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1302.1886
Collective Motion of Moshers at Heavy Metal Concerts
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.bio-ph
Human collective behavior can vary from calm to panicked depending on social context. Using videos publicly available online, we study the highly energized collective motion of attendees at heavy metal concerts. We find these extreme social gatherings generate similarly extreme behaviors: a disordered gas-like state called a mosh pit and an ordered vortex-like state called a circle pit. Both phenomena are reproduced in flocking simulations demonstrating that human collective behavior is consistent with the predictions of simplified models.
1302.1901
Relational Access Control with Bivalent Permissions in a Social Web/Collaboration Architecture
cs.SI cs.CR
We describe an access control model that has been implemented in the web content management framework "Deme" (which rhymes with "team"). Access control in Deme is an example of what we call "bivalent relation object access control"(BROAC). This model builds on recent work by Giunchiglia et al. on relation-based access control (RelBAC), as well as other work on relational, flexible, fine-grained, and XML access control models. We describe Deme's architecture and review access control models, motivating our approach. BROAC allows for both positive and negative permissions, which may conflict with each other. We argue for the usefulness of defining access control rules as objects in the target database, and for the necessity of resolving permission conflicts in a social Web/collaboration architecture. After describing how Deme access control works, including the precedence relations between different permission types in Deme, we provide several examples of realistic scenarios in which permission conflicts arise, and show how Deme resolves them. Initial performance tests indicate that permission checking scales linearly in time on a practical Deme website.
1302.1902
Practical Analysis of Codebook Design and Frequency Offset Estimation for Virtual-MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
A virtual multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless system using the receiver-side cooperation with the compress-and-forward (CF) protocol, is an alternative to a point-to-point MIMO system, when a single receiver is not equipped with multiple antennas. It is evident that the practicality of CF cooperation will be greatly enhanced if an efficient source coding technique can be used at the relay. It is even more desirable that CF cooperation should not be unduly sensitive to carrier frequency offsets (CFOs). This paper presents a practical study of these two issues. Firstly, codebook designs of the Voronoi vector quantization (VQ) and the tree-structure vector quantization (TSVQ) to enable CF cooperation at the relay are described. A comparison in terms of the codebook design and encoding complexity is analyzed. It is shown that the TSVQ is much simpler to design and operate, and can achieve a favorable performance-complexity tradeoff. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that CFO can lead to significant performance degradation for the virtual MIMO system. To overcome this, it is proposed to maintain clock synchronization and jointly estimate the CFO between the relay and the destination. This approach is shown to provide a significant performance improvement.
1302.1920
SWATI: Synthesizing Wordlengths Automatically Using Testing and Induction
cs.SY
In this paper, we present an automated technique SWATI: Synthesizing Wordlengths Automatically Using Testing and Induction, which uses a combination of Nelder-Mead optimization based testing, and induction from examples to automatically synthesize optimal fixedpoint implementation of numerical routines. The design of numerical software is commonly done using floating-point arithmetic in design-environments such as Matlab. However, these designs are often implemented using fixed-point arithmetic for speed and efficiency reasons especially in embedded systems. The fixed-point implementation reduces implementation cost, provides better performance, and reduces power consumption. The conversion from floating-point designs to fixed-point code is subject to two opposing constraints: (i) the word-width of fixed-point types must be minimized, and (ii) the outputs of the fixed-point program must be accurate. In this paper, we propose a new solution to this problem. Our technique takes the floating-point program, specified accuracy and an implementation cost model and provides the fixed-point program with specified accuracy and optimal implementation cost. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on a set of examples from the domain of automated control, robotics and digital signal processing.
1302.1923
Update XML Views
cs.DB
View update is the problem of translating an update to a view to some updates to the source data of the view. In this paper, we show the factors determining XML view update translation, propose a translation procedure, and propose translated updates to the source document for different types of views. We further show that the translated updates are precise. The proposed solution makes it possible for users who do not have access privileges to the source data to update the source data via a view.
1302.1931
Coding for Combined Block-Symbol Error Correction
cs.IT math.CO math.IT
We design low-complexity error correction coding schemes for channels that introduce different types of errors and erasures: on the one hand, the proposed schemes can successfully deal with symbol errors and erasures, and, on the other hand, they can also successfully handle phased burst errors and erasures.
1302.1937
Embedding agents in business applications using enterprise integration patterns
cs.MA
This paper addresses the issue of integrating agents with a variety of external resources and services, as found in enterprise computing environments. We propose an approach for interfacing agents and existing message routing and mediation engines based on the endpoint concept from the enterprise integration patterns of Hohpe and Woolf. A design for agent endpoints is presented, and an architecture for connecting the Jason agent platform to the Apache Camel enterprise integration framework using this type of endpoint is described. The approach is illustrated by means of a business process use case, and a number of Camel routes are presented. These demonstrate the benefits of interfacing agents to external services via a specialised message routing tool that supports enterprise integration patterns.
1302.1942
Surveillance Video Processing Using Compressive Sensing
cs.CV cs.IT math.IT
A compressive sensing method combined with decomposition of a matrix formed with image frames of a surveillance video into low rank and sparse matrices is proposed to segment the background and extract moving objects in a surveillance video. The video is acquired by compressive measurements, and the measurements are used to reconstruct the video by a low rank and sparse decomposition of matrix. The low rank component represents the background, and the sparse component is used to identify moving objects in the surveillance video. The decomposition is performed by an augmented Lagrangian alternating direction method. Experiments are carried out to demonstrate that moving objects can be reliably extracted with a small amount of measurements.
1302.1947
A new compressive video sensing framework for mobile broadcast
cs.MM cs.CV cs.IT math.IT
A new video coding method based on compressive sampling is proposed. In this method, a video is coded using compressive measurements on video cubes. Video reconstruction is performed by minimization of total variation (TV) of the pixelwise DCT coefficients along the temporal direction. A new reconstruction algorithm is developed from TVAL3, an efficient TV minimization algorithm based on the alternating minimization and augmented Lagrangian methods. Video coding with this method is inherently scalable, and has applications in mobile broadcast.
1302.2017
Cooperative Environmental Monitoring for PTZ Visual Sensor Networks: A Payoff-based Learning Approach
cs.SY
This paper investigates cooperative environmental monitoring for Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) visual sensor networks. We first present a novel formulation of the optimal environmental monitoring problem, whose objective function is intertwined with the uncertain state of the environment. In addition, due to the large volume of vision data, it is desired for each sensor to execute processing through local computation and communication. To address the issues, we present a distributed solution to the problem based on game theoretic cooperative control and payoff-based learning. At the first stage, a utility function is designed so that the resulting game constitutes a potential game with potential function equal to the group objective function, where the designed utility is shown to be computable through local image processing and communication. Then, we present a payoff-based learning algorithm so that the sensors are led to the global objective function maximizers without using any prior information on the environmental state. Finally, we run experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the present approach.
1302.2048
Improving success probability and embedding efficiency in code based steganography
cs.IT math.IT
For stegoschemes arising from error correcting codes, embedding depends on a decoding map for the corresponding code. As decoding maps are usually not complete, embedding can fail. We propose a method to ensure or increase the probability of embedding success for these stegoschemes. This method is based on puncturing codes. We show how the use of punctured codes may also increase the embedding efficiency of the obtained stegoschemes.
1302.2056
Complexity distribution of agent policies
cs.AI
We analyse the complexity of environments according to the policies that need to be used to achieve high performance. The performance results for a population of policies leads to a distribution that is examined in terms of policy complexity and analysed through several diagrams and indicators. The notion of environment response curve is also introduced, by inverting the performance results into an ability scale. We apply all these concepts, diagrams and indicators to a minimalistic environment class, agent-populated elementary cellular automata, showing how the difficulty, discriminating power and ranges (previous to normalisation) may vary for several environments.
1302.2073
pROST : A Smoothed Lp-norm Robust Online Subspace Tracking Method for Realtime Background Subtraction in Video
cs.CV
An increasing number of methods for background subtraction use Robust PCA to identify sparse foreground objects. While many algorithms use the L1-norm as a convex relaxation of the ideal sparsifying function, we approach the problem with a smoothed Lp-norm and present pROST, a method for robust online subspace tracking. The algorithm is based on alternating minimization on manifolds. Implemented on a graphics processing unit it achieves realtime performance. Experimental results on a state-of-the-art benchmark for background subtraction on real-world video data indicate that the method succeeds at a broad variety of background subtraction scenarios, and it outperforms competing approaches when video quality is deteriorated by camera jitter.
1302.2082
Sequences with Minimal Time-Frequency Uncertainty
cs.IT math.IT
A central problem in signal processing and communications is to design signals that are compact both in time and frequency. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that a given function cannot be arbitrarily compact both in time and frequency, defining an "uncertainty" lower bound. Taking the variance as a measure of localization in time and frequency, Gaussian functions reach this bound for continuous-time signals. For sequences, however, this is not true; it is known that Heisenberg's bound is generally unachievable. For a chosen frequency variance, we formulate the search for "maximally compact sequences" as an exactly and efficiently solved convex optimization problem, thus providing a sharp uncertainty principle for sequences. Interestingly, the optimization formulation also reveals that maximally compact sequences are derived from Mathieu's harmonic cosine function of order zero. We further provide rational asymptotic expansions of this sharp uncertainty bound. We use the derived bounds as a benchmark to compare the compactness of well-known window functions with that of the optimal Mathieu's functions.
1302.2093
A distributed accelerated gradient algorithm for distributed model predictive control of a hydro power valley
math.OC cs.MA cs.SY math.NA
A distributed model predictive control (DMPC) approach based on distributed optimization is applied to the power reference tracking problem of a hydro power valley (HPV) system. The applied optimization algorithm is based on accelerated gradient methods and achieves a convergence rate of O(1/k^2), where k is the iteration number. Major challenges in the control of the HPV include a nonlinear and large-scale model, nonsmoothness in the power-production functions, and a globally coupled cost function that prevents distributed schemes to be applied directly. We propose a linearization and approximation approach that accommodates the proposed the DMPC framework and provides very similar performance compared to a centralized solution in simulations. The provided numerical studies also suggest that for the sparsely interconnected system at hand, the distributed algorithm we propose is faster than a centralized state-of-the-art solver such as CPLEX.
1302.2112
Cryptanalysis and Improvement of Akleylek et al.'s cryptosystem
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT
Akleylek et al. [S. Akleylek, L. Emmungil and U. Nuriyev, A mod ified algorithm for peer-to-peer security, journal of Appl. Comput. Math., vol. 6(2), pp.258-264, 2007.], introduced a modified public-key encryption scheme with steganographic approach for security in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. In this cryptosystem, Akleylek et al. attempt to increase security of the P2P networks by mixing ElGamal cryptosystem with knapsack problem. In this paper, we present a ciphertext-only attack against their system to recover message. In addition, we show that for their scheme completeness property is not holds, and therefore, the receiver cannot uniquely decrypts messages. Furthermore, we also show that this system is not chosen-ciphertext secure, thus the proposed scheme is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle-attack, one of the most pernicious attacks against P2P networks. Therefore, this scheme is not suitable to implement in the P2P networks. We modify this cryptosystem in order to increase its security and efficiency. Our construction is the efficient CCA2-secure variant of the Akleylek et al.'s encryption scheme in the standard model, the de facto security notion for public-key encryption schemes.
1302.2128
Modulus Computational Entropy
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
The so-called {\em leakage-chain rule} is a very important tool used in many security proofs. It gives an upper bound on the entropy loss of a random variable $X$ in case the adversary who having already learned some random variables $Z_{1},\ldots,Z_{\ell}$ correlated with $X$, obtains some further information $Z_{\ell+1}$ about $X$. Analogously to the information-theoretic case, one might expect that also for the \emph{computational} variants of entropy the loss depends only on the actual leakage, i.e. on $Z_{\ell+1}$. Surprisingly, Krenn et al.\ have shown recently that for the most commonly used definitions of computational entropy this holds only if the computational quality of the entropy deteriorates exponentially in $|(Z_{1},\ldots,Z_{\ell})|$. This means that the current standard definitions of computational entropy do not allow to fully capture leakage that occurred "in the past", which severely limits the applicability of this notion. As a remedy for this problem we propose a slightly stronger definition of the computational entropy, which we call the \emph{modulus computational entropy}, and use it as a technical tool that allows us to prove a desired chain rule that depends only on the actual leakage and not on its history. Moreover, we show that the modulus computational entropy unifies other,sometimes seemingly unrelated, notions already studied in the literature in the context of information leakage and chain rules. Our results indicate that the modulus entropy is, up to now, the weakest restriction that guarantees that the chain rule for the computational entropy works. As an example of application we demonstrate a few interesting cases where our restricted definition is fulfilled and the chain rule holds.
1302.2131
Data Mining of the Concept "End of the World" in Twitter Microblogs
cs.SI cs.CL cs.IR physics.soc-ph
This paper describes the analysis of quantitative characteristics of frequent sets and association rules in the posts of Twitter microblogs, related to the discussion of "end of the world", which was allegedly predicted on December 21, 2012 due to the Mayan calendar. Discovered frequent sets and association rules characterize semantic relations between the concepts of analyzed subjects.The support for some fequent sets reaches the global maximum before the expected event with some time delay. Such frequent sets may be considered as predictive markers that characterize the significance of expected events for blogosphere users. It was shown that time dynamics of confidence of some revealed association rules can also have predictive characteristics. Exceeding a certain threshold, it may be a signal for the corresponding reaction in the society during the time interval between the maximum and probable coming of an event.
1302.2157
Passive Learning with Target Risk
cs.LG
In this paper we consider learning in passive setting but with a slight modification. We assume that the target expected loss, also referred to as target risk, is provided in advance for learner as prior knowledge. Unlike most studies in the learning theory that only incorporate the prior knowledge into the generalization bounds, we are able to explicitly utilize the target risk in the learning process. Our analysis reveals a surprising result on the sample complexity of learning: by exploiting the target risk in the learning algorithm, we show that when the loss function is both strongly convex and smooth, the sample complexity reduces to $\O(\log (\frac{1}{\epsilon}))$, an exponential improvement compared to the sample complexity $\O(\frac{1}{\epsilon})$ for learning with strongly convex loss functions. Furthermore, our proof is constructive and is based on a computationally efficient stochastic optimization algorithm for such settings which demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is practically useful.
1302.2167
Information, Estimation, and Lookahead in the Gaussian channel
cs.IT math.IT
We consider mean squared estimation with lookahead of a continuous-time signal corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise. We show that the mutual information rate function, i.e., the mutual information rate as function of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), does not, in general, determine the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) with fixed finite lookahead, in contrast to the special cases with 0 and infinite lookahead (filtering and smoothing errors), respectively, which were previously established in the literature. We also establish a new expectation identity under a generalized observation model where the Gaussian channel has an SNR jump at $t=0$, capturing the tradeoff between lookahead and SNR. Further, we study the class of continuous-time stationary Gauss-Markov processes (Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes) as channel inputs, and explicitly characterize the behavior of the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) with finite lookahead and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The MMSE with lookahead is shown to converge exponentially rapidly to the non-causal error, with the exponent being the reciprocal of the non-causal error. We extend our results to mixtures of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes, and use the insight gained to present lower and upper bounds on the MMSE with lookahead for a class of stationary Gaussian input processes, whose spectrum can be expressed as a mixture of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck spectra.
1302.2168
Optimal Throughput-Outage Trade-off in Wireless One-Hop Caching Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
We consider a wireless device-to-device (D2D) network where the nodes have cached information from a library of possible files. Inspired by the current trend in the standardization of the D2D mode for 4th generation wireless networks, we restrict to one-hop communication: each node place a request to a file in the library, and downloads from some other node which has the requested file in its cache through a direct communication link, without going through a base station. We describe the physical layer communication through a simple "protocol-model", based on interference avoidance (independent set scheduling). For this network we define the outage-throughput tradeoff problem and characterize the optimal scaling laws for various regimes where both the number of nodes and the files in the library grow to infinity.
1302.2176
Minimax Optimal Algorithms for Unconstrained Linear Optimization
cs.LG
We design and analyze minimax-optimal algorithms for online linear optimization games where the player's choice is unconstrained. The player strives to minimize regret, the difference between his loss and the loss of a post-hoc benchmark strategy. The standard benchmark is the loss of the best strategy chosen from a bounded comparator set. When the the comparison set and the adversary's gradients satisfy L_infinity bounds, we give the value of the game in closed form and prove it approaches sqrt(2T/pi) as T -> infinity. Interesting algorithms result when we consider soft constraints on the comparator, rather than restricting it to a bounded set. As a warmup, we analyze the game with a quadratic penalty. The value of this game is exactly T/2, and this value is achieved by perhaps the simplest online algorithm of all: unprojected gradient descent with a constant learning rate. We then derive a minimax-optimal algorithm for a much softer penalty function. This algorithm achieves good bounds under the standard notion of regret for any comparator point, without needing to specify the comparator set in advance. The value of this game converges to sqrt{e} as T ->infinity; we give a closed-form for the exact value as a function of T. The resulting algorithm is natural in unconstrained investment or betting scenarios, since it guarantees at worst constant loss, while allowing for exponential reward against an "easy" adversary.
1302.2178
Gaussian State Amplification with Noisy State Observations
cs.IT math.IT
The problem of simultaneous message transmission and state amplification in a Gaussian channel with additive Gaussian state is studied when the sender has imperfect noncausal knowledge of the state sequence. Inner and outer bounds to the rate--state-distortion region are provided. The coding scheme underlying the inner bound combines analog signaling and Gelfand-Pinsker coding, where the latter deviates from the operating point of Costa's dirty paper coding.
1302.2183
The Importance of Tie-Breaking in Finite-Blocklength Bounds
cs.IT math.IT
We consider upper bounds on the error probability in channel coding. We derive an improved maximum-likelihood union bound, which takes into account events where the likelihood of the correct codeword is tied with that of some competitors. We compare this bound to various previous results, both qualitatively and quantitatively. With respect to maximal error probability of linear codes, we observe that when the channel is additive, the derivation of bounds, as well as the assumptions on the admissible encoder and decoder, simplify considerably.
1302.2185
Passive Self-Interference Suppression for Full-Duplex Infrastructure Nodes
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
Recent research results have demonstrated the feasibility of full-duplex wireless communication for short-range links. Although the focus of the previous works has been active cancellation of the self-interference signal, a majority of the overall self-interference suppression is often due to passive suppression, i.e., isolation of the transmit and receive antennas. We present a measurement-based study of the capabilities and limitations of three key mechanisms for passive self-interference suppression: directional isolation, absorptive shielding, and cross-polarization. The study demonstrates that more than 70 dB of passive suppression can be achieved in certain environments, but also establishes two results on the limitations of passive suppression: (1) environmental reflections limit the amount of passive suppression that can be achieved, and (2) passive suppression, in general, increases the frequency selectivity of the residual self-interference signal. These results suggest two design implications: (1) deployments of full-duplex infrastructure nodes should minimize near-antenna reflectors, and (2) active cancellation in concatenation with passive suppression should employ higher-order filters or per-subcarrier cancellation.
1302.2187
Linear Precoding and Equalization for Network MIMO with Partial Cooperation
cs.IT math.IT math.OC
A cellular multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink system is studied in which each base station (BS) transmits to some of the users, so that each user receives its intended signal from a subset of the BSs. This scenario is referred to as network MIMO with partial cooperation, since only a subset of the BSs are able to coordinate their transmission towards any user. The focus of this paper is on the optimization of linear beamforming strategies at the BSs and at the users for network MIMO with partial cooperation. Individual power constraints at the BSs are enforced, along with constraints on the number of streams per user. It is first shown that the system is equivalent to a MIMO interference channel with generalized linear constraints (MIMO-IFC-GC). The problems of maximizing the sum-rate(SR) and minimizing the weighted sum mean square error (WSMSE) of the data estimates are non-convex, and suboptimal solutions with reasonable complexity need to be devised. Based on this, suboptimal techniques that aim at maximizing the sum-rate for the MIMO-IFC-GC are reviewed from recent literature and extended to the MIMO-IFC-GC where necessary. Novel designs that aim at minimizing the WSMSE are then proposed. Extensive numerical simulations are provided to compare the performance of the considered schemes for realistic cellular systems.
1302.2222
Ontology-Based Administration of Web Directories
cs.IR cs.DL
Administration of a Web directory and maintenance of its content and the associated structure is a delicate and labor intensive task performed exclusively by human domain experts. Subsequently there is an imminent risk of a directory structures becoming unbalanced, uneven and difficult to use to all except for a few users proficient with the particular Web directory and its domain. These problems emphasize the need to establish two important issues: i) generic and objective measures of Web directories structure quality, and ii) mechanism for fully automated development of a Web directory's structure. In this paper we demonstrate how to formally and fully integrate Web directories with the Semantic Web vision. We propose a set of criteria for evaluation of a Web directory's structure quality. Some criterion functions are based on heuristics while others require the application of ontologies. We also suggest an ontology-based algorithm for construction of Web directories. By using ontologies to describe the semantics of Web resources and Web directories' categories it is possible to define algorithms that can build or rearrange the structure of a Web directory. Assessment procedures can provide feedback and help steer the ontology-based construction process. The issues raised in the article can be equally applied to new and existing Web directories.
1302.2223
WNtags: A Web-Based Tool For Image Labeling And Retrieval With Lexical Ontologies
cs.IR cs.AI cs.MM
Ever growing number of image documents available on the Internet continuously motivates research in better annotation models and more efficient retrieval methods. Formal knowledge representation of objects and events in pictures, their interaction as well as context complexity becomes no longer an option for a quality image repository, but a necessity. We present an ontology-based online image annotation tool WNtags and demonstrate its usefulness in several typical multimedia retrieval tasks using International Affective Picture System emotionally annotated image database. WNtags is built around WordNet lexical ontology but considers Suggested Upper Merged Ontology as the preferred labeling formalism. WNtags uses sets of weighted WordNet synsets as high-level image semantic descriptors and query matching is performed with word stemming and node distance metrics. We also elaborate our near future plans to expand image content description with induced affect as in stimuli for research of human emotion and attention.
1302.2244
Efficient Data Gathering in Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Matrix Completion and Compressive Sensing
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Gathering data in an energy efficient manner in wireless sensor networks is an important design challenge. In wireless sensor networks, the readings of sensors always exhibit intra-temporal and inter-spatial correlations. Therefore, in this letter, we use low rank matrix completion theory to explore the inter-spatial correlation and use compressive sensing theory to take advantage of intra-temporal correlation. Our method, dubbed MCCS, can significantly reduce the amount of data that each sensor must send through network and to the sink, thus prolong the lifetime of the whole networks. Experiments using real datasets demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of our MCCS method.
1302.2246
Lower bounds on the minimum distance of long codes in the Lee metric
cs.IT math.IT
The Gilbert type bound for codes in the title is reviewed, both for small and large alphabets. Constructive lower bounds better than these existential bounds are derived from geometric codes, either over Fp or Fp2 ; or over even degree extensions of Fp: In the latter case the approach is concatena- tion with a good code for the Hamming metric as outer code and a short code for the Lee metric as an inner code. In the former case lower bounds on the minimum Lee distance are derived by algebraic geometric arguments inspired by results of Wu, Kuijper, Udaya (2007).
1302.2261
On the list decodability of random linear codes with large error rates
cs.IT math.IT
It is well known that a random q-ary code of rate \Omega(\epsilon^2) is list decodable up to radius (1 - 1/q - \epsilon) with list sizes on the order of 1/\epsilon^2, with probability 1 - o(1). However, until recently, a similar statement about random linear codes has until remained elusive. In a recent paper, Cheraghchi, Guruswami, and Velingker show a connection between list decodability of random linear codes and the Restricted Isometry Property from compressed sensing, and use this connection to prove that a random linear code of rate \Omega(\epsilon^2 / log^3(1/\epsilon)) achieves the list decoding properties above, with constant probability. We improve on their result to show that in fact we may take the rate to be \Omega(\epsilon^2), which is optimal, and further that the success probability is 1 - o(1), rather than constant. As an added benefit, our proof is relatively simple. Finally, we extend our methods to more general ensembles of linear codes. As an example, we show that randomly punctured Reed-Muller codes have the same list decoding properties as the original codes, even when the rate is improved to a constant.
1302.2273
Learning Universally Quantified Invariants of Linear Data Structures
cs.PL cs.FL cs.LG
We propose a new automaton model, called quantified data automata over words, that can model quantified invariants over linear data structures, and build poly-time active learning algorithms for them, where the learner is allowed to query the teacher with membership and equivalence queries. In order to express invariants in decidable logics, we invent a decidable subclass of QDAs, called elastic QDAs, and prove that every QDA has a unique minimally-over-approximating elastic QDA. We then give an application of these theoretically sound and efficient active learning algorithms in a passive learning framework and show that we can efficiently learn quantified linear data structure invariants from samples obtained from dynamic runs for a large class of programs.
1302.2277
A Time Series Forest for Classification and Feature Extraction
cs.LG
We propose a tree ensemble method, referred to as time series forest (TSF), for time series classification. TSF employs a combination of the entropy gain and a distance measure, referred to as the Entrance (entropy and distance) gain, for evaluating the splits. Experimental studies show that the Entrance gain criterion improves the accuracy of TSF. TSF randomly samples features at each tree node and has a computational complexity linear in the length of a time series and can be built using parallel computing techniques such as multi-core computing used here. The temporal importance curve is also proposed to capture the important temporal characteristics useful for classification. Experimental studies show that TSF using simple features such as mean, deviation and slope outperforms strong competitors such as one-nearest-neighbor classifiers with dynamic time warping, is computationally efficient, and can provide insights into the temporal characteristics.
1302.2315
A sampling theorem on shift-invariant spaces associated with the fractional Fourier transform domain
math.FA cs.IT math.IT
As a generalization of the Fourier transform, the fractional Fourier transform was introduced and has been further investigated both in theory and in applications of signal processing. We obtain a sampling theorem on shift-invariant spaces associated with the fractional Fourier transform domain. The resulting sampling theorem extends not only the classical Whittaker-Shannon-Kotelnikov sampling theorem associated with the fractional Fourier transform domain, but also extends the prior sampling theorems on shift-invariant spaces.
1302.2318
On Search Engine Evaluation Metrics
cs.IR
The search engine evaluation research has quite a lot metrics available to it. Only recently, the question of the significance of individual metrics started being raised, as these metrics' correlations to real-world user experiences or performance have generally not been well-studied. The first part of this thesis provides an overview of previous literature on the evaluation of search engine evaluation metrics themselves, as well as critiques of and comments on individual studies and approaches. The second part introduces a meta-evaluation metric, the Preference Identification Ratio (PIR), that quantifies the capacity of an evaluation metric to capture users' preferences. Also, a framework for simultaneously evaluating many metrics while varying their parameters and evaluation standards is introduced. Both PIR and the meta-evaluation framework are tested in a study which shows some interesting preliminary results; in particular, the unquestioning adherence to metrics or their ad hoc parameters seems to be disadvantageous. Instead, evaluation methods should themselves be rigorously evaluated with regard to goals set for a particular study.
1302.2330
Power Allocation and Time-Domain Artificial Noise Design for Wiretap OFDM with Discrete Inputs
cs.IT math.IT
Optimal power allocation for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) wiretap channels with Gaussian channel inputs has already been studied in some previous works from an information theoretical viewpoint. However, these results are not sufficient for practical system design. One reason is that discrete channel inputs, such as quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals, instead of Gaussian channel inputs, are deployed in current practical wireless systems to maintain moderate peak transmission power and receiver complexity. In this paper, we investigate the power allocation and artificial noise design for OFDM wiretap channels with discrete channel inputs. We first prove that the secrecy rate function for discrete channel inputs is nonconcave with respect to the transmission power. To resolve the corresponding nonconvex secrecy rate maximization problem, we develop a low-complexity power allocation algorithm, which yields a duality gap diminishing in the order of O(1/\sqrt{N}), where N is the number of subcarriers of OFDM. We then show that independent frequency-domain artificial noise cannot improve the secrecy rate of single-antenna wiretap channels. Towards this end, we propose a novel time-domain artificial noise design which exploits temporal degrees of freedom provided by the cyclic prefix of OFDM systems {to jam the eavesdropper and boost the secrecy rate even with a single antenna at the transmitter}. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed design schemes.
1302.2331
The Phase Transition of Matrix Recovery from Gaussian Measurements Matches the Minimax MSE of Matrix Denoising
cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.TH
Let $X_0$ be an unknown $M$ by $N$ matrix. In matrix recovery, one takes $n < MN$ linear measurements $y_1,..., y_n$ of $X_0$, where $y_i = \Tr(a_i^T X_0)$ and each $a_i$ is a $M$ by $N$ matrix. For measurement matrices with Gaussian i.i.d entries, it known that if $X_0$ is of low rank, it is recoverable from just a few measurements. A popular approach for matrix recovery is Nuclear Norm Minimization (NNM). Empirical work reveals a \emph{phase transition} curve, stated in terms of the undersampling fraction $\delta(n,M,N) = n/(MN)$, rank fraction $\rho=r/N$ and aspect ratio $\beta=M/N$. Specifically, a curve $\delta^* = \delta^*(\rho;\beta)$ exists such that, if $\delta > \delta^*(\rho;\beta)$, NNM typically succeeds, while if $\delta < \delta^*(\rho;\beta)$, it typically fails. An apparently quite different problem is matrix denoising in Gaussian noise, where an unknown $M$ by $N$ matrix $X_0$ is to be estimated based on direct noisy measurements $Y = X_0 + Z$, where the matrix $Z$ has iid Gaussian entries. It has been empirically observed that, if $X_0$ has low rank, it may be recovered quite accurately from the noisy measurement $Y$. A popular matrix denoising scheme solves the unconstrained optimization problem $\text{min} \| Y - X \|_F^2/2 + \lambda \|X\|_* $. When optimally tuned, this scheme achieves the asymptotic minimax MSE $\cM(\rho) = \lim_{N \goto \infty} \inf_\lambda \sup_{\rank(X) \leq \rho \cdot N} MSE(X,\hat{X}_\lambda)$. We report extensive experiments showing that the phase transition $\delta^*(\rho)$ in the first problem coincides with the minimax risk curve $\cM(\rho)$ in the second problem, for {\em any} rank fraction $0 < \rho < 1$.
1302.2339
Robust Low-Rank LCMV Beamforming Algorithms Based on Joint Iterative Optimization Strategies
cs.IT math.IT
This chapter presents reduced-rank linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) algorithms based on the concept of joint iterative optimization of parameters. The proposed reduced-rank scheme is based on a constrained robust joint iterative optimization (RJIO) of parameters according to the minimum variance criterion. The robust optimization procedure adjusts the parameters of a rank-reduction matrix, a reduced-rank beamformer and the diagonal loading in an alternating manner. LCMV expressions are developed for the design of the rank-reduction matrix and the reduced-rank beamformer. Stochastic gradient and recursive least-squares adaptive algorithms are then devised for an efficient implementation of the RJIO robust beamforming technique. Simulations for a application in the presence of uncertainties show that the RJIO scheme and algorithms outperform in convergence and tracking performances existing algorithms while requiring a comparable complexity.
1302.2343
Adaptive Space-Time Beamforming in Radar Systems
cs.IT math.IT
The goal of this chapter is to review the recent work and advances in the area of space-time beamforming algorithms and their application to radar systems. These systems include phased-array \cite{melvin} and multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar systems \cite{haimo_08}, mono-static and bi-static radar systems and other configurations \cite{melvin}. Furthermore, this chapter also describes in detail some of the most successful space-time beamforming algorithms that exploit low-rank and sparsity properties as well as the use of prior-knowledge to improve the performance of STAP algorithms in radar systems.
1302.2376
Modeling Morphology of Social Network Cascades
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Cascades represent an important phenomenon across various disciplines such as sociology, economy, psychology, political science, marketing, and epidemiology. An important property of cascades is their morphology, which encompasses the structure, shape, and size. However, cascade morphology has not been rigorously characterized and modeled in prior literature. In this paper, we propose a Multi-order Markov Model for the Morphology of Cascades ($M^4C$) that can represent and quantitatively characterize the morphology of cascades with arbitrary structures, shapes, and sizes. $M^4C$ can be used in a variety of applications to classify different types of cascades. To demonstrate this, we apply it to an unexplored but important problem in online social networks -- cascade size prediction. Our evaluations using real-world Twitter data show that $M^4C$ based cascade size prediction scheme outperforms the baseline scheme based on cascade graph features such as edge growth rate, degree distribution, clustering, and diameter. $M^4C$ based cascade size prediction scheme consistently achieves more than 90% classification accuracy under different experimental scenarios.
1302.2384
Efficient Desynchronization of Thermostatically Controlled Loads
math.OC cs.SY
This paper considers demand side management in smart power grid systems containing significant numbers of thermostatically controlled loads such as air conditioning systems, heat pumps, etc. Recent studies have shown that the overall power consumption of such systems can be regulated up and down centrally by broadcasting small setpoint change commands without significantly impacting consumer comfort. However, sudden simultaneous setpoint changes induce undesirable power consumption oscillations due to sudden synchronization of the on/off cycles of the individual units. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm for counter-acting these unwanted oscillations, which requires neither central management of the individual units nor communication between units. We present a formal proof of convergence of homogeneous populations to desynchronized status, as well as simulations that indicate that the algorithm is able to effectively dampen power consumption oscillations for both homogeneous and heterogeneous populations of thermostatically controlled loads.
1302.2420
Compressed Sensing with Incremental Sparse Measurements
cs.IT math.IT
This paper proposes a verification-based decoding approach for reconstruction of a sparse signal with incremental sparse measurements. In its first step, the verification-based decoding algorithm is employed to reconstruct the signal with a fixed number of sparse measurements. Often, it may fail as the number of sparse measurements may be not enough, possibly due to an underestimate of the signal sparsity. However, we observe that even if this first recovery fails, many component samples of the sparse signal have been identified. Hence, it is natural to further employ incremental measurements tuned to the unidentified samples with known locations. This approach has been proven very efficiently by extensive simulations.
1302.2427
Turbo DPSK in Bi-directional Relaying
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, iterative differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) demodulation and channel decoding scheme is investigated for the Joint Channel decoding and physical layer Network Coding (JCNC) approach in two-way relaying systems. The Bahl, Cocke, Jelinek, and Raviv (BCJR) algorithm for both coherent and noncoherent detection is derived for soft-in soft-out decoding of DPSK signalling over the two-user multiple-access channel with Rayleigh fading. Then, we propose a pragmatic approach with the JCNC scheme for iteratively exploiting the extrinsic information of the outer code. With coherent detection, we show that DPSK can be well concatenated with simple convolutional codes to achieve excellent coding gain just like in traditional point-to-point communication scenarios. The proposed noncoherent detection, which essentially requires that the channel keeps constant over two consecutive symbols, can work without explicit channel estimation. Simulation results show that the iterative processing converges very fast and most of the coding gain is obtained within two iterations.
1302.2436
Extracting useful rules through improved decision tree induction using information entropy
cs.LG
Classification is widely used technique in the data mining domain, where scalability and efficiency are the immediate problems in classification algorithms for large databases. We suggest improvements to the existing C4.5 decision tree algorithm. In this paper attribute oriented induction (AOI) and relevance analysis are incorporated with concept hierarchys knowledge and HeightBalancePriority algorithm for construction of decision tree along with Multi level mining. The assignment of priorities to attributes is done by evaluating information entropy, at different levels of abstraction for building decision tree using HeightBalancePriority algorithm. Modified DMQL queries are used to understand and explore the shortcomings of the decision trees generated by C4.5 classifier for education dataset and the results are compared with the proposed approach.
1302.2465
RIO: Minimizing User Interaction in Debugging of Knowledge Bases
cs.AI
The best currently known interactive debugging systems rely upon some meta-information in terms of fault probabilities in order to improve their efficiency. However, misleading meta information might result in a dramatic decrease of the performance and its assessment is only possible a-posteriori. Consequently, as long as the actual fault is unknown, there is always some risk of suboptimal interactions. In this work we present a reinforcement learning strategy that continuously adapts its behavior depending on the performance achieved and minimizes the risk of using low-quality meta information. Therefore, this method is suitable for application scenarios where reliable prior fault estimates are difficult to obtain. Using diverse real-world knowledge bases, we show that the proposed interactive query strategy is scalable, features decent reaction time, and outperforms both entropy-based and no-risk strategies on average w.r.t. required amount of user interaction.
1302.2472
Quantifying the effects of social influence
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
How do humans respond to indirect social influence when making decisions? We analysed an experiment where subjects had to repeatedly guess the correct answer to factual questions, while having only aggregated information about the answers of others. While the response of humans to aggregated information is a widely observed phenomenon, it has not been investigated quantitatively, in a controlled setting. We found that the adjustment of individual guesses depends linearly on the distance to the mean of all guesses. This is a remarkable, and yet surprisingly simple, statistical regularity. It holds across all questions analysed, even though the correct answers differ in several orders of magnitude. Our finding supports the assumption that individual diversity does not affect the response to indirect social influence. It also complements previous results on the nonlinear response in information-rich scenarios. We argue that the nature of the response to social influence crucially changes with the level of information aggregation. This insight contributes to the empirical foundation of models for collective decisions under social influence.
1302.2481
A Lower Bound on the Noncoherent Capacity Pre-log for the MIMO Channel with Temporally Correlated Fading
cs.IT math.IT
We derive a lower bound on the capacity pre-log of a temporally correlated Rayleigh block-fading multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel with T transmit antennas and R receive antennas in the noncoherent setting (no a priori channel knowledge at the transmitter and the receiver). In this model, the fading process changes independently across blocks of length L and is temporally correlated within each block for each transmit-receive antenna pair, with a given rank Q of the corresponding correlation matrix. Our result implies that for almost all choices of the coloring matrix that models the temporal correlation, the pre-log can be lower-bounded by T(1-1/L) for T <= (L-1)/Q provided that R is sufficiently large. The widely used constant block-fading model is equivalent to the temporally correlated block-fading model with Q = 1 for the special case when the temporal correlation for each transmit-receive antenna pair is the same, which is unlikely to be observed in practice. For the constant block-fading model, the capacity pre-log is given by T(1-T/L), which is smaller than our lower bound for the case Q = 1. Thus, our result suggests that the assumptions underlying the constant block- fading model lead to a pessimistic result for the capacity pre-log.
1302.2501
Optimal Forgery and Suppression of Ratings for Privacy Enhancement in Recommendation Systems
cs.IT math.IT math.OC
Recommendation systems are information-filtering systems that tailor information to users on the basis of knowledge about their preferences. The ability of these systems to profile users is what enables such intelligent functionality, but at the same time, it is the source of serious privacy concerns. In this paper we investigate a privacy-enhancing technology that aims at hindering an attacker in its efforts to accurately profile users based on the items they rate. Our approach capitalizes on the combination of two perturbative mechanisms---the forgery and the suppression of ratings. While this technique enhances user privacy to a certain extent, it inevitably comes at the cost of a loss in data utility, namely a degradation of the recommendation's accuracy. In short, it poses a trade-off between privacy and utility. The theoretical analysis of said trade-off is the object of this work. We measure privacy as the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the user's and the population's item distributions, and quantify utility as the proportion of ratings users consent to forge and eliminate. Equipped with these quantitative measures, we find a closed-form solution to the problem of optimal forgery and suppression of ratings, and characterize the trade-off among privacy, forgery rate and suppression rate. Experimental results on a popular recommendation system show how our approach may contribute to privacy enhancement.
1302.2512
Which Boolean Functions are Most Informative?
cs.IT math.IT
We introduce a simply stated conjecture regarding the maximum mutual information a Boolean function can reveal about noisy inputs. Specifically, let $X^n$ be i.i.d. Bernoulli(1/2), and let $Y^n$ be the result of passing $X^n$ through a memoryless binary symmetric channel with crossover probability $\alpha$. For any Boolean function $b:\{0,1\}^n\rightarrow \{0,1\}$, we conjecture that $I(b(X^n);Y^n)\leq 1-H(\alpha)$. While the conjecture remains open, we provide substantial evidence supporting its validity.
1302.2518
Minimum Dominating Sets in Scale-Free Network Ensembles
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
We study the scaling behavior of the size of minimum dominating set (MDS) in scale-free networks, with respect to network size $N$ and power-law exponent $\gamma$, while keeping the average degree fixed. We study ensembles generated by three different network construction methods, and we use a greedy algorithm to approximate the MDS. With a structural cutoff imposed on the maximal degree ($k_{\max}=\sqrt{N}$) we find linear scaling of the MDS size with respect to $N$ in all three network classes. Without any cutoff ($k_{\max}=N-1$) two of the network classes display a transition at $\gamma \approx 1.9$, with linear scaling above, and vanishingly weak dependence below, but in the third network class we find linear scaling irrespective of $\gamma$. We find that the partial MDS, which dominates a given $z<1$ fraction of nodes, displays essentially the same scaling behavior as the MDS.
1302.2550
Online Regret Bounds for Undiscounted Continuous Reinforcement Learning
cs.LG
We derive sublinear regret bounds for undiscounted reinforcement learning in continuous state space. The proposed algorithm combines state aggregation with the use of upper confidence bounds for implementing optimism in the face of uncertainty. Beside the existence of an optimal policy which satisfies the Poisson equation, the only assumptions made are Holder continuity of rewards and transition probabilities.
1302.2552
Selecting the State-Representation in Reinforcement Learning
cs.LG
The problem of selecting the right state-representation in a reinforcement learning problem is considered. Several models (functions mapping past observations to a finite set) of the observations are given, and it is known that for at least one of these models the resulting state dynamics are indeed Markovian. Without knowing neither which of the models is the correct one, nor what are the probabilistic characteristics of the resulting MDP, it is required to obtain as much reward as the optimal policy for the correct model (or for the best of the correct models, if there are several). We propose an algorithm that achieves that, with a regret of order T^{2/3} where T is the horizon time.
1302.2553
Optimal Regret Bounds for Selecting the State Representation in Reinforcement Learning
cs.LG
We consider an agent interacting with an environment in a single stream of actions, observations, and rewards, with no reset. This process is not assumed to be a Markov Decision Process (MDP). Rather, the agent has several representations (mapping histories of past interactions to a discrete state space) of the environment with unknown dynamics, only some of which result in an MDP. The goal is to minimize the average regret criterion against an agent who knows an MDP representation giving the highest optimal reward, and acts optimally in it. Recent regret bounds for this setting are of order $O(T^{2/3})$ with an additive term constant yet exponential in some characteristics of the optimal MDP. We propose an algorithm whose regret after $T$ time steps is $O(\sqrt{T})$, with all constants reasonably small. This is optimal in $T$ since $O(\sqrt{T})$ is the optimal regret in the setting of learning in a (single discrete) MDP.
1302.2563
Temporal motifs reveal homophily, gender-specific patterns and group talk in mobile communication networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
Electronic communication records provide detailed information about temporal aspects of human interaction. Previous studies have shown that individuals' communication patterns have complex temporal structure, and that this structure has system-wide effects. In this paper we use mobile phone records to show that interaction patterns involving multiple individuals have non-trivial temporal structure that cannot be deduced from a network presentation where only interaction frequencies are taken into account. We apply a recently introduced method, temporal motifs, to identify interaction patterns in a temporal network where nodes have additional attributes such as gender and age. We then develop a null model that allows identifying differences between various types of nodes so that these differences are independent of the network based on interaction frequencies. We find gender-related differences in communication patters, and show the existence of temporal homophily, the tendency of similar individuals to participate in interaction patterns beyond what would be expected on the basis of the network structure alone. We also show that temporal patterns differ between dense and sparse parts of the network. Because this result is independent of edge weights, it can be considered as an extension of Granovetter's hypothesis to temporal networks.
1302.2569
Toric grammars: a new statistical approach to natural language modeling
stat.ML cs.CL math.PR
We propose a new statistical model for computational linguistics. Rather than trying to estimate directly the probability distribution of a random sentence of the language, we define a Markov chain on finite sets of sentences with many finite recurrent communicating classes and define our language model as the invariant probability measures of the chain on each recurrent communicating class. This Markov chain, that we call a communication model, recombines at each step randomly the set of sentences forming its current state, using some grammar rules. When the grammar rules are fixed and known in advance instead of being estimated on the fly, we can prove supplementary mathematical properties. In particular, we can prove in this case that all states are recurrent states, so that the chain defines a partition of its state space into finite recurrent communicating classes. We show that our approach is a decisive departure from Markov models at the sentence level and discuss its relationships with Context Free Grammars. Although the toric grammars we use are closely related to Context Free Grammars, the way we generate the language from the grammar is qualitatively different. Our communication model has two purposes. On the one hand, it is used to define indirectly the probability distribution of a random sentence of the language. On the other hand it can serve as a (crude) model of language transmission from one speaker to another speaker through the communication of a (large) set of sentences.
1302.2575
Coded aperture compressive temporal imaging
cs.CV cs.IT math.IT
We use mechanical translation of a coded aperture for code division multiple access compression of video. We present experimental results for reconstruction at 148 frames per coded snapshot.
1302.2576
The trace norm constrained matrix-variate Gaussian process for multitask bipartite ranking
cs.LG stat.ML
We propose a novel hierarchical model for multitask bipartite ranking. The proposed approach combines a matrix-variate Gaussian process with a generative model for task-wise bipartite ranking. In addition, we employ a novel trace constrained variational inference approach to impose low rank structure on the posterior matrix-variate Gaussian process. The resulting posterior covariance function is derived in closed form, and the posterior mean function is the solution to a matrix-variate regression with a novel spectral elastic net regularizer. Further, we show that variational inference for the trace constrained matrix-variate Gaussian process combined with maximum likelihood parameter estimation for the bipartite ranking model is jointly convex. Our motivating application is the prioritization of candidate disease genes. The goal of this task is to aid the identification of unobserved associations between human genes and diseases using a small set of observed associations as well as kernels induced by gene-gene interaction networks and disease ontologies. Our experimental results illustrate the performance of the proposed model on real world datasets. Moreover, we find that the resulting low rank solution improves the computational scalability of training and testing as compared to baseline models.
1302.2606
A new bio-inspired method for remote sensing imagery classification
cs.NE cs.CV
The problem of supervised classification of the satellite image is considered to be the task of grouping pixels into a number of homogeneous regions in space intensity. This paper proposes a novel approach that combines a radial basic function clustering network with a growing neural gas include utility factor classifier to yield improved solutions, obtained with previous networks. The double objective technique is first used to the development of a method to perform the satellite images classification, and finally, the implementation to address the issue of the number of nodes in the hidden layer of the classic Radial Basis functions network. Results demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed technique are provided for numeric remote sensing imagery. Moreover, the remotely sensed image of Oran city in Algeria has been classified using the proposed technique to establish its utility.
1302.2615
Assessing Semantic Quality of Web Directory Structure
cs.IR cs.DL
The administration of a Web directory content and associated structure is a labor intensive task performed by human domain experts. Because of that there always exists a realistic risk of the structure becoming unbalanced, uneven and difficult to use to all except for a few users proficient in a particular Web directory. These problems emphasize the importance of generic and objective measures of Web directories structure quality. In this paper we demonstrate how to formally merge Web directories into the Semantic Web vision. We introduce a set of objective criterions for evaluation of a Web directory's structure quality. Some criteria functions are based on heuristics while others require the application of ontologies.
1302.2645
Geometrical complexity of data approximators
stat.ML cs.LG
There are many methods developed to approximate a cloud of vectors embedded in high-dimensional space by simpler objects: starting from principal points and linear manifolds to self-organizing maps, neural gas, elastic maps, various types of principal curves and principal trees, and so on. For each type of approximators the measure of the approximator complexity was developed too. These measures are necessary to find the balance between accuracy and complexity and to define the optimal approximations of a given type. We propose a measure of complexity (geometrical complexity) which is applicable to approximators of several types and which allows comparing data approximations of different types.
1302.2654
Enabling Secure Database as a Service using Fully Homomorphic Encryption: Challenges and Opportunities
cs.DB cs.CR
The database community, at least for the last decade, has been grappling with querying encrypted data, which would enable secure database as a service solutions. A recent breakthrough in the cryptographic community (in 2009) related to fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) showed that arbitrary computation on encrypted data is possible. Successful adoption of FHE for query processing is, however, still a distant dream, and numerous challenges have to be addressed. One challenge is how to perform algebraic query processing of encrypted data, where we produce encrypted intermediate results and operations on encrypted data can be composed. In this paper, we describe our solution for algebraic query processing of encrypted data, and also outline several other challenges that need to be addressed, while also describing the lessons that can be learnt from a decade of work by the database community in querying encrypted data.
1302.2671
Latent Self-Exciting Point Process Model for Spatial-Temporal Networks
cs.SI cs.LG stat.ML
We propose a latent self-exciting point process model that describes geographically distributed interactions between pairs of entities. In contrast to most existing approaches that assume fully observable interactions, here we consider a scenario where certain interaction events lack information about participants. Instead, this information needs to be inferred from the available observations. We develop an efficient approximate algorithm based on variational expectation-maximization to infer unknown participants in an event given the location and the time of the event. We validate the model on synthetic as well as real-world data, and obtain very promising results on the identity-inference task. We also use our model to predict the timing and participants of future events, and demonstrate that it compares favorably with baseline approaches.
1302.2672
Competing With Strategies
stat.ML cs.GT cs.LG
We study the problem of online learning with a notion of regret defined with respect to a set of strategies. We develop tools for analyzing the minimax rates and for deriving regret-minimization algorithms in this scenario. While the standard methods for minimizing the usual notion of regret fail, through our analysis we demonstrate existence of regret-minimization methods that compete with such sets of strategies as: autoregressive algorithms, strategies based on statistical models, regularized least squares, and follow the regularized leader strategies. In several cases we also derive efficient learning algorithms.
1302.2684
A Tensor Approach to Learning Mixed Membership Community Models
cs.LG cs.SI stat.ML
Community detection is the task of detecting hidden communities from observed interactions. Guaranteed community detection has so far been mostly limited to models with non-overlapping communities such as the stochastic block model. In this paper, we remove this restriction, and provide guaranteed community detection for a family of probabilistic network models with overlapping communities, termed as the mixed membership Dirichlet model, first introduced by Airoldi et al. This model allows for nodes to have fractional memberships in multiple communities and assumes that the community memberships are drawn from a Dirichlet distribution. Moreover, it contains the stochastic block model as a special case. We propose a unified approach to learning these models via a tensor spectral decomposition method. Our estimator is based on low-order moment tensor of the observed network, consisting of 3-star counts. Our learning method is fast and is based on simple linear algebraic operations, e.g. singular value decomposition and tensor power iterations. We provide guaranteed recovery of community memberships and model parameters and present a careful finite sample analysis of our learning method. As an important special case, our results match the best known scaling requirements for the (homogeneous) stochastic block model.
1302.2702
On the Capacity of Channels with Timing Synchronization Errors
cs.IT math.IT
We consider a new formulation of a class of synchronization error channels and derive analytical bounds and numerical estimates for the capacity of these channels. For the binary channel with only deletions, we obtain an expression for the symmetric information rate in terms of subsequence weights which reduces to a tight lower bound for small deletion probabilities. We are also able to exactly characterize the Markov-1 rate for the binary channel with only replications. For a channel that introduces deletions as well as replications of input symbols, we design approximating channels that parameterize the state space and show that the information rates of these approximate channels approach that of the deletion-replication channel as the state space grows. For the case of the channel where deletions and replications occur with the same probabilities, a stronger result in the convergence of mutual information rates is shown. The numerous advantages this new formulation presents are explored.
1302.2712
Bayesian Nonparametric Dictionary Learning for Compressed Sensing MRI
cs.CV physics.med-ph stat.AP
We develop a Bayesian nonparametric model for reconstructing magnetic resonance images (MRI) from highly undersampled k-space data. We perform dictionary learning as part of the image reconstruction process. To this end, we use the beta process as a nonparametric dictionary learning prior for representing an image patch as a sparse combination of dictionary elements. The size of the dictionary and the patch-specific sparsity pattern are inferred from the data, in addition to other dictionary learning variables. Dictionary learning is performed directly on the compressed image, and so is tailored to the MRI being considered. In addition, we investigate a total variation penalty term in combination with the dictionary learning model, and show how the denoising property of dictionary learning removes dependence on regularization parameters in the noisy setting. We derive a stochastic optimization algorithm based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) for the Bayesian model, and use the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) for efficiently performing total variation minimization. We present empirical results on several MRI, which show that the proposed regularization framework can improve reconstruction accuracy over other methods.
1302.2752
Adaptive Metric Dimensionality Reduction
cs.LG cs.DS stat.ML
We study adaptive data-dependent dimensionality reduction in the context of supervised learning in general metric spaces. Our main statistical contribution is a generalization bound for Lipschitz functions in metric spaces that are doubling, or nearly doubling. On the algorithmic front, we describe an analogue of PCA for metric spaces: namely an efficient procedure that approximates the data's intrinsic dimension, which is often much lower than the ambient dimension. Our approach thus leverages the dual benefits of low dimensionality: (1) more efficient algorithms, e.g., for proximity search, and (2) more optimistic generalization bounds.
1302.2767
Coherence and sufficient sampling densities for reconstruction in compressed sensing
cs.LG cs.IT math.AG math.IT stat.ML
We give a new, very general, formulation of the compressed sensing problem in terms of coordinate projections of an analytic variety, and derive sufficient sampling rates for signal reconstruction. Our bounds are linear in the coherence of the signal space, a geometric parameter independent of the specific signal and measurement, and logarithmic in the ambient dimension where the signal is presented. We exemplify our approach by deriving sufficient sampling densities for low-rank matrix completion and distance matrix completion which are independent of the true matrix.
1302.2787
Acquaintance Time of a Graph
cs.CC cs.DS cs.SI math.CO
We define the following parameter of connected graphs. For a given graph $G$ we place one agent in each vertex of $G$. Every pair of agents sharing a common edge is declared to be acquainted. In each round we choose some matching of $G$ (not necessarily a maximal matching), and for each edge in the matching the agents on this edge swap places. After the swap, again, every pair of agents sharing a common edge become acquainted, and the process continues. We define the \emph{acquaintance time} of a graph $G$, denoted by $AC(G)$, to be the minimal number of rounds required until every two agents are acquainted. We first study the acquaintance time for some natural families of graphs including the path, expanders, the binary tree, and the complete bipartite graph. We also show that for all positive integers $n$ and $k \leq n^{1.5}$ there exists an $n$-vertex graph $G$ such that $AC(G) =\Theta(k)$. We also prove that for all $n$-vertex connected graphs $G$ we have $AC(G) = O\left(\frac{n^2}{\log(n)/\log\log(n)}\right)$, improving the $O(n^2)$ trivial upper bound achieved by sequentially letting each agent perform depth-first search along a spanning tree of $G$. Studying the computational complexity of this problem, we prove that for any constant $t \geq 1$ the problem of deciding that a given graph $G$ has $AC(G) \leq t$ or $AC(G) \geq 2t$ is $\mathcal{NP}$-complete. That is, $AC(G)$ is $\mathcal{NP}$-hard to approximate within multiplicative factor of 2, as well as within any additive constant factor. On the algorithmic side, we give a deterministic algorithm that given a graph $G$ with $AC(G)=1$ finds a ${\lceil n/c\rceil}$-rounds strategy for acquaintance in time $n^{c+O(1)}$. We also design a randomized polynomial time algorithm that given a graph $G$ with $AC(G)=1$ finds with high probability an $O(\log(n))$-rounds strategy for acquaintance.
1302.2820
Linear and Geometric Mixtures - Analysis
cs.IT math.IT
Linear and geometric mixtures are two methods to combine arbitrary models in data compression. Geometric mixtures generalize the empirically well-performing PAQ7 mixture. Both mixture schemes rely on weight vectors, which heavily determine their performance. Typically weight vectors are identified via Online Gradient Descent. In this work we show that one can obtain strong code length bounds for such a weight estimation scheme. These bounds hold for arbitrary input sequences. For this purpose we introduce the class of nice mixtures and analyze how Online Gradient Descent with a fixed step size combined with a nice mixture performs. These results translate to linear and geometric mixtures, which are nice, as we show. The results hold for PAQ7 mixtures as well, thus we provide the first theoretical analysis of PAQ7.
1302.2828
Multi-agent RRT*: Sampling-based Cooperative Pathfinding (Extended Abstract)
cs.RO cs.AI cs.MA
Cooperative pathfinding is a problem of finding a set of non-conflicting trajectories for a number of mobile agents. Its applications include planning for teams of mobile robots, such as autonomous aircrafts, cars, or underwater vehicles. The state-of-the-art algorithms for cooperative pathfinding typically rely on some heuristic forward-search pathfinding technique, where A* is often the algorithm of choice. Here, we propose MA-RRT*, a novel algorithm for multi-agent path planning that builds upon a recently proposed asymptotically-optimal sampling-based algorithm for finding single-agent shortest path called RRT*. We experimentally evaluate the performance of the algorithm and show that the sampling-based approach offers better scalability than the classical forward-search approach in relatively large, but sparse environments, which are typical in real-world applications such as multi-aircraft collision avoidance.
1302.2839
Mixing Strategies in Data Compression
cs.IT math.IT
We propose geometric weighting as a novel method to combine multiple models in data compression. Our results reveal the rationale behind PAQ-weighting and generalize it to a non-binary alphabet. Based on a similar technique we present a new, generic linear mixture technique. All novel mixture techniques rely on given weight vectors. We consider the problem of finding optimal weights and show that the weight optimization leads to a strictly convex (and thus, good-natured) optimization problem. Finally, an experimental evaluation compares the two presented mixture techniques for a binary alphabet. The results indicate that geometric weighting is superior to linear weighting.
1302.2855
Polar-Coded Modulaton
cs.IT math.IT
A framework is proposed that allows for a joint description and optimization of both binary polar coding and $2^m$-ary digital pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) schemes such as multilevel coding (MLC) and bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM). The conceptual equivalence of polar coding and multilevel coding is pointed out in detail. Based on a novel characterization of the channel polarization phenomenon, rules for the optimal choice of the labeling in coded modulation schemes employing polar codes are developed. Simulation results regarding the error performance of the proposed schemes on the AWGN channel are included.
1302.2856
Combining non-stationary prediction, optimization and mixing for data compression
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper an approach to modelling nonstationary binary sequences, i.e., predicting the probability of upcoming symbols, is presented. After studying the prediction model we evaluate its performance in two non-artificial test cases. First the model is compared to the Laplace and Krichevsky-Trofimov estimators. Secondly a statistical ensemble model for compressing Burrows-Wheeler-Transform output is worked out and evaluated. A systematic approach to the parameter optimization of an individual model and the ensemble model is stated.
1302.2875
Information Transmission using the Nonlinear Fourier Transform, Part III: Spectrum Modulation
cs.IT math.IT
Motivated by the looming "capacity crunch" in fiber-optic networks, information transmission over such systems is revisited. Among numerous distortions, inter-channel interference in multiuser wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) is identified as the seemingly intractable factor limiting the achievable rate at high launch power. However, this distortion and similar ones arising from nonlinearity are primarily due to the use of methods suited for linear systems, namely WDM and linear pulse-train transmission, for the nonlinear optical channel. Exploiting the integrability of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger (NLS) equation, a nonlinear frequency-division multiplexing (NFDM) scheme is presented, which directly modulates non-interacting signal degrees-of-freedom under NLS propagation. The main distinction between this and previous methods is that NFDM is able to cope with the nonlinearity, and thus, as the the signal power or transmission distance is increased, the new method does not suffer from the deterministic cross-talk between signal components which has degraded the performance of previous approaches. In this paper, emphasis is placed on modulation of the discrete component of the nonlinear Fourier transform of the signal and some simple examples of achievable spectral efficiencies are provided.
1302.2937
The Biological Origin of Linguistic Diversity
physics.soc-ph cs.MA q-bio.PE
In contrast with animal communication systems, diversity is characteristic of almost every aspect of human language. Languages variously employ tones, clicks, or manual signs to signal differences in meaning; some languages lack the noun-verb distinction (e.g., Straits Salish), whereas others have a proliferation of fine-grained syntactic categories (e.g., Tzeltal); and some languages do without morphology (e.g., Mandarin), while others pack a whole sentence into a single word (e.g., Cayuga). A challenge for evolutionary biology is to reconcile the diversity of languages with the high degree of biological uniformity of their speakers. Here, we model processes of language change and geographical dispersion and find a consistent pressure for flexible learning, irrespective of the language being spoken. This pressure arises because flexible learners can best cope with the observed high rates of linguistic change associated with divergent cultural evolution following human migration. Thus, rather than genetic adaptations for specific aspects of language, such as recursion, the coevolution of genes and fast-changing linguistic structure provides the biological basis for linguistic diversity. Only biological adaptations for flexible learning combined with cultural evolution can explain how each child has the potential to learn any human language.
1302.2966
The Family of MapReduce and Large Scale Data Processing Systems
cs.DB
In the last two decades, the continuous increase of computational power has produced an overwhelming flow of data which has called for a paradigm shift in the computing architecture and large scale data processing mechanisms. MapReduce is a simple and powerful programming model that enables easy development of scalable parallel applications to process vast amounts of data on large clusters of commodity machines. It isolates the application from the details of running a distributed program such as issues on data distribution, scheduling and fault tolerance. However, the original implementation of the MapReduce framework had some limitations that have been tackled by many research efforts in several followup works after its introduction. This article provides a comprehensive survey for a family of approaches and mechanisms of large scale data processing mechanisms that have been implemented based on the original idea of the MapReduce framework and are currently gaining a lot of momentum in both research and industrial communities. We also cover a set of introduced systems that have been implemented to provide declarative programming interfaces on top of the MapReduce framework. In addition, we review several large scale data processing systems that resemble some of the ideas of the MapReduce framework for different purposes and application scenarios. Finally, we discuss some of the future research directions for implementing the next generation of MapReduce-like solutions.
1302.2994
Equivalence of Two Proof Techniques for Non-Shannon-type Inequalities
cs.IT math.IT math.PR
We compare two different techniques for proving non-Shannon-type information inequalities. The first one is the original Zhang-Yeung's method, commonly referred to as the copy/pasting lemma/trick. The copy lemma was used to derive the first conditional and unconditional non-Shannon-type inequalities. The second technique first appeared in Makarychev et al paper [7] and is based on a coding lemma from Ahlswede and K\"orner works. We first emphasize the importance of balanced inequalities and provide a simpler proof of a theorem of Chan's for the case of Shannon-type inequalities. We compare the power of various proof systems based on a single technique.
1302.3020
Output Filter Aware Optimization of the Noise Shaping Properties of {\Delta}{\Sigma} Modulators via Semi-Definite Programming
cs.IT math.IT
The Noise Transfer Function (NTF) of {\Delta}{\Sigma} modulators is typically designed after the features of the input signal. We suggest that in many applications, and notably those involving D/D and D/A conversion or actuation, the NTF should instead be shaped after the properties of the output/reconstruction filter. To this aim, we propose a framework for optimal design based on the Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov (KYP) lemma and semi-definite programming. Some examples illustrate how in practical cases the proposed strategy can outperform more standard approaches.
1302.3033
Structural Diversity for Resisting Community Identification in Published Social Networks
cs.SI cs.DS
As an increasing number of social networking data is published and shared for commercial and research purposes, privacy issues about the individuals in social networks have become serious concerns. Vertex identification, which identifies a particular user from a network based on background knowledge such as vertex degree, is one of the most important problems that has been addressed. In reality, however, each individual in a social network is inclined to be associated with not only a vertex identity but also a community identity, which can represent the personal privacy information sensitive to the public, such as political party affiliation. This paper first addresses the new privacy issue, referred to as community identification, by showing that the community identity of a victim can still be inferred even though the social network is protected by existing anonymity schemes. For this problem, we then propose the concept of \textit{structural diversity} to provide the anonymity of the community identities. The $k$-Structural Diversity Anonymization ($k$-SDA) is to ensure sufficient vertices with the same vertex degree in at least $k$ communities in a social network. We propose an Integer Programming formulation to find optimal solutions to $k$-SDA and also devise scalable heuristics to solve large-scale instances of $k$-SDA from different perspectives. The performance studies on real data sets from various perspectives demonstrate the practical utility of the proposed privacy scheme and our anonymization approaches.
1302.3051
Some Properties of Generalized Self-reciprocal Polynomials over Finite Fields
math.NT cs.IT math.IT math.RA
Numerous results on self-reciprocal polynomials over finite fields have been studied. In this paper we generalize some of these to a-self reciprocal polynomials defined in [4]. We consider some properties of the divisibility of a-reciprocal polynomials and characterize the parity of the number of irreducible factors for a-self reciprocal polynomials over finite fields of odd characteristic.
1302.3057
Building a reordering system using tree-to-string hierarchical model
cs.CL
This paper describes our submission to the First Workshop on Reordering for Statistical Machine Translation. We have decided to build a reordering system based on tree-to-string model, using only publicly available tools to accomplish this task. With the provided training data we have built a translation model using Moses toolkit, and then we applied a chart decoder, implemented in Moses, to reorder the sentences. Even though our submission only covered English-Farsi language pair, we believe that the approach itself should work regardless of the choice of the languages, so we have also carried out the experiments for English-Italian and English-Urdu. For these language pairs we have noticed a significant improvement over the baseline in BLEU, Kendall-Tau and Hamming metrics. A detailed description is given, so that everyone can reproduce our results. Also, some possible directions for further improvements are discussed.
1302.3086
Viral spread with or without emotions in online community
cs.SI nlin.AO physics.soc-ph
Diffusion of information and viral content, social contagion and influence are still topics of broad evaluation. We have studied the information epidemic in a social networking platform in order compare different campaign setups. The goal of this work is to present the new knowledge obtained from studying two artificial (experimental) and one natural (where people act emotionally) viral spread that took place in a closed virtual world. We propose an approach to modeling the behavior of online community exposed on external impulses as an epidemic process. The presented results base on online multilayer system observation, and show characteristic difference between setups, moreover, some important aspects of branching processes are presented. We run experiments, where we introduced viral to system and agents were able to propagate it. There were two modes of experiment: with or without award. Dynamic of spreading both of virals were described by epidemiological model and diffusion. Results of experiments were compared with real propagation process - spontaneous organization against ACTA. During general-national protest against new antypiracy multinational agreement - ACTA, criticized for its adverse effect on e.g. freedom of expression and privacy of communication, members of chosen community could send a viral such as Stop-ACTA transparent. In this scenario, we are able to capture behavior of society, when real emotions play a role, and compare results with artificiality conditioned experiments. Moreover, we could measure effect of emotions in viral propagation. As theory explaining the role of emotions in spreading behaviour as an factor of message targeting and individuals spread emotional-oriented content in a more carefully and more influential way, the experiments show that probabilities of secondary infections are four times bigger if emotions play a role.
1302.3101
Trend prediction in temporal bipartite networks: the case of Movielens, Netflix, and Digg
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Online systems where users purchase or collect items of some kind can be effectively represented by temporal bipartite networks where both nodes and links are added with time. We use this representation to predict which items might become popular in the near future. Various prediction methods are evaluated on three distinct datasets originating from popular online services (Movielens, Netflix, and Digg). We show that the prediction performance can be further enhanced if the user social network is known and centrality of individual users in this network is used to weight their actions.
1302.3110
Concatenated Capacity-Achieving Polar Codes for Optical Quantum Channels
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
We construct concatenated capacity-achieving quantum codes for noisy optical quantum channels. We demonstrate that the error-probability of capacity-achieving quantum polar encoding can be reduced by the proposed low-complexity concatenation scheme.
1302.3114
Polaractivation of Hidden Private Classical Capacity Region of Quantum Channels
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
We define a new phenomenon for communication over noisy quantum channels. The investigated solution is called polaractivation and based on quantum polar encoding. Polaractivation is a natural consequence of the channel polarization effect in quantum systems and makes possible to open the hidden capacity regions of a noisy quantum channel by using the idea of rate increment. While in case of a classical channel only the rate of classical communication can be increased, in case of a quantum channel the channel polarization and the rate improvement can be exploited to open unreachable capacity regions. We demonstrate the results for the opening of private classical capacity-domain. We prove that the method works for arbitrary quantum channels if a given criteria in the symmetric classical capacity is satisfied. We also derived a necessary lower bound on the rate of classical communication for the polaractivation of private classical capacity-domain.
1302.3118
The Correlation Conversion Property of Quantum Channels
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
Transmission of quantum entanglement will play a crucial role in future networks and long-distance quantum communications. Quantum Key Distribution, the working mechanism of quantum repeaters and the various quantum communication protocols are all based on quantum entanglement. On the other hand, quantum entanglement is extremely fragile and sensitive to the noise of the communication channel over which it has been transmitted. To share entanglement between distant points, high fidelity quantum channels are needed. In practice, these communication links are noisy, which makes it impossible or extremely difficult and expensive to distribute entanglement. In this work we first show that quantum entanglement can be generated by a new idea, exploiting the most natural effect of the communication channels: the noise itself of the link. We prove that the noise transformation of quantum channels that are not able to transmit quantum entanglement can be used to generate distillable (useable) entanglement from classically correlated input. We call this new phenomenon the Correlation Conversion property (CC-property) of quantum channels. The proposed solution does not require any non-local operation or local measurement by the parties, only the use of standard quantum channels. Our results have implications and consequences for the future of quantum communications, and for global-scale quantum communication networks. The discovery also revealed that entanglement generation by local operations is possible.
1302.3119
Comparision and analysis of photo image forgery detection techniques
cs.CV cs.CR cs.MM
Digital Photo images are everywhere, on the covers of magazines, in newspapers, in courtrooms, and all over the Internet. We are exposed to them throughout the day and most of the time. Ease with which images can be manipulated; we need to be aware that seeing does not always imply believing. We propose methodologies to identify such unbelievable photo images and succeeded to identify forged region by given only the forged image. Formats are additive tag for every file system and contents are relatively expressed with extension based on most popular digital camera uses JPEG and Other image formats like png, bmp etc. We have designed algorithm running behind with the concept of abnormal anomalies and identify the forgery regions.
1302.3120
Fast Compressed Sensing SAR Imaging based on Approximated Observation
cs.IT math.IT
In recent years, compressed sensing (CS) has been applied in the field of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and shows great potential. The existing models are, however, based on application of the sensing matrix acquired by the exact observation functions. As a result, the corresponding reconstruction algorithms are much more time consuming than traditional matched filter (MF) based focusing methods, especially in high resolution and wide swath systems. In this paper, we formulate a new CS-SAR imaging model based on the use of the approximated SAR observation deducted from the inverse of focusing procedures. We incorporate CS and MF within an sparse regularization framework that is then solved by a fast iterative thresholding algorithm. The proposed model forms a new CS-SAR imaging method that can be applied to high-quality and high-resolution imaging under sub-Nyquist rate sampling, while saving the computational cost substantially both in time and memory. Simulations and real SAR data applications support that the proposed method can perform SAR imaging effectively and efficiently under Nyquist rate, especially for large scale applications.
1302.3123
An Analysis of Gene Expression Data using Penalized Fuzzy C-Means Approach
cs.CV cs.CE
With the rapid advances of microarray technologies, large amounts of high-dimensional gene expression data are being generated, which poses significant computational challenges. A first step towards addressing this challenge is the use of clustering techniques, which is essential in the data mining process to reveal natural structures and identify interesting patterns in the underlying data. A robust gene expression clustering approach to minimize undesirable clustering is proposed. In this paper, Penalized Fuzzy C-Means (PFCM) Clustering algorithm is described and compared with the most representative off-line clustering techniques: K-Means Clustering, Rough K-Means Clustering and Fuzzy C-Means clustering. These techniques are implemented and tested for a Brain Tumor gene expression Dataset. Analysis of the performance of the proposed approach is presented through qualitative validation experiments. From experimental results, it can be observed that Penalized Fuzzy C-Means algorithm shows a much higher usability than the other projected clustering algorithms used in our comparison study. Significant and promising clustering results are presented using Brain Tumor Gene expression dataset. Thus patterns seen in genome-wide expression experiments can be interpreted as indications of the status of cellular processes. In these clustering results, we find that Penalized Fuzzy C-Means algorithm provides useful information as an aid to diagnosis in oncology.
1302.3126
Is Europe Evolving Toward an Integrated Research Area?
physics.soc-ph cs.DL cs.SI physics.data-an
An integrated European Research Area (ERA) is a critical component for a more competitive and open European R&D system. However, the impact of EU-specific integration policies aimed at overcoming innovation barriers associated with national borders is not well understood. Here we analyze 2.4 x 10^6 patent applications filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) over the 25-year period 1986-2010 along with a sample of 2.6 x 10^5 records from the ISI Web of Science to quantitatively measure the role of borders in international R&D collaboration and mobility. From these data we construct five different networks for each year analyzed: (i) the patent co-inventor network, (ii) the publication co-author network, (iii) the co-applicant patent network, (iv) the patent citation network, and (v) the patent mobility network. We use methods from network science and econometrics to perform a comparative analysis across time and between EU and non-EU countries to determine the "treatment effect" resulting from EU integration policies. Using non-EU countries as a control set, we provide quantitative evidence that, despite decades of efforts to build a European Research Area, there has been little integration above global trends in patenting and publication. This analysis provides concrete evidence that Europe remains a collection of national innovation systems.
1302.3155
Morphological Analusis Of The Left Ventricular Eendocardial Surface Using A Bag-Of-Features Descriptor
cs.CV
The limitations of conventional imaging techniques have hitherto precluded a thorough and formal investigation of the complex morphology of the left ventricular (LV) endocardial surface and its relation to the severity of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD). Recent developments in high-resolution Multirow-Detector Computed Tomography (MDCT) scanner technology have enabled the imaging of LV endocardial surface morphology in a single heart beat. Analysis of high-resolution Computed Tomography (CT) images from a 320-MDCT scanner allows the study of the relationship between percent Diameter Stenosis (DS) of the major coronary arteries and localization of the cardiac segments affected by coronary arterial stenosis. In this paper a novel approach for the analysis using a combination of rigid transformation-invariant shape descriptors and a more generalized isometry-invariant Bag-of-Features (BoF) descriptor, is proposed and implemented. The proposed approach is shown to be successful in identifying, localizing and quantifying the incidence and extent of CAD and thus, is seen to have a potentially significant clinical impact. Specifically, the association between the incidence and extent of CAD, determined via the percent DS measurements of the major coronary arteries, and the alterations in the endocardial surface morphology is formally quantified. A multivariate regression test performed on a strict leave-one-out basis are shown to exhibit a distinct pattern in terms of the correlation coefficient within the cardiac segments where the incidence of coronary arterial stenosis is localized.
1302.3160
A New Construction of Multi-receiver Authentication Codes from Pseudo-Symplectic Geometry over Finite Fields
cs.IT math.IT
Multi-receiver authentication codes allow one sender to construct an authenticated message for a group of receivers such that each receiver can verify authenticity of the received message. In this paper, we constructed one multi-receiver authentication codes from pseudo-symplectic geometry over finite fields. The parameters and the probabilities of deceptions of this codes are also computed.
1302.3166
CSI Sharing Strategies for Transmitter Cooperation in Wireless Networks
cs.IT math.IT
Multiple-antenna "based" transmitter (TX) cooperation has been established as a promising tool towards avoiding, aligning, or shaping the interference resulting from aggressive spectral reuse. The price paid in the form of feedback and exchanging channel state information (CSI) between cooperating devices in most existing methods is often underestimated however. In reality, feedback and information overhead threatens the practicality and scalability of TX cooperation approaches in dense networks. Hereby we addresses a "Who needs to know what?" problem, when it comes to CSI at cooperating transmitters. A comprehensive answer to this question remains beyond our reach and the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, recent results in this area suggest that CSI overhead can be contained for even large networks provided the allocation of feedback to TXs is made non-uniform and to properly depend on the network's topology. This paper provides a few hints toward solving the problem.
1302.3167
Equiaffine Structure and Conjugate Ricci-symmetry of a Statistical Manifold
math.DS cs.IT math-ph math.DG math.IT math.MP
A condition for a statistical manifold to have an equiaffine structure is studied. The facts that dual flatness and conjugate symmetry of a statistical manifold are sufficient conditions for a statistical manifold to have an equiaffine structure were obtained in [2] and [3]. In this paper, a fact that a statistical manifold, which is conjugate Ricci-symmetric, has an equiaffine structure is given, where conjugate Ricci-symmetry is weaker condition than conjugate symmetry. A condition for conjugate symmetry and conjugate Ricci-symmetry to coincide is also given.
1302.3203
Local Privacy, Data Processing Inequalities, and Statistical Minimax Rates
math.ST cs.CR cs.IT math.IT stat.TH
Working under a model of privacy in which data remains private even from the statistician, we study the tradeoff between privacy guarantees and the utility of the resulting statistical estimators. We prove bounds on information-theoretic quantities, including mutual information and Kullback-Leibler divergence, that depend on the privacy guarantees. When combined with standard minimax techniques, including the Le Cam, Fano, and Assouad methods, these inequalities allow for a precise characterization of statistical rates under local privacy constraints. We provide a treatment of several canonical families of problems: mean estimation, parameter estimation in fixed-design regression, multinomial probability estimation, and nonparametric density estimation. For all of these families, we provide lower and upper bounds that match up to constant factors, and exhibit new (optimal) privacy-preserving mechanisms and computationally efficient estimators that achieve the bounds.
1302.3209
"Groupware for Groups": Problem-Driven Design in Deme
cs.HC cs.SI
Design choices can be clarified when group interaction software is directed at solving the interaction needs of particular groups that pre-date the groupware. We describe an example: the Deme platform for online deliberation. Traditional threaded conversation systems are insufficient for solving the problem at which Deme is aimed, namely, that the democratic process in grassroots community groups is undermined both by the limited availability of group members for face-to-face meetings and by constraints on the use of information in real-time interactions. We describe and motivate design elements, either implemented or planned for Deme, that addresses this problem. We believe that "problem focused" design of software for preexisting groups provides a useful framework for evaluating the appropriateness of design elements in groupware generally.
1302.3219
An Efficient Dual Approach to Distance Metric Learning
cs.LG
Distance metric learning is of fundamental interest in machine learning because the distance metric employed can significantly affect the performance of many learning methods. Quadratic Mahalanobis metric learning is a popular approach to the problem, but typically requires solving a semidefinite programming (SDP) problem, which is computationally expensive. Standard interior-point SDP solvers typically have a complexity of $O(D^{6.5})$ (with $D$ the dimension of input data), and can thus only practically solve problems exhibiting less than a few thousand variables. Since the number of variables is $D (D+1) / 2 $, this implies a limit upon the size of problem that can practically be solved of around a few hundred dimensions. The complexity of the popular quadratic Mahalanobis metric learning approach thus limits the size of problem to which metric learning can be applied. Here we propose a significantly more efficient approach to the metric learning problem based on the Lagrange dual formulation of the problem. The proposed formulation is much simpler to implement, and therefore allows much larger Mahalanobis metric learning problems to be solved. The time complexity of the proposed method is $O (D ^ 3) $, which is significantly lower than that of the SDP approach. Experiments on a variety of datasets demonstrate that the proposed method achieves an accuracy comparable to the state-of-the-art, but is applicable to significantly larger problems. We also show that the proposed method can be applied to solve more general Frobenius-norm regularized SDP problems approximately.
1302.3261
Pavlov's dog associative learning demonstrated on synaptic-like organic transistors
q-bio.NC cond-mat.dis-nn cs.ET cs.NE
In this letter, we present an original demonstration of an associative learning neural network inspired by the famous Pavlov's dogs experiment. A single nanoparticle organic memory field effect transistor (NOMFET) is used to implement each synapse. We show how the physical properties of this dynamic memristive device can be used to perform low power write operations for the learning and implement short-term association using temporal coding and spike timing dependent plasticity based learning. An electronic circuit was built to validate the proposed learning scheme with packaged devices, with good reproducibility despite the complex synaptic-like dynamic of the NOMFET in pulse regime.
1302.3268
Adaptive Crowdsourcing Algorithms for the Bandit Survey Problem
cs.LG
Very recently crowdsourcing has become the de facto platform for distributing and collecting human computation for a wide range of tasks and applications such as information retrieval, natural language processing and machine learning. Current crowdsourcing platforms have some limitations in the area of quality control. Most of the effort to ensure good quality has to be done by the experimenter who has to manage the number of workers needed to reach good results. We propose a simple model for adaptive quality control in crowdsourced multiple-choice tasks which we call the \emph{bandit survey problem}. This model is related to, but technically different from the well-known multi-armed bandit problem. We present several algorithms for this problem, and support them with analysis and simulations. Our approach is based in our experience conducting relevance evaluation for a large commercial search engine.