id
stringlengths
9
16
title
stringlengths
4
278
categories
stringlengths
5
104
abstract
stringlengths
6
4.09k
1305.7393
Performance of Single User vs. Multiuser Modulation in Wireless Multicarrier (MC) Communications
cs.IT math.IT
The main objective of this paper is to compare block transmission system performance analytically for Code Divisional Multiple Access (CDMA) modulations in Generalized Multicarrier environment against linear modulation techniques for both single user and multiuser. The effectivity of GMC-CDMA for multiuser will also be judged for different Direct Sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA) such as MC-CDMA, MC-DS-CDMA, MC-SS-CDMA. The analytical comparison will be in terms of computing probability of bit error for frequency selective and slow flat fading channels for different modulation techniques. The Bit Error Rate should be a good indication for of the performance. The tolerance characteristics of DS-CDMA in frequency-selective channels and MC-CDMA in flat fading channels will be shown analytically and improved capacity and Bit Error Rate performance will be derived for Block Spread Multiuser Multicarrier by relying block symbol spreading and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) operations. GMC-CDMA should give guaranteed symbol recovery regardless of channel limitations.
1305.7395
PageRank model of opinion formation on Ulam networks
nlin.CD cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We consider a PageRank model of opinion formation on Ulam networks, generated by the intermittency map and the typical Chirikov map. The Ulam networks generated by these maps have certain similarities with such scale-free networks as the World Wide Web (WWW), showing an algebraic decay of the PageRank probability. We find that the opinion formation process on Ulam networks have certain similarities but also distinct features comparing to the WWW. We attribute these distinctions to internal differences in network structure of the Ulam and WWW networks. We also analyze the process of opinion formation in the frame of generalized Sznajd model which protects opinion of small communities.
1305.7416
The Dendritic Cell Algorithm for Intrusion Detection
cs.CR cs.NE
As one of the solutions to intrusion detection problems, Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) have shown their advantages. Unlike genetic algorithms, there is no one archetypal AIS, instead there are four major paradigms. Among them, the Dendritic Cell Algorithm (DCA) has produced promising results in various applications. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate the potential for the DCA as a suitable candidate for intrusion detection problems. We review some of the commonly used AIS paradigms for intrusion detection problems and demonstrate the advantages of one particular algorithm, the DCA. In order to clearly describe the algorithm, the background to its development and a formal definition are given. In addition, improvements to the original DCA are presented and their implications are discussed, including previous work done on an online analysis component with segmentation and ongoing work on automated data preprocessing. Based on preliminary results, both improvements appear to be promising for online anomaly-based intrusion detection.
1305.7422
Evaluating Different Cost-Benefit Analysis Methods for Port Security Operations
cs.CE
Service industries, such as ports, are attentive to their standards, a smooth service flow and economic viability. Cost benefit analysis has proven itself as a useful tool to support this type of decision making; it has been used by businesses and governmental agencies for many years. In this book chapter we demonstrate different modelling methods that are used for estimating input factors required for conducting cost benefit analysis based on a single case study. These methods are: scenario analysis, decision trees, Monte-Carlo simulation modelling and discrete event simulation modelling. Our aims are, on the one hand, to guide the analyst through the modelling processes and, on the other hand, to demonstrate what additional decision support information can be obtained from applying each of these modelling methods.
1305.7424
Investigating the effectiveness of Variance Reduction Techniques in Manufacturing, Call Center and Cross-docking Discrete Event Simulation Models
cs.CE
Variance reduction techniques have been shown by others in the past to be a useful tool to reduce variance in Simulation studies. However, their application and success in the past has been mainly domain specific, with relatively little guidelines as to their general applicability, in particular for novices in this area. To facilitate their use, this study aims to investigate the robustness of individual techniques across a set of scenarios from different domains. Experimental results show that Control Variates is the only technique which achieves a reduction in variance across all domains. Furthermore, applied individually, Antithetic Variates and Control Variates perform particularly well in the Cross-docking scenarios, which was previously unknown.
1305.7430
Dynamical Systems to Monitor Complex Networks in Continuous Time
cs.SI math.DS physics.soc-ph
In many settings it is appropriate to treat the evolution of pairwise interactions over continuous time. We show that new Katz-style centrality measures can be derived in this context via solutions to a nonautonomous ODE driven by the network dynamics. This allows us to identify and track, at any resolution, the most influential nodes in terms of broadcasting and receiving information through time dependent links. In addition to the classical notion of attenuation across edges used in the static Katz centrality measure, the ODE also allows for attenuation over time, so that real time "running measures" can be computed. With regard to computational efficiency, we explain why it is cheaper to track good receivers of information than good broadcasters. We illustrate the new measures on a large scale voice call network, where key features are discovered that are not evident from snapshots or aggregates.
1305.7432
Real-world Transfer of Evolved Artificial Immune System Behaviours between Small and Large Scale Robotic Platforms
cs.NE cs.RO
In mobile robotics, a solid test for adaptation is the ability of a control system to function not only in a diverse number of physical environments, but also on a number of different robotic platforms. This paper demonstrates that a set of behaviours evolved in simulation on a miniature robot (epuck) can be transferred to a much larger-scale platform (Pioneer), both in simulation and in the real world. The chosen architecture uses artificial evolution of epuck behaviours to obtain a genetic sequence, which is then employed to seed an idiotypic, artificial immune system (AIS) on the Pioneers. Despite numerous hardware and software differences between the platforms, navigation and target-finding experiments show that the evolved behaviours transfer very well to the larger robot when the idiotypic AIS technique is used. In contrast, transferability is poor when reinforcement learning alone is used, which validates the adaptability of the chosen architecture.
1305.7434
Motif Detection Inspired by Immune Memory (JORS)
cs.NE
The search for patterns or motifs in data represents an area of key interest to many researchers. In this paper we present the Motif Tracking Algorithm, a novel immune inspired pattern identification tool that is able to identify variable length unknown motifs which repeat within time series data. The algorithm searches from a neutral perspective that is independent of the data being analysed and the underlying motifs. In this paper we test the flexibility of the motif tracking algorithm by applying it to the search for patterns in two industrial data sets. The algorithm is able to identify a population of meaningful motifs in both cases, and the value of these motifs is discussed.
1305.7437
Modelling Electricity Consumption in Office Buildings: An Agent Based Approach
cs.CE cs.AI
In this paper, we develop an agent-based model which integrates four important elements, i.e. organisational energy management policies/regulations, energy management technologies, electric appliances and equipment, and human behaviour, to simulate the electricity consumption in office buildings. Based on a case study, we use this model to test the effectiveness of different electricity management strategies, and solve practical office electricity consumption problems. This paper theoretically contributes to an integration of the four elements involved in the complex organisational issue of office electricity consumption, and practically contributes to an application of an agent-based approach for office building electricity consumption study.
1305.7438
Heterogeneity Involved Network-based Algorithm Leads to Accurate and Personalized Recommendations
physics.soc-ph cs.IR cs.SI
Heterogeneity of both the source and target objects is taken into account in a network-based algorithm for the directional resource transformation between objects. Based on a biased heat conduction recommendation method (BHC) which considers the heterogeneity of the target object, we propose a heterogeneous heat conduction algorithm (HHC), by further taking the source object degree as the weight of diffusion. Tested on three real datasets, the Netflix, RYM and MovieLens, the HHC algorithm is found to present a better recommendation in both the accuracy and personalization than two excellent algorithms, i.e., the original BHC and a hybrid algorithm of heat conduction and mass diffusion (HHM), while not requiring any other accessorial information or parameter. Moreover, the HHC even elevates the recommendation accuracy on cold objects, referring to the so-called cold start problem, for effectively relieving the recommendation bias on objects with different level of popularity.
1305.7440
A Simple Generative Model of Collective Online Behaviour
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Human activities increasingly take place in online environments, providing novel opportunities for relating individual behaviours to population-level outcomes. In this paper, we introduce a simple generative model for the collective behaviour of millions of social networking site users who are deciding between different software applications. Our model incorporates two distinct components: one is associated with recent decisions of users, and the other reflects the cumulative popularity of each application. Importantly, although various combinations of the two mechanisms yield long-time behaviour that is consistent with data, the only models that reproduce the observed temporal dynamics are those that strongly emphasize the recent popularity of applications over their cumulative popularity. This demonstrates---even when using purely observational data without experimental design---that temporal data-driven modelling can effectively distinguish between competing microscopic mechanisms, allowing us to uncover new aspects of collective online behaviour.
1305.7445
Eigenvector centrality of nodes in multiplex networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We extend the concept of eigenvector centrality to multiplex networks, and introduce several alternative parameters that quantify the importance of nodes in a multi-layered networked system, including the definition of vectorial-type centralities. In addition, we rigorously show that, under reasonable conditions, such centrality measures exist and are unique. Computer experiments and simulations demonstrate that the proposed measures provide substantially different results when applied to the same multiplex structure, and highlight the non-trivial relationships between the different measures of centrality introduced.
1305.7454
Privileged Information for Data Clustering
cs.LG stat.ML
Many machine learning algorithms assume that all input samples are independently and identically distributed from some common distribution on either the input space X, in the case of unsupervised learning, or the input and output space X x Y in the case of supervised and semi-supervised learning. In the last number of years the relaxation of this assumption has been explored and the importance of incorporation of additional information within machine learning algorithms became more apparent. Traditionally such fusion of information was the domain of semi-supervised learning. More recently the inclusion of knowledge from separate hypothetical spaces has been proposed by Vapnik as part of the supervised setting. In this work we are interested in exploring Vapnik's idea of master-class learning and the associated learning using privileged information, however within the unsupervised setting. Adoption of the advanced supervised learning paradigm for the unsupervised setting instigates investigation into the difference between privileged and technical data. By means of our proposed aRi-MAX method stability of the KMeans algorithm is improved and identification of the best clustering solution is achieved on an artificial dataset. Subsequently an information theoretic dot product based algorithm called P-Dot is proposed. This method has the ability to utilize a wide variety of clustering techniques, individually or in combination, while fusing privileged and technical data for improved clustering. Application of the P-Dot method to the task of digit recognition confirms our findings in a real-world scenario.
1305.7458
Validation of a Microsimulation of the Port of Dover
cs.CE cs.AI physics.soc-ph
Modelling and simulating the traffic of heavily used but secure environments such as seaports and airports is of increasing importance. Errors made when simulating these environments can have long standing economic, social and environmental implications. This paper discusses issues and problems that may arise when designing a simulation strategy. Data for the Port is presented, methods for lightweight vehicle assessment that can be used to calibrate and validate simulations are also discussed along with a diagnosis of overcalibration issues. We show that decisions about where the intelligence lies in a system has important repercussions for the reliability of system statistics. Finally, conclusions are drawn about how microsimulations can be moved forward as a robust planning tool for the 21st century.
1305.7465
Wavelet feature extraction and genetic algorithm for biomarker detection in colorectal cancer data
cs.NE cs.CE
Biomarkers which predict patient's survival can play an important role in medical diagnosis and treatment. How to select the significant biomarkers from hundreds of protein markers is a key step in survival analysis. In this paper a novel method is proposed to detect the prognostic biomarkers of survival in colorectal cancer patients using wavelet analysis, genetic algorithm, and Bayes classifier. One dimensional discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is normally used to reduce the dimensionality of biomedical data. In this study one dimensional continuous wavelet transform (CWT) was proposed to extract the features of colorectal cancer data. One dimensional CWT has no ability to reduce dimensionality of data, but captures the missing features of DWT, and is complementary part of DWT. Genetic algorithm was performed on extracted wavelet coefficients to select the optimized features, using Bayes classifier to build its fitness function. The corresponding protein markers were located based on the position of optimized features. Kaplan-Meier curve and Cox regression model were used to evaluate the performance of selected biomarkers. Experiments were conducted on colorectal cancer dataset and several significant biomarkers were detected. A new protein biomarker CD46 was found to significantly associate with survival time.
1305.7471
Investigating Mathematical Models of Immuno-Interactions with Early-Stage Cancer under an Agent-Based Modelling Perspective
cs.CE cs.AI
Many advances in research regarding immuno-interactions with cancer were developed with the help of ordinary differential equation (ODE) models. These models, however, are not effectively capable of representing problems involving individual localisation, memory and emerging properties, which are common characteristics of cells and molecules of the immune system. Agent-based modelling and simulation is an alternative paradigm to ODE models that overcomes these limitations. In this paper we investigate the potential contribution of agent-based modelling and simulation when compared to ODE modelling and simulation. We seek answers to the following questions: Is it possible to obtain an equivalent agent-based model from the ODE formulation? Do the outcomes differ? Are there any benefits of using one method compared to the other? To answer these questions, we have considered three case studies using established mathematical models of immune interactions with early-stage cancer. These case studies were re-conceptualised under an agent-based perspective and the simulation results were then compared with those from the ODE models. Our results show that it is possible to obtain equivalent agent-based models (i.e. implementing the same mechanisms); the simulation output of both types of models however might differ depending on the attributes of the system to be modelled. In some cases, additional insight from using agent-based modelling was obtained. Overall, we can confirm that agent-based modelling is a useful addition to the tool set of immunologists, as it has extra features that allow for simulations with characteristics that are closer to the biological phenomena.
1305.7476
Theoretical formulation and analysis of the deterministic dendritic cell algorithm
cs.NE cs.DS
As one of the emerging algorithms in the field of Artificial Immune Systems (AIS), the Dendritic Cell Algorithm (DCA) has been successfully applied to a number of challenging real-world problems. However, one criticism is the lack of a formal definition, which could result in ambiguity for understanding the algorithm. Moreover, previous investigations have mainly focused on its empirical aspects. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a formal definition of the algorithm, as well as to perform runtime analyses to revealits theoretical aspects. In this paper, we define the deterministic version of the DCA, named the dDCA, using set theory and mathematical functions. Runtime analyses of the standard algorithm and the one with additional segmentation are performed. Our analysis suggests that the standard dDCA has a runtime complexity of O(n2) for the worst-case scenario, where n is the number of input data instances. The introduction of segmentation changes the algorithm's worst case runtime complexity to O(max(nN; nz)), for DC population size N with size of each segment z. Finally, two runtime variables of the algorithm are formulated based on the input data, to understand its runtime behaviour as guidelines for further development.
1305.7477
On model selection consistency of regularized M-estimators
math.ST cs.LG math.OC stat.ME stat.ML stat.TH
Regularized M-estimators are used in diverse areas of science and engineering to fit high-dimensional models with some low-dimensional structure. Usually the low-dimensional structure is encoded by the presence of the (unknown) parameters in some low-dimensional model subspace. In such settings, it is desirable for estimates of the model parameters to be \emph{model selection consistent}: the estimates also fall in the model subspace. We develop a general framework for establishing consistency and model selection consistency of regularized M-estimators and show how it applies to some special cases of interest in statistical learning. Our analysis identifies two key properties of regularized M-estimators, referred to as geometric decomposability and irrepresentability, that ensure the estimators are consistent and model selection consistent.
1305.7480
Path diversity improves the identification of influential spreaders
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Identifying influential spreaders in complex networks is a crucial problem which relates to wide applications. Many methods based on the global information such as $k$-shell and PageRank have been applied to rank spreaders. However, most of related previous works overwhelmingly focus on the number of paths for propagation, while whether the paths are diverse enough is usually overlooked. Generally, the spreading ability of a node might not be strong if its propagation depends on one or two paths while the other paths are dead ends. In this Letter, we introduced the concept of path diversity and find that it can largely improve the ranking accuracy. We further propose a local method combining the information of path number and path diversity to identify influential nodes in complex networks. This method is shown to outperform many well-known methods in both undirected and directed networks. Moreover, the efficiency of our method makes it possible to be applied to very large systems.
1305.7484
Technical Report: Convex Optimization of Nonlinear Feedback Controllers via Occupation Measures
cs.RO cs.SY math.OC
In this paper, we present an approach for designing feedback controllers for polynomial systems that maximize the size of the time-limited backwards reachable set (BRS). We rely on the notion of occupation measures to pose the synthesis problem as an infinite dimensional linear program (LP) and provide finite dimensional approximations of this LP in terms of semidefinite programs (SDPs). The solution to each SDP yields a polynomial control policy and an outer approximation of the largest achievable BRS. In contrast to traditional Lyapunov based approaches which are non-convex and require feasible initialization, our approach is convex and does not require any form of initialization. The resulting time-varying controllers and approximated reachable sets are well-suited for use in a trajectory library or feedback motion planning algorithm. We demonstrate the efficacy and scalability of our approach on five nonlinear systems.
1306.0029
A Hierarchical Modulation for Upgrading Digital Broadcast Systems
cs.IT math.IT
A hierarchical modulation scheme is proposed to upgrade an existing digital broadcast system, such as satellite TV, or satellite radio, by adding more data in its transmission. The hierarchical modulation consists of a basic constellation, which is the same as in the original system, and a secondary constellation, which carries the additional data for the upgraded system. The upgraded system with the hierarchical modulation is backward compatible in the sense that receivers that have been deployed in the original system can continue receiving data in the basic constellation. New receivers can be designed to receive data carried in the secondary constellation, as well as those in the basic constellation. Analysis will be performed to show the tradeoff between bit rate of the data in secondary constellation and the penalty to the performance of receiving the basic constellation.
1306.0034
Providing Local Content in a Hybrid Single Frequency Network using Hierarchical Modulation
cs.IT math.IT
A hierarchical modulation method is proposed for providing local content in a hybrid satellite and terrestrial single frequency network such DVB-SH. The hierarchical modulation is used to transmit both global and local content in terrestrial transmitters. The global content is transmitted with high priority layer of the hierarchical modulation, and the local content is modulated with the low priority layer of the hierarchical modulation. The satellite transmits global content only. The performance of the hierarchical system for both global and local content is analyzed.
1306.0036
Optimal Decentralized State-Feedback Control with Sparsity and Delays
cs.SY math.OC
This work presents the solution to a class of decentralized linear quadratic state-feedback control problems, in which the plant and controller must satisfy the same combination of delay and sparsity constraints. Using a novel decomposition of the noise history, the control problem is split into independent subproblems that are solved using dynamic programming. The approach presented herein both unifies and generalizes many existing results.
1306.0037
Digital predistortion for power amplifiers using separable functions
cs.IT math.IT
This paper is concerned with digital predistortion for linearization of RF high power amplifiers (HPAs). It has two objectives. First, we establish a theoretical framework for a generic predistorter system, and show that if a postdistorter exists, then it is also a predistorter, and therefore, the predistorter and postdistorter are equivalent. This justifies the indirect learning methods for a large class of HPAs. Secondly, we establish a systematic and general structure for a predistorter that is capable of compensating nonlinearity for a large variety of HPAs. This systematic structure is derived using approximation by separable functions, and avoids selection of predistorters based on the assumption of HPA models traditionally done in the literature.
1306.0054
Analysis and Evaluation of the Link and Content Based Focused Treasure-Crawler
cs.IR cs.DL
Indexing the Web is becoming a laborious task for search engines as the Web exponentially grows in size and distribution. Presently, the most effective known approach to overcome this problem is the use of focused crawlers. A focused crawler applies a proper algorithm in order to detect the pages on the Web that relate to its topic of interest. For this purpose we proposed a custom method that uses specific HTML elements of a page to predict the topical focus of all the pages that have an unvisited link within the current page. These recognized on-topic pages have to be sorted later based on their relevance to the main topic of the crawler for further actual downloads. In the Treasure-Crawler, we use a hierarchical structure called the T-Graph which is an exemplary guide to assign appropriate priority score to each unvisited link. These URLs will later be downloaded based on this priority. This paper outlines the architectural design and embodies the implementation, test results and performance evaluation of the Treasure-Crawler system. The Treasure-Crawler is evaluated in terms of information retrieval criteria such as recall and precision, both with values close to 0.5. Gaining such outcome asserts the significance of the proposed approach.
1306.0090
Harmony search algorithm for the container storage problem
cs.NE
Recently a new metaheuristic called harmony search was developed. It mimics the behaviors of musicians improvising to find the better state harmony. In this paper, this algorithm is described and applied to solve the container storage problem in the harbor. The objective of this problem is to determine a valid containers arrangement, which meets customers delivery deadlines, reduces the number of container rehandlings and minimizes the ship idle time. In this paper, an adaptation of the harmony search algorithm to the container storage problem is detailed and some experimental results are presented and discussed. The proposed approach was compared to a genetic algorithm previously applied to the same problem and recorded a good results.
1306.0094
Analysis of Mismatched Estimation Errors Using Gradients of Partition Functions
cs.IT cond-mat.stat-mech math.IT
We consider the problem of signal estimation (denoising) from a statistical-mechanical perspective, in continuation to a recent work on the analysis of mean-square error (MSE) estimation using a direct relationship between optimum estimation and certain partition functions. The paper consists of essentially two parts. In the first part, using the aforementioned relationship, we derive single-letter expressions of the mismatched MSE of a codeword (from a randomly selected code), corrupted by a Gaussian vector channel. In the second part, we provide several examples to demonstrate phase transitions in the behavior of the MSE. These examples enable us to understand more deeply and to gather intuition regarding the roles of the real and the mismatched probability measures in creating these phase transitions.
1306.0095
Universal Induction with Varying Sets of Combinators
cs.AI
Universal induction is a crucial issue in AGI. Its practical applicability can be achieved by the choice of the reference machine or representation of algorithms agreed with the environment. This machine should be updatable for solving subsequent tasks more efficiently. We study this problem on an example of combinatory logic as the very simple Turing-complete reference machine, which enables modifying program representations by introducing different sets of primitive combinators. Genetic programming system is used to search for combinator expressions, which are easily decomposed into sub-expressions being recombined in crossover. Our experiments show that low-complexity induction or prediction tasks can be solved by the developed system (much more efficiently than using brute force); useful combinators can be revealed and included into the representation simplifying more difficult tasks. However, optimal sets of combinators depend on the specific task, so the reference machine should be adaptively chosen in coordination with the search engine.
1306.0112
Deciphering the global organization of clustering in real complex networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI
We uncover the global organization of clustering in real complex networks. As it happens with other fundamental properties of networks such as the degree distribution, we find that real networks are neither completely random nor ordered with respect to clustering, although they tend to be closer to maximally random architectures. We reach this conclusion by comparing the global structure of clustering in real networks with that in maximally random and in maximally ordered clustered graphs. The former are produced with an exponential random graph model that maintains correlations among adjacent edges at the minimum needed to conform with the expected clustering spectrum; the later with a random model that arranges triangles in cliques inducing highly ordered structures. To compare the global organization of clustering in real and model networks, we compute $m$-core landscapes, where the $m$-core is defined, akin to the $k$-core, as the maximal subgraph with edges participating at least in $m$ triangles. This property defines a set of nested subgraphs that, contrarily to $k$-cores, is able to distinguish between hierarchical and modular architectures. To visualize the $m$-core decomposition we developed the LaNet-vi 3.0 tool.
1306.0125
Understanding ACT-R - an Outsider's Perspective
cs.LG
The ACT-R theory of cognition developed by John Anderson and colleagues endeavors to explain how humans recall chunks of information and how they solve problems. ACT-R also serves as a theoretical basis for "cognitive tutors", i.e., automatic tutoring systems that help students learn mathematics, computer programming, and other subjects. The official ACT-R definition is distributed across a large body of literature spanning many articles and monographs, and hence it is difficult for an "outsider" to learn the most important aspects of the theory. This paper aims to provide a tutorial to the core components of the ACT-R theory.
1306.0128
Towards Detection of Bottlenecks in Modular Systems
cs.AI cs.SY
The paper describes some basic approaches to detection of bottlenecks in composite (modular) systems. The following basic system bottlenecks detection problems are examined: (1) traditional quality management approaches (Pareto chart based method, multicriteria analysis as selection of Pareto-efficient points, and/or multicriteria ranking), (2) selection of critical system elements (critical components/modules, critical component interconnection), (3) selection of interconnected system components as composite system faults (via clique-based fusion), (4) critical elements (e.g., nodes) in networks, and (5) predictive detection of system bottlenecks (detection of system components based on forecasting of their parameters). Here, heuristic solving schemes are used. Numerical examples illustrate the approaches.
1306.0139
Image Inpainting by Kriging Interpolation Technique
cs.CV
Image inpainting is the art of predicting damaged regions of an image. The manual way of image inpainting is a time consuming. Therefore, there must be an automatic digital method for image inpainting that recovers the image from the damaged regions. In this paper, a novel statistical image inpainting algorithm based on Kriging interpolation technique was proposed. Kriging technique automatically fills the damaged region in an image using the information available from its surrounding regions in such away that it uses the spatial correlation structure of points inside the k-by-k block. Kriging has the ability to face the challenge of keeping the structure and texture information as the size of damaged region heighten. Experimental results showed that, Kriging has a high PSNR value when recovering a variety of test images from scratches and text as damaged regions.
1306.0150
Simulation of Molecular Signaling in Blood Vessels: Software Design and Application to Atherogenesis
cs.CE cond-mat.soft q-bio.QM
This paper presents a software platform, named BiNS2, able to simulate diffusion-based molecular communications with drift inside blood vessels. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First a detailed description of the simulator is given, under the software engineering point of view, by highlighting the innovations and optimizations introduced. Their introduction into the previous version of the BiNS simulator was needed to provide to functions for simulating molecular signaling and communication potentials inside bounded spaces. The second contribution consists of the analysis, carried out by using BiNS2, of a specific communication process happening inside blood vessels, the atherogenesis, which is the initial phase of the formation of atherosclerotic plaques, due to the abnormal signaling between platelets and endothelium. From a communication point of view, platelets act as mobile transmitters, endothelial cells are fixed receivers, sticky to the vessel walls, and the transmitted signal is made of bursts of molecules emitted by platelets. The simulator allows evaluating the channel latency and the footprint on the vessel wall of the transmitted signal as a function of the transmitter distance from the vessels wall, the signal strength, and the receiver sensitivity.
1306.0152
An Analysis of the Connections Between Layers of Deep Neural Networks
cs.CV
We present an analysis of different techniques for selecting the connection be- tween layers of deep neural networks. Traditional deep neural networks use ran- dom connection tables between layers to keep the number of connections small and tune to different image features. This kind of connection performs adequately in supervised deep networks because their values are refined during the training. On the other hand, in unsupervised learning, one cannot rely on back-propagation techniques to learn the connections between layers. In this work, we tested four different techniques for connecting the first layer of the network to the second layer on the CIFAR and SVHN datasets and showed that the accuracy can be im- proved up to 3% depending on the technique used. We also showed that learning the connections based on the co-occurrences of the features does not confer an advantage over a random connection table in small networks. This work is helpful to improve the efficiency of connections between the layers of unsupervised deep neural networks.
1306.0155
Dynamic Ad Allocation: Bandits with Budgets
cs.LG cs.DS
We consider an application of multi-armed bandits to internet advertising (specifically, to dynamic ad allocation in the pay-per-click model, with uncertainty on the click probabilities). We focus on an important practical issue that advertisers are constrained in how much money they can spend on their ad campaigns. This issue has not been considered in the prior work on bandit-based approaches for ad allocation, to the best of our knowledge. We define a simple, stylized model where an algorithm picks one ad to display in each round, and each ad has a \emph{budget}: the maximal amount of money that can be spent on this ad. This model admits a natural variant of UCB1, a well-known algorithm for multi-armed bandits with stochastic rewards. We derive strong provable guarantees for this algorithm.
1306.0158
Virality Prediction and Community Structure in Social Networks
cs.SI cs.CY physics.data-an physics.soc-ph
How does network structure affect diffusion? Recent studies suggest that the answer depends on the type of contagion. Complex contagions, unlike infectious diseases (simple contagions), are affected by social reinforcement and homophily. Hence, the spread within highly clustered communities is enhanced, while diffusion across communities is hampered. A common hypothesis is that memes and behaviors are complex contagions. We show that, while most memes indeed behave like complex contagions, a few viral memes spread across many communities, like diseases. We demonstrate that the future popularity of a meme can be predicted by quantifying its early spreading pattern in terms of community concentration. The more communities a meme permeates, the more viral it is. We present a practical method to translate data about community structure into predictive knowledge about what information will spread widely. This connection may lead to significant advances in computational social science, social media analytics, and marketing applications.
1306.0160
Phase Retrieval using Alternating Minimization
stat.ML cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
Phase retrieval problems involve solving linear equations, but with missing sign (or phase, for complex numbers) information. More than four decades after it was first proposed, the seminal error reduction algorithm of (Gerchberg and Saxton 1972) and (Fienup 1982) is still the popular choice for solving many variants of this problem. The algorithm is based on alternating minimization; i.e. it alternates between estimating the missing phase information, and the candidate solution. Despite its wide usage in practice, no global convergence guarantees for this algorithm are known. In this paper, we show that a (resampling) variant of this approach converges geometrically to the solution of one such problem -- finding a vector $\mathbf{x}$ from $\mathbf{y},\mathbf{A}$, where $\mathbf{y} = \left|\mathbf{A}^{\top}\mathbf{x}\right|$ and $|\mathbf{z}|$ denotes a vector of element-wise magnitudes of $\mathbf{z}$ -- under the assumption that $\mathbf{A}$ is Gaussian. Empirically, we demonstrate that alternating minimization performs similar to recently proposed convex techniques for this problem (which are based on "lifting" to a convex matrix problem) in sample complexity and robustness to noise. However, it is much more efficient and can scale to large problems. Analytically, for a resampling version of alternating minimization, we show geometric convergence to the solution, and sample complexity that is off by log factors from obvious lower bounds. We also establish close to optimal scaling for the case when the unknown vector is sparse. Our work represents the first theoretical guarantee for alternating minimization (albeit with resampling) for any variant of phase retrieval problems in the non-convex setting.
1306.0162
Cellular-Based Statistical Model for Mobile Dispersion
cs.IT math.IT
While analyzing mobile systems we often approximate the actual coverage surface and assume an ideal cell shape. In a multi-cellular network, because of its tessellating nature, a hexagon is more preferred than a circular geometry. Despite this reality, perhaps due to the inherent simplicity, only a model for circular based random spreading is available. However, if used, this results an unfair terminal distribution for non-circular contours. Therefore, in this paper we specifically derived an unbiased node density model for a hexagon. We then extended the principle and established stochastic ways to handle sectored cells. Next, based on these mathematical findings, we created a generic modeling tool that can support a complex network with varying position, capacity, size, user density, and sectoring capability. Last, simulation was used to verify the theoretical analysis.
1306.0165
CRUC: Cold-start Recommendations Using Collaborative Filtering in Internet of Things
cs.IR cs.NI
The Internet of Things (IoT) aims at interconnecting everyday objects (including both things and users) and then using this connection information to provide customized user services. However, IoT does not work in its initial stages without adequate acquisition of user preferences. This is caused by cold-start problem that is a situation where only few users are interconnected. To this end, we propose CRUC scheme - Cold-start Recommendations Using Collaborative Filtering in IoT, involving formulation, filtering and prediction steps. Extensive experiments over real cases and simulation have been performed to evaluate the performance of CRUC scheme. Experimental results show that CRUC efficiently solves the cold-start problem in IoT.
1306.0178
Using a bag of Words for Automatic Medical Image Annotation with a Latent Semantic
cs.IR cs.CV
We present in this paper a new approach for the automatic annotation of medical images, using the approach of "bag-of-words" to represent the visual content of the medical image combined with text descriptors based approach tf.idf and reduced by latent semantic to extract the co-occurrence between terms and visual terms. A medical report is composed of a text describing a medical image. First, we are interested to index the text and extract all relevant terms using a thesaurus containing MeSH medical concepts. In a second phase, the medical image is indexed while recovering areas of interest which are invariant to change in scale, light and tilt. To annotate a new medical image, we use the approach of "bagof-words" to recover the feature vector. Indeed, we use the vector space model to retrieve similar medical image from the database training. The calculation of the relevance value of an image to the query image is based on the cosine function. We conclude with an experiment carried out on five types of radiological imaging to evaluate the performance of our system of medical annotation. The results showed that our approach works better with more images from the radiology of the skull.
1306.0186
RNADE: The real-valued neural autoregressive density-estimator
stat.ML cs.LG
We introduce RNADE, a new model for joint density estimation of real-valued vectors. Our model calculates the density of a datapoint as the product of one-dimensional conditionals modeled using mixture density networks with shared parameters. RNADE learns a distributed representation of the data, while having a tractable expression for the calculation of densities. A tractable likelihood allows direct comparison with other methods and training by standard gradient-based optimizers. We compare the performance of RNADE on several datasets of heterogeneous and perceptual data, finding it outperforms mixture models in all but one case.
1306.0193
A Trust-based Recruitment Framework for Multi-hop Social Participatory Sensing
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The idea of social participatory sensing provides a substrate to benefit from friendship relations in recruiting a critical mass of participants willing to attend in a sensing campaign. However, the selection of suitable participants who are trustable and provide high quality contributions is challenging. In this paper, we propose a recruitment framework for social participatory sensing. Our framework leverages multi-hop friendship relations to identify and select suitable and trustworthy participants among friends or friends of friends, and finds the most trustable paths to them. The framework also includes a suggestion component which provides a cluster of suggested friends along with the path to them, which can be further used for recruitment or friendship establishment. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed recruitment framework in terms of selecting a large number of well-suited participants and providing contributions with high overall trust, in comparison with one-hop recruitment architecture.
1306.0194
Genetic algorithms and solid state NMR pulse sequences
cs.CE physics.ins-det
The use of genetic algorithms for the optimisation of magic angle spinning NMR pulse sequences is discussed. The discussion uses as an example the optimisation of the C7 dipolar recoupling pulse sequence, aiming to achieve improved efficiency for spin systems characterised by large chemical shielding anisotropies and/or small dipolar coupling interactions. The optimised pulse sequence is found to be robust over a wide range of parameters, requires only minimal a priori knowledge of the spin system for experimental implementations with buildup rates being solely determined by the magnitude of the dipolar coupling interaction, but is found to be less broadbanded than the original C7 pulse sequence. The optimised pulse sequence breaks the synchronicity between r.f. pulses and sample spinning.
1306.0196
Cumulative Effect in Information Diffusion: A Comprehensive Empirical Study on Microblogging Network
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Cumulative effect in social contagions underlies many studies on the spread of innovation, behaviors, and influence. However, few large-scale empirical studies are conducted to validate the existence of cumulative effect in the information diffusion on social networks. In this paper, using the population-scale dataset from the largest Chinese microblogging website, we conduct a comprehensive study on the cumulative effect in information diffusion. We base our study on the diffusion network of each message, where nodes are the involved users and links are the following relationships among them. We find that multiple exposures to the same message indeed increase the possibility of forwarding it. However, additional exposures cannot further improve the chance of forwarding when the number of exposures crosses its peak at two. This finding questions the cumulative effect hypothesis in information diffusion. Furthermore, to clarify the forwarding preference among users, we investigate both the structural motif of the diffusion network and the temporal pattern of information diffusion process among users. The patterns provide vital insight for understanding the variation of message popularity and explain the characteristics of diffusion networks.
1306.0225
Convergence Analysis and Parallel Computing Implementation for the Multiagent Coordination Optimization Algorithm
math.OC cs.NE math.DS
In this report, a novel variation of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, called Multiagent Coordination Optimization (MCO), is implemented in a parallel computing way for practical use by introducing MATLAB built-in function "parfor" into MCO. Then we rigorously analyze the global convergence of MCO by means of semistability theory. Besides sharing global optimal solutions with the PSO algorithm, the MCO algorithm integrates cooperative swarm behavior of multiple agents into the update formula by sharing velocity and position information between neighbors to improve its performance. Numerical evaluation of the parallel MCO algorithm is provided in the report by running the proposed algorithm on supercomputers in the High Performance Computing Center at Texas Tech University. In particular, the optimal value and consuming time are compared with PSO and serial MCO by solving several benchmark functions in the literature, respectively. Based on the simulation results, the performance of the parallel MCO is not only superb compared with PSO for solving many nonlinear, noncovex optimization problems, but also is of high efficiency by saving the computational time.
1306.0233
Scale-Free Networks with the Same Degree Distribution: Different Structural Properties
cs.SI cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.stat-mech math.DS physics.soc-ph
We have analysed some structural properties of scale-free networks with the same degree distribution. Departing from a degree distribution obtained from the Barab\'asi-Albert (BA) algorithm, networks were generated using four additional different algorithms a (Molloy-Reed, Kalisky, and two new models named A and B) besides the BA algorithm itself. For each network, we have calculated the following structural measures: average degree of the nearest neighbours, central point dominance, clustering coefficient, the Pearson correlation coefficient, and global efficiency. We found that different networks with the same degree distribution may have distinct structural properties. In particular, model B generates decentralized networks with a larger number of components, a smaller giant component size, and a low global efficiency when compared to the other algorithms, especially compared to the centralized BA networks that have all vertices in a single component, with a medium to high global efficiency. The other three models generate networks with intermediate characteristics between B and BA models. A consequence of this finding is that the dynamics of different phenomena on these networks may differ considerably.
1306.0237
Guided Random Forest in the RRF Package
cs.LG
Random Forest (RF) is a powerful supervised learner and has been popularly used in many applications such as bioinformatics. In this work we propose the guided random forest (GRF) for feature selection. Similar to a feature selection method called guided regularized random forest (GRRF), GRF is built using the importance scores from an ordinary RF. However, the trees in GRRF are built sequentially, are highly correlated and do not allow for parallel computing, while the trees in GRF are built independently and can be implemented in parallel. Experiments on 10 high-dimensional gene data sets show that, with a fixed parameter value (without tuning the parameter), RF applied to features selected by GRF outperforms RF applied to all features on 9 data sets and 7 of them have significant differences at the 0.05 level. Therefore, both accuracy and interpretability are significantly improved. GRF selects more features than GRRF, however, leads to better classification accuracy. Note in this work the guided random forest is guided by the importance scores from an ordinary random forest, however, it can also be guided by other methods such as human insights (by specifying $\lambda_i$). GRF can be used in "RRF" v1.4 (and later versions), a package that also includes the regularized random forest methods.
1306.0239
Deep Learning using Linear Support Vector Machines
cs.LG stat.ML
Recently, fully-connected and convolutional neural networks have been trained to achieve state-of-the-art performance on a wide variety of tasks such as speech recognition, image classification, natural language processing, and bioinformatics. For classification tasks, most of these "deep learning" models employ the softmax activation function for prediction and minimize cross-entropy loss. In this paper, we demonstrate a small but consistent advantage of replacing the softmax layer with a linear support vector machine. Learning minimizes a margin-based loss instead of the cross-entropy loss. While there have been various combinations of neural nets and SVMs in prior art, our results using L2-SVMs show that by simply replacing softmax with linear SVMs gives significant gains on popular deep learning datasets MNIST, CIFAR-10, and the ICML 2013 Representation Learning Workshop's face expression recognition challenge.
1306.0257
Spatially distributed social complex networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI nlin.AO
We propose a bare-bones stochastic model that takes into account both the geographical distribution of people within a country and their complex network of connections. The model, which is designed to give rise to a scale-free network of social connections and to visually resemble the geographical spread seen in satellite pictures of the Earth at night, gives rise to a power-law distribution for the ranking of cities by population size (but for the largest cities) and reflects the notion that highly connected individuals tend to live in highly populated areas. It also yields some interesting insights regarding Gibrat's law for the rates of city growth (by population size), in partial support of the findings in a recent analysis of real data [Rozenfeld et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105, 18702 (2008)]. The model produces a nontrivial relation between city population and city population density and a superlinear relationship between social connectivity and city population, both of which seem quite in line with real data.
1306.0260
A Distributed Algorithm for Solving Positive Definite Linear Equations over Networks with Membership Dynamics
cs.SY cs.DC
This paper considers the problem of solving a symmetric positive definite system of linear equations over a network of agents with arbitrary asynchronous interactions and membership dynamics. The latter implies that each agent is allowed to join and leave the network at any time, for infinitely many times, and lose all its memory upon leaving. We develop Subset Equalizing (SE), a distributed asynchronous algorithm for solving such a problem. To design and analyze SE, we introduce a novel time-varying Lyapunov-like function, defined on a state space with changing dimension, and a generalized concept of network connectivity, capable of handling such interactions and membership dynamics. Based on them, we establish the boundedness, asymptotic convergence, and exponential convergence of SE, along with a bound on its convergence rate. Finally, through extensive simulation, we show that SE is effective in a volatile agent network and that a special case of SE, termed Groupwise Equalizing, is significantly more bandwidth/energy efficient than two existing algorithms in multi-hop wireless networks.
1306.0264
Epidemic-like Proximity-based Traffic Offloading
cs.IT cs.SI math.IT
Cellular networks are overloaded due to the mobile traffic surge, and mobile social network (MSNets) carrying information flow can help reduce cellular traffic load. If geographically-nearby users directly adopt WiFi or Bluetooth technology (i.e., leveraging proximity-based communication) for information spreading in MSNets, a portion of mobile traffic can be offloaded from cellular networks. For many delay-tolerant applications, it is beneficial for traffic offloading to pick some seed users as information sources, which help further spread the information to others in an epidemic-like manner using proximity-based communication. In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework to study the issue of choosing only k seed users so as to maximize the mobile traffic offloaded from cellular networks via proximity-based communication. We introduce a gossip-style social cascade (GSC) model to model the information diffusion process, which captures the epidemic-like nature of proximity-based communication and characterizes users' social participation as well. For static networks as a special-case study and mobile networks, we establish an equivalent view and a temporal mapping of the information diffusion process, respectively, leveraging virtual coupon collectors. We further prove the submodularity in the information diffusion and propose a greedy algorithm to choose the seed users for proximity-based traffic offloading, yielding a solution within about 63% of the optimal value to the traffic offloading maximization (TOM) problem. Experiments are carried out to study the offloading performance of our approach, illustrating that proximity-based communication can offload cellular traffic by over 60% with a small number of seed users and the greedy algorithm significantly outperforms the heuristic and random algorithms.
1306.0271
KERT: Automatic Extraction and Ranking of Topical Keyphrases from Content-Representative Document Titles
cs.LG cs.IR
We introduce KERT (Keyphrase Extraction and Ranking by Topic), a framework for topical keyphrase generation and ranking. By shifting from the unigram-centric traditional methods of unsupervised keyphrase extraction to a phrase-centric approach, we are able to directly compare and rank phrases of different lengths. We construct a topical keyphrase ranking function which implements the four criteria that represent high quality topical keyphrases (coverage, purity, phraseness, and completeness). The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated on two collections of content-representative titles in the domains of Computer Science and Physics.
1306.0282
An efficient method for evaluating BEM singular integrals on curved elements with application in acoustic analysis
cs.CE math.NA
The polar coordinate transformation (PCT) method has been extensively used to treat various singular integrals in the boundary element method (BEM). However, the resultant integrands of the PCT tend to become nearly singular when (1) the aspect ratio of the element is large or (2) the field point is closed to the element boundary; thus a large number of quadrature points are needed to achieve a relatively high accuracy. In this paper, the first problem is circumvented by using a conformal transformation so that the geometry of the curved physical element is preserved in the transformed domain. The second problem is alleviated by using a sigmoidal transformation, which makes the quadrature points more concentrated around the near singularity. By combining the proposed two transformations with the Guiggiani's method in [M. Guiggiani, \emph{et al}. A general algorithm for the numerical solution of hypersingular boundary integral equations. \emph{ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics}, 59(1992), 604-614], one obtains an efficient and robust numerical method for computing the weakly-, strongly- and hyper-singular integrals in high-order BEM with curved elements. Numerical integration results show that, compared with the original PCT, the present method can reduce the number of quadrature points considerably, for given accuracy. For further verification, the method is incorporated into a 2-order Nystr\"om BEM code for solving acoustic Burton-Miller boundary integral equation. It is shown that the method can retain the convergence rate of the BEM with much less quadrature points than the existing PCT. The method is implemented in C language and freely available.
1306.0291
Revisiting Circular-Based Random Node Simulation
cs.IT math.IT
In literature, a stochastic model for spreading nodes in a cellular cell is available. Despite its existence, the current method does not offer any versatility in dealing with sectored layers. Of course, this needed adaptability could be created synthetically through heuristic means. However, due to selective sampling, such practice dissolves the true randomness sought. Hence, in this paper, a universal exact scattering model is derived. Also, as an alternative to exhaustive simulation, a generic close-form path-loss predictor between a node and a BS is obtained. Further, using these results, an algorithm based on the superposition principle is proposed. This will ensure greater emulation flexibility, and attain a heterogeneous spatial density.
1306.0308
Probabilistic Solutions to Differential Equations and their Application to Riemannian Statistics
stat.ML cs.LG math.NA
We study a probabilistic numerical method for the solution of both boundary and initial value problems that returns a joint Gaussian process posterior over the solution. Such methods have concrete value in the statistics on Riemannian manifolds, where non-analytic ordinary differential equations are involved in virtually all computations. The probabilistic formulation permits marginalising the uncertainty of the numerical solution such that statistics are less sensitive to inaccuracies. This leads to new Riemannian algorithms for mean value computations and principal geodesic analysis. Marginalisation also means results can be less precise than point estimates, enabling a noticeable speed-up over the state of the art. Our approach is an argument for a wider point that uncertainty caused by numerical calculations should be tracked throughout the pipeline of machine learning algorithms.
1306.0322
Correlation of Automorphism Group Size and Topological Properties with Program-size Complexity Evaluations of Graphs and Complex Networks
cs.IT cs.CC cs.CG math.IT q-bio.MN
We show that numerical approximations of Kolmogorov complexity (K) applied to graph adjacency matrices capture some group-theoretic and topological properties of graphs and empirical networks ranging from metabolic to social networks. That K and the size of the group of automorphisms of a graph are correlated opens up interesting connections to problems in computational geometry, and thus connects several measures and concepts from complexity science. We show that approximations of K characterise synthetic and natural networks by their generating mechanisms, assigning lower algorithmic randomness to complex network models (Watts-Strogatz and Barabasi-Albert networks) and high Kolmogorov complexity to (random) Erdos-Renyi graphs. We derive these results via two different Kolmogorov complexity approximation methods applied to the adjacency matrices of the graphs and networks. The methods used are the traditional lossless compression approach to Kolmogorov complexity, and a normalised version of a Block Decomposition Method (BDM) measure, based on algorithmic probability theory.
1306.0340
Majority-vote model on Opinion-Dependent Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We study a nonequilibrium model with up-down symmetry and a noise parameter $q$ known as majority-vote model of M.J. Oliveira $1992$ on opinion-dependent network or Stauffer-Hohnisch-Pittnauer networks. By Monte Carlo simulations and finite-size scaling relations the critical exponents $\beta/\nu$, $\gamma/\nu$, and $1/\nu$ and points $q_{c}$ and $U^*$ are obtained. After extensive simulations, we obtain $\beta/\nu=0.230(3)$, $\gamma/\nu=0.535(2)$, and $1/\nu=0.475(8)$. The calculated values of the critical noise parameter and Binder cumulant are $q_{c}=0.166(3)$ and $U^*=0.288(3)$. Within the error bars, the exponents obey the relation $2\beta/\nu+\gamma/\nu=1$ and the results presented here demonstrate that the majority-vote model belongs to a different universality class than the equilibrium Ising model on Stauffer-Hohnisch-Pittnauer networks, but to the same class as majority-vote models on some other networks.
1306.0386
Improved and Generalized Upper Bounds on the Complexity of Policy Iteration
math.OC cs.AI cs.DM cs.RO
Given a Markov Decision Process (MDP) with $n$ states and a totalnumber $m$ of actions, we study the number of iterations needed byPolicy Iteration (PI) algorithms to converge to the optimal$\gamma$-discounted policy. We consider two variations of PI: Howard'sPI that changes the actions in all states with a positive advantage,and Simplex-PI that only changes the action in the state with maximaladvantage. We show that Howard's PI terminates after at most $O\left(\frac{m}{1-\gamma}\log\left(\frac{1}{1-\gamma}\right)\right)$iterations, improving by a factor $O(\log n)$ a result by Hansen etal., while Simplex-PI terminates after at most $O\left(\frac{nm}{1-\gamma}\log\left(\frac{1}{1-\gamma}\right)\right)$iterations, improving by a factor $O(\log n)$ a result by Ye. Undersome structural properties of the MDP, we then consider bounds thatare independent of the discount factor~$\gamma$: quantities ofinterest are bounds $\tau\_t$ and $\tau\_r$---uniform on all states andpolicies---respectively on the \emph{expected time spent in transientstates} and \emph{the inverse of the frequency of visits in recurrentstates} given that the process starts from the uniform distribution.Indeed, we show that Simplex-PI terminates after at most $\tilde O\left(n^3 m^2 \tau\_t \tau\_r \right)$ iterations. This extends arecent result for deterministic MDPs by Post & Ye, in which $\tau\_t\le 1$ and $\tau\_r \le n$, in particular it shows that Simplex-PI isstrongly polynomial for a much larger class of MDPs. We explain whysimilar results seem hard to derive for Howard's PI. Finally, underthe additional (restrictive) assumption that the state space ispartitioned in two sets, respectively states that are transient andrecurrent for all policies, we show that both Howard's PI andSimplex-PI terminate after at most $\tilde O(m(n^2\tau\_t+n\tau\_r))$iterations.
1306.0393
Learning from networked examples in a k-partite graph
cs.LG stat.ML
Many machine learning algorithms are based on the assumption that training examples are drawn independently. However, this assumption does not hold anymore when learning from a networked sample where two or more training examples may share common features. We propose an efficient weighting method for learning from networked examples and show the sample error bound which is better than previous work.
1306.0404
Iterative Grassmannian Optimization for Robust Image Alignment
cs.CV math.OC stat.ML
Robust high-dimensional data processing has witnessed an exciting development in recent years, as theoretical results have shown that it is possible using convex programming to optimize data fit to a low-rank component plus a sparse outlier component. This problem is also known as Robust PCA, and it has found application in many areas of computer vision. In image and video processing and face recognition, the opportunity to process massive image databases is emerging as people upload photo and video data online in unprecedented volumes. However, data quality and consistency is not controlled in any way, and the massiveness of the data poses a serious computational challenge. In this paper we present t-GRASTA, or "Transformed GRASTA (Grassmannian Robust Adaptive Subspace Tracking Algorithm)". t-GRASTA iteratively performs incremental gradient descent constrained to the Grassmann manifold of subspaces in order to simultaneously estimate a decomposition of a collection of images into a low-rank subspace, a sparse part of occlusions and foreground objects, and a transformation such as rotation or translation of the image. We show that t-GRASTA is 4 $\times$ faster than state-of-the-art algorithms, has half the memory requirement, and can achieve alignment for face images as well as jittered camera surveillance images.
1306.0424
A data-driven analysis to question epidemic models for citation cascades on the blogosphere
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Citation cascades in blog networks are often considered as traces of information spreading on this social medium. In this work, we question this point of view using both a structural and semantic analysis of five months activity of the most representative blogs of the french-speaking community.Statistical measures reveal that our dataset shares many features with those that can be found in the literature, suggesting the existence of an identical underlying process. However, a closer analysis of the post content indicates that the popular epidemic-like descriptions of cascades are misleading in this context.A basic model, taking only into account the behavior of bloggers and their restricted social network, accounts for several important statistical features of the data.These arguments support the idea that citations primary goal may not be information spreading on the blogosphere.
1306.0442
Evolutionary Approach for the Containers Bin-Packing Problem
cs.NE
This paper deals with the resolution of combinatorial optimization problems, particularly those concerning the maritime transport scheduling. We are interested in the management platforms in a river port and more specifically in container organisation operations with a view to minimizing the number of container rehandlings. Subsequently, we rmeet customers delivery deadlines and we reduce ship stoppage time In this paper, we propose a genetic algorithm to solve this problem and we present some experiments and results.
1306.0493
Graph Metrics for Temporal Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Temporal networks, i.e., networks in which the interactions among a set of elementary units change over time, can be modelled in terms of time-varying graphs, which are time-ordered sequences of graphs over a set of nodes. In such graphs, the concepts of node adjacency and reachability crucially depend on the exact temporal ordering of the links. Consequently, all the concepts and metrics proposed and used for the characterisation of static complex networks have to be redefined or appropriately extended to time-varying graphs, in order to take into account the effects of time ordering on causality. In this chapter we discuss how to represent temporal networks and we review the definitions of walks, paths, connectedness and connected components valid for graphs in which the links fluctuate over time. We then focus on temporal node-node distance, and we discuss how to characterise link persistence and the temporal small-world behaviour in this class of networks. Finally, we discuss the extension of classic centrality measures, including closeness, betweenness and spectral centrality, to the case of time-varying graphs, and we review the work on temporal motifs analysis and the definition of modularity for temporal graphs.
1306.0502
Learning-Based Adaptive Transmission for Limited Feedback Multiuser MIMO-OFDM
cs.IT math.IT
Performing link adaptation in a multiantenna and multiuser system is challenging because of the coupling between precoding, user selection, spatial mode selection and use of limited feedback about the channel. The problem is exacerbated by the difficulty of selecting the proper modulation and coding scheme when using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). This paper presents a data-driven approach to link adaptation for multiuser multiple input mulitple output (MIMO) OFDM systems. A machine learning classifier is used to select the modulation and coding scheme, taking as input the SNR values in the different subcarriers and spatial streams. A new approximation is developed to estimate the unknown interuser interference due to the use of limited feedback. This approximation allows to obtain SNR information at the transmitter with a minimum communication overhead. A greedy algorithm is used to perform spatial mode and user selection with affordable complexity, without resorting to an exhaustive search. The proposed adaptation is studied in the context of the IEEE 802.11ac standard, and is shown to schedule users and adjust the transmission parameters to the channel conditions as well as to the rate of the feedback channel.
1306.0514
Riemannian metrics for neural networks II: recurrent networks and learning symbolic data sequences
cs.NE cs.LG
Recurrent neural networks are powerful models for sequential data, able to represent complex dependencies in the sequence that simpler models such as hidden Markov models cannot handle. Yet they are notoriously hard to train. Here we introduce a training procedure using a gradient ascent in a Riemannian metric: this produces an algorithm independent from design choices such as the encoding of parameters and unit activities. This metric gradient ascent is designed to have an algorithmic cost close to backpropagation through time for sparsely connected networks. We use this procedure on gated leaky neural networks (GLNNs), a variant of recurrent neural networks with an architecture inspired by finite automata and an evolution equation inspired by continuous-time networks. GLNNs trained with a Riemannian gradient are demonstrated to effectively capture a variety of structures in synthetic problems: basic block nesting as in context-free grammars (an important feature of natural languages, but difficult to learn), intersections of multiple independent Markov-type relations, or long-distance relationships such as the distant-XOR problem. This method does not require adjusting the network structure or initial parameters: the network used is a sparse random graph and the initialization is identical for all problems considered.
1306.0519
Random Walks on Multiplex Networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI
Multiplex networks are receiving increasing interests because they allow to model relationships between networked agents on several layers simultaneously. In this supplementary material for the paper "Navigability of interconnected networks under random failures", we extend well-known random walks to multiplexes and we introduce a new type of walk that can exist only in multiplexes. We derive exact expressions for vertex occupation time and the coverage. Finally, we show how the efficiency in exploring the multiplex critically depends on the underlying topology of layers, the weight of their inter-connections and the strategy adopted to walk.
1306.0530
Hybrid Coding: An Interface for Joint Source-Channel Coding and Network Communication
cs.IT math.IT
A new approach to joint source-channel coding is presented in the context of communicating correlated sources over multiple access channels. Similar to the separation architecture, the joint source-channel coding system architecture in this approach is modular, whereby the source encoding and channel decoding operations are decoupled. However, unlike the separation architecture, the same codeword is used for both source coding and channel coding, which allows the resulting hybrid coding scheme to achieve the performance of the best known joint source-channel coding schemes. Applications of the proposed architecture to relay communication are also discussed.
1306.0539
On the Performance Bounds of some Policy Search Dynamic Programming Algorithms
cs.AI cs.LG
We consider the infinite-horizon discounted optimal control problem formalized by Markov Decision Processes. We focus on Policy Search algorithms, that compute an approximately optimal policy by following the standard Policy Iteration (PI) scheme via an -approximate greedy operator (Kakade and Langford, 2002; Lazaric et al., 2010). We describe existing and a few new performance bounds for Direct Policy Iteration (DPI) (Lagoudakis and Parr, 2003; Fern et al., 2006; Lazaric et al., 2010) and Conservative Policy Iteration (CPI) (Kakade and Langford, 2002). By paying a particular attention to the concentrability constants involved in such guarantees, we notably argue that the guarantee of CPI is much better than that of DPI, but this comes at the cost of a relative--exponential in $\frac{1}{\epsilon}$-- increase of time complexity. We then describe an algorithm, Non-Stationary Direct Policy Iteration (NSDPI), that can either be seen as 1) a variation of Policy Search by Dynamic Programming by Bagnell et al. (2003) to the infinite horizon situation or 2) a simplified version of the Non-Stationary PI with growing period of Scherrer and Lesner (2012). We provide an analysis of this algorithm, that shows in particular that it enjoys the best of both worlds: its performance guarantee is similar to that of CPI, but within a time complexity similar to that of DPI.
1306.0541
Identifying Pairs in Simulated Bio-Medical Time-Series
cs.LG cs.CE
The paper presents a time-series-based classification approach to identify similarities in pairs of simulated human-generated patterns. An example for a pattern is a time-series representing a heart rate during a specific time-range, wherein the time-series is a sequence of data points that represent the changes in the heart rate values. A bio-medical simulator system was developed to acquire a collection of 7,871 price patterns of financial instruments. The financial instruments traded in real-time on three American stock exchanges, NASDAQ, NYSE, and AMEX, simulate bio-medical measurements. The system simulates a human in which each price pattern represents one bio-medical sensor. Data provided during trading hours from the stock exchanges allowed real-time classification. Classification is based on new machine learning techniques: self-labeling, which allows the application of supervised learning methods on unlabeled time-series and similarity ranking, which applied on a decision tree learning algorithm to classify time-series regardless of type and quantity.
1306.0543
Predicting Parameters in Deep Learning
cs.LG cs.NE stat.ML
We demonstrate that there is significant redundancy in the parameterization of several deep learning models. Given only a few weight values for each feature it is possible to accurately predict the remaining values. Moreover, we show that not only can the parameter values be predicted, but many of them need not be learned at all. We train several different architectures by learning only a small number of weights and predicting the rest. In the best case we are able to predict more than 95% of the weights of a network without any drop in accuracy.
1306.0549
Waveform Design for Secure SISO Transmissions and Multicasting
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT
Wireless physical-layer security is an emerging field of research aiming at preventing eavesdropping in an open wireless medium. In this paper, we propose a novel waveform design approach to minimize the likelihood that a message transmitted between trusted single-antenna nodes is intercepted by an eavesdropper. In particular, with knowledge first of the eavesdropper's channel state information (CSI), we find the optimum waveform and transmit energy that minimize the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at the output of the eavesdropper's maximum-SINR linear filter, while at the same time provide the intended receiver with a required pre-specified SINR at the output of its own max-SINR filter. Next, if prior knowledge of the eavesdropper's CSI is unavailable, we design a waveform that maximizes the amount of energy available for generating disturbance to eavesdroppers, termed artificial noise (AN), while the SINR of the intended receiver is maintained at the pre-specified level. The extensions of the secure waveform design problem to multiple intended receivers are also investigated and semidefinite relaxation (SDR) -an approximation technique based on convex optimization- is utilized to solve the arising NP-hard design problems. Extensive simulation studies confirm our analytical performance predictions and illustrate the benefits of the designed waveforms on securing single-input single-output (SISO) transmissions and multicasting.
1306.0585
Iterative Decoding and Turbo Equalization: The Z-Crease Phenomenon
cs.IT math.IT nlin.CD
Iterative probabilistic inference, popularly dubbed the soft-iterative paradigm, has found great use in a wide range of communication applications, including turbo decoding and turbo equalization. The classic approach of analyzing the iterative approach inevitably use the statistical and information-theoretical tools that bear ensemble-average flavors. This paper consider the per-block error rate performance, and analyzes it using nonlinear dynamical theory. By modeling the iterative processor as a nonlinear dynamical system, we report a universal "Z-crease phenomenon:" the zig-zag or up-and-down fluctuation -- rather than the monotonic decrease -- of the per-block errors, as the number of iteration increases. Using the turbo decoder as an example, we also report several interesting motion phenomenons which were not previously reported, and which appear to correspond well with the notion of "pseudo codewords" and "stopping/trapping sets." We further propose a heuristic stopping criterion to control Z-crease and identify the best iteration. Our stopping criterion is most useful for controlling the worst-case per-block errors, and helps to significantly reduce the average-iteration numbers.
1306.0587
Analog Turbo Codes: Turning Chaos to Reliability
cs.IT math.IT
Analog error correction codes, by relaxing the source space and the codeword space from discrete fields to continuous fields, present a generalization of digital codes. While linear codes are sufficient for digital codes, they are not for analog codes, and hence nonlinear mappings must be employed to fully harness the power of analog codes. This paper demonstrates new ways of building effective (nonlinear) analog codes from a special class of nonlinear, fast-diverging functions known as the chaotic functions. It is shown that the "butterfly effect" of the chaotic functions matches elegantly with the distance expansion condition required for error correction, and that the useful idea in digital turbo codes can be exploited to construct efficient turbo-like chaotic analog codes. Simulations show that the new analog codes can perform on par with, or better than, their digital counter-parts when transmitting analog sources.
1306.0604
Distributed k-Means and k-Median Clustering on General Topologies
cs.LG cs.DC stat.ML
This paper provides new algorithms for distributed clustering for two popular center-based objectives, k-median and k-means. These algorithms have provable guarantees and improve communication complexity over existing approaches. Following a classic approach in clustering by \cite{har2004coresets}, we reduce the problem of finding a clustering with low cost to the problem of finding a coreset of small size. We provide a distributed method for constructing a global coreset which improves over the previous methods by reducing the communication complexity, and which works over general communication topologies. Experimental results on large scale data sets show that this approach outperforms other coreset-based distributed clustering algorithms.
1306.0618
Prediction with Missing Data via Bayesian Additive Regression Trees
stat.ML cs.LG
We present a method for incorporating missing data in non-parametric statistical learning without the need for imputation. We focus on a tree-based method, Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART), enhanced with "Missingness Incorporated in Attributes," an approach recently proposed incorporating missingness into decision trees (Twala, 2008). This procedure takes advantage of the partitioning mechanisms found in tree-based models. Simulations on generated models and real data indicate that our proposed method can forecast well on complicated missing-at-random and not-missing-at-random models as well as models where missingness itself influences the response. Our procedure has higher predictive performance and is more stable than competitors in many cases. We also illustrate BART's abilities to incorporate missingness into uncertainty intervals and to detect the influence of missingness on the model fit.
1306.0626
Provable Inductive Matrix Completion
cs.LG cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
Consider a movie recommendation system where apart from the ratings information, side information such as user's age or movie's genre is also available. Unlike standard matrix completion, in this setting one should be able to predict inductively on new users/movies. In this paper, we study the problem of inductive matrix completion in the exact recovery setting. That is, we assume that the ratings matrix is generated by applying feature vectors to a low-rank matrix and the goal is to recover back the underlying matrix. Furthermore, we generalize the problem to that of low-rank matrix estimation using rank-1 measurements. We study this generic problem and provide conditions that the set of measurements should satisfy so that the alternating minimization method (which otherwise is a non-convex method with no convergence guarantees) is able to recover back the {\em exact} underlying low-rank matrix. In addition to inductive matrix completion, we show that two other low-rank estimation problems can be studied in our framework: a) general low-rank matrix sensing using rank-1 measurements, and b) multi-label regression with missing labels. For both the problems, we provide novel and interesting bounds on the number of measurements required by alternating minimization to provably converges to the {\em exact} low-rank matrix. In particular, our analysis for the general low rank matrix sensing problem significantly improves the required storage and computational cost than that required by the RIP-based matrix sensing methods \cite{RechtFP2007}. Finally, we provide empirical validation of our approach and demonstrate that alternating minimization is able to recover the true matrix for the above mentioned problems using a small number of measurements.
1306.0646
Information sharing and sorting in a community
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
We present the results of detailed numerical study of a model for the sharing and sorting of informations in a community consisting of a large number of agents. The information gathering takes place in a sequence of mutual bipartite interactions where randomly selected pairs of agents communicate with each other to enhance their knowledge and sort out the common information. Though our model is less restricted compared to the well established naming game, yet the numerical results strongly indicate that the whole set of exponents characterizing this model are different from those of the naming game and they assume non-trivial values. Finally it appears that in analogy to the emergence of clusters in the phenomenon of percolation, one can define clusters of agents here having the same information. We have studied in detail the growth of the largest cluster in this article and performed its finite-size scaling analysis.
1306.0662
Predictability of Event Occurrences in Timed Systems
cs.SY cs.FL cs.LO math.OC
We address the problem of predicting events' occurrences in partially observable timed systems modelled by timed automata. Our contribution is many-fold: 1) we give a definition of bounded predictability, namely k-predictability, that takes into account the minimum delay between the prediction and the actual event's occurrence; 2) we show that 0-predictability is equivalent to the original notion of predictability of S. Genc and S. Lafortune; 3) we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for k-predictability (which is very similar to k-diagnosability) and give a simple algorithm to check k-predictability; 4) we address the problem of predictability of events' occurrences in timed automata and show that the problem is PSPACE-complete.
1306.0665
Narrative based Postdictive Reasoning for Cognitive Robotics
cs.AI cs.RO
Making sense of incomplete and conflicting narrative knowledge in the presence of abnormalities, unobservable processes, and other real world considerations is a challenge and crucial requirement for cognitive robotics systems. An added challenge, even when suitably specialised action languages and reasoning systems exist, is practical integration and application within large-scale robot control frameworks. In the backdrop of an autonomous wheelchair robot control task, we report on application-driven work to realise postdiction triggered abnormality detection and re-planning for real-time robot control: (a) Narrative-based knowledge about the environment is obtained via a larger smart environment framework; and (b) abnormalities are postdicted from stable-models of an answer-set program corresponding to the robot's epistemic model. The overall reasoning is performed in the context of an approximate epistemic action theory based planner implemented via a translation to answer-set programming.
1306.0682
Modified CRB for Location and Velocity Estimation using Signals of Opportunity
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of localizing two sensors using signals of opportunity from beacons with known positions. Beacons and sensors have asynchronous local clocks or oscillators with unknown clock skews and offsets. We model clock skews as random, and analyze the biases introduced by clock asynchronism in the received signals. By deriving the equivalent Fisher information matrix for the modified Bayesian Cram\'er-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of sensor position and velocity estimation, we quantify the errors caused by clock asynchronism.
1306.0686
Online Learning under Delayed Feedback
cs.LG cs.AI stat.ML
Online learning with delayed feedback has received increasing attention recently due to its several applications in distributed, web-based learning problems. In this paper we provide a systematic study of the topic, and analyze the effect of delay on the regret of online learning algorithms. Somewhat surprisingly, it turns out that delay increases the regret in a multiplicative way in adversarial problems, and in an additive way in stochastic problems. We give meta-algorithms that transform, in a black-box fashion, algorithms developed for the non-delayed case into ones that can handle the presence of delays in the feedback loop. Modifications of the well-known UCB algorithm are also developed for the bandit problem with delayed feedback, with the advantage over the meta-algorithms that they can be implemented with lower complexity.
1306.0694
Iterated Tabu Search Algorithm for Packing Unequal Circles in a Circle
math.OC cs.AI
This paper presents an Iterated Tabu Search algorithm (denoted by ITS-PUCC) for solving the problem of Packing Unequal Circles in a Circle. The algorithm exploits the continuous and combinatorial nature of the unequal circles packing problem. It uses a continuous local optimization method to generate locally optimal packings. Meanwhile, it builds a neighborhood structure on the set of local minimum via two appropriate perturbation moves and integrates two combinatorial optimization methods, Tabu Search and Iterated Local Search, to systematically search for good local minima. Computational experiments on two sets of widely-used test instances prove its effectiveness and efficiency. For the first set of 46 instances coming from the famous circle packing contest and the second set of 24 instances widely used in the literature, the algorithm is able to discover respectively 14 and 16 better solutions than the previous best-known records.
1306.0710
On the Optimum Cyclic Subcode Chains of $\mathcal{RM}(2,m)^*$ for Increasing Message Length
cs.IT math.IT
The distance profiles of linear block codes can be employed to design variational coding scheme for encoding message with variational length and getting lower decoding error probability by large minimum Hamming distance. %, e.g. the design of TFCI in CDMA and the researches on the second-order Reed-Muller code $\mathcal{RM}(2,m)$, etc. Considering convenience for encoding, we focus on the distance profiles with respect to cyclic subcode chains (DPCs) of cyclic codes over $GF(q)$ with length $n$ such that $\mbox{gcd}(n,q) = 1$. In this paper the optimum DPCs and the corresponding optimum cyclic subcode chains are investigated on the punctured second-order Reed-Muller code $\mathcal{RM}(2,m)^*$ for increasing message length, where two standards on the optimums are studied according to the rhythm of increase.
1306.0712
Resource Allocation for Secure Communication in Systems with Wireless Information and Power Transfer
cs.IT math.IT
This paper considers secure communication in a multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) downlink system with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer. We study the design of resource allocation algorithms minimizing the total transmit power for the case when the receivers are able to harvest energy from the radio frequency. In particular, the algorithm design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem which takes into account artificial noise generation to combat potential eavesdroppers, a minimum required signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at the desired receiver, maximum tolerable SINRs at the potential eavesdroppers, and a minimum required power delivered to the receivers. We adopt a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation approach to obtain an upper bound solution for the considered problem. The tightness of the upper bound is revealed by examining a sufficient condition for the global optimal solution. Inspired by the sufficient condition, we propose two suboptimal resource allocation schemes enhancing secure communication and facilitating efficient energy harvesting. Simulation results demonstrate a close-to-optimal performance achieved by the proposed suboptimal schemes and significant transmit power savings by optimization of the artificial noise generation.
1306.0715
Random Walks on Stochastic Temporal Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
In the study of dynamical processes on networks, there has been intense focus on network structure -- i.e., the arrangement of edges and their associated weights -- but the effects of the temporal patterns of edges remains poorly understood. In this chapter, we develop a mathematical framework for random walks on temporal networks using an approach that provides a compromise between abstract but unrealistic models and data-driven but non-mathematical approaches. To do this, we introduce a stochastic model for temporal networks in which we summarize the temporal and structural organization of a system using a matrix of waiting-time distributions. We show that random walks on stochastic temporal networks can be described exactly by an integro-differential master equation and derive an analytical expression for its asymptotic steady state. We also discuss how our work might be useful to help build centrality measures for temporal networks.
1306.0733
Fast Gradient-Based Inference with Continuous Latent Variable Models in Auxiliary Form
cs.LG stat.ML
We propose a technique for increasing the efficiency of gradient-based inference and learning in Bayesian networks with multiple layers of continuous latent vari- ables. We show that, in many cases, it is possible to express such models in an auxiliary form, where continuous latent variables are conditionally deterministic given their parents and a set of independent auxiliary variables. Variables of mod- els in this auxiliary form have much larger Markov blankets, leading to significant speedups in gradient-based inference, e.g. rapid mixing Hybrid Monte Carlo and efficient gradient-based optimization. The relative efficiency is confirmed in ex- periments.
1306.0751
First-Order Decomposition Trees
cs.AI
Lifting attempts to speed up probabilistic inference by exploiting symmetries in the model. Exact lifted inference methods, like their propositional counterparts, work by recursively decomposing the model and the problem. In the propositional case, there exist formal structures, such as decomposition trees (dtrees), that represent such a decomposition and allow us to determine the complexity of inference a priori. However, there is currently no equivalent structure nor analogous complexity results for lifted inference. In this paper, we introduce FO-dtrees, which upgrade propositional dtrees to the first-order level. We show how these trees can characterize a lifted inference solution for a probabilistic logical model (in terms of a sequence of lifted operations), and make a theoretical analysis of the complexity of lifted inference in terms of the novel notion of lifted width for the tree.
1306.0772
Equivalence and comparison of heterogeneous cellular networks
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT math.PR
We consider a general heterogeneous network in which, besides general propagation effects (shadowing and/or fading), individual base stations can have different emitting powers and be subject to different parameters of Hata-like path-loss models (path-loss exponent and constant) due to, for example, varying antenna heights. We assume also that the stations may have varying parameters of, for example, the link layer performance (SINR threshold, etc). By studying the propagation processes of signals received by the typical user from all antennas marked by the corresponding antenna parameters, we show that seemingly different heterogeneous networks based on Poisson point processes can be equivalent from the point of view a typical user. These neworks can be replaced with a model where all the previously varying propagation parameters (including path-loss exponents) are set to constants while the only trade-off being the introduction of an isotropic base station density. This allows one to perform analytic comparisons of different network models via their isotropic representations. In the case of a constant path-loss exponent, the isotropic representation simplifies to a homogeneous modification of the constant intensity of the original network, thus generalizing a previous result showing that the propagation processes only depend on one moment of the emitted power and propagation effects. We give examples and applications to motivate these results and highlight an interesting observation regarding random path-loss exponents.
1306.0785
Robust multirobot coordination using priority encoded homotopic constraints
cs.RO
We study the problem of coordinating multiple robots along fixed geometric paths. Our contribution is threefold. First we formalize the intuitive concept of priorities as a binary relation induced by a feasible coordination solution, without excluding the case of robots following each other on the same geometric path. Then we prove that two paths in the coordination space are continuously deformable into each other if and only if they induce the \emph{same priority graph}, that is, the priority graph uniquely encodes homotopy classes of coordination solutions. Finally, we give a simple control law allowing to safely navigate into homotopy classes \emph{under kinodynamic constraints} even in the presence of unexpected events, such as a sudden robot deceleration without notice. It appears the freedom within homotopy classes allows to much deviate from any pre-planned trajectory without ever colliding nor having to re-plan the assigned priorities.
1306.0808
The Role of Trends in Evolving Networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
Modeling complex networks has been the focus of much research for over a decade. Preferential attachment (PA) is considered a common explanation to the self organization of evolving networks, suggesting that new nodes prefer to attach to more popular nodes. The PA model results in broad degree distributions, found in many networks, but cannot explain other common properties such as: The growth of nodes arriving late and Clustering (community structure). Here we show that when the tendency of networks to adhere to trends is incorporated into the PA model, it can produce networks with such properties. Namely, in trending networks, newly arriving nodes may become central at random, forming new clusters. In particular, we show that when the network is young it is more susceptible to trends, but even older networks may have trendy new nodes that become central in their structure. Alternatively, networks can be seen as composed of two parts: static, governed by a power law degree distribution, and a dynamic part governed by trends, as we show on Wiki pages. Our results also show that the arrival of trending new nodes not only creates new clusters, but also has an effect on the relative importance and centrality of all other nodes in the network. This can explain a variety of real world networks in economics, social and online networks, and cultural networks. Products popularity, formed by the network of people's opinions, exhibit these properties. Some lines of products are increasingly susceptible to trends and hence to shifts in popularity, while others are less trendy and hence more stable. We believe that our findings have a big impact on our understanding of real networks.
1306.0811
A Gang of Bandits
cs.LG cs.SI stat.ML
Multi-armed bandit problems are receiving a great deal of attention because they adequately formalize the exploration-exploitation trade-offs arising in several industrially relevant applications, such as online advertisement and, more generally, recommendation systems. In many cases, however, these applications have a strong social component, whose integration in the bandit algorithm could lead to a dramatic performance increase. For instance, we may want to serve content to a group of users by taking advantage of an underlying network of social relationships among them. In this paper, we introduce novel algorithmic approaches to the solution of such networked bandit problems. More specifically, we design and analyze a global strategy which allocates a bandit algorithm to each network node (user) and allows it to "share" signals (contexts and payoffs) with the neghboring nodes. We then derive two more scalable variants of this strategy based on different ways of clustering the graph nodes. We experimentally compare the algorithm and its variants to state-of-the-art methods for contextual bandits that do not use the relational information. Our experiments, carried out on synthetic and real-world datasets, show a marked increase in prediction performance obtained by exploiting the network structure.
1306.0813
Social Media and Information Overload: Survey Results
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
A UK-based online questionnaire investigating aspects of usage of user-generated media (UGM), such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, attracted 587 participants. Results show a high degree of engagement with social networking media such as Facebook, and a significant engagement with other media such as professional media, microblogs and blogs. Participants who experience information overload are those who engage less frequently with the media, rather than those who have fewer posts to read. Professional users show different behaviours to social users. Microbloggers complain of information overload to the greatest extent. Two thirds of Twitter-users have felt that they receive too many posts, and over half of Twitter-users have felt the need for a tool to filter out the irrelevant posts. Generally speaking, participants express satisfaction with the media, though a significant minority express a range of concerns including information overload and privacy.
1306.0816
A Critical Assessment of Cost-Based Nash Methods for Demand Scheduling in Smart Grids
cs.GT cs.CE
Demand-side management (DSM) is becoming an increasingly important component of the envisioned smart grid. The ability to improve the efficiency of energy use in the power system by altering demand is widely viewed as being not merely promising but in fact essential. However, while the advantages of DSM are clear, arriving at an efficient implementation has so far proven to be less straightforward. There have recently been many proposals put forth in the literature to tackle the demand scheduling aspect of DSM. One particular approach based on a game-theoretic treatment of the day-ahead load-scheduling problem has recently gained tremendous popularity in the DSM literature. In this letter, an assessment of this approach is conducted, and its main result is challenged.
1306.0832
Large-signal stability conditions for semi-quasi-Z-source inverters: switched and averaged models
cs.SY
The recently introduced semi-quasi-Z-source in- verter can be interpreted as a DC-DC converter whose input- output voltage gain may take any value between minus infinity and 1 depending on the applied duty cycle. In order to generate a sinusoidal voltage waveform at the output of this converter, a time-varying duty cycle needs to be applied. Application of a time-varying duty cycle that produces large-signal behavior requires careful consideration of stability issues. This paper provides stability results for both the large-signal averaged and the switched models of the semi-quasi-Z-source inverter operating in continuous conduction mode. We show that if the load is linear and purely resistive then the boundedness and ultimate boundedness of the state trajectories is guaranteed provided some reasonable operation conditions are ensured. These conditions amount to keeping the duty cycle away from the extreme values 0 or 1 (averaged and switched models), and limiting the maximum PWM switching period (switched model). The results obtained can be used to give theoretical justification to the inverter operation strategy recently proposed by Cao et al. in [1].
1306.0842
Kernel Mean Estimation and Stein's Effect
stat.ML cs.LG math.ST stat.TH
A mean function in reproducing kernel Hilbert space, or a kernel mean, is an important part of many applications ranging from kernel principal component analysis to Hilbert-space embedding of distributions. Given finite samples, an empirical average is the standard estimate for the true kernel mean. We show that this estimator can be improved via a well-known phenomenon in statistics called Stein's phenomenon. After consideration, our theoretical analysis reveals the existence of a wide class of estimators that are better than the standard. Focusing on a subset of this class, we propose efficient shrinkage estimators for the kernel mean. Empirical evaluations on several benchmark applications clearly demonstrate that the proposed estimators outperform the standard kernel mean estimator.
1306.0865
Joint Signal and Channel State Information Compression for the Backhaul of Uplink Network MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In network MIMO cellular systems, subsets of base stations (BSs), or remote radio heads, are connected via backhaul links to central units (CUs) that perform joint encoding in the downlink and joint decoding in the uplink. Focusing on the uplink, an effective solution for the communication between BSs and the corresponding CU on the backhaul links is based on compressing and forwarding the baseband received signal from each BS. In the presence of ergodic fading, communicating the channel state information (CSI) from the BSs to the CU may require a sizable part of the backhaul capacity. In a prior work, this aspect was studied by assuming a Compress-Forward-Estimate (CFE) approach, whereby the BSs compress the training signal and CSI estimation takes place at the CU. In this work, instead, an Estimate-Compress-Forward (ECF) approach is investigated, whereby the BSs perform CSI estimation and forward a compressed version of the CSI to the CU. This choice is motivated by the information theoretic optimality of separate estimation and compression. Various ECF strategies are proposed that perform either separate or joint compression of estimated CSI and received signal. Moreover, the proposed strategies are combined with distributed source coding when considering multiple BSs. "Semi-coherent" strategies are also proposed that do not convey any CSI or training information on the backhaul links. Via numerical results, it is shown that a proper design of ECF strategies based on joint received signal and estimated CSI compression or of semi-coherent schemes leads to substantial performance gains compared to more conventional approaches based on non-coherent transmission or the CFE approach.
1306.0886
$\propto$SVM for learning with label proportions
cs.LG stat.ML
We study the problem of learning with label proportions in which the training data is provided in groups and only the proportion of each class in each group is known. We propose a new method called proportion-SVM, or $\propto$SVM, which explicitly models the latent unknown instance labels together with the known group label proportions in a large-margin framework. Unlike the existing works, our approach avoids making restrictive assumptions about the data. The $\propto$SVM model leads to a non-convex integer programming problem. In order to solve it efficiently, we propose two algorithms: one based on simple alternating optimization and the other based on a convex relaxation. Extensive experiments on standard datasets show that $\propto$SVM outperforms the state-of-the-art, especially for larger group sizes.
1306.0896
Finding Numerical Solutions of Diophantine Equations using Ant Colony Optimization
cs.NE cs.ET
The paper attempts to find numerical solutions of Diophantine equations, a challenging problem as there are no general methods to find solutions of such equations. It uses the metaphor of foraging habits of real ants. The ant colony optimization based procedure starts with randomly assigned locations to a fixed number of artificial ants. Depending upon the quality of these positions, ants deposit pheromone at the nodes. A successor node is selected from the topological neighborhood of each of the nodes based on this stochastic pheromone deposit. If an ant bumps into an already encountered node, the pheromone is updated correspondingly. A suitably defined pheromone evaporation strategy guarantees that premature convergence does not take place. The experimental results, which compares with those of other machine intelligence techniques, validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
1306.0897
Urban ozone concentration forecasting with artificial neural network in Corsica
cs.NE
Atmospheric pollutants concentration forecasting is an important issue in air quality monitoring. Qualitair Corse, the organization responsible for monitoring air quality in Corsica (France) region, needs to develop a short-term prediction model to lead its mission of information towards the public. Various deterministic models exist for meso-scale or local forecasting, but need powerful large variable sets, a good knowledge of atmospheric processes, and can be inaccurate because of local climatical or geographical particularities, as observed in Corsica, a mountainous island located in a Mediterranean Sea. As a result, we focus in this study on statistical models, and particularly Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) that have shown good results in the prediction of ozone concentration at horizon h+1 with data measured locally. The purpose of this study is to build a predictor to realize predictions of ozone and PM10 at horizon d+1 in Corsica in order to be able to anticipate pollution peak formation and to take appropriated prevention measures. Specific meteorological conditions are known to lead to particular pollution event in Corsica (e.g. Saharan dust event). Therefore, several ANN models will be used, for meteorological conditions clustering and for operational forecasting.
1306.0924
Graph theory enables drug repurposing. How a mathematical model can drive the discovery of hidden Mechanisms of Action
q-bio.QM cs.CE
We introduced a methodology to efficiently exploit natural-language expressed biomedical knowledge for repurposing existing drugs towards diseases for which they were not initially intended. Leveraging on developments in Computational Linguistics and Graph Theory, a methodology is defined to build a graph representation of knowledge, which is automatically analysed to discover hidden relations between any drug and any disease: these relations are specific paths among the biomedical entities of the graph, representing possible Modes of Action for any given pharmacological compound. These paths are ranked according to their relevance, exploiting a measure induced by a stochastic process defined on the graph. Here we show, providing real-world examples, how the method successfully retrieves known pathophysiological Mode of Actions and finds new ones by meaningfully selecting and aggregating contributions from known bio-molecular interactions. Applications of this methodology are presented, and prove the efficacy of the method for selecting drugs as treatment options for rare diseases.