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1403.0503
Distributed Cooperative Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks without NLOS Identification
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, a 2-stage robust distributed algorithm is proposed for cooperative sensor network localization using time of arrival (TOA) data without identification of non-line of sight (NLOS) links. In the first stage, to overcome the effect of outliers, a convex relaxation of the Huber loss function is applied so that by using iterative optimization techniques, good estimates of the true sensor locations can be obtained. In the second stage, the original (non-relaxed) Huber cost function is further optimized to obtain refined location estimates based on those obtained in the first stage. In both stages, a simple gradient descent technique is used to carry out the optimization. Through simulations and real data analysis, it is shown that the proposed convex relaxation generally achieves a lower root mean squared error (RMSE) compared to other convex relaxation techniques in the literature. Also by doing the second stage, the position estimates are improved and we can achieve an RMSE close to that of the other distributed algorithms which know \textit{a priori} which links are in NLOS.
1403.0504
A Compilation Target for Probabilistic Programming Languages
cs.AI cs.PL stat.ML
Forward inference techniques such as sequential Monte Carlo and particle Markov chain Monte Carlo for probabilistic programming can be implemented in any programming language by creative use of standardized operating system functionality including processes, forking, mutexes, and shared memory. Exploiting this we have defined, developed, and tested a probabilistic programming language intermediate representation language we call probabilistic C, which itself can be compiled to machine code by standard compilers and linked to operating system libraries yielding an efficient, scalable, portable probabilistic programming compilation target. This opens up a new hardware and systems research path for optimizing probabilistic programming systems.
1403.0515
A Primal Dual Active Set with Continuation Algorithm for the \ell^0-Regularized Optimization Problem
math.OC cs.IT math.IT stat.ML
We develop a primal dual active set with continuation algorithm for solving the \ell^0-regularized least-squares problem that frequently arises in compressed sensing. The algorithm couples the the primal dual active set method with a continuation strategy on the regularization parameter. At each inner iteration, it first identifies the active set from both primal and dual variables, and then updates the primal variable by solving a (typically small) least-squares problem defined on the active set, from which the dual variable can be updated explicitly. Under certain conditions on the sensing matrix, i.e., mutual incoherence property or restricted isometry property, and the noise level, the finite step global convergence of the algorithm is established. Extensive numerical examples are presented to illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the algorithm and the convergence analysis.
1403.0522
Expert System Based On Neural-Fuzzy Rules for Thyroid Diseases Diagnosis
cs.AI
The thyroid, an endocrine gland that secretes hormones in the blood, circulates its products to all tissues of the body, where they control vital functions in every cell. Normal levels of thyroid hormone help the brain, heart, intestines, muscles and reproductive system function normally. Thyroid hormones control the metabolism of the body. Abnormalities of thyroid function are usually related to production of too little thyroid hormone (hypothyroidism) or production of too much thyroid hormone (hyperthyroidism). Therefore, the correct diagnosis of these diseases is very important topic. In this study, Linguistic Hedges Neural-Fuzzy Classifier with Selected Features (LHNFCSF) is presented for diagnosis of thyroid diseases. The performance evaluation of this system is estimated by using classification accuracy and k-fold cross-validation. The results indicated that the classification accuracy without feature selection was 98.6047% and 97.6744% during training and testing phases, respectively with RMSE of 0.02335. After applying feature selection algorithm, LHNFCSF achieved 100% for all cluster sizes during training phase. However, in the testing phase LHNFCSF achieved 88.3721% using one cluster for each class, 90.6977% using two clusters, 91.8605% using three clusters and 97.6744% using four clusters for each class and 12 fuzzy rules. The obtained classification accuracy was very promising with regard to the other classification applications in literature for this problem.
1403.0531
We Tweet Like We Talk and Other Interesting Observations: An Analysis of English Communication Modalities
cs.CL
Modalities of communication for human beings are gradually increasing in number with the advent of new forms of technology. Many human beings can readily transition between these different forms of communication with little or no effort, which brings about the question: How similar are these different communication modalities? To understand technology$\text{'}$s influence on English communication, four different corpora were analyzed and compared: Writing from Books using the 1-grams database from the Google Books project, Twitter, IRC Chat, and transcribed Talking. Multi-word confusion matrices revealed that Talking has the most similarity when compared to the other modes of communication, while 1-grams were the least similar form of communication analyzed. Based on the analysis of word usage, word usage frequency distributions, and word class usage, among other things, Talking is also the most similar to Twitter and IRC Chat. This suggests that communicating using Twitter and IRC Chat evolved from Talking rather than Writing. When we communicate online, even though we are writing, we do not Tweet or Chat how we write books; we Tweet and Chat how we Speak. Nonfiction and Fiction writing were clearly differentiable from our analysis with Twitter and Chat being much more similar to Fiction than Nonfiction writing. These hypotheses were then tested using author and journalists Cory Doctorow. Mr. Doctorow$\text{'}$s Writing, Twitter usage, and Talking were all found to have very similar vocabulary usage patterns as the amalgamized populations, as long as the writing was Fiction. However, Mr. Doctorow$\text{'}$s Nonfiction writing is different from 1-grams and other collected Nonfiction writings. This data could perhaps be used to create more entertaining works of Nonfiction.
1403.0537
A New Framework for the Performance Analysis of Wireless Communications under Hoyt (Nakagami-q) Fading
cs.IT math.IT
We present a novel relationship between the distribution of circular and non-circular complex Gaussian random variables. Specifically, we show that the distribution of the squared norm of a non-circular complex Gaussian random variable, usually referred to as squared Hoyt distribution, can be constructed from a conditional exponential distribution. From this fundamental connection we introduce a new approach, the Hoyt transform method, that allows to analyze the performance of a wireless link under Hoyt (Nakagami-q) fading in a very simple way. We illustrate that many performance metrics for Hoyt fading can be calculated by leveraging well-known results for Rayleigh fading and only performing a finite-range integral. We use this technique to obtain novel results for some information and communication-theoretic metrics in Hoyt fading channels.
1403.0541
Representing, reasoning and answering questions about biological pathways - various applications
cs.AI cs.CE cs.CL
Biological organisms are composed of numerous interconnected biochemical processes. Diseases occur when normal functionality of these processes is disrupted. Thus, understanding these biochemical processes and their interrelationships is a primary task in biomedical research and a prerequisite for diagnosing diseases, and drug development. Scientists studying these processes have identified various pathways responsible for drug metabolism, and signal transduction, etc. Newer techniques and speed improvements have resulted in deeper knowledge about these pathways, resulting in refined models that tend to be large and complex, making it difficult for a person to remember all aspects of it. Thus, computer models are needed to analyze them. We want to build such a system that allows modeling of biological systems and pathways in such a way that we can answer questions about them. Many existing models focus on structural and/or factoid questions, using surface-level knowledge that does not require understanding the underlying model. We believe these are not the kind of questions that a biologist may ask someone to test their understanding of the biological processes. We want our system to answer the kind of questions a biologist may ask. Such questions appear in early college level text books. Thus the main goal of our thesis is to develop a system that allows us to encode knowledge about biological pathways and answer such questions about them demonstrating understanding of the pathway. To that end, we develop a language that will allow posing such questions and illustrate the utility of our framework with various applications in the biological domain. We use some existing tools with modifications to accomplish our goal. Finally, we apply our system to real world applications by extracting pathway knowledge from text and answering questions related to drug development.
1403.0543
Quantum tunneling and evolution speed in an exactly solvable coupled double-well system
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
Exact analytical calculations of eigenvalues and eigenstates are presented for quantum coupled double-well (DW) systems with Razavy's hyperbolic potential. With the use of four kinds of initial wavepackets, we have calculated the tunneling period $T$ and the orthogonality time $\tau$ which signifies a time interval for an initial state to evolve to its orthogonal state. We discuss the coupling dependence of $T$ and $\tau$, and the relation between $\tau$ and the concurrence $C$ which is a typical measure of the entanglement in two qubits. Our calculations have shown that it is not clear whether the speed of quantum evolution may be measured by $T$ or $\tau$ and that the evolution speed measured by $\tau$ (or $T$) is not necessarily increased with increasing $C$. This is in contrast with the earlier study [V. Giovannetti, S. Lloyd and L. Maccone, Europhys. Lett. {\bf 62} (2003) 615] which pointed out that the evolution speed measured by $\tau$ is enhanced by the entanglement in the two-level model.
1403.0598
The Structurally Smoothed Graphlet Kernel
cs.LG
A commonly used paradigm for representing graphs is to use a vector that contains normalized frequencies of occurrence of certain motifs or sub-graphs. This vector representation can be used in a variety of applications, such as, for computing similarity between graphs. The graphlet kernel of Shervashidze et al. [32] uses induced sub-graphs of k nodes (christened as graphlets by Przulj [28]) as motifs in the vector representation, and computes the kernel via a dot product between these vectors. One can easily show that this is a valid kernel between graphs. However, such a vector representation suffers from a few drawbacks. As k becomes larger we encounter the sparsity problem; most higher order graphlets will not occur in a given graph. This leads to diagonal dominance, that is, a given graph is similar to itself but not to any other graph in the dataset. On the other hand, since lower order graphlets tend to be more numerous, using lower values of k does not provide enough discrimination ability. We propose a smoothing technique to tackle the above problems. Our method is based on a novel extension of Kneser-Ney and Pitman-Yor smoothing techniques from natural language processing to graphs. We use the relationships between lower order and higher order graphlets in order to derive our method. Consequently, our smoothing algorithm not only respects the dependency between sub-graphs but also tackles the diagonal dominance problem by distributing the probability mass across graphlets. In our experiments, the smoothed graphlet kernel outperforms graph kernels based on raw frequency counts.
1403.0600
Modeling Website Popularity Competition in the Attention-Activity Marketplace
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
How does a new startup drive the popularity of competing websites into oblivion like Facebook famously did to MySpace? This question is of great interest to academics, technologists, and financial investors alike. In this work we exploit the singular way in which Facebook wiped out the popularity of MySpace, Hi5, Friendster, and Multiply to guide the design of a new popularity competition model. Our model provides new insights into what Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon called the "marketplace of attention," which we recast as the attention-activity marketplace. Our model design is further substantiated by user-level activity of 250,000 MySpace users obtained between 2004 and 2009. The resulting model not only accurately fits the observed Daily Active Users (DAU) of Facebook and its competitors but also predicts their fate four years into the future.
1403.0603
Efficient Distributed Online Prediction and Stochastic Optimization with Approximate Distributed Averaging
cs.IT cs.DC cs.SY math.IT math.OC
We study distributed methods for online prediction and stochastic optimization. Our approach is iterative: in each round nodes first perform local computations and then communicate in order to aggregate information and synchronize their decision variables. Synchronization is accomplished through the use of a distributed averaging protocol. When an exact distributed averaging protocol is used, it is known that the optimal regret bound of $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{m})$ can be achieved using the distributed mini-batch algorithm of Dekel et al. (2012), where $m$ is the total number of samples processed across the network. We focus on methods using approximate distributed averaging protocols and show that the optimal regret bound can also be achieved in this setting. In particular, we propose a gossip-based optimization method which achieves the optimal regret bound. The amount of communication required depends on the network topology through the second largest eigenvalue of the transition matrix of a random walk on the network. In the setting of stochastic optimization, the proposed gossip-based approach achieves nearly-linear scaling: the optimization error is guaranteed to be no more than $\epsilon$ after $\mathcal{O}(\frac{1}{n \epsilon^2})$ rounds, each of which involves $\mathcal{O}(\log n)$ gossip iterations, when nodes communicate over a well-connected graph. This scaling law is also observed in numerical experiments on a cluster.
1403.0613
On Redundant Topological Constraints
cs.AI
The Region Connection Calculus (RCC) is a well-known calculus for representing part-whole and topological relations. It plays an important role in qualitative spatial reasoning, geographical information science, and ontology. The computational complexity of reasoning with RCC5 and RCC8 (two fragments of RCC) as well as other qualitative spatial/temporal calculi has been investigated in depth in the literature. Most of these works focus on the consistency of qualitative constraint networks. In this paper, we consider the important problem of redundant qualitative constraints. For a set $\Gamma$ of qualitative constraints, we say a constraint $(x R y)$ in $\Gamma$ is redundant if it is entailed by the rest of $\Gamma$. A prime subnetwork of $\Gamma$ is a subset of $\Gamma$ which contains no redundant constraints and has the same solution set as $\Gamma$. It is natural to ask how to compute such a prime subnetwork, and when it is unique. In this paper, we show that this problem is in general intractable, but becomes tractable if $\Gamma$ is over a tractable subalgebra $\mathcal{S}$ of a qualitative calculus. Furthermore, if $\mathcal{S}$ is a subalgebra of RCC5 or RCC8 in which weak composition distributes over nonempty intersections, then $\Gamma$ has a unique prime subnetwork, which can be obtained in cubic time by removing all redundant constraints simultaneously from $\Gamma$. As a byproduct, we show that any path-consistent network over such a distributive subalgebra is weakly globally consistent and minimal. A thorough empirical analysis of the prime subnetwork upon real geographical data sets demonstrates the approach is able to identify significantly more redundant constraints than previously proposed algorithms, especially in constraint networks with larger proportions of partial overlap relations.
1403.0623
Global solar irradiation prediction using a multi-gene genetic programming approach
cs.NE cs.CE stat.AP
In this paper, a nonlinear symbolic regression technique using an evolutionary algorithm known as multi-gene genetic programming (MGGP) is applied for a data-driven modelling between the dependent and the independent variables. The technique is applied for modelling the measured global solar irradiation and validated through numerical simulations. The proposed modelling technique shows improved results over the fuzzy logic and artificial neural network (ANN) based approaches as attempted by contemporary researchers. The method proposed here results in nonlinear analytical expressions, unlike those with neural networks which is essentially a black box modelling approach. This additional flexibility is an advantage from the modelling perspective and helps to discern the important variables which affect the prediction. Due to the evolutionary nature of the algorithm, it is able to get out of local minima and converge to a global optimum unlike the back-propagation (BP) algorithm used for training neural networks. This results in a better percentage fit than the ones obtained using neural networks by contemporary researchers. Also a hold-out cross validation is done on the obtained genetic programming (GP) results which show that the results generalize well to new data and do not over-fit the training samples. The multi-gene GP results are compared with those, obtained using its single-gene version and also the same with four classical regression models in order to show the effectiveness of the adopted approach.
1403.0628
Unconstrained Online Linear Learning in Hilbert Spaces: Minimax Algorithms and Normal Approximations
cs.LG
We study algorithms for online linear optimization in Hilbert spaces, focusing on the case where the player is unconstrained. We develop a novel characterization of a large class of minimax algorithms, recovering, and even improving, several previous results as immediate corollaries. Moreover, using our tools, we develop an algorithm that provides a regret bound of $\mathcal{O}\Big(U \sqrt{T \log(U \sqrt{T} \log^2 T +1)}\Big)$, where $U$ is the $L_2$ norm of an arbitrary comparator and both $T$ and $U$ are unknown to the player. This bound is optimal up to $\sqrt{\log \log T}$ terms. When $T$ is known, we derive an algorithm with an optimal regret bound (up to constant factors). For both the known and unknown $T$ case, a Normal approximation to the conditional value of the game proves to be the key analysis tool.
1403.0636
The path most travelled: Mining road usage patterns from massive call data
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Rapid urbanization places increasing stress on already burdened transportation systems, resulting in delays and poor levels of service. Billions of spatiotemporal call detail records (CDRs) collected from mobile devices create new opportunities to quantify and solve these problems. However, there is a need for tools to map new data onto existing transportation infrastructure. In this work, we propose a system that leverages this data to identify patterns in road usage. First, we develop an algorithm to mine billions of calls and learn location transition probabilities of callers. These transition probabilities are then upscaled with demographic data to estimate origin-destination (OD) flows of residents between any two intersections of a city. Next, we implement a distributed incremental traffic assignment algorithm to route these flows on road networks and estimate congestion and level of service for each roadway. From this assignment, we construct a bipartite usage network by connecting census tracts to the roads used by their inhabitants. Comparing the topologies of the physical road network and bipartite usage network allows us to classify each road's role in a city's transportation network and detect causes of local bottlenecks. Finally, we demonstrate an interactive, web-based visualization platform that allows researchers, policymakers, and drivers to explore road congestion and usage in a new dimension. To demonstrate the flexibility of this system, we perform these analyses in multiple cities across the globe with diverse geographical and sociodemographic qualities. This platform provides a foundation to build congestion mitigation solutions and generate new insights into urban mobility.
1403.0648
Multi-period Trading Prediction Markets with Connections to Machine Learning
cs.GT cs.LG q-fin.TR stat.ML
We present a new model for prediction markets, in which we use risk measures to model agents and introduce a market maker to describe the trading process. This specific choice on modelling tools brings us mathematical convenience. The analysis shows that the whole market effectively approaches a global objective, despite that the market is designed such that each agent only cares about its own goal. Additionally, the market dynamics provides a sensible algorithm for optimising the global objective. An intimate connection between machine learning and our markets is thus established, such that we could 1) analyse a market by applying machine learning methods to the global objective, and 2) solve machine learning problems by setting up and running certain markets.
1403.0667
The Hidden Convexity of Spectral Clustering
cs.LG stat.ML
In recent years, spectral clustering has become a standard method for data analysis used in a broad range of applications. In this paper we propose a new class of algorithms for multiway spectral clustering based on optimization of a certain "contrast function" over the unit sphere. These algorithms, partly inspired by certain Independent Component Analysis techniques, are simple, easy to implement and efficient. Geometrically, the proposed algorithms can be interpreted as hidden basis recovery by means of function optimization. We give a complete characterization of the contrast functions admissible for provable basis recovery. We show how these conditions can be interpreted as a "hidden convexity" of our optimization problem on the sphere; interestingly, we use efficient convex maximization rather than the more common convex minimization. We also show encouraging experimental results on real and simulated data.
1403.0686
Performance Analysis of Multi-Antenna Relay Networks over Nakagami-m Fading Channel
cs.IT math.IT
In this chapter, the authors present the performance of multi-antenna selective combining decode-and-forward (SC-DF) relay networks over independent and identically distributed (i.i.d) Nakagami-m fading channels. The outage probability, moment generation function, symbol error probability and average channel capacity are derived in closed-form using the Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR) statistical characteristics. After that, the authors formulate the outage probability problem, optimize it with an approximated problem, and then solve it analytically. Finally, for comparison with analytical formulas, the authors perform some Monte-Carlo simulations.
1403.0699
Multi-Shot Person Re-Identification via Relational Stein Divergence
cs.CV stat.ML
Person re-identification is particularly challenging due to significant appearance changes across separate camera views. In order to re-identify people, a representative human signature should effectively handle differences in illumination, pose and camera parameters. While general appearance-based methods are modelled in Euclidean spaces, it has been argued that some applications in image and video analysis are better modelled via non-Euclidean manifold geometry. To this end, recent approaches represent images as covariance matrices, and interpret such matrices as points on Riemannian manifolds. As direct classification on such manifolds can be difficult, in this paper we propose to represent each manifold point as a vector of similarities to class representers, via a recently introduced form of Bregman matrix divergence known as the Stein divergence. This is followed by using a discriminative mapping of similarity vectors for final classification. The use of similarity vectors is in contrast to the traditional approach of embedding manifolds into tangent spaces, which can suffer from representing the manifold structure inaccurately. Comparative evaluations on benchmark ETHZ and iLIDS datasets for the person re-identification task show that the proposed approach obtains better performance than recent techniques such as Histogram Plus Epitome, Partial Least Squares, and Symmetry-Driven Accumulation of Local Features.
1403.0700
Random Projections on Manifolds of Symmetric Positive Definite Matrices for Image Classification
cs.CV stat.ML
Recent advances suggest that encoding images through Symmetric Positive Definite (SPD) matrices and then interpreting such matrices as points on Riemannian manifolds can lead to increased classification performance. Taking into account manifold geometry is typically done via (1) embedding the manifolds in tangent spaces, or (2) embedding into Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHS). While embedding into tangent spaces allows the use of existing Euclidean-based learning algorithms, manifold shape is only approximated which can cause loss of discriminatory information. The RKHS approach retains more of the manifold structure, but may require non-trivial effort to kernelise Euclidean-based learning algorithms. In contrast to the above approaches, in this paper we offer a novel solution that allows SPD matrices to be used with unmodified Euclidean-based learning algorithms, with the true manifold shape well-preserved. Specifically, we propose to project SPD matrices using a set of random projection hyperplanes over RKHS into a random projection space, which leads to representing each matrix as a vector of projection coefficients. Experiments on face recognition, person re-identification and texture classification show that the proposed approach outperforms several recent methods, such as Tensor Sparse Coding, Histogram Plus Epitome, Riemannian Locality Preserving Projection and Relational Divergence Classification.
1403.0701
GraphChi-DB: Simple Design for a Scalable Graph Database System -- on Just a PC
cs.DB
We propose a new data structure, Parallel Adjacency Lists (PAL), for efficiently managing graphs with billions of edges on disk. The PAL structure is based on the graph storage model of GraphChi (Kyrola et. al., OSDI 2012), but we extend it to enable online database features such as queries and fast insertions. In addition, we extend the model with edge and vertex attributes. Compared to previous data structures, PAL can store graphs more compactly while allowing fast access to both the incoming and the outgoing edges of a vertex, without duplicating data. Based on PAL, we design a graph database management system, GraphChi-DB, which can also execute powerful analytical graph computation. We evaluate our design experimentally and demonstrate that GraphChi-DB achieves state-of-the-art performance on graphs that are much larger than the available memory. GraphChi-DB enables anyone with just a laptop or a PC to work with extremely large graphs.
1403.0728
A Novel Method for Vectorization
cs.CV cs.CG cs.GR
Vectorization of images is a key concern uniting computer graphics and computer vision communities. In this paper we are presenting a novel idea for efficient, customizable vectorization of raster images, based on Catmull Rom spline fitting. The algorithm maintains a good balance between photo-realism and photo abstraction, and hence is applicable to applications with artistic concerns or applications where less information loss is crucial. The resulting algorithm is fast, parallelizable and can satisfy general soft realtime requirements. Moreover, the smoothness of the vectorized images aesthetically outperforms outputs of many polygon-based methods
1403.0736
Fast Prediction with SVM Models Containing RBF Kernels
stat.ML cs.LG
We present an approximation scheme for support vector machine models that use an RBF kernel. A second-order Maclaurin series approximation is used for exponentials of inner products between support vectors and test instances. The approximation is applicable to all kernel methods featuring sums of kernel evaluations and makes no assumptions regarding data normalization. The prediction speed of approximated models no longer relates to the amount of support vectors but is quadratic in terms of the number of input dimensions. If the number of input dimensions is small compared to the amount of support vectors, the approximated model is significantly faster in prediction and has a smaller memory footprint. An optimized C++ implementation was made to assess the gain in prediction speed in a set of practical tests. We additionally provide a method to verify the approximation accuracy, prior to training models or during run-time, to ensure the loss in accuracy remains acceptable and within known bounds.
1403.0745
EnsembleSVM: A Library for Ensemble Learning Using Support Vector Machines
stat.ML cs.LG
EnsembleSVM is a free software package containing efficient routines to perform ensemble learning with support vector machine (SVM) base models. It currently offers ensemble methods based on binary SVM models. Our implementation avoids duplicate storage and evaluation of support vectors which are shared between constituent models. Experimental results show that using ensemble approaches can drastically reduce training complexity while maintaining high predictive accuracy. The EnsembleSVM software package is freely available online at http://esat.kuleuven.be/stadius/ensemblesvm.
1403.0761
The Obvious Solution to Semantic Mapping -- Ask an Expert
cs.IR
The semantic mapping problem is probably the main obstacle to computer-to-computer communication. If computer A knows that its concept X is the same as computer B's concept Y, then the two machines can communicate. They will in effect be talking the same language. This paper describes a relatively straightforward way of enhancing the semantic descriptions of Web Service interfaces by using online sources of keyword definitions. Method interface descriptions can be enhanced using these standard dictionary definitions. Because the generated metadata is now standardised, this means that any other computer that has access to the same source, or understands standard language concepts, can now understand the description. This helps to remove a lot of the heterogeneity that would otherwise build up though humans creating their own descriptions independently of each other. The description comes in the form of an XML script that can be retrieved and read through the Web Service interface itself. An additional use for these scripts would be for adding descriptions in different languages, which would mean that human users that speak a different language would also understand what the service was about.
1403.0764
Clustering Concept Chains from Ordered Data without Path Descriptions
cs.AI
This paper describes a process for clustering concepts into chains from data presented randomly to an evaluating system. There are a number of rules or guidelines that help the system to determine more accurately what concepts belong to a particular chain and what ones do not, but it should be possible to write these in a generic way. This mechanism also uses a flat structure without any hierarchical path information, where the link between two concepts is made at the level of the concept itself. It does not require related metadata, but instead, a simple counting mechanism is used. Key to this is a count for both the concept itself and also the group or chain that it belongs to. To test the possible success of the mechanism, concept chain parts taken randomly from a larger ontology were presented to the system, but only at a depth of 2 concepts each time. That is - root concept plus a concept that it is linked to. The results show that this can still lead to very variable structures being formed and can also accommodate some level of randomness.
1403.0770
A Metric for Modelling and Measuring Complex Behavioural Systems
cs.MA
This paper describes a metric for measuring the success of a complex system composed of agents performing autonomous behaviours. Because of the difficulty in evaluating such systems, this metric will help to give an initial indication as to how suitable the agents would be for solving the problem. The system is modelled as a script, or behavioural ontology, with a number of variables to represent each of the behaviour attributes. The set of equations can be used both for modeling and as part of the simulation evaluation. Behaviours can be nested, allowing for compound behaviours of arbitrary complexity to be built. There is also the capability for including rules or decision making into the script. The paper also gives some test examples to show how the metric might be used.
1403.0778
Dynamic Move Chains -- a Forward Pruning Approach to Tree Search in Computer Chess
cs.AI cs.NE
This paper proposes a new mechanism for pruning a search game-tree in computer chess. The algorithm stores and then reuses chains or sequences of moves, built up from previous searches. These move sequences have a built-in forward-pruning mechanism that can radically reduce the search space. A typical search process might retrieve a move from a Transposition Table, where the decision of what move to retrieve would be based on the position itself. This algorithm stores move sequences based on what previous sequences were better, or caused cutoffs. This is therefore position independent and so it could also be useful in games with imperfect information or uncertainty, where the whole situation is not known at any one time. Over a small set of tests, the algorithm was shown to clearly out-perform Transposition Tables, both in terms of search reduction and game-play results.
1403.0779
Hop Doubling Label Indexing for Point-to-Point Distance Querying on Scale-Free Networks
cs.DB
We study the problem of point-to-point distance querying for massive scale-free graphs, which is important for numerous applications. Given a directed or undirected graph, we propose to build an index for answering such queries based on a hop-doubling labeling technique. We derive bounds on the index size, the computation costs and I/O costs based on the properties of unweighted scale-free graphs. We show that our method is much more efficient compared to the state-of-the-art technique, in terms of both querying time and indexing time. Our empirical study shows that our method can handle graphs that are orders of magnitude larger than existing methods.
1403.0783
Uncertainty in Crowd Data Sourcing under Structural Constraints
cs.DB
Applications extracting data from crowdsourcing platforms must deal with the uncertainty of crowd answers in two different ways: first, by deriving estimates of the correct value from the answers; second, by choosing crowd questions whose answers are expected to minimize this uncertainty relative to the overall data collection goal. Such problems are already challenging when we assume that questions are unrelated and answers are independent, but they are even more complicated when we assume that the unknown values follow hard structural constraints (such as monotonicity). In this vision paper, we examine how to formally address this issue with an approach inspired by [Amsterdamer et al., 2013]. We describe a generalized setting where we model constraints as linear inequalities, and use them to guide the choice of crowd questions and the processing of answers. We present the main challenges arising in this setting, and propose directions to solve them.
1403.0801
Is getting the right answer just about choosing the right words? The role of syntactically-informed features in short answer scoring
cs.CL
Developments in the educational landscape have spurred greater interest in the problem of automatically scoring short answer questions. A recent shared task on this topic revealed a fundamental divide in the modeling approaches that have been applied to this problem, with the best-performing systems split between those that employ a knowledge engineering approach and those that almost solely leverage lexical information (as opposed to higher-level syntactic information) in assigning a score to a given response. This paper aims to introduce the NLP community to the largest corpus currently available for short-answer scoring, provide an overview of methods used in the shared task using this data, and explore the extent to which more syntactically-informed features can contribute to the short answer scoring task in a way that avoids the question-specific manual effort of the knowledge engineering approach.
1403.0802
Large-Scale Geospatial Processing on Multi-Core and Many-Core Processors: Evaluations on CPUs, GPUs and MICs
cs.DB cs.DC
Geospatial Processing, such as queries based on point-to-polyline shortest distance and point-in-polygon test, are fundamental to many scientific and engineering applications, including post-processing large-scale environmental and climate model outputs and analyzing traffic and travel patterns from massive GPS collections in transportation engineering and urban studies. Commodity parallel hardware, such as multi-core CPUs, many-core GPUs and Intel MIC accelerators, provide enormous computing power which can potentially achieve significant speedups on existing geospatial processing and open the opportunities for new applications. However, the realizable potential for geospatial processing on these new hardware devices is largely unknown due to the complexity in porting serial algorithms to diverse parallel hardware platforms. In this study, we aim at experimenting our data-parallel designs and implementations of point-to-polyline shortest distance computation (P2P) and point-in-polygon topological test (PIP) on different commodity hardware using real large-scale geospatial data, comparing their performance and discussing important factors that may significantly affect the performance. Our experiments have shown that, while GPUs can be several times faster than multi-core CPUs without utilizing the increasingly available SIMD computing power on Vector Processing Units (VPUs) that come with multi-core CPUs and MICs, multi-core CPUs and MICs can be several times faster than GPUs when VPUs are utilized. By adopting a Domain Specific Language (DSL) approach to exploiting the VPU computing power in geospatial processing, we are free from programming SIMD intrinsic functions directly which makes the new approach more effective, portable and scalable. Our designs, implementations and experiments can serve as case studies for parallel geospatial computing on modern commodity parallel hardware.
1403.0804
Double Cylinder Cycle codes of Arbitrary Girth
cs.IT cs.DM math.CO math.IT
A particular class of low-density parity-check codes referred to as cylinder-type BC-LDPC codes is proposed by Gholami and Eesmaeili. In this paper We represent a double cylinder-type parity-check matrix H by a graph called the block-structure graph of H and denoted by BSG(H). Using the properties of BSG(H) we propose some mother matrices with column-weight two such that the rate of corresponding cycle codes are greater tan cycle codes constructed by Gholami with same girth.
1403.0811
A Potential Game Approach for Information-Maximizing Cooperative Planning of Sensor Networks
cs.SY cs.GT
This paper presents a potential game approach for distributed cooperative selection of informative sensors, when the goal is to maximize the mutual information between the measurement variables and the quantities of interest. It is proved that a local utility function defined by the conditional mutual information of an agent conditioned on the other agents' sensing decisions leads to a potential game with the global potential being the original mutual information of the cooperative planning problem. The joint strategy fictitious play method is then applied to obtain a distributed solution that provably converges to a pure strategy Nash equilibrium. Two numerical examples on simplified weather forecasting and range-only target tracking verify convergence and performance characteristics of the proposed game-theoretic approach.
1403.0820
Geometry-based Adaptive Symbolic Approximation for Fast Sequence Matching on Manifolds
cs.CV math.DG
In this paper, we consider the problem of fast and efficient indexing techniques for sequences evolving in non-Euclidean spaces. This problem has several applications in the areas of human activity analysis, where there is a need to perform fast search, and recognition in very high dimensional spaces. The problem is made more challenging when representations such as landmarks, contours, and human skeletons etc. are naturally studied in a non-Euclidean setting where even simple operations are much more computationally intensive than their Euclidean counterparts. We propose a geometry and data adaptive symbolic framework that is shown to enable the deployment of fast and accurate algorithms for activity recognition, dynamic texture recognition, motif discovery. Toward this end, we present generalizations of key concepts of piece-wise aggregation and symbolic approximation for the case of non-Euclidean manifolds. We show that one can replace expensive geodesic computations with much faster symbolic computations with little loss of accuracy in activity recognition and discovery applications. The framework is general enough to work across both Euclidean and non-Euclidean spaces, depending on appropriate feature representations without compromising on the ultra-low bandwidth, high speed and high accuracy. The proposed methods are ideally suited for real-time systems and low complexity scenarios.
1403.0829
Multiview Hessian regularized logistic regression for action recognition
cs.CV cs.LG stat.ML
With the rapid development of social media sharing, people often need to manage the growing volume of multimedia data such as large scale video classification and annotation, especially to organize those videos containing human activities. Recently, manifold regularized semi-supervised learning (SSL), which explores the intrinsic data probability distribution and then improves the generalization ability with only a small number of labeled data, has emerged as a promising paradigm for semiautomatic video classification. In addition, human action videos often have multi-modal content and different representations. To tackle the above problems, in this paper we propose multiview Hessian regularized logistic regression (mHLR) for human action recognition. Compared with existing work, the advantages of mHLR lie in three folds: (1) mHLR combines multiple Hessian regularization, each of which obtained from a particular representation of instance, to leverage the exploring of local geometry; (2) mHLR naturally handle multi-view instances with multiple representations; (3) mHLR employs a smooth loss function and then can be effectively optimized. We carefully conduct extensive experiments on the unstructured social activity attribute (USAA) dataset and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed multiview Hessian regularized logistic regression for human action recognition.
1403.0836
Locally-Optimized Reweighted Belief Propagation for Decoding LDPC Codes with Finite-Length
cs.IT math.IT
In practice, LDPC codes are decoded using message passing methods. These methods offer good performance but tend to converge slowly and sometimes fail to converge and to decode the desired codewords correctly. Recently, tree-reweighted message passing methods have been modified to improve the convergence speed at little or no additional complexity cost. This paper extends this line of work and proposes a new class of locally optimized reweighting strategies, which are suitable for both regular and irregular LDPC codes. The proposed decoding algorithm first splits the factor graph into subgraphs and subsequently performs a local optimization of reweighting parameters. Simulations show that the proposed decoding algorithm significantly outperforms the standard message passing and existing reweighting techniques.
1403.0847
Knowledge-Aided Reweighted Belief Propagation LDPC Decoding using Regular and Irregular Designs
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper a new message passing algorithm, which takes advantage of both tree-based re-parameterization and the knowledge of short cycles, is introduced for the purpose of decoding LDPC codes with short block lengths. The proposed algorithm is called variable factor appearance probability belief propagation (VFAP-BP) algorithm and is suitable for wireless communications applications, where both good decoding performance and low-latency are expected. Our simulation results show that the VFAP-BP algorithm outperforms the standard BP algorithm and requires a significantly smaller number of iterations than existing algorithms when decoding both regular and irregular LDPC codes.
1403.0850
How to Network in Online Social Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In this paper, we consider how to maximize users' influence in Online Social Networks (OSNs) by exploiting social relationships only. Our first contribution is to extend to OSNs the model of Kempe et al. [1] on the propagation of information in a social network and to show that a greedy algorithm is a good approximation of the optimal algorithm that is NP-hard. However, the greedy algorithm requires global knowledge, which is hardly practical. Our second contribution is to show on simulations on the full Twitter social graph that simple and practical strategies perform close to the greedy algorithm.
1403.0873
Matroid Regression
math.ST cs.DM cs.LG stat.ME stat.ML stat.TH
We propose an algebraic combinatorial method for solving large sparse linear systems of equations locally - that is, a method which can compute single evaluations of the signal without computing the whole signal. The method scales only in the sparsity of the system and not in its size, and allows to provide error estimates for any solution method. At the heart of our approach is the so-called regression matroid, a combinatorial object associated to sparsity patterns, which allows to replace inversion of the large matrix with the inversion of a kernel matrix that is constant size. We show that our method provides the best linear unbiased estimator (BLUE) for this setting and the minimum variance unbiased estimator (MVUE) under Gaussian noise assumptions, and furthermore we show that the size of the kernel matrix which is to be inverted can be traded off with accuracy.
1403.0879
Robustness: a new SLIP model based criterion for gait transitions in bipedal locomotion
cs.RO
Bipedal locomotion is a phenomenon that still eludes a fundamental and concise mathematical understanding. Conceptual models that capture some relevant aspects of the process exist but their full explanatory power is not yet exhausted. In the current study, we introduce the robustness criterion which defines the conditions for stable locomotion when steps are taken with imprecise angle of attack. Intuitively, the necessity of a higher precision indicates the difficulty to continue moving with a given gait. We show that the spring-loaded inverted pendulum model, under the robustness criterion, is consistent with previously reported findings on attentional demand during human locomotion. This criterion allows transitions between running and walking, many of which conserve forward speed. Simulations of transitions predict Froude numbers below the ones observed in humans, nevertheless the model satisfactorily reproduces several biomechanical indicators such as hip excursion, gait duty factor and vertical ground reaction force profiles. Furthermore, we identify reversible robust walk-run transitions, which allow the system to execute a robust version of the hopping gait. These findings foster the spring-loaded inverted pendulum model as the unifying framework for the understanding of bipedal locomotion.
1403.0921
Dynamic stochastic blockmodels for time-evolving social networks
cs.SI cs.LG physics.soc-ph stat.ME
Significant efforts have gone into the development of statistical models for analyzing data in the form of networks, such as social networks. Most existing work has focused on modeling static networks, which represent either a single time snapshot or an aggregate view over time. There has been recent interest in statistical modeling of dynamic networks, which are observed at multiple points in time and offer a richer representation of many complex phenomena. In this paper, we present a state-space model for dynamic networks that extends the well-known stochastic blockmodel for static networks to the dynamic setting. We fit the model in a near-optimal manner using an extended Kalman filter (EKF) augmented with a local search. We demonstrate that the EKF-based algorithm performs competitively with a state-of-the-art algorithm based on Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling but is significantly less computationally demanding.
1403.0930
Spectrum Sensing Via Reconfigurable Antennas: Fundamental Limits and Potential Gains
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
We propose a novel paradigm for spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks that provides diversity and capacity benefits using a single antenna at the Secondary User (SU) receiver. The proposed scheme is based on a reconfigurable antenna: an antenna that is capable of altering its radiation characteristics by changing its geometric configuration. Each configuration is designated as an antenna mode or state and corresponds to a distinct channel realization. Based on an abstract model for the reconfigurable antenna, we tackle two different settings for the cognitive radio problem and present fundamental limits on the achievable diversity and throughput gains. First, we explore the (to cooperate or not to cooperate) tradeoff between the diversity and coding gains in conventional cooperative and noncooperative spectrum sensing schemes, showing that cooperation is not always beneficial. Based on this analysis, we propose two sensing schemes based on reconfigurable antennas that we term as state switching and state selection. It is shown that each of these schemes outperform both cooperative and non-cooperative spectrum sensing under a global energy constraint. Next, we study the (sensing-throughput) trade-off, and demonstrate that using reconfigurable antennas, the optimal sensing time is reduced allowing for a longer transmission time, and thus better throughput. Moreover, state selection can be applied to boost the capacity of SU transmission.
1403.0950
On the connection between compression learning and scenario based optimization
cs.SY
We investigate the connections between compression learning and scenario based optimization. We first show how to strengthen, or relax the consistency assumption at the basis of compression learning and study the learning and generalization properties of the algorithm involved. We then consider different constrained optimization problems affected by uncertainty represented by means of scenarios. We show that the issue of providing guarantees on the probability of constraint violation reduces to a learning problem for an appropriately chosen algorithm that enjoys compression learning properties. The compression learning perspective provides a unifying framework for scenario based optimization and allows us to revisit the scenario approach and the probabilistically robust design, a recently developed technique based on a mixture of randomized and robust optimization, and to extend the guarantees on the probability of constraint violation to cascading optimization problems.
1403.0952
Algorithmic Verification of Continuous and Hybrid Systems
cs.SY cs.FL cs.LO cs.NA
We provide a tutorial introduction to reachability computation, a class of computational techniques that exports verification technology toward continuous and hybrid systems. For open under-determined systems, this technique can sometimes replace an infinite number of simulations.
1403.0957
On the Symmetric $K$-user Interference Channels with Limited Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we develop achievability schemes for symmetric $K$-user interference channels with a rate-limited feedback from each receiver to the corresponding transmitter. We study this problem under two different channel models: the linear deterministic model, and the Gaussian model. For the deterministic model, the proposed scheme achieves a symmetric rate that is the minimum of the symmetric capacity with infinite feedback, and the sum of the symmetric capacity without feedback and the symmetric amount of feedback. For the Gaussian interference channel, we use lattice codes to propose a transmission strategy that incorporates the techniques of Han-Kobayashi message splitting, interference decoding, and decode and forward. This strategy achieves a symmetric rate which is within a constant number of bits to the minimum of the symmetric capacity with infinite feedback, and the sum of the symmetric capacity without feedback and the amount of symmetric feedback. This constant is obtained as a function of the number of users, $K$. The symmetric achievable rate is used to characterize the achievable generalized degrees of freedom which exhibits a gradual increase from no feedback to perfect feedback in the presence of feedback links with limited capacity.
1403.0965
Design Challenges of Millimeter Wave Communications: A MAC Layer Perspective
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
As the spectrum is becoming more scarce due to exponential demand of formidable data quantities, the new millimiterwave (mmW) band is considered as an enabling player of 5G communications to provide multi-gigabits wireless acccess. MmW communications exhibit high attenuation and blockage, directionality due to massive beamforming, deafness, low-interference, and may need micro waves networks for coordination and fallback support. The current mmW standardizations are challenged by the overwhelming complexity given by such heterogeneous communication systems and mmW band characteristics. This demands new substantial protocol developments at all layers. In this paper, the medium access control issues for mmW communications are reviewed. It is discussed that while existing standards address some of these issues for personal and local area networks, little has been done for cellular networks. It is argued that the medium access control layer should be equipped with adaptation mechanisms that are aware of the special mmW characteristics. Recommendations for mmW medium access control design in 5G are provided. It is concluded that the design of efficient access control techniques for mmW is in its infancy and much work still has to be done.
1403.0989
Detecting change points in the large-scale structure of evolving networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph stat.ML
Interactions among people or objects are often dynamic in nature and can be represented as a sequence of networks, each providing a snapshot of the interactions over a brief period of time. An important task in analyzing such evolving networks is change-point detection, in which we both identify the times at which the large-scale pattern of interactions changes fundamentally and quantify how large and what kind of change occurred. Here, we formalize for the first time the network change-point detection problem within an online probabilistic learning framework and introduce a method that can reliably solve it. This method combines a generalized hierarchical random graph model with a Bayesian hypothesis test to quantitatively determine if, when, and precisely how a change point has occurred. We analyze the detectability of our method using synthetic data with known change points of different types and magnitudes, and show that this method is more accurate than several previously used alternatives. Applied to two high-resolution evolving social networks, this method identifies a sequence of change points that align with known external "shocks" to these networks.
1403.1013
Covert Communication Gains from Adversary's Ignorance of Transmission Time
cs.IT math.IT
The recent square root law (SRL) for covert communication demonstrates that Alice can reliably transmit $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$ bits to Bob in $n$ uses of an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel while keeping ineffective any detector employed by the adversary; conversely, exceeding this limit either results in detection by the adversary with high probability or non-zero decoding error probability at Bob. This SRL is under the assumption that the adversary knows when Alice transmits (if she transmits); however, in many operational scenarios he does not know this. Hence, here we study the impact of the adversary's ignorance of the time of the communication attempt. We employ a slotted AWGN channel model with $T(n)$ slots each containing $n$ symbol periods, where Alice may use a single slot out of $T(n)$. Provided that Alice's slot selection is secret, the adversary needs to monitor all $T(n)$ slots for possible transmission. We show that this allows Alice to reliably transmit $\mathcal{O}(\min\{\sqrt{n\log T(n)},n\})$ bits to Bob (but no more) while keeping the adversary's detector ineffective. To achieve this gain over SRL, Bob does not have to know the time of transmission provided $T(n)<2^{c_{\rm T}n}$, $c_{\rm T}=\mathcal{O}(1)$.
1403.1023
Active Hypothesis Testing for Quickest Anomaly Detection
cs.IT math.IT
The problem of quickest detection of an anomalous process among M processes is considered. At each time, a subset of the processes can be observed, and the observations from each chosen process follow two different distributions, depending on whether the process is normal or abnormal. The objective is a sequential search strategy that minimizes the expected detection time subject to an error probability constraint. This problem can be considered as a special case of active hypothesis testing first considered by Chernoff in 1959 where a randomized strategy, referred to as the Chernoff test, was proposed and shown to be asymptotically (as the error probability approaches zero) optimal. For the special case considered in this paper, we show that a simple deterministic test achieves asymptotic optimality and offers better performance in the finite regime. We further extend the problem to the case where multiple anomalous processes are present. In particular, we examine the case where only an upper bound on the number of anomalous processes is known.
1403.1024
On learning to localize objects with minimal supervision
cs.CV cs.LG
Learning to localize objects with minimal supervision is an important problem in computer vision, since large fully annotated datasets are extremely costly to obtain. In this paper, we propose a new method that achieves this goal with only image-level labels of whether the objects are present or not. Our approach combines a discriminative submodular cover problem for automatically discovering a set of positive object windows with a smoothed latent SVM formulation. The latter allows us to leverage efficient quasi-Newton optimization techniques. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach provides a 50% relative improvement in mean average precision over the current state-of-the-art on PASCAL VOC 2007 detection.
1403.1056
K-Tangent Spaces on Riemannian Manifolds for Improved Pedestrian Detection
cs.CV
For covariance-based image descriptors, taking into account the curvature of the corresponding feature space has been shown to improve discrimination performance. This is often done through representing the descriptors as points on Riemannian manifolds, with the discrimination accomplished on a tangent space. However, such treatment is restrictive as distances between arbitrary points on the tangent space do not represent true geodesic distances, and hence do not represent the manifold structure accurately. In this paper we propose a general discriminative model based on the combination of several tangent spaces, in order to preserve more details of the structure. The model can be used as a weak learner in a boosting-based pedestrian detection framework. Experiments on the challenging INRIA and DaimlerChrysler datasets show that the proposed model leads to considerably higher performance than methods based on histograms of oriented gradients as well as previous Riemannian-based techniques.
1403.1070
How to Apply Markov Chains for Modeling Sequential Edit Patterns in Collaborative Ontology-Engineering Projects
cs.HC cs.SI
With the growing popularity of large-scale collaborative ontology-engineering projects, such as the creation of the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases, we need new methods and insights to help project- and community-managers to cope with the constantly growing complexity of such projects. In this paper, we present a novel application of Markov chains to model sequential usage patterns that can be found in the change-logs of collaborative ontology-engineering projects. We provide a detailed presentation of the analysis process, describing all the required steps that are necessary to apply and determine the best fitting Markov chain model. Amongst others, the model and results allow us to identify structural properties and regularities as well as predict future actions based on usage sequences. We are specifically interested in determining the appropriate Markov chain orders which postulate on how many previous actions future ones depend on. To demonstrate the practical usefulness of the extracted Markov chains we conduct sequential pattern analyses on a large-scale collaborative ontology-engineering dataset, the International Classification of Diseases in its 11th revision. To further expand on the usefulness of the presented analysis, we show that the collected sequential patterns provide potentially actionable information for user-interface designers, ontology-engineering tool developers and project-managers to monitor, coordinate and dynamically adapt to the natural development processes that occur when collaboratively engineering an ontology. We hope that presented work will spur a new line of ontology-development tools, evaluation-techniques and new insights, further taking the interactive nature of the collaborative ontology-engineering process into consideration.
1403.1073
Artificial Neuron Modelling Based on Wave Shape
cs.NE
This paper describes a new model for an artificial neural network processing unit or neuron. It is slightly different to a traditional feedforward network by the fact that it favours a mechanism of trying to match the wave-like 'shape' of the input with the shape of the output against specific value error corrections. The expectation is then that a best fit shape can be transposed into the desired output values more easily. This allows for notions of reinforcement through resonance and also the construction of synapses.
1403.1076
Is Intelligence Artificial?
cs.AI
Our understanding of intelligence is directed primarily at the human level. This paper attempts to give a more unifying definition that can be applied to the natural world in general and then Artificial Intelligence. The definition would be used more to qualify than quantify it and might help when making judgements on the matter. While correct behaviour is the preferred definition, a metric that is grounded in Kolmogorov's Complexity Theory is suggested, which leads to a measurement about entropy. A version of an accepted AI test is then put forward as the 'acid test' and might be what a free-thinking program would try to achieve. Recent work by the author has been more from a direction of mechanical processes, or ones that might operate automatically. This paper agrees that intelligence is a pro-active event, but also notes a second aspect to it that is in the background and mechanical. The paper suggests looking at intelligence and the conscious as being slightly different, where the conscious is this more mechanical aspect. In fact, a surprising conclusion can be a passive but intelligent brain being invoked by active and less intelligent senses.
1403.1078
A network centrality method for the rating problem
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We propose a new method for aggregating the information of multiple reviewers rating multiple products. Our approach is based on the network relations induced between products by the rating activity of the reviewers. We show that our method is algorithmically implementable even for large numbers of both products and consumers, as is the case for many online sites. Moreover, comparing it with the simple average, which is mostly used in practice, and with other methods previously proposed in the literature, it performs very well under various dimension, proving itself to be an optimal trade--off between computational efficiency, accordance with the reviewers original orderings, and robustness with respect to the inclusion of systematically biased reports.
1403.1080
New Ideas for Brain Modelling
cs.AI q-bio.NC
This paper describes some biologically-inspired processes that could be used to build the sort of networks that we associate with the human brain. New to this paper, a 'refined' neuron will be proposed. This is a group of neurons that by joining together can produce a more analogue system, but with the same level of control and reliability that a binary neuron would have. With this new structure, it will be possible to think of an essentially binary system in terms of a more variable set of values. The paper also shows how recent research associated with the new model, can be combined with established theories, to produce a more complete picture. The propositions are largely in line with conventional thinking, but possibly with one or two more radical suggestions. An earlier cognitive model can be filled in with more specific details, based on the new research results, where the components appear to fit together almost seamlessly. The intention of the research has been to describe plausible 'mechanical' processes that can produce the appropriate brain structures and mechanisms, but that could be used without the magical 'intelligence' part that is still not fully understood. There are also some important updates from an earlier version of this paper.
1403.1091
Signal Estimation from Nonuniform Samples with RMS Error Bound -- Application to OFDM Channel Estimation
cs.IT math.IT
We present a channel spectral estimator for OFDM signals containing pilot carriers, assuming a known delay spread or a bound on this parameter. The estimator is based on modeling the channel's spectrum as a band-limited function, instead of as the discrete Fourier transform of a tapped delay line (TDL). Its main advantage is its immunity to the truncation mismatch in usual TDL models (Gibbs phenomenon). In order to assess the estimator, we compare it with the well-known TDL maximum likelihood (ML) estimator in terms of root-mean-square (RMS) error. The main result is that the proposed estimator improves on the ML estimator significantly, whenever the average spectral sampling rate is above the channel's delay spread. The improvement increases with the spectral oversampling ratio.
1403.1104
Proposal for a Correction to the Temporal Correlation Coefficient Calculation for Temporal Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Measuring the topological overlap of two graphs becomes important when assessing the changes between temporally adjacent graphs in a time-evolving network. Current methods depend on the fraction of nodes that have persisting edges. This breaks down when there are nodes with no edges, persisting or otherwise. The following outlines a proposed correction to ensure that correlation metrics have the expected behavior.
1403.1124
Estimating complex causal effects from incomplete observational data
stat.ME cs.LG math.ST stat.ML stat.TH
Despite the major advances taken in causal modeling, causality is still an unfamiliar topic for many statisticians. In this paper, it is demonstrated from the beginning to the end how causal effects can be estimated from observational data assuming that the causal structure is known. To make the problem more challenging, the causal effects are highly nonlinear and the data are missing at random. The tools used in the estimation include causal models with design, causal calculus, multiple imputation and generalized additive models. The main message is that a trained statistician can estimate causal effects by judiciously combining existing tools.
1403.1168
Loud and Trendy: Crowdsourcing Impressions of Social Ambiance in Popular Indoor Urban Places
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
New research cutting across architecture, urban studies, and psychology is contextualizing the understanding of urban spaces according to the perceptions of their inhabitants. One fundamental construct that relates place and experience is ambiance, which is defined as "the mood or feeling associated with a particular place". We posit that the systematic study of ambiance dimensions in cities is a new domain for which multimedia research can make pivotal contributions. We present a study to examine how images collected from social media can be used for the crowdsourced characterization of indoor ambiance impressions in popular urban places. We design a crowdsourcing framework to understand suitability of social images as data source to convey place ambiance, to examine what type of images are most suitable to describe ambiance, and to assess how people perceive places socially from the perspective of ambiance along 13 dimensions. Our study is based on 50,000 Foursquare images collected from 300 popular places across six cities worldwide. The results show that reliable estimates of ambiance can be obtained for several of the dimensions. Furthermore, we found that most aggregate impressions of ambiance are similar across popular places in all studied cities. We conclude by presenting a multidisciplinary research agenda for future research in this domain.
1403.1169
A proof challenge: multiple alignment and information compression
cs.AI
These notes pose a "proof challenge": a proof, or disproof, of the proposition that "For any given body of information, I, expressed as a one-dimensional sequence of atomic symbols, a multiple alignment concept, described in the document, provides a means of encoding all the redundancy that may exist in I. Aspects of the challenge are described.
1403.1177
Effects of temporal correlations on cascades: Threshold models on temporal networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
A person's decision to adopt an idea or product is often driven by the decisions of peers, mediated through a network of social ties. A common way of modeling adoption dynamics is to use threshold models, where a node may become an adopter given a high enough rate of contacts with adopted neighbors. We study the dynamics of threshold models that take both the network topology and the timings of contacts into account, using empirical contact sequences as substrates. The models are designed such that adoption is driven by the number of contacts with different adopted neighbors within a chosen time. We find that while some networks support cascades leading to network-level adoption, some do not: the propagation of adoption depends on several factors from the frequency of contacts to burstiness and timing correlations of contact sequences. More specifically, burstiness is seen to suppress cascades sizes when compared to randomised contact timings, while timing correlations between contacts on adjacent links facilitate cascades.
1403.1180
A distributed Integrity Catalog for digital repositories
cs.DB cs.DC cs.DL
Digital repositories, either digital preservation systems or archival systems, periodically check the integrity of stored objects to assure users of their correctness. To do so, prior solutions calculate integrity metadata and require the repository to store it alongside the actual data objects. This integrity metadata is essential for regularly verifying the correctness of the stored data objects. To safeguard and detect damage to this metadata, prior solutions rely on widely visible media, that is unaffiliated third parties, to store and provide back digests of the metadata to verify it is intact. However, they do not address recovery of the integrity metadata in case of damage or attack by an adversary. In essence, they do not preserve this metadata. We introduce IntegrityCatalog, a system that collects all integrity related metadata in a single component, and treats them as first class objects, managing both their integrity and their preservation. We introduce a treap-based persistent authenticated dictionary managing arbitrary length key/value pairs, which we use to store all integrity metadata, accessible simply by object name. Additionally, IntegrityCatalog is a distributed system that includes a network protocol that manages both corruption detection and preservation of this metadata, using administrator-selected network peers with two possible roles. Verifiers store and offer attestations on digests and have minimal storage requirements, while preservers efficiently synchronize a complete copy of the catalog to assist in recovery in case of a detected catalog compromise on the local system. We describe our prototype implementation of IntegrityCatalog, measure its performance empirically, and demonstrate its effectiveness in real-world situations, with worst measured throughput of approximately 1K insertions per second, and 2K verified search operations per second.
1403.1185
Phase transitions in the condition number distribution of Gaussian random matrices
cond-mat.stat-mech cs.CC cs.IT math-ph math.IT math.MP stat.OT
We study the statistics of the condition number $\kappa=\lambda_{\mathrm{max}}/\lambda_{\mathrm{min}}$ (the ratio between largest and smallest squared singular values) of $N\times M$ Gaussian random matrices. Using a Coulomb fluid technique, we derive analytically and for large $N$ the cumulative $\mathcal{P}[\kappa<x]$ and tail-cumulative $\mathcal{P}[\kappa>x]$ distributions of $\kappa$. We find that these distributions decay as $\mathcal{P}[\kappa<x]\approx\exp\left(-\beta N^2 \Phi_{-}(x)\right)$ and $\mathcal{P}[\kappa>x]\approx\exp\left(-\beta N \Phi_{+}(x)\right)$, where $\beta$ is the Dyson index of the ensemble. The left and right rate functions $\Phi_{\pm}(x)$ are independent of $\beta$ and calculated exactly for any choice of the rectangularity parameter $\alpha=M/N-1>0$. Interestingly, they show a weak non-analytic behavior at their minimum $\langle\kappa\rangle$ (corresponding to the average condition number), a direct consequence of a phase transition in the associated Coulomb fluid problem. Matching the behavior of the rate functions around $\langle\kappa\rangle$, we determine exactly the scale of typical fluctuations $\sim\mathcal{O}(N^{-2/3})$ and the tails of the limiting distribution of $\kappa$. The analytical results are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations.
1403.1194
Latent Semantic Word Sense Disambiguation Using Global Co-occurrence Information
cs.CL cs.IR
In this paper, I propose a novel word sense disambiguation method based on the global co-occurrence information using NMF. When I calculate the dependency relation matrix, the existing method tends to produce very sparse co-occurrence matrix from a small training set. Therefore, the NMF algorithm sometimes does not converge to desired solutions. To obtain a large number of co-occurrence relations, I propose to use co-occurrence frequencies of dependency relations between word features in the whole training set. This enables us to solve data sparseness problem and induce more effective latent features. To evaluate the efficiency of the method of word sense disambiguation, I make some experiments to compare with the result of the two baseline methods. The results of the experiments show this method is effective for word sense disambiguation in comparison with the all baseline methods. Moreover, the proposed method is effective for obtaining a stable effect by analyzing the global co-occurrence information.
1403.1202
Flocking and turning: a new model for self-organized collective motion
cond-mat.stat-mech cs.RO cs.SY physics.bio-ph q-bio.PE
Birds in a flock move in a correlated way, resulting in large polarization of velocities. A good understanding of this collective behavior exists for linear motion of the flock. Yet observing actual birds, the center of mass of the group often turns giving rise to more complicated dynamics, still keeping strong polarization of the flock. Here we propose novel dynamical equations for the collective motion of polarized animal groups that account for correlated turning including solely social forces. We exploit rotational symmetries and conservation laws of the problem to formulate a theory in terms of generalized coordinates of motion for the velocity directions akin to a Hamiltonian formulation for rotations. We explicitly derive the correspondence between this formulation and the dynamics of the individual velocities, thus obtaining a new model of collective motion. In the appropriate overdamped limit we recover the well-known Vicsek model, which dissipates rotational information and does not allow for polarized turns. Although the new model has its most vivid success in describing turning groups, its dynamics is intrinsically different from previous ones in a wide dynamical regime, while reducing to the hydrodynamic description of Toner and Tu at very large length-scales. The derived framework is therefore general and it may describe the collective motion of any strongly polarized active matter system.
1403.1214
A fast clustering algorithm for mining social network data
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Many groups with diverse convictions are interacting online. Interactions in online communities help people to engage each other and enhance understanding across groups. Online communities include multiple sub-communities whose members are similar due to social ties, characteristics, or ideas on a topic. In this research, we are interested in understanding the changes in the relative size and activity of these sub-communities, their merging or splitting patterns, and the changes in the perspectives of the members of these sub-communities due to endogenous dynamics inside the community.
1403.1218
Cyclic Orbit Codes and Stabilizer Subfields
cs.IT math.IT
Cyclic orbit codes are constant dimension subspace codes that arise as the orbit of a cyclic subgroup of the general linear group acting on subspaces in the given ambient space. With the aid of the largest subfield over which the given subspace is a vector space, the cardinality of the orbit code can be determined, and estimates for its distance can be found. This subfield is closely related to the stabilizer of the generating subspace. Finally, with a linkage construction larger, and longer, constant dimension codes can be derived from cyclic orbit codes without compromising the distance.
1403.1228
Topological implications of negative curvature for biological and social networks
q-bio.MN cs.DM cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Network measures that reflect the most salient properties of complex large-scale networks are in high demand in the network research community. In this paper we adapt a combinatorial measure of negative curvature (also called hyperbolicity) to parameterized finite networks, and show that a variety of biological and social networks are hyperbolic. This hyperbolicity property has strong implications on the higher-order connectivity and other topological properties of these networks. Specifically, we derive and prove bounds on the distance among shortest or approximately shortest paths in hyperbolic networks. We describe two implications of these bounds to cross-talk in biological networks, and to the existence of central, influential neighborhoods in both biological and social networks.
1403.1241
Vaccines, Contagion, and Social Networks
stat.ME cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Consider the causal effect that one individual's treatment may have on another individual's outcome when the outcome is contagious, with specific application to the effect of vaccination on an infectious disease outcome. The effect of one individual's vaccination on another's outcome can be decomposed into two different causal effects, called the "infectiousness" and "contagion" effects. We present identifying assumptions and estimation or testing procedures for infectiousness and contagion effects in two different settings: (1) using data sampled from independent groups of observations, and (2) using data collected from a single interdependent social network. The methods that we propose for social network data require fitting generalized linear models (GLMs). GLMs and other statistical models that require independence across subjects have been used widely to estimate causal effects in social network data, but, because the subjects in networks are presumably not independent, the use of such models is generally invalid, resulting in inference that is expected to be anticonservative. We introduce a way to ensure that GLM residuals are uncorrelated across subjects despite the fact that outcomes are non-independent. This simultaneously demonstrates the possibility of using GLMs and related statistical models for network data and highlights their limitations.
1403.1243
Estimation of Toeplitz Covariance Matrices in Large Dimensional Regime with Application to Source Detection
cs.IT math.IT
In this article, we derive concentration inequalities for the spectral norm of two classical sample estimators of large dimensional Toeplitz covariance matrices, demonstrating in particular their asymptotic almost sure consistence. The consistency is then extended to the case where the aggregated matrix of time samples is corrupted by a rank one (or more generally, low rank) matrix. As an application of the latter, the problem of source detection in the context of large dimensional sensor networks within a temporally correlated noise environment is studied. As opposed to standard procedures, this application is performed online, i.e. without the need to possess a learning set of pure noise samples.
1403.1248
Integrating Energy Storage into the Smart Grid: A Prospect Theoretic Approach
cs.GT cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, the interactions and energy exchange decisions of a number of geographically distributed storage units are studied under decision-making involving end-users. In particular, a noncooperative game is formulated between customer-owned storage units where each storage unit's owner can decide on whether to charge or discharge energy with a given probability so as to maximize a utility that reflects the tradeoff between the monetary transactions from charging/discharging and the penalty from power regulation. Unlike existing game-theoretic works which assume that players make their decisions rationally and objectively, we use the new framework of prospect theory (PT) to explicitly incorporate the users' subjective perceptions of their expected utilities. For the two-player game, we show the existence of a proper mixed Nash equilibrium for both the standard game-theoretic case and the case with PT considerations. Simulation results show that incorporating user behavior via PT reveals several important insights into load management as well as economics of energy storage usage. For instance, the results show that deviations from conventional game theory, as predicted by PT, can lead to undesirable grid loads and revenues thus requiring the power company to revisit its pricing schemes and the customers to reassess their energy storage usage choices.
1403.1252
Inducing Language Networks from Continuous Space Word Representations
cs.LG cs.CL cs.SI
Recent advancements in unsupervised feature learning have developed powerful latent representations of words. However, it is still not clear what makes one representation better than another and how we can learn the ideal representation. Understanding the structure of latent spaces attained is key to any future advancement in unsupervised learning. In this work, we introduce a new view of continuous space word representations as language networks. We explore two techniques to create language networks from learned features by inducing them for two popular word representation methods and examining the properties of their resulting networks. We find that the induced networks differ from other methods of creating language networks, and that they contain meaningful community structure.
1403.1276
Quantifying the Information Leakage in Timing Side Channels in Deterministic Work-Conserving Schedulers
cs.IT math.IT
When multiple job processes are served by a single scheduler, the queueing delays of one process are often affected by the others, resulting in a timing side channel that leaks the arrival pattern of one process to the others. In this work, we study such a timing side channel between a regular user and a malicious attacker. Utilizing Shannon's mutual information as a measure of information leakage between the user and attacker, we analyze privacy-preserving behaviors of common work-conserving schedulers. We find that the attacker can always learn perfectly the user's arrival process in a longest-queue-first (LQF) scheduler. When the user's job arrival rate is very low (near zero), first-come-first-serve (FCFS) and round robin schedulers both completely reveal the user's arrival pattern. The near-complete information leakage in the low-rate traffic region is proven to be reduced by half in a work-conserving version of TDMA (WC-TDMA) scheduler, which turns out to be privacy-optimal in the class of deterministic-working-conserving (det-WC) schedulers, according to a universal lower bound on information leakage we derive for all det-WC schedulers.
1403.1310
AntiPlag: Plagiarism Detection on Electronic Submissions of Text Based Assignments
cs.IR cs.CL cs.DL
Plagiarism is one of the growing issues in academia and is always a concern in Universities and other academic institutions. The situation is becoming even worse with the availability of ample resources on the web. This paper focuses on creating an effective and fast tool for plagiarism detection for text based electronic assignments. Our plagiarism detection tool named AntiPlag is developed using the tri-gram sequence matching technique. Three sets of text based assignments were tested by AntiPlag and the results were compared against an existing commercial plagiarism detection tool. AntiPlag showed better results in terms of false positives compared to the commercial tool due to the pre-processing steps performed in AntiPlag. In addition, to improve the detection latency, AntiPlag applies a data clustering technique making it four times faster than the commercial tool considered. AntiPlag could be used to isolate plagiarized text based assignments from non-plagiarised assignments easily. Therefore, we present AntiPlag, a fast and effective tool for plagiarism detection on text based electronic assignments.
1403.1313
Accelerating motif finding in DNA sequences with multicore CPUs
cs.CE cs.DC
Motif discovery in DNA sequences is a challenging task in molecular biology. In computational motif discovery, Planted (l, d) motif finding is a widely studied problem and numerous algorithms are available to solve it. Both hardware and software accelerators have been introduced to accelerate the motif finding algorithms. However, the use of hardware accelerators such as FPGAs needs hardware specialists to design such systems. Software based acceleration methods on the other hand are easier to implement than hardware acceleration techniques. Grid computing is one such software based acceleration technique which has been used in acceleration of motif finding. However, drawbacks such as network communication delays and the need of fast interconnection between nodes in the grid can limit its usage and scalability. As using multicore CPUs to accelerate CPU intensive tasks are becoming increasingly popular and common nowadays, we can employ it to accelerate motif finding and it can be a faster method than grid based acceleration. In this paper, we have explored the use of multicore CPUs to accelerate motif finding. We have accelerated the Skip-Brute Force algorithm on multicore CPUs parallelizing it using the POSIX thread library. Our method yielded an average speed up of 34x on a 32-core processor compared to a speed up of 21x on a grid based implementation of 32 nodes.
1403.1314
Authorship detection of SMS messages using unigrams
cs.CL cs.IR
SMS messaging is a popular media of communication. Because of its popularity and privacy, it could be used for many illegal purposes. Additionally, since they are part of the day to day life, SMSes can be used as evidence for many legal disputes. Since a cellular phone might be accessible to people close to the owner, it is important to establish the fact that the sender of the message is indeed the owner of the phone. For this purpose, the straight forward solutions seem to be the use of popular stylometric methods. However, in comparison with the data used for stylometry in the literature, SMSes have unusual characteristics making it hard or impossible to apply these methods in a conventional way. Our target is to come up with a method of authorship detection of SMS messages that could still give a usable accuracy. We argue that, considering the methods of author attribution, the best method that could be applied to SMS messages is an n-gram method. To prove our point, we checked two different methods of distribution comparison with varying number of training and testing data. We specifically try to compare how well our algorithms work under less amount of testing data and large number of candidate authors (which we believe to be the real world scenario) against controlled tests with less number of authors and selected SMSes with large number of words. To counter the lack of information in an SMS message, we propose the method of stacking together few SMSes.
1403.1317
Hardware software co-design of the Aho-Corasick algorithm: Scalable for protein identification?
cs.CE
Pattern matching is commonly required in many application areas and bioinformatics is a major area of interest that requires both exact and approximate pattern matching. Much work has been done in this area, yet there is still a significant space for improvement in efficiency, flexibility, and throughput. This paper presents a hardware software co-design of Aho-Corasick algorithm in Nios II soft-processor and a study on its scalability for a pattern matching application. A software only approach is used to compare the throughput and the scalability of the hardware software co-design approach. According to the results we obtained, we conclude that the hardware software co-design implementation shows a maximum of 10 times speed up for pattern size of 1200 peptides compared to the software only implementation. The results also show that the hardware software co-design approach scales well for increasing data size compared to the software only approach.
1403.1319
Hardware accelerated protein inference framework
cs.CE
Protein inference plays a vital role in the proteomics study. Two major approaches could be used to handle the problem of protein inference; top-down and bottom-up. This paper presents a framework for protein inference, which uses hardware accelerated protein inference framework for handling the most important step in a bottom-up approach, viz. peptide identification during the assembling process. In our framework, identified peptides and their probabilities are used to predict the most suitable reference protein cluster for a given input amino acid sequence with the probability of identified peptides. The framework is developed on an FPGA where hardware software co-design techniques are used to accelerate the computationally intensive parts of the protein inference process. In the paper we have measured, compared and reported the time taken for the protein inference process in our framework against a pure software implementation.
1403.1323
Performance of ML Range Estimator in Radio Interferometric Positioning Systems
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
The radio interferometric positioning system (RIPS) is a novel positioning solution used in wireless sensor networks. This letter explores the ranging accuracy of RIPS in two configurations. In the linear step-frequency (LSF) configuration, we derive the mean square error (MSE) of the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator. In the random step-frequency (RSF) configuration, we introduce average MSE to characterize the performance of the ML estimator. The simulation results fit well with theoretical analysis. It is revealed that RSF is superior to LSF in that the former is more robust in a jamming environment with similar ranging accuracy.
1403.1327
Multi-view Face Analysis Based on Gabor Features
cs.CV
Facial analysis has attracted much attention in the technology for human-machine interface. Different methods of classification based on sparse representation and Gabor kernels have been widely applied in the fields of facial analysis. However, most of these methods treat face from a whole view standpoint. In terms of the importance of different facial views, in this paper, we present multi-view face analysis based on sparse representation and Gabor wavelet coefficients. To evaluate the performance, we conduct face analysis experiments including face recognition (FR) and face expression recognition (FER) on JAFFE database. Experiments are conducted from two parts: (1) Face images are divided into three facial parts which are forehead, eye and mouth. (2) Face images are divided into 8 parts by the orientation of Gabor kernels. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methods can significantly boost the performance and perform better than the other methods.
1403.1329
Integer Programming Relaxations for Integrated Clustering and Outlier Detection
cs.LG
In this paper we present methods for exemplar based clustering with outlier selection based on the facility location formulation. Given a distance function and the number of outliers to be found, the methods automatically determine the number of clusters and outliers. We formulate the problem as an integer program to which we present relaxations that allow for solutions that scale to large data sets. The advantages of combining clustering and outlier selection include: (i) the resulting clusters tend to be compact and semantically coherent (ii) the clusters are more robust against data perturbations and (iii) the outliers are contextualised by the clusters and more interpretable, i.e. it is easier to distinguish between outliers which are the result of data errors from those that may be indicative of a new pattern emergent in the data. We present and contrast three relaxations to the integer program formulation: (i) a linear programming formulation (LP) (ii) an extension of affinity propagation to outlier detection (APOC) and (iii) a Lagrangian duality based formulation (LD). Evaluation on synthetic as well as real data shows the quality and scalability of these different methods.
1403.1336
An Extensive Repot on the Efficiency of AIS-INMACA (A Novel Integrated MACA based Clonal Classifier for Protein Coding and Promoter Region Prediction)
cs.CE cs.LG
This paper exclusively reports the efficiency of AIS-INMACA. AIS-INMACA has created good impact on solving major problems in bioinformatics like protein region identification and promoter region prediction with less time (Pokkuluri Kiran Sree, 2014). This AIS-INMACA is now came with several variations (Pokkuluri Kiran Sree, 2014) towards projecting it as a tool in bioinformatics for solving many problems in bioinformatics. So this paper will be very much useful for so many researchers who are working in the domain of bioinformatics with cellular automata.
1403.1343
Ubic: Bridging the gap between digital cryptography and the physical world
cs.CR cs.CV
Advances in computing technology increasingly blur the boundary between the digital domain and the physical world. Although the research community has developed a large number of cryptographic primitives and has demonstrated their usability in all-digital communication, many of them have not yet made their way into the real world due to usability aspects. We aim to make another step towards a tighter integration of digital cryptography into real world interactions. We describe Ubic, a framework that allows users to bridge the gap between digital cryptography and the physical world. Ubic relies on head-mounted displays, like Google Glass, resource-friendly computer vision techniques as well as mathematically sound cryptographic primitives to provide users with better security and privacy guarantees. The framework covers key cryptographic primitives, such as secure identification, document verification using a novel secure physical document format, as well as content hiding. To make a contribution of practical value, we focused on making Ubic as simple, easily deployable, and user friendly as possible.
1403.1347
Deep Supervised and Convolutional Generative Stochastic Network for Protein Secondary Structure Prediction
q-bio.QM cs.CE cs.LG
Predicting protein secondary structure is a fundamental problem in protein structure prediction. Here we present a new supervised generative stochastic network (GSN) based method to predict local secondary structure with deep hierarchical representations. GSN is a recently proposed deep learning technique (Bengio & Thibodeau-Laufer, 2013) to globally train deep generative model. We present the supervised extension of GSN, which learns a Markov chain to sample from a conditional distribution, and applied it to protein structure prediction. To scale the model to full-sized, high-dimensional data, like protein sequences with hundreds of amino acids, we introduce a convolutional architecture, which allows efficient learning across multiple layers of hierarchical representations. Our architecture uniquely focuses on predicting structured low-level labels informed with both low and high-level representations learned by the model. In our application this corresponds to labeling the secondary structure state of each amino-acid residue. We trained and tested the model on separate sets of non-homologous proteins sharing less than 30% sequence identity. Our model achieves 66.4% Q8 accuracy on the CB513 dataset, better than the previously reported best performance 64.9% (Wang et al., 2011) for this challenging secondary structure prediction problem.
1403.1349
Learning Soft Linear Constraints with Application to Citation Field Extraction
cs.CL cs.DL cs.IR
Accurately segmenting a citation string into fields for authors, titles, etc. is a challenging task because the output typically obeys various global constraints. Previous work has shown that modeling soft constraints, where the model is encouraged, but not require to obey the constraints, can substantially improve segmentation performance. On the other hand, for imposing hard constraints, dual decomposition is a popular technique for efficient prediction given existing algorithms for unconstrained inference. We extend the technique to perform prediction subject to soft constraints. Moreover, with a technique for performing inference given soft constraints, it is easy to automatically generate large families of constraints and learn their costs with a simple convex optimization problem during training. This allows us to obtain substantial gains in accuracy on a new, challenging citation extraction dataset.
1403.1353
Collaborative Representation for Classification, Sparse or Non-sparse?
cs.CV cs.AI cs.LG
Sparse representation based classification (SRC) has been proved to be a simple, effective and robust solution to face recognition. As it gets popular, doubts on the necessity of enforcing sparsity starts coming up, and primary experimental results showed that simply changing the $l_1$-norm based regularization to the computationally much more efficient $l_2$-norm based non-sparse version would lead to a similar or even better performance. However, that's not always the case. Given a new classification task, it's still unclear which regularization strategy (i.e., making the coefficients sparse or non-sparse) is a better choice without trying both for comparison. In this paper, we present as far as we know the first study on solving this issue, based on plenty of diverse classification experiments. We propose a scoring function for pre-selecting the regularization strategy using only the dataset size, the feature dimensionality and a discrimination score derived from a given feature representation. Moreover, we show that when dictionary learning is taking into account, non-sparse representation has a more significant superiority to sparse representation. This work is expected to enrich our understanding of sparse/non-sparse collaborative representation for classification and motivate further research activities.
1403.1362
Illumination,Expression and Occlusion Invariant Pose-Adaptive Face Recognition System for Real-Time Applications
cs.CV
Face recognition in real-time scenarios is mainly affected by illumination, expression and pose variations and also by occlusion. This paper presents the framework for pose adaptive component-based face recognition system. The framework proposed deals with all the above mentioned issues. The steps involved in the presented framework are (i) facial landmark localisation, (ii) facial component extraction, (iii) pre-processing of facial image (iv) facial pose estimation (v) feature extraction using Local Binary Pattern Histograms of each component followed by (vi) fusion of pose adaptive classification of components. By employing pose adaptive classification, the recognition process is carried out on some part of database, based on estimated pose, instead of applying the recognition process on the whole database. Pre-processing techniques employed to overcome the problems due to illumination variation are also discussed in this paper. Component-based techniques provide better recognition rates when face images are occluded compared to the holistic methods. Our method is simple, feasible and provides better results when compared to other holistic methods.
1403.1366
An Accurate and Efficient Analysis of a MBSFN Network
cs.IT math.IT
A new accurate analysis is presented for an OFDM-based multicast-broadcast single-frequency network (MBSFN). The topology of the network is modeled by a constrained random spatial model involving a fixed number of base stations placed over a finite area with a minimum separation. The analysis is driven by a new closed-form expression for the conditional outage probability at each location of the network, where the conditioning is with respect to the network realization. The analysis accounts for the diversity combining of signals transmitted by different base stations of a given MBSFN area, and also accounts for the interference caused by the base stations of other MBSFN areas. The analysis features a flexible channel model, accounting for path loss, Nakagami fading, and correlated shadowing. The analysis is used to investigate the influence of the minimum base-station separation and provides insight regarding the optimal size of the MBSFN areas. In order to highlight the percentage of the network that will fail to successfully receive the broadcast, the area below an outage threshold (ABOT) is here used and defined as the fraction of the network that provides an outage probability (averaged over the fading) that meets a threshold.
1403.1403
Mining Concurrent Topical Activity in Microblog Streams
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Streams of user-generated content in social media exhibit patterns of collective attention across diverse topics, with temporal structures determined both by exogenous factors and endogenous factors. Teasing apart different topics and resolving their individual, concurrent, activity timelines is a key challenge in extracting knowledge from microblog streams. Facing this challenge requires the use of methods that expose latent signals by using term correlations across posts and over time. Here we focus on content posted to Twitter during the London 2012 Olympics, for which a detailed schedule of events is independently available and can be used for reference. We mine the temporal structure of topical activity by using two methods based on non-negative matrix factorization. We show that for events in the Olympics schedule that can be semantically matched to Twitter topics, the extracted Twitter activity timeline closely matches the known timeline from the schedule. Our results show that, given appropriate techniques to detect latent signals, Twitter can be used as a social sensor to extract topical-temporal information on real-world events at high temporal resolution.
1403.1412
Rate Prediction and Selection in LTE systems using Modified Source Encoding Techniques
stat.AP cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
In current wireless systems, the base-Station (eNodeB) tries to serve its user-equipment (UE) at the highest possible rate that the UE can reliably decode. The eNodeB obtains this rate information as a quantized feedback from the UE at time n and uses this, for rate selection till the next feedback is received at time n + {\delta}. The feedback received at n can become outdated before n + {\delta}, because of a) Doppler fading, and b) Change in the set of active interferers for a UE. Therefore rate prediction becomes essential. Since, the rates belong to a discrete set, we propose a discrete sequence prediction approach, wherein, frequency trees for the discrete sequences are built using source encoding algorithms like Prediction by Partial Match (PPM). Finding the optimal depth of the frequency tree used for prediction is cast as a model order selection problem. The rate sequence complexity is analysed to provide an upper bound on model order. Information-theoretic criteria are then used to solve the model order problem. Finally, two prediction algorithms are proposed, using the PPM with optimal model order and system level simulations demonstrate the improvement in packet loss and throughput due to these algorithms.
1403.1430
Sparse Principal Component Analysis via Rotation and Truncation
cs.LG cs.CV stat.ML
Sparse principal component analysis (sparse PCA) aims at finding a sparse basis to improve the interpretability over the dense basis of PCA, meanwhile the sparse basis should cover the data subspace as much as possible. In contrast to most of existing work which deal with the problem by adding some sparsity penalties on various objectives of PCA, in this paper, we propose a new method SPCArt, whose motivation is to find a rotation matrix and a sparse basis such that the sparse basis approximates the basis of PCA after the rotation. The algorithm of SPCArt consists of three alternating steps: rotate PCA basis, truncate small entries, and update the rotation matrix. Its performance bounds are also given. SPCArt is efficient, with each iteration scaling linearly with the data dimension. It is easy to choose parameters in SPCArt, due to its explicit physical explanations. Besides, we give a unified view to several existing sparse PCA methods and discuss the connection with SPCArt. Some ideas in SPCArt are extended to GPower, a popular sparse PCA algorithm, to overcome its drawback. Experimental results demonstrate that SPCArt achieves the state-of-the-art performance. It also achieves a good tradeoff among various criteria, including sparsity, explained variance, orthogonality, balance of sparsity among loadings, and computational speed.
1403.1437
Evolution of the digital society reveals balance between viral and mass media influence
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI physics.comp-ph
Online social networks (OSNs) enable researchers to study the social universe at a previously unattainable scale. The worldwide impact and the necessity to sustain their rapid growth emphasize the importance to unravel the laws governing their evolution. We present a quantitative two-parameter model which reproduces the entire topological evolution of a quasi-isolated OSN with unprecedented precision from the birth of the network. This allows us to precisely gauge the fundamental macroscopic and microscopic mechanisms involved. Our findings suggest that the coupling between the real pre-existing underlying social structure, a viral spreading mechanism, and mass media influence govern the evolution of OSNs. The empirical validation of our model, on a macroscopic scale, reveals that virality is four to five times stronger than mass media influence and, on a microscopic scale, individuals have a higher subscription probability if invited by weaker social contacts, in agreement with the "strength of weak ties" paradigm.
1403.1451
Real-Time Classification of Twitter Trends
cs.IR cs.CL cs.SI
Social media users give rise to social trends as they share about common interests, which can be triggered by different reasons. In this work, we explore the types of triggers that spark trends on Twitter, introducing a typology with following four types: 'news', 'ongoing events', 'memes', and 'commemoratives'. While previous research has analyzed trending topics in a long term, we look at the earliest tweets that produce a trend, with the aim of categorizing trends early on. This would allow to provide a filtered subset of trends to end users. We analyze and experiment with a set of straightforward language-independent features based on the social spread of trends to categorize them into the introduced typology. Our method provides an efficient way to accurately categorize trending topics without need of external data, enabling news organizations to discover breaking news in real-time, or to quickly identify viral memes that might enrich marketing decisions, among others. The analysis of social features also reveals patterns associated with each type of trend, such as tweets about ongoing events being shorter as many were likely sent from mobile devices, or memes having more retweets originating from a few trend-setters.
1403.1455
Non-singular assembly mode changing trajectories in the workspace for the 3-RPS parallel robot
cs.RO
Having non-singular assembly modes changing trajectories for the 3-RPS parallel robot is a well-known feature. The only known solution for defining such trajectory is to encircle a cusp point in the joint space. In this paper, the aspects and the characteristic surfaces are computed for each operation mode to define the uniqueness of the domains. Thus, we can easily see in the workspace that at least three assembly modes can be reached for each operation mode. To validate this property, the mathematical analysis of the determinant of the Jacobian is done. The image of these trajectories in the joint space is depicted with the curves associated with the cusp points.
1403.1458
Phase Transitions in Phase Retrieval
cs.IT math.AG math.FA math.IT
Consider a scenario in which an unknown signal is transformed by a known linear operator, and then the pointwise absolute value of the unknown output function is reported. This scenario appears in several applications, and the goal is to recover the unknown signal -- this is called phase retrieval. Phase retrieval has been a popular subject of research in the last few years, both in determining whether complete information is available with a given linear operator, and in finding efficient and stable phase retrieval algorithms in the cases where complete information is available. Interestingly, there are a few ways to measure information completeness, and each way appears to be governed by a phase transition of sorts. This chapter will survey the state of the art with some of these phase transitions, and identify a few open problems for further research.
1403.1460
Decentralized Subspace Pursuit for Joint Sparsity Pattern Recovery
cs.IT math.IT
To solve the problem of joint sparsity pattern recovery in a decen-tralized network, we propose an algorithm named decentralized and collaborative subspace pursuit (DCSP). The basic idea of DCSP is to embed collaboration among nodes and fusion strategy into each iteration of the standard subspace pursuit (SP) algorithm. In DCSP, each node collaborates with several of its neighbors by sharing high-dimensional coefficient estimates and communicates with other remote nodes by exchanging low-dimensional support set estimates. Experimental evaluations show that, compared with several existing algorithms for sparsity pattern recovery, DCSP produces satisfactory results in terms of accuracy of sparsity pattern recovery with much less communication cost.
1403.1476
Cooperative Radar and Communications Signaling: The Estimation and Information Theory Odd Couple
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate cooperative radar and communications signaling. While each system typically considers the other system a source of interference, by considering the radar and communications operations to be a single joint system, the performance of both systems can, under certain conditions, be improved by the existence of the other. As an initial demonstration, we focus on the radar as relay scenario and present an approach denoted multiuser detection radar (MUDR). A novel joint estimation and information theoretic bound formulation is constructed for a receiver that observes communications and radar return in the same frequency allocation. The joint performance bound is presented in terms of the communication rate and the estimation rate of the system.
1403.1486
Lifespan and propagation of information in On-line Social Networks a Case Study
cs.SI cs.IR physics.soc-ph
Since 1950, information flows have been in the centre of scientific research. Up until internet penetration in the late 90s, these studies were based over traditional offline social networks. Several observations in offline information flows studies, such as two-step flow of communication and the importance of weak ties, were verified in several online studies, showing that the diffused information flows from one Online Social Network (OSN) to several others. Within that flow, information is shared to and reproduced by the users of each network. Furthermore, the original content is enhanced or weakened according to its topic, the dynamic and exposure of each OSNs. In such a concept, each OSN is considered a layer of information flows that interacts with each other. In this paper, we examine such flows in several social networks, as well as their diffusion and lifespan across multiple OSNs, in terms of user-generated content. Our results verify the perception of content and information connection in various OSNs.