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1308.1389
Degrees of Freedom for the MIMO Multi-way Relay Channel
cs.IT math.IT
This paper investigates the degrees of freedom (DoF) of the L-cluster, K-user MIMO multi-way relay channel, where users in each cluster wish to exchange messages within the cluster, and they can only communicate through the relay. A novel DoF upper bound is derived by providing users with carefully designed genie information. Achievable DoF is identified using signal space alignment and multiple-access transmission. For the two-cluster MIMO multi-way relay channel with two users in each cluster, DoF is established for the general case when users and the relay have arbitrary number of antennas, and it is shown that the DoF upper bound can be achieved using signal space alignment or multiple-access transmission, or a combination of both. The result is then generalized to the three user case. For the L-cluster K-user MIMO multi-way relay channel in the symmetric setting, conditions under which the DoF upper bound can be achieved are established. In addition to being shown to be tight in a variety of scenarios of interests of the multi-way relay channel, the newly derived upperbound also establishes the optimality of several previously established achievable DoF results for multiuser relay channels that are special cases of the multi-way relay channel.
1308.1391
Low-Dimensional Reconciliation for Continuous-Variable Quantum Key Distribution
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
We propose an efficient logical layer-based reconciliation method for continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) to extract binary information from correlated Gaussian variables. We demonstrate that by operating on the raw-data level, the noise of the quantum channel can be corrected in the low-dimensional (scalar) space and the reconciliation can be extended to arbitrary dimensions. The CVQKD systems allow an unconditionally secret communication over standard telecommunication networks. To exploit the real potential of CVQKD a robust reconciliation technique is needed. It is currently unavailable, which makes it impossible to reach the real performance of the CVQKD protocols. The reconciliation is a post-processing step separated from the transmission of quantum states, which is aimed to derive the secret key from the raw data. The reconciliation process of correlated Gaussian variables is a complex problem that requires either tomography in the physical layer that is intractable in a practical scenario, or high-cost calculations in the multidimensional spherical space with strict dimensional limitations. To avoid these issues we define the low-dimensional reconciliation. We prove that the error probability of one-dimensional reconciliation is zero in any practical CVQKD scenario, and provides unconditional security. The results allow to significantly improve the currently available key rates and transmission distances of CVQKD.
1308.1418
A Latent Social Approach to YouTube Popularity Prediction
cs.SI cs.MM cs.NI physics.soc-ph
Current works on Information Centric Networking assume the spectrum of caching strategies under the Least Recently/ Frequently Used (LRFU) scheme as the de-facto standard, due to the ease of implementation and easier analysis of such strategies. In this paper we predict the popularity distribution of YouTube videos within a campus network. We explore two broad approaches in predicting the popularity of videos in the network: consensus approaches based on aggregate behavior in the network, and social approaches based on the information diffusion over an implicit network. We measure the performance of our approaches under a simple caching framework by picking the k most popular videos according to our predicted distribution and calculating the hit rate on the cache. We develop our approach by first incorporating video inter-arrival time (based on the power-law distribution governing the transmission time between two receivers of the same message in scale-free networks) to the baseline (LRFU), then combining with an information diffusion model over the inferred latent social graph that governs diffusion of videos in the network. We apply techniques from latent social network inference to learn the sharing probabilities between users in the network and apply a virus propagation model borrowed from mathematical epidemiology to estimate the number of times a video will be accessed in the future. Our approach gives rise to a 14% hit rate improvement over the baseline.
1308.1440
Graywulf: A platform for federated scientific databases and services
cs.DB
Many fields of science rely on relational database management systems to analyze, publish and share data. Since RDBMS are originally designed for, and their development directions are primarily driven by, business use cases they often lack features very important for scientific applications. Horizontal scalability is probably the most important missing feature which makes it challenging to adapt traditional relational database systems to the ever growing data sizes. Due to the limited support of array data types and metadata management, successful application of RDBMS in science usually requires the development of custom extensions. While some of these extensions are specific to the field of science, the majority of them could easily be generalized and reused in other disciplines. With the Graywulf project we intend to target several goals. We are building a generic platform that offers reusable components for efficient storage, transformation, statistical analysis and presentation of scientific data stored in Microsoft SQL Server. Graywulf also addresses the distributed computational issues arising from current RDBMS technologies. The current version supports load balancing of simple queries and parallel execution of partitioned queries over a set of mirrored databases. Uniform user access to the data is provided through a web based query interface and a data surface for software clients. Queries are formulated in a slightly modified syntax of SQL that offers a transparent view of the distributed data. The software library consists of several components that can be reused to develop complex scientific data warehouses: a system registry, administration tools to manage entire database server clusters, a sophisticated workflow execution framework, and a SQL parser library.
1308.1464
ManyClaw: Slicing and dicing Riemann solvers for next generation highly parallel architectures
cs.CE cs.MS
Next generation computer architectures will include order of magnitude more intra-node parallelism; however, many application programmers have a difficult time keeping their codes current with the state-of-the-art machines. In this context, we analyze Hyperbolic PDE solvers, which are used in the solution of many important applications in science and engineering. We present ManyClaw, a project intended to explore the exploitation of intra-node parallelism in hyperbolic PDE solvers via the Clawpack software package for solving hyperbolic PDEs. Our goal is to separate the low level parallelism and the physical equations thus providing users the capability to leverage intra-node parallelism without explicitly writing code to take advantage of newer architectures.
1308.1471
Application of Inventory Management Principles for Efficient Data Placement in Storage Networks
cs.DB
The principles and strategies found in material management are comparable and analogue with the data management. This paper concentrates on the conversion of product inventory management principles into data inventory management principles. Efforts were made to enumerate various impacting parameters that would be appropriate to consider if any data inventory model could be plotted.
1308.1482
Increasing Robustness of the Anesthesia Process from Difference Patient's Delay Using a State-Space Model Predictive Controller
cs.SY
The process of anesthesia is nonlinear with time delay and also there are some constraints which have to be considered in calculating administrative drug dosage. We present an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) observer to estimate drug concentration in the patient's body and use this estimation in a state-space based Model of Predictive Controller (MPC) for controlling the depth of anesthesia. Bispectral Index (BIS) is used as a patient consciousness index and propofol as an anesthetic agent. Performance evaluations of the proposed controller, the results have been compared with those of a MPC controller. The results demonstrate that state-space MPC including the EKF estimator for controlling the anesthesia process can significantly increase the robustness in encountering patients' delay deviations in comparison with the MPC.
1308.1484
A Multi-Swarm Cellular PSO based on Clonal Selection Algorithm in Dynamic Environments
cs.NE cs.AI
Many real-world problems are dynamic optimization problems. In this case, the optima in the environment change dynamically. Therefore, traditional optimization algorithms disable to track and find optima. In this paper, a new multi-swarm cellular particle swarm optimization based on clonal selection algorithm (CPSOC) is proposed for dynamic environments. In the proposed algorithm, the search space is partitioned into cells by a cellular automaton. Clustered particles in each cell, which make a sub-swarm, are evolved by the particle swarm optimization and clonal selection algorithm. Experimental results on Moving Peaks Benchmark demonstrate the superiority of the CPSOC its popular methods.
1308.1503
ALOHA Random Access that Operates as a Rateless Code
cs.IT math.IT
Various applications of wireless Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications have rekindled the research interest in random access protocols, suitable to support a large number of connected devices. Slotted ALOHA and its derivatives represent a simple solution for distributed random access in wireless networks. Recently, a framed version of slotted ALOHA gained renewed interest due to the incorporation of successive interference cancellation (SIC) in the scheme, which resulted in substantially higher throughputs. Based on similar principles and inspired by the rateless coding paradigm, a frameless approach for distributed random access in slotted ALOHA framework is described in this paper. The proposed approach shares an operational analogy with rateless coding, expressed both through the user access strategy and the adaptive length of the contention period, with the objective to end the contention when the instantaneous throughput is maximized. The paper presents the related analysis, providing heuristic criteria for terminating the contention period and showing that very high throughputs can be achieved, even for a low number for contending users. The demonstrated results potentially have more direct practical implications compared to the approaches for coded random access that lead to high throughputs only asymptotically.
1308.1507
Logical analysis of natural language semantics to solve the problem of computer understanding
cs.CL
An object--oriented approach to create a natural language understanding system is considered. The understanding program is a formal system built on the base of predicative calculus. Horn's clauses are used as well--formed formulas. An inference is based on the principle of resolution. Sentences of natural language are represented in the view of typical predicate set. These predicates describe physical objects and processes, abstract objects, categories and semantic relations between objects. Predicates for concrete assertions are saved in a database. To describe the semantics of classes for physical objects, abstract concepts and processes, a knowledge base is applied. The proposed representation of natural language sentences is a semantic net. Nodes of such net are typical predicates. This approach is perspective as, firstly, such typification of nodes facilitates essentially forming of processing algorithms and object descriptions, secondly, the effectiveness of algorithms is increased (particularly for the great number of nodes), thirdly, to describe the semantics of words, encyclopedic knowledge is used, and this permits essentially to extend the class of solved problems.
1308.1509
Monotone Smoothing Splines Using General Linear Systems
cs.SY cs.IT math.IT math.OC stat.AP
In this paper, a method is proposed to solve the problem of monotone smoothing splines using general linear systems. This problem, also called monotone control theoretic splines, has been solved only when the curve generator is modeled by the second-order integrator, but not for other cases. The difficulty in the problem is that the monotonicity constraint should be satisfied over an interval which has the cardinality of the continuum. To solve this problem, we first formulate the problem as a semi-infinite quadratic programming, and then we adopt a discretization technique to obtain a finite-dimensional quadratic programming problem. It is shown that the solution of the finite-dimensional problem always satisfies the infinite-dimensional monotonicity constraint. It is also proved that the approximated solution converges to the exact solution as the discretization grid-size tends to zero. An example is presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
1308.1533
Topological Structure of Urban Street Networks from the Perspective of Degree Correlations
physics.soc-ph cs.SI nlin.AO
Many complex networks demonstrate a phenomenon of striking degree correlations, i.e., a node tends to link to other nodes with similar (or dissimilar) degrees. From the perspective of degree correlations, this paper attempts to characterize topological structures of urban street networks. We adopted six urban street networks (three European and three North American), and converted them into network topologies in which nodes and edges respectively represent individual streets and street intersections, and compared the network topologies to three reference network topologies (biological, technological, and social). The urban street network topologies (with the exception of Manhattan) showed a consistent pattern that distinctly differs from the three reference networks. The topologies of urban street networks lack striking degree correlations in general. Through reshuffling the network topologies towards for example maximum or minimum degree correlations while retaining the initial degree distributions, we found that all the surrogate topologies of the urban street networks, as well as the reference ones, tended to deviate from small world properties. This implies that the initial degree correlations do not have any positive or negative effect on the networks' performance or functions. Keywords: Scale free, small world, rewiring, rich club effect, reshuffle, and complex networks
1308.1590
Sparse Representations for Packetized Predictive Networked Control
cs.SY cs.IT math.IT math.OC
We investigate a networked control architecture for LTI plant models with a scalar input. Communication from controller to actuator is over an unreliable network which introduces packet dropouts. To achieve robustness against dropouts, we adopt a packetized predictive control paradigm wherein each control packet transmitted contains tentative future plant input values. The novelty of our approach is that we seek that the control packets transmitted be sparse. For that purpose, we adapt tools from the area of compressed sensing and propose to design the control packets via on-line minimization of a suitable L1/L2 cost function. We then show how to choose parameters of the cost function to ensure that the resultant closed loop system be practically stable, provided the maximum number of consecutive packet dropouts is bounded. A numerical example illustrates that sparsity reduces bit-rates, thereby making our proposal suited to control over unreliable and bit-rate limited networks.
1308.1600
Universal codes of the natural numbers
cs.LO cs.IT math.IT
A code of the natural numbers is a uniquely-decodable binary code of the natural numbers with non-decreasing codeword lengths, which satisfies Kraft's inequality tightly. We define a natural partial order on the set of codes, and show how to construct effectively a code better than a given sequence of codes, in a certain precise sense. As an application, we prove that the existence of a scale of codes (a well-ordered set of codes which contains a code better than any given code) is independent of ZFC.
1308.1603
A Note on Topology Preservation in Classification, and the Construction of a Universal Neuron Grid
cs.NE cs.AI nlin.AO stat.ML
It will be shown that according to theorems of K. Menger, every neuron grid if identified with a curve is able to preserve the adopted qualitative structure of a data space. Furthermore, if this identification is made, the neuron grid structure can always be mapped to a subset of a universal neuron grid which is constructable in three space dimensions. Conclusions will be drawn for established neuron grid types as well as neural fields.
1308.1605
The stability of a graph partition: A dynamics-based framework for community detection
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI physics.data-an
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the analysis of complex networks, facilitated by the availability of relational data and the increasingly powerful computational resources that can be employed for their analysis. Naturally, the study of real-world systems leads to highly complex networks and a current challenge is to extract intelligible, simplified descriptions from the network in terms of relevant subgraphs, which can provide insight into the structure and function of the overall system. Sparked by seminal work by Newman and Girvan, an interesting line of research has been devoted to investigating modular community structure in networks, revitalising the classic problem of graph partitioning. However, modular or community structure in networks has notoriously evaded rigorous definition. The most accepted notion of community is perhaps that of a group of elements which exhibit a stronger level of interaction within themselves than with the elements outside the community. This concept has resulted in a plethora of computational methods and heuristics for community detection. Nevertheless a firm theoretical understanding of most of these methods, in terms of how they operate and what they are supposed to detect, is still lacking to date. Here, we will develop a dynamical perspective towards community detection enabling us to define a measure named the stability of a graph partition. It will be shown that a number of previously ad-hoc defined heuristics for community detection can be seen as particular cases of our method providing us with a dynamic reinterpretation of those measures. Our dynamics-based approach thus serves as a unifying framework to gain a deeper understanding of different aspects and problems associated with community detection and allows us to propose new dynamically-inspired criteria for community structure.
1308.1609
Geometric Relationships Between Gaussian and Modulo-Lattice Error Exponents
cs.IT math.IT
Lattice coding and decoding have been shown to achieve the capacity of the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. This was accomplished using a minimum mean-square error scaling and randomization to transform the AWGN channel into a modulo-lattice additive noise channel of the same capacity. It has been further shown that when operating at rates below capacity but above the critical rate of the channel, there exists a rate-dependent scaling such that the associated modulo-lattice channel attains the error exponent of the AWGN channel. A geometric explanation for this result is developed. In particular, it is shown how the geometry of typical error events for the modulo-lattice channel coincides with that of a spherical code for the AWGN channel.
1308.1688
The Number Theoretic Hilbert Transform
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT math.NT
This paper presents a general expression for a number-theoretic Hilbert transform (NHT). The transformations preserve the circulant nature of the discrete Hilbert transform (DHT) matrix together with alternating values in each row being zero and non-zero. Specific examples for 4-point, 6-point, and 8-point NHT are provided. The NHT transformation can be used as a primitive to create cryptographically useful scrambling transformations.
1308.1725
State Estimation over Sensor Networks with Correlated Wireless Fading Channels
math.OC cs.IT cs.SY math.IT
Stochastic stability for centralized time-varying Kalman filtering over a wireles ssensor network with correlated fading channels is studied. On their route to the gateway, sensor packets, possibly aggregated with measurements from several nodes, may be dropped because of fading links. To study this situation, we introduce a network state process, which describes a finite set of configurations of the radio environment. The network state characterizes the channel gain distributions of the links, which are allowed to be correlated between each other. Temporal correlations of channel gains are modeled by allowing the network state process to form a (semi-)Markov chain. We establish sufficient conditions that ensure the Kalman filter to be exponentially bounded. In the one-sensor case, this new stability condition is shown to include previous results obtained in the literature as special cases. The results also hold when using power and bit-rate control policies, where the transmission power and bit-rate of each node are nonlinear mapping of the network state and channel gains.
1308.1744
Adaptive Controller Placement for Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks with Erasure Channels
cs.SY math.OC
Wireless sensor-actuator networks offer flexibility for control design. One novel element which may arise in networks with multiple nodes is that the role of some nodes does not need to be fixed. In particular, there is no need to pre-allocate which nodes assume controller functions and which ones merely relay data. We present a flexible architecture for networked control using multiple nodes connected in series over analog erasure channels without acknowledgments. The control architecture proposed adapts to changes in network conditions, by allowing the role played by individual nodes to depend upon transmission outcomes. We adopt stochastic models for transmission outcomes and characterize the distribution of controller location and the covariance of system states. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed architecture has the potential to give better performance than limiting control calculations to be carried out at a fixed node.
1308.1745
Power Control and Coding Formulation for State Estimation with Wireless Sensors
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
Technological advances have made wireless sensors cheap and reliable enough to be brought into industrial use. A major challenge arises from the fact that wireless channels introduce random packet dropouts. Power control and coding are key enabling technologies in wireless communications to ensure efficient communications. In the present work, we examine the role of power control and coding for Kalman filtering over wireless correlated channels. Two estimation architectures are considered: In the first, the sensors send their measurements directly to a single gateway. In the second scheme, wireless relay nodes provide additional links. The gateway decides on the coding scheme and the transmitter power levels of the wireless nodes. The decision process is carried out on-line and adapts to varying channel conditions in order to improve the trade-off between state estimation accuracy and energy expenditure. In combination with predictive power control, we investigate the use of multiple-description coding, zero-error coding and network coding and provide sufficient conditions for the expectation of the estimation error covariance matrix to be bounded. Numerical results suggest that the proposed method may lead to energy savings of around 50 %, when compared to an alternative scheme, wherein transmission power levels and bit-rates are governed by simple logic. In particular, zero-error coding is preferable at time instances with high channel gains, whereas multiple-description coding is superior for time instances with low gains. When channels between the sensors and the gateway are in deep fades, network coding improves estimation accuracy significantly without sacrificing energy efficiency.
1308.1746
Online Decision Making in Crowdsourcing Markets: Theoretical Challenges (Position Paper)
cs.SI cs.CY cs.HC
Over the past decade, crowdsourcing has emerged as a cheap and efficient method of obtaining solutions to simple tasks that are difficult for computers to solve but possible for humans. The popularity and promise of crowdsourcing markets has led to both empirical and theoretical research on the design of algorithms to optimize various aspects of these markets, such as the pricing and assignment of tasks. Much of the existing theoretical work on crowdsourcing markets has focused on problems that fall into the broad category of online decision making; task requesters or the crowdsourcing platform itself make repeated decisions about prices to set, workers to filter out, problems to assign to specific workers, or other things. Often these decisions are complex, requiring algorithms that learn about the distribution of available tasks or workers over time and take into account the strategic (or sometimes irrational) behavior of workers. As human computation grows into its own field, the time is ripe to address these challenges in a principled way. However, it appears very difficult to capture all pertinent aspects of crowdsourcing markets in a single coherent model. In this paper, we reflect on the modeling issues that inhibit theoretical research on online decision making for crowdsourcing, and identify some steps forward. This paper grew out of the authors' own frustration with these issues, and we hope it will encourage the community to attempt to understand, debate, and ultimately address them. The authors welcome feedback for future revisions of this paper.
1308.1747
Sequence-based Anytime Control
math.OC cs.SY
We present two related anytime algorithms for control of nonlinear systems when the processing resources available are time-varying. The basic idea is to calculate tentative control input sequences for as many time steps into the future as allowed by the available processing resources at every time step. This serves to compensate for the time steps when the processor is not available to perform any control calculations. Using a stochastic Lyapunov function based approach, we analyze the stability of the resulting closed loop system for the cases when the processor availability can be modeled as an independent and identically distributed sequence and via an underlying Markov chain. Numerical simulations indicate that the increase in performance due to the proposed algorithms can be significant.
1308.1761
The Deterministic Capacity of Relay Networks with Relay Private Messages
cs.IT math.IT
We study the capacity region of a deterministic 4-node network, where 3 nodes can only communicate via the fourth one. However, the fourth node is not merely a relay since it can exchange private messages with all other nodes. This situation resembles the case where a base station relays messages between users and delivers messages between the backbone system and the users. We assume an asymmetric scenario where the channel between any two nodes is not reciprocal. First, an upper bound on the capacity region is obtained based on the notion of single sided genie. Subsequently, we construct an achievable scheme that achieves this upper bound using a superposition of broadcasting node 4 messages and an achievable "detour" scheme for a reduced 3-user relay network.
1308.1776
Comparing the usage of global and local Wikipedias with focus on Swedish Wikipedia
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
This report summarizes the results of a short-term student research project focused on the usage of Swedish Wikipedia. It is trying to answer the following question: To what extent (and why) do people from non-English language communities use the English Wikipedia instead of the one in their local language? Article access time series and article edit time series from major Wikipedias including Swedish Wikipedia are analyzed with various tools.
1308.1779
Proving soundness of combinatorial Vickrey auctions and generating verified executable code
cs.GT cs.CE cs.LO
Using mechanised reasoning we prove that combinatorial Vickrey auctions are soundly specified in that they associate a unique outcome (allocation and transfers) to any valid input (bids). Having done so, we auto-generate verified executable code from the formally defined auction. This removes a source of error in implementing the auction design. We intend to use formal methods to verify new auction designs. Here, our contribution is to introduce and demonstrate the use of formal methods for auction verification in the familiar setting of a well-known auction.
1308.1792
OFF-Set: One-pass Factorization of Feature Sets for Online Recommendation in Persistent Cold Start Settings
cs.LG cs.IR
One of the most challenging recommendation tasks is recommending to a new, previously unseen user. This is known as the 'user cold start' problem. Assuming certain features or attributes of users are known, one approach for handling new users is to initially model them based on their features. Motivated by an ad targeting application, this paper describes an extreme online recommendation setting where the cold start problem is perpetual. Every user is encountered by the system just once, receives a recommendation, and either consumes or ignores it, registering a binary reward. We introduce One-pass Factorization of Feature Sets, OFF-Set, a novel recommendation algorithm based on Latent Factor analysis, which models users by mapping their features to a latent space. Furthermore, OFF-Set is able to model non-linear interactions between pairs of features. OFF-Set is designed for purely online recommendation, performing lightweight updates of its model per each recommendation-reward observation. We evaluate OFF-Set against several state of the art baselines, and demonstrate its superiority on real ad-targeting data.
1308.1801
Satellite image classification methods and Landsat 5TM bands
cs.CV astro-ph.IM
This paper attempts to find the most accurate classification method among parallelepiped, minimum distance and chain methods. Moreover, this study also challenges to find the suitable combination of bands, which can lead to better results in case combinations of bands occur. After comparing these three methods, the chain method over perform the other methods with 79% overall accuracy. Hence, it is more accurate than minimum distance with 67% and parallelepiped with 65%. On the other hand, based on bands features, and also by combining several researchers' findings, a table was created which includes the main objects on the land and the suitable combination of the bands for accurately detecting of landcover objects. During this process, it was observed that band 4 (out of 7 bands of Landsat 5TM) is the band, which can be used for increasing the accuracy of the combined bands in detecting objects on the land.
1308.1817
Semantic Computing of Moods Based on Tags in Social Media of Music
cs.MM cs.IR cs.SI
Social tags inherent in online music services such as Last.fm provide a rich source of information on musical moods. The abundance of social tags makes this data highly beneficial for developing techniques to manage and retrieve mood information, and enables study of the relationships between music content and mood representations with data substantially larger than that available for conventional emotion research. However, no systematic assessment has been done on the accuracy of social tags and derived semantic models at capturing mood information in music. We propose a novel technique called Affective Circumplex Transformation (ACT) for representing the moods of music tracks in an interpretable and robust fashion based on semantic computing of social tags and research in emotion modeling. We validate the technique by predicting listener ratings of moods in music tracks, and compare the results to prediction with the Vector Space Model (VSM), Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF), and Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA). The results show that ACT consistently outperforms the baseline techniques, and its performance is robust against a low number of track-level mood tags. The results give validity and analytical insights for harnessing millions of music tracks and associated mood data available through social tags in application development.
1308.1847
The Royal Birth of 2013: Analysing and Visualising Public Sentiment in the UK Using Twitter
cs.CL cs.IR cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Analysis of information retrieved from microblogging services such as Twitter can provide valuable insight into public sentiment in a geographic region. This insight can be enriched by visualising information in its geographic context. Two underlying approaches for sentiment analysis are dictionary-based and machine learning. The former is popular for public sentiment analysis, and the latter has found limited use for aggregating public sentiment from Twitter data. The research presented in this paper aims to extend the machine learning approach for aggregating public sentiment. To this end, a framework for analysing and visualising public sentiment from a Twitter corpus is developed. A dictionary-based approach and a machine learning approach are implemented within the framework and compared using one UK case study, namely the royal birth of 2013. The case study validates the feasibility of the framework for analysis and rapid visualisation. One observation is that there is good correlation between the results produced by the popular dictionary-based approach and the machine learning approach when large volumes of tweets are analysed. However, for rapid analysis to be possible faster methods need to be developed using big data techniques and parallel methods.
1308.1857
PANAS-t: A Pychometric Scale for Measuring Sentiments on Twitter
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Online social networks have become a major communication platform, where people share their thoughts and opinions about any topic real-time. The short text updates people post in these network contain emotions and moods, which when measured collectively can unveil the public mood at population level and have exciting implications for businesses, governments, and societies. Therefore, there is an urgent need for developing solid methods for accurately measuring moods from large-scale social media data. In this paper, we propose PANAS-t, which measures sentiments from short text updates in Twitter based on a well-established psychometric scale, PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule). We test the efficacy of PANAS-t over 10 real notable events drawn from 1.8 billion tweets and demonstrate that it can efficiently capture the expected sentiments of a wide variety of issues spanning tragedies, technology releases, political debates, and healthcare.
1308.1860
An Optimization Framework to Improve 4D-Var Data Assimilation System Performance
cs.CE
This paper develops a computational framework for optimizing the parameters of data assimilation systems in order to improve their performance. The approach formulates a continuous meta-optimization problem for parameters; the meta-optimization is constrained by the original data assimilation problem. The numerical solution process employs adjoint models and iterative solvers. The proposed framework is applied to optimize observation values, data weighting coefficients, and the location of sensors for a test problem. The ability to optimize a distributed measurement network is crucial for cutting down operating costs and detecting malfunctions.
1308.1876
A Non-Alternating Algorithm for Joint BS-RS Precoding Design in Two-Way Relay Systems
cs.IT math.IT
Cooperative relay systems have become an active area of research during recent years since they help cellular networks to enhance data rate and coverage. In this paper we develop a method to jointly optimize precoding matrices for amplify-and-forward relay station and base station. Our objective is to increase max-min SINR fairness within co-channel users in a cell. The main achievement of this work is avoiding any tedious alternating optimization for joint design of RS/BS precoders, in order to save complexity. Moreover, no convex solver is required in this method. RS precoding is done by transforming the underlying non-convex problem into a system of nonlinear equations which is then solved using Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. This method for RS precoder design is guaranteed to converge to a local optimum. For the BS precoder a low-complexity iterative method is proposed. The efficiency of the joint optimization method is verified by simulations.
1308.1887
Comparing cost and performance of replication and erasure coding
cs.IT math.IT
Data storage systems are more reliable than their individual components. In order to build highly reliable systems out of less reliable parts, systems introduce redundancy. In replicated systems, objects are simply copied several times with each copy residing on a different physical device. While such an approach is simple and direct, more elaborate approaches such as erasure coding can achieve equivalent levels of data protection while using less redundancy. This report examines the trade-offs in cost and performance between replicated and erasure encoded storage systems.
1308.1889
SOSOPT: A Toolbox for Polynomial Optimization
math.OC cs.SY
SOSOPT is a Matlab toolbox for formulating and solving Sum-of-Squares (SOS) polynomial optimizations. This document briefly describes the use and functionality of this toolbox. Section 1 introduces the problem formulations for SOS tests, SOS feasibility problems, SOS optimizations, and generalized SOS problems. Section 2 reviews the SOSOPT toolbox for solving these optimizations. This section includes information on toolbox installation, formulating constraints, solving SOS optimizations, and setting optimization options. Finally, Section 3 briefly reviews the connections between SOS optimizations and semidefinite programs (SDPs). It is the connection to SDPs that enables SOS optimizations to be solved in an efficient manner
1308.1940
Time series modeling with pruned multi-layer perceptron and 2-stage damped least-squares method
cs.NE
A Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) defines a family of artificial neural networks often used in TS modeling and forecasting. Because of its "black box" aspect, many researchers refuse to use it. Moreover, the optimization (often based on the exhaustive approach where "all" configurations are tested) and learning phases of this artificial intelligence tool (often based on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm; LMA) are weaknesses of this approach (exhaustively and local minima). These two tasks must be repeated depending on the knowledge of each new problem studied, making the process, long, laborious and not systematically robust. In this paper a pruning process is proposed. This method allows, during the training phase, to carry out an inputs selecting method activating (or not) inter-nodes connections in order to verify if forecasting is improved. We propose to use iteratively the popular damped least-squares method to activate inputs and neurons. A first pass is applied to 10% of the learning sample to determine weights significantly different from 0 and delete other. Then a classical batch process based on LMA is used with the new MLP. The validation is done using 25 measured meteorological TS and cross-comparing the prediction results of the classical LMA and the 2-stage LMA.
1308.1947
Interdependent network reciprocity in evolutionary games
physics.soc-ph cs.GT cs.SI q-bio.PE
Besides the structure of interactions within networks, also the interactions between networks are of the outmost importance. We therefore study the outcome of the public goods game on two interdependent networks that are connected by means of a utility function, which determines how payoffs on both networks jointly influence the success of players in each individual network. We show that an unbiased coupling allows the spontaneous emergence of interdependent network reciprocity, which is capable to maintain healthy levels of public cooperation even in extremely adverse conditions. The mechanism, however, requires simultaneous formation of correlated cooperator clusters on both networks. If this does not emerge or if the coordination process is disturbed, network reciprocity fails, resulting in the total collapse of cooperation. Network interdependence can thus be exploited effectively to promote cooperation past the limits imposed by isolated networks, but only if the coordination between the interdependent networks is not disturbed.
1308.1968
Detection and Isolation of Link Failures under the Agreement Protocol
cs.SY cs.SI math.DS math.OC
In this paper a property of the multi-agent consensus dynamics that relates the failure of links in the network to jump discontinuities in the derivatives of the output responses of the nodes is derived and verified analytically. At the next step, an algorithm for sensor placement is proposed, which would enable the designer to detect and isolate any link failures across the network based on the observed jump discontinuities in the derivatives of the responses of a subset of nodes. These results are explained through elaborative examples.
1308.1975
Predicting protein contact map using evolutionary and physical constraints by integer programming (extended version)
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.LG math.OC q-bio.BM stat.ML
Motivation. Protein contact map describes the pairwise spatial and functional relationship of residues in a protein and contains key information for protein 3D structure prediction. Although studied extensively, it remains very challenging to predict contact map using only sequence information. Most existing methods predict the contact map matrix element-by-element, ignoring correlation among contacts and physical feasibility of the whole contact map. A couple of recent methods predict contact map based upon residue co-evolution, taking into consideration contact correlation and enforcing a sparsity restraint, but these methods require a very large number of sequence homologs for the protein under consideration and the resultant contact map may be still physically unfavorable. Results. This paper presents a novel method PhyCMAP for contact map prediction, integrating both evolutionary and physical restraints by machine learning and integer linear programming (ILP). The evolutionary restraints include sequence profile, residue co-evolution and context-specific statistical potential. The physical restraints specify more concrete relationship among contacts than the sparsity restraint. As such, our method greatly reduces the solution space of the contact map matrix and thus, significantly improves prediction accuracy. Experimental results confirm that PhyCMAP outperforms currently popular methods no matter how many sequence homologs are available for the protein under consideration. PhyCMAP can predict contacts within minutes after PSIBLAST search for sequence homologs is done, much faster than the two recent methods PSICOV and EvFold. See http://raptorx.uchicago.edu for the web server.
1308.1981
A Framework for the Analysis of Computational Imaging Systems with Practical Applications
cs.CV
Over the last decade, a number of Computational Imaging (CI) systems have been proposed for tasks such as motion deblurring, defocus deblurring and multispectral imaging. These techniques increase the amount of light reaching the sensor via multiplexing and then undo the deleterious effects of multiplexing by appropriate reconstruction algorithms. Given the widespread appeal and the considerable enthusiasm generated by these techniques, a detailed performance analysis of the benefits conferred by this approach is important. Unfortunately, a detailed analysis of CI has proven to be a challenging problem because performance depends equally on three components: (1) the optical multiplexing, (2) the noise characteristics of the sensor, and (3) the reconstruction algorithm. A few recent papers have performed analysis taking multiplexing and noise characteristics into account. However, analysis of CI systems under state-of-the-art reconstruction algorithms, most of which exploit signal prior models, has proven to be unwieldy. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis framework incorporating all three components. In order to perform this analysis, we model the signal priors using a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM). A GMM prior confers two unique characteristics. Firstly, GMM satisfies the universal approximation property which says that any prior density function can be approximated to any fidelity using a GMM with appropriate number of mixtures. Secondly, a GMM prior lends itself to analytical tractability allowing us to derive simple expressions for the `minimum mean square error' (MMSE), which we use as a metric to characterize the performance of CI systems. We use our framework to analyze several previously proposed CI techniques, giving conclusive answer to the question: `How much performance gain is due to use of a signal prior and how much is due to multiplexing?
1308.1995
Predicting Trends in Social Networks via Dynamic Activeness Model
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
With the effect of word-of-the-mouth, trends in social networks are now playing a significant role in shaping people's lives. Predicting dynamic trends is an important problem with many useful applications. There are three dynamic characteristics of a trend that should be captured by a trend model: intensity, coverage and duration. However, existing approaches on the information diffusion are not capable of capturing these three characteristics. In this paper, we study the problem of predicting dynamic trends in social networks. We first define related concepts to quantify the dynamic characteristics of trends in social networks, and formalize the problem of trend prediction. We then propose a Dynamic Activeness (DA) model based on the novel concept of activeness, and design a trend prediction algorithm using the DA model. Due to the use of stacking principle, we are able to make the prediction algorithm very efficient. We examine the prediction algorithm on a number of real social network datasets, and show that it is more accurate than state-of-the-art approaches.
1308.2013
Min-Max Design of FIR Digital Filters by Semidefinite Programming
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
In this article we consider two problems: FIR (Finite Impulse Response) approximation of IIR (Infinite Impulse Response) filters and inverse FIR filtering of FIR or IIR filters. By means of Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov (KYP) lemma and its generalization (GKYP), the problems are reduced to semidefinite programming described in linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). MATLAB codes for these design methods are given. An design example shows the effectiveness of these methods.
1308.2015
Role of social environment and social clustering in spread of opinions in co-evolving networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Taking a pragmatic approach to the processes involved in the phenomena of collective opinion formation, we investigate two specific modifications to the co-evolving network voter model of opinion formation, studied by Holme and Newman [1]. First, we replace the rewiring probability parameter by a distribution of probability of accepting or rejecting opinions between individuals, accounting for the asymmetric influences in relationships among individuals in a social group. Second, we modify the rewiring step by a path-length-based preference for rewiring that reinforces local clustering. We have investigated the influences of these modifications on the outcomes of the simulations of this model. We found that varying the shape of the distribution of probability of accepting or rejecting opinions can lead to the emergence of two qualitatively distinct final states, one having several isolated connected components each in internal consensus leading to the existence of diverse set of opinions and the other having one single dominant connected component with each node within it having the same opinion. Furthermore, and more importantly, we found that the initial clustering in network can also induce similar transitions. Our investigation also brings forward that these transitions are governed by a weak and complex dependence on system size. We found that the networks in the final states of the model have rich structural properties including the small world property for some parameter regimes. [1] P. Holme and M. Newman, Phys. Rev. E 74, 056108 (2006).
1308.2027
Symmetric Toeplitz-Structured Compressed Sensing Matrices
cs.IT math.IT
How to construct a suitable measurement matrix is still an open question in compressed sensing. A significant part of the recent work is that the measurement matrices are not completely random on the entries but exhibit considerable structure. In this paper, we proved that the symmetric Toeplitz matrix and its transforms can be used as measurement matrix and recovery signal with high probability. Compared with random matrices (e.g. Gaussian and Bernullio matrices) and some structured matrices (e.g. Toeplitz and circulant matrices), we need to generate fewer independent entries to obtain the measurement matrix while the effectiveness of recovery does not get worse. Furthermore, the signal can be recovered more efficiently by the algorithm.
1308.2058
RBioCloud: A Light-weight Framework for Bioconductor and R-based Jobs on the Cloud
cs.DC cs.CE cs.PF cs.SE
Large-scale ad hoc analytics of genomic data is popular using the R-programming language supported by 671 software packages provided by Bioconductor. More recently, analytical jobs are benefitting from on-demand computing and storage, their scalability and their low maintenance cost, all of which are offered by the cloud. While Biologists and Bioinformaticists can take an analytical job and execute it on their personal workstations, it remains challenging to seamlessly execute the job on the cloud infrastructure without extensive knowledge of the cloud dashboard. How analytical jobs can not only with minimum effort be executed on the cloud, but also how both the resources and data required by the job can be managed is explored in this paper. An open-source light-weight framework for executing R-scripts using Bioconductor packages, referred to as `RBioCloud', is designed and developed. RBioCloud offers a set of simple command-line tools for managing the cloud resources, the data and the execution of the job. Three biological test cases validate the feasibility of RBioCloud. The framework is publicly available from http://www.rbiocloud.com.
1308.2063
Signal Reconstruction via H-infinity Sampled-Data Control Theory: Beyond the Shannon Paradigm
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
This paper presents a new method for signal reconstruction by leveraging sampled-data control theory. We formulate the signal reconstruction problem in terms of an analog performance optimization problem using a stable discrete-time filter. The proposed H-infinity performance criterion naturally takes intersample behavior into account, reflecting the energy distributions of the signal. We present methods for computing optimal solutions which are guaranteed to be stable and causal. Detailed comparisons to alternative methods are provided. We discuss some applications in sound and image reconstruction.
1308.2066
Parallel Simulations for Analysing Portfolios of Catastrophic Event Risk
cs.DC cs.CE cs.PF
At the heart of the analytical pipeline of a modern quantitative insurance/reinsurance company is a stochastic simulation technique for portfolio risk analysis and pricing process referred to as Aggregate Analysis. Support for the computation of risk measures including Probable Maximum Loss (PML) and the Tail Value at Risk (TVAR) for a variety of types of complex property catastrophe insurance contracts including Cat eXcess of Loss (XL), or Per-Occurrence XL, and Aggregate XL, and contracts that combine these measures is obtained in Aggregate Analysis. In this paper, we explore parallel methods for aggregate risk analysis. A parallel aggregate risk analysis algorithm and an engine based on the algorithm is proposed. This engine is implemented in C and OpenMP for multi-core CPUs and in C and CUDA for many-core GPUs. Performance analysis of the algorithm indicates that GPUs offer an alternative HPC solution for aggregate risk analysis that is cost effective. The optimised algorithm on the GPU performs a 1 million trial aggregate simulation with 1000 catastrophic events per trial on a typical exposure set and contract structure in just over 20 seconds which is approximately 15x times faster than the sequential counterpart. This can sufficiently support the real-time pricing scenario in which an underwriter analyses different contractual terms and pricing while discussing a deal with a client over the phone.
1308.2069
Finite p-groups, entropy vectors and the Ingleton inequality for nilpotent groups
cs.IT math.GR math.IT
In this paper we study the capacity/entropy region of finite, directed, acyclic, multiple-sources, multiple-sinks network by means of group theory and entropy vectors coming from groups. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the entropy vector of a collection of n random variables and a certain group-characterizable vector obtained from a finite group and n of its subgroups. We are looking at nilpotent group characterizable entropy vectors and show that they are all also Abelian group characterizable, and hence they satisfy the Ingleton inequality. It is known that not all entropic vectors can be obtained from Abelian groups, so our result implies that in order to get more exotic entropic vectors, one has to go at least to soluble groups or larger nilpotency classes. The result also implies that Ingleton inequality is satisfied by nilpotent groups of bounded class, depending on the order of the group.
1308.2116
MaLeS: A Framework for Automatic Tuning of Automated Theorem Provers
cs.AI
MaLeS is an automatic tuning framework for automated theorem provers. It provides solutions for both the strategy finding as well as the strategy scheduling problem. This paper describes the tool and the methods used in it, and evaluates its performance on three automated theorem provers: E, LEO-II and Satallax. An evaluation on a subset of the TPTP library problems shows that on average a MaLeS-tuned prover solves 8.67% more problems than the prover with its default settings.
1308.2119
Deconstructing analogy
cs.AI
Analogy has been shown to be important in many key cognitive abilities, including learning, problem solving, creativity and language change. For cognitive models of analogy, the fundamental computational question is how its inherent complexity (its NP-hardness) is solved by the human cognitive system. Indeed, different models of analogical processing can be categorized by the simplification strategies they adopt to make this computational problem more tractable. In this paper, I deconstruct several of these models in terms of the simplification-strategies they use; a deconstruction that provides some interesting perspectives on the relative differences between them. Later, I consider whether any of these computational simplifications reflect the actual strategies used by people and sketch a new cognitive model that tries to present a closer fit to the psychological evidence.
1308.2124
Space as an invention of biological organisms
cs.AI
The question of the nature of space around us has occupied thinkers since the dawn of humanity, with scientists and philosophers today implicitly assuming that space is something that exists objectively. Here we show that this does not have to be the case: the notion of space could emerge when biological organisms seek an economic representation of their sensorimotor flow. The emergence of spatial notions does not necessitate the existence of real physical space, but only requires the presence of sensorimotor invariants called `compensable' sensory changes. We show mathematically and then in simulations that na\"ive agents making no assumptions about the existence of space are able to learn these invariants and to build the abstract notion that physicists call rigid displacement, which is independent of what is being displaced. Rigid displacements may underly perception of space as an unchanging medium within which objects are described by their relative positions. Our findings suggest that the question of the nature of space, currently exclusive to philosophy and physics, should also be addressed from the standpoint of neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
1308.2140
Axioms for Centrality
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Given a social network, which of its nodes are more central? This question has been asked many times in sociology, psychology and computer science, and a whole plethora of centrality measures (a.k.a. centrality indices, or rankings) were proposed to account for the importance of the nodes of a network. In this paper, we try to provide a mathematically sound survey of the most important classic centrality measures known from the literature and propose an axiomatic approach to establish whether they are actually doing what they have been designed for. Our axioms suggest some simple, basic properties that a centrality measure should exhibit. Surprisingly, only a new simple measure based on distances, harmonic centrality, turns out to satisfy all axioms; essentially, harmonic centrality is a correction to Bavelas's classic closeness centrality designed to take unreachable nodes into account in a natural way. As a sanity check, we examine in turn each measure under the lens of information retrieval, leveraging state-of-the-art knowledge in the discipline to measure the effectiveness of the various indices in locating web pages that are relevant to a query. While there are some examples of this comparisons in the literature, here for the first time we take into consideration centrality measures based on distances, such as closeness, in an information-retrieval setting. The results match closely the data we gathered using our axiomatic approach. Our results suggest that centrality measures based on distances, which have been neglected in information retrieval in favour of spectral centrality measures in the last years, are actually of very high quality; moreover, harmonic centrality pops up as an excellent general-purpose centrality index for arbitrary directed graphs.
1308.2144
In-Core Computation of Geometric Centralities with HyperBall: A Hundred Billion Nodes and Beyond
cs.DS cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Given a social network, which of its nodes are more central? This question has been asked many times in sociology, psychology and computer science, and a whole plethora of centrality measures (a.k.a. centrality indices, or rankings) were proposed to account for the importance of the nodes of a network. In this paper, we approach the problem of computing geometric centralities, such as closeness and harmonic centrality, on very large graphs; traditionally this task requires an all-pairs shortest-path computation in the exact case, or a number of breadth-first traversals for approximated computations, but these techniques yield very weak statistical guarantees on highly disconnected graphs. We rather assume that the graph is accessed in a semi-streaming fashion, that is, that adjacency lists are scanned almost sequentially, and that a very small amount of memory (in the order of a dozen bytes) per node is available in core memory. We leverage the newly discovered algorithms based on HyperLogLog counters, making it possible to approximate a number of geometric centralities at a very high speed and with high accuracy. While the application of similar algorithms for the approximation of closeness was attempted in the MapReduce framework, our exploitation of HyperLogLog counters reduces exponentially the memory footprint, paving the way for in-core processing of networks with a hundred billion nodes using "just" 2TiB of RAM. Moreover, the computations we describe are inherently parallelizable, and scale linearly with the number of available cores.
1308.2147
Exploiting Locality in Lease-Based Replicated Transactional Memory via Task Migration
cs.DB cs.DC
We present Lilac-TM, the first locality-aware Distributed Software Transactional Memory (DSTM) implementation. Lilac-TM is a fully decentralized lease-based replicated DSTM. It employs a novel self- optimizing lease circulation scheme based on the idea of dynamically determining whether to migrate transactions to the nodes that own the leases required for their validation, or to demand the acquisition of these leases by the node that originated the transaction. Our experimental evaluation establishes that Lilac-TM provides significant performance gains for distributed workloads exhibiting data locality, while typically incurring no overhead for non-data local workloads.
1308.2166
Parallel Triangle Counting in Massive Streaming Graphs
cs.DB cs.DC cs.DS cs.SI
The number of triangles in a graph is a fundamental metric, used in social network analysis, link classification and recommendation, and more. Driven by these applications and the trend that modern graph datasets are both large and dynamic, we present the design and implementation of a fast and cache-efficient parallel algorithm for estimating the number of triangles in a massive undirected graph whose edges arrive as a stream. It brings together the benefits of streaming algorithms and parallel algorithms. By building on the streaming algorithms framework, the algorithm has a small memory footprint. By leveraging the paralell cache-oblivious framework, it makes efficient use of the memory hierarchy of modern multicore machines without needing to know its specific parameters. We prove theoretical bounds on accuracy, memory access cost, and parallel runtime complexity, as well as showing empirically that the algorithm yields accurate results and substantial speedups compared to an optimized sequential implementation. (This is an expanded version of a CIKM'13 paper of the same title.)
1308.2188
Finite-State Markov Modeling of Leaky Waveguide Channels in Communication-based Train Control (CBTC) Systems
cs.DM cs.IT math.IT
Leaky waveguide has been adopted in communication based train control (CBTC) systems, as it can significantly enhance railway network efficiency, safety and capacity. Since CBTC systems have high requirements for the train ground communications, modeling the leaky waveguide channels is very important to design the wireless networks and evaluate the performance of CBTC systems. In the letter, we develop a finite-state Markov channel (FSMC) model for leaky waveguide channels in CBTC systems based on real field channel measurements obtained from a business operating subway line. The proposed FSMC channel model takes train locations into account to have a more accurate channel model. The overall leaky waveguide is divided into intervals, and an FSMC model is applied in each interval. The accuracy of the proposed FSMC model is illustrated by the simulation results generated from the model and the real field measurement results.
1308.2218
Coding for Random Projections
cs.LG cs.DS cs.IT math.IT stat.CO
The method of random projections has become very popular for large-scale applications in statistical learning, information retrieval, bio-informatics and other applications. Using a well-designed coding scheme for the projected data, which determines the number of bits needed for each projected value and how to allocate these bits, can significantly improve the effectiveness of the algorithm, in storage cost as well as computational speed. In this paper, we study a number of simple coding schemes, focusing on the task of similarity estimation and on an application to training linear classifiers. We demonstrate that uniform quantization outperforms the standard existing influential method (Datar et. al. 2004). Indeed, we argue that in many cases coding with just a small number of bits suffices. Furthermore, we also develop a non-uniform 2-bit coding scheme that generally performs well in practice, as confirmed by our experiments on training linear support vector machines (SVM).
1308.2234
Innovation networks
cs.AI cs.SI physics.soc-ph
This paper advances a framework for modeling the component interactions between cognitive and social aspects of scientific creativity and technological innovation. Specifically, it aims to characterize Innovation Networks; those networks that involve the interplay of people, ideas and organizations to create new, technologically feasible, commercially-realizable products, processes and organizational structures. The tri-partite framework captures networks of ideas (Concept Level), people (Individual Level) and social structures (Social-Organizational Level) and the interactions between these levels. At the concept level, new ideas are the nodes that are created and linked, kept open for further investigation or closed if solved by actors at the individual or organizational levels. At the individual level, the nodes are actors linked by shared worldviews (based on shared professional, educational, experiential backgrounds) who are the builders of the concept level. At the social-organizational level, the nodes are organizations linked by common efforts on a given project (e.g., a company-university collaboration) that by virtue of their intellectual property or rules of governance constrain the actions of individuals (at the Individual Level) or ideas (at the Concept Level). After describing this framework and its implications we paint a number of scenarios to flesh out how it can be applied.
1308.2236
Surprise: Youve got some explaining to do
cs.AI cs.HC
Why are some events more surprising than others? We propose that events that are more difficult to explain are those that are more surprising. The two experiments reported here test the impact of different event outcomes (Outcome-Type) and task demands (Task) on ratings of surprise for simple story scenarios. For the Outcome-Type variable, participants saw outcomes that were either known or less-known surprising outcomes for each scenario. For the Task variable, participants either answered comprehension questions or provided an explanation of the outcome. Outcome-Type reliably affected surprise judgments; known outcomes were rated as less surprising than less-known outcomes. Task also reliably affected surprise judgments; when people provided an explanation it lowered surprise judgments relative to simply answering comprehension questions. Both experiments thus provide evidence on this less-explored explanation aspect of surprise, specifically showing that ease of explanation is a key factor in determining the level of surprise experienced.
1308.2240
Cognitive residues of similarity
cs.AI cs.HC
What are the cognitive after-effects of making a similarity judgement? What, cognitively, is left behind and what effect might these residues have on subsequent processing? In this paper, we probe for such after-effects using a visual search task, performed after a task in which pictures of real-world objects were compared. So, target objects were first presented in a comparison task (e.g., rate the similarity of this object to another) thus, presumably, modifying some of their features before asking people to visually search for the same object in complex scenes (with distractors and camouflaged backgrounds). As visual search is known to be influenced by the features of target objects, then any after-effects of the comparison task should be revealed in subsequent visual searches. Results showed that when people previously rated an object as being high on a scale (e.g., colour similarity or general similarity) then visual search is inhibited (slower RTs and more saccades in eye-tracking) relative to an object being rated as low in the same scale. There was also some evidence that different comparison tasks (e.g., compare on colour or compare on general similarity) have differential effects on visual search.
1308.2248
Topology Identification of Directed Dynamical Networks via Power Spectral Analysis
cs.SY math.DS math.OC
We address the problem of identifying the topology of an unknown weighted, directed network of LTI systems stimulated by wide-sense stationary noises of unknown power spectral densities. We propose several reconstruction algorithms based on the cross-power spectral densities of the network's response to the input noises. Our first algorithm reconstructs the Boolean structure (i.e., existence and directions of links) of a directed network from a series of dynamical responses. Moreover, we propose a second algorithm to recover the exact structure of the network (including edge weights), as well as the power spectral density of the input noises, when an eigenvalue-eigenvector pair of the connectivity matrix is known (for example, Laplacian connectivity matrices). Finally, for the particular cases of nonreciprocal networks (i.e., networks with no directed edges pointing in opposite directions) and undirected networks, we propose specialized algorithms that result in a lower computational cost.
1308.2260
Communication Practices in a Distributed Scrum Project
cs.SE cs.SI
While global software development (GSD) projects face cultural and time differences, the biggest challenge is communication. We studied a distributed student project with an industrial customer. The project lasted 3 months, involved 25 participants, and was distributed between the University of Victoria, Canada and Aalto University, Finland. We analyzed email communication, version control system (VCS) data, and surveys on satisfaction. Our aim was to find out whether reflecting on communication affected it, if standups influenced when developers committed to the VCS repository, and if leaders emerged in the three distributed Scrum teams. Initially students sent on average 21 emails per day. With the reduction to 16 emails, satisfaction with communication increased. By comparing Scrum standup times and VCS activity we found that the live communication of standups activated people to work on the project. Out of the three teams, one had an emergent communication facilitator.
1308.2264
Error Performance Analysis of DF and AF Multi-way Relay Networks with BPSK Modulation
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we analyze the error performance of decode and forward (DF) and amplify and forward (AF) multi-way relay networks (MWRN). We consider a MWRN with pair-wise data exchange protocol using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation in both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels. We quantify the possible error events in an $L$-user DF or AF MWRN and derive accurate asymptotic bounds on the probability for the general case that a user incorrectly decodes the messages of exactly $k$ ($k\in[1,L-1]$) users. We show that at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the higher order error events ($k\geq 3$) are less probable in AF MWRN, but all error events are equally probable in a DF MWRN. We derive the average BER of a user in a DF or AF MWRN in both AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels under high SNR conditions. Simulation results validate the correctness of the derived expressions. Our results show that at medium to high SNR, DF MWRN provides better error performance than AF MWRN in AWGN channels even with a large number of users (for example, L=100). Whereas, AF MWRN outperforms DF MWRN in Rayleigh fading channels even for much smaller number of users (for example, $L > 10$).
1308.2272
Search Optimization for Minimum Load under Detection Performance Constraints in Multifunction Radars
cs.SY math.OC
This paper presents a solution procedure of search parameter optimization for minimum load ensuring desired one-off and cumulative probabilities of detection in a multifunction phased array radar. The key approach is to convert this nonlinear optimization on four search parameters into a scalar optimization on signal-to-noise ratio by a semi-analytic process based on subproblem decomposition. The efficacy of the proposed solution approach is verified with theoretical analysis and numerical case studies.
1308.2291
Compressive Sampling for Networked Feedback Control
cs.SY cs.IT math.IT math.OC
We investigate the use of compressive sampling for networked feedback control systems. The method proposed serves to compress the control vectors which are transmitted through rate-limited channels without much deterioration of control performance. The control vectors are obtained by an L1-L2 optimization, which can be solved very efficiently by FISTA (Fast Iterative Shrinkage-Thresholding Algorithm). Simulation results show that the proposed sparsity-promoting control scheme gives a better control performance than a conventional energy-limiting L2-optimal control.
1308.2292
Fast image segmentation and restoration using parametric curve evolution with junctions and topology changes
cs.CV math.AP math.NA
Curve evolution schemes for image segmentation based on a region based contour model allowing for junctions, vector-valued images and topology changes are introduced. Together with an a posteriori denoising in the segmented homogeneous regions this leads to a fast and efficient method for image segmentation and restoration. An uneven spread of mesh points is avoided by using the tangential degrees of freedom. Several numerical simulations on artificial test problems and on real images illustrate the performance of the method.
1308.2293
Recovery of Low-Rank Matrices under Affine Constraints via a Smoothed Rank Function
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, the problem of matrix rank minimization under affine constraints is addressed. The state-of-the-art algorithms can recover matrices with a rank much less than what is sufficient for the uniqueness of the solution of this optimization problem. We propose an algorithm based on a smooth approximation of the rank function, which practically improves recovery limits on the rank of the solution. This approximation leads to a non-convex program; thus, to avoid getting trapped in local solutions, we use the following scheme. Initially, a rough approximation of the rank function subject to the affine constraints is optimized. As the algorithm proceeds, finer approximations of the rank are optimized and the solver is initialized with the solution of the previous approximation until reaching the desired accuracy. On the theoretical side, benefiting from the spherical section property, we will show that the sequence of the solutions of the approximating function converges to the minimum rank solution. On the experimental side, it will be shown that the proposed algorithm, termed SRF standing for Smoothed Rank Function, can recover matrices which are unique solutions of the rank minimization problem and yet not recoverable by nuclear norm minimization. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that, in completing partially observed matrices, the accuracy of SRF is considerably and consistently better than some famous algorithms when the number of revealed entries is close to the minimum number of parameters that uniquely represent a low-rank matrix.
1308.2299
Lossless Data Compression with Error Detection using Cantor Set
cs.IT math.IT nlin.CD
In 2009, a lossless compression algorithm based on 1D chaotic maps known as Generalized Lur\"{o}th Series (or GLS) has been proposed. This algorithm (GLS-coding) encodes the input message as a symbolic sequence on an appropriate 1D chaotic map (GLS) and the compressed file is obtained as the initial value by iterating backwards on the map. For ergodic sources, it was shown that GLS-coding achieves the best possible lossless compression (in the noiseless setting) bounded by Shannon entropy. However, in the presence of noise, even small errors in the compressed file leads to catastrophic decoding errors owing to sensitive dependence on initial values. In this paper, we first show that Repetition codes $\mathcal{R}_n$ (every symbol is repeated $n$ times, where $n$ is a positive odd integer), the oldest and the most basic error correction and detection codes in literature, actually lie on a Cantor set with a fractal dimension of $\frac{1}{n}$, which is also the rate of the code. Inspired by this, we incorporate error detection capability to GLS-coding by ensuring that the compressed file (initial value on the map) lies on a Cantor set of measure zero. Even a 1-bit error in the initial value will throw it outside the Cantor set which can be detected while decoding. The error detection performance (and also the rate of the code) can be controlled by the fractal dimension of the Cantor set and could be suitably adjusted depending on the noise level of the communication channel.
1308.2302
High-Dimensional Regression with Gaussian Mixtures and Partially-Latent Response Variables
cs.LG stat.ML
In this work we address the problem of approximating high-dimensional data with a low-dimensional representation. We make the following contributions. We propose an inverse regression method which exchanges the roles of input and response, such that the low-dimensional variable becomes the regressor, and which is tractable. We introduce a mixture of locally-linear probabilistic mapping model that starts with estimating the parameters of inverse regression, and follows with inferring closed-form solutions for the forward parameters of the high-dimensional regression problem of interest. Moreover, we introduce a partially-latent paradigm, such that the vector-valued response variable is composed of both observed and latent entries, thus being able to deal with data contaminated by experimental artifacts that cannot be explained with noise models. The proposed probabilistic formulation could be viewed as a latent-variable augmentation of regression. We devise expectation-maximization (EM) procedures based on a data augmentation strategy which facilitates the maximum-likelihood search over the model parameters. We propose two augmentation schemes and we describe in detail the associated EM inference procedures that may well be viewed as generalizations of a number of EM regression, dimension reduction, and factor analysis algorithms. The proposed framework is validated with both synthetic and real data. We provide experimental evidence that our method outperforms several existing regression techniques.
1308.2307
Finite Element Model Updating Using Fish School Search Optimization Method
cs.CE cs.NE
A recent nature inspired optimization algorithm, Fish School Search (FSS) is applied to the finite element model (FEM) updating problem. This method is tested on a GARTEUR SM-AG19 aeroplane structure. The results of this algorithm are compared with two other metaheuristic algorithms; Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). It is observed that on average, the FSS and PSO algorithms give more accurate results than the GA. A minor modification to the FSS is proposed. This modification improves the performance of FSS on the FEM updating problem which has a constrained search space.
1308.2309
Applying the Negative Selection Algorithm for Merger and Acquisition Target Identification
cs.AI
In this paper, we propose a new methodology based on the Negative Selection Algorithm that belongs to the field of Computational Intelligence, specifically, Artificial Immune Systems to identify takeover targets. Although considerable research based on customary statistical techniques and some contemporary Computational Intelligence techniques have been devoted to identify takeover targets, most of the existing studies are based upon multiple previous mergers and acquisitions. Contrary to previous research, the novelty of this proposal lies in its ability to suggest takeover targets for novice firms that are at the beginning of their merger and acquisition spree. We first discuss the theoretical perspective and then provide a case study with details for practical implementation, both capitalizing from unique generalization capabilities of artificial immune systems algorithms.
1308.2310
Mining Positive and Negative Association Rules Using CoherentApproach
cs.DB
In the data mining field, association rules are discovered having domain knowledge specified as a minimum support threshold. The accuracy in setting up this threshold directly influences the number and the quality of association rules discovered. Typically, before association rules are mined, a user needs to determine a support threshold in order to obtain only the frequent item sets. Having users to determine a support threshold attracts a number of issues. We propose an association rule mining framework that does not require a per-set support threshold. Often, the number of association rules, even though large in number, misses some interesting rules and the rules quality necessitates further analysis. As a result, decision making using these rules could lead to risky actions.
1308.2338
Lossy Compression of Exponential and Laplacian Sources using Expansion Coding
cs.IT math.IT
A general method of source coding over expansion is proposed in this paper, which enables one to reduce the problem of compressing an analog (continuous-valued source) to a set of much simpler problems, compressing discrete sources. Specifically, the focus is on lossy compression of exponential and Laplacian sources, which is subsequently expanded using a finite alphabet prior to being quantized. Due to decomposability property of such sources, the resulting random variables post expansion are independent and discrete. Thus, each of the expanded levels corresponds to an independent discrete source coding problem, and the original problem is reduced to coding over these parallel sources with a total distortion constraint. Any feasible solution to the optimization problem is an achievable rate distortion pair of the original continuous-valued source compression problem. Although finding the solution to this optimization problem at every distortion is hard, we show that our expansion coding scheme presents a good solution in the low distrotion regime. Further, by adopting low-complexity codes designed for discrete source coding, the total coding complexity can be tractable in practice.
1308.2350
Learning Features and their Transformations by Spatial and Temporal Spherical Clustering
cs.NE cs.AI cs.CV cs.LG q-bio.NC
Learning features invariant to arbitrary transformations in the data is a requirement for any recognition system, biological or artificial. It is now widely accepted that simple cells in the primary visual cortex respond to features while the complex cells respond to features invariant to different transformations. We present a novel two-layered feedforward neural model that learns features in the first layer by spatial spherical clustering and invariance to transformations in the second layer by temporal spherical clustering. Learning occurs in an online and unsupervised manner following the Hebbian rule. When exposed to natural videos acquired by a camera mounted on a cat's head, the first and second layer neurons in our model develop simple and complex cell-like receptive field properties. The model can predict by learning lateral connections among the first layer neurons. A topographic map to their spatial features emerges by exponentially decaying the flow of activation with distance from one neuron to another in the first layer that fire in close temporal proximity, thereby minimizing the pooling length in an online manner simultaneously with feature learning.
1308.2354
RAProp: Ranking Tweets by Exploiting the Tweet/User/Web Ecosystem and Inter-Tweet Agreement
cs.IR
The increasing popularity of Twitter renders improved trustworthiness and relevance assessment of tweets much more important for search. However, given the limitations on the size of tweets, it is hard to extract measures for ranking from the tweets' content alone. We present a novel ranking method, called RAProp, which combines two orthogonal measures of relevance and trustworthiness of a tweet. The first, called Feature Score, measures the trustworthiness of the source of the tweet. This is done by extracting features from a 3-layer twitter ecosystem, consisting of users, tweets and the pages referred to in the tweets. The second measure, called agreement analysis, estimates the trustworthiness of the content of the tweet, by analyzing how and whether the content is independently corroborated by other tweets. We view the candidate result set of tweets as the vertices of a graph, with the edges measuring the estimated agreement between each pair of tweets. The feature score is propagated over this agreement graph to compute the top-k tweets that have both trustworthy sources and independent corroboration. The evaluation of our method on 16 million tweets from the TREC 2011 Microblog Dataset shows that for top-30 precision we achieve 53% higher than current best performing method on the Dataset and over 300% over current Twitter Search. We also present a detailed internal empirical evaluation of RAProp in comparison to several alternative approaches proposed by us.
1308.2357
On the Detection of Passive Eavesdroppers in the MIMO Wiretap Channel
cs.IT math.IT
The classic MIMO wiretap channel comprises a passive eavesdropper that attempts to intercept communications between an authorized transmitter-receiver pair, each node being equipped with multiple antennas. In a dynamic network, it is imperative that the presence of an eavesdropper be determined before the transmitter can deploy robust secrecyencoding schemes as a countermeasure. This is a difficult task in general, since by definition the eavesdropper is passive and never transmits. In this work we adopt a method that allows the legitimate nodes to detect the passive eavesdropper from the local oscillator power that is inadvertently leaked from its RF front end. We examine the performance of non-coherent energy detection and optimal coherent detection, followed by composite GLRT detection methods that account for unknown parameters. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed detectors allow the legitimate nodes to increase the secrecy rate of the MIMO wiretap channel.
1308.2359
Exploratory Analysis of Highly Heterogeneous Document Collections
cs.CL cs.HC cs.IR
We present an effective multifaceted system for exploratory analysis of highly heterogeneous document collections. Our system is based on intelligently tagging individual documents in a purely automated fashion and exploiting these tags in a powerful faceted browsing framework. Tagging strategies employed include both unsupervised and supervised approaches based on machine learning and natural language processing. As one of our key tagging strategies, we introduce the KERA algorithm (Keyword Extraction for Reports and Articles). KERA extracts topic-representative terms from individual documents in a purely unsupervised fashion and is revealed to be significantly more effective than state-of-the-art methods. Finally, we evaluate our system in its ability to help users locate documents pertaining to military critical technologies buried deep in a large heterogeneous sea of information.
1308.2372
Throughput of One-Hop Wireless Networks with Noisy Feedback Channel
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider the effect of feedback channel error on the throughput of one-hop wireless networks under the random connection model. The transmission strategy is based on activating source-destination pairs with strongest direct links. While these activated pairs are identified based on Channel State Information (CSI) at the receive side, the transmit side will be provided with a noisy version of this information via the feedback channel. Such error will degrade network throughput, as we investigate in this paper. Our results show that if the feedback error probability is below a given threshold, network can tolerate such error without any significant throughput loss. The threshold value depends on the number of nodes in the network and the channel fading distribution. Such analysis is crucial in design of error correction codes for feedback channel in such networks.
1308.2375
A radial basis function neural network based approach for the electrical characteristics estimation of a photovoltaic module
cs.NE
The design process of photovoltaic (PV) modules can be greatly enhanced by using advanced and accurate models in order to predict accurately their electrical output behavior. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the application of an advanced neural network based model of a module to improve the accuracy of the predicted output I--V and P--V curves and to keep in account the change of all the parameters at different operating conditions. Radial basis function neural networks (RBFNN) are here utilized to predict the output characteristic of a commercial PV module, by reading only the data of solar irradiation and temperature. A lot of available experimental data were used for the training of the RBFNN, and a backpropagation algorithm was employed. Simulation and experimental validation is reported.
1308.2390
Adaptive Technique for Computationally Efficient Time Delay and Magnitude Estimation of Sinusoidal Signals
cs.SY
An online, adaptive method of time delay and magnitude estimation for sinusoidal signals is presented. The method is based on an adaptive gradient descent algorithm that directly determines the time delay and magnitudes of two noisy sinusoidal signals. The new estimator uses a novel quadrature carrier generator to produce the carriers for an adaptive quadrature phase detector, which in turn uses an arc tan function to compute the time delay. The proposed method is quite robust and can adapt to significant variation in input signal characteristics like magnitude and frequency imposing no requirement on the magnitudes of the two signals. It even works effectively when the signals have time-varying magnitudes. The convergence analysis of the proposed technique shows that estimate converges exponentially fast to their nominal values. In addition, if the technique is implemented in the continuous time domain, the delay estimation accuracy will not be constrained by the sampling frequency as observed in some of the classical techniques. Extensive simulations show that the proposed method provides very accurate estimates of the time delay comparable to that of the popular methods like Sinc-based estimator, Lagrange estimator, and the Quadrature estimator, as well the magnitude estimate of the input signals at lower signal to noise ratio at appreciably reduced computational cost.
1308.2401
Numerical Fitting-based Likelihood Calculation to Speed up the Particle Filter
cs.IT cs.NA math.IT
The likelihood calculation of a vast number of particles is the computational bottleneck for the particle filter in applications where the observation information is rich. For fast computing the likelihood of particles, a numerical fitting approach is proposed to construct the Likelihood Probability Density Function (Li-PDF) by using a comparably small number of so-called fulcrums. The likelihood of particles is thereby analytically inferred, explicitly or implicitly, based on the Li-PDF instead of directly computed by utilizing the observation, which can significantly reduce the computation and enables real time filtering. The proposed approach guarantees the estimation quality when an appropriate fitting function and properly distributed fulcrums are used. The details for construction of the fitting function and fulcrums are addressed respectively in detail. In particular, to deal with multivariate fitting, the nonparametric kernel density estimator is presented which is flexible and convenient for implicit Li-PDF implementation. Simulation comparison with a variety of existing approaches on a benchmark 1-dimensional model and multi-dimensional robot localization and visual tracking demonstrate the validity of our approach.
1308.2426
Bias of the SIR filter in estimation of the state transition noise
cs.SY cs.NA
This Note investigates the bias of the sampling importance resampling (SIR) filter in estimation of the state transition noise in the state space model. The SIR filter may suffer from sample impoverishment that is caused by the resampling and therefore will benefit from a sampling proposal that has a heavier tail, e.g. the state transition noise simulated for particle preparation is bigger than the true noise involved with the state dynamics. This is because a comparably big transition noise used for particle propagation can spread overlapped particles to counteract impoverishment, giving better approximation of the posterior. As such, the SIR filter tends to yield a biased (bigger-than-the-truth) estimate of the transition noise if it is unknown and needs to be estimated, at least, in the forward-only filtering estimation. The bias is elaborated via the direct roughening approach by means of both qualitative logical deduction and quantitative numerical simulation.
1308.2428
Hidden Structure and Function in the Lexicon
cs.CL
How many words are needed to define all the words in a dictionary? Graph-theoretic analysis reveals that about 10% of a dictionary is a unique Kernel of words that define one another and all the rest, but this is not the smallest such subset. The Kernel consists of one huge strongly connected component (SCC), about half its size, the Core, surrounded by many small SCCs, the Satellites. Core words can define one another but not the rest of the dictionary. The Kernel also contains many overlapping Minimal Grounding Sets (MGSs), each about the same size as the Core, each part-Core, part-Satellite. MGS words can define all the rest of the dictionary. They are learned earlier, more concrete and more frequent than the rest of the dictionary. Satellite words, not correlated with age or frequency, are less concrete (more abstract) words that are also needed for full lexical power.
1308.2433
Archiving the Relaxed Consistency Web
cs.DL cs.DB cs.SI
The historical, cultural, and intellectual importance of archiving the web has been widely recognized. Today, all countries with high Internet penetration rate have established high-profile archiving initiatives to crawl and archive the fast-disappearing web content for long-term use. As web technologies evolve, established web archiving techniques face challenges. This paper focuses on the potential impact of the relaxed consistency web design on crawler driven web archiving. Relaxed consistent websites may disseminate, albeit ephemerally, inaccurate and even contradictory information. If captured and preserved in the web archives as historical records, such information will degrade the overall archival quality. To assess the extent of such quality degradation, we build a simplified feed-following application and simulate its operation with synthetic workloads. The results indicate that a non-trivial portion of a relaxed consistency web archive may contain observable inconsistency, and the inconsistency window may extend significantly longer than that observed at the data store. We discuss the nature of such quality degradation and propose a few possible remedies.
1308.2443
Fighting Sample Degeneracy and Impoverishment in Particle Filters: A Review of Intelligent Approaches
cs.AI stat.CO
During the last two decades there has been a growing interest in Particle Filtering (PF). However, PF suffers from two long-standing problems that are referred to as sample degeneracy and impoverishment. We are investigating methods that are particularly efficient at Particle Distribution Optimization (PDO) to fight sample degeneracy and impoverishment, with an emphasis on intelligence choices. These methods benefit from such methods as Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, Mean-shift algorithms, artificial intelligence algorithms (e.g., Particle Swarm Optimization, Genetic Algorithm and Ant Colony Optimization), machine learning approaches (e.g., clustering, splitting and merging) and their hybrids, forming a coherent standpoint to enhance the particle filter. The working mechanism, interrelationship, pros and cons of these approaches are provided. In addition, Approaches that are effective for dealing with high-dimensionality are reviewed. While improving the filter performance in terms of accuracy, robustness and convergence, it is noted that advanced techniques employed in PF often causes additional computational requirement that will in turn sacrifice improvement obtained in real life filtering. This fact, hidden in pure simulations, deserves the attention of the users and designers of new filters.
1308.2451
What can Social Media teach us about protests? Analyzing the Chilean 2011-12 Student Movement's Network evolution through Twitter data
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
Using social media data -specially twitter -of the Chilean 2011-12 student movement, we study their social network evolution over time to analyze how leaders and participants self-organize and spread information. Based on a few key events of the student movement's timeline, we visualize the student network trajectory and analyze their structural and semantic properties. Therefore, in this paper we: i) describe the basic network topology of the 2011-12 Chilean massive student movement; ii) explore how the 180 key central nodes of the movement are connected, self-organize and spread information. We contend that this social media enabled massive movement is yet another manifestation of the network era, which leverages agents' socio-technical networks, and thus accelerates how agents coordinate, mobilize resources and enact collective intelligence.
1308.2454
Understanding the Benefits of Open Access in Femtocell Networks: Stochastic Geometric Analysis in the Uplink
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
We introduce a comprehensive analytical framework to compare between open access and closed access in two-tier femtocell networks, with regard to uplink interference and outage. Interference at both the macrocell and femtocell levels is considered. A stochastic geometric approach is employed as the basis for our analysis. We further derive sufficient conditions for open access and closed access to outperform each other in terms of the outage probability, leading to closed-form expressions to upper and lower bound the difference in the targeted received power between the two access modes. Simulations are conducted to validate the accuracy of the analytical model and the correctness of the bounds.
1308.2462
Wireless Information and Power Transfer in Multiuser OFDM Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we study the optimal design for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in downlink multiuser orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. For information transmission, we consider two types of multiple access schemes, namely, time division multiple access (TDMA) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). At the receiver side, due to the practical limitation that circuits for harvesting energy from radio signals are not yet able to decode the carried information directly, each user applies either time switching (TS) or power splitting (PS) to coordinate the energy harvesting (EH) and information decoding (ID) processes. For the TDMA-based information transmission, we employ TS at the receivers; for the OFDMA-based information transmission, we employ PS at the receivers. Under the above two scenarios, we address the problem of maximizing the weighted sum-rate over all users by varying the time/frequency power allocation and either TS or PS ratio, subject to a minimum harvested energy constraint on each user as well as a peak and/or total transmission power constraint. For the TS scheme, by an appropriate variable transformation the problem is reformulated as a convex problem, for which the optimal power allocation and TS ratio are obtained by the Lagrange duality method. For the PS scheme, we propose an iterative algorithm to optimize the power allocation, subcarrier (SC) allocation and the PS ratio for each user. The performances of the two schemes are compared numerically as well as analytically for the special case of single-user setup. It is revealed that the peak power constraint imposed on each OFDM SC as well as the number of users in the system play a key role in the rate-energy performance comparison by the two proposed schemes.
1308.2464
Faster gradient descent and the efficient recovery of images
cs.CV cs.NA math.NA
Much recent attention has been devoted to gradient descent algorithms where the steepest descent step size is replaced by a similar one from a previous iteration or gets updated only once every second step, thus forming a {\em faster gradient descent method}. For unconstrained convex quadratic optimization these methods can converge much faster than steepest descent. But the context of interest here is application to certain ill-posed inverse problems, where the steepest descent method is known to have a smoothing, regularizing effect, and where a strict optimization solution is not necessary. Specifically, in this paper we examine the effect of replacing steepest descent by a faster gradient descent algorithm in the practical context of image deblurring and denoising tasks. We also propose several highly efficient schemes for carrying out these tasks independently of the step size selection, as well as a scheme for the case where both blur and significant noise are present. In the above context there are situations where many steepest descent steps are required, thus building slowness into the solution procedure. Our general conclusion regarding gradient descent methods is that in such cases the faster gradient descent methods offer substantial advantages. In other situations where no such slowness buildup arises the steepest descent method can still be very effective.
1308.2505
Stability Results for Simple Traffic Models Under PI-Regulator Control
math.OC cs.SY
This paper provides necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for the (global) Input-to-State Stability property of simple uncertain vehicular-traffic network models under the effect of a PI-regulator. Local stability properties for vehicular-traffic networks under the effect of PI-regulator control are studied as well: the region of attraction of a locally exponentially stable equilibrium point is estimated by means of Lyapunov functions. All obtained results are illustrated by means of simple examples.
1308.2509
Coding and Compression of Three Dimensional Meshes by Planes
cs.CG cs.IT math.IT
The present paper suggests a new approach for geometric representation of 3D spatial models and provides a new compression algorithm for 3D meshes, which is based on mathematical theory of convex geometry. In our approach we represent a 3D convex polyhedron by means of planes, containing only its faces. This allows not to consider topological aspects of the problem (connectivity information among vertices and edges) since by means of the planes we construct the polyhedron uniquely. Due to the fact that the topological data is ignored this representation provides high degree of compression. Also planes based representation provides a compression of geometrical data because most of the faces of the polyhedron are not triangles but polygons with more than three vertices.
1308.2516
Fluctuation in e-mail sizes weakens power-law correlations in e-mail flow
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
Power-law correlations have been observed in packet flow over the Internet. The possible origin of these correlations includes demand for Internet services. We observe the demand for e-mail services in an organization, and analyze correlations in the flow and the sequence of send requests using a Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA). The correlation in the flow is found to be weaker than that in the send requests. Four types of artificial flow are constructed to investigate the effects of fluctuations in e-mail sizes. As a result, we find that the correlation in the flow originates from that in the sequence of send requests. The strength of the power-law correlation decreases as a function of the ratio of the standard deviation of e-mail sizes to their average.
1308.2565
A place-focused model for social networks in cities
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The focused organization theory of social ties proposes that the structure of human social networks can be arranged around extra-network foci, which can include shared physical spaces such as homes, workplaces, restaurants, and so on. Until now, this has been difficult to investigate on a large scale, but the huge volume of data available from online location-based social services now makes it possible to examine the friendships and mobility of many thousands of people, and to investigate the relationship between meetings at places and the structure of the social network. In this paper, we analyze a large dataset from Foursquare, the most popular online location-based social network. We examine the properties of city-based social networks, finding that they have common structural properties, and that the category of place where two people meet has very strong influence on the likelihood of their being friends. Inspired by these observations in combination with the focused organization theory, we then present a model to generate city-level social networks, and show that it produces networks with the structural properties seen in empirical data.
1308.2572
Achieving Speedup in Aggregate Risk Analysis using Multiple GPUs
cs.DC cs.CE cs.DS q-fin.RM
Stochastic simulation techniques employed for the analysis of portfolios of insurance/reinsurance risk, often referred to as `Aggregate Risk Analysis', can benefit from exploiting state-of-the-art high-performance computing platforms. In this paper, parallel methods to speed-up aggregate risk analysis for supporting real-time pricing are explored. An algorithm for analysing aggregate risk is proposed and implemented for multi-core CPUs and for many-core GPUs. Experimental studies indicate that GPUs offer a feasible alternative solution over traditional high-performance computing systems. A simulation of 1,000,000 trials with 1,000 catastrophic events per trial on a typical exposure set and contract structure is performed in less than 5 seconds on a multiple GPU platform. The key result is that the multiple GPU implementation can be used in real-time pricing scenarios as it is approximately 77x times faster than the sequential counterpart implemented on a CPU.
1308.2591
Alpha current flow betweenness centrality
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
A class of centrality measures called betweenness centralities reflects degree of participation of edges or nodes in communication between different parts of the network. The original shortest-path betweenness centrality is based on counting shortest paths which go through a node or an edge. One of shortcomings of the shortest-path betweenness centrality is that it ignores the paths that might be one or two steps longer than the shortest paths, while the edges on such paths can be important for communication processes in the network. To rectify this shortcoming a current flow betweenness centrality has been proposed. Similarly to the shortest path betwe has prohibitive complexity for large size networks. In the present work we propose two regularizations of the current flow betweenness centrality, \alpha-current flow betweenness and truncated \alpha-current flow betweenness, which can be computed fast and correlate well with the original current flow betweenness.
1308.2592
Sparse Command Generator for Remote Control
cs.SY cs.IT math.IT math.OC
In this article, we consider remote-controlled systems, where the command generator and the controlled object are connected with a bandwidth-limited communication link. In the remote-controlled systems, efficient representation of control commands is one of the crucial issues because of the bandwidth limitations of the link. We propose a new representation method for control commands based on compressed sensing. In the proposed method, compressed sensing reduces the number of bits in each control signal by representing it as a sparse vector. The compressed sensing problem is solved by an L1-L2 optimization, which can be effectively implemented with an iterative shrinkage algorithm. A design example also shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.
1308.2600
An Enhanced Time Space Priority Scheme to Manage QoS for Multimedia Flows transmitted to an end user in HSDPA Network
cs.NI cs.MM cs.SY
When different type of packets with different needs of Quality of Service (QoS) requirements share the same network resources, it became important to use queue management and scheduling schemes in order to maintain perceived quality at the end users at an acceptable level. Many schemes have been studied in the literature, these schemes use time priority (to maintain QoS for Real Time (RT) packets) and/or space priority (to maintain QoS for Non Real Time (NRT) packets). In this paper, we study and show the drawback of a combined time and space priority (TSP) scheme used to manage QoS for RT and NRT packets intended for an end user in High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) cell, and we propose an enhanced scheme (Enhanced Basic-TSP scheme) to improve QoS relatively to the RT packets, and to exploit efficiently the network resources. A mathematical model for the EB-TSP scheme is done, and numerical results show the positive impact of this scheme.
1308.2654
Local image registration a comparison for bilateral registration mammography
cs.CV
Early tumor detection is key in reducing the number of breast cancer death and screening mammography is one of the most widely available and reliable method for early detection. However, it is difficult for the radiologist to process with the same attention each case, due the large amount of images to be read. Computer aided detection (CADe) systems improve tumor detection rate; but the current efficiency of these systems is not yet adequate and the correct interpretation of CADe outputs requires expert human intervention. Computer aided diagnosis systems (CADx) are being designed to improve cancer diagnosis accuracy, but they have not been efficiently applied in breast cancer. CADx efficiency can be enhanced by considering the natural mirror symmetry between the right and left breast. The objective of this work is to evaluate co-registration algorithms for the accurate alignment of the left to right breast for CADx enhancement. A set of mammograms were artificially altered to create a ground truth set to evaluate the registration efficiency of DEMONs, and SPLINE deformable registration algorithms. The registration accuracy was evaluated using mean square errors, mutual information and correlation. The results on the 132 images proved that the SPLINE deformable registration over-perform the DEMONS on mammography images.
1308.2655
KL-based Control of the Learning Schedule for Surrogate Black-Box Optimization
cs.LG cs.AI stat.ML
This paper investigates the control of an ML component within the Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) devoted to black-box optimization. The known CMA-ES weakness is its sample complexity, the number of evaluations of the objective function needed to approximate the global optimum. This weakness is commonly addressed through surrogate optimization, learning an estimate of the objective function a.k.a. surrogate model, and replacing most evaluations of the true objective function with the (inexpensive) evaluation of the surrogate model. This paper presents a principled control of the learning schedule (when to relearn the surrogate model), based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence of the current search distribution and the training distribution of the former surrogate model. The experimental validation of the proposed approach shows significant performance gains on a comprehensive set of ill-conditioned benchmark problems, compared to the best state of the art including the quasi-Newton high-precision BFGS method.
1308.2696
B(eo)W(u)LF: Facilitating recurrence analysis on multi-level language
cs.CL
Discourse analysis may seek to characterize not only the overall composition of a given text but also the dynamic patterns within the data. This technical report introduces a data format intended to facilitate multi-level investigations, which we call the by-word long-form or B(eo)W(u)LF. Inspired by the long-form data format required for mixed-effects modeling, B(eo)W(u)LF structures linguistic data into an expanded matrix encoding any number of researchers-specified markers, making it ideal for recurrence-based analyses. While we do not necessarily claim to be the first to use methods along these lines, we have created a series of tools utilizing Python and MATLAB to enable such discourse analyses and demonstrate them using 319 lines of the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, translated into modern English.