterior distribution over $H$ can be computed analytically. We derive formulas for the posterior mean (Bayes' least squares estimate) and variance under Dirichlet and Pitman-Yor process priors. Moreover, we show that a fixed Dirichlet or Pitman-Yor process prior implies a narrow prior distribution over $H$, meaning the prior strongly determines the entropy estimate in the under-sampled regime. We derive a family of continuous mixing measures such that the resulting mixture of Pitman-Yor processes produces an approximately flat prior over $H$. We show that the resulting Pitman-Yor Mixture (PYM) entropy estimator is consistent for a large class of distributions. We explore the theoretical properties of the resulting estimator, and show that it performs well both in simulation and in application to real data.
1302.0334
Class Algebra for Ontology Reasoning
cs.AI
Class algebra provides a natural framework for sharing of ISA hierarchies between users that may be unaware of each other's definitions. This permits data from relational databases, object-oriented databases, and tagged XML documents to be unioned into one distributed ontology, sharable by all users without the need for prior negotiation or the development of a "standard" ontology for each field. Moreover, class algebra produces a functional correspondence between a class's class algebraic definition (i.e. its "intent") and the set of all instances which satisfy the expression (i.e. its "extent"). The framework thus provides assistance in quickly locating examples and counterexamples of various definitions. This kind of information is very valuable when developing models of the real world, and serves as an invaluable tool assisting in the proof of theorems concerning these class algebra expressions. Finally, the relative frequencies of objects in the ISA hierarchy can produce a useful Boolean algebra of probabilities. The probabilities can be used by traditional information-theoretic classification methodologies to obtain optimal ways of classifying objects in the database.
1302.0336
Sharp Inequalities for $f$-divergences
math.ST cs.IT math.IT math.OC math.PR stat.ML stat.TH
$f$-divergences are a general class of divergences between probability measures which include as special cases many commonly used divergences in probability, mathematical statistics and information theory such as Kullback-Leibler divergence, chi-squared divergence, squared Hellinger distance, total variation distance etc. In this paper, we study the problem of maximizing or minimizing an $f$-divergence between two probability measures subject to a finite number of constraints on other $f$-divergences. We show that these infinite-dimensional optimization problems can all be reduced to optimization problems over small finite dimensional spaces which are tractable. Our results lead to a comprehensive and unified treatment of the problem of obtaining sharp inequalities between $f$-divergences. We demonstrate that many of the existing results on inequalities between $f$-divergences can be obtained as special cases of our results and we also improve on some existing non-sharp inequalities.
1302.0337
Perancangan basisdata sistem informasi penggajian
cs.DB
The purpose of this research is to design database scheme of information system at XYZ University. By using database design methods (conceptual scheme, logical scheme, & physical scheme) the writer designs payroll information system. The physical scheme is compatible with Borland Delphi Database Engine Scheme to support the implementation of the I.S. After 3 (three) steps we get 7 (seven) tables, dan 6 (six) forms. By using this shemce, the system can produce several reports quickly, accurately, efficiently, and effectively.
1302.0347
An Efficient CCA2-Secure Variant of the McEliece Cryptosystem in the Standard Model
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT
Recently, a few chosen-ciphertext secure (CCA2-secure) variants of the McEliece public-key encryption (PKE) scheme in the standard model were introduced. All the proposed schemes are based on encryption repetition paradigm and use general transformation from CPA-secure scheme to a CCA2-secure one. Therefore, the resulting encryption scheme needs \textit{separate} encryption and has \textit{large} key size compared to the original scheme, which complex public key size problem in the code-based PKE schemes. Thus, the proposed schemes are not sufficiently efficient to be used in practice. In this work, we propose an efficient CCA2-secure variant of the McEliece PKE scheme in the standard model. The main novelty is that, unlike previous approaches, our approach is a generic conversion and can be applied to \textit{any} one-way trapdoor function (OW-TDF), the lowest-level security notion in the context of public-key cryptography, resolving a big fundamental and central problem that has remained unsolved in the past two decades.
1302.0351
New Dimension Value Introduction for In-Memory What-If Analysis
cs.DB
OLAP systems operate on historical data and provide answers to analysts queries. Recent in-memory implementations provide significant performance improvement for real time ad-hoc analysis. Philosophy and techniques of what-if analysis on data warehouse and in-memory data store based OLAP systems have been covered in great detail before but exploration of new dimension value (attribute) introduction has been limited in the context of what-if analysis. We extend the approach of Andrey Balmin et al of using select modify operator on data graph to introduce new values for dimensions and measures in a read-only in-memory data store as scenarios. Our system constructs scenarios without materializing the rows and stores the row information as queries. The rows associated with the scenarios are constructed as and when required by an ad-hoc query.
1302.0386
Fast Damage Recovery in Robotics with the T-Resilience Algorithm
cs.RO cs.AI cs.LG
Damage recovery is critical for autonomous robots that need to operate for a long time without assistance. Most current methods are complex and costly because they require anticipating each potential damage in order to have a contingency plan ready. As an alternative, we introduce the T-resilience algorithm, a new algorithm that allows robots to quickly and autonomously discover compensatory behaviors in unanticipated situations. This algorithm equips the robot with a self-model and discovers new behaviors by learning to avoid those that perform differently in the self-model and in reality. Our algorithm thus does not identify the damaged parts but it implicitly searches for efficient behaviors that do not use them. We evaluate the T-Resilience algorithm on a hexapod robot that needs to adapt to leg removal, broken legs and motor failures; we compare it to stochastic local search, policy gradient and the self-modeling algorithm proposed by Bongard et al. The behavior of the robot is assessed on-board thanks to a RGB-D sensor and a SLAM algorithm. Using only 25 tests on the robot and an overall running time of 20 minutes, T-Resilience consistently leads to substantially better results than the other approaches.
1302.0393
Lambek vs. Lambek: Functorial Vector Space Semantics and String Diagrams for Lambek Calculus
math.LO cs.CL math.CT
The Distributional Compositional Categorical (DisCoCat) model is a mathematical framework that provides compositional semantics for meanings of natural language sentences. It consists of a computational procedure for constructing meanings of sentences, given their grammatical structure in terms of compositional type-logic, and given the empirically derived meanings of their words. For the particular case that the meaning of words is modelled within a distributional vector space model, its experimental predictions, derived from real large scale data, have outperformed other empirically validated methods that could build vectors for a full sentence. This success can be attributed to a conceptually motivated mathematical underpinning, by integrating qualitative compositional type-logic and quantitative modelling of meaning within a category-theoretic mathematical framework. The type-logic used in the DisCoCat model is Lambek's pregroup grammar. Pregroup types form a posetal compact closed category, which can be passed, in a functorial manner, on to the compact closed structure of vector spaces, linear maps and tensor product. The diagrammatic versions of the equational reasoning in compact closed categories can be interpreted as the flow of word meanings within sentences. Pregroups simplify Lambek's previous type-logic, the Lambek calculus, which has been extensively used to formalise and reason about various linguistic phenomena. The apparent reliance of the DisCoCat on pregroups has been seen as a shortcoming. This paper addresses this concern, by pointing out that one may as well realise a functorial passage from the original type-logic of Lambek, a monoidal bi-closed category, to vector spaces, or to any other model of meaning organised within a monoidal bi-closed category. The corresponding string diagram calculus, due to Baez and Stay, now depicts the flow of word meanings.
1302.0394
The weight distributions of some cyclic codes with three or four nonzeros over F3
cs.IT math.IT
Because of efficient encoding and decoding algorithms, cyclic codes are an important family of linear block codes, and have applications in communica- tion and storage systems. However, their weight distributions are known only for a few cases mainly on the codes with one or two nonzeros. In this paper, the weight distributions of two classes of cyclic codes with three or four nonzeros are determined.
1302.0398
Towards efficient decoding of classical-quantum polar codes
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
Known strategies for sending bits at the capacity rate over a general channel with classical input and quantum output (a cq channel) require the decoder to implement impractically complicated collective measurements. Here, we show that a fully collective strategy is not necessary in order to recover all of the information bits. In fact, when coding for a large number N uses of a cq channel W, N I(W_acc) of the bits can be recovered by a non-collective strategy which amounts to coherent quantum processing of the results of product measurements, where I(W_acc) is the accessible information of the channel W. In order to decode the other N (I(W) - I(W_acc)) bits, where I(W) is the Holevo rate, our conclusion is that the receiver should employ collective measurements. We also present two other results: 1) collective Fuchs-Caves measurements (quantum likelihood ratio measurements) can be used at the receiver to achieve the Holevo rate and 2) we give an explicit form of the Helstrom measurements used in small-size polar codes. The main approach used to demonstrate these results is a quantum extension of Arikan's polar codes.
1302.0406
Generalization Guarantees for a Binary Classification Framework for Two-Stage Multiple Kernel Learning
cs.LG stat.ML
We present generalization bounds for the TS-MKL framework for two stage multiple kernel learning. We also present bounds for sparse kernel learning formulations within the TS-MKL framework.
1302.0413
Learning to Rank for Expert Search in Digital Libraries of Academic Publications
cs.IR cs.DL
The task of expert finding has been getting increasing attention in information retrieval literature. However, the current state-of-the-art is still lacking in principled approaches for combining different sources of evidence in an optimal way. This paper explores the usage of learning to rank methods as a principled approach for combining multiple estimators of expertise, derived from the textual contents, from the graph-structure with the citation patterns for the community of experts, and from profile information about the experts. Experiments made over a dataset of academic publications, for the area of Computer Science, attest for the adequacy of the proposed approaches.
1302.0420
Benchmarking some Portuguese S&T system research units: 2nd Edition
cs.DL cs.IR
The increasing use of productivity and impact metrics for evaluation and comparison, not only of individual researchers but also of institutions, universities and even countries, has prompted the development of bibliometrics. Currently, metrics are becoming widely accepted as an easy and balanced way to assist the peer review and evaluation of scientists and/or research units, provided they have adequate precision and recall. This paper presents a benchmarking study of a selected list of representative Portuguese research units, based on a fairly complete set of parameters: bibliometric parameters, number of competitive projects and number of PhDs produced. The study aimed at collecting productivity and impact data from the selected research units in comparable conditions i.e., using objective metrics based on public information, retrievable on-line and/or from official sources and thus verifiable and repeatable. The study has thus focused on the activity of the 2003-06 period, where such data was available from the latest official evaluation. The main advantage of our study was the application of automatic tools, achieving relevant results at a reduced cost. Moreover, the results over the selected units suggest that this kind of analyses will be very useful to benchmark scientific productivity and impact, and assist peer review.
1302.0422
Set-Membership Constrained Conjugate Gradient Beamforming Algorithms
cs.IT math.IT
In this work a constrained adaptive filtering strategy based on conjugate gradient (CG) and set-membership (SM) techniques is presented for adaptive beamforming. A constraint on the magnitude of the array output is imposed to derive an adaptive algorithm that performs data-selective updates when calculating the beamformer's parameters. We consider a linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) optimization problem with the bounded constraint based on this strategy and propose a CG type algorithm for implementation. The proposed algorithm has data-selective updates, a variable forgetting factor and performs one iteration per update to reduce the computational complexity. The updated parameters construct a space of feasible solutions that enforce the constraints. We also introduce two time-varying bounding schemes to measure the quality of the parameters that could be included in the parameter space. A comprehensive complexity and performance analysis between the proposed and existing algorithms are provided. Simulations are performed to show the enhanced convergence and tracking performance of the proposed algorithm as compared to existing techniques.
1302.0435
Parallel D2-Clustering: Large-Scale Clustering of Discrete Distributions
cs.LG cs.CV
The discrete distribution clustering algorithm, namely D2-clustering, has demonstrated its usefulness in image classification and annotation where each object is represented by a bag of weighed vectors. The high computational complexity of the algorithm, however, limits its applications to large-scale problems. We present a parallel D2-clustering algorithm with substantially improved scalability. A hierarchical structure for parallel computing is devised to achieve a balance between the individual-node computation and the integration process of the algorithm. Additionally, it is shown that even with a single CPU, the hierarchical structure results in significant speed-up. Experiments on real-world large-scale image data, Youtube video data, and protein sequence data demonstrate the efficiency and wide applicability of the parallel D2-clustering algorithm. The loss in clustering accuracy is minor in comparison with the original sequential algorithm.
1302.0439
Correcting Camera Shake by Incremental Sparse Approximation
cs.CV cs.GR
The problem of deblurring an image when the blur kernel is unknown remains challenging after decades of work. Recently there has been rapid progress on correcting irregular blur patterns caused by camera shake, but there is still much room for improvement. We propose a new blind deconvolution method using incremental sparse edge approximation to recover images blurred by camera shake. We estimate the blur kernel first from only the strongest edges in the image, then gradually refine this estimate by allowing for weaker and weaker edges. Our method competes with the benchmark deblurring performance of the state-of-the-art while being significantly faster and easier to generalize.
1302.0446
Sparse Camera Network for Visual Surveillance -- A Comprehensive Survey
cs.CV
Technological advances in sensor manufacture, communication, and computing are stimulating the development of new applications that are transforming traditional vision systems into pervasive intelligent camera networks. The analysis of visual cues in multi-camera networks enables a wide range of applications, from smart home and office automation to large area surveillance and traffic surveillance. While dense camera networks - in which most cameras have large overlapping fields of view - are well studied, we are mainly concerned with sparse camera networks. A sparse camera network undertakes large area surveillance using as few cameras as possible, and most cameras have non-overlapping fields of view with one another. The task is challenging due to the lack of knowledge about the topological structure of the network, variations in the appearance and motion of specific tracking targets in different views, and the difficulties of understanding composite events in the network. In this review paper, we present a comprehensive survey of recent research results to address the problems of intra-camera tracking, topological structure learning, target appearance modeling, and global activity understanding in sparse camera networks. A number of current open research issues are discussed.
1302.0449
Design of optimal sparse interconnection graphs for synchronization of oscillator networks
math.OC cs.SY
We study the optimal design of a conductance network as a means for synchronizing a given set of oscillators. Synchronization is achieved when all oscillator voltages reach consensus, and performance is quantified by the mean-square deviation from the consensus value. We formulate optimization problems that address the trade-off between synchronization performance and the number and strength of oscillator couplings. We promote the sparsity of the coupling network by penalizing the number of interconnection links. For identical oscillators, we establish convexity of the optimization problem and demonstrate that the design problem can be formulated as a semidefinite program. Finally, for special classes of oscillator networks we derive explicit analytical expressions for the optimal conductance values.
1302.0450
Algorithms for leader selection in stochastically forced consensus networks
math.OC cs.RO cs.SY
We are interested in assigning a pre-specified number of nodes as leaders in order to minimize the mean-square deviation from consensus in stochastically forced networks. This problem arises in several applications including control of vehicular formations and localization in sensor networks. For networks with leaders subject to noise, we show that the Boolean constraints (a node is either a leader or it is not) are the only source of nonconvexity. By relaxing these constraints to their convex hull we obtain a lower bound on the global optimal value. We also use a simple but efficient greedy algorithm to identify leaders and to compute an upper bound. For networks with leaders that perfectly follow their desired trajectories, we identify an additional source of nonconvexity in the form of a rank constraint. Removal of the rank constraint and relaxation of the Boolean constraints yields a semidefinite program for which we develop a customized algorithm well-suited for large networks. Several examples ranging from regular lattices to random graphs are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the developed algorithms.
1302.0459
On the performance of 1-level LDPC lattices
cs.IT math.IT
The low-density parity-check (LDPC) lattices perform very well in high dimensions under generalized min-sum iterative decoding algorithm. In this work we focus on 1-level LDPC lattices. We show that these lattices are the same as lattices constructed based on Construction A and low-density lattice-code (LDLC) lattices. In spite of having slightly lower coding gain, 1-level regular LDPC lattices have remarkable performances. The lower complexity nature of the decoding algorithm for these type of lattices allows us to run it for higher dimensions easily. Our simulation results show that a 1-level LDPC lattice of size 10000 can work as close as 1.1 dB at normalized error probability (NEP) of $10^{-5}$.This can also be reported as 0.6 dB at symbol error rate (SER) of $10^{-5}$ with sum-product algorithm.
1302.0463
Modeling citation networks based on vigorousness and dormancy
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.DL cs.SI
In citation networks, the activity of papers usually decreases with age and dormant papers may be discovered and become fashionable again. To model this phenomenon, a competition mechanism is suggested which incorporates two factors: vigorousness and dormancy. Based on this idea, a citation network model is proposed, in which a node has two discrete stage: vigorous and dormant. Vigorous nodes can be deactivated and dormant nodes may be activated and become vigorous. The evolution of the network couples addition of new nodes and state transitions of old ones. Both analytical calculation and numerical simulation show that the degree distribution of nodes in generated networks displays a good right-skewed behavior. Particularly, scale-free networks are obtained as the deactivated vertex is target selected and exponential networks are realized for the random-selected case. Moreover, the measurement of four real-world citation networks achieves a good agreement with the stochastic model.
1302.0487
On the dynamic compressibility of sets
cs.CC cs.IT math.IT
We define a new notion of compressibility of a set of numbers through the dynamics of a polynomial function. We provide approaches to solve the problem by reducing it to the multi-criteria traveling salesman problem through a series of transformations. We then establish computational complexity results by giving some NP-completeness proofs. We also discuss about a notion of $\epsilon$ K-compressibility of a set, with regard to lossy compression and deduce the necessary condition for the given set to be $\epsilon$ K-compressible. Finally, we conclude by providing a list of open problems solutions to which could extend the applicability the our technique.
1302.0488
A multi-lane traffic simulation model via continuous cellular automata
cs.MA nlin.CG
Traffic models based on cellular automata have high computational efficiency because of their simplicity in describing unrealistic vehicular behavior and the versatility of cellular automata to be implemented on parallel processing. On the other hand, the other microscopic traffic models such as car-following models are computationally more expensive, but they have more realistic driver behaviors and detailed vehicle characteristics. We propose a new class between these two categories, defining a traffic model based on continuous cellular automata where we combine the efficiency of cellular automata models with the accuracy of the other microscopic models. More precisely, we introduce a stochastic cellular automata traffic model in which the space is not coarse-grain but continuous. The continuity also allows us to embed a multi-agent fuzzy system proposed to handle uncertainties in decision making on road traffic. Therefore, we simulate different driver behaviors and study the effect of various compositions of vehicles within the traffic stream from the macroscopic point of view. The experimental results show that our model is able to reproduce the typical traffic flow phenomena showing a variety of effects due to the heterogeneity of traffic.
1302.0490
Improved Bounds on RIP for Generalized Orthogonal Matching Pursuit
cs.IT math.IT
Generalized Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (gOMP) is a natural extension of OMP algorithm where unlike OMP, it may select $N (\geq1)$ atoms in each iteration. In this paper, we demonstrate that gOMP can successfully reconstruct a $K$-sparse signal from a compressed measurement $ {\bf y}={\bf \Phi x}$ by $K^{th}$ iteration if the sensing matrix ${\bf \Phi}$ satisfies restricted isometry property (RIP) of order $NK$ where $\delta_{NK} < \frac {\sqrt{N}}{\sqrt{K}+2\sqrt{N}}$. Our bound offers an improvement over the very recent result shown in \cite{wang_2012b}. Moreover, we present another bound for gOMP of order $NK+1$ with $\delta_{NK+1} < \frac {\sqrt{N}}{\sqrt{K}+\sqrt{N}}$ which exactly relates to the near optimal bound of $\delta_{K+1} < \frac {1}{\sqrt{K}+1}$ for OMP (N=1) as shown in \cite{wang_2012a}.
1302.0494
Local Structure Matching Driven by Joint-Saliency-Structure Adaptive Kernel Regression
cs.CV
For nonrigid image registration, matching the particular structures (or the outliers) that have missing correspondence and/or local large deformations, can be more difficult than matching the common structures with small deformations in the two images. Most existing works depend heavily on the outlier segmentation to remove the outlier effect in the registration. Moreover, these works do not handle simultaneously the missing correspondences and local large deformations. In this paper, we defined the nonrigid image registration as a local adaptive kernel regression which locally reconstruct the moving image's dense deformation vectors from the sparse deformation vectors in the multi-resolution block matching. The kernel function of the kernel regression adapts its shape and orientation to the reference image's structure to gather more deformation vector samples of the same structure for the iterative regression computation, whereby the moving image's local deformations could be compliant with the reference image's local structures. To estimate the local deformations around the outliers, we use joint saliency map that highlights the corresponding saliency structures (called Joint Saliency Structures, JSSs) in the two images to guide the dense deformation reconstruction by emphasizing those JSSs' sparse deformation vectors in the kernel regression. The experimental results demonstrate that by using local JSS adaptive kernel regression, the proposed method achieves almost the best performance in alignment of all challenging image pairs with outlier structures compared with other five state-of-the-art nonrigid registration algorithms.
1302.0522
Minimum Distance Distribution of Irregular Generalized LDPC Code Ensembles
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, the minimum distance distribution of irregular generalized LDPC (GLDPC) code ensembles is investigated. Two classes of GLDPC code ensembles are analyzed; in one case, the Tanner graph is regular from the variable node perspective, and in the other case the Tanner graph is completely unstructured and irregular. In particular, for the former ensemble class we determine exactly which ensembles have minimum distance growing linearly with the block length with probability approaching unity with increasing block length. This work extends previous results concerning LDPC and regular GLDPC codes to the case where a hybrid mixture of check node types is used.
1302.0533
Low-Complexity Reduced-Rank Beamforming Algorithms
cs.IT math.IT
A reduced-rank framework with set-membership filtering (SMF) techniques is presented for adaptive beamforming problems encountered in radar systems. We develop and analyze stochastic gradient (SG) and recursive least squares (RLS)-type adaptive algorithms, which achieve an enhanced convergence and tracking performance with low computational cost as compared to existing techniques. Simulations show that the proposed algorithms have a superior performance to prior methods, while the complexity is lower.
1302.0540
A game-theoretic framework for classifier ensembles using weighted majority voting with local accuracy estimates
cs.LG
In this paper, a novel approach for the optimal combination of binary classifiers is proposed. The classifier combination problem is approached from a Game Theory perspective. The proposed framework of adapted weighted majority rules (WMR) is tested against common rank-based, Bayesian and simple majority models, as well as two soft-output averaging rules. Experiments with ensembles of Support Vector Machines (SVM), Ordinary Binary Tree Classifiers (OBTC) and weighted k-nearest-neighbor (w/k-NN) models on benchmark datasets indicate that this new adaptive WMR model, employing local accuracy estimators and the analytically computed optimal weights outperform all the other simple combination rules.
1302.0558
Evolutionary dynamics of time-resolved social interactions
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Cooperation among unrelated individuals is frequently observed in social groups when their members combine efforts and resources to obtain a shared benefit that is unachievable by an individual alone. However, understanding why cooperation arises despite the natural tendency of individuals towards selfish behavior is still an open problem and represents one of the most fascinating challenges in evolutionary dynamics. Recently, the structural characterization of the networks in which social interactions take place has shed some light on the mechanisms by which cooperative behavior emerges and eventually overcomes the natural temptation to defect. In particular, it has been found that the heterogeneity in the number of social ties and the presence of tightly knit communities lead to a significant increase in cooperation as compared with the unstructured and homogeneous connection patterns considered in classical evolutionary dynamics. Here, we investigate the role of social-ties dynamics for the emergence of cooperation in a family of social dilemmas. Social interactions are in fact intrinsically dynamic, fluctuating, and intermittent over time, and they can be represented by time-varying networks. By considering two experimental data sets of human interactions with detailed time information, we show that the temporal dynamics of social ties has a dramatic impact on the evolution of cooperation: the dynamics of pairwise interactions favors selfish behavior.
1302.0561
Breaking the coherence barrier: A new theory for compressed sensing
cs.IT math.IT math.NA
This paper provides an extension of compressed sensing which bridges a substantial gap between existing theory and its current use in real-world applications. It introduces a mathematical framework that generalizes the three standard pillars of compressed sensing - namely, sparsity, incoherence and uniform random subsampling - to three new concepts: asymptotic sparsity, asymptotic incoherence and multilevel random sampling. The new theorems show that compressed sensing is also possible, and reveals several advantages, under these substantially relaxed conditions. The importance of this is threefold. First, inverse problems to which compressed sensing is currently applied are typically coherent. The new theory provides the first comprehensive mathematical explanation for a range of empirical usages of compressed sensing in real-world applications, such as medical imaging, microscopy, spectroscopy and others. Second, in showing that compressed sensing does not require incoherence, but instead that asymptotic incoherence is sufficient, the new theory offers markedly greater flexibility in the design of sensing mechanisms. Third, by using asymptotic incoherence and multi-level sampling to exploit not just sparsity, but also structure, i.e. asymptotic sparsity, the new theory shows that substantially improved reconstructions can be obtained from fewer measurements.
1302.0569
A Class of Three-Weight Cyclic Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Cyclic codes are a subclass of linear codes and have applications in consumer electronics, data storage systems, and communication systems as they have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In this paper, a class of three-weight cyclic codes over $\gf(p)$ whose duals have two zeros is presented, where $p$ is an odd prime. The weight distribution of this class of cyclic codes is settled. Some of the cyclic codes are optimal. The duals of a subclass of the cyclic codes are also studied and proved to be optimal.
1302.0579
A Universal Quantum Circuit Scheme For Finding Complex Eigenvalues
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
We present a general quantum circuit design for finding eigenvalues of non-unitary matrices on quantum computers using the iterative phase estimation algorithm. In particular, we show how the method can be used for the simulation of resonance states for quantum systems.
1302.0581
SMML estimators for exponential families with continuous sufficient statistics
cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.ML stat.TH
The minimum message length principle is an information theoretic criterion that links data compression with statistical inference. This paper studies the strict minimum message length (SMML) estimator for $d$-dimensional exponential families with continuous sufficient statistics, for all $d \ge 1$. The partition of an SMML estimator is shown to consist of convex polytopes (i.e. convex polygons when $d=2$) which can be described explicitly in terms of the assertions and coding probabilities. While this result is known, we give a new proof based on the calculus of variations, and this approach gives some interesting new inequalities for SMML estimators. We also use this result to construct an SMML estimator for a $2$-dimensional normal random variable with known variance and a normal prior on its mean.
1302.0585
Wireless Information and Power Transfer: A Dynamic Power Splitting Approach
cs.IT math.IT
Scavenging energy from ambient radio signals, namely wireless energy harvesting (WEH), has recently drawn significant attention. In this paper, we consider a point-to-point wireless link over the flat-fading channel, where the receiver replenishes energy via WEH from the signals sent by the transmitter. We consider a SISO (single-input single-output) system where the single-antenna receiver cannot decode information and harvest energy independently from the same signal received. Under this practical constraint, we propose a dynamic power splitting (DPS) scheme, where the received signal is split into two streams with adjustable power levels for information decoding and energy harvesting separately based on the instantaneous channel condition that is assumed to be known at the receiver. We derive the optimal power splitting rule at the receiver to achieve various trade-offs between the maximum ergodic capacity for information transfer and the maximum average harvested energy for power transfer. Moreover, for the case when the channel state information is also known at the transmitter, we investigate the joint optimization of transmitter power control and receiver power splitting. Finally, we extend the result for DPS to the SIMO (single-input multiple-output) system and investigate a low-complexity power splitting scheme termed antenna switching.
1302.0614
Outage Capacity for the Optical MIMO Channel
cs.IT math.IT
MIMO processing techniques in fiber optical communications have been proposed as a promising approach to meet increasing demand for information throughput. In this context, the multiple channels correspond to the multiple modes and/or multiple cores in the fiber. In this paper we characterize the distribution of the mutual information with Gaussian input in a simple channel model for this system. Assuming significant cross talk between cores, negligible backscattering and near-lossless propagation in the fiber, we model the transmission channel as a random complex unitary matrix. The loss in the transmission may be parameterized by a number of unutilized channels in the fiber. We analyze the system in a dual fashion. First, we evaluate a closed-form expression for the outage probability, which is handy for small matrices. We also apply the asymptotic approach, in particular the Coulomb gas method from statistical mechanics, to obtain closed-form results for the ergodic mutual information, its variance as well as the outage probability for Gaussian input in the limit of large number of cores/modes. By comparing our analytic results to simulations, we see that, despite the fact that this method is nominally valid for large number of modes, our method is quite accurate even for small to modest number of channels.
1302.0634
Cross-Gramian-Based Combined State and Parameter Reduction for Large-Scale Control Systems
math.OC cs.SY math.DS
This work introduces the empirical cross gramian for multiple-input-multiple-output systems. The cross gramian is a tool for reducing the state space of control systems, which conjoins controllability and observability information into a single matrix and does not require balancing. Its empirical gramian variant extends the application of the cross gramian to nonlinear systems. Furthermore, for parametrized systems, the empirical gramians can also be utilized for sensitivity analysis or parameter identification and thus for parameter reduction. This work also introduces the empirical joint gramian, which is derived from the empirical cross gramian. The joint gramian not only allows a reduction of the parameter space, but also the combined state and parameter space reduction, which is tested on a linear and a nonlinear control system. Controllability- and observability-based combined reduction methods are also presented, which are benchmarked against the joint gramian.
1302.0635
Projection Design For Statistical Compressive Sensing: A Tight Frame Based Approach
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we develop a framework to design sensing matrices for compressive sensing applications that lead to good mean squared error (MSE) performance subject to sensing cost constraints. By capitalizing on the MSE of the oracle estimator, whose performance has been shown to act as a benchmark to the performance of standard sparse recovery algorithms, we use the fact that a Parseval tight frame is the closest design - in the Frobenius norm sense - to the solution of a convex relaxation of the optimization problem that relates to the minimization of the MSE of the oracle estimator with respect to the equivalent sensing matrix, subject to sensing energy constraints. Based on this result, we then propose two sensing matrix designs that exhibit two key properties: i) the designs are closed form rather than iterative; ii) the designs exhibit superior performance in relation to other designs in the literature, which is revealed by our numerical investigation in various scenarios with different sparse recovery algorithms including basis pursuit de-noise (BPDN), the Dantzig selector and orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP).
1302.0677
Two types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In the Twitter blogosphere, the number of followers is probably the most basic and succinct quantity for measuring popularity of users. However, the number of followers can be manipulated in various ways; we can even buy follows. Therefore, alternative popularity measures for Twitter users on the basis of, for example, users' tweets and retweets, have been developed. In the present work, we take a purely network approach to this fundamental question. First, we find that two relatively distinct types of users possessing a large number of followers exist, in particular for Japanese, Russian, and Korean users among the seven language groups that we examined. A first type of user follows a small number of other users. A second type of user follows approximately the same number of other users as the number of follows that the user receives. Then, we compare local (i.e., egocentric) followership networks around the two types of users with many followers. We show that the second type, which is presumably uninfluential users despite its large number of followers, is characterized by high link reciprocity, a large number of friends (i.e., those whom a user follows) for the followers, followers' high link reciprocity, large clustering coefficient, large fraction of the second type of users among the followers, and a small PageRank. Our network-based results support that the number of followers used alone is a misleading measure of user's popularity. We propose that the number of friends, which is simple to measure, also helps us to assess the popularity of Twitter users.
1302.0689
Multi-scale Visual Attention & Saliency Modelling with Decision Theory
cs.CV
Bottom-up saliency, an early human visual processing, behaves like binary classification of interest and null hypothesis. Its discriminant power, mutual information of image features and class distribution, is closely related to saliency value by the well-known centre-surround theory. As classification accuracy very much depends on window sizes, the discriminant saliency (power) varies according to sampling scales. Discriminating power estimation in multi-scales framework needs integrating with wavelet transformation and then estimating statistical discrepancy of two consecutive scales (centre-surround windows) by Hidden Markov Tree (HMT) model. Finally, multi-scale discriminant saliency (MDIS) maps are combined by the maximum information rule to synthesize a final saliency map. All MDIS maps are evaluated with standard quantitative tools (NSS,LCC,AUC) on N.Bruce's database with ground truth data as eye-tracking locations ; as well assessed qualitatively by visual examination of individual cases. For evaluating MDIS against well-known AIM saliency method, simulations are needed and described in details with several interesting conclusions, drawn for further research directions.
1302.0692
Epidemiologically optimal static networks from temporal network data
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.PE
Network epidemiology's most important assumption is that the contact structure over which infectious diseases propagate can be represented as a static network. However, contacts are highly dynamic, changing at many time scales. In this paper, we investigate conceptually simple methods to construct static graphs for network epidemiology from temporal contact data. We evaluate these methods on empirical and synthetic model data. For almost all our cases, the network representation that captures most relevant information is a so-called exponential-threshold network. In these, each contact contributes with a weight decreasing exponentially with time, and there is an edge between a pair of vertices if the weight between them exceeds a threshold. Networks of aggregated contacts over an optimally chosen time window perform almost as good as the exponential-threshold networks. On the other hand, networks of accumulated contacts over the entire sampling time, and networks of concurrent partnerships, perform worse. We discuss these observations in the context of the temporal and topological structure of the data sets.
1302.0710
ThermInfo: Collecting, Retrieving, and Estimating Reliable Thermochemical Data
cs.CE
Standard enthalpies of formation are used for assessing the efficiency and safety of chemical processes in the chemical industry. However, the number of compounds for which the enthalpies of formation are available is many orders of magnitude smaller than the number of known compounds. Thermochemical data prediction methods are therefore clearly needed. Several commercial and free chemical databases are currently available, the NIST WebBook being the most used free source. To overcome this problem a cheminformatics system was designed and built with two main objectives in mind: collecting and retrieving critically evaluated thermochemical values, and estimating new data. In its present version, by using cheminformatics techniques, ThermInfo allows the retrieval of the value of a thermochemical property, such as a gas-phase standard enthalpy of formation, by inputting, for example, the molecular structure or the name of a compound. The same inputs can also be used to estimate data (presently restricted to non-polycyclic hydrocarbons) by using the Extended Laidler Bond Additivity (ELBA) method. The information system is publicly available at http://www.therminfo.com or http://therminfo.lasige.di.fc.ul.pt. ThermInfo's strength lies in the data quality, availability (free access), search capabilities, and, in particular, prediction ability, based on a user-friendly interface that accepts inputs in several formats.
1302.0723
Multi-Robot Informative Path Planning for Active Sensing of Environmental Phenomena: A Tale of Two Algorithms
cs.LG cs.AI cs.MA cs.RO
A key problem of robotic environmental sensing and monitoring is that of active sensing: How can a team of robots plan the most informative observation paths to minimize the uncertainty in modeling and predicting an environmental phenomenon? This paper presents two principled approaches to efficient information-theoretic path planning based on entropy and mutual information criteria for in situ active sensing of an important broad class of widely-occurring environmental phenomena called anisotropic fields. Our proposed algorithms are novel in addressing a trade-off between active sensing performance and time efficiency. An important practical consequence is that our algorithms can exploit the spatial correlation structure of Gaussian process-based anisotropic fields to improve time efficiency while preserving near-optimal active sensing performance. We analyze the time complexity of our algorithms and prove analytically that they scale better than state-of-the-art algorithms with increasing planning horizon length. We provide theoretical guarantees on the active sensing performance of our algorithms for a class of exploration tasks called transect sampling, which, in particular, can be improved with longer planning time and/or lower spatial correlation along the transect. Empirical evaluation on real-world anisotropic field data shows that our algorithms can perform better or at least as well as the state-of-the-art algorithms while often incurring a few orders of magnitude less computational time, even when the field conditions are less favorable.
1302.0739
Benchmarking community detection methods on social media data
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Benchmarking the performance of community detection methods on empirical social network data has been identified as critical for improving these methods. In particular, while most current research focuses on detecting communities in data that has been digitally extracted from large social media and telecommunications services, most evaluation of this research is based on small, hand-curated datasets. We argue that these two types of networks differ so significantly that by evaluating algorithms solely on the former, we know little about how well they perform on the latter. To address this problem, we consider the difficulties that arise in constructing benchmarks based on digitally extracted network data, and propose a task-based strategy which we feel addresses these difficulties. To demonstrate that our scheme is effective, we use it to carry out a substantial benchmark based on Facebook data. The benchmark reveals that some of the most popular algorithms fail to detect fine-grained community structure.
1302.0744
Explicit MBR All-Symbol Locality Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Node failures are inevitable in distributed storage systems (DSS). To enable efficient repair when faced with such failures, two main techniques are known: Regenerating codes, i.e., codes that minimize the total repair bandwidth; and codes with locality, which minimize the number of nodes participating in the repair process. This paper focuses on regenerating codes with locality, using pre-coding based on Gabidulin codes, and presents constructions that utilize minimum bandwidth regenerating (MBR) local codes. The constructions achieve maximum resilience (i.e., optimal minimum distance) and have maximum capacity (i.e., maximum rate). Finally, the same pre-coding mechanism can be combined with a subclass of fractional-repetition codes to enable maximum resilience and repair-by-transfer simultaneously.
1302.0749
Multi-Way Information Exchange Over Completely-Connected Interference Networks with a Multi-Antenna Relay
cs.IT math.IT
This paper considers a fully-connected interference network with a relay in which multiple users equipped with a single antenna want to exchange multiple unicast messages with other users in the network by sharing the relay equipped with multiple antennas. For such a network, the degrees of freedom (DoF) are derived by considering various message exchange scenarios: a multi-user fully-connected Y channel, a two-pair two-way interference channel with the relay, and a two-pair two-way X channel with the relay. Further, considering distributed relays employing a single antenna in the two-way interference channel and the three-user fully-connected Y channel, achievable sum-DoF are also derived in the two-way interference channel and the three-user fully-connected Y channel. A major implication of the derived DoF results is that a relay with multiple antennas or multiple relays employing a single antenna increases the capacity scaling law of the multi-user interference network when multiple directional information flows are considered, even if the networks are fully-connected and all nodes operate in half-duplex. These results reveal that the relay is useful in the multi-way interference network with practical considerations.
1302.0753
Rooted Trees with Probabilities Revisited
cs.IT math.IT
Rooted trees with probabilities are convenient to represent a class of random processes with memory. They allow to describe and analyze variable length codes for data compression and distribution matching. In this work, the Leaf-Average Node-Sum Interchange Theorem (LANSIT) and the well-known applications to path length and leaf entropy are re-stated. The LANSIT is then applied to informational divergence. Next, the differential LANSIT is derived, which allows to write normalized functionals of leaf distributions as an average of functionals of branching distributions. Joint distributions of random variables and the corresponding conditional distributions are special cases of leaf distributions and branching distributions. Using the differential LANSIT, Pinsker's inequality is formulated for rooted trees with probabilities, with an application to the approximation of product distributions. In particular, it is shown that if the normalized informational divergence of a distribution and a product distribution approaches zero, then the entropy rate approaches the entropy rate of the product distribution.
1302.0756
Decomposition by Partial Linearization: Parallel Optimization of Multi-Agent Systems
cs.IT math.IT math.OC
We propose a novel decomposition framework for the distributed optimization of general nonconvex sum-utility functions arising naturally in the system design of wireless multiuser interfering systems. Our main contributions are: i) the development of the first class of (inexact) Jacobi best-response algorithms with provable convergence, where all the users simultaneously and iteratively solve a suitably convexified version of the original sum-utility optimization problem; ii) the derivation of a general dynamic pricing mechanism that provides a unified view of existing pricing schemes that are based, instead, on heuristics; and iii) a framework that can be easily particularized to well-known applications, giving rise to very efficient practical (Jacobi or Gauss-Seidel) algorithms that outperform existing adhoc methods proposed for very specific problems. Interestingly, our framework contains as special cases well-known gradient algorithms for nonconvex sum-utility problems, and many blockcoordinate descent schemes for convex functions.
1302.0780
Internal models for nonlinear output agreement and optimal flow control
cs.SY math.OC
This paper studies the problem of output agreement in networks of nonlinear dynamical systems under time-varying disturbances. Necessary and sufficient conditions for output agreement are derived for the class of incrementally passive systems. Following this, it is shown that the optimal distribution problem in dynamic inventory systems with time-varying supply and demand can be cast as a special version of the output agreement problem. We show in particular that the time-varying optimal distribution problem can be solved by applying an internal model controller to the dual variables of a certain convex network optimization problem.
1302.0785
Beyond Markov Chains, Towards Adaptive Memristor Network-based Music Generation
cs.ET cs.AI cs.NE cs.SD
We undertook a study of the use of a memristor network for music generation, making use of the memristor's memory to go beyond the Markov hypothesis. Seed transition matrices are created and populated using memristor equations, and which are shown to generate musical melodies and change in style over time as a result of feedback into the transition matrix. The spiking properties of simple memristor networks are demonstrated and discussed with reference to applications of music making. The limitations of simulating composing memristor networks in von Neumann hardware is discussed and a hardware solution based on physical memristor properties is presented.
1302.0797
Comparison of Ant-Inspired Gatherer Allocation Approaches using Memristor-Based Environmental Models
cs.NE
Memristors are used to compare three gathering techniques in an already-mapped environment where resource locations are known. The All Site model, which apportions gatherers based on the modeled memristance of that path, proves to be good at increasing overall efficiency and decreasing time to fully deplete an environment, however it only works well when the resources are of similar quality. The Leaf Cutter method, based on Leaf Cutter Ant behaviour, assigns all gatherers first to the best resource, and once depleted, uses the All Site model to spread them out amongst the rest. The Leaf Cutter model is better at increasing resource influx in the short-term and vastly out-performs the All Site model in a more varied environments. It is demonstrated that memristor based abstractions of gatherer models provide potential methods for both the comparison and implementation of agent controls.
1302.0806
On the Fundamental Feedback-vs-Performance Tradeoff over the MISO-BC with Imperfect and Delayed CSIT
cs.IT math.IT
This work considers the multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast channel (BC), where a transmitter with M antennas transmits information to K single-antenna users, and where - as expected - the quality and timeliness of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is imperfect. Motivated by the fundamental question of how much feedback is necessary to achieve a certain performance, this work seeks to establish bounds on the tradeoff between degrees-of-freedom (DoF) performance and CSIT feedback quality. Specifically, this work provides a novel DoF region outer bound for the general K-user MISO BC with partial current CSIT, which naturally bridges the gap between the case of having no current CSIT (only delayed CSIT, or no CSIT) and the case with full CSIT. The work then characterizes the minimum CSIT feedback that is necessary for any point of the sum DoF, which is optimal for the case with M >= K, and the case with M=2, K=3.
1302.0870
Centrality-constrained graph embedding
stat.ML cs.CV math.OC
Visual rendering of graphs is a key task in the mapping of complex network data. Although most graph drawing algorithms emphasize aesthetic appeal, certain applications such as travel-time maps place more importance on visualization of structural network properties. The present paper advocates a graph embedding approach with centrality considerations to comply with node hierarchy. The problem is formulated as one of constrained multi-dimensional scaling (MDS), and it is solved via block coordinate descent iterations with successive approximations and guaranteed convergence to a KKT point. In addition, a regularization term enforcing graph smoothness is incorporated with the goal of reducing edge crossings. Experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm converges, and can be used to efficiently embed large graphs on the order of thousands of nodes.
1302.0891
Large-Scale Fading Behavior for a Cellular Network with Uniform Spatial Distribution
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
Large-scale fading (LSF) between interacting nodes is a fundamental element in radio communications, responsible for weakening the propagation, and thus worsening the service quality. Given the importance of channel-losses in general, and the inevitability of random spatial geometry in real-life wireless networks, it was then natural to merge these two paradigms together in order to obtain an improved stochastical model for the LSF indicator. Therefore, in exact closed-form notation, we generically derived the LSF distribution between a prepositioned reference base-station and an arbitrary node for a multi-cellular random network model. In fact, we provided an explicit and definitive formulation that considered at once: the lattice profile, the users' random geometry, the effect of the far-field phenomenon, the path-loss behavior, and the stochastic impact of channel scatters. The veracity and accuracy of the theoretical analysis were also confirmed through Monte Carlo simulations.
1302.0895
Exact Sparse Recovery with L0 Projections
stat.ML cs.IT cs.LG math.IT math.ST stat.TH
Many applications concern sparse signals, for example, detecting anomalies from the differences between consecutive images taken by surveillance cameras. This paper focuses on the problem of recovering a K-sparse signal x in N dimensions. In the mainstream framework of compressed sensing (CS), the vector x is recovered from M non-adaptive linear measurements y = xS, where S (of size N x M) is typically a Gaussian (or Gaussian-like) design matrix, through some optimization procedure such as linear programming (LP). In our proposed method, the design matrix S is generated from an $\alpha$-stable distribution with $\alpha\approx 0$. Our decoding algorithm mainly requires one linear scan of the coordinates, followed by a few iterations on a small number of coordinates which are "undetermined" in the previous iteration. Comparisons with two strong baselines, linear programming (LP) and orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP), demonstrate that our algorithm can be significantly faster in decoding speed and more accurate in recovery quality, for the task of exact spare recovery. Our procedure is robust against measurement noise. Even when there are no sufficient measurements, our algorithm can still reliably recover a significant portion of the nonzero coordinates. To provide the intuition for understanding our method, we also analyze the procedure by assuming an idealistic setting. Interestingly, when K=2, the "idealized" algorithm achieves exact recovery with merely 3 measurements, regardless of N. For general K, the required sample size of the "idealized" algorithm is about 5K.
1302.0907
Bootstrap Methods for the Empirical Study of Decision-Making and Information Flows in Social Systems
cs.IT cs.SI math.IT physics.soc-ph stat.ME
We characterize the statistical bootstrap for the estimation of information-theoretic quantities from data, with particular reference to its use in the study of large-scale social phenomena. Our methods allow one to preserve, approximately, the underlying axiomatic relationships of information theory---in particular, consistency under arbitrary coarse-graining---that motivate use of these quantities in the first place, while providing reliability comparable to the state of the art for Bayesian estimators. We show how information-theoretic quantities allow for rigorous empirical study of the decision-making capacities of rational agents and the time-asymmetric flows of information in distributed systems. We provide illustrative examples by reference to ongoing collaborative work on the semantic structure of the British Criminal Court system and the conflict dynamics of the contemporary Afghanistan insurgency.
1302.0908
The Traffic Phases of Road Networks
math.OC cs.SY math.DS
We study the relation between the average traffic flow and the vehicle density on road networks that we call 2D-traffic fundamental diagram. We show that this diagram presents mainly four phases. We analyze different cases. First, the case of a junction managed with a priority rule is presented, four traffic phases are identified and described, and a good analytic approximation of the fundamental diagram is obtained by computing a generalized eigenvalue of the dynamics of the system. Then, the model is extended to the case of two junctions, and finally to a regular city. The system still presents mainly four phases. The role of a critical circuit of non-priority roads appears clearly in the two junctions case. In Section 4, we use traffic light controls to improve the traffic diagram. We present the improvements obtained by open-loop, local feedback, and global feedback strategies. A comparison based on the response times to reach the stationary regime is also given. Finally, we show the importance of the design of the junction. It appears that if the junction is enough large, the traffic is almost not slowed down by the junction.
1302.0914
Beyond Worst-Case Analysis for Joins with Minesweeper
cs.DB
We describe a new algorithm, Minesweeper, that is able to satisfy stronger runtime guarantees than previous join algorithms (colloquially, `beyond worst-case guarantees') for data in indexed search trees. Our first contribution is developing a framework to measure this stronger notion of complexity, which we call {\it certificate complexity}, that extends notions of Barbay et al. and Demaine et al.; a certificate is a set of propositional formulae that certifies that the output is correct. This notion captures a natural class of join algorithms. In addition, the certificate allows us to define a strictly stronger notion of runtime complexity than traditional worst-case guarantees. Our second contribution is to develop a dichotomy theorem for the certificate-based notion of complexity. Roughly, we show that Minesweeper evaluates $\beta$-acyclic queries in time linear in the certificate plus the output size, while for any $\beta$-cyclic query there is some instance that takes superlinear time in the certificate (and for which the output is no larger than the certificate size). We also extend our certificate-complexity analysis to queries with bounded treewidth and the triangle query.
1302.0951
Channel Coding and Lossy Source Coding Using a Constrained Random Number Generator
cs.IT math.IT
Stochastic encoders for channel coding and lossy source coding are introduced with a rate close to the fundamental limits, where the only restriction is that the channel input alphabet and the reproduction alphabet of the lossy source code are finite. Random numbers, which satisfy a condition specified by a function and its value, are used to construct stochastic encoders. The proof of the theorems is based on the hash property of an ensemble of functions, where the results are extended to general channels/sources and alternative formulas are introduced for channel capacity and the rate-distortion region. Since an ensemble of sparse matrices has a hash property, we can construct a code by using sparse matrices, where the sum-product algorithm can be used for encoding and decoding by assuming that channels/sources are memoryless.
1302.0952
A Family of Five-Weight Cyclic Codes and Their Weight Enumerators
cs.IT math.IT
Cyclic codes are a subclass of linear codes and have applications in consumer electronics, data storage systems, and communication systems as they have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In this paper, a family of $p$-ary cyclic codes whose duals have three zeros are proposed. The weight distribution of this family of cyclic codes is determined. It turns out that the proposed cyclic codes have five nonzero weights.
1302.0962
Improved Accuracy of PSO and DE using Normalization: an Application to Stock Price Prediction
cs.NE cs.LG
Data Mining is being actively applied to stock market since 1980s. It has been used to predict stock prices, stock indexes, for portfolio management, trend detection and for developing recommender systems. The various algorithms which have been used for the same include ANN, SVM, ARIMA, GARCH etc. Different hybrid models have been developed by combining these algorithms with other algorithms like roughest, fuzzy logic, GA, PSO, DE, ACO etc. to improve the efficiency. This paper proposes DE-SVM model (Differential EvolutionSupport vector Machine) for stock price prediction. DE has been used to select best free parameters combination for SVM to improve results. The paper also compares the results of prediction with the outputs of SVM alone and PSO-SVM model (Particle Swarm Optimization). The effect of normalization of data on the accuracy of prediction has also been studied.
1302.0963
RandomBoost: Simplified Multi-class Boosting through Randomization
cs.LG
We propose a novel boosting approach to multi-class classification problems, in which multiple classes are distinguished by a set of random projection matrices in essence. The approach uses random projections to alleviate the proliferation of binary classifiers typically required to perform multi-class classification. The result is a multi-class classifier with a single vector-valued parameter, irrespective of the number of classes involved. Two variants of this approach are proposed. The first method randomly projects the original data into new spaces, while the second method randomly projects the outputs of learned weak classifiers. These methods are not only conceptually simple but also effective and easy to implement. A series of experiments on synthetic, machine learning and visual recognition data sets demonstrate that our proposed methods compare favorably to existing multi-class boosting algorithms in terms of both the convergence rate and classification accuracy.
1302.0971
Validasi data dengan menggunakan objek lookup pada borland delphi 7.0
cs.DB
Developing an application with some tables must concern the validation of input (specially in Table Child). In order to maximize the accuracy and data input validation. Its called lookup (took data from other dataset). There are two ways to look up data from Table Parent: 1) Using Objects (DBLookupComboBox and DBookupListBox), or 2) Arranging the properties of data types fields (shown by using DBGrid). In this article is using Borland Delphi software (Inprise product). The method is offered using 5 (five) practise steps: 1) Relational Database Scheme, 2) Form Design, 3) Object DatabasesRelationships Scheme, 4) Properties and Field Type Arrangement, and 5) Procedures. The result of this paper are: 1) The relationship that using lookup objects are valid, and 2) Delphi Lookup Objects can be used for 1-1, 1-N, and M-N relationship.
1302.0974
A Comparison of Relaxations of Multiset Cannonical Correlation Analysis and Applications
cs.LG
Canonical correlation analysis is a statistical technique that is used to find relations between two sets of variables. An important extension in pattern analysis is to consider more than two sets of variables. This problem can be expressed as a quadratically constrained quadratic program (QCQP), commonly referred to Multi-set Canonical Correlation Analysis (MCCA). This is a non-convex problem and so greedy algorithms converge to local optima without any guarantees on global optimality. In this paper, we show that despite being highly structured, finding the optimal solution is NP-Hard. This motivates our relaxation of the QCQP to a semidefinite program (SDP). The SDP is convex, can be solved reasonably efficiently and comes with both absolute and output-sensitive approximation quality. In addition to theoretical guarantees, we do an extensive comparison of the QCQP method and the SDP relaxation on a variety of synthetic and real world data. Finally, we present two useful extensions: we incorporate kernel methods and computing multiple sets of canonical vectors.
1302.1007
Image Denoising Using Interquartile Range Filter with Local Averaging
cs.CV
Image denoising is one of the fundamental problems in image processing. In this paper, a novel approach to suppress noise from the image is conducted by applying the interquartile range (IQR) which is one of the statistical methods used to detect outlier effect from a dataset. A window of size kXk was implemented to support IQR filter. Each pixel outside the IQR range of the kXk window is treated as noisy pixel. The estimation of the noisy pixels was obtained by local averaging. The essential advantage of applying IQR filter is to preserve edge sharpness better of the original image. A variety of test images have been used to support the proposed filter and PSNR was calculated and compared with median filter. The experimental results on standard test images demonstrate this filter is simpler and better performing than median filter.
1302.1008
CSIT Sharing over Finite Capacity Backhaul for Spatial Interference Alignment
cs.IT math.IT
Cellular systems that employ time division duplexing (TDD) transmission are good candidates for implementation of interference alignment (IA) in the downlink since channel reciprocity enables the estimation of the channel state by the base stations (BS) in the uplink phase. However, the interfering BSs need to share their channel estimates via backhaul links of finite capacity. A quantization scheme is proposed which reduces the amount of information exchange (compared to conventional methods) required to achieve IA in a TDD system. The scaling (with the transmit power) of the number of bits to be exchanged between the BSs that is sufficient to preserve the multiplexing gain of IA is derived.
1302.1020
Block-to-Block Distribution Matching
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, binary block-to-block distribution matching is considered. m independent and uniformly distributed bits are mapped to n output bits resembling a target product distribution. A rate R is called achieved by a sequence of encoder-decoder pairs, if for m,n to infinity, (1) m/n approaches R, (2) the informational divergence per bit of the output distribution and the target distribution goes to zero, and (3) the probability of erroneous decoding goes to zero. It is shown that the maximum achievable rate is equal to the entropy of the target distribution. A practical encoder-decoder pair is constructed that provably achieves the maximum rate in the limit. Numerical results illustrate that the suggested system operates close to the limits with reasonable complexity. The key idea is to internally use a fixed-to-variable length matcher and to compensate underflow by random mapping and to cast an error when overflow occurs.
1302.1035
Leveraging Automorphisms of Quantum Codes for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
Fault-tolerant quantum computation is a technique that is necessary to build a scalable quantum computer from noisy physical building blocks. Key for the implementation of fault-tolerant computations is the ability to perform a universal set of quantum gates that act on the code space of an underlying quantum code. To implement such a universal gate set fault-tolerantly is an expensive task in terms of physical operations, and any possible shortcut to save operations is potentially beneficial and might lead to a reduction in overhead for fault-tolerant computations. We show how the automorphism group of a quantum code can be used to implement some operators on the encoded quantum states in a fault-tolerant way by merely permuting the physical qubits. We derive conditions that a code has to satisfy in order to have a large group of operations that can be implemented transversally when combining transversal CNOT with automorphisms. We give several examples for quantum codes with large groups, including codes with parameters [[8,3,3]], [[15,7,3]], [[22,8,4]], and [[31,11,5]].
1302.1043
The price of bandit information in multiclass online classification
cs.LG
We consider two scenarios of multiclass online learning of a hypothesis class $H\subseteq Y^X$. In the {\em full information} scenario, the learner is exposed to instances together with their labels. In the {\em bandit} scenario, the true label is not exposed, but rather an indication whether the learner's prediction is correct or not. We show that the ratio between the error rates in the two scenarios is at most $8\cdot|Y|\cdot \log(|Y|)$ in the realizable case, and $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{|Y|})$ in the agnostic case. The results are tight up to a logarithmic factor and essentially answer an open question from (Daniely et. al. - Multiclass learnability and the erm principle). We apply these results to the class of $\gamma$-margin multiclass linear classifiers in $\reals^d$. We show that the bandit error rate of this class is $\tilde{\Theta}(\frac{|Y|}{\gamma^2})$ in the realizable case and $\tilde{\Theta}(\frac{1}{\gamma}\sqrt{|Y|T})$ in the agnostic case. This resolves an open question from (Kakade et. al. - Efficient bandit algorithms for online multiclass prediction).
1302.1079
Cognitive Access Policies under a Primary ARQ process via Forward-Backward Interference Cancellation
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT
This paper introduces a novel technique for access by a cognitive Secondary User (SU) using best-effort transmission to a spectrum with an incumbent Primary User (PU), which uses Type-I Hybrid ARQ. The technique leverages the primary ARQ protocol to perform Interference Cancellation (IC) at the SU receiver (SUrx). Two IC mechanisms that work in concert are introduced: Forward IC, where SUrx, after decoding the PU message, cancels its interference in the (possible) following PU retransmissions of the same message, to improve the SU throughput; Backward IC, where SUrx performs IC on previous SU transmissions, whose decoding failed due to severe PU interference. Secondary access policies are designed that determine the secondary access probability in each state of the network so as to maximize the average long-term SU throughput by opportunistically leveraging IC, while causing bounded average long-term PU throughput degradation and SU power expenditure. It is proved that the optimal policy prescribes that the SU prioritizes its access in the states where SUrx knows the PU message, thus enabling IC. An algorithm is provided to optimally allocate additional secondary access opportunities in the states where the PU message is unknown. Numerical results are shown to assess the throughput gain provided by the proposed techniques.
1302.1094
Analysis Based Blind Compressive Sensing
cs.IT math.IT
In this work we address the problem of blindly reconstructing compressively sensed signals by exploiting the co-sparse analysis model. In the analysis model it is assumed that a signal multiplied by an analysis operator results in a sparse vector. We propose an algorithm that learns the operator adaptively during the reconstruction process. The arising optimization problem is tackled via a geometric conjugate gradient approach. Different types of sampling noise are handled by simply exchanging the data fidelity term. Numerical experiments are performed for measurements corrupted with Gaussian as well as impulsive noise to show the effectiveness of our method.
1302.1105
Open Access, library and publisher competition, and the evolution of general commerce
cs.DL cs.CY cs.SI math.HO physics.soc-ph
Discussions of the economics of scholarly communication are usually devoted to Open Access, rising journal prices, publisher profits, and boycotts. That ignores what seems a much more important development in this market. Publishers, through the oft-reviled "Big Deal" packages, are providing much greater and more egalitarian access to the journal literature, an approximation to true Open Access. In the process they are also marginalizing libraries, and obtaining a greater share of the resources going into scholarly communication. This is enabling a continuation of publisher profits as well as of what for decades has been called "unsustainable journal price escalation". It is also inhibiting the spread of Open Access, and potentially leading to an oligopoly of publishers controlling distribution through large-scale licensing. The "Big Deal" practices are worth studying for several general reasons. The degree to which publishers succeed in diminishing the role of libraries may be an indicator of the degree and speed at which universities transform themselves. More importantly, these "Big Deals" appear to point the way to the future of the whole economy, where progress is characterized by declining privacy, increasing price discrimination, increasing opaqueness in pricing, increasing reliance on low-paid or upaid work of others for profits, and business models that depend on customer inertia.
1302.1123
Large Scale Distributed Acoustic Modeling With Back-off N-grams
cs.CL
The paper revives an older approach to acoustic modeling that borrows from n-gram language modeling in an attempt to scale up both the amount of training data and model size (as measured by the number of parameters in the model), to approximately 100 times larger than current sizes used in automatic speech recognition. In such a data-rich setting, we can expand the phonetic context significantly beyond triphones, as well as increase the number of Gaussian mixture components for the context-dependent states that allow it. We have experimented with contexts that span seven or more context-independent phones, and up to 620 mixture components per state. Dealing with unseen phonetic contexts is accomplished using the familiar back-off technique used in language modeling due to implementation simplicity. The back-off acoustic model is estimated, stored and served using MapReduce distributed computing infrastructure. Speech recognition experiments are carried out in an N-best list rescoring framework for Google Voice Search. Training big models on large amounts of data proves to be an effective way to increase the accuracy of a state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition system. We use 87,000 hours of training data (speech along with transcription) obtained by filtering utterances in Voice Search logs on automatic speech recognition confidence. Models ranging in size between 20--40 million Gaussians are estimated using maximum likelihood training. They achieve relative reductions in word-error-rate of 11% and 6% when combined with first-pass models trained using maximum likelihood, and boosted maximum mutual information, respectively. Increasing the context size beyond five phones (quinphones) does not help.
1302.1128
On the Relation of Delay Equations to First-Order Hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations
math.OC cs.SY math.AP math.DS
This paper establishes the equivalence between systems described by a single first-order hyperbolic partial differential equation and systems described by integral delay equations. System-theoretic results are provided for both classes of systems (among them converse Lyapunov results). The proposed framework can allow the study of discontinuous solutions for nonlinear systems described by a single first-order hyperbolic partial differential equation under the effect of measurable inputs acting on the boundary and/or on the differential equation. An illustrative example shows that the conversion of a system described by a single first-order hyperbolic partial differential equation to an integral delay system can simplify considerably the solution of the corresponding robust feedback stabilization problem.
1302.1143
Evolvability Is Inevitable: Increasing Evolvability Without the Pressure to Adapt
cs.NE q-bio.PE
Why evolvability appears to have increased over evolutionary time is an important unresolved biological question. Unlike most candidate explanations, this paper proposes that increasing evolvability can result without any pressure to adapt. The insight is that if evolvability is heritable, then an unbiased drifting process across genotypes can still create a distribution of phenotypes biased towards evolvability, because evolvable organisms diffuse more quickly through the space of possible phenotypes. Furthermore, because phenotypic divergence often correlates with founding niches, niche founders may on average be more evolvable, which through population growth provides a genotypic bias towards evolvability. Interestingly, the combination of these two mechanisms can lead to increasing evolvability without any pressure to out-compete other organisms, as demonstrated through experiments with a series of simulated models. Thus rather than from pressure to adapt, evolvability may inevitably result from any drift through genotypic space combined with evolution's passive tendency to accumulate niches.
1302.1155
An Effective Procedure for Computing "Uncomputable" Functions
cs.AI
We give an effective procedure that produces a natural number in its output from any natural number in its input, that is, it computes a total function. The elementary operations of the procedure are Turing-computable. The procedure has a second input which can contain the Goedel number of any Turing-computable total function whose range is a subset of the set of the Goedel numbers of all Turing-computable total functions. We prove that the second input cannot be set to the Goedel number of any Turing-computable function that computes the output from any natural number in its first input. In this sense, there is no Turing program that computes the output from its first input. The procedure is used to define creative procedures which compute functions that are not Turing-computable. We argue that creative procedures model an aspect of reasoning that cannot be modeled by Turing machines.
1302.1156
A Non-Binary Associative Memory with Exponential Pattern Retrieval Capacity and Iterative Learning: Extended Results
cs.NE
We consider the problem of neural association for a network of non-binary neurons. Here, the task is to first memorize a set of patterns using a network of neurons whose states assume values from a finite number of integer levels. Later, the same network should be able to recall previously memorized patterns from their noisy versions. Prior work in this area consider storing a finite number of purely random patterns, and have shown that the pattern retrieval capacities (maximum number of patterns that can be memorized) scale only linearly with the number of neurons in the network. In our formulation of the problem, we concentrate on exploiting redundancy and internal structure of the patterns in order to improve the pattern retrieval capacity. Our first result shows that if the given patterns have a suitable linear-algebraic structure, i.e. comprise a sub-space of the set of all possible patterns, then the pattern retrieval capacity is in fact exponential in terms of the number of neurons. The second result extends the previous finding to cases where the patterns have weak minor components, i.e. the smallest eigenvalues of the correlation matrix tend toward zero. We will use these minor components (or the basis vectors of the pattern null space) to both increase the pattern retrieval capacity and error correction capabilities. An iterative algorithm is proposed for the learning phase, and two simple neural update algorithms are presented for the recall phase. Using analytical results and simulations, we show that the proposed methods can tolerate a fair amount of errors in the input while being able to memorize an exponentially large number of patterns.
1302.1157
Excess-Risk of Distributed Stochastic Learners
math.OC cs.DC cs.MA cs.SI
This work studies the learning ability of consensus and diffusion distributed learners from continuous streams of data arising from different but related statistical distributions. Four distinctive features for diffusion learners are revealed in relation to other decentralized schemes even under left-stochastic combination policies. First, closed-form expressions for the evolution of their excess-risk are derived for strongly-convex risk functions under a diminishing step-size rule. Second, using these results, it is shown that the diffusion strategy improves the asymptotic convergence rate of the excess-risk relative to non-cooperative schemes. Third, it is shown that when the in-network cooperation rules are designed optimally, the performance of the diffusion implementation can outperform that of naive centralized processing. Finally, the arguments further show that diffusion outperforms consensus strategies asymptotically, and that the asymptotic excess-risk expression is invariant to the particular network topology. The framework adopted in this work studies convergence in the stronger mean-square-error sense, rather than in distribution, and develops tools that enable a close examination of the differences between distributed strategies in terms of asymptotic behavior, as well as in terms of convergence rates.
1302.1170
Computability of the entropy of one-tape Turing Machines
cs.FL cs.CC cs.IT math.DS math.IT
We prove that the maximum speed and the entropy of a one-tape Turing machine are computable, in the sense that we can approximate them to any given precision $\epsilon$. This is contrary to popular belief, as all dynamical properties are usually undecidable for Turing machines. The result is quite specific to one-tape Turing machines, as it is not true anymore for two-tape Turing machines by the results of Blondel et al., and uses the approach of crossing sequences introduced by Hennie.
1302.1178
Overview of EIREX 2012: Social Media
cs.IR
The third Information Retrieval Education through EXperimentation track (EIREX 2012) was run at the University Carlos III of Madrid, during the 2012 spring semester. EIREX 2012 is the third in a series of experiments designed to foster new Information Retrieval (IR) education methodologies and resources, with the specific goal of teaching undergraduate IR courses from an experimental perspective. For an introduction to the motivation behind the EIREX experiments, see the first sections of [Urbano et al., 2011a]. For information on other editions of EIREX and related data, see the website at http://ir.kr.inf.uc3m.es/eirex/. The EIREX series have the following goals: a) to help students get a view of the Information Retrieval process as they would find it in a real-world scenario, either industrial or academic; b) to make students realize the importance of laboratory experiments in Computer Science and have them initiated in their execution and analysis; c) to create a public repository of resources to teach Information Retrieval courses; d) to seek the collaboration and active participation of other Universities in this endeavor. This overview paper summarizes the results of the EIREX 2012 track, focusing on the creation of the test collection and the analysis to assess its reliability.
1302.1211
Quantum Lyapunov Control Based on the Average Value of an Imaginary Mechanical Quantity
cs.SY math-ph math.MP
The convergence of closed quantum systems in the degenerate cases to the desired target state by using the quantum Lyapunov control based on the average value of an imaginary mechanical quantity is studied. On the basis of the existing methods which can only ensure the single-control Hamiltonian systems converge toward a set, we design the control laws to make the multi-control Hamiltonian systems converge to the desired target state. The convergence of the control system is proved, and the convergence to the desired target state is analyzed. How to make these conditions of convergence to the target state to be satisfied is proved or analyzed. Finally, numerical simulations for a three level system in the degenrate case transfering form an initial eigenstate to a target superposition state are studied to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method.
1302.1216
Secure Communication Via an Untrusted Non-Regenerative Relay in Fading Channels
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate a relay network where the source can potentially utilize an untrusted non-regenerative relay to augment its direct transmission of a confidential message to the destination. Since the relay is untrusted, it is desirable to protect the confidential data from it while simultaneously making use of it to increase the reliability of the transmission. We first examine the secrecy outage probability (SOP) of the network assuming a single antenna relay, and calculate the exact SOP for three different schemes: direct transmission without using the relay, conventional non-regenerative relaying, and cooperative jamming by the destination. Subsequently, we conduct an asymptotic analysis of the SOPs to determine the optimal policies in different operating regimes. We then generalize to the multi-antenna relay case and investigate the impact of the number of relay antennas on the secrecy performance. Finally, we study a scenario where the relay has only a single RF chain which necessitates an antenna selection scheme, and we show that unlike the case where all antennas are used, under certain conditions the cooperative jamming scheme with antenna selection provides a diversity advantage for the receiver. Numerical results are presented to verify the theoretical predictions of the preferred transmission policies.
1302.1232
When are the most informative components for inference also the principal components?
math.ST cs.DS cs.IT cs.LG math.IT math.PR stat.TH
Which components of the singular value decomposition of a signal-plus-noise data matrix are most informative for the inferential task of detecting or estimating an embedded low-rank signal matrix? Principal component analysis ascribes greater importance to the components that capture the greatest variation, i.e., the singular vectors associated with the largest singular values. This choice is often justified by invoking the Eckart-Young theorem even though that work addresses the problem of how to best represent a signal-plus-noise matrix using a low-rank approximation and not how to best_infer_ the underlying low-rank signal component. Here we take a first-principles approach in which we start with a signal-plus-noise data matrix and show how the spectrum of the noise-only component governs whether the principal or the middle components of the singular value decomposition of the data matrix will be the informative components for inference. Simply put, if the noise spectrum is supported on a connected interval, in a sense we make precise, then the use of the principal components is justified. When the noise spectrum is supported on multiple intervals, then the middle components might be more informative than the principal components. The end result is a proper justification of the use of principal components in the setting where the noise matrix is i.i.d. Gaussian and the identification of scenarios, generically involving heterogeneous noise models such as mixtures of Gaussians, where the middle components might be more informative than the principal components so that they may be exploited to extract additional processing gain. Our results show how the blind use of principal components can lead to suboptimal or even faulty inference because of phase transitions that separate a regime where the principal components are informative from a regime where they are uninformative.
1302.1236
Sharp RIP Bound for Sparse Signal and Low-Rank Matrix Recovery
cs.IT math.IT
This paper establishes a sharp condition on the restricted isometry property (RIP) for both the sparse signal recovery and low-rank matrix recovery. It is shown that if the measurement matrix $A$ satisfies the RIP condition $\delta_k^A<1/3$, then all $k$-sparse signals $\beta$ can be recovered exactly via the constrained $\ell_1$ minimization based on $y=A\beta$. Similarly, if the linear map $\cal M$ satisfies the RIP condition $\delta_r^{\cal M}<1/3$, then all matrices $X$ of rank at most $r$ can be recovered exactly via the constrained nuclear norm minimization based on $b={\cal M}(X)$. Furthermore, in both cases it is not possible to do so in general when the condition does not hold. In addition, noisy cases are considered and oracle inequalities are given under the sharp RIP condition.
1302.1256
Repairing Multiple Failures in the Suh-Ramchandran Regenerating Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Using the idea of interference alignment, Suh and Ramchandran constructed a class of minimum-storage regenerating codes which can repair one systematic or one parity-check node with optimal repair bandwidth. With the same code structure, we show that in addition to single node failure, double node failures can be repaired collaboratively with optimal repair bandwidth as well. We give an example of how to repair double failures in the Suh-Ramchandran regenerating code with six nodes, and give the proof for the general case.
1302.1258
A Comparison of Superposition Coding Schemes
cs.IT math.IT
There are two variants of superposition coding schemes. Cover's original superposition coding scheme has code clouds of the identical shape, while Bergmans's superposition coding scheme has code clouds of independently generated shapes. These two schemes yield identical achievable rate regions in several scenarios, such as the capacity region for degraded broadcast channels. This paper shows that under the optimal maximum likelihood decoding, these two superposition coding schemes can result in different rate regions. In particular, it is shown that for the two-receiver broadcast channel, Cover's superposition coding scheme can achieve rates strictly larger than Bergmans's scheme.
1302.1270
Diffusion of Cooperative Behavior in Decentralized Cognitive Radio Networks with Selfish Spectrum Sensors
cs.IT cs.GT math.IT
This work investigates the diffusion of cooperative behavior over time in a decentralized cognitive radio network with selfish spectrum-sensing users. The users can individually choose whether or not to participate in cooperative spectrum sensing, in order to maximize their individual payoff defined in terms of the sensing false-alarm rate and transmit energy expenditure. The system is modeled as a partially connected network with a statistical distribution of the degree of the users, who play their myopic best responses to the actions of their neighbors at each iteration. Based on this model, we investigate the existence and characterization of Bayesian Nash Equilibria for the diffusion game. The impacts of network topology, channel fading statistics, sensing protocol, and multiple antennas on the outcome of the diffusion process are analyzed next. Simulation results that demonstrate how conducive different network scenarios are to the diffusion of cooperation are presented for further insight, and we conclude with a discussion on additional refinements and issues worth pursuing.
1302.1294
Image Interpolation Using Kriging Technique for Spatial Data
cs.CV
Image interpolation has been used spaciously by customary interpolation techniques. Recently, Kriging technique has been widely implemented in simulation area and geostatistics for prediction. In this article, Kriging technique was used instead of the classical interpolation methods to predict the unknown points in the digital image array. The efficiency of the proposed technique was proven using the PSNR and compared with the traditional interpolation techniques. The results showed that Kriging technique is almost accurate as cubic interpolation and in some images Kriging has higher accuracy. A miscellaneous test images have been used to consolidate the proposed technique.
1302.1296
Hybrid Image Segmentation using Discerner Cluster in FCM and Histogram Thresholding
cs.CV
Image thresholding has played an important role in image segmentation. This paper presents a hybrid approach for image segmentation based on the thresholding by fuzzy c-means (THFCM) algorithm for image segmentation. The goal of the proposed approach is to find a discerner cluster able to find an automatic threshold. The algorithm is formulated by applying the standard FCM clustering algorithm to the frequencies (y-values) on the smoothed histogram. Hence, the frequencies of an image can be used instead of the conventional whole data of image. The cluster that has the highest peak which represents the maximum frequency in the image histogram will play as an excellent role in determining a discerner cluster to the grey level image. Then, the pixels belong to the discerner cluster represent an object in the gray level histogram while the other clusters represent a background. Experimental results with standard test images have been obtained through the proposed approach (THFCM).
1302.1300
Kriging Interpolation Filter to Reduce High Density Salt and Pepper Noise
cs.CV
Image denoising is a critical issue in the field of digital image processing. This paper proposes a novel Salt & Pepper noise suppression by developing a Kriging Interpolation Filter (KIF) for image denoising. Gray-level images degraded with Salt & Pepper noise have been considered. A sequential search for noise detection was made using kXk window size to determine non-noisy pixels only. The non-noisy pixels are passed into Kriging interpolation method to predict their absent neighbor pixels that were noisy pixels at the first phase. The utilization of Kriging interpolation filter proves that it is very impressive to suppress high noise density. It has been found that Kriging Interpolation filter achieves noise reduction without loss of edges and detailed information. Comparisons with existing algorithms are done using quality metrics like PSNR and MSE to assess the proposed filter.
1302.1302
Quasi-Static SIMO Fading Channels at Finite Blocklength
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate the maximal achievable rate for a given blocklength and error probability over quasi-static single-input multiple-output (SIMO) fading channels. Under mild conditions on the channel gains, it is shown that the channel dispersion is zero regardless of whether the fading realizations are available at the transmitter and/or the receiver. The result follows from computationally and analytically tractable converse and achievability bounds. Through numerical evaluation, we verify that, in some scenarios, zero dispersion indeed entails fast convergence to outage capacity as the blocklength increases. In the example of a particular 1*2 SIMO Rician channel, the blocklength required to achieve 90% of capacity is about an order of magnitude smaller compared to the blocklength required for an AWGN channel with the same capacity.
1302.1326
Cloud Computing framework for Computer Vision Research:An Introduction
cs.CV cs.DC
Cloud computing offers the potential to help scientists to process massive number of computing resources often required in machine learning application such as computer vision problems. This proposal would like to show that which benefits can be obtained from cloud in order to help medical image analysis users (including scientists, clinicians, and research institutes). As security and privacy of algorithms are important for most of algorithms inventors, these algorithms can be hidden in a cloud to allow the users to use the algorithms as a package without any access to see/change their inside. In another word, in the user part, users send their images to the cloud and configure the algorithm via an interface. In the cloud part, the algorithms are applied to this image and the results are returned back to the user. My proposal has two parts: (1) investigate the potential of cloud computing for computer vision problems and (2) study the components of a proposed cloud-based framework for medical image analysis application and develop them (depending on the length of the internship). The investigation part will involve a study on several aspects of the problem including security, usability (for medical end users of the service), appropriate programming abstractions for vision problems, scalability and resource requirements. In the second part of this proposal I am going to thoroughly study of the proposed framework components and their relations and develop them. The proposed cloud-based framework includes an integrated environment to enable scientists and clinicians to access to the previous and current medical image analysis algorithms using a handful user interface without any access to the algorithm codes and procedures.