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1404.4443
Enhanced List-Based Group-Wise Overloaded Receiver with Application to Satellite Reception
cs.IT math.IT
The market trends towards the use of smaller dish antennas for TV satellite receivers, as well as the growing density of broadcasting satellites in orbit require the application of robust adjacent satellite interference (ASI) cancellation algorithms at the receivers. The wider beamwidth of a small size dish and the growing number of satellites in orbit impose an overloaded scenario, i.e., a scenario where the number of transmitting satellites exceeds the number of receiving antennas. For such a scenario, we present a two stage receiver to enhance signal detection from the satellite of interest, i.e., the satellite that the dish is pointing to, while reducing interference from neighboring satellites. Towards this objective, we propose an enhanced List-based Group-wise Search Detection (LGSD) receiver architecture that takes into account the spatially correlated additive noise and uses the signal-to-interference-plus noise ratio (SINR) maximization criterion to improve detection performance. Simulations show that the proposed receiver structure enhances the performance of satellite systems in the presence of ASI when compared to existing methods.
1404.4448
Overloaded Satellite Receiver Using SIC with Hybrid Beamforming and ML Detection
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, a new receiver structure that is intended to detect the signals from multiple adjacent satellites in the presence of other interfering satellites is proposed. We tackle the worst case interference conditions, i.e., it is assumed that uncoded signals that fully overlap in frequency arrive at a multiple-element small-size parabolic antenna in a spatially correlated noise environment. The proposed successive interference cancellation (SIC) receiver, denoted by SIC Hy/ML, employs hybrid beamforming and disjoint maximum likelihood (ML) detection. Depending on the individual signals spatial position, the proposed SIC Hy/ML scheme takes advantage of two types of beamformers: a maximum ratio combining (MRC) beamformer and a compromised array response (CAR) beamformer. The performance of the proposed receiver is compared to an SIC receiver that uses only MRC beamforming scheme with ML detection for all signals, a joint ML detector, and a minimum mean square error detector. It is found that SIC Hy/ML outperforms the other schemes by a large margin.
1404.4453
Efficient Decoding Algorithms for the Compute-and-Forward Strategy
cs.IT math.IT
We address in this paper decoding aspects of the Compute-and-Forward (CF) physical-layer network coding strategy. It is known that the original decoder for the CF is asymptotically optimal. However, its performance gap to optimal decoders in practical settings are still not known. In this work, we develop and assess the performance of novel decoding algorithms for the CF operating in the multiple access channel. For the fading channel, we analyze the ML decoder and develop a novel diophantine approximation-based decoding algorithm showed numerically to outperform the original CF decoder. For the Gaussian channel, we investigate the maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoder. We derive a novel MAP decoding metric and develop practical decoding algorithms proved numerically to outperform the original one.
1404.4467
Cube-Cut: Vertebral Body Segmentation in MRI-Data through Cubic-Shaped Divergences
cs.CV
In this article, we present a graph-based method using a cubic template for volumetric segmentation of vertebrae in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisitions. The user can define the degree of deviation from a regular cube via a smoothness value Delta. The Cube-Cut algorithm generates a directed graph with two terminal nodes (s-t-network), where the nodes of the graph correspond to a cubic-shaped subset of the image's voxels. The weightings of the graph's terminal edges, which connect every node with a virtual source s or a virtual sink t, represent the affinity of a voxel to the vertebra (source) and to the background (sink). Furthermore, a set of infinite weighted and non-terminal edges implements the smoothness term. After graph construction, a minimal s-t-cut is calculated within polynomial computation time, which splits the nodes into two disjoint units. Subsequently, the segmentation result is determined out of the source-set. A quantitative evaluation of a C++ implementation of the algorithm resulted in an average Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of 81.33% and a running time of less than a minute.
1404.4468
On Independence Atoms and Keys
cs.DB cs.LO
Uniqueness and independence are two fundamental properties of data. Their enforcement in database systems can lead to higher quality data, faster data service response time, better data-driven decision making and knowledge discovery from data. The applications can be effectively unlocked by providing efficient solutions to the underlying implication problems of keys and independence atoms. Indeed, for the sole class of keys and the sole class of independence atoms the associated finite and general implication problems coincide and enjoy simple axiomatizations. However, the situation changes drastically when keys and independence atoms are combined. We show that the finite and the general implication problems are already different for keys and unary independence atoms. Furthermore, we establish a finite axiomatization for the general implication problem, and show that the finite implication problem does not enjoy a k-ary axiomatization for any k.
1404.4496
3-D Channel Characteristics for Molecular Communications with an Absorbing Receiver
cs.IT math.IT q-bio.MN
Within the domain of molecular communications, researchers mimic the techniques in nature to come up with alternative communication methods for collaborating nanomachines. This work investigates the channel transfer function for molecular communication via diffusion. In nature, information-carrying molecules are generally absorbed by the target node via receptors. Using the concentration function, without considering the absorption process, as the channel transfer function implicitly assumes that the receiver node does not affect the system. In this letter, we propose a solid analytical formulation and analyze the signal metrics (attenuation and propagation delay) for molecular communication via diffusion channel with an absorbing receiver in a 3-D environment. The proposed model and the formulation match well with the simulations without any normalization.
1404.4502
A Complete Solver for Constraint Games
cs.GT cs.AI
Game Theory studies situations in which multiple agents having conflicting objectives have to reach a collective decision. The question of a compact representation language for agents utility function is of crucial importance since the classical representation of a $n$-players game is given by a $n$-dimensional matrix of exponential size for each player. In this paper we use the framework of Constraint Games in which CSP are used to represent utilities. Constraint Programming --including global constraints-- allows to easily give a compact and elegant model to many useful games. Constraint Games come in two flavors: Constraint Satisfaction Games and Constraint Optimization Games, the first one using satisfaction to define boolean utilities. In addition to multimatrix games, it is also possible to model more complex games where hard constraints forbid certain situations. In this paper we study complete search techniques and show that our solver using the compact representation of Constraint Games is faster than the classical game solver Gambit by one to two orders of magnitude.
1404.4528
The role of centrality for the identification of influential spreaders in complex networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
The identification of the most influential spreaders in networks is important to control and understand the spreading capabilities of the system as well as to ensure an efficient information diffusion such as in rumor-like dynamics. Recent works have suggested that the identification of influential spreaders is not independent of the dynamics being studied. For instance, the key disease spreaders might not necessarily be so when it comes to analyze social contagion or rumor propagation. Additionally, it has been shown that different metrics (degree, coreness, etc) might identify different influential nodes even for the same dynamical processes with diverse degree of accuracy. In this paper, we investigate how nine centrality measures correlate with the disease and rumor spreading capabilities of the nodes that made up different synthetic and real-world (both spatial and non-spatial) networks. We also propose a generalization of the random walk accessibility as a new centrality measure and derive analytical expressions for the latter measure for simple network configurations. Our results show that for non-spatial networks, the $k$-core and degree centralities are most correlated to epidemic spreading, whereas the average neighborhood degree, the closeness centrality and accessibility are most related to rumor dynamics. On the contrary, for spatial networks, the accessibility measure outperforms the rest of centrality metrics in almost all cases regardless of the kind of dynamics considered. Therefore, an important consequence of our analysis is that previous studies performed in synthetic random networks cannot be generalized to the case of spatial networks.
1404.4540
Collective computation in a network with distributed information
cs.SI cs.DC physics.soc-ph
We analyze a distributed information network in which each node has access to the information contained in a limited set of nodes (its neighborhood) at a given time. A collective computation is carried out in which each node calculates a value that implies all information contained in the network (in our case, the average value of a variable that can take different values in each network node). The neighborhoods can change dynamically by exchanging neighbors with other nodes. The results of this collective calculation show rapid convergence and good scalability with the network size. These results are compared with those of a fixed network arranged as a square lattice, in which the number of rounds to achieve a given accuracy is very high when the size of the network increases. The results for the evolving networks are interpreted in light of the properties of complex networks and are directly relevant to the diameter and characteristic path length of the networks, which seem to express "small world" properties.
1404.4560
A Control Dichotomy for Pure Scoring Rules
cs.GT cs.CC cs.MA
Scoring systems are an extremely important class of election systems. A length-$m$ (so-called) scoring vector applies only to $m$-candidate elections. To handle general elections, one must use a family of vectors, one per length. The most elegant approach to making sure such families are "family-like" is the recently introduced notion of (polynomial-time uniform) pure scoring rules [Betzler and Dorn 2010], where each scoring vector is obtained from its precursor by adding one new coefficient. We obtain the first dichotomy theorem for pure scoring rules for a control problem. In particular, for constructive control by adding voters (CCAV), we show that CCAV is solvable in polynomial time for $k$-approval with $k \leq 3$, $k$-veto with $k \leq 2$, every pure scoring rule in which only the two top-rated candidates gain nonzero scores, and a particular rule that is a "hybrid" of 1-approval and 1-veto. For all other pure scoring rules, CCAV is NP-complete. We also investigate the descriptive richness of different models for defining pure scoring rules, proving how more rule-generation time gives more rules, proving that rationals give more rules than do the natural numbers, and proving that some restrictions previously thought to be "w.l.o.g." in fact do lose generality.
1404.4572
The First Parallel Multilingual Corpus of Persian: Toward a Persian BLARK
cs.CL
In this article, we have introduced the first parallel corpus of Persian with more than 10 other European languages. This article describes primary steps toward preparing a Basic Language Resources Kit (BLARK) for Persian. Up to now, we have proposed morphosyntactic specification of Persian based on EAGLE/MULTEXT guidelines and specific resources of MULTEXT-East. The article introduces Persian Language, with emphasis on its orthography and morphosyntactic features, then a new Part-of-Speech categorization and orthography for Persian in digital environments is proposed. Finally, the corpus and related statistic will be analyzed.
1404.4606
How Many Topics? Stability Analysis for Topic Models
cs.LG cs.CL cs.IR
Topic modeling refers to the task of discovering the underlying thematic structure in a text corpus, where the output is commonly presented as a report of the top terms appearing in each topic. Despite the diversity of topic modeling algorithms that have been proposed, a common challenge in successfully applying these techniques is the selection of an appropriate number of topics for a given corpus. Choosing too few topics will produce results that are overly broad, while choosing too many will result in the "over-clustering" of a corpus into many small, highly-similar topics. In this paper, we propose a term-centric stability analysis strategy to address this issue, the idea being that a model with an appropriate number of topics will be more robust to perturbations in the data. Using a topic modeling approach based on matrix factorization, evaluations performed on a range of corpora show that this strategy can successfully guide the model selection process.
1404.4641
Multilingual Models for Compositional Distributed Semantics
cs.CL
We present a novel technique for learning semantic representations, which extends the distributional hypothesis to multilingual data and joint-space embeddings. Our models leverage parallel data and learn to strongly align the embeddings of semantically equivalent sentences, while maintaining sufficient distance between those of dissimilar sentences. The models do not rely on word alignments or any syntactic information and are successfully applied to a number of diverse languages. We extend our approach to learn semantic representations at the document level, too. We evaluate these models on two cross-lingual document classification tasks, outperforming the prior state of the art. Through qualitative analysis and the study of pivoting effects we demonstrate that our representations are semantically plausible and can capture semantic relationships across languages without parallel data.
1404.4644
A New Space for Comparing Graphs
stat.ME cs.IR cs.LG stat.ML
Finding a new mathematical representations for graph, which allows direct comparison between different graph structures, is an open-ended research direction. Having such a representation is the first prerequisite for a variety of machine learning algorithms like classification, clustering, etc., over graph datasets. In this paper, we propose a symmetric positive semidefinite matrix with the $(i,j)$-{th} entry equal to the covariance between normalized vectors $A^ie$ and $A^je$ ($e$ being vector of all ones) as a representation for graph with adjacency matrix $A$. We show that the proposed matrix representation encodes the spectrum of the underlying adjacency matrix and it also contains information about the counts of small sub-structures present in the graph such as triangles and small paths. In addition, we show that this matrix is a \emph{"graph invariant"}. All these properties make the proposed matrix a suitable object for representing graphs. The representation, being a covariance matrix in a fixed dimensional metric space, gives a mathematical embedding for graphs. This naturally leads to a measure of similarity on graph objects. We define similarity between two given graphs as a Bhattacharya similarity measure between their corresponding covariance matrix representations. As shown in our experimental study on the task of social network classification, such a similarity measure outperforms other widely used state-of-the-art methodologies. Our proposed method is also computationally efficient. The computation of both the matrix representation and the similarity value can be performed in operations linear in the number of edges. This makes our method scalable in practice. We believe our theoretical and empirical results provide evidence for studying truncated power iterations, of the adjacency matrix, to characterize social networks.
1404.4646
Advancing Matrix Completion by Modeling Extra Structures beyond Low-Rankness
stat.ME cs.IT cs.LG math.IT math.ST stat.TH
A well-known method for completing low-rank matrices based on convex optimization has been established by Cand{\`e}s and Recht. Although theoretically complete, the method may not entirely solve the low-rank matrix completion problem. This is because the method captures only the low-rankness property which gives merely a rough constraint that the data points locate on some low-dimensional subspace, but generally ignores the extra structures which specify in more detail how the data points locate on the subspace. Whenever the geometric distribution of the data points is not uniform, the coherence parameters of data might be large and, accordingly, the method might fail even if the latent matrix we want to recover is fairly low-rank. To better handle non-uniform data, in this paper we propose a method termed Low-Rank Factor Decomposition (LRFD), which imposes an additional restriction that the data points must be represented as linear combinations of the bases in a dictionary constructed or learnt in advance. We show that LRFD can well handle non-uniform data, provided that the dictionary is configured properly: We mathematically prove that if the dictionary itself is low-rank then LRFD is immune to the coherence parameters which might be large on non-uniform data. This provides an elementary principle for learning the dictionary in LRFD and, naturally, leads to a practical algorithm for advancing matrix completion. Extensive experiments on randomly generated matrices and motion datasets show encouraging results.
1404.4655
Hierarchical Quasi-Clustering Methods for Asymmetric Networks
cs.LG stat.ML
This paper introduces hierarchical quasi-clustering methods, a generalization of hierarchical clustering for asymmetric networks where the output structure preserves the asymmetry of the input data. We show that this output structure is equivalent to a finite quasi-ultrametric space and study admissibility with respect to two desirable properties. We prove that a modified version of single linkage is the only admissible quasi-clustering method. Moreover, we show stability of the proposed method and we establish invariance properties fulfilled by it. Algorithms are further developed and the value of quasi-clustering analysis is illustrated with a study of internal migration within United States.
1404.4661
Learning Fine-grained Image Similarity with Deep Ranking
cs.CV
Learning fine-grained image similarity is a challenging task. It needs to capture between-class and within-class image differences. This paper proposes a deep ranking model that employs deep learning techniques to learn similarity metric directly from images.It has higher learning capability than models based on hand-crafted features. A novel multiscale network structure has been developed to describe the images effectively. An efficient triplet sampling algorithm is proposed to learn the model with distributed asynchronized stochastic gradient. Extensive experiments show that the proposed algorithm outperforms models based on hand-crafted visual features and deep classification models.
1404.4667
Subspace Learning and Imputation for Streaming Big Data Matrices and Tensors
stat.ML cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
Extracting latent low-dimensional structure from high-dimensional data is of paramount importance in timely inference tasks encountered with `Big Data' analytics. However, increasingly noisy, heterogeneous, and incomplete datasets as well as the need for {\em real-time} processing of streaming data pose major challenges to this end. In this context, the present paper permeates benefits from rank minimization to scalable imputation of missing data, via tracking low-dimensional subspaces and unraveling latent (possibly multi-way) structure from \emph{incomplete streaming} data. For low-rank matrix data, a subspace estimator is proposed based on an exponentially-weighted least-squares criterion regularized with the nuclear norm. After recasting the non-separable nuclear norm into a form amenable to online optimization, real-time algorithms with complementary strengths are developed and their convergence is established under simplifying technical assumptions. In a stationary setting, the asymptotic estimates obtained offer the well-documented performance guarantees of the {\em batch} nuclear-norm regularized estimator. Under the same unifying framework, a novel online (adaptive) algorithm is developed to obtain multi-way decompositions of \emph{low-rank tensors} with missing entries, and perform imputation as a byproduct. Simulated tests with both synthetic as well as real Internet and cardiac magnetic resonance imagery (MRI) data confirm the efficacy of the proposed algorithms, and their superior performance relative to state-of-the-art alternatives.
1404.4679
Graph-based Anomaly Detection and Description: A Survey
cs.SI cs.CR
Detecting anomalies in data is a vital task, with numerous high-impact applications in areas such as security, finance, health care, and law enforcement. While numerous techniques have been developed in past years for spotting outliers and anomalies in unstructured collections of multi-dimensional points, with graph data becoming ubiquitous, techniques for structured {\em graph} data have been of focus recently. As objects in graphs have long-range correlations, a suite of novel technology has been developed for anomaly detection in graph data. This survey aims to provide a general, comprehensive, and structured overview of the state-of-the-art methods for anomaly detection in data represented as graphs. As a key contribution, we provide a comprehensive exploration of both data mining and machine learning algorithms for these {\em detection} tasks. we give a general framework for the algorithms categorized under various settings: unsupervised vs. (semi-)supervised approaches, for static vs. dynamic graphs, for attributed vs. plain graphs. We highlight the effectiveness, scalability, generality, and robustness aspects of the methods. What is more, we stress the importance of anomaly {\em attribution} and highlight the major techniques that facilitate digging out the root cause, or the `why', of the detected anomalies for further analysis and sense-making. Finally, we present several real-world applications of graph-based anomaly detection in diverse domains, including financial, auction, computer traffic, and social networks. We conclude our survey with a discussion on open theoretical and practical challenges in the field.
1404.4699
Modal occupation measures and LMI relaxations for nonlinear switched systems control
math.OC cs.SY
This paper presents a linear programming approach for the optimal control of nonlinear switched systems where the control is the switching sequence. This is done by introducing modal occupation measures, which allow to relax the problem as a primal linear programming (LP) problem. Its dual linear program of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman inequalities is also characterized. The LPs are then solved numerically with a converging hierarchy of primal-dual moment-sum-of-squares (SOS) linear matrix inequalities (LMI). Because of the special structure of switched systems, we obtain a much more efficient method than could be achieved by applying standard moment/SOS LMI hierarchies for general optimal control problems.
1404.4702
Tight Bounds on $\ell_1$ Approximation and Learning of Self-Bounding Functions
cs.LG cs.DS
We study the complexity of learning and approximation of self-bounding functions over the uniform distribution on the Boolean hypercube ${0,1}^n$. Informally, a function $f:{0,1}^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is self-bounding if for every $x \in {0,1}^n$, $f(x)$ upper bounds the sum of all the $n$ marginal decreases in the value of the function at $x$. Self-bounding functions include such well-known classes of functions as submodular and fractionally-subadditive (XOS) functions. They were introduced by Boucheron et al. (2000) in the context of concentration of measure inequalities. Our main result is a nearly tight $\ell_1$-approximation of self-bounding functions by low-degree juntas. Specifically, all self-bounding functions can be $\epsilon$-approximated in $\ell_1$ by a polynomial of degree $\tilde{O}(1/\epsilon)$ over $2^{\tilde{O}(1/\epsilon)}$ variables. We show that both the degree and junta-size are optimal up to logarithmic terms. Previous techniques considered stronger $\ell_2$ approximation and proved nearly tight bounds of $\Theta(1/\epsilon^{2})$ on the degree and $2^{\Theta(1/\epsilon^2)}$ on the number of variables. Our bounds rely on the analysis of noise stability of self-bounding functions together with a stronger connection between noise stability and $\ell_1$ approximation by low-degree polynomials. This technique can also be used to get tighter bounds on $\ell_1$ approximation by low-degree polynomials and faster learning algorithm for halfspaces. These results lead to improved and in several cases almost tight bounds for PAC and agnostic learning of self-bounding functions relative to the uniform distribution. In particular, assuming hardness of learning juntas, we show that PAC and agnostic learning of self-bounding functions have complexity of $n^{\tilde{\Theta}(1/\epsilon)}$.
1404.4711
Resource Allocation for Power Minimization in the Downlink of THP-based Spatial Multiplexing MIMO-OFDMA Systems
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, we deal with resource allocation in the downlink of spatial multiplexing MIMO-OFDMA systems. In particular, we concentrate on the problem of jointly optimizing the transmit and receive processing matrices, the channel assignment and the power allocation with the objective of minimizing the total power consumption while satisfying different quality-of-service requirements. A layered architecture is used in which users are first partitioned in different groups on the basis of their channel quality and then channel assignment and transceiver design are sequentially addressed starting from the group of users with most adverse channel conditions. The multi-user interference among users belonging to different groups is removed at the base station using a Tomlinson-Harashima pre-coder operating at user level. Numerical results are used to highlight the effectiveness of the proposed solution and to make comparisons with existing alternatives.
1404.4714
Radical-Enhanced Chinese Character Embedding
cs.CL
We present a method to leverage radical for learning Chinese character embedding. Radical is a semantic and phonetic component of Chinese character. It plays an important role as characters with the same radical usually have similar semantic meaning and grammatical usage. However, existing Chinese processing algorithms typically regard word or character as the basic unit but ignore the crucial radical information. In this paper, we fill this gap by leveraging radical for learning continuous representation of Chinese character. We develop a dedicated neural architecture to effectively learn character embedding and apply it on Chinese character similarity judgement and Chinese word segmentation. Experiment results show that our radical-enhanced method outperforms existing embedding learning algorithms on both tasks.
1404.4738
On the Deployment of Cognitive Relay as Underlay Systems
cs.IT math.IT
The objective of this paper is to extend the idea of Cognitive Relay (CR). CR, as a secondary user, follows an underlay paradigm to endorse secondary usage of the spectrum to the indoor devices. To seek a spatial opportunity, i.e., deciding its transmission over the primary user channels, CR models its deployment scenario and the movements of the primary receivers and indoor devices. Modeling is beneficial for theoretical analysis, however it is also important to ensure the performance of CR in a real scenario. We consider briefly, the challenges involved while deploying a hardware prototype of such a system.
1404.4740
Challenges in Persian Electronic Text Analysis
cs.CL
Farsi, also known as Persian, is the official language of Iran and Tajikistan and one of the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan. Farsi enjoys a unified Arabic script as its writing system. In this paper we briefly introduce the writing standards of Farsi and highlight problems one would face when analyzing Farsi electronic texts, especially during development of Farsi corpora regarding to transcription and encoding of Farsi e-texts. The pointes mentioned may sounds easy but they are crucial when developing and processing written corpora of Farsi.
1404.4748
Resilience of modular complex networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Complex networks often have a modular structure, where a number of tightly- connected groups of nodes (modules) have relatively few interconnections. Modularity had been shown to have an important effect on the evolution and stability of biological networks, on the scalability and efficiency of large-scale infrastructure, and the development of economic and social systems. An analytical framework for understanding modularity and its effects on network vulnerability is still missing. Through recent advances in the understanding of multilayer networks, however, it is now possible to develop a theoretical framework to systematically study this critical issue. Here we study, analytically and numerically, the resilience of modular networks under attacks on interconnected nodes, which exhibit high betweenness values and are often more exposed to failure. Our model provides new understandings into the feedback between structure and function in real world systems, and consequently has important implications as diverse as developing efficient immunization strategies, designing robust large-scale infrastructure, and understanding brain function.
1404.4749
Decoding binary node labels from censored edge measurements: Phase transition and efficient recovery
cs.IT cs.DS math.IT
We consider the problem of clustering a graph $G$ into two communities by observing a subset of the vertex correlations. Specifically, we consider the inverse problem with observed variables $Y=B_G x \oplus Z$, where $B_G$ is the incidence matrix of a graph $G$, $x$ is the vector of unknown vertex variables (with a uniform prior) and $Z$ is a noise vector with Bernoulli$(\varepsilon)$ i.i.d. entries. All variables and operations are Boolean. This model is motivated by coding, synchronization, and community detection problems. In particular, it corresponds to a stochastic block model or a correlation clustering problem with two communities and censored edges. Without noise, exact recovery (up to global flip) of $x$ is possible if and only the graph $G$ is connected, with a sharp threshold at the edge probability $\log(n)/n$ for Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graphs. The first goal of this paper is to determine how the edge probability $p$ needs to scale to allow exact recovery in the presence of noise. Defining the degree (oversampling) rate of the graph by $\alpha =np/\log(n)$, it is shown that exact recovery is possible if and only if $\alpha >2/(1-2\varepsilon)^2+ o(1/(1-2\varepsilon)^2)$. In other words, $2/(1-2\varepsilon)^2$ is the information theoretic threshold for exact recovery at low-SNR. In addition, an efficient recovery algorithm based on semidefinite programming is proposed and shown to succeed in the threshold regime up to twice the optimal rate. For a deterministic graph $G$, defining the degree rate as $\alpha=d/\log(n)$, where $d$ is the minimum degree of the graph, it is shown that the proposed method achieves the rate $\alpha> 4((1+\lambda)/(1-\lambda)^2)/(1-2\varepsilon)^2+ o(1/(1-2\varepsilon)^2)$, where $1-\lambda$ is the spectral gap of the graph $G$.
1404.4761
Using Network Coding to Achieve the Capacity of Deterministic Relay Networks with Relay Messages
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we derive the capacity of the deterministic relay networks with relay messages. We consider a network which consists of five nodes, four of which can only communicate via the fifth one. However, the fifth node is not merely a relay as it may exchange private messages with the other network nodes. First, we develop an upper bound on the capacity region based on the notion of a single sided genie. In the course of the achievability proof, we also derive the deterministic capacity of a 4-user relay network (without private messages at the relay). The capacity achieving schemes use a combination of two network coding techniques: the Simple Ordering Scheme (SOS) and Detour Schemes (DS). In the SOS, we order the transmitted bits at each user such that the bi-directional messages will be received at the same channel level at the relay, while the basic idea behind the DS is that some parts of the message follow an indirect path to their respective destinations. This paper, therefore, serves to show that user cooperation and network coding can enhance throughput, even when the users are not directly connected to each other.
1404.4772
Approximating Pareto Curves using Semidefinite Relaxations
math.OC cs.RO
We consider the problem of constructing an approximation of the Pareto curve associated with the multiobjective optimization problem $\min_{\mathbf{x} \in \mathbf{S}}\{ (f_1(\mathbf{x}), f_2(\mathbf{x})) \}$, where $f_1$ and $f_2$ are two conflicting polynomial criteria and $\mathbf{S} \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ is a compact basic semialgebraic set. We provide a systematic numerical scheme to approximate the Pareto curve. We start by reducing the initial problem into a scalarized polynomial optimization problem (POP). Three scalarization methods lead to consider different parametric POPs, namely (a) a weighted convex sum approximation, (b) a weighted Chebyshev approximation, and (c) a parametric sublevel set approximation. For each case, we have to solve a semidefinite programming (SDP) hierarchy parametrized by the number of moments or equivalently the degree of a polynomial sums of squares approximation of the Pareto curve. When the degree of the polynomial approximation tends to infinity, we provide guarantees of convergence to the Pareto curve in $L^2$-norm for methods (a) and (b), and $L^1$-norm for method (c).
1404.4774
Online Group Feature Selection
cs.CV
Online feature selection with dynamic features has become an active research area in recent years. However, in some real-world applications such as image analysis and email spam filtering, features may arrive by groups. Existing online feature selection methods evaluate features individually, while existing group feature selection methods cannot handle online processing. Motivated by this, we formulate the online group feature selection problem, and propose a novel selection approach for this problem. Our proposed approach consists of two stages: online intra-group selection and online inter-group selection. In the intra-group selection, we use spectral analysis to select discriminative features in each group when it arrives. In the inter-group selection, we use Lasso to select a globally optimal subset of features. This 2-stage procedure continues until there are no more features to come or some predefined stopping conditions are met. Extensive experiments conducted on benchmark and real-world data sets demonstrate that our proposed approach outperforms other state-of-the-art online feature selection methods.
1404.4780
Robust Face Recognition via Adaptive Sparse Representation
cs.CV
Sparse Representation (or coding) based Classification (SRC) has gained great success in face recognition in recent years. However, SRC emphasizes the sparsity too much and overlooks the correlation information which has been demonstrated to be critical in real-world face recognition problems. Besides, some work considers the correlation but overlooks the discriminative ability of sparsity. Different from these existing techniques, in this paper, we propose a framework called Adaptive Sparse Representation based Classification (ASRC) in which sparsity and correlation are jointly considered. Specifically, when the samples are of low correlation, ASRC selects the most discriminative samples for representation, like SRC; when the training samples are highly correlated, ASRC selects most of the correlated and discriminative samples for representation, rather than choosing some related samples randomly. In general, the representation model is adaptive to the correlation structure, which benefits from both $\ell_1$-norm and $\ell_2$-norm. Extensive experiments conducted on publicly available data sets verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithm by comparing it with state-of-the-art methods.
1404.4785
Ontology as a Source for Rule Generation
cs.AI
This paper discloses the potential of OWL (Web Ontology Language) ontologies for generation of rules. The main purpose of this paper is to identify new types of rules, which may be generated from OWL ontologies. Rules, generated from OWL ontologies, are necessary for the functioning of the Semantic Web Expert System. It is expected that the Semantic Web Expert System (SWES) will be able to process ontologies from the Web with the purpose to supplement or even to develop its knowledge base.
1404.4789
A new combination approach based on improved evidence distance
cs.AI
Dempster-Shafer evidence theory is a powerful tool in information fusion. When the evidence are highly conflicting, the counter-intuitive results will be presented. To adress this open issue, a new method based on evidence distance of Jousselme and Hausdorff distance is proposed. Weight of each evidence can be computed, preprocess the original evidence to generate a new evidence. The Dempster's combination rule is used to combine the new evidence. Comparing with the existing methods, the new proposed method is efficient.
1404.4797
Parallel Graph Partitioning for Complex Networks
cs.DC cs.DS cs.NE cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Processing large complex networks like social networks or web graphs has recently attracted considerable interest. In order to do this in parallel, we need to partition them into pieces of about equal size. Unfortunately, previous parallel graph partitioners originally developed for more regular mesh-like networks do not work well for these networks. This paper addresses this problem by parallelizing and adapting the label propagation technique originally developed for graph clustering. By introducing size constraints, label propagation becomes applicable for both the coarsening and the refinement phase of multilevel graph partitioning. We obtain very high quality by applying a highly parallel evolutionary algorithm to the coarsened graph. The resulting system is both more scalable and achieves higher quality than state-of-the-art systems like ParMetis or PT-Scotch. For large complex networks the performance differences are very big. For example, our algorithm can partition a web graph with 3.3 billion edges in less than sixteen seconds using 512 cores of a high performance cluster while producing a high quality partition -- none of the competing systems can handle this graph on our system.
1404.4800
Automatic Annotation of Axoplasmic Reticula in Pursuit of Connectomes
cs.CV
In this paper, we present a new pipeline which automatically identifies and annotates axoplasmic reticula, which are small subcellular structures present only in axons. We run our algorithm on the Kasthuri11 dataset, which was color corrected using gradient-domain techniques to adjust contrast. We use a bilateral filter to smooth out the noise in this data while preserving edges, which highlights axoplasmic reticula. These axoplasmic reticula are then annotated using a morphological region growing algorithm. Additionally, we perform Laplacian sharpening on the bilaterally filtered data to enhance edges, and repeat the morphological region growing algorithm to annotate more axoplasmic reticula. We track our annotations through the slices to improve precision, and to create long objects to aid in segment merging. This method annotates axoplasmic reticula with high precision. Our algorithm can easily be adapted to annotate axoplasmic reticula in different sets of brain data by changing a few thresholds. The contribution of this work is the introduction of a straightforward and robust pipeline which annotates axoplasmic reticula with high precision, contributing towards advancements in automatic feature annotations in neural EM data.
1404.4801
Generalized Evidence Theory
cs.AI
Conflict management is still an open issue in the application of Dempster Shafer evidence theory. A lot of works have been presented to address this issue. In this paper, a new theory, called as generalized evidence theory (GET), is proposed. Compared with existing methods, GET assumes that the general situation is in open world due to the uncertainty and incomplete knowledge. The conflicting evidence is handled under the framework of GET. It is shown that the new theory can explain and deal with the conflicting evidence in a more reasonable way.
1404.4805
iPiano: Inertial Proximal Algorithm for Non-Convex Optimization
cs.CV math.OC
In this paper we study an algorithm for solving a minimization problem composed of a differentiable (possibly non-convex) and a convex (possibly non-differentiable) function. The algorithm iPiano combines forward-backward splitting with an inertial force. It can be seen as a non-smooth split version of the Heavy-ball method from Polyak. A rigorous analysis of the algorithm for the proposed class of problems yields global convergence of the function values and the arguments. This makes the algorithm robust for usage on non-convex problems. The convergence result is obtained based on the \KL inequality. This is a very weak restriction, which was used to prove convergence for several other gradient methods. First, an abstract convergence theorem for a generic algorithm is proved, and, then iPiano is shown to satisfy the requirements of this theorem. Furthermore, a convergence rate is established for the general problem class. We demonstrate iPiano on computer vision problems: image denoising with learned priors and diffusion based image compression.
1404.4820
Topology optimization based on moving deformable components: A new computational framework
cs.CE physics.comp-ph
In the present work, a new computational framework for structural topology optimization based on the concept of moving deformable components is proposed. Compared with the traditional pixel or node point-based solution framework, the proposed solution paradigm can incorporate more geometry and mechanical information into topology optimization directly and therefore render the solution process more flexible. It also has the great potential to reduce the computational burden associated with topology optimization substantially. Some representative examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
1404.4821
A Technology for BigData Analysis Task Description using Domain-Specific Languages
cs.DC cs.DB cs.PL
The article presents a technology for dynamic knowledge-based building of Domain-Specific Languages (DSL) to describe data-intensive scientific discovery tasks using BigData technology. The proposed technology supports high level abstract definition of analytic and simulation parts of the task as well as integration into the composite scientific solutions. Automatic translation of the abstract task definition enables seamless integration of various data sources within single solution.
1404.4822
Performance Analysis of Ambient RF Energy Harvesting: A Stochastic Geometry Approach
cs.IT math.IT
Ambient RF (Radio Frequency) energy harvesting technique has recently been proposed as a potential solution to provide proactive energy replenishment for wireless devices. This paper aims to analyze the performance of a battery-free wireless sensor powered by ambient RF energy harvesting using a stochastic-geometry approach. Specifically, we consider a random network model in which ambient RF sources are distributed as a Ginibre $\alpha$-determinantal point process which recovers the Poisson point process when alpha? approaches zero. We characterize the expected RF energy harvesting rate.We also perform a worst-case study which derives the upper bounds of both power outage and transmission outage probabilities. Numerical results show that our upper bounds are accurate and that better performance is achieved when the distribution of ambient sources exhibits stronger repulsion.
1404.4880
Bias Correction and Modified Profile Likelihood under the Wishart Complex Distribution
cs.CV stat.ME
This paper proposes improved methods for the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of the equivalent number of looks $L$. This parameter has a meaningful interpretation in the context of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images. Due to the presence of coherent illumination in their processing, PolSAR systems generate images which present a granular noise called speckle. As a potential solution for reducing such interference, the parameter $L$ controls the signal-noise ratio. Thus, the proposal of efficient estimation methodologies for $L$ has been sought. To that end, we consider firstly that a PolSAR image is well described by the scaled complex Wishart distribution. In recent years, Anfinsen et al. derived and analyzed estimation methods based on the ML and on trace statistical moments for obtaining the parameter $L$ of the unscaled version of such probability law. This paper generalizes that approach. We present the second-order bias expression proposed by Cox and Snell for the ML estimator of this parameter. Moreover, the formula of the profile likelihood modified by Barndorff-Nielsen in terms of $L$ is discussed. Such derivations yield two new ML estimators for the parameter $L$, which are compared to the estimators proposed by Anfinsen et al. The performance of these estimators is assessed by means of Monte Carlo experiments, adopting three statistical measures as comparison criterion: the mean square error, the bias, and the coefficient of variation. Equivalently to the simulation study, an application to actual PolSAR data concludes that the proposed estimators outperform all the others in homogeneous scenarios.
1404.4884
Causal Interfaces
cs.AI math.ST stat.TH
The interaction of two binary variables, assumed to be empirical observations, has three degrees of freedom when expressed as a matrix of frequencies. Usually, the size of causal influence of one variable on the other is calculated as a single value, as increase in recovery rate for a medical treatment, for example. We examine what is lost in this simplification, and propose using two interface constants to represent positive and negative implications separately. Given certain assumptions about non-causal outcomes, the set of resulting epistemologies is a continuum. We derive a variety of particular measures and contrast them with the one-dimensional index.
1404.4887
(Semi-)External Algorithms for Graph Partitioning and Clustering
cs.DS cs.SI
In this paper, we develop semi-external and external memory algorithms for graph partitioning and clustering problems. Graph partitioning and clustering are key tools for processing and analyzing large complex networks. We address both problems in the (semi-)external model by adapting the size-constrained label propagation technique. Our (semi-)external size-constrained label propagation algorithm can be used to compute graph clusterings and is a prerequisite for the (semi-)external graph partitioning algorithm. The algorithm is then used for both the coarsening and the refinement phase of a multilevel algorithm to compute graph partitions. Our algorithm is able to partition and cluster huge complex networks with billions of edges on cheap commodity machines. Experiments demonstrate that the semi-external graph partitioning algorithm is scalable and can compute high quality partitions in time that is comparable to the running time of an efficient internal memory implementation. A parallelization of the algorithm in the semi-external model further reduces running time.
1404.4888
Supervised detection of anomalous light-curves in massive astronomical catalogs
cs.CE astro-ph.IM cs.LG
The development of synoptic sky surveys has led to a massive amount of data for which resources needed for analysis are beyond human capabilities. To process this information and to extract all possible knowledge, machine learning techniques become necessary. Here we present a new method to automatically discover unknown variable objects in large astronomical catalogs. With the aim of taking full advantage of all the information we have about known objects, our method is based on a supervised algorithm. In particular, we train a random forest classifier using known variability classes of objects and obtain votes for each of the objects in the training set. We then model this voting distribution with a Bayesian network and obtain the joint voting distribution among the training objects. Consequently, an unknown object is considered as an outlier insofar it has a low joint probability. Our method is suitable for exploring massive datasets given that the training process is performed offline. We tested our algorithm on 20 millions light-curves from the MACHO catalog and generated a list of anomalous candidates. We divided the candidates into two main classes of outliers: artifacts and intrinsic outliers. Artifacts were principally due to air mass variation, seasonal variation, bad calibration or instrumental errors and were consequently removed from our outlier list and added to the training set. After retraining, we selected about 4000 objects, which we passed to a post analysis stage by perfoming a cross-match with all publicly available catalogs. Within these candidates we identified certain known but rare objects such as eclipsing Cepheids, blue variables, cataclysmic variables and X-ray sources. For some outliers there were no additional information. Among them we identified three unknown variability types and few individual outliers that will be followed up for a deeper analysis.
1404.4893
CTBNCToolkit: Continuous Time Bayesian Network Classifier Toolkit
cs.AI cs.LG cs.MS
Continuous time Bayesian network classifiers are designed for temporal classification of multivariate streaming data when time duration of events matters and the class does not change over time. This paper introduces the CTBNCToolkit: an open source Java toolkit which provides a stand-alone application for temporal classification and a library for continuous time Bayesian network classifiers. CTBNCToolkit implements the inference algorithm, the parameter learning algorithm, and the structural learning algorithm for continuous time Bayesian network classifiers. The structural learning algorithm is based on scoring functions: the marginal log-likelihood score and the conditional log-likelihood score are provided. CTBNCToolkit provides also an implementation of the expectation maximization algorithm for clustering purpose. The paper introduces continuous time Bayesian network classifiers. How to use the CTBNToolkit from the command line is described in a specific section. Tutorial examples are included to facilitate users to understand how the toolkit must be used. A section dedicate to the Java library is proposed to help further code extensions.
1404.4909
Document Retrieval on Repetitive Collections
cs.DS cs.IR
Document retrieval aims at finding the most important documents where a pattern appears in a collection of strings. Traditional pattern-matching techniques yield brute-force document retrieval solutions, which has motivated the research on tailored indexes that offer near-optimal performance. However, an experimental study establishing which alternatives are actually better than brute force, and which perform best depending on the collection characteristics, has not been carried out. In this paper we address this shortcoming by exploring the relationship between the nature of the underlying collection and the performance of current methods. Via extensive experiments we show that established solutions are often beaten in practice by brute-force alternatives. We also design new methods that offer superior time/space trade-offs, particularly on repetitive collections.
1404.4911
Communication Delay Co-Design in $\mathcal{H}_2$ Distributed Control Using Atomic Norm Minimization
math.OC cs.SY
When designing distributed controllers for large-scale systems, the actuation, sensing and communication architectures of the controller can no longer be taken as given. In particular, controllers implemented using dense architectures typically outperform controllers implemented using simpler ones -- however, it is also desirable to minimize the cost of building the architecture used to implement a controller. The recently introduced Regularization for Design (RFD) framework poses the controller architecture/control law co-design problem as one of jointly optimizing the competing metrics of controller architecture cost and closed loop performance, and shows that this task can be accomplished by augmenting the variational solution to an optimal control problem with a suitable atomic norm penalty. Although explicit constructions for atomic norms useful for the design of actuation, sensing and joint actuation/sensing architectures are introduced, no such construction is given for atomic norms used to design communication architectures. This paper describes an atomic norm that can be used to design communication architectures for which the resulting distributed optimal controller is specified by the solution to a convex program. Using this atomic norm we then show that in the context of $\mathcal{H}_2$ distributed optimal control, the communication architecture/control law co-design task can be performed through the use of finite dimensional second order cone programming.
1404.4923
Unified Structured Learning for Simultaneous Human Pose Estimation and Garment Attribute Classification
cs.CV
In this paper, we utilize structured learning to simultaneously address two intertwined problems: human pose estimation (HPE) and garment attribute classification (GAC), which are valuable for a variety of computer vision and multimedia applications. Unlike previous works that usually handle the two problems separately, our approach aims to produce a jointly optimal estimation for both HPE and GAC via a unified inference procedure. To this end, we adopt a preprocessing step to detect potential human parts from each image (i.e., a set of "candidates") that allows us to have a manageable input space. In this way, the simultaneous inference of HPE and GAC is converted to a structured learning problem, where the inputs are the collections of candidate ensembles, the outputs are the joint labels of human parts and garment attributes, and the joint feature representation involves various cues such as pose-specific features, garment-specific features, and cross-task features that encode correlations between human parts and garment attributes. Furthermore, we explore the "strong edge" evidence around the potential human parts so as to derive more powerful representations for oriented human parts. Such evidences can be seamlessly integrated into our structured learning model as a kind of energy function, and the learning process could be performed by standard structured Support Vector Machines (SVM) algorithm. However, the joint structure of the two problems is a cyclic graph, which hinders efficient inference. To resolve this issue, we compute instead approximate optima by using an iterative procedure, where in each iteration the variables of one problem are fixed. In this way, satisfactory solutions can be efficiently computed by dynamic programming. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets show the state-of-the-art performance of our approach.
1404.4927
On the Number of Iterations for Convergence of CoSaMP and Subspace Pursuit Algorithms
cs.IT math.IT
In compressive sensing, one important parameter that characterizes the various greedy recovery algorithms is the iteration bound which provides the maximum number of iterations by which the algorithm is guaranteed to converge. In this letter, we present a new iteration bound for CoSaMP by certain mathematical manipulations including formulation of appropriate sufficient conditions that ensure passage of a chosen support through the two selection stages of CoSaMP, Augment and Update. Subsequently, we extend the treatment to the subspace pursuit (SP) algorithm. The proposed iteration bounds for both CoSaMP and SP algorithms are seen to be improvements over their existing counterparts, revealing that both CoSaMP and SP algorithms converge in fewer iterations than suggested by results available in literature.
1404.4935
Opinion Mining In Hindi Language: A Survey
cs.IR cs.CL
Opinions are very important in the life of human beings. These Opinions helped the humans to carry out the decisions. As the impact of the Web is increasing day by day, Web documents can be seen as a new source of opinion for human beings. Web contains a huge amount of information generated by the users through blogs, forum entries, and social networking websites and so on To analyze this large amount of information it is required to develop a method that automatically classifies the information available on the Web. This domain is called Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining. Opinion Mining or Sentiment Analysis is a natural language processing task that mine information from various text forms such as reviews, news, and blogs and classify them on the basis of their polarity as positive, negative or neutral. But, from the last few years, enormous increase has been seen in Hindi language on the Web. Research in opinion mining mostly carried out in English language but it is very important to perform the opinion mining in Hindi language also as large amount of information in Hindi is also available on the Web. This paper gives an overview of the work that has been done Hindi language.
1404.4936
Promoting cold-start items in recommender systems
cs.IR cs.SI physics.soc-ph
As one of major challenges, cold-start problem plagues nearly all recommender systems. In particular, new items will be overlooked, impeding the development of new products online. Given limited resources, how to utilize the knowledge of recommender systems and design efficient marketing strategy for new items is extremely important. In this paper, we convert this ticklish issue into a clear mathematical problem based on a bipartite network representation. Under the most widely used algorithm in real e-commerce recommender systems, so-called the item-based collaborative filtering, we show that to simply push new items to active users is not a good strategy. To our surprise, experiments on real recommender systems indicate that to connect new items with some less active users will statistically yield better performance, namely these new items will have more chance to appear in other users' recommendation lists. Further analysis suggests that the disassortative nature of recommender systems contributes to such observation. In a word, getting in-depth understanding on recommender systems could pave the way for the owners to popularize their cold-start products with low costs.
1404.4939
Bipartite Graph based Construction of Compressed Sensing Matrices
cs.IT math.IT
This paper proposes an efficient method to construct the bipartite graph with as many edges as possible while without introducing the shortest cycles of length equal to 4. The binary matrix associated with the bipartite graph described above presents comparable and even better phase transitions than Gaussian random matrices.
1404.4942
Geometric Abstraction from Noisy Image-Based 3D Reconstructions
cs.CV
Creating geometric abstracted models from image-based scene reconstructions is difficult due to noise and irregularities in the reconstructed model. In this paper, we present a geometric modeling method for noisy reconstructions dominated by planar horizontal and orthogonal vertical structures. We partition the scene into horizontal slices and create an inside/outside labeling represented by a floor plan for each slice by solving an energy minimization problem. Consecutively, we create an irregular discretization of the volume according to the individual floor plans and again label each cell as inside/outside by minimizing an energy function. By adjusting the smoothness parameter, we introduce different levels of detail. In our experiments, we show results with varying regularization levels using synthetically generated and real-world data.
1404.4944
Unit commitment with valve-point loading effect
math.OC cs.CE
Valve-point loading affects the input-output characteristics of generating units, bringing the fuel costs nonlinear and nonsmooth. This has been considered in the solution of load dispatch problems, but not in the planning phase of unit commitment. This paper presents a mathematical optimization model for the thermal unit commitment problem considering valve-point loading. The formulation is based on a careful linearization of the fuel cost function, which is modeled with great detail on power regions being used in the current solution, and roughly on other regions. A set of benchmark instances for this problem is used for analyzing the method, with recourse to a general-purpose mixed-integer optimization solver.
1404.4960
Agent Behavior Prediction and Its Generalization Analysis
cs.LG
Machine learning algorithms have been applied to predict agent behaviors in real-world dynamic systems, such as advertiser behaviors in sponsored search and worker behaviors in crowdsourcing. The behavior data in these systems are generated by live agents: once the systems change due to the adoption of the prediction models learnt from the behavior data, agents will observe and respond to these changes by changing their own behaviors accordingly. As a result, the behavior data will evolve and will not be identically and independently distributed, posing great challenges to the theoretical analysis on the machine learning algorithms for behavior prediction. To tackle this challenge, in this paper, we propose to use Markov Chain in Random Environments (MCRE) to describe the behavior data, and perform generalization analysis of the machine learning algorithms on its basis. Since the one-step transition probability matrix of MCRE depends on both previous states and the random environment, conventional techniques for generalization analysis cannot be directly applied. To address this issue, we propose a novel technique that transforms the original MCRE into a higher-dimensional time-homogeneous Markov chain. The new Markov chain involves more variables but is more regular, and thus easier to deal with. We prove the convergence of the new Markov chain when time approaches infinity. Then we prove a generalization bound for the machine learning algorithms on the behavior data generated by the new Markov chain, which depends on both the Markovian parameters and the covering number of the function class compounded by the loss function for behavior prediction and the behavior prediction model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that performs the generalization analysis on data generated by complex processes in real-world dynamic systems.
1404.4963
Functional dependencies with null markers
cs.DB
Functional dependencies are an integral part of database design. However, they are only defined when we exclude null markers. Yet we commonly use null markers in practice. To bridge this gap between theory and practice, researchers have proposed definitions of functional dependencies over relations with null markers. Though sound, these definitions lack some qualities that we find desirable. For example, some fail to satisfy Armstrong's axioms---while these axioms are part of the foundation of common database methodologies. We propose a set of properties that any extension of functional dependencies over relations with null markers should possess. We then propose two new extensions having these properties. These extensions attempt to allow null markers where they make sense to practitioners. They both support Armstrong's axioms and provide realizable null markers: at any time, some or all of the null markers can be replaced by actual values without causing an anomaly. Our proposals may improve database designs.
1404.4975
Joint Latency and Cost Optimization for Erasure-coded Data Center Storage
cs.DC cs.IT math.IT math.OC
Modern distributed storage systems offer large capacity to satisfy the exponentially increasing need of storage space. They often use erasure codes to protect against disk and node failures to increase reliability, while trying to meet the latency requirements of the applications and clients. This paper provides an insightful upper bound on the average service delay of such erasure-coded storage with arbitrary service time distribution and consisting of multiple heterogeneous files. Not only does the result supersede known delay bounds that only work for a single file or homogeneous files, it also enables a novel problem of joint latency and storage cost minimization over three dimensions: selecting the erasure code, placement of encoded chunks, and optimizing scheduling policy. The problem is efficiently solved via the computation of a sequence of convex approximations with provable convergence. We further prototype our solution in an open-source, cloud storage deployment over three geographically distributed data centers. Experimental results validate our theoretical delay analysis and show significant latency reduction, providing valuable insights into the proposed latency-cost tradeoff in erasure-coded storage.
1404.4983
Shiva++: An Enhanced Graph based Ontology Matcher
cs.AI
With the web getting bigger and assimilating knowledge about different concepts and domains, it is becoming very difficult for simple database driven applications to capture the data for a domain. Thus developers have come out with ontology based systems which can store large amount of information and can apply reasoning and produce timely information. Thus facilitating effective knowledge management. Though this approach has made our lives easier, but at the same time has given rise to another problem. Two different ontologies assimilating same knowledge tend to use different terms for the same concepts. This creates confusion among knowledge engineers and workers, as they do not know which is a better term then the other. Thus we need to merge ontologies working on same domain so that the engineers can develop a better application over it. This paper shows the development of one such matcher which merges the concepts available in two ontologies at two levels; 1) at string level and 2) at semantic level; thus producing better merged ontologies. We have used a graph matching technique which works at the core of the system. We have also evaluated the system and have tested its performance with its predecessor which works only on string matching. Thus current approach produces better results.
1404.4984
Information Theoretic Analysis of Concurrent Information Transfer and Power Gain
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we analyze the fundamental trade-off between information transfer and power gain by means of an information-theoretic framework in communications circuits. This analysis is of interest as many of today's applications require that maximum information and maximum signal power are extracted (or transferred) through the circuit at the same time for further processing so that a compromise concerning the signal spectral shape as well as the matching network has to be found. To this end, the optimization framework is applied to a two-port circuit, which is used as an abstraction for a broadband amplifier. Thereby, we characterize the involved Pareto bound by considering different optimization problems. The first one aims at optimizing the input power spectral density (PSD) as well as the source and load admittances, whereas the second approach assumes the PSD to be fixed and uniformly distributed within a fixed bandwidth and optimizes the source and load admittances only. Moreover, we will show that additional matching networks may help to improve the trade-off.
1404.4995
A Generalized Cut-Set Bound for Deterministic Multi-Flow Networks and its Applications
cs.IT math.IT
We present a new outer bound for the sum capacity of general multi-unicast deterministic networks. Intuitively, this bound can be understood as applying the cut-set bound to concatenated copies of the original network with a special restriction on the allowed transmit signal distributions. We first study applications to finite-field networks, where we obtain a general outer-bound expression in terms of ranks of the transfer matrices. We then show that, even though our outer bound is for deterministic networks, a recent result relating the capacity of AWGN KxKxK networks and the capacity of a deterministic counterpart allows us to establish an outer bound to the DoF of KxKxK wireless networks with general connectivity. This bound is tight in the case of the "adjacent-cell interference" topology, and yields graph-theoretic necessary and sufficient conditions for K DoF to be achievable in general topologies.
1404.4997
Tight bounds for learning a mixture of two gaussians
cs.LG cs.DS stat.ML
We consider the problem of identifying the parameters of an unknown mixture of two arbitrary $d$-dimensional gaussians from a sequence of independent random samples. Our main results are upper and lower bounds giving a computationally efficient moment-based estimator with an optimal convergence rate, thus resolving a problem introduced by Pearson (1894). Denoting by $\sigma^2$ the variance of the unknown mixture, we prove that $\Theta(\sigma^{12})$ samples are necessary and sufficient to estimate each parameter up to constant additive error when $d=1.$ Our upper bound extends to arbitrary dimension $d>1$ up to a (provably necessary) logarithmic loss in $d$ using a novel---yet simple---dimensionality reduction technique. We further identify several interesting special cases where the sample complexity is notably smaller than our optimal worst-case bound. For instance, if the means of the two components are separated by $\Omega(\sigma)$ the sample complexity reduces to $O(\sigma^2)$ and this is again optimal. Our results also apply to learning each component of the mixture up to small error in total variation distance, where our algorithm gives strong improvements in sample complexity over previous work. We also extend our lower bound to mixtures of $k$ Gaussians, showing that $\Omega(\sigma^{6k-2})$ samples are necessary to estimate each parameter up to constant additive error.
1404.5002
A Geometric Distance Oracle for Large Real-World Graphs
cs.SI cs.DS
Many graph processing algorithms require determination of shortest-path distances between arbitrary numbers of node pairs. Since computation of exact distances between all node-pairs of a large graph, e.g., 10M nodes and up, is prohibitively expensive both in computational time and storage space, distance approximation is often used in place of exact computation. In this paper, we present a novel and scalable distance oracle that leverages the hyperbolic core of real-world large graphs for fast and scalable distance approximation. We show empirically that the proposed oracle significantly outperforms prior oracles on a random set of test cases drawn from public domain graph libraries. There are two sets of prior work against which we benchmark our approach. The first set, which often outperforms other oracles, employs embedding of the graph into low dimensional Euclidean spaces with carefully constructed hyperbolic distances, but provides no guarantees on the distance estimation error. The second set leverages Gromov-type tree contraction of the graph with the additive error guaranteed not to exceed $2\delta\log{n}$, where $\delta$ is the hyperbolic constant of the graph. We show that our proposed oracle 1) is significantly faster than those oracles that use hyperbolic embedding (first set) with similar approximation error and, perhaps surprisingly, 2) exhibits substantially lower average estimation error compared to Gromov-like tree contractions (second set). We substantiate our claims through numerical computations on a collection of a dozen real world networks and synthetic test cases from multiple domains, ranging in size from 10s of thousand to 10s of millions of nodes.
1404.5007
Secure Degrees of Freedom of the MIMO Multiple Access Channel with Multiple unknown Eavesdroppers
cs.IT math.IT
We investigate the secure degrees of freedom (SDoF) of a two-transmitter Gaussian multiple access channel with multiple antennas at the transmitters, the legitimate receiver with the existence of an unknown number of eavesdroppers each with a number of antennas less than or equal to a known value $N_E$. The channel matrices between the legitimate transmitters and the receiver are available everywhere, while the legitimate pair does not know the eavesdroppers' channels matrices. We provide the exact sum SDoF for the considered system. A new comprehensive upperbound is deduced and a new achievable scheme based on utilizing jamming is exploited. We prove that Cooperative Jamming is SDoF optimal even without the instantaneous eavesdropper CSI available at the transmitters.
1404.5009
Efficient Semidefinite Branch-and-Cut for MAP-MRF Inference
cs.CV cs.LG cs.NA
We propose a Branch-and-Cut (B&C) method for solving general MAP-MRF inference problems. The core of our method is a very efficient bounding procedure, which combines scalable semidefinite programming (SDP) and a cutting-plane method for seeking violated constraints. In order to further speed up the computation, several strategies have been exploited, including model reduction, warm start and removal of inactive constraints. We analyze the performance of the proposed method under different settings, and demonstrate that our method either outperforms or performs on par with state-of-the-art approaches. Especially when the connectivities are dense or when the relative magnitudes of the unary costs are low, we achieve the best reported results. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm achieves better approximation than the state-of-the-art methods within a variety of time budgets on challenging non-submodular MAP-MRF inference problems.
1404.5012
On the MacWilliams Identity for Classical and Quantum Convolutional Codes
cs.IT math.IT quant-ph
The weight generating functions associated with convolutional codes (CCs) are based on state space realizations or the weight adjacency matrices (WAMs). The MacWilliams identity for CCs on the WAMs was first established by Gluesing- Luerssen and Schneider in the case of minimal encoders, and generalized by Forney. We consider this problem in the viewpoint of constraint codes and obtain a simple and direct proof of this MacWilliams identity in the case of minimal encoders. For our purpose, we choose a different representation for the exact weight generating function (EWGF) of a block code, by defining it as a linear combination of orthonormal vectors in Dirac bra-ket notation. This representation provides great flexibility so that general split weight generating functions and their MacWilliams identities can be easily obtained from the MacWilliams identity for EWGFs. As a result, we also obtain the MacWilliams identity for the input-parity weight adjacency matrices of a systematic convolutional code and its dual. Finally, paralleling the development of the classical case, we establish the MacWilliams identity for quantum convolutional codes.
1404.5021
Local Rank Modulation for Flash Memories II
cs.IT math.IT
Local rank modulation scheme was suggested recently for representing information in flash memories in order to overcome drawbacks of rank modulation. For $0 < s\leq t\leq n$ with $s$ divides $n$, an $(s,t,n)$-LRM scheme is a local rank modulation scheme where the $n$ cells are locally viewed cyclically through a sliding window of size $t$ resulting in a sequence of small permutations which requires less comparisons and less distinct values. The gap between two such windows equals to $s$. In this work, encoding, decoding, and asymptotic enumeration of the $(1,3,n)$-LRM scheme is studied. The techniques which are suggested have some generalizations for $(1,t,n)$-LRM, $t > 3$, but the proofs will become more complicated. The enumeration problem is presented also as a purely combinatorial problem. Finally, we prove the conjecture that the size of a constant weight $(1,2,n)$-LRM Gray code with weight two is at most $2n$.
1404.5037
Multiresolution analysis on compact Riemannian manifolds
cs.IT math.IT
In the chapter "Multiresolution Analysis on Compact Riemannian Manifolds" Isaac Pesenson describes multiscale analysis, sampling, interpolation and approximation of functions defined on manifolds. His main achievements are: construction on manifolds of bandlimited and space-localized frames which have Parseval property and construction of variational splines on manifolds. Such frames and splines enable multiscale analysis on arbitrary compact manifolds, and they already found a number of important applications (statistics, CMB, crystallography) related to such manifolds as two-dimensional sphere and group of its rotations.
1404.5043
The predictable degree property, column reducedness, and minimality in multidimensional convolutional coding
cs.IT math.IT
Higher-dimensional analogs of the predictable degree property and column reducedness are defined, and it is proved that the two properties are equivalent. It is shown that every multidimensional convolutional code has, what is called, a minimal reduced polynomial resolution. It is uniquely determined (up to isomorphism) and leads to a number of important integer invariants of the code generalizing classical Forney's indices.
1404.5055
Correlated Jamming in a Joint Source Channel Communication System
cs.IT math.IT
We study correlated jamming in joint source-channel communication systems. An i.i.d. source is to be communicated over a memoryless channel in the presence of a correlated jammer with non-causal knowledge of user transmission. This user-jammer interaction is modeled as a zero sum game. A set of conditions on the source and the channel is provided for the existence of a Nash equilibrium for this game, where the user strategy is uncoded transmission and the jammer strategy is i.i.d jamming. This generalizes a well-known example of uncoded communication of a Gaussian sources over Gaussian channels with additive jamming. Another example, of a Binary Symmetric source over a Binary Symmetric channel with jamming, is provided as a validation of this result.
1404.5060
Writing on a Dirty Paper in the presence of Jamming
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, the problem of writing on a dirty paper in the presence of jamming is examined. We consider an AWGN channel with an additive white Gaussian state and an additive adversarial jammer. The state is assumed to be known non-causally to the encoder and the jammer but not to the decoder. The capacity of the channel in the presence of a jammer is determined. A surprising result that this capacity is equal to the capacity of a relaxed version of the problem, where the state is also known non-causally to the decoder, is proved.
1404.5062
Rapid prototyping for sling design optimization
cs.CE
This paper deals with combination of two modern engineering methods in order to optimise the shape of a representative casting product. The product being analysed is a sling, which is used to attach pulling rope in timber transportation. The first step was 3D modelling and static stress/strain analysis using CAD/CAE software NX4. The slinger shape optimization was performed using Traction method, by means of software Optishape-TS. To define constraints for shape optimization, FEA software FEMAP was used. The mould pattern with optimized 3D shape was then prepared using Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) Rapid prototyping method. The sling mass decreased by 20%, while signifficantly better stress distribution was achieved, with maximum stress 3.5 times less than initial value. The future researches should use 3D scanning technology in order to provide more accurate 3D model of initial part. Results of this research can be used by toolmakers in order to engage FEA/RP technology to design and manufacture lighter products with acceptable stress distribution.
1404.5065
Multi-Target Regression via Random Linear Target Combinations
cs.LG
Multi-target regression is concerned with the simultaneous prediction of multiple continuous target variables based on the same set of input variables. It arises in several interesting industrial and environmental application domains, such as ecological modelling and energy forecasting. This paper presents an ensemble method for multi-target regression that constructs new target variables via random linear combinations of existing targets. We discuss the connection of our approach with multi-label classification algorithms, in particular RA$k$EL, which originally inspired this work, and a family of recent multi-label classification algorithms that involve output coding. Experimental results on 12 multi-target datasets show that it performs significantly better than a strong baseline that learns a single model for each target using gradient boosting and compares favourably to multi-objective random forest approach, which is a state-of-the-art approach. The experiments further show that our approach improves more when stronger unconditional dependencies exist among the targets.
1404.5068
Directional Cell Discovery in Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks
cs.IT math.IT
The acute disparity between increasing bandwidth demand and available spectrum, has brought millimeter wave (mmW) bands to the forefront of candidate solutions for the next-generation cellular networks. Highly directional transmissions are essential for cellular communication in these frequencies to compensate for high isotropic path loss. This reliance on directional beamforming, however, complicates initial cell search since the mobile and base station must jointly search over a potentially large angular directional space to locate a suitable path to initiate communication. To address this problem, this paper proposes a directional cell discovery procedure where base stations periodically transmit synchronization signals, potentially in time-varying random directions, to scan the angular space. Detectors for these signals are derived based on a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT) under various signal and receiver assumptions. The detectors are then simulated under realistic design parameters and channels based on actual experimental measurements at 28~GHz in New York City. The study reveals two key findings: (i) digital beamforming can significantly outperform analog beamforming even when the digital beamforming uses very low quantization to compensate for the additional power requirements; and (ii) omni-directional transmissions of the synchronization signals from the base station generally outperforms random directional scanning.
1404.5078
TurKPF: TurKontrol as a Particle Filter
cs.AI
TurKontrol, and algorithm presented in (Dai et al. 2010), uses a POMDP to model and control an iterative workflow for crowdsourced work. Here, TurKontrol is re-implemented as "TurKPF," which uses a Particle Filter to reduce computation time & memory usage. Most importantly, in our experimental environment with default parameter settings, the action is chosen nearly instantaneously. Through a series of experiments we see that TurKPF and TurKontrol perform similarly.
1404.5083
Transmit Antenna Selection in Underlay Cognitive Radio Environment
cs.IT math.IT
Cognitive radio (CR) technology addresses the problem of spectrum under-utilization. In underlay CR mode, the secondary users are allowed to communicate provided that their transmission is not detrimental to primary user communication. Transmit antenna selection is one of the low-complexity methods to increase the capacity of wireless communication systems. In this article, we propose and analyze the performance benefit of a transmit antenna selection scheme for underlay secondary system that ensures the instantaneous interference caused by the secondary transmitter to the primary receiver is below a predetermined level. Closed-form expressions of the outage probability, amount of fading, and ergodic capacity for the secondary network are derived. Monte-carlo simulations are also carried out to confirm various mathematical results presented in this article.
1404.5121
SleepScale: Runtime Joint Speed Scaling and Sleep States Management for Power Efficient Data Centers
cs.PF cs.SY
Power consumption in data centers has been growing significantly in recent years. To reduce power, servers are being equipped with increasingly sophisticated power management mechanisms. Different mechanisms offer dramatically different trade-offs between power savings and performance penalties. Considering the complexity, variety, and temporally varying nature of the applications hosted in a typical data center, intelligently determining which power management policy to use and when is a complicated task. In this paper we analyze a system model featuring both performance scaling and low-power states. We reveal the interplay between performance scaling and low-power states via intensive simulation and analytic verification. Based on the observations, we present SleepScale, a runtime power management tool designed to efficiently exploit existing power control mechanisms. At run time, SleepScale characterizes power consumption and quality-of-service (QoS) for each low-power state and frequency setting, and selects the best policy for a given QoS constraint. We evaluate SleepScale using workload traces from data centers and achieve significant power savings relative to conventional power management strategies.
1404.5122
Spatiotemporal Sparse Bayesian Learning with Applications to Compressed Sensing of Multichannel Physiological Signals
cs.IT cs.LG math.IT stat.ML
Energy consumption is an important issue in continuous wireless telemonitoring of physiological signals. Compressed sensing (CS) is a promising framework to address it, due to its energy-efficient data compression procedure. However, most CS algorithms have difficulty in data recovery due to non-sparsity characteristic of many physiological signals. Block sparse Bayesian learning (BSBL) is an effective approach to recover such signals with satisfactory recovery quality. However, it is time-consuming in recovering multichannel signals, since its computational load almost linearly increases with the number of channels. This work proposes a spatiotemporal sparse Bayesian learning algorithm to recover multichannel signals simultaneously. It not only exploits temporal correlation within each channel signal, but also exploits inter-channel correlation among different channel signals. Furthermore, its computational load is not significantly affected by the number of channels. The proposed algorithm was applied to brain computer interface (BCI) and EEG-based driver's drowsiness estimation. Results showed that the algorithm had both better recovery performance and much higher speed than BSBL. Particularly, the proposed algorithm ensured that the BCI classification and the drowsiness estimation had little degradation even when data were compressed by 80%, making it very suitable for continuous wireless telemonitoring of multichannel signals.
1404.5144
Influence of the learning method in the performance of feedforward neural networks when the activity of neurons is modified
cs.NE
A method that allows us to give a different treatment to any neuron inside feedforward neural networks is presented. The algorithm has been implemented with two very different learning methods: a standard Back-propagation (BP) procedure and an evolutionary algorithm. First, we have demonstrated that the EA training method converges faster and gives more accurate results than BP. Then we have made a full analysis of the effects of turning off different combinations of neurons after the training phase. We demonstrate that EA is much more robust than BP for all the cases under study. Even in the case when two hidden neurons are lost, EA training is still able to give good average results. This difference implies that we must be very careful when pruning or redundancy effects are being studied since the network performance when losing neurons strongly depends on the training method. Moreover, the influence of the individual inputs will also depend on the training algorithm. Since EA keeps a good classification performance when units are lost, this method could be a good way to simulate biological learning systems since they must be robust against deficient neuron performance. Although biological systems are much more complex than the simulations shown in this article, we propose that a smart training strategy such as the one shown here could be considered as a first protection against the losing of a certain number of neurons.
1404.5165
GP-Localize: Persistent Mobile Robot Localization using Online Sparse Gaussian Process Observation Model
cs.RO cs.LG stat.ML
Central to robot exploration and mapping is the task of persistent localization in environmental fields characterized by spatially correlated measurements. This paper presents a Gaussian process localization (GP-Localize) algorithm that, in contrast to existing works, can exploit the spatially correlated field measurements taken during a robot's exploration (instead of relying on prior training data) for efficiently and scalably learning the GP observation model online through our proposed novel online sparse GP. As a result, GP-Localize is capable of achieving constant time and memory (i.e., independent of the size of the data) per filtering step, which demonstrates the practical feasibility of using GPs for persistent robot localization and autonomy. Empirical evaluation via simulated experiments with real-world datasets and a real robot experiment shows that GP-Localize outperforms existing GP localization algorithms.
1404.5173
Compression for Quadratic Similarity Queries: Finite Blocklength and Practical Schemes
cs.IT math.IT
We study the problem of compression for the purpose of similarity identification, where similarity is measured by the mean square Euclidean distance between vectors. While the asymptotical fundamental limits of the problem - the minimal compression rate and the error exponent - were found in a previous work, in this paper we focus on the nonasymptotic domain and on practical, implementable schemes. We first present a finite blocklength achievability bound based on shape-gain quantization: The gain (amplitude) of the vector is compressed via scalar quantization and the shape (the projection on the unit sphere) is quantized using a spherical code. The results are numerically evaluated and they converge to the asymptotic values as predicted by the error exponent. We then give a nonasymptotic lower bound on the performance of any compression scheme, and compare to the upper (achievability) bound. For a practical implementation of such a scheme, we use wrapped spherical codes, studied by Hamkins and Zeger, and use the Leech lattice as an example for an underlying lattice. As a side result, we obtain a bound on the covering angle of any wrapped spherical code, as a function of the covering radius of the underlying lattice.
1404.5187
Discrimination on the Grassmann Manifold: Fundamental Limits of Subspace Classifiers
cs.IT math.IT
We present fundamental limits on the reliable classification of linear and affine subspaces from noisy, linear features. Drawing an analogy between discrimination among subspaces and communication over vector wireless channels, we propose two Shannon-inspired measures to characterize asymptotic classifier performance. First, we define the classification capacity, which characterizes necessary and sufficient conditions for the misclassification probability to vanish as the signal dimension, the number of features, and the number of subspaces to be discerned all approach infinity. Second, we define the diversity-discrimination tradeoff which, by analogy with the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff of fading vector channels, characterizes relationships between the number of discernible subspaces and the misclassification probability as the noise power approaches zero. We derive upper and lower bounds on these measures which are tight in many regimes. Numerical results, including a face recognition application, validate the results in practice.
1404.5190
Sparse Approximation, List Decoding, and Uncertainty Principles
cs.IT math.IT
We consider list versions of sparse approximation problems, where unlike the existing results in sparse approximation that consider situations with unique solutions, we are interested in multiple solutions. We introduce these problems and present the first combinatorial results on the output list size. These generalize and enhance some of the existing results on threshold phenomenon and uncertainty principles in sparse approximations. Our definitions and results are inspired by similar results in list decoding. We also present lower bound examples that bolster our results and show they are of the appropriate size.
1404.5214
Graph Kernels via Functional Embedding
cs.LG cs.AI stat.ML
We propose a representation of graph as a functional object derived from the power iteration of the underlying adjacency matrix. The proposed functional representation is a graph invariant, i.e., the functional remains unchanged under any reordering of the vertices. This property eliminates the difficulty of handling exponentially many isomorphic forms. Bhattacharyya kernel constructed between these functionals significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art graph kernels on 3 out of the 4 standard benchmark graph classification datasets, demonstrating the superiority of our approach. The proposed methodology is simple and runs in time linear in the number of edges, which makes our kernel more efficient and scalable compared to many widely adopted graph kernels with running time cubic in the number of vertices.
1404.5236
Sum-of-squares proofs and the quest toward optimal algorithms
cs.DS cs.CC cs.LG math.OC
In order to obtain the best-known guarantees, algorithms are traditionally tailored to the particular problem we want to solve. Two recent developments, the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) and the Sum-of-Squares (SOS) method, surprisingly suggest that this tailoring is not necessary and that a single efficient algorithm could achieve best possible guarantees for a wide range of different problems. The Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) is a tantalizing conjecture in computational complexity, which, if true, will shed light on the complexity of a great many problems. In particular this conjecture predicts that a single concrete algorithm provides optimal guarantees among all efficient algorithms for a large class of computational problems. The Sum-of-Squares (SOS) method is a general approach for solving systems of polynomial constraints. This approach is studied in several scientific disciplines, including real algebraic geometry, proof complexity, control theory, and mathematical programming, and has found applications in fields as diverse as quantum information theory, formal verification, game theory and many others. We survey some connections that were recently uncovered between the Unique Games Conjecture and the Sum-of-Squares method. In particular, we discuss new tools to rigorously bound the running time of the SOS method for obtaining approximate solutions to hard optimization problems, and how these tools give the potential for the sum-of-squares method to provide new guarantees for many problems of interest, and possibly to even refute the UGC.
1404.5239
InfluenceTracker: Rating the impact of a Twitter account
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We describe a methodology of rating the influence of a Twitter ac-count in this famous microblogging service. We then evaluate it over real ac-counts, under the belief that influence is not only a matter of quantity (amount of followers), but also a mixture of quality measures that reflect interaction, awareness, and visibility in the social sphere. The authors of this paper have created InfluenceTracker, a publicly available website where anyone can rate and compare the recent activity of any Twitter account.
1404.5254
Simultaneous Source for non-uniform data variance and missing data
cs.CE
The use of simultaneous sources in geophysical inverse problems has revolutionized the ability to deal with large scale data sets that are obtained from multiple source experiments. However, the technique breaks when the data has non-uniform standard deviation or when some data are missing. In this paper we develop, study, and compare a number of techniques that enable to utilize advantages of the simultaneous source framework for these cases. We show that the inverse problem can still be solved efficiently by using these new techniques. We demonstrate our new approaches on the Direct Current Resistivity inverse problem.
1404.5278
The Frobenius anatomy of word meanings I: subject and object relative pronouns
cs.CL
This paper develops a compositional vector-based semantics of subject and object relative pronouns within a categorical framework. Frobenius algebras are used to formalise the operations required to model the semantics of relative pronouns, including passing information between the relative clause and the modified noun phrase, as well as copying, combining, and discarding parts of the relative clause. We develop two instantiations of the abstract semantics, one based on a truth-theoretic approach and one based on corpus statistics.
1404.5287
Quantification of entanglement entropy in helium by the Schmidt-Slater decomposition method
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT physics.atom-ph physics.chem-ph
In this work, we present an investigation on the spatial entanglement entropies in the helium atom by using highly correlated Hylleraas functions to represent the S-wave states. Singlet-spin 1sns 1Se states (with n = 1 to 6) and triplet-spin 1sns 3Se states (with n = 2 to 6) are investigated. As a measure on the spatial entanglement, von Neumann entropy and linear entropy are calculated. Furthermore, we apply the Schmidt-Slater decomposition method on the two-electron wave functions, and obtain eigenvalues of the one-particle reduced density matrix, from which the linear entropy and von Neumann entropy can be determined.
1404.5322
CitNetExplorer: A new software tool for analyzing and visualizing citation networks
cs.DL cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We present CitNetExplorer, a new software tool for analyzing and visualizing citation networks of scientific publications. CitNetExplorer can for instance be used to study the development of a research field, to delineate the literature on a research topic, and to support literature reviewing. We first introduce the main concepts that need to be understood when working with CitNetExplorer. We then demonstrate CitNetExplorer by using the tool to analyze the scientometric literature and the literature on community detection in networks. Finally, we discuss some technical details on the construction, visualization, and analysis of citation networks in CitNetExplorer.
1404.5344
A higher-order MRF based variational model for multiplicative noise reduction
cs.CV
The Fields of Experts (FoE) image prior model, a filter-based higher-order Markov Random Fields (MRF) model, has been shown to be effective for many image restoration problems. Motivated by the successes of FoE-based approaches, in this letter, we propose a novel variational model for multiplicative noise reduction based on the FoE image prior model. The resulted model corresponds to a non-convex minimization problem, which can be solved by a recently published non-convex optimization algorithm. Experimental results based on synthetic speckle noise and real synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images suggest that the performance of our proposed method is on par with the best published despeckling algorithm. Besides, our proposed model comes along with an additional advantage, that the inference is extremely efficient. {Our GPU based implementation takes less than 1s to produce state-of-the-art despeckling performance.}
1404.5351
Fast Approximate Matching of Cell-Phone Videos for Robust Background Subtraction
cs.CV
We identify a novel instance of the background subtraction problem that focuses on extracting near-field foreground objects captured using handheld cameras. Given two user-generated videos of a scene, one with and the other without the foreground object(s), our goal is to efficiently generate an output video with only the foreground object(s) present in it. We cast this challenge as a spatio-temporal frame matching problem, and propose an efficient solution for it that exploits the temporal smoothness of the video sequences. We present theoretical analyses for the error bounds of our approach, and validate our findings using a detailed set of simulation experiments. Finally, we present the results of our approach tested on multiple real videos captured using handheld cameras, and compare them to several alternate foreground extraction approaches.
1404.5356
Finding safe strategies for competitive diffusion on trees
cs.DM cs.GR cs.SI
We study the two-player safe game of Competitive Diffusion, a game-theoretic model for the diffusion of technologies or influence through a social network. In game theory, safe strategies are mixed strategies with a minimal expected gain against unknown strategies of the opponents. Safe strategies for competitive diffusion lead to maximum spread of influence in the presence of uncertainty about the other players. We study the safe game on two specific classes of trees, spiders and complete trees, and give tight bounds on the minimal expected gain. We then use these results to give an algorithm which suggests a safe strategy for a player on any tree. We test this algorithm on randomly generated trees, and show that it finds strategies that are close to optimal.
1404.5357
Morphological Analysis of the Bishnupriya Manipuri Language using Finite State Transducers
cs.CL
In this work we present a morphological analysis of Bishnupriya Manipuri language, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the north eastern India. As of now, there is no computational work available for the language. Finite state morphology is one of the successful approaches applied in a wide variety of languages over the year. Therefore we adapted the finite state approach to analyse morphology of the Bishnupriya Manipuri language.
1404.5367
Lexicon Infused Phrase Embeddings for Named Entity Resolution
cs.CL
Most state-of-the-art approaches for named-entity recognition (NER) use semi supervised information in the form of word clusters and lexicons. Recently neural network-based language models have been explored, as they as a byproduct generate highly informative vector representations for words, known as word embeddings. In this paper we present two contributions: a new form of learning word embeddings that can leverage information from relevant lexicons to improve the representations, and the first system to use neural word embeddings to achieve state-of-the-art results on named-entity recognition in both CoNLL and Ontonotes NER. Our system achieves an F1 score of 90.90 on the test set for CoNLL 2003---significantly better than any previous system trained on public data, and matching a system employing massive private industrial query-log data.
1404.5372
Linking Geographic Vocabularies through WordNet
cs.IR cs.CL
The linked open data (LOD) paradigm has emerged as a promising approach to structuring and sharing geospatial information. One of the major obstacles to this vision lies in the difficulties found in the automatic integration between heterogeneous vocabularies and ontologies that provides the semantic backbone of the growing constellation of open geo-knowledge bases. In this article, we show how to utilize WordNet as a semantic hub to increase the integration of LOD. With this purpose in mind, we devise Voc2WordNet, an unsupervised mapping technique between a given vocabulary and WordNet, combining intensional and extensional aspects of the geographic terms. Voc2WordNet is evaluated against a sample of human-generated alignments with the OpenStreetMap (OSM) Semantic Network, a crowdsourced geospatial resource, and the GeoNames ontology, the vocabulary of a large digital gazetteer. These empirical results indicate that the approach can obtain high precision and recall.
1404.5412
Analytical Assessment of Coordinated Overlay D2D Communications
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, analytical assessment of overlay-inband device-to-device (D2D) communications is investigated, under cellular-network-assisted (coordinated) scheduling. To this end, a simple scheduling scheme is assumed that takes into account only local (per cell) topological information of the D2D links. Stochastic geometry tools are utilized in order to obtain analytical expressions for the interferers density as well as the D2D link signal-to-interference-ratio distribution. The analytical results accuracy is validated by comparison with simulations. In addition, the analytical expressions are employed for efficiently optimizing the parameters of a cellular system with overlay D2D communications. It is shown that coordinated scheduling of D2D transmissions enhances system performance both in terms of average user rate as well as maximum allowable D2D link distance.
1404.5417
Attractor Metadynamics in Adapting Neural Networks
q-bio.NC cond-mat.dis-nn cs.NE
Slow adaption processes, like synaptic and intrinsic plasticity, abound in the brain and shape the landscape for the neural dynamics occurring on substantially faster timescales. At any given time the network is characterized by a set of internal parameters, which are adapting continuously, albeit slowly. This set of parameters defines the number and the location of the respective adiabatic attractors. The slow evolution of network parameters hence induces an evolving attractor landscape, a process which we term attractor metadynamics. We study the nature of the metadynamics of the attractor landscape for several continuous-time autonomous model networks. We find both first- and second-order changes in the location of adiabatic attractors and argue that the study of the continuously evolving attractor landscape constitutes a powerful tool for understanding the overall development of the neural dynamics.
1404.5421
Concurrent bandits and cognitive radio networks
cs.LG cs.MA
We consider the problem of multiple users targeting the arms of a single multi-armed stochastic bandit. The motivation for this problem comes from cognitive radio networks, where selfish users need to coexist without any side communication between them, implicit cooperation or common control. Even the number of users may be unknown and can vary as users join or leave the network. We propose an algorithm that combines an $\epsilon$-greedy learning rule with a collision avoidance mechanism. We analyze its regret with respect to the system-wide optimum and show that sub-linear regret can be obtained in this setting. Experiments show dramatic improvement compared to other algorithms for this setting.
1404.5433
Equilibrium Refinement through Negotiation in Binary Voting
cs.GT cs.MA
We study voting games on binary issues, where voters hold an objective over the outcome of the collective decision and are allowed, before the vote takes place, to negotiate their voting strategy with the other participants. We analyse the voters' rational behaviour in the resulting two-phase game, showing under what conditions undesirable equilibria can be removed and desirable ones sustained as a consequence of the pre-vote phase.
1404.5454
Stochastic Privacy
cs.AI
Online services such as web search and e-commerce applications typically rely on the collection of data about users, including details of their activities on the web. Such personal data is used to enhance the quality of service via personalization of content and to maximize revenues via better targeting of advertisements and deeper engagement of users on sites. To date, service providers have largely followed the approach of either requiring or requesting consent for opting-in to share their data. Users may be willing to share private information in return for better quality of service or for incentives, or in return for assurances about the nature and extend of the logging of data. We introduce \emph{stochastic privacy}, a new approach to privacy centering on a simple concept: A guarantee is provided to users about the upper-bound on the probability that their personal data will be used. Such a probability, which we refer to as \emph{privacy risk}, can be assessed by users as a preference or communicated as a policy by a service provider. Service providers can work to personalize and to optimize revenues in accordance with preferences about privacy risk. We present procedures, proofs, and an overall system for maximizing the quality of services, while respecting bounds on allowable or communicated privacy risk. We demonstrate the methodology with a case study and evaluation of the procedures applied to web search personalization. We show how we can achieve near-optimal utility of accessing information with provable guarantees on the probability of sharing data.