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1404.5458
Complex Workflow Management and Integration of Distributed Computing Resources by Science Gateway Portal for Molecular Dynamics Simulations in Materials Science
cs.CE cond-mat.mtrl-sci cs.DC
The "IMP Science Gateway Portal" (http://scigate.imp.kiev.ua) for complex workflow management and integration of distributed computing resources (like clusters, service grids, desktop grids, clouds) is presented. It is created on the basis of WS-PGRADE and gUSE technologies, where WS-PGRADE is designed for science workflow operation and gUSE - for smooth integration of available resources for parallel and distributed computing in various heterogeneous distributed computing infrastructures (DCI). The typical scientific workflow with possible scenarios of its preparation and usage is considered. Several typical science applications (scientific workflows) are considered for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of complex behavior of various nanostructures (nanoindentation of graphene layers, defect system relaxation in metal nanocrystals, thermal stability of boron nitride nanotubes, etc.). The advantages and drawbacks of the solution are shortly analyzed in the context of its practical applications for MD simulations in materials science, physics and nanotechnologies with available heterogeneous DCIs.
1404.5475
Combining pattern-based CRFs and weighted context-free grammars
cs.FL cs.DS cs.LG
We consider two models for the sequence labeling (tagging) problem. The first one is a {\em Pattern-Based Conditional Random Field }(\PB), in which the energy of a string (chain labeling) $x=x_1\ldots x_n\in D^n$ is a sum of terms over intervals $[i,j]$ where each term is non-zero only if the substring $x_i\ldots x_j$ equals a prespecified word $w\in \Lambda$. The second model is a {\em Weighted Context-Free Grammar }(\WCFG) frequently used for natural language processing. \PB and \WCFG encode local and non-local interactions respectively, and thus can be viewed as complementary. We propose a {\em Grammatical Pattern-Based CRF model }(\GPB) that combines the two in a natural way. We argue that it has certain advantages over existing approaches such as the {\em Hybrid model} of Bened{\'i} and Sanchez that combines {\em $\mbox{$N$-grams}$} and \WCFGs. The focus of this paper is to analyze the complexity of inference tasks in a \GPB such as computing MAP. We present a polynomial-time algorithm for general \GPBs and a faster version for a special case that we call {\em Interaction Grammars}.
1404.5478
Optimal control of information epidemics modeled as Maki Thompson rumors
cs.SY cs.SI math.OC
We model the spread of information in a homogeneously mixed population using the Maki Thompson rumor model. We formulate an optimal control problem, from the perspective of single campaigner, to maximize the spread of information when the campaign budget is fixed. Control signals, such as advertising in the mass media, attempt to convert ignorants and stiflers into spreaders. We show the existence of a solution to the optimal control problem when the campaigning incurs non-linear costs under the isoperimetric budget constraint. The solution employs Pontryagin's Minimum Principle and a modified version of forward backward sweep technique for numerical computation to accommodate the isoperimetric budget constraint. The techniques developed in this paper are general and can be applied to similar optimal control problems in other areas. We have allowed the spreading rate of the information epidemic to vary over the campaign duration to model practical situations when the interest level of the population in the subject of the campaign changes with time. The shape of the optimal control signal is studied for different model parameters and spreading rate profiles. We have also studied the variation of the optimal campaigning costs with respect to various model parameters. Results indicate that, for some model parameters, significant improvements can be achieved by the optimal strategy compared to the static control strategy. The static strategy respects the same budget constraint as the optimal strategy and has a constant value throughout the campaign horizon. This work finds application in election and social awareness campaigns, product advertising, movie promotion and crowdfunding campaigns.
1404.5501
Polar Codes for Distributed Hierarchical Source Coding
cs.IT math.IT
We show that polar codes can be used to achieve the rate-distortion functions in the problem of hierarchical source coding also known as the successive refinement problem. We also analyze the distributed version of this problem, constructing a polar coding scheme that achieves the rate distortion functions for successive refinement with side information.
1404.5507
Strong Converse and Second-Order Asymptotics of Channel Resolvability
cs.IT math.IT
We study the problem of channel resolvability for fixed i.i.d. input distributions and discrete memoryless channels (DMCs), and derive the strong converse theorem for any DMCs that are not necessarily full rank. We also derive the optimal second-order rate under a condition. Furthermore, under the condition that a DMC has the unique capacity achieving input distribution, we derive the optimal second-order rate of channel resolvability for the worst input distribution.
1404.5511
Coactive Learning for Locally Optimal Problem Solving
cs.LG
Coactive learning is an online problem solving setting where the solutions provided by a solver are interactively improved by a domain expert, which in turn drives learning. In this paper we extend the study of coactive learning to problems where obtaining a globally optimal or near-optimal solution may be intractable or where an expert can only be expected to make small, local improvements to a candidate solution. The goal of learning in this new setting is to minimize the cost as measured by the expert effort over time. We first establish theoretical bounds on the average cost of the existing coactive Perceptron algorithm. In addition, we consider new online algorithms that use cost-sensitive and Passive-Aggressive (PA) updates, showing similar or improved theoretical bounds. We provide an empirical evaluation of the learners in various domains, which show that the Perceptron based algorithms are quite effective and that unlike the case for online classification, the PA algorithms do not yield significant performance gains.
1404.5520
A Computationally Efficient Limited Memory CMA-ES for Large Scale Optimization
cs.NE
We propose a computationally efficient limited memory Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy for large scale optimization, which we call the LM-CMA-ES. The LM-CMA-ES is a stochastic, derivative-free algorithm for numerical optimization of non-linear, non-convex optimization problems in continuous domain. Inspired by the limited memory BFGS method of Liu and Nocedal (1989), the LM-CMA-ES samples candidate solutions according to a covariance matrix reproduced from $m$ direction vectors selected during the optimization process. The decomposition of the covariance matrix into Cholesky factors allows to reduce the time and memory complexity of the sampling to $O(mn)$, where $n$ is the number of decision variables. When $n$ is large (e.g., $n$ > 1000), even relatively small values of $m$ (e.g., $m=20,30$) are sufficient to efficiently solve fully non-separable problems and to reduce the overall run-time.
1404.5521
Together we stand, Together we fall, Together we win: Dynamic Team Formation in Massive Open Online Courses
cs.SI cs.CY cs.LG cs.MA
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer a new scalable paradigm for e-learning by providing students with global exposure and opportunities for connecting and interacting with millions of people all around the world. Very often, students work as teams to effectively accomplish course related tasks. However, due to lack of face to face interaction, it becomes difficult for MOOC students to collaborate. Additionally, the instructor also faces challenges in manually organizing students into teams because students flock to these MOOCs in huge numbers. Thus, the proposed research is aimed at developing a robust methodology for dynamic team formation in MOOCs, the theoretical framework for which is grounded at the confluence of organizational team theory, social network analysis and machine learning. A prerequisite for such an undertaking is that we understand the fact that, each and every informal tie established among students offers the opportunities to influence and be influenced. Therefore, we aim to extract value from the inherent connectedness of students in the MOOC. These connections carry with them radical implications for the way students understand each other in the networked learning community. Our approach will enable course instructors to automatically group students in teams that have fairly balanced social connections with their peers, well defined in terms of appropriately selected qualitative and quantitative network metrics.
1404.5528
Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for Cloud Computing Applications
cs.DC cs.AI
In this paper with the aid of genetic algorithm and fuzzy theory, we present a hybrid job scheduling approach, which considers the load balancing of the system and reduces total execution time and execution cost. We try to modify the standard Genetic algorithm and to reduce the iteration of creating population with the aid of fuzzy theory. The main goal of this research is to assign the jobs to the resources with considering the VM MIPS and length of jobs. The new algorithm assigns the jobs to the resources with considering the job length and resources capacities. We evaluate the performance of our approach with some famous cloud scheduling models. The results of the experiments show the efficiency of the proposed approach in term of execution time, execution cost and average Degree of Imbalance (DI).
1404.5538
Analysis and Design of Two-Hop Diffusion-Based Molecular Communication Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we consider a two-hop molecular communication network consisting of one nanotransmitter, one nanoreceiver, and one nanotransceiver acting as a relay. We consider two different schemes for relaying to improve the range of diffusion-based molecular communication. In the first scheme, two different types of messenger molecules are utilized at the relay node for transmission and detection. In the second scheme, we assume that there is only one type of molecule available to be used as an information carrier. We identify self-interference as the performance-limiting effect for the second relaying scheme. Self-interference occurs when the relay must detect the same type of molecule that it also emits. Furthermore, we consider two relaying modes analogous to those used in wireless communication systems, i.e., full-duplex and half-duplex. In particular, while our main focus is on full-duplex relaying, half-duplex relaying is employed as a means to mitigate self-interference. In addition, we propose the adaptation of the decision threshold as an effective mechanism to mitigate self-interference at the relay for full-duplex transmission. We derive closed-form expressions for the expected error probability of the network for both considered relaying schemes.
1404.5557
The Degrees of Freedom of Partly Smooth Regularizers
math.ST cs.IT math.IT stat.TH
In this paper, we are concerned with regularized regression problems where the prior regularizer is a proper lower semicontinuous and convex function which is also partly smooth relative to a Riemannian submanifold. This encompasses as special cases several known penalties such as the Lasso ($\ell^1$-norm), the group Lasso ($\ell^1-\ell^2$-norm), the $\ell^\infty$-norm, and the nuclear norm. This also includes so-called analysis-type priors, i.e. composition of the previously mentioned penalties with linear operators, typical examples being the total variation or fused Lasso penalties.We study the sensitivity of any regularized minimizer to perturbations of the observations and provide its precise local parameterization.Our main sensitivity analysis result shows that the predictor moves locally stably along the same active submanifold as the observations undergo small perturbations. This local stability is a consequence of the smoothness of the regularizer when restricted to the active submanifold, which in turn plays a pivotal role to get a closed form expression for the variations of the predictor w.r.t. observations. We also show that, for a variety of regularizers, including polyhedral ones or the group Lasso and its analysis counterpart, this divergence formula holds Lebesgue almost everywhere.When the perturbation is random (with an appropriate continuous distribution), this allows us to derive an unbiased estimator of the degrees of freedom and of the risk of the estimator prediction.Our results hold true without requiring the design matrix to be full column rank.They generalize those already known in the literature such as the Lasso problem, the general Lasso problem (analysis $\ell^1$-penalty), or the group Lasso where existing results for the latter assume that the design is full column rank.
1404.5562
Characterizing Information Spreading in Online Social Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Online social networks (OSNs) are changing the way in which the information spreads throughout the Internet. A deep understanding of the information spreading in OSNs leads to both social and commercial benefits. In this paper, we characterize the dynamic of information spreading (e.g., how fast and widely the information spreads against time) in OSNs by developing a general and accurate model based on the Interactive Markov Chains (IMCs) and mean-field theory. This model explicitly reveals the impacts of the network topology on information spreading in OSNs. Further, we extend our model to feature the time-varying user behaviors and the ever-changing information popularity. The complicated dynamic patterns of information spreading are captured by our model using six key parameters. Extensive tests based on Renren's dataset validate the accuracy of our model, which demonstrate that it can characterize the dynamic patterns of video sharing in Renren precisely and predict future spreading tendency successfully.
1404.5585
A Structural Query System for Han Characters
cs.CL cs.DB
The IDSgrep structural query system for Han character dictionaries is presented. This system includes a data model and syntax for describing the spatial structure of Han characters using Extended Ideographic Description Sequences (EIDSes) based on the Unicode IDS syntax; a language for querying EIDS databases, designed to suit the needs of font developers and foreign language learners; a bit vector index inspired by Bloom filters for faster query operations; a freely available implementation; and format translation from popular third-party IDS and XML character databases. Experimental results are included, with a comparison to other software used for similar applications.
1404.5588
Large Margin Image Set Representation and Classification
cs.CV
In this paper, we propose a novel image set representation and classification method by maximizing the margin of image sets. The margin of an image set is defined as the difference of the distance to its nearest image set from different classes and the distance to its nearest image set of the same class. By modeling the image sets by using both their image samples and their affine hull models, and maximizing the margins of the images sets, the image set representation parameter learning problem is formulated as an minimization problem, which is further optimized by an expectation -maximization (EM) strategy with accelerated proximal gradient (APG) optimization in an iterative algorithm. To classify a given test image set, we assign it to the class which could provide the largest margin. Experiments on two applications of video-sequence-based face recognition demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art image set classification methods in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency.
1404.5605
SCMA for Downlink Multiple Access of 5G Wireless Networks
cs.IT math.IT
Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) is a new frequency domain non-orthogonal multiple-access technique which can improve spectral efficiency of wireless radio access. With SCMA, different incoming data streams are directly mapped to codewords of different multi-dimensional cookbooks, where each codeword represents a spread transmission layer. Multiple SCMA layers share the same time-frequency resources of OFDMA. The sparsity of codewords makes the near-optimal detection feasible through iterative message passing algorithm (MPA). Such low complexity of multi-layer detection allows excessive codeword overloading in which the dimension of multiplexed layers exceeds the dimension of codewords. Optimization of overloading factor along with modulation-coding levels of layers provides a more flexible and efficient link-adaptation mechanism. On the other hand, the signal spreading feature of SCMA can improve link-adaptation as a result of less colored interference. In this paper a technique is developed to enable multi-user SCMA (MU-SCMA) for downlink wireless access. User pairing, power sharing, rate adjustment, and scheduling algorithms are designed to improve the downlink throughput of a heavily loaded network. The advantage of SCMA spreading for lightly loaded networks is also evaluated.
1404.5611
IMP Science Gateway: from the Portal to the Hub of Virtual Experimental Labs in Materials Science
cs.CE cond-mat.mtrl-sci cs.DC
"Science gateway" (SG) ideology means a user-friendly intuitive interface between scientists (or scientific communities) and different software components + various distributed computing infrastructures (DCIs) (like grids, clouds, clusters), where researchers can focus on their scientific goals and less on peculiarities of software/DCI. "IMP Science Gateway Portal" (http://scigate.imp.kiev.ua) for complex workflow management and integration of distributed computing resources (like clusters, service grids, desktop grids, clouds) is presented. It is created on the basis of WS-PGRADE and gUSE technologies, where WS-PGRADE is designed for science workflow operation and gUSE - for smooth integration of available resources for parallel and distributed computing in various heterogeneous distributed computing infrastructures (DCI). The typical scientific workflows with possible scenarios of its preparation and usage are presented. Several typical use cases for these science applications (scientific workflows) are considered for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of complex behavior of various nanostructures (nanoindentation of graphene layers, defect system relaxation in metal nanocrystals, thermal stability of boron nitride nanotubes, etc.). The user experience is analyzed in the context of its practical applications for MD simulations in materials science, physics and nanotechnologies with available heterogeneous DCIs. In conclusion, the "science gateway" approach - workflow manager (like WS-PGRADE) + DCI resources manager (like gUSE)- gives opportunity to use the SG portal (like "IMP Science Gateway Portal") in a very promising way, namely, as a hub of various virtual experimental labs (different software components + various requirements to resources) in the context of its practical MD applications in materials science, physics, chemistry, biology, and nanotechnologies.
1404.5643
A Formal Analysis of Required Cooperation in Multi-agent Planning
cs.AI cs.MA
Research on multi-agent planning has been popular in recent years. While previous research has been motivated by the understanding that, through cooperation, multi-agent systems can achieve tasks that are unachievable by single-agent systems, there are no formal characterizations of situations where cooperation is required to achieve a goal, thus warranting the application of multi-agent systems. In this paper, we provide such a formal discussion from the planning aspect. We first show that determining whether there is required cooperation (RC) is intractable is general. Then, by dividing the problems that require cooperation (referred to as RC problems) into two classes -- problems with heterogeneous and homogeneous agents, we aim to identify all the conditions that can cause RC in these two classes. We establish that when none of these identified conditions hold, the problem is single-agent solvable. Furthermore, with a few assumptions, we provide an upper bound on the minimum number of agents required for RC problems with homogeneous agents. This study not only provides new insights into multi-agent planning, but also has many applications. For example, in human-robot teaming, when a robot cannot achieve a task, it may be due to RC. In such cases, the human teammate should be informed and, consequently, coordinate with other available robots for a solution.
1404.5651
On Scaling Limits of Power Law Shot-noise Fields
math.PR cs.IT math.IT
This article studies the scaling limit of a class of shot-noise fields defined on an independently marked stationary Poisson point process and with a power law response function. Under appropriate conditions, it is shown that the shot-noise field can be scaled suitably to have a $\alpha$-stable limit, intensity of the underlying point process goes to infinity. It is also shown that the finite dimensional distributions of the limiting random field have i.i.d. stable random components. We hence propose to call this limte the $\alpha$- stable white noise field. Analogous results are also obtained for the extremal shot-noise field which converges to a Fr\'{e}chet white noise field. Finally, these results are applied to the analysis of wireless networks.
1404.5653
Compressive sampling for energy spectrum estimation of turbulent flows
physics.flu-dyn cs.IT math.IT
Recent results from compressive sampling (CS) have demonstrated that accurate reconstruction of sparse signals often requires far fewer samples than suggested by the classical Nyquist--Shannon sampling theorem. Typically, signal reconstruction errors are measured in the $\ell^2$ norm and the signal is assumed to be sparse, compressible or having a prior distribution. Our spectrum estimation by sparse optimization (SpESO) method uses prior information about isotropic homogeneous turbulent flows with power law energy spectra and applies the methods of CS to 1-D and 2-D turbulence signals to estimate their energy spectra with small logarithmic errors. SpESO is distinct from existing energy spectrum estimation methods which are based on sparse support of the signal in Fourier space. SpESO approximates energy spectra with an order of magnitude fewer samples than needed with Shannon sampling. Our results demonstrate that SpESO performs much better than lumped orthogonal matching pursuit (LOMP), and as well or better than wavelet-based best M-term or M/2-term methods, even though these methods require complete sampling of the signal before compression.
1404.5666
An Importance Sampling Algorithm for the Ising Model with Strong Couplings
stat.CO cs.IT math.IT physics.comp-ph
We consider the problem of estimating the partition function of the ferromagnetic Ising model in a consistent external magnetic field. The estimation is done via importance sampling in the dual of the Forney factor graph representing the model. Emphasis is on models at low temperature (corresponding to models with strong couplings) and on models with a mixture of strong and weak coupling parameters.
1404.5668
An Adversarial Interpretation of Information-Theoretic Bounded Rationality
cs.AI
Recently, there has been a growing interest in modeling planning with information constraints. Accordingly, an agent maximizes a regularized expected utility known as the free energy, where the regularizer is given by the information divergence from a prior to a posterior policy. While this approach can be justified in various ways, including from statistical mechanics and information theory, it is still unclear how it relates to decision-making against adversarial environments. This connection has previously been suggested in work relating the free energy to risk-sensitive control and to extensive form games. Here, we show that a single-agent free energy optimization is equivalent to a game between the agent and an imaginary adversary. The adversary can, by paying an exponential penalty, generate costs that diminish the decision maker's payoffs. It turns out that the optimal strategy of the adversary consists in choosing costs so as to render the decision maker indifferent among its choices, which is a definining property of a Nash equilibrium, thus tightening the connection between free energy optimization and game theory.
1404.5683
The Likelihood Encoder for Lossy Source Compression
cs.IT math.IT
In this work, a likelihood encoder is studied in the context of lossy source compression. The analysis of the likelihood encoder is based on a soft-covering lemma. It is demonstrated that the use of a likelihood encoder together with the soft-covering lemma gives alternative achievability proofs for classical source coding problems. The case of the rate-distortion function with side information at the decoder (i.e. the Wyner-Ziv problem) is carefully examined and an application of the likelihood encoder to the multi-terminal source coding inner bound (i.e. the Berger-Tung region) is outlined.
1404.5686
DGFIndex for Smart Grid: Enhancing Hive with a Cost-Effective Multidimensional Range Index
cs.DB cs.DC
In Smart Grid applications, as the number of deployed electric smart meters increases, massive amounts of valuable meter data is generated and collected every day. To enable reliable data collection and make business decisions fast, high throughput storage and high-performance analysis of massive meter data become crucial for grid companies. Considering the advantage of high efficiency, fault tolerance, and price-performance of Hadoop and Hive systems, they are frequently deployed as underlying platform for big data processing. However, in real business use cases, these data analysis applications typically involve multidimensional range queries (MDRQ) as well as batch reading and statistics on the meter data. While Hive is high-performance at complex data batch reading and analysis, it lacks efficient indexing techniques for MDRQ. In this paper, we propose DGFIndex, an index structure for Hive that efficiently supports MDRQ for massive meter data. DGFIndex divides the data space into cubes using the grid file technique. Unlike the existing indexes in Hive, which stores all combinations of multiple dimensions, DGFIndex only stores the information of cubes. This leads to smaller index size and faster query processing. Furthermore, with pre-computing user-defined aggregations of each cube, DGFIndex only needs to access the boundary region for aggregation query. Our comprehensive experiments show that DGFIndex can save significant disk space in comparison with the existing indexes in Hive and the query performance with DGFIndex is 2-50 times faster than existing indexes in Hive and HadoopDB for aggregation query, 2-5 times faster than both for non-aggregation query, 2-75 times faster than scanning the whole table in different query selectivity.
1404.5692
Forward - Backward Greedy Algorithms for Atomic Norm Regularization
cs.DS cs.LG math.OC stat.ML
In many signal processing applications, the aim is to reconstruct a signal that has a simple representation with respect to a certain basis or frame. Fundamental elements of the basis known as "atoms" allow us to define "atomic norms" that can be used to formulate convex regularizations for the reconstruction problem. Efficient algorithms are available to solve these formulations in certain special cases, but an approach that works well for general atomic norms, both in terms of speed and reconstruction accuracy, remains to be found. This paper describes an optimization algorithm called CoGEnT that produces solutions with succinct atomic representations for reconstruction problems, generally formulated with atomic-norm constraints. CoGEnT combines a greedy selection scheme based on the conditional gradient approach with a backward (or "truncation") step that exploits the quadratic nature of the objective to reduce the basis size. We establish convergence properties and validate the algorithm via extensive numerical experiments on a suite of signal processing applications. Our algorithm and analysis also allow for inexact forward steps and for occasional enhancements of the current representation to be performed. CoGEnT can outperform the basic conditional gradient method, and indeed many methods that are tailored to specific applications, when the enhancement and truncation steps are defined appropriately. We also introduce several novel applications that are enabled by the atomic-norm framework, including tensor completion, moment problems in signal processing, and graph deconvolution.
1404.5699
Quantum Trajectories for a Class of Continuous Matrix Product Input States
quant-ph cs.SY math-ph math.MP math.OC
We introduce a new class of continuous matrix product (CMP) states and establish the stochastic master equations (quantum filters) for an arbitrary quantum system probed by a bosonic input field in this class of states. We show that this class of CMP states arise naturally as outputs of a Markovian model, and that input fields in these states lead to master and filtering (quantum trajectory) equations which are matrix-valued. Furthermore, it is shown that this class of continuous matrix product states include the (continuous-mode) single photon and time-ordered multi-photon states.
1404.5701
Achieving Shannon Capacity in a Wiretap Channel via Previous Messages
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
In this paper we consider a wiretap channel with a secret key buffer. We use the coding scheme of [1] to enhance the secrecy rate to the capacity of the main channel, while storing each securely transmitted message in the secret key buffer. We use the oldest secret bits from the buffer to be used as a secret key to transmit a message in a slot and then remove those bits. With this scheme we are able to prove stronger results than those in [1]. i.e., not only the message which is being transmitted currently, but all the messages transmitted in last $N_1$ slots are secure with respect to all the information that the eavesdropper possesses, where $N_1$ can be chosen arbitrarily large.
1404.5708
Converging Work-Talk Patterns in Online Task-Oriented Communities
cs.SE cs.HC cs.SI physics.data-an
Much of what we do is accomplished by working collaboratively with others, and a large portion of our lives are spent working and talking; the patterns embodied in the alternation of working and talking can provide much useful insight into task-oriented social behaviors. The available electronic traces of the different kinds of human activities in online communities are an empirical goldmine that can enable the holistic study and understanding of these social systems. Open Source Software projects are prototypical examples of collaborative, task-oriented communities, depending on volunteers for high-quality work. Here, we use sequence analysis methods to identify the work-talk patterns of software developers in these online communities. We find that software developers prefer to persist in same kinds of activities, i.e., a string of work activities followed by a string of talk activities and so forth, rather than switch them frequently; this tendency strengthens with time, suggesting that developers become more efficient, and can work longer with fewer interruptions. This process is accompanied by the formation of community culture: developers' patterns in the same communities get closer with time while different communities get relatively more different. The emergence of community culture is apparently driven by both "talk" and "work". Finally, we also find that workers with good balance between "work" and "talk" tend to produce just as much work as those that focus strongly on "work"; however, the former appear to be more likely to continue to be active contributors in the communities.
1404.5711
Modeling multi-stage decision optimization problems
math.OC cs.AI
Multi-stage optimization under uncertainty techniques can be used to solve long-term management problems. Although many optimization modeling language extensions as well as computational environments have been proposed, the acceptance of this technique is generally low, due to the inherent complexity of the modeling and solution process. In this paper a simplification to annotate multi-stage decision problems under uncertainty is presented - this simplification contrasts with the common approach to create an extension on top of an existing optimization modeling language. This leads to the definition of meta models, which can be instanced in various programming languages. An example using the statistical computing language R is shown.
1404.5715
Converses for Secret Key Agreement and Secure Computing
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
We consider information theoretic secret key agreement and secure function computation by multiple parties observing correlated data, with access to an interactive public communication channel. Our main result is an upper bound on the secret key length, which is derived using a reduction of binary hypothesis testing to multiparty secret key agreement. Building on this basic result, we derive new converses for multiparty secret key agreement. Furthermore, we derive converse results for the oblivious transfer problem and the bit commitment problem by relating them to secret key agreement. Finally, we derive a necessary condition for the feasibility of secure computation by trusted parties that seek to compute a function of their collective data, using an interactive public communication that by itself does not give away the value of the function. In many cases, we strengthen and improve upon previously known converse bounds. Our results are single-shot and use only the given joint distribution of the correlated observations. For the case when the correlated observations consist of independent and identically distributed (in time) sequences, we derive strong versions of previously known converses.
1404.5716
List-Decoding Gabidulin Codes via Interpolation and the Euclidean Algorithm
cs.IT math.IT
We show how Gabidulin codes can be list decoded by using a parametrization approach. For this we consider a certain module in the ring of linearized polynomials and find a minimal basis for this module using the Euclidean algorithm with respect to composition of polynomials. For a given received word, our decoding algorithm computes a list of all codewords that are closest to the received word with respect to the rank metric.
1404.5719
A Scaling Law to Predict the Finite-Length Performance of Spatially-Coupled LDPC Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Spatially-coupled LDPC codes are known to have excellent asymptotic properties. Much less is known regarding their finite-length performance. We propose a scaling law to predict the error probability of finite-length spatially-coupled ensembles when transmission takes place over the binary erasure channel. We discuss how the parameters of the scaling law are connected to fundamental quantities appearing in the asymptotic analysis of these ensembles and we verify that the predictions of the scaling law fit well to the data derived from simulations over a wide range of parameters. The ultimate goal of this line of research is to develop analytic tools for the design of spatially-coupled LDPC codes under practical constraints.
1404.5756
A Revised Scheme to Compute Horizontal Covariances in an Oceanographic 3D-VAR Assimilation System
cs.NA cs.CE cs.DC math.NA
We propose an improvement of an oceanographic three dimensional variational assimilation scheme (3D-VAR), named OceanVar, by introducing a recursive filter (RF) with the third order of accuracy (3rd-RF), instead of a RF with first order of accuracy (1st-RF), to approximate horizontal Gaussian covariances. An advantage of the proposed scheme is that the CPU's time can be substantially reduced with benefits on the large scale applications. Experiments estimating the impact of 3rd-RF are performed by assimilating oceanographic data in two realistic oceanographic applications. The results evince benefits in terms of assimilation process computational time, accuracy of the Gaussian correlation modeling, and show that the 3rd-RF is a suitable tool for operational data assimilation.
1404.5764
From Quantity to Quality: Massive Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Nanostructures under Plastic Deformation in Desktop and Service Grid Distributed Computing Infrastructure
cs.CE cond-mat.mtrl-sci cs.DC
The distributed computing infrastructure (DCI) on the basis of BOINC and EDGeS-bridge technologies for high-performance distributed computing is used for porting the sequential molecular dynamics (MD) application to its parallel version for DCI with Desktop Grids (DGs) and Service Grids (SGs). The actual metrics of the working DG-SG DCI were measured, and the normal distribution of host performances, and signs of log-normal distributions of other characteristics (CPUs, RAM, and HDD per host) were found. The practical feasibility and high efficiency of the MD simulations on the basis of DG-SG DCI were demonstrated during the experiment with the massive MD simulations for the large quantity of aluminum nanocrystals ($\sim10^2$-$10^3$). Statistical analysis (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, moment analysis, and bootstrapping analysis) of the defect density distribution over the ensemble of nanocrystals had shown that change of plastic deformation mode is followed by the qualitative change of defect density distribution type over ensemble of nanocrystals. Some limitations (fluctuating performance, unpredictable availability of resources, etc.) of the typical DG-SG DCI were outlined, and some advantages (high efficiency, high speedup, and low cost) were demonstrated. Deploying on DG DCI allows to get new scientific $\it{quality}$ from the simulated $\it{quantity}$ of numerous configurations by harnessing sufficient computational power to undertake MD simulations in a wider range of physical parameters (configurations) in a much shorter timeframe.
1404.5765
Find my mug: Efficient object search with a mobile robot using semantic segmentation
cs.CV cs.RO
In this paper, we propose an efficient semantic segmentation framework for indoor scenes, tailored to the application on a mobile robot. Semantic segmentation can help robots to gain a reasonable understanding of their environment, but to reach this goal, the algorithms not only need to be accurate, but also fast and robust. Therefore, we developed an optimized 3D point cloud processing framework based on a Randomized Decision Forest, achieving competitive results at sufficiently high frame rates. We evaluate the capabilities of our method on the popular NYU depth dataset and our own data and demonstrate its feasibility by deploying it on a mobile service robot, for which we could optimize an object search procedure using our results.
1404.5767
Codynamic Fitness Landscapes of Coevolutionary Minimal Substrates
cs.NE
Coevolutionary minimal substrates are simple and abstract models that allow studying the relationships and codynamics between objective and subjective fitness. Using these models an approach is presented for defining and analyzing fitness landscapes of coevolutionary problems. We devise similarity measures of codynamic fitness landscapes and experimentally study minimal substrates of test--based and compositional problems for both cooperative and competitive interaction.
1404.5772
Sequential Click Prediction for Sponsored Search with Recurrent Neural Networks
cs.IR cs.LG cs.NE
Click prediction is one of the fundamental problems in sponsored search. Most of existing studies took advantage of machine learning approaches to predict ad click for each event of ad view independently. However, as observed in the real-world sponsored search system, user's behaviors on ads yield high dependency on how the user behaved along with the past time, especially in terms of what queries she submitted, what ads she clicked or ignored, and how long she spent on the landing pages of clicked ads, etc. Inspired by these observations, we introduce a novel framework based on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). Compared to traditional methods, this framework directly models the dependency on user's sequential behaviors into the click prediction process through the recurrent structure in RNN. Large scale evaluations on the click-through logs from a commercial search engine demonstrate that our approach can significantly improve the click prediction accuracy, compared to sequence-independent approaches.
1404.5828
Motion planning and Collision Avoidance using Non-Gradient Vector Fields. Technical Report
cs.RO
This paper presents a novel feedback method on the motion planning for unicycle robots in environments with static obstacles, along with an extension to the distributed planning and coordination in multi-robot systems. The method employs a family of 2-dimensional analytic vector fields, whose integral curves exhibit various patterns depending on the value of a parameter lambda. More specifically, for an a priori known value of lambda, the vector field has a unique singular point of dipole type and can be used to steer the unicycle to a goal configuration. Furthermore, for the unique value of lambda that the vector field has a continuum of singular points, the integral curves are used to define flows around obstacles. An almost global feedback motion plan can then be constructed by suitably blending attractive and repulsive vector fields in a static obstacle environment. The method does not suffer from the appearance of sinks (stable nodes) away from goal point. Compared to other similar methods which are free of local minima, the proposed approach does not require any parameter tuning to render the desired convergence properties. The paper also addresses the extension of the method to the distributed coordination and control of multiple robots, where each robot needs to navigate to a goal configuration while avoiding collisions with the remaining robots, and while using local information only. More specifically, based on the results which apply to the single-robot case, a motion coordination protocol is presented which guarantees the safety of the multi-robot system and the almost global convergence of the robots to their goal configurations. The efficacy of the proposed methodology is demonstrated via simulation results in static and dynamic environments.
1404.5859
Distributed Channel Assignment in Cognitive Radio Networks: Stable Matching and Walrasian Equilibrium
cs.IT math.IT
We consider a set of secondary transmitter-receiver pairs in a cognitive radio setting. Based on channel sensing and access performances, we consider the problem of assigning channels orthogonally to secondary users through distributed coordination and cooperation algorithms. Two economic models are applied for this purpose: matching markets and competitive markets. In the matching market model, secondary users and channels build two agent sets. We implement a stable matching algorithm in which each secondary user, based on his achievable rate, proposes to the coordinator to be matched with desirable channels. The coordinator accepts or rejects the proposals based on the channel preferences which depend on interference from the secondary user. The coordination algorithm is of low complexity and can adapt to network dynamics. In the competitive market model, channels are associated with prices and secondary users are endowed with monetary budget. Each secondary user, based on his utility function and current channel prices, demands a set of channels. A Walrasian equilibrium maximizes the sum utility and equates the channel demand to their supply. We prove the existence of Walrasian equilibrium and propose a cooperative mechanism to reach it. The performance and complexity of the proposed solutions are illustrated by numerical simulations.
1404.5874
Using Triangles to Improve Community Detection in Directed Networks
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In a graph, a community may be loosely defined as a group of nodes that are more closely connected to one another than to the rest of the graph. While there are a variety of metrics that can be used to specify the quality of a given community, one common theme is that flows tend to stay within communities. Hence, we expect cycles to play an important role in community detection. For undirected graphs, the importance of triangles -- an undirected 3-cycle -- has been known for a long time and can be used to improve community detection. In directed graphs, the situation is more nuanced. The smallest cycle is simply two nodes with a reciprocal connection, and using information about reciprocation has proven to improve community detection. Our new idea is based on the four types of directed triangles that contain cycles. To identify communities in directed networks, then, we propose an undirected edge-weighting scheme based on the type of the directed triangles in which edges are involved. We also propose a new metric on quality of the communities that is based on the number of 3-cycles that are split across communities. To demonstrate the impact of our new weighting, we use the standard METIS graph partitioning tool to determine communities and show experimentally that the resulting communities result in fewer 3-cycles being cut. The magnitude of the effect varies between a 10 and 50% reduction, and we also find evidence that this weighting scheme improves a task where plausible ground-truth communities are known.
1404.5889
Coherence Optimization and Best Complex Antipodal Spherical Codes
cs.IT math.IT
Vector sets with optimal coherence according to the Welch bound cannot exist for all pairs of dimension and cardinality. If such an optimal vector set exists, it is an equiangular tight frame and represents the solution to a Grassmannian line packing problem. Best Complex Antipodal Spherical Codes (BCASCs) are the best vector sets with respect to the coherence. By extending methods used to find best spherical codes in the real-valued Euclidean space, the proposed approach aims to find BCASCs, and thereby, a complex-valued vector set with minimal coherence. There are many applications demanding vector sets with low coherence. Examples are not limited to several techniques in wireless communication or to the field of compressed sensing. Within this contribution, existing analytical and numerical approaches for coherence optimization of complex-valued vector spaces are summarized and compared to the proposed approach. The numerically obtained coherence values improve previously reported results. The drawback of increased computational effort is addressed and a faster approximation is proposed which may be an alternative for time critical cases.
1404.5899
A Comparison of Clustering and Missing Data Methods for Health Sciences
math.NA cs.LG
In this paper, we compare and analyze clustering methods with missing data in health behavior research. In particular, we propose and analyze the use of compressive sensing's matrix completion along with spectral clustering to cluster health related data. The empirical tests and real data results show that these methods can outperform standard methods like LPA and FIML, in terms of lower misclassification rates in clustering and better matrix completion performance in missing data problems. According to our examination, a possible explanation of these improvements is that spectral clustering takes advantage of high data dimension and compressive sensing methods utilize the near-to-low-rank property of health data.
1404.5901
Linearization of Time-Varying Nonlinear Systems Using A Modified Linear Iterative Method
cs.SY
The linearization of nonlinear systems is an important digital enhancement technique. In this paper, a real-time capable post- and pre-linearization method for the widely applicable time-varying discrete-time Volterra series is presented. To this end, an alternative view on the Volterra series is established, which enables the utilization of certain modified linear iterative methods for linearization. For one particular linear iterative method, the Richardson iteration, the corresponding post- and pre-linearizers are discussed in detail. It is motivated that the resulting algorithm can be regarded as a generalization of some existing methods. Furthermore, a simply verifiable condition for convergence is presented, which allows the straightforward evaluation of applicability. The proposed method is demonstrated by means of the linearization of a time-varying nonlinear amplifier, which highlights its capability of linearizing significantly distorted signals, illustrates the advantageous convergence behavior, and depicts its robustness against modeling errors.
1404.5903
Most Correlated Arms Identification
stat.ML cs.LG
We study the problem of finding the most mutually correlated arms among many arms. We show that adaptive arms sampling strategies can have significant advantages over the non-adaptive uniform sampling strategy. Our proposed algorithms rely on a novel correlation estimator. The use of this accurate estimator allows us to get improved results for a wide range of problem instances.
1404.5905
STFU NOOB! Predicting Crowdsourced Decisions on Toxic Behavior in Online Games
cs.SI cs.CY physics.soc-ph
One problem facing players of competitive games is negative, or toxic, behavior. League of Legends, the largest eSport game, uses a crowdsourcing platform called the Tribunal to judge whether a reported toxic player should be punished or not. The Tribunal is a two stage system requiring reports from those players that directly observe toxic behavior, and human experts that review aggregated reports. While this system has successfully dealt with the vague nature of toxic behavior by majority rules based on many votes, it naturally requires tremendous cost, time, and human efforts. In this paper, we propose a supervised learning approach for predicting crowdsourced decisions on toxic behavior with large-scale labeled data collections; over 10 million user reports involved in 1.46 million toxic players and corresponding crowdsourced decisions. Our result shows good performance in detecting overwhelmingly majority cases and predicting crowdsourced decisions on them. We demonstrate good portability of our classifier across regions. Finally, we estimate the practical implications of our approach, potential cost savings and victim protection.
1404.5927
Secure MIMO Communications under Quantized Channel Feedback in the presence of Jamming
cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of secure communications in a MIMO setting in the presence of an adversarial jammer equipped with $n_j$ transmit antennas and an eavesdropper equipped with $n_e$ receive antennas. A multiantenna transmitter, equipped with $n_t$ antennas, desires to secretly communicate a message to a multiantenna receiver equipped with $n_r$ antennas. We propose a transmission method based on artificial noise and linear precoding and a two-stage receiver method employing beamforming. Under this strategy, we first characterize the achievable secrecy rates of communication and prove that the achievable secure degrees-of-freedom (SDoF) is given by $d_s = n_r - n_j$ in the perfect channel state information (CSI) case. Second, we consider quantized CSI feedback using Grassmannian quantization of a function of the direct channel matrix and derive sufficient conditions for the quantization bit rate scaling as a function of transmit power for maintaining the achievable SDoF $d_s$ with perfect CSI and for having asymptotically zero secrecy rate loss due to quantization. Numerical simulations are also provided to support the theory.
1404.5940
A strong converse for the quantum state merging protocol
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
The Polyanskiy-Verd\'{u} paradigm provides an elegant way of using generalized-divergences to obtain strong converses and thus far has remained confined to protocols involving channels (classical or quantum). In this paper, drawing inspirations from it, we provide strong converses for protocols involving LOCC (local operations and classical communication). The key quantity that we work with is the R\'{e}nyi relative entropy of entanglement. We provide a strong converse for the quantum state merging protocol that gives an exponential decay of the fidelity of the protocol for rates below the optimum with the number of copies of the state and are provided both for entanglement rate with LOCC as well as for classical communication with one-way LOCC. As an aside, the developments also yield short strong converses for the entanglement-concentration of pure states and the Schumacher compression.
1404.5945
Previous Messages Provide the Key to Achieve Shannon Capacity in a Wiretap Channel
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
We consider a wiretap channel and use previously transmitted messages to generate a secret key which increases the secrecy capacity. This can be bootstrapped to increase the secrecy capacity to the Shannon capacity without using any feedback or extra channel while retaining the strong secrecy of the wiretap channel.
1404.5997
One weird trick for parallelizing convolutional neural networks
cs.NE cs.DC cs.LG
I present a new way to parallelize the training of convolutional neural networks across multiple GPUs. The method scales significantly better than all alternatives when applied to modern convolutional neural networks.
1404.6000
Robust and computationally feasible community detection in the presence of arbitrary outlier nodes
math.ST cs.IT math.IT math.OC stat.ML stat.TH
Community detection, which aims to cluster $N$ nodes in a given graph into $r$ distinct groups based on the observed undirected edges, is an important problem in network data analysis. In this paper, the popular stochastic block model (SBM) is extended to the generalized stochastic block model (GSBM) that allows for adversarial outlier nodes, which are connected with the other nodes in the graph in an arbitrary way. Under this model, we introduce a procedure using convex optimization followed by $k$-means algorithm with $k=r$. Both theoretical and numerical properties of the method are analyzed. A theoretical guarantee is given for the procedure to accurately detect the communities with small misclassification rate under the setting where the number of clusters can grow with $N$. This theoretical result admits to the best-known result in the literature of computationally feasible community detection in SBM without outliers. Numerical results show that our method is both computationally fast and robust to different kinds of outliers, while some popular computationally fast community detection algorithms, such as spectral clustering applied to adjacency matrices or graph Laplacians, may fail to retrieve the major clusters due to a small portion of outliers. We apply a slight modification of our method to a political blogs data set, showing that our method is competent in practice and comparable to existing computationally feasible methods in the literature. To the best of the authors' knowledge, our result is the first in the literature in terms of clustering communities with fast growing numbers under the GSBM where a portion of arbitrary outlier nodes exist.
1404.6012
Degrees of Freedom of Uplink-Downlink Multiantenna Cellular Networks
cs.IT math.IT
An uplink-downlink two-cell cellular network is studied in which the first base station (BS) with $M_1$ antennas receives independent messages from its $N_1$ serving users, while the second BS with $M_2$ antennas transmits independent messages to its $N_2$ serving users. That is, the first and second cells operate as uplink and downlink, respectively. Each user is assumed to have a single antenna. Under this uplink-downlink setting, the sum degrees of freedom (DoF) is completely characterized as the minimum of $(N_1N_2+\min(M_1,N_1)(N_1-N_2)^++\min(M_2,N_2)(N_2-N_1)^+)/\max(N_1,N_2)$, $M_1+N_2,M_2+N_1$, $\max(M_1,M_2)$, and $\max(N_1,N_2)$, where $a^+$ denotes $\max(0,a)$. The result demonstrates that, for a broad class of network configurations, operating one of the two cells as uplink and the other cell as downlink can strictly improve the sum DoF compared to the conventional uplink or downlink operation, in which both cells operate as either uplink or downlink. The DoF gain from such uplink-downlink operation is further shown to be achievable for heterogeneous cellular networks having hotspots and with delayed channel state information.
1404.6020
A Fast Multiple Attractor Cellular Automata with Modified Clonal Classifier for Splicing Site Prediction in Human Genome
cs.CE
Bioinformatics encompass storing, analyzing and interpreting the biological data. Most of the challenges for Machine Learning methods like Cellular Automata is to furnish the functional information with the corresponding biological sequences. In eukaryotes DNA is divided into introns and exons. The introns will be removed to make the coding region by a process called splicing. By indentifying a splice site we can easily specify the DNA sequence category (Donor/Accepter/Neither).Splicing sites play an important role in understanding the genes. A class of CA which can handle fuzzy logic is employed with modified clonal algorithm is proposed to identify the splicing site. This classifier is tested with Irvine Primate Splice Junction Database. It is compared with NNspIICE, GENIO, HSPL and SPIICE VIEW. The reported accuracy and efficiency of prediction is quite promising.
1404.6026
Proximal linearized iteratively reweighted least squares for a class of nonconvex and nonsmooth problems
math.OC cs.IT math.IT
For solving a wide class of nonconvex and nonsmooth problems, we propose a proximal linearized iteratively reweighted least squares (PL-IRLS) algorithm. We first approximate the original problem by smoothing methods, and second write the approximated problem into an auxiliary problem by introducing new variables. PL-IRLS is then built on solving the auxiliary problem by utilizing the proximal linearization technique and the iteratively reweighted least squares (IRLS) method, and has remarkable computation advantages. We show that PL-IRLS can be extended to solve more general nonconvex and nonsmooth problems via adjusting generalized parameters, and also to solve nonconvex and nonsmooth problems with two or more blocks of variables. Theoretically, with the help of the Kurdyka- Lojasiewicz property, we prove that each bounded sequence generated by PL-IRLS globally converges to a critical point of the approximated problem. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first global convergence result of applying IRLS idea to solve nonconvex and nonsmooth problems. At last, we apply PL-IRLS to solve three representative nonconvex and nonsmooth problems in sparse signal recovery and low-rank matrix recovery and obtain new globally convergent algorithms.
1404.6029
Optimization and design of a laser-cutting machine using delta robot
cs.RO
Industrial high speed laser operations the use of delta parallel robots potentially offers many benefits due to their structural stiffness and limited moving masses. This paper deals with a particular Delta, developed for high speed laser cutting. Parallel delta robot has numerous advantages in comparison with serial robots Higher stiffness and connected with that a lower mass of links the possibility of transporting heavier loads, and higher accuracy. The main drawback is however a smaller workspace. Hence there exists an interest for the research concerning the workspace of robots.In industrial cutting tool maximum do not have more prescribe measurement to cut so that in This paper is oriented to parallel kinematic robots definition description of their specific application of laser cutting comparison of robots made by different producers and determination of velocity and acceleration parameters kinematic analysis inverse and forward kinematic. It brings information about development of Delta robot. The production of laser cutting machines began thirty years ago. The progress was very fast and at present time every year over 3000 laser cutting machines is installed in the world. Laser cutting is one of the largest applications of lasers in metal working industry.
1404.6031
Maximum Margin Vector Correlation Filter
cs.CV
Correlation Filters (CFs) are a class of classifiers which are designed for accurate pattern localization. Traditionally CFs have been used with scalar features only, which limits their ability to be used with vector feature representations like Gabor filter banks, SIFT, HOG, etc. In this paper we present a new CF named Maximum Margin Vector Correlation Filter (MMVCF) which extends the traditional CF designs to vector features. MMVCF further combines the generalization capability of large margin based classifiers like Support Vector Machines (SVMs) and the localization properties of CFs for better robustness to outliers. We demonstrate the efficacy of MMVCF for object detection and landmark localization on a variety of databases and demonstrate that MMVCF consistently shows improved pattern localization capability in comparison to SVMs.
1404.6036
Gradual Classical Logic for Attributed Objects
cs.AI cs.LO
There is knowledge. There is belief. And there is tacit agreement.' 'We may talk about objects. We may talk about attributes of the objects. Or we may talk both about objects and their attributes.' This work inspects tacit agreements on assumptions about the relation between objects and their attributes, and studies a way of expressing them, presenting as the result what we term gradual logic in which the sense of truth gradually shifts. It extends classical logic instances with a new logical connective capturing the object-attribute relation. A formal semantics is presented. Decidability is proved. Para- consistent/epistemic/conditional/intensional/description/combined logics are compared.
1404.6039
The fshape framework for the variability analysis of functional shapes
cs.CG cs.CV math.DG
This article introduces a full mathematical and numerical framework for treating functional shapes (or fshapes) following the landmarks of shape spaces and shape analysis. Functional shapes can be described as signal functions supported on varying geometrical supports. Analysing variability of fshapes' ensembles require the modelling and quantification of joint variations in geometry and signal, which have been treated separately in previous approaches. Instead, building on the ideas of shape spaces for purely geometrical objects, we propose the extended concept of fshape bundles and define Riemannian metrics for fshape metamorphoses to model geometrico-functional transformations within these bundles. We also generalize previous works on data attachment terms based on the notion of varifolds and demonstrate the utility of these distances. Based on these, we propose variational formulations of the atlas estimation problem on populations of fshapes and prove existence of solutions for the different models. The second part of the article examines the numerical implementation of the models by detailing discrete expressions for the metrics and gradients and proposing an optimization scheme for the atlas estimation problem. We present a few results of the methodology on a synthetic dataset as well as on a population of retinal membranes with thickness maps.
1404.6044
Harnessing Bursty Interference in Multicarrier Systems with Feedback
cs.IT math.IT
We study parallel symmetric 2-user interference channels when the interference is bursty and feedback is available from the respective receivers. Presence of interference in each subcarrier is modeled as a memoryless Bernoulli random state. The states across subcarriers are drawn from an arbitrary joint distribution with the same marginal probability for each subcarrier and instantiated i.i.d. over time. For the linear deterministic setup, we give a complete characterization of the capacity region. For the setup with Gaussian noise, we give outer bounds and a tight generalized degrees of freedom characterization. We propose a novel helping mechanism which enables subcarriers in very strong interference regime to help in recovering interfered signals for subcarriers in strong and weak interference regimes. Depending on the interference and burstiness regime, the inner bounds either employ the proposed helping mechanism to code across subcarriers or treat the subcarriers separately. The outer bounds demonstrate a connection to a subset entropy inequality by Madiman and Tetali.
1404.6048
List and Unique Error-Erasure Decoding of Interleaved Gabidulin Codes with Interpolation Techniques
cs.IT math.IT
A new interpolation-based decoding principle for interleaved Gabidulin codes is presented. The approach consists of two steps: First, a multi-variate linearized polynomial is constructed which interpolates the coefficients of the received word and second, the roots of this polynomial have to be found. Due to the specific structure of the interpolation polynomial, both steps (interpolation and root-finding) can be accomplished by solving a linear system of equations. This decoding principle can be applied as a list decoding algorithm (where the list size is not necessarily bounded polynomially) as well as an efficient probabilistic unique decoding algorithm. For the unique decoder, we show a connection to known unique decoding approaches and give an upper bound on the failure probability. Finally, we generalize our approach to incorporate not only errors, but also row and column erasures.
1404.6055
A General Homogeneous Matrix Formulation to 3D Rotation Geometric Transformations
cs.CV
We present algebraic projective geometry definitions of 3D rotations so as to bridge a small gap between the applications and the definitions of 3D rotations in homogeneous matrix form. A general homogeneous matrix formulation to 3D rotation geometric transformations is proposed which suits for the cases when the rotation axis is unnecessarily through the coordinate system origin given their rotation axes and rotation angles. General three-dimensional rotation formula~\eqref{eqn:3D homogeneous roation} and~\eqref{eqn:3D rotation matrix vector Euclidean} similar to the Euler-Rodrigues formula were presented. The matrix-vector form of 3D rotation in Euclidean space is especially suited for numerical applications where gimbal lock is a concern.}
1404.6059
A Comparative study Between Fuzzy Clustering Algorithm and Hard Clustering Algorithm
cs.AI
Data clustering is an important area of data mining. This is an unsupervised study where data of similar types are put into one cluster while data of another types are put into different cluster. Fuzzy C means is a very important clustering technique based on fuzzy logic. Also we have some hard clustering techniques available like K-means among the popular ones. In this paper a comparative study is done between Fuzzy clustering algorithm and hard clustering algorithm
1404.6071
Rough Clustering Based Unsupervised Image Change Detection
cs.CV cs.AI
This paper introduces an unsupervised technique to detect the changed region of multitemporal images on a same reference plane with the help of rough clustering. The proposed technique is a soft-computing approach, based on the concept of rough set with rough clustering and Pawlak's accuracy. It is less noisy and avoids pre-deterministic knowledge about the distribution of the changed and unchanged regions. To show the effectiveness, the proposed technique is compared with some other approaches.
1404.6074
Classifying pairs with trees for supervised biological network inference
cs.LG stat.ML
Networks are ubiquitous in biology and computational approaches have been largely investigated for their inference. In particular, supervised machine learning methods can be used to complete a partially known network by integrating various measurements. Two main supervised frameworks have been proposed: the local approach, which trains a separate model for each network node, and the global approach, which trains a single model over pairs of nodes. Here, we systematically investigate, theoretically and empirically, the exploitation of tree-based ensemble methods in the context of these two approaches for biological network inference. We first formalize the problem of network inference as classification of pairs, unifying in the process homogeneous and bipartite graphs and discussing two main sampling schemes. We then present the global and the local approaches, extending the later for the prediction of interactions between two unseen network nodes, and discuss their specializations to tree-based ensemble methods, highlighting their interpretability and drawing links with clustering techniques. Extensive computational experiments are carried out with these methods on various biological networks that clearly highlight that these methods are competitive with existing methods.
1404.6075
Unsupervised Text Extraction from G-Maps
cs.CV cs.AI
This paper represents an text extraction method from Google maps, GIS maps/images. Due to an unsupervised approach there is no requirement of any prior knowledge or training set about the textual and non-textual parts. Fuzzy CMeans clustering technique is used for image segmentation and Prewitt method is used to detect the edges. Connected component analysis and gridding technique enhance the correctness of the results. The proposed method reaches 98.5% accuracy level on the basis of experimental data sets.
1404.6097
Degree Variance and Emotional Strategies Catalyze Cooperation in Dynamic Signed Networks
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
We study the problem of the emergence of cooperation in dynamic signed networks where agent strategies coevolve with relational signs and network topology. Running simulations based on an agent-based model, we compare results obtained in a regular lattice initialization with those obtained on a comparable random network initialization. We show that the increased degree heterogeneity at the outset enlarges the parametric conditions in which cooperation survives in the long run. Furthermore, we show how the presence of sign-dependent emotional strategies catalyze the evolution of cooperation with both network topology initializations.
1404.6116
Development of an open source software module for enhanced visualization during MR-guided interstitial gynecologic brachytherapy
cs.SY cs.SE
In 2010, gynecologic malignancies were the 4th leading cause of death in U.S. women and for patients with extensive primary or recurrent disease, treatment with interstitial brachytherapy may be an option. However, brachytherapy requires precise insertion of hollow catheters with introducers into the tumor in order to eradicate the cancer. In this study, a software solution to assist interstitial gynecologic brachytherapy has been investigated and the software has been realized as an own module under (3D) Slicer, which is a free open source software platform for (translational) biomedical research. The developed research module allows on-time processing of intra-operative magnetic resonance imaging (iMRI) data over a direct DICOM connection to a MR scanner. Afterwards follows a multi-stage registration of CAD models of the medical brachytherapy devices (template, obturator) to the patient's MR images, enabling the virtual placement of interstitial needles to assist the physician during the intervention.
1404.6150
Compressed Sensing Based Direct Conversion Receiver With Interference Reducing Sampling
cs.IT math.IT
This paper describes a direct conversion receiver applying compressed sensing with the objective to relax the analog filtering requirements seen in the traditional architecture. The analog filter is cumbersome in an \gls{IC} design and relaxing its requirements is an advantage in terms of die area, performance and robustness of the receiver. The objective is met by a selection of sampling pattern matched to the prior knowledge of the frequency placement of the desired and interfering signals. A simple numerical example demonstrates the principle. The work is part of an ongoing research effort and the different project phases are explained.
1404.6151
SimpleTrack:Adaptive Trajectory Compression with Deterministic Projection Matrix for Mobile Sensor Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
Some mobile sensor network applications require the sensor nodes to transfer their trajectories to a data sink. This paper proposes an adaptive trajectory (lossy) compression algorithm based on compressive sensing. The algorithm has two innovative elements. First, we propose a method to compute a deterministic projection matrix from a learnt dictionary. Second, we propose a method for the mobile nodes to adaptively predict the number of projections needed based on the speed of the mobile nodes. Extensive evaluation of the proposed algorithm using 6 datasets shows that our proposed algorithm can achieve sub-metre accuracy. In addition, our method of computing projection matrices outperforms two existing methods. Finally, comparison of our algorithm against a state-of-the-art trajectory compression algorithm show that our algorithm can reduce the error by 10-60 cm for the same compression ratio.
1404.6163
Overlapping Trace Norms in Multi-View Learning
cs.LG
Multi-view learning leverages correlations between different sources of data to make predictions in one view based on observations in another view. A popular approach is to assume that, both, the correlations between the views and the view-specific covariances have a low-rank structure, leading to inter-battery factor analysis, a model closely related to canonical correlation analysis. We propose a convex relaxation of this model using structured norm regularization. Further, we extend the convex formulation to a robust version by adding an l1-penalized matrix to our estimator, similarly to convex robust PCA. We develop and compare scalable algorithms for several convex multi-view models. We show experimentally that the view-specific correlations are improving data imputation performances, as well as labeling accuracy in real-world multi-label prediction tasks.
1404.6216
CoRE Kernels
stat.ML cs.DS cs.LG stat.ME
The term "CoRE kernel" stands for correlation-resemblance kernel. In many applications (e.g., vision), the data are often high-dimensional, sparse, and non-binary. We propose two types of (nonlinear) CoRE kernels for non-binary sparse data and demonstrate the effectiveness of the new kernels through a classification experiment. CoRE kernels are simple with no tuning parameters. However, training nonlinear kernel SVM can be (very) costly in time and memory and may not be suitable for truly large-scale industrial applications (e.g. search). In order to make the proposed CoRE kernels more practical, we develop basic probabilistic hashing algorithms which transform nonlinear kernels into linear kernels.
1404.6230
Ensemble estimation of multivariate f-divergence
cs.IT math.IT
f-divergence estimation is an important problem in the fields of information theory, machine learning, and statistics. While several divergence estimators exist, relatively few of their convergence rates are known. We derive the MSE convergence rate for a density plug-in estimator of f-divergence. Then by applying the theory of optimally weighted ensemble estimation, we derive a divergence estimator with a convergence rate of O(1/T) that is simple to implement and performs well in high dimensions. We validate our theoretical results with experiments.
1404.6247
Career on the Move: Geography, Stratification, and Scientific Impact
physics.soc-ph cs.SI physics.data-an
Changing institutions is an integral part of an academic life. Yet little is known about the mobility patterns of scientists at an institutional level and how these career choices affect scientific outcomes. Here, we examine over 420,000 papers, to track the affiliation information of individual scientists, allowing us to reconstruct their career trajectories over decades. We find that career movements are not only temporally and spatially localized, but also characterized by a high degree of stratification in institutional ranking. When cross-group movement occurs, we find that while going from elite to lower-rank institutions on average associates with modest decrease in scientific performance, transitioning into elite institutions does not result in subsequent performance gain. These results offer empirical evidence on institutional level career choices and movements and have potential implications for science policy.
1404.6265
Determination of the functional state of the fruits by parameters of the electric impedance
cs.SY
Introduction. To assess the freshness of various products are often used measuring impedance module. But due to the structure of plant foods diagnostic value should have exactly a complex component of impedance. Article tasked with developing criteria for assessing the functional state of the products subject to a comprehensive component of the impedance. Research methodology. To determine the functional status of the fruit were measured module and phase of impedance at the three frequencies of 20, 100 and 500 kHz. Criteria for recognition of functional status determined by the dynamics of changes in the parameters of the complex impedance due to destructive processes caused by dehydration and putrefaction processes. Data processing and analysis. On the basis of experimental data obtained at three frequencies modeled frequency and phase response and their changes during losing of freshness and appearance of destructive processes. Discussion and conclusions. In fresh and stale fruit modulus and phase of the impedance at low and high frequencies have characteristic differences. But this is especially evident on the phase-frequency characteristic, which can be seen that the value of the phase with the loss of freshness at low frequency decreases and increases at high more than twice during one week. Therefore, to assess the functional state of fresh and stale products we suggest use phase portraits of phase response.
1404.6272
Scalable Similarity Learning using Large Margin Neighborhood Embedding
cs.CV cs.LG
Classifying large-scale image data into object categories is an important problem that has received increasing research attention. Given the huge amount of data, non-parametric approaches such as nearest neighbor classifiers have shown promising results, especially when they are underpinned by a learned distance or similarity measurement. Although metric learning has been well studied in the past decades, most existing algorithms are impractical to handle large-scale data sets. In this paper, we present an image similarity learning method that can scale well in both the number of images and the dimensionality of image descriptors. To this end, similarity comparison is restricted to each sample's local neighbors and a discriminative similarity measure is induced from large margin neighborhood embedding. We also exploit the ensemble of projections so that high-dimensional features can be processed in a set of lower-dimensional subspaces in parallel without much performance compromise. The similarity function is learned online using a stochastic gradient descent algorithm in which the triplet sampling strategy is customized for quick convergence of classification performance. The effectiveness of our proposed model is validated on several data sets with scales varying from tens of thousands to one million images. Recognition accuracies competitive with the state-of-the-art performance are achieved with much higher efficiency and scalability.
1404.6281
Explicit factorization of $x^n-1\in \mathbb F_q[x]$
cs.IT math.IT math.NT
Let $\mathbb F_q$ be a finite field and $n$ a positive integer. In this article, we prove that, under some conditions on $q$ and $n$, the polynomial $x^n-1$ can be split into irreducible binomials $x^t-a$ and an explicit factorization into irreducible factors is given. Finally, weakening one of our hypothesis, we also obtain factors of the form $x^{2t}-ax^t+b$ and explicit splitting of $x^n-1$ into irreducible factors is given.
1404.6304
Non-Reconstructability in the Stochastic Block Model
math.PR cs.SI
We consider the problem of clustering (or reconstruction) in the stochastic block model, in the regime where the average degree is constant. For the case of two clusters with equal sizes, recent results by Mossel, Neeman and Sly, and by Massoulie, show that reconstructability undergoes a phase transition at the Kesten-Stigum bound of $\lambda_2^2 d = 1$, where $\lambda_2$ is the second largest eigenvalue of a related stochastic matrix and $d$ is the average degree. In this paper, we address the general case of more than two clusters and/or unbalanced cluster sizes. Our main result is a sufficient condition for clustering to be impossible, which matches the existing result for two clusters of equal sizes. A key ingredient in our result is a new connection between non-reconstructability and non-distinguishability of the block model from an Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi model with the same average degree. We also show that it is some times possible to reconstruct even when $\lambda_2^2 d < 1$. Our results provide evidence supporting a series of conjectures made by Decelle, Krzkala, Moore and Zdeborov\'a regarding reconstructability and distinguishability of stochastic block models (but do not settle them).
1404.6312
Reconstructing Native Language Typology from Foreign Language Usage
cs.CL
Linguists and psychologists have long been studying cross-linguistic transfer, the influence of native language properties on linguistic performance in a foreign language. In this work we provide empirical evidence for this process in the form of a strong correlation between language similarities derived from structural features in English as Second Language (ESL) texts and equivalent similarities obtained from the typological features of the native languages. We leverage this finding to recover native language typological similarity structure directly from ESL text, and perform prediction of typological features in an unsupervised fashion with respect to the target languages. Our method achieves 72.2% accuracy on the typology prediction task, a result that is highly competitive with equivalent methods that rely on typological resources.
1404.6320
Demystifying the Scaling Laws of Dense Wireless Networks: No Linear Scaling in Practice
cs.IT math.IT
We optimize the hierarchical cooperation protocol of Ozgur, Leveque and Tse, which is supposed to yield almost linear scaling of the capacity of a dense wireless network with the number of users $n$. Exploiting recent results on the optimality of "treating interference as noise" in Gaussian interference channels, we are able to optimize the achievable average per-link rate and not just its scaling law. Our optimized hierarchical cooperation protocol significantly outperforms the originally proposed scheme. On the negative side, we show that even for very large $n$, the rate scaling is far from linear, and the optimal number of stages $t$ is less than 4, instead of $t \rightarrow \infty$ as required for almost linear scaling. Combining our results and the fact that, beyond a certain user density, the network capacity is fundamentally limited by Maxwell laws, as shown by Francheschetti, Migliore and Minero, we argue that there is indeed no intermediate regime of linear scaling for dense networks in practice.
1404.6325
Global and Local Information in Clustering Labeled Block Models
math.PR cs.SI
The stochastic block model is a classical cluster-exhibiting random graph model that has been widely studied in statistics, physics and computer science. In its simplest form, the model is a random graph with two equal-sized clusters, with intra-cluster edge probability p, and inter-cluster edge probability q. We focus on the sparse case, i.e., p, q = O(1/n), which is practically more relevant and also mathematically more challenging. A conjecture of Decelle, Krzakala, Moore and Zdeborova, based on ideas from statistical physics, predicted a specific threshold for clustering. The negative direction of the conjecture was proved by Mossel, Neeman and Sly (2012), and more recently the positive direction was proven independently by Massoulie and Mossel, Neeman, and Sly. In many real network clustering problems, nodes contain information as well. We study the interplay between node and network information in clustering by studying a labeled block model, where in addition to the edge information, the true cluster labels of a small fraction of the nodes are revealed. In the case of two clusters, we show that below the threshold, a small amount of node information does not affect recovery. On the other hand, we show that for any small amount of information efficient local clustering is achievable as long as the number of clusters is sufficiently large (as a function of the amount of revealed information).
1404.6331
Active Adversaries from an Information-Theoretic Perspective: Data Modification Attacks
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
We investigate the problem of reliable communication in the presence of active adversaries that can tamper with the transmitted data. We consider a legitimate transmitter-receiver pair connected over multiple communication paths (routes). We propose two new models of adversary, a "memoryless" and a "foreseer" adversary. For both models, the adversaries are placing themselves arbitrarily on the routes, keeping their placement fixed throughout the transmission block. This placement may or may not be known to the transmitter. The adversaries can choose their best modification strategy to increase the error at the legitimate receiver, subject to a maximum distortion constraint. We investigate the communication rates that can be achieved in the presence of the two types of adversaries and the channel (benign) stochastic behavior. For memoryless adversaries, the capacity is derived. Our method is to use the typical set of the anticipated received signal for all possible adversarial strategies (including their best one) in a compound channel that also captures adversarial placement. For the foreseer adversaries, which have enhanced observation capabilities compared to the memoryless ones, we propose a new coding scheme to guarantee resilience, i.e., recovery of the codeword independently of the adversarial (best) choice. We derive an achievable rate and we propose an upper bound on the capacity. We evaluate our general results for specific cases (e.g., binary symbol replacement or erasing attacks), to gain insights.
1404.6334
Input anticipating critical reservoirs show power law forgetting of unexpected input events
cs.NE
Usually, reservoir computing shows an exponential memory decay. This paper investigates under which circumstances echo state networks can show a power law forgetting. That means traces of earlier events can be found in the reservoir for very long time spans. Such a setting requires critical connectivity exactly at the limit of what is permissible according the echo state condition. However, for general matrices the limit cannot be determined exactly from theory. In addition, the behavior of the network is strongly influenced by the input flow. Results are presented that use certain types of restricted recurrent connectivity and anticipation learning with regard to the input, where indeed power law forgetting can be achieved.
1404.6348
A DoF-Optimal Scheme for the two-user X-channel with Synergistic Alternating CSIT
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, the degrees of freedom (DoF) of the two-user single input single output (SISO) X-channel are investigated. Three cases are considered for the availability of channel state information at the transmitters (CSIT); perfect, delayed, and no-CSIT. A new achievable scheme is proposed to elucidate the potency of interference creation-resurrection (IRC) when the available CSIT alternates between these three cases. For some patterns of alternating CSIT, the proposed scheme achieves $4/3$ DoF, and hence, coincides with the information theoretic upper bound on the DoF of the two-user X-channel with perfect and instantaneous CSIT. The CSIT alternation patterns are investigated where the patterns that provide extraordinary synergistic gain and dissociative ones are identified.
1404.6351
Improving weather radar by fusion and classification
cs.CV
In air traffic management (ATM) all necessary operations (tactical planing, sector configuration, required staffing, runway configuration, routing of approaching aircrafts) rely on accurate measurements and predictions of the current weather situation. An essential basis of information is delivered by weather radar images (WXR), which, unfortunately, exhibit a vast amount of disturbances. Thus, the improvement of these datasets is the key factor for more accurate predictions of weather phenomena and weather conditions. Image processing methods based on texture analysis and geometric operators allow to identify regions including artefacts as well as zones of missing information. Correction of these zones is implemented by exploiting multi-spectral satellite data (Meteosat Second Generation). Results prove that the proposed system for artefact detection and data correction significantly improves the quality of WXR data and, thus, enables more reliable weather now- and forecast leading to increased ATM safety.
1404.6360
Networks maximizing the consensus time of voter models
cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We explore the networks that yield the largest mean consensus time of voter models under different update rules. By analytical and numerical means, we show that the so-called lollipop graph, barbell graph, and double star graph maximise the mean consensus time under the update rules called the link dynamics, voter model, and invasion process, respectively. For each update rule, the largest mean consensus time scales as O(N^3), where N is the number of nodes in the network.
1404.6369
Applying machine learning to the problem of choosing a heuristic to select the variable ordering for cylindrical algebraic decomposition
cs.SC cs.LG
Cylindrical algebraic decomposition(CAD) is a key tool in computational algebraic geometry, particularly for quantifier elimination over real-closed fields. When using CAD, there is often a choice for the ordering placed on the variables. This can be important, with some problems infeasible with one variable ordering but easy with another. Machine learning is the process of fitting a computer model to a complex function based on properties learned from measured data. In this paper we use machine learning (specifically a support vector machine) to select between heuristics for choosing a variable ordering, outperforming each of the separate heuristics.
1404.6384
CATOS: Computer Aided Training/Observing System
cs.CE cs.HC
In animal behavioral biology, there are several cases in which an autonomous observing/training system would be useful. 1) Observation of certain species continuously, or for documenting specific events, which happen irregularly; 2) Longterm intensive training of animals in preparation for behavioral experiments; and 3) Training and testing of animals without human interference, to eliminate potential cues and biases induced by humans. The primary goal of this study is to build a system named CATOS (Computer Aided Training/Observing System) that could be used in the above situations. As a proof of concept, the system was built and tested in a pilot experiment, in which cats were trained to press three buttons differently in response to three different sounds (human speech) to receive food rewards. The system was built in use for about 6 months, successfully training two cats. One cat learned to press a particular button, out of three buttons, to obtain the food reward with over 70 percent correctness.
1404.6385
High-Content Digital Microscopy with Python
cs.CE cs.PL
High-Content Digital Microscopy enhances user comfort, data storage and analysis throughput, paving the way to new researches and medical diagnostics. A digital microscopy platform aims at capturing an image of a cover slip, at storing information on a file server and a database, at visualising the image and analysing its content. We will discuss how the Python ecosystem can provide such software framework efficiently. Moreover this paper will give an illustration of the data chunking approach to manage the huge amount of data.
1404.6389
Computing an Optimal Control Policy for an Energy Storage
cs.SY
We introduce StoDynProg, a small library created to solve Optimal Control problems arising in the management of Renewable Power Sources, in particular when coupled with an Energy Storage System. The library implements generic Stochastic Dynamic Programming (SDP) numerical methods which can solve a large class of Dynamic Optimization problems. We demonstrate the library capabilities with a prototype problem: smoothing the power of an Ocean Wave Energy Converter. First we use time series analysis to derive a stochastic Markovian model of this system since it is required by Dynamic Programming. Then, we briefly describe the "policy iteration" algorithm we have implemented and the numerical tools being used. We show how the API design of the library is generic enough to address Dynamic Optimization problems outside the field of Energy Management. Finally, we solve the power smoothing problem and compare the optimal control with a simpler heuristic control.
1404.6391
SfePy - Write Your Own FE Application
cs.CE cs.PL
SfePy (Simple Finite Elements in Python) is a framework for solving various kinds of problems (mechanics, physics, biology, ...) described by partial differential equations in two or three space dimensions by the finite element method. The paper illustrates its use in an interactive environment or as a framework for building custom finite-element based solvers.
1404.6413
Indoor Activity Detection and Recognition for Sport Games Analysis
cs.CV
Activity recognition in sport is an attractive field for computer vision research. Game, player and team analysis are of great interest and research topics within this field emerge with the goal of automated analysis. The very specific underlying rules of sports can be used as prior knowledge for the recognition task and present a constrained environment for evaluation. This paper describes recognition of single player activities in sport with special emphasis on volleyball. Starting from a per-frame player-centered activity recognition, we incorporate geometry and contextual information via an activity context descriptor that collects information about all player's activities over a certain timespan relative to the investigated player. The benefit of this context information on single player activity recognition is evaluated on our new real-life dataset presenting a total amount of almost 36k annotated frames containing 7 activity classes within 6 videos of professional volleyball games. Our incorporation of the contextual information improves the average player-centered classification performance of 77.56% by up to 18.35% on specific classes, proving that spatio-temporal context is an important clue for activity recognition.
1404.6441
A note on the minimum distance of quantum LDPC codes
quant-ph cs.IT math.CO math.IT
We provide a new lower bound on the minimum distance of a family of quantum LDPC codes based on Cayley graphs proposed by MacKay, Mitchison and Shokrollahi. Our bound is exponential, improving on the quadratic bound of Couvreur, Delfosse and Z\'emor. This result is obtained by examining a family of subsets of the hypercube which locally satisfy some parity conditions.
1404.6445
Belief merging within fragments of propositional logic
cs.AI cs.LO
Recently, belief change within the framework of fragments of propositional logic has gained increasing attention. Previous works focused on belief contraction and belief revision on the Horn fragment. However, the problem of belief merging within fragments of propositional logic has been neglected so far. This paper presents a general approach to define new merging operators derived from existing ones such that the result of merging remains in the fragment under consideration. Our approach is not limited to the case of Horn fragment but applicable to any fragment of propositional logic characterized by a closure property on the sets of models of its formulae. We study the logical properties of the proposed operators in terms of satisfaction of merging postulates, considering in particular distance-based merging operators for Horn and Krom fragments.
1404.6471
The Capacity Region of the Source-Type Model for Secret Key and Private Key Generation
cs.IT math.IT
The problem of simultaneously generating a secret key (SK) and private key (PK) pair among three terminals via public discussion is investigated, in which each terminal observes a component of correlated sources. All three terminals are required to generate a common secret key concealed from an eavesdropper that has access to public discussion, while two designated terminals are required to generate an extra private key concealed from both the eavesdropper and the remaining terminal. An outer bound on the SK-PK capacity region was established in [1], and was shown to be achievable for one case. In this paper, achievable schemes are designed to achieve the outer bound for the remaining two cases, and hence the SK-PK capacity region is established in general. The main technique lies in the novel design of a random binning-joint decoding scheme that achieves the existing outer bound.
1404.6472
Parallel Gaussian Networks with a Common State-Cognitive Helper
cs.IT math.IT
A class of state-dependent parallel networks with a common state-cognitive helper, in which $K$ transmitters wish to send $K$ messages to their corresponding receivers over $K$ state-corrupted parallel channels, and a helper who knows the state information noncausally wishes to assist these receivers to cancel state interference. Furthermore, the helper also has its own message to be sent simultaneously to its corresponding receiver. Since the state information is known only to the helper, but not to the corresponding transmitters $1,\dots,K$, transmitter-side state cognition and receiver-side state interference are mismatched. Our focus is on the high state power regime, i.e., the state power goes to infinity. Three (sub)models are studied. Model I serves as a basic model, which consists of only one transmitter-receiver (with state corruption) pair in addition to a helper that assists the receiver to cancel state in addition to transmitting its own message. Model II consists of two transmitter-receiver pairs in addition to a helper, and only one receiver is interfered by a state sequence. Model III generalizes model I include multiple transmitter-receiver pairs with each receiver corrupted by independent state. For all models, inner and outer bounds on the capacity region are derived, and comparison of the two bounds leads to characterization of either full or partial boundary of the capacity region under various channel parameters.
1404.6474
An Information Theoretic Approach to Secret Sharing
cs.IT math.IT
A novel information theoretic approach is proposed to solve the secret sharing problem, in which a dealer distributes one or multiple secrets among a set of participants that for each secret only qualified sets of users can recover it by pooling their shares together while non-qualified sets of users obtain no information about the secret even if they pool their shares together. While existing secret sharing systems (implicitly) assume that communications between the dealer and participants are noiseless, this paper takes a more practical assumption that the dealer delivers shares to the participants via a noisy broadcast channel. An information theoretic approach is proposed, which exploits the channel as additional resources to achieve secret sharing requirements. In this way, secret sharing problems can be reformulated as equivalent secure communication problems via wiretap channels, and can be solved by employing powerful information theoretic security techniques. This approach is first developed for the classic secret sharing problem, in which only one secret is to be shared. This classic problem is shown to be equivalent to a communication problem over a compound wiretap channel. The lower and upper bounds on the secrecy capacity of the compound channel provide the corresponding bounds on the secret sharing rate. The power of the approach is further demonstrated by a more general layered multi-secret sharing problem, which is shown to be equivalent to the degraded broadcast multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel with layered decoding and secrecy constraints. The secrecy capacity region for the degraded MIMO broadcast channel is characterized, which provides the secret sharing capacity region. Furthermore, these secure encoding schemes that achieve the secrecy capacity region provide an information theoretic scheme for sharing the secrets.
1404.6491
An Account of Opinion Implicatures
cs.CL cs.IR
While previous sentiment analysis research has concentrated on the interpretation of explicitly stated opinions and attitudes, this work initiates the computational study of a type of opinion implicature (i.e., opinion-oriented inference) in text. This paper described a rule-based framework for representing and analyzing opinion implicatures which we hope will contribute to deeper automatic interpretation of subjective language. In the course of understanding implicatures, the system recognizes implicit sentiments (and beliefs) toward various events and entities in the sentence, often attributed to different sources (holders) and of mixed polarities; thus, it produces a richer interpretation than is typical in opinion analysis.
1404.6512
Cellular Interference Alignment: Omni-Directional Antennas and Asymmetric Configurations
cs.IT math.IT
Although interference alignment (IA) can theoretically achieve the optimal degrees of freedom (DoFs) in the $K$-user Gaussian interference channel, its direct application comes at the prohibitive cost of precoding over exponentially-many signaling dimensions. On the other hand, it is known that practical "one-shot" IA precoding (i.e., linear schemes without symbol expansion) provides a vanishing DoFs gain in large fully-connected networks with generic channel coefficients. In our previous work, we introduced the concept of "Cellular IA" for a network topology induced by hexagonal cells with sectors and nearest-neighbor interference. Assuming that neighboring sectors can exchange decoded messages (and not received signal samples) in the uplink, we showed that linear one-shot IA precoding over $M$ transmit/receive antennas can achieve the optimal $M/2$ DoFs per user. In this paper we extend this framework to networks with omni-directional (non-sectorized) cells and consider the practical scenario where users have $2$ antennas, and base-stations have $2$, $3$ or $4$ antennas. In particular, we provide linear one-shot IA schemes for the $2\times 2$, $2\times3$ and $2\times 4$ cases, and show the achievability of $3/4$, $1$ and $7/6$ DoFs per user, respectively. DoFs converses for one-shot schemes require the solution of a discrete optimization problem over a number of variables that grows with the network size. We develop a new approach to transform such challenging optimization problem into a tractable linear program (LP) with significantly fewer variables. This approach is used to show that the achievable $3/4$ DoFs per user are indeed optimal for a large (extended) cellular network with $2\times 2$ links.
1404.6535
Quadratization of Symmetric Pseudo-Boolean Functions
math.OC cs.CC cs.CV math.CO
A pseudo-Boolean function is a real-valued function $f(x)=f(x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_n)$ of $n$ binary variables; that is, a mapping from $\{0,1\}^n$ to $\mathbb{R}$. For a pseudo-Boolean function $f(x)$ on $\{0,1\}^n$, we say that $g(x,y)$ is a quadratization of $f$ if $g(x,y)$ is a quadratic polynomial depending on $x$ and on $m$ auxiliary binary variables $y_1,y_2,\ldots,y_m$ such that $f(x)= \min \{g(x,y) : y \in \{0,1\}^m \}$ for all $x \in \{0,1\}^n$. By means of quadratizations, minimization of $f$ is reduced to minimization (over its extended set of variables) of the quadratic function $g(x,y)$. This is of some practical interest because minimization of quadratic functions has been thoroughly studied for the last few decades, and much progress has been made in solving such problems exactly or heuristically. A related paper \cite{ABCG} initiated a systematic study of the minimum number of auxiliary $y$-variables required in a quadratization of an arbitrary function $f$ (a natural question, since the complexity of minimizing the quadratic function $g(x,y)$ depends, among other factors, on the number of binary variables). In this paper, we determine more precisely the number of auxiliary variables required by quadratizations of symmetric pseudo-Boolean functions $f(x)$, those functions whose value depends only on the Hamming weight of the input $x$ (the number of variables equal to $1$).
1404.6538
On Quadratization of Pseudo-Boolean Functions
math.OC cs.CV math.CO
We survey current term-wise techniques for quadratizing high-degree pseudo-Boolean functions and introduce a new one, which allows multiple splits of terms. We also introduce the first aggregative approach, which splits a collection of terms based on their common parts.
1404.6544
Interference Mitigating Satellite Broadcast Receiver using Reduced Complexity List-Based Detection in Correlated Noise
cs.IT math.IT
The recent commercial trends towards using smaller dish antennas for satellite receivers, and the growing density of broadcasting satellites, necessitate the application of robust adjacent satellite interference (ASI) cancellation schemes. This orbital density growth along with the wider beamwidth of a smaller dish have imposed an overloaded scenario at the satellite receiver, where the number of transmitting satellites exceeds the number of receiving elements at the dish antenna. To ensure successful operation in this practical scenario, we propose a satellite receiver that enhances signal detection from the desired satellite by mitigating the interference from neighboring satellites. Towards this objective, we propose a reduced complexity list-based group-wise search detection (RC-LGSD) receiver under the assumption of spatially correlated additive noise. To further enhance detection performance, the proposed satellite receiver utilizes a newly designed whitening filter to remove the spatial correlation amongst the noise parameters, while also applying a preprocessor that maximizes the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). Extensive simulations under practical scenarios show that the proposed receiver enhances the performance of satellite broadcast systems in the presence of ASI compared to existing methods.
1404.6556
Asymptotic Deployment Gain: A Simple Approach to Characterize the SINR Distribution in General Cellular Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT math.PR
In cellular network models, the base stations are usually assumed to form a lattice or a Poisson point process (PPP). In reality, however, they are deployed neither fully regularly nor completely randomly. Accordingly, in this paper, we consider the very general class of motion-invariant models and analyze the behavior of the outage probability (the probability that the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) is smaller than a threshold) as the threshold goes to zero. We show that, remarkably, the slope of the outage probability (in dB) as a function of the threshold (also in dB) is the same for essentially all motion-invariant point processes. The slope merely depends on the fading statistics. Using this result, we introduce the notion of the asymptotic deployment gain (ADG), which characterizes the horizontal gap between the success probabilities of the PPP and another point process in the high-reliability regime (where the success probability is near 1). To demonstrate the usefulness of the ADG for the characterization of the SINR distribution, we investigate the outage probabilities and the ADGs for different point processes and fading statistics by simulations.