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1308.2705
Stochastic Models Predict User Behavior in Social Media
cs.CY cs.SI physics.soc-ph
User response to contributed content in online social media depends on many factors. These include how the site lays out new content, how frequently the user visits the site, how many friends the user follows, how active these friends are, as well as how interesting or useful the content is to the user. We present a stochastic modeling framework that relates a user's behavior to details of the site's user interface and user activity and describe a procedure for estimating model parameters from available data. We apply the model to study discussions of controversial topics on Twitter, specifically, to predict how followers of an advocate for a topic respond to the advocate's posts. We show that a model of user behavior that explicitly accounts for a user transitioning through a series of states before responding to an advocate's post better predicts response than models that fail to take these states into account. We demonstrate other benefits of stochastic models, such as their ability to identify users who are highly interested in advocate's posts.
1308.2725
Adaptive and Iterative Multi-Branch MMSE Decision Feedback Detection Algorithms for MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, decision feedback (DF) detection algorithms based on multiple processing branches for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) spatial multiplexing systems are proposed. The proposed detector employs multiple cancellation branches with receive filters that are obtained from a common matrix inverse and achieves a performance close to the maximum likelihood detector (MLD). Constrained minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) receive filters designed with constraints on the shape and magnitude of the feedback filters for the multi-branch MMSE DF (MB-MMSE-DF) receivers are presented. An adaptive implementation of the proposed MB-MMSE-DF detector is developed along with a recursive least squares-type algorithm for estimating the parameters of the receive filters when the channel is time-varying. A soft-output version of the MB-MMSE-DF detector is also proposed as a component of an iterative detection and decoding receiver structure. A computational complexity analysis shows that the MB-MMSE-DF detector does not require a significant additional complexity over the conventional MMSE-DF detector, whereas a diversity analysis discusses the diversity order achieved by the MB-MMSE-DF detector. Simulation results show that the MB-MMSE-DF detector achieves a performance superior to existing suboptimal detectors and close to the MLD, while requiring significantly lower complexity.
1308.2737
H-infinity Optimal Approximation for Causal Spline Interpolation
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
In this paper, we give a causal solution to the problem of spline interpolation using H-infinity optimal approximation. Generally speaking, spline interpolation requires filtering the whole sampled data, the past and the future, to reconstruct the inter-sample values. This leads to non-causality of the filter, and this becomes a critical issue for real-time applications. Our objective here is to derive a causal system which approximates spline interpolation by H-infinity optimization for the filter. The advantage of H-infinity optimization is that it can address uncertainty in the input signals to be interpolated in design, and hence the optimized system has robustness property against signal uncertainty. We give a closed-form solution to the H-infinity optimization in the case of the cubic splines. For higher-order splines, the optimal filter can be effectively solved by a numerical computation. We also show that the optimal FIR (Finite Impulse Response) filter can be designed by an LMI (Linear Matrix Inequality), which can also be effectively solved numerically. A design example is presented to illustrate the result.
1308.2743
H-infinity Design of Periodically Nonuniform Interpolation and Decimation for Non-Band-Limited Signals
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
In this paper, we consider signal interpolation of discrete-time signals which are decimated nonuniformly. A conventional interpolation method is based on the sampling theorem, and the resulting system consists of an ideal filter with complex-valued coefficients. While the conventional method assumes band limitation of signals, we propose a new method by sampled-data H-infinity optimization. By this method, we can remove the band-limiting assumption and the optimal filter can be with real-valued coefficients. Moreover, we show that without band-limited assumption, there can be the optimal decimation patterns among ones with the same ratio. By examples, we show the effectiveness of our method.
1308.2747
Closed-Loop Beam Alignment for Massive MIMO Channel Estimation
cs.IT math.IT
Training sequences are designed to probe wireless channels in order to obtain channel state information for block-fading channels. Optimal training sounds the channel using orthogonal beamforming vectors to find an estimate that optimizes some cost function, such as mean square error. As the number of transmit antennas increases, however, the training overhead becomes significant. This creates a need for alternative channel estimation schemes for increasingly large transmit arrays. In this work, we relax the orthogonal restriction on sounding vectors. The use of a feedback channel after each forward channel use during training enables closed-loop sounding vector design. A misalignment cost function is introduced, which provides a metric to sequentially design sounding vectors. In turn, the structure of the sounding vectors aligns the transmit beamformer with the true channel direction, thereby increasing beamforming gain. This beam alignment scheme for massive MIMO is shown to improve beamforming gain over conventional orthogonal training for a MISO channel.
1308.2762
An efficient ant based qos aware intelligent temporally ordered routing algorithm for manets
cs.NI cs.NE
A Mobile Ad hoc network (MANET) is a self configurable network connected by wireless links. This type of network is only suitable for temporary communication links as it is infrastructure-less and there is no centralised control. Providing QoS aware routing is a challenging task in this type of network due to dynamic topology and limited resources. The main purpose of QoS aware routing is to find a feasible path from source to destination which will satisfy two or more end to end QoS constrains. Therefore, the task of designing an efficient routing algorithm which will satisfy all the quality of service requirements and be robust and adaptive is considered as a highly challenging problem. In this work we have designed a new efficient and energy aware multipath routing algorithm based on ACO framework, inspired by the behaviours of biological ants. Basically by considering QoS constraints and artificial ants we have designed an intelligent version of classical Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA) which will increase network lifetime and decrease packet loss and average end to end delay that makes this algorithm suitable for real time and multimedia applications.
1308.2772
Extended Distributed Learning Automata:A New Method for Solving Stochastic Graph Optimization Problems
cs.AI
In this paper, a new structure of cooperative learning automata so-called extended learning automata (eDLA) is introduced. Based on the proposed structure, a new iterative randomized heuristic algorithm for finding optimal sub-graph in a stochastic edge-weighted graph through sampling is proposed. It has been shown that the proposed algorithm based on new networked-structure can be to solve the optimization problems on stochastic graph through less number of sampling in compare to standard sampling. Stochastic graphs are graphs in which the edges have an unknown distribution probability weights. Proposed algorithm uses an eDLA to find a policy that leads to an induced sub-graph that satisfies some restrictions such as minimum or maximum weight (length). At each stage of the proposed algorithm, eDLA determines which edges to be sampled. This eDLA-based proposed sampling method may result in decreasing unnecessary samples and hence decreasing the time that algorithm requires for finding the optimal sub-graph. It has been shown that proposed method converge to optimal solution, furthermore the probability of this convergence can be made arbitrarily close to 1 by using a sufficiently small learning rate. A new variance-aware threshold value was proposed that can be improving significantly convergence rate of the proposed eDLA-based algorithm. It has been shown that the proposed algorithm is competitive in terms of the quality of the solution
1308.2773
Wind Speed Data Analysis for Various Seasons during a Decade by Wavelet and S transform
cs.CE
The appropriate weather prediction is a challenging task and it can be feasible with proper wind speed fluctuation analysis. In this current paper daubechies-4 wavelet is used to analyze the winter wind speed fluctuations due to lesser agitated wind data samples of winter. In summer abrupt changes in wind speed occurs which creates difficulty for wavelets to keep proper track of wind speed fluctuations. So, in that case the concept of the S-transform is introduced.
1308.2787
Accelerating R-based Analytics on the Cloud
cs.DC cs.CE cs.SE
This paper addresses how the benefits of cloud-based infrastructure can be harnessed for analytical workloads. Often the software handling analytical workloads is not developed by a professional programmer, but on an ad hoc basis by Analysts in high-level programming environments such as R or Matlab. The goal of this research is to allow Analysts to take an analytical job that executes on their personal workstations, and with minimum effort execute it on cloud infrastructure and manage both the resources and the data required by the job. If this can be facilitated gracefully, then the Analyst benefits from on-demand resources, low maintenance cost and scalability of computing resources, all of which are offered by the cloud. In this paper, a Platform for Parallel R-based Analytics on the Cloud (P2RAC) that is placed between an Analyst and a cloud infrastructure is proposed and implemented. P2RAC offers a set of command-line tools for managing the resources, such as instances and clusters, the data and the execution of the software on the Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud infrastructure. Experimental studies are pursued using two parallel problems and the results obtained confirm the feasibility of employing P2RAC for solving large-scale analytical problems on the cloud.
1308.2798
Effective Construction of a Class of Bent Quadratic Boolean Functions
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider the characterization of the bentness of quadratic Boolean functions of the form $f(x)=\sum_{i=1}^{\frac{m}{2}-1} Tr^n_1(c_ix^{1+2^{ei}})+ Tr_1^{n/2}(c_{m/2}x^{1+2^{n/2}}) ,$ where $n=me$, $m$ is even and $c_i\in GF(2^e)$. For a general $m$, it is difficult to determine the bentness of these functions. We present the bentness of quadratic Boolean function for two cases: $m=2^vp^r$ and $m=2^vpq$, where $p$ and $q$ are two distinct primes. Further, we give the enumeration of quadratic bent functions for the case $m=2^vpq$.
1308.2808
Discretized Gabor Frames of Totally Positive Functions
cs.IT math.IT math.NA
In this paper a large class of universal windows for Gabor frames (Weyl-Heisenberg frames) is constructed. These windows have the fundamental property that every overcritical rectangular lattice generates a Gabor frame. Likewise, every undercritical rectangular lattice generates a Riesz sequence.
1308.2833
Asymptotically Optimal Power Allocation for Energy Harvesting Communication Networks
cs.IT math.IT
For a general energy harvesting (EH) communication network, i.e., a network where the nodes generate their transmit power through EH, we derive the asymptotically optimal online power allocation solution which optimizes a general utility function when the number of transmit time slots, $N$, and the battery capacities of the EH nodes, $B_{\rm max}$, satisfy $N\to\infty$ and $B_{\rm max}\to\infty$. The considered family of utility functions is general enough to include the most important performance measures in communication theory such as the average data rate, outage probability, average bit error probability, and average signal-to-noise ratio. The proposed power allocation solution is very simple. Namely, the asymptotically optimal power allocation for the EH network is identical to the optimal power allocation for an equivalent non-EH network whose nodes have infinite energy available but their average transmit power is constrained to be equal to the average harvested power and/or the maximum average transmit power of the corresponding nodes in the EH network. Moreover, the maximum average performance of a general EH network converges to the maximum average performance of the corresponding equivalent non-EH network, when $N\to\infty$ and $B_{\rm max}\to\infty$. Although the proposed solution is asymptotic in nature, it is applicable to EH systems transmitting in a large but finite number of time slots and having a battery capacity much larger than the average harvested power and/or the maximum average transmit power.
1308.2838
Wireless Information and Energy Transfer in Multi-Antenna Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
This paper considers the transmitter design for wireless information and energy transfer (WIET) in a multiple-input single-output (MISO) interference channel (IFC). The design problem is to maximize the system throughput (i.e., the weighted sum rate) subject to individual energy harvesting constraints and power constraints. Different from the conventional IFCs without energy harvesting, the cross-link signals in the considered scenario play two opposite roles in information detection (ID) and energy harvesting (EH). It is observed that the ideal scheme, where the receivers can simultaneously perform ID and EH from the received signal, may not always achieve the best tradeoff between information transfer and energy harvesting, but simple practical schemes based on time splitting may perform better. We therefore propose two practical time splitting schemes, namely time division mode switching (TDMS) and time division multiple access (TDMA), in addition to a power splitting (PS) scheme which separates the received signal into two parts for ID and EH, respectively. In the two-user scenario, we show that beamforming is optimal to all the schemes. Moreover, the design problems associated with the TDMS and TDMA schemes admit semi-analytical solutions. In the general K-user scenario, a successive convex approximation method is proposed to handle the WIET problems associated with the ideal scheme and the PS scheme, which are known to be NP-hard in general. The K-user TDMS and TDMA schemes are shown efficiently solvable as convex problems. Simulation results show that stronger cross-link channel powers actually improve the information sum rate under energy harvesting constraints. Moreover, none of the schemes under consideration can dominate another in terms of the sum rate performance.
1308.2853
When are Overcomplete Topic Models Identifiable? Uniqueness of Tensor Tucker Decompositions with Structured Sparsity
cs.LG cs.IR math.NA math.ST stat.ML stat.TH
Overcomplete latent representations have been very popular for unsupervised feature learning in recent years. In this paper, we specify which overcomplete models can be identified given observable moments of a certain order. We consider probabilistic admixture or topic models in the overcomplete regime, where the number of latent topics can greatly exceed the size of the observed word vocabulary. While general overcomplete topic models are not identifiable, we establish generic identifiability under a constraint, referred to as topic persistence. Our sufficient conditions for identifiability involve a novel set of "higher order" expansion conditions on the topic-word matrix or the population structure of the model. This set of higher-order expansion conditions allow for overcomplete models, and require the existence of a perfect matching from latent topics to higher order observed words. We establish that random structured topic models are identifiable w.h.p. in the overcomplete regime. Our identifiability results allows for general (non-degenerate) distributions for modeling the topic proportions, and thus, we can handle arbitrarily correlated topics in our framework. Our identifiability results imply uniqueness of a class of tensor decompositions with structured sparsity which is contained in the class of Tucker decompositions, but is more general than the Candecomp/Parafac (CP) decomposition.
1308.2857
Engagement in the electoral processes: scaling laws and the role of the political positions
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
We report on a statistical analysis of the engagement in the electoral processes of all Brazilian cities by considering the number of party memberships and the number of candidates for mayor and councillor. By investigating the relationships between the number of party members and the population of voters, we have found that the functional form of these relationships are well described by sub-linear power laws (allometric scaling) surrounded by a multiplicative log-normal noise. We have observed that this pattern is quite similar to those previously-reported for the relationships between the number candidates (mayor and councillor) and population of voters [EPL 96, 48001 (2011)], suggesting that similar universal laws may be ruling the engagement in the electoral processes. We also note that the power law exponents display a clear hierarchy, where the more influential is the political position the smaller is the value of the exponent. We have also investigated the probability distributions of the number of candidates (mayor and councilor), party memberships and voters. The results indicate that the most influential positions are characterized by distributions with very short-tails, while less influential positions display an intermediate power law decay before showing an exponential-like cutoff. We discuss that, in addition to the political power of the position, limitations in the number of available seats can also be connected with this changing of behavior. We further believe that our empirical findings point out to an underrepresentation effect, where the larger city is, the larger are the obstacles for more individuals to become directly engaged in the electoral process.
1308.2867
Composite Self-Concordant Minimization
stat.ML cs.LG math.OC
We propose a variable metric framework for minimizing the sum of a self-concordant function and a possibly non-smooth convex function, endowed with an easily computable proximal operator. We theoretically establish the convergence of our framework without relying on the usual Lipschitz gradient assumption on the smooth part. An important highlight of our work is a new set of analytic step-size selection and correction procedures based on the structure of the problem. We describe concrete algorithmic instances of our framework for several interesting applications and demonstrate them numerically on both synthetic and real data.
1308.2872
Can Agent Intelligence be used to Achieve Fault Tolerant Parallel Computing Systems?
cs.DC cs.MA
The work reported in this paper is motivated towards validating an alternative approach for fault tolerance over traditional methods like checkpointing that constrain efficacious fault tolerance. Can agent intelligence be used to achieve fault tolerant parallel computing systems? If so, "What agent capabilities are required for fault tolerance?", "What parallel computational tasks can benefit from such agent capabilities?" and "How can agent capabilities be implemented for fault tolerance?" need to be addressed. Cognitive capabilities essential for achieving fault tolerance through agents are considered. Parallel reduction algorithms are identified as a class of algorithms that can benefit from cognitive agent capabilities. The Message Passing Interface is utilized for implementing an intelligent agent based approach. Preliminary results obtained from the experiments validate the feasibility of an agent based approach for achieving fault tolerance in parallel computing systems.
1308.2893
Multiclass learnability and the ERM principle
cs.LG
We study the sample complexity of multiclass prediction in several learning settings. For the PAC setting our analysis reveals a surprising phenomenon: In sharp contrast to binary classification, we show that there exist multiclass hypothesis classes for which some Empirical Risk Minimizers (ERM learners) have lower sample complexity than others. Furthermore, there are classes that are learnable by some ERM learners, while other ERM learners will fail to learn them. We propose a principle for designing good ERM learners, and use this principle to prove tight bounds on the sample complexity of learning {\em symmetric} multiclass hypothesis classes---classes that are invariant under permutations of label names. We further provide a characterization of mistake and regret bounds for multiclass learning in the online setting and the bandit setting, using new generalizations of Littlestone's dimension.
1308.2894
Low-Complexity Sphere Decoding of Polar Codes based on Optimum Path Metric
cs.IT math.IT
Sphere decoding (SD) of polar codes is an efficient method to achieve the error performance of maximum likelihood (ML) decoding. But the complexity of the conventional sphere decoder is still high, where the candidates in a target sphere are enumerated and the radius is decreased gradually until no available candidate is in the sphere. In order to reduce the complexity of SD, a stack SD (SSD) algorithm with an efficient enumeration is proposed in this paper. Based on a novel path metric, SSD can effectively narrow the search range when enumerating the candidates within a sphere. The proposed metric follows an exact ML rule and takes the full usage of the whole received sequence. Furthermore, another very simple metric is provided as an approximation of the ML metric in the high signal-to-noise ratio regime. For short polar codes, simulation results over the additive white Gaussian noise channels show that the complexity of SSD based on the proposed metrics is up to 100 times lower than that of the conventional SD.
1308.2923
Robotic Message Ferrying for Wireless Networks using Coarse-Grained Backpressure Control
cs.NI cs.RO cs.SY math.OC
We formulate the problem of robots ferrying messages between statically-placed source and sink pairs that they can communicate with wirelessly. We first analyze the capacity region for this problem under both ideal (arbitrarily high velocity, long scheduling periods) and realistic conditions. We indicate how robots could be scheduled optimally to satisfy any arrival rate in the capacity region, given prior knowledge about arrival rates. We find that if the number of robots allocated grows proportionally with the number of source-sink pairs, then the capacity of the network scales as $\Theta(1)$, similar to what was shown previously by Grossglauser and Tse for uncontrolled mobility; however, in contrast to that prior result, we also find that with controlled mobility this constant capacity scaling can be obtained while ensuring finite delay. We then consider the setting where the arrival rates are unknown and present a coarse-grained backpressure message ferrying algorithm (CBMF) for it. In CBMF, the robots are matched to sources and sinks once every epoch to maximize a queue-differential-based weight. The matching controls both motion and transmission for each robot: if a robot is matched to a source, it moves towards that source and collects data from it; and if it is matched to a sink, it moves towards that sink and transmits data to it. We show through analysis and simulations the conditions under which CBMF can stabilize the network. We show that the maximum achievable stable throughput with this policy tends to the ideal capacity as the schedule duration and robot velocity increase.
1308.2930
Semistability-Based Convergence Analysis for Paracontracting Multiagent Coordination Optimization
cs.SY cs.NE math.OC
This sequential technical report extends some of the previous results we posted at arXiv:1306.0225.
1308.2938
ERP projects Internal Stakeholder network and how it influences the projects outcome
cs.SI cs.CY
So far little effort has been put into researching the importance of internal ERP project stakeholders mutual interactions,realizing the projects complexity,influence on the whole organization, and high risk for a useful final outcome. This research analyzes the stakeholders interactions and positions in the project network, their criticality, potential bottlenecks and conflicts. The main methods used are Social Network Analysis, and the elicitation of drivers for the individual players. Information was collected from several stakeholders from three large ERP projects all in global companies headquartered in Finland, together with representatives from two different ERP vendors, and with two experienced ERP consultants. The analysis gives quantitative as well as qualitative characterization of stakeholder criticality (mostly the Project Manager(s), the Business Owner(s) and the Process Owner(s)), degree of centrality, closeness, mediating or bottleneck roles, relational ties and conflicts (individual, besides those between business and project organizations), and clique formations. A generic internal stakeholder network model is established as well as the criticality of the project phases. The results are summarized in the form of a list of recommendations for future ERP projects to address the internal stakeholder impacts .Project management should utilize the latest technology to provide tools to increase the interaction between the stakeholders and to monitor the strength of these relations. Social network analysis tools could be used in the projects to visualize the stakeholder relations in order to better understand the possible risks related to the relations (or lack of them).
1308.2944
Smart business networks and business genetics with a high tech communications supplier selection industry case
cs.CY cs.SI
Despite the emergence of event driven business process management, smart business networks, social networks, etc. as important research areas in management, for all the attractiveness of these concepts, two major challenges remain around their design and the partner selection rules while learning from interaction events.While smart business networks should provide advantages due to the quick connect of business partners for selected functions in a process common to several parties, literature does not provide constructive methods whereby the selection of temporary partners and functions can be done. Most discussions only rely solely on human judgment. This paper introduces both computational geometry, and genetic programming, as systematic methods whereby to identify, characterize, and then display on a continuing basis from event monitoring such possible partnerships; such techniques also allow to plan for their effect on the organizations and thus to carry out selection. The two methods are being put in the context of emergence theory. Tessellations address the identification and categorization issues; business maps address the display and monitoring challenge with the use of Voronoii diagrams. Cellular automata mimicking living bodies, with genetic algorithms of which parameters are estimated by learning, address the selection and effect issues. To illustrate the approach, some experimental results from the sourcing function in a high tech industry, are discussed; they address the case of how to determine the selection process for a systems integrator to set up joint ventures with smaller technology suppliers.
1308.2952
Subadditivity of Matrix phi-Entropy and Concentration of Random Matrices
cs.IT math.IT math.PR
Matrix concentration inequalities provide a direct way to bound the typical spectral norm of a random matrix. The methods for establishing these results often parallel classical arguments, such as the Laplace transform method. This work develops a matrix extension of the entropy method, and it applies these ideas to obtain some matrix concentration inequalities.
1308.2954
Trace Complexity of Network Inference
cs.DS cs.SI
The network inference problem consists of reconstructing the edge set of a network given traces representing the chronology of infection times as epidemics spread through the network. This problem is a paradigmatic representative of prediction tasks in machine learning that require deducing a latent structure from observed patterns of activity in a network, which often require an unrealistically large number of resources (e.g., amount of available data, or computational time). A fundamental question is to understand which properties we can predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy with the available resources, and which we cannot. We define the trace complexity as the number of distinct traces required to achieve high fidelity in reconstructing the topology of the unobserved network or, more generally, some of its properties. We give algorithms that are competitive with, while being simpler and more efficient than, existing network inference approaches. Moreover, we prove that our algorithms are nearly optimal, by proving an information-theoretic lower bound on the number of traces that an optimal inference algorithm requires for performing this task in the general case. Given these strong lower bounds, we turn our attention to special cases, such as trees and bounded-degree graphs, and to property recovery tasks, such as reconstructing the degree distribution without inferring the network. We show that these problems require a much smaller (and more realistic) number of traces, making them potentially solvable in practice.
1308.3009
Structural Changes in Data Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks
physics.data-an cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
Wireless sensor networks are an important technology for making distributed autonomous measures in hostile or inaccessible environments. Among the challenges they pose, the way data travel among them is a relevant issue since their structure is quite dynamic. The operational topology of such devices can often be described by complex networks. In this work, we assess the variation of measures commonly employed in the complex networks literature applied to wireless sensor networks. Four data communication strategies were considered: geometric, random, small-world, and scale-free models, along with the shortest path length measure. The sensitivity of this measure was analyzed with respect to the following perturbations: insertion and removal of nodes in the geometric strategy; and insertion, removal and rewiring of links in the other models. The assessment was performed using the normalized Kullback-Leibler divergence and Hellinger distance quantifiers, both deriving from the Information Theory framework. The results reveal that the shortest path length is sensitive to perturbations.
1308.3015
On Generalized Bayesian Data Fusion with Complex Models in Large Scale Networks
cs.RO cs.SY stat.CO stat.ME
Recent advances in communications, mobile computing, and artificial intelligence have greatly expanded the application space of intelligent distributed sensor networks. This in turn motivates the development of generalized Bayesian decentralized data fusion (DDF) algorithms for robust and efficient information sharing among autonomous agents using probabilistic belief models. However, DDF is significantly challenging to implement for general real-world applications requiring the use of dynamic/ad hoc network topologies and complex belief models, such as Gaussian mixtures or hybrid Bayesian networks. To tackle these issues, we first discuss some new key mathematical insights about exact DDF and conservative approximations to DDF. These insights are then used to develop novel generalized DDF algorithms for complex beliefs based on mixture pdfs and conditional factors. Numerical examples motivated by multi-robot target search demonstrate that our methods lead to significantly better fusion results, and thus have great potential to enhance distributed intelligent reasoning in sensor networks.
1308.3025
Effect of assessment error and private information on stern-judging in indirect reciprocity
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.PE
Stern-judging is one of the best-known assessment rules in indirect reciprocity. Indirect reciprocity is a fundamental mechanism for the evolution of cooperation. It relies on mutual monitoring and assessments, i.e., individuals judge, following their own assessment rules, whether other individuals are "good" or "bad" according to information on their past behaviors. Among many assessment rules, stern-judging is known to provide stable cooperation in a population, as observed when all members in the population know all about others' behaviors (public information case) and when the members never commit an assessment error. In this paper, the effect of assessment error and private information on stern-judging is investigated. By analyzing the image matrix, which describes who is good in the eyes of whom in the population, we analytically show that private information and assessment error cause the collapse of stern-judging: all individuals assess other individuals as "good" at random with a probability of 1/2.
1308.3052
Gradient Magnitude Similarity Deviation: A Highly Efficient Perceptual Image Quality Index
cs.CV
It is an important task to faithfully evaluate the perceptual quality of output images in many applications such as image compression, image restoration and multimedia streaming. A good image quality assessment (IQA) model should not only deliver high quality prediction accuracy but also be computationally efficient. The efficiency of IQA metrics is becoming particularly important due to the increasing proliferation of high-volume visual data in high-speed networks. We present a new effective and efficient IQA model, called gradient magnitude similarity deviation (GMSD). The image gradients are sensitive to image distortions, while different local structures in a distorted image suffer different degrees of degradations. This motivates us to explore the use of global variation of gradient based local quality map for overall image quality prediction. We find that the pixel-wise gradient magnitude similarity (GMS) between the reference and distorted images combined with a novel pooling strategy the standard deviation of the GMS map can predict accurately perceptual image quality. The resulting GMSD algorithm is much faster than most state-of-the-art IQA methods, and delivers highly competitive prediction accuracy.
1308.3058
Phase Retrieval for Sparse Signals: Uniqueness Conditions
cs.IT math.IT
In a variety of fields, in particular those involving imaging and optics, we often measure signals whose phase is missing or has been irremediably distorted. Phase retrieval attempts the recovery of the phase information of a signal from the magnitude of its Fourier transform to enable the reconstruction of the original signal. A fundamental question then is: "Under which conditions can we uniquely recover the signal of interest from its measured magnitudes?" In this paper, we assume the measured signal to be sparse. This is a natural assumption in many applications, such as X-ray crystallography, speckle imaging and blind channel estimation. In this work, we derive a sufficient condition for the uniqueness of the solution of the phase retrieval (PR) problem for both discrete and continuous domains, and for one and multi-dimensional domains. More precisely, we show that there is a strong connection between PR and the turnpike problem, a classic combinatorial problem. We also prove that the existence of collisions in the autocorrelation function of the signal may preclude the uniqueness of the solution of PR. Then, assuming the absence of collisions, we prove that the solution is almost surely unique on 1-dimensional domains. Finally, we extend this result to multi-dimensional signals by solving a set of 1-dimensional problems. We show that the solution of the multi-dimensional problem is unique when the autocorrelation function has no collisions, significantly improving upon a previously known result.
1308.3059
Membership in social networks and the application in information filtering
cs.IR cs.SI physics.soc-ph
During the past a few years, users' membership in the online system (i.e. the social groups that online users joined) are wildly investigated. Most of these works focus on the detection, formulation and growth of online communities. In this paper, we study users' membership in a coupled system which contains user-group and user-object bipartite networks. By linking users' membership information and their object selection, we find that the users who have collected only a few objects are more likely to be "influenced" by the membership when choosing objects. Moreover, we observe that some users may join many online communities though they collected few objects. Based on these findings, we design a social diffusion recommendation algorithm which can effectively solve the user cold-start problem. Finally, we propose a personalized combination of our method and the hybrid method in [PNAS 107, 4511 (2010)], which leads to a further improvement in the overall recommendation performance.
1308.3060
Information filtering in sparse online systems: recommendation via semi-local diffusion
cs.IR
With the rapid growth of the Internet and overwhelming amount of information and choices that people are confronted with, recommender systems have been developed to effectively support users' decision-making process in the online systems. However, many recommendation algorithms suffer from the data sparsity problem, i.e. the user-object bipartite networks are so sparse that algorithms cannot accurately recommend objects for users. This data sparsity problem makes many well-known recommendation algorithms perform poorly. To solve the problem, we propose a recommendation algorithm based on the semi-local diffusion process on a user-object bipartite network. The numerical simulation on two sparse datasets, Amazon and Bookcross, show that our method significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods especially for those small-degree users. Two personalized semi-local diffusion methods are proposed which further improve the recommendation accuracy. Finally, our work indicates that sparse online systems are essentially different from the dense online systems, all the algorithms and conclusions based on dense data should be rechecked again in sparse data.
1308.3080
Average Drift Analysis and Population Scalability
cs.NE
This paper aims to study how the population size affects the computation time of evolutionary algorithms in a rigorous way. The computation time of an evolutionary algorithm can be measured by either the expected number of generations (hitting time) or the expected number of fitness evaluations (running time) to find an optimal solution. Population scalability is the ratio of the expected hitting time between a benchmark algorithm and an algorithm using a larger population size. Average drift analysis is presented for comparing the expected hitting time of two algorithms and estimating lower and upper bounds on population scalability. Several intuitive beliefs are rigorously analysed. It is prove that (1) using a population sometimes increases rather than decreases the expected hitting time; (2) using a population cannot shorten the expected running time of any elitist evolutionary algorithm on unimodal functions in terms of the time-fitness landscape, but this is not true in terms of the distance-based fitness landscape; (3) using a population cannot always reduce the expected running time on fully-deceptive functions, which depends on the benchmark algorithm using elitist selection or random selection.
1308.3101
Compact Relaxations for MAP Inference in Pairwise MRFs with Piecewise Linear Priors
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
Label assignment problems with large state spaces are important tasks especially in computer vision. Often the pairwise interaction (or smoothness prior) between labels assigned at adjacent nodes (or pixels) can be described as a function of the label difference. Exact inference in such labeling tasks is still difficult, and therefore approximate inference methods based on a linear programming (LP) relaxation are commonly used in practice. In this work we study how compact linear programs can be constructed for general piecwise linear smoothness priors. The number of unknowns is O(LK) per pairwise clique in terms of the state space size $L$ and the number of linear segments K. This compares to an O(L^2) size complexity of the standard LP relaxation if the piecewise linear structure is ignored. Our compact construction and the standard LP relaxation are equivalent and lead to the same (approximate) label assignment.
1308.3106
System and Methods for Converting Speech to SQL
cs.CL cs.DB
This paper concerns with the conversion of a Spoken English Language Query into SQL for retrieving data from RDBMS. A User submits a query as speech signal through the user interface and gets the result of the query in the text format. We have developed the acoustic and language models using which a speech utterance can be converted into English text query and thus natural language processing techniques can be applied on this English text query to generate an equivalent SQL query. For conversion of speech into English text HTK and Julius tools have been used and for conversion of English text query into SQL query we have implemented a System which uses rule based translation to translate English Language Query into SQL Query. The translation uses lexical analyzer, parser and syntax directed translation techniques like in compilers. JFLex and BYACC tools have been used to build lexical analyzer and parser respectively. System is domain independent i.e. system can run on different database as it generates lex files from the underlying database.
1308.3112
Nonlinearity measures of random Boolean functions
math.CO cs.IT math.IT
The r-th order nonlinearity of a Boolean function is the minimum number of elements that have to be changed in its truth table to arrive at a Boolean function of degree at most r. It is shown that the (suitably normalised) r-th order nonlinearity of a random Boolean function converges strongly for all r\ge 1. This extends results by Rodier for r=1 and by Dib for r=2. The methods in the present paper are mostly of elementary combinatorial nature and also lead to simpler proofs in the cases that r=1 or 2.
1308.3127
Performance Analysis of Connection Admission Control Scheme in IEEE 802.16 OFDMA Networks
cs.PF cs.IT cs.NI cs.SY math.IT
IEEE 802.16 OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) technology has emerged as a promising technology for broadband access in a Wireless Metropolitan Area Network (WMAN) environment. In this paper, we address the problem of queueing theoretic performance modeling and analysis of OFDMA under broad-band wireless networks. We consider a single-cell IEEE 802.16 environment in which the base station allocates subchannels to the subscriber stations in its coverage area. The subchannels allocated to a subscriber station are shared by multiple connections at that subscriber station. To ensure the Quality of Service (QoS) performances, a Connection Admission Control (CAC) scheme is considered at a subscriber station. A queueing analytical framework for these admission control schemes is presented considering OFDMA-based transmission at the physical layer. Then, based on the queueing model, both the connection-level and the packet-level performances are studied and compared with their analogues in the case without CAC. The connection arrival is modeled by a Poisson process and the packet arrival for a connection by a two-state Markov Modulated Poisson Process (MMPP). We determine analytically and numerically different performance parameters, such as connection blocking probability, average number of ongoing connections, average queue length, packet dropping probability, queue throughput and average packet delay.
1308.3136
Toward the Coevolution of Novel Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines
cs.NE cs.AI cs.CE
The production of renewable and sustainable energy is one of the most important challenges currently facing mankind. Wind has made an increasing contribution to the world's energy supply mix, but still remains a long way from reaching its full potential. In this paper, we investigate the use of artificial evolution to design vertical-axis wind turbine prototypes that are physically instantiated and evaluated under fan generated wind conditions. Initially a conventional evolutionary algorithm is used to explore the design space of a single wind turbine and later a cooperative coevolutionary algorithm is used to explore the design space of an array of wind turbines. Artificial neural networks are used throughout as surrogate models to assist learning and found to reduce the number of fabrications required to reach a higher aerodynamic efficiency. Unlike in other approaches, such as computational fluid dynamics simulations, no mathematical formulations are used and no model assumptions are made.
1308.3155
Percolation on the Information-Theoretically Secure Signal to Interference Ratio Graph
cs.IT math.IT math.PR
We consider a continuum percolation model consisting of two types of nodes, namely legitimate and eavesdropper nodes, distributed according to independent Poisson point processes (PPPs) in $\bbR ^2$ of intensities $\lambda$ and $\lambda_E$ respectively. A directed edge from one legitimate node $A$ to another legitimate node $B$ exists provided the strength of the {\it signal} transmitted from node $A$ that is received at node $B$ is higher than that received at any eavesdropper node. The strength of the received signal at a node from a legitimate node depends not only on the distance between these nodes, but also on the location of the other legitimate nodes and an interference suppression parameter $\gamma$. The graph is said to percolate when there exists an infinite connected component. We show that for any finite intensity $\lambda_E$ of eavesdropper nodes, there exists a critical intensity $\lambda_c < \infty$ such that for all $\lambda > \lambda_c$ the graph percolates for sufficiently small values of the interference parameter. Furthermore, for the sub-critical regime, we show that there exists a $\lambda_0$ such that for all $\lambda < \lambda_0 \leq \lambda_c$ a suitable graph defined over eavesdropper node connections percolates that precludes percolation in the graphs formed by the legitimate nodes.
1308.3174
Communication Network Design: Balancing Modularity and Mixing via Optimal Graph Spectra
cs.SI cs.GT cs.MA
By leveraging information technologies, organizations now have the ability to design their communication networks and crowdsourcing platforms to pursue various performance goals, but existing research on network design does not account for the specific features of social networks, such as the notion of teams. We fill this gap by demonstrating how desirable aspects of organizational structure can be mapped parsimoniously onto the spectrum of the graph Laplacian allowing the specification of structural objectives and build on recent advances in non-convex programming to optimize them. This design framework is general, but we focus here on the problem of creating graphs that balance high modularity and low mixing time, and show how "liaisons" rather than brokers maximize this objective.
1308.3177
Normalized Google Distance of Multisets with Applications
cs.IR cs.LG
Normalized Google distance (NGD) is a relative semantic distance based on the World Wide Web (or any other large electronic database, for instance Wikipedia) and a search engine that returns aggregate page counts. The earlier NGD between pairs of search terms (including phrases) is not sufficient for all applications. We propose an NGD of finite multisets of search terms that is better for many applications. This gives a relative semantics shared by a multiset of search terms. We give applications and compare the results with those obtained using the pairwise NGD. The derivation of NGD method is based on Kolmogorov complexity.
1308.3182
Structural measures for multiplex networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Many real-world complex systems consist of a set of elementary units connected by relationships of different kinds. All such systems are better described in terms of multiplex networks, where the links at each layer represent a different type of interaction between the same set of nodes, rather than in terms of (single-layer) networks. In this paper we present a general framework to describe and study multiplex networks, whose links are either unweighted or weighted. In particular we propose a series of measures to characterize the multiplexicity of the systems in terms of: i) basic node and link properties such as the node degree, and the edge overlap and reinforcement, ii) local properties such as the clustering coefficient and the transitivity, iii) global properties related to the navigability of the multiplex across the different layers. The measures we introduce are validated on a genuine multiplex data set of Indonesian terrorists, where information among 78 individuals are recorded with respect to mutual trust, common operations, exchanged communications and business relationships.
1308.3185
To Relay or Not to Relay: Learning Device-to-Device Relaying Strategies in Cellular Networks
cs.GT cs.MA cs.NI
We consider a cellular network where mobile transceiver devices that are owned by self-interested users are incentivized to cooperate with each other using tokens, which they exchange electronically to "buy" and "sell" downlink relay services, thereby increasing the network's capacity compared to a network that only supports base station-to-device (B2D) communications. We investigate how an individual device in the network can learn its optimal cooperation policy online, which it uses to decide whether or not to provide downlink relay services for other devices in exchange for tokens. We propose a supervised learning algorithm that devices can deploy to learn their optimal cooperation strategies online given their experienced network environment. We then systematically evaluate the learning algorithm in various deployment scenarios. Our simulation results suggest that devices have the greatest incentive to cooperate when the network contains (i) many devices with high energy budgets for relaying, (ii) many highly mobile users (e.g., users in motor vehicles), and (iii) neither too few nor too many tokens. Additionally, within the token system, self-interested devices can effectively learn to cooperate online, and achieve over 20% higher throughput on average than with B2D communications alone, all while selfishly maximizing their own utilities.
1308.3200
An Upper Bound On the Size of Locally Recoverable Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In a {\em locally recoverable} or {\em repairable} code, any symbol of a codeword can be recovered by reading only a small (constant) number of other symbols. The notion of local recoverability is important in the area of distributed storage where a most frequent error-event is a single storage node failure (erasure). A common objective is to repair the node by downloading data from as few other storage node as possible. In this paper, we bound the minimum distance of a code in terms of its length, size and locality. Unlike previous bounds, our bound follows from a significantly simple analysis and depends on the size of the alphabet being used. It turns out that the binary Simplex codes satisfy our bound with equality; hence the Simplex codes are the first example of a optimal binary locally repairable code family. We also provide achievability results based on random coding and concatenated codes that are numerically verified to be close to our bounds.
1308.3217
Can Visible Light Communications Provide Gb/s Service?
cs.IT math.IT
Visible light communications (VLC) that use the infrastructure of the indoor illumination system have been envisioned as a compact, safe, and green alternative to WiFi for the downlink of an indoor wireless mobile communication system. Although the optical spectrum is typically well-suited to high throughput applications, combining communications with indoor lighting in a commercially viable system imposes severe limitations both in bandwidth and received power. Clever techniques are needed to achieve Gb/s transmission, and to do it in a cost effective manner so as to successfully compete with other high-capacity alternatives for indoor access, such as millimeter-wave radio-frequency (RF). This article presents modulation schemes that have the potential to overcome the many challenges faced by VLC in providing multi Gb/s indoor wireless connectivity.
1308.3225
An interactive engine for multilingual video browsing using semantic content
cs.MM cs.CV cs.IR
The amount of audio-visual information has increased dramatically with the advent of High Speed Internet. Furthermore, technological advances in recent years in the field of information technology, have simplified the use of video data in various fields by the general public. This made it possible to store large collections of video documents into computer systems. To enable efficient use of these collections, it is necessary to develop tools to facilitate access to these documents and handling them. In this paper we propose a method for indexing and retrieval of video sequences in a video database of large dimension, based on a weighting technique to calculate the degree of membership of a concept in a video also a structuring of the data of the audio-visual (context / concept / video) and a relevance feedback mechanism.
1308.3229
The Quest for Sustainable Smart Grids
cs.SY physics.soc-ph
This letter is my comment about the opinion paper: Transdisciplinary electric power grid science (PNAS, 2013 - http://www.pnas.org/content/110/30/12159.full). [arXiv:1307.7305].
1308.3239
Orthogonality and Cooperation in Collaborative Spectrum Sensing through MIMO Decision Fusion
cs.IT math.IT
This paper deals with spectrum sensing for cognitive radio scenarios where the decision fusion center (DFC) exploits array processing. More specifically, we explore the impact of user cooperation and orthogonal transmissions among secondary users (SUs) on the reporting channel. To this aim four protocols are considered: (i) non-orthogonal and non-cooperative; (ii) orthogonal and non-cooperative; (iii) non-orthogonal and cooperative; (iv) orthogonal and cooperative. The DFC employs maximum ratio combining (MRC) rule and performance are evaluated in terms of complementary receiver operating characteristic (CROC). Analytical results, coupled with Monte Carlo simulations, are presented.
1308.3243
Arabic Text Recognition in Video Sequences
cs.MM cs.CL cs.CV
In this paper, we propose a robust approach for text extraction and recognition from Arabic news video sequence. The text included in video sequences is an important needful for indexing and searching system. However, this text is difficult to detect and recognize because of the variability of its size, their low resolution characters and the complexity of the backgrounds. To solve these problems, we propose a system performing in two main tasks: extraction and recognition of text. Our system is tested on a varied database composed of different Arabic news programs and the obtained results are encouraging and show the merits of our approach.
1308.3272
Space-Time Interference Alignment and Degrees of Freedom Regions for the MISO Broadcast Channel with Periodic CSI Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
This paper characterizes the degrees of freedom (DoF) regions for the multi-user vector broadcast channel with periodic channel state information (CSI) feedback. As a part of the characterization, a new transmission method called space-time interference alignment is proposed, which exploits both the current and past CSI jointly. Using the proposed alignment technique, an inner bound of the sum-DoF region is characterized as a function of a normalized CSI feedback frequency, which measures CSI feedback speed compared to the speed of user's channel variations. One consequence of the result is that the achievable sum-DoF gain is improved significantly when a user sends back both current and outdated CSI compared to the case where the user sends back current CSI only. Then, a trade-off between CSI feedback delay and the sum-DoF gain is characterized for the multi-user vector broadcast channel in terms of a normalized CSI feedback delay that measures CSI obsoleteness compared to channel coherence time. A crucial insight is that it is possible to achieve the optimal DoF gain if the feedback delay is less than a derived fraction of the channel coherence time. This precisely characterizes the intuition that a small delay should be negligible.
1308.3282
Complete stability analysis of a heuristic ADP control design
cs.NE cs.SY
This paper provides new stability results for Action-Dependent Heuristic Dynamic Programming (ADHDP), using a control algorithm that iteratively improves an internal model of the external world in the autonomous system based on its continuous interaction with the environment. We extend previous results by ADHDP control to the case of general multi-layer neural networks with deep learning across all layers. In particular, we show that the introduced control approach is uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) under specific conditions on the learning rates, without explicit constraints on the temporal discount factor. We demonstrate the benefit of our results to the control of linear and nonlinear systems, including the cart-pole balancing problem. Our results show significantly improved learning and control performance as compared to the state-of-art.
1308.3294
A Secure and Comparable Text Encryption Algorithm
cs.CR cs.CL cs.CY cs.SI
This paper discloses a simple algorithm for encrypting text messages, based on the NP-completeness of the subset sum problem, such that the similarity between encryptions is roughly proportional to the semantic similarity between their generating messages. This allows parties to compare encrypted messages for semantic overlap without trusting an intermediary and might be applied, for example, as a means of finding scientific collaborators over the Internet.
1308.3297
Estimating Clique Composition and Size Distributions from Sampled Network Data
cs.SI physics.data-an physics.soc-ph
Cliques are defined as complete graphs or subgraphs; they are the strongest form of cohesive subgroup, and are of interest in both social science and engineering contexts. In this paper we show how to efficiently estimate the distribution of clique sizes from a probability sample of nodes obtained from a graph (e.g., by independence or link-trace sampling). We introduce two types of unbiased estimators, one of which exploits labeling of sampled nodes neighbors and one of which does not require this information. We compare the estimators on a variety of real-world graphs and provide suggestions for their use. We generalize our estimators to cases in which cliques are distinguished not only by size but also by node attributes, allowing us to estimate clique composition by size. Finally, we apply our methodology to a sample of Facebook users to estimate the clique size distribution by gender over the social graph.
1308.3300
Active Noise Control with Sampled-Data Filtered-x Adaptive Algorithm
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
Analysis and design of filtered-x adaptive algorithms are conventionally done by assuming that the transfer function in the secondary path is a discrete-time system. However, in real systems such as active noise control, the secondary path is a continuous-time system. Therefore, such a system should be analyzed and designed as a hybrid system including discrete- and continuous- time systems and AD/DA devices. In this article, we propose a hybrid design taking account of continuous-time behavior of the secondary path via lifting (continuous-time polyphase decomposition) technique in sampled-data control theory.
1308.3302
YY Filter - A Paradigm of Digital Signal Processing
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
YY filter, named after the founder Prof. Yutaka Yamamoto, is a digital filter designed by sampled-data control theory, which can optimize the analog performance of the signal processing system with AD/DA converters. This article discusses problems in conventional signal processing and introduces advantages of the YY filter.
1308.3303
Upper Bounds On the ML Decoding Error Probability of General Codes over AWGN Channels
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, parameterized Gallager's first bounding technique (GFBT) is presented by introducing nested Gallager regions, to derive upper bounds on the ML decoding error probability of general codes over AWGN channels. The three well-known bounds, namely, the sphere bound (SB) of Herzberg and Poltyrev, the tangential bound (TB) of Berlekamp, and the tangential-sphere bound (TSB) of Poltyrev, are generalized to general codes without the properties of geometrical uniformity and equal energy. When applied to the binary linear codes, the three generalized bounds are reduced to the conventional ones. The new derivation also reveals that the SB of Herzberg and Poltyrev is equivalent to the SB of Kasami et al., which was rarely cited in the literatures.
1308.3309
Search-Space Characterization for Real-time Heuristic Search
cs.AI
Recent real-time heuristic search algorithms have demonstrated outstanding performance in video-game pathfinding. However, their applications have been thus far limited to that domain. We proceed with the aim of facilitating wider applications of real-time search by fostering a greater understanding of the performance of recent algorithms. We first introduce eight algorithm-independent complexity measures for search spaces and correlate their values with algorithm performance. The complexity measures are statistically shown to be significant predictors of algorithm performance across a set of commercial video-game maps. We then extend this analysis to a wider variety of search spaces in the first application of database-driven real-time search to domains outside of video-game pathfinding. In doing so, we gain insight into algorithm performance and possible enhancement as well as into search space complexity.
1308.3310
On the Capacity and Degrees of Freedom Regions of MIMO Interference Channels with Limited Receiver Cooperation
cs.IT math.IT
This paper gives the approximate capacity region of a two-user MIMO interference channel with limited receiver cooperation, where the gap between the inner and outer bounds is in terms of the total number of receive antennas at the two receivers and is independent of the actual channel values. The approximate capacity region is then used to find the degrees of freedom region. For the special case of symmetric interference channels, we also find the amount of receiver cooperation in terms of the backhaul capacity beyond which the degrees of freedom do not improve. Further, the generalized degrees of freedom are found for MIMO interference channels with equal number of antennas at all nodes. It is shown that the generalized degrees of freedom improve gradually from a "W" curve to a "V" curve with increase in cooperation in terms of the backhaul capacity.
1308.3314
The algorithm of noisy k-means
stat.ML cs.LG
In this note, we introduce a new algorithm to deal with finite dimensional clustering with errors in variables. The design of this algorithm is based on recent theoretical advances (see Loustau (2013a,b)) in statistical learning with errors in variables. As the previous mentioned papers, the algorithm mixes different tools from the inverse problem literature and the machine learning community. Coarsely, it is based on a two-step procedure: (1) a deconvolution step to deal with noisy inputs and (2) Newton's iterations as the popular k-means.
1308.3324
History Based Coalition Formation in Hedonic Context Using Trust
cs.MA cs.AI
In this paper we address the problem of coalition formation in hedonic context. Our modelling tries to be as realistic as possible. In previous models, once an agent joins a coalition it would not be able to leave the coalition and join the new one; in this research we made it possible to leave a coalition but put some restrictions to control the behavior of agents. Leaving or staying of an agent in a coalition will affect on the trust of the other agents included in this coalition. Agents will use the trust values in computing the expected utility of coalitions. Three different risk behaviors are introduced for agents that want to initiate a coalition. Using these risk behaviors, some simulations are made and results are analyzed.
1308.3340
Overlapping modularity at the critical point of k-clique percolation
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
One of the most remarkable social phenomena is the formation of communities in social networks corresponding to families, friendship circles, work teams, etc. Since people usually belong to several different communities at the same time, the induced overlaps result in an extremely complicated web of the communities themselves. Thus, uncovering the intricate community structure of social networks is a non-trivial task with great potential for practical applications, gaining a notable interest in the recent years. The Clique Percolation Method (CPM) is one of the earliest overlapping community finding methods, which was already used in the analysis of several different social networks. In this approach the communities correspond to k-clique percolation clusters, and the general heuristic for setting the parameters of the method is to tune the system just below the critical point of k-clique percolation. However, this rule is based on simple physical principles and its validity was never subject to quantitative analysis. Here we examine the quality of the partitioning in the vicinity of the critical point using recently introduced overlapping modularity measures. According to our results on real social- and other networks, the overlapping modularities show a maximum close to the critical point, justifying the original criteria for the optimal parameter settings.
1308.3357
The Entity Registry System: Implementing 5-Star Linked Data Without the Web
cs.DB cs.CY
Linked Data applications often assume that connectivity to data repositories and entity resolution services are always available. This may not be a valid assumption in many cases. Indeed, there are about 4.5 billion people in the world who have no or limited Web access. Many data-driven applications may have a critical impact on the life of those people, but are inaccessible to those populations due to the architecture of today's data registries. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a new open-source system that can be used as a general-purpose entity registry suitable for deployment in poorly-connected or ad-hoc environments.
1308.3372
Objective Information Theory: A Sextuple Model and 9 Kinds of Metrics
cs.IT math.IT
In the contemporary era, the importance of information is undisputed, but there has never been a common understanding of information, nor a unanimous conclusion to the researches on information metrics. Based on the previous studies, this paper analyzes the important achievements in the researches of the properties and metrics of information as well as their main insufficiencies, and explores the essence and connotation, the mathematical expressions and other basic problems related to information. On the basis of the understanding of the objectivity of information, it proposes the definitions and a Sextuple model of information; discusses the basic properties of information, and brings forward the definitions and mathematical expressions of nine kinds of metrics of information, i.e., extensity, detailedness, sustainability, containability, delay, richness, distribution, validity and matchability. Through these, this paper establishes a basic theory frame of Objective Information Theory to support the analysis and research on information and information system systematically and comprehensively.
1308.3374
Utilization of Noise-Only Samples in Array Processing With Prior Knowledge
math.ST cs.IT math.IT stat.TH
For array processing, we consider the problem of estimating signals of interest, and their directions of arrival (DOA), in unknown colored noise fields. We develop an estimator that efficiently utilizes a set of noise-only samples and, further, can incorporate prior knowledge of the DOAs with varying degrees of certainty. The estimator is compared with state of the art estimators that utilize noise-only samples, and the Cram\'{e}r-Rao bound, exhibiting improved performance for smaller sample sets and in poor signal conditions.
1308.3381
High dimensional Sparse Gaussian Graphical Mixture Model
stat.ML cs.LG
This paper considers the problem of networks reconstruction from heterogeneous data using a Gaussian Graphical Mixture Model (GGMM). It is well known that parameter estimation in this context is challenging due to large numbers of variables coupled with the degeneracy of the likelihood. We propose as a solution a penalized maximum likelihood technique by imposing an $l_{1}$ penalty on the precision matrix. Our approach shrinks the parameters thereby resulting in better identifiability and variable selection. We use the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm which involves the graphical LASSO to estimate the mixing coefficients and the precision matrices. We show that under certain regularity conditions the Penalized Maximum Likelihood (PML) estimates are consistent. We demonstrate the performance of the PML estimator through simulations and we show the utility of our method for high dimensional data analysis in a genomic application.
1308.3383
Axioms for graph clustering quality functions
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
We investigate properties that intuitively ought to be satisfied by graph clustering quality functions, that is, functions that assign a score to a clustering of a graph. Graph clustering, also known as network community detection, is often performed by optimizing such a function. Two axioms tailored for graph clustering quality functions are introduced, and the four axioms introduced in previous work on distance based clustering are reformulated and generalized for the graph setting. We show that modularity, a standard quality function for graph clustering, does not satisfy all of these six properties. This motivates the derivation of a new family of quality functions, adaptive scale modularity, which does satisfy the proposed axioms. Adaptive scale modularity has two parameters, which give greater flexibility in the kinds of clusterings that can be found. Standard graph clustering quality functions, such as normalized cut and unnormalized cut, are obtained as special cases of adaptive scale modularity. In general, the results of our investigation indicate that the considered axiomatic framework covers existing `good' quality functions for graph clustering, and can be used to derive an interesting new family of quality functions.
1308.3388
Models of on-line social networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We present a deterministic model for on-line social networks (OSNs) based on transitivity and local knowledge in social interactions. In the Iterated Local Transitivity (ILT) model, at each time-step and for every existing node $x$, a new node appears which joins to the closed neighbour set of $x.$ The ILT model provably satisfies a number of both local and global properties that were observed in OSNs and other real-world complex networks, such as a densification power law, decreasing average distance, and higher clustering than in random graphs with the same average degree. Experimental studies of social networks demonstrate poor expansion properties as a consequence of the existence of communities with low number of inter-community edges. Bounds on the spectral gap for both the adjacency and normalized Laplacian matrices are proved for graphs arising from the ILT model, indicating such bad expansion properties. The cop and domination number are shown to remain the same as the graph from the initial time-step $G_0$, and the automorphism group of $G_0$ is a subgroup of the automorphism group of graphs generated at all later time-steps. A randomized version of the ILT model is presented, which exhibits a tuneable densification power law exponent, and maintains several properties of the deterministic model.
1308.3400
Guiding Designs of Self-Organizing Swarms: Interactive and Automated Approaches
cs.NE nlin.AO
Self-organization of heterogeneous particle swarms is rich in its dynamics but hard to design in a traditional top-down manner, especially when many types of kinetically distinct particles are involved. In this chapter, we discuss how we have been addressing this problem by (1) utilizing and enhancing interactive evolutionary design methods and (2) realizing spontaneous evolution of self organizing swarms within an artificial ecosystem.
1308.3432
Estimating or Propagating Gradients Through Stochastic Neurons for Conditional Computation
cs.LG
Stochastic neurons and hard non-linearities can be useful for a number of reasons in deep learning models, but in many cases they pose a challenging problem: how to estimate the gradient of a loss function with respect to the input of such stochastic or non-smooth neurons? I.e., can we "back-propagate" through these stochastic neurons? We examine this question, existing approaches, and compare four families of solutions, applicable in different settings. One of them is the minimum variance unbiased gradient estimator for stochatic binary neurons (a special case of the REINFORCE algorithm). A second approach, introduced here, decomposes the operation of a binary stochastic neuron into a stochastic binary part and a smooth differentiable part, which approximates the expected effect of the pure stochatic binary neuron to first order. A third approach involves the injection of additive or multiplicative noise in a computational graph that is otherwise differentiable. A fourth approach heuristically copies the gradient with respect to the stochastic output directly as an estimator of the gradient with respect to the sigmoid argument (we call this the straight-through estimator). To explore a context where these estimators are useful, we consider a small-scale version of {\em conditional computation}, where sparse stochastic units form a distributed representation of gaters that can turn off in combinatorially many ways large chunks of the computation performed in the rest of the neural network. In this case, it is important that the gating units produce an actual 0 most of the time. The resulting sparsity can be potentially be exploited to greatly reduce the computational cost of large deep networks for which conditional computation would be useful.
1308.3438
Identification of hybrid node and link communities in complex networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Identification of communities in complex networks has become an effective means to analysis of complex systems. It has broad applications in diverse areas such as social science, engineering, biology and medicine. Finding communities of nodes and finding communities of links are two popular schemes for network structure analysis. These schemes, however, have inherent drawbacks and are often inadequate to properly capture complex organizational structures in real networks. We introduce a new scheme and effective approach for identifying complex network structures using a mixture of node and link communities, called hybrid node-link communities. A central piece of our approach is a probabilistic model that accommodates node, link and hybrid node-link communities. Our extensive experiments on various real-world networks, including a large protein-protein interaction network and a large semantic association network of commonly used words, illustrated that the scheme for hybrid communities is superior in revealing network characteristics. Moreover, the new approach outperformed the existing methods for finding node or link communities separately.
1308.3485
Information sharing promotes prosocial behaviour
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI q-bio.PE
More often than not, bad decisions are bad regardless of where and when they are made. Information sharing might thus be utilized to mitigate them. Here we show that sharing the information about strategy choice between players residing on two different networks reinforces the evolution of cooperation. In evolutionary games the strategy reflects the action of each individual that warrants the highest utility in a competitive setting. We therefore assume that identical strategies on the two networks reinforce themselves by lessening their propensity to change. Besides network reciprocity working in favour of cooperation on each individual network, we observe the spontaneous emerge of correlated behaviour between the two networks, which further deters defection. If information is shared not just between individuals but also between groups, the positive effect is even stronger, and this despite the fact that information sharing is implemented without any assumptions with regards to content.
1308.3506
Computational Rationalization: The Inverse Equilibrium Problem
cs.GT cs.LG stat.ML
Modeling the purposeful behavior of imperfect agents from a small number of observations is a challenging task. When restricted to the single-agent decision-theoretic setting, inverse optimal control techniques assume that observed behavior is an approximately optimal solution to an unknown decision problem. These techniques learn a utility function that explains the example behavior and can then be used to accurately predict or imitate future behavior in similar observed or unobserved situations. In this work, we consider similar tasks in competitive and cooperative multi-agent domains. Here, unlike single-agent settings, a player cannot myopically maximize its reward; it must speculate on how the other agents may act to influence the game's outcome. Employing the game-theoretic notion of regret and the principle of maximum entropy, we introduce a technique for predicting and generalizing behavior.
1308.3508
A General Optimization Technique for High Quality Community Detection in Complex Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Recent years have witnessed the development of a large body of algorithms for community detection in complex networks. Most of them are based upon the optimization of objective functions, among which modularity is the most common, though a number of alternatives have been suggested in the scientific literature. We present here an effective general search strategy for the optimization of various objective functions for community detection purposes. When applied to modularity, on both real-world and synthetic networks, our search strategy substantially outperforms the best existing algorithms in terms of final scores of the objective function; for description length, its performance is on par with the original Infomap algorithm. The execution time of our algorithm is on par with non-greedy alternatives present in literature, and networks of up to 10,000 nodes can be analyzed in time spans ranging from minutes to a few hours on average workstations, making our approach readily applicable to tasks which require the quality of partitioning to be as high as possible, and are not limited by strict time constraints. Finally, based on the most effective of the available optimization techniques, we compare the performance of modularity and code length as objective functions, in terms of the quality of the partitions one can achieve by optimizing them. To this end, we evaluated the ability of each objective function to reconstruct the underlying structure of a large set of synthetic and real-world networks.
1308.3509
Stochastic Optimization for Machine Learning
cs.LG
It has been found that stochastic algorithms often find good solutions much more rapidly than inherently-batch approaches. Indeed, a very useful rule of thumb is that often, when solving a machine learning problem, an iterative technique which relies on performing a very large number of relatively-inexpensive updates will often outperform one which performs a smaller number of much "smarter" but computationally-expensive updates. In this thesis, we will consider the application of stochastic algorithms to two of the most important machine learning problems. Part i is concerned with the supervised problem of binary classification using kernelized linear classifiers, for which the data have labels belonging to exactly two classes (e.g. "has cancer" or "doesn't have cancer"), and the learning problem is to find a linear classifier which is best at predicting the label. In Part ii, we will consider the unsupervised problem of Principal Component Analysis, for which the learning task is to find the directions which contain most of the variance of the data distribution. Our goal is to present stochastic algorithms for both problems which are, above all, practical--they work well on real-world data, in some cases better than all known competing algorithms. A secondary, but still very important, goal is to derive theoretical bounds on the performance of these algorithms which are at least competitive with, and often better than, those known for other approaches.
1308.3513
Hidden Parameter Markov Decision Processes: A Semiparametric Regression Approach for Discovering Latent Task Parametrizations
cs.LG cs.AI
Control applications often feature tasks with similar, but not identical, dynamics. We introduce the Hidden Parameter Markov Decision Process (HiP-MDP), a framework that parametrizes a family of related dynamical systems with a low-dimensional set of latent factors, and introduce a semiparametric regression approach for learning its structure from data. In the control setting, we show that a learned HiP-MDP rapidly identifies the dynamics of a new task instance, allowing an agent to flexibly adapt to task variations.
1308.3521
A New Distributed DC-Programming Method and its Applications
cs.IT math.IT math.OC
We propose a novel decomposition framework for the distributed optimization of Difference Convex (DC)-type nonseparable sum-utility functions subject to coupling convex constraints. A major contribution of the paper is to develop for the first time a class of (inexact) best-response-like algorithms with provable convergence, where a suitably convexified version of the original DC program is iteratively solved. The main feature of the proposed successive convex approximation method is its decomposability structure across the users, which leads naturally to distributed algorithms in the primal and/or dual domain. The proposed framework is applicable to a variety of multiuser DC problems in different areas, ranging from signal processing, to communications and networking. As a case study, in the second part of the paper we focus on two examples, namely: i) a novel resource allocation problem in the emerging area of cooperative physical layer security; ii) and the renowned sum-rate maximization of MIMO Cognitive Radio networks. Our contribution in this context is to devise a class of easy-to-implement distributed algorithms with provable convergence to stationary solution of such problems. Numerical results show that the proposed distributed schemes reach performance close to (and sometimes better than) that of centralized methods.
1308.3524
Innovative Second-Generation Wavelets Construction With Recurrent Neural Networks for Solar Radiation Forecasting
cs.NE
Solar radiation prediction is an important challenge for the electrical engineer because it is used to estimate the power developed by commercial photovoltaic modules. This paper deals with the problem of solar radiation prediction based on observed meteorological data. A 2-day forecast is obtained by using novel wavelet recurrent neural networks (WRNNs). In fact, these WRNNS are used to exploit the correlation between solar radiation and timescale-related variations of wind speed, humidity, and temperature. The input to the selected WRNN is provided by timescale-related bands of wavelet coefficients obtained from meteorological time series. The experimental setup available at the University of Catania, Italy, provided this information. The novelty of this approach is that the proposed WRNN performs the prediction in the wavelet domain and, in addition, also performs the inverse wavelet transform, giving the predicted signal as output. The obtained simulation results show a very low root-mean-square error compared to the results of the solar radiation prediction approaches obtained by hybrid neural networks reported in the recent literature.
1308.3536
Evasion Paths in Mobile Sensor Networks
math.AT cs.RO
Suppose that ball-shaped sensors wander in a bounded domain. A sensor doesn't know its location but does know when it overlaps a nearby sensor. We say that an evasion path exists in this sensor network if a moving intruder can avoid detection. In "Coordinate-free coverage in sensor networks with controlled boundaries via homology", Vin deSilva and Robert Ghrist give a necessary condition, depending only on the time-varying connectivity data of the sensors, for an evasion path to exist. Using zigzag persistent homology, we provide an equivalent condition that moreover can be computed in a streaming fashion. However, no method with time-varying connectivity data as input can give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an evasion path. Indeed, we show that the existence of an evasion path depends not only on the fibrewise homotopy type of the region covered by sensors but also on its embedding in spacetime. For planar sensors that also measure weak rotation and distance information, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an evasion path.
1308.3541
Knapsack Constrained Contextual Submodular List Prediction with Application to Multi-document Summarization
cs.LG
We study the problem of predicting a set or list of options under knapsack constraint. The quality of such lists are evaluated by a submodular reward function that measures both quality and diversity. Similar to DAgger (Ross et al., 2010), by a reduction to online learning, we show how to adapt two sequence prediction models to imitate greedy maximization under knapsack constraint problems: CONSEQOPT (Dey et al., 2012) and SCP (Ross et al., 2013). Experiments on extractive multi-document summarization show that our approach outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods.
1308.3548
Distributed Ranging and Localization for Wireless Networks via Compressed Sensing
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Location-based services in a wireless network require nodes to know their locations accurately. Conventional solutions rely on contention-based medium access, where only one node can successfully transmit at any time in any neighborhood. In this paper, a novel, complete, distributed ranging and localization solution is proposed, which let all nodes in the network broadcast their location estimates and measure distances to all neighbors simultaneously. An on-off signaling is designed to overcome the physical half-duplex constraint. In each iteration, all nodes transmit simultaneously, each broadcasting codewords describing the current location estimate. From the superposed signals from all neighbors, each node decodes their neighbors' locations and also estimates their distances using the signal strengths. The node then broadcasts its improved location estimates in the subsequent iteration. Simulations demonstrate accurate localization throughout a large network over a few thousand symbol intervals, suggesting much higher efficiency than conventional schemes based on ALOHA or CSMA.
1308.3553
Application of Analog Network Coding to MIMO Two-Way Relay Channel in Cellular Systems
cs.IT math.IT
An efficient analog network coding transmission protocol is proposed in this letter for a MIMO two way cellular network. Block signal alignment is first proposed to null the inter-user interference for multi-antenna users, which makes the dimensions of aligned space larger compared with the existing signal alignment. Two algorithms are developed to jointly design the precoding matrices at the relay and BS for outage optimization. Especially, the last algorithm is designed to maximize the effective channel gain to the effective noise gain ratio. The performance of this transmission protocol is also verified by simulations.
1308.3554
Source Code Retrieval Using Sequence Based Similarity
cs.SE cs.IR
Duplicated code has a negative impact on the quality of software systems and should be detected at least. In this paper, we discuss an approach that improves source code retrieval using the structural information about the programs. We developed a lexical parser to extract control statements and method identifiers from Java programs. We propose a similarity measure that is defined by the ratio of the number of sequentially full matching statements to the number of sequentially partial matching ones. The similarity measure is considered to be an extension of a set based similarity index, e.g., Sorensen-Dice index. Our key contribution of this research is the development of a similarity retrieval algorithm that derives meaningful search conditions from a given sequence, and then performs retrieval using all of the derived conditions. Experiments show that our retrieval model outperforms the other retrieval models up to 90.9% in the number of retrieved methods.
1308.3558
Fast Stochastic Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers
cs.LG cs.NA
In this paper, we propose a new stochastic alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm, which incrementally approximates the full gradient in the linearized ADMM formulation. Besides having a low per-iteration complexity as existing stochastic ADMM algorithms, the proposed algorithm improves the convergence rate on convex problems from $O(\frac 1 {\sqrt{T}})$ to $O(\frac 1 T)$, where $T$ is the number of iterations. This matches the convergence rate of the batch ADMM algorithm, but without the need to visit all the samples in each iteration. Experiments on the graph-guided fused lasso demonstrate that the new algorithm is significantly faster than state-of-the-art stochastic and batch ADMM algorithms.
1308.3565
Fast prediction and evaluation of gravitational waveforms using surrogate models
gr-qc cs.CE
[Abridged] We propose a solution to the problem of quickly and accurately predicting gravitational waveforms within any given physical model. The method is relevant for both real-time applications and in more traditional scenarios where the generation of waveforms using standard methods can be prohibitively expensive. Our approach is based on three offline steps resulting in an accurate reduced-order model that can be used as a surrogate for the true/fiducial waveform family. First, a set of m parameter values is determined using a greedy algorithm from which a reduced basis representation is constructed. Second, these m parameters induce the selection of m time values for interpolating a waveform time series using an empirical interpolant. Third, a fit in the parameter dimension is performed for the waveform's value at each of these m times. The cost of predicting L waveform time samples for a generic parameter choice is of order m L + m c_f online operations where c_f denotes the fitting function operation count and, typically, m << L. We generate accurate surrogate models for Effective One Body (EOB) waveforms of non-spinning binary black hole coalescences with durations as long as 10^5 M, mass ratios from 1 to 10, and for multiple harmonic modes. We find that these surrogates are three orders of magnitude faster to evaluate as compared to the cost of generating EOB waveforms in standard ways. Surrogate model building for other waveform models follow the same steps and have the same low online scaling cost. For expensive numerical simulations of binary black hole coalescences we thus anticipate large speedups in generating new waveforms with a surrogate. As waveform generation is one of the dominant costs in parameter estimation algorithms and parameter space exploration, surrogate models offer a new and practical way to dramatically accelerate such studies without impacting accuracy.
1308.3575
Euclidean and Hermitian Self-orthogonal Algebraic Geometry Codes and Their Application to Quantum Codes
cs.IT math.IT
In the present paper, we show that if the dimension of an arbitrary algebraic geometry code over a finite field of even characters is slightly less than half of its length, then it is equivalent to an Euclidean self-orthogonal code. However, in the literatures, a strong contrition about existence of certain differential is required to obtain such a result. We also show a similar result on Hermitian self-orthogonal algebraic geometry codes. As a consequence, we can apply our result to quantum codes and obtain quantum codes with good asymptotic bounds.
1308.3577
A Construction of Quantum Codes via A Class of Classical Polynomial Codes
cs.IT math.IT
There have been various constructions of classical codes from polynomial valuations in literature \cite{ARC04, LNX01,LX04,XF04,XL00}. In this paper, we present a construction of classical codes based on polynomial construction again. One of the features of this construction is that not only the classical codes arisen from the construction have good parameters, but also quantum codes with reasonably good parameters can be produced from these classical codes. In particular, some new quantum codes are constructed (see Examples \ref{5.5} and \ref{5.6}).
1308.3578
Quantum Gilbert-Varshamov Bound Through Symplectic Self-Orthogonal Codes
cs.IT math.IT
It is well known that quantum codes can be constructed through classical symplectic self-orthogonal codes. In this paper, we give a kind of Gilbert-Varshamov bound for symplectic self-orthogonal codes first and then obtain the Gilbert-Varshamov bound for quantum codes. The idea of obtaining the Gilbert-Varshamov bound for symplectic self-orthogonal codes follows from counting arguments.
1308.3600
Random Walks on Directed Networks: Inference and Respondent-driven Sampling
stat.ME cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Respondent driven sampling (RDS) is a method often used to estimate population properties (e.g. sexual risk behavior) in hard-to-reach populations. It combines an effective modified snowball sampling methodology with an estimation procedure that yields unbiased population estimates under the assumption that the sampling process behaves like a random walk on the social network of the population. Current RDS estimation methodology assumes that the social network is undirected, i.e. that all edges are reciprocal. However, empirical social networks in general also have non-reciprocated edges. To account for this fact, we develop a new estimation method for RDS in the presence of directed edges on the basis of random walks on directed networks. We distinguish directed and undirected edges and consider the possibility that the random walk returns to its current position in two steps through an undirected edge. We derive estimators of the selection probabilities of individuals as a function of the number of outgoing edges of sampled individuals. We evaluate the performance of the proposed estimators on artificial and empirical networks to show that they generally perform better than existing methods. This is in particular the case when the fraction of directed edges in the network is large.
1308.3615
QuPARA: Query-Driven Large-Scale Portfolio Aggregate Risk Analysis on MapReduce
cs.DC cs.CE
Stochastic simulation techniques are used for portfolio risk analysis. Risk portfolios may consist of thousands of reinsurance contracts covering millions of insured locations. To quantify risk each portfolio must be evaluated in up to a million simulation trials, each capturing a different possible sequence of catastrophic events over the course of a contractual year. In this paper, we explore the design of a flexible framework for portfolio risk analysis that facilitates answering a rich variety of catastrophic risk queries. Rather than aggregating simulation data in order to produce a small set of high-level risk metrics efficiently (as is often done in production risk management systems), the focus here is on allowing the user to pose queries on unaggregated or partially aggregated data. The goal is to provide a flexible framework that can be used by analysts to answer a wide variety of unanticipated but natural ad hoc queries. Such detailed queries can help actuaries or underwriters to better understand the multiple dimensions (e.g., spatial correlation, seasonality, peril features, construction features, and financial terms) that can impact portfolio risk. We implemented a prototype system, called QuPARA (Query-Driven Large-Scale Portfolio Aggregate Risk Analysis), using Hadoop, which is Apache's implementation of the MapReduce paradigm. This allows the user to take advantage of large parallel compute servers in order to answer ad hoc risk analysis queries efficiently even on very large data sets typically encountered in practice. We describe the design and implementation of QuPARA and present experimental results that demonstrate its feasibility. A full portfolio risk analysis run consisting of a 1,000,000 trial simulation, with 1,000 events per trial, and 3,200 risk transfer contracts can be completed on a 16-node Hadoop cluster in just over 20 minutes.
1308.3616
Complexity in animal communication: Estimating the size of N-Gram structures
q-bio.PE cs.IT math.IT q-bio.QM
In this paper, new techniques that allow conditional entropy to estimate the combinatorics of symbols are applied to animal communication studies to estimate the communication's repertoire size. By using the conditional entropy estimates at multiple orders, the paper estimates the total repertoire sizes for animal communication across bottlenose dolphins, humpback whales, and several species of birds for N-grams length one to three. In addition to discussing the impact of this method on studies of animal communication complexity, the reliability of these estimates is compared to other methods through simulation. While entropy does undercount the total repertoire size due to rare N-grams, it gives a more accurate picture of the most frequently used repertoire than just repertoire size alone.
1308.3657
Hoodsquare: Modeling and Recommending Neighborhoods in Location-based Social Networks
cs.CY cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Information garnered from activity on location-based social networks can be harnessed to characterize urban spaces and organize them into neighborhoods. In this work, we adopt a data-driven approach to the identification and modeling of urban neighborhoods using location-based social networks. We represent geographic points in the city using spatio-temporal information about Foursquare user check-ins and semantic information about places, with the goal of developing features to input into a novel neighborhood detection algorithm. The algorithm first employs a similarity metric that assesses the homogeneity of a geographic area, and then with a simple mechanism of geographic navigation, it detects the boundaries of a city's neighborhoods. The models and algorithms devised are subsequently integrated into a publicly available, map-based tool named Hoodsquare that allows users to explore activities and neighborhoods in cities around the world. Finally, we evaluate Hoodsquare in the context of a recommendation application where user profiles are matched to urban neighborhoods. By comparing with a number of baselines, we demonstrate how Hoodsquare can be used to accurately predict the home neighborhood of Twitter users. We also show that we are able to suggest neighborhoods geographically constrained in size, a desirable property in mobile recommendation scenarios for which geographical precision is key.
1308.3662
A Convex Framework for Optimal Investment on Disease Awareness in Social Networks
cs.SI cs.SY math.OC physics.soc-ph
We consider the problem of controlling the propagation of an epidemic outbreak in an arbitrary network of contacts by investing on disease awareness throughout the network. We model the effect of agent awareness on the dynamics of an epidemic using the SAIS epidemic model, an extension of the SIS epidemic model that includes a state of "awareness". This model allows to derive a condition to control the spread of an epidemic outbreak in terms of the eigenvalues of a matrix that depends on the network structure and the parameters of the model. We study the problem of finding the cost-optimal investment on disease awareness throughout the network when the cost function presents some realistic properties. We propose a convex framework to find cost-optimal allocation of resources. We validate our results with numerical simulations in a real online social network.
1308.3679
Just In Time Indexing
cs.DB
One of the major challenges being faced by Database managers today is to manage the performance of complex SQL queries which are dynamic in nature. Since it is not possible to tune each and every query because of its dynamic nature, there is a definite possibility that these queries may cause serious database performance issues if left alone. Conventional indexes are useful only for those queries which are frequently executed or those columns which are frequently joined in SQL queries. This proposal is regarding a method, a query optimizer for optimizing database queries in a database management system. Just In Time(JIT) indexes are On Demand, temporary indexes created on the fly based on current needs so that they would be able to satisfy any kind of queries. JIT indexes are created only when the configured threshold values for resource consumption are exceeded for a query. JIT indexes will be stored in a temporary basis and will get replaced by new JIT indexes in course of time. The proposal is substantiated with the help of experimental programs and with various test cases. The idea of parallel programming is also brought into picture as it can be effectively used in a multiprocessor system. Multiple threads are employed while one set of threads proceed in the conventional way and the other set of threads proceed with the proposed way. A live switch over is made when a suitable stage is reached and from then onwards the proposed method will only come into picture.
1308.3689
Evolving a Behavioral Repertoire for a Walking Robot
cs.RO
Numerous algorithms have been proposed to allow legged robots to learn to walk. However, the vast majority of these algorithms is devised to learn to walk in a straight line, which is not sufficient to accomplish any real-world mission. Here we introduce the Transferability-based Behavioral Repertoire Evolution algorithm (TBR-Evolution), a novel evolutionary algorithm that simultaneously discovers several hundreds of simple walking controllers, one for each possible direction. By taking advantage of solutions that are usually discarded by evolutionary processes, TBR-Evolution is substantially faster than independently evolving each controller. Our technique relies on two methods: (1) novelty search with local competition, which searches for both high-performing and diverse solutions, and (2) the transferability approach, which com-bines simulations and real tests to evolve controllers for a physical robot. We evaluate this new technique on a hexapod robot. Results show that with only a few dozen short experiments performed on the robot, the algorithm learns a repertoire of con-trollers that allows the robot to reach every point in its reachable space. Overall, TBR-Evolution opens a new kind of learning algorithm that simultaneously optimizes all the achievable behaviors of a robot.
1308.3700
Sailfish: Alignment-free Isoform Quantification from RNA-seq Reads using Lightweight Algorithms
q-bio.GN cs.CE
RNA-seq has rapidly become the de facto technique to measure gene expression. However, the time required for analysis has not kept up with the pace of data generation. Here we introduce Sailfish, a novel computational method for quantifying the abundance of previously annotated RNA isoforms from RNA-seq data. Sailfish entirely avoids mapping reads, which is a time-consuming step in all current methods. Sailfish provides quantification estimates much faster than existing approaches (typically 20-times faster) without loss of accuracy.
1308.3740
Standardizing Interestingness Measures for Association Rules
stat.AP cs.LG stat.ML
Interestingness measures provide information that can be used to prune or select association rules. A given value of an interestingness measure is often interpreted relative to the overall range of the values that the interestingness measure can take. However, properties of individual association rules restrict the values an interestingness measure can achieve. An interesting measure can be standardized to take this into account, but this has only been done for one interestingness measure to date, i.e., the lift. Standardization provides greater insight than the raw value and may even alter researchers' perception of the data. We derive standardized analogues of three interestingness measures and use real and simulated data to compare them to their raw versions, each other, and the standardized lift.
1308.3750
Comment on "robustness and regularization of support vector machines" by H. Xu, et al., (Journal of Machine Learning Research, vol. 10, pp. 1485-1510, 2009, arXiv:0803.3490)
cs.LG
This paper comments on the published work dealing with robustness and regularization of support vector machines (Journal of Machine Learning Research, vol. 10, pp. 1485-1510, 2009) [arXiv:0803.3490] by H. Xu, etc. They proposed a theorem to show that it is possible to relate robustness in the feature space and robustness in the sample space directly. In this paper, we propose a counter example that rejects their theorem.
1308.3772
Joint Phase Noise Estimation and Data Detection in Coded MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, the problem of joint oscillator phase noise (PHN) estimation and data detection for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems using bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) is analyzed. A new MIMO receiver that iterates between the estimator and the detector, based on the expectation-maximization (EM) framework, is proposed. It is shown that at high signal-to-noise ratios, a maximum a posteriori estimator (MAP) can be used to carry out the maximization step of the EM algorithm. Moreover, to reduce the computational complexity of the proposed EM algorithm, a soft decision-directed extended Kalman filter-smoother (EKFS) is applied instead of the MAP estimator to track the PHN parameters. Numerical results show that by combining the proposed EKFS based approach with an iterative detector that employs low density parity check (LDPC) codes, PHN can be accurately tracked. Simulations also demonstrate that compared to existing algorithms, the proposed iterative receiver can significantly enhance the performance of MIMO systems in the presence of PHN.
1308.3780
Decision Theory with Resource-Bounded Agents
cs.GT cs.AI
There have been two major lines of research aimed at capturing resource-bounded players in game theory. The first, initiated by Rubinstein, charges an agent for doing costly computation; the second, initiated by Neyman, does not charge for computation, but limits the computation that agents can do, typically by modeling agents as finite automata. We review recent work on applying both approaches in the context of decision theory. For the first approach, we take the objects of choice in a decision problem to be Turing machines, and charge players for the ``complexity'' of the Turing machine chosen (e.g., its running time). This approach can be used to explain well-known phenomena like first-impression-matters biases (i.e., people tend to put more weight on evidence they hear early on) and belief polarization (two people with different prior beliefs, hearing the same evidence, can end up with diametrically opposed conclusions) as the outcomes of quite rational decisions. For the second approach, we model people as finite automata, and provide a simple algorithm that, on a problem that captures a number of settings of interest, provably performs optimally as the number of states in the automaton increases.
1308.3784
Graph Colouring Problem Based on Discrete Imperialist Competitive Algorithm
cs.AI cs.NE
In graph theory, Graph Colouring Problem (GCP) is an assignment of colours to vertices of any given graph such that the colours on adjacent vertices are different. The GCP is known to be an optimization and NP-hard problem. Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA) is a meta-heuristic optimization and stochastic search strategy which is inspired from socio-political phenomenon of imperialistic competition. The ICA contains two main operators: the assimilation and the imperialistic competition. The ICA has excellent capabilities such as high convergence rate and better global optimum achievement. In this research, a discrete version of ICA is proposed to deal with the solution of GCP. We call this algorithm as the DICA. The performance of the proposed method is compared with Genetic Algorithm (GA) on seven well-known graph colouring benchmarks. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the DICA for the benchmarks. This means DICA can produce optimal and valid solutions for different GCP instances.