id
stringlengths
9
16
title
stringlengths
4
278
categories
stringlengths
5
104
abstract
stringlengths
6
4.09k
1308.3785
Implementation Of Back-Propagation Neural Network For Isolated Bangla Speech Recognition
cs.CL cs.NE
This paper is concerned with the development of Back-propagation Neural Network for Bangla Speech Recognition. In this paper, ten bangla digits were recorded from ten speakers and have been recognized. The features of these speech digits were extracted by the method of Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) analysis. The mfcc features of five speakers were used to train the network with Back propagation algorithm. The mfcc features of ten bangla digit speeches, from 0 to 9, of another five speakers were used to test the system. All the methods and algorithms used in this research were implemented using the features of Turbo C and C++ languages. From our investigation it is seen that the developed system can successfully encode and analyze the mfcc features of the speech signal to recognition. The developed system achieved recognition rate about 96.332% for known speakers (i.e., speaker dependent) and 92% for unknown speakers (i.e., speaker independent).
1308.3799
Permutation Enhanced Parallel Reconstruction with A Linear Compressive Sampling Device
cs.IT math.IT
In this letter, a permutation enhanced parallel reconstruction architecture for compressive sampling is proposed. In this architecture, a measurement matrix is constructed from a block-diagonal sensing matrix and the sparsifying basis of the target signal. In this way, the projection of the signal onto the sparsifying basis can be divided into several segments and all segments can be reconstructed in parallel. Thus, the computational complexity and the time for reconstruction can be reduced significantly. This feature is especially appealing for big data processing. Furthermore, to reduce the number of measurements needed to achieve the desired reconstruction error performance, permutation is introduced for the projection of the signal. It is shown that the permutation can be performed implicitly by using a pre-designed measurement matrix. Thus, the permutation enhanced parallel reconstruction can be achieved with a linear compressive sampling device.
1308.3818
Reference Distance Estimator
cs.LG stat.ML
A theoretical study is presented for a simple linear classifier called reference distance estimator (RDE), which assigns the weight of each feature j as P(r|j)-P(r), where r is a reference feature relevant to the target class y. The analysis shows that if r performs better than random guess in predicting y and is conditionally independent with each feature j, the RDE will have the same classification performance as that from P(y|j)-P(y), a classifier trained with the gold standard y. Since the estimation of P(r|j)-P(r) does not require labeled data, under the assumption above, RDE trained with a large number of unlabeled examples would be close to that trained with infinite labeled examples. For the case the assumption does not hold, we theoretically analyze the factors that influence the closeness of the RDE to the perfect one under the assumption, and present an algorithm to select reference features and combine multiple RDEs from different reference features using both labeled and unlabeled data. The experimental results on 10 text classification tasks show that the semi-supervised learning method improves supervised methods using 5,000 labeled examples and 13 million unlabeled ones, and in many tasks, its performance is even close to a classifier trained with 13 million labeled examples. In addition, the bounds in the theorems provide good estimation of the classification performance and can be useful for new algorithm design.
1308.3827
Layered Constructions for Low-Delay Streaming Codes
cs.IT math.IT
We propose a new class of error correction codes for low-delay streaming communication. We consider an online setup where a source packet arrives at the encoder every $M$ channel uses, and needs to be decoded with a maximum delay of $T$ packets. We consider a sliding-window erasure channel --- $\cC(N,B,W)$ --- which introduces either up to $N$ erasures in arbitrary positions, or $B$ erasures in a single burst, in any window of length $W$. When $M=1$, the case where source-arrival and channel-transmission rates are equal, we propose a class of codes --- MiDAS codes --- that achieve a near optimal rate. Our construction is based on a {\em layered} approach. We first construct an optimal code for the $\cC(N=1,B,W)$ channel, and then concatenate an additional layer of parity-check symbols to deal with $N>1$. When $M > 1$, the case where source-arrival and channel-transmission rates are unequal, we characterize the capacity when $N=1$ and $W \ge M(T+1),$ and for $N>1$, we propose a construction based on a layered approach. Numerical simulations over Gilbert-Elliott and Fritchman channel models indicate significant gains in the residual loss probability over baseline schemes. We also discuss the connection between the error correction properties of the MiDAS codes and their underlying column distance and column span.
1308.3830
Natural Language Web Interface for Database (NLWIDB)
cs.CL cs.DB cs.HC
It is a long term desire of the computer users to minimize the communication gap between the computer and a human. On the other hand, almost all ICT applications store information in to databases and retrieve from them. Retrieving information from the database requires knowledge of technical languages such as Structured Query Language. However majority of the computer users who interact with the databases do not have a technical background and are intimidated by the idea of using languages such as SQL. For above reasons, a Natural Language Web Interface for Database (NLWIDB) has been developed. The NLWIDB allows the user to query the database in a language more like English, through a convenient interface over the Internet.
1308.3831
Strict majority bootstrap percolation in the r-wheel
cs.SI math.PR
In this paper we study the strict majority bootstrap percolation process on graphs. Vertices may be active or passive. Initially, active vertices are chosen independently with probability p. Each passive vertex becomes active if at least half of its neighbors are active (and thereafter never changes its state). If at the end of the process all vertices become active then we say that the initial set of active vertices percolates on the graph. We address the problem of finding graphs for which percolation is likely to occur for small values of p. Specifically, we study a graph that we call r-wheel: a ring of n vertices augmented with a universal vertex where each vertex in the ring is connected to its r closest neighbors to the left and to its r closest neighbors to the right. We prove that the critical probability is 1/4. In other words, if p>1/4 then for large values of r percolation occurs with probability arbitrarily close to 1 as n goes to infinity. On the other hand, if p<1/4 then the probability of percolation is bounded away from 1.
1308.3839
Consensus Sequence Segmentation
cs.CL
In this paper we introduce a method to detect words or phrases in a given sequence of alphabets without knowing the lexicon. Our linear time unsupervised algorithm relies entirely on statistical relationships among alphabets in the input sequence to detect location of word boundaries. We compare our algorithm to previous approaches from unsupervised sequence segmentation literature and provide superior segmentation over number of benchmarks.
1308.3847
Exploiting Binary Floating-Point Representations for Constraint Propagation: The Complete Unabridged Version
cs.AI cs.SE
Floating-point computations are quickly finding their way in the design of safety- and mission-critical systems, despite the fact that designing floating-point algorithms is significantly more difficult than designing integer algorithms. For this reason, verification and validation of floating-point computations is a hot research topic. An important verification technique, especially in some industrial sectors, is testing. However, generating test data for floating-point intensive programs proved to be a challenging problem. Existing approaches usually resort to random or search-based test data generation, but without symbolic reasoning it is almost impossible to generate test inputs that execute complex paths controlled by floating-point computations. Moreover, as constraint solvers over the reals or the rationals do not natively support the handling of rounding errors, the need arises for efficient constraint solvers over floating-point domains. In this paper, we present and fully justify improved algorithms for the propagation of arithmetic IEEE 754 binary floating-point constraints. The key point of these algorithms is a generalization of an idea by B. Marre and C. Michel that exploits a property of the representation of floating-point numbers.
1308.3874
Alert-BDI: BDI Model with Adaptive Alertness through Situational Awareness
cs.MA
In this paper, we address the problems faced by a group of agents that possess situational awareness, but lack a security mechanism, by the introduction of a adaptive risk management system. The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture lacks a framework that would facilitate an adaptive risk management system that uses the situational awareness of the agents. We extend the BDI architecture with the concept of adaptive alertness. Agents can modify their level of alertness by monitoring the risks faced by them and by their peers. Alert-BDI enables the agents to detect and assess the risks faced by them in an efficient manner, thereby increasing operational efficiency and resistance against attacks.
1308.3876
Detection and Filtering of Collaborative Malicious Users in Reputation System using Quality Repository Approach
cs.SI cs.IR physics.soc-ph
Online reputation system is gaining popularity as it helps a user to be sure about the quality of a product/service he wants to buy. Nonetheless online reputation system is not immune from attack. Dealing with malicious ratings in reputation systems has been recognized as an important but difficult task. This problem is challenging when the number of true user's ratings is relatively small and unfair ratings plays majority in rated values. In this paper, we have proposed a new method to find malicious users in online reputation systems using Quality Repository Approach (QRA). We mainly concentrated on anomaly detection in both rating values and the malicious users. QRA is very efficient to detect malicious user ratings and aggregate true ratings. The proposed reputation system has been evaluated through simulations and it is concluded that the QRA based system significantly reduces the impact of unfair ratings and improve trust on reputation score with lower false positive as compared to other method used for the purpose.
1308.3892
Do the rich get richer? An empirical analysis of the BitCoin transaction network
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-fin.GN
The possibility to analyze everyday monetary transactions is limited by the scarcity of available data, as this kind of information is usually considered highly sensitive. Present econophysics models are usually employed on presumed random networks of interacting agents, and only macroscopic properties (e.g. the resulting wealth distribution) are compared to real-world data. In this paper, we analyze BitCoin, which is a novel digital currency system, where the complete list of transactions is publicly available. Using this dataset, we reconstruct the network of transactions, and extract the time and amount of each payment. We analyze the structure of the transaction network by measuring network characteristics over time, such as the degree distribution, degree correlations and clustering. We find that linear preferential attachment drives the growth of the network. We also study the dynamics taking place on the transaction network, i.e. the flow of money. We measure temporal patterns and the wealth accumulation. Investigating the microscopic statistics of money movement, we find that sublinear preferential attachment governs the evolution of the wealth distribution. We report a scaling relation between the degree and wealth associated to individual nodes.
1308.3898
Firefly Algorithm: Recent Advances and Applications
math.OC cs.AI
Nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms, especially those based on swarm intelligence, have attracted much attention in the last ten years. Firefly algorithm appeared in about five years ago, its literature has expanded dramatically with diverse applications. In this paper, we will briefly review the fundamentals of firefly algorithm together with a selection of recent publications. Then, we discuss the optimality associated with balancing exploration and exploitation, which is essential for all metaheuristic algorithms. By comparing with intermittent search strategy, we conclude that metaheuristics such as firefly algorithm are better than the optimal intermittent search strategy. We also analyse algorithms and their implications for higher-dimensional optimization problems.
1308.3900
Bat Algorithm: Literature Review and Applications
cs.AI math.OC
Bat algorithm (BA) is a bio-inspired algorithm developed by Yang in 2010 and BA has been found to be very efficient. As a result, the literature has expanded significantly in the last 3 years. This paper provides a timely review of the bat algorithm and its new variants. A wide range of diverse applications and case studies are also reviewed and summarized briefly here. Further research topics are also discussed.
1308.3916
Robust Supervisory Control for Uniting Two Output-Feedback Hybrid Controllers with Different Objectives
cs.SY
The problem of robustly, asymptotically stabilizing a point (or a set) with two output-feedback hybrid controllers is considered. These control laws may have different objectives, e.g., the closed-loop systems resulting with each controller may have different attractors. We provide a control algorithm that combines the two hybrid controllers to accomplish the stabilization task. The algorithm consists of a hybrid supervisor that, based on the values of plant's outputs and (norm) state estimates, selects the hybrid controller that should be applied to the plant. The accomplishment of the stabilization task relies on an output-to-state stability property induced by the controllers, which enables the construction of an estimator for the norm of the plant's state. The algorithm is motivated by and applied to robust, semi-global stabilization problems uniting two controllers.
1308.3946
Optimal Algorithms for Testing Closeness of Discrete Distributions
cs.DS cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
We study the question of closeness testing for two discrete distributions. More precisely, given samples from two distributions $p$ and $q$ over an $n$-element set, we wish to distinguish whether $p=q$ versus $p$ is at least $\eps$-far from $q$, in either $\ell_1$ or $\ell_2$ distance. Batu et al. gave the first sub-linear time algorithms for these problems, which matched the lower bounds of Valiant up to a logarithmic factor in $n$, and a polynomial factor of $\eps.$ In this work, we present simple (and new) testers for both the $\ell_1$ and $\ell_2$ settings, with sample complexity that is information-theoretically optimal, to constant factors, both in the dependence on $n$, and the dependence on $\eps$; for the $\ell_1$ testing problem we establish that the sample complexity is $\Theta(\max\{n^{2/3}/\eps^{4/3}, n^{1/2}/\eps^2 \}).$
1308.3956
Target Assignment in Robotic Networks: Distance Optimality Guarantees and Hierarchical Strategies
cs.RO
We study the problem of multi-robot target assignment to minimize the total distance traveled by the robots until they all reach an equal number of static targets. In the first half of the paper, we present a necessary and sufficient condition under which true distance optimality can be achieved for robots with limited communication and target-sensing ranges. Moreover, we provide an explicit, non-asymptotic formula for computing the number of robots needed to achieve distance optimality in terms of the robots' communication and target-sensing ranges with arbitrary guaranteed probabilities. The same bounds are also shown to be asymptotically tight. In the second half of the paper, we present suboptimal strategies for use when the number of robots cannot be chosen freely. Assuming first that all targets are known to all robots, we employ a hierarchical communication model in which robots communicate only with other robots in the same partitioned region. This hierarchical communication model leads to constant approximations of true distance-optimal solutions under mild assumptions. We then revisit the limited communication and sensing models. By combining simple rendezvous-based strategies with a hierarchical communication model, we obtain decentralized hierarchical strategies that achieve constant approximation ratios with respect to true distance optimality. Results of simulation show that the approximation ratio is as low as 1.4.
1308.3957
Iterative Multiuser Detection and Decoding with Spatially Coupled Interleaving
cs.IT math.IT
Spatially coupled (SC) interleaving is proposed to improve the performance of iterative multiuser detection and decoding (MUDD) for quasi-static fading multiple-input multiple-output systems. The linear minimum mean-squared error (LMMSE) demodulator is used to reduce the complexity and to avoid error propagation. Furthermore, sliding window MUDD is proposed to circumvent an increase of the decoding latency due to SC interleaving. Theoretical and numerical analyses show that SC interleaving can improve the performance of the iterative LMMSE MUDD for regular low-density parity-check codes.
1308.3985
Remarks on criteria for achieving the optimal diversity-multiplexing gain trade-off
cs.IT math.IT
In this short note we will prove that non-vanishing determinant (NVD) criterion is not enough for an asymmetric space-time block code (STBC) to achieve the optimal diversity-multiplexing gain trade-off (DMT). This result is in contrast to the recent result made by Srinath and Rajan. In order to clarify the issue further the approximately universality criterion by Tavildar and Viswanath is translated into language of lattice theory and some conjectures are given.
1308.3995
A Comparison of Hybridized and Standard DG Methods for Target-Based hp-Adaptive Simulation of Compressible Flow
cs.CE cs.NA math.NA
We present a comparison between hybridized and non-hybridized discontinuous Galerkin methods in the context of target-based hp-adaptation for compressible flow problems. The aim is to provide a critical assessment of the computational efficiency of hybridized DG methods. Hybridization of finite element discretizations has the main advantage, that the resulting set of algebraic equations has globally coupled degrees of freedom only on the skeleton of the computational mesh. Consequently, solving for these degrees of freedom involves the solution of a potentially much smaller system. This not only reduces storage requirements, but also allows for a faster solution with iterative solvers. Using a discrete-adjoint approach, sensitivities with respect to output functionals are computed to drive the adaptation. From the error distribution given by the adjoint-based error estimator, h- or p-refinement is chosen based on the smoothness of the solution which can be quantified by properly-chosen smoothness indicators. Numerical results are shown for subsonic, transonic, and supersonic flow around the NACA0012 airfoil. hp-adaptation proves to be superior to pure h-adaptation if discontinuous or singular flow features are involved. In all cases, a higher polynomial degree turns out to be beneficial. We show that for polynomial degree of approximation p=2 and higher, and for a broad range of test cases, HDG performs better than DG in terms of runtime and memory requirements.
1308.4002
Topological bifurcations in a model society of reasonable contrarians
nlin.CG cs.SI nlin.CD physics.soc-ph
People are often divided into conformists and contrarians, the former tending to align to the majority opinion in their neighborhood and the latter tending to disagree with that majority. In practice, however, the contrarian tendency is rarely followed when there is an overwhelming majority with a given opinion, which denotes a social norm. Such reasonable contrarian behavior is often considered a mark of independent thought, and can be a useful strategy in financial markets. We present the opinion dynamics of a society of reasonable contrarian agents. The model is a cellular automaton of Ising type, with antiferromagnetic pair interactions modeling contrarianism and plaquette terms modeling social norms. We introduce the entropy of the collective variable as a way of comparing deterministic (mean-field) and probabilistic (simulations) bifurcation diagrams. In the mean field approximation the model exhibits bifurcations and a chaotic phase, interpreted as coherent oscillations of the whole society. However, in a one-dimensional spatial arrangement one observes incoherent oscillations and a constant average. In simulations on Watts-Strogatz networks with a small-world effect the mean field behavior is recovered, with a bifurcation diagram that resembles the mean-field one, but using the rewiring probability as the control parameter. Similar bifurcation diagrams are found for scale free networks, and we are able to compute an effective connectivity for such networks.
1308.4004
A balanced k-means algorithm for weighted point sets
math.OC cs.LG stat.ML
The classical $k$-means algorithm for partitioning $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ into $k$ clusters is one of the most popular and widely spread clustering methods. The need to respect prescribed lower bounds on the cluster sizes has been observed in many scientific and business applications. In this paper, we present and analyze a generalization of $k$-means that is capable of handling weighted point sets and prescribed lower and upper bounds on the cluster sizes. We call it weight-balanced $k$-means. The key difference to existing models lies in the ability to handle the combination of weighted point sets with prescribed bounds on the cluster sizes. This imposes the need to perform partial membership clustering, and leads to significant differences. For example, while finite termination of all $k$-means variants for unweighted point sets is a simple consequence of the existence of only finitely many partitions of a given set of points, the situation is more involved for weighted point sets, as there are infinitely many partial membership clusterings. Using polyhedral theory, we show that the number of iterations of weight-balanced $k$-means is bounded above by $n^{O(dk)}$, so in particular it is polynomial for fixed $k$ and $d$. This is similar to the known worst-case upper bound for classical $k$-means for unweighted point sets and unrestricted cluster sizes, despite the much more general framework. We conclude with the discussion of some additional favorable properties of our method.
1308.4008
A Literature Survey of Benchmark Functions For Global Optimization Problems
cs.AI math.OC
Test functions are important to validate and compare the performance of optimization algorithms. There have been many test or benchmark functions reported in the literature; however, there is no standard list or set of benchmark functions. Ideally, test functions should have diverse properties so that can be truly useful to test new algorithms in an unbiased way. For this purpose, we have reviewed and compiled a rich set of 175 benchmark functions for unconstrained optimization problems with diverse properties in terms of modality, separability, and valley landscape. This is by far the most complete set of functions so far in the literature, and tt can be expected this complete set of functions can be used for validation of new optimization in the future.
1308.4013
Incentives for Privacy Tradeoff in Community Sensing
cs.GT cs.AI
Community sensing, fusing information from populations of privately-held sensors, presents a great opportunity to create efficient and cost-effective sensing applications. Yet, reasonable privacy concerns often limit the access to such data streams. How should systems valuate and negotiate access to private information, for example in return for monetary incentives? How should they optimally choose the participants from a large population of strategic users with privacy concerns, and compensate them for information shared? In this paper, we address these questions and present a novel mechanism, SeqTGreedy, for budgeted recruitment of participants in community sensing. We first show that privacy tradeoffs in community sensing can be cast as an adaptive submodular optimization problem. We then design a budget feasible, incentive compatible (truthful) mechanism for adaptive submodular maximization, which achieves near-optimal utility for a large class of sensing applications. This mechanism is general, and of independent interest. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in a case study of air quality monitoring, using data collected from the Mechanical Turk platform. Compared to the state of the art, our approach achieves up to 30% reduction in cost in order to achieve a desired level of utility.
1308.4014
Epidemic Spreading on Weighted Complex Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Nowadays, the emergence of online services provides various multi-relation information to support the comprehensive understanding of the epidemic spreading process. In this Letter, we consider the edge weights to represent such multi-role relations. In addition, we perform detailed analysis of two representative metrics, outbreak threshold and epidemic prevalence, on SIS and SIR models. Both theoretical and simulation results find good agreements with each other. Furthermore, experiments show that, on fully mixed networks, the weight distribution on edges would not affect the epidemic results once the average weight of whole network is fixed. This work may shed some light on the in-depth understanding of epidemic spreading on multi-relation and weighted networks.
1308.4027
Combined-Semantics Equivalence Is Decidable for a Practical Class of Conjunctive Queries
cs.DB
In this paper, we focus on the problem of determining whether two conjunctive ("CQ") queries posed on relational data are combined-semantics equivalent [9]. We continue the tradition of [2,5,9] of studying this problem using the tool of containment between queries. We introduce a syntactic necessary and sufficient condition for equivalence of queries belonging to a large natural language of "explicit-wave" combined-semantics CQ queries; this language encompasses (but is not limited to) all set, bag, and bag-set queries, and appears to cover all combined-semantics CQ queries that are expressible in SQL. Our result solves in the positive the decidability problem of determining combined-semantics equivalence for pairs of explicit-wave CQ queries. That is, for an arbitrary pair of combined-semantics CQ queries, it is decidable (i) to determine whether each of the queries is explicit wave, and (ii) to determine, in case both queries are explicit wave, whether or not they are combined-semantics equivalent, by using our syntactic criterion. (The problem of determining equivalence for general combined-semantics CQ queries remains open. Even so, our syntactic sufficient containment condition could still be used to determine that two general CQ queries are combined-semantics equivalent.) Our equivalence test, as well as our general sufficient condition for containment of combined-semantics CQ queries, reduce correctly to the special cases reported in [2,5] for set, bag, and bag-set semantics. Our containment and equivalence conditions also properly generalize the results of [9], provided that the latter are restricted to the language of (combined-semantics) CQ queries.
1308.4048
Gcube Indexing
cs.DB
Spatial Online Analytical Processing System involves the non-categorical attribute information also whereas standard Online Analytical Processing System deals with only categorical attributes. Providing spatial information to the data warehouse (DW); two major challenges faced are;1.Defining and Aggregation of Spatial/Continues values and 2.Representation, indexing, updating and efficient query processing. In this paper, we present GCUBE(Geographical Cube) storage and indexing procedure to aggregate the spatial information/Continuous values. We employed the proposed approach storing and indexing using synthetic and real data sets and evaluated its build, update and Query time. It is observed that the proposed procedure offers significant performance advantage.
1308.4067
The S-metric, the Beichl-Cloteaux approximation, and preferential attachment
math.CO cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The S-metric has grown popular in network studies, as a measure of ``scale-freeness'' restricted to the collection G(D) of connected graphs with a common degree sequence D=(d_1,\ldots,d_n). The calculation of S depends on the maximum possible degree assortativity r among graphs in G(D). The original method involves a heuristic construction of a maximally assortative graph g*. The approximation by Beichl and Cloteaux involves constructing a possibly disconnected graph g' with r(g') >= r(g*) and requires O(n^2) tests for the graphicality of a degree sequence. The present paper uses the Tripathi-Vijay test to streamline this approximation, and thereby to investigate two collections of graphs: Barabasi-Albert trees and coauthorship graphs of mathematical sciences researchers. Long-term trends in the coauthorship graphs are discussed, and contextualized by insights derived from the BA trees. It is known that greater degree-based preferential attachment produces greater variance in degree sequences, and these trees exhibited assortativities restricted to a narrow band. In contrast, variance in degree rose over time in the coauthorship graphs in spite of weakening degree-based preferential attachment. These observations and their implications are discussed and avenues of future work are suggested.
1308.4077
Support Recovery for the Drift Coefficient of High-Dimensional Diffusions
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT math.PR math.ST stat.TH
Consider the problem of learning the drift coefficient of a $p$-dimensional stochastic differential equation from a sample path of length $T$. We assume that the drift is parametrized by a high-dimensional vector, and study the support recovery problem when both $p$ and $T$ can tend to infinity. In particular, we prove a general lower bound on the sample-complexity $T$ by using a characterization of mutual information as a time integral of conditional variance, due to Kadota, Zakai, and Ziv. For linear stochastic differential equations, the drift coefficient is parametrized by a $p\times p$ matrix which describes which degrees of freedom interact under the dynamics. In this case, we analyze a $\ell_1$-regularized least squares estimator and prove an upper bound on $T$ that nearly matches the lower bound on specific classes of sparse matrices.
1308.4123
A Likelihood Ratio Approach for Probabilistic Inequalities
math.PR cs.LG math.ST stat.TH
We propose a new approach for deriving probabilistic inequalities based on bounding likelihood ratios. We demonstrate that this approach is more general and powerful than the classical method frequently used for deriving concentration inequalities such as Chernoff bounds. We discover that the proposed approach is inherently related to statistical concepts such as monotone likelihood ratio, maximum likelihood, and the method of moments for parameter estimation. A connection between the proposed approach and the large deviation theory is also established. We show that, without using moment generating functions, tightest possible concentration inequalities may be readily derived by the proposed approach. We have derived new concentration inequalities using the proposed approach, which cannot be obtained by the classical approach based on moment generating functions.
1308.4189
Seeing What You're Told: Sentence-Guided Activity Recognition In Video
cs.CV cs.AI cs.CL
We present a system that demonstrates how the compositional structure of events, in concert with the compositional structure of language, can interplay with the underlying focusing mechanisms in video action recognition, thereby providing a medium, not only for top-down and bottom-up integration, but also for multi-modal integration between vision and language. We show how the roles played by participants (nouns), their characteristics (adjectives), the actions performed (verbs), the manner of such actions (adverbs), and changing spatial relations between participants (prepositions) in the form of whole sentential descriptions mediated by a grammar, guides the activity-recognition process. Further, the utility and expressiveness of our framework is demonstrated by performing three separate tasks in the domain of multi-activity videos: sentence-guided focus of attention, generation of sentential descriptions of video, and query-based video search, simply by leveraging the framework in different manners.
1308.4200
Towards Adapting ImageNet to Reality: Scalable Domain Adaptation with Implicit Low-rank Transformations
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
Images seen during test time are often not from the same distribution as images used for learning. This problem, known as domain shift, occurs when training classifiers from object-centric internet image databases and trying to apply them directly to scene understanding tasks. The consequence is often severe performance degradation and is one of the major barriers for the application of classifiers in real-world systems. In this paper, we show how to learn transform-based domain adaptation classifiers in a scalable manner. The key idea is to exploit an implicit rank constraint, originated from a max-margin domain adaptation formulation, to make optimization tractable. Experiments show that the transformation between domains can be very efficiently learned from data and easily applied to new categories. This begins to bridge the gap between large-scale internet image collections and object images captured in everyday life environments.
1308.4201
Full-Diversity Space-Time Block Codes for Integer-Forcing Linear Receivers
cs.IT math.IT
In multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels, the design criterion for full-diversity space-time block codes (STBCs) is primarily determined by the decoding method at the receiver. Although constructions of STBCs have predominantly matched the maximum-likelihood (ML) decoder, design criteria and constructions of full-diversity STBCs have also been reported for low-complexity linear receivers. A new receiver architecture called Integer-Forcing (IF) linear receiver has been proposed to MIMO channels by Zhan et al. which showed promising results for the high-rate V-BLAST encoding scheme. In this paper, we address the design of full-diversity STBCs for IF linear receivers. In particular, we are interested in characterizing the structure of STBCs that provide full-diversity with the IF receiver. Along that direction, we derive an upper bound on the probability of decoding error, and show that STBCs that satisfy the restricted non-vanishing singular value (RNVS) property provide full-diversity for the IF receiver. Furthermore, we prove that all known STBCs with the non-vanishing determinant property provide full-diversity with IF receivers, as they guarantee the RNVS property. By using the formulation of RNVS property, we also prove the existence of a full-diversity STBC outside the class of perfect STBCs, thereby adding significant insights compared to the existing works on STBCs with IF decoding. Finally, we present extensive simulation results to demonstrate that linear designs with RNVS property provide full-diversity for IF receiver.
1308.4206
Nested Nonnegative Cone Analysis
stat.ME cs.LG
Motivated by the analysis of nonnegative data objects, a novel Nested Nonnegative Cone Analysis (NNCA) approach is proposed to overcome some drawbacks of existing methods. The application of traditional PCA/SVD method to nonnegative data often cause the approximation matrix leave the nonnegative cone, which leads to non-interpretable and sometimes nonsensical results. The nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) approach overcomes this issue, however the NMF approximation matrices suffer several drawbacks: 1) the factorization may not be unique, 2) the resulting approximation matrix at a specific rank may not be unique, and 3) the subspaces spanned by the approximation matrices at different ranks may not be nested. These drawbacks will cause troubles in determining the number of components and in multi-scale (in ranks) interpretability. The NNCA approach proposed in this paper naturally generates a nested structure, and is shown to be unique at each rank. Simulations are used in this paper to illustrate the drawbacks of the traditional methods, and the usefulness of the NNCA method.
1308.4214
Pylearn2: a machine learning research library
stat.ML cs.LG cs.MS
Pylearn2 is a machine learning research library. This does not just mean that it is a collection of machine learning algorithms that share a common API; it means that it has been designed for flexibility and extensibility in order to facilitate research projects that involve new or unusual use cases. In this paper we give a brief history of the library, an overview of its basic philosophy, a summary of the library's architecture, and a description of how the Pylearn2 community functions socially.
1308.4216
Triple Point in Correlated Interdependent Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Many real-world networks depend on other networks, often in non-trivial ways, to maintain their functionality. These interdependent "networks of networks" are often extremely fragile. When a fraction $1-p$ of nodes in one network randomly fails, the damage propagates to nodes in networks that are interdependent and a dynamic failure cascade occurs that affects the entire system. We present dynamic equations for two interdependent networks that allow us to reproduce the failure cascade for an arbitrary pattern of interdependency. We study the "rich club" effect found in many real interdependent network systems in which the high-degree nodes are extremely interdependent, correlating a fraction $\alpha$ of the higher degree nodes on each network. We find a rich phase diagram in the plane $p-\alpha$, with a triple point reminiscent of the triple point of liquids that separates a non-functional phase from two functional phases.
1308.4227
A Computational Framework for the Mixing Times in the QBD Processes with Infinitely-Many Levels
math.PR cs.PF cs.SY math.OC
In this paper, we develop some matrix Poisson's equations satisfied by the mean and variance of the mixing time in an irreducible positive-recurrent discrete-time Markov chain with infinitely-many levels, and provide a computational framework for the solution to the matrix Poisson's equations by means of the UL-type of $RG$-factorization as well as the generalized inverses. In an important special case: the level-dependent QBD processes, we provide a detailed computation for the mean and variance of the mixing time. Based on this, we give new highlight on computation of the mixing time in the block-structured Markov chains with infinitely-many levels through the matrix-analytic method.
1308.4259
Time Development of Early Social Networks: Link analysis and group dynamics
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.ed-ph
Empirical data on early network history are rare. Students beginning their studies at a university with no or few prior connections to each other offer a unique opportunity to investigate the formation and early development of social networks. During a nine week introductory physics course, first year physics students were asked to identify those with whom they communicated about problem solving in physics during the preceding week. We use these students' self reports to produce time dependent student interaction networks. These networks have also been investigated to elucidate possible effects of gender and students' final course grade. Changes in the weekly number of links are investigated to show that while roughly half of all links change from week to week, students also reestablish a growing number of links as they progress through their first weeks of study. To investigate how students group, Infomap is used to establish groups. Further, student group flow is examined using alluvial diagrams, showing that many students jump between group each week., Finally, a segregation measure is developed which shows that students structure themselves according to gender and laboratory exercise groups and not according to end-of-course grade. The results show the behavior of an early social-educational network, and may have implications for theoretical network models as well as for physics education.
1308.4268
Multirate Digital Signal Processing via Sampled-Data H-infinity Optimization
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
In this thesis, we present a new method for designing multirate signal processing and digital communication systems via sampled-data H-infinity control theory. The difference between our method and conventional ones is in the signal spaces. Conventional designs are executed in the discrete-time domain, while our design takes account of both the discrete-time and the continuous-time signals. Namely, our method can take account of the characteristic of the original analog signal and the influence of the A/D and D/A conversion. While the conventional method often indicates that an ideal digital low-pass filter is preferred, we show that the optimal solution need not be an ideal low-pass when the original analog signal is not completely band-limited. This fact can not be recognized only in the discrete-time domain. Moreover, we consider quantization effects. We discuss the stability and the performance of quantized sampled-data control systems. We justify H-infinity control to reduce distortion caused by the quantizer. Then we apply it to differential pulse code modulation. While the conventional Delta modulator is not optimal and besides not stable, our modulator is stable and optimal with respect to the H-infinity-norm. We also give an LMI (Linear Matrix Inequality) solution to the optimal H-infinity approximation of IIR (Infinite Impulse Response) filters via FIR (Finite Impulse Response) filters. A comparison with the Nehari shuffle is made with a numerical example, and it is observed that the LMI solution generally performs better. Another numerical study also indicates that there is a trade-off between the pass-band and stop-band approximation characteristics.
1308.4273
Adaptive matching pursuit for off-grid compressed sensing
eess.SP cs.IT math.IT
Compressive sensing (CS) can effectively recover a signal when it is sparse in some discrete atoms. However, in some applications, signals are sparse in a continuous parameter space, e.g., frequency space, rather than discrete atoms. Usually, we divide the continuous parameter into finite discrete grid points and build a dictionary from these grid points. However, the actual targets may not exactly lie on the grid points no matter how densely the parameter is grided, which introduces mismatch between the predefined dictionary and the actual one. In this article, a novel method, namely adaptive matching pursuit with constrained total least squares (AMP-CTLS), is proposed to find actual atoms even if they are not included in the initial dictionary. In AMP-CTLS, the grid and the dictionary are adaptively updated to better agree with measurements. The convergence of the algorithm is discussed, and numerical experiments demonstrate the advantages of AMP-CTLS.
1308.4274
Chaotic Characteristic of Discrete-time Linear Inclusion Dynamical Systems
cs.SY math.DS math.OC
In this paper, we study the fiber-chaos of switched linear dynamical systems.
1308.4294
Expanding the Knowledge Horizon in Underwater Robot Swarms
cs.RO
In this paper we study the time delays affecting the diffusion of information in an underwater heterogeneous robot swarm, considering a time-sensitive environment. In many situations each member of the swarm must update its knowledge about the environment as soon as possible, thus every effort to expand the knowledge horizon is useful. Otherwise critical information may not reach nodes far from the source causing dangerous misbehaviour of the swarm. We consider two extreme situations. In the first scenario we have an unique probabilistic delay distribution. In the second scenario, each agent is subject to a different truncated gaussian distribution, meaning local conditions are significantly different from link to link. We study how several swarm topologies react to the two scenarios and how to allocate the more efficient transmission resources in order to expand the horizon. Results show that significant time savings under a gossip-like protocol are possible properly allocating the resources. Moreover, methods to determine the fastest swarm topologies and the most important nodes are suggested.
1308.4316
Decentralized Charging of Plug-In Electric Vehicles with Distribution Feeder Overload Control
cs.SY
As the number of charging Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) increase, due to the limited power capacity of the distribution feeders and the sensitivity of the mid-way distribution transformers to the excessive load, it is crucial to control the amount of power through each specific distribution feeder to avoid system overloads that may lead to breakdowns. In this paper we develop, analyze and evaluate charging algorithms for PEVs with feeder overload constraints in the distribution grid. The algorithms we propose jointly minimize the variance of the aggregate load and prevent overloading of the distribution feeders.
1308.4338
SAR Image Despeckling Algorithms using Stochastic Distances and Nonlocal Means
cs.IT cs.CV cs.GR math.IT stat.AP stat.ML
This paper presents two approaches for filter design based on stochastic distances for intensity speckle reduction. A window is defined around each pixel, overlapping samples are compared and only those which pass a goodness-of-fit test are used to compute the filtered value. The tests stem from stochastic divergences within the Information Theory framework. The technique is applied to intensity Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data with homogeneous regions using the Gamma model. The first approach uses a Nagao-Matsuyama-type procedure for setting the overlapping samples, and the second uses the nonlocal method. The proposals are compared with the Improved Sigma filter and with anisotropic diffusion for speckled data (SRAD) using a protocol based on Monte Carlo simulation. Among the criteria used to quantify the quality of filters, we employ the equivalent number of looks, and line and edge preservation. Moreover, we also assessed the filters by the Universal Image Quality Index and by the Pearson correlation between edges. Applications to real images are also discussed. The proposed methods show good results.
1308.4398
Understanding recurrent crime as system-immanent collective behavior
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.PE
Containing the spreading of crime is a major challenge for society. Yet, since thousands of years, no effective strategy has been found to overcome crime. To the contrary, empirical evidence shows that crime is recurrent, a fact that is not captured well by rational choice theories of crime. According to these, strong enough punishment should prevent crime from happening. To gain a better understanding of the relationship between crime and punishment, we consider that the latter requires prior discovery of illicit behavior and study a spatial version of the inspection game. Simulations reveal the spontaneous emergence of cyclic dominance between ''criminals'', ''inspectors'', and ''ordinary people'' as a consequence of spatial interactions. Such cycles dominate the evolutionary process, in particular when the temptation to commit crime or the cost of inspection are low or moderate. Yet, there are also critical parameter values beyond which cycles cease to exist and the population is dominated either by a stable mixture of criminals and inspectors or one of these two strategies alone. Both continuous and discontinuous phase transitions to different final states are possible, indicating that successful strategies to contain crime can be very much counter-intuitive and complex. Our results demonstrate that spatial interactions are crucial for the evolutionary outcome of the inspection game, and they also reveal why criminal behavior is likely to be recurrent rather than evolving towards an equilibrium with monotonous parameter dependencies.
1308.4440
Influences Combination of Multi-Sensor Images on Classification Accuracy
cs.CV
This paper focuses on two main issues; first one is the impact of combination of multi-sensor images on the supervised learning classification accuracy using segment Fusion (SF). The second issue attempts to undertake the study of supervised machine learning classification technique of remote sensing images by using four classifiers like Parallelepiped (Pp), Mahalanobis Distance (MD), Maximum-Likelihood (ML) and Euclidean Distance(ED) classifiers, and their accuracies have been evaluated on their respected classification to choose the best technique for classification of remote sensing images. QuickBird multispectral data (MS) and panchromatic data (PAN) have been used in this study to demonstrate the enhancement and accuracy assessment of fused image over the original images using ALwassaiProcess software. According to experimental result of this study, is that the test results indicate the supervised classification results of fusion image, which generated better than the MS did. As well as the result with Euclidean classifier is robust and provides better results than the other classifiers do, despite of the popular belief that the maximum-likelihood classifier is the most accurate classifier.
1308.4479
An Investigation of the Sampling-Based Alignment Method and Its Contributions
cs.CL
By investigating the distribution of phrase pairs in phrase translation tables, the work in this paper describes an approach to increase the number of n-gram alignments in phrase translation tables output by a sampling-based alignment method. This approach consists in enforcing the alignment of n-grams in distinct translation subtables so as to increase the number of n-grams. Standard normal distribution is used to allot alignment time among translation subtables, which results in adjustment of the distribution of n- grams. This leads to better evaluation results on statistical machine translation tasks than the original sampling-based alignment approach. Furthermore, the translation quality obtained by merging phrase translation tables computed from the sampling-based alignment method and from MGIZA++ is examined.
1308.4499
On a question of Babadi and Tarokh II
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper we continue to study a question proposed by Babadi and Tarokh \cite{ba2} on the mysterious randomness of Gold sequences. Upon improving their result, we establish the randomness of product of pseudorandom matrices formed from two linear block codes with respect to the empirical spectral distribution, if the dual distance of both codes is at least 5, hence providing an affirmative answer to the question.
1308.4506
A study of retrieval algorithms of sparse messages in networks of neural cliques
cs.NE
Associative memories are data structures addressed using part of the content rather than an index. They offer good fault reliability and biological plausibility. Among different families of associative memories, sparse ones are known to offer the best efficiency (ratio of the amount of bits stored to that of bits used by the network itself). Their retrieval process performance has been shown to benefit from the use of iterations. However classical algorithms require having prior knowledge about the data to retrieve such as the number of nonzero symbols. We introduce several families of algorithms to enhance the retrieval process performance in recently proposed sparse associative memories based on binary neural networks. We show that these algorithms provide better performance, along with better plausibility than existing techniques. We also analyze the required number of iterations and derive corresponding curves.
1308.4526
Formalization, Mechanization and Automation of G\"odel's Proof of God's Existence
cs.LO cs.AI math.LO
G\"odel's ontological proof has been analysed for the first-time with an unprecedent degree of detail and formality with the help of higher-order theorem provers. The following has been done (and in this order): A detailed natural deduction proof. A formalization of the axioms, definitions and theorems in the TPTP THF syntax. Automatic verification of the consistency of the axioms and definitions with Nitpick. Automatic demonstration of the theorems with the provers LEO-II and Satallax. A step-by-step formalization using the Coq proof assistant. A formalization using the Isabelle proof assistant, where the theorems (and some additional lemmata) have been automated with Sledgehammer and Metis.
1308.4560
On the Throughput and Energy Efficiency of Cognitive MIMO Transmissions
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, throughput and energy efficiency of cognitive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating under quality-of-service (QoS) constraints, interference limitations, and imperfect channel sensing, are studied. It is assumed that transmission power and covariance of the input signal vectors are varied depending on the sensed activities of primary users (PUs) in the system. Interference constraints are applied on the transmission power levels of cognitive radios (CRs) to provide protection for the PUs whose activities are modeled as a Markov chain. Considering the reliability of the transmissions and channel sensing results, a state-transition model is provided. Throughput is determined by formulating the effective capacity. First derivative of the effective capacity is derived in the low-power regime and the minimum bit energy requirements in the presence of QoS limitations and imperfect sensing results are identified. Minimum energy per bit is shown to be achieved by beamforming in the maximal-eigenvalue eigenspace of certain matrices related to the channel matrix. In a special case, wideband slope is determined for more refined analysis of energy efficiency. Numerical results are provided for the throughput for various levels of buffer constraints and different number of transmit and receive antennas. The impact of interference constraints and benefits of multiple-antenna transmissions are determined. It is shown that increasing the number of antennas when the interference power constraint is stringent is generally beneficial. On the other hand, it is shown that under relatively loose interference constraints, increasing the number of antennas beyond a certain level does not lead to much increase in the throughput.
1308.4565
Decentralized Online Big Data Classification - a Bandit Framework
cs.LG cs.MA
Distributed, online data mining systems have emerged as a result of applications requiring analysis of large amounts of correlated and high-dimensional data produced by multiple distributed data sources. We propose a distributed online data classification framework where data is gathered by distributed data sources and processed by a heterogeneous set of distributed learners which learn online, at run-time, how to classify the different data streams either by using their locally available classification functions or by helping each other by classifying each other's data. Importantly, since the data is gathered at different locations, sending the data to another learner to process incurs additional costs such as delays, and hence this will be only beneficial if the benefits obtained from a better classification will exceed the costs. We assume that the classification functions available to each processing element are fixed, but their prediction accuracy for various types of incoming data are unknown and can change dynamically over time, and thus they need to be learned online. We model the problem of joint classification by the distributed and heterogeneous learners from multiple data sources as a distributed contextual bandit problem where each data is characterized by a specific context. We develop distributed online learning algorithms for which we can prove that they have sublinear regret. Compared to prior work in distributed online data mining, our work is the first to provide analytic regret results characterizing the performance of the proposed algorithms.
1308.4568
Distributed Online Learning via Cooperative Contextual Bandits
cs.LG stat.ML
In this paper we propose a novel framework for decentralized, online learning by many learners. At each moment of time, an instance characterized by a certain context may arrive to each learner; based on the context, the learner can select one of its own actions (which gives a reward and provides information) or request assistance from another learner. In the latter case, the requester pays a cost and receives the reward but the provider learns the information. In our framework, learners are modeled as cooperative contextual bandits. Each learner seeks to maximize the expected reward from its arrivals, which involves trading off the reward received from its own actions, the information learned from its own actions, the reward received from the actions requested of others and the cost paid for these actions - taking into account what it has learned about the value of assistance from each other learner. We develop distributed online learning algorithms and provide analytic bounds to compare the efficiency of these with algorithms with the complete knowledge (oracle) benchmark (in which the expected reward of every action in every context is known by every learner). Our estimates show that regret - the loss incurred by the algorithm - is sublinear in time. Our theoretical framework can be used in many practical applications including Big Data mining, event detection in surveillance sensor networks and distributed online recommendation systems.
1308.4572
Codeword or noise? Exact random coding exponents for slotted asynchronism
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of slotted asynchronous coded communication, where in each time frame (slot), the transmitter is either silent or transmits a codeword from a given (randomly selected) codebook. The task of the decoder is to decide whether transmission has taken place, and if so, to decode the message. We derive the optimum detection/decoding rule in the sense of the best trade-off among the probabilities of decoding error, false alarm, and misdetection. For this detection/decoding rule, we then derive single-letter characterizations of the exact exponential rates of these three probabilities for the average code in the ensemble.
1308.4577
Network Reliability: The effect of local network structure on diffusive processes
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.comp-ph
This paper re-introduces the network reliability polynomial - introduced by Moore and Shannon in 1956 -- for studying the effect of network structure on the spread of diseases. We exhibit a representation of the polynomial that is well-suited for estimation by distributed simulation. We describe a collection of graphs derived from Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi and scale-free-like random graphs in which we have manipulated assortativity-by-degree and the number of triangles. We evaluate the network reliability for all these graphs under a reliability rule that is related to the expected size of a connected component. Through these extensive simulations, we show that for positively or neutrally assortative graphs, swapping edges to increase the number of triangles does not increase the network reliability. Also, positively assortative graphs are more reliable than neutral or disassortative graphs with the same number of edges. Moreover, we show the combined effect of both assortativity-by-degree and the presence of triangles on the critical point and the size of the smallest subgraph that is reliable.
1308.4618
Can inferred provenance and its visualisation be used to detect erroneous annotation? A case study using UniProtKB
cs.CL cs.CE cs.DL q-bio.QM
A constant influx of new data poses a challenge in keeping the annotation in biological databases current. Most biological databases contain significant quantities of textual annotation, which often contains the richest source of knowledge. Many databases reuse existing knowledge, during the curation process annotations are often propagated between entries. However, this is often not made explicit. Therefore, it can be hard, potentially impossible, for a reader to identify where an annotation originated from. Within this work we attempt to identify annotation provenance and track its subsequent propagation. Specifically, we exploit annotation reuse within the UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProtKB), at the level of individual sentences. We describe a visualisation approach for the provenance and propagation of sentences in UniProtKB which enables a large-scale statistical analysis. Initially levels of sentence reuse within UniProtKB were analysed, showing that reuse is heavily prevalent, which enables the tracking of provenance and propagation. By analysing sentences throughout UniProtKB, a number of interesting propagation patterns were identified, covering over 100, 000 sentences. Over 8000 sentences remain in the database after they have been removed from the entries where they originally occurred. Analysing a subset of these sentences suggest that approximately 30% are erroneous, whilst 35% appear to be inconsistent. These results suggest that being able to visualise sentence propagation and provenance can aid in the determination of the accuracy and quality of textual annotation. Source code and supplementary data are available from the authors website.
1308.4643
Topological security assessment of technological networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The spreading of dangerous malware or faults in inter-dependent networks of electronics devices has raised deep concern, because from the ICT networks infections may propagate to other Critical Infrastructures producing the well-known domino or cascading effect. Researchers are attempting to develop a high level analysis of malware propagation discarding software details, in order to generalize to the maximum extent the defensive strategies. For example, it has been suggested that the maximum eigenvalue of the network adjacency matrix could act as a threshold for the malware's spreading. This leads naturally to use the spectral graph theory to identify the most critical and influential nodes in technological networks. Many well-known graph parameters have been studied in the past years to accomplish the task. Here we test our AV11 algorithm showing that outperforms degree, closeness, betweenness centrality and the dynamical importance
1308.4648
PACE: Pattern Accurate Computationally Efficient Bootstrapping for Timely Discovery of Cyber-Security Concepts
cs.IR cs.CL
Public disclosure of important security information, such as knowledge of vulnerabilities or exploits, often occurs in blogs, tweets, mailing lists, and other online sources months before proper classification into structured databases. In order to facilitate timely discovery of such knowledge, we propose a novel semi-supervised learning algorithm, PACE, for identifying and classifying relevant entities in text sources. The main contribution of this paper is an enhancement of the traditional bootstrapping method for entity extraction by employing a time-memory trade-off that simultaneously circumvents a costly corpus search while strengthening pattern nomination, which should increase accuracy. An implementation in the cyber-security domain is discussed as well as challenges to Natural Language Processing imposed by the security domain.
1308.4675
Genetic Algorithm for Solving Simple Mathematical Equality Problem
cs.NE
This paper explains genetic algorithm for novice in this field. Basic philosophy of genetic algorithm and its flowchart are described. Step by step numerical computation of genetic algorithm for solving simple mathematical equality problem will be briefly explained
1308.4687
Query Processing Performance and Searching Over Encrypted Data By Using An Efficient Algorithm
cs.DB cs.CR
Data is the central asset of today's dynamically operating organization and their business. This data is usually stored in database. A major consideration is applied on the security of that data from the unauthorized access and intruders. Data encryption is a strong option for security of data in database and especially in those organizations where security risks are high. But there is a potential disadvantage of performance degradation. When we apply encryption on database then we should compromise between the security and efficient query processing. The work of this paper tries to fill this gap. It allows the users to query over the encrypted column directly without decrypting all the records. It's improves the performance of the system. The proposed algorithm works well in the case of range and fuzzy match queries.
1308.4718
Invertibility and Robustness of Phaseless Reconstruction
math.FA cs.CV stat.ML
This paper is concerned with the question of reconstructing a vector in a finite-dimensional real Hilbert space when only the magnitudes of the coefficients of the vector under a redundant linear map are known. We analyze various Lipschitz bounds of the nonlinear analysis map and we establish theoretical performance bounds of any reconstruction algorithm. We show that robust and stable reconstruction requires additional redundancy than the critical threshold.
1308.4757
Online and stochastic Douglas-Rachford splitting method for large scale machine learning
cs.NA cs.LG stat.ML
Online and stochastic learning has emerged as powerful tool in large scale optimization. In this work, we generalize the Douglas-Rachford splitting (DRs) method for minimizing composite functions to online and stochastic settings (to our best knowledge this is the first time DRs been generalized to sequential version). We first establish an $O(1/\sqrt{T})$ regret bound for batch DRs method. Then we proved that the online DRs splitting method enjoy an $O(1)$ regret bound and stochastic DRs splitting has a convergence rate of $O(1/\sqrt{T})$. The proof is simple and intuitive, and the results and technique can be served as a initiate for the research on the large scale machine learning employ the DRs method. Numerical experiments of the proposed method demonstrate the effectiveness of the online and stochastic update rule, and further confirm our regret and convergence analysis.
1308.4761
Matching Demand with Supply in the Smart Grid using Agent-Based Multiunit Auction
cs.AI cs.GT
Recent work has suggested reducing electricity generation cost by cutting the peak to average ratio (PAR) without reducing the total amount of the loads. However, most of these proposals rely on consumer's willingness to act. In this paper, we propose an approach to cut PAR explicitly from the supply side. The resulting cut loads are then distributed among consumers by the means of a multiunit auction which is done by an intelligent agent on behalf of the consumer. This approach is also in line with the future vision of the smart grid to have the demand side matched with the supply side. Experiments suggest that our approach reduces overall system cost and gives benefit to both consumers and the energy provider.
1308.4764
On the Zero-freeness of Tall Multirate Linear Systems
cs.SY
In this paper, tall discrete-time linear systems with multirate outputs are studied. In particular, we focus on their zeros. In systems and control literature zeros of multirate systems are defined as those of their corresponding time-invariant blocked systems. Hence, the zeros of tall blocked systems resulting from blocking of linear systems with multirate outputs are mainly explored in this work. We specifically investigate zeros of tall blocked systems formed by blocking tall multirate linear systems with generic parameter matrices. It is demonstrated that tall blocked systems generically have no finite nonzero zeros; however, they may have zeros at the origin or at infinity depending on the choice of blocking delay and the input, state and output dimensions.
1308.4774
Bit Rate of Programs
cs.SE cs.IT math.IT
A program can be considered as a device that generates discrete time signals, where a signal is an execution. Shannon information rate, or bit rate, of the signals may not be uniformly distributed. When the program is specified by a finite state transition system, algorithms are provided in identifying information-rich components. For a black-box program that has a partial specification or does not even have a specification, a bit rate signal and its spectrum are studied, which make use of data compression and the Fourier transform. The signal provides a bit-rate coverage for testing the black-box while its spectrum indicates a visual representation for execution's information characteristics.
1308.4777
Adaptive Multi-objective Optimization for Energy Efficient Interference Coordination in Multi-Cell Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we investigate the distributed power allocation for multi-cell OFDMA networks taking both energy efficiency and inter-cell interference (ICI) mitigation into account. A performance metric termed as throughput contribution is exploited to measure how ICI is effectively coordinated. To achieve a distributed power allocation scheme for each base station (BS), the throughput contribution of each BS to the network is first given based on a pricing mechanism. Different from existing works, a biobjective problem is formulated based on multi-objective optimization theory, which aims at maximizing the throughput contribution of the BS to the network and minimizing its total power consumption at the same time. Using the method of Pascoletti and Serafini scalarization, the relationship between the varying parameters and minimal solutions is revealed. Furthermore, to exploit the relationship an algorithm is proposed based on which all the solutions on the boundary of the efficient set can be achieved by adaptively adjusting the involved parameters. With the obtained solution set, the decision maker has more choices on power allocation schemes in terms of both energy consumption and throughput. Finally, the performance of the algorithm is assessed by the simulation results.
1308.4786
An Investigation On Fuzzy Logic Controllers (TAKAGI-SUGENO & MAMDANI) In Inverse Pendulum System
cs.SY
The concept of controlling non-linear systems is one the significant fields in scientific researches for the purpose of which intelligent approaches can provide desirable applicability. Fuzzy systems are systems with ambiguous definition and fuzzy control is an especial type of non-linear control. Inverse pendulum system is one the most widely popular non-linear systems which is known for its specific characteristics such as being intrinsically non-linear and unsteady. Therefore, a controller is required for maintaining stability of the system Present study tries to compare the obtained results from designing fuzzy intelligent controllers in similar conditions and also identify the appropriate controller for holding the inverse pendulum in vertical position on the cart.
1308.4791
Multipath Matching Pursuit
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we propose an algorithm referred to as multipath matching pursuit that investigates multiple promising candidates to recover sparse signals from compressed measurements. Our method is inspired by the fact that the problem to find the candidate that minimizes the residual is readily modeled as a combinatoric tree search problem and the greedy search strategy is a good fit for solving this problem. In the empirical results as well as the restricted isometry property (RIP) based performance guarantee, we show that the proposed MMP algorithm is effective in reconstructing original sparse signals for both noiseless and noisy scenarios.
1308.4801
The Mapping of Simulated Climate-Dependent Building Innovations
cs.CE
Performances of building energy innovations are most of the time dependent on the external climate conditions. This means a high performance of a specific innovation in a certain part of Europe, does not imply the same performances in other regions. The mapping of simulated building performances at the EU scale could prevent the waste of potential good ideas by identifying the best region for a specific innovation. This paper presents a methodology for obtaining maps of performances of building innovations that are virtually spread over whole Europe. It is concluded that these maps are useful for finding regions at the EU where innovations have the highest expected performances.
1308.4809
Block Markov Superposition Transmission: Construction of Big Convolutional Codes from Short Codes
cs.IT math.IT
A construction of big convolutional codes from short codes called block Markov superposition transmission (BMST) is proposed. The BMST is very similar to superposition blockMarkov encoding (SBME), which has been widely used to prove multiuser coding theorems. The encoding process of BMST can be as fast as that of the involved short code, while the decoding process can be implemented as an iterative sliding-window decoding algorithm with a tunable delay. More importantly, the performance of BMST can be simply lower-bounded in terms of the transmission memory given that the performance of the short code is available. Numerical results show that, 1) the lower bounds can be matched with a moderate decoding delay in the low bit-error-rate (BER) region, implying that the iterative slidingwindow decoding algorithm is near optimal; 2) BMST with repetition codes and single parity-check codes can approach the Shannon limit within 0.5 dB at BER of 10^{-5} for a wide range of code rates; and 3) BMST can also be applied to nonlinear codes.
1308.4828
The Sample-Complexity of General Reinforcement Learning
cs.LG
We present a new algorithm for general reinforcement learning where the true environment is known to belong to a finite class of N arbitrary models. The algorithm is shown to be near-optimal for all but O(N log^2 N) time-steps with high probability. Infinite classes are also considered where we show that compactness is a key criterion for determining the existence of uniform sample-complexity bounds. A matching lower bound is given for the finite case.
1308.4839
Diversification Based Static Index Pruning - Application to Temporal Collections
cs.IR
Nowadays, web archives preserve the history of large portions of the web. As medias are shifting from printed to digital editions, accessing these huge information sources is drawing increasingly more attention from national and international institutions, as well as from the research community. These collections are intrinsically big, leading to index files that do not fit into the memory and an increase query response time. Decreasing the index size is a direct way to decrease this query response time. Static index pruning methods reduce the size of indexes by removing a part of the postings. In the context of web archives, it is necessary to remove postings while preserving the temporal diversity of the archive. None of the existing pruning approaches take (temporal) diversification into account. In this paper, we propose a diversification-based static index pruning method. It differs from the existing pruning approaches by integrating diversification within the pruning context. We aim at pruning the index while preserving retrieval effectiveness and diversity by pruning while maximizing a given IR evaluation metric like DCG. We show how to apply this approach in the context of web archives. Finally, we show on two collections that search effectiveness in temporal collections after pruning can be improved using our approach rather than diversity oblivious approaches.
1308.4840
Power Control in Networks With Heterogeneous Users: A Quasi-Variational Inequality Approach
cs.IT math.IT
This work deals with the power allocation problem in a multipoint-to-multipoint network, which is heterogenous in the sense that each transmit and receiver pair can arbitrarily choose whether to selfishly maximize its own rate or energy efficiency. This is achieved by modeling the transmit and receiver pairs as rational players that engage in a non-cooperative game in which the utility function changes according to each player's nature. The underlying game is reformulated as a quasi variational inequality (QVI) problem using convex fractional program theory. The equivalence between the QVI and the non-cooperative game provides us with all the mathematical tools to study the uniqueness of its Nash equilibrium (NE) points and to derive novel algorithms that allow the network to converge to these points in an iterative manner both with and without the need for a centralized processing. A small-cell network is considered as a possible case study of this heterogeneous scenario. Numerical results are used to validate the proposed solutions in different operating conditions.
1308.4846
POMDPs under Probabilistic Semantics
cs.AI
We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with limit-average payoff, where a reward value in the interval [0,1] is associated to every transition, and the payoff of an infinite path is the long-run average of the rewards. We consider two types of path constraints: (i) quantitative constraint defines the set of paths where the payoff is at least a given threshold {\lambda} in (0, 1]; and (ii) qualitative constraint which is a special case of quantitative constraint with {\lambda} = 1. We consider the computation of the almost-sure winning set, where the controller needs to ensure that the path constraint is satisfied with probability 1. Our main results for qualitative path constraint are as follows: (i) the problem of deciding the existence of a finite-memory controller is EXPTIME-complete; and (ii) the problem of deciding the existence of an infinite-memory controller is undecidable. For quantitative path constraint we show that the problem of deciding the existence of a finite-memory controller is undecidable.
1308.4847
The dynamic pattern of human attention
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
A mass of traces of human activities show diverse dynamic patterns. In this paper, we comprehensively investigate the dynamic pattern of human attention defined by the quantity of interests on subdisciplines in an online academic communication forum. Both the expansion and exploration of human attention have a power-law scaling relation with browsing actions, of which the exponent is close to that in one-dimension random walk. Furthermore, the memory effect of human attention is characterized by the power-law distributions of both the return interval time and return interval steps, which is reinforced by studying the attention shift that monotonically increase with the interval order between pairs of continuously segmental sequences of expansion. At last, the observing dynamic pattern of human attention in the browsing process is analytically described by a dynamic model whose generic mechanism is analogy to that of human spatial mobility. Thus, our work not only enlarges the research scope of human dynamics, but also provides an insight to understand the relationship between the interest transitivity in online activities and human spatial mobility in real world.
1308.4880
May the Best Meme Win!: New Exploration of Competitive Epidemic Spreading over Arbitrary Multi-Layer Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
This study extends the SIS epidemic model for single virus propagation over an arbitrary graph to an SI1SI2S epidemic model of two exclusive, competitive viruses over a two-layer network with generic structure, where network layers represent the distinct transmission routes of the viruses. We find analytical results determining extinction, mutual exclusion, and coexistence of the viruses by introducing the concepts of survival threshold and winning threshold. Furthermore, we show the possibility of coexistence in SIS-type competitive spreading over multilayer networks. Not only do we rigorously prove a region of coexistence, we quantitate it via interrelation of central nodes across the network layers. Little to no overlapping of layers central nodes is the key determinant of coexistence. Specifically, we show coexistence is impossible if network layers are identical yet possible if the network layers have distinct dominant eigenvectors and node degree vectors. For example, we show both analytically and numerically that positive correlation of network layers makes it difficult for a virus to survive while in a network with negatively correlated layers survival is easier but total removal of the other virus is more difficult. We believe our methodology has great potentials for application to broader classes of multi-pathogen spreading over multi-layer and interconnected networks.
1308.4902
A review on handwritten character and numeral recognition for Roman, Arabic, Chinese and Indian scripts
cs.CV
There are a lot of intensive researches on handwritten character recognition (HCR) for almost past four decades. The research has been done on some of popular scripts such as Roman, Arabic, Chinese and Indian. In this paper we present a review on HCR work on the four popular scripts. We have summarized most of the published paper from 2005 to recent and also analyzed the various methods in creating a robust HCR system. We also added some future direction of research on HCR.
1308.4904
Proceedings Third International Workshop on Hybrid Autonomous Systems
cs.SY cs.CE
The interest on autonomous systems is increasing both in industry and academia. Such systems must operate with limited human intervention in a changing environment and must be able to compensate for significant system failures without external intervention. The most appropriate models of autonomous systems can be found in the class of hybrid systems (which study continuous-state dynamic processes via discrete-state controllers) that interact with their environment. This workshop brings together researchers interested in all aspects of autonomy and resilience of hybrid systems.
1308.4908
A Unified Framework for Multi-Sensor HDR Video Reconstruction
cs.CV cs.GR cs.MM
One of the most successful approaches to modern high quality HDR-video capture is to use camera setups with multiple sensors imaging the scene through a common optical system. However, such systems pose several challenges for HDR reconstruction algorithms. Previous reconstruction techniques have considered debayering, denoising, resampling (align- ment) and exposure fusion as separate problems. In contrast, in this paper we present a unifying approach, performing HDR assembly directly from raw sensor data. Our framework includes a camera noise model adapted to HDR video and an algorithm for spatially adaptive HDR reconstruction based on fitting of local polynomial approximations to observed sensor data. The method is easy to implement and allows reconstruction to an arbitrary resolution and output mapping. We present an implementation in CUDA and show real-time performance for an experimental 4 Mpixel multi-sensor HDR video system. We further show that our algorithm has clear advantages over existing methods, both in terms of flexibility and reconstruction quality.
1308.4915
Minimal Dirichlet energy partitions for graphs
math.OC cs.LG stat.ML
Motivated by a geometric problem, we introduce a new non-convex graph partitioning objective where the optimality criterion is given by the sum of the Dirichlet eigenvalues of the partition components. A relaxed formulation is identified and a novel rearrangement algorithm is proposed, which we show is strictly decreasing and converges in a finite number of iterations to a local minimum of the relaxed objective function. Our method is applied to several clustering problems on graphs constructed from synthetic data, MNIST handwritten digits, and manifold discretizations. The model has a semi-supervised extension and provides a natural representative for the clusters as well.
1308.4922
Learning Deep Representation Without Parameter Inference for Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction
cs.LG stat.ML
Unsupervised deep learning is one of the most powerful representation learning techniques. Restricted Boltzman machine, sparse coding, regularized auto-encoders, and convolutional neural networks are pioneering building blocks of deep learning. In this paper, we propose a new building block -- distributed random models. The proposed method is a special full implementation of the product of experts: (i) each expert owns multiple hidden units and different experts have different numbers of hidden units; (ii) the model of each expert is a k-center clustering, whose k-centers are only uniformly sampled examples, and whose output (i.e. the hidden units) is a sparse code that only the similarity values from a few nearest neighbors are reserved. The relationship between the pioneering building blocks, several notable research branches and the proposed method is analyzed. Experimental results show that the proposed deep model can learn better representations than deep belief networks and meanwhile can train a much larger network with much less time than deep belief networks.
1308.4941
Automatic Labeling for Entity Extraction in Cyber Security
cs.IR cs.CL
Timely analysis of cyber-security information necessitates automated information extraction from unstructured text. While state-of-the-art extraction methods produce extremely accurate results, they require ample training data, which is generally unavailable for specialized applications, such as detecting security related entities; moreover, manual annotation of corpora is very costly and often not a viable solution. In response, we develop a very precise method to automatically label text from several data sources by leveraging related, domain-specific, structured data and provide public access to a corpus annotated with cyber-security entities. Next, we implement a Maximum Entropy Model trained with the average perceptron on a portion of our corpus ($\sim$750,000 words) and achieve near perfect precision, recall, and accuracy, with training times under 17 seconds.
1308.4942
A Multiscale Pyramid Transform for Graph Signals
cs.IT cs.SI math.FA math.IT
Multiscale transforms designed to process analog and discrete-time signals and images cannot be directly applied to analyze high-dimensional data residing on the vertices of a weighted graph, as they do not capture the intrinsic geometric structure of the underlying graph data domain. In this paper, we adapt the Laplacian pyramid transform for signals on Euclidean domains so that it can be used to analyze high-dimensional data residing on the vertices of a weighted graph. Our approach is to study existing methods and develop new methods for the four fundamental operations of graph downsampling, graph reduction, and filtering and interpolation of signals on graphs. Equipped with appropriate notions of these operations, we leverage the basic multiscale constructs and intuitions from classical signal processing to generate a transform that yields both a multiresolution of graphs and an associated multiresolution of a graph signal on the underlying sequence of graphs.
1308.4943
David Poole's Specificity Revised
cs.AI
In the middle of the 1980s, David Poole introduced a semantical, model-theoretic notion of specificity to the artificial-intelligence community. Since then it has found further applications in non-monotonic reasoning, in particular in defeasible reasoning. Poole tried to approximate the intuitive human concept of specificity, which seems to be essential for reasoning in everyday life with its partial and inconsistent information. His notion, however, turns out to be intricate and problematic, which --- as we show --- can be overcome to some extent by a closer approximation of the intuitive human concept of specificity. Besides the intuitive advantages of our novel specificity ordering over Poole's specificity relation in the classical examples of the literature, we also report some hard mathematical facts: Contrary to what was claimed before, we show that Poole's relation is not transitive. The present means to decide our novel specificity relation, however, show only a slight improvement over the known ones for Poole's relation, and further work is needed in this aspect.
1308.4965
A proposal for a Chinese keyboard for cellphones, smartphones, ipads and tablets
cs.HC cs.CL
In this paper, we investigate the possibility to use two tilings of the hyperbolic plane as basic frame for devising a way to input texts in Chinese characters into messages of cellphones, smartphones, ipads and tablets.
1308.4969
Optimal interdependence between networks for the evolution of cooperation
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI q-bio.PE
Recent research has identified interactions between networks as crucial for the outcome of evolutionary games taking place on them. While the consensus is that interdependence does promote cooperation by means of organizational complexity and enhanced reciprocity that is out of reach on isolated networks, we here address the question just how much interdependence there should be. Intuitively, one might assume the more the better. However, we show that in fact only an intermediate density of sufficiently strong interactions between networks warrants an optimal resolution of social dilemmas. This is due to an intricate interplay between the heterogeneity that causes an asymmetric strategy flow because of the additional links between the networks, and the independent formation of cooperative patterns on each individual network. Presented results are robust to variations of the strategy updating rule, the topology of interdependent networks, and the governing social dilemma, thus suggesting a high degree of universality.
1308.4994
Matrix Completion in Colocated MIMO Radar: Recoverability, Bounds & Theoretical Guarantees
cs.IT math.IT
It was recently shown that low rank matrix completion theory can be employed for designing new sampling schemes in the context of MIMO radars, which can lead to the reduction of the high volume of data typically required for accurate target detection and estimation. Employing random samplers at each reception antenna, a partially observed version of the received data matrix is formulated at the fusion center, which, under certain conditions, can be recovered using convex optimization. This paper presents the theoretical analysis regarding the performance of matrix completion in colocated MIMO radar systems, exploiting the particular structure of the data matrix. Both Uniform Linear Arrays (ULAs) and arbitrary 2-dimensional arrays are considered for transmission and reception. Especially for the ULA case, under some mild assumptions on the directions of arrival of the targets, it is explicitly shown that the coherence of the data matrix is both asymptotically and approximately optimal with respect to the number of antennas of the arrays involved and further, the data matrix is recoverable using a subset of its entries with minimal cardinality. Sufficient conditions guaranteeing low matrix coherence and consequently satisfactory matrix completion performance are also presented, including the arbitrary 2-dimensional array case.
1308.4999
Incorporating Text Analysis into Evolution of Social Groups in Blogosphere
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Data reflecting social and business relations has often form of network of connections between entities (called social network). In such network important and influential users can be identified as well as groups of strongly connected users. Finding such groups and observing their evolution becomes an increasingly important research problem. One of the significant problems is to develop method incorporating not only information about connections between entities but also information obtained from text written by the users. Method presented in this paper combine social network analysis and text mining in order to understand groups evolution.
1308.5000
Smoothing and Decomposition for Analysis Sparse Recovery
math.OC cs.IT math.IT
We consider algorithms and recovery guarantees for the analysis sparse model in which the signal is sparse with respect to a highly coherent frame. We consider the use of a monotone version of the fast iterative shrinkage- thresholding algorithm (MFISTA) to solve the analysis sparse recovery problem. Since the proximal operator in MFISTA does not have a closed-form solution for the analysis model, it cannot be applied directly. Instead, we examine two alternatives based on smoothing and decomposition transformations that relax the original sparse recovery problem, and then implement MFISTA on the relaxed formulation. We refer to these two methods as smoothing-based and decomposition-based MFISTA. We analyze the convergence of both algorithms, and establish that smoothing- based MFISTA converges more rapidly when applied to general nonsmooth optimization problems. We then derive a performance bound on the reconstruction error using these techniques. The bound proves that our methods can recover a signal sparse in a redundant tight frame when the measurement matrix satisfies a properly adapted restricted isometry property. Numerical examples demonstrate the performance of our methods and show that smoothing-based MFISTA converges faster than the decomposition-based alternative in real applications, such as MRI image reconstruction.
1308.5010
Sentiment in New York City: A High Resolution Spatial and Temporal View
physics.soc-ph cs.CL cs.CY
Measuring public sentiment is a key task for researchers and policymakers alike. The explosion of available social media data allows for a more time-sensitive and geographically specific analysis than ever before. In this paper we analyze data from the micro-blogging site Twitter and generate a sentiment map of New York City. We develop a classifier specifically tuned for 140-character Twitter messages, or tweets, using key words, phrases and emoticons to determine the mood of each tweet. This method, combined with geotagging provided by users, enables us to gauge public sentiment on extremely fine-grained spatial and temporal scales. We find that public mood is generally highest in public parks and lowest at transportation hubs, and locate other areas of strong sentiment such as cemeteries, medical centers, a jail, and a sewage facility. Sentiment progressively improves with proximity to Times Square. Periodic patterns of sentiment fluctuate on both a daily and a weekly scale: more positive tweets are posted on weekends than on weekdays, with a daily peak in sentiment around midnight and a nadir between 9:00 a.m. and noon.
1308.5015
The Simple Rules of Social Contagion
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
It is commonly believed that information spreads between individuals like a pathogen, with each exposure by an informed friend potentially resulting in a naive individual becoming infected. However, empirical studies of social media suggest that individual response to repeated exposure to information is significantly more complex than the prediction of the pathogen model. As a proxy for intervention experiments, we compare user responses to multiple exposures on two different social media sites, Twitter and Digg. We show that the position of the exposing messages on the user-interface strongly affects social contagion. Accounting for this visibility significantly simplifies the dynamics of social contagion. The likelihood an individual will spread information increases monotonically with exposure, while explicit feedback about how many friends have previously spread it increases the likelihood of a response. We apply our model to real-time forecasting of user behavior.
1308.5032
How Did Humans Become So Creative? A Computational Approach
cs.NE cs.AI cs.MA q-bio.NC
This paper summarizes efforts to computationally model two transitions in the evolution of human creativity: its origins about two million years ago, and the 'big bang' of creativity about 50,000 years ago. Using a computational model of cultural evolution in which neural network based agents evolve ideas for actions through invention and imitation, we tested the hypothesis that human creativity began with onset of the capacity for recursive recall. We compared runs in which agents were limited to single-step actions to runs in which they used recursive recall to chain simple actions into complex ones. Chaining resulted in higher diversity, open-ended novelty, no ceiling on the mean fitness of actions, and greater ability to make use of learning. Using a computational model of portrait painting, we tested the hypothesis that the explosion of creativity in the Middle/Upper Paleolithic was due to onset of con-textual focus: the capacity to shift between associative and analytic thought. This resulted in faster convergence on portraits that resembled the sitter, employed painterly techniques, and were rated as preferable. We conclude that recursive recall and contextual focus provide a computationally plausible explanation of how humans evolved the means to transform this planet.
1308.5033
A hybrid evolutionary algorithm with importance sampling for multi-dimensional optimization
cs.NE
A hybrid evolutionary algorithm with importance sampling method is proposed for multi-dimensional optimization problems in this paper. In order to make use of the information provided in the search process, a set of visited solutions is selected to give scores for intervals in each dimension, and they are updated as algorithm proceeds. Those intervals with higher scores are regarded as good intervals, which are used to estimate the joint distribution of optimal solutions through an interaction between the pool of good genetics, which are the individuals with smaller fitness values. And the sampling probabilities for good genetics are determined through an interaction between those estimated good intervals. It is a cross validation mechanism which determines the sampling probabilities for good intervals and genetics, and the resulted probabilities are used to design crossover, mutation and other stochastic operators with importance sampling method. As the selection of genetics and intervals is not directly dependent on the values of fitness, the resulted offsprings may avoid the trap of local optima. And a purely random EA is also combined into the proposed algorithm to maintain the diversity of population. 30 benchmark test functions are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, and it is found that the proposed hybrid algorithm is an efficient algorithm for multi-dimensional optimization problems considered in this paper.
1308.5038
Group-Sparse Signal Denoising: Non-Convex Regularization, Convex Optimization
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
Convex optimization with sparsity-promoting convex regularization is a standard approach for estimating sparse signals in noise. In order to promote sparsity more strongly than convex regularization, it is also standard practice to employ non-convex optimization. In this paper, we take a third approach. We utilize a non-convex regularization term chosen such that the total cost function (consisting of data consistency and regularization terms) is convex. Therefore, sparsity is more strongly promoted than in the standard convex formulation, but without sacrificing the attractive aspects of convex optimization (unique minimum, robust algorithms, etc.). We use this idea to improve the recently developed 'overlapping group shrinkage' (OGS) algorithm for the denoising of group-sparse signals. The algorithm is applied to the problem of speech enhancement with favorable results in terms of both SNR and perceptual quality.
1308.5045
Network Coding meets Decentralized Control: Network Linearization and Capacity-Stabilizablilty Equivalence
math.OC cs.IT math.IT
We take a unified view of network coding and decentralized control. Precisely speaking, we consider both as linear time-invariant systems by appropriately restricting channels and coding schemes of network coding to be linear time-invariant, and the plant and controllers of decentralized control to be linear time-invariant as well. First, we apply linear system theory to network coding. This gives a novel way of converting an arbitrary relay network to an equivalent acyclic single-hop relay network, which we call Network Linearization. Based on network linearization, we prove that the fundamental design limit, mincut, is achievable by a linear time-invariant network-coding scheme regardless of the network topology. Then, we use the network-coding to view decentralized linear systems. We argue that linear time-invariant controllers in a decentralized linear system "communicate" via linear network coding to stabilize the plant. To justify this argument, we give an algorithm to "externalize" the implicit communication between the controllers that we believe must be occurring to stabilize the plant. Based on this, we show that the stabilizability condition for decentralized linear systems comes from an underlying communication limit, which can be described by the algebraic mincut-maxflow theorem. With this re-interpretation in hand, we also consider stabilizability over LTI networks to emphasize the connection with network coding. In particular, in broadcast and unicast problems, unintended messages at the receivers will be modeled as secrecy constraints.
1308.5046
The Fractal Dimension of SAT Formulas
cs.AI
Modern SAT solvers have experienced a remarkable progress on solving industrial instances. Most of the techniques have been developed after an intensive experimental testing process. Recently, there have been some attempts to analyze the structure of these formulas in terms of complex networks, with the long-term aim of explaining the success of these SAT solving techniques, and possibly improving them. We study the fractal dimension of SAT formulas, and show that most industrial families of formulas are self-similar, with a small fractal dimension. We also show that this dimension is not affected by the addition of learnt clauses. We explore how the dimension of a formula, together with other graph properties can be used to characterize SAT instances. Finally, we give empirical evidence that these graph properties can be used in state-of-the-art portfolios.
1308.5053
Delay Optimal Scheduling for Energy Harvesting Based Communications
cs.ET cs.IT math.IT
Green communication attracts increasing research interest recently. Equipped with a rechargeable battery, a source node can harvest energy from ambient environments and rely on this free and regenerative energy supply to transmit packets. Due to the uncertainty of available energy from harvesting, however, intolerably large latency and packet loss could be induced, if the source always waits for harvested energy. To overcome this problem, one Reliable Energy Source (RES) can be resorted to for a prompt delivery of backlogged packets. Naturally, there exists a tradeoff between the packet delivery delay and power consumption from the RES. In this paper, we address the delay optimal scheduling problem for a bursty communication link powered by a capacity-limited battery storing harvested energy together with one RES. The proposed scheduling scheme gives priority to the usage of harvested energy, and resorts to the RES when necessary based on the data and energy queueing processes, with an average power constraint from the RES. Through twodimensional Markov chain modeling and linear programming formulation, we derive the optimal threshold-based scheduling policy together with the corresponding transmission parameters. Our study includes three exemplary cases that capture some important relations between the data packet arrival process and energy harvesting capability. Our theoretical analysis is corroborated by simulation results.
1308.5063
Suspicious Object Recognition Method in Video Stream Based on Visual Attention
cs.CV
We propose a state of the art method for intelligent object recognition and video surveillance based on human visual attention. Bottom up and top down attention are applied respectively in the process of acquiring interested object(saliency map) and object recognition. The revision of 4 channel PFT method is proposed for bottom up attention and enhances the speed and accuracy. Inhibit of return (IOR) is applied in judging the sequence of saliency object pop out. Euclidean distance of color distribution, object center coordinates and speed are considered in judging whether the target is match and suspicious. The extensive tests on videos and images show that our method in video analysis has high accuracy and fast speed compared with traditional method. The method can be applied into many fields such as video surveillance and security.
1308.5094
Complexity of evolutionary equilibria in static fitness landscapes
q-bio.PE cs.NE
A fitness landscape is a genetic space -- with two genotypes adjacent if they differ in a single locus -- and a fitness function. Evolutionary dynamics produce a flow on this landscape from lower fitness to higher; reaching equilibrium only if a local fitness peak is found. I use computational complexity to question the common assumption that evolution on static fitness landscapes can quickly reach a local fitness peak. I do this by showing that the popular NK model of rugged fitness landscapes is PLS-complete for K >= 2; the reduction from Weighted 2SAT is a bijection on adaptive walks, so there are NK fitness landscapes where every adaptive path from some vertices is of exponential length. Alternatively -- under the standard complexity theoretic assumption that there are problems in PLS not solvable in polynomial time -- this means that there are no evolutionary dynamics (known, or to be discovered, and not necessarily following adaptive paths) that can converge to a local fitness peak on all NK landscapes with K = 2. Applying results from the analysis of simplex algorithms, I show that there exist single-peaked landscapes with no reciprocal sign epistasis where the expected length of an adaptive path following strong selection weak mutation dynamics is $e^{O(n^{1/3})}$ even though an adaptive path to the optimum of length less than n is available from every vertex. The technical results are written to be accessible to mathematical biologists without a computer science background, and the biological literature is summarized for the convenience of non-biologists with the aim to open a constructive dialogue between the two disciplines.
1308.5121
Voter Model with Arbitrary Degree Dependence: Clout, Confidence and Irreversibility
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.MA cs.SI
In this paper, we consider the voter model with popularity bias. The influence of each node on its neighbors depends on its degree. We find the consensus probabilities and expected consensus times for each of the states. We also find the fixation probability, which is the probability that a single node whose state differs from every other node imposes its state on the entire system. In addition, we find the expected fixation time. Then two extensions to the model are proposed and the motivations behind them are discussed. The first one is confidence, where in addition to the states of neighbors, nodes take their own state into account at each update. We repeat the calculations for the augmented model and investigate the effects of adding confidence to the model. The second proposed extension is irreversibility, where one of the states is given the property that once nodes adopt it, they cannot switch back. The dynamics of densities, fixation times and consensus times are obtained.
1308.5125
Discovering Latent Patterns from the Analysis of User-Curated Movie Lists
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
User content curation is becoming an important source of preference data, as well as providing information regarding the items being curated. One popular approach involves the creation of lists. On Twitter, these lists might contain accounts relevant to a particular topic, whereas on a community site such as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), this might take the form of lists of movies sharing common characteristics. While list curation involves substantial combined effort on the part of users, researchers have rarely looked at mining the outputs of this kind of crowdsourcing activity. Here we study a large collection of movie lists from IMDb. We apply network analysis methods to a graph that reflects the degree to which pairs of movies are "co-listed", that is, assigned to the same lists. This allows us to uncover a more nuanced grouping of movies that goes beyond categorisation schemes based on attributes such as genre or director.