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1307.1073
Modelling Reactive and Proactive Behaviour in Simulation: A Case Study in a University Organisation
cs.CE
Simulation is a well established what-if scenario analysis tool in Operational Research (OR). While traditionally Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and System Dynamics Simulation (SDS) are the predominant simulation techniques in OR, a new simulation technique, namely Agent-Based Simulation (ABS), has emerged and is gaining more attention. In our research we focus on discrete simulation methods (i.e. DES and ABS). The contribution made by this paper is the comparison of DES and combined DES/ABS for modelling human reactive and different level of detail of human proactive behaviour in service systems. The results of our experiments show that the level of proactiveness considered in the model has a big impact on the simulation output. However, there is not a big difference between the results from the DES and the combined DES/ABS simulation models. Therefore, for service systems of the type we investigated we would suggest to use DES as the preferred analysis tool.
1307.1078
Investigating the Detection of Adverse Drug Events in a UK General Practice Electronic Health-Care Database
cs.CE cs.LG
Data-mining techniques have frequently been developed for Spontaneous reporting databases. These techniques aim to find adverse drug events accurately and efficiently. Spontaneous reporting databases are prone to missing information, under reporting and incorrect entries. This often results in a detection lag or prevents the detection of some adverse drug events. These limitations do not occur in electronic health-care databases. In this paper, existing methods developed for spontaneous reporting databases are implemented on both a spontaneous reporting database and a general practice electronic health-care database and compared. The results suggests that the application of existing methods to the general practice database may help find signals that have gone undetected when using the spontaneous reporting system database. In addition the general practice database provides far more supplementary information, that if incorporated in analysis could provide a wealth of information for identifying adverse events more accurately.
1307.1079
Application of a clustering framework to UK domestic electricity data
cs.CE cs.LG
This paper takes an approach to clustering domestic electricity load profiles that has been successfully used with data from Portugal and applies it to UK data. Clustering techniques are applied and it is found that the preferred technique in the Portuguese work (a two stage process combining Self Organised Maps and Kmeans) is not appropriate for the UK data. The work shows that up to nine clusters of households can be identified with the differences in usage profiles being visually striking. This demonstrates the appropriateness of breaking the electricity usage patterns down to more detail than the two load profiles currently published by the electricity industry. The paper details initial results using data collected in Milton Keynes around 1990. Further work is described and will concentrate on building accurate and meaningful clusters of similar electricity users in order to better direct demand side management initiatives to the most relevant target customers.
1307.1101
Mixed-Timescale Precoding and Cache Control in Cached MIMO Interference Network
cs.IT math.IT
Consider media streaming in MIMO interference networks whereby multiple base stations (BS) simultaneously deliver media to their associated users using fixed data rates. The performance is fundamentally limited by the cross-link interference. We propose a cache-induced opportunistic cooperative MIMO (CoMP) for interference mitigation. By caching a portion of the media files, the BSs opportunistically employ CoMP to transform the cross-link interference into spatial multiplexing gain. We study a mixed-timescale optimization of MIMO precoding and cache control to minimize the transmit power under the rate constraint. The cache control is to create more CoMP opportunities and is adaptive to the long-term popularity of the media files. The precoding is to guarantee the rate requirement and is adaptive to the channel state information and cache state at the BSs. The joint stochastic optimization problem is decomposed into a short-term precoding and a long-term cache control problem. We propose a precoding algorithm which converges to a stationary point of the short-term problem. Based on this, we exploit the hidden convexity of the long-term problem and propose a low complexity and robust solution using stochastic subgradient. The solution has significant gains over various baselines and does not require explicit knowledge of the media popularity.
1307.1166
A Novel Robust Method to Add Watermarks to Bitmap Images by Fading Technique
cs.CV cs.MM
Digital water marking is one of the essential fields in image security and copyright protection. The proposed technique in this paper was based on the principle of protecting images by hide an invisible watermark in the image. The technique starts with merging the cover image and the watermark image with suitable ratios, i.e., 99% from the cover image will be merged with 1% from the watermark image. Technically, the fading process is irreversible but with the proposed technique, the probability to reconstruct the original watermark image is great. There is no perceptible difference between the original and watermarked image by human eye. The experimental results show that the proposed technique proven its ability to hide images that have the same size of the cover image. Three performance measures were implemented to support the proposed techniques which are MSE, PSNR, and SSIM. Fortunately, all the three measures have excellent values.
1307.1170
A Formal Sociologic Study of Free Will
cs.SI
We make a formal sociologic study of the concept of free will. By using the language of mathematics and logic, we define what we call everlasting societies. Everlasting societies never age: persons never age, and the goods of the society are indestructible. The infinite history of an everlasting society unfolds by following deterministic and probabilistic laws that do their best to satisfy the free will of all the persons of the society. We define three possible kinds of histories for everlasting societies: primitive histories, good histories, and golden histories. In primitive histories, persons are inherently selfish, and they use their free will to obtain the personal ownerships of all the goods of the society. In good histories, persons are inherently good, and they use their free will to distribute the goods of the society. In good histories, a person is not only able to desire the personal ownership of goods, but is also able to desire that a good be owned by another person. In golden histories, free will is bound by the ethic of reciprocity, which states that "you should wish upon others as you would like others to wish upon yourself". In golden societies, the ethic of reciprocity becomes a law that partially binds free will, and that must be abided at all times. In other words, the verb "should" becomes the verb "must".
1307.1179
Future Web Growth and its Consequences for Web Search Architectures
cs.IR
Introduction: Before embarking on the design of any computer system it is first necessary to assess the magnitude of the problem. In the case of a web search engine this assessment amounts to determining the current size of the web, the growth rate of the web, and the quantity of computing resource necessary to search it, and projecting the historical growth of this into the future. Method: The over 20 year history of the web makes it possible to make short-term projections on future growth. The longer history of hard disk drives (and smart phone memory card) makes it possible to make short-term hardware projections. Analysis: Historical data on Internet uptake and hardware growth is extrapolated. Results: It is predicted that within a decade the storage capacity of a single hard drive will exceed the size of the index of the web at that time. Within another decade it will be possible to store the entire searchable text on the same hard drive. Within another decade the entire searchable web (including images) will also fit. Conclusion: This result raises questions about the future architecture of search engines. Several new models are proposed. In one model the user's computer is an active part of the distributed search architecture. They search a pre-loaded snapshot (back-file) of the web on their local device which frees up the online data centre for searching just the difference between the snapshot and the current time. Advantageously this also makes it possible to search when the user is disconnected from the Internet. In another model all changes to all files are broadcast to all users (forming a star-like network) and no data centre is needed.
1307.1192
AdaBoost and Forward Stagewise Regression are First-Order Convex Optimization Methods
stat.ML cs.LG math.OC
Boosting methods are highly popular and effective supervised learning methods which combine weak learners into a single accurate model with good statistical performance. In this paper, we analyze two well-known boosting methods, AdaBoost and Incremental Forward Stagewise Regression (FS$_\varepsilon$), by establishing their precise connections to the Mirror Descent algorithm, which is a first-order method in convex optimization. As a consequence of these connections we obtain novel computational guarantees for these boosting methods. In particular, we characterize convergence bounds of AdaBoost, related to both the margin and log-exponential loss function, for any step-size sequence. Furthermore, this paper presents, for the first time, precise computational complexity results for FS$_\varepsilon$.
1307.1212
Handover adaptation for dynamic load balancing in 3gpp long term evolution systems
cs.NI cs.RO
The long-Term Evolution (LTE) of the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) radio access network is in early stage of specification. Self-tuning and self-optimisation algorithms are currently studied with the aim of enriching the LTE standard. This paper investigates auto-tuning of LTE mobility algorithm. The auto-tuning is carried out by adapting handover parameters of each base station according to its radio load and the load of its adjacent cells. The auto-tuning alleviates cell congestion and balances the traffic and the load between cells by handing off mobiles close to the cell border from the congested cell to its neighbouring cells. Simulation results show that the auto-tuning process brings an important gain in both call admission rate and user throughput.
1307.1252
The Complexity of Fully Proportional Representation for Single-Crossing Electorates
cs.GT cs.MA
We study the complexity of winner determination in single-crossing elections under two classic fully proportional representation rules---Chamberlin--Courant's rule and Monroe's rule. Winner determination for these rules is known to be NP-hard for unrestricted preferences. We show that for single-crossing preferences this problem admits a polynomial-time algorithm for Chamberlin--Courant's rule, but remains NP-hard for Monroe's rule. Our algorithm for Chamberlin--Courant's rule can be modified to work for elections with bounded single-crossing width. To circumvent the hardness result for Monroe's rule, we consider single-crossing elections that satisfy an additional constraint, namely, ones where each candidate is ranked first by at least one voter (such elections are called narcissistic). For single-crossing narcissistic elections, we provide an efficient algorithm for the egalitarian version of Monroe's rule.
1307.1253
Network robustness of multiplex networks with interlayer degree correlations
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
We study the robustness properties of multiplex networks consisting of multiple layers of distinct types of links, focusing on the role of correlations between degrees of a node in different layers. We use generating function formalism to address various notions of the network robustness relevant to multiplex networks such as the resilience of ordinary- and mutual connectivity under random or targeted node removals as well as the biconnectivity. We found that correlated coupling can affect the structural robustness of multiplex networks in diverse fashion. For example, for maximally-correlated duplex networks, all pairs of nodes in the giant component are connected via at least two independent paths and network structure is highly resilient to random failure. In contrast, anti-correlated duplex networks are on one hand robust against targeted attack on high-degree nodes, but on the other hand they can be vulnerable to random failure.
1307.1275
Constructing Hierarchical Image-tags Bimodal Representations for Word Tags Alternative Choice
cs.LG cs.NE
This paper describes our solution to the multi-modal learning challenge of ICML. This solution comprises constructing three-level representations in three consecutive stages and choosing correct tag words with a data-specific strategy. Firstly, we use typical methods to obtain level-1 representations. Each image is represented using MPEG-7 and gist descriptors with additional features released by the contest organizers. And the corresponding word tags are represented by bag-of-words model with a dictionary of 4000 words. Secondly, we learn the level-2 representations using two stacked RBMs for each modality. Thirdly, we propose a bimodal auto-encoder to learn the similarities/dissimilarities between the pairwise image-tags as level-3 representations. Finally, during the test phase, based on one observation of the dataset, we come up with a data-specific strategy to choose the correct tag words leading to a leap of an improved overall performance. Our final average accuracy on the private test set is 100%, which ranks the first place in this challenge.
1307.1277
Evidence and plausibility in neighborhood structures
math.LO cs.AI cs.LO
The intuitive notion of evidence has both semantic and syntactic features. In this paper, we develop an {\em evidence logic} for epistemic agents faced with possibly contradictory evidence from different sources. The logic is based on a neighborhood semantics, where a neighborhood $N$ indicates that the agent has reason to believe that the true state of the world lies in $N$. Further notions of relative plausibility between worlds and beliefs based on the latter ordering are then defined in terms of this evidence structure, yielding our intended models for evidence-based beliefs. In addition, we also consider a second more general flavor, where belief and plausibility are modeled using additional primitive relations, and we prove a representation theorem showing that each such general model is a $p$-morphic image of an intended one. This semantics invites a number of natural special cases, depending on how uniform we make the evidence sets, and how coherent their total structure. We give a structural study of the resulting `uniform' and `flat' models. Our main result are sound and complete axiomatizations for the logics of all four major model classes with respect to the modal language of evidence, belief and safe belief. We conclude with an outlook toward logics for the dynamics of changing evidence, and the resulting language extensions and connections with logics of plausibility change.
1307.1289
Further results on dissimilarity spaces for hyperspectral images RF-CBIR
cs.IR cs.CV
Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems are powerful search tools in image databases that have been little applied to hyperspectral images. Relevance feedback (RF) is an iterative process that uses machine learning techniques and user's feedback to improve the CBIR systems performance. We pursued to expand previous research in hyperspectral CBIR systems built on dissimilarity functions defined either on spectral and spatial features extracted by spectral unmixing techniques, or on dictionaries extracted by dictionary-based compressors. These dissimilarity functions were not suitable for direct application in common machine learning techniques. We propose to use a RF general approach based on dissimilarity spaces which is more appropriate for the application of machine learning algorithms to the hyperspectral RF-CBIR. We validate the proposed RF method for hyperspectral CBIR systems over a real hyperspectral dataset.
1307.1303
Submodularity of a Set Label Disagreement Function
cs.CV
A set label disagreement function is defined over the number of variables that deviates from the dominant label. The dominant label is the value assumed by the largest number of variables within a set of binary variables. The submodularity of a certain family of set label disagreement function is discussed in this manuscript. Such disagreement function could be utilized as a cost function in combinatorial optimization approaches for problems defined over hypergraphs.
1307.1307
Fourier-Laguerre transform, convolution and wavelets on the ball
cs.IT astro-ph.IM math.IT
We review the Fourier-Laguerre transform, an alternative harmonic analysis on the three-dimensional ball to the usual Fourier-Bessel transform. The Fourier-Laguerre transform exhibits an exact quadrature rule and thus leads to a sampling theorem on the ball. We study the definition of convolution on the ball in this context, showing explicitly how translation on the radial line may be viewed as convolution with a shifted Dirac delta function. We review the exact Fourier-Laguerre wavelet transform on the ball, coined flaglets, and show that flaglets constitute a tight frame.
1307.1354
Modeling and Predicting the Growth and Death of Membership-based Websites
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Driven by outstanding success stories of Internet startups such as Facebook and The Huffington Post, recent studies have thoroughly described their growth. These highly visible online success stories, however, overshadow an untold number of similar ventures that fail. The study of website popularity is ultimately incomplete without general mechanisms that can describe both successes and failures. In this work we present six years of the daily number of users (DAU) of twenty-two membership-based websites - encompassing online social networks, grassroots movements, online forums, and membership-only Internet stores - well balanced between successes and failures. We then propose a combination of reaction-diffusion-decay processes whose resulting equations seem not only to describe well the observed DAU time series but also provide means to roughly predict their evolution. This model allows an approximate automatic DAU-based classification of websites into self-sustainable v.s. unsustainable and whether the startup growth is mostly driven by marketing & media campaigns or word-of-mouth adoptions.
1307.1360
On sparsity averaging
cs.IT astro-ph.IM math.IT
Recent developments in Carrillo et al. (2012) and Carrillo et al. (2013) introduced a novel regularization method for compressive imaging in the context of compressed sensing with coherent redundant dictionaries. The approach relies on the observation that natural images exhibit strong average sparsity over multiple coherent frames. The associated reconstruction algorithm, based on an analysis prior and a reweighted $\ell_1$ scheme, is dubbed Sparsity Averaging Reweighted Analysis (SARA). We review these advances and extend associated simulations establishing the superiority of SARA to regularization methods based on sparsity in a single frame, for a generic spread spectrum acquisition and for a Fourier acquisition of particular interest in radio astronomy.
1307.1370
Matching Known Patients to Health Records in Washington State Data
cs.CY cs.DB
The State of Washington sells patient-level health data for $50. This publicly available dataset has virtually all hospitalizations occurring in the State in a given year, including patient demographics, diagnoses, procedures, attending physician, hospital, a summary of charges, and how the bill was paid. It does not contain patient names or addresses (only ZIPs). Newspaper stories printed in the State for the same year that contain the word "hospitalized" often include a patient's name and residential information and explain why the person was hospitalized, such as vehicle accident or assault. News information uniquely and exactly matched medical records in the State database for 35 of the 81 cases (or 43 percent) found in 2011, thereby putting names to patient records. A news reporter verified matches by contacting patients. Employers, financial organizations and others know the same kind of information as reported in news stories making it just as easy for them to identify the medical records of employees, debtors, and others.
1307.1372
Clustering of Complex Networks and Community Detection Using Group Search Optimization
cs.NE cs.DS
Group Search Optimizer(GSO) is one of the best algorithms, is very new in the field of Evolutionary Computing. It is very robust and efficient algorithm, which is inspired by animal searching behaviour. The paper describes an application of GSO to clustering of networks. We have tested GSO against five standard benchmark datasets, GSO algorithm is proved very competitive in terms of accuracy and convergence speed.
1307.1380
The Application of a Data Mining Framework to Energy Usage Profiling in Domestic Residences using UK data
cs.CE cs.LG stat.AP
This paper describes a method for defining representative load profiles for domestic electricity users in the UK. It considers bottom up and clustering methods and then details the research plans for implementing and improving existing framework approaches based on the overall usage profile. The work focuses on adapting and applying analysis framework approaches to UK energy data in order to determine the effectiveness of creating a few (single figures) archetypical users with the intention of improving on the current methods of determining usage profiles. The work is currently in progress and the paper details initial results using data collected in Milton Keynes around 1990. Various possible enhancements to the work are considered including a split based on temperature to reflect the varying UK weather conditions.
1307.1385
Creating Personalised Energy Plans. From Groups to Individuals using Fuzzy C Means Clustering
cs.CE cs.LG
Changes in the UK electricity market mean that domestic users will be required to modify their usage behaviour in order that supplies can be maintained. Clustering allows usage profiles collected at the household level to be clustered into groups and assigned a stereotypical profile which can be used to target marketing campaigns. Fuzzy C Means clustering extends this by allowing each household to be a member of many groups and hence provides the opportunity to make personalised offers to the household dependent on their degree of membership of each group. In addition, feedback can be provided on how user's changing behaviour is moving them towards more "green" or cost effective stereotypical usage.
1307.1387
Examining the Classification Accuracy of TSVMs with ?Feature Selection in Comparison with the GLAD Algorithm
cs.LG cs.CE
Gene expression data sets are used to classify and predict patient diagnostic categories. As we know, it is extremely difficult and expensive to obtain gene expression labelled examples. Moreover, conventional supervised approaches cannot function properly when labelled data (training examples) are insufficient using Support Vector Machines (SVM) algorithms. Therefore, in this paper, we suggest Transductive Support Vector Machines (TSVMs) as semi-supervised learning algorithms, learning with both labelled samples data and unlabelled samples to perform the classification of microarray data. To prune the superfluous genes and samples we used a feature selection method called Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE), which is supposed to enhance the output of classification and avoid the local optimization problem. We examined the classification prediction accuracy of the TSVM-RFE algorithm in comparison with the Genetic Learning Across Datasets (GLAD) algorithm, as both are semi-supervised learning methods. Comparing these two methods, we found that the TSVM-RFE surpassed both a SVM using RFE and GLAD.
1307.1388
Introducing Memory and Association Mechanism into a Biologically Inspired Visual Model
cs.AI
A famous biologically inspired hierarchical model firstly proposed by Riesenhuber and Poggio has been successfully applied to multiple visual recognition tasks. The model is able to achieve a set of position- and scale-tolerant recognition, which is a central problem in pattern recognition. In this paper, based on some other biological experimental results, we introduce the Memory and Association Mechanisms into the above biologically inspired model. The main motivations of the work are (a) to mimic the active memory and association mechanism and add the 'top down' adjustment to the above biologically inspired hierarchical model and (b) to build up an algorithm which can save the space and keep a good recognition performance. The new model is also applied to object recognition processes. The primary experimental results show that our method is efficient with much less memory requirement.
1307.1390
Systems Dynamics or Agent-Based Modelling for Immune Simulation?
cs.CE cs.MA
In immune system simulation there are two competing simulation approaches: System Dynamics Simulation (SDS) and Agent-Based Simulation (ABS). In the literature there is little guidance on how to choose the best approach for a specific immune problem. Our overall research aim is to develop a framework that helps researchers with this choice. In this paper we investigate if it is possible to easily convert simulation models between approaches. With no explicit guidelines available from the literature we develop and test our own set of guidelines for converting SDS models into ABS models in a non-spacial scenario. We also define guidelines to convert ABS into SDS considering a non-spatial and a spatial scenario. After running some experiments with the developed models we found that in all cases there are significant differences between the results produced by the different simulation methods.
1307.1391
Quiet in Class: Classification, Noise and the Dendritic Cell Algorithm
cs.LG cs.CR
Theoretical analyses of the Dendritic Cell Algorithm (DCA) have yielded several criticisms about its underlying structure and operation. As a result, several alterations and fixes have been suggested in the literature to correct for these findings. A contribution of this work is to investigate the effects of replacing the classification stage of the DCA (which is known to be flawed) with a traditional machine learning technique. This work goes on to question the merits of those unique properties of the DCA that are yet to be thoroughly analysed. If none of these properties can be found to have a benefit over traditional approaches, then "fixing" the DCA is arguably less efficient than simply creating a new algorithm. This work examines the dynamic filtering property of the DCA and questions the utility of this unique feature for the anomaly detection problem. It is found that this feature, while advantageous for noisy, time-ordered classification, is not as useful as a traditional static filter for processing a synthetic dataset. It is concluded that there are still unique features of the DCA left to investigate. Areas that may be of benefit to the Artificial Immune Systems community are suggested.
1307.1394
Detect adverse drug reactions for drug Alendronate
cs.CE cs.LG
Adverse drug reaction (ADR) is widely concerned for public health issue. In this study we propose an original approach to detect the ADRs using feature matrix and feature selection. The experiments are carried out on the drug Simvastatin. Major side effects for the drug are detected and better performance is achieved compared to other computerized methods. The detected ADRs are based on the computerized method, further investigation is needed.
1307.1397
Secure Source Coding with a Public Helper
cs.IT math.IT
We consider secure multi-terminal source coding problems in the presence of a public helper. Two main scenarios are studied: 1) source coding with a helper where the coded side information from the helper is eavesdropped by an external eavesdropper; 2) triangular source coding with a helper where the helper is considered as a public terminal. We are interested in how the helper can support the source transmission subject to a constraint on the amount of information leaked due to its public nature. We characterize the tradeoff between transmission rate, incurred distortion, and information leakage rate at the helper/eavesdropper in the form of a rate-distortion-leakage region for various classes of problems.
1307.1408
An investigation into the relationship between type-2 FOU size and environmental uncertainty in robotic control
cs.RO cs.AI
It has been suggested that, when faced with large amounts of uncertainty in situations of automated control, type-2 fuzzy logic based controllers will out-perform the simpler type-1 varieties due to the latter lacking the flexibility to adapt accordingly. This paper aims to investigate this problem in detail in order to analyse when a type-2 controller will improve upon type-1 performance. A robotic sailing boat is subjected to several experiments in which the uncertainty and difficulty of the sailing problem is increased in order to observe the effects on measured performance. Improved performance is observed but not in every case. The size of the FOU is shown to be have a large effect on performance with potentially severe performance penalties for incorrectly sized footprints.
1307.1411
Discovering Sequential Patterns in a UK General Practice Database
cs.LG cs.CE stat.AP
The wealth of computerised medical information becoming readily available presents the opportunity to examine patterns of illnesses, therapies and responses. These patterns may be able to predict illnesses that a patient is likely to develop, allowing the implementation of preventative actions. In this paper sequential rule mining is applied to a General Practice database to find rules involving a patients age, gender and medical history. By incorporating these rules into current health-care a patient can be highlighted as susceptible to a future illness based on past or current illnesses, gender and year of birth. This knowledge has the ability to greatly improve health-care and reduce health-care costs.
1307.1437
Toward Guaranteed Illumination Models for Non-Convex Objects
cs.CV
Illumination variation remains a central challenge in object detection and recognition. Existing analyses of illumination variation typically pertain to convex, Lambertian objects, and guarantee quality of approximation in an average case sense. We show that it is possible to build V(vertex)-description convex cone models with worst-case performance guarantees, for non-convex Lambertian objects. Namely, a natural verification test based on the angle to the constructed cone guarantees to accept any image which is sufficiently well-approximated by an image of the object under some admissible lighting condition, and guarantees to reject any image that does not have a sufficiently good approximation. The cone models are generated by sampling point illuminations with sufficient density, which follows from a new perturbation bound for point images in the Lambertian model. As the number of point images required for guaranteed verification may be large, we introduce a new formulation for cone preserving dimensionality reduction, which leverages tools from sparse and low-rank decomposition to reduce the complexity, while controlling the approximation error with respect to the original cone.
1307.1448
Distributed Detection and Estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks
cs.DC cs.IT math.IT
In this article we consider the problems of distributed detection and estimation in wireless sensor networks. In the first part, we provide a general framework aimed to show how an efficient design of a sensor network requires a joint organization of in-network processing and communication. Then, we recall the basic features of consensus algorithm, which is a basic tool to reach globally optimal decisions through a distributed approach. The main part of the paper starts addressing the distributed estimation problem. We show first an entirely decentralized approach, where observations and estimations are performed without the intervention of a fusion center. Then, we consider the case where the estimation is performed at a fusion center, showing how to allocate quantization bits and transmit powers in the links between the nodes and the fusion center, in order to accommodate the requirement on the maximum estimation variance, under a constraint on the global transmit power. We extend the approach to the detection problem. Also in this case, we consider the distributed approach, where every node can achieve a globally optimal decision, and the case where the decision is taken at a central node. In the latter case, we show how to allocate coding bits and transmit power in order to maximize the detection probability, under constraints on the false alarm rate and the global transmit power. Then, we generalize consensus algorithms illustrating a distributed procedure that converges to the projection of the observation vector onto a signal subspace. We then address the issue of energy consumption in sensor networks, thus showing how to optimize the network topology in order to minimize the energy necessary to achieve a global consensus. Finally, we address the problem of matching the topology of the network to the graph describing the statistical dependencies among the observed variables.
1307.1461
Degrees of Freedom of the Rank-deficient Interference Channel with Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate the total degrees of freedom (DoF) of the K-user rank-deficient interference channel with feedback. For the two-user case, we characterize the total DoF by developing an achievable scheme and deriving a matching upper bound. For the three-user case, we develop a new achievable scheme which employs interference alignment to efficiently utilize the dimension of the received signal space. In addition, we derive an upper bound for the general K-user case and show the tightness of the bound when the number of antennas at each node is sufficiently large. As a consequence of these results, we show that feedback can increase the DoF when the number of antennas at each node is large enough as compared to the ranks of channel matrices. This finding is in contrast to the full-rank interference channel where feedback provides no DoF gain. The gain comes from using feedback to provide alternative signal paths, thereby effectively increasing the ranks of desired channel matrices.
1307.1466
Detect adverse drug reactions for the drug Pravastatin
cs.CE
Adverse drug reaction (ADR) is widely concerned for public health issue. ADRs are one of most common causes to withdraw some drugs from market. Prescription event monitoring (PEM) is an important approach to detect the adverse drug reactions. The main problem to deal with this method is how to automatically extract the medical events or side effects from high-throughput medical data, which are collected from day to day clinical practice. In this study we propose an original approach to detect the ADRs using feature matrix and feature selection. The experiments are carried out on the drug Pravastatin. Major side effects for the drug are detected. The detected ADRs are based on computerized method, further investigation is needed.
1307.1482
Towards Combining HTN Planning and Geometric Task Planning
cs.AI
In this paper we present an interface between a symbolic planner and a geometric task planner, which is different to a standard trajectory planner in that the former is able to perform geometric reasoning on abstract entities---tasks. We believe that this approach facilitates a more principled interface to symbolic planning, while also leaving more room for the geometric planner to make independent decisions. We show how the two planners could be interfaced, and how their planning and backtracking could be interleaved. We also provide insights for a methodology for using the combined system, and experimental results to use as a benchmark with future extensions to both the combined system, as well as to the geometric task planner.
1307.1493
Dropout Training as Adaptive Regularization
stat.ML cs.LG stat.ME
Dropout and other feature noising schemes control overfitting by artificially corrupting the training data. For generalized linear models, dropout performs a form of adaptive regularization. Using this viewpoint, we show that the dropout regularizer is first-order equivalent to an L2 regularizer applied after scaling the features by an estimate of the inverse diagonal Fisher information matrix. We also establish a connection to AdaGrad, an online learning algorithm, and find that a close relative of AdaGrad operates by repeatedly solving linear dropout-regularized problems. By casting dropout as regularization, we develop a natural semi-supervised algorithm that uses unlabeled data to create a better adaptive regularizer. We apply this idea to document classification tasks, and show that it consistently boosts the performance of dropout training, improving on state-of-the-art results on the IMDB reviews dataset.
1307.1508
Multiple-Level Power Allocation Strategy for Secondary Users in Cognitive Radio Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we propose a multiple-level power allocation strategy for the secondary user (SU) in cognitive radio (CR) networks. Different from the conventional strategies, where SU either stays silent or transmit with a constant/binary power depending on the busy/idle status of the primary user (PU), the proposed strategy allows SU to choose different power levels according to a carefully designed function of the receiving energy. The way of the power level selection is optimized to maximize the achievable rate of SU under the constraints of average transmit power at SU and average interference power at PU. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed strategy can significantly improve the performance of SU compared to the conventional strategies.
1307.1514
Network-Coded Multiple Access
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
This paper proposes and experimentally demonstrates a first wireless local area network (WLAN) system that jointly exploits physical-layer network coding (PNC) and multiuser decoding (MUD) to boost system throughput. We refer to this multiple access mode as Network-Coded Multiple Access (NCMA). Prior studies on PNC mostly focused on relay networks. NCMA is the first realized multiple access scheme that establishes the usefulness of PNC in a non-relay setting. NCMA allows multiple nodes to transmit simultaneously to the access point (AP) to boost throughput. In the non-relay setting, when two nodes A and B transmit to the AP simultaneously, the AP aims to obtain both packet A and packet B rather than their network-coded packet. An interesting question is whether network coding, specifically PNC which extracts packet (A XOR B), can still be useful in such a setting. We provide an affirmative answer to this question with a novel two-layer decoding approach amenable to real-time implementation. Our USRP prototype indicates that NCMA can boost throughput by 100% in the medium-high SNR regime (>=10dB). We believe further throughput enhancement is possible by allowing more than two users to transmit together.
1307.1524
Fundamentals of Heterogeneous Cellular Networks with Energy Harvesting
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT stat.AP
We develop a new tractable model for K-tier heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets), where each base station (BS) is powered solely by a self-contained energy harvesting module. The BSs across tiers differ in terms of the energy harvesting rate, energy storage capacity, transmit power and deployment density. Since a BS may not always have enough energy, it may need to be kept OFF and allowed to recharge while nearby users are served by neighboring BSs that are ON. We show that the fraction of time a k^{th} tier BS can be kept ON, termed availability \rho_k, is a fundamental metric of interest. Using tools from random walk theory, fixed point analysis and stochastic geometry, we characterize the set of K-tuples (\rho_1, \rho_2, ... \rho_K), termed the availability region, that is achievable by general uncoordinated operational strategies, where the decision to toggle the current ON/OFF state of a BS is taken independently of the other BSs. If the availability vector corresponding to the optimal system performance, e.g., in terms of rate, lies in this availability region, there is no performance loss due to the presence of unreliable energy sources. As a part of our analysis, we model the temporal dynamics of the energy level at each BS as a birth-death process, derive the energy utilization rate, and use hitting/stopping time analysis to prove that there exists a fundamental limit on \rho_k that cannot be surpassed by any uncoordinated strategy.
1307.1537
Optimal Power Allocation and User Loading for Multiuser MISO Channels with Regularized Channel Inversion
cs.IT math.IT
We consider a multiuser system where a single transmitter equipped with multiple antennas (the base station) communicates with multiple users each with a single antenna. Regularized channel inversion is employed as the precoding strategy at the base station. Within this scenario we are interested in the problems of power allocation and user admission control so as to maximize the system throughput, i.e., which users should we communicate with and what power should we use for each of the admitted users so as to get the highest sum rate. This is in general a very difficult problem but we do two things to allow some progress to be made. Firstly we consider the large system regime where the number of antennas at the base station is large along with the number of users. Secondly we cluster the downlink path gains of users into a finite number of groups. By doing this we are able to show that the optimal power allocation under an average transmit power constraint follows the well-known water filling scheme. We also investigate the user admission problem which reduces in the large system regime to optimization of the user loading in the system.
1307.1543
Finding Information Through Integrated Ad-Hoc Socializing in the Virtual and Physical World
cs.IR cs.SI
Despite the services of sophisticated search engines like Google, there are a number of interesting information sources which are useful but largely inaccessible to current Web users. These information sources are often ad-hoc, location-specific and only useful for users over short periods of time, or relate to tacit knowledge of users or implicit knowledge in crowds. The solution presented in this paper addresses these problems by introducing an integrated concept of "location" and "presence" across the physical and virtual worlds enabling ad-hoc socializing of users interested in, or looking for similar information. While the definition of presence in the physical world is straightforward - through a spatial location and vicinity at a certain point in time - their definitions in the virtual world are neither obvious nor trivial. Based on a detailed analysis we provide an integrated spatial model spanning both worlds which enables us to define presence of users in a unified way. This integrated model allows us to enable ad-hoc socializing of users browsing the Web with users in the physical world specific to their joint information needs and allows us to unlock the untapped information sources mentioned above. We describe a proof-of-concept implementation of our model and provide an empirical analysis based on real-world experiments.
1307.1561
A Sub-block Based Image Retrieval Using Modified Integrated Region Matching
cs.IR cs.CV
This paper proposes a content based image retrieval (CBIR) system using the local colour and texture features of selected image sub-blocks and global colour and shape features of the image. The image sub-blocks are roughly identified by segmenting the image into partitions of different configuration, finding the edge density in each partition using edge thresholding followed by morphological dilation. The colour and texture features of the identified regions are computed from the histograms of the quantized HSV colour space and Gray Level Co- occurrence Matrix (GLCM) respectively. The colour and texture feature vectors is computed for each region. The shape features are computed from the Edge Histogram Descriptor (EHD). A modified Integrated Region Matching (IRM) algorithm is used for finding the minimum distance between the sub-blocks of the query and target image. Experimental results show that the proposed method provides better retrieving result than retrieval using some of the existing methods.
1307.1568
Using MathML to Represent Units of Measurement for Improved Ontology Alignment
cs.AI
Ontologies provide a formal description of concepts and their relationships in a knowledge domain. The goal of ontology alignment is to identify semantically matching concepts and relationships across independently developed ontologies that purport to describe the same knowledge. In order to handle the widest possible class of ontologies, many alignment algorithms rely on terminological and structural meth- ods, but the often fuzzy nature of concepts complicates the matching process. However, one area that should provide clear matching solutions due to its mathematical nature, is units of measurement. Several on- tologies for units of measurement are available, but there has been no attempt to align them, notwithstanding the obvious importance for tech- nical interoperability. We propose a general strategy to map these (and similar) ontologies by introducing MathML to accurately capture the semantic description of concepts specified therein. We provide mapping results for three ontologies, and show that our approach improves on lexical comparisons.
1307.1584
Comparing Data-mining Algorithms Developed for Longitudinal Observational Databases
cs.LG cs.CE cs.DB
Longitudinal observational databases have become a recent interest in the post marketing drug surveillance community due to their ability of presenting a new perspective for detecting negative side effects. Algorithms mining longitudinal observation databases are not restricted by many of the limitations associated with the more conventional methods that have been developed for spontaneous reporting system databases. In this paper we investigate the robustness of four recently developed algorithms that mine longitudinal observational databases by applying them to The Health Improvement Network (THIN) for six drugs with well document known negative side effects. Our results show that none of the existing algorithms was able to consistently identify known adverse drug reactions above events related to the cause of the drug and no algorithm was superior.
1307.1597
A Beginners Guide to Systems Simulation in Immunology
cs.CE
Some common systems modelling and simulation approaches for immune problems are Monte Carlo simulations, system dynamics, discrete-event simulation and agent-based simulation. These methods, however, are still not widely adopted in immunology research. In addition, to our knowledge, there is few research on the processes for the development of simulation models for the immune system. Hence, for this work, we have two contributions to knowledge. The first one is to show the importance of systems simulation to help immunological research and to draw the attention of simulation developers to this research field. The second contribution is the introduction of a quick guide containing the main steps for modelling and simulation in immunology, together with challenges that occur during the model development. Further, this paper introduces an example of a simulation problem, where we test our guidelines.
1307.1598
Extending a Microsimulation of the Port of Dover
cs.CE
Modelling and simulating the traffic of heavily used but secure environments such as seaports and airports is of increasing importance. This paper discusses issues and problems that may arise when extending an existing microsimulation strategy. We also discuss how extensions of these simulations can aid planners with optimal physical and operational feedback. Conclusions are drawn about how microsimulations can be moved forward as a robust planning tool for the 21st century.
1307.1599
Supervised Learning and Anti-learning of Colorectal Cancer Classes and Survival Rates from Cellular Biology Parameters
cs.LG cs.CE stat.ML
In this paper, we describe a dataset relating to cellular and physical conditions of patients who are operated upon to remove colorectal tumours. This data provides a unique insight into immunological status at the point of tumour removal, tumour classification and post-operative survival. Attempts are made to learn relationships between attributes (physical and immunological) and the resulting tumour stage and survival. Results for conventional machine learning approaches can be considered poor, especially for predicting tumour stages for the most important types of cancer. This poor performance is further investigated and compared with a synthetic, dataset based on the logical exclusive-OR function and it is shown that there is a significant level of 'anti-learning' present in all supervised methods used and this can be explained by the highly dimensional, complex and sparsely representative dataset. For predicting the stage of cancer from the immunological attributes, anti-learning approaches outperform a range of popular algorithms.
1307.1601
Biomarker Clustering of Colorectal Cancer Data to Complement Clinical Classification
cs.LG cs.CE
In this paper, we describe a dataset relating to cellular and physical conditions of patients who are operated upon to remove colorectal tumours. This data provides a unique insight into immunological status at the point of tumour removal, tumour classification and post-operative survival. Attempts are made to cluster this dataset and important subsets of it in an effort to characterize the data and validate existing standards for tumour classification. It is apparent from optimal clustering that existing tumour classification is largely unrelated to immunological factors within a patient and that there may be scope for re-evaluating treatment options and survival estimates based on a combination of tumour physiology and patient histochemistry.
1307.1625
Robust Causality Check for Sampled Scattering Parameters via a Filtered Fourier Transform
cs.CE
We introduce a robust numerical technique to verify the causality of sampled scattering parameters given on a finite bandwidth. The method is based on a filtered Fourier transform and includes a rigorous estimation of the errors caused by missing out-of-band samples. Compared to existing techniques, the method is simpler to implement and provides a useful insight on the time-domain characteristics of the detected violation. Through an applicative example, we shows its usefulness to improve the accuracy and reliability of macromodeling techniques used to convert sampled scattering parameters into models for transient analysis.
1307.1630
Power Allocation Strategies in Energy Harvesting Wireless Cooperative Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, a wireless cooperative network is considered, in which multiple source-destination pairs communicate with each other via an energy harvesting relay. The focus of this paper is on the relay's strategies to distribute the harvested energy among the multiple users and their impact on the system performance. Specifically, a non-cooperative strategy is to use the energy harvested from the i-th source as the relay transmission power to the i-th destination, to which asymptotic results show that its outage performance decays as logSNR over SNR. A faster decaying rate, 1 over SNR, can be achieved by the two centralized strategies proposed this the paper, where the water filling based one can achieve optimal performance with respect to several criteria, with a price of high complexity. An auction based power allocation scheme is also proposed to achieve a better tradeoff between the system performance and complexity. Simulation results are provided to confirm the accuracy of the developed analytical results and facilitate a better performance comparison.
1307.1656
Contact-based Social Contagion in Multiplex Networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
We develop a theoretical framework for the study of epidemic-like social contagion in large scale social systems. We consider the most general setting in which different communication platforms or categories form multiplex networks. Specifically, we propose a contact-based information spreading model, and show that the critical point of the multiplex system associated to the active phase is determined by the layer whose contact probability matrix has the largest eigenvalue. The framework is applied to a number of different situations, including a real multiplex system. Finally, we also show that when the system through which information is disseminating is inherently multiplex, working with the graph that results from the aggregation of the different layers is flawed.
1307.1662
Polyglot: Distributed Word Representations for Multilingual NLP
cs.CL cs.LG
Distributed word representations (word embeddings) have recently contributed to competitive performance in language modeling and several NLP tasks. In this work, we train word embeddings for more than 100 languages using their corresponding Wikipedias. We quantitatively demonstrate the utility of our word embeddings by using them as the sole features for training a part of speech tagger for a subset of these languages. We find their performance to be competitive with near state-of-art methods in English, Danish and Swedish. Moreover, we investigate the semantic features captured by these embeddings through the proximity of word groupings. We will release these embeddings publicly to help researchers in the development and enhancement of multilingual applications.
1307.1674
Stochastic Optimization of PCA with Capped MSG
stat.ML cs.LG
We study PCA as a stochastic optimization problem and propose a novel stochastic approximation algorithm which we refer to as "Matrix Stochastic Gradient" (MSG), as well as a practical variant, Capped MSG. We study the method both theoretically and empirically.
1307.1681
Extracting the trustworthiest way to service provider in complex online social networks
cs.SI cs.ET
In complex online social networks, it is crucial for a service consumer to extract the trustworthiest way to a target service provider from numerous social trust paths between them. The extraction of the trustworthiest way (namely, optimal social trust path (OSTP)) with multiple end-to-end quality of trust (QoT) constraints has been proved to be NP-Complete. Heuristic algorithms with polynomial and pseudo-polynomial-time complexities are often used to deal with this challenging problem. However, existing solutions cannot guarantee the efficiency of searching, that is, they can hardly avoid obtaining partial optimal solutions during searching process. Quantum annealing uses delocalization and tunneling to avoid falling into local minima without sacrifying execution time. It has been proved to be a promising way to many optimization problems in recently published literatures. In this paper, for the first time, QA based OSTP algorithms (QA_OSTP) is applied to the extraction of the trustworthiest way. The experiment results show that QA based algorithms have better performance than its heuristic opponents.
1307.1690
An efficient reconciliation algorithm for social networks
cs.DS cs.SI
People today typically use multiple online social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.). Each online network represents a subset of their "real" ego-networks. An interesting and challenging problem is to reconcile these online networks, that is, to identify all the accounts belonging to the same individual. Besides providing a richer understanding of social dynamics, the problem has a number of practical applications. At first sight, this problem appears algorithmically challenging. Fortunately, a small fraction of individuals explicitly link their accounts across multiple networks; our work leverages these connections to identify a very large fraction of the network. Our main contributions are to mathematically formalize the problem for the first time, and to design a simple, local, and efficient parallel algorithm to solve it. We are able to prove strong theoretical guarantees on the algorithm's performance on well-established network models (Random Graphs, Preferential Attachment). We also experimentally confirm the effectiveness of the algorithm on synthetic and real social network data sets.
1307.1718
Graph-based Approach to Automatic Taxonomy Generation (GraBTax)
cs.IR
We propose a novel graph-based approach for constructing concept hierarchy from a large text corpus. Our algorithm, GraBTax, incorporates both statistical co-occurrences and lexical similarity in optimizing the structure of the taxonomy. To automatically generate topic-dependent taxonomies from a large text corpus, GraBTax first extracts topical terms and their relationships from the corpus. The algorithm then constructs a weighted graph representing topics and their associations. A graph partitioning algorithm is then used to recursively partition the topic graph into a taxonomy. For evaluation, we apply GraBTax to articles, primarily computer science, in the CiteSeerX digital library and search engine. The quality of the resulting concept hierarchy is assessed by both human judges and comparison with Wikipedia categories.
1307.1739
Anatomical Feature-guided Volumeric Registration of Multimodal Prostate MRI
cs.CV cs.GR
Radiological imaging of prostate is becoming more popular among researchers and clinicians in searching for diseases, primarily cancer. Scans might be acquired at different times, with patient movement between scans, or with different equipment, resulting in multiple datasets that need to be registered. For this issue, we introduce a registration method using anatomical feature-guided mutual information. Prostate scans of the same patient taken in three different orientations are first aligned for the accurate detection of anatomical features in 3D. Then, our pipeline allows for multiple modalities registration through the use of anatomical features, such as the interior urethra of prostate and gland utricle, in a bijective way. The novelty of this approach is the application of anatomical features as the pre-specified corresponding landmarks for prostate registration. We evaluate the registration results through both artificial and clinical datasets. Registration accuracy is evaluated by performing statistical analysis of local intensity differences or spatial differences of anatomical landmarks between various MR datasets. Evaluation results demonstrate that our method statistics-significantly improves the quality of registration. Although this strategy is tested for MRI-guided brachytherapy, the preliminary results from these experiments suggest that it can be also applied to other settings such as transrectal ultrasound-guided or CT-guided therapy, where the integration of preoperative MRI may have a significant impact upon treatment planning and guidance.
1307.1746
Generalized Quasi-Cyclic Codes Over $\mathbb{F}_q+u\mathbb{F}_q$
cs.IT math.IT
Generalized quasi-cyclic (GQC) codes with arbitrary lengths over the ring $\mathbb{F}_{q}+u\mathbb{F}_{q}$, where $u^2=0$, $q=p^n$, $n$ a positive integer and $p$ a prime number, are investigated. By the Chinese Remainder Theorem, structural properties and the decomposition of GQC codes are given. For 1-generator GQC codes, minimal generating sets and lower bounds on the minimum distance are given. As a special class of GQC codes, quasi-cyclic (QC) codes over $\mathbb{F}_q+u\mathbb{F}_q$ are also discussed briefly in this paper.
1307.1751
Study and Development of a Data Acquisition & Control (DAQ) System using TCP/Modbus Protocol
cs.SY cs.HC physics.ins-det
The aim of the project was to develop a HMI (Human-Machine Interface) with the help of which a person could remotely control and monitor the Vacuum measurement system. The Vacuum measurement system was constructed using a DAQ (Data Acquisition & Control) implementation instead of a PLC based implementation because of the cost involvement and complexity involved in deployment when only one basic parameter i.e. vacuum is required to be measured. The system is to be installed in the Superconducting Cyclotron section of VECC. The need for remote monitoring arises as during the operation of the K500 Superconducting Cyclotron, people are not allowed to enter within a certain specified range due to effective ion radiation. Using the designed software i.e. HMI the following objective of remote monitoring could be achieved effortlessly from any area which is in the safe zone. Moreover the software was designed in a way that data could be recorded real time and in an unmanned way. The hardware is also easy to setup and overcomes the complexity involved in interfacing a PLC with other hardware. The deployment time is also quite fast. Lastly, the practical results obtained showed an appreciable degree of accuracy of the system and friendliness with the user.
1307.1759
Approximate dynamic programming using fluid and diffusion approximations with applications to power management
cs.LG math.OC
Neuro-dynamic programming is a class of powerful techniques for approximating the solution to dynamic programming equations. In their most computationally attractive formulations, these techniques provide the approximate solution only within a prescribed finite-dimensional function class. Thus, the question that always arises is how should the function class be chosen? The goal of this paper is to propose an approach using the solutions to associated fluid and diffusion approximations. In order to illustrate this approach, the paper focuses on an application to dynamic speed scaling for power management in computer processors.
1307.1769
Ensemble Methods for Multi-label Classification
stat.ML cs.LG
Ensemble methods have been shown to be an effective tool for solving multi-label classification tasks. In the RAndom k-labELsets (RAKEL) algorithm, each member of the ensemble is associated with a small randomly-selected subset of k labels. Then, a single label classifier is trained according to each combination of elements in the subset. In this paper we adopt a similar approach, however, instead of randomly choosing subsets, we select the minimum required subsets of k labels that cover all labels and meet additional constraints such as coverage of inter-label correlations. Construction of the cover is achieved by formulating the subset selection as a minimum set covering problem (SCP) and solving it by using approximation algorithms. Every cover needs only to be prepared once by offline algorithms. Once prepared, a cover may be applied to the classification of any given multi-label dataset whose properties conform with those of the cover. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, we introduce SCP as a general framework for constructing label covers while allowing the user to incorporate cover construction constraints. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this framework by proposing two construction constraints whose enforcement produces covers that improve the prediction performance of random selection. Second, we provide theoretical bounds that quantify the probabilities of random selection to produce covers that meet the proposed construction criteria. The experimental results indicate that the proposed methods improve multi-label classification accuracy and stability compared with the RAKEL algorithm and to other state-of-the-art algorithms.
1307.1770
Improving A*OMP: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses With a Novel Dynamic Cost Model
cs.IT math.IT
Best-first search has been recently utilized for compressed sensing (CS) by the A* orthogonal matching pursuit (A*OMP) algorithm. In this work, we concentrate on theoretical and empirical analyses of A*OMP. We present a restricted isometry property (RIP) based general condition for exact recovery of sparse signals via A*OMP. In addition, we develop online guarantees which promise improved recovery performance with the residue-based termination instead of the sparsity-based one. We demonstrate the recovery capabilities of A*OMP with extensive recovery simulations using the adaptive-multiplicative (AMul) cost model, which effectively compensates for the path length differences in the search tree. The presented results, involving phase transitions for different nonzero element distributions as well as recovery rates and average error, reveal not only the superior recovery accuracy of A*OMP, but also the improvements with the residue-based termination and the AMul cost model. Comparison of the run times indicate the speed up by the AMul cost model. We also demonstrate a hybrid of OMP and A?OMP to accelerate the search further. Finally, we run A*OMP on a sparse image to illustrate its recovery performance for more realistic coefcient distributions.
1307.1786
MacWilliams type identities for some new $m$-spotty weight enumerators over finite commutative Frobenius rings
cs.IT math.IT
Past few years have seen an extensive use of RAM chips with wide I/O data (e.g. 16, 32, 64 bits) in computer memory systems. These chips are highly vulnerable to a special type of byte error, called an $m$-spotty byte error, which can be effectively detected or corrected using byte error-control codes. The MacWilliams identity provides the relationship between the weight distribution of a code and that of its dual. This paper introduces $m$-spotty Hamming weight enumerator, joint $m$-spotty Hamming weight enumerator and split $m$-spotty Hamming weight enumerator for byte error-control codes over finite commutative Frobenius rings as well as $m$-spotty Lee weight enumerator over an infinite family of rings. In addition, MacWilliams type identities are also derived for these enumerators.
1307.1790
Lifting Structural Tractability to CSP with Global Constraints
cs.AI
A wide range of problems can be modelled as constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), that is, a set of constraints that must be satisfied simultaneously. Constraints can either be represented extensionally, by explicitly listing allowed combinations of values, or implicitly, by special-purpose algorithms provided by a solver. Such implicitly represented constraints, known as global constraints, are widely used; indeed, they are one of the key reasons for the success of constraint programming in solving real-world problems. In recent years, a variety of restrictions on the structure of CSP instances that yield tractable classes have been identified. However, many such restrictions fail to guarantee tractability for CSPs with global constraints. In this paper, we investigate the properties of extensionally represented constraints that these restrictions exploit to achieve tractability, and show that there are large classes of global constraints that also possess these properties. This allows us to lift these restrictions to the global case, and identify new tractable classes of CSPs with global constraints.
1307.1827
Loss minimization and parameter estimation with heavy tails
cs.LG stat.ML
This work studies applications and generalizations of a simple estimation technique that provides exponential concentration under heavy-tailed distributions, assuming only bounded low-order moments. We show that the technique can be used for approximate minimization of smooth and strongly convex losses, and specifically for least squares linear regression. For instance, our $d$-dimensional estimator requires just $\tilde{O}(d\log(1/\delta))$ random samples to obtain a constant factor approximation to the optimal least squares loss with probability $1-\delta$, without requiring the covariates or noise to be bounded or subgaussian. We provide further applications to sparse linear regression and low-rank covariance matrix estimation with similar allowances on the noise and covariate distributions. The core technique is a generalization of the median-of-means estimator to arbitrary metric spaces.
1307.1829
Group performance is maximized by hierarchical competence distribution
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Groups of people or even robots often face problems they need to solve together. Examples include collectively searching for resources, choosing when and where to invest time and effort, and many more. Although a hierarchical ordering of the relevance of the group members' inputs during collective decision making is abundant, a quantitative demonstration of its origin and advantages using a generic approach has not been described yet. Here we introduce a family of models based on the most general features of group decision making to show that the optimal distribution of competences is a highly skewed function with a structured fat tail. Our results have been obtained by optimizing the groups' compositions through identifying the best performing distributions for both the competences and for the members' flexibilities/pliancies. Potential applications include choosing the best composition for a group intended to solve a given task.
1307.1834
Multiple Vectors Propagation of Epidemics in Complex Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
This letter investigates the epidemic spreading in two-vectors propagation network (TPN). We propose detailed theoretical analysis that allows us to accurately calculate the epidemic threshold and outbreak size. It is found that the epidemics can spread across the TPN even if two sub-single-vector propagation networks (SPNs) of TPN are well below their respective epidemic thresholds. Strong positive degree-degree correlation of nodes in TPN could lead to a much lower epidemic threshold and a relatively smaller outbreak size. However, the average similarity between the neighbors from different SPNs of nodes has no effect on the epidemic threshold and outbreak size.
1307.1870
Crossing the Reality Gap: a Short Introduction to the Transferability Approach
cs.RO
In robotics, gradient-free optimization algorithms (e.g. evolutionary algorithms) are often used only in simulation because they require the evaluation of many candidate solutions. Nevertheless, solutions obtained in simulation often do not work well on the real device. The transferability approach aims at crossing this gap between simulation and reality by \emph{making the optimization algorithm aware of the limits of the simulation}. In the present paper, we first describe the transferability function, that maps solution descriptors to a score representing how well a simulator matches the reality. We then show that this function can be learned using a regression algorithm and a few experiments with the real devices. Our results are supported by an extensive study of the reality gap for a simple quadruped robot whose control parameters are optimized. In particular, we mapped the whole search space in reality and in simulation to understand the differences between the fitness landscapes.
1307.1872
Intelligent Hybrid Man-Machine Translation Quality Estimation
cs.CL
Inferring evaluation scores based on human judgments is invaluable compared to using current evaluation metrics which are not suitable for real-time applications e.g. post-editing. However, these judgments are much more expensive to collect especially from expert translators, compared to evaluation based on indicators contrasting source and translation texts. This work introduces a novel approach for quality estimation by combining learnt confidence scores from a probabilistic inference model based on human judgments, with selective linguistic features-based scores, where the proposed inference model infers the credibility of given human ranks to solve the scarcity and inconsistency issues of human judgments. Experimental results, using challenging language-pairs, demonstrate improvement in correlation with human judgments over traditional evaluation metrics.
1307.1879
On Stochastic Subgradient Mirror-Descent Algorithm with Weighted Averaging
math.OC cs.SY
This paper considers stochastic subgradient mirror-descent method for solving constrained convex minimization problems. In particular, a stochastic subgradient mirror-descent method with weighted iterate-averaging is investigated and its per-iterate convergence rate is analyzed. The novel part of the approach is in the choice of weights that are used to construct the averages. Through the use of these weighted averages, we show that the known optimal rates can be obtained with simpler algorithms than those currently existing in the literature. Specifically, by suitably choosing the stepsize values, one can obtain the rate of the order $1/k$ for strongly convex functions, and the rate $1/\sqrt{k}$ for general convex functions (not necessarily differentiable). Furthermore, for the latter case, it is shown that a stochastic subgradient mirror-descent with iterate averaging converges (along a subsequence) to an optimal solution, almost surely, even with the stepsize of the form $1/\sqrt{1+k}$, which was not previously known. The stepsize choices that achieve the best rates are those proposed by Paul Tseng for acceleration of proximal gradient methods.
1307.1890
Solution of Rectangular Fuzzy Games by Principle of Dominance Using LR-type Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers
cs.AI
Fuzzy Set Theory has been applied in many fields such as Operations Research, Control Theory, and Management Sciences etc. In particular, an application of this theory in Managerial Decision Making Problems has a remarkable significance. In this Paper, we consider a solution of Rectangular Fuzzy game with pay-off as imprecise numbers instead of crisp numbers viz., interval and LR-type Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers. The solution of such Fuzzy games with pure strategies by minimax-maximin principle is discussed. The Algebraic Method to solve Fuzzy games without saddle point by using mixed strategies is also illustrated. Here, pay-off matrix is reduced to pay-off matrix by Dominance Method. This fact is illustrated by means of Numerical Example.
1307.1891
A Comparative study of Transportation Problem under Probabilistic and Fuzzy Uncertainties
cs.AI
Transportation Problem is an important aspect which has been widely studied in Operations Research domain. It has been studied to simulate different real life problems. In particular, application of this Problem in NP- Hard Problems has a remarkable significance. In this Paper, we present a comparative study of Transportation Problem through Probabilistic and Fuzzy Uncertainties. Fuzzy Logic is a computational paradigm that generalizes classical two-valued logic for reasoning under uncertainty. In order to achieve this, the notation of membership in a set needs to become a matter of degree. By doing this we accomplish two things viz., (i) ease of describing human knowledge involving vague concepts and (ii) enhanced ability to develop cost-effective solution to real-world problem. The multi-valued nature of Fuzzy Sets allows handling uncertain and vague information. It is a model-less approach and a clever disguise of Probability Theory. We give comparative simulation results of both approaches and discuss the Computational Complexity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work on comparative study of Transportation Problem using Probabilistic and Fuzzy Uncertainties.
1307.1893
Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers for the Transportation Problem
cs.AI
Transportation Problem is an important problem which has been widely studied in Operations Research domain. It has been often used to simulate different real life problems. In particular, application of this Problem in NP Hard Problems has a remarkable significance. In this Paper, we present the closed, bounded and non empty feasible region of the transportation problem using fuzzy trapezoidal numbers which ensures the existence of an optimal solution to the balanced transportation problem. The multivalued nature of Fuzzy Sets allows handling of uncertainty and vagueness involved in the cost values of each cells in the transportation table. For finding the initial solution of the transportation problem we use the Fuzzy Vogel Approximation Method and for determining the optimality of the obtained solution Fuzzy Modified Distribution Method is used. The fuzzification of the cost of the transportation problem is discussed with the help of a numerical example. Finally, we discuss the computational complexity involved in the problem. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work on obtaining the solution of the transportation problem using fuzzy trapezoidal numbers.
1307.1895
Discovering Stock Price Prediction Rules of Bombay Stock Exchange Using Rough Fuzzy Multi Layer Perception Networks
cs.AI
In India financial markets have existed for many years. A functionally accented, diverse, efficient and flexible financial system is vital to the national objective of creating a market driven, productive and competitive economy. Today markets of varying maturity exist in equity, debt, commodities and foreign exchange. In this work we attempt to generate prediction rules scheme for stock price movement at Bombay Stock Exchange using an important Soft Computing paradigm viz., Rough Fuzzy Multi Layer Perception. The use of Computational Intelligence Systems such as Neural Networks, Fuzzy Sets, Genetic Algorithms, etc. for Stock Market Predictions has been widely established. The process is to extract knowledge in the form of rules from daily stock movements. These rules can then be used to guide investors. To increase the efficiency of the prediction process, Rough Sets is used to discretize the data. The methodology uses a Genetic Algorithm to obtain a structured network suitable for both classification and rule extraction. The modular concept, based on divide and conquer strategy, provides accelerated training and a compact network suitable for generating a minimum number of rules with high certainty values. The concept of variable mutation operator is introduced for preserving the localized structure of the constituting Knowledge Based sub-networks, while they are integrated and evolved. Rough Set Dependency Rules are generated directly from the real valued attribute table containing Fuzzy membership values. The paradigm is thus used to develop a rule extraction algorithm. The extracted rules are compared with some of the related rule extraction techniques on the basis of some quantitative performance indices. The proposed methodology extracts rules which are less in number, are accurate, have high certainty factor and have low confusion with less computation time.
1307.1900
Fuzzy Integer Linear Programming Mathematical Models for Examination Timetable Problem
cs.AI
ETP is NP Hard combinatorial optimization problem. It has received tremendous research attention during the past few years given its wide use in universities. In this Paper, we develop three mathematical models for NSOU, Kolkata, India using FILP technique. To deal with impreciseness and vagueness we model various allocation variables through fuzzy numbers. The solution to the problem is obtained using Fuzzy number ranking method. Each feasible solution has fuzzy number obtained by Fuzzy objective function. The different FILP technique performance are demonstrated by experimental data generated through extensive simulation from NSOU, Kolkata, India in terms of its execution times. The proposed FILP models are compared with commonly used heuristic viz. ILP approach on experimental data which gives an idea about quality of heuristic. The techniques are also compared with different Artificial Intelligence based heuristics for ETP with respect to best and mean cost as well as execution time measures on Carter benchmark datasets to illustrate its effectiveness. FILP takes an appreciable amount of time to generate satisfactory solution in comparison to other heuristics. The formulation thus serves as good benchmark for other heuristics. The experimental study presented here focuses on producing a methodology that generalizes well over spectrum of techniques that generates significant results for one or more datasets. The performance of FILP model is finally compared to the best results cited in literature for Carter benchmarks to assess its potential. The problem can be further reduced by formulating with lesser number of allocation variables it without affecting optimality of solution obtained. FLIP model for ETP can also be adapted to solve other ETP as well as combinatorial optimization problems.
1307.1903
Achieving greater Explanatory Power and Forecasting Accuracy with Non-uniform spread Fuzzy Linear Regression
cs.AI
Fuzzy regression models have been applied to several Operations Research applications viz., forecasting and prediction. Earlier works on fuzzy regression analysis obtain crisp regression coefficients for eliminating the problem of increasing spreads for the estimated fuzzy responses as the magnitude of the independent variable increases. But they cannot deal with the problem of non-uniform spreads. In this work, a three-phase approach is discussed to construct the fuzzy regression model with non-uniform spreads to deal with this problem. The first phase constructs the membership functions of the least-squares estimates of regression coefficients based on extension principle to completely conserve the fuzziness of observations. They are then defuzzified by the centre of area method to obtain crisp regression coefficients in the second phase. Finally, the error terms of the method are determined by setting each estimated spread equal to its corresponding observed spread. The Tagaki-Sugeno inference system is used for improving the accuracy of forecasts. The simulation example demonstrates the strength of fuzzy linear regression model in terms of higher explanatory power and forecasting performance.
1307.1905
A Dynamic Algorithm for the Longest Common Subsequence Problem using Ant Colony Optimization Technique
cs.AI
We present a dynamic algorithm for solving the Longest Common Subsequence Problem using Ant Colony Optimization Technique. The Ant Colony Optimization Technique has been applied to solve many problems in Optimization Theory, Machine Learning and Telecommunication Networks etc. In particular, application of this theory in NP-Hard Problems has a remarkable significance. Given two strings, the traditional technique for finding Longest Common Subsequence is based on Dynamic Programming which consists of creating a recurrence relation and filling a table of size . The proposed algorithm draws analogy with behavior of ant colonies function and this new computational paradigm is known as Ant System. It is a viable new approach to Stochastic Combinatorial Optimization. The main characteristics of this model are positive feedback, distributed computation, and the use of constructive greedy heuristic. Positive feedback accounts for rapid discovery of good solutions, distributed computation avoids premature convergence and greedy heuristic helps find acceptable solutions in minimum number of stages. We apply the proposed methodology to Longest Common Subsequence Problem and give the simulation results. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by efficient Computational Complexity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Longest Common Subsequence Problem.
1307.1927
Link Based Session Reconstruction: Finding All Maximal Paths
cs.DB
This paper introduces a new method for the session construction problem, which is the first main step of the web usage mining process. Through experiments, it is shown that when our new technique is used, it outperforms previous approaches in web usage mining applications such as next-page prediction.
1307.1940
Reinforcing Power Grid Transmission with FACTS Devices
math.OC cs.SY physics.soc-ph
We explore optimization methods for planning the placement, sizing and operations of Flexible Alternating Current Transmission System (FACTS) devices installed into the grid to relieve congestion created by load growth or fluctuations of intermittent renewable generation. We limit our selection of FACTS devices to those that can be represented by modification of the inductance of the transmission lines. Our master optimization problem minimizes the $l_1$ norm of the FACTS-associated inductance correction subject to constraints enforcing that no line of the system exceeds its thermal limit. We develop off-line heuristics that reduce this non-convex optimization to a succession of Linear Programs (LP) where at each step the constraints are linearized analytically around the current operating point. The algorithm is accelerated further with a version of the cutting plane method greatly reducing the number of active constraints during the optimization, while checking feasibility of the non-active constraints post-factum. This hybrid algorithm solves a typical single-contingency problem over the MathPower Polish Grid model (3299 lines and 2746 nodes) in 40 seconds per iteration on a standard laptop---a speed up that allows the sizing and placement of a family of FACTS devices to correct a large set of anticipated contingencies. From testing of multiple examples, we observe that our algorithm finds feasible solutions that are always sparse, i.e., FACTS devices are placed on only a few lines. The optimal FACTS are not always placed on the originally congested lines, however typically the correction(s) is made at line(s) positioned in a relative proximity of the overload line(s).
1307.1944
READ-EVAL-PRINT in Parallel and Asynchronous Proof-checking
cs.LO cs.AI cs.HC
The LCF tradition of interactive theorem proving, which was started by Milner in the 1970-ies, appears to be tied to the classic READ-EVAL-PRINT-LOOP of sequential and synchronous evaluation of prover commands. We break up this loop and retrofit the read-eval-print phases into a model of parallel and asynchronous proof processing. Thus we explain some key concepts of the Isabelle/Scala approach to prover interaction and integration, and the Isabelle/jEdit Prover IDE as front-end technology. We hope to open up the scientific discussion about non-trivial interaction models for ITP systems again, and help getting other old-school proof assistants on a similar track.
1307.1949
Orthogonal Matching Pursuit with Thresholding and its Application in Compressive Sensing
cs.IT math.IT
Greed is good. However, the tighter you squeeze, the less you have. In this paper, a less greedy algorithm for sparse signal reconstruction in compressive sensing, named orthogonal matching pursuit with thresholding is studied. Using the global 2-coherence , which provides a "bridge" between the well known mutual coherence and the restricted isometry constant, the performance of orthogonal matching pursuit with thresholding is analyzed and more general results for sparse signal reconstruction are obtained. It is also shown that given the same assumption on the coherence index and the restricted isometry constant as required for orthogonal matching pursuit, the thresholding variation gives exactly the same reconstruction performance with significantly less complexity.
1307.1954
B-tests: Low Variance Kernel Two-Sample Tests
cs.LG stat.ML
A family of maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) kernel two-sample tests is introduced. Members of the test family are called Block-tests or B-tests, since the test statistic is an average over MMDs computed on subsets of the samples. The choice of block size allows control over the tradeoff between test power and computation time. In this respect, the $B$-test family combines favorable properties of previously proposed MMD two-sample tests: B-tests are more powerful than a linear time test where blocks are just pairs of samples, yet they are more computationally efficient than a quadratic time test where a single large block incorporating all the samples is used to compute a U-statistic. A further important advantage of the B-tests is their asymptotically Normal null distribution: this is by contrast with the U-statistic, which is degenerate under the null hypothesis, and for which estimates of the null distribution are computationally demanding. Recent results on kernel selection for hypothesis testing transfer seamlessly to the B-tests, yielding a means to optimize test power via kernel choice.
1307.1960
Modal Analysis with Compressive Measurements
cs.IT math.IT
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems are critical for monitoring aging infrastructure (such as buildings or bridges) in a cost-effective manner. Such systems typically involve collections of battery-operated wireless sensors that sample vibration data over time. After the data is transmitted to a central node, modal analysis can be used to detect damage in the structure. In this paper, we propose and study three frameworks for Compressive Sensing (CS) in SHM systems; these methods are intended to minimize power consumption by allowing the data to be sampled and/or transmitted more efficiently. At the central node, all of these frameworks involve a very simple technique for estimating the structure's mode shapes without requiring a traditional CS reconstruction of the vibration signals; all that is needed is to compute a simple Singular Value Decomposition. We provide theoretical justification (including measurement bounds) for each of these techniques based on the equations of motion describing a simplified Multiple-Degree-Of-Freedom (MDOF) system, and we support our proposed techniques using simulations based on synthetic and real data.
1307.1961
Optimal Locally Repairable Linear Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Linear erasure codes with local repairability are desirable for distributed data storage systems. An [n, k, d] code having all-symbol (r, \delta})-locality, denoted as (r, {\delta})a, is considered optimal if it also meets the minimum Hamming distance bound. The existing results on the existence and the construction of optimal (r, {\delta})a codes are limited to only the special case of {\delta} = 2, and to only two small regions within this special case, namely, m = 0 or m >= (v+{\delta}-1) > ({\delta}-1), where m = n mod (r+{\delta}-1) and v = k mod r. This paper investigates the existence conditions and presents deterministic constructive algorithms for optimal (r, {\delta})a codes with general r and {\delta}. First, a structure theorem is derived for general optimal (r, {\delta})a codes which helps illuminate some of their structure properties. Next, the entire problem space with arbitrary n, k, r and {\delta} is divided into eight different cases (regions) with regard to the specific relations of these parameters. For two cases, it is rigorously proved that no optimal (r, {\delta})a could exist. For four other cases the optimal (r, {\delta})a codes are shown to exist, deterministic constructions are proposed and the lower bound on the required field size for these algorithms to work is provided. Our new constructive algorithms not only cover more cases, but for the same cases where previous algorithms exist, the new constructions require a considerably smaller field, which translates to potentially lower computational complexity. Our findings substantially enriches the knowledge on (r, {\delta})a codes, leaving only two cases in which the existence of optimal codes are yet to be determined.
1307.1998
Using Clustering to extract Personality Information from socio economic data
cs.LG cs.CE
It has become apparent that models that have been applied widely in economics, including Machine Learning techniques and Data Mining methods, should take into consideration principles that derive from the theories of Personality Psychology in order to discover more comprehensive knowledge regarding complicated economic behaviours. In this work, we present a method to extract Behavioural Groups by using simple clustering techniques that can potentially reveal aspects of the Personalities for their members. We believe that this is very important because the psychological information regarding the Personalities of individuals is limited in real world applications and because it can become a useful tool in improving the traditional models of Knowledge Economy.
1307.2001
Variance in System Dynamics and Agent Based Modelling Using the SIR Model of Infectious Disease
cs.CE cs.MA
Classical deterministic simulations of epidemiological processes, such as those based on System Dynamics, produce a single result based on a fixed set of input parameters with no variance between simulations. Input parameters are subsequently modified on these simulations using Monte-Carlo methods, to understand how changes in the input parameters affect the spread of results for the simulation. Agent Based simulations are able to produce different output results on each run based on knowledge of the local interactions of the underlying agents and without making any changes to the input parameters. In this paper we compare the influence and effect of variation within these two distinct simulation paradigms and show that the Agent Based simulation of the epidemiological SIR (Susceptible, Infectious, and Recovered) model is more effective at capturing the natural variation within SIR compared to an equivalent model using System Dynamics with Monte-Carlo simulation. To demonstrate this effect, the SIR model is implemented using both System Dynamics (with Monte-Carlo simulation) and Agent Based Modelling based on previously published empirical data.
1307.2015
Full-text Support for Publish/Subscribe Ontology Systems
cs.IR cs.DB
We envision a publish/subscribe ontology system that is able to index millions of user subscriptions and filter them against ontology data that arrive in a streaming fashion. In this work, we propose a SPARQL extension appropriate for a publish/subscribe setting; our extension builds on the natural semantic graph matching of the language and supports the creation of full-text subscriptions. Subsequently, we propose a main-memory subscription indexing algorithm which performs both semantic and full-text matching at low complexity and minimal filtering time. Thus, when ontology data are published matching subscriptions are identified and notifications are forwarded to users.
1307.2084
Mitigating Epidemics through Mobile Micro-measures
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
Epidemics of infectious diseases are among the largest threats to the quality of life and the economic and social well-being of developing countries. The arsenal of measures against such epidemics is well-established, but costly and insufficient to mitigate their impact. In this paper, we argue that mobile technology adds a powerful weapon to this arsenal, because (a) mobile devices endow us with the unprecedented ability to measure and model the detailed behavioral patterns of the affected population, and (b) they enable the delivery of personalized behavioral recommendations to individuals in real time. We combine these two ideas and propose several strategies to generate such recommendations from mobility patterns. The goal of each strategy is a large reduction in infections, with a small impact on the normal course of daily life. We evaluate these strategies over the Orange D4D dataset and show the benefit of mobile micro-measures, even if only a fraction of the population participates. These preliminary results demonstrate the potential of mobile technology to complement other measures like vaccination and quarantines against disease epidemics.
1307.2087
Performance Bounds for Constrained Linear Min-Max Control
math.OC cs.SY
This paper proposes a method to compute lower performance bounds for discrete-time infinite-horizon min-max control problems with input constraints and bounded disturbances. Such bounds can be used as a performance metric for control policies synthesized via suboptimal design techniques. Our approach is motivated by recent work on performance bounds for stochastic constrained optimal control problems using relaxations of the Bellman equation. The central idea of the paper is to find an unconstrained min-max control problem, with negatively weighted disturbances as in H infinity control, that provides the tightest possible lower performance bound on the original problem of interest and whose value function is easily computed. The new method is demonstrated via a numerical example for a system with box constrained input.
1307.2089
Certifying non-existence of undesired locally stable equilibria in formation shape control problems
math.OC cs.SY
A fundamental control problem for autonomous vehicle formations is formation shape control, in which the agents must maintain a prescribed formation shape using only information measured or communicated from neighboring agents. While a large and growing literature has recently emerged on distance-based formation shape control, global stability properties remain a significant open problem. Even in four-agent formations, the basic question of whether or not there can exist locally stable incorrect equilibrium shapes remains open. This paper shows how this question can be answered for any size formation in principle using semidefinite programming techniques for semialgebraic problems, involving solutions sets of polynomial equations, inequations, and inequalities.
1307.2090
Spectral properties of the Laplacian of multiplex networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
One of the more challenging tasks in the understanding of dynamical properties of models on top of complex networks is to capture the precise role of multiplex topologies. In a recent paper, Gomez et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 028701 (2013)] proposed a framework for the study of diffusion processes in such networks. Here, we extend the previous framework to deal with general configurations in several layers of networks, and analyze the behavior of the spectrum of the Laplacian of the full multiplex. We derive an interesting decoupling of the problem that allow us to unravel the role played by the interconnections of the multiplex in the dynamical processes on top of them. Capitalizing on this decoupling we perform an asymptotic analysis that allow us to derive analytical expressions for the full spectrum of eigenvalues. This spectrum is used to gain insight into physical phenomena on top of multiplex, specifically, diffusion processes and synchronizability.
1307.2104
Enhanced reconstruction of weighted networks from strengths and degrees
physics.data-an cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Network topology plays a key role in many phenomena, from the spreading of diseases to that of financial crises. Whenever the whole structure of a network is unknown, one must resort to reconstruction methods that identify the least biased ensemble of networks consistent with the partial information available. A challenging case, frequently encountered due to privacy issues in the analysis of interbank flows and Big Data, is when there is only local (node-specific) aggregate information available. For binary networks, the relevant ensemble is one where the degree (number of links) of each node is constrained to its observed value. However, for weighted networks the problem is much more complicated. While the naive approach prescribes to constrain the strengths (total link weights) of all nodes, recent counter-intuitive results suggest that in weighted networks the degrees are often more informative than the strengths. This implies that the reconstruction of weighted networks would be significantly enhanced by the specification of both strengths and degrees, a computationally hard and bias-prone procedure. Here we solve this problem by introducing an analytical and unbiased maximum-entropy method that works in the shortest possible time and does not require the explicit generation of reconstructed samples. We consider several real-world examples and show that, while the strengths alone give poor results, the additional knowledge of the degrees yields accurately reconstructed networks. Information-theoretic criteria rigorously confirm that the degree sequence, as soon as it is non-trivial, is irreducible to the strength sequence. Our results have strong implications for the analysis of motifs and communities and whenever the reconstructed ensemble is required as a null model to detect higher-order patterns.
1307.2105
Successive Integer-Forcing and its Sum-Rate Optimality
cs.IT math.IT
Integer-forcing receivers generalize traditional linear receivers for the multiple-input multiple-output channel by decoding integer-linear combinations of the transmitted streams, rather then the streams themselves. Previous works have shown that the additional degree of freedom in choosing the integer coefficients enables this receiver to approach the performance of maximum-likelihood decoding in various scenarios. Nonetheless, even for the optimal choice of integer coefficients, the additive noise at the equalizer's output is still correlated. In this work we study a variant of integer-forcing, termed successive integer-forcing, that exploits these noise correlations to improve performance. This scheme is the integer-forcing counterpart of successive interference cancellation for traditional linear receivers. Similarly to the latter, we show that successive integer-forcing is capacity achieving when it is possible to optimize the rate allocation to the different streams. In comparison to standard successive interference cancellation receivers, the successive integer-forcing receiver offers more possibilities for capacity achieving rate tuples, and in particular, ones that are more balanced.
1307.2111
Finding the creatures of habit; Clustering households based on their flexibility in using electricity
cs.LG cs.CE
Changes in the UK electricity market, particularly with the roll out of smart meters, will provide greatly increased opportunities for initiatives intended to change households' electricity usage patterns for the benefit of the overall system. Users show differences in their regular behaviours and clustering households into similar groupings based on this variability provides for efficient targeting of initiatives. Those people who are stuck into a regular pattern of activity may be the least receptive to an initiative to change behaviour. A sample of 180 households from the UK are clustered into four groups as an initial test of the concept and useful, actionable groupings are found.
1307.2117
Mixed Compressed Sensing Based on Random Graphs
cs.IT math.IT
Finding a suitable measurement matrix is an important topic in compressed sensing. Though the known random matrix, whose entries are drawn independently from a certain probability distribution, can be used as a measurement matrix and recover signal well, in most cases, we hope the measurement matrix imposed with some special structure. In this paper, based on random graph models, we show that the mixed symmetric random matrices, whose diagonal entries obey a distribution and non-diagonal entries obey another distribution, can be used to recover signal successfully with high probability.
1307.2118
A PAC-Bayesian Tutorial with A Dropout Bound
cs.LG
This tutorial gives a concise overview of existing PAC-Bayesian theory focusing on three generalization bounds. The first is an Occam bound which handles rules with finite precision parameters and which states that generalization loss is near training loss when the number of bits needed to write the rule is small compared to the sample size. The second is a PAC-Bayesian bound providing a generalization guarantee for posterior distributions rather than for individual rules. The PAC-Bayesian bound naturally handles infinite precision rule parameters, $L_2$ regularization, {\em provides a bound for dropout training}, and defines a natural notion of a single distinguished PAC-Bayesian posterior distribution. The third bound is a training-variance bound --- a kind of bias-variance analysis but with bias replaced by expected training loss. The training-variance bound dominates the other bounds but is more difficult to interpret. It seems to suggest variance reduction methods such as bagging and may ultimately provide a more meaningful analysis of dropouts.
1307.2136
Near-Optimal Encoding for Sigma-Delta Quantization of Finite Frame Expansions
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we investigate encoding the bit-stream resulting from coarse Sigma-Delta quantization of finite frame expansions (i.e., overdetermined representations) of vectors. We show that for a wide range of finite-frames, including random frames and piecewise smooth frames, there exists a simple encoding algorithm ---acting only on the Sigma-Delta bit stream--- and an associated decoding algorithm that together yield an approximation error which decays exponentially in the number of bits used. The encoding strategy consists of applying a discrete random operator to the Sigma-Delta bit stream and assigning a binary codeword to the result. The reconstruction procedure is essentially linear and equivalent to solving a least squares minimization problem.
1307.2150
Transmodal Analysis of Neural Signals
q-bio.NC cs.LG q-bio.QM
Localizing neuronal activity in the brain, both in time and in space, is a central challenge to advance the understanding of brain function. Because of the inability of any single neuroimaging techniques to cover all aspects at once, there is a growing interest to combine signals from multiple modalities in order to benefit from the advantages of each acquisition method. Due to the complexity and unknown parameterization of any suggested complete model of BOLD response in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the development of a reliable ultimate fusion approach remains difficult. But besides the primary goal of superior temporal and spatial resolution, conjoint analysis of data from multiple imaging modalities can alternatively be used to segregate neural information from physiological and acquisition noise. In this paper we suggest a novel methodology which relies on constructing a quantifiable mapping of data from one modality (electroencephalography; EEG) into another (fMRI), called transmodal analysis of neural signals (TRANSfusion). TRANSfusion attempts to map neural data embedded within the EEG signal into its reflection in fMRI data. Assessing the mapping performance on unseen data allows to localize brain areas where a significant portion of the signal could be reliably reconstructed, hence the areas neural activity of which is reflected in both EEG and fMRI data. Consecutive analysis of the learnt model allows to localize areas associated with specific frequency bands of EEG, or areas functionally related (connected or coherent) to any given EEG sensor. We demonstrate the performance of TRANSfusion on artificial and real data from an auditory experiment. We further speculate on possible alternative uses: cross-modal data filtering and EEG-driven interpolation of fMRI signals to obtain arbitrarily high temporal sampling of BOLD.
1307.2189
On the Topology of the Facebook Page Network
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The Facebook Page Network (FPN) is a platform for Businesses, Public Figures and Organizations (BPOs) to connect with individuals and other BPOs in the digital space. For over a decade scale-free networks have most appropriately described a variety of seemingly disparate physical, biological and social real-world systems unified by similar network properties such as scale-invariance, growth via a preferential attachment mechanism, and a power law degree distribution P(k) = ck^-{\lambda} where typically 2<{\lambda}<3. In this paper we show that both the Facebook Page Network and its BPO-BPO subnetwork suggest power law and scale-free characteristics. We argue that social media analysts must consider the logarithmic and non-linear properties of social media audiences of scale.
1307.2191
A Knowledge-based Treatment of Human-Automation Systems
cs.HC cs.AI
In a supervisory control system the human agent knowledge of past, current, and future system behavior is critical for system performance. Being able to reason about that knowledge in a precise and structured manner is central to effective system design. In this paper we introduce the application of a well-established formal approach to reasoning about knowledge to the modeling and analysis of complex human-automation systems. An intuitive notion of knowledge in human-automation systems is sketched and then cast as a formal model. We present a case study in which the approach is used to model and reason about a classic problem from the human-automation systems literature; the results of our analysis provide evidence for the validity and value of reasoning about complex systems in terms of the knowledge of the system agents. To conclude, we discuss research directions that will extend this approach, and note several systems in the aviation and human-robot team domains that are of particular interest.