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1311.1013
Interference Alignment (IA) and Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) with IEEE802.11ac feedback compression: testbed results
cs.IT math.IT
We have implemented interference alignment (IA) and joint transmission coordinated multipoint (CoMP) on a wireless testbed using the feedback compression scheme of the new 802.11ac standard. The performance as a function of the frequency domain granularity is assessed. Realistic throughput gains are obtained by probing each spatial modulation stream with ten different coding and modulation schemes. The gain of IA and CoMP over TDMA MIMO is found to be 26% and 71%, respectively under stationary conditions. In our dense indoor office deployment, the frequency domain granularity of the feedback can be reduced down to every 8th subcarrier (2.5MHz), without sacrificing performance.
1311.1040
Combined Independent Component Analysis and Canonical Polyadic Decomposition via Joint Diagonalization
stat.ML cs.LG
Recently, there has been a trend to combine independent component analysis and canonical polyadic decomposition (ICA-CPD) for an enhanced robustness for the computation of CPD, and ICA-CPD could be further converted into CPD of a 5th-order partially symmetric tensor, by calculating the eigenmatrices of the 4th-order cumulant slices of a trilinear mixture. In this study, we propose a new 5th-order CPD algorithm constrained with partial symmetry based on joint diagonalization. As the main steps involved in the proposed algorithm undergo no updating iterations for the loading matrices, it is much faster than the existing algorithm based on alternating least squares and enhanced line search, with competent performances. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.
1311.1053
Guessing a password over a wireless channel (on the effect of noise non-uniformity)
cs.IT math.IT
A string is sent over a noisy channel that erases some of its characters. Knowing the statistical properties of the string's source and which characters were erased, a listener that is equipped with an ability to test the veracity of a string, one string at a time, wishes to fill in the missing pieces. Here we characterize the influence of the stochastic properties of both the string's source and the noise on the channel on the distribution of the number of attempts required to identify the string, its guesswork. In particular, we establish that the average noise on the channel is not a determining factor for the average guesswork and illustrate simple settings where one recipient with, on average, a better channel than another recipient, has higher average guesswork. These results stand in contrast to those for the capacity of wiretap channels and suggest the use of techniques such as friendly jamming with pseudo-random sequences to exploit this guesswork behavior.
1311.1082
Motivation for hyperlink creation using inter-page relationships
cs.DL cs.IR cs.SI
Using raw hyperlink counts for webometrics research has been shown to be unreliable and researchers have looked for alternatives. One alternative is classifying hyperlinks in a website based on the motivation behind the hyperlink creation. The method used for this type of classification involves manually visiting a webpage and then classifying individual links on the webpage. This is time consuming, making it infeasible for large scale studies. This paper speeds up the classification of hyperlinks in UK academic websites by using a machine learning technique, decision tree induction, to group web pages found in UK academic websites into one of eight categories and then infer the motivation for the creation of a hyperlink in a webpage based on the linking pattern of the category the webpage belongs to.
1311.1090
Polyhedrons and Perceptrons Are Functionally Equivalent
cs.NE
Mathematical definitions of polyhedrons and perceptron networks are discussed. The formalization of polyhedrons is done in a rather traditional way. For networks, previously proposed systems are developed. Perceptron networks in disjunctive normal form (DNF) and conjunctive normal forms (CNF) are introduced. The main theme is that single output perceptron neural networks and characteristic functions of polyhedrons are one and the same class of functions. A rigorous formulation and proof that three layers suffice is obtained. The various constructions and results are among several steps required for algorithms that replace incremental and statistical learning with more efficient, direct and exact geometric methods for calculation of perceptron architecture and weights.
1311.1132
Motion and audio analysis in mobile devices for remote monitoring of physical activities and user authentication
cs.HC cs.CV
In this article we propose the use of accelerometer embedded by default in smartphone as a cost-effective, reliable and efficient way to provide remote physical activity monitoring for the elderly and people requiring healthcare service. Mobile phones are regularly carried by users during their day-to-day work routine, physical movement information can be captured by the mobile phone accelerometer, processed and sent to a remote server for monitoring. The acceleration pattern can deliver information related to the pattern of physical activities the user is engaged in. We further show how this technique can be extended to provide implicit real-time security by analysing unexpected movements captured by the phone accelerometer, and automatically locking the phone in such situation to prevent unauthorised access. This technique is also shown to provide implicit continuous user authentication, by capturing regular user movements such as walking, and requesting for re-authentication whenever it detects a non-regular movement.
1311.1162
Semantic Stability in Social Tagging Streams
cs.CY cs.IR cs.SI physics.soc-ph
One potential disadvantage of social tagging systems is that due to the lack of a centralized vocabulary, a crowd of users may never manage to reach a consensus on the description of resources (e.g., books, users or songs) on the Web. Yet, previous research has provided interesting evidence that the tag distributions of resources may become semantically stable over time as more and more users tag them. At the same time, previous work has raised an array of new questions such as: (i) How can we assess the semantic stability of social tagging systems in a robust and methodical way? (ii) Does semantic stabilization of tags vary across different social tagging systems and ultimately, (iii) what are the factors that can explain semantic stabilization in such systems? In this work we tackle these questions by (i) presenting a novel and robust method which overcomes a number of limitations in existing methods, (ii) empirically investigating semantic stabilization processes in a wide range of social tagging systems with distinct domains and properties and (iii) detecting potential causes for semantic stabilization, specifically imitation behavior, shared background knowledge and intrinsic properties of natural language. Our results show that tagging streams which are generated by a combination of imitation dynamics and shared background knowledge exhibit faster and higher semantic stability than tagging streams which are generated via imitation dynamics or natural language streams alone.
1311.1163
Sparse Time-Frequency decomposition by dictionary learning
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we propose a time-frequency analysis method to obtain instantaneous frequencies and the corresponding decomposition by solving an optimization problem. In this optimization problem, the basis to decompose the signal is not known. Instead, it is adapted to the signal and is determined as part of the optimization problem. In this sense, this optimization problem can be seen as a dictionary learning problem. This dictionary learning problem is solved by using the Augmented Lagrangian Multiplier method (ALM) iteratively. We further accelerate the convergence of the ALM method in each iteration by using the fast wavelet transform. We apply our method to decompose several signals, including signals with poor scale separation, signals with outliers and polluted by noise and a real signal. The results show that this method can give accurate recovery of both the instantaneous frequencies and the intrinsic mode functions.
1311.1169
Using Robust PCA to estimate regional characteristics of language use from geo-tagged Twitter messages
cs.CL
Principal component analysis (PCA) and related techniques have been successfully employed in natural language processing. Text mining applications in the age of the online social media (OSM) face new challenges due to properties specific to these use cases (e.g. spelling issues specific to texts posted by users, the presence of spammers and bots, service announcements, etc.). In this paper, we employ a Robust PCA technique to separate typical outliers and highly localized topics from the low-dimensional structure present in language use in online social networks. Our focus is on identifying geospatial features among the messages posted by the users of the Twitter microblogging service. Using a dataset which consists of over 200 million geolocated tweets collected over the course of a year, we investigate whether the information present in word usage frequencies can be used to identify regional features of language use and topics of interest. Using the PCA pursuit method, we are able to identify important low-dimensional features, which constitute smoothly varying functions of the geographic location.
1311.1181
Toward a New Approach for Modeling Dependability of Data Warehouse System
cs.DB cs.SE
The sustainability of any Data Warehouse System (DWS) is closely correlated with user satisfaction. Therefore, analysts, designers and developers focused more on achieving all its functionality, without considering others kinds of requirement such as dependability s aspects. Moreover, these latter are often considered as properties of the system that will must be checked and corrected once the project is completed. The practice of "fix it later" can cause the obsolescence of the entire Data Warehouse System. Therefore, it requires the adoption of a methodology that will ensure the integration of aspects of dependability since the early stages of project DWS. In this paper, we first define the concepts related to dependability of DWS. Then we present our approach inspired from the MDA (Model Driven Architecture) approach to model dependability s aspects namely: availability, reliability, maintainability and security, taking into account their interaction.
1311.1187
Constrained Codes for Joint Energy and Information Transfer
cs.IT math.IT
In various wireless systems, such as sensor RFID networks and body area networks with implantable devices, the transmitted signals are simultaneously used both for information transmission and for energy transfer. In order to satisfy the conflicting requirements on information and energy transfer, this paper proposes the use of constrained run-length limited (RLL) codes in lieu of conventional unconstrained (i.e., random-like) capacity-achieving codes. The receiver's energy utilization requirements are modeled stochastically, and constraints are imposed on the probabilities of battery underflow and overflow at the receiver. It is demonstrated that the codewords' structure afforded by the use of constrained codes enables the transmission strategy to be better adjusted to the receiver's energy utilization pattern, as compared to classical unstructured codes. As a result, constrained codes allow a wider range of trade-offs between the rate of information transmission and the performance of energy transfer to be achieved.
1311.1189
Statistical Inference in Hidden Markov Models using $k$-segment Constraints
stat.ME cs.LG stat.ML
Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are one of the most widely used statistical methods for analyzing sequence data. However, the reporting of output from HMMs has largely been restricted to the presentation of the most-probable (MAP) hidden state sequence, found via the Viterbi algorithm, or the sequence of most probable marginals using the forward-backward (F-B) algorithm. In this article, we expand the amount of information we could obtain from the posterior distribution of an HMM by introducing linear-time dynamic programming algorithms that, we collectively call $k$-segment algorithms, that allow us to i) find MAP sequences, ii) compute posterior probabilities and iii) simulate sample paths conditional on a user specified number of segments, i.e. contiguous runs in a hidden state, possibly of a particular type. We illustrate the utility of these methods using simulated and real examples and highlight the application of prospective and retrospective use of these methods for fitting HMMs or exploring existing model fits.
1311.1194
Identifying Purpose Behind Electoral Tweets
cs.CL
Tweets pertaining to a single event, such as a national election, can number in the hundreds of millions. Automatically analyzing them is beneficial in many downstream natural language applications such as question answering and summarization. In this paper, we propose a new task: identifying the purpose behind electoral tweets--why do people post election-oriented tweets? We show that identifying purpose is correlated with the related phenomenon of sentiment and emotion detection, but yet significantly different. Detecting purpose has a number of applications including detecting the mood of the electorate, estimating the popularity of policies, identifying key issues of contention, and predicting the course of events. We create a large dataset of electoral tweets and annotate a few thousand tweets for purpose. We develop a system that automatically classifies electoral tweets as per their purpose, obtaining an accuracy of 43.56% on an 11-class task and an accuracy of 73.91% on a 3-class task (both accuracies well above the most-frequent-class baseline). Finally, we show that resources developed for emotion detection are also helpful for detecting purpose.
1311.1213
A Big Data Approach to Computational Creativity
cs.CY cs.AI cs.HC physics.soc-ph
Computational creativity is an emerging branch of artificial intelligence that places computers in the center of the creative process. Broadly, creativity involves a generative step to produce many ideas and a selective step to determine the ones that are the best. Many previous attempts at computational creativity, however, have not been able to achieve a valid selective step. This work shows how bringing data sources from the creative domain and from hedonic psychophysics together with big data analytics techniques can overcome this shortcoming to yield a system that can produce novel and high-quality creative artifacts. Our data-driven approach is demonstrated through a computational creativity system for culinary recipes and menus we developed and deployed, which can operate either autonomously or semi-autonomously with human interaction. We also comment on the volume, velocity, variety, and veracity of data in computational creativity.
1311.1223
Quality Assessment of Pixel-Level ImageFusion Using Fuzzy Logic
cs.CV
Image fusion is to reduce uncertainty and minimize redundancy in the output while maximizing relevant information from two or more images of a scene into a single composite image that is more informative and is more suitable for visual perception or processing tasks like medical imaging, remote sensing, concealed weapon detection, weather forecasting, biometrics etc. Image fusion combines registered images to produce a high quality fused image with spatial and spectral information. The fused image with more information will improve the performance of image analysis algorithms used in different applications. In this paper, we proposed a fuzzy logic method to fuse images from different sensors, in order to enhance the quality and compared proposed method with two other methods i.e. image fusion using wavelet transform and weighted average discrete wavelet transform based image fusion using genetic algorithm (here onwards abbreviated as GA) along with quality evaluation parameters image quality index (IQI), mutual information measure (MIM), root mean square error (RMSE), peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), fusion factor (FF), fusion symmetry (FS) and fusion index (FI) and entropy. The results obtained from proposed fuzzy based image fusion approach improves quality of fused image as compared to earlier reported methods, wavelet transform based image fusion and weighted average discrete wavelet transform based image fusion using genetic algorithm.
1311.1247
LA-CTR: A Limited Attention Collaborative Topic Regression for Social Media
cs.IR cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Probabilistic models can learn users' preferences from the history of their item adoptions on a social media site, and in turn, recommend new items to users based on learned preferences. However, current models ignore psychological factors that play an important role in shaping online social behavior. One such factor is attention, the mechanism that integrates perceptual and cognitive features to select the items the user will consciously process and may eventually adopt. Recent research has shown that people have finite attention, which constrains their online interactions, and that they divide their limited attention non-uniformly over other people. We propose a collaborative topic regression model that incorporates limited, non-uniformly divided attention. We show that the proposed model is able to learn more accurate user preferences than state-of-art models, which do not take human cognitive factors into account. Specifically we analyze voting on news items on the social news aggregator and show that our model is better able to predict held out votes than alternate models. Our study demonstrates that psycho-socially motivated models are better able to describe and predict observed behavior than models which only consider latent social structure and content.
1311.1259
Multi-target Radar Detection within a Sparsity Framework
cs.IT math.IT
Traditional radar detection schemes are typically studied for single target scenarios and they can be non-optimal when there are multiple targets in the scene. In this paper, we develop a framework to discuss multi-target detection schemes with sparse reconstruction techniques that is based on the Neyman-Pearson criterion. We will describe an initial result in this framework concerning false alarm probability with LASSO as the sparse reconstruction technique. Then, several simulations validating this result will be discussed. Finally, we describe several research avenues to further pursue this framework.
1311.1264
Dynamic Network Formation with Incomplete Information
cs.SI cs.GT physics.soc-ph
How do networks form and what is their ultimate topology? Most of the literature that addresses these questions assumes complete information: agents know in advance the value of linking to other agents, even with agents they have never met and with whom they have had no previous interaction (direct or indirect). This paper addresses the same questions under what seems to us to be the much more natural assumption of incomplete information: agents do not know in advance -- but must learn -- the value of linking to agents they have never met. We show that the assumption of incomplete information has profound implications for the process of network formation and the topology of networks that ultimately form. Under complete information, the networks that form and are stable typically have a star, wheel or core-periphery form, with high-value agents in the core. Under incomplete information, the presence of positive externalities (the value of indirect links) implies that a much wider collection of network topologies can emerge and be stable. Moreover, even when the topologies that emerge are the same, the locations of agents can be very different. For instance, when information is incomplete, it is possible for a hub-and-spokes network with a low-value agent in the center to form and endure permanently: an agent can achieve a central position purely as the result of chance rather than as the result of merit. Perhaps even more strikingly: when information is incomplete, a connected network could form and persist even if, when information were complete, no links would ever form, so that the final form would be a totally disconnected network. All of this can occur even in settings where agents eventually learn everything so that information, although initially incomplete, eventually becomes complete.
1311.1266
Topological-collaborative approach for disambiguating authors' names in collaborative networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Concepts and methods of complex networks have been employed to uncover patterns in a myriad of complex systems. Unfortunately, the relevance and significance of these patterns strongly depends on the reliability of the data sets. In the study of collaboration networks, for instance, unavoidable noise pervading author's collaboration datasets arises when authors share the same name. To address this problem, we derive a hybrid approach based on authors' collaboration patterns and on topological features of collaborative networks. Our results show that the combination of strategies, in most cases, performs better than the traditional approach which disregards topological features. We also show that the main factor for improving the discriminability of homonymous authors is the average distance between authors. Finally, we show that it is possible to predict the weighting associated to each strategy compounding the hybrid system by examining the discrimination obtained from the traditional analysis of collaboration patterns. Once the methodology devised here is generic, our approach is potentially useful to classify many other networked systems governed by complex interactions.
1311.1279
Face Recognition via Globality-Locality Preserving Projections
cs.CV
We present an improved Locality Preserving Projections (LPP) method, named Gloablity-Locality Preserving Projections (GLPP), to preserve both the global and local geometric structures of data. In our approach, an additional constraint of the geometry of classes is imposed to the objective function of conventional LPP for respecting some more global manifold structures. Moreover, we formulate a two-dimensional extension of GLPP (2D-GLPP) as an example to show how to extend GLPP with some other statistical techniques. We apply our works to face recognition on four popular face databases, namely ORL, Yale, FERET and LFW-A databases, and extensive experimental results demonstrate that the considered global manifold information can significantly improve the performance of LPP and the proposed face recognition methods outperform the state-of-the-arts.
1311.1288
Performance of Uplink Multiuser Massive MIMO Systems
cs.IT math.IT
We study the performance of uplink transmission in a large-scale (massive) MIMO system, where all the transmitters have single antennas and the receiver (base station) has a large number of antennas. Specifically, we analyze achievable degrees of freedom of the system without assuming channel state information at the receiver. Also, we quantify the amount of power saving that is possible with increasing number of receive antennas.
1311.1291
Multiuser SM-MIMO versus Massive MIMO: Uplink Performance Comparison
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we propose algorithms for signal detection in large-scale multiuser {\em spatial modulation multiple-input multiple-output (SM-MIMO)} systems. In large-scale SM-MIMO, each user is equipped with multiple transmit antennas (e.g., 2 or 4 antennas) but only one transmit RF chain, and the base station (BS) is equipped with tens to hundreds of (e.g., 128) receive antennas. In SM-MIMO, in a given channel use, each user activates any one of its multiple transmit antennas and the index of the activated antenna conveys information bits in addition to the information bits conveyed through conventional modulation symbols (e.g., QAM). We propose two different algorithms for detection of large-scale SM-MIMO signals at the BS; one is based on {\em message passing} and the other is based on {\em local search}. The proposed algorithms are shown to achieve very good performance and scale well. Also, for the same spectral efficiency, multiuser SM-MIMO outperforms conventional multiuser MIMO (recently being referred to as massive MIMO) by several dBs; for e.g., with 16 users, 128 antennas at the BS and 4 bpcu per user, SM-MIMO with 4 transmit antennas per user and 4-QAM outperforms massive MIMO with 1 transmit antenna per user and 16-QAM by about 4 to 5 dB at $10^{-3}$ uncoded BER. The SNR advantage of SM-MIMO over massive MIMO can be attributed to the following reasons: (i) because of the spatial index bits, SM-MIMO can use a lower-order QAM alphabet compared to that in massive MIMO to achieve the same spectral efficiency, and (ii) for the same spectral efficiency and QAM size, massive MIMO will need more spatial streams per user which leads to increased spatial interference.
1311.1294
Delay Learning Architectures for Memory and Classification
cs.NE q-bio.NC
We present a neuromorphic spiking neural network, the DELTRON, that can remember and store patterns by changing the delays of every connection as opposed to modifying the weights. The advantage of this architecture over traditional weight based ones is simpler hardware implementation without multipliers or digital-analog converters (DACs) as well as being suited to time-based computing. The name is derived due to similarity in the learning rule with an earlier architecture called Tempotron. The DELTRON can remember more patterns than other delay-based networks by modifying a few delays to remember the most 'salient' or synchronous part of every spike pattern. We present simulations of memory capacity and classification ability of the DELTRON for different random spatio-temporal spike patterns. The memory capacity for noisy spike patterns and missing spikes are also shown. Finally, we present SPICE simulation results of the core circuits involved in a reconfigurable mixed signal implementation of this architecture.
1311.1309
Convex lifted conditions for robust stability analysis and stabilization of linear discrete-time switched systems
math.OC cs.SY
Stability analysis of discrete-time switched systems under minimum dwell-time is studied using a new type of LMI conditions. These conditions are convex in the matrices of the system and shown to be equivalent to the nonconvex conditions proposed by Geromel and Colaneri. The convexification of the conditions is performed by a lifting process which introduces a moderate number of additional decision variables. The convexity of the conditions can be exploited to extend the results to uncertain systems, control design and $\ell_2$-gain computation without introducing additional conservatism. Several examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the approach.
1311.1312
Two are Better Than One: Adaptive Sparse System Identification using Affine Combination of Two Sparse Adaptive Filters
cs.IT math.IT
Sparse system identification problems often exist in many applications, such as echo interference cancellation, sparse channel estimation, and adaptive beamforming. One of popular adaptive sparse system identification (ASSI) methods is adopting only one sparse least mean square (LMS) filter. However, the adoption of only one sparse LMS filter cannot simultaneously achieve fast convergence speed and small steady-state mean state deviation (MSD). Unlike the conventional method, we propose an improved ASSI method using affine combination of two sparse LMS filters to simultaneously achieving fast convergence and low steady-state MSD. First, problem formulation and standard affine combination of LMS filters are introduced. Then an approximate optimum affine combiner is adopted for the proposed filter according to stochastic gradient search method. Later, to verify the proposed filter for ASSI, computer simulations are provided to confirm effectiveness of the proposed filter which can achieve better estimation performance than the conventional one and standard affine combination of LMS filters.
1311.1314
Variable is Better Than Invariable: Stable Sparse VSS-NLMS Algorithms with Application to Estimating MIMO Channels
cs.IT math.IT
To estimate multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels, invariable step-size normalized least mean square (ISSNLMS) algorithm was applied to adaptive channel estimation (ACE). Since the MIMO channel is often described by sparse channel model due to broadband signal transmission, such sparsity can be exploited by adaptive sparse channel estimation (ASCE) methods using sparse ISS-NLMS algorithms. It is well known that step-size is a critical parameter which controls three aspects: algorithm stability, estimation performance and computational cost. The previous approaches can exploit channel sparsity but their step-sizes are keeping invariant which unable balances well the three aspects and easily cause either estimation performance loss or instability. In this paper, we propose two stable sparse variable step-size NLMS (VSS-NLMS) algorithms to improve the accuracy of MIMO channel estimators. First, ASCE for estimating MIMO channels is formulated in MIMO systems. Second, different sparse penalties are introduced to VSS-NLMS algorithm for ASCE. In addition, difference between sparse ISS-NLMS algorithms and sparse VSS-NLMS ones are explained. At last, to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms for ASCE, several selected simulation results are shown to prove that the proposed sparse VSS-NLMS algorithms can achieve better estimation performance than the conventional methods via mean square error (MSE) and bit error rate (BER) metrics.
1311.1315
Variable Earns Profit: Improved Adaptive Channel Estimation using Sparse VSS-NLMS Algorithms
cs.IT math.IT
Accurate channel estimation is essential for broadband wireless communications. As wireless channels often exhibit sparse structure, the adaptive sparse channel estimation algorithms based on normalized least mean square (NLMS) have been proposed, e.g., the zero-attracting NLMS (ZA-NLMS) algorithm and reweighted zero-attracting NLMS (RZA-NLMS). In these NLMS-based algorithms, the step size used to iteratively update the channel estimate is a critical parameter to control the estimation accuracy and the convergence speed (so the computational cost). However, invariable step-size (ISS) is usually used in conventional algorithms, which leads to provide performance loss or/and low convergence speed as well as high computational cost. To solve these problems, based on the observation that large step size is preferred for fast convergence while small step size is preferred for accurate estimation, we propose to replace the ISS by variable step size (VSS) in conventional NLMS-based algorithms to improve the adaptive sparse channel estimation in terms of bit error rate (BER) and mean square error (MSE) metrics. The proposed VSS-ZA-NLMS and VSS-RZA-NLMS algorithms adopt VSS, which can be adaptive to the estimation error in each iteration, i.e., large step size is used in the case of large estimation error to accelerate the convergence speed, while small step size is used when the estimation error is small to improve the steady-state estimation accuracy. Simulation results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
1311.1329
Physical Layer Network Coding: A Cautionary Story with Interference and Spatial Reservation
cs.IT math.IT
Physical layer network coding (PLNC) has the potential to improve throughput of multi-hop networks. However, most of the works are focused on the simple, three-node model with two-way relaying, not taking into account the fact that there can be other neighboring nodes that can cause/receive interference. The way to deal with this problem in distributed wireless networks is usage of MAC-layer mechanisms that make a spatial reservation of the shared wireless medium, similar to the well-known RTS/CTS in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. In this paper, we investigate two-way relaying in presence of interfering nodes and usage of spatial reservation mechanisms. Specifically, we introduce a reserved area in order to protect the nodes involved in two-way relaying from the interference caused by neighboring nodes. We analytically derive the end-to-end rate achieved by PLNC considering the impact of interference and reserved area. A relevant performance measure is data rate per unit area, in order to reflect the fact that any spatial reservation blocks another data exchange in the reserved area. The numerical results carry a cautionary message that the gains brought by PLNC over one-way relaying may be vanishing when the two-way relaying is considered in a broader context of a larger wireless network.
1311.1339
Zero-Error Capacity of a Class of Timing Channels
cs.IT cs.DM math.IT
We analyze the problem of zero-error communication through timing channels that can be interpreted as discrete-time queues with bounded waiting times. The channel model includes the following assumptions: 1) Time is slotted, 2) at most $ N $ "particles" are sent in each time slot, 3) every particle is delayed in the channel for a number of slots chosen randomly from the set $ \{0, 1, \ldots, K\} $, and 4) the particles are identical. It is shown that the zero-error capacity of this channel is $ \log r $, where $ r $ is the unique positive real root of the polynomial $ x^{K+1} - x^{K} - N $. Capacity-achieving codes are explicitly constructed, and a linear-time decoding algorithm for these codes devised. In the particular case $ N = 1 $, $ K = 1 $, the capacity is equal to $ \log \phi $, where $ \phi = (1 + \sqrt{5}) / 2 $ is the golden ratio, and the constructed codes give another interpretation of the Fibonacci sequence.
1311.1354
How to Center Binary Deep Boltzmann Machines
stat.ML cs.LG
This work analyzes centered binary Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs) and binary Deep Boltzmann Machines (DBMs), where centering is done by subtracting offset values from visible and hidden variables. We show analytically that (i) centering results in a different but equivalent parameterization for artificial neural networks in general, (ii) the expected performance of centered binary RBMs/DBMs is invariant under simultaneous flip of data and offsets, for any offset value in the range of zero to one, (iii) centering can be reformulated as a different update rule for normal binary RBMs/DBMs, and (iv) using the enhanced gradient is equivalent to setting the offset values to the average over model and data mean. Furthermore, numerical simulations suggest that (i) optimal generative performance is achieved by subtracting mean values from visible as well as hidden variables, (ii) centered RBMs/DBMs reach significantly higher log-likelihood values than normal binary RBMs/DBMs, (iii) centering variants whose offsets depend on the model mean, like the enhanced gradient, suffer from severe divergence problems, (iv) learning is stabilized if an exponentially moving average over the batch means is used for the offset values instead of the current batch mean, which also prevents the enhanced gradient from diverging, (v) centered RBMs/DBMs reach higher LL values than normal RBMs/DBMs while having a smaller norm of the weight matrix, (vi) centering leads to an update direction that is closer to the natural gradient and that the natural gradient is extremly efficient for training RBMs, (vii) centering dispense the need for greedy layer-wise pre-training of DBMs, (viii) furthermore we show that pre-training often even worsen the results independently whether centering is used or not, and (ix) centering is also beneficial for auto encoders.
1311.1358
Scalar Compandor Design Based on Optimal Compressor Function Approximating by Spline Functions
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper the approximation of the optimal compressor function using the first-degree spline functions and quadratic spline functions is done. Coefficients on which we form approximative spline functions are determined by solving equation systems that are formed from treshold conditions. For Gaussian source at the input of the quantizer, using the obtained approximate spline functions a companding quantizer designing is done. On the basis of the comparison with the SQNR of the optimal compandor it can be noticed that the proposed companding quantizer based on approximate spline functions achieved SQNR arbitrary close to that of the optimal compandor.
1311.1363
On Known-Plaintext Attacks to a Compressed Sensing-based Encryption: A Quantitative Analysis
cs.IT math.IT
Despite the linearity of its encoding, compressed sensing may be used to provide a limited form of data protection when random encoding matrices are used to produce sets of low-dimensional measurements (ciphertexts). In this paper we quantify by theoretical means the resistance of the least complex form of this kind of encoding against known-plaintext attacks. For both standard compressed sensing with antipodal random matrices and recent multiclass encryption schemes based on it, we show how the number of candidate encoding matrices that match a typical plaintext-ciphertext pair is so large that the search for the true encoding matrix inconclusive. Such results on the practical ineffectiveness of known-plaintext attacks underlie the fact that even closely-related signal recovery under encoding matrix uncertainty is doomed to fail. Practical attacks are then exemplified by applying compressed sensing with antipodal random matrices as a multiclass encryption scheme to signals such as images and electrocardiographic tracks, showing that the extracted information on the true encoding matrix from a plaintext-ciphertext pair leads to no significant signal recovery quality increase. This theoretical and empirical evidence clarifies that, although not perfectly secure, both standard compressed sensing and multiclass encryption schemes feature a noteworthy level of security against known-plaintext attacks, therefore increasing its appeal as a negligible-cost encryption method for resource-limited sensing applications.
1311.1372
Minimum-Variance Importance-Sampling Bernoulli Estimator for Fast Simulation of Linear Block Codes over Binary Symmetric Channels
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper the choice of the Bernoulli distribution as biased distribution for importance sampling (IS) Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation of linear block codes over binary symmetric channels (BSCs) is studied. Based on the analytical derivation of the optimal IS Bernoulli distribution, with explicit calculation of the variance of the corresponding IS estimator, two novel algorithms for fast-simulation of linear block codes are proposed. For sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) one of the proposed algorithm is SNR-invariant, i.e. the IS estimator does not depend on the cross-over probability of the channel. Also, the proposed algorithms are shown to be suitable for the estimation of the error-correcting capability of the code and the decoder. Finally, the effectiveness of the algorithms is confirmed through simulation results in comparison to standard Monte Carlo method.
1311.1406
TOP-SPIN: TOPic discovery via Sparse Principal component INterference
cs.CV cs.IR cs.LG
We propose a novel topic discovery algorithm for unlabeled images based on the bag-of-words (BoW) framework. We first extract a dictionary of visual words and subsequently for each image compute a visual word occurrence histogram. We view these histograms as rows of a large matrix from which we extract sparse principal components (PCs). Each PC identifies a sparse combination of visual words which co-occur frequently in some images but seldom appear in others. Each sparse PC corresponds to a topic, and images whose interference with the PC is high belong to that topic, revealing the common parts possessed by the images. We propose to solve the associated sparse PCA problems using an Alternating Maximization (AM) method, which we modify for purpose of efficiently extracting multiple PCs in a deflation scheme. Our approach attacks the maximization problem in sparse PCA directly and is scalable to high-dimensional data. Experiments on automatic topic discovery and category prediction demonstrate encouraging performance of our approach.
1311.1411
Effective Secrecy: Reliability, Confusion and Stealth
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
A security measure called effective security is defined that includes strong secrecy and stealth communication. Effective secrecy ensures that a message cannot be deciphered and that the presence of meaningful communication is hidden. To measure stealth we use resolvability and relate this to binary hypothesis testing. Results are developed for wire-tap channels and broadcast channels with confidential messages.
1311.1422
Structural Learning for Template-free Protein Folding
cs.LG cs.CE q-bio.QM
The thesis is aimed to solve the template-free protein folding problem by tackling two important components: efficient sampling in vast conformation space, and design of knowledge-based potentials with high accuracy. We have proposed the first-order and second-order CRF-Sampler to sample structures from the continuous local dihedral angles space by modeling the lower and higher order conditional dependency between neighboring dihedral angles given the primary sequence information. A framework combining the Conditional Random Fields and the energy function is introduced to guide the local conformation sampling using long range constraints with the energy function. The relationship between the sequence profile and the local dihedral angle distribution is nonlinear. Hence we proposed the CNF-Folder to model this complex relationship by applying a novel machine learning model Conditional Neural Fields which utilizes the structural graphical model with the neural network. CRF-Samplers and CNF-Folder perform very well in CASP8 and CASP9. Further, a novel pairwise distance statistical potential (EPAD) is designed to capture the dependency of the energy profile on the positions of the interacting amino acids as well as the types of those amino acids, opposing the common assumption that this energy profile depends only on the types of amino acids. EPAD has also been successfully applied in the CASP 10 Free Modeling experiment with CNF-Folder, especially outstanding on some uncommon structured targets.
1311.1436
Adaptive Measurement-Based Policy-Driven QoS Management with Fuzzy-Rule-based Resource Allocation
cs.NI cs.AI
Fixed and wireless networks are increasingly converging towards common connectivity with IP-based core networks. Providing effective end-to-end resource and QoS management in such complex heterogeneous converged network scenarios requires unified, adaptive and scalable solutions to integrate and co-ordinate diverse QoS mechanisms of different access technologies with IP-based QoS. Policy-Based Network Management (PBNM) is one approach that could be employed to address this challenge. Hence, a policy-based framework for end-to-end QoS management in converged networks, CNQF (Converged Networks QoS Management Framework) has been proposed within our project. In this paper, the CNQF architecture, a Java implementation of its prototype and experimental validation of key elements are discussed. We then present a fuzzy-based CNQF resource management approach and study the performance of our implementation with real traffic flows on an experimental testbed. The results demonstrate the efficacy of our resource-adaptive approach for practical PBNM systems.
1311.1484
Regional properties of global communication as reflected in aggregated Twitter data
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Twitter is a popular public conversation platform with world-wide audience and diverse forms of connections between users. In this paper we introduce the concept of aggregated regional Twitter networks in order to characterize communication between geopolitical regions. We present the study of a follower and a mention graph created from an extensive data set collected during the second half of the year of $2012$. With a k-shell decomposition the global core-periphery structure is revealed and by means of a modified Regional-SIR model we also consider basic information spreading properties.
1311.1490
On Unconditionally Secure Multiparty Computation for Realizing Correlated Equilibria in Games
cs.CR cs.GT cs.IT math.IT
In game theory, a trusted mediator acting on behalf of the players can enable the attainment of correlated equilibria, which may provide better payoffs than those available from the Nash equilibria alone. We explore the approach of replacing the trusted mediator with an unconditionally secure sampling protocol that jointly generates the players' actions. We characterize the joint distributions that can be securely sampled by malicious players via protocols using error-free communication. This class of distributions depends on whether players may speak simultaneously ("cheap talk") or must speak in turn ("polite talk"). In applying sampling protocols toward attaining correlated equilibria with rational players, we observe that security against malicious parties may be much stronger than necessary. We propose the concept of secure sampling by rational players, and show that many more distributions are feasible given certain utility functions. However, the payoffs attainable via secure sampling by malicious players are a dominant subset of the rationally attainable payoffs.
1311.1539
Category-Theoretic Quantitative Compositional Distributional Models of Natural Language Semantics
cs.CL cs.LG math.CT math.LO
This thesis is about the problem of compositionality in distributional semantics. Distributional semantics presupposes that the meanings of words are a function of their occurrences in textual contexts. It models words as distributions over these contexts and represents them as vectors in high dimensional spaces. The problem of compositionality for such models concerns itself with how to produce representations for larger units of text by composing the representations of smaller units of text. This thesis focuses on a particular approach to this compositionality problem, namely using the categorical framework developed by Coecke, Sadrzadeh, and Clark, which combines syntactic analysis formalisms with distributional semantic representations of meaning to produce syntactically motivated composition operations. This thesis shows how this approach can be theoretically extended and practically implemented to produce concrete compositional distributional models of natural language semantics. It furthermore demonstrates that such models can perform on par with, or better than, other competing approaches in the field of natural language processing. There are three principal contributions to computational linguistics in this thesis. The first is to extend the DisCoCat framework on the syntactic front and semantic front, incorporating a number of syntactic analysis formalisms and providing learning procedures allowing for the generation of concrete compositional distributional models. The second contribution is to evaluate the models developed from the procedures presented here, showing that they outperform other compositional distributional models present in the literature. The third contribution is to show how using category theory to solve linguistic problems forms a sound basis for research, illustrated by examples of work on this topic, that also suggest directions for future research.
1311.1565
On Maximal Ratio Diversity with Weighting Errors for Physical Layer Security
cs.IT math.IT
In this letter, we introduce the performance of maximal ratio combining (MRC) with weighting errors for physical layer security. We assume both legitimate user and eavesdropper each equipped with multiple antennas employ non ideal MRC. The non ideal MRC is designed in terms of power correlation between the estimated and actual fadings. We derive new closedform and generalized expressions for secrecy outage probability. Next, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of secrecy outage probability for high signal-to-noise ratio in the main channel between legitimate user and transmitter. The asymptotic analysis provides the insights about actual diversity provided by MRC with weighting errors. We substantiate our claims with the analytic results and numerical evaluations.
1311.1567
Beamforming Design for Joint Localization and Data Transmission in Distributed Antenna System
cs.IT math.IT
A distributed antenna system is studied whose goal is to provide data communication and positioning functionalities to Mobile Stations (MSs). Each MS receives data from a number of Base Stations (BSs), and uses the received signal not only to extract the information but also to determine its location. This is done based on Time of Arrival (TOA) or Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) measurements, depending on the assumed synchronization conditions. The problem of minimizing the overall power expenditure of the BSs under data throughput and localization accuracy requirements is formulated with respect to the beamforming vectors used at the BSs. The analysis covers both frequency-flat and frequency-selective channels, and accounts also for robustness constraints in the presence of parameter uncertainty. The proposed algorithmic solutions are based on rank-relaxation and Difference-of-Convex (DC) programming.
1311.1568
Stability of Sequence-Based Control with Random Delays and Dropouts
math.OC cs.SY
We study networked control of non-linear systems where system states and tentative plant input sequences are transmitted over unreliable communication channels. The sequences are calculated recursively by using a pre-designed nominally stabilizing state-feedback control mapping to plant state predictions. The controller does not require receipt acknowledgments or knowledge of delay or dropout distributions. For the i.i.d. case, in which case the numbers of consecutive dropouts are geometrically distributed, we show how the resulting closed loop system can be modeled as a Markov non-linear jump system and establish sufficient conditions for stochastic stability.
1311.1626
Trade-offs Computing Minimum Hub Cover toward Optimized Graph Query Processing
cs.DB cs.DS
As techniques for graph query processing mature, the need for optimization is increasingly becoming an imperative. Indices are one of the key ingredients toward efficient query processing strategies via cost-based optimization. Due to the apparent absence of a common representation model, it is difficult to make a focused effort toward developing access structures, metrics to evaluate query costs, and choose alternatives. In this context, recent interests in covering-based graph matching appears to be a promising direction of research. In this paper, our goal is to formally introduce a new graph representation model, called Minimum Hub Cover, and demonstrate that this representation offers interesting strategic advantages, facilitates construction of candidate graphs from graph fragments, and helps leverage indices in novel ways for query optimization. However, similar to other covering problems, minimum hub cover is NP-hard, and thus is a natural candidate for optimization. We claim that computing the minimum hub cover leads to substantial cost reduction for graph query processing. We present a computational characterization of minimum hub cover based on integer programming to substantiate our claim and investigate its computational cost on various graph types.
1311.1632
Persistence, Change, and the Integration of Objects and Processes in the Framework of the General Formal Ontology
cs.AI
In this paper we discuss various problems, associated to temporal phenomena. These problems include persistence and change, the integration of objects and processes, and truth-makers for temporal propositions. We propose an approach which interprets persistence as a phenomenon emanating from the activity of the mind, and which, additionally, postulates that persistence, finally, rests on personal identity. The General Formal Ontology (GFO) is a top level ontology being developed at the University of Leipzig. Top level ontologies can be roughly divided into 3D-ontologies, and 4D-ontologies. GFO is the only top level ontology, used in applications, which is a 4D-ontology admitting additionally 3D objects. Objects and processes are integrated in a natural way.
1311.1640
Computer simulations reveal complex distribution of haemodynamic forces in a mouse retina model of angiogenesis
cs.CE physics.bio-ph q-bio.QM
There is currently limited understanding of the role played by haemodynamic forces on the processes governing vascular development. One of many obstacles to be overcome is being able to measure those forces, at the required resolution level, on vessels only a few micrometres thick. In the current paper, we present an in silico method for the computation of the haemodynamic forces experienced by murine retinal vasculature (a widely used vascular development animal model) beyond what is measurable experimentally. Our results show that it is possible to reconstruct high-resolution three-dimensional geometrical models directly from samples of retinal vasculature and that the lattice-Boltzmann algorithm can be used to obtain accurate estimates of the haemodynamics in these domains. We generate flow models from samples obtained at postnatal days (P) 5 and 6. Our simulations show important differences between the flow patterns recovered in both cases, including observations of regression occurring in areas where wall shear stress gradients exist. We propose two possible mechanisms to account for the observed increase in velocity and wall shear stress between P5 and P6: i) the measured reduction in typical vessel diameter between both time points, ii) the reduction in network density triggered by the pruning process. The methodology developed herein is applicable to other biomedical domains where microvasculature can be imaged but experimental flow measurements are unavailable or difficult to obtain.
1311.1642
Quasi-Linear Compressed Sensing
math.NA cs.IT math.IT
Inspired by significant real-life applications, in particular, sparse phase retrieval and sparse pulsation frequency detection in Asteroseismology, we investigate a general framework for compressed sensing, where the measurements are quasi-linear. We formulate natural generalizations of the well-known Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) towards nonlinear measurements, which allow us to prove both unique identifiability of sparse signals as well as the convergence of recovery algorithms to compute them efficiently. We show that for certain randomized quasi-linear measurements, including Lipschitz perturbations of classical RIP matrices and phase retrieval from random projections, the proposed restricted isometry properties hold with high probability. We analyze a generalized Orthogonal Least Squares (OLS) under the assumption that magnitudes of signal entries to be recovered decay fast. Greed is good again, as we show that this algorithm performs efficiently in phase retrieval and asteroseismology. For situations where the decay assumption on the signal does not necessarily hold, we propose two alternative algorithms, which are natural generalizations of the well-known iterative hard and soft-thresholding. While these algorithms are rarely successful for the mentioned applications, we show their strong recovery guarantees for quasi-linear measurements which are Lipschitz perturbations of RIP matrices.
1311.1644
The Maximum Entropy Relaxation Path
cs.LG math.OC stat.ML
The relaxed maximum entropy problem is concerned with finding a probability distribution on a finite set that minimizes the relative entropy to a given prior distribution, while satisfying relaxed max-norm constraints with respect to a third observed multinomial distribution. We study the entire relaxation path for this problem in detail. We show existence and a geometric description of the relaxation path. Specifically, we show that the maximum entropy relaxation path admits a planar geometric description as an increasing, piecewise linear function in the inverse relaxation parameter. We derive fast algorithms for tracking the path. In various realistic settings, our algorithms require $O(n\log(n))$ operations for probability distributions on $n$ points, making it possible to handle large problems. Once the path has been recovered, we show that given a validation set, the family of admissible models is reduced from an infinite family to a small, discrete set. We demonstrate the merits of our approach in experiments with synthetic data and discuss its potential for the estimation of compact n-gram language models.
1311.1694
Biometric Signature Processing & Recognition Using Radial Basis Function Network
cs.CV
Automatic recognition of signature is a challenging problem which has received much attention during recent years due to its many applications in different fields. Signature has been used for long time for verification and authentication purpose. Earlier methods were manual but nowadays they are getting digitized. This paper provides an efficient method to signature recognition using Radial Basis Function Network. The network is trained with sample images in database. Feature extraction is performed before using them for training. For testing purpose, an image is made to undergo rotation-translation-scaling correction and then given to network. The network successfully identifies the original image and gives correct output for stored database images also. The method provides recognition rate of approximately 80% for 200 samples.
1311.1704
Scalable Recommendation with Poisson Factorization
cs.IR cs.AI cs.LG stat.ML
We develop a Bayesian Poisson matrix factorization model for forming recommendations from sparse user behavior data. These data are large user/item matrices where each user has provided feedback on only a small subset of items, either explicitly (e.g., through star ratings) or implicitly (e.g., through views or purchases). In contrast to traditional matrix factorization approaches, Poisson factorization implicitly models each user's limited attention to consume items. Moreover, because of the mathematical form of the Poisson likelihood, the model needs only to explicitly consider the observed entries in the matrix, leading to both scalable computation and good predictive performance. We develop a variational inference algorithm for approximate posterior inference that scales up to massive data sets. This is an efficient algorithm that iterates over the observed entries and adjusts an approximate posterior over the user/item representations. We apply our method to large real-world user data containing users rating movies, users listening to songs, and users reading scientific papers. In all these settings, Bayesian Poisson factorization outperforms state-of-the-art matrix factorization methods.
1311.1712
Approximate Bayesian Probabilistic-Data-Association-Aided Iterative Detection for MIMO Systems Using Arbitrary M-ary Modulation
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, the issue of designing an iterative-detection-and-decoding (IDD)-aided receiver, relying on the low-complexity probabilistic data association (PDA) method, is addressed for turbo-coded multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems using general M-ary modulations. We demonstrate that the classic candidate-search-aided bit-based extrinsic log-likelihood ratio (LLR) calculation method is not applicable to the family of PDA-based detectors. Additionally, we reveal that, in contrast to the interpretation in the existing literature, the output symbol probabilities of existing PDA algorithms are not the true a posteriori probabilities (APPs) but, rather, the normalized symbol likelihoods. Therefore, the classic relationship, where the extrinsic LLRs are given by subtracting the a priori LLRs from the a posteriori LLRs, does not hold for the existing PDA-based detectors. Motivated by these revelations, we conceive a new approximate Bayesian-theorem-based logarithmic-domain PDA (AB-Log-PDA) method and unveil the technique of calculating bit-based extrinsic LLRs for the AB-Log-PDA, which facilitates the employment of the AB-Log-PDA in a simplified IDD receiver structure. Additionally, we demonstrate that we may dispense with inner iterations within the AB-Log-PDA in the context of IDD receivers. Our complexity analysis and numerical results recorded for Nakagami-m fading channels demonstrate that the proposed AB-Log-PDA-based IDD scheme is capable of achieving a performance comparable with that of the optimal maximum a posteriori (MAP)-detector-based IDD receiver, while imposing significantly lower computational complexity in the scenarios considered.
1311.1723
On Probability Estimation via Relative Frequencies and Discount
cs.IT math.IT
Probability estimation is an elementary building block of every statistical data compression algorithm. In practice probability estimation is often based on relative letter frequencies which get scaled down, when their sum is too large. Such algorithms are attractive in terms of memory requirements, running time and practical performance. However, there still is a lack of theoretical understanding. In this work we formulate a typical probability estimation algorithm based on relative frequencies and frequency discount, Algorithm RFD. Our main contribution is its theoretical analysis. We show that the code length it requires above an arbitrary piecewise stationary model with bounded and unbounded letter probabilities is small. This theoretically confirms the recency effect of periodic frequency discount, which has often been observed empirically.
1311.1731
Stochastic blockmodel approximation of a graphon: Theory and consistent estimation
stat.ME cs.LG cs.SI physics.data-an stat.ML
Non-parametric approaches for analyzing network data based on exchangeable graph models (ExGM) have recently gained interest. The key object that defines an ExGM is often referred to as a graphon. This non-parametric perspective on network modeling poses challenging questions on how to make inference on the graphon underlying observed network data. In this paper, we propose a computationally efficient procedure to estimate a graphon from a set of observed networks generated from it. This procedure is based on a stochastic blockmodel approximation (SBA) of the graphon. We show that, by approximating the graphon with a stochastic block model, the graphon can be consistently estimated, that is, the estimation error vanishes as the size of the graph approaches infinity.
1311.1757
Failure dynamics of the global risk network
cs.CY cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Risks threatening modern societies form an intricately interconnected network that often underlies crisis situations. Yet, little is known about how risk materializations in distinct domains influence each other. Here we present an approach in which expert assessments of risks likelihoods and influence underlie a quantitative model of the global risk network dynamics. The modeled risks range from environmental to economic and technological and include difficult to quantify risks, such as geo-political or social. Using the maximum likelihood estimation, we find the optimal model parameters and demonstrate that the model including network effects significantly outperforms the others, uncovering full value of the expert collected data. We analyze the model dynamics and study its resilience and stability. Our findings include such risk properties as contagion potential, persistence, roles in cascades of failures and the identity of risks most detrimental to system stability. The model provides quantitative means for measuring the adverse effects of risk interdependence and the materialization of risks in the network.
1311.1759
Dimensionality reduction and spectral properties of multilayer networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI math.CO
Network representations are useful for describing the structure of a large variety of complex systems. Although most studies of real-world networks suppose that nodes are connected by only a single type of edge, most natural and engineered systems include multiple subsystems and layers of connectivity. This new paradigm has attracted a great deal of attention and one fundamental challenge is to characterize multilayer networks both structurally and dynamically. One way to address this question is to study the spectral properties of such networks. Here, we apply the framework of graph quotients, which occurs naturally in this context, and the associated eigenvalue interlacing results, to the adjacency and Laplacian matrices of undirected multilayer networks. Specifically, we describe relationships between the eigenvalue spectra of multilayer networks and their two most natural quotients, the network of layers and the aggregate network, and show the dynamical implications of working with either of the two simplified representations. Our work thus contributes in particular to the study of dynamical processes whose critical properties are determined by the spectral properties of the underlying network.
1311.1761
Exploring Deep and Recurrent Architectures for Optimal Control
cs.LG cs.AI cs.NE cs.RO cs.SY
Sophisticated multilayer neural networks have achieved state of the art results on multiple supervised tasks. However, successful applications of such multilayer networks to control have so far been limited largely to the perception portion of the control pipeline. In this paper, we explore the application of deep and recurrent neural networks to a continuous, high-dimensional locomotion task, where the network is used to represent a control policy that maps the state of the system (represented by joint angles) directly to the torques at each joint. By using a recent reinforcement learning algorithm called guided policy search, we can successfully train neural network controllers with thousands of parameters, allowing us to compare a variety of architectures. We discuss the differences between the locomotion control task and previous supervised perception tasks, present experimental results comparing various architectures, and discuss future directions in the application of techniques from deep learning to the problem of optimal control.
1311.1764
Automatic ontology generation for data mining using fca and clustering
cs.DB cs.AI
Motivated by the increased need for formalized representations of the domain of Data Mining, the success of using Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) and Ontology in several Computer Science fields, we present in this paper a new approach for automatic generation of Fuzzy Ontology of Data Mining (FODM), through the fusion of conceptual clustering, fuzzy logic, and FCA. In our approach, we propose to generate ontology taking in consideration another degree of granularity into the process of generation. Indeed, we suggest to define an ontology between classes resulting from a preliminary classification on the data. We prove that this approach optimize the definition of the ontology, offered a better interpretation of the data and optimized both the space memory and the execution time for exploiting this data.
1311.1780
Learned-Norm Pooling for Deep Feedforward and Recurrent Neural Networks
cs.NE cs.LG stat.ML
In this paper we propose and investigate a novel nonlinear unit, called $L_p$ unit, for deep neural networks. The proposed $L_p$ unit receives signals from several projections of a subset of units in the layer below and computes a normalized $L_p$ norm. We notice two interesting interpretations of the $L_p$ unit. First, the proposed unit can be understood as a generalization of a number of conventional pooling operators such as average, root-mean-square and max pooling widely used in, for instance, convolutional neural networks (CNN), HMAX models and neocognitrons. Furthermore, the $L_p$ unit is, to a certain degree, similar to the recently proposed maxout unit (Goodfellow et al., 2013) which achieved the state-of-the-art object recognition results on a number of benchmark datasets. Secondly, we provide a geometrical interpretation of the activation function based on which we argue that the $L_p$ unit is more efficient at representing complex, nonlinear separating boundaries. Each $L_p$ unit defines a superelliptic boundary, with its exact shape defined by the order $p$. We claim that this makes it possible to model arbitrarily shaped, curved boundaries more efficiently by combining a few $L_p$ units of different orders. This insight justifies the need for learning different orders for each unit in the model. We empirically evaluate the proposed $L_p$ units on a number of datasets and show that multilayer perceptrons (MLP) consisting of the $L_p$ units achieve the state-of-the-art results on a number of benchmark datasets. Furthermore, we evaluate the proposed $L_p$ unit on the recently proposed deep recurrent neural networks (RNN).
1311.1838
Efficient Regularization of Squared Curvature
cs.CV
Curvature has received increased attention as an important alternative to length based regularization in computer vision. In contrast to length, it preserves elongated structures and fine details. Existing approaches are either inefficient, or have low angular resolution and yield results with strong block artifacts. We derive a new model for computing squared curvature based on integral geometry. The model counts responses of straight line triple cliques. The corresponding energy decomposes into submodular and supermodular pairwise potentials. We show that this energy can be efficiently minimized even for high angular resolutions using the trust region framework. Our results confirm that we obtain accurate and visually pleasing solutions without strong artifacts at reasonable run times.
1311.1839
An Efficiently Solvable Quadratic Program for Stabilizing Dynamic Locomotion
cs.RO
We describe a whole-body dynamic walking controller implemented as a convex quadratic program. The controller solves an optimal control problem using an approximate value function derived from a simple walking model while respecting the dynamic, input, and contact constraints of the full robot dynamics. By exploiting sparsity and temporal structure in the optimization with a custom active-set algorithm, we surpass the performance of the best available off-the-shelf solvers and achieve 1kHz control rates for a 34-DOF humanoid. We describe applications to balancing and walking tasks using the simulated Atlas robot in the DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge.
1311.1856
Submodularization for Quadratic Pseudo-Boolean Optimization
cs.CV
Many computer vision problems require optimization of binary non-submodular energies. We propose a general optimization framework based on local submodular approximations (LSA). Unlike standard LP relaxation methods that linearize the whole energy globally, our approach iteratively approximates the energies locally. On the other hand, unlike standard local optimization methods (e.g. gradient descent or projection techniques) we use non-linear submodular approximations and optimize them without leaving the domain of integer solutions. We discuss two specific LSA algorithms based on "trust region" and "auxiliary function" principles, LSA-TR and LSA-AUX. These methods obtain state-of-the-art results on a wide range of applications outperforming many standard techniques such as LBP, QPBO, and TRWS. While our paper is focused on pairwise energies, our ideas extend to higher-order problems. The code is available online (http://vision.csd.uwo.ca/code/).
1311.1869
Optimization, Learning, and Games with Predictable Sequences
cs.LG cs.GT
We provide several applications of Optimistic Mirror Descent, an online learning algorithm based on the idea of predictable sequences. First, we recover the Mirror Prox algorithm for offline optimization, prove an extension to Holder-smooth functions, and apply the results to saddle-point type problems. Next, we prove that a version of Optimistic Mirror Descent (which has a close relation to the Exponential Weights algorithm) can be used by two strongly-uncoupled players in a finite zero-sum matrix game to converge to the minimax equilibrium at the rate of O((log T)/T). This addresses a question of Daskalakis et al 2011. Further, we consider a partial information version of the problem. We then apply the results to convex programming and exhibit a simple algorithm for the approximate Max Flow problem.
1311.1885
Verifiable Control System Development for Gas Turbine Engines
cs.SY math.OC
A control software verification framework for gas turbine engines is developed. A stability proof is presented for gain scheduled closed-loop engine system based on global linearization and linear matrix inequality (LMI) techniques. Using convex optimization tools, a single quadratic Lyapunov function is computed for multiple linearizations near equilibrium points of the closed-loop system. With the computed stability matrices, ellipsoid invariant sets are constructed, which are used efficiently for DGEN turbofan engine control code stability analysis. Then a verifiable linear gain scheduled controller for DGEN engine is developed based on formal methods, and tested on the engine virtual test bench. Simulation results show that the developed verifiable gain scheduled controller is capable of regulating the engine in a stable fashion with proper tracking performance.
1311.1887
Demand Side Management in Smart Grids using a Repeated Game Framework
cs.SY cs.GT
Demand side management (DSM) is a key solution for reducing the peak-time power consumption in smart grids. To provide incentives for consumers to shift their consumption to off-peak times, the utility company charges consumers differential pricing for using power at different times of the day. Consumers take into account these differential prices when deciding when and how much power to consume daily. Importantly, while consumers enjoy lower billing costs when shifting their power usage to off-peak times, they also incur discomfort costs due to the altering of their power consumption patterns. Existing works propose stationary strategies for the myopic consumers to minimize their short-term billing and discomfort costs. In contrast, we model the interaction emerging among self-interested, foresighted consumers as a repeated energy scheduling game and prove that the stationary strategies are suboptimal in terms of long-term total billing and discomfort costs. Subsequently, we propose a novel framework for determining optimal nonstationary DSM strategies, in which consumers can choose different daily power consumption patterns depending on their preferences, routines, and needs. As a direct consequence of the nonstationary DSM policy, different subsets of consumers are allowed to use power in peak times at a low price. The subset of consumers that are selected daily to have their joint discomfort and billing costs minimized is determined based on the consumers' power consumption preferences as well as on the past history of which consumers have shifted their usage previously. Importantly, we show that the proposed strategies are incentive-compatible. Simulations confirm that, given the same peak-to-average ratio, the proposed strategy can reduce the total cost (billing and discomfort costs) by up to 50% compared to existing DSM strategies.
1311.1888
D$^3$PO - Denoising, Deconvolving, and Decomposing Photon Observations
astro-ph.IM cs.IT math.IT physics.data-an stat.CO
The analysis of astronomical images is a non-trivial task. The D3PO algorithm addresses the inference problem of denoising, deconvolving, and decomposing photon observations. Its primary goal is the simultaneous but individual reconstruction of the diffuse and point-like photon flux given a single photon count image, where the fluxes are superimposed. In order to discriminate between these morphologically different signal components, a probabilistic algorithm is derived in the language of information field theory based on a hierarchical Bayesian parameter model. The signal inference exploits prior information on the spatial correlation structure of the diffuse component and the brightness distribution of the spatially uncorrelated point-like sources. A maximum a posteriori solution and a solution minimizing the Gibbs free energy of the inference problem using variational Bayesian methods are discussed. Since the derivation of the solution is not dependent on the underlying position space, the implementation of the D3PO algorithm uses the NIFTY package to ensure applicability to various spatial grids and at any resolution. The fidelity of the algorithm is validated by the analysis of simulated data, including a realistic high energy photon count image showing a 32 x 32 arcmin^2 observation with a spatial resolution of 0.1 arcmin. In all tests the D3PO algorithm successfully denoised, deconvolved, and decomposed the data into a diffuse and a point-like signal estimate for the respective photon flux components.
1311.1897
Logique math\'ematique et linguistique formelle
math.LO cs.CL
As the etymology of the word shows, logic is intimately related to language, as exemplified by the work of philosophers from Antiquity and from the Middle-Age. At the beginning of the XX century, the crisis of the foundations of mathematics invented mathematical logic and imposed logic as a language-based foundation for mathematics. How did the relations between logic and language evolved in this newly defined mathematical framework? After a survey of the history of the relation between logic and linguistics, traditionally focused on semantics, we focus on some present issues: 1) grammar as a deductive system 2) the transformation of the syntactic structure of a sentence to a logical formula representing its meaning 3) taking into account the context when interpreting words. This lecture shows that type theory provides a convenient framework both for natural language syntax and for the interpretation of any of tis level (words, sentences, discourse).
1311.1903
Moment-based Uniform Deviation Bounds for $k$-means and Friends
cs.LG stat.ML
Suppose $k$ centers are fit to $m$ points by heuristically minimizing the $k$-means cost; what is the corresponding fit over the source distribution? This question is resolved here for distributions with $p\geq 4$ bounded moments; in particular, the difference between the sample cost and distribution cost decays with $m$ and $p$ as $m^{\min\{-1/4, -1/2+2/p\}}$. The essential technical contribution is a mechanism to uniformly control deviations in the face of unbounded parameter sets, cost functions, and source distributions. To further demonstrate this mechanism, a soft clustering variant of $k$-means cost is also considered, namely the log likelihood of a Gaussian mixture, subject to the constraint that all covariance matrices have bounded spectrum. Lastly, a rate with refined constants is provided for $k$-means instances possessing some cluster structure.
1311.1935
Unsupervised learning human's activities by overexpressed recognized non-speech sounds
cs.AI cs.HC
Human activity and environment produces sounds such as, at home, the noise produced by water, cough, or television. These sounds can be used to determine the activity in the environment. The objective is to monitor a person's activity or determine his environment using a single low cost microphone by sound analysis. The purpose is to adapt programs to the activity or environment or detect abnormal situations. Some patterns of over expressed repeatedly in the sequences of recognized sounds inter and intra environment allow to characterize activities such as the entrance of a person in the house, or a tv program watched. We first manually annotated 1500 sounds of daily life activity of old persons living at home recognized sounds. Then we inferred an ontology and enriched the database of annotation with a crowed sourced manual annotation of 7500 sounds to help with the annotation of the most frequent sounds. Using learning sound algorithms, we defined 50 types of the most frequent sounds. We used this set of recognizable sounds as a base to tag sounds and put tags on them. By using over expressed number of motifs of sequences of the tags, we were able to categorize using only a single low-cost microphone, complex activities of daily life of a persona at home as watching TV, entrance in the apartment of a person, or phone conversation including detecting unknown activities as repeated tasks performed by users.
1311.1939
Fast Tracking via Spatio-Temporal Context Learning
cs.CV
In this paper, we present a simple yet fast and robust algorithm which exploits the spatio-temporal context for visual tracking. Our approach formulates the spatio-temporal relationships between the object of interest and its local context based on a Bayesian framework, which models the statistical correlation between the low-level features (i.e., image intensity and position) from the target and its surrounding regions. The tracking problem is posed by computing a confidence map, and obtaining the best target location by maximizing an object location likelihood function. The Fast Fourier Transform is adopted for fast learning and detection in this work. Implemented in MATLAB without code optimization, the proposed tracker runs at 350 frames per second on an i7 machine. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs favorably against state-of-the-art methods in terms of efficiency, accuracy and robustness.
1311.1940
Power Decoding of Reed-Solomon Codes Revisited
cs.IT math.IT
Power decoding, or "decoding by virtual interleaving", of Reed--Solomon codes is a method for unique decoding beyond half the minimum distance. We give a new variant of the Power decoding scheme, building upon the key equation of Gao. We show various interesting properties such as behavioural equivalence to the classical scheme using syndromes, as well as a new bound on the failure probability when the powering degree is 3.
1311.1958
Constructing Time Series Shape Association Measures: Minkowski Distance and Data Standardization
cs.LG
It is surprising that last two decades many works in time series data mining and clustering were concerned with measures of similarity of time series but not with measures of association that can be used for measuring possible direct and inverse relationships between time series. Inverse relationships can exist between dynamics of prices and sell volumes, between growth patterns of competitive companies, between well production data in oilfields, between wind velocity and air pollution concentration etc. The paper develops a theoretical basis for analysis and construction of time series shape association measures. Starting from the axioms of time series shape association measures it studies the methods of construction of measures satisfying these axioms. Several general methods of construction of such measures suitable for measuring time series shape similarity and shape association are proposed. Time series shape association measures based on Minkowski distance and data standardization methods are considered. The cosine similarity and the Pearsons correlation coefficient are obtained as particular cases of the proposed general methods that can be used also for construction of new association measures in data analysis.
1311.2003
Threshold Saturation for Nonbinary SC-LDPC Codes on the Binary Erasure Channel
cs.IT math.IT
We analyze the asymptotic performance of nonbinary spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) code ensembles defined over the general linear group on the binary erasure channel. In particular, we prove threshold saturation of belief propagation decoding to the so called potential threshold, using the proof technique based on potential functions introduced by Yedla \textit{et al.}, assuming that the potential function exists. We rewrite the density evolution of nonbinary SC-LDPC codes in an equivalent vector recursion form which is suited for the use of the potential function. We then discuss the existence of the potential function for the general case of vector recursions defined by multivariate polynomials, and give a method to construct it. We define a potential function in a slightly more general form than one by Yedla \textit{et al.}, in order to make the technique based on potential functions applicable to the case of nonbinary LDPC codes. We show that the potential function exists if a solution to a carefully designed system of linear equations exists. Furthermore, we show numerically the existence of a solution to the system of linear equations for a large number of nonbinary LDPC code ensembles, which allows us to define their potential function and thus prove threshold saturation.
1311.2008
Statistical validation of high-dimensional models of growing networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
The abundance of models of complex networks and the current insufficient validation standards make it difficult to judge which models are strongly supported by data and which are not. We focus here on likelihood maximization methods for models of growing networks with many parameters and compare their performance on artificial and real datasets. While high dimensionality of the parameter space harms the performance of direct likelihood maximization on artificial data, this can be improved by introducing a suitable penalization term. Likelihood maximization on real data shows that the presented approach is able to discriminate among available network models. To make large-scale datasets accessible to this kind of analysis, we propose a subset sampling technique and show that it yields substantial model evidence in a fraction of time necessary for the analysis of the complete data.
1311.2012
Quasi-Static Multiple-Antenna Fading Channels at Finite Blocklength
cs.IT math.IT
This paper investigates the maximal achievable rate for a given blocklength and error probability over quasi-static multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels, with and without channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter and/or the receiver. The principal finding is that outage capacity, despite being an asymptotic quantity, is a sharp proxy for the finite-blocklength fundamental limits of slow-fading channels. Specifically, the channel dispersion is shown to be zero regardless of whether the fading realizations are available at both transmitter and receiver, at only one of them, or at neither of them. These results follow from analytically tractable converse and achievability bounds. Numerical evaluation of these bounds verifies that zero dispersion may indeed imply fast convergence to the outage capacity as the blocklength increases. In the example of a particular $1 \times 2$ single-input multiple-output (SIMO) Rician fading channel, the blocklength required to achieve $90\%$ of capacity is about an order of magnitude smaller compared to the blocklength required for an AWGN channel with the same capacity. For this specific scenario, the coding/decoding schemes adopted in the LTE-Advanced standard are benchmarked against the finite-blocklength achievability and converse bounds.
1311.2013
Google matrix analysis of C.elegans neural network
physics.soc-ph cs.SI q-bio.NC
We study the structural properties of the neural network of the C.elegans (worm) from a directed graph point of view. The Google matrix analysis is used to characterize the neuron connectivity structure and node classifications are discussed and compared with physiological properties of the cells. Our results are obtained by a proper definition of neural directed network and subsequent eigenvector analysis which recovers some results of previous studies. Our analysis highlights particular sets of important neurons constituting the core of the neural system. The applications of PageRank, CheiRank and ImpactRank to characterization of interdependency of neurons are discussed.
1311.2014
A new stopping criterion for the mean shift iterative algorithm
cs.CV
The mean shift iterative algorithm was proposed in 2006, for using the entropy as a stopping criterion. From then on, a theoretical base has been developed and a group of applications has been carried out using this algorithm. This paper proposes a new stopping criterion for the mean shift iterative algorithm, where stopping threshold via entropy is used now, but in another way. Many segmentation experiments were carried out by utilizing standard images and it was verified that a better segmentation was reached, and that the algorithm had better stability. An analysis on the convergence, through a theorem, with the new stopping criterion was carried out. The goal of this paper is to compare the new stopping criterion with the old criterion. For this reason, the obtained results were not compared with other segmentation approaches, since with the old stopping criterion were previously carried out.
1311.2023
Information dissemination processes in directed social networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Social networks can have asymmetric relationships. In the online social network Twitter, a follower receives tweets from a followed person but the followed person is not obliged to subscribe to the channel of the follower. Thus, it is natural to consider the dissemination of information in directed networks. In this work we use the mean-field approach to derive differential equations that describe the dissemination of information in a social network with asymmetric relationships. In particular, our model reflects the impact of the degree distribution on the information propagation process. We further show that for an important subclass of our model, the differential equations can be solved analytically.
1311.2064
Credible Autocoding of Fault Detection Observers
cs.SY
In this paper, we present a domain specific process to assist the verification of observer-based fault detection software. Observer-based fault detection systems, like control systems, yield invariant properties of quadratic types. These quadratic invariants express both safety properties of the software such as the boundedness of the states and correctness properties such as the absence of false alarms from the fault detector. We seek to leverage these quadratic invariants, in an automated fashion, for the formal verification of the fault detection software. The approach, referred to as the credible autocoding framework [1], can be characterized as autocoding with proofs. The process starts with the fault detector model, along with its safety and correctness properties, all expressed formally in a synchronous modeling environment such as Simulink. The model is then transformed by a prototype credible autocoder into both code and analyzable annotations for the code. We demonstrate the credible autocoding process on a running example of an output observer fault detector for a 3-degrees-of-freedom (3DOF) helicopter control system.
1311.2079
Nonparametric Multi-group Membership Model for Dynamic Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph stat.ML
Relational data-like graphs, networks, and matrices-is often dynamic, where the relational structure evolves over time. A fundamental problem in the analysis of time-varying network data is to extract a summary of the common structure and the dynamics of the underlying relations between the entities. Here we build on the intuition that changes in the network structure are driven by the dynamics at the level of groups of nodes. We propose a nonparametric multi-group membership model for dynamic networks. Our model contains three main components: We model the birth and death of individual groups with respect to the dynamics of the network structure via a distance dependent Indian Buffet Process. We capture the evolution of individual node group memberships via a Factorial Hidden Markov model. And, we explain the dynamics of the network structure by explicitly modeling the connectivity structure of groups. We demonstrate our model's capability of identifying the dynamics of latent groups in a number of different types of network data. Experimental results show that our model provides improved predictive performance over existing dynamic network models on future network forecasting and missing link prediction.
1311.2092
Relating and contrasting plain and prefix Kolmogorov complexity
cs.CC cs.IT math.IT
In [3] a short proof is given that some strings have maximal plain Kolmogorov complexity but not maximal prefix-free complexity. The proof uses Levin's symmetry of information, Levin's formula relating plain and prefix complexity and Gacs' theorem that complexity of complexity given the string can be high. We argue that the proof technique and results mentioned above are useful to simplify existing proofs and to solve open questions. We present a short proof of Solovay's result [21] relating plain and prefix complexity: $K (x) = C (x) + CC (x) + O(CCC (x))$ and $C (x) = K (x) - KK (x) + O(KKK (x))$, (here $CC(x)$ denotes $C(C(x))$, etc.). We show that there exist $\omega$ such that $\liminf C(\omega_1\dots \omega_n) - C(n)$ is infinite and $\liminf K(\omega_1\dots \omega_n) - K(n)$ is finite, i.e. the infinitely often C-trivial reals are not the same as the infinitely often K-trivial reals (i.e. [1,Question 1]). Solovay showed that for infinitely many $x$ we have $|x| - C (x) \le O(1)$ and $|x| + K (|x|) - K (x) \ge \log^{(2)} |x| - O(\log^{(3)} |x|)$, (here $|x|$ denotes the length of $x$ and $\log^{(2)} = \log\log$, etc.). We show that this result holds for prefixes of some 2-random sequences. Finally, we generalize our proof technique and show that no monotone relation exists between expectation and probability bounded randomness deficiency (i.e. [6, Question 1]).
1311.2095
Wave-absorbing vehicular platoon controller
cs.SY
The paper tailors the so-called wave-based control popular in the field of flexible mechanical structures to the field of distributed control of vehicular platoons. The proposed solution augments the symmetric bidirectional control algorithm with a wave-absorbing controller implemented on the leader, and/or on the rear-end vehicle. The wave-absorbing controller actively absorbs an incoming wave of positional changes in the platoon and thus prevents oscillations of inter-vehicle distances. The proposed controller significantly improves the performance of platoon manoeuvrers such as acceleration/deceleration or changing the distances between vehicles without making the platoon string unstable. Numerical simulations show that the wave-absorbing controller performs efficiently even for platoons with a large number of vehicles, for which other platooning algorithms are inefficient or require wireless communication between vehicles.
1311.2097
Risk-sensitive Reinforcement Learning
cs.LG
We derive a family of risk-sensitive reinforcement learning methods for agents, who face sequential decision-making tasks in uncertain environments. By applying a utility function to the temporal difference (TD) error, nonlinear transformations are effectively applied not only to the received rewards but also to the true transition probabilities of the underlying Markov decision process. When appropriate utility functions are chosen, the agents' behaviors express key features of human behavior as predicted by prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979), for example different risk-preferences for gains and losses as well as the shape of subjective probability curves. We derive a risk-sensitive Q-learning algorithm, which is necessary for modeling human behavior when transition probabilities are unknown, and prove its convergence. As a proof of principle for the applicability of the new framework we apply it to quantify human behavior in a sequential investment task. We find, that the risk-sensitive variant provides a significantly better fit to the behavioral data and that it leads to an interpretation of the subject's responses which is indeed consistent with prospect theory. The analysis of simultaneously measured fMRI signals show a significant correlation of the risk-sensitive TD error with BOLD signal change in the ventral striatum. In addition we find a significant correlation of the risk-sensitive Q-values with neural activity in the striatum, cingulate cortex and insula, which is not present if standard Q-values are used.
1311.2100
Querying Knowledge Graphs by Example Entity Tuples
cs.DB
We witness an unprecedented proliferation of knowledge graphs that record millions of entities and their relationships. While knowledge graphs are structure-flexible and content rich, they are difficult to use. The challenge lies in the gap between their overwhelming complexity and the limited database knowledge of non-professional users. If writing structured queries over simple tables is difficult, complex graphs are only harder to query. As an initial step toward improving the usability of knowledge graphs, we propose to query such data by example entity tuples, without requiring users to form complex graph queries. Our system, GQBE (Graph Query By Example), automatically derives a weighted hidden maximal query graph based on input query tuples, to capture a user's query intent. It efficiently finds and ranks the top approximate answer tuples. For fast query processing, GQBE only partially evaluates query graphs. We conducted experiments and user studies on the large Freebase and DBpedia datasets and observed appealing accuracy and efficiency. Our system provides a complementary approach to the existing keyword-based methods, facilitating user-friendly graph querying. To the best of our knowledge, there was no such proposal in the past in the context of graphs.
1311.2102
An Experimental Comparison of Trust Region and Level Sets
cs.CV
High-order (non-linear) functionals have become very popular in segmentation, stereo and other computer vision problems. Level sets is a well established general gradient descent framework, which is directly applicable to optimization of such functionals and widely used in practice. Recently, another general optimization approach based on trust region methodology was proposed for regional non-linear functionals. Our goal is a comprehensive experimental comparison of these two frameworks in regard to practical efficiency, robustness to parameters, and optimality. We experiment on a wide range of problems with non-linear constraints on segment volume, appearance and shape.
1311.2103
Idea of a new Personality-Type based Recommendation Engine
cs.IR
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) types depict the psychological preferences by which a person perceives the world and make decisions. There are 4 principal functions through which the people see the world: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. These functions along with the Introverted\Extroverted nature of the person, there are 16 personalities types, the humans are divided into. Here an idea is presented where a user can get recommendations for books, web media content, music and movies on the basis of the users' MBTI type. Only things like books and other media content has been chosen because the preferences in such things are mostly subjective. Apart from the recommended content that is generally generated on the basis of the previous purchases, searches can be enhanced by using the MBTI. A minimalist survey was designed for collecting the data. This has a more than 100 features that show the preference of a personality type. Those include preferences in book genres, music genres, movie genres and even video games genres. After analyzing the data that is collected from the survey, some inferences were drawn from it which can be used to design a new recommendation engine for recommending the content that coincides with the personality of the user.
1311.2106
Submodular Optimization with Submodular Cover and Submodular Knapsack Constraints
cs.DS cs.AI cs.DM
We investigate two new optimization problems -- minimizing a submodular function subject to a submodular lower bound constraint (submodular cover) and maximizing a submodular function subject to a submodular upper bound constraint (submodular knapsack). We are motivated by a number of real-world applications in machine learning including sensor placement and data subset selection, which require maximizing a certain submodular function (like coverage or diversity) while simultaneously minimizing another (like cooperative cost). These problems are often posed as minimizing the difference between submodular functions [14, 35] which is in the worst case inapproximable. We show, however, that by phrasing these problems as constrained optimization, which is more natural for many applications, we achieve a number of bounded approximation guarantees. We also show that both these problems are closely related and an approximation algorithm solving one can be used to obtain an approximation guarantee for the other. We provide hardness results for both problems thus showing that our approximation factors are tight up to log-factors. Finally, we empirically demonstrate the performance and good scalability properties of our algorithms.
1311.2110
Curvature and Optimal Algorithms for Learning and Minimizing Submodular Functions
cs.DS cs.DM cs.LG
We investigate three related and important problems connected to machine learning: approximating a submodular function everywhere, learning a submodular function (in a PAC-like setting [53]), and constrained minimization of submodular functions. We show that the complexity of all three problems depends on the 'curvature' of the submodular function, and provide lower and upper bounds that refine and improve previous results [3, 16, 18, 52]. Our proof techniques are fairly generic. We either use a black-box transformation of the function (for approximation and learning), or a transformation of algorithms to use an appropriate surrogate function (for minimization). Curiously, curvature has been known to influence approximations for submodular maximization [7, 55], but its effect on minimization, approximation and learning has hitherto been open. We complete this picture, and also support our theoretical claims by empirical results.
1311.2115
Fast large-scale optimization by unifying stochastic gradient and quasi-Newton methods
cs.LG
We present an algorithm for minimizing a sum of functions that combines the computational efficiency of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with the second order curvature information leveraged by quasi-Newton methods. We unify these disparate approaches by maintaining an independent Hessian approximation for each contributing function in the sum. We maintain computational tractability and limit memory requirements even for high dimensional optimization problems by storing and manipulating these quadratic approximations in a shared, time evolving, low dimensional subspace. Each update step requires only a single contributing function or minibatch evaluation (as in SGD), and each step is scaled using an approximate inverse Hessian and little to no adjustment of hyperparameters is required (as is typical for quasi-Newton methods). This algorithm contrasts with earlier stochastic second order techniques that treat the Hessian of each contributing function as a noisy approximation to the full Hessian, rather than as a target for direct estimation. We experimentally demonstrate improved convergence on seven diverse optimization problems. The algorithm is released as open source Python and MATLAB packages.
1311.2121
Asynchronous Systems and Binary Diagonal Random Matrices: A Proof and Convergence Rate
math.SP cs.IT math.IT
In a synchronized network of $n$ nodes, each node will update its parameter based on the system state in a given iteration. It is well-known that the updates can converge to a fixed point if the maximum absolute eigenvalue (spectral radius) of the $n \times n$ iterative matrix ${\bf{F}}$ is less than one (i.e. $\rho({\bf{F}})<1$). However, if only a subset of the nodes update their parameter in an iteration (due to delays or stale feedback) then this effectively renders the spectral radius of the iterative matrix as one. We consider matrices of unit spectral radii generated from ${\bf{F}}$ due to random delays in the updates. We show that if each node updates at least once in every $T$ iterations, then the product of the random matrices (joint spectral radius) corresponding to these iterations is less than one. We then use this property to prove convergence of asynchronous iterative systems. Finally, we show that the convergence rate of such a system is $\rho({\bf{F}})\frac{(1-(1-\gamma)^T)^n}{T}$, where assuming ergodicity, $\gamma$ is the lowest bound on the probability that a node will update in any given iteration.
1311.2123
Linear-Complexity Overhead-Optimized Random Linear Network Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Sparse random linear network coding (SRLNC) is an attractive technique proposed in the literature to reduce the decoding complexity of random linear network coding. Recognizing the fact that the existing SRLNC schemes are not efficient in terms of the required reception overhead, we consider the problem of designing overhead-optimized SRLNC schemes. To this end, we introduce a new design of SRLNC scheme that enjoys very small reception overhead while maintaining the main benefit of SRLNC, i.e., its linear encoding/decoding complexity. We also provide a mathematical framework for the asymptotic analysis and design of this class of codes based on density evolution (DE) equations. To the best of our knowledge, this work introduces the first DE analysis in the context of network coding. Our analysis method then enables us to design network codes with reception overheads in the order of a few percent. We also investigate the finite-length performance of the proposed codes and through numerical examples we show that our proposed codes have significantly lower reception overheads compared to all existing linear-complexity random linear network coding schemes.
1311.2137
A Structured Prediction Approach for Missing Value Imputation
cs.LG
Missing value imputation is an important practical problem. There is a large body of work on it, but there does not exist any work that formulates the problem in a structured output setting. Also, most applications have constraints on the imputed data, for example on the distribution associated with each variable. None of the existing imputation methods use these constraints. In this paper we propose a structured output approach for missing value imputation that also incorporates domain constraints. We focus on large margin models, but it is easy to extend the ideas to probabilistic models. We deal with the intractable inference step in learning via a piecewise training technique that is simple, efficient, and effective. Comparison with existing state-of-the-art and baseline imputation methods shows that our method gives significantly improved performance on the Hamming loss measure.
1311.2139
Large Margin Semi-supervised Structured Output Learning
cs.LG
In structured output learning, obtaining labelled data for real-world applications is usually costly, while unlabelled examples are available in abundance. Semi-supervised structured classification has been developed to handle large amounts of unlabelled structured data. In this work, we consider semi-supervised structural SVMs with domain constraints. The optimization problem, which in general is not convex, contains the loss terms associated with the labelled and unlabelled examples along with the domain constraints. We propose a simple optimization approach, which alternates between solving a supervised learning problem and a constraint matching problem. Solving the constraint matching problem is difficult for structured prediction, and we propose an efficient and effective hill-climbing method to solve it. The alternating optimization is carried out within a deterministic annealing framework, which helps in effective constraint matching, and avoiding local minima which are not very useful. The algorithm is simple to implement and achieves comparable generalization performance on benchmark datasets.
1311.2146
Coding based Data Broadcasting for Time Critical Applications with Rate Adaptation
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we dynamically select the transmission rate and design wireless network coding to improve the quality of services such as delay for time critical applications. In a network coded system, with low transmission rate and hence longer transmission range, more packets may be encoded, which increases the coding opportunity. However, low transmission rate may incur extra transmission delay, which is intolerable for time critical applications. We design a novel joint rate selection and wireless network coding (RSNC) scheme with delay constraint, so as to maximize the total benefit (where we can define the benefit based on the priority or importance of a packet for example) of the packets that are successfully received at the destinations without missing their deadlines. We prove that the proposed problem is NP-hard, and propose a novel graph model to mathematically formulate the problem. For the general case, we propose a transmission metric and design an efficient algorithm to determine the transmission rate and coding strategy for each transmission. For a special case when all delay constraints are the same, we study the pairwise coding and present a polynomial time pairwise coding algorithm that achieves an approximation ratio of 1 - 1/e to the optimal pairwise coding solution, where e is the base of the natural logarithm. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed RSNC scheme.
1311.2150
Pattern-Coupled Sparse Bayesian Learning for Recovery of Block-Sparse Signals
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT stat.ML
We consider the problem of recovering block-sparse signals whose structures are unknown \emph{a priori}. Block-sparse signals with nonzero coefficients occurring in clusters arise naturally in many practical scenarios. However, the knowledge of the block structure is usually unavailable in practice. In this paper, we develop a new sparse Bayesian learning method for recovery of block-sparse signals with unknown cluster patterns. Specifically, a pattern-coupled hierarchical Gaussian prior model is introduced to characterize the statistical dependencies among coefficients, in which a set of hyperparameters are employed to control the sparsity of signal coefficients. Unlike the conventional sparse Bayesian learning framework in which each individual hyperparameter is associated independently with each coefficient, in this paper, the prior for each coefficient not only involves its own hyperparameter, but also the hyperparameters of its immediate neighbors. In doing this way, the sparsity patterns of neighboring coefficients are related to each other and the hierarchical model has the potential to encourage structured-sparse solutions. The hyperparameters, along with the sparse signal, are learned by maximizing their posterior probability via an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm presents uniform superiority over other existing methods in a series of experiments.
1311.2167
SPH Entropy Errors and the Pressure Blip
cs.CE
The spurious pressure jump at a contact discontinuity, in SPH simulations of the compressible Euler equations is investigated. From the spatiotemporal behaviour of the error, the SPH pressure jump is likened to entropy errors observed for artificial viscosity based finite difference/volume schemes. The error is observed to be generated at start-up and dissipation is the only recourse to mitigate it's effect. We show that similar errors are generated for the Lagrangian plus remap version of the Piecewise Parabolic Method (PPM) finite volume code (PPMLR). Through a comparison with the direct Eulerian version of the PPM code (PPMDE), we argue that a lack of diffusion across the material wave (contact discontinuity) is responsible for the error in PPMLR. We verify this hypothesis by constructing a more dissipative version of the remap code using a piecewise constant reconstruction. As an application to SPH, we propose a hybrid GSPH scheme that adds the requisite dissipation by utilizing a more dissipative Riemann solver for the energy equation. The proposed modification to the GSPH scheme, and it's improved treatment of the anomaly is verified for flows with strong shocks in one and two dimensions. The result that dissipation must act across the density and energy equations provides a consistent explanation for many of the hitherto proposed "cures" or "fixes" for the problem.
1311.2180
Adaptive Epidemic Dynamics in Networks: Thresholds and Control
math.DS cs.CR cs.SI math.OC q-bio.PE
Theoretical modeling of computer virus/worm epidemic dynamics is an important problem that has attracted many studies. However, most existing models are adapted from biological epidemic ones. Although biological epidemic models can certainly be adapted to capture some computer virus spreading scenarios (especially when the so-called homogeneity assumption holds), the problem of computer virus spreading is not well understood because it has many important perspectives that are not necessarily accommodated in the biological epidemic models. In this paper we initiate the study of such a perspective, namely that of adaptive defense against epidemic spreading in arbitrary networks. More specifically, we investigate a non-homogeneous Susceptible-Infectious-Susceptible (SIS) model where the model parameters may vary with respect to time. In particular, we focus on two scenarios we call semi-adaptive defense and fully-adaptive} defense, which accommodate implicit and explicit dependency relationships between the model parameters, respectively. In the semi-adaptive defense scenario, the model's input parameters are given; the defense is semi-adaptive because the adjustment is implicitly dependent upon the outcome of virus spreading. For this scenario, we present a set of sufficient conditions (some are more general or succinct than others) under which the virus spreading will die out; such sufficient conditions are also known as epidemic thresholds in the literature. In the fully-adaptive defense scenario, some input parameters are not known (i.e., the aforementioned sufficient conditions are not applicable) but the defender can observe the outcome of virus spreading. For this scenario, we present adaptive control strategies under which the virus spreading will die out or will be contained to a desired level.
1311.2191
Neighborhood filters and the decreasing rearrangement
cs.CV
Nonlocal filters are simple and powerful techniques for image denoising. In this paper, we give new insights into the analysis of one kind of them, the Neighborhood filter, by using a classical although not very common transformation: the decreasing rearrangement of a function (the image). Independently of the dimension of the image, we reformulate the Neighborhood filter and its iterative variants as an integral operator defined in a one-dimensional space. The simplicity of this formulation allows to perform a detailed analysis of its properties. Among others, we prove that the filter behaves asymptotically as a shock filter combined with a border diffusive term, responsible for the staircaising effect and the loss of contrast.
1311.2229
Joint Sparsity Recovery for Spectral Compressed Sensing
cs.IT math.IT
Compressed Sensing (CS) is an effective approach to reduce the required number of samples for reconstructing a sparse signal in an a priori basis, but may suffer severely from the issue of basis mismatch. In this paper we study the problem of simultaneously recovering multiple spectrally-sparse signals that are supported on the same frequencies lying arbitrarily on the unit circle. We propose an atomic norm minimization problem, which can be regarded as a continuous counterpart of the discrete CS formulation and be solved efficiently via semidefinite programming. Through numerical experiments, we show that the number of samples per signal may be further reduced by harnessing the joint sparsity pattern of multiple signals.
1311.2234
FuSSO: Functional Shrinkage and Selection Operator
stat.ML cs.LG math.ST stat.TH
We present the FuSSO, a functional analogue to the LASSO, that efficiently finds a sparse set of functional input covariates to regress a real-valued response against. The FuSSO does so in a semi-parametric fashion, making no parametric assumptions about the nature of input functional covariates and assuming a linear form to the mapping of functional covariates to the response. We provide a statistical backing for use of the FuSSO via proof of asymptotic sparsistency under various conditions. Furthermore, we observe good results on both synthetic and real-world data.
1311.2236
Fast Distribution To Real Regression
stat.ML cs.LG math.ST stat.TH
We study the problem of distribution to real-value regression, where one aims to regress a mapping $f$ that takes in a distribution input covariate $P\in \mathcal{I}$ (for a non-parametric family of distributions $\mathcal{I}$) and outputs a real-valued response $Y=f(P) + \epsilon$. This setting was recently studied, and a "Kernel-Kernel" estimator was introduced and shown to have a polynomial rate of convergence. However, evaluating a new prediction with the Kernel-Kernel estimator scales as $\Omega(N)$. This causes the difficult situation where a large amount of data may be necessary for a low estimation risk, but the computation cost of estimation becomes infeasible when the data-set is too large. To this end, we propose the Double-Basis estimator, which looks to alleviate this big data problem in two ways: first, the Double-Basis estimator is shown to have a computation complexity that is independent of the number of of instances $N$ when evaluating new predictions after training; secondly, the Double-Basis estimator is shown to have a fast rate of convergence for a general class of mappings $f\in\mathcal{F}$.