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1307.7389
Complex scale-free networks with tunable power-law exponent and clustering
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We introduce a network evolution process motivated by the network of citations in the scientific literature. In each iteration of the process a node is born and directed links are created from the new node to a set of target nodes already in the network. This set includes $m$ "ambassador" nodes and $l$ of each ambassador's descendants where $m$ and $l$ are random variables selected from any choice of distributions $p_{l}$ and $q_{m}$. The process mimics the tendency of authors to cite varying numbers of papers included in the bibliographies of the other papers they cite. We show that the degree distributions of the networks generated after a large number of iterations are scale-free and derive an expression for the power-law exponent. In a particular case of the model where the number of ambassadors is always the constant $m$ and the number of selected descendants from each ambassador is the constant $l$, the power-law exponent is $(2l+1)/l$. For this example we derive expressions for the degree distribution and clustering coefficient in terms of $l$ and $m$. We conclude that the proposed model can be tuned to have the same power law exponent and clustering coefficient of a broad range of the scale-free distributions that have been studied empirically.
1307.7398
ROSoClingo: A ROS package for ASP-based robot control
cs.RO cs.AI
Knowledge representation and reasoning capacities are vital to cognitive robotics because they provide higher level cognitive functions for reasoning about actions, environments, goals, perception, etc. Although Answer Set Programming (ASP) is well suited for modelling such functions, there was so far no seamless way to use ASP in a robotic environment. We address this shortcoming and show how a recently developed reactive ASP system can be harnessed to provide appropriate reasoning capacities within a robotic system. To be more precise, we furnish a package integrating the reactive ASP solver oClingo with the popular open-source robotic middleware ROS. The resulting system, ROSoClingo, provides a generic way by which an ASP program can be used to control the behaviour of a robot and to respond to the results of the robot's actions.
1307.7401
Properties of nonlinear noise in long, dispersion-uncompensated fiber links
physics.optics cs.IT math.IT
We study the properties of nonlinear interference noise (NLIN) in fiber-optic communications systems with large accumulated dispersion. Our focus is on settling the discrepancy between the results of the Gaussian noise (GN) model (according to which NLIN is additive Gaussian) and a recently published time-domain analysis, which attributes drastically different properties to the NLIN. Upon reviewing the two approaches we identify several unjustified assumptions that are key in the derivation of the GN model, and that are responsible for the discrepancy. We derive the true NLIN power and verify that the NLIN is not additive Gaussian, but rather it depends strongly on the data transmitted in the channel of interest. In addition we validate the time-domain model numerically and demonstrate the strong dependence of the NLIN on the interfering channels' modulation format.
1307.7405
Reasoning for Moving Blocks Problem: Formal Representation and Implementation
cs.RO cs.AI
The combined approach of the Qualitative Reasoning and Probabilistic Functions for the knowledge representation is proposed. The method aims at represent uncertain, qualitative knowledge that is essential for the moving blocks task's execution. The attempt to formalize the commonsense knowledge is performed with the Situation Calculus language for reasoning and robot's beliefs representation. The method is implemented in the Prolog programming language and tested for a specific simulated scenario. In most cases the implementation enables us to solve a given task, i.e., move blocks to desired positions. The example of robot's reasoning and main parts of the implemented program's code are presented.
1307.7411
Towards an Efficient Discovery of the Topological Representative Subgraphs
cs.DB
With the emergence of graph databases, the task of frequent subgraph discovery has been extensively addressed. Although the proposed approaches in the literature have made this task feasible, the number of discovered frequent subgraphs is still very high to be efficiently used in any further exploration. Feature selection for graph data is a way to reduce the high number of frequent subgraphs based on exact or approximate structural similarity. However, current structural similarity strategies are not efficient enough in many real-world applications, besides, the combinatorial nature of graphs makes it computationally very costly. In order to select a smaller yet structurally irredundant set of subgraphs, we propose a novel approach that mines the top-k topological representative subgraphs among the frequent ones. Our approach allows detecting hidden structural similarities that existing approaches are unable to detect such as the density or the diameter of the subgraph. In addition, it can be easily extended using any user defined structural or topological attributes depending on the sought properties. Empirical studies on real and synthetic graph datasets show that our approach is fast and scalable.
1307.7429
Participation anticipating in elections using data mining methods
cs.CY cs.LG
Anticipating the political behavior of people will be considerable help for election candidates to assess the possibility of their success and to be acknowledged about the public motivations to select them. In this paper, we provide a general schematic of the architecture of participation anticipating system in presidential election by using KNN, Classification Tree and Na\"ive Bayes and tools orange based on crisp which had hopeful output. To test and assess the proposed model, we begin to use the case study by selecting 100 qualified persons who attend in 11th presidential election of Islamic republic of Iran and anticipate their participation in Kohkiloye & Boyerahmad. We indicate that KNN can perform anticipation and classification processes with high accuracy in compared with two other algorithms to anticipate participation.
1307.7432
Data mining application for cyber space users tendency in blog writing: a case study
cs.CY cs.LG
Blogs are the recent emerging media which relies on information technology and technological advance. Since the mass media in some less-developed and developing countries are in government service and their policies are developed based on governmental interests, so blogs are provided for ideas and exchanging opinions. In this paper, we highlighted performed simulations from obtained information from 100 users and bloggers in Kohkiloye and Boyer Ahmad Province and using Weka 3.6 tool and c4.5 algorithm by applying decision tree with more than %82 precision for getting future tendency anticipation of users to blogging and using in strategically areas.
1307.7435
A new approach in dynamic traveling salesman problem: a hybrid of ant colony optimization and descending gradient
cs.NE
Nowadays swarm intelligence-based algorithms are being used widely to optimize the dynamic traveling salesman problem (DTSP). In this paper, we have used mixed method of Ant Colony Optimization (AOC)and gradient descent to optimize DTSP which differs with ACO algorithm in evaporation rate and innovative data. This approach prevents premature convergence and scape from local optimum spots and also makes it possible to find better solutions for algorithm. In this paper, we are going to offer gradient descent and ACO algorithm which in comparison to some former methods it shows that algorithm has significantly improved routes optimization.
1307.7447
Wireless Information and Power Transfer in Two-Way Amplify-and-Forward Relaying Channels
cs.IT math.IT
The various wireless networks have made the ambient radio frequency signals around the world. Wireless information and power transfer enables the devices to recycle energy from these ambient radio frequency signals and process information simultaneously. In this paper, we develop a wireless information and power transfer protocol in two-way amplify-and-forward relaying channels, where two sources exchange information via an energy harvesting relay node. The relay node collects energy from the received signals and uses it to provide the transmission power to forward the received signals. We analytically derive the exact expressions of the outage probability, the ergodic capacity and the finite-SNR diversity-multiplexing trade-off (DMT). Furthermore, the tight closed-form upper and lower bounds of the outage probability and the ergodic capacity are then developed. Moreover, the impact of the power splitting ratio is also evaluated and analyzed. Finally, we show that compared to the non-cooperative relaying scheme, the proposed protocol is a green solution to offer higher transmission rate and more reliable communication without consuming additional resource.
1307.7461
Levels of Integration between Low-Level Reasoning and Task Planning
cs.RO cs.AI
We provide a systematic analysis of levels of integration between discrete high-level reasoning and continuous low-level reasoning to address hybrid planning problems in robotics. We identify four distinct strategies for such an integration: (i) low-level checks are done for all possible cases in advance and then this information is used during plan generation, (ii) low-level checks are done exactly when they are needed during the search for a plan, (iii) first all plans are computed and then infeasible ones are filtered, and (iv) by means of replanning, after finding a plan, low-level checks identify whether it is infeasible or not; if it is infeasible, a new plan is computed considering the results of previous low- level checks. We perform experiments on hybrid planning problems in robotic manipulation and legged locomotion domains considering these four methods of integration, as well as some of their combinations. We analyze the usefulness of levels of integration in these domains, both from the point of view of computational efficiency (in time and space) and from the point of view of plan quality relative to its feasibility. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of each strategy in the light of experimental results and provide some guidelines on choosing proper strategies for a given domain.
1307.7466
Integration of 3D Object Recognition and Planning for Robotic Manipulation: A Preliminary Report
cs.AI cs.CV cs.RO
We investigate different approaches to integrating object recognition and planning in a tabletop manipulation domain with the set of objects used in the 2012 RoboCup@Work competition. Results of our preliminary experiments show that, with some approaches, close integration of perception and planning improves the quality of plans, as well as the computation times of feasible plans.
1307.7474
Automatic Mammogram image Breast Region Extraction and Removal of Pectoral Muscle
cs.CV
Currently Mammography is a most effective imaging modality used by radiologists for the screening of breast cancer. Finding an accurate, robust and efficient breast region segmentation technique still remains a challenging problem in digital mammography. Extraction of the breast profile region and the removal of pectoral muscle are essential pre-processing steps in Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system for the diagnosis of breast cancer. Primarily it allows the search for abnormalities to be limited to the region of the breast tissue without undue influence from the background of the mammogram. The presence of pectoral muscle in mammograms biases detection procedures, which recommends removing the pectoral muscle during mammogram image pre-processing. The presence of pectoral muscle in mammograms may disturb or influence the detection of breast cancer as the pectoral muscle and mammographic parenchymas appear similar. The goal of breast region extraction is reducing the image size without losing anatomic information, it improve the accuracy of the overall CAD system. The main objective of this study is to propose an automated method to identify the pectoral muscle in Medio-Lateral Oblique (MLO) view mammograms. In this paper, we proposed histogram based 8-neighborhood connected component labelling method for breast region extraction and removal of pectoral muscle. The proposed method is evaluated by using the mean values of accuracy and error. The comparative analysis shows that the proposed method identifies the breast region more accurately.
1307.7494
ReAct! An Interactive Tool for Hybrid Planning in Robotics
cs.AI cs.LO cs.RO
We present ReAct!, an interactive tool for high-level reasoning for cognitive robotic applications. ReAct! enables robotic researchers to describe robots' actions and change in dynamic domains, without having to know about the syntactic and semantic details of the underlying formalism in advance, and solve planning problems using state-of-the-art automated reasoners, without having to learn about their input/output language or usage. In particular, ReAct! can be used to represent sophisticated dynamic domains that feature concurrency, indirect effects of actions, and state/transition constraints. It allows for embedding externally defined calculations (e.g., checking for collision-free continuous trajectories) into representations of hybrid domains that require a tight integration of (discrete) high-level reasoning with (continuous) geometric reasoning. ReAct! also enables users to solve planning problems that involve complex goals. Such variety of utilities are useful for robotic researchers to work on interesting and challenging domains, ranging from service robotics to cognitive factories. ReAct! provides sample formalizations of some action domains (e.g., multi-agent path planning, Tower of Hanoi), as well as dynamic simulations of plans computed by a state-of-the-art automated reasoner (e.g., a SAT solver or an ASP solver).
1307.7495
Universal Polarization
cs.IT math.IT
A method to polarize channels universally is introduced. The method is based on combining two distinct channels in each polarization step, as opposed to Arikan's original method of combining identical channels. This creates an equal number of only two types of channels, one of which becomes progressively better as the other becomes worse. The locations of the good polarized channels are independent of the underlying channel, guaranteeing universality. Polarizing the good channels further with Arikan's method results in universal polar codes of rate 1/2. The method is generalized to construct codes of arbitrary rates. It is also shown that the less noisy ordering of channels is preserved under polarization, and thus a good polar code for a given channel will perform well over a less noisy one.
1307.7513
An Approach Finding Frequent Items In Text Or Transactional Data Base By Using BST To Improve The Efficiency Of Apriori Algorithm
cs.DB cs.DS
Data mining techniques have been widely used in various applications. Binary search tree based frequent items is an effective method for automatically recognize the most frequent items, least frequent items and average frequent items. This paper presents a new approach in order to find out frequent items. The word frequent item refers to how many times the item appeared in the given input. This approach is used to find out item sets in any order using familiar approach binary search tree. The method adapted here is in order to find out frequent items by comparing and incrementing the counter variable in existing transactional data base or text data. We are also representing different approaches in frequent item sets and also propose an algorithmic approach for the problem solving
1307.7521
Union of Low-Rank Subspaces Detector
cs.IT cs.CV math.IT
The problem of signal detection using a flexible and general model is considered. Due to applicability and flexibility of sparse signal representation and approximation, it has attracted a lot of attention in many signal processing areas. In this paper, we propose a new detection method based on sparse decomposition in a union of subspaces (UoS) model. Our proposed detector uses a dictionary that can be interpreted as a bank of matched subspaces. This improves the performance of signal detection, as it is a generalization for detectors. Low-rank assumption for the desired signals implies that the representations of these signals in terms of some proper bases would be sparse. Our proposed detector exploits sparsity in its decision rule. We demonstrate the high efficiency of our method in the cases of voice activity detection in speech processing.
1307.7533
Stabilization of Linear Systems Over Gaussian Networks
math.OC cs.IT math.IT
The problem of remotely stabilizing a noisy linear time invariant plant over a Gaussian relay network is addressed. The network is comprised of a sensor node, a group of relay nodes and a remote controller. The sensor and the relay nodes operate subject to an average transmit power constraint and they can cooperate to communicate the observations of the plant's state to the remote controller. The communication links between all nodes are modeled as Gaussian channels. Necessary as well as sufficient conditions for mean-square stabilization over various network topologies are derived. The sufficient conditions are in general obtained using delay-free linear policies and the necessary conditions are obtained using information theoretic tools. Different settings where linear policies are optimal, asymptotically optimal (in certain parameters of the system) and suboptimal have been identified. For the case with noisy multi-dimensional sources controlled over scalar channels, it is shown that linear time varying policies lead to minimum capacity requirements, meeting the fundamental lower bound. For the case with noiseless sources and parallel channels, non-linear policies which meet the lower bound have been identified.
1307.7544
On block coherence of frames
cs.IT math.IT
Block coherence of matrices plays an important role in analyzing the performance of block compressed sensing recovery algorithms (Bajwa and Mixon, 2012). In this paper, we characterize two block coherence metrics: worst-case and average block coherence. First, we present lower bounds on worst-case block coherence, in both the general case and also when the matrix is constrained to be a union of orthobases. We then present deterministic matrix constructions based upon Kronecker products which obtain these lower bounds. We also characterize the worst-case block coherence of random subspaces. Finally, we present a flipping algorithm that can improve the average block coherence of a matrix, while maintaining the worst-case block coherence of the original matrix. We provide numerical examples which demonstrate that our proposed deterministic matrix construction performs well in block compressed sensing.
1307.7545
Multi-Objective Beamforming for Secure Communication in Systems with Wireless Information and Power Transfer
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we study power allocation for secure communication in a multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) downlink system with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer. The receivers are able to harvest energy from the radio frequency when they are idle. We propose a multi-objective optimization problem for power allocation algorithm design which incorporates two conflicting system objectives: total transmit power minimization and energy harvesting efficiency maximization. The proposed problem formulation takes into account a quality of service (QoS) requirement for the system secrecy capacity. Our designs advocate the dual use of artificial noise in providing secure communication and facilitating efficient energy harvesting. The multi-objective optimization problem is non-convex and is solved by a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation approach which results in an approximate of solution. A sufficient condition for the global optimal solution is revealed and the accuracy of the approximation is examined. To strike a balance between computational complexity and system performance, we propose two suboptimal power allocation schemes. Numerical results not only demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed suboptimal schemes compared to baseline schemes, but also unveil an interesting trade-off between energy harvesting efficiency and total transmit power.
1307.7562
On the convergence of weighted-average consensus
math.OC cs.SY
In this note we give sufficient conditions for the convergence of the iterative algorithm called weighted-average consensus in directed graphs. We study the discrete-time form of this algorithm. We use standard techniques from matrix theory to prove the main result. As a particular case one can obtain well-known results for non-weighted average consensus. We also give a corollary for undirected graphs.
1307.7569
Community detection for networks with unipartite and bipartite structure
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.QM
Finding community structures in networks is important in network science, technology, and applications. To date, most algorithms that aim to find community structures only focus either on unipartite or bipartite networks. A unipartite network consists of one set of nodes and a bipartite network consists of two nonoverlapping sets of nodes with only links joining the nodes in different sets. However, a third type of network exists, defined here as the mixture network. Just like a bipartite network, a mixture network also consists of two sets of nodes, but some nodes may simultaneously belong to two sets, which breaks the nonoverlapping restriction of a bipartite network. The mixture network can be considered as a general case, with unipartite and bipartite networks viewed as its limiting cases. A mixture network can represent not only all the unipartite and bipartite networks, but also a wide range of real-world networks that cannot be properly represented as either unipartite or bipartite networks in fields such as biology and social science. Based on this observation, we first propose a probabilistic model that can find modules in unipartite, bipartite, and mixture networks in a unified framework based on the link community model for a unipartite undirected network [B Ball et al (2011 Phys. Rev. E 84 036103)]. We test our algorithm on synthetic networks (both overlapping and nonoverlapping communities) and apply it to two real-world networks: a southern women bipartite network and a human transcriptional regulatory mixture network. The results suggest that our model performs well for all three types of networks, is competitive with other algorithms for unipartite or bipartite networks, and is applicable to real-world networks.
1307.7577
Safe Screening With Variational Inequalities and Its Application to LASSO
cs.LG stat.ML
Sparse learning techniques have been routinely used for feature selection as the resulting model usually has a small number of non-zero entries. Safe screening, which eliminates the features that are guaranteed to have zero coefficients for a certain value of the regularization parameter, is a technique for improving the computational efficiency. Safe screening is gaining increasing attention since 1) solving sparse learning formulations usually has a high computational cost especially when the number of features is large and 2) one needs to try several regularization parameters to select a suitable model. In this paper, we propose an approach called "Sasvi" (Safe screening with variational inequalities). Sasvi makes use of the variational inequality that provides the sufficient and necessary optimality condition for the dual problem. Several existing approaches for Lasso screening can be casted as relaxed versions of the proposed Sasvi, thus Sasvi provides a stronger safe screening rule. We further study the monotone properties of Sasvi for Lasso, based on which a sure removal regularization parameter can be identified for each feature. Experimental results on both synthetic and real data sets are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed Sasvi for Lasso screening.
1307.7597
Context-aware QR-codes
cs.IT cs.CY cs.NI math.IT
This paper describes a new model for presenting local information based on the network proximity. We present a novelty mobile mashup which combines Wi-Fi proximity measurements with QR-codes. Our mobile mashup automatically adds context information the content presented by QR-codes. It simplifies the deployment schemes and allows to use unified presentation for all data points, for example. This paper describes how to combine QR-codes and network proximity information.
1307.7602
Survey on Positioning System: Sampling methods
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
Millimeter-accuracy Ultra-Wideband (UWB) positioning systems using the Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) algorithm are able to be utilized in military and many other important applications. Previous research on UWB positioning system has achieved up to mm or sub-mm accuracy. However, one bottleneck in UWB system is at sampling high resolution UWB signals, as well as high resolution timing information. In this paper, UWB positioning systems are surveyed and we focus on sampling methods for handling UWB signals. Among different sampling methods, one traditional way is the sequential sampling method, which is not a real time sampling method and blocks UWB positioning system to achieve higher precision. Another way is by applying Compressed Sensing (CS) to UWB system for achieving sub-mm positioning accuracy. In this paper, we compare different TDOA-based UWB systems with different sampling methods. In particular, several CS-UWB algorithms for UWB signal reconstruction are compared in terms of positioning accuracy. Simulation results in 2D and 3D experiments demonstrate performance of different algorithms including typical BCS, OMP and BP algorithms. CS-UWB is also compared with UWB positioning system based on the sequential sampling method.
1307.7622
Distributed Energy Trading: The Multiple-Microgrid Case
math.OC cs.MA
In this paper, a distributed convex optimization framework is developed for energy trading between islanded microgrids. More specifically, the problem consists of several islanded microgrids that exchange energy flows by means of an arbitrary topology. Due to scalability issues and in order to safeguard local information on cost functions, a subgradient-based cost minimization algorithm is proposed that converges to the optimal solution in a practical number of iterations and with a limited communication overhead. Furthermore, this approach allows for a very intuitive economics interpretation that explains the algorithm iterations in terms of "supply--demand model" and "market clearing". Numerical results are given in terms of convergence rate of the algorithm and attained costs for different network topologies.
1307.7720
Herding the Crowd: Automated Planning for Crowdsourced Planning
cs.AI cs.HC
There has been significant interest in crowdsourcing and human computation. One subclass of human computation applications are those directed at tasks that involve planning (e.g. travel planning) and scheduling (e.g. conference scheduling). Much of this work appears outside the traditional automated planning forums, and at the outset it is not clear whether automated planning has much of a role to play in these human computation systems. Interestingly however, work on these systems shows that even primitive forms of automated oversight of the human planner does help in significantly improving the effectiveness of the humans/crowd. In this paper, we will argue that the automated oversight used in these systems can be viewed as a primitive automated planner, and that there are several opportunities for more sophisticated automated planning in effectively steering crowdsourced planning. Straightforward adaptation of current planning technology is however hampered by the mismatch between the capabilities of human workers and automated planners. We identify two important challenges that need to be overcome before such adaptation of planning technology can occur: (i) interpreting the inputs of the human workers (and the requester) and (ii) steering or critiquing the plans being produced by the human workers armed only with incomplete domain and preference models. In this paper, we discuss approaches for handling these challenges, and characterize existing human computation systems in terms of the specific choices they make in handling these challenges.
1307.7729
Spectral methods for network community detection and graph partitioning
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI physics.data-an
We consider three distinct and well studied problems concerning network structure: community detection by modularity maximization, community detection by statistical inference, and normalized-cut graph partitioning. Each of these problems can be tackled using spectral algorithms that make use of the eigenvectors of matrix representations of the network. We show that with certain choices of the free parameters appearing in these spectral algorithms the algorithms for all three problems are, in fact, identical, and hence that, at least within the spectral approximations used here, there is no difference between the modularity- and inference-based community detection methods, or between either and graph partitioning.
1307.7757
Household Electricity Consumption Data Cleansing
cs.CE
Load curve data in power systems refers to users' electrical energy consumption data periodically collected with meters. It has become one of the most important assets for modern power systems. Many operational decisions are made based on the information discovered in the data. Load curve data, however, usually suffers from corruptions caused by various factors, such as data transmission errors or malfunctioning meters. To solve the problem, tremendous research efforts have been made on load curve data cleansing. Most existing approaches apply outlier detection methods from the supply side (i.e., electricity service providers), which may only have aggregated load data. In this paper, we propose to seek aid from the demand side (i.e., electricity service users). With the help of readily available knowledge on consumers' appliances, we present a new appliance-driven approach to load curve data cleansing. This approach utilizes data generation rules and a Sequential Local Optimization Algorithm (SLOA) to solve the Corrupted Data Identification Problem (CDIP). We evaluate the performance of SLOA with real-world trace data and synthetic data. The results indicate that, comparing to existing load data cleansing methods, such as B-spline smoothing, our approach has an overall better performance and can effectively identify consecutive corrupted data. Experimental results also demonstrate that our method is robust in various tests. Our method provides a highly feasible and reliable solution to an emerging industry application.
1307.7770
A Connection between Good Rate-distortion Codes and Backward DMCs
cs.IT math.IT
Let $X^n\in\mathcal{X}^n$ be a sequence drawn from a discrete memoryless source, and let $Y^n\in\mathcal{Y}^n$ be the corresponding reconstruction sequence that is output by a good rate-distortion code. This paper establishes a property of the joint distribution of $(X^n,Y^n)$. It is shown that for $D>0$, the input-output statistics of a $R(D)$-achieving rate-distortion code converge (in normalized relative entropy) to the output-input statistics of a discrete memoryless channel (dmc). The dmc is "backward" in that it is a channel from the reconstruction space $\mathcal{Y}^n$ to source space $\mathcal{X}^n$. It is also shown that the property does not necessarily hold when normalized relative entropy is replaced by variational distance.
1307.7779
An Overview of Load Balancing in HetNets: Old Myths and Open Problems
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
Matching the demand for resources ("load") with the supply of resources ("capacity") is a basic problem occurring across many fields of engineering, logistics, and economics, and has been considered extensively both in the Internet and in wireless networks. The ongoing evolution of cellular communication networks into dense, organic, and irregular heterogeneous networks ("HetNets") has elevated load-awareness to a central problem, and introduces many new subtleties. This paper explains how several long-standing assumptions about cellular networks need to be rethought in the context of a load-balanced HetNet: we highlight these as three deeply entrenched myths that we then dispel. We survey and compare the primary technical approaches to HetNet load balancing: (centralized) optimization, game theory, Markov decision processes, and the newly popular cell range expansion (a.k.a. "biasing"), and draw design lessons for OFDMA-based cellular systems. We also identify several open areas for future exploration.
1307.7793
Multi-dimensional Parametric Mincuts for Constrained MAP Inference
cs.LG cs.AI
In this paper, we propose novel algorithms for inferring the Maximum a Posteriori (MAP) solution of discrete pairwise random field models under multiple constraints. We show how this constrained discrete optimization problem can be formulated as a multi-dimensional parametric mincut problem via its Lagrangian dual, and prove that our algorithm isolates all constraint instances for which the problem can be solved exactly. These multiple solutions enable us to even deal with `soft constraints' (higher order penalty functions). Moreover, we propose two practical variants of our algorithm to solve problems with hard constraints. We also show how our method can be applied to solve various constrained discrete optimization problems such as submodular minimization and shortest path computation. Experimental evaluation using the foreground-background image segmentation problem with statistic constraints reveals that our method is faster and its results are closer to the ground truth labellings compared with the popular continuous relaxation based methods.
1307.7795
Protein (Multi-)Location Prediction: Using Location Inter-Dependencies in a Probabilistic Framework
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.LG q-bio.GN
Knowing the location of a protein within the cell is important for understanding its function, role in biological processes, and potential use as a drug target. Much progress has been made in developing computational methods that predict single locations for proteins, assuming that proteins localize to a single location. However, it has been shown that proteins localize to multiple locations. While a few recent systems have attempted to predict multiple locations of proteins, they typically treat locations as independent or capture inter-dependencies by treating each locations-combination present in the training set as an individual location-class. We present a new method and a preliminary system we have developed that directly incorporates inter-dependencies among locations into the multiple-location-prediction process, using a collection of Bayesian network classifiers. We evaluate our system on a dataset of single- and multi-localized proteins. Our results, obtained by incorporating inter-dependencies are significantly higher than those obtained by classifiers that do not use inter-dependencies. The performance of our system on multi-localized proteins is comparable to a top performing system (YLoc+), without restricting predictions to be based only on location-combinations present in the training set.
1307.7796
Emergence of scaling in human-interest dynamics
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Human behaviors are often driven by human interests. Despite intense recent efforts in exploring the dynamics of human behaviors, little is known about human-interest dynamics, partly due to the extreme difficulty in accessing the human mind from observations. However, the availability of large-scale data, such as those from e-commerce and smart-phone communications, makes it possible to probe into and quantify the dynamics of human interest. Using three prototypical "big data" sets, we investigate the scaling behaviors associated with human-interest dynamics. In particular, from the data sets we uncover power-law scaling associated with the three basic quantities: (1) the length of continuous interest, (2) the return time of visiting certain interest, and (3) interest ranking and transition. We argue that there are three basic ingredients underlying human-interest dynamics: preferential return to previously visited interests, inertial effect, and exploration of new interests. We develop a biased random-walk model, incorporating the three ingredients, to account for the observed power-law scaling relations. Our study represents the first attempt to understand the dynamical processes underlying human interest, which has significant applications in science and engineering, commerce, as well as defense, in terms of specific tasks such as recommendation and human-behavior prediction.
1307.7800
Efficient Energy Minimization for Enforcing Statistics
cs.CV
Energy minimization algorithms, such as graph cuts, enable the computation of the MAP solution under certain probabilistic models such as Markov random fields. However, for many computer vision problems, the MAP solution under the model is not the ground truth solution. In many problem scenarios, the system has access to certain statistics of the ground truth. For instance, in image segmentation, the area and boundary length of the object may be known. In these cases, we want to estimate the most probable solution that is consistent with such statistics, i.e., satisfies certain equality or inequality constraints. The above constrained energy minimization problem is NP-hard in general, and is usually solved using Linear Programming formulations, which relax the integrality constraints. This paper proposes a novel method that finds the discrete optimal solution of such problems by maximizing the corresponding Lagrangian dual. This method can be applied to any constrained energy minimization problem whose unconstrained version is polynomial time solvable, and can handle multiple, equality or inequality, and linear or non-linear constraints. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method on the foreground/background image segmentation problem, and show that it produces impressive segmentation results with less error, and runs more than 20 times faster than the state-of-the-art LP relaxation based approaches.
1307.7808
Automated Attack Planning
cs.AI cs.CR
Penetration Testing is a methodology for assessing network security, by generating and executing possible attacks. Doing so automatically allows for regular and systematic testing. A key question then is how to automatically generate the attacks. A natural way to address this issue is as an attack planning problem. In this thesis, we are concerned with the specific context of regular automated pentesting, and use the term "attack planning" in that sense. The following three research directions are investigated. First, we introduce a conceptual model of computer network attacks, based on an analysis of the penetration testing practices. We study how this attack model can be represented in the PDDL language. Then we describe an implementation that integrates a classical planner with a penetration testing tool. This allows us to automatically generate attack paths for real world pentesting scenarios, and to validate these attacks by executing them. Secondly, we present efficient probabilistic planning algorithms, specifically designed for this problem, that achieve industrial-scale runtime performance (able to solve scenarios with several hundred hosts and exploits). These algorithms take into account the probability of success of the actions and their expected cost (for example in terms of execution time, or network traffic generated). Finally, we take a different direction: instead of trying to improve the efficiency of the solutions developed, we focus on improving the model of the attacker. We model the attack planning problem in terms of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP). This grounds penetration testing in a well-researched formalism. POMDPs allow the modelling of information gathering as an integral part of the problem, thus providing for the first time a means to intelligently mix scanning actions with actual exploits.
1307.7809
Les POMDP font de meilleurs hackers: Tenir compte de l'incertitude dans les tests de penetration
cs.AI cs.CR
Penetration Testing is a methodology for assessing network security, by generating and executing possible hacking attacks. Doing so automatically allows for regular and systematic testing. A key question is how to generate the attacks. This is naturally formulated as planning under uncertainty, i.e., under incomplete knowledge about the network configuration. Previous work uses classical planning, and requires costly pre-processes reducing this uncertainty by extensive application of scanning methods. By contrast, we herein model the attack planning problem in terms of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP). This allows to reason about the knowledge available, and to intelligently employ scanning actions as part of the attack. As one would expect, this accurate solution does not scale. We devise a method that relies on POMDPs to find good attacks on individual machines, which are then composed into an attack on the network as a whole. This decomposition exploits network structure to the extent possible, making targeted approximations (only) where needed. Evaluating this method on a suitably adapted industrial test suite, we demonstrate its effectiveness in both runtime and solution quality.
1307.7810
Accurate Decoding of Pooled Sequenced Data Using Compressed Sensing
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.IT math.IT q-bio.GN
In order to overcome the limitations imposed by DNA barcoding when multiplexing a large number of samples in the current generation of high-throughput sequencing instruments, we have recently proposed a new protocol that leverages advances in combinatorial pooling design (group testing) doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003010. We have also demonstrated how this new protocol would enable de novo selective sequencing and assembly of large, highly-repetitive genomes. Here we address the problem of decoding pooled sequenced data obtained from such a protocol. Our algorithm employs a synergistic combination of ideas from compressed sensing and the decoding of error-correcting codes. Experimental results on synthetic data for the rice genome and real data for the barley genome show that our novel decoding algorithm enables significantly higher quality assemblies than the previous approach.
1307.7811
A Novel Combinatorial Method for Estimating Transcript Expression with RNA-Seq: Bounding the Number of Paths
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.DS
RNA-Seq technology offers new high-throughput ways for transcript identification and quantification based on short reads, and has recently attracted great interest. The problem is usually modeled by a weighted splicing graph whose nodes stand for exons and whose edges stand for split alignments to the exons. The task consists of finding a number of paths, together with their expression levels, which optimally explain the coverages of the graph under various fitness functions, such least sum of squares. In (Tomescu et al. RECOMB-seq 2013) we showed that under general fitness functions, if we allow a polynomially bounded number of paths in an optimal solution, this problem can be solved in polynomial time by a reduction to a min-cost flow program. In this paper we further refine this problem by asking for a bounded number k of paths that optimally explain the splicing graph. This problem becomes NP-hard in the strong sense, but we give a fast combinatorial algorithm based on dynamic programming for it. In order to obtain a practical tool, we implement three optimizations and heuristics, which achieve better performance on real data, and similar or better performance on simulated data, than state-of-the-art tools Cufflinks, IsoLasso and SLIDE. Our tool, called Traph, is available at http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/gsa/traph/
1307.7813
A polynomial delay algorithm for the enumeration of bubbles with length constraints in directed graphs and its application to the detection of alternative splicing in RNA-seq data
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.DS
We present a new algorithm for enumerating bubbles with length constraints in directed graphs. This problem arises in transcriptomics, where the question is to identify all alternative splicing events present in a sample of mRNAs sequenced by RNA-seq. This is the first polynomial-delay algorithm for this problem and we show that in practice, it is faster than previous approaches. This enables us to deal with larger instances and therefore to discover novel alternative splicing events, especially long ones, that were previously overseen using existing methods.
1307.7820
Faster Algorithms for RNA-folding using the Four-Russians method
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.DS
The secondary structure that maximizes the number of non-crossing matchings between complimentary bases of an RNA sequence of length n can be computed in O(n^3) time using Nussinov's dynamic programming algorithm. The Four-Russians method is a technique that will reduce the running time for certain dynamic programming algorithms by a multiplicative factor after a preprocessing step where solutions to all smaller subproblems of a fixed size are exhaustively enumerated and solved. Frid and Gusfield designed an O(\frac{n^3}{\log n}) algorithm for RNA folding using the Four-Russians technique. In their algorithm the preprocessing is interleaved with the algorithm computation. (Algo. Mol. Biol., 2010). We simplify the algorithm and the analysis by doing the preprocessing once prior to the algorithm computation. We call this the two-vector method. We also show variants where instead of exhaustive preprocessing, we only solve the subproblems encountered in the main algorithm once and memoize the results. We give a simple proof of correctness and explore the practical advantages over the earlier method. The Nussinov algorithm admits an O(n^2) time parallel algorithm. We show a parallel algorithm using the two-vector idea that improves the time bound to O(\frac{n^2}{log n}). We discuss the organization of the data structures to exploit coalesced memory access for fast running times. The ideas to organize the data structures also help in improving the running time of the serial algorithms. For sequences of length up to 6000 bases the parallel algorithm takes only about 2.5 seconds and the two-vector serial method takes about 57 seconds on a desktop and 15 seconds on a server. Among the serial algorithms, the two-vector and memoized versions are faster than the Frid-Gusfield algorithm by a factor of 3, and are faster than Nussinov by up to a factor of 20.
1307.7821
Algorithms for the Majority Rule (+) Consensus Tree and the Frequency Difference Consensus Tree
cs.DS cs.CE q-bio.QM
This paper presents two new deterministic algorithms for constructing consensus trees. Given an input of k phylogenetic trees with identical leaf label sets and n leaves each, the first algorithm constructs the majority rule (+) consensus tree in O(kn) time, which is optimal since the input size is Omega(kn), and the second one constructs the frequency difference consensus tree in min(O(kn^2), O(kn (k+log^2 n))) time.
1307.7824
The generalized Robinson-Foulds metric
cs.DS cs.CE q-bio.QM
The Robinson-Foulds (RF) metric is arguably the most widely used measure of phylogenetic tree similarity, despite its well-known shortcomings: For example, moving a single taxon in a tree can result in a tree that has maximum distance to the original one; but the two trees are identical if we remove the single taxon. To this end, we propose a natural extension of the RF metric that does not simply count identical clades but instead, also takes similar clades into consideration. In contrast to previous approaches, our model requires the matching between clades to respect the structure of the two trees, a property that the classical RF metric exhibits, too. We show that computing this generalized RF metric is, unfortunately, NP-hard. We then present a simple Integer Linear Program for its computation, and evaluate it by an all-against-all comparison of 100 trees from a benchmark data set. We find that matchings that respect the tree structure differ significantly from those that do not, underlining the importance of this natural condition.
1307.7825
Computing the Skewness of the Phylogenetic Mean Pairwise Distance in Linear Time
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.DS
The phylogenetic Mean Pairwise Distance (MPD) is one of the most popular measures for computing the phylogenetic distance between a given group of species. More specifically, for a phylogenetic tree T and for a set of species R represented by a subset of the leaf nodes of T, the MPD of R is equal to the average cost of all possible simple paths in T that connect pairs of nodes in R. Among other phylogenetic measures, the MPD is used as a tool for deciding if the species of a given group R are closely related. To do this, it is important to compute not only the value of the MPD for this group but also the expectation, the variance, and the skewness of this metric. Although efficient algorithms have been developed for computing the expectation and the variance the MPD, there has been no approach so far for computing the skewness of this measure. In the present work we describe how to compute the skewness of the MPD on a tree T optimally, in Theta(n) time; here n is the size of the tree T. So far this is the first result that leads to an exact, let alone efficient, computation of the skewness for any popular phylogenetic distance measure. Moreover, we show how we can compute in Theta(n) time several interesting quantities in T that can be possibly used as building blocks for computing efficiently the skewness of other phylogenetic measures.
1307.7828
Characterizing Compatibility and Agreement of Unrooted Trees via Cuts in Graphs
cs.DM cs.CE q-bio.QM
Deciding whether there is a single tree -a supertree- that summarizes the evolutionary information in a collection of unrooted trees is a fundamental problem in phylogenetics. We consider two versions of this question: agreement and compatibility. In the first, the supertree is required to reflect precisely the relationships among the species exhibited by the input trees. In the second, the supertree can be more refined than the input trees. Tree compatibility can be characterized in terms of the existence of a specific kind of triangulation in a structure known as the display graph. Alternatively, it can be characterized as a chordal graph sandwich problem in a structure known as the edge label intersection graph. Here, we show that the latter characterization yields a natural characterization of compatibility in terms of minimal cuts in the display graph, which is closely related to compatibility of splits. We then derive a characterization for agreement.
1307.7831
Unifying Parsimonious Tree Reconciliation
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.DS q-bio.PE
Evolution is a process that is influenced by various environmental factors, e.g. the interactions between different species, genes, and biogeographical properties. Hence, it is interesting to study the combined evolutionary history of multiple species, their genes, and the environment they live in. A common approach to address this research problem is to describe each individual evolution as a phylogenetic tree and construct a tree reconciliation which is parsimonious with respect to a given event model. Unfortunately, most of the previous approaches are designed only either for host-parasite systems, for gene tree/species tree reconciliation, or biogeography. Hence, a method is desirable, which addresses the general problem of mapping phylogenetic trees and covering all varieties of coevolving systems, including e.g., predator-prey and symbiotic relationships. To overcome this gap, we introduce a generalized cophylogenetic event model considering the combinatorial complete set of local coevolutionary events. We give a dynamic programming based heuristic for solving the maximum parsimony reconciliation problem in time O(n^2), for two phylogenies each with at most n leaves. Furthermore, we present an exact branch-and-bound algorithm which uses the results from the dynamic programming heuristic for discarding partial reconciliations. The approach has been implemented as a Java application which is freely available from http://pacosy.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/coresym.
1307.7840
On the Matrix Median Problem
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.DM
The Genome Median Problem is an important problem in phylogenetic reconstruction under rearrangement models. It can be stated as follows: given three genomes, find a fourth that minimizes the sum of the pairwise rearrangement distances between it and the three input genomes. Recently, Feijao and Meidanis extended the algebraic theory for genome rearrangement to allow for linear chromosomes, thus yielding a new rearrangement model (the algebraic model), very close to the celebrated DCJ model. In this paper, we study the genome median problem under the algebraic model, whose complexity is currently open, proposing a more general form of the problem, the matrix median problem. It is known that, for any metric distance, at least one of the corners is a 4/3-approximation of the median. Our results allow us to compute up to three additional matrix median candidates, all of them with approximation ratios at least as good as the best corner, when the input matrices come from genomes. From the application point of view, it is usually more interesting to locate medians farther from the corners. We also show a fourth median candidate that gives better results in cases we tried. However, we do not have proven bounds for this fourth candidate yet.
1307.7842
A Fixed-Parameter Algorithm for Minimum Common String Partition with Few Duplications
cs.DS cs.CE q-bio.QM
Motivated by the study of genome rearrangements, the NP-hard Minimum Common String Partition problems asks, given two strings, to split both strings into an identical set of blocks. We consider an extension of this problem to unbalanced strings, so that some elements may not be covered by any block. We present an efficient fixed-parameter algorithm for the parameters number k of blocks and maximum occurrence d of a letter in either string. We then evaluate this algorithm on bacteria genomes and synthetic data.
1307.7848
An Integrated System for 3D Gaze Recovery and Semantic Analysis of Human Attention
cs.CV
This work describes a computer vision system that enables pervasive mapping and monitoring of human attention. The key contribution is that our methodology enables full 3D recovery of the gaze pointer, human view frustum and associated human centered measurements directly into an automatically computed 3D model in real-time. We apply RGB-D SLAM and descriptor matching methodologies for the 3D modeling, localization and fully automated annotation of ROIs (regions of interest) within the acquired 3D model. This innovative methodology will open new avenues for attention studies in real world environments, bringing new potential into automated processing for human factors technologies.
1307.7851
Hybrid Affinity Propagation
cs.CV
In this paper, we address a problem of managing tagged images with hybrid summarization. We formulate this problem as finding a few image exemplars to represent the image set semantically and visually, and solve it in a hybrid way by exploiting both visual and textual information associated with images. We propose a novel approach, called homogeneous and heterogeneous message propagation ($\text{H}^\text{2}\text{MP}$). Similar to the affinity propagation (AP) approach, $\text{H}^\text{2}\text{MP}$ reduce the conventional \emph{vector} message propagation to \emph{scalar} message propagation to make the algorithm more efficient. Beyond AP that can only handle homogeneous data, $\text{H}^\text{2}\text{MP}$ generalizes it to exploit extra heterogeneous relations and the generalization is non-trivial as the reduction to scalar messages from vector messages is more challenging. The main advantages of our approach lie in 1) that $\text{H}^\text{2}\text{MP}$ exploits visual similarity and in addition the useful information from the associated tags, including the associations relation between images and tags and the relations within tags, and 2) that the summary is both visually and semantically satisfactory. In addition, our approach can also present a textual summary to a tagged image collection, which can be used to automatically generate a textual description. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the roposed approach.
1307.7852
Scalable $k$-NN graph construction
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
The $k$-NN graph has played a central role in increasingly popular data-driven techniques for various learning and vision tasks; yet, finding an efficient and effective way to construct $k$-NN graphs remains a challenge, especially for large-scale high-dimensional data. In this paper, we propose a new approach to construct approximate $k$-NN graphs with emphasis in: efficiency and accuracy. We hierarchically and randomly divide the data points into subsets and build an exact neighborhood graph over each subset, achieving a base approximate neighborhood graph; we then repeat this process for several times to generate multiple neighborhood graphs, which are combined to yield a more accurate approximate neighborhood graph. Furthermore, we propose a neighborhood propagation scheme to further enhance the accuracy. We show both theoretical and empirical accuracy and efficiency of our approach to $k$-NN graph construction and demonstrate significant speed-up in dealing with large scale visual data.
1307.7895
Wavelet Analysis of Dynamic Behaviors of the Large Interconnected Power System
cs.SY
In this paper, the simulation of the disturbance propagation through a large power system is performed on the WSCC 127 bus test system. The signal frequency analysis from several parts of the power system is performed by applying the Wavelet Transform (WT). The results show that this approach provides the system operators with some useful information regarding the identification of the power system low-frequency electromechanical oscillations, the identification of the coherent groups of generators and the insight into the speed retardation of some parts of the power system. The ability to localize the disturbance is based on the disturbance propagation through the power system and the time-frequency analysis performed by using the WT is presented along with detailed physical interpretation of the used approach.
1307.7897
Energy Distribution of EEG Signals: EEG Signal Wavelet-Neural Network Classifier
cs.NE q-bio.NC
In this paper, a wavelet-based neural network (WNN) classifier for recognizing EEG signals is implemented and tested under three sets EEG signals (healthy subjects, patients with epilepsy and patients with epileptic syndrome during the seizure). First, the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) with the Multi-Resolution Analysis (MRA) is applied to decompose EEG signal at resolution levels of the components of the EEG signal (delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma) and the Parsevals theorem are employed to extract the percentage distribution of energy features of the EEG signal at different resolution levels. Second, the neural network (NN) classifies these extracted features to identify the EEGs type according to the percentage distribution of energy features. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been evaluated using in total 300 EEG signals. The results showed that the proposed classifier has the ability of recognizing and classifying EEG signals efficiently.
1307.7925
Detecting Superbubbles in Assembly Graphs
cs.DS cs.CE cs.DM q-bio.QM
We introduce a new concept of a subgraph class called a superbubble for analyzing assembly graphs, and propose an efficient algorithm for detecting it. Most assembly algorithms utilize assembly graphs like the de Bruijn graph or the overlap graph constructed from reads. From these graphs, many assembly algorithms first detect simple local graph structures (motifs), such as tips and bubbles, mainly to find sequencing errors. These motifs are easy to detect, but they are sometimes too simple to deal with more complex errors. The superbubble is an extension of the bubble, which is also important for analyzing assembly graphs. Though superbubbles are much more complex than ordinary bubbles, we show that they can be efficiently enumerated. We propose an average-case linear time algorithm (i.e., O(n+m) for a graph with n vertices and m edges) for graphs with a reasonable model, though the worst-case time complexity of our algorithm is quadratic (i.e., O(n(n+m))). Moreover, the algorithm is practically very fast: Our experiments show that our algorithm runs in reasonable time with a single CPU core even against a very large graph of a whole human genome.
1307.7948
On the accuracy of the Viterbi alignment
stat.ME cs.LG stat.CO
In a hidden Markov model, the underlying Markov chain is usually hidden. Often, the maximum likelihood alignment (Viterbi alignment) is used as its estimate. Although having the biggest likelihood, the Viterbi alignment can behave very untypically by passing states that are at most unexpected. To avoid such situations, the Viterbi alignment can be modified by forcing it not to pass these states. In this article, an iterative procedure for improving the Viterbi alignment is proposed and studied. The iterative approach is compared with a simple bunch approach where a number of states with low probability are all replaced at the same time. It can be seen that the iterative way of adjusting the Viterbi alignment is more efficient and it has several advantages over the bunch approach. The same iterative algorithm for improving the Viterbi alignment can be used in the case of peeping, that is when it is possible to reveal hidden states. In addition, lower bounds for classification probabilities of the Viterbi alignment under different conditions on the model parameters are studied.
1307.7970
Short Term Memory Capacity in Networks via the Restricted Isometry Property
cs.IT cs.NE math.IT
Cortical networks are hypothesized to rely on transient network activity to support short term memory (STM). In this paper we study the capacity of randomly connected recurrent linear networks for performing STM when the input signals are approximately sparse in some basis. We leverage results from compressed sensing to provide rigorous non asymptotic recovery guarantees, quantifying the impact of the input sparsity level, the input sparsity basis, and the network characteristics on the system capacity. Our analysis demonstrates that network memory capacities can scale superlinearly with the number of nodes, and in some situations can achieve STM capacities that are much larger than the network size. We provide perfect recovery guarantees for finite sequences and recovery bounds for infinite sequences. The latter analysis predicts that network STM systems may have an optimal recovery length that balances errors due to omission and recall mistakes. Furthermore, we show that the conditions yielding optimal STM capacity can be embodied in several network topologies, including networks with sparse or dense connectivities.
1307.7973
Connecting Language and Knowledge Bases with Embedding Models for Relation Extraction
cs.CL cs.IR cs.LG
This paper proposes a novel approach for relation extraction from free text which is trained to jointly use information from the text and from existing knowledge. Our model is based on two scoring functions that operate by learning low-dimensional embeddings of words and of entities and relationships from a knowledge base. We empirically show on New York Times articles aligned with Freebase relations that our approach is able to efficiently use the extra information provided by a large subset of Freebase data (4M entities, 23k relationships) to improve over existing methods that rely on text features alone.
1307.7974
Image Tag Refinement by Regularized Latent Dirichlet Allocation
cs.IR
Tagging is nowadays the most prevalent and practical way to make images searchable. However, in reality many manually-assigned tags are irrelevant to image content and hence are not reliable for applications. A lot of recent efforts have been conducted to refine image tags. In this paper, we propose to do tag refinement from the angle of topic modeling and present a novel graphical model, regularized Latent Dirichlet Allocation (rLDA). In the proposed approach, tag similarity and tag relevance are jointly estimated in an iterative manner, so that they can benefit from each other, and the multi-wise relationships among tags are explored. Moreover, both the statistics of tags and visual affinities of images in the corpus are explored to help topic modeling. We also analyze the superiority of our approach from the deep structure perspective. The experiments on tag ranking and image retrieval demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method.
1307.7981
Likelihood-ratio calibration using prior-weighted proper scoring rules
stat.ML cs.LG
Prior-weighted logistic regression has become a standard tool for calibration in speaker recognition. Logistic regression is the optimization of the expected value of the logarithmic scoring rule. We generalize this via a parametric family of proper scoring rules. Our theoretical analysis shows how different members of this family induce different relative weightings over a spectrum of applications of which the decision thresholds range from low to high. Special attention is given to the interaction between prior weighting and proper scoring rule parameters. Experiments on NIST SRE'12 suggest that for applications with low false-alarm rate requirements, scoring rules tailored to emphasize higher score thresholds may give better accuracy than logistic regression.
1307.7982
Flavor Pairing in Medieval European Cuisine: A Study in Cooking with Dirty Data
physics.soc-ph cs.CY cs.SI physics.data-an
An important part of cooking with computers is using statistical methods to create new, flavorful ingredient combinations. The flavor pairing hypothesis states that culinary ingredients with common chemical flavor components combine well to produce pleasant dishes. It has been recently shown that this design principle is a basis for modern Western cuisine and is reversed for Asian cuisine. Such data-driven analysis compares the chemistry of ingredients to ingredient sets found in recipes. However, analytics-based generation of novel flavor profiles can only be as good as the underlying chemical and recipe data. Incomplete, inaccurate, and irrelevant data may degrade flavor pairing inferences. Chemical data on flavor compounds is incomplete due to the nature of the experiments that must be conducted to obtain it. Recipe data may have issues due to text parsing errors, imprecision in textual descriptions of ingredients, and the fact that the same ingredient may be known by different names in different recipes. Moreover, the process of matching ingredients in chemical data and recipe data may be fraught with mistakes. Much of the `dirtiness' of the data cannot be cleansed even with manual curation. In this work, we collect a new data set of recipes from Medieval Europe before the Columbian Exchange and investigate the flavor pairing hypothesis historically. To investigate the role of data incompleteness and error as part of this hypothesis testing, we use two separate chemical compound data sets with different levels of cleanliness. Notably, the different data sets give conflicting conclusions about the flavor pairing hypothesis in Medieval Europe. As a contribution towards social science, we obtain inferences about the evolution of culinary arts when many new ingredients are suddenly made available.
1307.7993
Sharp Threshold for Multivariate Multi-Response Linear Regression via Block Regularized Lasso
cs.LG stat.ML
In this paper, we investigate a multivariate multi-response (MVMR) linear regression problem, which contains multiple linear regression models with differently distributed design matrices, and different regression and output vectors. The goal is to recover the support union of all regression vectors using $l_1/l_2$-regularized Lasso. We characterize sufficient and necessary conditions on sample complexity \emph{as a sharp threshold} to guarantee successful recovery of the support union. Namely, if the sample size is above the threshold, then $l_1/l_2$-regularized Lasso correctly recovers the support union; and if the sample size is below the threshold, $l_1/l_2$-regularized Lasso fails to recover the support union. In particular, the threshold precisely captures the impact of the sparsity of regression vectors and the statistical properties of the design matrices on sample complexity. Therefore, the threshold function also captures the advantages of joint support union recovery using multi-task Lasso over individual support recovery using single-task Lasso.
1307.8007
Classical-Quantum Arbitrarily Varying Wiretap Channel: Ahlswede dichotomy, Positivity, Resources, Super Activation
cs.IT math.IT quant-ph
We establish Ahlswede dichotomy for arbitrarily varying classical-quantum wiretap channels. This means that either the deterministic secrecy capacity of an arbitrarily varying classical-quantum wiretap channel is zero or it equals its randomness-assisted secrecy capacity. We analyze the secrecy capacity of arbitrarily varying classical-quantum wiretap channels when the sender and the receiver use various resources. It turns out that having randomness, common randomness, and correlation as resources are very helpful for achieving a positive deterministic secrecy capacity of arbitrarily varying classical-quantum wiretap channels. We prove the phenomenon super-activation for arbitrarily varying classical-quantum wiretap channels, i.e., if we use two arbitrarily varying classical-quantum wiretap channels, both with zero deterministic secrecy capacity together, they allow perfect secure transmission.
1307.8012
A Study on Classification in Imbalanced and Partially-Labelled Data Streams
astro-ph.IM cs.LG
The domain of radio astronomy is currently facing significant computational challenges, foremost amongst which are those posed by the development of the world's largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). Preliminary specifications for this instrument suggest that the final design will incorporate between 2000 and 3000 individual 15 metre receiving dishes, which together can be expected to produce a data rate of many TB/s. Given such a high data rate, it becomes crucial to consider how this information will be processed and stored to maximise its scientific utility. In this paper, we consider one possible data processing scenario for the SKA, for the purposes of an all-sky pulsar survey. In particular we treat the selection of promising signals from the SKA processing pipeline as a data stream classification problem. We consider the feasibility of classifying signals that arrive via an unlabelled and heavily class imbalanced data stream, using currently available algorithms and frameworks. Our results indicate that existing stream learners exhibit unacceptably low recall on real astronomical data when used in standard configuration; however, good false positive performance and comparable accuracy to static learners, suggests they have definite potential as an on-line solution to this particular big data challenge.
1307.8040
Stabilization of Nonlinear Delay Systems Using Approximate Predictors and High-Gain Observers
math.OC cs.SY
We provide a solution to the heretofore open problem of stabilization of systems with arbitrarily long delays at the input and output of a nonlinear system using output feedback only. The solution is global, employs the predictor approach over the period that combines the input and output delays, addresses nonlinear systems with sampled measurements and with control applied using a zero-order hold, and requires that the sampling/holding periods be sufficiently short, though not necessarily constant. Our approach considers a class of globally Lipschitz strict-feedback systems with disturbances and employs an appropriately constructed successive approximation of the predictor map, a high-gain sampled-data observer, and a linear stabilizing feedback for the delay-free system. The obtained results guarantee robustness to perturbations of the sampling schedule and different sampling and holding periods are considered. The approach is specialized to linear systems, where the predictor is available explicitly.
1307.8049
Optimistic Concurrency Control for Distributed Unsupervised Learning
cs.LG cs.AI cs.DC
Research on distributed machine learning algorithms has focused primarily on one of two extremes - algorithms that obey strict concurrency constraints or algorithms that obey few or no such constraints. We consider an intermediate alternative in which algorithms optimistically assume that conflicts are unlikely and if conflicts do arise a conflict-resolution protocol is invoked. We view this "optimistic concurrency control" paradigm as particularly appropriate for large-scale machine learning algorithms, particularly in the unsupervised setting. We demonstrate our approach in three problem areas: clustering, feature learning and online facility location. We evaluate our methods via large-scale experiments in a cluster computing environment.
1307.8057
Extracting Connected Concepts from Biomedical Texts using Fog Index
cs.CL cs.IR
In this paper, we establish Fog Index (FI) as a text filter to locate the sentences in texts that contain connected biomedical concepts of interest. To do so, we have used 24 random papers each containing four pairs of connected concepts. For each pair, we categorize sentences based on whether they contain both, any or none of the concepts. We then use FI to measure difficulty of the sentences of each category and find that sentences containing both of the concepts have low readability. We rank sentences of a text according to their FI and select 30 percent of the most difficult sentences. We use an association matrix to track the most frequent pairs of concepts in them. This matrix reports that the first filter produces some pairs that hold almost no connections. To remove these unwanted pairs, we use the Equally Weighted Harmonic Mean of their Positive Predictive Value (PPV) and Sensitivity as a second filter. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
1307.8060
Extracting Information-rich Part of Texts using Text Denoising
cs.IR cs.CL
The aim of this paper is to report on a novel text reduction technique, called Text Denoising, that highlights information-rich content when processing a large volume of text data, especially from the biomedical domain. The core feature of the technique, the text readability index, embodies the hypothesis that complex text is more information-rich than the rest. When applied on tasks like biomedical relation bearing text extraction, keyphrase indexing and extracting sentences describing protein interactions, it is evident that the reduced set of text produced by text denoising is more information-rich than the rest.
1307.8083
TOFEC: Achieving Optimal Throughput-Delay Trade-off of Cloud Storage Using Erasure Codes
cs.NI cs.IR cs.PF
Our paper presents solutions using erasure coding, parallel connections to storage cloud and limited chunking (i.e., dividing the object into a few smaller segments) together to significantly improve the delay performance of uploading and downloading data in and out of cloud storage. TOFEC is a strategy that helps front-end proxy adapt to level of workload by treating scalable cloud storage (e.g. Amazon S3) as a shared resource requiring admission control. Under light workloads, TOFEC creates more smaller chunks and uses more parallel connections per file, minimizing service delay. Under heavy workloads, TOFEC automatically reduces the level of chunking (fewer chunks with increased size) and uses fewer parallel connections to reduce overhead, resulting in higher throughput and preventing queueing delay. Our trace-driven simulation results show that TOFEC's adaptation mechanism converges to an appropriate code that provides the optimal delay-throughput trade-off without reducing system capacity. Compared to a non-adaptive strategy optimized for throughput, TOFEC delivers 2.5x lower latency under light workloads; compared to a non-adaptive strategy optimized for latency, TOFEC can scale to support over 3x as many requests.
1307.8084
Combining Answer Set Programming and POMDPs for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning on Mobile Robots
cs.AI cs.RO
For widespread deployment in domains characterized by partial observability, non-deterministic actions and unforeseen changes, robots need to adapt sensing, processing and interaction with humans to the tasks at hand. While robots typically cannot process all sensor inputs or operate without substantial domain knowledge, it is a challenge to provide accurate domain knowledge and humans may not have the time and expertise to provide elaborate and accurate feedback. The architecture described in this paper combines declarative programming and probabilistic reasoning to address these challenges, enabling robots to: (a) represent and reason with incomplete domain knowledge, resolving ambiguities and revising existing knowledge using sensor inputs and minimal human feedback; and (b) probabilistically model the uncertainty in sensor input processing and navigation. Specifically, Answer Set Programming (ASP), a declarative programming paradigm, is combined with hierarchical partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), using domain knowledge to revise probabilistic beliefs, and using positive and negative observations for early termination of tasks that can no longer be pursued. All algorithms are evaluated in simulation and on mobile robots locating target objects in indoor domains.
1307.8104
Neural Network Capacity for Multilevel Inputs
cs.NE
This paper examines the memory capacity of generalized neural networks. Hopfield networks trained with a variety of learning techniques are investigated for their capacity both for binary and non-binary alphabets. It is shown that the capacity can be much increased when multilevel inputs are used. New learning strategies are proposed to increase Hopfield network capacity, and the scalability of these methods is also examined in respect to size of the network. The ability to recall entire patterns from stimulation of a single neuron is examined for the increased capacity networks.
1307.8136
DeBaCl: A Python Package for Interactive DEnsity-BAsed CLustering
stat.ME cs.LG stat.ML
The level set tree approach of Hartigan (1975) provides a probabilistically based and highly interpretable encoding of the clustering behavior of a dataset. By representing the hierarchy of data modes as a dendrogram of the level sets of a density estimator, this approach offers many advantages for exploratory analysis and clustering, especially for complex and high-dimensional data. Several R packages exist for level set tree estimation, but their practical usefulness is limited by computational inefficiency, absence of interactive graphical capabilities and, from a theoretical perspective, reliance on asymptotic approximations. To make it easier for practitioners to capture the advantages of level set trees, we have written the Python package DeBaCl for DEnsity-BAsed CLustering. In this article we illustrate how DeBaCl's level set tree estimates can be used for difficult clustering tasks and interactive graphical data analysis. The package is intended to promote the practical use of level set trees through improvements in computational efficiency and a high degree of user customization. In addition, the flexible algorithms implemented in DeBaCl enjoy finite sample accuracy, as demonstrated in recent literature on density clustering. Finally, we show the level set tree framework can be easily extended to deal with functional data.
1307.8182
POMDPs Make Better Hackers: Accounting for Uncertainty in Penetration Testing
cs.AI cs.CR
Penetration Testing is a methodology for assessing network security, by generating and executing possible hacking attacks. Doing so automatically allows for regular and systematic testing. A key question is how to generate the attacks. This is naturally formulated as planning under uncertainty, i.e., under incomplete knowledge about the network configuration. Previous work uses classical planning, and requires costly pre-processes reducing this uncertainty by extensive application of scanning methods. By contrast, we herein model the attack planning problem in terms of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP). This allows to reason about the knowledge available, and to intelligently employ scanning actions as part of the attack. As one would expect, this accurate solution does not scale. We devise a method that relies on POMDPs to find good attacks on individual machines, which are then composed into an attack on the network as a whole. This decomposition exploits network structure to the extent possible, making targeted approximations (only) where needed. Evaluating this method on a suitably adapted industrial test suite, we demonstrate its effectiveness in both runtime and solution quality.
1307.8187
Towards Minimax Online Learning with Unknown Time Horizon
cs.LG
We consider online learning when the time horizon is unknown. We apply a minimax analysis, beginning with the fixed horizon case, and then moving on to two unknown-horizon settings, one that assumes the horizon is chosen randomly according to some known distribution, and the other which allows the adversary full control over the horizon. For the random horizon setting with restricted losses, we derive a fully optimal minimax algorithm. And for the adversarial horizon setting, we prove a nontrivial lower bound which shows that the adversary obtains strictly more power than when the horizon is fixed and known. Based on the minimax solution of the random horizon setting, we then propose a new adaptive algorithm which "pretends" that the horizon is drawn from a distribution from a special family, but no matter how the actual horizon is chosen, the worst-case regret is of the optimal rate. Furthermore, our algorithm can be combined and applied in many ways, for instance, to online convex optimization, follow the perturbed leader, exponential weights algorithm and first order bounds. Experiments show that our algorithm outperforms many other existing algorithms in an online linear optimization setting.
1307.8199
Technical Report: An MGF-based Unified Framework to Determine the Joint Statistics of Partial Sums of Ordered i.n.d. Random Variables
cs.IT cs.PF math.IT
The joint statistics of partial sums of ordered random variables (RVs) are often needed for the accurate performance characterization of a wide variety of wireless communication systems. A unified analytical framework to determine the joint statistics of partial sums of ordered independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) random variables was recently presented. However, the identical distribution assumption may not be valid in several real-world applications. With this motivation in mind, we consider in this paper the more general case in which the random variables are independent but not necessarily identically distributed (i.n.d.). More specifically, we extend the previous analysis and introduce a new more general unified analytical framework to determine the joint statistics of partial sums of ordered i.n.d. RVs. Our mathematical formalism is illustrated with an application on the exact performance analysis of the capture probability of generalized selection combining (GSC)-based RAKE receivers operating over frequency-selective fading channels with a non-uniform power delay profile. We also discussed a couple of other sample applications of the generic results presented in this work.
1307.8201
Non-homogeneous Two-Rack Model for Distributed Storage Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In the traditional two-rack distributed storage system (DSS) model, due to the assumption that the storage capacity of each node is the same, the minimum bandwidth regenerating (MBR) point becomes infeasible. In this paper, we design a new non-homogeneous two-rack model by proposing a generalization of the threshold function used to compute the tradeoff curve. We prove that by having the nodes in the rack with higher regenerating bandwidth stores more information, all the points on the tradeoff curve, including the MBR point, become feasible. Finally, we show how the non-homogeneous two-rack model outperforms the traditional model in the tradeoff curve between the storage per node and the repair bandwidth.
1307.8225
A Novel Architecture for Relevant Blog Page Identifcation
cs.IR cs.CL
Blogs are undoubtedly the richest source of information available in cyberspace. Blogs can be of various natures i.e. personal blogs which contain posts on mixed issues or blogs can be domain specific which contains posts on particular topics, this is the reason, they offer wide variety of relevant information which is often focused. A general search engine gives back a huge collection of web pages which may or may not give correct answers, as web is the repository of information of all kinds and a user has to go through various documents before he gets what he was originally looking for, which is a very time consuming process. So, the search can be made more focused and accurate if it is limited to blogosphere instead of web pages. The reason being that the blogs are more focused in terms of information. So, User will only get related blogs in response to his query. These results will be then ranked according to our proposed method and are finally presented in front of user in descending order
1307.8230
An Information Theoretic Point of View to Contention Resolution
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
We consider a slotted wireless network in an infrastructure setup with a base station (or an access point) and N users. The wireless channel gain between the base station and the users is assumed to be i.i.d., and the base station seeks to schedule the user with the highest channel gain in every slot (opportunistic scheduling). We assume that the identity of the user with the highest channel gain is resolved using a series of contention slots and with feedback from the base station. In this setup, we formulate the contention resolution problem for opportunistic scheduling as identifying a random threshold (channel gain) that separates the best channel from the other samples. We show that the average delay to resolve contention is related to the entropy of the random threshold. We illustrate our formulation by studying the opportunistic splitting algorithm (OSA) for i.i.d. wireless channel [9]. We note that the thresholds of OSA correspond to a maximal probability allocation scheme. We conjecture that maximal probability allocation is an entropy minimizing strategy and a delay minimizing strategy for i.i.d. wireless channel. Finally, we discuss the applicability of this framework for few other network scenarios.
1307.8232
Maximum-Hands-Off Control and L1 Optimality
math.OC cs.IT cs.SY math.IT
In this article, we propose a new paradigm of control, called a maximum-hands-off control. A hands-off control is defined as a control that has a much shorter support than the horizon length. The maximum-hands-off control is the minimum-support (or sparsest) control among all admissible controls. We first prove that a solution to an L1-optimal control problem gives a maximum-hands-off control, and vice versa. This result rationalizes the use of L1 optimality in computing a maximum-hands-off control. The solution has in general the "bang-off-bang" property, and hence the control may be discontinuous. We then propose an L1/L2-optimal control to obtain a continuous hands-off control. Examples are shown to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method.
1307.8233
A Prototyping Environment for Integrated Artificial Attention Systems
cs.CV
Artificial visual attention systems aim to support technical systems in visual tasks by applying the concepts of selective attention observed in humans and other animals. Such systems are typically evaluated against ground truth obtained from human gaze-data or manually annotated test images. When applied to robotics, the systems are required to be adaptable to the target system. Here, we describe a flexible environment based on a robotic middleware layer allowing the development and testing of attention-guided vision systems. In such a framework, the systems can be tested with input from various sources, different attention algorithms at the core, and diverse subsequent tasks.
1307.8240
On Finding a Subset of Healthy Individuals from a Large Population
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we derive mutual information based upper and lower bounds on the number of nonadaptive group tests required to identify a given number of "non defective" items from a large population containing a small number of "defective" items. We show that a reduction in the number of tests is achievable compared to the approach of first identifying all the defective items and then picking the required number of non-defective items from the complement set. In the asymptotic regime with the population size $N \rightarrow \infty$, to identify $L$ non-defective items out of a population containing $K$ defective items, when the tests are reliable, our results show that $\frac{C_s K}{1-o(1)} (\Phi(\alpha_0, \beta_0) + o(1))$ measurements are sufficient, where $C_s$ is a constant independent of $N, K$ and $L$, and $\Phi(\alpha_0, \beta_0)$ is a bounded function of $\alpha_0 \triangleq \lim_{N\rightarrow \infty} \frac{L}{N-K}$ and $\beta_0 \triangleq \lim_{N\rightarrow \infty} \frac{K} {N-K}$. Further, in the nonadaptive group testing setup, we obtain rigorous upper and lower bounds on the number of tests under both dilution and additive noise models. Our results are derived using a general sparse signal model, by virtue of which, they are also applicable to other important sparse signal based applications such as compressive sensing.
1307.8242
Sparse Packetized Predictive Control for Networked Control over Erasure Channels
cs.SY math.OC
We study feedback control over erasure channels with packet-dropouts. To achieve robustness with respect to packet-dropouts, the controller transmits data packets containing plant input predictions, which minimize a finite horizon cost function. To reduce the data size of packets, we propose to adopt sparsity-promoting optimizations, namely, ell-1-ell-2 and ell-2-constrained ell-0 optimizations, for which efficient algorithms exist. We derive sufficient conditions on design parameters, which guarantee (practical) stability of the resulting feedback control systems when the number of consecutive packet-dropouts is bounded.
1307.8250
Critical Transitions in Social Network Activity
physics.soc-ph cs.SI nlin.AO physics.data-an
A large variety of complex systems in ecology, climate science, biomedicine and engineering have been observed to exhibit tipping points, where the internal dynamical state of the system abruptly changes. For example, such critical transitions may result in the sudden change of ecological environments and climate conditions. Data and models suggest that detectable warning signs may precede some of these drastic events. This view is also corroborated by abstract mathematical theory for generic bifurcations in stochastic multi-scale systems. Whether the stochastic scaling laws used as warning signs are also present in social networks that anticipate a-priori {\it unknown} events in society is an exciting open problem, to which at present only highly speculative answers can be given. Here, we instead provide a first step towards tackling this formidable question by focusing on a-priori {\it known} events and analyzing a social network data set with a focus on classical variance and autocorrelation warning signs. Our results thus pertain to one absolutely fundamental question: Can the stochastic warning signs known from other areas also be detected in large-scale social network data? We answer this question affirmatively as we find that several a-priori known events are preceded by variance and autocorrelation growth. Our findings thus clearly establish the necessary starting point to further investigate the relation between abstract mathematical theory and various classes of critical transitions in social networks.
1307.8269
Introducing Access Control in Webdamlog
cs.DB
We survey recent work on the specification of an access control mechanism in a collaborative environment. The work is presented in the context of the WebdamLog language, an extension of datalog to a distributed context. We discuss a fine-grained access control mechanism for intentional data based on provenance as well as a control mechanism for delegation, i.e., for deploying rules at remote peers.
1307.8279
Tracking Extrema in Dynamic Environment using Multi-Swarm Cellular PSO with Local Search
cs.AI cs.NE
Many real-world phenomena can be modelled as dynamic optimization problems. In such cases, the environment problem changes dynamically and therefore, conventional methods are not capable of dealing with such problems. In this paper, a novel multi-swarm cellular particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed by clustering and local search. In the proposed algorithm, the search space is partitioned into cells, while the particles identify changes in the search space and form clusters to create sub-swarms. Then a local search is applied to improve the solutions in the each cell. Simulation results for static standard benchmarks and dynamic environments show superiority of the proposed method over other alternative approaches.
1307.8305
The Planning-ahead SMO Algorithm
cs.LG
The sequential minimal optimization (SMO) algorithm and variants thereof are the de facto standard method for solving large quadratic programs for support vector machine (SVM) training. In this paper we propose a simple yet powerful modification. The main emphasis is on an algorithm improving the SMO step size by planning-ahead. The theoretical analysis ensures its convergence to the optimum. Experiments involving a large number of datasets were carried out to demonstrate the superiority of the new algorithm.
1307.8320
OMP Based Joint Sparsity Pattern Recovery Under Communication Constraints
cs.IT math.IT
We address the problem of joint sparsity pattern recovery based on low dimensional multiple measurement vectors (MMVs) in resource constrained distributed networks. We assume that distributed nodes observe sparse signals which share the same sparsity pattern and each node obtains measurements via a low dimensional linear operator. When the measurements are collected at distributed nodes in a communication network, it is often required that joint sparse recovery be performed under inherent resource constraints such as communication bandwidth and transmit/processing power. We present two approaches to take the communication constraints into account while performing common sparsity pattern recovery. First, we explore the use of a shared multiple access channel (MAC) in forwarding observations residing at each node to a fusion center. With MAC, while the bandwidth requirement does not depend on the number of nodes, the fusion center has access to only a linear combination of the observations. We discuss the conditions under which the common sparsity pattern can be estimated reliably. Second, we develop two collaborative algorithms based on Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP), to jointly estimate the common sparsity pattern in a decentralized manner with a low communication overhead. In the proposed algorithms, each node exploits collaboration among neighboring nodes by sharing a small amount of information for fusion at different stages in estimating the indices of the true support in a greedy manner. Efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms are demonstrated via simulations along with a comparison with the most related existing algorithms considering the trade-off between the performance gain and the communication overhead.
1307.8327
The Likelihood Encoder for Source Coding
cs.IT math.IT
The likelihood encoder with a random codebook is demonstrated as an effective tool for source coding. Coupled with a soft covering lemma (associated with channel resolvability), likelihood encoders yield simple achievability proofs for known results, such as rate-distortion theory. They also produce a tractable analysis for secure rate-distortion theory and strong coordination.
1307.8371
The Power of Localization for Efficiently Learning Linear Separators with Noise
cs.LG cs.CC cs.DS stat.ML
We introduce a new approach for designing computationally efficient learning algorithms that are tolerant to noise, and demonstrate its effectiveness by designing algorithms with improved noise tolerance guarantees for learning linear separators. We consider both the malicious noise model and the adversarial label noise model. For malicious noise, where the adversary can corrupt both the label and the features, we provide a polynomial-time algorithm for learning linear separators in $\Re^d$ under isotropic log-concave distributions that can tolerate a nearly information-theoretically optimal noise rate of $\eta = \Omega(\epsilon)$. For the adversarial label noise model, where the distribution over the feature vectors is unchanged, and the overall probability of a noisy label is constrained to be at most $\eta$, we also give a polynomial-time algorithm for learning linear separators in $\Re^d$ under isotropic log-concave distributions that can handle a noise rate of $\eta = \Omega\left(\epsilon\right)$. We show that, in the active learning model, our algorithms achieve a label complexity whose dependence on the error parameter $\epsilon$ is polylogarithmic. This provides the first polynomial-time active learning algorithm for learning linear separators in the presence of malicious noise or adversarial label noise.
1307.8405
Who and Where: People and Location Co-Clustering
cs.CV
In this paper, we consider the clustering problem on images where each image contains patches in people and location domains. We exploit the correlation between people and location domains, and proposed a semi-supervised co-clustering algorithm to cluster images. Our algorithm updates the correlation links at the runtime, and produces clustering in both domains simultaneously. We conduct experiments in a manually collected dataset and a Flickr dataset. The result shows that the such correlation improves the clustering performance.
1307.8410
Analysis of a Proportionally Fair and Locally Adaptive spatial Aloha in Poisson Networks
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT math.PR
The proportionally fair sharing of the capacity of a Poisson network using Spatial-Aloha leads to closed-form performance expressions in two extreme cases: (1) the case without topology information, where the analysis boils down to a parametric optimization problem leveraging stochastic geometry; (2) the case with full network topology information, which was recently solved using shot-noise techniques. We show that there exists a continuum of adaptive controls between these two extremes, based on local stopping sets, which can also be analyzed in closed form. We also show that these control schemes are implementable, in contrast to the full information case which is not. As local information increases, the performance levels of these schemes are shown to get arbitrarily close to those of the full information scheme. The analytical results are combined with discrete event simulation to provide a detailed evaluation of the performance of this class of medium access controls.
1307.8430
Fast Simultaneous Training of Generalized Linear Models (FaSTGLZ)
cs.LG stat.ML
We present an efficient algorithm for simultaneously training sparse generalized linear models across many related problems, which may arise from bootstrapping, cross-validation and nonparametric permutation testing. Our approach leverages the redundancies across problems to obtain significant computational improvements relative to solving the problems sequentially by a conventional algorithm. We demonstrate our fast simultaneous training of generalized linear models (FaSTGLZ) algorithm on a number of real-world datasets, and we run otherwise computationally intensive bootstrapping and permutation test analyses that are typically necessary for obtaining statistically rigorous classification results and meaningful interpretation. Code is freely available at http://liinc.bme.columbia.edu/fastglz.
1308.0002
Packetized Predictive Control for Rate-Limited Networks via Sparse Representation
cs.SY math.OC
We study a networked control architecture for linear time-invariant plants in which an unreliable data-rate limited network is placed between the controller and the plant input. The distinguishing aspect of the situation at hand is that an unreliable data-rate limited network is placed between controller and the plant input. To achieve robustness with respect to dropouts, the controller transmits data packets containing plant input predictions, which minimize a finite horizon cost function. In our formulation, we design sparse packets for rate-limited networks, by adopting an an ell-0 optimization, which can be effectively solved by an orthogonal matching pursuit method. Our formulation ensures asymptotic stability of the control loop in the presence of bounded packet dropouts. Simulation results indicate that the proposed controller provides sparse control packets, thereby giving bit-rate reductions for the case of memoryless scalar coding schemes when compared to the use of, more common, quadratic cost functions, as in linear quadratic (LQ) control.
1308.0029
Hierarchical self-organization of non-cooperating individuals
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.bio-ph
Hierarchy is one of the most conspicuous features of numerous natural, technological and social systems. The underlying structures are typically complex and their most relevant organizational principle is the ordering of the ties among the units they are made of according to a network displaying hierarchical features. In spite of the abundant presence of hierarchy no quantitative theoretical interpretation of the origins of a multi-level, knowledge-based social network exists. Here we introduce an approach which is capable of reproducing the emergence of a multi-levelled network structure based on the plausible assumption that the individuals (representing the nodes of the network) can make the right estimate about the state of their changing environment to a varying degree. Our model accounts for a fundamental feature of knowledge-based organizations: the less capable individuals tend to follow those who are better at solving the problems they all face. We find that relatively simple rules lead to hierarchical self-organization and the specific structures we obtain possess the two, perhaps most important features of complex systems: a simultaneous presence of adaptability and stability. In addition, the performance (success score) of the emerging networks is significantly higher than the average expected score of the individuals without letting them copy the decisions of the others. The results of our calculations are in agreement with a related experiment and can be useful from the point of designing the optimal conditions for constructing a given complex social structure as well as understanding the hierarchical organization of such biological structures of major importance as the regulatory pathways or the dynamics of neural networks.
1308.0037
Route Swarm: Wireless Network Optimization through Mobility
cs.SY cs.MA cs.NI cs.RO math.OC
In this paper, we demonstrate a novel hybrid architecture for coordinating networked robots in sensing and information routing applications. The proposed INformation and Sensing driven PhysIcally REconfigurable robotic network (INSPIRE), consists of a Physical Control Plane (PCP) which commands agent position, and an Information Control Plane (ICP) which regulates information flow towards communication/sensing objectives. We describe an instantiation where a mobile robotic network is dynamically reconfigured to ensure high quality routes between static wireless nodes, which act as source/destination pairs for information flow. The ICP commands the robots towards evenly distributed inter-flow allocations, with intra-flow configurations that maximize route quality. The PCP then guides the robots via potential-based control to reconfigure according to ICP commands. This formulation, deemed Route Swarm, decouples information flow and physical control, generating a feedback between routing and sensing needs and robotic configuration. We demonstrate our propositions through simulation under a realistic wireless network regime.
1308.0041
A Tractable Model for Non-Coherent Joint-Transmission Base Station Cooperation
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
This paper presents a tractable model for analyzing non-coherent joint transmission base station (BS) cooperation, taking into account the irregular BS deployment typically encountered in practice. Besides cellular-network specific aspects such as BS density, channel fading, average path loss and interference, the model also captures relevant cooperation mechanisms including user-centric BS clustering and channel-dependent cooperation activation. The locations of all BSs are modeled by a Poisson point process. Using tools from stochastic geometry, the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio ($\mathtt{SINR}$) distribution with cooperation is precisely characterized in a generality-preserving form. The result is then applied to practical design problems of recent interest. We find that increasing the network-wide BS density improves the $\mathtt{SINR}$, while the gains increase with the path loss exponent. For pilot-based channel estimation, the average spectral efficiency saturates at cluster sizes of around $7$ BSs for typical values, irrespective of backhaul quality. Finally, it is shown that intra-cluster frequency reuse is favorable in moderately loaded cells with generous cooperation activation, while intra-cluster coordinated scheduling may be better in lightly loaded cells with conservative cooperation activation.
1308.0047
On Lattices and the Dualities of Information Measures
cs.IT math.IT q-bio.QM
Measures of dependence among variables, and measures of information content and shared information have become valuable tools of multi-variable data analysis. Information measures, like marginal entropies, mutual and multi-information, have a number of significant advantages over more standard statistical methods, like their reduced sensitivity to sampling limitations than statistical estimates of probability densities. There are also interesting applications of these measures to the theory of complexity and to statistical mechanics. Their mathematical properties and relationships are therefore of interest at several levels. Of the interesting relationships between common information measures, perhaps none are more intriguing and as elegant as the duality relationships based on Mobius inversions. These inversions are directly related to the lattices (posets) that describe these sets of variables and their multi-variable measures. In this paper we describe extensions of the duality previously noted by Bell to a range of measures, and show how the structure of the lattice determines fundamental relationships of these functions. Our major result is a set of interlinked duality relations among marginal entropies, interaction information, and conditional interaction information. The implications of these results include a flexible range of alternative formulations of information-based measures, and a new set of sum rules that arise from path-independent sums on the lattice. Our motivation is to advance the fundamental integration of this set of ideas and relations, and to show explicitly the ways in which all these measures are interrelated through lattice properties. These ideas can be useful in constructing theories of complexity, descriptions of large scale stochastic processes and systems, and in devising algorithms and approximations for computations in multi-variable data analysis.
1308.0075
Polynomial-Phase Signal Direction-Finding & Source-Tracking with an Acoustic Vector Sensor
stat.AP cs.IT math.IT
A new ESPRIT-based algorithm is proposed to estimate the direction-of-arrival of an arbitrary degree polynomial-phase signal with a single acoustic vector sensor. The proposed approach requires neither a priori knowledge of the polynomial-phase signal's coefficients nor a priori knowledge of the polynomial-phase signal's frequency-spectrum. A pre-processing technique is also proposed to incorporate the single-forgetting-factor algorithm and multiple-forgetting-factor adaptive tracking algorithm to track a polynomial-phase signal using one acoustic vector sensor. Simulation results verify the efficacy of the proposed direction finding and source tracking algorithms.
1308.0094
Improving Physical Layer Secrecy Using Full-Duplex Jamming Receivers
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies secrecy rate optimization in a wireless network with a single-antenna source, a multi-antenna destination and a multi-antenna eavesdropper. This is an unfavorable scenario for secrecy performance as the system is interference-limited. In the literature, assuming that the receiver operates in half duplex (HD) mode, the aforementioned problem has been addressed via use of cooperating nodes who act as jammers to confound the eavesdropper. This paper investigates an alternative solution, which assumes the availability of a full duplex (FD) receiver. In particular, while receiving data, the receiver transmits jamming noise to degrade the eavesdropper channel. The proposed self-protection scheme eliminates the need for external helpers and provides system robustness. For the case in which global channel state information is available, we aim to design the optimal jamming covariance matrix that maximizes the secrecy rate and mitigates loop interference associated with the FD operation. We consider both fixed and optimal linear receiver design at the destination, and show that the optimal jamming covariance matrix is rank-1, and can be found via an efficient 1-D search. For the case in which only statistical information on the eavesdropper channel is available, the optimal power allocation is studied in terms of ergodic and outage secrecy rates. Simulation results verify the analysis and demonstrate substantial performance gain over conventional HD operation at the destination.
1308.0102
Mutual Information-Based Planning for Informative Windowed Forecasting of Continuous-Time Linear Systems
cs.SY cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents expression of mutual information that defines the information gain in planning of sensing resources, when the goal is to reduce the forecast uncertainty of some quantities of interest and the system dynamics is described as a continuous-time linear system. The method extends the smoother approach in [5] to handle more general notion of verification entity - continuous sequence of variables over some finite time window in the future. The expression of mutual information for this windowed forecasting case is derived and quantified, taking advantage of underlying conditional independence structure and utilizing the fixed-interval smoothing formula with correlated noises. Two numerical examples on (a) simplified weather forecasting with moving verification paths, and (b) sensor network scheduling for tracking of multiple moving targets are considered for validation of the proposed approach.
1308.0104
A Fast Eigen Solution for Homogeneous Quadratic Minimization with at most Three Constraints
math.NA cs.IT math.IT
We propose an eigenvalue based technique to solve the Homogeneous Quadratic Constrained Quadratic Programming problem (HQCQP) with at most 3 constraints which arise in many signal processing problems. Semi-Definite Relaxation (SDR) is the only known approach and is computationally intensive. We study the performance of the proposed fast eigen approach through simulations in the context of MIMO relays and show that the solution converges to the solution obtained using the SDR approach with significant reduction in complexity.
1308.0109
Optimal Receiver Design for Diffusive Molecular Communication With Flow and Additive Noise
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we perform receiver design for a diffusive molecular communication environment. Our model includes flow in any direction, sources of information molecules in addition to the transmitter, and enzymes in the propagation environment to mitigate intersymbol interference. We characterize the mutual information between receiver observations to show how often independent observations can be made. We derive the maximum likelihood sequence detector to provide a lower bound on the bit error probability. We propose the family of weighted sum detectors for more practical implementation and derive their expected bit error probability. Under certain conditions, the performance of the optimal weighted sum detector is shown to be equivalent to a matched filter. Receiver simulation results show the tradeoff in detector complexity versus achievable bit error probability, and that a slow flow in any direction can improve the performance of a weighted sum detector.