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1302.3892
Identifying trends in word frequency dynamics
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.dis-nn cs.CL q-bio.PE
The word-stock of a language is a complex dynamical system in which words can be created, evolve, and become extinct. Even more dynamic are the short-term fluctuations in word usage by individuals in a population. Building on the recent demonstration that word niche is a strong determinant of future rise or fall in word frequency, here we introduce a model that allows us to distinguish persistent from temporary increases in frequency. Our model is illustrated using a 10^8-word database from an online discussion group and a 10^11-word collection of digitized books. The model reveals a strong relation between changes in word dissemination and changes in frequency. Aside from their implications for short-term word frequency dynamics, these observations are potentially important for language evolution as new words must survive in the short term in order to survive in the long term.
1302.3900
Robust Image Segmentation in Low Depth Of Field Images
cs.CV
In photography, low depth of field (DOF) is an important technique to emphasize the object of interest (OOI) within an image. Thus, low DOF images are widely used in the application area of macro, portrait or sports photography. When viewing a low DOF image, the viewer implicitly concentrates on the regions that are sharper regions of the image and thus segments the image into regions of interest and non regions of interest which has a major impact on the perception of the image. Thus, a robust algorithm for the fully automatic detection of the OOI in low DOF images provides valuable information for subsequent image processing and image retrieval. In this paper we propose a robust and parameterless algorithm for the fully automatic segmentation of low DOF images. We compare our method with three similar methods and show the superior robustness even though our algorithm does not require any parameters to be set by hand. The experiments are conducted on a real world data set with high and low DOF images.
1302.3912
An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design
cs.HC cs.CY cs.SI
We have created a platform for online deliberation called Deme (which rhymes with 'team'). Deme is designed to allow groups of people to engage in collaborative drafting, focused discussion, and decision making using the Internet. The Deme project has evolved greatly from its beginning in 2003. This chapter outlines the thinking behind Deme's initial design: our motivations for creating it, the principles that guided its construction, and its most important design features. The version of Deme described here was written in PHP and was deployed in 2004 and used by several groups (including organizers of the 2005 Online Deliberation Conference). Other papers describe later developments in the Deme project (see Davies et al. 2005, 2008; Davies and Mintz 2009).
1302.3918
Using Correlated Subset Structure for Compressive Sensing Recovery
cs.IT math.IT math.NA
Compressive sensing is a methodology for the reconstruction of sparse or compressible signals using far fewer samples than required by the Nyquist criterion. However, many of the results in compressive sensing concern random sampling matrices such as Gaussian and Bernoulli matrices. In common physically feasible signal acquisition and reconstruction scenarios such as super-resolution of images, the sensing matrix has a non-random structure with highly correlated columns. Here we present a compressive sensing recovery algorithm that exploits this correlation structure. We provide algorithmic justification as well as empirical comparisons.
1302.3921
Support detection in super-resolution
cs.IT math.IT math.NA math.OC
We study the problem of super-resolving a superposition of point sources from noisy low-pass data with a cut-off frequency f. Solving a tractable convex program is shown to locate the elements of the support with high precision as long as they are separated by 2/f and the noise level is small with respect to the amplitude of the signal.
1302.3931
Understanding Boltzmann Machine and Deep Learning via A Confident Information First Principle
cs.NE cs.LG stat.ML
Typical dimensionality reduction methods focus on directly reducing the number of random variables while retaining maximal variations in the data. In this paper, we consider the dimensionality reduction in parameter spaces of binary multivariate distributions. We propose a general Confident-Information-First (CIF) principle to maximally preserve parameters with confident estimates and rule out unreliable or noisy parameters. Formally, the confidence of a parameter can be assessed by its Fisher information, which establishes a connection with the inverse variance of any unbiased estimate for the parameter via the Cram\'{e}r-Rao bound. We then revisit Boltzmann machines (BM) and theoretically show that both single-layer BM without hidden units (SBM) and restricted BM (RBM) can be solidly derived using the CIF principle. This can not only help us uncover and formalize the essential parts of the target density that SBM and RBM capture, but also suggest that the deep neural network consisting of several layers of RBM can be seen as the layer-wise application of CIF. Guided by the theoretical analysis, we develop a sample-specific CIF-based contrastive divergence (CD-CIF) algorithm for SBM and a CIF-based iterative projection procedure (IP) for RBM. Both CD-CIF and IP are studied in a series of density estimation experiments.
1302.3932
Real-Time Power Balancing via Decentralized Coordinated Home Energy Scheduling
cs.SY cs.IT math.IT
It is anticipated that an uncoordinated operation of individual home energy management (HEM) systems in a neighborhood would have a rebound effect on the aggregate demand profile. To address this issue, this paper proposes a coordinated home energy management (CoHEM) architecture in which distributed HEM units collaborate with each other in order to keep the demand and supply balanced in their neighborhood. Assuming the energy requests by customers are random in time, we formulate the proposed CoHEM design as a multi-stage stochastic optimization problem. We propose novel models to describe the deferrable appliance load (e.g., Plug-in (Hybrid) Electric Vehicles (PHEV)), and apply approximation and decomposition techniques to handle the considered design problem in a decentralized fashion. The developed decentralized CoHEM algorithm allow the customers to locally compute their scheduling solutions using domestic user information and with message exchange between their neighbors only. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed CoHEM architecture can effectively improve real-time power balancing. Extensions to joint power procurement and real-time CoHEM scheduling are also presented.
1302.3949
A collective opinion formation model under Bayesian updating and confirmation bias
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We propose a collective opinion formation model with a so-called confirmation bias. The confirmation bias is a psychological effect with which, in the context of opinion formation, an individual in favor of an opinion is prone to misperceive new incoming information as supporting the current belief of the individual. Our model modifies a Bayesian decision-making model for single individuals [M. Rabin and J. L. Schrag, Q. J. Econ. 114, 37 (1999)] for the case of a well-mixed population of interacting individuals in the absence of the external input. We numerically simulate the model to show that all the agents eventually agree on one of the two opinions only when the confirmation bias is weak. Otherwise, the stochastic population dynamics ends up creating a disagreement configuration (also called polarization), particularly for large system sizes. A strong confirmation bias allows various final disagreement configurations with different fractions of the individuals in favor of the opposite opinions.
1302.3956
Clustering validity based on the most similarity
cs.LG stat.ML
One basic requirement of many studies is the necessity of classifying data. Clustering is a proposed method for summarizing networks. Clustering methods can be divided into two categories named model-based approaches and algorithmic approaches. Since the most of clustering methods depend on their input parameters, it is important to evaluate the result of a clustering algorithm with its different input parameters, to choose the most appropriate one. There are several clustering validity techniques based on inner density and outer density of clusters that represent different metrics to choose the most appropriate clustering independent of the input parameters. According to dependency of previous methods on the input parameters, one challenge in facing with large systems, is to complete data incrementally that effects on the final choice of the most appropriate clustering. Those methods define the existence of high intensity in a cluster, and low intensity among different clusters as the measure of choosing the optimal clustering. This measure has a tremendous problem, not availing all data at the first stage. In this paper, we introduce an efficient measure in which maximum number of repetitions for various initial values occurs.
1302.3969
Coordination Control of Heterogeneous Compounded-Order Multi-Agent Systems with Communication Delays
cs.SY
Since the complexity of the practical environment, many distributed networked systems can not be illustrated with the integer-order dynamics and only be described as the fractional-order dynamics. Suppose multi-agent systems will show the individual diversity with difference agents, where the heterogeneous (integer-order and fractional-order) dynamics are used to illustrate the agent systems and compose integer-fractional compounded-order systems. Applying Laplace transform and frequency domain theory of the fractional-order operator, consensus of delayed multi-agent systems with directed weighted topologies is studied. Since integer-order model is the special case of fractional-order model, the results in this paper can be extend to the systems with integer-order models. Finally, numerical examples are used to verify our results.
1302.3971
Directed Information on Abstract Spaces: Properties and Variational Equalities
cs.IT math.FA math.IT math.OC math.PR
Directed information or its variants are utilized extensively in the characterization of the capacity of channels with memory and feedback, nonanticipative lossy data compression, and their generalizations to networks. In this paper, we derive several functional and topological properties of directed information for general abstract alphabets (complete separable metric spaces) using the topology of weak convergence of probability measures. These include convexity of the set of consistent distributions, which uniquely define causally conditioned distributions, convexity and concavity of directed information with respect to the sets of consistent distributions, weak compactness of these sets of distributions, their joint distributions and their marginals. Furthermore, we show lower semicontinuity of directed information, and under certain conditions we also establish continuity of directed information. Finally, we derive variational equalities for directed information, including sequential versions. These may be viewed as the analogue of the variational equalities of mutual information (utilized in Blahut-Arimoto algorithm). In summary, we extend the basic functional and topological properties of mutual information to directed information. These properties are discussed in the context of extremum problems of directed information.
1302.3988
A solution concept for games with altruism and cooperation
cs.GT cs.AI
Over the years, numerous experiments have been accumulated to show that cooperation is not casual and depends on the payoffs of the game. These findings suggest that humans have attitude to cooperation by nature and the same person may act more or less cooperatively depending on the particular payoffs. In other words, people do not act a priori as single agents, but they forecast how the game would be played if they formed coalitions and then they play according to their best forecast. In this paper we formalize this idea and we define a new solution concept for one-shot normal form games. We prove that this \emph{cooperative equilibrium} exists for all finite games and it explains a number of different experimental findings, such as (1) the rate of cooperation in the Prisoner's dilemma depends on the cost-benefit ratio; (2) the rate of cooperation in the Traveler's dilemma depends on the bonus/penalty; (3) the rate of cooperation in the Publig Goods game depends on the pro-capite marginal return and on the numbers of players; (4) the rate of cooperation in the Bertrand competition depends on the number of players; (5) players tend to be fair in the bargaining problem; (6) players tend to be fair in the Ultimatum game; (7) players tend to be altruist in the Dictator game; (8) offers in the Ultimatum game are larger than offers in the Dictator game.
1302.4000
ClusCo: clustering and comparison of protein models
q-bio.BM cs.CE q-bio.QM
Background: The development, optimization and validation of protein modeling methods require efficient tools for structural comparison. Frequently, a large number of models need to be compared with the target native structure. The main reason for the development of Clusco software was to create a high-throughput tool for all-versus-all comparison, because calculating similarity matrix is the one of the bottlenecks in the protein modeling pipeline. Results: Clusco is fast and easy-to-use software for high-throughput comparison of protein models with different similarity measures (cRMSD, dRMSD, GDT_TS, TM-Score, MaxSub, Contact Map Overlap) and clustering of the comparison results with standard methods: K-means Clustering or Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering. Conclusions: The application was highly optimized and written in C/C++, including the code for parallel execution on CPU and GPU version of cRMSD, which resulted in a significant speedup over similar clustering and scoring computation programs.
1302.4019
Decentralized Event-Triggering for Control of Nonlinear Systems
cs.SY math.OC
This paper considers nonlinear systems with full state feedback, a central controller and distributed sensors not co-located with the central controller. We present a methodology for designing decentralized asynchronous event-triggers, which utilize only locally available information, for determining the time instants of transmission from the sensors to the central controller. The proposed design guarantees a positive lower bound for the inter-transmission times of each sensor, while ensuring asymptotic stability of the origin of the system with an arbitrary, but priorly fixed, compact region of attraction. In the special case of Linear Time Invariant (LTI) systems, global asymptotic stability is guaranteed and scale invariance of inter-transmission times is preserved. A modified design method is also proposed for nonlinear systems, with the addition of event-triggered communication from the controller to the sensors, that promises to significantly increase the average sensor inter-transmission times compared to the case where the controller does not transmit data to the sensors. The proposed designs are illustrated through simulations of a linear and a nonlinear example.
1302.4020
Topological Interference Management with Alternating Connectivity
cs.IT math.IT
The topological interference management problem refers to the study of the capacity of partially connected linear (wired and wireless) communication networks with no channel state information at the transmitters (no CSIT) beyond the network topology, i.e., a knowledge of which channel coefficients are zero (weaker than the noise floor in the wireless case). While the problem is originally studied with fixed topology, in this work we explore the implications of varying connectivity, through a series of simple and conceptually representative examples. Specifically, we highlight the synergistic benefits of coding across alternating topologies.
1302.4024
Note on the Complex Networks and Epidemiology Part I: Complex Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI nlin.AO q-bio.MN q-bio.PE
Complex networks describe a wide range of systems in nature and society. Frequently cited examples include Internet, WWW, a network of chemicals linked by chemical reactions, social relationship networks, citation networks, etc. The research of complex networks has attracted many scientists' attention. Physicists have shown that these networks exhibit some surprising characters, such as high clustering coefficient, small diameter, and the absence of the thresholds of percolation. Scientists in mathematical epidemiology discovered that the threshold of infectious disease disappears on contact networks that following Scale-Free distribution. Researchers in economics and public health also find that the imitation behavior could lead to cluster phenomena of vaccination and un-vaccination. In this note, we will review the basic concepts of complex networks; Basic epidemic models; the development of complex networks and epidemiology.
1302.4043
A new scheme of signature extraction for iris authentication
cs.CV
Iris recognition, a relatively new biometric technology, has great advantages, such as variability, stability and security, thus is the most promising for high security environment. Iris recognition is proposed in this report. We describe some methods, the first one is based on grey level histogram to extract the pupil, the second is based on elliptic and parabolic HOUGH transformation to determinate the edge of iris, upper and lower eyelids, the third we used 2D Gabor Wavelets to encode the iris and finally we used the Hamming distance for authentication.
1302.4092
On time-varying collaboration networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
The patterns of scientific collaboration have been frequently investigated in terms of complex networks without reference to time evolution. In the present work, we derive collaborative networks (from the arXiv repository) parameterized along time. By defining the concept of affine group, we identify several interesting trends in scientific collaboration, including the fact that the average size of the affine groups grows exponentially, while the number of authors increases as a power law. We were therefore able to identify, through extrapolation, the possible date when a single affine group is expected to emerge. Characteristic collaboration patterns were identified for each researcher, and their analysis revealed that larger affine groups tend to be less stable.
1302.4095
Three-feature model to reproduce the topology of citation networks and the effects from authors' visibility on their h-index
physics.soc-ph cs.DL cs.SI physics.data-an
Various factors are believed to govern the selection of references in citation networks, but a precise, quantitative determination of their importance has remained elusive. In this paper, we show that three factors can account for the referencing pattern of citation networks for two topics, namely "graphenes" and "complex networks", thus allowing one to reproduce the topological features of the networks built with papers being the nodes and the edges established by citations. The most relevant factor was content similarity, while the other two - in-degree (i.e. citation counts) and {age of publication} had varying importance depending on the topic studied. This dependence indicates that additional factors could play a role. Indeed, by intuition one should expect the reputation (or visibility) of authors and/or institutions to affect the referencing pattern, and this is only indirectly considered via the in-degree that should correlate with such reputation. Because information on reputation is not readily available, we simulated its effect on artificial citation networks considering two communities with distinct fitness (visibility) parameters. One community was assumed to have twice the fitness value of the other, which amounts to a double probability for a paper being cited. While the h-index for authors in the community with larger fitness evolved with time with slightly higher values than for the control network (no fitness considered), a drastic effect was noted for the community with smaller fitness.
1302.4099
Identification of Literary Movements Using Complex Networks to Represent Texts
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
The use of statistical methods to analyze large databases of text has been useful to unveil patterns of human behavior and establish historical links between cultures and languages. In this study, we identify literary movements by treating books published from 1590 to 1922 as complex networks, whose metrics were analyzed with multivariate techniques to generate six clusters of books. The latter correspond to time periods coinciding with relevant literary movements over the last 5 centuries. The most important factor contributing to the distinction between different literary styles was {the average shortest path length (particularly, the asymmetry of the distribution)}. Furthermore, over time there has been a trend toward larger average shortest path lengths, which is correlated with increased syntactic complexity, and a more uniform use of the words reflected in a smaller power-law coefficient for the distribution of word frequency. Changes in literary style were also found to be driven by opposition to earlier writing styles, as revealed by the analysis performed with geometrical concepts. The approaches adopted here are generic and may be extended to analyze a number of features of languages and cultures.
1302.4107
Using Complex Networks to Quantify Consistency in the Use of Words
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
In this paper we quantify the consistency of word usage in written texts represented by complex networks, where words were taken as nodes, by measuring the degree of preservation of the node neighborhood.} Words were considered highly consistent if the authors used them with the same neighborhood. When ranked according to the consistency of use, the words obeyed a log-normal distribution, in contrast to the Zipf's law that applies to the frequency of use. Consistency correlated positively with the familiarity and frequency of use, and negatively with ambiguity and age of acquisition. An inspection of some highly consistent words confirmed that they are used in very limited semantic contexts. A comparison of consistency indices for 8 authors indicated that these indices may be employed for author recognition. Indeed, as expected authors of novels could be distinguished from those who wrote scientific texts. Our analysis demonstrated the suitability of the consistency indices, which can now be applied in other tasks, such as emotion recognition.
1302.4118
Target Estimation in Colocated MIMO Radar via Matrix Completion
cs.IT math.IT stat.AP
We consider a colocated MIMO radar scenario, in which the receive antennas forward their measurements to a fusion center. Based on the received data, the fusion center formulates a matrix which is then used for target parameter estimation. When the receive antennas sample the target returns at Nyquist rate, and assuming that there are more receive antennas than targets, the data matrix at the fusion center is low-rank. When each receive antenna sends to the fusion center only a small number of samples, along with the sample index, the receive data matrix has missing elements, corresponding to the samples that were not forwarded. Under certain conditions, matrix completion techniques can be applied to recover the full receive data matrix, which can then be used in conjunction with array processing techniques, e.g., MUSIC, to obtain target information. Numerical results indicate that good target recovery can be achieved with occupancy of the receive data matrix as low as 50%.
1302.4127
Adaptive Set-Membership Reduced-Rank Least Squares Beamforming Algorithms
cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents a new adaptive algorithm for the linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) beamformer design. We incorporate the set-membership filtering (SMF) mechanism into the reduced-rank joint iterative optimization (JIO) scheme to develop a constrained recursive least squares (RLS) based algorithm called JIO-SM-RLS. The proposed algorithm inherits the positive features of reduced-rank signal processing techniques to enhance the output performance, and utilizes the data-selective updates (around 10-15%) of the SMF methodology to save the computational cost significantly. An effective time-varying bound is imposed on the array output as a constraint to circumvent the risk of overbounding or underbounding, and to update the parameters for beamforming. The updated parameters construct a set of solutions (a membership set) that satisfy the constraints of the LCMV beamformer. Simulations are performed to show the superior performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of the convergence rate and the reduced computational complexity in comparison with the existing methods.
1302.4129
Repair-Optimal MDS Array Codes over GF(2)
cs.IT math.IT
Maximum-distance separable (MDS) array codes with high rate and an optimal repair property were introduced recently. These codes could be applied in distributed storage systems, where they minimize the communication and disk access required for the recovery of failed nodes. However, the encoding and decoding algorithms of the proposed codes use arithmetic over finite fields of order greater than 2, which could result in a complex implementation. In this work, we present a construction of 2-parity MDS array codes, that allow for optimal repair of a failed information node using XOR operations only. The reduction of the field order is achieved by allowing more parity bits to be updated when a single information bit is being changed by the user.
1302.4130
Adaptive Minimum BER Reduced-Rank Interference Suppression Algorithms Based on Joint and Iterative Optimization of Parameters
cs.IT math.IT
In this letter, we propose a novel adaptive reduced-rank strategy based on joint iterative optimization (JIO) of filters according to the minimization of the bit error rate (BER) cost function. The proposed optimization technique adjusts the weights of a subspace projection matrix and a reduced-rank filter jointly. We develop stochastic gradient (SG) algorithms for their adaptive implementation and introduce a novel automatic rank selection method based on the BER criterion. Simulation results for direct-sequence code-division-multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems show that the proposed adaptive algorithms significantly outperform the existing schemes.
1302.4136
Post-buckling Solutions of Hyper-elastic Beam by Canonical Dual Finite Element Method
cs.CE math.NA
Post buckling problem of a large deformed beam is analyzed using canonical dual finite element method (CD-FEM). The feature of this method is to choose correctly the canonical dual stress so that the original non-convex potential energy functional is reformulated in a mixed complementary energy form with both displacement and stress fields, and a pure complementary energy is explicitly formulated in finite dimensional space. Based on the canonical duality theory and the associated triality theorem, a primal-dual algorithm is proposed, which can be used to find all possible solutions of this nonconvex post-buckling problem. Numerical results show that the global maximum of the pure-complementary energy leads to a stable buckled configuration of the beam. While the local extrema of the pure-complementary energy present unstable deformation states, especially. We discovered that the unstable buckled state is very sensitive to the number of total elements and the external loads. Theoretical results are verified through numerical examples and some interesting phenomena in post-bifurcation of this large deformed beam are observed.
1302.4141
Canonical dual solutions to nonconvex radial basis neural network optimization problem
cs.NE cs.LG stat.ML
Radial Basis Functions Neural Networks (RBFNNs) are tools widely used in regression problems. One of their principal drawbacks is that the formulation corresponding to the training with the supervision of both the centers and the weights is a highly non-convex optimization problem, which leads to some fundamentally difficulties for traditional optimization theory and methods. This paper presents a generalized canonical duality theory for solving this challenging problem. We demonstrate that by sequential canonical dual transformations, the nonconvex optimization problem of the RBFNN can be reformulated as a canonical dual problem (without duality gap). Both global optimal solution and local extrema can be classified. Several applications to one of the most used Radial Basis Functions, the Gaussian function, are illustrated. Our results show that even for one-dimensional case, the global minimizer of the nonconvex problem may not be the best solution to the RBFNNs, and the canonical dual theory is a promising tool for solving general neural networks training problems.
1302.4146
Linear Network Error Correction Multicast/Broadcast/Dispersion Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, for the purposes of information transmission and network error correction simultaneously, three classes of important linear network codes in network coding, linear multicast/broadcast/dispersion codes are generalized to linear network error correction coding, i.e., linear network error correction multicast/broadcast/dispersion codes. We further propose the (weakly, strongly) extended Singleton bounds for these new classes of codes, and define the optimal codes satisfying the corresponding Singleton bounds with equality, which are called multicast/broadcast/dispersion MDS codes respectively. The existence of such codes are proved by an algebraic method and one kind of constructive algorithm is also proposed.
1302.4147
The Failure Probability of Random Linear Network Coding for Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In practice, since many communication networks are huge in scale, or complicated in structure, or even dynamic, the predesigned linear network codes based on the network topology is impossible even if the topological structure is known. Therefore, random linear network coding has been proposed as an acceptable coding technique for the case that the network topology cannot be utilized completely. Motivated by the fact that different network topological information can be obtained for different practical applications, we study the performance analysis of random linear network coding by analyzing some failure probabilities depending on these different topological information of networks. We obtain some tight or asymptotically tight upper bounds on these failure probabilities and indicate the worst cases for these bounds, i.e., the networks meeting the upper bounds with equality. In addition, if the more topological information of the network is utilized, the better upper bounds are obtained. On the other hand, we also discuss the lower bounds on the failure probabilities.
1302.4150
Duality in Entanglement-Assisted Quantum Error Correction
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
The dual of an entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting (EAQEC) code is defined from the orthogonal group of a simplified stabilizer group. From the Poisson summation formula, this duality leads to the MacWilliams identities and linear programming bounds for EAQEC codes. We establish a table of upper and lower bounds on the minimum distance of any maximal-entanglement EAQEC code with length up to 15 channel qubits.
1302.4168
Data Placement and Replica Selection for Improving Co-location in Distributed Environments
cs.DB cs.DC
Increasing need for large-scale data analytics in a number of application domains has led to a dramatic rise in the number of distributed data management systems, both parallel relational databases, and systems that support alternative frameworks like MapReduce. There is thus an increasing contention on scarce data center resources like network bandwidth; further, the energy requirements for powering the computing equipment are also growing dramatically. As we show empirically, increasing the execution parallelism by spreading out data across a large number of machines may achieve the intended goal of decreasing query latencies, but in most cases, may increase the total resource and energy consumption significantly. For many analytical workloads, however, minimizing query latencies is often not critical; in such scenarios, we argue that we should instead focus on minimizing the average query span, i.e., the average number of machines that are involved in processing of a query, through colocation of data items that are frequently accessed together. In this work, we exploit the fact that most distributed environments need to use replication for fault tolerance, and we devise workload-driven replica selection and placement algorithms that attempt to minimize the average query span. We model a historical query workload trace as a hypergraph over a set of data items, and formulate and analyze the problem of replica placement by drawing connections to several well-studied graph theoretic concepts. We develop a series of algorithms to decide which data items to replicate, and where to place the replicas. We show effectiveness of our proposed approach by presenting results on a collection of synthetic and real workloads. Our experiments show that careful data placement and replication can dramatically reduce the average query spans resulting in significant reductions in the resource consumption.
1302.4225
Impact of Pointing Errors on the Performance of Mixed RF/FSO Dual-Hop Transmission Systems
cs.IT cs.PF math.IT math.PR
In this work, the performance analysis of a dual-hop relay transmission system composed of asymmetric radio-frequency (RF)/free-space optical (FSO) links with pointing errors is presented. More specifically, we build on the system model presented in [1] to derive new exact closed-form expressions for the cumulative distribution function, probability density function, moment generating function, and moments of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio in terms of the Meijer's G function. We then capitalize on these results to offer new exact closed-form expressions for the higher-order amount of fading, average error rate for binary and M-ary modulation schemes, and the ergodic capacity, all in terms of Meijer's G functions. Our new analytical results were also verified via computer-based Monte-Carlo simulation results.
1302.4242
Metrics for Multivariate Dictionaries
cs.LG stat.ML
Overcomplete representations and dictionary learning algorithms kept attracting a growing interest in the machine learning community. This paper addresses the emerging problem of comparing multivariate overcomplete representations. Despite a recurrent need to rely on a distance for learning or assessing multivariate overcomplete representations, no metrics in their underlying spaces have yet been proposed. Henceforth we propose to study overcomplete representations from the perspective of frame theory and matrix manifolds. We consider distances between multivariate dictionaries as distances between their spans which reveal to be elements of a Grassmannian manifold. We introduce Wasserstein-like set-metrics defined on Grassmannian spaces and study their properties both theoretically and numerically. Indeed a deep experimental study based on tailored synthetic datasetsand real EEG signals for Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) have been conducted. In particular, the introduced metrics have been embedded in clustering algorithm and applied to BCI Competition IV-2a for dataset quality assessment. Besides, a principled connection is made between three close but still disjoint research fields, namely, Grassmannian packing, dictionary learning and compressed sensing.
1302.4245
Gaussian Process Kernels for Pattern Discovery and Extrapolation
stat.ML cs.AI stat.ME
Gaussian processes are rich distributions over functions, which provide a Bayesian nonparametric approach to smoothing and interpolation. We introduce simple closed form kernels that can be used with Gaussian processes to discover patterns and enable extrapolation. These kernels are derived by modelling a spectral density -- the Fourier transform of a kernel -- with a Gaussian mixture. The proposed kernels support a broad class of stationary covariances, but Gaussian process inference remains simple and analytic. We demonstrate the proposed kernels by discovering patterns and performing long range extrapolation on synthetic examples, as well as atmospheric CO2 trends and airline passenger data. We also show that we can reconstruct standard covariances within our framework.
1302.4258
Phase Retrieval via Structured Modulations in Paley-Wiener Spaces
cs.IT math.IT
This paper considers the recovery of continuous time signals from the magnitude of its samples. It uses a combination of structured modulation and oversampling and provides sufficient conditions on the signal and the sampling system such that signal recovery is possible. In particular, it is shown that an average sampling rate of four times the Nyquist rate is sufficient to reconstruct a signal from its magnitude measurements.
1302.4268
Re-Encoding Techniques for Interpolation-Based Decoding of Reed-Solomon Codes
cs.IT math.IT
We consider interpolation-based decoding of Reed-Solomon codes using the Guruswami-Sudan algorithm (GSA) and investigate the effects of two modification techniques for received vectors, i.e., the re-encoding map and the newly introduced periodicity projection. After an analysis of the latter, we track the benefits (that is low Hamming weight and regular structure) of modified received vectors through the interpolation step of the GSA and show how the involved homogeneous linear system of equations can be compressed. We show that this compression as well as the recovery of the interpolated bivariate polynomial is particularly simple when the periodicity projection was applied.
1302.4283
On the Fly Self-Organized Base Station Placement
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we address the deployment of base stations (BSs) in a one-dimensional network in which the users are randomly distributed.In order to take into account the users' distribution to optimally place the BSs we optimize the uplink MMSE sum rate. Moreover, given a massive number of antennas at the BSs we propose a novel random matrix theory-based technique so as to obtain tight approximations for the MMSE sum rate in the uplink. We investigate a cooperative (CP) scenario where the BSs jointly decode the messages and a non-cooperative (NCP) scheme in which the BS can only decode its own users. Our results show that the CP strategy considerably outperforms the NCP case. Moreover, we show that there exists a trade off in the BS deployment regarding the position of each BS. Thus, through location games we can optimize the position of each BS in order to maximize the system performance.
1302.4297
Feature Multi-Selection among Subjective Features
cs.LG stat.ML
When dealing with subjective, noisy, or otherwise nebulous features, the "wisdom of crowds" suggests that one may benefit from multiple judgments of the same feature on the same object. We give theoretically-motivated `feature multi-selection' algorithms that choose, among a large set of candidate features, not only which features to judge but how many times to judge each one. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach for linear regression on a crowdsourced learning task of predicting people's height and weight from photos, using features such as 'gender' and 'estimated weight' as well as culturally fraught ones such as 'attractive'.
1302.4332
Streaming Data from HDD to GPUs for Sustained Peak Performance
cs.DC cs.CE cs.MS q-bio.GN
In the context of the genome-wide association studies (GWAS), one has to solve long sequences of generalized least-squares problems; such a task has two limiting factors: execution time --often in the range of days or weeks-- and data management --data sets in the order of Terabytes. We present an algorithm that obviates both issues. By pipelining the computation, and thanks to a sophisticated transfer strategy, we stream data from hard disk to main memory to GPUs and achieve sustained peak performance; with respect to a highly-optimized CPU implementation, our algorithm shows a speedup of 2.6x. Moreover, the approach lends itself to multiple GPUs and attains almost perfect scalability. When using 4 GPUs, we observe speedups of 9x over the aforementioned implementation, and 488x over a widespread biology library.
1302.4343
On Translation Invariant Kernels and Screw Functions
math.FA cs.LG stat.ML
We explore the connection between Hilbertian metrics and positive definite kernels on the real line. In particular, we look at a well-known characterization of translation invariant Hilbertian metrics on the real line by von Neumann and Schoenberg (1941). Using this result we are able to give an alternate proof of Bochner's theorem for translation invariant positive definite kernels on the real line (Rudin, 1962).
1302.4381
Reasoning about Independence in Probabilistic Models of Relational Data
cs.AI
We extend the theory of d-separation to cases in which data instances are not independent and identically distributed. We show that applying the rules of d-separation directly to the structure of probabilistic models of relational data inaccurately infers conditional independence. We introduce relational d-separation, a theory for deriving conditional independence facts from relational models. We provide a new representation, the abstract ground graph, that enables a sound, complete, and computationally efficient method for answering d-separation queries about relational models, and we present empirical results that demonstrate effectiveness.
1302.4383
Explaining Zipf's Law via Mental Lexicon
physics.data-an cond-mat.stat-mech cs.CL
The Zipf's law is the major regularity of statistical linguistics that served as a prototype for rank-frequency relations and scaling laws in natural sciences. Here we show that the Zipf's law -- together with its applicability for a single text and its generalizations to high and low frequencies including hapax legomena -- can be derived from assuming that the words are drawn into the text with random probabilities. Their apriori density relates, via the Bayesian statistics, to general features of the mental lexicon of the author who produced the text.
1302.4387
Online Learning with Switching Costs and Other Adaptive Adversaries
cs.LG stat.ML
We study the power of different types of adaptive (nonoblivious) adversaries in the setting of prediction with expert advice, under both full-information and bandit feedback. We measure the player's performance using a new notion of regret, also known as policy regret, which better captures the adversary's adaptiveness to the player's behavior. In a setting where losses are allowed to drift, we characterize ---in a nearly complete manner--- the power of adaptive adversaries with bounded memories and switching costs. In particular, we show that with switching costs, the attainable rate with bandit feedback is $\widetilde{\Theta}(T^{2/3})$. Interestingly, this rate is significantly worse than the $\Theta(\sqrt{T})$ rate attainable with switching costs in the full-information case. Via a novel reduction from experts to bandits, we also show that a bounded memory adversary can force $\widetilde{\Theta}(T^{2/3})$ regret even in the full information case, proving that switching costs are easier to control than bounded memory adversaries. Our lower bounds rely on a new stochastic adversary strategy that generates loss processes with strong dependencies.
1302.4389
Maxout Networks
stat.ML cs.LG
We consider the problem of designing models to leverage a recently introduced approximate model averaging technique called dropout. We define a simple new model called maxout (so named because its output is the max of a set of inputs, and because it is a natural companion to dropout) designed to both facilitate optimization by dropout and improve the accuracy of dropout's fast approximate model averaging technique. We empirically verify that the model successfully accomplishes both of these tasks. We use maxout and dropout to demonstrate state of the art classification performance on four benchmark datasets: MNIST, CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and SVHN.
1302.4391
Constructing a genome assembly that has the maximum likelihood
cs.CE cs.DS
We formulate genome assembly problem as an optimization problem in which the objective function is the likelihood of the assembly given the reads.
1302.4405
Performance Regions in Compressed Sensing from Noisy Measurements
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, compressed sensing with noisy measurements is addressed. The theoretically optimal reconstruction error is studied by evaluating Tanaka's equation. The main contribution is to show that in several regions, which have different measurement rates and noise levels, the reconstruction error behaves differently. This paper also evaluates the performance of the belief propagation (BP) signal reconstruction method in the regions discovered. When the measurement rate and the noise level lie in a certain region, BP is suboptimal with respect to Tanaka's equation, and it may be possible to develop reconstruction algorithms with lower error in that region.
1302.4406
Optimal Scheduling for Linear-Rate Multi-Mode Systems
cs.FL cs.SY
Linear-Rate Multi-Mode Systems is a model that can be seen both as a subclass of switched linear systems with imposed global safety constraints and as hybrid automata with no guards on transitions. We study the existence and design of a controller for this model that keeps the state of the system within a given safe set for the whole time. A sufficient and necessary condition is given for such a controller to exist as well as an algorithm that finds one in polynomial time. We further generalise the model by adding costs on modes and present an algorithm that constructs a safe controller which minimises the peak cost, the average-cost or any cost expressed as a weighted sum of these two. Finally, we present numerical simulation results based on our implementation of these algorithms.
1302.4412
Recommending Given Names
cs.IR cs.SI physics.soc-ph
All over the world, future parents are facing the task of finding a suitable given name for their child. This choice is influenced by different factors, such as the social context, language, cultural background and especially personal taste. Although this task is omnipresent, little research has been conducted on the analysis and application of interrelations among given names from a data mining perspective. The present work tackles the problem of recommending given names, by firstly mining for inter-name relatedness in data from the Social Web. Based on these results, the name search engine "Nameling" was built, which attracted more than 35,000 users within less than six months, underpinning the relevance of the underlying recommendation task. The accruing usage data is then used for evaluating different state-of-the-art recommendation systems, as well our new NameRank algorithm which we adopted from our previous work on folksonomies and which yields the best results, considering the trade-off between prediction accuracy and runtime performance as well as its ability to generate personalized recommendations. We also show, how the gathered inter-name relationships can be used for meaningful result diversification of PageRank-based recommendation systems. As all of the considered usage data is made publicly available, the present work establishes baseline results, encouraging other researchers to implement advanced recommendation systems for given names.
1302.4421
Towards a theory of good SAT representations
cs.AI cs.LO
We aim at providing a foundation of a theory of "good" SAT representations F of boolean functions f. We argue that the hierarchy UC_k of unit-refutation complete clause-sets of level k, introduced by the authors, provides the most basic target classes, that is, F in UC_k is to be achieved for k as small as feasible. If F does not contain new variables, i.e., F is equivalent (as a CNF) to f, then F in UC_1 is similar to "achieving (generalised) arc consistency" known from the literature (it is somewhat weaker, but theoretically much nicer to handle). We show that for polysize representations of boolean functions in this sense, the hierarchy UC_k is strict. The boolean functions for these separations are "doped" minimally unsatisfiable clause-sets of deficiency 1; these functions have been introduced in [Sloan, Soerenyi, Turan, 2007], and we generalise their construction and show a correspondence to a strengthened notion of irredundant sub-clause-sets. Turning from lower bounds to upper bounds, we believe that many common CNF representations fit into the UC_k scheme, and we give some basic tools to construct representations in UC_1 with new variables, based on the Tseitin translation. Note that regarding new variables the UC_1-representations are stronger than mere "arc consistency", since the new variables are not excluded from consideration.
1302.4433
Adaptive Minimum BER Reduced-Rank Linear Detection for Massive MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive reduced-rank strategy for very large multiuser multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. The proposed reduced-rank scheme is based on the concept of joint iterative optimization (JIO) of filters according to the minimization of the bit error rate (BER) cost function. The proposed optimization technique adjusts the weights of a projection matrix and a reduced-rank filter jointly. We develop stochastic gradient (SG) algorithms for their adaptive implementation and introduce a novel automatic rank selection method based on the BER criterion. Simulation results for multiuser MIMO systems show that the proposed adaptive algorithms significantly outperform existing schemes.
1302.4462
LEDDB: LOFAR Epoch of Reionization Diagnostic Database
astro-ph.IM cs.DB
One of the key science projects of the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) is the detection of the cosmological signal coming from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Here we present the LOFAR EoR Diagnostic Database (LEDDB) that is used in the storage, management, processing and analysis of the LOFAR EoR observations. It stores referencing information of the observations and diagnostic parameters extracted from their calibration. This stored data is used to ease the pipeline processing, monitor the performance of the telescope and visualize the diagnostic parameters which facilitates the analysis of the several contamination effects on the signals. It is implemented with PostgreSQL and accessed through the psycopg2 python module. We have developed a very flexible query engine, which is used by a web user interface to access the database, and a very extensive set of tools for the visualization of the diagnostic parameters through all their multiple dimensions.
1302.4465
Unveiling the relationship between complex networks metrics and word senses
physics.soc-ph cs.CL cs.SI physics.data-an
The automatic disambiguation of word senses (i.e., the identification of which of the meanings is used in a given context for a word that has multiple meanings) is essential for such applications as machine translation and information retrieval, and represents a key step for developing the so-called Semantic Web. Humans disambiguate words in a straightforward fashion, but this does not apply to computers. In this paper we address the problem of Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) by treating texts as complex networks, and show that word senses can be distinguished upon characterizing the local structure around ambiguous words. Our goal was not to obtain the best possible disambiguation system, but we nevertheless found that in half of the cases our approach outperforms traditional shallow methods. We show that the hierarchical connectivity and clustering of words are usually the most relevant features for WSD. The results reported here shine light on the relationship between semantic and structural parameters of complex networks. They also indicate that when combined with traditional techniques the complex network approach may be useful to enhance the discrimination of senses in large texts
1302.4471
Word sense disambiguation via high order of learning in complex networks
physics.soc-ph cs.CL cs.SI physics.data-an
Complex networks have been employed to model many real systems and as a modeling tool in a myriad of applications. In this paper, we use the framework of complex networks to the problem of supervised classification in the word disambiguation task, which consists in deriving a function from the supervised (or labeled) training data of ambiguous words. Traditional supervised data classification takes into account only topological or physical features of the input data. On the other hand, the human (animal) brain performs both low- and high-level orders of learning and it has facility to identify patterns according to the semantic meaning of the input data. In this paper, we apply a hybrid technique which encompasses both types of learning in the field of word sense disambiguation and show that the high-level order of learning can really improve the accuracy rate of the model. This evidence serves to demonstrate that the internal structures formed by the words do present patterns that, generally, cannot be correctly unveiled by only traditional techniques. Finally, we exhibit the behavior of the model for different weights of the low- and high-level classifiers by plotting decision boundaries. This study helps one to better understand the effectiveness of the model.
1302.4474
On the multiple unicast capacity of 3-source, 3-terminal directed acyclic networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
We consider the multiple unicast problem with three source-terminal pairs over directed acyclic networks with unit-capacity edges. The three $s_i-t_i$ pairs wish to communicate at unit-rate via network coding. The connectivity between the $s_i - t_i$ pairs is quantified by means of a connectivity level vector, $[k_1 k_2 k_3]$ such that there exist $k_i$ edge-disjoint paths between $s_i$ and $t_i$. In this work we attempt to classify networks based on the connectivity level. It can be observed that unit-rate transmission can be supported by routing if $k_i \geq 3$, for all $i = 1, \dots, 3$. In this work, we consider, connectivity level vectors such that $\min_{i = 1, \dots, 3} k_i < 3$. We present either a constructive linear network coding scheme or an instance of a network that cannot support the desired unit-rate requirement, for all such connectivity level vectors except the vector $[1~2~4]$ (and its permutations). The benefits of our schemes extend to networks with higher and potentially different edge capacities. Specifically, our experimental results indicate that for networks where the different source-terminal paths have a significant overlap, our constructive unit-rate schemes can be packed along with routing to provide higher throughput as compared to a pure routing approach.
1302.4475
In Love With a Robot: the Dawn of Machine-To-Machine Marketing
cs.AI cs.CY
The article looks at mass market artificial intelligence tools in the context of their ever-growing sophistication, availability and market penetration. The subject is especially relevant today for these exact reasons - if a few years ago AI was the subject of high tech research and science fiction novels, today, we increasingly rely on cloud robotics to cater to our daily needs - to trade stock, predict weather, manage diaries, find friends and buy presents online.
1302.4489
Termhood-based Comparability Metrics of Comparable Corpus in Special Domain
cs.CL
Cross-Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) and machine translation (MT) resources, such as dictionaries and parallel corpora, are scarce and hard to come by for special domains. Besides, these resources are just limited to a few languages, such as English, French, and Spanish and so on. So, obtaining comparable corpora automatically for such domains could be an answer to this problem effectively. Comparable corpora, that the subcorpora are not translations of each other, can be easily obtained from web. Therefore, building and using comparable corpora is often a more feasible option in multilingual information processing. Comparability metrics is one of key issues in the field of building and using comparable corpus. Currently, there is no widely accepted definition or metrics method of corpus comparability. In fact, Different definitions or metrics methods of comparability might be given to suit various tasks about natural language processing. A new comparability, namely, termhood-based metrics, oriented to the task of bilingual terminology extraction, is proposed in this paper. In this method, words are ranked by termhood not frequency, and then the cosine similarities, calculated based on the ranking lists of word termhood, is used as comparability. Experiments results show that termhood-based metrics performs better than traditional frequency-based metrics.
1302.4490
Complex networks analysis of language complexity
physics.soc-ph cs.CL cs.SI physics.data-an
Methods from statistical physics, such as those involving complex networks, have been increasingly used in quantitative analysis of linguistic phenomena. In this paper, we represented pieces of text with different levels of simplification in co-occurrence networks and found that topological regularity correlated negatively with textual complexity. Furthermore, in less complex texts the distance between concepts, represented as nodes, tended to decrease. The complex networks metrics were treated with multivariate pattern recognition techniques, which allowed us to distinguish between original texts and their simplified versions. For each original text, two simplified versions were generated manually with increasing number of simplification operations. As expected, distinction was easier for the strongly simplified versions, where the most relevant metrics were node strength, shortest paths and diversity. Also, the discrimination of complex texts was improved with higher hierarchical network metrics, thus pointing to the usefulness of considering wider contexts around the concepts. Though the accuracy rate in the distinction was not as high as in methods using deep linguistic knowledge, the complex network approach is still useful for a rapid screening of texts whenever assessing complexity is essential to guarantee accessibility to readers with limited reading ability
1302.4492
Bilingual Terminology Extraction Using Multi-level Termhood
cs.CL
Purpose: Terminology is the set of technical words or expressions used in specific contexts, which denotes the core concept in a formal discipline and is usually applied in the fields of machine translation, information retrieval, information extraction and text categorization, etc. Bilingual terminology extraction plays an important role in the application of bilingual dictionary compilation, bilingual Ontology construction, machine translation and cross-language information retrieval etc. This paper addresses the issues of monolingual terminology extraction and bilingual term alignment based on multi-level termhood. Design/methodology/approach: A method based on multi-level termhood is proposed. The new method computes the termhood of the terminology candidate as well as the sentence that includes the terminology by the comparison of the corpus. Since terminologies and general words usually have differently distribution in the corpus, termhood can also be used to constrain and enhance the performance of term alignment when aligning bilingual terms on the parallel corpus. In this paper, bilingual term alignment based on termhood constraints is presented. Findings: Experiment results show multi-level termhood can get better performance than existing method for terminology extraction. If termhood is used as constrain factor, the performance of bilingual term alignment can be improved.
1302.4504
On the use of topological features and hierarchical characterization for disambiguating names in collaborative networks
physics.soc-ph cs.DL cs.IR cs.SI
Many features of complex systems can now be unveiled by applying statistical physics methods to treat them as social networks. The power of the analysis may be limited, however, by the presence of ambiguity in names, e.g., caused by homonymy in collaborative networks. In this paper we show that the ability to distinguish between homonymous authors is enhanced when longer-distance connections are considered, rather than looking at only the immediate neighbors of a node in the collaborative network. Optimized results were obtained upon using the 3rd hierarchy in connections. Furthermore, reasonable distinction among authors could also be achieved upon using pattern recognition strategies for the data generated from the topology of the collaborative network. These results were obtained with a network from papers in the arXiv repository, into which homonymy was deliberately introduced to test the methods with a controlled, reliable dataset. In all cases, several methods of supervised and unsupervised machine learning were used, leading to the same overall results. The suitability of using deeper hierarchies and network topology was confirmed with a real database of movie actors, with the additional finding that the distinguishing ability can be further enhanced by combining topology features and long-range connections in the collaborative network.
1302.4516
Bilayer Protograph Codes for Half-Duplex Relay Channels
cs.IT math.IT
Despite encouraging advances in the design of relay codes, several important challenges remain. Many of the existing LDPC relay codes are tightly optimized for fixed channel conditions and not easily adapted without extensive re-optimization of the code. Some have high encoding complexity and some need long block lengths to approach capacity. This paper presents a high-performance protograph-based LDPC coding scheme for the half-duplex relay channel that addresses simultaneously several important issues: structured coding that permits easy design, low encoding complexity, embedded structure for convenient adaptation to various channel conditions, and performance close to capacity with a reasonable block length. The application of the coding structure to multi-relay networks is demonstrated. Finally, a simple new methodology for evaluating the end-to-end error performance of relay coding systems is developed and used to highlight the performance of the proposed codes.
1302.4519
A Genetic Algorithm for Power-Aware Virtual Machine Allocation in Private Cloud
cs.NE cs.DC
Energy efficiency has become an important measurement of scheduling algorithm for private cloud. The challenge is trade-off between minimizing of energy consumption and satisfying Quality of Service (QoS) (e.g. performance or resource availability on time for reservation request). We consider resource needs in context of a private cloud system to provide resources for applications in teaching and researching. In which users request computing resources for laboratory classes at start times and non-interrupted duration in some hours in prior. Many previous works are based on migrating techniques to move online virtual machines (VMs) from low utilization hosts and turn these hosts off to reduce energy consumption. However, the techniques for migration of VMs could not use in our case. In this paper, a genetic algorithm for power-aware in scheduling of resource allocation (GAPA) has been proposed to solve the static virtual machine allocation problem (SVMAP). Due to limited resources (i.e. memory) for executing simulation, we created a workload that contains a sample of one-day timetable of lab hours in our university. We evaluate the GAPA and a baseline scheduling algorithm (BFD), which sorts list of virtual machines in start time (i.e. earliest start time first) and using best-fit decreasing (i.e. least increased power consumption) algorithm, for solving the same SVMAP. As a result, the GAPA algorithm obtains total energy consumption is lower than the baseline algorithm on simulated experimentation.
1302.4545
Preference-Based Unawareness
cs.GT cs.AI cs.LO
Morris (1996, 1997) introduced preference-based definitions of knowledge and belief in standard state-space structures. This paper extends this preference-based approach to unawareness structures (Heifetz, Meier, and Schipper, 2006, 2008). By defining unawareness and knowledge in terms of preferences over acts in unawareness structures and showing their equivalence to the epistemic notions of unawareness and knowledge, we try to build a bridge between decision theory and epistemic logic. Unawareness of an event is characterized behaviorally as the event being null and its negation being null.
1302.4546
Random-walk domination in large graphs: problem definitions and fast solutions
cs.SI cs.DS physics.soc-ph
We introduce and formulate two types of random-walk domination problems in graphs motivated by a number of applications in practice (e.g., item-placement problem in online social network, Ads-placement problem in advertisement networks, and resource-placement problem in P2P networks). Specifically, given a graph $G$, the goal of the first type of random-walk domination problem is to target $k$ nodes such that the total hitting time of an $L$-length random walk starting from the remaining nodes to the targeted nodes is minimal. The second type of random-walk domination problem is to find $k$ nodes to maximize the expected number of nodes that hit any one targeted node through an $L$-length random walk. We prove that these problems are two special instances of the submodular set function maximization with cardinality constraint problem. To solve them effectively, we propose a dynamic-programming (DP) based greedy algorithm which is with near-optimal performance guarantee. The DP-based greedy algorithm, however, is not very efficient due to the expensive marginal gain evaluation. To further speed up the algorithm, we propose an approximate greedy algorithm with linear time complexity w.r.t.\ the graph size and also with near-optimal performance guarantee. The approximate greedy algorithm is based on a carefully designed random-walk sampling and sample-materialization techniques. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness, efficiency and scalability of the proposed algorithms.
1302.4549
Breaking the Small Cluster Barrier of Graph Clustering
cs.LG stat.ML
This paper investigates graph clustering in the planted cluster model in the presence of {\em small clusters}. Traditional results dictate that for an algorithm to provably correctly recover the clusters, {\em all} clusters must be sufficiently large (in particular, $\tilde{\Omega}(\sqrt{n})$ where $n$ is the number of nodes of the graph). We show that this is not really a restriction: by a more refined analysis of the trace-norm based recovery approach proposed in Jalali et al. (2011) and Chen et al. (2012), we prove that small clusters, under certain mild assumptions, do not hinder recovery of large ones. Based on this result, we further devise an iterative algorithm to recover {\em almost all clusters} via a "peeling strategy", i.e., recover large clusters first, leading to a reduced problem, and repeat this procedure. These results are extended to the {\em partial observation} setting, in which only a (chosen) part of the graph is observed.The peeling strategy gives rise to an active learning algorithm, in which edges adjacent to smaller clusters are queried more often as large clusters are learned (and removed). From a high level, this paper sheds novel insights on high-dimensional statistics and learning structured data, by presenting a structured matrix learning problem for which a one shot convex relaxation approach necessarily fails, but a carefully constructed sequence of convex relaxationsdoes the job.
1302.4557
Extracting Three Dimensional Surface Model of Human Kidney from the Visible Human Data Set using Free Software
physics.med-ph cs.CE
Three dimensional digital model of a representative human kidney is needed for a surgical simulator that is capable of simulating a laparoscopic surgery involving kidney. Buying a three dimensional computer model of a representative human kidney, or reconstructing a human kidney from an image sequence using commercial software, both involve (sometimes significant amount of) money. In this paper, author has shown that one can obtain a three dimensional surface model of human kidney by making use of images from the Visible Human Data Set and a few free software packages (ImageJ, ITK-SNAP, and MeshLab in particular). Images from the Visible Human Data Set, and the software packages used here, both do not cost anything. Hence, the practice of extracting the geometry of a representative human kidney for free, as illustrated in the present work, could be a free alternative to the use of expensive commercial software or to the purchase of a digital model.
1302.4572
Searchability of central nodes in networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Social networks are discrete systems with a large amount of heterogeneity among nodes (individuals). Measures of centrality aim at a quantification of nodes' importance for structure and function. Here we ask to which extent the most central nodes can be found by purely local search. We find that many networks have close-to-optimal searchability under eigenvector centrality, outperforming searches for degree and betweenness. Searchability of the strongest spreaders in epidemic dynamics tends to be substantially larger for supercritical than for subcritical spreading.
1302.4619
Compactified Horizontal Visibility Graph for the Language Network
cs.CL cs.DS
A compactified horizontal visibility graph for the language network is proposed. It was found that the networks constructed in such way are scale free, and have a property that among the nodes with largest degrees there are words that determine not only a text structure communication, but also its informational structure.
1302.4660
Compressive Classification
cs.IT math.IT
This paper derives fundamental limits associated with compressive classification of Gaussian mixture source models. In particular, we offer an asymptotic characterization of the behavior of the (upper bound to the) misclassification probability associated with the optimal Maximum-A-Posteriori (MAP) classifier that depends on quantities that are dual to the concepts of diversity gain and coding gain in multi-antenna communications. The diversity, which is shown to determine the rate at which the probability of misclassification decays in the low noise regime, is shown to depend on the geometry of the source, the geometry of the measurement system and their interplay. The measurement gain, which represents the counterpart of the coding gain, is also shown to depend on geometrical quantities. It is argued that the diversity order and the measurement gain also offer an optimization criterion to perform dictionary learning for compressive classification applications.
1302.4670
Exact-Repair Regenerating Codes Via Layered Erasure Correction and Block Designs
cs.IT math.IT
A new class of exact-repair regenerating codes is constructed by combining two layers of erasure correction codes together with combinatorial block designs, e.g., Steiner systems, balanced incomplete block designs and t-designs. The proposed codes have the "uncoded repair" property where the nodes participating in the repair simply transfer part of the stored data directly, without performing any computation. The layered error correction structure makes the decoding process rather straightforward, and in general the complexity is low. We show that this construction is able to achieve performance better than time-sharing between the minimum storage regenerating codes and the minimum repair-bandwidth regenerating codes.
1302.4673
Good Recognition is Non-Metric
cs.CV
Recognition is the fundamental task of visual cognition, yet how to formalize the general recognition problem for computer vision remains an open issue. The problem is sometimes reduced to the simplest case of recognizing matching pairs, often structured to allow for metric constraints. However, visual recognition is broader than just pair matching -- especially when we consider multi-class training data and large sets of features in a learning context. What we learn and how we learn it has important implications for effective algorithms. In this paper, we reconsider the assumption of recognition as a pair matching test, and introduce a new formal definition that captures the broader context of the problem. Through a meta-analysis and an experimental assessment of the top algorithms on popular data sets, we gain a sense of how often metric properties are violated by good recognition algorithms. By studying these violations, useful insights come to light: we make the case that locally metric algorithms should leverage outside information to solve the general recognition problem.
1302.4680
Moving target inference with hierarchical Bayesian models in synthetic aperture radar imagery
cs.IT math.IT
In synthetic aperture radar (SAR), images are formed by focusing the response of stationary objects to a single spatial location. On the other hand, moving targets cause phase errors in the standard formation of SAR images that cause displacement and defocusing effects. SAR imagery also contains significant sources of non-stationary spatially-varying noises, including antenna gain discrepancies, angular scintillation (glints) and complex speckle. In order to account for this intricate phenomenology, this work combines the knowledge of the physical, kinematic, and statistical properties of SAR imaging into a single unified Bayesian structure that simultaneously (a) estimates the nuisance parameters such as clutter distributions and antenna miscalibrations and (b) estimates the target signature required for detection/inference of the target state. Moreover, we provide a Monte Carlo estimate of the posterior distribution for the target state and nuisance parameters that infers the parameters of the model directly from the data, largely eliminating tuning of algorithm parameters. We demonstrate that our algorithm competes at least as well on a synthetic dataset as state-of-the-art algorithms for estimating sparse signals. Finally, performance analysis on a measured dataset demonstrates that the proposed algorithm is robust at detecting/estimating targets over a wide area and performs at least as well as popular algorithms for SAR moving target detection.
1302.4701
A Receiver-Centric OFCDM Approach with Subcarrier Grouping
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT
In this letter, following a cross-layer design concept, we propose a novel subcarrier grouping technique for Orthogonal Frequency and Code Division Multiplexing (OFCDM) multiuser systems. We adopt a two dimensional (2D) spreading, so as to achieve both frequency- and time-domain channel gain. Furthermore, we enable a receiver-centric approach, where the receiver rather than a potential sender controls the admission decision of the communication establishment. We study the robustness of the proposed scheme in terms of the Bit-Error-Rate (BER) and the outage probability. The derived results indicate that the proposed scheme outperforms the classical OFCDM approach.
1302.4705
Performance Analysis of the Ordered V-BLAST Approach over Nakagami-m Fading Channels
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT
The performance of the V-BLAST approach, which utilizes successive interference cancellation (SIC) with optimal ordering, over independent Nakagami-m fading channels is studied. Systems with two transmit and n receive antennas are employed whereas the potential erroneous decision of SIC is also considered. In particular, tight closed-form bound expressions are derived in terms of the average symbol error rate (ASER) and the outage probability, in case of binary and rectangular M-ary constellation alphabets. The mathematical analysis is accompanied with selected performance evaluation and numerical results, which demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach.
1302.4706
Curves on Flat Tori and Analog Source-Channel Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we consider the problem of transmitting a continuous alphabet discrete-time source over an AWGN channel. We propose a constructive scheme based on a set of curves on the surface of a N-dimensional sphere. Our approach shows that the design of good codes for this communication problem is related to geometrical properties of spherical codes and projections of N-dimensional rectangular lattices. Theoretical comparisons with some previous works in terms of the mean square error as a function of the channel SNR as well as simulations are provided.
1302.4717
Channel Sounding Waveforms Design for Asynchronous Multiuser MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we provide three contributions to the field of channel sounding waveform design in asynchronous Multi-user (MU) MIMO systems. The first contribution is a derivation of the asynchronous MU-MIMO model and the conditions that the sounding waveform must meet to independently resolve all of the spatial channel responses. Next we propose a chirp waveform that meets the constraints and we show that the MSE of our system meets the Cramer-Rao Bound (CRB) when the time offset is an integer multiple of the sampling interval. Finally we demonstrate that the channel capacity region of the asynchronous system and synchronous system is equivalent under certain conditions. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the findings.
1302.4721
Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation in OFDMA Systems with Hybrid Energy Harvesting Base Station
cs.IT math.IT
We study resource allocation algorithm design for energy-efficient communication in an OFDMA downlink network with hybrid energy harvesting base station. Specifically, an energy harvester and a constant energy source driven by a non-renewable resource are used for supplying the energy required for system operation. We first consider a deterministic offline system setting. In particular, assuming availability of non-causal knowledge about energy arrivals and channel gains, an offline resource allocation problem is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem taking into account the circuit energy consumption, a finite energy storage capacity, and a minimum required data rate. We transform this non-convex optimization problem into a convex optimization problem by applying time-sharing and fractional programming which results in an efficient asymptotically optimal offline iterative resource allocation algorithm. In each iteration, the transformed problem is solved by using Lagrange dual decomposition. The obtained resource allocation policy maximizes the weighted energy efficiency of data transmission. Subsequently, we focus on online algorithm design. A stochastic dynamic programming approach is employed to obtain the optimal online resource allocation algorithm which requires a prohibitively high complexity. To strike a balance between system performance and computational complexity, we propose a low complexity suboptimal online iterative algorithm which is motivated by the offline optimization.
1302.4726
An Ontology for Modelling and Supporting the Process of Authoring Technical Assessments
cs.IR cs.CL cs.DL
In this paper, we present a semantic web approach for modelling the process of creating new technical and regulatory documents related to the Building sector. This industry, among other industries, is currently experiencing a phenomenal growth in its technical and regulatory texts. Therefore, it is urgent and crucial to improve the process of creating regulations by automating it as much as possible. We focus on the creation of particular technical documents issued by the French Scientific and Technical Centre for Building (CSTB), called Technical Assessments, and we propose services based on Semantic Web models and techniques for modelling the process of their creation.
1302.4735
Realignment in the NHL, MLB, the NFL, and the NBA
stat.AP cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Sports leagues consist of conferences subdivided into divisions. Teams play a number of games within their divisions and fewer games against teams in different divisions and conferences. Usually, a league structure remains stable from one season to the next. However, structures change when growth or contraction occurs, and realignment of the four major professional sports leagues in North America has occurred more than twenty-five times since 1967. In this paper, we describe a method for realigning sports leagues that is flexible, adaptive, and that enables construction of schedules that minimize travel while satisfying other criteria. We do not build schedules; we develop league structures which support the subsequent construction of efficient schedules. Our initial focus is the NHL, which has an urgent need for realignment following the recent move of the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg, but our methods can be adapted to virtually any situation. We examine a variety of scenarios for the NHL, and apply our methods to the NBA, MLB, and NFL. We find the biggest improvements for MLB and the NFL, where adopting the best solutions would reduce league travel by about 20%.
1302.4755
Channel-Aware Random Access in the Presence of Channel Estimation Errors
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, we consider the random access of nodes adapting their transmission probability based on the local channel state information (CSI) in a decentralized manner, which is called CARA. The CSI is not directly available to each node but estimated with some errors in our scenario. Thus, the impact of imperfect CSI on the performance of CARA is our main concern. Specifically, an exact stability analysis is carried out when a pair of bursty sources are competing for a common receiver and, thereby, have interdependent services. The analysis also takes into account the compound effects of the multipacket reception (MPR) capability at the receiver. The contributions in this paper are twofold: first, we obtain the exact stability region of CARA in the presence of channel estimation errors; such an assessment is necessary as the errors in channel estimation are inevitable in the practical situation. Secondly, we compare the performance of CARA to that achieved by the class of stationary scheduling policies that make decisions in a centralized manner based on the CSI feedback. It is shown that the stability region of CARA is not necessarily a subset of that of centralized schedulers as the MPR capability improves.
1302.4761
Finite-time Consensus for Multi-agent Networks with Unknown Inherent Nonlinear Dynamics
math.OC cs.SY
This paper focuses on analyzing the finite-time convergence of a nonlinear consensus algorithm for multi-agent networks with unknown inherent nonlinear dynamics. Due to the existence of the unknown inherent nonlinear dynamics, the stability analysis and the finite-time convergence analysis of the closed-loop system under the proposed consensus algorithm are more challenging than those under the well-studied consensus algorithms for known linear systems. For this purpose, we propose a novel stability tool based on a generalized comparison lemma. With the aid of the novel stability tool, it is shown that the proposed nonlinear consensus algorithm can guarantee finite-time convergence if the directed switching interaction graph has a directed spanning tree at each time interval. Specifically, the finite-time convergence is shown by comparing the closed-loop system under the proposed consensus algorithm with some well-designed closed-loop system whose stability properties are easier to obtain. Moreover, the stability and the finite-time convergence of the closed-loop system using the proposed consensus algorithm under a (general) directed switching interaction graph can even be guaranteed by the stability and the finite-time convergence of some special well-designed nonlinear closed-loop system under some special directed switching interaction graph, where each agent has at most one neighbor whose state is either the maximum of those states that are smaller than its own state or the minimum of those states that are larger than its own state. This provides a stimulating example for the potential applications of the proposed novel stability tool in the stability analysis of linear/nonlinear closed-loop systems by making use of known results in linear/nonlinear systems. For illustration of the theoretical result, we provide a simulation example.
1302.4765
Design Features for the Social Web: The Architecture of Deme
cs.SI cs.SE
We characterize the "social Web" and argue for several features that are desirable for users of socially oriented web applications. We describe the architecture of Deme, a web content management system (WCMS) and extensible framework, and show how it implements these desired features. We then compare Deme on our desiderata with other web technologies: traditional HTML, previous open source WCMSs (illustrated by Drupal), commercial Web 2.0 applications, and open-source, object-oriented web application frameworks. The analysis suggests that a WCMS can be well suited to building social websites if it makes more of the features of object-oriented programming, such as polymorphism, and class inheritance, available to non-programmers in an accessible vocabulary.
1302.4767
Low-power Secret-key Agreement over OFDM
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
Information-theoretic secret-key agreement is perhaps the most practically feasible mechanism that provides unconditional security at the physical layer to date. In this paper, we consider the problem of secret-key agreement by sharing randomness at low power over an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) link, in the presence of an eavesdropper. The low power assumption greatly simplifies the design of the randomness sharing scheme, even in a fading channel scenario. We assess the performance of the proposed system in terms of secrecy key rate and show that a practical approach to key sharing is obtained by using low-density parity check (LDPC) codes for information reconciliation. Numerical results confirm the merits of the proposed approach as a feasible and practical solution. Moreover, the outage formulation allows to implement secret-key agreement even when only statistical knowledge of the eavesdropper channel is available.
1302.4773
Optimal Discriminant Functions Based On Sampled Distribution Distance for Modulation Classification
stat.ML cs.LG cs.PF
In this letter, we derive the optimal discriminant functions for modulation classification based on the sampled distribution distance. The proposed method classifies various candidate constellations using a low complexity approach based on the distribution distance at specific testpoints along the cumulative distribution function. This method, based on the Bayesian decision criteria, asymptotically provides the minimum classification error possible given a set of testpoints. Testpoint locations are also optimized to improve classification performance. The method provides significant gains over existing approaches that also use the distribution of the signal features.
1302.4774
A theoretical framework for conducting multi-level studies of complex social systems with agent-based models and empirical data
cs.MA cs.SI stat.AP
A formal but intuitive framework is introduced to bridge the gap between data obtained from empirical studies and that generated by agent-based models. This is based on three key tenets. Firstly, a simulation can be given multiple formal descriptions corresponding to static and dynamic properties at different levels of observation. These can be easily mapped to empirically observed phenomena and data obtained from them. Secondly, an agent-based model generates a set of closed systems, and computational simulation is the means by which we sample from this set. Thirdly, properties at different levels and statistical relationships between them can be used to classify simulations as those that instantiate a more sophisticated set of constraints. These can be validated with models obtained from statistical models of empirical data (for example, structural equation or multi-level models) and hence provide more stringent criteria for validating the agent-based model itself.
1302.4776
Universal Outlier Hypothesis Testing
cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.TH
Outlier hypothesis testing is studied in a universal setting. Multiple sequences of observations are collected, a small subset of which are outliers. A sequence is considered an outlier if the observations in that sequence are distributed according to an ``outlier'' distribution, distinct from the ``typical'' distribution governing the observations in all the other sequences. Nothing is known about the outlier and typical distributions except that they are distinct and have full supports. The goal is to design a universal test to best discern the outlier sequence(s). It is shown that the generalized likelihood test is universally exponentially consistent under various settings. The achievable error exponent is also characterized. In the other settings, it is also shown that there cannot exist any universally exponentially consistent test.
1302.4784
An Optical Watermarking Solution for Color Personal Identification Pictures
cs.MM cs.CV physics.optics
This paper presents a new approach for embedding authentication information into image on printed materials based on optical projection technique. Our experimental setup consists of two parts, one is a common camera, and the other is a LCD projector, which project a pattern on personnel's body (especially on the face). The pattern, generated by a computer, act as the illumination light source with sinusoidal distribution and it is also the watermark signal. For a color image, the watermark is embedded into the blue channel. While we take pictures (256 *256 and 512*512, 567*390 pixels, respectively), an invisible mark is embedded directly into magnitude oefficients of Discrete Fourier transform (DFT) at exposure moment. Both optical an d digital correlation is suitable for detection of this type of watermark. The decoded watermark is a set of concentric circles or sectors in the DFT domain (middle frequencies region) which is robust to photographing, printing and scanning. The unlawful people modify or replace the original photograph, and make fake passport (drivers' license and so on). Experiments show, it is difficult to forge certificates in which a watermark was embedded by our projector-camera combination based on analogue watermark method rather than classical digital method.
1302.4785
A Distributed Approach to Interference Alignment in OFDM-based Two-tiered Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this contribution, we consider a two-tiered network and focus on the coexistence between the two tiers at physical layer. We target our efforts on a long term evolution advanced (LTE-A) orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) macro-cell sharing the spectrum with a randomly deployed second tier of small-cells. In such networks, high levels of co-channel interference between the macro and small base stations (MBS/SBS) may largely limit the potential spectral efficiency gains provided by the frequency reuse 1. To address this issue, we propose a novel cognitive interference alignment based scheme to protect the macro-cell from the cross-tier interference, while mitigating the co-tier interference in the second tier. Remarkably, only local channel state information (CSI) and autonomous operations are required in the second tier, resulting in a completely self-organizing approach for the SBSs. The optimal precoder that maximizes the spectral efficiency of the link between each SBS and its served user equipment is found by means of a distributed one-shot strategy. Numerical findings reveal non-negligible spectral efficiency enhancements with respect to traditional time division multiple access approaches at any signal to noise (SNR) regime. Additionally, the proposed technique exhibits significant robustness to channel estimation errors, achieving remarkable results for the imperfect CSI case and yielding consistent performance enhancements to the network.
1302.4786
Cognitive Orthogonal Precoder for Two-tiered Networks Deployment
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, the problem of cross-tier interference in a two-tiered (macro-cell and cognitive small-cells) network, under the complete spectrum sharing paradigm, is studied. A new orthogonal precoder transmit scheme for the small base stations, called multi-user Vandermonde-subspace frequency division multiplexing (MU-VFDM), is proposed. MU-VFDM allows several cognitive small base stations to coexist with legacy macro-cell receivers, by nulling the small- to macro-cell cross-tier interference, without any cooperation between the two tiers. This cleverly designed cascaded precoder structure, not only cancels the cross-tier interference, but avoids the co-tier interference for the small-cell network. The achievable sum-rate of the small-cell network, satisfying the interference cancelation requirements, is evaluated for perfect and imperfect channel state information at the transmitter. Simulation results for the cascaded MU-VFDM precoder show a comparable performance to that of state-of-the-art dirty paper coding technique, for the case of a dense cellular layout. Finally, a comparison between MU-VFDM and a standard complete spectrum separation strategy is proposed. Promising gains in terms of achievable sum-rate are shown for the two-tiered network w.r.t. the traditional bandwidth management approach.
1302.4788
Layered Interference Networks with Delayed CSI: DoF Scaling with Distributed Transmitters
cs.IT math.IT
The layered interference network is investigated with delayed channel state information (CSI) at all nodes. It is demonstrated how multi-hopping can be utilized to increase the achievable degrees of freedom (DoF). In particular, a multi-phase transmission scheme is proposed for the $K$-user $2K$-hop interference network in order to systematically exploit the layered structure of the network and delayed CSI to achieve DoF values that scale with $K$. This result provides the first example of a network with distributed transmitters and delayed CSI whose DoF scales with the number of users.
1302.4793
Opportunistic Wireless Energy Harvesting in Cognitive Radio Networks
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Wireless networks can be self-sustaining by harvesting energy from ambient radio-frequency (RF) signals. Recently, researchers have made progress on designing efficient circuits and devices for RF energy harvesting suitable for low-power wireless applications. Motivated by this and building upon the classic cognitive radio (CR) network model, this paper proposes a novel method for wireless networks coexisting where low-power mobiles in a secondary network, called secondary transmitters (STs), harvest ambient RF energy from transmissions by nearby active transmitters in a primary network, called primary transmitters (PTs), while opportunistically accessing the spectrum licensed to the primary network. We consider a stochastic-geometry model in which PTs and STs are distributed as independent homogeneous Poisson point processes (HPPPs) and communicate with their intended receivers at fixed distances. Each PT is associated with a guard zone to protect its intended receiver from ST's interference, and at the same time delivers RF energy to STs located in its harvesting zone. Based on the proposed model, we analyze the transmission probability of STs and the resulting spatial throughput of the secondary network. The optimal transmission power and density of STs are derived for maximizing the secondary network throughput under the given outage-probability constraints in the two coexisting networks, which reveal key insights to the optimal network design. Finally, we show that our analytical result can be generally applied to a non-CR setup, where distributed wireless power chargers are deployed to power coexisting wireless transmitters in a sensor network.
1302.4805
Energy-Efficient Optimization for Physical Layer Security in Multi-Antenna Downlink Networks with QoS Guarantee
cs.IT math.IT
In this letter, we consider a multi-antenna downlink network where a secure user (SU) coexists with a passive eavesdropper. There are two design requirements for such a network. First, the information should be transferred in a secret and efficient manner. Second, the quality of service (QoS), i.e. delay sensitivity, should be take into consideration to satisfy the demands of real-time wireless services. In order to fulfill the two requirements, we combine the physical layer security technique based on switched beam beamforming with an energy-efficient power allocation. The problem is formulated as the maximization of the secrecy energy efficiency subject to delay and power constraints. By solving the optimization problem, we derive an energy-efficient power allocation scheme. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
1302.4811
Towards a Semantic-based Approach for Modeling Regulatory Documents in Building Industry
cs.CL
Regulations in the Building Industry are becoming increasingly complex and involve more than one technical area. They cover products, components and project implementation. They also play an important role to ensure the quality of a building, and to minimize its environmental impact. In this paper, we are particularly interested in the modeling of the regulatory constraints derived from the Technical Guides issued by CSTB and used to validate Technical Assessments. We first describe our approach for modeling regulatory constraints in the SBVR language, and formalizing them in the SPARQL language. Second, we describe how we model the processes of compliance checking described in the CSTB Technical Guides. Third, we show how we implement these processes to assist industrials in drafting Technical Documents in order to acquire a Technical Assessment; a compliance report is automatically generated to explain the compliance or noncompliance of this Technical Documents.
1302.4813
Probabilistic Frame Induction
cs.CL
In natural-language discourse, related events tend to appear near each other to describe a larger scenario. Such structures can be formalized by the notion of a frame (a.k.a. template), which comprises a set of related events and prototypical participants and event transitions. Identifying frames is a prerequisite for information extraction and natural language generation, and is usually done manually. Methods for inducing frames have been proposed recently, but they typically use ad hoc procedures and are difficult to diagnose or extend. In this paper, we propose the first probabilistic approach to frame induction, which incorporates frames, events, participants as latent topics and learns those frame and event transitions that best explain the text. The number of frames is inferred by a novel application of a split-merge method from syntactic parsing. In end-to-end evaluations from text to induced frames and extracted facts, our method produced state-of-the-art results while substantially reducing engineering effort.
1302.4814
NLP and CALL: integration is working
cs.CL
In the first part of this article, we explore the background of computer-assisted learning from its beginnings in the early XIXth century and the first teaching machines, founded on theories of learning, at the start of the XXth century. With the arrival of the computer, it became possible to offer language learners different types of language activities such as comprehension tasks, simulations, etc. However, these have limits that cannot be overcome without some contribution from the field of natural language processing (NLP). In what follows, we examine the challenges faced and the issues raised by integrating NLP into CALL. We hope to demonstrate that the key to success in integrating NLP into CALL is to be found in multidisciplinary work between computer experts, linguists, language teachers, didacticians and NLP specialists.
1302.4840
Joint Physical Network Coding and LDPC decoding for Two Way Wireless Relaying
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we investigate the joint design of channel and network coding in bi-directional relaying systems and propose a combined low complexity physical network coding and LDPC decoding scheme. For the same LDPC codes employed at both source nodes, we show that the relay can decodes the network coded codewords from the superimposed signal received from the BPSK-modulated multiple-access channel. Simulation results shown that this novel joint physical network coding and LDPC decoding method outperforms the existing MMSE network coding and LDPC decoding method over AWGN and complex MAC channel.
1302.4858
Trajectory generation and display for free flight
math.OC cs.RO
In this study a new approach is proposed for the generation of aircraft trajectories. The relative guidance of an aircraft, which is aimed to join in minimum time the track of a leader aircraft, is particularly considered. In a first place, a minimum time relative convergence problem is considered and optimal trajectories are characterized. Then the synthesis of a neural approximator for optimal trajectories is discussed. Trained neural networks are used in an adaptive manner to generate intent trajectories during operation. Finally simulation results involving two wide body aircraft are presented.
1302.4872
Cohesion, consensus and extreme information in opinion dynamics
physics.soc-ph cs.SI nlin.AO
Opinion formation is an important element of social dynamics. It has been widely studied in the last years with tools from physics, mathematics and computer science. Here, a continuous model of opinion dynamics for multiple possible choices is analysed. Its main features are the inclusion of disagreement and possibility of modulating information, both from one and multiple sources. The interest is in identifying the effect of the initial cohesion of the population, the interplay between cohesion and information extremism, and the effect of using multiple sources of information that can influence the system. Final consensus, especially with external information, depends highly on these factors, as numerical simulations show. When no information is present, consensus or segregation is determined by the initial cohesion of the population. Interestingly, when only one source of information is present, consensus can be obtained, in general, only when this is extremely mild, i.e. there is not a single opinion strongly promoted, or in the special case of a large initial cohesion and low information exposure. On the contrary, when multiple information sources are allowed, consensus can emerge with an information source even when this is not extremely mild, i.e. it carries a strong message, for a large range of initial conditions.
1302.4874
A Labeled Graph Kernel for Relationship Extraction
cs.CL cs.LG
In this paper, we propose an approach for Relationship Extraction (RE) based on labeled graph kernels. The kernel we propose is a particularization of a random walk kernel that exploits two properties previously studied in the RE literature: (i) the words between the candidate entities or connecting them in a syntactic representation are particularly likely to carry information regarding the relationship; and (ii) combining information from distinct sources in a kernel may help the RE system make better decisions. We performed experiments on a dataset of protein-protein interactions and the results show that our approach obtains effectiveness values that are comparable with the state-of-the art kernel methods. Moreover, our approach is able to outperform the state-of-the-art kernels when combined with other kernel methods.
1302.4886
Fast methods for denoising matrix completion formulations, with applications to robust seismic data interpolation
stat.ML cs.LG
Recent SVD-free matrix factorization formulations have enabled rank minimization for systems with millions of rows and columns, paving the way for matrix completion in extremely large-scale applications, such as seismic data interpolation. In this paper, we consider matrix completion formulations designed to hit a target data-fitting error level provided by the user, and propose an algorithm called LR-BPDN that is able to exploit factorized formulations to solve the corresponding optimization problem. Since practitioners typically have strong prior knowledge about target error level, this innovation makes it easy to apply the algorithm in practice, leaving only the factor rank to be determined. Within the established framework, we propose two extensions that are highly relevant to solving practical challenges of data interpolation. First, we propose a weighted extension that allows known subspace information to improve the results of matrix completion formulations. We show how this weighting can be used in the context of frequency continuation, an essential aspect to seismic data interpolation. Second, we propose matrix completion formulations that are robust to large measurement errors in the available data. We illustrate the advantages of LR-BPDN on the collaborative filtering problem using the MovieLens 1M, 10M, and Netflix 100M datasets. Then, we use the new method, along with its robust and subspace re-weighted extensions, to obtain high-quality reconstructions for large scale seismic interpolation problems with real data, even in the presence of data contamination.
1302.4888
Exploiting Social Tags for Cross-Domain Collaborative Filtering
cs.IR cs.AI
One of the most challenging problems in recommender systems based on the collaborative filtering (CF) concept is data sparseness, i.e., limited user preference data is available for making recommendations. Cross-domain collaborative filtering (CDCF) has been studied as an effective mechanism to alleviate data sparseness of one domain using the knowledge about user preferences from other domains. A key question to be answered in the context of CDCF is what common characteristics can be deployed to link different domains for effective knowledge transfer. In this paper, we assess the usefulness of user-contributed (social) tags in this respect. We do so by means of the Generalized Tag-induced Cross-domain Collaborative Filtering (GTagCDCF) approach that we propose in this paper and that we developed based on the general collective matrix factorization framework. Assessment is done by a series of experiments, using publicly available CF datasets that represent three cross-domain cases, i.e., two two-domain cases and one three-domain case. A comparative analysis on two-domain cases involving GTagCDCF and several state-of-the-art CDCF approaches indicates the increased benefit of using social tags as representatives of explicit links between domains for CDCF as compared to the implicit links deployed by the existing CDCF methods. In addition, we show that users from different domains can already benefit from GTagCDCF if they only share a few common tags. Finally, we use the three-domain case to validate the robustness of GTagCDCF with respect to the scale of datasets and the varying number of domains.