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1303.2176
Scaling behavior of online human activity
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
The rapid development of Internet technology enables human explore the web and record the traces of online activities. From the analysis of these large-scale data sets (i.e. traces), we can get insights about dynamic behavior of human activity. In this letter, the scaling behavior and complexity of human activity in the e-commerce, such as music, book, and movie rating, are comprehensively investigated by using detrended fluctuation analysis technique and multiscale entropy method. Firstly, the interevent time series of rating behaviors of these three type medias show the similar scaling property with exponents ranging from 0.53 to 0.58, which implies that the collective behaviors of rating media follow a process embodying self-similarity and long-range correlation. Meanwhile, by dividing the users into three groups based their activities (i.e., rating per unit time), we find that the scaling exponents of interevent time series in three groups are different. Hence, these results suggest the stronger long-range correlations exist in these collective behaviors. Furthermore, their information complexities vary from three groups. To explain the differences of the collective behaviors restricted to three groups, we study the dynamic behavior of human activity at individual level, and find that the dynamic behaviors of a few users have extremely small scaling exponents associating with long-range anticorrelations. By comparing with the interevent time distributions of four representative users, we can find that the bimodal distributions may bring the extraordinary scaling behaviors. These results of analyzing the online human activity in the e-commerce may not only provide insights to understand its dynamic behaviors but also be applied to acquire the potential economic interest.
1303.2184
Complex Support Vector Machines for Regression and Quaternary Classification
cs.LG stat.ML
The paper presents a new framework for complex Support Vector Regression as well as Support Vector Machines for quaternary classification. The method exploits the notion of widely linear estimation to model the input-out relation for complex-valued data and considers two cases: a) the complex data are split into their real and imaginary parts and a typical real kernel is employed to map the complex data to a complexified feature space and b) a pure complex kernel is used to directly map the data to the induced complex feature space. The recently developed Wirtinger's calculus on complex reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS) is employed in order to compute the Lagrangian and derive the dual optimization problem. As one of our major results, we prove that any complex SVM/SVR task is equivalent with solving two real SVM/SVR tasks exploiting a specific real kernel which is generated by the chosen complex kernel. In particular, the case of pure complex kernels leads to the generation of new kernels, which have not been considered before. In the classification case, the proposed framework inherently splits the complex space into four parts. This leads naturally in solving the four class-task (quaternary classification), instead of the typical two classes of the real SVM. In turn, this rationale can be used in a multiclass problem as a split-class scenario based on four classes, as opposed to the one-versus-all method; this can lead to significant computational savings. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for regression and classification tasks that involve complex data.
1303.2211
Medical Information Embedding in Compressed Watermarked Intravascular Ultrasound Video
cs.MM cs.CV
In medical field, intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is a tomographic imaging modality, which can identify the boundaries of different layers of blood vessels. IVUS can detect myocardial infarction (heart attack) that remains ignored and unattended when only angioplasty is done. During the past decade, it became easier for some individuals or groups to copy and transmits digital information without the permission of the owner. For increasing authentication and security of copyrights, digital watermarking, an information hiding technique, was introduced. Achieving watermarking technique with lesser amount of distortion in biomedical data is a challenging task. Watermark can be embedded into an image or in a video. As video data is a huge amount of information, therefore a large storage area is needed which is not feasible. In this case motion vector based video compression is done to reduce size. In this present paper, an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) is embedded as watermark within an IVUS video and then motion vector is calculated. This proposed method proves robustness as the extracted watermark has good PSNR value and less MSE.
1303.2215
Expensive Optimisation: A Metaheuristics Perspective
cs.NE
Stochastic, iterative search methods such as Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) are proven to be efficient optimizers. However, they require evaluation of the candidate solutions which may be prohibitively expensive in many real world optimization problems. Use of approximate models or surrogates is being explored as a way to reduce the number of such evaluations. In this paper we investigated three such methods. The first method (DAFHEA) partially replaces an expensive function evaluation by its approximate model. The approximation is realized with support vector machine (SVM) regression models. The second method (DAFHEA II) is an enhancement on DAFHEA to accommodate for uncertain environments. The third one uses surrogate ranking with preference learning or ordinal regression. The fitness of the candidates is estimated by modeling their rank. The techniques' performances on some of the benchmark numerical optimization problems have been reported. The comparative benefits and shortcomings of both techniques have been identified.
1303.2219
The Vernam cipher is robust to small deviations from randomness
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT
The Vernam cipher (or one-time pad) has played an important rule in cryptography because it is a perfect secrecy system. For example, if an English text (presented in binary system) $X_1 X_2 ... $ is enciphered according to the formula $Z_i = (X_i + Y_i) \mod 2 $, where $Y_1 Y_2 ...$ is a key sequence generated by the Bernoulli source with equal probabilities of 0 and 1, anyone who knows $Z_1 Z_2 ... $ has no information about $X_1 X_2 ... $ without the knowledge of the key $Y_1 Y_2 ...$. (The best strategy is to guess $X_1 X_2 ... $ not paying attention to $Z_1 Z_2 ... $.) But what should one say about secrecy of an analogous method where the key sequence $Y_1 Y_2 ...$ is generated by the Bernoulli source with a small bias, say, $P(0) = 0.49, $ $ P(1) = 0.51$? To the best of our knowledge, there are no theoretical estimates for the secrecy of such a system, as well as for the general case where $X_1 X_2 ... $ (the plaintext) and key sequence are described by stationary ergodic processes. We consider the running-key ciphers where the plaintext and the key are generated by stationary ergodic sources and show how to estimate the secrecy of such systems. In particular, it is shown that, in a certain sense, the Vernam cipher is robust to small deviations from randomness.
1303.2221
Clustering on Multi-Layer Graphs via Subspace Analysis on Grassmann Manifolds
cs.LG cs.CV cs.SI stat.ML
Relationships between entities in datasets are often of multiple nature, like geographical distance, social relationships, or common interests among people in a social network, for example. This information can naturally be modeled by a set of weighted and undirected graphs that form a global multilayer graph, where the common vertex set represents the entities and the edges on different layers capture the similarities of the entities in term of the different modalities. In this paper, we address the problem of analyzing multi-layer graphs and propose methods for clustering the vertices by efficiently merging the information provided by the multiple modalities. To this end, we propose to combine the characteristics of individual graph layers using tools from subspace analysis on a Grassmann manifold. The resulting combination can then be viewed as a low dimensional representation of the original data which preserves the most important information from diverse relationships between entities. We use this information in new clustering methods and test our algorithm on several synthetic and real world datasets where we demonstrate superior or competitive performances compared to baseline and state-of-the-art techniques. Our generic framework further extends to numerous analysis and learning problems that involve different types of information on graphs.
1303.2223
khmer: Working with Big Data in Bioinformatics
cs.CE q-bio.GN
We introduce design and optimization considerations for the 'khmer' package.
1303.2242
Adaptive Network Dynamics and Evolution of Leadership in Collective Migration
nlin.AO cs.SI physics.soc-ph q-bio.PE
The evolution of leadership in migratory populations depends not only on costs and benefits of leadership investments but also on the opportunities for individuals to rely on cues from others through social interactions. We derive an analytically tractable adaptive dynamic network model of collective migration with fast timescale migration dynamics and slow timescale adaptive dynamics of individual leadership investment and social interaction. For large populations, our analysis of bifurcations with respect to investment cost explains the observed hysteretic effect associated with recovery of migration in fragmented environments. Further, we show a minimum connectivity threshold above which there is evolutionary branching into leader and follower populations. For small populations, we show how the topology of the underlying social interaction network influences the emergence and location of leaders in the adaptive system. Our model and analysis can describe other adaptive network dynamics involving collective tracking or collective learning of a noisy, unknown signal, and likewise can inform the design of robotic networks where agents use decentralized strategies that balance direct environmental measurements with agent interactions.
1303.2251
Zero-point attracting projection algorithm for sequential compressive sensing
cs.IT math.IT
Sequential Compressive Sensing, which may be widely used in sensing devices, is a popular topic of recent research. This paper proposes an online recovery algorithm for sparse approximation of sequential compressive sensing. Several techniques including warm start, fast iteration, and variable step size are adopted in the proposed algorithm to improve its online performance. Finally, numerical simulations demonstrate its better performance than the relative art.
1303.2255
A Robust Zero-point Attraction LMS Algorithm on Near Sparse System Identification
cs.IT math.IT
The newly proposed $l_1$ norm constraint zero-point attraction Least Mean Square algorithm (ZA-LMS) demonstrates excellent performance on exact sparse system identification. However, ZA-LMS has less advantage against standard LMS when the system is near sparse. Thus, in this paper, firstly the near sparse system modeling by Generalized Gaussian Distribution is recommended, where the sparsity is defined accordingly. Secondly, two modifications to the ZA-LMS algorithm have been made. The $l_1$ norm penalty is replaced by a partial $l_1$ norm in the cost function, enhancing robustness without increasing the computational complexity. Moreover, the zero-point attraction item is weighted by the magnitude of estimation error which adjusts the zero-point attraction force dynamically. By combining the two improvements, Dynamic Windowing ZA-LMS (DWZA-LMS) algorithm is further proposed, which shows better performance on near sparse system identification. In addition, the mean square performance of DWZA-LMS algorithm is analyzed. Finally, computer simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and verify the result of theoretical analysis.
1303.2257
A stochastic gradient approach on compressive sensing signal reconstruction based on adaptive filtering framework
cs.IT math.IT
Based on the methodological similarity between sparse signal reconstruction and system identification, a new approach for sparse signal reconstruction in compressive sensing (CS) is proposed in this paper. This approach employs a stochastic gradient-based adaptive filtering framework, which is commonly used in system identification, to solve the sparse signal reconstruction problem. Two typical algorithms for this problem: $l_0$-least mean square ($l_0$-LMS) algorithm and $l_0$-exponentially forgetting window LMS ($l_0$-EFWLMS) algorithm are hence introduced here. Both the algorithms utilize a zero attraction method, which has been implemented by minimizing a continuous approximation of $l_0$ norm of the studied signal. To improve the performances of these proposed algorithms, an $l_0$-zero attraction projection ($l_0$-ZAP) algorithm is also adopted, which has effectively accelerated their convergence rates, making them much faster than the other existing algorithms for this problem. Advantages of the proposed approach, such as its robustness against noise etc., are demonstrated by numerical experiments.
1303.2261
l_0 Norm Constraint LMS Algorithm for Sparse System Identification
cs.IT math.IT
In order to improve the performance of Least Mean Square (LMS) based system identification of sparse systems, a new adaptive algorithm is proposed which utilizes the sparsity property of such systems. A general approximating approach on $l_0$ norm -- a typical metric of system sparsity, is proposed and integrated into the cost function of the LMS algorithm. This integration is equivalent to add a zero attractor in the iterations, by which the convergence rate of small coefficients, that dominate the sparse system, can be effectively improved. Moreover, using partial updating method, the computational complexity is reduced. The simulations demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can effectively improve the performance of LMS-based identification algorithms on sparse system.
1303.2270
Penalty-regulated dynamics and robust learning procedures in games
math.OC cs.GT cs.LG
Starting from a heuristic learning scheme for N-person games, we derive a new class of continuous-time learning dynamics consisting of a replicator-like drift adjusted by a penalty term that renders the boundary of the game's strategy space repelling. These penalty-regulated dynamics are equivalent to players keeping an exponentially discounted aggregate of their on-going payoffs and then using a smooth best response to pick an action based on these performance scores. Owing to this inherent duality, the proposed dynamics satisfy a variant of the folk theorem of evolutionary game theory and they converge to (arbitrarily precise) approximations of Nash equilibria in potential games. Motivated by applications to traffic engineering, we exploit this duality further to design a discrete-time, payoff-based learning algorithm which retains these convergence properties and only requires players to observe their in-game payoffs: moreover, the algorithm remains robust in the presence of stochastic perturbations and observation errors, and it does not require any synchronization between players.
1303.2277
Is Learning to Rank Worth It? A Statistical Analysis of Learning to Rank Methods
cs.IR
The Learning to Rank (L2R) research field has experienced a fast paced growth over the last few years, with a wide variety of benchmark datasets and baselines available for experimentation. We here investigate the main assumption behind this field, which is that, the use of sophisticated L2R algorithms and models, produce significant gains over more traditional and simple information retrieval approaches. Our experimental results surprisingly indicate that many L2R algorithms, when put up against the best individual features of each dataset, may not produce statistically significant differences, even if the absolute gains may seem large. We also find that most of the reported baselines are statistically tied, with no clear winner.
1303.2280
Stabilization of Networked Control Systems with Sparse Observer-Controller Networks
math.OC cs.SY
In this paper we provide a set of stability conditions for linear time-invariant networked control systems with arbitrary topology, using a Lyapunov direct approach. We then use these stability conditions to provide a novel low-complexity algorithm for the design of a sparse observer-based control network. We employ distributed observers by employing the output of other nodes to improve the stability of each observer dynamics. To avoid unbounded growth of controller and observer gains, we impose bounds on their norms. The effects of relaxation of these bounds is discussed when trying to find the complete decentralization conditions.
1303.2284
GenomeFingerprinter and universal genome fingerprint analysis for systematic comparative genomics
q-bio.GN cs.CE math.NA
How to compare whole genome sequences at large scale has not been achieved via conventional methods based on pair-wisely base-to-base comparison; nevertheless, no attention was paid to handle in-one-sitting a number of genomes crossing genetic category (chromosome, plasmid, and phage) with farther divergences (much less or no homologous) over large size ranges (from Kbp to Mbp). We created a new method, GenomeFingerprinter, to unambiguously produce three-dimensional coordinates from a sequence, followed by one three-dimensional plot and six two-dimensional trajectory projections to illustrate whole genome fingerprints. We further developed a set of concepts and tools and thereby established a new method, universal genome fingerprint analysis. We demonstrated their applications through case studies on over a hundred of genome sequences. Particularly, we defined the total genetic component configuration (TGCC) (i.e., chromosome, plasmid, and phage) for describing a strain as a system, and the universal genome fingerprint map (UGFM) of TGCC for differentiating a strain as a universal system, as well as the systematic comparative genomics (SCG) for comparing in-one-sitting a number of genomes crossing genetic category in diverse strains. By using UGFM, UGFM-TGCC, and UGFM-TGCC-SCG, we compared a number of genome sequences with farther divergences (chromosome, plasmid, and phage; bacterium, archaeal bacterium, and virus) over large size ranges (6Kbp~5Mbp), giving new insights into critical problematic issues in microbial genomics in the post-genomic era. This paper provided a new method for rapidly computing, geometrically visualizing, and intuitively comparing genome sequences at fingerprint level, and hence established a new method of universal genome fingerprint analysis for systematic comparative genomics.
1303.2289
Distributed optimization over time-varying directed graphs
math.OC cs.DC cs.SY
We consider distributed optimization by a collection of nodes, each having access to its own convex function, whose collective goal is to minimize the sum of the functions. The communications between nodes are described by a time-varying sequence of directed graphs, which is uniformly strongly connected. For such communications, assuming that every node knows its out-degree, we develop a broadcast-based algorithm, termed the subgradient-push, which steers every node to an optimal value under a standard assumption of subgradient boundedness. The subgradient-push requires no knowledge of either the number of agents or the graph sequence to implement. Our analysis shows that the subgradient-push algorithm converges at a rate of $O(\ln(t)/\sqrt{t})$, where the constant depends on the initial values at the nodes, the subgradient norms, and, more interestingly, on both the consensus speed and the imbalances of influence among the nodes.
1303.2292
Intelligent Approaches to interact with Machines using Hand Gesture Recognition in Natural way: A Survey
cs.HC cs.CV
Hand gestures recognition (HGR) is one of the main areas of research for the engineers, scientists and bioinformatics. HGR is the natural way of Human Machine interaction and today many researchers in the academia and industry are working on different application to make interactions more easy, natural and convenient without wearing any extra device. HGR can be applied from games control to vision enabled robot control, from virtual reality to smart home systems. In this paper we are discussing work done in the area of hand gesture recognition where focus is on the intelligent approaches including soft computing based methods like artificial neural network, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms etc. The methods in the preprocessing of image for segmentation and hand image construction also taken into study. Most researchers used fingertips for hand detection in appearance based modeling. Finally the comparison of results given by different researchers is also presented.
1303.2308
Improving adaptation of ubiquitous recommander systems by using reinforcement learning and collaborative filtering
cs.IR
The wide development of mobile applications provides a considerable amount of data of all types (images, texts, sounds, videos, etc.). Thus, two main issues have to be considered: assist users in finding information and reduce search and navigation time. In this sense, context-based recommender systems (CBRS) propose the user the adequate information depending on her/his situation. Our work consists in applying machine learning techniques and reasoning process in order to bring a solution to some of the problems concerning the acceptance of recommender systems by users, namely avoiding the intervention of experts, reducing cold start problem, speeding learning process and adapting to the user's interest. To achieve this goal, we propose a fundamental modification in terms of how we model the learning of the CBRS. Inspired by models of human reasoning developed in robotic, we combine reinforcement learning and case-based reasoning to define a contextual recommendation process based on different context dimensions (cognitive, social, temporal, geographic). This paper describes an ongoing work on the implementation of a CBRS based on a hybrid Q-learning (HyQL) algorithm which combines Q-learning, collaborative filtering and case-based reasoning techniques. It also presents preliminary results by comparing HyQL and the standard Q-Learning w.r.t. solving the cold start problem.
1303.2309
On the Performance Limits of Map-Aware Localization
cs.IT math.IT stat.AP
Establishing bounds on the accuracy achievable by localization techniques represents a fundamental technical issue. Bounds on localization accuracy have been derived for cases in which the position of an agent is estimated on the basis of a set of observations and, possibly, of some a priori information related to them (e.g., information about anchor positions and properties of the communication channel). In this manuscript new bounds are derived under the assumption that the localization system is map-aware, i.e., it can benefit not only from the availability of observations, but also from the a priori knowledge provided by the map of the environment where it operates. Our results show that: a) map-aware estimation accuracy can be related to some features of the map (e.g., its shape and area) even though, in general, the relation is complicated; b) maps are really useful in the presence of some combination of low signal-to-noise ratios and specific geometrical features of the map (e.g., the size of obstructions); c) in most cases, there is no need of refined maps since additional details do not improve estimation accuracy.
1303.2310
Trajectory Based Optimal Segment Computation in Road Network Databases
cs.DB
Finding a location for a new facility such that the facility attracts the maximal number of customers is a challenging problem. Existing studies either model customers as static sites and thus do not consider customer movement, or they focus on theoretical aspects and do not provide solutions that are shown empirically to be scalable. Given a road network, a set of existing facilities, and a collection of customer route traversals, an optimal segment query returns the optimal road network segment(s) for a new facility. We propose a practical framework for computing this query, where each route traversal is assigned a score that is distributed among the road segments covered by the route according to a score distribution model. The query returns the road segment(s) with the highest score. To achieve low latency, it is essential to prune the very large search space. We propose two algorithms that adopt different approaches to computing the query. Algorithm AUG uses graph augmentation, and ITE uses iterative road-network partitioning. Empirical studies with real data sets demonstrate that the algorithms are capable of offering high performance in realistic settings.
1303.2314
Mini-Batch Primal and Dual Methods for SVMs
cs.LG math.OC
We address the issue of using mini-batches in stochastic optimization of SVMs. We show that the same quantity, the spectral norm of the data, controls the parallelization speedup obtained for both primal stochastic subgradient descent (SGD) and stochastic dual coordinate ascent (SCDA) methods and use it to derive novel variants of mini-batched SDCA. Our guarantees for both methods are expressed in terms of the original nonsmooth primal problem based on the hinge-loss.
1303.2330
Image compression using anti-forensics method
cs.MM cs.CV
A large number of image forensics methods are available which are capable of identifying image tampering. But these techniques are not capable of addressing the anti-forensics method which is able to hide the trace of image tampering. In this paper anti-forensics method for digital image compression has been proposed. This anti-forensics method is capable of removing the traces of image compression. Additionally, technique is also able to remove the traces of blocking artifact that are left by image compression algorithms that divide an image into segments during compression process. This method is targeted to remove the compression fingerprints of JPEG compression.
1303.2364
The Multidimensional Study of Viral Campaigns as Branching Processes
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Viral campaigns on the Internet may follow variety of models, depending on the content, incentives, personal attitudes of sender and recipient to the content and other factors. Due to the fact that the knowledge of the campaign specifics is essential for the campaign managers, researchers are constantly evaluating models and real-world data. The goal of this article is to present the new knowledge obtained from studying two viral campaigns that took place in a virtual world which followed the branching process. The results show that it is possible to reduce the time needed to estimate the model parameters of the campaign and, moreover, some important aspects of time-generations relationship are presented.
1303.2365
Studying Paths of Participation in Viral Diffusion Process
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Authors propose a conceptual model of participation in viral diffusion process composed of four stages: awareness, infection, engagement and action. To verify the model it has been applied and studied in the virtual social chat environment settings. The study investigates the behavioral paths of actions that reflect the stages of participation in the diffusion and presents shortcuts, that lead to the final action, i.e. the attendance in a virtual event. The results show that the participation in each stage of the process increases the probability of reaching the final action. Nevertheless, the majority of users involved in the virtual event did not go through each stage of the process but followed the shortcuts. That suggests that the viral diffusion process is not necessarily a linear sequence of human actions but rather a dynamic system.
1303.2369
Negative Effects of Incentivised Viral Campaigns for Activity in Social Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Viral campaigns are crucial methods for word-of-mouth marketing in social communities. The goal of these campaigns is to encourage people for activity. The problem of incentivised and non-incentivised campaigns is studied in the paper. Based on the data collected within the real social networking site both approaches were compared. The experimental results revealed that a highly motivated campaign not necessarily provides better results due to overlapping effect. Additional studies have shown that the behaviour of individual community members in the campaign based on their service profile can be predicted but the classification accuracy may be limited.
1303.2379
Conditions for Robustness of Polar Codes in the Presence of Channel Mismatch
cs.IT math.IT
A challenging problem related to the design of polar codes is "robustness against channel parameter variations" as stated in Ar{\i}kan's original work. In this paper, we describe how the problem of robust polar code design can be viewed as a mismatch decoding problem. We propose conditions which ensure a polar encoder/decoder designed for a mismatched B-DMC can be used to communicate reliably. In particular, the analysis shows that the original polar code construction method is robust over the class of binary symmetric channels.
1303.2389
Maximin Analysis of Message Passing Algorithms for Recovering Block Sparse Signals
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of recovering a block (or group) sparse signal from an underdetermined set of random linear measurements, which appear in compressed sensing applications such as radar and imaging. Recent results of Donoho, Johnstone, and Montanari have shown that approximate message passing (AMP) in combination with Stein's shrinkage outperforms group LASSO for large block sizes. In this paper, we prove that, for a fixed block size and in the strong undersampling regime (i.e., having very few measurements compared to the ambient dimension), AMP cannot improve upon group LASSO, thereby complementing the results of Donoho et al.
1303.2395
State estimation under non-Gaussian Levy noise: A modified Kalman filtering method
math.DS cs.IT cs.LG math.IT math.PR stat.ML
The Kalman filter is extensively used for state estimation for linear systems under Gaussian noise. When non-Gaussian L\'evy noise is present, the conventional Kalman filter may fail to be effective due to the fact that the non-Gaussian L\'evy noise may have infinite variance. A modified Kalman filter for linear systems with non-Gaussian L\'evy noise is devised. It works effectively with reasonable computational cost. Simulation results are presented to illustrate this non-Gaussian filtering method.
1303.2409
Finite-time Stabilization of Circular Formations using Bearing-only Measurements
cs.SY math.OC
This paper studies decentralized formation control of multiple vehicles when each vehicle can only measure the local bearings of their neighbors by using bearing-only sensors. Since the inter-vehicle distance cannot be measured, the target formation involves no distance constraints. More specifically, the target formation considered in this paper is an angle-constrained circular formation, where each vehicle has exactly two neighbors and the angle at each vehicle subtended by its two neighbors is pre-specified. To stabilize the target formation, we propose a discontinuous control law that only requires the sign information of the angle errors. Due to the discontinuity of the proposed control law, the stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed by employing a locally Lipschitz Lyapunov function and nonsmooth analysis tools. We prove that the target formation is locally finite-time stable with collision avoidance guaranteed. The evolution of the vehicle positions in the plane is also characterized.
1303.2414
A Bayesian Approach to Data Fusion in Sensor Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we address the fusion problem in wireless sensor networks, where the cross-correlation between the estimates is unknown. To solve the problem within the Bayesian framework, we assume that the covariance matrix has a prior distribution. We also assume that we know the covariance of each estimate, i.e., the diagonal block of the entire covariance matrix (of the random vector consisting of the two estimates). We then derive the conditional distribution of the off-diagonal blocks, which is the cross-correlation of our interest. We show that when there are two nodes, the conditional distribution happens to be the inverted matrix variate $t$-distribution, from which we can readily sample. For more than two nodes, the conditional distribution is no longer the inverted matrix variate $t$-distribution. But we show that we can decompose it into several sampling problems, each of which is the inverted matrix variate $t$-distribution and therefore we can still sample from it. Since we can sample from this distribution, it enables us to use the Monte Carlo method to compute the minimum mean square error estimate for the fusion problem. We use two models to generate experiment data and demonstrate the generality of our method. Simulation results show that the proposed method works better than the popular covariance intersection method.
1303.2417
Linear NDCG and Pair-wise Loss
cs.LG stat.ML
Linear NDCG is used for measuring the performance of the Web content quality assessment in ECML/PKDD Discovery Challenge 2010. In this paper, we will prove that the DCG error equals a new pair-wise loss.
1303.2430
Quantum and Concept Combination, Entangled Measurements and Prototype Theory
cs.AI cs.CL quant-ph
We analyze the meaning of the violation of the marginal probability law for situations of correlation measurements where entanglement is identified. We show that for quantum theory applied to the cognitive realm such a violation does not lead to the type of problems commonly believed to occur in situations of quantum theory applied to the physical realm. We briefly situate our quantum approach for modeling concepts and their combinations with respect to the notions of 'extension' and 'intension' in theories of meaning, and in existing concept theories.
1303.2437
Least-Squares FIR Models of Low-Resolution MR data for Efficient Phase-Error Compensation with Simultaneous Artefact Removal
cs.CV
Signal space models in both phase-encode, and frequency-encode directions are presented for extrapolation of 2D partial kspace. Using the boxcar representation of low-resolution spatial data, and a geometrical representation of signal space vectors in both positive and negative phase-encode directions, a robust predictor is constructed using a series of signal space projections. Compared to some of the existing phase-correction methods that require acquisition of a pre-determined set of fractional kspace lines, the proposed predictor is found to be more efficient, due to its capability of exhibiting an equivalent degree of performance using only half the number of fractional lines. Robust filtering of noisy data is achieved using a second signal space model in the frequency-encode direction, bypassing the requirement of a prior highpass filtering operation. The signal space is constructed from Fourier Transformed samples of each row in the low-resolution image. A set of FIR filters are estimated by fitting a least squares model to this signal space. Partial kspace extrapolation using the FIR filters is shown to result in artifact-free reconstruction, particularly in respect of Gibbs ringing and streaking type artifacts.
1303.2438
A Taxonomy of Hyperlink Hiding Techniques
cs.IR
Hidden links are designed solely for search engines rather than visitors. To get high search engine rankings, link hiding techniques are usually used for the profitability of black industries, such as illicit game servers, false medical services, illegal gambling, and less attractive high-profit industry, etc. This paper investigates hyperlink hiding techniques on the Web, and gives a detailed taxonomy. We believe the taxonomy can help develop appropriate countermeasures. Study on 5,583,451 Chinese sites' home pages indicate that link hidden techniques are very prevalent on the Web. We also tried to explore the attitude of Google towards link hiding spam by analyzing the PageRank values of relative links. The results show that more should be done to punish the hidden link spam.
1303.2439
Voxel-wise Weighted MR Image Enhancement using an Extended Neighborhood Filter
cs.CV
We present an edge preserving and denoising filter for enhancing the features in images, which contain an ROI having a narrow spatial extent. Typical examples include angiograms, or ROI spatially distributed in multiple locations and contained within an outlying region, such as in multiple-sclerosis. The filtering involves determination of multiplicative weights in the spatial domain using an extended set of neighborhood directions. Equivalently, the filtering operation may be interpreted as a combination of directional filters in the frequency domain, with selective weighting for spatial frequencies contained within each direction. The advantages of the proposed filter in comparison to specialized non-linear filters, which operate on diffusion principle, are illustrated using numerical phantom data. The performance evaluation is carried out on simulated images from BrainWeb database for multiple-sclerosis, acute ischemic stroke using clinically acquired FLAIR images and MR angiograms.
1303.2446
Broadening the Scope of Nanopublications
cs.DL cs.IR
In this paper, we present an approach for extending the existing concept of nanopublications --- tiny entities of scientific results in RDF representation --- to broaden their application range. The proposed extension uses English sentences to represent informal and underspecified scientific claims. These sentences follow a syntactic and semantic scheme that we call AIDA (Atomic, Independent, Declarative, Absolute), which provides a uniform and succinct representation of scientific assertions. Such AIDA nanopublications are compatible with the existing nanopublication concept and enjoy most of its advantages such as information sharing, interlinking of scientific findings, and detailed attribution, while being more flexible and applicable to a much wider range of scientific results. We show that users are able to create AIDA sentences for given scientific results quickly and at high quality, and that it is feasible to automatically extract and interlink AIDA nanopublications from existing unstructured data sources. To demonstrate our approach, a web-based interface is introduced, which also exemplifies the use of nanopublications for non-scientific content, including meta-nanopublications that describe other nanopublications.
1303.2448
Automatic Detection of Non-deverbal Event Nouns for Quick Lexicon Production
cs.CL
In this work we present the results of our experimental work on the develop-ment of lexical class-based lexica by automatic means. The objective is to as-sess the use of linguistic lexical-class based information as a feature selection methodology for the use of classifiers in quick lexical development. The results show that the approach can help in re-ducing the human effort required in the development of language resources sig-nificantly.
1303.2449
Using qualia information to identify lexical semantic classes in an unsupervised clustering task
cs.CL
Acquiring lexical information is a complex problem, typically approached by relying on a number of contexts to contribute information for classification. One of the first issues to address in this domain is the determination of such contexts. The work presented here proposes the use of automatically obtained FORMAL role descriptors as features used to draw nouns from the same lexical semantic class together in an unsupervised clustering task. We have dealt with three lexical semantic classes (HUMAN, LOCATION and EVENT) in English. The results obtained show that it is possible to discriminate between elements from different lexical semantic classes using only FORMAL role information, hence validating our initial hypothesis. Also, iterating our method accurately accounts for fine-grained distinctions within lexical classes, namely distinctions involving ambiguous expressions. Moreover, a filtering and bootstrapping strategy employed in extracting FORMAL role descriptors proved to minimize effects of sparse data and noise in our task.
1303.2465
A Low-Complexity Algorithm for Static Background Estimation from Cluttered Image Sequences in Surveillance Contexts
cs.CV
For the purposes of foreground estimation, the true background model is unavailable in many practical circumstances and needs to be estimated from cluttered image sequences. We propose a sequential technique for static background estimation in such conditions, with low computational and memory requirements. Image sequences are analysed on a block-by-block basis. For each block location a representative set is maintained which contains distinct blocks obtained along its temporal line. The background estimation is carried out in a Markov Random Field framework, where the optimal labelling solution is computed using iterated conditional modes. The clique potentials are computed based on the combined frequency response of the candidate block and its neighbourhood. It is assumed that the most appropriate block results in the smoothest response, indirectly enforcing the spatial continuity of structures within a scene. Experiments on real-life surveillance videos demonstrate that the proposed method obtains considerably better background estimates (both qualitatively and quantitatively) than median filtering and the recently proposed "intervals of stable intensity" method. Further experiments on the Wallflower dataset suggest that the combination of the proposed method with a foreground segmentation algorithm results in improved foreground segmentation.
1303.2506
Monte-Carlo utility estimates for Bayesian reinforcement learning
cs.LG stat.ML
This paper introduces a set of algorithms for Monte-Carlo Bayesian reinforcement learning. Firstly, Monte-Carlo estimation of upper bounds on the Bayes-optimal value function is employed to construct an optimistic policy. Secondly, gradient-based algorithms for approximate upper and lower bounds are introduced. Finally, we introduce a new class of gradient algorithms for Bayesian Bellman error minimisation. We theoretically show that the gradient methods are sound. Experimentally, we demonstrate the superiority of the upper bound method in terms of reward obtained. However, we also show that the Bayesian Bellman error method is a close second, despite its significant computational simplicity.
1303.2542
Robust Smoothing for Estimating Optical Phase Varying as a Continuous Resonant Process
math.OC cs.SY quant-ph
Continuous phase estimation is known to be superior in accuracy as compared to static estimation. The estimation process is, however, desired to be made robust to uncertainties in the underlying parameters. Here, homodyne phase estimation of coherent and squeezed states of light, evolving continuously under the influence of a second-order resonant noise process, are made robust to parameter uncertainties using a robust fixed-interval smoother, designed for uncertain systems satisfying a certain integral quadratic constraint. We observe that such a robust smoother provides improved worst-case performance over the optimal smoother and also performs better than a robust filter for the uncertain system.
1303.2545
Optimization of the parity-check matrix density in QC-LDPC code-based McEliece cryptosystems
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are one of the most promising families of codes to replace the Goppa codes originally used in the McEliece cryptosystem. In fact, it has been shown that by using quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes in this system, drastic reductions in the public key size can be achieved, while maintaining fixed security levels. Recently, some proposals have appeared in the literature using codes with denser parity-check matrices, named moderate-density parity-check (MDPC) codes. However, the density of the parity-check matrices to be used in QC-LDPC code-based variants of the McEliece cryptosystem has never been optimized. This paper aims at filling such gap, by proposing a procedure for selecting the density of the private parity-check matrix, based on the security level and the decryption complexity. We provide some examples of the system parameters obtained through the proposed technique.
1303.2547
On a family of binary completely transitive codes with growing covering radius
cs.IT math.IT
A new family of binary linear completely transitive (and, therefore, completely regular) codes is constructed. The covering radius of these codes is growing with the length of the code. In particular, for any integer r > 1, there exist two codes with d=3, covering radius r and length 2r(4r-1) and (2r+1)(4r+1), respectively. These new completely transitive codes induce, as coset graphs, a family of distance-transitive graphs of growing diameter.
1303.2579
One-shot source coding with coded side information available at the decoder
cs.IT math.IT
One-shot achievable rate region for source coding when coded side information is available at the decoder (source coding with a helper) is proposed. The achievable region proposed is in terms of conditional smooth max Renyi entropy and smooth max Renyi divergence. Asymptotically (in the limit of large block lengths) this region is quantified in terms of spectral-sup conditional entropy rate and spectral- sup mutual information rate. In particular, it coincides with the rate region derived in the limit of unlimited independent and identically distributed copies of the sources.
1303.2587
Multicell Random Beamforming with CDF-based Scheduling: Exact Rate and Scaling Laws
cs.IT math.IT
In a multicell multiuser MIMO downlink employing random beamforming as the transmission scheme, the heterogeneous large scale channel effects of intercell and intracell interference complicate analysis of distributed scheduling based systems. In this paper, we extend the analysis in [1] and [2] to study the aforementioned challenging scenario. The cumulative distribution function (CDF)-based scheduling policy utilized in [1] and [2] is leveraged to maintain fairness among users and simultaneously obtain multiuser diversity gain. The closed form expression of the individual sum rate for each user is derived under the CDF-based scheduling policy. More importantly, with this distributed scheduling policy, we conduct asymptotic (in users) analysis to determine the limiting distribution of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio, and establish the individual scaling laws for each user.
1303.2595
Integrating Space, Time, Version and Scale Using Alexandrov Topologies
cs.DB
This article introduces a novel approach to spatial database design. Instead of extending the canonical Solid-Face-Edge-Vertex schema by, say, "hypersolids" these classes are generalised to a common type SpatialEntity, and the individual BoundedBy relations between two consecutive classes are generalised to one BoundedBy relation on SpatialEntity instances. Then the pair (SpatialEntity, BoundedBy) is a so-called incidence graph. The novelty about this approach uses the observation that an incidence graph represents a topological space of SpatialEntity instances because the BoundedBy-relation defines a so-called Alexandrov topology for them turning them into a topological space. So spatial data becomes part of mathematical topology and topology can be immediately applied to spatial data. For example, continuous functions between two instances of spatial data allow the consistent modelling of generalisation. Further, it is also possible to establish a formal topological definition of spatial data dimension, and every topological data model of arbitrary dimension gets a simple uniform data model. This model covers space-time, and the version history of a spatial model can be represented by an Alexandrov topology, too. By integrating space, time, version, and scale into one single schema, topological queries across those aspects are enabled through topological constructions. In fact, the topological constructions cover a relationally complete query language for spaces and can be redefined to operate accordingly on their graph representations. With these observations a relational database schema for a spatial data model of dimension 6 and more is developed. The schema seamlessly integrates 4D space-time, levels of detail and version history, and it can be easily expanded to also contain non-spatial information or be linked to other data sources.
1303.2607
Joint optimization of fitting & matching in multi-view reconstruction
cs.CV
Many standard approaches for geometric model fitting are based on pre-matched image features. Typically, such pre-matching uses only feature appearances (e.g. SIFT) and a large number of non-unique features must be discarded in order to control the false positive rate. In contrast, we solve feature matching and multi-model fitting problems in a joint optimization framework. This paper proposes several fit-&-match energy formulations based on a generalization of the assignment problem. We developed an efficient solver based on min-cost-max-flow algorithm that finds near optimal solutions. Our approach significantly increases the number of detected matches. In practice, energy-based joint fitting & matching allows to increase the distance between view-points previously restricted by robustness of local SIFT-matching and to improve the model fitting accuracy when compared to state-of-the-art multi-model fitting techniques.
1303.2610
Kernel Sparse Models for Automated Tumor Segmentation
cs.CV
In this paper, we propose sparse coding-based approaches for segmentation of tumor regions from MR images. Sparse coding with data-adapted dictionaries has been successfully employed in several image recovery and vision problems. The proposed approaches obtain sparse codes for each pixel in brain magnetic resonance images considering their intensity values and location information. Since it is trivial to obtain pixel-wise sparse codes, and combining multiple features in the sparse coding setup is not straightforward, we propose to perform sparse coding in a high-dimensional feature space where non-linear similarities can be effectively modeled. We use the training data from expert-segmented images to obtain kernel dictionaries with the kernel K-lines clustering procedure. For a test image, sparse codes are computed with these kernel dictionaries, and they are used to identify the tumor regions. This approach is completely automated, and does not require user intervention to initialize the tumor regions in a test image. Furthermore, a low complexity segmentation approach based on kernel sparse codes, which allows the user to initialize the tumor region, is also presented. Results obtained with both the proposed approaches are validated against manual segmentation by an expert radiologist, and the proposed methods lead to accurate tumor identification.
1303.2631
Quantum filtering using POVM measurements
quant-ph cs.SY math.PR
The objective of this work is to develop a recursive, discrete time quantum filtering equation for a system that interacts with a probe, on which measurements are performed according to the Positive Operator Valued Measures (POVMs) framework. POVMs are the most general measurements one can make on a quantum system and although in principle they can be reformulated as projective measurements on larger spaces, for which filtering results exist, a direct treatment of POVMs is more natural and can simplify the filter computations for some applications. Hence we formalize the notion of strongly commuting (Davies) instruments which allows one to develop joint measurement statistics for POVM type measurements. This allows us to prove the existence of conditional POVMs, which is essential for the development of a filtering equation. We demonstrate that under generally satisfied assumptions, knowing the observed probe POVM operator is sufficient to uniquely specify the quantum filtering evolution for the system.
1303.2636
Energy Cooperation in Energy Harvesting Communications
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
In energy harvesting communications, users transmit messages using energy harvested from nature during the course of communication. With an optimum transmit policy, the performance of the system depends only on the energy arrival profiles. In this paper, we introduce the concept of energy cooperation, where a user wirelessly transmits a portion of its energy to another energy harvesting user. This enables shaping and optimization of the energy arrivals at the energy-receiving node, and improves the overall system performance, despite the loss incurred in energy transfer. We consider several basic multi-user network structures with energy harvesting and wireless energy transfer capabilities: relay channel, two-way channel and multiple access channel. We determine energy management policies that maximize the system throughput within a given duration using a Lagrangian formulation and the resulting KKT optimality conditions. We develop a two-dimensional directional water-filling algorithm which optimally controls the flow of harvested energy in two dimensions: in time (from past to future) and among users (from energy-transferring to energy-receiving) and show that a generalized version of this algorithm achieves the boundary of the capacity region of the two-way channel.
1303.2643
Revealing Cluster Structure of Graph by Path Following Replicator Dynamic
cs.LG cs.GT
In this paper, we propose a path following replicator dynamic, and investigate its potentials in uncovering the underlying cluster structure of a graph. The proposed dynamic is a generalization of the discrete replicator dynamic. The replicator dynamic has been successfully used to extract dense clusters of graphs; however, it is often sensitive to the degree distribution of a graph, and usually biased by vertices with large degrees, thus may fail to detect the densest cluster. To overcome this problem, we introduce a dynamic parameter, called path parameter, into the evolution process. The path parameter can be interpreted as the maximal possible probability of a current cluster containing a vertex, and it monotonically increases as evolution process proceeds. By limiting the maximal probability, the phenomenon of some vertices dominating the early stage of evolution process is suppressed, thus making evolution process more robust. To solve the optimization problem with a fixed path parameter, we propose an efficient fixed point algorithm. The time complexity of the path following replicator dynamic is only linear in the number of edges of a graph, thus it can analyze graphs with millions of vertices and tens of millions of edges on a common PC in a few minutes. Besides, it can be naturally generalized to hypergraph and graph with edges of different orders. We apply it to four important problems: maximum clique problem, densest k-subgraph problem, structure fitting, and discovery of high-density regions. The extensive experimental results clearly demonstrate its advantages, in terms of robustness, scalability and flexility.
1303.2651
Hybrid Q-Learning Applied to Ubiquitous recommender system
cs.LG cs.IR
Ubiquitous information access becomes more and more important nowadays and research is aimed at making it adapted to users. Our work consists in applying machine learning techniques in order to bring a solution to some of the problems concerning the acceptance of the system by users. To achieve this, we propose a fundamental shift in terms of how we model the learning of recommender system: inspired by models of human reasoning developed in robotic, we combine reinforcement learning and case-base reasoning to define a recommendation process that uses these two approaches for generating recommendations on different context dimensions (social, temporal, geographic). We describe an implementation of the recommender system based on this framework. We also present preliminary results from experiments with the system and show how our approach increases the recommendation quality.
1303.2663
Spectral Clustering with Epidemic Diffusion
cs.SI cs.LG physics.soc-ph stat.ML
Spectral clustering is widely used to partition graphs into distinct modules or communities. Existing methods for spectral clustering use the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian, an operator that is closely associated with random walks on graphs. We propose a new spectral partitioning method that exploits the properties of epidemic diffusion. An epidemic is a dynamic process that, unlike the random walk, simultaneously transitions to all the neighbors of a given node. We show that the replicator, an operator describing epidemic diffusion, is equivalent to the symmetric normalized Laplacian of a reweighted graph with edges reweighted by the eigenvector centralities of their incident nodes. Thus, more weight is given to edges connecting more central nodes. We describe a method that partitions the nodes based on the componentwise ratio of the replicator's second eigenvector to the first, and compare its performance to traditional spectral clustering techniques on synthetic graphs with known community structure. We demonstrate that the replicator gives preference to dense, clique-like structures, enabling it to more effectively discover communities that may be obscured by dense intercommunity linking.
1303.2685
Bilateral Filter: Graph Spectral Interpretation and Extensions
cs.CV
In this paper we study the bilateral filter proposed by Tomasi and Manduchi, as a spectral domain transform defined on a weighted graph. The nodes of this graph represent the pixels in the image and a graph signal defined on the nodes represents the intensity values. Edge weights in the graph correspond to the bilateral filter coefficients and hence are data adaptive. Spectrum of a graph is defined in terms of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian matrix. We use this spectral interpretation to generalize the bilateral filter and propose more flexible and application specific spectral designs of bilateral-like filters. We show that these spectral filters can be implemented with k-iterative bilateral filtering operations and do not require expensive diagonalization of the Laplacian matrix.
1303.2709
Resilient Continuous-Time Consensus in Fractional Robust Networks
cs.SY
In this paper, we study the continuous-time consensus problem in the presence of adversaries. The networked multi-agent system is modeled as a switched system, where the normal agents have integrator dynamics and the switching signal determines the topology of the network. We consider several models of omniscient adversaries under the assumption that at most a fraction of any normal agent's neighbors may be adversaries. Under this fractional assumption on the interaction between normal and adversary agents, we show that a novel graph theoretic metric, called fractional robustness, is useful for analyzing the network topologies under which the normal agents achieve consensus.
1303.2720
Low-Complexity Constrained Constant Modulus SG-based Beamforming Algorithms with Variable Step Size
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, two low-complexity adaptive step size algorithms are investigated for blind adaptive beamforming. Both of them are used in a stochastic gradient (SG) algorithm, which employs the constrained constant modulus (CCM) criterion as the design approach. A brief analysis is given for illustrating their properties. Simulations are performed to compare the performances of the novel algorithms with other well-known methods. Results indicate that the proposed algorithms achieve superior performance, better convergence behavior and lower computational complexity in both stationary and non-stationary environments.
1303.2721
Guaranteed Performance Leader-follower Control for Multi-agent Systems with Linear IQC-Constrained Coupling
cs.SY
This paper considers the leader-follower control problem for a linear multi-agent system with undirected topology and linear coupling subject to integral quadratic constraints (IQCs). A consensus-type control protocol is proposed based on each agent's states relative its neighbors. In addition a selected set of agents uses for control their states relative the leader. Using a coordinate transformation, the consensus analysis of the multi-agent system is recast as a decentralized robust control problem for an auxiliary interconnected large scale system. Based on this interconnected large scale system, sufficient conditions are obtained which guarantee that the system tracks the leader. These conditions guarantee a suboptimal bound on the system tracking performance. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated using a simulation example.
1303.2725
Robust blind methods using $\ell_p$ quasi norms
cs.IT math.IT
It was shown in a previous work that some blind methods can be made robust to channel order overmodeling by using the $\ell_1$ or $\ell_p$ quasi-norms. However, no theoretical argument has been provided to support this statement. In this work, we study the robustness of subspace blind based methods using $\ell_1$ or $\ell_p$ quasi-norms. For the $\ell_1$ norm, we provide the sufficient and necessary condition that the channel should satisfy in order to ensure its identifiability in the noise-less case. We then study its frequency of occurrence, and deduce the effect of channel parameters on the robustness of blind subspace methods using $\ell_1$ norms.
1303.2735
Efficient Codes for Limited View Adversarial Channels
cs.IT math.IT
We introduce randomized Limited View (LV) adversary codes that provide protection against an adversary that uses their partial view of the communication to construct an adversarial error vector to be added to the channel. For a codeword of length N, the adversary selects a subset of \rho_rN of the codeword components to "see", and then "adds" an adversarial error vector of weight \rho_wN to the codeword. Performance of the code is measured by the probability of the decoder failure in recovering the sent message. An (N, q^{RN},\delta)-limited view adversary code ensures that the success chance of the adversary in making decoder fail, is bounded by \delta when the information rate of the code is at least R. Our main motivation to study these codes is providing protection for wireless communication at the physical layer of networks. We formalize the definition of adversarial error and decoder failure, construct a code with efficient encoding and decoding that allows the adversary to, depending on the code rate, read up to half of the sent codeword and add error on the same coordinates. The code is non-linear, has an efficient decoding algorithm, and is constructed using a message authentication code (MAC) and a Folded Reed-Solomon (FRS) code. The decoding algorithm uses an innovative approach that combines the list decoding algorithm of the FRS codes and the MAC verification algorithm to eliminate the exponential size of the list output from the decoding algorithm. We discuss application of our results to Reliable Message Transmission problem, and open problems for future work.
1303.2739
Machine Learning for Bioclimatic Modelling
cs.LG stat.AP
Many machine learning (ML) approaches are widely used to generate bioclimatic models for prediction of geographic range of organism as a function of climate. Applications such as prediction of range shift in organism, range of invasive species influenced by climate change are important parameters in understanding the impact of climate change. However, success of machine learning-based approaches depends on a number of factors. While it can be safely said that no particular ML technique can be effective in all applications and success of a technique is predominantly dependent on the application or the type of the problem, it is useful to understand their behavior to ensure informed choice of techniques. This paper presents a comprehensive review of machine learning-based bioclimatic model generation and analyses the factors influencing success of such models. Considering the wide use of statistical techniques, in our discussion we also include conventional statistical techniques used in bioclimatic modelling.
1303.2745
Evolutionary Approaches to Expensive Optimisation
cs.NE
Surrogate assisted evolutionary algorithms (EA) are rapidly gaining popularity where applications of EA in complex real world problem domains are concerned. Although EAs are powerful global optimizers, finding optimal solution to complex high dimensional, multimodal problems often require very expensive fitness function evaluations. Needless to say, this could brand any population-based iterative optimization technique to be the most crippling choice to handle such problems. Use of approximate model or surrogates provides a much cheaper option. However, naturally this cheaper option comes with its own price. This paper discusses some of the key issues involved with use of approximation in evolutionary algorithm, possible best practices and solutions. Answers to the following questions have been sought: what type of fitness approximation to be used; which approximation model to use; how to integrate the approximation model in EA; how much approximation to use; and how to ensure reliable approximation.
1303.2751
Gaussian Mixture Model for Handwritten Script Identification
cs.CV
This paper presents a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) to identify the script of handwritten words of Roman, Devanagari, Kannada and Telugu scripts. It emphasizes the significance of directional energies for identification of script of the word. It is robust to varied image sizes and different styles of writing. A GMM is modeled using a set of six novel features derived from directional energy distributions of the underlying image. The standard deviation of directional energy distributions are computed by decomposing an image matrix into right and left diagonals. Furthermore, deviation of horizontal and vertical distributions of energies is also built-in to GMM. A dataset of 400 images out of 800 (200 of each script) are used for training GMM and the remaining is for testing. An exhaustive experimentation is carried out at bi-script, tri-script and multi-script level and achieved script identification accuracies in percentage as 98.7, 98.16 and 96.91 respectively.
1303.2766
Optimized Transmission with Improper Gaussian Signaling in the K-User MISO Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the achievable rate region of the K-user Gaussian multiple-input single-output interference channel (MISO-IC) with the interference treated as noise, when improper or circularly asymmetric complex Gaussian signaling is applied. The transmit optimization with improper Gaussian signaling involves not only the signal covariance matrix as in the conventional proper or circularly symmetric Gaussian signaling, but also the signal pseudo-covariance matrix, which is conventionally set to zero in proper Gaussian signaling. By exploiting the separable rate expression with improper Gaussian signaling, we propose a separate transmit covariance and pseudo-covariance optimization algorithm, which is guaranteed to improve the users' achievable rates over the conventional proper Gaussian signaling. In particular, for the pseudo-covariance optimization, we establish the optimality of rank-1 pseudo-covariance matrices, given the optimal rank-1 transmit covariance matrices for achieving the Pareto boundary of the rate region. Based on this result, we are able to greatly reduce the number of variables in the pseudo-covariance optimization problem and thereby develop an efficient solution by applying the celebrated semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique. Finally, we extend the result to the Gaussian MISO broadcast channel (MISO-BC) with improper Gaussian signaling or so-called widely linear transmit precoding.
1303.2774
Joint Beamforming and Power Control in Coordinated Multicell: Max-Min Duality, Effective Network and Large System Transition
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies joint beamforming and power control in a coordinated multicell downlink system that serves multiple users per cell to maximize the minimum weighted signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio. The optimal solution and distributed algorithm with geometrically fast convergence rate are derived by employing the nonlinear Perron-Frobenius theory and the multicell network duality. The iterative algorithm, though operating in a distributed manner, still requires instantaneous power update within the coordinated cluster through the backhaul. The backhaul information exchange and message passing may become prohibitive with increasing number of transmit antennas and increasing number of users. In order to derive asymptotically optimal solution, random matrix theory is leveraged to design a distributed algorithm that only requires statistical information. The advantage of our approach is that there is no instantaneous power update through backhaul. Moreover, by using nonlinear Perron-Frobenius theory and random matrix theory, an effective primal network and an effective dual network are proposed to characterize and interpret the asymptotic solution.
1303.2783
Combined Learning of Salient Local Descriptors and Distance Metrics for Image Set Face Verification
cs.CV
In contrast to comparing faces via single exemplars, matching sets of face images increases robustness and discrimination performance. Recent image set matching approaches typically measure similarities between subspaces or manifolds, while representing faces in a rigid and holistic manner. Such representations are easily affected by variations in terms of alignment, illumination, pose and expression. While local feature based representations are considerably more robust to such variations, they have received little attention within the image set matching area. We propose a novel image set matching technique, comprised of three aspects: (i) robust descriptors of face regions based on local features, partly inspired by the hierarchy in the human visual system, (ii) use of several subspace and exemplar metrics to compare corresponding face regions, (iii) jointly learning which regions are the most discriminative while finding the optimal mixing weights for combining metrics. Face recognition experiments on LFW, PIE and MOBIO face datasets show that the proposed algorithm obtains considerably better performance than several recent state-of-the-art techniques, such as Local Principal Angle and the Kernel Affine Hull Method.
1303.2789
A Cooperative Q-learning Approach for Real-time Power Allocation in Femtocell Networks
cs.MA cs.LG
In this paper, we address the problem of distributed interference management of cognitive femtocells that share the same frequency range with macrocells (primary user) using distributed multi-agent Q-learning. We formulate and solve three problems representing three different Q-learning algorithms: namely, centralized, distributed and partially distributed power control using Q-learning (CPC-Q, DPC-Q and PDPC-Q). CPCQ, although not of practical interest, characterizes the global optimum. Each of DPC-Q and PDPC-Q works in two different learning paradigms: Independent (IL) and Cooperative (CL). The former is considered the simplest form for applying Qlearning in multi-agent scenarios, where all the femtocells learn independently. The latter is the proposed scheme in which femtocells share partial information during the learning process in order to strike a balance between practical relevance and performance. In terms of performance, the simulation results showed that the CL paradigm outperforms the IL paradigm and achieves an aggregate femtocells capacity that is very close to the optimal one. For the practical relevance issue, we evaluate the robustness and scalability of DPC-Q, in real time, by deploying new femtocells in the system during the learning process, where we showed that DPC-Q in the CL paradigm is scalable to large number of femtocells and more robust to the network dynamics compared to the IL paradigm
1303.2792
Modeling Basic Aspects of Cyber-Physical Systems
cs.RO
Designing novel cyber-physical systems entails significant, costly physical experimentation. Simulation tools can enable the virtualization of experiments. Unfortunately, current tools have shortcomings that limit their utility for virtual experimentation. Language research can be especially helpful in addressing many of these problems. As a first step in this direction, we consider the question of determining what language features are needed to model cyber-physical systems. Using a series of elementary examples of cyber-physical systems, we reflect on the extent to which a small, experimental domain-specific formalism called Acumen suffices for this purpose.
1303.2799
Spectral Compressive Sensing with Polar Interpolation
cs.IT math.IT
Existing approaches to compressive sensing of frequency-sparse signals focuses on signal recovery rather than spectral estimation. Furthermore, the recovery performance is limited by the coherence of the required sparsity dictionaries and by the discretization of the frequency parameter space. In this paper, we introduce a greedy recovery algorithm that leverages a band-exclusion function and a polar interpolation function to address these two issues in spectral compressive sensing. Our algorithm is geared towards line spectral estimation from compressive measurements and outperforms most existing approaches in fidelity and tolerance to noise.
1303.2812
Energy-Efficient Power Control for Contention-Based Synchronization in OFDMA Systems with Discrete Powers and Limited Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
This work derives a distributed and iterative algorithm by which mobile terminals can selfishly control their transmit powers during the synchronization procedure specified by the IEEE 802.16m and the 3GPP-LTE standards for orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access technologies. The proposed solution aims at maximizing the energy efficiency of the network and is derived on the basis of a finite noncooperative game in which the players have discrete action sets of transmit powers. The set of Nash equilibria of the game is investigated, and a distributed power control algorithm is proposed to achieve synchronization in an energy-efficient manner under the assumption that the feedback from the base station is limited. Numerical results show that the proposed solution improves the energy efficiency as well as the timing estimation accuracy of the network compared to existing alternatives, while requiring a reasonable amount of information to be exchanged on the return channel.
1303.2817
A Tutorial on the Optimization of Amplify-and-Forward MIMO Relay Systems
cs.IT math.IT
The remarkable promise of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless channels has motivated an intense research activity to characterize the theoretical and practical issues associated with the design of transmit (source) and receive (destination) processing matrices under different operating conditions. This activity was primarily focused on point-to-point (single-hop) communications but more recently there has been an extensive work on two-hop or multi-hop settings in which single or multiple relays are used to deliver the information from the source to the destination. The aim of this tutorial is to provide an up-to-date overview of the fundamental results and practical implementation issues of designing amplify-and-forward MIMO relay systems.
1303.2820
Power Allocation in Two-Hop Amplify-and-Forward MIMO Relay Systems with QoS requirements
cs.IT math.IT
The problem of minimizing the total power consumption while satisfying different quality-of-service (QoS) requirements in a two-hop multiple-input multiple-output network with a single non-regenerative relay is considered. As shown by Y. Rong in [1], the optimal processing matrices for both linear and non-linear transceiver architectures lead to the diagonalization of the source-relay-destination channel so that the power minimization problem reduces to properly allocating the available power over the established links. Unfortunately, finding the solution of this problem is numerically difficult as it is not in a convex form. To overcome this difficulty, existing solutions rely on the computation of upper- and lower-bounds that are hard to obtain or require the relaxation of the QoS constraints. In this work, a novel approach is devised for both linear and non-linear transceiver architectures, which allows to closely approximate the solutions of the non-convex power allocation problems with those of convex ones easy to compute in closed-form by means of multi-step procedures of reduced complexity. Computer simulations are used to assess the performance of the proposed approach and to make comparisons with alternatives.
1303.2823
Gaussian Processes for Nonlinear Signal Processing
cs.LG cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
Gaussian processes (GPs) are versatile tools that have been successfully employed to solve nonlinear estimation problems in machine learning, but that are rarely used in signal processing. In this tutorial, we present GPs for regression as a natural nonlinear extension to optimal Wiener filtering. After establishing their basic formulation, we discuss several important aspects and extensions, including recursive and adaptive algorithms for dealing with non-stationarity, low-complexity solutions, non-Gaussian noise models and classification scenarios. Furthermore, we provide a selection of relevant applications to wireless digital communications.
1303.2826
Probabilistic Topic and Syntax Modeling with Part-of-Speech LDA
cs.CL
This article presents a probabilistic generative model for text based on semantic topics and syntactic classes called Part-of-Speech LDA (POSLDA). POSLDA simultaneously uncovers short-range syntactic patterns (syntax) and long-range semantic patterns (topics) that exist in document collections. This results in word distributions that are specific to both topics (sports, education, ...) and parts-of-speech (nouns, verbs, ...). For example, multinomial distributions over words are uncovered that can be understood as "nouns about weather" or "verbs about law". We describe the model and an approximate inference algorithm and then demonstrate the quality of the learned topics both qualitatively and quantitatively. Then, we discuss an NLP application where the output of POSLDA can lead to strong improvements in quality: unsupervised part-of-speech tagging. We describe algorithms for this task that make use of POSLDA-learned distributions that result in improved performance beyond the state of the art.
1303.2830
Almost sure convergence of a randomized algorithm for relative localization in sensor networks
cs.SY math.OC
This paper regards the relative localization problem in sensor networks. We study a randomized algorithm, which is based on input-driven consensus dynamics and involves pairwise "gossip" communications and updates. Due to the randomness of the updates, the state of this algorithm ergodically oscillates around a limit value. Exploiting the ergodicity of the dynamics, we show that the time-average of the state almost surely converges to the least-squares solution of the localization problem. Remarkably, the computation of the time-average does not require the sensors to share any common clock. Hence, the proposed algorithm is fully distributed and asynchronous.
1303.2844
A Stochastic Grammar for Natural Shapes
cs.CV
We consider object detection using a generic model for natural shapes. A common approach for object recognition involves matching object models directly to images. Another approach involves building intermediate representations via a generic grouping processes. We argue that these two processes (model-based recognition and grouping) may use similar computational mechanisms. By defining a generic model for shapes we can use model-based techniques to implement a mid-level vision grouping process.
1303.2860
Fairness in Academic Course Timetabling
cs.AI cs.DS
We consider the problem of creating fair course timetables in the setting of a university. Our motivation is to improve the overall satisfaction of individuals concerned (students, teachers, etc.) by providing a fair timetable to them. The central idea is that undesirable arrangements in the course timetable, i.e., violations of soft constraints, should be distributed in a fair way among the individuals. We propose two formulations for the fair course timetabling problem that are based on max-min fairness and Jain's fairness index, respectively. Furthermore, we present and experimentally evaluate an optimization algorithm based on simulated annealing for solving max-min fair course timetabling problems. The new contribution is concerned with measuring the energy difference between two timetables, i.e., how much worse a timetable is compared to another timetable with respect to max-min fairness. We introduce three different energy difference measures and evaluate their impact on the overall algorithm performance. The second proposed problem formulation focuses on the tradeoff between fairness and the total amount of soft constraint violations. Our experimental evaluation shows that the known best solutions to the ITC2007 curriculum-based course timetabling instances are quite fair with respect to Jain's fairness index. However, the experiments also show that the fairness can be improved further for only a rather small increase in the total amount of soft constraint violations.
1303.2870
CoMP Meets Smart Grid: A New Communication and Energy Cooperation Paradigm
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we pursue a unified study on smart grid and coordinated multi-point (CoMP) enabled wireless communication by investigating a new joint communication and energy cooperation approach. We consider a practical CoMP system with clustered multiple-antenna base stations (BSs) cooperatively communicating with multiple single-antenna mobile terminals (MTs), where each BS is equipped with local renewable energy generators to supply power and also a smart meter to enable two-way energy flow with the grid. We propose a new energy cooperation paradigm, where a group of BSs dynamically share their renewable energy for more efficient operation via locally injecting/drawing power to/from an aggregator with a zero effective sum-energy exchanged. Under this new energy cooperation model, we consider the downlink transmission in one CoMP cluster with cooperative zero-forcing (ZF) based precoding at the BSs. We maximize the weighted sum-rate for all MTs by jointly optimizing the transmit power allocations at cooperative BSs and their exchanged energy amounts subject to a new type of power constraints featuring energy cooperation among BSs with practical loss ratios. Our new setup with BSs' energy cooperation generalizes the conventional CoMP transmit optimization under BSs' sum-power or individual-power constraints. Finally, we validate our results by simulations under various practical setups, and show that the proposed joint communication and energy cooperation scheme substantially improves the downlink throughput of CoMP systems powered by smart grid and renewable energy, as compared to other suboptimal designs without communication and/or energy cooperation.
1303.2873
Inferring Social Rank in an Old Assyrian Trade Network
cs.CY cs.SI
We present work in jointly inferring the unique individuals as well as their social rank within a collection of letters from an Old Assyrian trade colony in K\"ultepe, Turkey, settled by merchants from the ancient city of Assur for approximately 200 years between 1950-1750 BCE, the height of the Middle Bronze Age. Using a probabilistic latent-variable model, we leverage pairwise social differences between names in cuneiform tablets to infer a single underlying social order that best explains the data we observe. Evaluating our output with published judgments by domain experts suggests that our method may be used for building informed hypotheses that are driven by data, and that may offer promising avenues for directed research by Assyriologists.
1303.2912
Integrated Pre-Processing for Bayesian Nonlinear System Identification with Gaussian Processes
cs.AI cs.RO cs.SY stat.ML
We introduce GP-FNARX: a new model for nonlinear system identification based on a nonlinear autoregressive exogenous model (NARX) with filtered regressors (F) where the nonlinear regression problem is tackled using sparse Gaussian processes (GP). We integrate data pre-processing with system identification into a fully automated procedure that goes from raw data to an identified model. Both pre-processing parameters and GP hyper-parameters are tuned by maximizing the marginal likelihood of the probabilistic model. We obtain a Bayesian model of the system's dynamics which is able to report its uncertainty in regions where the data is scarce. The automated approach, the modeling of uncertainty and its relatively low computational cost make of GP-FNARX a good candidate for applications in robotics and adaptive control.
1303.2933
Interference Networks: A Complex System View
cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents an unusual view of interference wireless networks based on complex system thinking. To proceed with this analysis, a literature review of the different applications of complex systems is firstly presented to illustrate how such an approach can be used in a wide range of research topics, from economics to linguistics. Then the problem of quantifying the fundamental limits of wireless systems where the co-channel interference is the main limiting factor is described and hence contextualized in the perspective of complex systems. Specifically some possible internal and external pressures that the network elements may suffer are identified as, for example, queue stability, maximum packet loss rate and transmit power constraint. Besides, other important external factors such as mobility and incoming traffic are also pointed out. As a study case, a decentralized point-to-point interference network is described and several claims about the optimal design setting for different network states and under two mobility conditions, namely quasi-static and highly mobile, are stated based on results found in the literature. Using these claims as a background, the design of a robust adaptive algorithm that each network element should run is investigated.
1303.2975
Towards Automated Proof Strategy Generalisation
cs.LO cs.AI
The ability to automatically generalise (interactive) proofs and use such generalisations to discharge related conjectures is a very hard problem which remains unsolved. Here, we develop a notion of goal types to capture key properties of goals, which enables abstractions over the specific order and number of sub-goals arising when composing tactics. We show that the goal types form a lattice, and utilise this property in the techniques we develop to automatically generalise proof strategies in order to reuse it for proofs of related conjectures. We illustrate our approach with an example.
1303.2987
On Periodic Reference Tracking Using Batch-Mode Reinforcement Learning with Application to Gene Regulatory Network Control
cs.SY math.OC
In this paper, we consider the periodic reference tracking problem in the framework of batch-mode reinforcement learning, which studies methods for solving optimal control problems from the sole knowledge of a set of trajectories. In particular, we extend an existing batch-mode reinforcement learning algorithm, known as Fitted Q Iteration, to the periodic reference tracking problem. The presented periodic reference tracking algorithm explicitly exploits a priori knowledge of the future values of the reference trajectory and its periodicity. We discuss the properties of our approach and illustrate it on the problem of reference tracking for a synthetic biology gene regulatory network known as the generalised repressilator. This system can produce decaying but long-lived oscillations, which makes it an interesting system for the tracking problem. In our companion paper we also take a look at the regulation problem of the toggle switch system, where the main goal is to drive the system's states to a specific bounded region in the state space.
1303.3036
Type-theoretical natural language semantics: on the system F for meaning assembly
cs.LO cs.CL math.LO
This paper presents and extends our type theoretical framework for a compositional treatment of natural language semantics with some lexical features like coercions (e.g. of a town into a football club) and copredication (e.g. on a town as a set of people and as a location). The second order typed lambda calculus was shown to be a good framework, and here we discuss how to introduced predefined types and coercive subtyping which are much more natural than internally coded similar constructs. Linguistic applications of these new features are also exemplified.
1303.3047
Data Retrieval over DNS in SQL Injection Attacks
cs.CR cs.DB cs.NI
This paper describes an advanced SQL injection technique where DNS resolution process is exploited for retrieval of malicious SQL query results. Resulting DNS requests are intercepted by attackers themselves at the controlled remote name server extracting valuable data. Open source SQL injection tool sqlmap has been adjusted to automate this task. With modifications done, attackers are able to use this technique for fast and low profile data retrieval, especially in cases where other standard ones fail.
1303.3049
On Optimal Jamming Over an Additive Noise Channel
math.OC cs.IT cs.SY math.IT
This paper considers the problem of optimal zero-delay jamming over an additive noise channel. Early work had already solved this problem for a Gaussian source and channel. Building on a sequence of recent results on conditions for linearity of optimal estimation, and of optimal mappings in source-channel coding, we derive the saddle-point solution to the jamming problem for general sources and channels, without recourse to Gaussian assumptions. We show that linearity conditions play a pivotal role in jamming, in the sense that the optimal jamming strategy is to effectively force both transmitter and receiver to default to linear mappings, i.e., the jammer ensures, whenever possible, that the transmitter and receiver cannot benefit from non-linear strategies. This result is shown to subsume the known result for Gaussian source and channel. We analyze conditions and general settings where such unbeatable strategy can indeed be achieved by the jammer. Moreover, we provide the procedure to approximate optimal jamming in the remaining (source-channel) cases where the jammer cannot impose linearity on the transmitter and the receiver.
1303.3055
Online Learning in Markov Decision Processes with Adversarially Chosen Transition Probability Distributions
cs.LG stat.ML
We study the problem of learning Markov decision processes with finite state and action spaces when the transition probability distributions and loss functions are chosen adversarially and are allowed to change with time. We introduce an algorithm whose regret with respect to any policy in a comparison class grows as the square root of the number of rounds of the game, provided the transition probabilities satisfy a uniform mixing condition. Our approach is efficient as long as the comparison class is polynomial and we can compute expectations over sample paths for each policy. Designing an efficient algorithm with small regret for the general case remains an open problem.
1303.3058
Robust Auxiliary Vector Filtering with Constrained Constant Modulus Design for Beamforming
cs.IT math.IT
This paper proposes an auxiliary vector filtering (AVF) algorithm based on a constrained constant modulus (CCM) design for robust adaptive beamforming. This scheme provides an efficient way to deal with filters with a large number of elements. The proposed beamformer decomposes the adaptive filter into a constrained (reference vector filters) and an unconstrained (auxiliary vector filters) components. The weight vector is iterated by subtracting the scaling auxiliary vector from the reference vector. The scalar factor and the auxiliary vector depend on each other and are jointly calculated according to the CCM criterion. The proposed robust AVF algorithm provides an iterative exchange of information between the scalar factor and the auxiliary vector and thus leads to a fast convergence and an improved steady-state performance over the existing techniques. Simulations are performed to show the performance and the robustness of the proposed scheme and algorithm in several scenarios.
1303.3067
Computing Motion with 3D Memristive Grid
cs.CV q-bio.NC
Computing the relative motion of objects is an important navigation task that we routinely perform by relying on inherently unreliable biological cells in the retina. The non-linear and adaptive response of memristive devices make them excellent building blocks for realizing complex synaptic-like architectures that are common in the human retina. Here, we introduce a novel memristive thresholding scheme that facilitates the detection of moving edges. In addition, a double-layered 3-D memristive network is employed for modeling the motion computations that take place in both the Outer Plexiform Layer (OPL) and Inner Plexiform Layer (IPL) that enables the detection of on-center and off-center transient responses. Applying the transient detection results, it is shown that it is possible to generate an estimation of the speed and direction a moving object.
1303.3072
Optical Flow Sensing and the Inverse Perception Problem for Flying Bats
cs.SY
The movements of birds, bats, and other flying species are governed by complex sensorimotor systems that allow the animals to react to stationary environmental features as well as to wind disturbances, other animals in nearby airspace, and a wide variety of unexpected challenges. The paper and talk will describe research that analyzes the three-dimensional trajectories of bats flying in a habitat in Texas. The trajectories are computed with stereoscopic methods using data from synchronous thermal videos that were recorded with high temporal and spatial resolution from three viewpoints. Following our previously reported work, we examine the possibility that bat trajectories in this habitat are governed by optical flow sensing that interpolates periodic distance measurements from echolocation. Using an idealized geometry of bat eyes, we introduce the concept of time-to-transit, and recall some research that suggests that this quantity is computed by the animals' visual cortex. Several steering control laws based on time-to-transit are proposed for an idealized flight model, and it is shown that these can be used to replicate the observed flight of what we identify as typical bats. Although the vision-based motion control laws we propose and the protocols for switching between them are quite simple, some of the trajectories that have been synthesized are qualitatively bat-like. Examination of the control protocols that generate these trajectories suggests that bat motions are governed both by their reactions to a subset of key feature points as well by their memories of where these feature points are located.
1303.3087
Statistical Texture Features based Handwritten and Printed Text Classification in South Indian Documents
cs.CV
In this paper, we use statistical texture features for handwritten and printed text classification. We primarily aim for word level classification in south Indian scripts. Words are first extracted from the scanned document. For each extracted word, statistical texture features are computed such as mean, standard deviation, smoothness, moment, uniformity, entropy and local range including local entropy. These feature vectors are then used to classify words via k-NN classifier. We have validated the approach over several different datasets. Scripts like Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi i.e., Devanagari are primarily employed where an average classification rate of 99.26% is achieved. In addition, to provide an extensibility of the approach, we address Roman script by using publicly available dataset and interesting results are reported.
1303.3100
Ergodic Interference Alignment with Delayed Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
We propose new ergodic interference alignment techniques for $K$-user interference channels with delayed feedback. Two delayed feedback scenarios are considered -- delayed channel information at transmitter (CIT) and delayed output feedback. It is proved that the proposed techniques achieve total $2K/(K+2)$ DoF which is higher than that by the retrospective interference alignment for the delayed feedback scenarios.
1303.3134
Egocentric vision IT technologies for Alzheimer disease assessment and studies
cs.HC cs.CV
Egocentric vision technology consists in capturing the actions of persons from their own visual point of view using wearable camera sensors. We apply this new paradigm to instrumental activities monitoring with the objective of providing new tools for the clinical evaluation of the impact of the disease on persons with dementia. In this paper, we introduce the current state of the development of this technology and focus on two technology modules: automatic location estimation and visual saliency estimation for content interpretation.
1303.3145
Convex Hull-Based Multi-objective Genetic Programming for Maximizing ROC Performance
cs.NE
ROC is usually used to analyze the performance of classifiers in data mining. ROC convex hull (ROCCH) is the least convex major-ant (LCM) of the empirical ROC curve, and covers potential optima for the given set of classifiers. Generally, ROC performance maximization could be considered to maximize the ROCCH, which also means to maximize the true positive rate (tpr) and minimize the false positive rate (fpr) for each classifier in the ROC space. However, tpr and fpr are conflicting with each other in the ROCCH optimization process. Though ROCCH maximization problem seems like a multi-objective optimization problem (MOP), the special characters make it different from traditional MOP. In this work, we will discuss the difference between them and propose convex hull-based multi-objective genetic programming (CH-MOGP) to solve ROCCH maximization problems. Convex hull-based sort is an indicator based selection scheme that aims to maximize the area under convex hull, which serves as a unary indicator for the performance of a set of points. A selection procedure is described that can be efficiently implemented and follows similar design principles than classical hyper-volume based optimization algorithms. It is hypothesized that by using a tailored indicator-based selection scheme CH-MOGP gets more efficient for ROC convex hull approximation than algorithms which compute all Pareto optimal points. To test our hypothesis we compare the new CH-MOGP to MOGP with classical selection schemes, including NSGA-II, MOEA/D) and SMS-EMOA. Meanwhile, CH-MOGP is also compared with traditional machine learning algorithms such as C4.5, Naive Bayes and Prie. Experimental results based on 22 well-known UCI data sets show that CH-MOGP outperforms significantly traditional EMOAs.
1303.3152
Material quality assessment of silk nanofibers based on swarm intelligence
cs.CV
In this paper, we propose a novel approach for texture analysis based on artificial crawler model. Our method assumes that each agent can interact with the environment and each other. The evolution process converges to an equilibrium state according to the set of rules. For each textured image, the feature vector is composed by signatures of the live agents curve at each time. Experimental results revealed that combining the minimum and maximum signatures into one increase the classification rate. In addition, we pioneer the use of autonomous agents for characterizing silk fibroin scaffolds. The results strongly suggest that our approach can be successfully employed for texture analysis.
1303.3154
Mixed Strategy May Outperform Pure Strategy: An Initial Study
cs.NE cs.GT
In pure strategy meta-heuristics, only one search strategy is applied for all time. In mixed strategy meta-heuristics, each time one search strategy is chosen from a strategy pool with a probability and then is applied. An example is classical genetic algorithms, where either a mutation or crossover operator is chosen with a probability each time. The aim of this paper is to compare the performance between mixed strategy and pure strategy meta-heuristic algorithms. First an experimental study is implemented and results demonstrate that mixed strategy evolutionary algorithms may outperform pure strategy evolutionary algorithms on the 0-1 knapsack problem in up to 77.8% instances. Then Complementary Strategy Theorem is rigorously proven for applying mixed strategy at the population level. The theorem asserts that given two meta-heuristic algorithms where one uses pure strategy 1 and another uses pure strategy 2, the condition of pure strategy 2 being complementary to pure strategy 1 is sufficient and necessary if there exists a mixed strategy meta-heuristics derived from these two pure strategies and its expected number of generations to find an optimal solution is no more than that of using pure strategy 1 for any initial population, and less than that of using pure strategy 1 for some initial population.
1303.3163
A Greedy Approximation of Bayesian Reinforcement Learning with Probably Optimistic Transition Model
cs.AI cs.LG stat.ML
Bayesian Reinforcement Learning (RL) is capable of not only incorporating domain knowledge, but also solving the exploration-exploitation dilemma in a natural way. As Bayesian RL is intractable except for special cases, previous work has proposed several approximation methods. However, these methods are usually too sensitive to parameter values, and finding an acceptable parameter setting is practically impossible in many applications. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that greedily approximates Bayesian RL to achieve robustness in parameter space. We show that for a desired learning behavior, our proposed algorithm has a polynomial sample complexity that is lower than those of existing algorithms. We also demonstrate that the proposed algorithm naturally outperforms other existing algorithms when the prior distributions are not significantly misleading. On the other hand, the proposed algorithm cannot handle greatly misspecified priors as well as the other algorithms can. This is a natural consequence of the fact that the proposed algorithm is greedier than the other algorithms. Accordingly, we discuss a way to select an appropriate algorithm for different tasks based on the algorithms' greediness. We also introduce a new way of simplifying Bayesian planning, based on which future work would be able to derive new algorithms.
1303.3164
Features and Aggregators for Web-scale Entity Search
cs.IR
We focus on two research issues in entity search: scoring a document or snippet that potentially supports a candidate entity, and aggregating scores from different snippets into an entity score. Proximity scoring has been studied in IR outside the scope of entity search. However, aggregation has been hardwired except in a few cases where probabilistic language models are used. We instead explore simple, robust, discriminative ranking algorithms, with informative snippet features and broad families of aggregation functions. Our first contribution is a study of proximity-cognizant snippet features. In contrast with prior work which uses hardwired "proximity kernels" that implement a fixed decay with distance, we present a "universal" feature encoding which jointly expresses the perplexity (informativeness) of a query term match and the proximity of the match to the entity mention. Our second contribution is a study of aggregation functions. Rather than train the ranking algorithm on snippets and then aggregate scores, we directly train on entities such that the ranking algorithm takes into account the aggregation function being used. Our third contribution is an extensive Web-scale evaluation of the above algorithms on two data sets having quite different properties and behavior. The first one is the W3C dataset used in TREC-scale enterprise search, with pre-annotated entity mentions. The second is a Web-scale open-domain entity search dataset consisting of 500 million Web pages, which contain about 8 billion token spans annotated automatically with two million entities from 200,000 entity types in Wikipedia. On the TREC dataset, the performance of our system is comparable to the currently prevalent systems. On the much larger and noisier Web dataset, our system delivers significantly better performance than all other systems, with 8% MAP improvement over the closest competitor.
1303.3165
Joint Optimization of Throughput and Packet Drop Rate for Delay Sensitive Applications in TDD Satellite Network Coded Systems
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
In this paper, we consider the issue of throughput and packet drop rate (PDR) optimization as two performance metrics for delay sensitive applications in network coded time division duplex (TDD) satellite systems with large round trip times (RTT). We adopt random linear network coding (RLNC) under two different scenarios, feedback-less and with feedback, and our goal is to jointly optimize the mean throughputs and PDRs of users in the system. For this purpose, we propose a systematic framework and start with formulating and optimizing these performance metrics for the single-user case. This framework enables us to analytically compare the performance metrics under different system parameters and settings. By comparing RLNC schemes under feedback-less and feedback scenarios for different RTTs, we show that the feedback-less schemes outperform the schemes with feedback in TDD systems with large RTTs. Then, we extend the study of feedback-less RLNC schemes to the multi-user broadcast case. Here, we consider a number of different broadcast scenarios and optimize the system parameters such that the best overall performance is achieved. Furthermore, the complicated interplay of the mean throughputs and PDRs of different users with different packet erasure conditions in each of the considered broadcast scenarios is discussed.
1303.3170
Types and forgetfulness in categorical linguistics and quantum mechanics
cs.CL math.CT quant-ph
The role of types in categorical models of meaning is investigated. A general scheme for how typed models of meaning may be used to compare sentences, regardless of their grammatical structure is described, and a toy example is used as an illustration. Taking as a starting point the question of whether the evaluation of such a type system 'loses information', we consider the parametrized typing associated with connectives from this viewpoint. The answer to this question implies that, within full categorical models of meaning, the objects associated with types must exhibit a simple but subtle categorical property known as self-similarity. We investigate the category theory behind this, with explicit reference to typed systems, and their monoidal closed structure. We then demonstrate close connections between such self-similar structures and dagger Frobenius algebras. In particular, we demonstrate that the categorical structures implied by the polymorphically typed connectives give rise to a (lax unitless) form of the special forms of Frobenius algebras known as classical structures, used heavily in abstract categorical approaches to quantum mechanics.