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1305.2245
Capacity of a Simple Intercellular Signal Transduction Channel
cs.IT math.IT q-bio.CB
We model the ligand-receptor molecular communication channel with a discrete-time Markov model, and show how to obtain the capacity of this channel. We show that the capacity-achieving input distribution is iid; further, unusually for a channel with memory, we show that feedback does not increase the capacity of this channel.
1305.2254
Programming with Personalized PageRank: A Locally Groundable First-Order Probabilistic Logic
cs.AI
In many probabilistic first-order representation systems, inference is performed by "grounding"---i.e., mapping it to a propositional representation, and then performing propositional inference. With a large database of facts, groundings can be very large, making inference and learning computationally expensive. Here we present a first-order probabilistic language which is well-suited to approximate "local" grounding: every query $Q$ can be approximately grounded with a small graph. The language is an extension of stochastic logic programs where inference is performed by a variant of personalized PageRank. Experimentally, we show that the approach performs well without weight learning on an entity resolution task; that supervised weight-learning improves accuracy; and that grounding time is independent of DB size. We also show that order-of-magnitude speedups are possible by parallelizing learning.
1305.2265
Quality Measures of Parameter Tuning for Aggregated Multi-Objective Temporal Planning
cs.AI
Parameter tuning is recognized today as a crucial ingredient when tackling an optimization problem. Several meta-optimization methods have been proposed to find the best parameter set for a given optimization algorithm and (set of) problem instances. When the objective of the optimization is some scalar quality of the solution given by the target algorithm, this quality is also used as the basis for the quality of parameter sets. But in the case of multi-objective optimization by aggregation, the set of solutions is given by several single-objective runs with different weights on the objectives, and it turns out that the hypervolume of the final population of each single-objective run might be a better indicator of the global performance of the aggregation method than the best fitness in its population. This paper discusses this issue on a case study in multi-objective temporal planning using the evolutionary planner DaE-YAHSP and the meta-optimizer ParamILS. The results clearly show how ParamILS makes a difference between both approaches, and demonstrate that indeed, in this context, using the hypervolume indicator as ParamILS target is the best choice. Other issues pertaining to parameter tuning in the proposed context are also discussed.
1305.2269
Beyond Physical Connections: Tree Models in Human Pose Estimation
cs.CV
Simple tree models for articulated objects prevails in the last decade. However, it is also believed that these simple tree models are not capable of capturing large variations in many scenarios, such as human pose estimation. This paper attempts to address three questions: 1) are simple tree models sufficient? more specifically, 2) how to use tree models effectively in human pose estimation? and 3) how shall we use combined parts together with single parts efficiently? Assuming we have a set of single parts and combined parts, and the goal is to estimate a joint distribution of their locations. We surprisingly find that no latent variables are introduced in the Leeds Sport Dataset (LSP) during learning latent trees for deformable model, which aims at approximating the joint distributions of body part locations using minimal tree structure. This suggests one can straightforwardly use a mixed representation of single and combined parts to approximate their joint distribution in a simple tree model. As such, one only needs to build Visual Categories of the combined parts, and then perform inference on the learned latent tree. Our method outperformed the state of the art on the LSP, both in the scenarios when the training images are from the same dataset and from the PARSE dataset. Experiments on animal images from the VOC challenge further support our findings.
1305.2299
Fast Collision Checking: From Single Robots to Multi-Robot Teams
cs.RO cs.AI cs.MA
We examine three different algorithms that enable the collision certificate method from [Bialkowski, et al.] to handle the case of a centralized multi-robot team. By taking advantage of symmetries in the configuration space of multi-robot teams, our methods can significantly reduce the number of collision checks vs. both [Bialkowski, et al.] and standard collision checking implementations.
1305.2322
Simulation of a typical house in the region of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Determination of passive solutions using local materials
cs.CE
This paper deals with new proposals for the design of passive solutions adapted to the climate of the highlands of Madagascar. While the strongest population density is located in the central highlands, the problem of thermal comfort in buildings occurs mainly during winter time. Currently, people use raw wood to warm the poorly designed houses. This leads to a large scale deforestation of the areas and causes erosion and environmental problems. The methodology used consisted of the identification of a typical building and of a typical meteorological year. Simulations were carried out using a thermal and airflow software (CODYRUN) to improve each building component (roof, walls, windows, and soil) in such a way as to estimate the influence of some technical solutions on each component in terms of thermal comfort. The proposed solutions also took into account the use of local materials and the standard of living of the country.
1305.2352
Speech Enhancement Using Pitch Detection Approach For Noisy Environment
cs.SD cs.CL
Acoustical mismatch among training and testing phases degrades outstandingly speech recognition results. This problem has limited the development of real-world nonspecific applications, as testing conditions are highly variant or even unpredictable during the training process. Therefore the background noise has to be removed from the noisy speech signal to increase the signal intelligibility and to reduce the listener fatigue. Enhancement techniques applied, as pre-processing stages; to the systems remarkably improve recognition results. In this paper, a novel approach is used to enhance the perceived quality of the speech signal when the additive noise cannot be directly controlled. Instead of controlling the background noise, we propose to reinforce the speech signal so that it can be heard more clearly in noisy environments. The subjective evaluation shows that the proposed method improves perceptual quality of speech in various noisy environments. As in some cases speaking may be more convenient than typing, even for rapid typists: many mathematical symbols are missing from the keyboard but can be easily spoken and recognized. Therefore, the proposed system can be used in an application designed for mathematical symbol recognition (especially symbols not available on the keyboard) in schools.
1305.2357
Immunization strategies for epidemic processes in time-varying contact networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.PE
Spreading processes represent a very efficient tool to investigate the structural properties of networks and the relative importance of their constituents, and have been widely used to this aim in static networks. Here we consider simple disease spreading processes on empirical time-varying networks of contacts between individuals, and compare the effect of several immunization strategies on these processes. An immunization strategy is defined as the choice of a set of nodes (individuals) who cannot catch nor transmit the disease. This choice is performed according to a certain ranking of the nodes of the contact network. We consider various ranking strategies, focusing in particular on the role of the training window during which the nodes' properties are measured in the time-varying network: longer training windows correspond to a larger amount of information collected and could be expected to result in better performances of the immunization strategies. We find instead an unexpected saturation in the efficiency of strategies based on nodes' characteristics when the length of the training window is increased, showing that a limited amount of information on the contact patterns is sufficient to design efficient immunization strategies. This finding is balanced by the large variations of the contact patterns, which strongly alter the importance of nodes from one period to the next and therefore significantly limit the efficiency of any strategy based on an importance ranking of nodes. We also observe that the efficiency of strategies that include an element of randomness and are based on temporally local information do not perform as well but are largely independent on the amount of information available.
1305.2362
Revisiting Bayesian Blind Deconvolution
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
Blind deconvolution involves the estimation of a sharp signal or image given only a blurry observation. Because this problem is fundamentally ill-posed, strong priors on both the sharp image and blur kernel are required to regularize the solution space. While this naturally leads to a standard MAP estimation framework, performance is compromised by unknown trade-off parameter settings, optimization heuristics, and convergence issues stemming from non-convexity and/or poor prior selections. To mitigate some of these problems, a number of authors have recently proposed substituting a variational Bayesian (VB) strategy that marginalizes over the high-dimensional image space leading to better estimates of the blur kernel. However, the underlying cost function now involves both integrals with no closed-form solution and complex, function-valued arguments, thus losing the transparency of MAP. Beyond standard Bayesian-inspired intuitions, it thus remains unclear by exactly what mechanism these methods are able to operate, rendering understanding, improvements and extensions more difficult. To elucidate these issues, we demonstrate that the VB methodology can be recast as an unconventional MAP problem with a very particular penalty/prior that couples the image, blur kernel, and noise level in a principled way. This unique penalty has a number of useful characteristics pertaining to relative concavity, local minima avoidance, and scale-invariance that allow us to rigorously explain the success of VB including its existing implementational heuristics and approximations. It also provides strict criteria for choosing the optimal image prior that, perhaps counter-intuitively, need not reflect the statistics of natural scenes. In so doing we challenge the prevailing notion of why VB is successful for blind deconvolution while providing a transparent platform for introducing enhancements.
1305.2386
Disappointment in Social Choice Protocols
cs.MA
Social choice theory is a theoretical framework for analysis of combining individual preferences, interests, or welfare to reach a collective decision or social welfare in some sense. We introduce a new criterion for social choice protocols called social disappointment. Social disappointment happens when the outcome of a voting system occurs for those alternatives which are at the end of at least half of individual preference profiles. Here we introduce some protocols that prevent social disappointment and prove an impossibility theorem based on this key concept.
1305.2387
Loss Rate Based Fountain Codes for Data Transfer
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Fountain codes are becoming increasingly important for data transferring over dedicated high-speed long-distance network. However, the encoding and decoding complexity of traditional fountain codes such as LT and Raptor codes are still high. In this paper, a new fountain codes named LRF (Loss Rate Based Fountain) codes for data transfer is proposed. In order to improve the performance of encoding and decoding efficiency and decrease the number of redundant encoding symbols, an innovative degree distribution instead of robust soliton degree distribution in LT (Luby Transfer) codes is proposed. In LRF codes, the degree of encoding symbol is decided by loss rate property, and the window size is extended dynamic. Simulations result using LRF codes show that the proposed method has better performance in term of encoding ratio, degree ratio, encoding and decoding efficiency with respect to LT and Raptor codes.
1305.2388
Fast Feature Reduction in intrusion detection datasets
cs.CR cs.LG
In the most intrusion detection systems (IDS), a system tries to learn characteristics of different type of attacks by analyzing packets that sent or received in network. These packets have a lot of features. But not all of them is required to be analyzed to detect that specific type of attack. Detection speed and computational cost is another vital matter here, because in these types of problems, datasets are very huge regularly. In this paper we tried to propose a very simple and fast feature selection method to eliminate features with no helpful information on them. Result faster learning in process of redundant feature omission. We compared our proposed method with three most successful similarity based feature selection algorithm including Correlation Coefficient, Least Square Regression Error and Maximal Information Compression Index. After that we used recommended features by each of these algorithms in two popular classifiers including: Bayes and KNN classifier to measure the quality of the recommendations. Experimental result shows that although the proposed method can't outperform evaluated algorithms with high differences in accuracy, but in computational cost it has huge superiority over them.
1305.2395
Shape Reconstruction and Recognition with Isolated Non-directional Cues
cs.CV
The paper investigates a hypothesis that our visual system groups visual cues based on how they form a surface, or more specifically triangulation derived from the visual cues. To test our hypothesis, we compare shape recognition with three different representations of visual cues: a set of isolated dots delineating the outline of the shape, a set of triangles obtained from Delaunay triangulation of the set of dots, and a subset of Delaunay triangles excluding those outside of the shape. Each participant was assigned to one particular representation type and increased the number of dots (and consequentially triangles) until the underlying shape could be identified. We compare the average number of dots needed for identification among three types of representations. Our hypothesis predicts that the results from the three representations will be similar. However, they show statistically significant differences. The paper also presents triangulation based algorithms for reconstruction and recognition of a shape from a set of isolated dots. Experiments showed that the algorithms were more effective and perceptually agreeable than similar contour based ones. From these experiments, we conclude that triangulation does affect our shape recognition. However, the surface based approach presents a number of computational advantages over the contour based one and should be studied further.
1305.2415
Exponentiated Gradient LINUCB for Contextual Multi-Armed Bandits
cs.AI
We present Exponentiated Gradient LINUCB, an algorithm for con-textual multi-armed bandits. This algorithm uses Exponentiated Gradient to find the optimal exploration of the LINUCB. Within a deliberately designed offline simulation framework we conduct evaluations with real online event log data. The experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms surveyed algorithms.
1305.2436
Regularized M-estimators with nonconvexity: Statistical and algorithmic theory for local optima
math.ST cs.IT math.IT stat.ML stat.TH
We provide novel theoretical results regarding local optima of regularized $M$-estimators, allowing for nonconvexity in both loss and penalty functions. Under restricted strong convexity on the loss and suitable regularity conditions on the penalty, we prove that \emph{any stationary point} of the composite objective function will lie within statistical precision of the underlying parameter vector. Our theory covers many nonconvex objective functions of interest, including the corrected Lasso for errors-in-variables linear models; regression for generalized linear models with nonconvex penalties such as SCAD, MCP, and capped-$\ell_1$; and high-dimensional graphical model estimation. We quantify statistical accuracy by providing bounds on the $\ell_1$-, $\ell_2$-, and prediction error between stationary points and the population-level optimum. We also propose a simple modification of composite gradient descent that may be used to obtain a near-global optimum within statistical precision $\epsilon$ in $\log(1/\epsilon)$ steps, which is the fastest possible rate of any first-order method. We provide simulation studies illustrating the sharpness of our theoretical results.
1305.2440
Rate Region of the (4,3,3) Exact-Repair Regenerating Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Exact-repair regenerating codes are considered for the case (n,k,d)=(4,3,3), for which a complete characterization of the rate region is provided. This characterization answers in the affirmative the open question whether there exists a non-vanishing gap between the optimal bandwidth-storage tradeoff of the functional-repair regenerating codes (i.e., the cut-set bound) and that of the exact-repair regenerating codes. The converse proof relies on the existence of symmetric optimal solutions. For the achievability, only one non-trivial corner point of the rate region needs to be addressed, for which an explicit binary code construction is given.
1305.2452
Stochastic Collapsed Variational Bayesian Inference for Latent Dirichlet Allocation
cs.LG
In the internet era there has been an explosion in the amount of digital text information available, leading to difficulties of scale for traditional inference algorithms for topic models. Recent advances in stochastic variational inference algorithms for latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) have made it feasible to learn topic models on large-scale corpora, but these methods do not currently take full advantage of the collapsed representation of the model. We propose a stochastic algorithm for collapsed variational Bayesian inference for LDA, which is simpler and more efficient than the state of the art method. We show connections between collapsed variational Bayesian inference and MAP estimation for LDA, and leverage these connections to prove convergence properties of the proposed algorithm. In experiments on large-scale text corpora, the algorithm was found to converge faster and often to a better solution than the previous method. Human-subject experiments also demonstrated that the method can learn coherent topics in seconds on small corpora, facilitating the use of topic models in interactive document analysis software.
1305.2459
Interference Alignment in Distributed Antenna Systems
cs.IT math.IT
Interference alignment (IA) is a cooperative transmission strategy that improves spectral efficiency in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments, yet performs poorly in low-SNR scenarios. This limits IA's utility in cellular systems as it is ineffective in improving cell-edge data rates. Modern cellular architectures such as distributed antenna systems (DAS), however, promise to boost cell-edge SNR, creating the environment needed to realize practical IA gains. Existing IA solutions cannot be applied to DAS as they neglect the per-remote-radio power constraints imposed on distributed precoders. This paper considers two types of distributed antenna IA systems: ones with a limit on maximum per-radio power, and ones with a strict equality constraint on per-radio power. The rate-loss incurred by a simple power back-off strategy, used in systems with maximum power constraints, is characterized analytically. It is also shown that enforcing strict power constraints avoids such a rate-loss but negatively affects IA feasibility. For such systems, an IA algorithm is proposed and feasibility conditions are derived based on the concept of system properness. Finally, numerical results validate the analysis and demonstrate that IA and DAS can be successfully combined to mitigate inter-cell interference and improve performance for most mobile users, especially those at the cell-edge.
1305.2460
Spatially Sparse Precoding in Millimeter Wave MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
Millimeter wave (mmWave) signals experience orders-of-magnitude more pathloss than the microwave signals currently used in most wireless applications. MmWave systems must therefore leverage large antenna arrays, made possible by the decrease in wavelength, to combat pathloss with beamforming gain. Beamforming with multiple data streams, known as precoding, can be used to further improve mmWave spectral efficiency. Both beamforming and precoding are done digitally at baseband in traditional multi-antenna systems. The high cost and power consumption of mixed-signal devices in mmWave systems, however, make analog processing in the RF domain more attractive. This hardware limitation restricts the feasible set of precoders and combiners that can be applied by practical mmWave transceivers. In this paper, we consider transmit precoding and receiver combining in mmWave systems with large antenna arrays. We exploit the spatial structure of mmWave channels to formulate the precoding/combining problem as a sparse reconstruction problem. Using the principle of basis pursuit, we develop algorithms that accurately approximate optimal unconstrained precoders and combiners such that they can be implemented in low-cost RF hardware. We present numerical results on the performance of the proposed algorithms and show that they allow mmWave systems to approach their unconstrained performance limits, even when transceiver hardware constraints are considered.
1305.2480
Weight Distribution for Non-binary Cluster LDPC Code Ensemble
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we derive the average weight distributions for the irregular non-binary cluster low-density parity-check (LDPC) code ensembles. Moreover, we give the exponential growth rate of the average weight distribution in the limit of large code length. We show that there exist $(2,d_c)$-regular non-binary cluster LDPC code ensembles whose normalized typical minimum distances are strictly positive.
1305.2490
Combining Drift Analysis and Generalized Schema Theory to Design Efficient Hybrid and/or Mixed Strategy EAs
cs.NE
Hybrid and mixed strategy EAs have become rather popular for tackling various complex and NP-hard optimization problems. While empirical evidence suggests that such algorithms are successful in practice, rather little theoretical support for their success is available, not mentioning a solid mathematical foundation that would provide guidance towards an efficient design of this type of EAs. In the current paper we develop a rigorous mathematical framework that suggests such designs based on generalized schema theory, fitness levels and drift analysis. An example-application for tackling one of the classical NP-hard problems, the "single-machine scheduling problem" is presented.
1305.2496
Perturbation centrality and Turbine: a novel centrality measure obtained using a versatile network dynamics tool
q-bio.MN cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI physics.bio-ph
Analysis of network dynamics became a focal point to understand and predict changes of complex systems. Here we introduce Turbine, a generic framework enabling fast simulation of any algorithmically definable dynamics on very large networks. Using a perturbation transmission model inspired by communicating vessels, we define a novel centrality measure: perturbation centrality. Hubs and inter-modular nodes proved to be highly efficient in perturbation propagation. High perturbation centrality nodes of the Met-tRNA synthetase protein structure network were identified as amino acids involved in intra-protein communication by earlier studies. Changes in perturbation centralities of yeast interactome nodes upon various stresses well recapitulated the functional changes of stressed yeast cells. The novelty and usefulness of perturbation centrality was validated in several other model, biological and social networks. The Turbine software and the perturbation centrality measure may provide a large variety of novel options to assess signaling, drug action, environmental and social interventions. The Turbine algorithm is available at: http://www.turbine.linkgroup.hu
1305.2498
A Further Generalization of the Finite-Population Geiringer-like Theorem for POMDPs to Allow Recombination Over Arbitrary Set Covers
cs.AI
A popular current research trend deals with expanding the Monte-Carlo tree search sampling methodologies to the environments with uncertainty and incomplete information. Recently a finite population version of Geiringer theorem with nonhomologous recombination has been adopted to the setting of Monte-Carlo tree search to cope with randomness and incomplete information by exploiting the entrinsic similarities within the state space of the problem. The only limitation of the new theorem is that the similarity relation was assumed to be an equivalence relation on the set of states. In the current paper we lift this "curtain of limitation" by allowing the similarity relation to be modeled in terms of an arbitrary set cover of the set of state-action pairs.
1305.2504
Geiringer Theorems: From Population Genetics to Computational Intelligence, Memory Evolutive Systems and Hebbian Learning
cs.NE
The classical Geiringer theorem addresses the limiting frequency of occurrence of various alleles after repeated application of crossover. It has been adopted to the setting of evolutionary algorithms and, a lot more recently, reinforcement learning and Monte-Carlo tree search methodology to cope with a rather challenging question of action evaluation at the chance nodes. The theorem motivates novel dynamic parallel algorithms that are explicitly described in the current paper for the first time. The algorithms involve independent agents traversing a dynamically constructed directed graph that possibly has loops. A rather elegant and profound category-theoretic model of cognition in biological neural networks developed by a well-known French mathematician, professor Andree Ehresmann jointly with a neurosurgeon, Jan Paul Vanbremeersch over the last thirty years provides a hint at the connection between such algorithms and Hebbian learning.
1305.2505
On the Generalization Ability of Online Learning Algorithms for Pairwise Loss Functions
cs.LG stat.ML
In this paper, we study the generalization properties of online learning based stochastic methods for supervised learning problems where the loss function is dependent on more than one training sample (e.g., metric learning, ranking). We present a generic decoupling technique that enables us to provide Rademacher complexity-based generalization error bounds. Our bounds are in general tighter than those obtained by Wang et al (COLT 2012) for the same problem. Using our decoupling technique, we are further able to obtain fast convergence rates for strongly convex pairwise loss functions. We are also able to analyze a class of memory efficient online learning algorithms for pairwise learning problems that use only a bounded subset of past training samples to update the hypothesis at each step. Finally, in order to complement our generalization bounds, we propose a novel memory efficient online learning algorithm for higher order learning problems with bounded regret guarantees.
1305.2524
Corrupted Sensing: Novel Guarantees for Separating Structured Signals
cs.IT math.IT math.OC stat.ML
We study the problem of corrupted sensing, a generalization of compressed sensing in which one aims to recover a signal from a collection of corrupted or unreliable measurements. While an arbitrary signal cannot be recovered in the face of arbitrary corruption, tractable recovery is possible when both signal and corruption are suitably structured. We quantify the relationship between signal recovery and two geometric measures of structure, the Gaussian complexity of a tangent cone and the Gaussian distance to a subdifferential. We take a convex programming approach to disentangling signal and corruption, analyzing both penalized programs that trade off between signal and corruption complexity, and constrained programs that bound the complexity of signal or corruption when prior information is available. In each case, we provide conditions for exact signal recovery from structured corruption and stable signal recovery from structured corruption with added unstructured noise. Our simulations demonstrate close agreement between our theoretical recovery bounds and the sharp phase transitions observed in practice. In addition, we provide new interpretable bounds for the Gaussian complexity of sparse vectors, block-sparse vectors, and low-rank matrices, which lead to sharper guarantees of recovery when combined with our results and those in the literature.
1305.2532
Learning Policies for Contextual Submodular Prediction
cs.LG stat.ML
Many prediction domains, such as ad placement, recommendation, trajectory prediction, and document summarization, require predicting a set or list of options. Such lists are often evaluated using submodular reward functions that measure both quality and diversity. We propose a simple, efficient, and provably near-optimal approach to optimizing such prediction problems based on no-regret learning. Our method leverages a surprising result from online submodular optimization: a single no-regret online learner can compete with an optimal sequence of predictions. Compared to previous work, which either learn a sequence of classifiers or rely on stronger assumptions such as realizability, we ensure both data-efficiency as well as performance guarantees in the fully agnostic setting. Experiments validate the efficiency and applicability of the approach on a wide range of problems including manipulator trajectory optimization, news recommendation and document summarization.
1305.2545
Bandits with Knapsacks
cs.DS cs.LG
Multi-armed bandit problems are the predominant theoretical model of exploration-exploitation tradeoffs in learning, and they have countless applications ranging from medical trials, to communication networks, to Web search and advertising. In many of these application domains the learner may be constrained by one or more supply (or budget) limits, in addition to the customary limitation on the time horizon. The literature lacks a general model encompassing these sorts of problems. We introduce such a model, called "bandits with knapsacks", that combines aspects of stochastic integer programming with online learning. A distinctive feature of our problem, in comparison to the existing regret-minimization literature, is that the optimal policy for a given latent distribution may significantly outperform the policy that plays the optimal fixed arm. Consequently, achieving sublinear regret in the bandits-with-knapsacks problem is significantly more challenging than in conventional bandit problems. We present two algorithms whose reward is close to the information-theoretic optimum: one is based on a novel "balanced exploration" paradigm, while the other is a primal-dual algorithm that uses multiplicative updates. Further, we prove that the regret achieved by both algorithms is optimal up to polylogarithmic factors. We illustrate the generality of the problem by presenting applications in a number of different domains including electronic commerce, routing, and scheduling. As one example of a concrete application, we consider the problem of dynamic posted pricing with limited supply and obtain the first algorithm whose regret, with respect to the optimal dynamic policy, is sublinear in the supply.
1305.2548
On Min-Cut Algorithms for Half-Duplex Relay Networks
cs.IT math.IT
Computing the cut-set bound in half-duplex relay networks is a challenging optimization problem, since it requires finding the cut-set optimal half-duplex schedule. This subproblem in general involves an exponential number of variables, since the number of ways to assign each node to either transmitter or receiver mode is exponential in the number of nodes. We present a general technique that takes advantage of specific structures in the topology of a given network and allows us to reduce the complexity of computing the half-duplex schedule that maximizes the cut-set bound (with i.i.d. input distribution). In certain classes of network topologies, our approach yields polynomial time algorithms. We use simulations to show running time improvements over alternative methods and compare the performance of various half-duplex scheduling approaches in different SNR regimes.
1305.2550
HERMES: towards an integrated toolbox to characterize functional and effective brain connectivity
q-bio.NC cs.CE cs.MS physics.bio-ph physics.data-an
The analysis of the interdependence between time series has become an important field of research in the last years, mainly as a result of advances in the characterization of dynamical systems from the signals they produce, the introduction of concepts such as generalized and phase synchronization and the application of information theory to time series analysis. In neurophysiology, different analytical tools stemming from these concepts have added to the 'traditional' set of linear methods, which includes the cross-correlation and the coherency function in the time and frequency domain, respectively, or more elaborated tools such as Granger Causality. This increase in the number of approaches to tackle the existence of functional (FC) or effective connectivity (EC) between two (or among many) neural networks, along with the mathematical complexity of the corresponding time series analysis tools, makes it desirable to arrange them into a unified-easy-to-use software package. The goal is to allow neuroscientists, neurophysiologists and researchers from related fields to easily access and make use of these analysis methods from a single integrated toolbox. Here we present HERMES (http://hermes.ctb.upm.es), a toolbox for the Matlab environment (The Mathworks, Inc), which is designed for the analysis functional and effective brain connectivity from neurophysiological data such as multivariate EEG and/or MEG records. It includes also visualization tools and statistical methods to address the problem of multiple comparisons. We believe that this toolbox will be very helpful to all the researchers working in the emerging field of brain connectivity analysis.
1305.2561
Strategic Planning for Network Data Analysis
cs.AI
As network traffic monitoring software for cybersecurity, malware detection, and other critical tasks becomes increasingly automated, the rate of alerts and supporting data gathered, as well as the complexity of the underlying model, regularly exceed human processing capabilities. Many of these applications require complex models and constituent rules in order to come up with decisions that influence the operation of entire systems. In this paper, we motivate the novel "strategic planning" problem -- one of gathering data from the world and applying the underlying model of the domain in order to come up with decisions that will monitor the system in an automated manner. We describe our use of automated planning methods to this problem, including the technique that we used to solve it in a manner that would scale to the demands of a real-time, real world scenario. We then present a PDDL model of one such application scenario related to network administration and monitoring, followed by a description of a novel integrated system that was built to accept generated plans and to continue the execution process. Finally, we present evaluations of two different automated planners and their different capabilities with our integrated system, both on a six-month window of network data, and using a simulator.
1305.2581
Accelerated Mini-Batch Stochastic Dual Coordinate Ascent
stat.ML cs.LG
Stochastic dual coordinate ascent (SDCA) is an effective technique for solving regularized loss minimization problems in machine learning. This paper considers an extension of SDCA under the mini-batch setting that is often used in practice. Our main contribution is to introduce an accelerated mini-batch version of SDCA and prove a fast convergence rate for this method. We discuss an implementation of our method over a parallel computing system, and compare the results to both the vanilla stochastic dual coordinate ascent and to the accelerated deterministic gradient descent method of \cite{nesterov2007gradient}.
1305.2592
On the Performance Limits of Scalar Coding Over MISO Channels
cs.IT math.IT
The performance limits of scalar coding for multiple-input single-output channels are revisited in this work. By employing randomized beamforming, Narula et al. demonstrated that the loss of scalar coding is universally bounded by ~ 2.51 dB (or 0.833 bits/symbol) for any number of antennas and channel gains. In this work, by using randomized beamforming in conjunction with space-time codes, it is shown that the bound can be tightened to ~ 1.1 dB (or 0.39 bits/symbol).
1305.2623
(k,m)-connectivity in Mobile Clustered Wireless Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.CO math.IT math.PR
This paper has been withdrawn by the author due to a crucial error in the calculation of Equation (28). We propose a novel concept of $(k,m)$-connectivity in mobile clustered wireless networks, in which there are $n$ mobile cluster members and $n^d$ static cluster heads, where $k,m,d$ are all positive constants and $k\leq m$. $(k,m)$-connectivity signifies that in a time period consisting of $m$ time slots, there exist at least $k$ time slots for each cluster member and in any one of these $k$ time slots the cluster member can directly communicate with at least one cluster head. We investigate the critical transmission range of asymptotic $(k,m)$-connectivity when cluster members move according to random walk or i.i.d. mobility model. Under random walk mobility, we propose two general heterogeneous velocity models in which cluster members may move with different velocities. Under both mobility models, we also define weak and strong parameters conditions, resulting in different accuracies of evaluations on the probability that the network is asymptotically $(k,m)$-connected, denoted as $P(\mathcal {C})$ below for simplicity. For both mobilities, under weak parameters condition, we provide bounds on $P(\mathcal {C})$ and derive the critical transmission range for $(k,m)$-connectivity. For random walk mobility with one kind of velocity model and i.i.d. mobility, under strong parameters condition, we present a precise asymptotic probability distribution of $P(\mathcal {C})$ in terms of the transmission radius. Our results offer fundamental insights and theoretical guidelines on design of large-scale wireless networks.
1305.2642
Adaptive Frequency Domain Detectors for SC-FDE in Multiuser DS-UWB Systems with Structured Channel Estimation and Direct Adaptation
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we propose two adaptive detection schemes based on single-carrier frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) for multiuser direct-sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) systems, which are termed structured channel estimation (SCE) and direct adaptation (DA). Both schemes use the minimum mean square error (MMSE) linear detection strategy and employ a cyclic prefix. In the SCE scheme, we perform the adaptive channel estimation in the frequency domain and implement the despreading in the time domain after the FDE. In this scheme, the MMSE detection requires the knowledge of the number of users and the noise variance. For this purpose, we propose simple algorithms for estimating these parameters. In the DA scheme, the interference suppression task is fulfilled with only one adaptive filter in the frequency domain and a new signal expression is adopted to simplify the design of such a filter. Least-mean squares (LMS), recursive least squares (RLS) and conjugate gradient (CG) adaptive algorithms are then developed for both schemes. A complexity analysis compares the computational complexity of the proposed algorithms and schemes, and simulation results for the downlink illustrate their performance.
1305.2648
Boosting with the Logistic Loss is Consistent
cs.LG stat.ML
This manuscript provides optimization guarantees, generalization bounds, and statistical consistency results for AdaBoost variants which replace the exponential loss with the logistic and similar losses (specifically, twice differentiable convex losses which are Lipschitz and tend to zero on one side). The heart of the analysis is to show that, in lieu of explicit regularization and constraints, the structure of the problem is fairly rigidly controlled by the source distribution itself. The first control of this type is in the separable case, where a distribution-dependent relaxed weak learning rate induces speedy convergence with high probability over any sample. Otherwise, in the nonseparable case, the convex surrogate risk itself exhibits distribution-dependent levels of curvature, and consequently the algorithm's output has small norm with high probability.
1305.2679
The Multi-Sender Multicast Index Coding
cs.IT math.IT
We focus on the following instance of an index coding problem, where a set of receivers are required to decode multiple messages, whilst each knows one of the messages a priori. In particular, here we consider a generalized setting where they are multiple senders, each sender only knows a subset of messages, and all senders are required to collectively transmit the index code. For a single sender, Ong and Ho (ICC, 2012) have established the optimal index codelength, where the lower bound was obtained using a pruning algorithm. In this paper, the pruning algorithm is simplified, and used in conjunction with an appending technique to give a lower bound to the multi-sender case. An upper bound is derived based on network coding. While the two bounds do not match in general, for the special case where no two senders know any message bit in common, the bounds match, giving the optimal index codelength. The results are derived based on graph theory, and are expressed in terms of strongly connected components.
1305.2680
A study for the effect of the Emphaticness and language and dialect for Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)
cs.CL cs.SD
The signal sound contains many different features, including Voice Onset Time (VOT), which is a very important feature of stop sounds in many languages. The only application of VOT values is stopping phoneme subsets. This subset of consonant sounds is stop phonemes exist in the Arabic language, and in fact, all languages. The pronunciation of these sounds is hard and unique especially for less-educated Arabs and non-native Arabic speakers. VOT can be utilized by the human auditory system to distinguish between voiced and unvoiced stops such as /p/ and /b/ in English.This search focuses on computing and analyzing VOT of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), within the Arabic language, for all pairs of non-emphatic (namely, /d/ and /t/) and emphatic pairs (namely, /d?/ and /t?/) depending on carrier words. This research uses a database built by ourselves, and uses the carrier words syllable structure: CV-CV-CV. One of the main outcomes always found is the emphatic sounds (/d?/, /t?/) are less than 50% of non-emphatic (counter-part) sounds ( /d/, /t/).Also, VOT can be used to classify or detect for a dialect ina language.
1305.2686
Using Exclusive Web Crawlers to Store Better Results in Search Engines' Database
cs.IR
Crawler-based search engines are the mostly used search engines among web and Internet users, involve web crawling, storing in database, ranking, indexing and displaying to the user. But it is noteworthy that because of increasing changes in web sites search engines suffer high time and transfers costs which are consumed to investigate the existence of each page in database while crawling, updating database and even investigating its existence in any crawling operations. "Exclusive Web Crawler" proposes guidelines for crawling features, links, media and other elements and to store crawling results in a certain table in its database on the web. With doing this, search engines store each site's tables in their databases and implement their ranking results on them. Thus, accuracy of data in every table (and its being up-to-date) is ensured and no 404 result is shown in search results since, in fact, this data crawler crawls data entered by webmaster and the database stores whatever he wants to display.
1305.2687
Automatic Parameter Adaptation for Multi-object Tracking
cs.CV
Object tracking quality usually depends on video context (e.g. object occlusion level, object density). In order to decrease this dependency, this paper presents a learning approach to adapt the tracker parameters to the context variations. In an offline phase, satisfactory tracking parameters are learned for video context clusters. In the online control phase, once a context change is detected, the tracking parameters are tuned using the learned values. The experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms the recent trackers in state of the art. This paper brings two contributions: (1) a classification method of video sequences to learn offline tracking parameters, (2) a new method to tune online tracking parameters using tracking context.
1305.2713
Early Detection of Alzheimer's - A Crucial Requirement
cs.CV physics.med-ph
Alzheimer's, an old age disease of people over 65 years causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. This disease progresses very slow and its identification in early stages is very difficult. The symptoms of Alzheimer's appear slowly and gradually will have worse effects. In its early stages, not only the patients themselves but their loved ones are generally unable to accept that the patient is suffering from disease. In this paper, we have proposed a new algorithm to detect patients of Alzheimer's at early stages by comparing the Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) of the patients with normal persons of their age. The progress of the disease can also be monitored by periodic comparison of the previous and current MRI.
1305.2714
Sharp MSE Bounds for Proximal Denoising
cs.IT math.IT math.OC
Denoising has to do with estimating a signal $x_0$ from its noisy observations $y=x_0+z$. In this paper, we focus on the "structured denoising problem", where the signal $x_0$ possesses a certain structure and $z$ has independent normally distributed entries with mean zero and variance $\sigma^2$. We employ a structure-inducing convex function $f(\cdot)$ and solve $\min_x\{\frac{1}{2}\|y-x\|_2^2+\sigma\lambda f(x)\}$ to estimate $x_0$, for some $\lambda>0$. Common choices for $f(\cdot)$ include the $\ell_1$ norm for sparse vectors, the $\ell_1-\ell_2$ norm for block-sparse signals and the nuclear norm for low-rank matrices. The metric we use to evaluate the performance of an estimate $x^*$ is the normalized mean-squared-error $\text{NMSE}(\sigma)=\frac{\mathbb{E}\|x^*-x_0\|_2^2}{\sigma^2}$. We show that NMSE is maximized as $\sigma\rightarrow 0$ and we find the \emph{exact} worst case NMSE, which has a simple geometric interpretation: the mean-squared-distance of a standard normal vector to the $\lambda$-scaled subdifferential $\lambda\partial f(x_0)$. When $\lambda$ is optimally tuned to minimize the worst-case NMSE, our results can be related to the constrained denoising problem $\min_{f(x)\leq f(x_0)}\{\|y-x\|_2\}$. The paper also connects these results to the generalized LASSO problem, in which, one solves $\min_{f(x)\leq f(x_0)}\{\|y-Ax\|_2\}$ to estimate $x_0$ from noisy linear observations $y=Ax_0+z$. We show that certain properties of the LASSO problem are closely related to the denoising problem. In particular, we characterize the normalized LASSO cost and show that it exhibits a "phase transition" as a function of number of observations. Our results are significant in two ways. First, we find a simple formula for the performance of a general convex estimator. Secondly, we establish a connection between the denoising and linear inverse problems.
1305.2724
Generalized Neutrosophic Soft Set
cs.AI
In this paper we present a new concept called generalized neutrosophic soft set. This concept incorporates the beneficial properties of both generalized neutrosophic set introduced by A.A. Salama [7]and soft set techniques proposed by Molodtsov [4]. We also study some properties of this concept. Some definitions and operations have been introduced on generalized neutrosophic soft set. Finally we present an application of generalized neuutrosophic soft set in decision making problem.
1305.2732
An efficient algorithm for learning with semi-bandit feedback
cs.LG
We consider the problem of online combinatorial optimization under semi-bandit feedback. The goal of the learner is to sequentially select its actions from a combinatorial decision set so as to minimize its cumulative loss. We propose a learning algorithm for this problem based on combining the Follow-the-Perturbed-Leader (FPL) prediction method with a novel loss estimation procedure called Geometric Resampling (GR). Contrary to previous solutions, the resulting algorithm can be efficiently implemented for any decision set where efficient offline combinatorial optimization is possible at all. Assuming that the elements of the decision set can be described with d-dimensional binary vectors with at most m non-zero entries, we show that the expected regret of our algorithm after T rounds is O(m sqrt(dT log d)). As a side result, we also improve the best known regret bounds for FPL in the full information setting to O(m^(3/2) sqrt(T log d)), gaining a factor of sqrt(d/m) over previous bounds for this algorithm.
1305.2741
Can Human-Like Bots Control Collective Mood: Agent-Based Simulations of Online Chats
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Using agent-based modeling approach, in this paper, we study self-organized dynamics of interacting agents in the presence of chat Bots. Different Bots with tunable ``human-like'' attributes, which exchange emotional messages with agents, are considered, and collective emotional behavior of agents is quantitatively analysed. In particular, using detrended fractal analysis we determine persistent fluctuations and temporal correlations in time series of agent's activity and statistics of avalanches carrying emotional messages of agents when Bots favoring positive/negative affects are active. We determine the impact of Bots and identify parameters that can modulate it. Our analysis suggests that, by these measures, the emotional Bots induce collective emotion among interacting agents by suitably altering the fractal characteristics of the underlying stochastic process.Positive-emotion Bots are slightly more effective than the negative ones. Moreover, the Bots which are periodically alternating between positive and negative emotion, can enhance fluctuations in the system leading to the avalanches of agent's messages that are reminiscent of self-organized critical states.
1305.2752
Hybrid fuzzy logic and pid controller based ph neutralization pilot plant
cs.SY cs.AI
Use of Control theory within process control industries has changed rapidly due to the increase complexity of instrumentation, real time requirements, minimization of operating costs and highly nonlinear characteristics of chemical process. Previously developed process control technologies which are mostly based on a single controller are not efficient in terms of signal transmission delays, processing power for computational needs and signal to noise ratio. Hybrid controller with efficient system modelling is essential to cope with the current challenges of process control in terms of control performance. This paper presents an optimized mathematical modelling and advance hybrid controller (Fuzzy Logic and PID) design along with practical implementation and validation of pH neutralization pilot plant. This procedure is particularly important for control design and automation of Physico-chemical systems for process control industry.
1305.2755
Clustering Web Search Results For Effective Arabic Language Browsing
cs.IR
The process of browsing Search Results is one of the major problems with traditional Web search engines for English, European, and any other languages generally, and for Arabic Language particularly. This process is absolutely time consuming and the browsing style seems to be unattractive. Organizing Web search results into clusters facilitates users quick browsing through search results. Traditional clustering techniques (data-centric clustering algorithms) are inadequate since they don't generate clusters with highly readable names or cluster labels. To solve this problem, Description-centric algorithms such as Suffix Tree Clustering (STC) algorithm have been introduced and used successfully and extensively with different adapted versions for English, European, and Chinese Languages. However, till the day of writing this paper, in our knowledge, STC algorithm has been never applied for Arabic Web Snippets Search Results Clustering.In this paper, we propose first, to study how STC can be applied for Arabic Language? We then illustrate by example that is impossible to apply STC after Arabic Snippets pre-processing (stem or root extraction) because the Merging process yields many redundant clusters. Secondly, to overcome this problem, we propose to integrate STC in a new scheme taking into a count the Arabic language properties in order to get the web more and more adapted to Arabic users. The proposed approach automatically clusters the web search results into high quality, and high significant clusters labels. The obtained clusters not only are coherent, but also can convey the contents to the users concisely and accurately. Therefore the Arabic users can decide at a glance whether the contents of a cluster are of interest.....
1305.2758
Using Page Size for Controlling Duplicate Query Results in Semantic Web
cs.DB
Semantic web is a web of future. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a language to represent resources in the World Wide Web. When these resources are queried the problem of duplicate query results occurs. The present techniques used hash index comparison to remove duplicate query results. The major drawback of using the hash index to remove duplicate query results is that, if there is a slight change in formatting or word order, then hash index is changed and query results are no more considered as duplicate even though they have same contents. We presented an algorithm for detection and elimination of duplicate query results from semantic web using hash index and page size comparisons. Experimental results showed that the proposed technique removed duplicate query results from semantic web efficiently, solved the problems of using hash index for duplicate handling and could be embedded in existing SQL-Based query system for semantic web. Research could be carried out for certain flexibilities in existing SQL-Based query system of semantic web to accommodate other duplicate detection techniques as well.
1305.2770
Personal Information Privacy Settings of Online Social Networks and their Suitability for Mobile Internet Devices
cs.SI cs.CY
Protecting personal information privacy has become a controversial issue among online social network providers and users. Most social network providers have developed several techniques to decrease threats and risks to the users privacy. These risks include the misuse of personal information which may lead to illegal acts such as identity theft. This study aims to measure the awareness of users on protecting their personal information privacy, as well as the suitability of the privacy systems which they use to modify privacy settings. Survey results show high percentage of the use of smart phones for web services but the current privacy settings for online social networks need to be improved to support different type of mobile phones screens. Because most users use their mobile phones for Internet services, privacy settings that are compatible with mobile phones need to be developed. The method of selecting privacy settings should also be simplified to provide users with a clear picture of the data that will be shared with others. Results of this study can be used to develop a new privacy system which will help users control their personal information easily from different devices, including mobile Internet devices and computers.
1305.2788
HRF estimation improves sensitivity of fMRI encoding and decoding models
cs.LG stat.AP
Extracting activation patterns from functional Magnetic Resonance Images (fMRI) datasets remains challenging in rapid-event designs due to the inherent delay of blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal. The general linear model (GLM) allows to estimate the activation from a design matrix and a fixed hemodynamic response function (HRF). However, the HRF is known to vary substantially between subjects and brain regions. In this paper, we propose a model for jointly estimating the hemodynamic response function (HRF) and the activation patterns via a low-rank representation of task effects.This model is based on the linearity assumption behind the GLM and can be computed using standard gradient-based solvers. We use the activation patterns computed by our model as input data for encoding and decoding studies and report performance improvement in both settings.
1305.2789
Phaseless Signal Recovery in Infinite Dimensional Spaces using Structured Modulations
cs.IT math.IT
This paper considers the recovery of continuous signals in infinite dimensional spaces from the magnitude of their frequency samples. It proposes a sampling scheme which involves a combination of oversampling and modulations with complex exponentials. Sufficient conditions are given such that almost every signal with compact support can be reconstructed up to a unimodular constant using only its magnitude samples in the frequency domain. Finally it is shown that an average sampling rate of four times the Nyquist rate is enough to reconstruct almost every time-limited signal.
1305.2801
Quantization Noise Shaping for Information Maximizing ADCs
cs.IT math.IT
ADCs sit at the interface of the analog and digital worlds and fundamentally determine what information is available in the digital domain for processing. This paper shows that a configurable ADC can be designed for signals with non constant information as a function of frequency such that within a fixed power budget the ADC maximizes the information in the converted signal by frequency shaping the quantization noise. Quantization noise shaping can be realized via loop filter design for a single channel delta sigma ADC and extended to common time and frequency interleaved multi channel structures. Results are presented for example wireline and wireless style channels.
1305.2827
Human Mood Detection For Human Computer Interaction
cs.CV
In this paper we propose an easiest approach for facial expression recognition. Here we are using concept of SVM for Expression Classification. Main problem is sub divided in three main modules. First one is Face detection in which we are using skin filter and Face segmentation. We are given more stress on feature Extraction. This method is effective enough for application where fast execution is required. Second, Facial Feature Extraction which is essential part for expression recognition. In this module we used Edge Projection Analysis. Finally extracted features vector is passed towards SVM classifier for Expression Recognition. We are considering six basic Expressions (Anger, Fear, Disgust, Joy, Sadness, and Surprise)
1305.2828
Image Optimization and Prediction
cs.CV
Image Processing, Optimization and Prediction of an Image play a key role in Computer Science. Image processing provides a way to analyze and identify an image .Many areas like medical image processing, Satellite images, natural images and artificial images requires lots of analysis and research on optimization. In Image Optimization and Prediction we are combining the features of Query Optimization, Image Processing and Prediction . Image optimization is used in Pattern analysis, object recognition, in medical Image processing to predict the type of diseases, in satellite images for predicting weather forecast, availability of water or mineral etc. Image Processing, Optimization and analysis is a wide open area for research .Lots of research has been conducted in the area of Image analysis and many techniques are available for image analysis but, a single technique is not yet identified for image analysis and prediction .our research is focused on identifying a global technique for image analysis and Prediction.
1305.2830
Performance Enhancement of Distributed Quasi Steady-State Genetic Algorithm
cs.NE
This paper proposes a new scheme for performance enhancement of distributed genetic algorithm (DGA). Initial population is divided in two classes i.e. female and male. Simple distance based clustering is used for cluster formation around females. For reclustering self-adaptive K-means is used, which produces well distributed and well separated clusters. The self-adaptive K-means used for reclustering automatically locates initial position of centroids and number of clusters. Four plans of co-evolution are applied on these clusters independently. Clusters evolve separately. Merging of clusters takes place depending on their performance. For experimentation unimodal and multimodal test functions have been used. Test result show that the new scheme of distribution of population has given better performance.
1305.2831
Test Model for Text Categorization and Text Summarization
cs.IR
Text Categorization is the task of automatically sorting a set of documents into categories from a predefined set and Text Summarization is a brief and accurate representation of input text such that the output covers the most important concepts of the source in a condensed manner. Document Summarization is an emerging technique for understanding the main purpose of any kind of documents. This paper presents a model that uses text categorization and text summarization for searching a document based on user query.
1305.2846
Opportunities & Challenges In Automatic Speech Recognition
cs.CL cs.SD
Automatic speech recognition enables a wide range of current and emerging applications such as automatic transcription, multimedia content analysis, and natural human-computer interfaces. This paper provides a glimpse of the opportunities and challenges that parallelism provides for automatic speech recognition and related application research from the point of view of speech researchers. The increasing parallelism in computing platforms opens three major possibilities for speech recognition systems: improving recognition accuracy in non-ideal, everyday noisy environments; increasing recognition throughput in batch processing of speech data; and reducing recognition latency in realtime usage scenarios. This paper describes technical challenges, approaches taken, and possible directions for future research to guide the design of efficient parallel software and hardware infrastructures.
1305.2847
An Overview of Hindi Speech Recognition
cs.CL cs.SD
In this age of information technology, information access in a convenient manner has gained importance. Since speech is a primary mode of communication among human beings, it is natural for people to expect to be able to carry out spoken dialogue with computer. Speech recognition system permits ordinary people to speak to the computer to retrieve information. It is desirable to have a human computer dialogue in local language. Hindi being the most widely spoken Language in India is the natural primary human language candidate for human machine interaction. There are five pairs of vowels in Hindi languages; one member is longer than the other one. This paper describes an overview of speech recognition system that includes how speech is produced and the properties and characteristics of Hindi Phoneme.
1305.2876
Multi-q Pattern Classification of Polarization Curves
cs.CE cs.CV
Several experimental measurements are expressed in the form of one-dimensional profiles, for which there is a scarcity of methodologies able to classify the pertinence of a given result to a specific group. The polarization curves that evaluate the corrosion kinetics of electrodes in corrosive media are an application where the behavior is chiefly analyzed from profiles. Polarization curves are indeed a classic method to determine the global kinetics of metallic electrodes, but the strong nonlinearity from different metals and alloys can overlap and the discrimination becomes a challenging problem. Moreover, even finding a typical curve from replicated tests requires subjective judgement. In this paper we used the so-called multi-q approach based on the Tsallis statistics in a classification engine to separate multiple polarization curve profiles of two stainless steels. We collected 48 experimental polarization curves in aqueous chloride medium of two stainless steel types, with different resistance against localized corrosion. Multi-q pattern analysis was then carried out on a wide potential range, from cathodic up to anodic regions. An excellent classification rate was obtained, at a success rate of 90%, 80%, and 83% for low (cathodic), high (anodic), and both potential ranges, respectively, using only 2% of the original profile data. These results show the potential of the proposed approach towards efficient, robust, systematic and automatic classification of highly non-linear profile curves.
1305.2889
Finding a needle in an exponential haystack: Discrete RRT for exploration of implicit roadmaps in multi-robot motion planning
cs.RO
We present a sampling-based framework for multi-robot motion planning which combines an implicit representation of a roadmap with a novel approach for pathfinding in geometrically embedded graphs tailored for our setting. Our pathfinding algorithm, discrete-RRT (dRRT), is an adaptation of the celebrated RRT algorithm for the discrete case of a graph, and it enables a rapid exploration of the high-dimensional configuration space by carefully walking through an implicit representation of a tensor product of roadmaps for the individual robots. We demonstrate our approach experimentally on scenarios of up to 60 degrees of freedom where our algorithm is faster by a factor of at least ten when compared to existing algorithms that we are aware of.
1305.2938
Temporal networks: slowing down diffusion by long lasting interactions
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Interactions among units in complex systems occur in a specific sequential order thus affecting the flow of information, the propagation of diseases, and general dynamical processes. We investigate the Laplacian spectrum of temporal networks and compare it with that of the corresponding aggregate network. First, we show that the spectrum of the ensemble average of a temporal network has identical eigenmodes but smaller eigenvalues than the aggregate networks. In large networks without edge condensation, the expected temporal dynamics is a time-rescaled version of the aggregate dynamics. Even for single sequential realizations, diffusive dynamics is slower in temporal networks. These discrepancies are due to the noncommutability of interactions. We illustrate our analytical findings using a simple temporal motif, larger network models and real temporal networks.
1305.2949
Unsupervised ensemble of experts (EoE) framework for automatic binarization of document images
cs.CV
In recent years, a large number of binarization methods have been developed, with varying performance generalization and strength against different benchmarks. In this work, to leverage on these methods, an ensemble of experts (EoE) framework is introduced, to efficiently combine the outputs of various methods. The proposed framework offers a new selection process of the binarization methods, which are actually the experts in the ensemble, by introducing three concepts: confidentness, endorsement and schools of experts. The framework, which is highly objective, is built based on two general principles: (i) consolidation of saturated opinions and (ii) identification of schools of experts. After building the endorsement graph of the ensemble for an input document image based on the confidentness of the experts, the saturated opinions are consolidated, and then the schools of experts are identified by thresholding the consolidated endorsement graph. A variation of the framework, in which no selection is made, is also introduced that combines the outputs of all experts using endorsement-dependent weights. The EoE framework is evaluated on the set of participating methods in the H-DIBCO'12 contest and also on an ensemble generated from various instances of grid-based Sauvola method with promising performance.
1305.2959
Automatic Speech Recognition Using Template Model for Man-Machine Interface
cs.SD cs.CL
Speech is a natural form of communication for human beings, and computers with the ability to understand speech and speak with a human voice are expected to contribute to the development of more natural man-machine interfaces. Computers with this kind of ability are gradually becoming a reality, through the evolution of speech recognition technologies. Speech is being an important mode of interaction with computers. In this paper Feature extraction is implemented using well-known Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC).Pattern matching is done using Dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm.
1305.2974
Blind Adaptive Reduced-Rank Detectors for DS-UWB Systems Based on Joint Iterative Optimization and the Constrained Constant Modulus Criterion
cs.IT math.IT
A novel linear blind adaptive receiver based on joint iterative optimization (JIO) and the constrained constant modulus (CCM) design criterion is proposed for interference suppression in direct-sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) systems. The proposed blind receiver consists of two parts, a transformation matrix that performs dimensionality reduction and a reduced-rank filter that produces the output. In the proposed receiver, the transformation matrix and the reduced-rank filter are updated jointly and iteratively to minimize the constant modulus (CM) cost function subject to a constraint. Adaptive implementations for the JIO receiver are developed by using the normalized stochastic gradient (NSG) and recursive least-squares (RLS) algorithms. In order to obtain a low-complexity scheme, the columns of the transformation matrix with the RLS algorithm are updated individually. Blind channel estimation algorithms for both versions (NSG and RLS) are implemented. Assuming the perfect timing, the JIO receiver only requires the spreading code of the desired user and the received data. Simulation results show that both versions of the proposed JIO receivers have excellent performance in suppressing the inter-symbol interference (ISI) and multiple access interference (MAI) with a low complexity.
1305.2981
Metrics for Computing Trust in a Multi-Agent Environment
cs.CY cs.SI
One of the risks involved in multi agent community is in the identification of trustworthy agent partners for transaction. In this paper we aim to describe a trust model for measuring trust in the interacting agents. The trust metric model works on the basis of the parameters that we have identified. The model primarily analyses trust value on the basis of the agents reputation, as provided by the agent itself, and the agents aggregate rating as provided by the witness agents. The final computation of the trust value is given by a weighted average of these two components. While computing the aggregate rating, a weight based method has been adopted to discount the contribution of possibly unfair ratings by the witness agents.
1305.2982
Estimating or Propagating Gradients Through Stochastic Neurons
cs.LG
Stochastic neurons can be useful for a number of reasons in deep learning models, but in many cases they pose a challenging problem: how to estimate the gradient of a loss function with respect to the input of such stochastic neurons, i.e., can we "back-propagate" through these stochastic neurons? We examine this question, existing approaches, and present two novel families of solutions, applicable in different settings. In particular, it is demonstrated that a simple biologically plausible formula gives rise to an an unbiased (but noisy) estimator of the gradient with respect to a binary stochastic neuron firing probability. Unlike other estimators which view the noise as a small perturbation in order to estimate gradients by finite differences, this estimator is unbiased even without assuming that the stochastic perturbation is small. This estimator is also interesting because it can be applied in very general settings which do not allow gradient back-propagation, including the estimation of the gradient with respect to future rewards, as required in reinforcement learning setups. We also propose an approach to approximating this unbiased but high-variance estimator by learning to predict it using a biased estimator. The second approach we propose assumes that an estimator of the gradient can be back-propagated and it provides an unbiased estimator of the gradient, but can only work with non-linearities unlike the hard threshold, but like the rectifier, that are not flat for all of their range. This is similar to traditional sigmoidal units but has the advantage that for many inputs, a hard decision (e.g., a 0 output) can be produced, which would be convenient for conditional computation and achieving sparse representations and sparse gradients.
1305.2985
Opportunistic Interference Management for Multicarrier systems
cs.IT math.IT
We study opportunistic interference management when there is bursty interference in parallel 2-user linear deterministic interference channels. A degraded message set communication problem is formulated to exploit the burstiness of interference in M subcarriers allocated to each user. We focus on symmetric rate requirements based on the number of interfered subcarriers rather than the exact set of interfered subcarriers. Inner bounds are obtained using erasure coding, signal-scale alignment and Han-Kobayashi coding strategy. Tight outer bounds for a variety of regimes are obtained using the El Gamal-Costa injective interference channel bounds and a sliding window subset entropy inequality. The result demonstrates an application of techniques from multilevel diversity coding to interference channels. We also conjecture outer bounds indicating the sub-optimality of erasure coding across subcarriers in certain regimes.
1305.2999
Dynamic Spectrum Refarming of GSM Spectrum for LTE Small Cells
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
In this paper we propose a novel solution called dynamic spectrum refarming (DSR) for deploying LTE small cells using the same spectrum as existing GSM networks. The basic idea of DSR is that LTE small cells are deployed in the GSM spectrum but suppress transmission of all signals including the reference signals in some specific physical resource blocks corresponding to a portion of the GSM carriers to ensure full GSM coverage. Our study shows that the proposed solution can provide LTE mobile terminals with high speed data services when they are in the coverage of the LTE small cells while minimally affecting the service provided to GSM terminals located within the LTE small cell coverage area. Thus, the proposal allows the normal operation of the existing GSM networks even with LTE small cells deployed in that spectrum. Though the focus of this paper is about GSM spectrum refarming, an analogous approach can be applied to reuse code division multiple access (CDMA) spectrum for LTE small cells.
1305.3002
Applications of Compressed Sensing in Communications Networks
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents a tutorial for CS applications in communications networks. The Shannon's sampling theorem states that to recover a signal, the sampling rate must be as least the Nyquist rate. Compressed sensing (CS) is based on the surprising fact that to recover a signal that is sparse in certain representations, one can sample at the rate far below the Nyquist rate. Since its inception in 2006, CS attracted much interest in the research community and found wide-ranging applications from astronomy, biology, communications, image and video processing, medicine, to radar. CS also found successful applications in communications networks. CS was applied in the detection and estimation of wireless signals, source coding, multi-access channels, data collection in sensor networks, and network monitoring, etc. In many cases, CS was shown to bring performance gains on the order of 10X. We believe this is just the beginning of CS applications in communications networks, and the future will see even more fruitful applications of CS in our field.
1305.3006
Fast Linearized Alternating Direction Minimization Algorithm with Adaptive Parameter Selection for Multiplicative Noise Removal
cs.CV math.NA
Owing to the edge preserving ability and low computational cost of the total variation (TV), variational models with the TV regularization have been widely investigated in the field of multiplicative noise removal. The key points of the successful application of these models lie in: the optimal selection of the regularization parameter which balances the data-fidelity term with the TV regularizer; the efficient algorithm to compute the solution. In this paper, we propose two fast algorithms based on the linearized technique, which are able to estimate the regularization parameter and recover the image simultaneously. In the iteration step of the proposed algorithms, the regularization parameter is adjusted by a special discrepancy function defined for multiplicative noise. The convergence properties of the proposed algorithms are proved under certain conditions, and numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithms overall outperform some state-of-the-art methods in the PSNR values and computational time.
1305.3011
Real Time Bid Optimization with Smooth Budget Delivery in Online Advertising
cs.GT cs.LG
Today, billions of display ad impressions are purchased on a daily basis through a public auction hosted by real time bidding (RTB) exchanges. A decision has to be made for advertisers to submit a bid for each selected RTB ad request in milliseconds. Restricted by the budget, the goal is to buy a set of ad impressions to reach as many targeted users as possible. A desired action (conversion), advertiser specific, includes purchasing a product, filling out a form, signing up for emails, etc. In addition, advertisers typically prefer to spend their budget smoothly over the time in order to reach a wider range of audience accessible throughout a day and have a sustainable impact. However, since the conversions occur rarely and the occurrence feedback is normally delayed, it is very challenging to achieve both budget and performance goals at the same time. In this paper, we present an online approach to the smooth budget delivery while optimizing for the conversion performance. Our algorithm tries to select high quality impressions and adjust the bid price based on the prior performance distribution in an adaptive manner by distributing the budget optimally across time. Our experimental results from real advertising campaigns demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach.
1305.3013
Novel variational model for inpainting in the wavelet domain
cs.CV
Wavelet domain inpainting refers to the process of recovering the missing coefficients during the image compression or transmission stage. Recently, an efficient algorithm framework which is called Bregmanized operator splitting (BOS) was proposed for solving the classical variational model of wavelet inpainting. However, it is still time-consuming to some extent due to the inner iteration. In this paper, a novel variational model is established to formulate this reconstruction problem from the view of image decomposition. Then an efficient iterative algorithm based on the split-Bregman method is adopted to calculate an optimal solution, and it is also proved to be convergent. Compared with the BOS algorithm the proposed algorithm avoids the inner iteration and hence is more simple. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is very efficient and outperforms the current state-of-the-art methods, especially in the computational time.
1305.3014
Scalable Audience Reach Estimation in Real-time Online Advertising
cs.LG cs.DB
Online advertising has been introduced as one of the most efficient methods of advertising throughout the recent years. Yet, advertisers are concerned about the efficiency of their online advertising campaigns and consequently, would like to restrict their ad impressions to certain websites and/or certain groups of audience. These restrictions, known as targeting criteria, limit the reachability for better performance. This trade-off between reachability and performance illustrates a need for a forecasting system that can quickly predict/estimate (with good accuracy) this trade-off. Designing such a system is challenging due to (a) the huge amount of data to process, and, (b) the need for fast and accurate estimates. In this paper, we propose a distributed fault tolerant system that can generate such estimates fast with good accuracy. The main idea is to keep a small representative sample in memory across multiple machines and formulate the forecasting problem as queries against the sample. The key challenge is to find the best strata across the past data, perform multivariate stratified sampling while ensuring fuzzy fall-back to cover the small minorities. Our results show a significant improvement over the uniform and simple stratified sampling strategies which are currently widely used in the industry.
1305.3040
Weighted Approach to General Entropy Function
cs.IT math.IT
The definition of weighted entropy allows for easy calculation of the entropy of the mixture of measures. In this paper we investigate the problem of equivalent definition of the general entropy function in weighted form. We show that under reasonable condition, which is satisfied by the well-known Shannon, R\'enyi and Tsallis entropies, every entropy function can be defined equivalently in the weighted way. As a corollary, we show how use the weighted form to compute Tsallis entropy of the mixture of measures.
1305.3046
Running Consensus for Decentralized Detection
cs.SY cs.MA
This thesis represents a culmination of work and learning that has taken place over a period of almost three years (2007 - 2010) at the University of Salerno, and at the University of Connecticut. It is mostly an unified mathematical dissertation of the running consensus procedures. In the recent years, the detection using the paradigm of the running consensus has been recognized as one of the three possible classes of distributed detection in which the phases of sensing and communication need not be mutually exclusive, i.e., sensing and communication occur simultaneously. Considering that the running consensus paradigm is just an intuitive inference procedure, i.e. sub-optimal w.r.t. an ideal centralized system scheme which is optimal, the most important result is that it asymptotically reaches the performance of this ideal scheme.
1305.3051
Using Feedback for Secrecy over Graphs
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
We study the problem of secure message multicasting over graphs in the presence of a passive (node) adversary who tries to eavesdrop in the network. We show that use of feedback, facilitated through the existence of cycles or undirected edges, enables higher rates than possible in directed acyclic graphs of the same mincut. We demonstrate this using code constructions for canonical combination networks (CCNs). We also provide general outer bounds as well as schemes for node adversaries over CCNs.
1305.3054
The Degrees of Freedom of the MIMO Y-channel
cs.IT math.IT
The degrees of freedom (DoF) of the MIMO Y-channel, a multi-way communication network consisting of 3 users and a relay, are characterized for arbitrary number of antennas. The converse is provided by cut-set bounds and novel genie-aided bounds. The achievability is shown by a scheme that uses beamforming to establish network coding on-the-fly at the relay in the uplink, and zero-forcing pre-coding in the downlink. It is shown that the network has min{2M_2+2M_3,M_1+M_2+M_3,2N} DoF, where M_j and N represent the number of antennas at user j and the relay, respectively. Thus, in the extreme case where M_1+M_2+M_3 dominates the DoF expression and is smaller than N, the network has the same DoF as the MAC between the 3 users and the relay. In this case, a decode and forward strategy is optimal. In the other extreme where 2N dominates, the DoF of the network is twice that of the aforementioned MAC, and hence network coding is necessary. As a byproduct of this work, it is shown that channel output feedback from the relay to the users has no impact on the DoF of this channel.
1305.3055
Secrecy Transmission on Block Fading Channels: Theoretical Limits and Performance of Practical Codes
cs.IT math.IT
We consider a system where an agent (Alice) aims at transmitting a message to a second agent (Bob) over a set of parallel channels, while keeping it secret from a third agent (Eve) by using physical layer security techniques. We assume that Alice perfectly knows the set of channels with respect to Bob, but she has only a statistical knowledge of the channels with respect to Eve. We derive bounds on the achievable outage secrecy rates, by considering coding either within each channel or across all parallel channels. Transmit power is adapted to the channel conditions, with a constraint on the average power over the whole transmission. We also focus on the maximum cumulative outage secrecy rate that can be achieved. Moreover, in order to assess the performance in a real life scenario, we consider the use of practical error correcting codes. We extend the definitions of security gap and equivocation rate, previously applied to the single additive white Gaussian noise channel, to Rayleigh distributed parallel channels, on the basis of the error rate targets and the outage probability. Bounds on these metrics are also derived, taking into account the statistics of the parallel channels. Numerical results are provided, that confirm the feasibility of the considered physical layer security techniques.
1305.3058
Rule-Based Application Development using Webdamlog
cs.DB
We present the WebdamLog system for managing distributed data on the Web in a peer-to-peer manner. We demonstrate the main features of the system through an application called Wepic for sharing pictures between attendees of the sigmod conference. Using Wepic, the attendees will be able to share, download, rate and annotate pictures in a highly decentralized manner. We show how WebdamLog handles heterogeneity of the devices and services used to share data in such a Web setting. We exhibit the simple rules that define the Wepic application and show how to easily modify the Wepic application.
1305.3082
Mining Frequent Neighborhood Patterns in Large Labeled Graphs
cs.DB
Over the years, frequent subgraphs have been an important sort of targeted patterns in the pattern mining literatures, where most works deal with databases holding a number of graph transactions, e.g., chemical structures of compounds. These methods rely heavily on the downward-closure property (DCP) of the support measure to ensure an efficient pruning of the candidate patterns. When switching to the emerging scenario of single-graph databases such as Google Knowledge Graph and Facebook social graph, the traditional support measure turns out to be trivial (either 0 or 1). However, to the best of our knowledge, all attempts to redefine a single-graph support resulted in measures that either lose DCP, or are no longer semantically intuitive. This paper targets mining patterns in the single-graph setting. We resolve the "DCP-intuitiveness" dilemma by shifting the mining target from frequent subgraphs to frequent neighborhoods. A neighborhood is a specific topological pattern where a vertex is embedded, and the pattern is frequent if it is shared by a large portion (above a given threshold) of vertices. We show that the new patterns not only maintain DCP, but also have equally significant semantics as subgraph patterns. Experiments on real-life datasets display the feasibility of our algorithms on relatively large graphs, as well as the capability of mining interesting knowledge that is not discovered in prior works.
1305.3103
A fast method for implementation of the property lists in programming languages
cs.PL cs.DB
One of the major challenges in programming languages is to support different data structures and their variations in both static and dynamic aspects. One of the these data structures is the property list which applications use it as a convenient way to store, organize, and access standard types of data. In this paper, the standards methods for implementation of the Property Lists, including the Static Array, Link List, Hash and Tree are reviewed. Then an efficient method to implement the property list is presented. The experimental results shows that our method is fast compared with the existing methods.
1305.3107
I Wish I Didn't Say That! Analyzing and Predicting Deleted Messages in Twitter
cs.SI cs.CL
Twitter has become a major source of data for social media researchers. One important aspect of Twitter not previously considered are {\em deletions} -- removal of tweets from the stream. Deletions can be due to a multitude of reasons such as privacy concerns, rashness or attempts to undo public statements. We show how deletions can be automatically predicted ahead of time and analyse which tweets are likely to be deleted and how.
1305.3120
Optimization with First-Order Surrogate Functions
stat.ML cs.LG math.OC
In this paper, we study optimization methods consisting of iteratively minimizing surrogates of an objective function. By proposing several algorithmic variants and simple convergence analyses, we make two main contributions. First, we provide a unified viewpoint for several first-order optimization techniques such as accelerated proximal gradient, block coordinate descent, or Frank-Wolfe algorithms. Second, we introduce a new incremental scheme that experimentally matches or outperforms state-of-the-art solvers for large-scale optimization problems typically arising in machine learning.
1305.3146
Discriminating Power of Centrality Measures
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The calculation of centrality measures is common practice in the study of networks, as they attempt to quantify the importance of individual vertices, edges, or other components. Different centralities attempt to measure importance in different ways. In this paper, we examine a conjecture posed by E. Estrada regarding the ability of several measures to distinguish the vertices of networks. Estrada conjectured that if all vertices of a graph have the same subgraph centrality, then all vertices must also have the same degree, eigenvector, closeness, and betweenness centralities. We provide a counterexample for the latter two centrality measures and propose a revised conjecture.
1305.3149
Qualitative detection of oil adulteration with machine learning approaches
cs.CE cs.LG
The study focused on the machine learning analysis approaches to identify the adulteration of 9 kinds of edible oil qualitatively and answered the following three questions: Is the oil sample adulterant? How does it constitute? What is the main ingredient of the adulteration oil? After extracting the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) data on triglyceride from 370 oil samples, we applied the adaptive boosting with multi-class Hamming loss (AdaBoost.MH) to distinguish the oil adulteration in contrast with the support vector machine (SVM). Further, we regarded the adulterant oil and the pure oil samples as ones with multiple labels and with only one label, respectively. Then multi-label AdaBoost.MH and multi-label learning vector quantization (ML-LVQ) model were built to determine the ingredients and their relative ratio in the adulteration oil. The experimental results on six measures show that ML-LVQ achieves better performance than multi-label AdaBoost.MH.
1305.3178
Convergence of Distributed Randomized PageRank Algorithms
cs.SY
The PageRank algorithm employed by Google quantifies the importance of each page by the link structure of the web. To reduce the computational burden the distributed randomized PageRank algorithms (DRPA) recently appeared in literature suggest pages to update their ranking values by locally communicating with the linked pages. The main objective of the note is to show that the estimates generated by DRPA converge to the true PageRank value almost surely under the assumption that the randomization is realized in an independent and identically distributed (iid) way. This is achieved with the help of the stochastic approximation (SA) and its convergence results.
1305.3189
A Bag of Words Approach for Semantic Segmentation of Monitored Scenes
cs.CV
This paper proposes a semantic segmentation method for outdoor scenes captured by a surveillance camera. Our algorithm classifies each perceptually homogenous region as one of the predefined classes learned from a collection of manually labelled images. The proposed approach combines two different types of information. First, color segmentation is performed to divide the scene into perceptually similar regions. Then, the second step is based on SIFT keypoints and uses the bag of words representation of the regions for the classification. The prediction is done using a Na\"ive Bayesian Network as a generative classifier. Compared to existing techniques, our method provides more compact representations of scene contents and the segmentation result is more consistent with human perception due to the combination of the color information with the image keypoints. The experiments conducted on a publicly available data set demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.
1305.3207
Efficient Density Estimation via Piecewise Polynomial Approximation
cs.LG cs.DS stat.ML
We give a highly efficient "semi-agnostic" algorithm for learning univariate probability distributions that are well approximated by piecewise polynomial density functions. Let $p$ be an arbitrary distribution over an interval $I$ which is $\tau$-close (in total variation distance) to an unknown probability distribution $q$ that is defined by an unknown partition of $I$ into $t$ intervals and $t$ unknown degree-$d$ polynomials specifying $q$ over each of the intervals. We give an algorithm that draws $\tilde{O}(t\new{(d+1)}/\eps^2)$ samples from $p$, runs in time $\poly(t,d,1/\eps)$, and with high probability outputs a piecewise polynomial hypothesis distribution $h$ that is $(O(\tau)+\eps)$-close (in total variation distance) to $p$. This sample complexity is essentially optimal; we show that even for $\tau=0$, any algorithm that learns an unknown $t$-piecewise degree-$d$ probability distribution over $I$ to accuracy $\eps$ must use $\Omega({\frac {t(d+1)} {\poly(1 + \log(d+1))}} \cdot {\frac 1 {\eps^2}})$ samples from the distribution, regardless of its running time. Our algorithm combines tools from approximation theory, uniform convergence, linear programming, and dynamic programming. We apply this general algorithm to obtain a wide range of results for many natural problems in density estimation over both continuous and discrete domains. These include state-of-the-art results for learning mixtures of log-concave distributions; mixtures of $t$-modal distributions; mixtures of Monotone Hazard Rate distributions; mixtures of Poisson Binomial Distributions; mixtures of Gaussians; and mixtures of $k$-monotone densities. Our general technique yields computationally efficient algorithms for all these problems, in many cases with provably optimal sample complexities (up to logarithmic factors) in all parameters.
1305.3224
Update-Efficiency and Local Repairability Limits for Capacity Approaching Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Motivated by distributed storage applications, we investigate the degree to which capacity achieving encodings can be efficiently updated when a single information bit changes, and the degree to which such encodings can be efficiently (i.e., locally) repaired when single encoded bit is lost. Specifically, we first develop conditions under which optimum error-correction and update-efficiency are possible, and establish that the number of encoded bits that must change in response to a change in a single information bit must scale logarithmically in the block-length of the code if we are to achieve any nontrivial rate with vanishing probability of error over the binary erasure or binary symmetric channels. Moreover, we show there exist capacity-achieving codes with this scaling. With respect to local repairability, we develop tight upper and lower bounds on the number of remaining encoded bits that are needed to recover a single lost bit of the encoding. In particular, we show that if the code-rate is $\epsilon$ less than the capacity, then for optimal codes, the maximum number of codeword symbols required to recover one lost symbol must scale as $\log1/\epsilon$. Several variations on---and extensions of---these results are also developed.
1305.3240
Reaction-Diffusion Systems as Complex Networks
math.OC cs.SY math.AP
The spatially distributed reaction networks are indispensable for the understanding of many important phenomena concerning the development of organisms, coordinated cell behavior, and pattern formation. The purpose of this brief discussion paper is to point out some open problems in the theory of PDE and compartmental ODE models of balanced reaction-diffusion networks.
1305.3250
Bioacoustical Periodic Pulse Train Signal Detection and Classification using Spectrogram Intensity Binarization and Energy Projection
cs.CV
The following work outlines an approach for automatic detection and recognition of periodic pulse train signals using a multi-stage process based on spectrogram edge detection, energy projection and classification. The method has been implemented to automatically detect and recognize pulse train songs of minke whales. While the long term goal of this work is to properly identify and detect minke songs from large multi-year datasets, this effort was developed using sounds off the coast of Massachusetts, in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The detection methodology is presented and evaluated on 232 continuous hours of acoustic recordings and a qualitative analysis of machine learning classifiers and their performance is described. The trained automatic detection and classification system is applied to 120 continuous hours, comprised of various challenges such as broadband and narrowband noises, low SNR, and other pulse train signatures. This automatic system achieves a TPR of 63% for FPR of 0.6% (or 0.87 FP/h), at a Precision (PPV) of 84% and an F1 score of 71%.
1305.3252
Fault-tolerant control under controller-driven sampling using virtual actuator strategy
cs.SY
We present a new output feedback fault tolerant control strategy for continuous-time linear systems. The strategy combines a digital nominal controller under controller-driven (varying) sampling with virtual-actuator (VA)-based controller reconfiguration to compensate for actuator faults. In the proposed scheme, the controller controls both the plant and the sampling period, and performs controller reconfiguration by engaging in the loop the VA adapted to the diagnosed fault. The VA also operates under controller-driven sampling. Two independent objectives are considered: (a) closed-loop stability with setpoint tracking and (b) controller reconfiguration under faults. Our main contribution is to extend an existing VA-based controller reconfiguration strategy to systems under controller-driven sampling in such a way that if objective (a) is possible under controller-driven sampling (without VA) and objective (b) is possible under uniform sampling (without controller-driven sampling), then closed-loop stability and setpoint tracking will be preserved under both healthy and faulty operation for all possible sampling rate evolutions that may be selected by the controller.
1305.3253
Social Network for Smart Devices using Embedded Ethernet
cs.NI cs.SI
Embedded Ethernet is nothing but a microcontroller which is able to communicate with the network. A design of AVR controller-based embedded Ethernet interface is presented. In the design, an existing SPI serial device can be converted into a network interface peripheral to obtain compatibility with the network. By typing the IP-address of LAN on the web browser, the user gets a web page on screen; this page contains all the information about the status of the devices. The user can also control the devices interfaced to the web server by pressing buttons provided in the web page. This creates a network for easy communication among the devices.
1305.3265
Interference Channel with Intermittent Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate how to exploit intermittent feedback for interference management. Focusing on the two-user linear deterministic interference channel, we completely characterize the capacity region. We find that the characterization only depends on the forward channel parameters and the marginal probability distribution of each feedback link. The scheme we propose makes use of block Markov encoding and quantize-map-and-forward at the transmitters, and backward decoding at the receivers. Matching outer bounds are derived based on novel genie-aided techniques. As a consequence, the perfect-feedback capacity can be achieved once the two feedback links are active with large enough probabilities.
1305.3282
Emergence of hierarchy in cost driven growth of spatial networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI
One of the most important features of spatial networks such as transportation networks, power grids, Internet, neural networks, is the existence of a cost associated with the length of links. Such a cost has a profound influence on the global structure of these networks which usually display a hierarchical spatial organization. The link between local constraints and large-scale structure is however not elucidated and we introduce here a generic model for the growth of spatial networks based on the general concept of cost benefit analysis. This model depends essentially on one single scale and produces a family of networks which range from the star-graph to the minimum spanning tree and which are characterised by a continuously varying exponent. We show that spatial hierarchy emerges naturally, with structures composed of various hubs controlling geographically separated service areas, and appears as a large-scale consequence of local cost-benefit considerations. Our model thus provides the first building blocks for a better understanding of the evolution of spatial networks and their properties. We also find that, surprisingly, the average detour is minimal in the intermediate regime, as a result of a large diversity in link lengths. Finally, we estimate the important parameters for various world railway networks and find that --remarkably-- they all fall in this intermediate regime, suggesting that spatial hierarchy is a crucial feature for these systems and probably possesses an important evolutionary advantage.
1305.3288
A Convex Analysis Approach to Computational Entropy
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the notion of computational entropy. Using techniques from convex optimization, we investigate the following problems: (a) Can we derandomize the computational entropy? More precisely, for the computational entropy, what is the real difference in security defined using the three important classes of circuits: deterministic boolean, deterministic real valued, or (the most powerful) randomized ones? (b) How large the difference in the computational entropy for an unbounded versus efficient adversary can be? (c) Can we obtain useful, simpler characterizations for the computational entropy?
1305.3289
Redundancy Allocation of Partitioned Linear Block Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Most memories suffer from both permanent defects and intermittent random errors. The partitioned linear block codes (PLBC) were proposed by Heegard to efficiently mask stuck-at defects and correct random errors. The PLBC have two separate redundancy parts for defects and random errors. In this paper, we investigate the allocation of redundancy between these two parts. The optimal redundancy allocation will be investigated using simulations and the simulation results show that the PLBC can significantly reduce the probability of decoding failure in memory with defects. In addition, we will derive the upper bound on the probability of decoding failure of PLBC and estimate the optimal redundancy allocation using this upper bound. The estimated redundancy allocation matches the optimal redundancy allocation well.
1305.3311
Does the Great Firewall really isolate the Chinese? Integrating access blockage with cultural factors to explain web user behavior
cs.CY cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The dominant understanding of Internet censorship posits that blocking access to foreign-based websites creates isolated communities of Internet users. We question this discourse for its assumption that if given access people would use all websites. We develop a conceptual framework that integrates access blockage with social structures to explain web users' choices, and argue that users visit websites they find culturally proximate and access blockage matters only when such sites are blocked. We examine the case of China, where online blockage is notoriously comprehensive, and compare Chinese web usage patterns with those elsewhere. Analyzing audience traffic among the 1000 most visited websites, we find that websites cluster according to language and geography. Chinese websites constitute one cluster, which resembles other such geo-linguistic clusters in terms of both its composition and degree of isolation. Our sociological investigation reveals a greater role of cultural proximity than access blockage in explaining online behaviors.
1305.3317
Linear Reduced-Rank Interference Suppression for DS-UWB Systems Using Switched Approximations of Adaptive Basis Functions
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, we propose a novel low-complexity reduced-rank scheme and consider its application to linear interference suppression in direct-sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) systems. Firstly, we investigate a generic reduced-rank scheme that jointly optimizes a projection vector and a reduced-rank filter by using the minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) criterion. Then a low-complexity scheme, denoted switched approximation of adaptive basis functions (SAABF), is proposed. The SAABF scheme is an extension of the generic scheme, in which the complexity reduction is achieved by using a multi-branch framework to simplify the structure of the projection vector. Adaptive implementations for the SAABF scheme are developed by using least-mean squares (LMS) and recursive least-squares (RLS) algorithms. We also develop algorithms for selecting the branch number and the model order of the SAABF scheme. Simulations show that in the scenarios with severe inter-symbol interference (ISI) and multiple access interference (MAI), the proposed SAABF scheme has fast convergence and remarkable interference suppression performance with low complexity.
1305.3321
A Mining-Based Compression Approach for Constraint Satisfaction Problems
cs.AI
In this paper, we propose an extension of our Mining for SAT framework to Constraint satisfaction Problem (CSP). We consider n-ary extensional constraints (table constraints). Our approach aims to reduce the size of the CSP by exploiting the structure of the constraints graph and of its associated microstructure. More precisely, we apply itemset mining techniques to search for closed frequent itemsets on these two representation. Using Tseitin extension, we rewrite the whole CSP to another compressed CSP equivalent with respect to satisfiability. Our approach contrast with previous proposed approach by Katsirelos and Walsh, as we do not change the structure of the constraints.