id
stringlengths
9
16
title
stringlengths
4
278
categories
stringlengths
5
104
abstract
stringlengths
6
4.09k
1403.7455
Hybrid Approach to English-Hindi Name Entity Transliteration
cs.CL
Machine translation (MT) research in Indian languages is still in its infancy. Not much work has been done in proper transliteration of name entities in this domain. In this paper we address this issue. We have used English-Hindi language pair for our experiments and have used a hybrid approach. At first we have processed English words using a rule based approach which extracts individual phonemes from the words and then we have applied statistical approach which converts the English into its equivalent Hindi phoneme and in turn the corresponding Hindi word. Through this approach we have attained 83.40% accuracy.
1403.7465
Shiva: A Framework for Graph Based Ontology Matching
cs.AI
Since long, corporations are looking for knowledge sources which can provide structured description of data and can focus on meaning and shared understanding. Structures which can facilitate open world assumptions and can be flexible enough to incorporate and recognize more than one name for an entity. A source whose major purpose is to facilitate human communication and interoperability. Clearly, databases fail to provide these features and ontologies have emerged as an alternative choice, but corporations working on same domain tend to make different ontologies. The problem occurs when they want to share their data/knowledge. Thus we need tools to merge ontologies into one. This task is termed as ontology matching. This is an emerging area and still we have to go a long way in having an ideal matcher which can produce good results. In this paper we have shown a framework to matching ontologies using graphs.
1403.7471
Approximate Decentralized Bayesian Inference
cs.LG
This paper presents an approximate method for performing Bayesian inference in models with conditional independence over a decentralized network of learning agents. The method first employs variational inference on each individual learning agent to generate a local approximate posterior, the agents transmit their local posteriors to other agents in the network, and finally each agent combines its set of received local posteriors. The key insight in this work is that, for many Bayesian models, approximate inference schemes destroy symmetry and dependencies in the model that are crucial to the correct application of Bayes' rule when combining the local posteriors. The proposed method addresses this issue by including an additional optimization step in the combination procedure that accounts for these broken dependencies. Experiments on synthetic and real data demonstrate that the decentralized method provides advantages in computational performance and predictive test likelihood over previous batch and distributed methods.
1403.7481
Indexing large genome collections on a PC
cs.CE q-bio.GN q-bio.QM
Motivation: The availability of thousands of invidual genomes of one species should boost rapid progress in personalized medicine or understanding of the interaction between genotype and phenotype, to name a few applications. A key operation useful in such analyses is aligning sequencing reads against a collection of genomes, which is costly with the use of existing algorithms due to their large memory requirements. Results: We present MuGI, Multiple Genome Index, which reports all occurrences of a given pattern, in exact and approximate matching model, against a collection of thousand(s) genomes. Its unique feature is the small index size fitting in a standard computer with 16--32\,GB, or even 8\,GB, of RAM, for the 1000GP collection of 1092 diploid human genomes. The solution is also fast. For example, the exact matching queries are handled in average time of 39\,$\mu$s and with up to 3 mismatches in 373\,$\mu$s on the test PC with the index size of 13.4\,GB. For a smaller index, occupying 7.4\,GB in memory, the respective times grow to 76\,$\mu$s and 917\,$\mu$s. Availability: Software and Suuplementary material: \url{http://sun.aei.polsl.pl/mugi}.
1403.7532
Opportunistic Spectrum Sharing using Dumb Basis Patterns: The Line-of-Sight Interference Scenario
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate a spectrum-sharing system with non-severely faded mutual interference links, where both the secondary-to-primary and primary-to-secondary channels have a Line-of-Sight (LoS) component. Based on a Rician model for the LoS channels, we show, analytically and numerically, that LoS interference hinders the achievable secondary user capacity. This is caused by the poor dynamic range of the interference channels fluctuations when a dominant LoS component exists. In order to improve the capacity of such system, we propose the usage of an Electronically Steerable Parasitic Array Radiator (ESPAR) antenna at the secondary terminals. An ESPAR antenna requires a single RF chain and has a reconfigurable radiation pattern that is controlled by assigning arbitrary weights to M orthonormal basis radiation patterns. By viewing these orthonormal patterns as multiple virtual dumb antennas, we randomly vary their weights over time creating artificial channel fluctuations that can perfectly eliminate the undesired impact of LoS interference. Because the proposed scheme uses a single RF chain, it is well suited for compact and low cost mobile terminals.
1403.7543
A sparse Kaczmarz solver and a linearized Bregman method for online compressed sensing
math.OC cs.CV cs.IT math.IT math.NA
An algorithmic framework to compute sparse or minimal-TV solutions of linear systems is proposed. The framework includes both the Kaczmarz method and the linearized Bregman method as special cases and also several new methods such as a sparse Kaczmarz solver. The algorithmic framework has a variety of applications and is especially useful for problems in which the linear measurements are slow and expensive to obtain. We present examples for online compressed sensing, TV tomographic reconstruction and radio interferometry.
1403.7550
DimmWitted: A Study of Main-Memory Statistical Analytics
cs.DB cs.LG math.OC stat.ML
We perform the first study of the tradeoff space of access methods and replication to support statistical analytics using first-order methods executed in the main memory of a Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) machine. Statistical analytics systems differ from conventional SQL-analytics in the amount and types of memory incoherence they can tolerate. Our goal is to understand tradeoffs in accessing the data in row- or column-order and at what granularity one should share the model and data for a statistical task. We study this new tradeoff space, and discover there are tradeoffs between hardware and statistical efficiency. We argue that our tradeoff study may provide valuable information for designers of analytics engines: for each system we consider, our prototype engine can run at least one popular task at least 100x faster. We conduct our study across five architectures using popular models including SVMs, logistic regression, Gibbs sampling, and neural networks.
1403.7588
Scalable Robust Matrix Recovery: Frank-Wolfe Meets Proximal Methods
math.OC cs.CV cs.NA stat.ML
Recovering matrices from compressive and grossly corrupted observations is a fundamental problem in robust statistics, with rich applications in computer vision and machine learning. In theory, under certain conditions, this problem can be solved in polynomial time via a natural convex relaxation, known as Compressive Principal Component Pursuit (CPCP). However, all existing provable algorithms for CPCP suffer from superlinear per-iteration cost, which severely limits their applicability to large scale problems. In this paper, we propose provable, scalable and efficient methods to solve CPCP with (essentially) linear per-iteration cost. Our method combines classical ideas from Frank-Wolfe and proximal methods. In each iteration, we mainly exploit Frank-Wolfe to update the low-rank component with rank-one SVD and exploit the proximal step for the sparse term. Convergence results and implementation details are also discussed. We demonstrate the scalability of the proposed approach with promising numerical experiments on visual data.
1403.7591
Building A Large Concept Bank for Representing Events in Video
cs.MM cs.CV cs.IR
Concept-based video representation has proven to be effective in complex event detection. However, existing methods either manually design concepts or directly adopt concept libraries not specifically designed for events. In this paper, we propose to build Concept Bank, the largest concept library consisting of 4,876 concepts specifically designed to cover 631 real-world events. To construct the Concept Bank, we first gather a comprehensive event collection from WikiHow, a collaborative writing project that aims to build the world's largest manual for any possible How-To event. For each event, we then search Flickr and discover relevant concepts from the tags of the returned images. We train a Multiple Kernel Linear SVM for each discovered concept as a concept detector in Concept Bank. We organize the concepts into a five-layer tree structure, in which the higher-level nodes correspond to the event categories while the leaf nodes are the event-specific concepts discovered for each event. Based on such tree ontology, we develop a semantic matching method to select relevant concepts for each textual event query, and then apply the corresponding concept detectors to generate concept-based video representations. We use TRECVID Multimedia Event Detection 2013 and Columbia Consumer Video open source event definitions and videos as our test sets and show very promising results on two video event detection tasks: event modeling over concept space and zero-shot event retrieval. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest concept library covering the largest number of real-world events.
1403.7595
Information Filtering on Coupled Social Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In this paper, based on the coupled social networks (CSN), we propose a hybrid algorithm to nonlinearly integrate both social and behavior information of online users. Filtering algorithm based on the coupled social networks, which considers the effects of both social influence and personalized preference. Experimental results on two real datasets, \emph{Epinions} and \emph{Friendfeed}, show that hybrid pattern can not only provide more accurate recommendations, but also can enlarge the recommendation coverage while adopting global metric. Further empirical analyses demonstrate that the mutual reinforcement and rich-club phenomenon can also be found in coupled social networks where the identical individuals occupy the core position of the online system. This work may shed some light on the in-depth understanding structure and function of coupled social networks.
1403.7598
A Non-cooperative Differential Game Model for Frequency Reuse based Channel Allocation in Satellite Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
In this paper, channel resource allocation problem for LEO mobile satellite systems is investigated and a new dynamic channel resource allocation scheme is proposed based on differential game. Optimal channel resource allocated to each satellite beams are formulated as Nash equilibrium. It is proved that optimal channel resource allocation can be achieved and the differential game based scheme is applicable and acceptable. Numerical results shows that system performance can be improved based on the proposed scheme.
1403.7654
Where Businesses Thrive: Predicting the Impact of the Olympic Games on Local Retailers through Location-based Services Data
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The Olympic Games are an important sporting event with notable consequences for the general economic landscape of the host city. Traditional economic assessments focus on the aggregated impact of the event on the national income, but fail to provide micro-scale insights on why local businesses will benefit from the increased activity during the Games. In this paper we provide a novel approach to modeling the impact of the Olympic Games on local retailers by analyzing a dataset mined from a large location-based social service, Foursquare. We hypothesize that the spatial positioning of businesses as well as the mobility trends of visitors are primary indicators of whether retailers will rise their popularity during the event. To confirm this we formulate a retail winners prediction task in the context of which we evaluate a set of geographic and mobility metrics. We find that the proximity to stadiums, the diversity of activity in the neighborhood, the nearby area sociability, as well as the probability of customer flows from and to event places such as stadiums and parks are all vital factors. Through supervised learning techniques we demonstrate that the success of businesses hinges on a combination of both geographic and mobility factors. Our results suggest that location-based social networks, where crowdsourced information about the dynamic interaction of users with urban spaces becomes publicly available, present an alternative medium to assess the economic impact of large scale events in a city.
1403.7657
The Call of the Crowd: Event Participation in Location-based Social Services
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Understanding the social and behavioral forces behind event participation is not only interesting from the viewpoint of social science, but also has important applications in the design of personalized event recommender systems. This paper takes advantage of data from a widely used location-based social network, Foursquare, to analyze event patterns in three metropolitan cities. We put forward several hypotheses on the motivating factors of user participation and confirm that social aspects play a major role in determining the likelihood of a user to participate in an event. While an explicit social filtering signal accounting for whether friends are attending dominates the factors, the popularity of an event proves to also be a strong attractor. Further, we capture an implicit social signal by performing random walks in a high dimensional graph that encodes the place type preferences of friends and that proves especially suited to identify relevant niche events for users. Our findings on the extent to which the various temporal, spatial and social aspects underlie users' event preferences lead us to further hypothesize that a combination of factors better models users' event interests. We verify this through a supervised learning framework. We show that for one in three users in London and one in five users in New York and Chicago it identifies the exact event the user would attend among the pool of suggestions.
1403.7663
Dynamical Systems on Networks: A Tutorial
nlin.AO cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We give a tutorial for the study of dynamical systems on networks. We focus especially on "simple" situations that are tractable analytically, because they can be very insightful and provide useful springboards for the study of more complicated scenarios. We briefly motivate why examining dynamical systems on networks is interesting and important, and we then give several fascinating examples and discuss some theoretical results. We also briefly discuss dynamical systems on dynamical (i.e., time-dependent) networks, overview software implementations, and give an outlook on the field.
1403.7679
Coded Distributed Diversity: A Novel Distributed Reception Technique for Wireless Communication Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider a distributed reception scenario where a transmitter broadcasts a signal to multiple geographically separated receive nodes over fading channels, and each node forwards a few bits representing a processed version of the received signal to a fusion center. The fusion center then tries to decode the transmitted signal based on the forwarded information from the receive nodes and possible channel state information. We show that there is a strong connection between the problem of minimizing a symbol error probability at the fusion center in distributed reception and channel coding in coding theory. This connection allows us to design a unified framework for coded distributed diversity reception. We focus linear block codes such as simplex codes or first-order Reed-Muller codes that achieve the Griesmer bound with equality to maximize the diversity gain. Due to its simple structure, no complex offline optimization process is needed to design the coding structure at the receive nodes for the proposed coded diversity technique. The proposed technique can support a wide array of distributed reception scenarios, i.e., arbitrary $M$-ary symbol transmission at the transmitter and received signal processing with multiple bits at the receive nodes. Numerical studies show that the proposed coded diversity technique can achieve practical symbol error rates even with moderate signal-to-noise ratio and numbers of the receive nodes.
1403.7682
Downlink Analysis for a Heterogeneous Cellular Network
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, a comprehensive study of the the downlink performance in a heterogeneous cellular network (or hetnet) is conducted. A general hetnet model is considered consisting of an arbitrary number of open-access and closed-access tier of base stations (BSs) arranged according to independent homogeneous Poisson point processes. The BSs of each tier have a constant transmission power, random fading coefficient with an arbitrary distribution and arbitrary path-loss exponent of the power-law path-loss model. For such a system, analytical characterizations for the coverage probability and average rate at an arbitrary mobile-station (MS), and average per-tier load are derived for both the max-SINR connectivity and nearest-BS connectivity models. Using stochastic ordering, interesting properties and simplifications for the hetnet downlink performance are derived by relating these two connectivity models to the maximum instantaneous received power (MIRP) connectivity model and the maximum biased received power (MBRP) connectivity models, respectively, providing good insights about the hetnets and the downlink performance in these complex networks. Furthermore, the results also demonstrate the effectiveness and analytical tractability of the stochastic geometric approach to study the hetnet performance.
1403.7683
Approximate Matrix Multiplication with Application to Linear Embeddings
math.ST cs.IT math.IT stat.ML stat.TH
In this paper, we study the problem of approximately computing the product of two real matrices. In particular, we analyze a dimensionality-reduction-based approximation algorithm due to Sarlos [1], introducing the notion of nuclear rank as the ratio of the nuclear norm over the spectral norm. The presented bound has improved dependence with respect to the approximation error (as compared to previous approaches), whereas the subspace -- on which we project the input matrices -- has dimensions proportional to the maximum of their nuclear rank and it is independent of the input dimensions. In addition, we provide an application of this result to linear low-dimensional embeddings. Namely, we show that any Euclidean point-set with bounded nuclear rank is amenable to projection onto number of dimensions that is independent of the input dimensionality, while achieving additive error guarantees.
1403.7691
Mobile Conductance in Sparse Networks and Mobility-Connectivity Tradeoff
cs.NI cs.SI
In this paper, our recently proposed mobile-conductance based analytical framework is extended to the sparse settings, thus offering a unified tool for analyzing information spreading in mobile networks. A penalty factor is identified for information spreading in sparse networks as compared to the connected scenario, which is then intuitively interpreted and verified by simulations. With the analytical results obtained, the mobility-connectivity tradeoff is quantitatively analyzed to determine how much mobility may be exploited to make up for network connectivity deficiency.
1403.7697
MIMO Beamforming in Millimeter-Wave Directional Wi-Fi
cs.IT math.IT
Beamforming is indispensable in the operation of 60-GHz millimeter-wave directional multi-gigabit Wi-Fi. Simple power method and its extensions enable the transmitting and receiving antenna arrays to form a beam for single spatial stream. To further improve the spectral efficiency in future 60-GHz directional Wi-Fi, alternating least square (ALS) algorithm can form multiple beams between the transmitter and receiver for multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) operations. For both shared and split MIMO architecture, the ALS beamforming algorithm can be operated in both frequency-flat and frequency-selective channels. In the split architecture, MIMO beamforming approximately maximizes the capacity of the beam-formed MIMO channel.
1403.7714
Asymptotically-Optimal Motion Planning using Lower Bounds on Cost
cs.RO
Many path-finding algorithms on graphs such as A* are sped up by using a heuristic function that gives lower bounds on the cost to reach the goal. Aiming to apply similar techniques to speed up sampling-based motion-planning algorithms, we use effective lower bounds on the cost between configurations to tightly estimate the cost-to-go. We then use these estimates in an anytime asymptotically-optimal algorithm which we call Motion Planning using Lower Bounds (MPLB). MPLB is based on the Fast Marching Trees (FMT*) algorithm recently presented by Janson and Pavone. An advantage of our approach is that in many cases (especially as the number of samples grows) the weight of collision detection in the computation is almost negligible with respect to nearest-neighbor calls. We prove that MPLB performs no more collision-detection calls than an anytime version of FMT*. Additionally, we demonstrate in simulations that for certain scenarios, the algorithmic tools presented here enable efficiently producing low-cost paths while spending only a small fraction of the running time on collision detection.
1403.7720
Irregular Fractional Repetition Code Optimization for Heterogeneous Cloud Storage
cs.IT math.IT
This paper presents a flexible irregular model for heterogeneous cloud storage systems and investigates how the cost of repairing failed nodes can be minimized. The fractional repetition code, originally designed for minimizing repair bandwidth for homogeneous storage systems, is generalized to the irregular fractional repetition code, which is adaptable to heterogeneous environments. The code structure and the associated storage allocation can be obtained by solving an integer linear programming problem. For moderate sized networks, a heuristic algorithm is proposed and shown to be near-optimal by computer simulations.
1403.7726
Relevant Feature Selection Model Using Data Mining for Intrusion Detection System
cs.CR cs.LG
Network intrusions have become a significant threat in recent years as a result of the increased demand of computer networks for critical systems. Intrusion detection system (IDS) has been widely deployed as a defense measure for computer networks. Features extracted from network traffic can be used as sign to detect anomalies. However with the huge amount of network traffic, collected data contains irrelevant and redundant features that affect the detection rate of the IDS, consumes high amount of system resources, and slowdown the training and testing process of the IDS. In this paper, a new feature selection model is proposed; this model can effectively select the most relevant features for intrusion detection. Our goal is to build a lightweight intrusion detection system by using a reduced features set. Deleting irrelevant and redundant features helps to build a faster training and testing process, to have less resource consumption as well as to maintain high detection rates. The effectiveness and the feasibility of our feature selection model were verified by several experiments on KDD intrusion detection dataset. The experimental results strongly showed that our model is not only able to yield high detection rates but also to speed up the detection process.
1403.7729
Multi-Resource Parallel Query Scheduling and Optimization
cs.DB
Scheduling query execution plans is a particularly complex problem in shared-nothing parallel systems, where each site consists of a collection of local time-shared (e.g., CPU(s) or disk(s)) and space-shared (e.g., memory) resources and communicates with remote sites by message-passing. Earlier work on parallel query scheduling employs either (a) one-dimensional models of parallel task scheduling, effectively ignoring the potential benefits of resource sharing, or (b) models of globally accessible resource units, which are appropriate only for shared-memory architectures, since they cannot capture the affinity of system resources to sites. In this paper, we develop a general approach capturing the full complexity of scheduling distributed, multi-dimensional resource units for all forms of parallelism within and across queries and operators. We present a level-based list scheduling heuristic algorithm for independent query tasks (i.e., physical operator pipelines) that is provably near-optimal for given degrees of partitioned parallelism (with a worst-case performance ratio that depends on the number of time-shared and space-shared resources per site and the granularity of the clones). We also propose extensions to handle blocking constraints in logical operator (e.g., hash-join) pipelines and bushy query plans as well as on-line task arrivals (e.g., in a dynamic or multi-query execution environment). Experiments with our scheduling algorithms implemented on top of a detailed simulation model verify their effectiveness compared to existing approaches in a realistic setting. Based on our analytical and experimental results, we revisit the open problem of designing efficient cost models for parallel query optimization and propose a solution that captures all the important parameters of parallel execution.
1403.7735
Optimal Cooperative Cognitive Relaying and Spectrum Access for an Energy Harvesting Cognitive Radio: Reinforcement Learning Approach
cs.NI cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
In this paper, we consider a cognitive setting under the context of cooperative communications, where the cognitive radio (CR) user is assumed to be a self-organized relay for the network. The CR user and the PU are assumed to be energy harvesters. The CR user cooperatively relays some of the undelivered packets of the primary user (PU). Specifically, the CR user stores a fraction of the undelivered primary packets in a relaying queue (buffer). It manages the flow of the undelivered primary packets to its relaying queue using the appropriate actions over time slots. Moreover, it has the decision of choosing the used queue for channel accessing at idle time slots (slots where the PU's queue is empty). It is assumed that one data packet transmission dissipates one energy packet. The optimal policy changes according to the primary and CR users arrival rates to the data and energy queues as well as the channels connectivity. The CR user saves energy for the PU by taking the responsibility of relaying the undelivered primary packets. It optimally organizes its own energy packets to maximize its payoff as time progresses.
1403.7737
Sharpened Error Bounds for Random Sampling Based $\ell_2$ Regression
cs.LG cs.NA stat.ML
Given a data matrix $X \in R^{n\times d}$ and a response vector $y \in R^{n}$, suppose $n>d$, it costs $O(n d^2)$ time and $O(n d)$ space to solve the least squares regression (LSR) problem. When $n$ and $d$ are both large, exactly solving the LSR problem is very expensive. When $n \gg d$, one feasible approach to speeding up LSR is to randomly embed $y$ and all columns of $X$ into a smaller subspace $R^c$; the induced LSR problem has the same number of columns but much fewer number of rows, and it can be solved in $O(c d^2)$ time and $O(c d)$ space. We discuss in this paper two random sampling based methods for solving LSR more efficiently. Previous work showed that the leverage scores based sampling based LSR achieves $1+\epsilon$ accuracy when $c \geq O(d \epsilon^{-2} \log d)$. In this paper we sharpen this error bound, showing that $c = O(d \log d + d \epsilon^{-1})$ is enough for achieving $1+\epsilon$ accuracy. We also show that when $c \geq O(\mu d \epsilon^{-2} \log d)$, the uniform sampling based LSR attains a $2+\epsilon$ bound with positive probability.
1403.7746
Multi-label Ferns for Efficient Recognition of Musical Instruments in Recordings
cs.LG cs.SD
In this paper we introduce multi-label ferns, and apply this technique for automatic classification of musical instruments in audio recordings. We compare the performance of our proposed method to a set of binary random ferns, using jazz recordings as input data. Our main result is obtaining much faster classification and higher F-score. We also achieve substantial reduction of the model size.
1403.7752
Auto-encoders: reconstruction versus compression
cs.NE cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
We discuss the similarities and differences between training an auto-encoder to minimize the reconstruction error, and training the same auto-encoder to compress the data via a generative model. Minimizing a codelength for the data using an auto-encoder is equivalent to minimizing the reconstruction error plus some correcting terms which have an interpretation as either a denoising or contractive property of the decoding function. These terms are related but not identical to those used in denoising or contractive auto-encoders [Vincent et al. 2010, Rifai et al. 2011]. In particular, the codelength viewpoint fully determines an optimal noise level for the denoising criterion.
1403.7755
On the Construction of Optimal Asymmetric Quantum Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Constacyclic codes are important classes of linear codes that have been applied to the construction of quantum codes. Six new families of asymmetric quantum codes derived from constacyclic codes are constructed in this paper. Moreover, the constructed asymmetric quantum codes are optimal and different from the codes available in the literature.
1403.7766
Enhancing Automated Decision Support across Medical and Oral Health Domains with Semantic Web Technologies
cs.AI cs.IR
Research has shown that the general health and oral health of an individual are closely related. Accordingly, current practice of isolating the information base of medical and oral health domains can be dangerous and detrimental to the health of the individual. However, technical issues such as heterogeneous data collection and storage formats, limited sharing of patient information and lack of decision support over the shared information are the principal reasons for the current state of affairs. To address these issues, the following research investigates the development and application of a cross-domain ontology and rules to build an evidence-based and reusable knowledge base consisting of the inter-dependent conditions from the two domains. Through example implementation of the knowledge base in Protege, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in reasoning over and providing decision support for cross-domain patient information.
1403.7772
Twitter in Academic Conferences: Usage, Networking and Participation over Time
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
Twitter is often referred to as a backchannel for conferences. While the main conference takes place in a physical setting, attendees and virtual attendees socialize, introduce new ideas or broadcast information by microblogging on Twitter. In this paper we analyze the scholars' Twitter use in 16 Computer Science conferences over a timespan of five years. Our primary finding is that over the years there are increasing differences with respect to conversation use and information use in Twitter. We studied the interaction network between users to understand whether assumptions about the structure of the conversations hold over time and between different types of interactions, such as retweets, replies, and mentions. While `people come and people go', we want to understand what keeps people stay with the conference on Twitter. By casting the problem to a classification task, we find different factors that contribute to the continuing participation of users to the online Twitter conference activity. These results have implications for research communities to implement strategies for continuous and active participation among members.
1403.7774
Study and Capacity Evaluation of SISO, MISO and MIMO RF Wireless Communication Systems
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
The wireless communication systems has gone from different generations from SISO systems to MIMO systems. Bandwidth is one important constraint in wireless communication. In wireless communication, high data transmission rates are essential for the services like tripple play i.e. data, voice and video. At user end the capacity determines the quality of the communication systems. This paper aims to compare the different RF wireless communication systems like SISO, MISO, SIMO and MIMO systems on the capacity basis and explaining the concept as today, the wireless communication has evolved from 2G, 3G to 4G and the companies are fighting to create networks with more and more capacity so that data rates can be increased and customers can be benefitted more. The ultimate goal of wireless communication systems is to create a global personal and multimedia communication without any capacity issues.
1403.7783
Extraction of Line Word Character Segments Directly from Run Length Compressed Printed Text Documents
cs.CV
Segmentation of a text-document into lines, words and characters, which is considered to be the crucial pre-processing stage in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is traditionally carried out on uncompressed documents, although most of the documents in real life are available in compressed form, for the reasons such as transmission and storage efficiency. However, this implies that the compressed image should be decompressed, which indents additional computing resources. This limitation has motivated us to take up research in document image analysis using compressed documents. In this paper, we think in a new way to carry out segmentation at line, word and character level in run-length compressed printed-text-documents. We extract the horizontal projection profile curve from the compressed file and using the local minima points perform line segmentation. However, tracing vertical information which leads to tracking words-characters in a run-length compressed file is not very straight forward. Therefore, we propose a novel technique for carrying out simultaneous word and character segmentation by popping out column runs from each row in an intelligent sequence. The proposed algorithms have been validated with 1101 text-lines, 1409 words and 7582 characters from a data-set of 35 noise and skew free compressed documents of Bengali, Kannada and English Scripts.
1403.7790
Optimal Two Player LQR State Feedback With Varying Delay
math.OC cs.SY
This paper presents an explicit solution to a two player distributed LQR problem in which communication between controllers occurs across a communication link with varying delay. We extend known dynamic programming methods to accommodate this varying delay, and show that under suitable assumptions, the optimal control actions are linear in their information, and that the resulting controller has piecewise linear dynamics dictated by the current effective delay regime.
1403.7792
Swarm Intelligence Based Algorithms: A Critical Analysis
math.OC cs.NE nlin.AO
Many optimization algorithms have been developed by drawing inspiration from swarm intelligence (SI). These SI-based algorithms can have some advantages over traditional algorithms. In this paper, we carry out a critical analysis of these SI-based algorithms by analyzing their ways to mimic evolutionary operators. We also analyze the ways of achieving exploration and exploitation in algorithms by using mutation, crossover and selection. In addition, we also look at algorithms using dynamic systems, self-organization and Markov chain framework. Finally, we provide some discussions and topics for further research.
1403.7793
True Global Optimality of the Pressure Vessel Design Problem: A Benchmark for Bio-Inspired Optimisation Algorithms
math.OC cs.NE nlin.AO
The pressure vessel design problem is a well-known design benchmark for validating bio-inspired optimization algorithms. However, its global optimality is not clear and there has been no mathematical proof put forward. In this paper, a detailed mathematical analysis of this problem is provided that proves that 6059.714335048436 is the global minimum. The Lagrange multiplier method is also used as an alternative proof and this method is extended to find the global optimum of a cantilever beam design problem.
1403.7795
Bio-Inspired Computation: Success and Challenges of IJBIC
math.OC cs.NE
It is now five years since the launch of the International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation (IJBIC). At the same time, significant new progress has been made in the area of bio-inspired computation. This review paper summarizes the success and achievements of IJBIC in the past five years, and also highlights the challenges and key issues for further research.
1403.7802
Capacity Analysis of LTE-Advanced HetNets with Reduced Power Subframes and Range Expansion
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
The time domain inter-cell interference coordination techniques specified in LTE Rel. 10 standard improves the throughput of picocell-edge users by protecting them from macrocell interference. On the other hand, it also degrades the aggregate capacity in macrocell because the macro base station (MBS) does not transmit data during certain subframes known as almost blank subframes. The MBS data transmission using reduced power subframes was standardized in LTE Rel. 11, which can improve the capacity in macrocell while not causing high interference to the nearby picocells. In order to get maximum benefit from the reduced power subframes, setting the key system parameters, such as the amount of power reduction, carries critical importance. Using stochastic geometry, this paper lays down a theoretical foundation for the performance evaluation of heterogeneous networks with reduced power subframes and range expansion bias. The analytic expressions for average capacity and 5th percentile throughput are derived as a function of transmit powers, node densities, and interference coordination parameters in a heterogeneous network scenario, and are validated through Monte Carlo simulations. Joint optimization of range expansion bias, power reduction factor, scheduling thresholds, and duty cycle of reduced power subframes are performed to study the trade-offs between aggregate capacity of a cell and fairness among the users. To validate our analysis, we also compare the stochastic geometry based theoretical results with the real MBS deployment (in the city of London) and the hexagonal-grid model. Our analysis shows that with optimum parameter settings, the LTE Rel. 11 with reduced power subframes can provide substantially better performance than the LTE Rel. 10 with almost blank subframes, in terms of both aggregate capacity and fairness.
1403.7806
Unbiased Black-Box Complexities of Jump Functions
cs.NE
We analyze the unbiased black-box complexity of jump functions with small, medium, and large sizes of the fitness plateau surrounding the optimal solution. Among other results, we show that when the jump size is $(1/2 - \varepsilon)n$, that is, only a small constant fraction of the fitness values is visible, then the unbiased black-box complexities for arities $3$ and higher are of the same order as those for the simple \textsc{OneMax} function. Even for the extreme jump function, in which all but the two fitness values $n/2$ and $n$ are blanked out, polynomial-time mutation-based (i.e., unary unbiased) black-box optimization algorithms exist. This is quite surprising given that for the extreme jump function almost the whole search space (all but a $\Theta(n^{-1/2})$ fraction) is a plateau of constant fitness. To prove these results, we introduce new tools for the analysis of unbiased black-box complexities, for example, selecting the new parent individual not by comparing the fitnesses of the competing search points, but also by taking into account the (empirical) expected fitnesses of their offspring.
1403.7827
Motif-based success scores in coauthorship networks are highly sensitive to author name disambiguation
physics.soc-ph cs.DL cs.SI
Following the work of Krumov et al. [Eur. Phys. J. B 84, 535 (2011)] we revisit the question whether the usage of large citation datasets allows for the quantitative assessment of social (by means of coauthorship of publications) influence on the progression of science. Applying a more comprehensive and well-curated dataset containing the publications in the journals of the American Physical Society during the whole 20th century we find that the measure chosen in the original study, a score based on small induced subgraphs, has to be used with caution, since the obtained results are highly sensitive to the exact implementation of the author disambiguation task.
1403.7841
Proceedings 1st International Workshop on Synthesis of Continuous Parameters
cs.SC cs.FL cs.SY
This volume contains the proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Synthesis of Continuous Parameters (SynCoP'14). The workshop was held in Grenoble, France on April 6th, 2014, as a satellite event of the 17th European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS'14). SynCoP aims at bringing together researchers working on parameter synthesis for systems with continuous variables, where the parameters consist of a (usually dense) set of constant values. Synthesis problems for such parameters arise for real-time, hybrid or probabilistic systems in a large variety application domains. A parameter could be, e.g., a delay in a real-time system, or a reaction rate in a biological cell model. The objective of the synthesis problem is to identify suitable parameters to achieve desired behavior, or to verify the behavior for a given range of parameter values. This volume contains seven contributions: two invited talks and five regular papers.
1403.7846
Distributed Channel Quantization for Two-User Interference Networks
cs.IT math.IT
We introduce conferencing-based distributed channel quantizers for two-user interference networks where interference signals are treated as noise. Compared with the conventional distributed quantizers where each receiver quantizes its own channel independently, the proposed quantizers allow multiple rounds of feedback communication in the form of conferencing between receivers. We take the network outage probabilities of sum rate and minimum rate as performance measures and consider quantizer design in the transmission strategies of time sharing and interference transmission. First, we propose distributed quantizers that achieve the optimal network outage probability of sum rate for both time sharing and interference transmission strategies with an average feedback rate of only two bits per channel state. Then, for the time sharing strategy, we propose a distributed quantizer that achieves the optimal network outage probability of minimum rate with finite average feedback rate; conventional quantizers require infinite rate to achieve the same performance. For the interference transmission strategy, a distributed quantizer that can approach the optimal network outage probability of minimum rate closely is also proposed. Numerical simulations confirm that our distributed quantizers based on conferencing outperform the conventional ones.
1403.7851
Adaptive Linear Programming Decoding of Polar Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Polar codes are high density parity check codes and hence the sparse factor graph, instead of the parity check matrix, has been used to practically represent an LP polytope for LP decoding. Although LP decoding on this polytope has the ML-certificate property, it performs poorly over a BAWGN channel. In this paper, we propose modifications to adaptive cut generation based LP decoding techniques and apply the modified-adaptive LP decoder to short blocklength polar codes over a BAWGN channel. The proposed decoder provides significant FER performance gain compared to the previously proposed LP decoder and its performance approaches that of ML decoding at high SNRs. We also present an algorithm to obtain a smaller factor graph from the original sparse factor graph of a polar code. This reduced factor graph preserves the small check node degrees needed to represent the LP polytope in practice. We show that the fundamental polytope of the reduced factor graph can be obtained from the projection of the polytope represented by the original sparse factor graph and the frozen bit information. Thus, the LP decoding time complexity is decreased without changing the FER performance by using the reduced factor graph representation.
1403.7869
Application des techniques d'ench\`eres dans les r\'eseaux de radio cognitive
cs.NI cs.MA
The rapid proliferation of standards and radio services in recent years caused the problem of spectrum scarcity. The main objective of Cognitive Radio (CR) is to facilitate access to radio spectrum. Our contribution in this paper is the use of auctions to solve the problem of spectrum congestion in the context of CR, for that, we will combine the theory of auctions with multi-agent systems. Our approach has shown that it is preferable to use the Sealed-bid Auction with dynamic programming because this method has many advantages over other methods. --- La prolif\'eration rapide de standards et services de radiocommunication ces derni\`eres ann\'ees provoquent le probl\`eme de la p\'enurie du spectre. Dans ce contexte, l'objectif principal de la Radio Cognitive (RC) est de faciliter l'acc\`es au spectre radio. Notre contribution dans le cadre de ce papier est l'utilisation des ench\`eres pour r\'esoudre le probl\`eme de l'encombrement du spectre dans le cadre de la RC. Pour cela, nous avons combin\'e la th\'eorie des ench\`eres avec les syst\`emes multi agents. Notre approche a prouv\'e qu'il est pr\'ef\'erable d'utiliser les ench\`eres \`a Enveloppe Scell\'ee avec programmation dynamique car cette m\'ethode a beaucoup d'avantages par rapport aux autres m\'ethodes.
1403.7870
Optimized Training Design for Wireless Energy Transfer
cs.IT math.IT
Radio-frequency (RF) enabled wireless energy transfer (WET), as a promising solution to provide cost-effective and reliable power supplies for energy-constrained wireless networks, has drawn growing interests recently. To overcome the significant propagation loss over distance, employing multi-antennas at the energy transmitter (ET) to more efficiently direct wireless energy to desired energy receivers (ERs), termed \emph{energy beamforming}, is an essential technique for enabling WET. However, the achievable gain of energy beamforming crucially depends on the available channel state information (CSI) at the ET, which needs to be acquired practically. In this paper, we study the design of an efficient channel acquisition method for a point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) WET system by exploiting the channel reciprocity, i.e., the ET estimates the CSI via dedicated reverse-link training from the ER. Considering the limited energy availability at the ER, the training strategy should be carefully designed so that the channel can be estimated with sufficient accuracy, and yet without consuming excessive energy at the ER. To this end, we propose to maximize the \emph{net} harvested energy at the ER, which is the average harvested energy offset by that used for channel training. An optimization problem is formulated for the training design over MIMO Rician fading channels, including the subset of ER antennas to be trained, as well as the training time and power allocated. Closed-form solutions are obtained for some special scenarios, based on which useful insights are drawn on when training should be employed to improve the net transferred energy in MIMO WET systems.
1403.7876
Correlation Filters with Limited Boundaries
cs.CV
Correlation filters take advantage of specific properties in the Fourier domain allowing them to be estimated efficiently: O(NDlogD) in the frequency domain, versus O(D^3 + ND^2) spatially where D is signal length, and N is the number of signals. Recent extensions to correlation filters, such as MOSSE, have reignited interest of their use in the vision community due to their robustness and attractive computational properties. In this paper we demonstrate, however, that this computational efficiency comes at a cost. Specifically, we demonstrate that only 1/D proportion of shifted examples are unaffected by boundary effects which has a dramatic effect on detection/tracking performance. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to correlation filter estimation that: (i) takes advantage of inherent computational redundancies in the frequency domain, and (ii) dramatically reduces boundary effects. Impressive object tracking and detection results are presented in terms of both accuracy and computational efficiency.
1403.7877
ROML: A Robust Feature Correspondence Approach for Matching Objects in A Set of Images
cs.CV
Feature-based object matching is a fundamental problem for many applications in computer vision, such as object recognition, 3D reconstruction, tracking, and motion segmentation. In this work, we consider simultaneously matching object instances in a set of images, where both inlier and outlier features are extracted. The task is to identify the inlier features and establish their consistent correspondences across the image set. This is a challenging combinatorial problem, and the problem complexity grows exponentially with the image number. To this end, we propose a novel framework, termed ROML, to address this problem. ROML optimizes simultaneously a partial permutation matrix (PPM) for each image, and feature correspondences are established by the obtained PPMs. Two of our key contributions are summarized as follows. (1) We formulate the problem as rank and sparsity minimization for PPM optimization, and treat simultaneous optimization of multiple PPMs as a regularized consensus problem in the context of distributed optimization. (2) We use the ADMM method to solve the thus formulated ROML problem, in which a subproblem associated with a single PPM optimization appears to be a difficult integer quadratic program (IQP). We prove that under wildly applicable conditions, this IQP is equivalent to a linear sum assignment problem (LSAP), which can be efficiently solved to an exact solution. Extensive experiments on rigid/non-rigid object matching, matching instances of a common object category, and common object localization show the efficacy of our proposed method.
1403.7879
Triadic motifs in the dependence networks of virtual societies
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
In friendship networks, individuals have different numbers of friends, and the closeness or intimacy between an individual and her friends is heterogeneous. Using a statistical filtering method to identify relationships about who depends on whom, we construct dependence networks (which are directed) from weighted friendship networks of avatars in more than two hundred virtual societies of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). We investigate the evolution of triadic motifs in dependence networks. Several metrics show that the virtual societies evolved through a transient stage in the first two to three weeks and reached a relatively stable stage. We find that the unidirectional loop motif (${\rm{M}}_9$) is underrepresented and does not appear, open motifs are also underrepresented, while other close motifs are overrepresented. We also find that, for most motifs, the overall level difference of the three avatars in the same motif is significantly lower than average, whereas the sum of ranks is only slightly larger than average. Our findings show that avatars' social status plays an important role in the formation of triadic motifs.
1403.7883
Multiple-Access Relay Wiretap Channel
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we investigate the effects of an additional trusted relay node on the secrecy of multiple-access wiretap channel (MAC-WT) by considering the model of multiple-access relay wiretap channel (MARC-WT). More specifically, first, we investigate the discrete memoryless MARC-WT. Three inner bounds (with respect to decode-forward (DF), noise-forward (NF) and compress-forward (CF) strategies) on the secrecy capacity region are provided. Second, we investigate the degraded discrete memoryless MARC-WT, and present an outer bound on the secrecy capacity region of this degraded model. Finally, we investigate the Gaussian MARC-WT, and find that the NF and CF strategies help to enhance Tekin-Yener's achievable secrecy rate region of Gaussian MAC-WT. Moreover, we find that if the noise variance of the transmitters-relay channel is smaller than that of the transmitters-receiver channel, the DF strategy may also enhance Tekin-Yener's achievable secrecy rate region of Gaussian MAC-WT, and it may perform even better than the NF and CF strategies.
1403.7890
Sparse K-Means with $\ell_{\infty}/\ell_0$ Penalty for High-Dimensional Data Clustering
stat.ML cs.LG stat.ME
Sparse clustering, which aims to find a proper partition of an extremely high-dimensional data set with redundant noise features, has been attracted more and more interests in recent years. The existing studies commonly solve the problem in a framework of maximizing the weighted feature contributions subject to a $\ell_2/\ell_1$ penalty. Nevertheless, this framework has two serious drawbacks: One is that the solution of the framework unavoidably involves a considerable portion of redundant noise features in many situations, and the other is that the framework neither offers intuitive explanations on why this framework can select relevant features nor leads to any theoretical guarantee for feature selection consistency. In this article, we attempt to overcome those drawbacks through developing a new sparse clustering framework which uses a $\ell_{\infty}/\ell_0$ penalty. First, we introduce new concepts on optimal partitions and noise features for the high-dimensional data clustering problems, based on which the previously known framework can be intuitively explained in principle. Then, we apply the suggested $\ell_{\infty}/\ell_0$ framework to formulate a new sparse k-means model with the $\ell_{\infty}/\ell_0$ penalty ($\ell_0$-k-means for short). We propose an efficient iterative algorithm for solving the $\ell_0$-k-means. To deeply understand the behavior of $\ell_0$-k-means, we prove that the solution yielded by the $\ell_0$-k-means algorithm has feature selection consistency whenever the data matrix is generated from a high-dimensional Gaussian mixture model. Finally, we provide experiments with both synthetic data and the Allen Developing Mouse Brain Atlas data to support that the proposed $\ell_0$-k-means exhibits better noise feature detection capacity over the previously known sparse k-means with the $\ell_2/\ell_1$ penalty ($\ell_1$-k-means for short).
1403.7899
Identifying User Behavior in domain-specific Repositories
cs.DL cs.IR
This paper presents an analysis of the user behavior of two different domain-specific repositories. The web analytic tool etracker was used to gain a first overall insight into the user behavior of these repositories. Moreover, we extended our work to describe an apache web log analysis approach which focuses on the identification of the user behavior. Therefore the user traffic within our systems is visualized using chord diagrams. We could find that recommendations are used frequently and users do rarely combine searching with faceting or filtering.
1403.7920
Computing the dimension of ideals in group algebras, with an application to coding theory
cs.IT math.IT math.RA
The problem of computing the dimension of a left/right ideal in a group algebra F[G] of a finite group G over a field F is considered. The ideal dimension is related to the rank of a matrix originating from a regular left/right representation of G; in particular, when F[G] is semisimple, the dimension of a principal ideal is equal to the rank of the matrix representing a generator. From this observation, a bound and an efficient algorithm to compute the dimension of an ideal in a group ring are established. Since group codes are ideals in finite group rings, the algorithm allows efficient computation of their dimension.
1403.7923
Using perceptually defined music features in music information retrieval
cs.IR cs.SD
In this study, the notion of perceptual features is introduced for describing general music properties based on human perception. This is an attempt at rethinking the concept of features, in order to understand the underlying human perception mechanisms. Instead of using concepts from music theory such as tones, pitches, and chords, a set of nine features describing overall properties of the music was selected. They were chosen from qualitative measures used in psychology studies and motivated from an ecological approach. The selected perceptual features were rated in two listening experiments using two different data sets. They were modeled both from symbolic (MIDI) and audio data using different sets of computational features. Ratings of emotional expression were predicted using the perceptual features. The results indicate that (1) at least some of the perceptual features are reliable estimates; (2) emotion ratings could be predicted by a small combination of perceptual features with an explained variance up to 90%; (3) the perceptual features could only to a limited extent be modeled using existing audio features. The results also clearly indicated that a small number of dedicated features were superior to a 'brute force' model using a large number of general audio features.
1403.7928
Integrated Data Acquisition, Storage, Retrieval and Processing Using the COMPASS DataBase (CDB)
cs.DB
We present a complex data handling system for the COMPASS tokamak, operated by IPP ASCR Prague, Czech Republic [1]. The system, called CDB (Compass DataBase), integrates different data sources as an assortment of data acquisition hardware and software from different vendors is used. Based on widely available open source technologies wherever possible, CDB is vendor and platform independent and it can be easily scaled and distributed. The data is directly stored and retrieved using a standard NAS (Network Attached Storage), hence independent of the particular technology; the description of the data (the metadata) is recorded in a relational database. Database structure is general and enables the inclusion of multi-dimensional data signals in multiple revisions (no data is overwritten). This design is inherently distributed as the work is off-loaded to the clients. Both NAS and database can be implemented and optimized for fast local access as well as secure remote access. CDB is implemented in Python language; bindings for Java, C/C++, IDL and Matlab are provided. Independent data acquisitions systems as well as nodes managed by FireSignal [2] are all integrated using CDB. An automated data post-processing server is a part of CDB. Based on dependency rules, the server executes, in parallel if possible, prescribed post-processing tasks.
1403.7933
Additive codes over $GF(4)$ from circulant graphs
math.CO cs.DM cs.IT math.IT
In $2006$, Danielsen and Parker \cite{DP} proved that every self-dual additive code over $GF(4)$ is equivalent to a graph code. So, graph is an important tool for searching (proposed) optimum codes. In this paper, we introduce a new method of searching (proposed) optimum additive codes from circulant graphs.
1403.7948
Structure of conflict graphs in constraint alignment problems and algorithms
cs.DS cs.CE
We consider the constrained graph alignment problem which has applications in biological network analysis. Given two input graphs $G_1=(V_1,E_1), G_2=(V_2,E_2)$, a pair of vertex mappings induces an {\it edge conservation} if the vertex pairs are adjacent in their respective graphs. %In general terms The goal is to provide a one-to-one mapping between the vertices of the input graphs in order to maximize edge conservation. However the allowed mappings are restricted since each vertex from $V_1$ (resp. $V_2$) is allowed to be mapped to at most $m_1$ (resp. $m_2$) specified vertices in $V_2$ (resp. $V_1$). Most of results in this paper deal with the case $m_2=1$ which attracted most attention in the related literature. We formulate the problem as a maximum independent set problem in a related {\em conflict graph} and investigate structural properties of this graph in terms of forbidden subgraphs. We are interested, in particular, in excluding certain wheals, fans, cliques or claws (all terms are defined in the paper), which corresponds in excluding certain cycles, paths, cliques or independent sets in the neighborhood of each vertex. Then, we investigate algorithmic consequences of some of these properties, which illustrates the potential of this approach and raises new horizons for further works. In particular this approach allows us to reinterpret a known polynomial case in terms of conflict graph and to improve known approximation and fixed-parameter tractability results through efficiently solving the maximum independent set problem in conflict graphs. Some of our new approximation results involve approximation ratios that are function of the optimal value, in particular its square root; this kind of results cannot be achieved for maximum independent set in general graphs.
1403.7970
Direct design of LPV feedback controllers: technical details and numerical examples
cs.SY
The paper contains technical details of recent results developed by the author, regarding the design of LPV controllers directly from experimental data. Two numerical examples are also presented, about control of the Duffing oscillator and control of a two-degree-of-freedom manipulator.
1403.7985
Relative generalized Hamming weights of one-point algebraic geometric codes
cs.IT math.AG math.IT
Security of linear ramp secret sharing schemes can be characterized by the relative generalized Hamming weights of the involved codes. In this paper we elaborate on the implication of these parameters and we devise a method to estimate their value for general one-point algebraic geometric codes. As it is demonstrated, for Hermitian codes our bound is often tight. Furthermore, for these codes the relative generalized Hamming weights are often much larger than the corresponding generalized Hamming weights.
1403.8003
Probabilistic Intra-Retinal Layer Segmentation in 3-D OCT Images Using Global Shape Regularization
cs.CV
With the introduction of spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT), resulting in a significant increase in acquisition speed, the fast and accurate segmentation of 3-D OCT scans has become evermore important. This paper presents a novel probabilistic approach, that models the appearance of retinal layers as well as the global shape variations of layer boundaries. Given an OCT scan, the full posterior distribution over segmentations is approximately inferred using a variational method enabling efficient probabilistic inference in terms of computationally tractable model components: Segmenting a full 3-D volume takes around a minute. Accurate segmentations demonstrate the benefit of using global shape regularization: We segmented 35 fovea-centered 3-D volumes with an average unsigned error of 2.46 $\pm$ 0.22 {\mu}m as well as 80 normal and 66 glaucomatous 2-D circular scans with errors of 2.92 $\pm$ 0.53 {\mu}m and 4.09 $\pm$ 0.98 {\mu}m respectively. Furthermore, we utilized the inferred posterior distribution to rate the quality of the segmentation, point out potentially erroneous regions and discriminate normal from pathological scans. No pre- or postprocessing was required and we used the same set of parameters for all data sets, underlining the robustness and out-of-the-box nature of our approach.
1403.8024
Replica Analysis and Approximate Message Passing Decoder for Superposition Codes
cs.IT cond-mat.dis-nn math.IT
Superposition codes are efficient for the Additive White Gaussian Noise channel. We provide here a replica analysis of the performances of these codes for large signals. We also consider a Bayesian Approximate Message Passing decoder based on a belief-propagation approach, and discuss its performance using the density evolution technic. Our main findings are 1) for the sizes we can access, the message-passing decoder outperforms other decoders studied in the literature 2) its performance is limited by a sharp phase transition and 3) while these codes reach capacity as $B$ (a crucial parameter in the code) increases, the performance of the message passing decoder worsen as the phase transition goes to lower rates.
1403.8034
Keep Your Friends Close and Your Facebook Friends Closer: A Multiplex Network Approach to the Analysis of Offline and Online Social Ties
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Social media allow for an unprecedented amount of interaction between people online. A fundamental aspect of human social behavior, however, is the tendency of people to associate themselves with like-minded individuals, forming homogeneous social circles both online and offline. In this work, we apply a new model that allows us to distinguish between social ties of varying strength, and to observe evidence of homophily with regards to politics, music, health, residential sector & year in college, within the online and offline social network of 74 college students. We present a multiplex network approach to social tie strength, here applied to mobile communication data - calls, text messages, and co-location, allowing us to dimensionally identify relationships by considering the number of communication channels utilized between students. We find that strong social ties are characterized by maximal use of communication channels, while weak ties by minimal use. We are able to identify 75% of close friendships, 90% of weaker ties, and 90% of Facebook friendships as compared to reported ground truth. We then show that stronger ties exhibit greater profile similarity than weaker ones. Apart from high homogeneity in social circles with respect to political and health aspects, we observe strong homophily driven by music, residential sector and year in college. Despite Facebook friendship being highly dependent on residence and year, exposure to less homogeneous content can be found in the online rather than the offline social circles of students, most notably in political and music aspects.
1403.8042
Optimal Power Allocation for Three-phase Bidirectional DF Relaying with Fixed Rates
cs.IT math.IT
Wireless systems that carry delay-sensitive information (such as speech and/or video signals) typically transmit with fixed data rates, but may occasionally suffer from transmission outages caused by the random nature of the fading channels. If the transmitter has instantaneous channel state information (CSI) available, it can compensate for a significant portion of these outages by utilizing power allocation. In this paper, we consider optimal power allocation for a conventional dual-hop bidirectional decode-and-forward (DF) relaying system with a three-phase transmission protocol. The proposed strategy minimizes the average power consumed by the end nodes and the relay, subject to some maximum allowable system outage probability (OP), or equivalently, minimizes the system OP while meeting average power constraints at the end nodes and the relay. We show that in the proposed power allocation scheme, the end nodes and the relay adjust their output powers to the minimum level required to avoid outages, but will sometimes be silent, in order to conserve power and prolong their lifetimes. For the proposed scheme, the end nodes use the instantaneous CSI of their respective source-relay links and the relay uses the instantaneous CSI of both links.
1403.8046
Chemlambda, universality and self-multiplication
cs.AI math.GT math.LO
We present chemlambda (or the chemical concrete machine), an artificial chemistry with the following properties: (a) is Turing complete, (b) has a model of decentralized, distributed computing associated to it, (c) works at the level of individual (artificial) molecules, subject of reversible, but otherwise deterministic interactions with a small number of enzymes, (d) encodes information in the geometrical structure of the molecules and not in their numbers, (e) all interactions are purely local in space and time. This is part of a larger project to create computing, artificial chemistry and artificial life in a distributed context, using topological and graphical languages.
1403.8067
Robust Subspace Recovery via Bi-Sparsity Pursuit
cs.CV
Successful applications of sparse models in computer vision and machine learning imply that in many real-world applications, high dimensional data is distributed in a union of low dimensional subspaces. Nevertheless, the underlying structure may be affected by sparse errors and/or outliers. In this paper, we propose a bi-sparse model as a framework to analyze this problem and provide a novel algorithm to recover the union of subspaces in presence of sparse corruptions. We further show the effectiveness of our method by experiments on both synthetic data and real-world vision data.
1403.8084
Privacy Tradeoffs in Predictive Analytics
cs.CR cs.LG
Online services routinely mine user data to predict user preferences, make recommendations, and place targeted ads. Recent research has demonstrated that several private user attributes (such as political affiliation, sexual orientation, and gender) can be inferred from such data. Can a privacy-conscious user benefit from personalization while simultaneously protecting her private attributes? We study this question in the context of a rating prediction service based on matrix factorization. We construct a protocol of interactions between the service and users that has remarkable optimality properties: it is privacy-preserving, in that no inference algorithm can succeed in inferring a user's private attribute with a probability better than random guessing; it has maximal accuracy, in that no other privacy-preserving protocol improves rating prediction; and, finally, it involves a minimal disclosure, as the prediction accuracy strictly decreases when the service reveals less information. We extensively evaluate our protocol using several rating datasets, demonstrating that it successfully blocks the inference of gender, age and political affiliation, while incurring less than 5% decrease in the accuracy of rating prediction.
1403.8093
The Lossy Common Information of Correlated Sources
cs.IT math.IT
The two most prevalent notions of common information (CI) are due to Wyner and Gacs-Korner and both the notions can be stated as two different characteristic points in the lossless Gray-Wyner region. Although the information theoretic characterizations for these two CI quantities can be easily evaluated for random variables with infinite entropy (eg., continuous random variables), their operational significance is applicable only to the lossless framework. The primary objective of this paper is to generalize these two CI notions to the lossy Gray-Wyner network, which hence extends the theoretical foundation to general sources and distortion measures. We begin by deriving a single letter characterization for the lossy generalization of Wyner's CI, defined as the minimum rate on the shared branch of the Gray-Wyner network, maintaining minimum sum transmit rate when the two decoders reconstruct the sources subject to individual distortion constraints. To demonstrate its use, we compute the CI of bivariate Gaussian random variables for the entire regime of distortions. We then similarly generalize Gacs and Korner's definition to the lossy framework. The latter half of the paper focuses on studying the tradeoff between the total transmit rate and receive rate in the Gray-Wyner network. We show that this tradeoff yields a contour of points on the surface of the Gray-Wyner region, which passes through both the Wyner and Gacs-Korner operating points, and thereby provides a unified framework to understand the different notions of CI. We further show that this tradeoff generalizes the two notions of CI to the excess sum transmit rate and receive rate regimes, respectively.
1403.8098
Hyperspectral image superresolution: An edge-preserving convex formulation
cs.CV physics.data-an stat.ML
Hyperspectral remote sensing images (HSIs) are characterized by having a low spatial resolution and a high spectral resolution, whereas multispectral images (MSIs) are characterized by low spectral and high spatial resolutions. These complementary characteristics have stimulated active research in the inference of images with high spatial and spectral resolutions from HSI-MSI pairs. In this paper, we formulate this data fusion problem as the minimization of a convex objective function containing two data-fitting terms and an edge-preserving regularizer. The data-fitting terms are quadratic and account for blur, different spatial resolutions, and additive noise; the regularizer, a form of vector Total Variation, promotes aligned discontinuities across the reconstructed hyperspectral bands. The optimization described above is rather hard, owing to its non-diagonalizable linear operators, to the non-quadratic and non-smooth nature of the regularizer, and to the very large size of the image to be inferred. We tackle these difficulties by tailoring the Split Augmented Lagrangian Shrinkage Algorithm (SALSA)---an instance of the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM)---to this optimization problem. By using a convenient variable splitting and by exploiting the fact that HSIs generally "live" in a low-dimensional subspace, we obtain an effective algorithm that yields state-of-the-art results, as illustrated by experiments.
1403.8118
E-Generalization Using Grammars
cs.LO cs.AI cs.FL
We extend the notion of anti-unification to cover equational theories and present a method based on regular tree grammars to compute a finite representation of E-generalization sets. We present a framework to combine Inductive Logic Programming and E-generalization that includes an extension of Plotkin's lgg theorem to the equational case. We demonstrate the potential power of E-generalization by three example applications: computation of suggestions for auxiliary lemmas in equational inductive proofs, computation of construction laws for given term sequences, and learning of screen editor command sequences.
1403.8122
Performance of Selection Combining for Differential Amplify-and-Forward Relaying Over Time-Varying Channels
cs.IT math.IT
Selection combining (SC) at the destination for differential amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying is attractive as it does not require channel state information as compared to the semi maximum-ratio-combining (semi-MRC) while delivering close performance. Performance analysis of the SC scheme was recently reported but only for the case of slow-fading channels. This paper provides an exact average bit-error-rate (BER) of the SC scheme over a general case of time-varying Rayleigh fading channels and when the DBPSK modulation is used together with the non-coherent detection at the destination. The presented analysis is thoroughly verified with simulation results in various fading scenarios. It is shown that the performance of the system is related to the auto-correlation values of the channels. It is also shown that the performance of the SC method is very close to that of the semi-MRC method and the existence of an error floor at high signal-to-noise ratio region is inevitable in both methods. The obtained BER analysis for the SC method can also be used to approximate the BER performance of the MRC method, whose exact analytical evaluation in time-varying channels appears to be difficult.
1403.8128
Performance of Differential Amplify-and-Forward Relaying in Multi-Node Wireless Communications
cs.IT math.IT
This paper is concerned with the performance of differential amplify-and-forward (D-AF) relaying for multi-node wireless communications over time-varying Rayleigh fading channels. A first-order auto-regressive model is utilized to characterize the time-varying nature of the channels. Based on the secondorder statistical properties of the wireless channels, a new set of combining weights is proposed for signal detection at the destination. Expression of pair-wise error probability (PEP) is provided and used to obtain the approximated total average bit error probability (BER). It is shown that the performance of the system is related to the auto-correlation of the direct and cascaded channels and an irreducible error floor exists at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The new weights lead to a better performance when compared to the conventional combining scheme. Computer simulation is carried out in different scenarios to support the analysis.
1403.8130
Selection Combining for Differential Amplify-and-Forward Relaying Over Rayleigh-Fading Channel
cs.IT math.IT
This paper proposes and analyses selection combining (SC) at the destination for differential amplify-andforward (D-AF) relaying over slow Rayleigh-fading channels. The selection combiner chooses the link with the maximum magnitude of the decision variable to be used for non-coherent detection of the transmitted symbols. Therefore, in contrast to the maximum ratio combining (MRC), no channel information is needed at the destination. The exact average bit-error-rate (BER) of the proposed SC is derived and verified with simulation results. It is also shown that the performance of the SC method is very close to that of the MRC method, albeit with lower complexity
1403.8144
Coding for Random Projections and Approximate Near Neighbor Search
cs.LG cs.DB cs.DS stat.CO
This technical note compares two coding (quantization) schemes for random projections in the context of sub-linear time approximate near neighbor search. The first scheme is based on uniform quantization while the second scheme utilizes a uniform quantization plus a uniformly random offset (which has been popular in practice). The prior work compared the two schemes in the context of similarity estimation and training linear classifiers, with the conclusion that the step of random offset is not necessary and may hurt the performance (depending on the similarity level). The task of near neighbor search is related to similarity estimation with importance distinctions and requires own study. In this paper, we demonstrate that in the context of near neighbor search, the step of random offset is not needed either and may hurt the performance (sometimes significantly so, depending on the similarity and other parameters).
1404.0027
An efficient GPU acceptance-rejection algorithm for the selection of the next reaction to occur for Stochastic Simulation Algorithms
cs.CE cs.DC
Motivation: The Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) has largely diffused in the field of systems biology. This approach needs many realizations for establishing statistical results on the system under study. It is very computationnally demanding, and with the advent of large models this burden is increasing. Hence parallel implementation of SSA are needed to address these needs. At the very heart of the SSA is the selection of the next reaction to occur at each time step, and to the best of our knowledge all implementations are based on an inverse transformation method. However, this method involves a random number of steps to select this next reaction and is poorly amenable to a parallel implementation. Results: Here, we introduce a parallel acceptance-rejection algorithm to select the K next reactions to occur. This algorithm uses a deterministic number of steps, a property well suited to a parallel implementation. It is simple and small, accurate and scalable. We propose a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) implementation and validate our algorithm with simulated propensity distributions and the propensity distribution of a large model of yeast iron metabolism. We show that our algorithm can handle thousands of selections of next reaction to occur in parallel on the GPU, paving the way to massive SSA. Availability: We present our GPU-AR algorithm that focuses on the very heart of the SSA. We do not embed our algorithm within a full implementation in order to stay pedagogical and allows its rapid implementation in existing software. We hope that it will enable stochastic modelers to implement our algorithm with the benefits of their own optimizations.
1404.0039
Asynchronous Transmission of Wireless Multicast System with Genetic Joint Antennas Selection
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
Optimal antenna selection algorithm of multicast transmission can significantly reduce the number of antennas and can acquire lower complexity and high performance which is close to that of exhaustive search. An asynchronous multicast transmission mechanism based on genetic antenna selection is proposed. The computational complexity of genetic antenna selection algorithm remains moderate while the total number of antennas increases comparing with optimum searching algorithm. Symbol error rate (SER) and capacity of our mechanism are analyzed and simulated, and the simulation results demonstrate that our proposed mechanism can achieve better SER and sub-maximum channel capacity in wireless multicast systems.
1404.0046
Approximation Schemes for Many-Objective Query Optimization
cs.DB
The goal of multi-objective query optimization (MOQO) is to find query plans that realize a good compromise between conflicting objectives such as minimizing execution time and minimizing monetary fees in a Cloud scenario. A previously proposed exhaustive MOQO algorithm needs hours to optimize even simple TPC-H queries. This is why we propose several approximation schemes for MOQO that generate guaranteed near-optimal plans in seconds where exhaustive optimization takes hours. We integrated all MOQO algorithms into the Postgres optimizer and present experimental results for TPC-H queries; we extended the Postgres cost model and optimize for up to nine conflicting objectives in our experiments. The proposed algorithms are based on a formal analysis of typical cost functions that occur in the context of MOQO. We identify properties that hold for a broad range of objectives and can be exploited for the design of future MOQO algorithms.
1404.0058
Short Term Electricity Load Forecasting on Varying Levels of Aggregation
stat.AP cs.SI
We propose a simple empirical scaling law that describes load forecasting accuracy at different levels of aggregation. The model is justified based on a simple decomposition of individual consumption patterns. We show that for different forecasting methods and horizons, aggregating more customers improves the relative forecasting performance up to specific point. Beyond this point, no more improvement in relative performance can be obtained.
1404.0061
Short Message Noisy Network Coding with Rate Splitting
cs.IT math.IT
Short message noisy network coding with rate splitting (SNNC-RS) encoding strategy is presented. It has been shown by Hou and Kramer that mixed cooperative strategies in which relays in favorable positions perform decode-and-forward (DF) and the rest of the relays perform short message noisy network coding (SNNC) can outperform noisy network coding (NNC). Our proposed strategy further improves the rate performance of such mixed SNNC-DF cooperative strategy. In the proposed scheme, superposition coding is incorporated into the SNNC encoding in order to facilitate partial interference cancellation at DF relays, thereby increasing the overall rate. To demonstrate gains of the proposed SNNC-RS strategy, the achievable rate is analyzed for the discrete memoryless two-relay network with one DF relay and one SNNC-RS relay and compared to the case without rate-splitting. The obtained rate is evaluated in the Gaussian two-relay network and gains over the rate achieved without rate splitting are demonstrated.
1404.0062
On redundancy of memoryless sources over countable alphabets
cs.IT math.IT
The minimum average number of bits need to describe a random variable is its entropy, assuming knowledge of the underlying statistics On the other hand, universal compression supposes that the distribution of the random variable, while unknown, belongs to a known set $\cal P$ of distributions. Such universal descriptions for the random variable are agnostic to the identity of the distribution in $\cal P$. But because they are not matched exactly to the underlying distribution of the random variable, the average number of bits they use is higher, and the excess over the entropy used is the "redundancy". This formulation is fundamental to problems not just in compression, but also estimation and prediction and has a wide variety of applications from language modeling to insurance. In this paper, we study the redundancy of universal encodings of strings generated by independent identically distributed (iid) sampling from a set $\cal P$ of distributions over a countable support. We first show that if describing a single sample from $\cal P$ incurs finite redundancy, then $\cal P$ is tight but that the converse does not always hold. If a single sample can be described with finite worst-case-regret (a more stringent formulation than redundancy above), then it is known that length-$n$ iid samples only incurs a diminishing (in $n$) redundancy per symbol as $n$ increases. However, we show it is possible that a collection $\cal P$ incurs finite redundancy, yet description of length-$n$ iid samples incurs a constant redundancy per symbol encoded. We then show a sufficient condition on $\cal P$ such that length-$n$ iid samples will incur diminishing redundancy per symbol encoded.
1404.0067
Topics in social network analysis and network science
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
This chapter introduces statistical methods used in the analysis of social networks and in the rapidly evolving parallel-field of network science. Although several instances of social network analysis in health services research have appeared recently, the majority involve only the most basic methods and thus scratch the surface of what might be accomplished. Cutting-edge methods using relevant examples and illustrations in health services research are provided.
1404.0074
Quantum Turing automata
quant-ph cs.FL cs.IT math.IT
A denotational semantics of quantum Turing machines having a quantum control is defined in the dagger compact closed category of finite dimensional Hilbert spaces. Using the Moore-Penrose generalized inverse, a new additive trace is introduced on the restriction of this category to isometries, which trace is carried over to directed quantum Turing machines as monoidal automata. The Joyal-Street-Verity Int construction is then used to extend this structure to a reversible bidirectional one.
1404.0077
Effective dimension in some general metric spaces
cs.CC cs.IT math.IT
We introduce the concept of effective dimension for a wide class of metric spaces that are not required to have a computable measure. Effective dimension was defined by Lutz in (Lutz 2003) for Cantor space and has also been extended to Euclidean space. Lutz effectivization uses the concept of gale and supergale, our extension of Hausdorff dimension to other metric spaces is also based on a supergale characterization of dimension, which in practice avoids an extra quantifier present in the classical definition of dimension that is based on Hausdorff measure and therefore allows effectivization for small time-bounds. We present here the concept of constructive dimension and its characterization in terms of Kolmogorov complexity, for which we extend the concept of Kolmogorov complexity to any metric space defining the Kolmogorov complexity of a point at a certain precision. Further research directions are indicated.
1404.0084
A Calculus of Located Entities
cs.PL cs.CE
We define BioScapeL, a stochastic pi-calculus in 3D-space. A novel aspect of BioScapeL is that entities have programmable locations. The programmer can specify a particular location where to place an entity, or a location relative to the current location of the entity. The motivation for the extension comes from the need to describe the evolution of populations of biochemical species in space, while keeping a sufficiently high level description, so that phenomena like diffusion, collision, and confinement can remain part of the semantics of the calculus. Combined with the random diffusion movement inherited from BioScape, programmable locations allow us to capture the assemblies of configurations of polymers, oligomers, and complexes such as microtubules or actin filaments. Further new aspects of BioScapeL include random translation and scaling. Random translation is instrumental in describing the location of new entities relative to the old ones. For example, when a cell secretes a hydronium ion, the ion should be placed at a given distance from the originating cell, but in a random direction. Additionally, scaling allows us to capture at a high level events such as division and growth; for example, daughter cells after mitosis have half the size of the mother cell.
1404.0086
Using HMM in Strategic Games
cs.GT cs.IR cs.LG
In this paper we describe an approach to resolve strategic games in which players can assume different types along the game. Our goal is to infer which type the opponent is adopting at each moment so that we can increase the player's odds. To achieve that we use Markov games combined with hidden Markov model. We discuss a hypothetical example of a tennis game whose solution can be applied to any game with similar characteristics.
1404.0091
Interestingness a Unifying Paradigm Bipolar Function Composition
cs.IR
Interestingness is an important criterion by which we judge knowledge discovery. But, interestingness has escaped all attempts to capture its intuitive meaning into a concise and comprehensive form. A unifying paradigm is formulated by function composition. We claim that composition is bipolar, i.e. composition of exactly two functions, whose two semantic poles are relevance and unexpectedness. The paradigm generality is demonstrated by case studies of new interestingness functions, examples of known functions that fit the framework, and counter-examples for which the paradigm points out to the lacking pole.
1404.0097
Haplotype Assembly: An Information Theoretic View
cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the haplotype assembly problem from an information theoretic perspective. A haplotype is a sequence of nucleotide bases on a chromosome, often conveniently represented by a binary string, that differ from the bases in the corresponding positions on the other chromosome in a homologous pair. Information about the order of bases in a genome is readily inferred using short reads provided by high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies. In this paper, the recovery of the target pair of haplotype sequences using short reads is rephrased as a joint source-channel coding problem. Two messages, representing haplotypes and chromosome memberships of reads, are encoded and transmitted over a channel with erasures and errors, where the channel model reflects salient features of high-throughput sequencing. The focus of this paper is on the required number of reads for reliable haplotype reconstruction, and both the necessary and sufficient conditions are presented with order-wise optimal bounds.
1404.0099
Venture: a higher-order probabilistic programming platform with programmable inference
cs.AI cs.PL stat.CO stat.ML
We describe Venture, an interactive virtual machine for probabilistic programming that aims to be sufficiently expressive, extensible, and efficient for general-purpose use. Like Church, probabilistic models and inference problems in Venture are specified via a Turing-complete, higher-order probabilistic language descended from Lisp. Unlike Church, Venture also provides a compositional language for custom inference strategies built out of scalable exact and approximate techniques. We also describe four key aspects of Venture's implementation that build on ideas from probabilistic graphical models. First, we describe the stochastic procedure interface (SPI) that specifies and encapsulates primitive random variables. The SPI supports custom control flow, higher-order probabilistic procedures, partially exchangeable sequences and ``likelihood-free'' stochastic simulators. It also supports external models that do inference over latent variables hidden from Venture. Second, we describe probabilistic execution traces (PETs), which represent execution histories of Venture programs. PETs capture conditional dependencies, existential dependencies and exchangeable coupling. Third, we describe partitions of execution histories called scaffolds that factor global inference problems into coherent sub-problems. Finally, we describe a family of stochastic regeneration algorithms for efficiently modifying PET fragments contained within scaffolds. Stochastic regeneration linear runtime scaling in cases where many previous approaches scaled quadratically. We show how to use stochastic regeneration and the SPI to implement general-purpose inference strategies such as Metropolis-Hastings, Gibbs sampling, and blocked proposals based on particle Markov chain Monte Carlo and mean-field variational inference techniques.
1404.0101
Quantization for Uplink Transmissions in Two-tier Networks with Femtocells
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
We propose two novel schemes to level up the sum--rate for a two-tier network with femtocell where the backhaul uplink and downlink connecting the Base Stations have limited capacity. The backhaul links are exploited to transport the information in order to improve the decoding of the macrocell and femtocell messages. In the first scheme, Quantize-and-Forward, the Femto Base Station (FBS) quantizes what it receives and forwards it to the Macro Base Station (MBS). Two quantization methods are considered: Elementary Quantization and Wyner-Ziv Quantization. In the second scheme, called Decode-and-Forward with Quantized Side Information (DFQSI) to be distinguished with the considered conventional Decode-and-Forward (DF) scheme. The DFQSI scheme exploits the backhaul downlink to quantize and send the information about the message in the macrocell to the FBS to help it better decode the message, cancel it and decode the message in the femtocell. The results show that there are interesting scenarios in which the proposed techniques offer considerable gains in terms of maximal sum rate and max minimal rate.
1404.0103
Comparative Resilience Notions and Vertex Attack Tolerance of Scale-Free Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We are concerned with an appropriate mathematical measure of resilience in the face of targeted node attacks for arbitrary degree networks, and subsequently comparing the resilience of different scale-free network models with the proposed measure. We strongly motivate our resilience measure termed \emph{vertex attack tolerance} (VAT), which is denoted mathematically as $\tau(G) = \min_{S \subset V} \frac{|S|}{|V-S-C_{max}(V-S)|+1}$, where $C_{max}(V-S)$ is the largest connected component in $V-S$. We attempt a thorough comparison of VAT with several existing resilience notions: conductance, vertex expansion, integrity, toughness, tenacity and scattering number. Our comparisons indicate that for artbitrary degree distributions VAT is the only measure that fully captures both the major \emph{bottlenecks} of a network and the resulting \emph{component size distribution} upon targeted node attacks (both captured in a manner proportional to the size of the attack set). For the case of $d$-regular graphs, we prove that $\tau(G) \le d\Phi(G)$, where $\Phi(G)$ is the conductance of the graph $G$. Conductance and expansion are well-studied measures of robustness and bottlenecks in the case of regular graphs but fail to capture resilience in the case of highly heterogeneous degree graphs. Regarding comparison of different scale-free graph models, our experimental results indicate that PLOD graphs with degree distributions identical to BA graphs of the same size exhibit consistently better vertex attack tolerance than the BA type graphs, although both graph types appear asymptotically resilient for BA generative parameter $m = 2$. BA graphs with $m = 1$ also appear to lack resilience, not only exhibiting very low VAT values, but also great transparency in the identification of the vulnerable node sets, namely the hubs, consistent with well known previous work.
1404.0106
Traffic Monitoring Using M2M Communication
cs.CV
This paper presents an intelligent traffic monitoring system using wireless vision sensor network that captures and processes the real-time video image to obtain the traffic flow rate and vehicle speeds along different urban roadways. This system will display the traffic states on the front roadways that can guide the drivers to select the right way and avoid potential traffic congestions. On the other hand, it will also monitor the vehicle speeds and store the vehicle details, for those breaking the roadway speed limits, in its database. The real-time traffic data is processed by the Personal Computer (PC) at the sub roadway station and the traffic flow rate data is transmitted to the main roadway station Arduino 3G via email, where the data is extracted and traffic flow rate displayed.
1404.0138
Efficient Algorithms and Error Analysis for the Modified Nystrom Method
cs.LG
Many kernel methods suffer from high time and space complexities and are thus prohibitive in big-data applications. To tackle the computational challenge, the Nystr\"om method has been extensively used to reduce time and space complexities by sacrificing some accuracy. The Nystr\"om method speedups computation by constructing an approximation of the kernel matrix using only a few columns of the matrix. Recently, a variant of the Nystr\"om method called the modified Nystr\"om method has demonstrated significant improvement over the standard Nystr\"om method in approximation accuracy, both theoretically and empirically. In this paper, we propose two algorithms that make the modified Nystr\"om method practical. First, we devise a simple column selection algorithm with a provable error bound. Our algorithm is more efficient and easier to implement than and nearly as accurate as the state-of-the-art algorithm. Second, with the selected columns at hand, we propose an algorithm that computes the approximation in lower time complexity than the approach in the previous work. Furthermore, we prove that the modified Nystr\"om method is exact under certain conditions, and we establish a lower error bound for the modified Nystr\"om method.
1404.0142
Information-Theoretic Bounds for Performance of Resource-Constrained Communication Systems
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.OC
Resource-constrained systems are prevalent in communications. Such a system is composed of many components but only some of them can be allocated with resources such as time slots. According to the amount of information about the system, algorithms are employed to allocate resources and the overall system performance depends on the result of resource allocation. We do not always have complete information, and thus, the system performance may not be satisfactory. In this work, we propose a general model for the resource-constrained communication systems. We draw the relationship between system information and performance and derive the performance bounds for the optimal algorithm for the system. This gives the expected performance corresponding to the available information, and we can determine if we should put more efforts to collect more accurate information before actually constructing an algorithm for the system. Several examples of applications in communications to the model are also given.
1404.0163
Gender Asymmetries in Reality and Fiction: The Bechdel Test of Social Media
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
The subjective nature of gender inequality motivates the analysis and comparison of data from real and fictional human interaction. We present a computational extension of the Bechdel test: A popular tool to assess if a movie contains a male gender bias, by looking for two female characters who discuss about something besides a man. We provide the tools to quantify Bechdel scores for both genders, and we measure them in movie scripts and large datasets of dialogues between users of MySpace and Twitter. Comparing movies and users of social media, we find that movies and Twitter conversations have a consistent male bias, which does not appear when analyzing MySpace. Furthermore, the narrative of Twitter is closer to the movies that do not pass the Bechdel test than to those that pass it. We link the properties of movies and the users that share trailers of those movies. Our analysis reveals some particularities of movies that pass the Bechdel test: Their trailers are less popular, female users are more likely to share them than male users, and users that share them tend to interact less with male users. Based on our datasets, we define gender independence measurements to analyze the gender biases of a society, as manifested through digital traces of online behavior. Using the profile information of Twitter users, we find larger gender independence for urban users in comparison to rural ones. Additionally, the asymmetry between genders is larger for parents and lower for students. Gender asymmetry varies across US states, increasing with higher average income and latitude. This points to the relation between gender inequality and social, economical, and cultural factors of a society, and how gender roles exist in both fictional narratives and public online dialogues.
1404.0173
A Recursive Method for Enumeration of Costas Arrays
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we propose a recursive method for finding Costas arrays that relies on a particular formation of Costas arrays from similar patterns of smaller size. By using such an idea, the proposed algorithm is able to dramatically reduce the computational burden (when compared to the exhaustive search), and at the same time, still can find all possible Costas arrays of given size. Similar to exhaustive search, the proposed method can be conveniently implemented in parallel computing. The efficiency of the method is discussed based on theoretical and numerical results.
1404.0195
Extension theorems for self-dual codes over rings and new binary self-dual codes
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, extension theorems are generalized to self-dual codes over rings and as applications many new binary self-dual extremal codes are found from self-dual codes over F_2^m+uF_2^m for m = 1, 2. The duality and distance preserving Gray maps from F4 +uF4 to (F_2 +uF_2)^2 and (F_4)^2 are used to obtain self-dual codes whose binary Gray images are [64,32,12]-extremal self-dual. An F_2+uF_2-extension is used and as binary images, 178 extremal binary self-dual codes of length 68 with new weight enumerators are obtained. Especially the first examples of codes with gamma=3 and many codes with the rare gamma= 4, 6 parameters are obtained. In addition to these, two hundred fifty doubly even self dual [96,48,16]-codes with new weight enumerators are obtained from four-circulant codes over F_4 + uF_4. New extremal doubly even binary codes of lengths 80 and 88 are also found by the F_2+uF_2-lifts of binary four circulant codes and a corresponding result about 3-designs is stated.
1404.0200
Household Electricity Demand Forecasting -- Benchmarking State-of-the-Art Methods
cs.LG stat.AP
The increasing use of renewable energy sources with variable output, such as solar photovoltaic and wind power generation, calls for Smart Grids that effectively manage flexible loads and energy storage. The ability to forecast consumption at different locations in distribution systems will be a key capability of Smart Grids. The goal of this paper is to benchmark state-of-the-art methods for forecasting electricity demand on the household level across different granularities and time scales in an explorative way, thereby revealing potential shortcomings and find promising directions for future research in this area. We apply a number of forecasting methods including ARIMA, neural networks, and exponential smoothening using several strategies for training data selection, in particular day type and sliding window based strategies. We consider forecasting horizons ranging between 15 minutes and 24 hours. Our evaluation is based on two data sets containing the power usage of individual appliances at second time granularity collected over the course of several months. The results indicate that forecasting accuracy varies significantly depending on the choice of forecasting methods/strategy and the parameter configuration. Measured by the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), the considered state-of-the-art forecasting methods rarely beat corresponding persistence forecasts. Overall, we observed MAPEs in the range between 5 and >100%. The average MAPE for the first data set was ~30%, while it was ~85% for the other data set. These results show big room for improvement. Based on the identified trends and experiences from our experiments, we contribute a detailed discussion of promising future research.
1404.0218
Sparse Model Uncertainties in Compressed Sensing with Application to Convolutions and Sporadic Communication
cs.IT math.IT
The success of the compressed sensing paradigm has shown that a substantial reduction in sampling and storage complexity can be achieved in certain linear and non-adaptive estimation problems. It is therefore an advisable strategy for noncoherent information retrieval in, for example, sporadic blind and semi-blind communication and sampling problems. But, the conventional model is not practical here since the compressible signals have to be estimated from samples taken solely on the output of an un-calibrated system which is unknown during measurement but often compressible. Conventionally, one has either to operate at suboptimal sampling rates or the recovery performance substantially suffers from the dominance of model mismatch. In this work we discuss such type of estimation problems and we focus on bilinear inverse problems. We link this problem to the recovery of low-rank and sparse matrices and establish stable low-dimensional embeddings of the uncalibrated receive signals whereby addressing also efficient communication-oriented methods like universal random demodulation. Exemplary, we investigate in more detail sparse convolutions serving as a basic communication channel model. In using some recent results from additive combinatorics we show that such type of signals can be efficiently low-rate sampled by semi-blind methods. Finally, we present a further application of these results in the field of phase retrieval from intensity Fourier measurements.
1404.0237
Design of Symbolic Controllers for Networked Control Systems
cs.SY
Networked Control Systems (NCS) are distributed systems where plants, sensors, actuators and controllers communicate over shared networks. Non-ideal behaviors of the communication network include variable sampling/transmission intervals and communication delays, packet losses, communication constraints and quantization errors. NCS have been the object of intensive study in the last few years. However, due to the inherent complexity of NCS, current literature focuses on a subset of these non-idealities and mostly considers stability and stabilizability problems. Recent technology advances need different and more complex control objectives to be considered. In this paper we present first a general model of NCS, including most relevant non-idealities of the communication network; then, we propose a symbolic model approach to the control design with objectives expressed in terms of non-deterministic transition systems. The presented results are based on recent advances in symbolic control design of continuous and hybrid systems. An example in the context of robot motion planning with remote control is included, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
1404.0255
A Case Where Interference Does Not Affect The Channel Dispersion
cs.IT math.IT
In 1975, Carleial presented a special case of an interference channel in which the interference does not reduce the capacity of the constituent point-to-point Gaussian channels. In this work, we show that if the inequalities in the conditions that Carleial stated are strict, the dispersions are similarly unaffected. More precisely, in this work, we characterize the second-order coding rates of the Gaussian interference channel in the strictly very strong interference regime. In other words, we characterize the speed of convergence of rates of optimal block codes towards a boundary point of the (rectangular) capacity region. These second-order rates are expressed in terms of the average probability of error and variances of some modified information densities which coincide with the dispersion of the (single-user) Gaussian channel. We thus conclude that the dispersions are unaffected by interference in this channel model.
1404.0265
On Minimizing the Maximum Broadcast Decoding Delay for Instantly Decodable Network Coding
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the maximum broadcast decoding delay experienced by all the receivers of generalized instantly decodable network coding (IDNC). Unlike the sum decoding delay, the maximum decoding delay as a definition of delay for IDNC allows a more equitable distribution of the delays between the different receivers and thus a better Quality of Service (QoS). In order to solve this problem, we first derive the expressions for the probability distributions of maximum decoding delay increments. Given these expressions, we formulate the problem as a maximum weight clique problem in the IDNC graph. Although this problem is known to be NP-hard, we design a greedy algorithm to perform effective packet selection. Through extensive simulations, we compare the sum decoding delay and the max decoding delay experienced when applying the policies to minimize the sum decoding delay [1] and our policy to reduce the max decoding delay. Simulations results show that our policy gives a good agreement among all the delay aspects in all situations and outperforms the sum decoding delay policy to effectively minimize the sum decoding delay when the channel conditions become harsher. They also show that our definition of delay significantly improve the number of served receivers when they are subject to strict delay constraints.
1404.0267
The diffusion dynamics of choice: From durable goods markets to fashion first names
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Goods, styles, ideologies are adopted by society through various mechanisms. In particular, adoption driven by innovation is extensively studied by marketing economics. Mathematical models are currently used to forecast the sales of innovative goods. Inspired by the theory of diffusion processes developed for marketing economics, we propose, for the first time, a predictive framework for the mechanism of fashion, which we apply to first names. Analyses of French, Dutch and US national databases validate our modelling approach for thousands of first names, covering, on average, more than 50% of the yearly incidence in each database. In these cases, it is thus possible to forecast how popular the first names will become and when they will run out of fashion. Furthermore, we uncover a clear distinction between popularity and fashion: less popular names, typically not included in studies of fashion, may be driven by fashion, as well.
1404.0273
Lattice Codes for Many-to-One Interference Channels With and Without Cognitive Messages
cs.IT math.IT
A new achievable rate region is given for the Gaussian cognitive many-to-one interference channel. The proposed novel coding scheme is based on the compute-and-forward approach with lattice codes. Using the idea of decoding sums of codewords, our scheme improves considerably upon the conventional coding schemes which treat interference as noise or decode messages simultaneously. Our strategy also extends directly to the usual many-to-one interference channels without cognitive messages. Comparing to the usual compute-and-forward scheme where a fixed lattice is used for the code construction, the novel scheme employs scaled lattices and also encompasses key ingredients of the existing schemes for the cognitive interference channel. With this new component, our scheme achieves a larger rate region in general. For some symmetric channel settings, new constant gap or capacity results are established, which are independent of the number of users in the system.