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cs/0402021
A Numerical Example on the Principles of Stochastic Discrimination
cs.CV cs.LG
Studies on ensemble methods for classification suffer from the difficulty of modeling the complementary strengths of the components. Kleinberg's theory of stochastic discrimination (SD) addresses this rigorously via mathematical notions of enrichment, uniformity, and projectability of an ensemble. We explain these concepts via a very simple numerical example that captures the basic principles of the SD theory and method. We focus on a fundamental symmetry in point set covering that is the key observation leading to the foundation of the theory. We believe a better understanding of the SD method will lead to developments of better tools for analyzing other ensemble methods.
cs/0402023
A Service-Based Approach for Managing Mammography Data
cs.DB cs.SE
Grid-based technologies are emerging as a potential open-source standards-based solution for managing and collabo-rating distributed resources. In view of these new computing solutions, the Mammogrid project is developing a service-based and Grid-aware application which manages a Euro-pean-wide database of mammograms. Medical conditions such as breast cancer, and mammograms as images, are ex-tremely complex with many dimensions of variability across the population. An effective solution for the management of disparate mammogram data sources is a federation of autonomous multi-centre sites which transcends national boundaries. The Mammogrid solution utilizes the Grid tech-nologies to integrate geographically distributed data sets. The Mammogrid application will explore the potential of the Grid to support effective co-working among radiologists through-out the EU. This paper outlines the Mammogrid service-based approach in managing a federation of grid-connected mam-mography databases.
cs/0402024
Pattern Reification as the Basis for Description-Driven Systems
cs.DB cs.SE
One of the main factors driving object-oriented software development for information systems is the requirement for systems to be tolerant to change. To address this issue in designing systems, this paper proposes a pattern-based, object-oriented, description-driven system (DDS) architecture as an extension to the standard UML four-layer meta-model. A DDS architecture is proposed in which aspects of both static and dynamic systems behavior can be captured via descriptive models and meta-models. The proposed architecture embodies four main elements - firstly, the adoption of a multi-layered meta-modeling architecture and reflective meta-level architecture, secondly the identification of four data modeling relationships that can be made explicit such that they can be modified dynamically, thirdly the identification of five design patterns which have emerged from practice and have proved essential in providing reusable building blocks for data management, and fourthly the encoding of the structural properties of the five design patterns by means of one fundamental pattern, the Graph pattern. A practical example of this philosophy, the CRISTAL project, is used to demonstrate the use of description-driven data objects to handle system evolution.
cs/0402025
A perspective on the Healthgrid initiative
cs.DB cs.SE
This paper presents a perspective on the Healthgrid initiative which involves European projects deploying pioneering applications of grid technology in the health sector. In the last couple of years, several grid projects have been funded on health related issues at national and European levels. A crucial issue is to maximize their cross fertilization in the context of an environment where data of medical interest can be stored and made easily available to the different actors in healthcare, physicians, healthcare centres and administrations, and of course the citizens. The Healthgrid initiative, represented by the Healthgrid association (http://www.healthgrid.org), was initiated to bring the necessary long term continuity, to reinforce and promote awareness of the possibilities and advantages linked to the deployment of GRID technologies in health. Technologies to address the specific requirements for medical applications are under development. Results from the DataGrid and other projects are given as examples of early applications.
cs/0402029
Mapping Topics and Topic Bursts in PNAS
cs.IR cs.HC
Scientific research is highly dynamic. New areas of science continually evolve;others gain or lose importance, merge or split. Due to the steady increase in the number of scientific publications it is hard to keep an overview of the structure and dynamic development of one's own field of science, much less all scientific domains. However, knowledge of hot topics, emergent research frontiers, or change of focus in certain areas is a critical component of resource allocation decisions in research labs, governmental institutions, and corporations. This paper demonstrates the utilization of Kleinberg's burst detection algorithm, co-word occurrence analysis, and graph layout techniques to generate maps that support the identification of major research topics and trends. The approach was applied to analyze and map the complete set of papers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the years 1982-2001. Six domain experts examined and commented on the resulting maps in an attempt to reconstruct the evolution of major research areas covered by PNAS.
cs/0402030
Computational complexity and simulation of rare events of Ising spin glasses
cs.NE cs.AI
We discuss the computational complexity of random 2D Ising spin glasses, which represent an interesting class of constraint satisfaction problems for black box optimization. Two extremal cases are considered: (1) the +/- J spin glass, and (2) the Gaussian spin glass. We also study a smooth transition between these two extremal cases. The computational complexity of all studied spin glass systems is found to be dominated by rare events of extremely hard spin glass samples. We show that complexity of all studied spin glass systems is closely related to Frechet extremal value distribution. In a hybrid algorithm that combines the hierarchical Bayesian optimization algorithm (hBOA) with a deterministic bit-flip hill climber, the number of steps performed by both the global searcher (hBOA) and the local searcher follow Frechet distributions. Nonetheless, unlike in methods based purely on local search, the parameters of these distributions confirm good scalability of hBOA with local search. We further argue that standard performance measures for optimization algorithms--such as the average number of evaluations until convergence--can be misleading. Finally, our results indicate that for highly multimodal constraint satisfaction problems, such as Ising spin glasses, recombination-based search can provide qualitatively better results than mutation-based search.
cs/0402031
Parameter-less hierarchical BOA
cs.NE cs.AI
The parameter-less hierarchical Bayesian optimization algorithm (hBOA) enables the use of hBOA without the need for tuning parameters for solving each problem instance. There are three crucial parameters in hBOA: (1) the selection pressure, (2) the window size for restricted tournaments, and (3) the population size. Although both the selection pressure and the window size influence hBOA performance, performance should remain low-order polynomial with standard choices of these two parameters. However, there is no standard population size that would work for all problems of interest and the population size must thus be eliminated in a different way. To eliminate the population size, the parameter-less hBOA adopts the population-sizing technique of the parameter-less genetic algorithm. Based on the existing theory, the parameter-less hBOA should be able to solve nearly decomposable and hierarchical problems in quadratic or subquadratic number of function evaluations without the need for setting any parameters whatsoever. A number of experiments are presented to verify scalability of the parameter-less hBOA.
cs/0402032
Fitness inheritance in the Bayesian optimization algorithm
cs.NE cs.AI cs.LG
This paper describes how fitness inheritance can be used to estimate fitness for a proportion of newly sampled candidate solutions in the Bayesian optimization algorithm (BOA). The goal of estimating fitness for some candidate solutions is to reduce the number of fitness evaluations for problems where fitness evaluation is expensive. Bayesian networks used in BOA to model promising solutions and generate the new ones are extended to allow not only for modeling and sampling candidate solutions, but also for estimating their fitness. The results indicate that fitness inheritance is a promising concept in BOA, because population-sizing requirements for building appropriate models of promising solutions lead to good fitness estimates even if only a small proportion of candidate solutions is evaluated using the actual fitness function. This can lead to a reduction of the number of actual fitness evaluations by a factor of 30 or more.
cs/0402033
Recycling Computed Answers in Rewrite Systems for Abduction
cs.AI
In rule-based systems, goal-oriented computations correspond naturally to the possible ways that an observation may be explained. In some applications, we need to compute explanations for a series of observations with the same domain. The question whether previously computed answers can be recycled arises. A yes answer could result in substantial savings of repeated computations. For systems based on classic logic, the answer is YES. For nonmonotonic systems however, one tends to believe that the answer should be NO, since recycling is a form of adding information. In this paper, we show that computed answers can always be recycled, in a nontrivial way, for the class of rewrite procedures that we proposed earlier for logic programs with negation. We present some experimental results on an encoding of the logistics domain.
cs/0402035
Memory As A Monadic Control Construct In Problem-Solving
cs.AI
Recent advances in programming languages study and design have established a standard way of grounding computational systems representation in category theory. These formal results led to a better understanding of issues of control and side-effects in functional and imperative languages. This framework can be successfully applied to the investigation of the performance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) inference and cognitive systems. In this paper, we delineate a categorical formalisation of memory as a control structure driving performance in inference systems. Abstracting away control mechanisms from three widely used representations of memory in cognitive systems (scripts, production rules and clusters) we explain how categorical triples capture the interaction between learning and problem-solving.
cs/0402042
Anonymity and Information Hiding in Multiagent Systems
cs.CR cs.LO cs.MA
We provide a framework for reasoning about information-hiding requirements in multiagent systems and for reasoning about anonymity in particular. Our framework employs the modal logic of knowledge within the context of the runs and systems framework, much in the spirit of our earlier work on secrecy [Halpern and O'Neill 2002]. We give several definitions of anonymity with respect to agents, actions, and observers in multiagent systems, and we relate our definitions of anonymity to other definitions of information hiding, such as secrecy. We also give probabilistic definitions of anonymity that are able to quantify an observer s uncertainty about the state of the system. Finally, we relate our definitions of anonymity to other formalizations of anonymity and information hiding, including definitions of anonymity in the process algebra CSP and definitions of information hiding using function views.
cs/0402047
Parameter-less Optimization with the Extended Compact Genetic Algorithm and Iterated Local Search
cs.NE
This paper presents a parameter-less optimization framework that uses the extended compact genetic algorithm (ECGA) and iterated local search (ILS), but is not restricted to these algorithms. The presented optimization algorithm (ILS+ECGA) comes as an extension of the parameter-less genetic algorithm (GA), where the parameters of a selecto-recombinative GA are eliminated. The approach that we propose is tested on several well known problems. In the absence of domain knowledge, it is shown that ILS+ECGA is a robust and easy-to-use optimization method.
cs/0402049
An architecture for massive parallelization of the compact genetic algorithm
cs.NE
This paper presents an architecture which is suitable for a massive parallelization of the compact genetic algorithm. The resulting scheme has three major advantages. First, it has low synchronization costs. Second, it is fault tolerant, and third, it is scalable. The paper argues that the benefits that can be obtained with the proposed approach is potentially higher than those obtained with traditional parallel genetic algorithms. In addition, the ideas suggested in the paper may also be relevant towards parallelizing more complex probabilistic model building genetic algorithms.
cs/0402050
A philosophical essay on life and its connections with genetic algorithms
cs.NE
This paper makes a number of connections between life and various facets of genetic and evolutionary algorithms research. Specifically, it addresses the topics of adaptation, multiobjective optimization, decision making, deception, and search operators, among others. It argues that human life, from birth to death, is an adaptive or dynamic optimization problem where people are continuously searching for happiness. More important, the paper speculates that genetic algorithms can be used as a source of inspiration for helping people make decisions in their everyday life.
cs/0402051
Nested Intervals Tree Encoding with Continued Fractions
cs.DB
We introduce a new variation of Tree Encoding with Nested Intervals, find connections with Materialized Path, and suggest a method for moving parts of the hierarchy.
cs/0402053
The Complexity of Modified Instances
cs.CC cs.AI
In this paper we study the complexity of solving a problem when a solution of a similar instance is known. This problem is relevant whenever instances may change from time to time, and known solutions may not remain valid after the change. We consider two scenarios: in the first one, what is known is only a solution of the problem before the change; in the second case, we assume that some additional information, found during the search for this solution, is also known. In the first setting, the techniques from the theory of NP-completeness suffice to show complexity results. In the second case, negative results can only be proved using the techniques of compilability, and are often related to the size of considered changes.
cs/0402055
Lexical Base as a Compressed Language Model of the World (on the material of the Ukrainian language)
cs.CL
In the article the fact is verified that the list of words selected by formal statistical methods (frequency and functional genre unrestrictedness) is not a conglomerate of non-related words. It creates a system of interrelated items and it can be named "lexical base of language". This selected list of words covers all the spheres of human activities. To verify this statement the invariant synoptical scheme common for ideographic dictionaries of different language was determined.
cs/0402057
Integrating Defeasible Argumentation and Machine Learning Techniques
cs.AI
The field of machine learning (ML) is concerned with the question of how to construct algorithms that automatically improve with experience. In recent years many successful ML applications have been developed, such as datamining programs, information-filtering systems, etc. Although ML algorithms allow the detection and extraction of interesting patterns of data for several kinds of problems, most of these algorithms are based on quantitative reasoning, as they rely on training data in order to infer so-called target functions. In the last years defeasible argumentation has proven to be a sound setting to formalize common-sense qualitative reasoning. This approach can be combined with other inference techniques, such as those provided by machine learning theory. In this paper we outline different alternatives for combining defeasible argumentation and machine learning techniques. We suggest how different aspects of a generic argument-based framework can be integrated with other ML-based approaches.
cs/0402061
A Correlation-Based Distance
cs.IR
In this short technical report, we define on the sample space R^D a distance between data points which depends on their correlation. We also derive an expression for the center of mass of a set of points with respect to this distance.
cs/0403001
Evolving a Stigmergic Self-Organized Data-Mining
cs.AI cs.IR
Self-organizing complex systems typically are comprised of a large number of frequently similar components or events. Through their process, a pattern at the global-level of a system emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower-level components of the system. Moreover, the rules specifying interactions among the system's components are executed using only local information, without reference to the global pattern, which, as in many real-world problems is not easily accessible or possible to be found. Stigmergy, a kind of indirect communication and learning by the environment found in social insects is a well know example of self-organization, providing not only vital clues in order to understand how the components can interact to produce a complex pattern, as can pinpoint simple biological non-linear rules and methods to achieve improved artificial intelligent adaptive categorization systems, critical for Data-Mining. On the present work it is our intention to show that a new type of Data-Mining can be designed based on Stigmergic paradigms, taking profit of several natural features of this phenomenon. By hybridizing bio-inspired Swarm Intelligence with Evolutionary Computation we seek for an entire distributed, adaptive, collective and cooperative self-organized Data-Mining. As a real-world, real-time test bed for our proposal, World-Wide-Web Mining will be used. Having that purpose in mind, Web usage Data was collected from the Monash University's Web site (Australia), with over 7 million hits every week. Results are compared to other recent systems, showing that the system presented is by far promising.
cs/0403002
Epistemic Foundation of Stable Model Semantics
cs.AI
Stable model semantics has become a very popular approach for the management of negation in logic programming. This approach relies mainly on the closed world assumption to complete the available knowledge and its formulation has its basis in the so-called Gelfond-Lifschitz transformation. The primary goal of this work is to present an alternative and epistemic-based characterization of stable model semantics, to the Gelfond-Lifschitz transformation. In particular, we show that stable model semantics can be defined entirely as an extension of the Kripke-Kleene semantics. Indeed, we show that the closed world assumption can be seen as an additional source of `falsehood' to be added cumulatively to the Kripke-Kleene semantics. Our approach is purely algebraic and can abstract from the particular formalism of choice as it is based on monotone operators (under the knowledge order) over bilattices only.
cs/0403003
Genetic Algorithms and Quantum Computation
cs.NE
Recently, researchers have applied genetic algorithms (GAs) to address some problems in quantum computation. Also, there has been some works in the designing of genetic algorithms based on quantum theoretical concepts and techniques. The so called Quantum Evolutionary Programming has two major sub-areas: Quantum Inspired Genetic Algorithms (QIGAs) and Quantum Genetic Algorithms (QGAs). The former adopts qubit chromosomes as representations and employs quantum gates for the search of the best solution. The later tries to solve a key question in this field: what GAs will look like as an implementation on quantum hardware? As we shall see, there is not a complete answer for this question. An important point for QGAs is to build a quantum algorithm that takes advantage of both the GA and quantum computing parallelism as well as true randomness provided by quantum computers. In the first part of this paper we present a survey of the main works in GAs plus quantum computing including also our works in this area. Henceforth, we review some basic concepts in quantum computation and GAs and emphasize their inherent parallelism. Next, we review the application of GAs for learning quantum operators and circuit design. Then, quantum evolutionary programming is considered. Finally, we present our current research in this field and some perspectives.
cs/0403006
The role of behavior modifiers in representation development
cs.AI
We address the problem of the development of representations and their relationship to the environment. We study a software agent which develops in a network a representation of its simple environment which captures and integrates the relationships between agent and environment through a closure mechanism. The inclusion of a variable behavior modifier allows better representation development. This can be confirmed with an internal description of the closure mechanism, and with an external description of the properties of the representation network.
cs/0403009
Demolishing Searle's Chinese Room
cs.AI cs.GL
Searle's Chinese Room argument is refuted by showing that he has actually given two different versions of the room, which fail for different reasons. Hence, Searle does not achieve his stated goal of showing ``that a system could have input and output capabilities that duplicated those of a native Chinese speaker and still not understand Chinese''.
cs/0403012
Distributed Control by Lagrangian Steepest Descent
cs.MA cs.GT nlin.AO
Often adaptive, distributed control can be viewed as an iterated game between independent players. The coupling between the players' mixed strategies, arising as the system evolves from one instant to the next, is determined by the system designer. Information theory tells us that the most likely joint strategy of the players, given a value of the expectation of the overall control objective function, is the minimizer of a Lagrangian function of the joint strategy. So the goal of the system designer is to speed evolution of the joint strategy to that Lagrangian minimizing point, lower the expectated value of the control objective function, and repeat. Here we elaborate the theory of algorithms that do this using local descent procedures, and that thereby achieve efficient, adaptive, distributed control.
cs/0403014
Search Efficiency in Indexing Structures for Similarity Searching
cs.DB
Similarity searching finds application in a wide variety of domains including multilingual databases, computational biology, pattern recognition and text retrieval. Similarity is measured in terms of a distance function, edit distance, in general metric spaces, which is expensive to compute. Indexing techniques can be used reduce the number of distance computations. We present an analysis of various existing similarity indexing structures for the same. The performance obtained using the index structures studied was found to be unsatisfactory . We propose an indexing technique that combines the features of clustering with M tree(MTB) and the results indicate that this gives better performance.
cs/0403016
A Comparative Study of Arithmetic Constraints on Integer Intervals
cs.PL cs.AI
We propose here a number of approaches to implement constraint propagation for arithmetic constraints on integer intervals. To this end we introduce integer interval arithmetic. Each approach is explained using appropriate proof rules that reduce the variable domains. We compare these approaches using a set of benchmarks.
cs/0403017
Extending the SDSS Batch Query System to the National Virtual Observatory Grid
cs.DB
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey science database is approaching 2TB. While the vast majority of queries normally execute in seconds or minutes, this interactive execution time can be disproportionately increased by a small fraction of queries that take hours or days to run; either because they require non-index scans of the largest tables or because they request very large result sets. In response to this, we added a multi-queue job submission and tracking system. The transfer of very large result sets from queries over the network is another serious problem. Statistics suggested that much of this data transfer is unnecessary; users would prefer to store results locally in order to allow further cross matching and filtering. To allow local analysis, we implemented a system that gives users their own personal database (MyDB) at the portal site. Users may transfer data to their MyDB, and then perform further analysis before extracting it to their own machine. We intend to extend the MyDB and asynchronous query ideas to multiple NVO nodes. This implies development, in a distributed manner, of several features, which have been demonstrated for a single node in the SDSS Batch Query System (CasJobs). The generalization of asynchronous queries necessitates some form of MyDB storage as well as workflow tracking services on each node and coordination strategies among nodes.
cs/0403018
The World Wide Telescope: An Archetype for Online Science
cs.DB
Most scientific data will never be directly examined by scientists; rather it will be put into online databases where it will be analyzed and summarized by computer programs. Scientists increasingly see their instruments through online scientific archives and analysis tools, rather than examining the raw data. Today this analysis is primarily driven by scientists asking queries, but scientific archives are becoming active databases that self-organize and recognize interesting and anomalous facts as data arrives. In some fields, data from many different archives can be cross-correlated to produce new insights. Astronomy presents an excellent example of these trends; and, federating Astronomy archives presents interesting challenges for computer scientists.
cs/0403020
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Science Archive: Migrating a Multi-Terabyte Astronomical Archive from Object to Relational DBMS
cs.DB
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Science Archive is the first in a series of multi-Terabyte digital archives in Astronomy and other data-intensive sciences. To facilitate data mining in the SDSS archive, we adapted a commercial database engine and built specialized tools on top of it. Originally we chose an object-oriented database management system due to its data organization capabilities, platform independence, query performance and conceptual fit to the data. However, after using the object database for the first couple of years of the project, it soon began to fall short in terms of its query support and data mining performance. This was as much due to the inability of the database vendor to respond our demands for features and bug fixes as it was due to their failure to keep up with the rapid improvements in hardware performance, particularly faster RAID disk systems. In the end, we were forced to abandon the object database and migrate our data to a relational database. We describe below the technical issues that we faced with the object database and how and why we migrated to relational technology.
cs/0403021
A Quick Look at SATA Disk Performance
cs.DB cs.PF
We have been investigating the use of low-cost, commodity components for multi-terabyte SQL Server databases. Dubbed storage bricks, these servers are white box PCs containing the largest ATA drives, value-priced AMD or Intel processors, and inexpensive ECC memory. One issue has been the wiring mess, air flow problems, length restrictions, and connector failures created by seven or more parallel ATA (PATA) ribbon cables and drives in]a tower or 3U rack-mount chassis. Large capacity Serial ATA (SATA) drives have recently become widely available for the PC environment at a reasonable price. In addition to being faster, the SATA connectors seem more reliable, have a more reasonable length restriction (1m) and allow better airflow. We tested two drive brands along with two RAID controllers to evaluate SATA drive performance and reliablility. This paper documents our results so far.
cs/0403025
Distribution of Mutual Information from Complete and Incomplete Data
cs.LG cs.AI cs.IT math.IT math.ST stat.TH
Mutual information is widely used, in a descriptive way, to measure the stochastic dependence of categorical random variables. In order to address questions such as the reliability of the descriptive value, one must consider sample-to-population inferential approaches. This paper deals with the posterior distribution of mutual information, as obtained in a Bayesian framework by a second-order Dirichlet prior distribution. The exact analytical expression for the mean, and analytical approximations for the variance, skewness and kurtosis are derived. These approximations have a guaranteed accuracy level of the order O(1/n^3), where n is the sample size. Leading order approximations for the mean and the variance are derived in the case of incomplete samples. The derived analytical expressions allow the distribution of mutual information to be approximated reliably and quickly. In fact, the derived expressions can be computed with the same order of complexity needed for descriptive mutual information. This makes the distribution of mutual information become a concrete alternative to descriptive mutual information in many applications which would benefit from moving to the inductive side. Some of these prospective applications are discussed, and one of them, namely feature selection, is shown to perform significantly better when inductive mutual information is used.
cs/0403027
An approach to membrane computing under inexactitude
cs.OH cs.NE
In this paper we introduce a fuzzy version of symport/antiport membrane systems. Our fuzzy membrane systems handle possibly inexact copies of reactives and their rules are endowed with threshold functions that determine whether a rule can be applied or not to a given set of objects, depending of the degree of accuracy of these objects to the reactives specified in the rule. We prove that these fuzzy membrane systems generate exactly the recursively enumerable finite-valued fuzzy sets of natural numbers.
cs/0403031
Concept of E-machine: How does a "dynamical" brain learn to process "symbolic" information? Part I
cs.AI cs.LG
The human brain has many remarkable information processing characteristics that deeply puzzle scientists and engineers. Among the most important and the most intriguing of these characteristics are the brain's broad universality as a learning system and its mysterious ability to dynamically change (reconfigure) its behavior depending on a combinatorial number of different contexts. This paper discusses a class of hypothetically brain-like dynamically reconfigurable associative learning systems that shed light on the possible nature of these brain's properties. The systems are arranged on the general principle referred to as the concept of E-machine. The paper addresses the following questions: 1. How can "dynamical" neural networks function as universal programmable "symbolic" machines? 2. What kind of a universal programmable symbolic machine can form arbitrarily complex software in the process of programming similar to the process of biological associative learning? 3. How can a universal learning machine dynamically reconfigure its software depending on a combinatorial number of possible contexts?
cs/0403032
Where Fail-Safe Default Logics Fail
cs.AI cs.LO
Reiter's original definition of default logic allows for the application of a default that contradicts a previously applied one. We call failure this condition. The possibility of generating failures has been in the past considered as a semantical problem, and variants have been proposed to solve it. We show that it is instead a computational feature that is needed to encode some domains into default logic.
cs/0403035
Web pages search engine based on DNS
cs.NI cs.IR
Search engine is main access to the largest information source in this world, Internet. Now Internet is changing every aspect of our life. Information retrieval service may be its most important services. But for common user, internet search service is still far from our expectation, too many unrelated search results, old information, etc. To solve these problems, a new system, search engine based on DNS is proposed. The original idea, detailed content and implementation of this system all are introduced in this paper.
cs/0403038
Tournament versus Fitness Uniform Selection
cs.LG cs.AI
In evolutionary algorithms a critical parameter that must be tuned is that of selection pressure. If it is set too low then the rate of convergence towards the optimum is likely to be slow. Alternatively if the selection pressure is set too high the system is likely to become stuck in a local optimum due to a loss of diversity in the population. The recent Fitness Uniform Selection Scheme (FUSS) is a conceptually simple but somewhat radical approach to addressing this problem - rather than biasing the selection towards higher fitness, FUSS biases selection towards sparsely populated fitness levels. In this paper we compare the relative performance of FUSS with the well known tournament selection scheme on a range of problems.
cs/0403039
A Flexible Rule Compiler for Speech Synthesis
cs.CL cs.AI
We present a flexible rule compiler developed for a text-to-speech (TTS) system. The compiler converts a set of rules into a finite-state transducer (FST). The input and output of the FST are subject to parameterization, so that the system can be applied to strings and sequences of feature-structures. The resulting transducer is guaranteed to realize a function (as opposed to a relation), and therefore can be implemented as a deterministic device (either a deterministic FST or a bimachine).
cs/0404001
On the Practicality of Intrinsic Reconfiguration As a Fault Recovery Method in Analog Systems
cs.PF cs.NE
Evolvable hardware combines the powerful search capability of evolutionary algorithms with the flexibility of reprogrammable devices, thereby providing a natural framework for reconfiguration. This framework has generated an interest in using evolvable hardware for fault-tolerant systems because reconfiguration can effectively deal with hardware faults whenever it is impossible to provide spares. But systems cannot tolerate faults indefinitely, which means reconfiguration does have a deadline. The focus of previous evolvable hardware research relating to fault-tolerance has been primarily restricted to restoring functionality, with no real consideration of time constraints. In this paper we are concerned with evolvable hardware performing reconfiguration under deadline constraints. In particular, we investigate reconfigurable hardware that undergoes intrinsic evolution. We show that fault recovery done by intrinsic reconfiguration has some restrictions, which designers cannot ignore.
cs/0404002
Mathematical Analysis of Multi-Agent Systems
cs.RO cs.MA
We review existing approaches to mathematical modeling and analysis of multi-agent systems in which complex collective behavior arises out of local interactions between many simple agents. Though the behavior of an individual agent can be considered to be stochastic and unpredictable, the collective behavior of such systems can have a simple probabilistic description. We show that a class of mathematical models that describe the dynamics of collective behavior of multi-agent systems can be written down from the details of the individual agent controller. The models are valid for Markov or memoryless agents, in which each agents future state depends only on its present state and not any of the past states. We illustrate the approach by analyzing in detail applications from the robotics domain: collaboration and foraging in groups of robots.
cs/0404003
Enhancing the expressive power of the U-Datalog language
cs.DB
U-Datalog has been developed with the aim of providing a set-oriented logical update language, guaranteeing update parallelism in the context of a Datalog-like language. In U-Datalog, updates are expressed by introducing constraints (+p(X), to denote insertion, and [minus sign]p(X), to denote deletion) inside Datalog rules. A U-Datalog program can be interpreted as a CLP program. In this framework, a set of updates (constraints) is satisfiable if it does not represent an inconsistent theory, that is, it does not require the insertion and the deletion of the same fact. This approach resembles a very simple form of negation. However, on the other hand, U-Datalog does not provide any mechanism to explicitly deal with negative information, resulting in a language with limited expressive power. In this paper, we provide a semantics, based on stratification, handling the use of negated atoms in U-Datalog programs, and we show which problems arise in defining a compositional semantics.
cs/0404004
Dealing With Curious Players in Secure Networks
cs.CR cs.GT cs.MA
In secure communications networks there are a great number of user behavioural problems, which need to be dealt with. Curious players pose a very real and serious threat to the integrity of such a network. By traversing a network a Curious player could uncover secret information, which that user has no need to know, by simply posing as a loyalty check. Loyalty checks are done simply to gauge the integrity of the network with respect to players who act in a malicious manner. We wish to propose a method, which can deal with Curious players trying to obtain "Need to Know" information using a combined Fault-tolerant, Cryptographic and Game Theoretic Approach.
cs/0404006
Delimited continuations in natural language: quantification and polarity sensitivity
cs.CL cs.PL
Making a linguistic theory is like making a programming language: one typically devises a type system to delineate the acceptable utterances and a denotational semantics to explain observations on their behavior. Via this connection, the programming language concept of delimited continuations can help analyze natural language phenomena such as quantification and polarity sensitivity. Using a logical metalanguage whose syntax includes control operators and whose semantics involves evaluation order, these analyses can be expressed in direct style rather than continuation-passing style, and these phenomena can be thought of as computational side effects.
cs/0404007
Polarity sensitivity and evaluation order in type-logical grammar
cs.CL
We present a novel, type-logical analysis of_polarity sensitivity_: how negative polarity items (like "any" and "ever") or positive ones (like "some") are licensed or prohibited. It takes not just scopal relations but also linear order into account, using the programming-language notions of delimited continuations and evaluation order, respectively. It thus achieves greater empirical coverage than previous proposals.
cs/0404009
Tabular Parsing
cs.CL
This is a tutorial on tabular parsing, on the basis of tabulation of nondeterministic push-down automata. Discussed are Earley's algorithm, the Cocke-Kasami-Younger algorithm, tabular LR parsing, the construction of parse trees, and further issues.
cs/0404011
Parametric external predicates for the DLV System
cs.AI
This document describes syntax, semantics and implementation guidelines in order to enrich the DLV system with the possibility to make external C function calls. This feature is realized by the introduction of parametric external predicates, whose extension is not specified through a logic program but implicitly computed through external code.
cs/0404012
Toward the Implementation of Functions in the DLV System (Preliminary Technical Report)
cs.AI
This document describes the functions as they are treated in the DLV system. We give first the language, then specify the main implementation issues.
cs/0404013
Tycoon: A Distributed Market-based Resource Allocation System
cs.DC cs.MA
P2P clusters like the Grid and PlanetLab enable in principle the same statistical multiplexing efficiency gains for computing as the Internet provides for networking. The key unsolved problem is resource allocation. Existing solutions are not economically efficient and require high latency to acquire resources. We designed and implemented Tycoon, a market based distributed resource allocation system based on an Auction Share scheduling algorithm. Preliminary results show that Tycoon achieves low latency and high fairness while providing incentives for truth-telling on the part of strategic users.
cs/0404017
Exploring tradeoffs in pleiotropy and redundancy using evolutionary computing
cs.NE cs.NI
Evolutionary computation algorithms are increasingly being used to solve optimization problems as they have many advantages over traditional optimization algorithms. In this paper we use evolutionary computation to study the trade-off between pleiotropy and redundancy in a client-server based network. Pleiotropy is a term used to describe components that perform multiple tasks, while redundancy refers to multiple components performing one same task. Pleiotropy reduces cost but lacks robustness, while redundancy increases network reliability but is more costly, as together, pleiotropy and redundancy build flexibility and robustness into systems. Therefore it is desirable to have a network that contains a balance between pleiotropy and redundancy. We explore how factors such as link failure probability, repair rates, and the size of the network influence the design choices that we explore using genetic algorithms.
cs/0404018
NLML--a Markup Language to Describe the Unlimited English Grammar
cs.CL cs.AI
In this paper we present NLML (Natural Language Markup Language), a markup language to describe the syntactic and semantic structure of any grammatically correct English expression. At first the related works are analyzed to demonstrate the necessity of the NLML: simple form, easy management and direct storage. Then the description of the English grammar with NLML is introduced in details in three levels: sentences (with different complexities, voices, moods, and tenses), clause (relative clause and noun clause) and phrase (noun phrase, verb phrase, prepositional phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase and predicate phrase). At last the application fields of the NLML in NLP are shown with two typical examples: NLOJM (Natural Language Object Modal in Java) and NLDB (Natural Language Database).
cs/0404019
Optimizing genetic algorithm strategies for evolving networks
cs.NE cs.NI
This paper explores the use of genetic algorithms for the design of networks, where the demands on the network fluctuate in time. For varying network constraints, we find the best network using the standard genetic algorithm operators such as inversion, mutation and crossover. We also examine how the choice of genetic algorithm operators affects the quality of the best network found. Such networks typically contain redundancy in servers, where several servers perform the same task and pleiotropy, where servers perform multiple tasks. We explore this trade-off between pleiotropy versus redundancy on the cost versus reliability as a measure of the quality of the network.
cs/0404024
Computability Logic: a formal theory of interaction
cs.LO cs.AI math.LO
Computability logic is a formal theory of (interactive) computability in the same sense as classical logic is a formal theory of truth. This approach was initiated very recently in "Introduction to computability logic" (Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 123 (2003), pp.1-99). The present paper reintroduces computability logic in a more compact and less technical way. It is written in a semitutorial style with a general computer science, logic or mathematics audience in mind. An Internet source on the subject is available at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~giorgi/cl.html, and additional material at http://www.csc.villanova.edu/~japaridz/CL/gsoll.html .
cs/0404025
Test Collections for Patent-to-Patent Retrieval and Patent Map Generation in NTCIR-4 Workshop
cs.CL
This paper describes the Patent Retrieval Task in the Fourth NTCIR Workshop, and the test collections produced in this task. We perform the invalidity search task, in which each participant group searches a patent collection for the patents that can invalidate the demand in an existing claim. We also perform the automatic patent map generation task, in which the patents associated with a specific topic are organized in a multi-dimensional matrix.
cs/0404026
DAB Content Annotation and Receiver Hardware Control with XML
cs.GL cs.CL
The Eureka-147 Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) standard defines the 'dynamic labels' data field for holding information about the transmission content. However, this information does not follow a well-defined structure since it is designed to carry text for direct output to displays, for human interpretation. This poses a problem when machine interpretation of DAB content information is desired. Extensible Markup Language (XML) was developed to allow for the well-defined, structured machine-to-machine exchange of data over computer networks. This article proposes a novel technique of machine-interpretable DAB content annotation and receiver hardware control, involving the utilisation of XML as metadata in the transmitted DAB frames.
cs/0404030
XML framework for concept description and knowledge representation
cs.AI cs.LO
An XML framework for concept description is given, based upon the fact that the tree structure of XML implies the logical structure of concepts as defined by attributional calculus. Especially, the attribute-value representation is implementable in the XML framework. Since the attribute-value representation is an important way to represent knowledge in AI, the framework offers a further and simpler way than the powerful RDF technology.
cs/0404032
When Do Differences Matter? On-Line Feature Extraction Through Cognitive Economy
cs.LG cs.AI cs.NE
For an intelligent agent to be truly autonomous, it must be able to adapt its representation to the requirements of its task as it interacts with the world. Most current approaches to on-line feature extraction are ad hoc; in contrast, this paper presents an algorithm that bases judgments of state compatibility and state-space abstraction on principled criteria derived from the psychological principle of cognitive economy. The algorithm incorporates an active form of Q-learning, and partitions continuous state-spaces by merging and splitting Voronoi regions. The experiments illustrate a new methodology for testing and comparing representations by means of learning curves. Results from the puck-on-a-hill task demonstrate the algorithm's ability to learn effective representations, superior to those produced by some other, well-known, methods.
cs/0404033
The Persistent Buffer Tree : An I/O-efficient Index for Temporal Data
cs.GL cs.DB
In a variety of applications, we need to keep track of the development of a data set over time. For maintaining and querying this multi version data I/O-efficiently, external memory data structures are required. In this paper, we present a probabilistic self-balancing persistent data structure in external memory called the persistent buffer tree, which supports insertions, updates and deletions of data items at the present version and range queries for any version, past or present. The persistent buffer tree is I/O-optimal in the sense that the expected amortized I/O performance bounds are asymptotically the same as the deterministic amortized bounds of the (single version) buffer tree in the worst case.
cs/0404036
Online Searching with an Autonomous Robot
cs.RO cs.DS
We discuss online strategies for visibility-based searching for an object hidden behind a corner, using Kurt3D, a real autonomous mobile robot. This task is closely related to a number of well-studied problems. Our robot uses a three-dimensional laser scanner in a stop, scan, plan, go fashion for building a virtual three-dimensional environment. Besides planning trajectories and avoiding obstacles, Kurt3D is capable of identifying objects like a chair. We derive a practically useful and asymptotically optimal strategy that guarantees a competitive ratio of 2, which differs remarkably from the well-studied scenario without the need of stopping for surveying the environment. Our strategy is used by Kurt3D, documented in a separate video.
cs/0404038
2-Sat Sub-Clauses and the Hypernodal Structure of the 3-Sat Problem
cs.CC cs.AI
Like simpler graphs, nested (hypernodal) graphs consist of two components: a set of nodes and a set of edges, where each edge connects a pair of nodes. In the hypernodal graph model, however, a node may contain other graphs, so that a node may be contained in a graph that it contains. The inherently recursive structure of the hypernodal graph model aptly characterizes both the structure and dynamic of the 3-sat problem, a broadly applicable, though intractable, computer science problem. In this paper I first discuss the structure of the 3-sat problem, analyzing the relation of 3-sat to 2-sat, a related, though tractable problem. I then discuss sub-clauses and sub-clause thresholds and the transformation of sub-clauses into implication graphs, demonstrating how combinations of implication graphs are equivalent to hypernodal graphs. I conclude with a brief discussion of the use of hypernodal graphs to model the 3-sat problem, illustrating how hypernodal graphs model both the conditions for satisfiability and the process by which particular 3-sat assignments either succeed or fail.
cs/0404039
Algorithms for Estimating Information Distance with Application to Bioinformatics and Linguistics
cs.CC cs.CE q-bio.GN
After reviewing unnormalized and normalized information distances based on incomputable notions of Kolmogorov complexity, we discuss how Kolmogorov complexity can be approximated by data compression algorithms. We argue that optimal algorithms for data compression with side information can be successfully used to approximate the normalized distance. Next, we discuss an alternative information distance, which is based on relative entropy rate (also known as Kullback-Leibler divergence), and compression-based algorithms for its estimation. Based on available biological and linguistic data, we arrive to unexpected conclusion that in Bioinformatics and Computational Linguistics this alternative distance is more relevant and important than the ones based on Kolmogorov complexity.
cs/0404041
NLOMJ--Natural Language Object Model in Java
cs.CL cs.PL
In this paper we present NLOMJ--a natural language object model in Java with English as the experiment language. This modal describes the grammar elements of any permissible expression in a natural language and their complicated relations with each other with the concept "Object" in OOP(Object Oriented Programming). Directly mapped to the syntax and semantics of the natural language, it can be used in information retrieval as a linguistic method. Around the UML diagram of the NLOMJ the important classes(Sentence, Clause and Phrase) and their sub classes are introduced and their syntactic and semantic meanings are explained.
cs/0404042
Extraction of topological features from communication network topological patterns using self-organizing feature maps
cs.NE cs.CV
Different classes of communication network topologies and their representation in the form of adjacency matrix and its eigenvalues are presented. A self-organizing feature map neural network is used to map different classes of communication network topological patterns. The neural network simulation results are reported.
cs/0404045
Speculation on graph computation architectures and computing via synchronization
cs.NE cs.AI
A speculative overview of a future topic of research. The paper is a collection of ideas concerning two related areas: 1) Graph computation machines ("computing with graphs"). This is the class of models of computation in which the state of the computation is represented as a graph or network. 2) Arc-based neural networks, which store information not as activation in the nodes, but rather by adding and deleting arcs. Sometimes the arcs may be interpreted as synchronization. Warnings to readers: this is not the sort of thing that one might submit to a journal or conference. No proofs are presented. The presentation is informal, and written at an introductory level. You'll probably want to wait for a more concise presentation.
cs/0404046
Visualising the structure of architectural open spaces based on shape analysis
cs.CV cs.CG cs.DS
This paper proposes the application of some well known two-dimensional geometrical shape descriptors for the visualisation of the structure of architectural open spaces. The paper demonstrates the use of visibility measures such as distance to obstacles and amount of visible space to calculate shape descriptors such as convexity and skeleton of the open space. The aim of the paper is to indicate a simple, objective and quantifiable approach to understand the structure of open spaces otherwise impossible due to the complex construction of built structures.
cs/0404049
Exploiting Cross-Document Relations for Multi-document Evolving Summarization
cs.CL cs.AI
This paper presents a methodology for summarization from multiple documents which are about a specific topic. It is based on the specification and identification of the cross-document relations that occur among textual elements within those documents. Our methodology involves the specification of the topic-specific entities, the messages conveyed for the specific entities by certain textual elements and the specification of the relations that can hold among these messages. The above resources are necessary for setting up a specific topic for our query-based summarization approach which uses these resources to identify the query-specific messages within the documents and the query-specific relations that connect these messages across documents.
cs/0404051
Knowledge And The Action Description Language A
cs.AI
We introduce Ak, an extension of the action description language A (Gelfond and Lifschitz, 1993) to handle actions which affect knowledge. We use sensing actions to increase an agent's knowledge of the world and non-deterministic actions to remove knowledge. We include complex plans involving conditionals and loops in our query language for hypothetical reasoning. We also present a translation of Ak domain descriptions into epistemic logic programs.
cs/0404057
Convergence of Discrete MDL for Sequential Prediction
cs.LG cs.AI math.ST stat.TH
We study the properties of the Minimum Description Length principle for sequence prediction, considering a two-part MDL estimator which is chosen from a countable class of models. This applies in particular to the important case of universal sequence prediction, where the model class corresponds to all algorithms for some fixed universal Turing machine (this correspondence is by enumerable semimeasures, hence the resulting models are stochastic). We prove convergence theorems similar to Solomonoff's theorem of universal induction, which also holds for general Bayes mixtures. The bound characterizing the convergence speed for MDL predictions is exponentially larger as compared to Bayes mixtures. We observe that there are at least three different ways of using MDL for prediction. One of these has worse prediction properties, for which predictions only converge if the MDL estimator stabilizes. We establish sufficient conditions for this to occur. Finally, some immediate consequences for complexity relations and randomness criteria are proven.
cs/0405002
Splitting an operator: Algebraic modularity results for logics with fixpoint semantics
cs.AI cs.LO
It is well known that, under certain conditions, it is possible to split logic programs under stable model semantics, i.e. to divide such a program into a number of different "levels", such that the models of the entire program can be constructed by incrementally constructing models for each level. Similar results exist for other non-monotonic formalisms, such as auto-epistemic logic and default logic. In this work, we present a general, algebraicsplitting theory for logics with a fixpoint semantics. Together with the framework of approximation theory, a general fixpoint theory for arbitrary operators, this gives us a uniform and powerful way of deriving splitting results for each logic with a fixpoint semantics. We demonstrate the usefulness of these results, by generalizing existing results for logic programming, auto-epistemic logic and default logic.
cs/0405004
Quantum Computers
cs.AI cs.AR
This research paper gives an overview of quantum computers - description of their operation, differences between quantum and silicon computers, major construction problems of a quantum computer and many other basic aspects. No special scientific knowledge is necessary for the reader.
cs/0405005
Maximum-likelihood decoding of Reed-Solomon Codes is NP-hard
cs.CC cs.DM cs.IT math.IT
Maximum-likelihood decoding is one of the central algorithmic problems in coding theory. It has been known for over 25 years that maximum-likelihood decoding of general linear codes is NP-hard. Nevertheless, it was so far unknown whether maximum- likelihood decoding remains hard for any specific family of codes with nontrivial algebraic structure. In this paper, we prove that maximum-likelihood decoding is NP-hard for the family of Reed-Solomon codes. We moreover show that maximum-likelihood decoding of Reed-Solomon codes remains hard even with unlimited preprocessing, thereby strengthening a result of Bruck and Naor.
cs/0405007
"In vivo" spam filtering: A challenge problem for data mining
cs.AI cs.DB cs.IR
Spam, also known as Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), is the bane of email communication. Many data mining researchers have addressed the problem of detecting spam, generally by treating it as a static text classification problem. True in vivo spam filtering has characteristics that make it a rich and challenging domain for data mining. Indeed, real-world datasets with these characteristics are typically difficult to acquire and to share. This paper demonstrates some of these characteristics and argues that researchers should pursue in vivo spam filtering as an accessible domain for investigating them.
cs/0405008
A Comparative Study of Fuzzy Classification Methods on Breast Cancer Data
cs.AI
In this paper, we examine the performance of four fuzzy rule generation methods on Wisconsin breast cancer data. The first method generates fuzzy if then rules using the mean and the standard deviation of attribute values. The second approach generates fuzzy if then rules using the histogram of attributes values. The third procedure generates fuzzy if then rules with certainty of each attribute into homogeneous fuzzy sets. In the fourth approach, only overlapping areas are partitioned. The first two approaches generate a single fuzzy if then rule for each class by specifying the membership function of each antecedent fuzzy set using the information about attribute values of training patterns. The other two approaches are based on fuzzy grids with homogeneous fuzzy partitions of each attribute. The performance of each approach is evaluated on breast cancer data sets. Simulation results show that the Modified grid approach has a high classification rate of 99.73 %.
cs/0405009
Intelligent Systems: Architectures and Perspectives
cs.AI
The integration of different learning and adaptation techniques to overcome individual limitations and to achieve synergetic effects through the hybridization or fusion of these techniques has, in recent years, contributed to a large number of new intelligent system designs. Computational intelligence is an innovative framework for constructing intelligent hybrid architectures involving Neural Networks (NN), Fuzzy Inference Systems (FIS), Probabilistic Reasoning (PR) and derivative free optimization techniques such as Evolutionary Computation (EC). Most of these hybridization approaches, however, follow an ad hoc design methodology, justified by success in certain application domains. Due to the lack of a common framework it often remains difficult to compare the various hybrid systems conceptually and to evaluate their performance comparatively. This chapter introduces the different generic architectures for integrating intelligent systems. The designing aspects and perspectives of different hybrid archirectures like NN-FIS, EC-FIS, EC-NN, FIS-PR and NN-FIS-EC systems are presented. Some conclusions are also provided towards the end.
cs/0405010
A Neuro-Fuzzy Approach for Modelling Electricity Demand in Victoria
cs.AI
Neuro-fuzzy systems have attracted growing interest of researchers in various scientific and engineering areas due to the increasing need of intelligent systems. This paper evaluates the use of two popular soft computing techniques and conventional statistical approach based on Box--Jenkins autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model to predict electricity demand in the State of Victoria, Australia. The soft computing methods considered are an evolving fuzzy neural network (EFuNN) and an artificial neural network (ANN) trained using scaled conjugate gradient algorithm (CGA) and backpropagation (BP) algorithm. The forecast accuracy is compared with the forecasts used by Victorian Power Exchange (VPX) and the actual energy demand. To evaluate, we considered load demand patterns for 10 consecutive months taken every 30 min for training the different prediction models. Test results show that the neuro-fuzzy system performed better than neural networks, ARIMA model and the VPX forecasts.
cs/0405011
Neuro Fuzzy Systems: Sate-of-the-Art Modeling Techniques
cs.AI
Fusion of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Fuzzy Inference Systems (FIS) have attracted the growing interest of researchers in various scientific and engineering areas due to the growing need of adaptive intelligent systems to solve the real world problems. ANN learns from scratch by adjusting the interconnections between layers. FIS is a popular computing framework based on the concept of fuzzy set theory, fuzzy if-then rules, and fuzzy reasoning. The advantages of a combination of ANN and FIS are obvious. There are several approaches to integrate ANN and FIS and very often it depends on the application. We broadly classify the integration of ANN and FIS into three categories namely concurrent model, cooperative model and fully fused model. This paper starts with a discussion of the features of each model and generalize the advantages and deficiencies of each model. We further focus the review on the different types of fused neuro-fuzzy systems and citing the advantages and disadvantages of each model.
cs/0405012
Is Neural Network a Reliable Forecaster on Earth? A MARS Query!
cs.AI
Long-term rainfall prediction is a challenging task especially in the modern world where we are facing the major environmental problem of global warming. In general, climate and rainfall are highly non-linear phenomena in nature exhibiting what is known as the butterfly effect. While some regions of the world are noticing a systematic decrease in annual rainfall, others notice increases in flooding and severe storms. The global nature of this phenomenon is very complicated and requires sophisticated computer modeling and simulation to predict accurately. In this paper, we report a performance analysis for Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS)and artificial neural networks for one month ahead prediction of rainfall. To evaluate the prediction efficiency, we made use of 87 years of rainfall data in Kerala state, the southern part of the Indian peninsula situated at latitude -longitude pairs (8o29'N - 76o57' E). We used an artificial neural network trained using the scaled conjugate gradient algorithm. The neural network and MARS were trained with 40 years of rainfall data. For performance evaluation, network predicted outputs were compared with the actual rainfall data. Simulation results reveal that MARS is a good forecasting tool and performed better than the considered neural network.
cs/0405013
DCT Based Texture Classification Using Soft Computing Approach
cs.AI
Classification of texture pattern is one of the most important problems in pattern recognition. In this paper, we present a classification method based on the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients of texture image. As DCT works on gray level image, the color scheme of each image is transformed into gray levels. For classifying the images using DCT we used two popular soft computing techniques namely neurocomputing and neuro-fuzzy computing. We used a feedforward neural network trained using the backpropagation learning and an evolving fuzzy neural network to classify the textures. The soft computing models were trained using 80% of the texture data and remaining was used for testing and validation purposes. A performance comparison was made among the soft computing models for the texture classification problem. We also analyzed the effects of prolonged training of neural networks. It is observed that the proposed neuro-fuzzy model performed better than neural network.
cs/0405014
Estimating Genome Reversal Distance by Genetic Algorithm
cs.AI
Sorting by reversals is an important problem in inferring the evolutionary relationship between two genomes. The problem of sorting unsigned permutation has been proven to be NP-hard. The best guaranteed error bounded is the 3/2- approximation algorithm. However, the problem of sorting signed permutation can be solved easily. Fast algorithms have been developed both for finding the sorting sequence and finding the reversal distance of signed permutation. In this paper, we present a way to view the problem of sorting unsigned permutation as signed permutation. And the problem can then be seen as searching an optimal signed permutation in all n2 corresponding signed permutations. We use genetic algorithm to conduct the search. Our experimental result shows that the proposed method outperform the 3/2-approximation algorithm.
cs/0405016
Intrusion Detection Systems Using Adaptive Regression Splines
cs.AI
Past few years have witnessed a growing recognition of intelligent techniques for the construction of efficient and reliable intrusion detection systems. Due to increasing incidents of cyber attacks, building effective intrusion detection systems (IDS) are essential for protecting information systems security, and yet it remains an elusive goal and a great challenge. In this paper, we report a performance analysis between Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS), neural networks and support vector machines. The MARS procedure builds flexible regression models by fitting separate splines to distinct intervals of the predictor variables. A brief comparison of different neural network learning algorithms is also given.
cs/0405017
Data Mining Approach for Analyzing Call Center Performance
cs.AI
The aim of our research was to apply well-known data mining techniques (such as linear neural networks, multi-layered perceptrons, probabilistic neural networks, classification and regression trees, support vector machines and finally a hybrid decision tree neural network approach) to the problem of predicting the quality of service in call centers; based on the performance data actually collected in a call center of a large insurance company. Our aim was two-fold. First, to compare the performance of models built using the above-mentioned techniques and, second, to analyze the characteristics of the input sensitivity in order to better understand the relationship between the perform-ance evaluation process and the actual performance and in this way help improve the performance of call centers. In this paper we summarize our findings.
cs/0405018
Modeling Chaotic Behavior of Stock Indices Using Intelligent Paradigms
cs.AI
The use of intelligent systems for stock market predictions has been widely established. In this paper, we investigate how the seemingly chaotic behavior of stock markets could be well represented using several connectionist paradigms and soft computing techniques. To demonstrate the different techniques, we considered Nasdaq-100 index of Nasdaq Stock MarketS and the S&P CNX NIFTY stock index. We analyzed 7 year's Nasdaq 100 main index values and 4 year's NIFTY index values. This paper investigates the development of a reliable and efficient technique to model the seemingly chaotic behavior of stock markets. We considered an artificial neural network trained using Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Takagi-Sugeno neuro-fuzzy model and a Difference Boosting Neural Network (DBNN). This paper briefly explains how the different connectionist paradigms could be formulated using different learning methods and then investigates whether they can provide the required level of performance, which are sufficiently good and robust so as to provide a reliable forecast model for stock market indices. Experiment results reveal that all the connectionist paradigms considered could represent the stock indices behavior very accurately.
cs/0405019
Hybrid Fuzzy-Linear Programming Approach for Multi Criteria Decision Making Problems
cs.AI
The purpose of this paper is to point to the usefulness of applying a linear mathematical formulation of fuzzy multiple criteria objective decision methods in organising business activities. In this respect fuzzy parameters of linear programming are modelled by preference-based membership functions. This paper begins with an introduction and some related research followed by some fundamentals of fuzzy set theory and technical concepts of fuzzy multiple objective decision models. Further a real case study of a manufacturing plant and the implementation of the proposed technique is presented. Empirical results clearly show the superiority of the fuzzy technique in optimising individual objective functions when compared to non-fuzzy approach. Furthermore, for the problem considered, the optimal solution helps to infer that by incorporating fuzziness in a linear programming model either in constraints, or both in objective functions and constraints, provides a similar (or even better) level of satisfaction for obtained results compared to non-fuzzy linear programming.
cs/0405024
Meta-Learning Evolutionary Artificial Neural Networks
cs.AI
In this paper, we present MLEANN (Meta-Learning Evolutionary Artificial Neural Network), an automatic computational framework for the adaptive optimization of artificial neural networks wherein the neural network architecture, activation function, connection weights; learning algorithm and its parameters are adapted according to the problem. We explored the performance of MLEANN and conventionally designed artificial neural networks for function approximation problems. To evaluate the comparative performance, we used three different well-known chaotic time series. We also present the state of the art popular neural network learning algorithms and some experimentation results related to convergence speed and generalization performance. We explored the performance of backpropagation algorithm; conjugate gradient algorithm, quasi-Newton algorithm and Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm for the three chaotic time series. Performances of the different learning algorithms were evaluated when the activation functions and architecture were changed. We further present the theoretical background, algorithm, design strategy and further demonstrate how effective and inevitable is the proposed MLEANN framework to design a neural network, which is smaller, faster and with a better generalization performance.
cs/0405025
The Largest Compatible Subset Problem for Phylogenetic Data
cs.AI
The phylogenetic tree construction is to infer the evolutionary relationship between species from the experimental data. However, the experimental data are often imperfect and conflicting each others. Therefore, it is important to extract the motif from the imperfect data. The largest compatible subset problem is that, given a set of experimental data, we want to discard the minimum such that the remaining is compatible. The largest compatible subset problem can be viewed as the vertex cover problem in the graph theory that has been proven to be NP-hard. In this paper, we propose a hybrid Evolutionary Computing (EC) method for this problem. The proposed method combines the EC approach and the algorithmic approach for special structured graphs. As a result, the complexity of the problem is dramatically reduced. Experiments were performed on randomly generated graphs with different edge densities. The vertex covers produced by the proposed method were then compared to the vertex covers produced by a 2-approximation algorithm. The experimental results showed that the proposed method consistently outperformed a classical 2- approximation algorithm. Furthermore, a significant improvement was found when the graph density was small.
cs/0405026
A Concurrent Fuzzy-Neural Network Approach for Decision Support Systems
cs.AI
Decision-making is a process of choosing among alternative courses of action for solving complicated problems where multi-criteria objectives are involved. The past few years have witnessed a growing recognition of Soft Computing technologies that underlie the conception, design and utilization of intelligent systems. Several works have been done where engineers and scientists have applied intelligent techniques and heuristics to obtain optimal decisions from imprecise information. In this paper, we present a concurrent fuzzy-neural network approach combining unsupervised and supervised learning techniques to develop the Tactical Air Combat Decision Support System (TACDSS). Experiment results clearly demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed technique.
cs/0405027
Evolution of a Subsumption Architecture Neurocontroller
cs.AI cs.NE
An approach to robotics called layered evolution and merging features from the subsumption architecture into evolutionary robotics is presented, and its advantages are discussed. This approach is used to construct a layered controller for a simulated robot that learns which light source to approach in an environment with obstacles. The evolvability and performance of layered evolution on this task is compared to (standard) monolithic evolution, incremental and modularised evolution. To corroborate the hypothesis that a layered controller performs at least as well as an integrated one, the evolved layers are merged back into a single network. On the grounds of the test results, it is argued that layered evolution provides a superior approach for many tasks, and it is suggested that this approach may be the key to scaling up evolutionary robotics.
cs/0405028
Analysis of Hybrid Soft and Hard Computing Techniques for Forex Monitoring Systems
cs.AI
In a universe with a single currency, there would be no foreign exchange market, no foreign exchange rates, and no foreign exchange. Over the past twenty-five years, the way the market has performed those tasks has changed enormously. The need for intelligent monitoring systems has become a necessity to keep track of the complex forex market. The vast currency market is a foreign concept to the average individual. However, once it is broken down into simple terms, the average individual can begin to understand the foreign exchange market and use it as a financial instrument for future investing. In this paper, we attempt to compare the performance of hybrid soft computing and hard computing techniques to predict the average monthly forex rates one month ahead. The soft computing models considered are a neural network trained by the scaled conjugate gradient algorithm and a neuro-fuzzy model implementing a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy inference system. We also considered Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS), Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and a hybrid CART-MARS technique. We considered the exchange rates of Australian dollar with respect to US dollar, Singapore dollar, New Zealand dollar, Japanese yen and United Kingdom pounds. The models were trained using 70% of the data and remaining was used for testing and validation purposes. It is observed that the proposed hybrid models could predict the forex rates more accurately than all the techniques when applied individually. Empirical results also reveal that the hybrid hard computing approach also improved some of our previous work using a neuro-fuzzy approach.
cs/0405029
A New Computational Framework For 2D Shape-Enclosing Contours
cs.CV cs.CG
In this paper, a new framework for one-dimensional contour extraction from discrete two-dimensional data sets is presented. Contour extraction is important in many scientific fields such as digital image processing, computer vision, pattern recognition, etc. This novel framework includes (but is not limited to) algorithms for dilated contour extraction, contour displacement, shape skeleton extraction, contour continuation, shape feature based contour refinement and contour simplification. Many of the new techniques depend strongly on the application of a Delaunay tessellation. In order to demonstrate the versatility of this novel toolbox approach, the contour extraction techniques presented here are applied to scientific problems in material science, biology and heavy ion physics.
cs/0405030
Business Intelligence from Web Usage Mining
cs.AI
The rapid e-commerce growth has made both business community and customers face a new situation. Due to intense competition on one hand and the customer's option to choose from several alternatives business community has realized the necessity of intelligent marketing strategies and relationship management. Web usage mining attempts to discover useful knowledge from the secondary data obtained from the interactions of the users with the Web. Web usage mining has become very critical for effective Web site management, creating adaptive Web sites, business and support services, personalization, network traffic flow analysis and so on. In this paper, we present the important concepts of Web usage mining and its various practical applications. We further present a novel approach 'intelligent-miner' (i-Miner) to optimize the concurrent architecture of a fuzzy clustering algorithm (to discover web data clusters) and a fuzzy inference system to analyze the Web site visitor trends. A hybrid evolutionary fuzzy clustering algorithm is proposed in this paper to optimally segregate similar user interests. The clustered data is then used to analyze the trends using a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy inference system learned using a combination of evolutionary algorithm and neural network learning. Proposed approach is compared with self-organizing maps (to discover patterns) and several function approximation techniques like neural networks, linear genetic programming and Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy inference system (to analyze the clusters). The results are graphically illustrated and the practical significance is discussed in detail. Empirical results clearly show that the proposed Web usage-mining framework is efficient.
cs/0405031
Adaptation of Mamdani Fuzzy Inference System Using Neuro - Genetic Approach for Tactical Air Combat Decision Support System
cs.AI
Normally a decision support system is build to solve problem where multi-criteria decisions are involved. The knowledge base is the vital part of the decision support containing the information or data that is used in decision-making process. This is the field where engineers and scientists have applied several intelligent techniques and heuristics to obtain optimal decisions from imprecise information. In this paper, we present a hybrid neuro-genetic learning approach for the adaptation a Mamdani fuzzy inference system for the Tactical Air Combat Decision Support System (TACDSS). Some simulation results demonstrating the difference of the learning techniques and are also provided.
cs/0405032
EvoNF: A Framework for Optimization of Fuzzy Inference Systems Using Neural Network Learning and Evolutionary Computation
cs.AI
Several adaptation techniques have been investigated to optimize fuzzy inference systems. Neural network learning algorithms have been used to determine the parameters of fuzzy inference system. Such models are often called as integrated neuro-fuzzy models. In an integrated neuro-fuzzy model there is no guarantee that the neural network learning algorithm converges and the tuning of fuzzy inference system will be successful. Success of evolutionary search procedures for optimization of fuzzy inference system is well proven and established in many application areas. In this paper, we will explore how the optimization of fuzzy inference systems could be further improved using a meta-heuristic approach combining neural network learning and evolutionary computation. The proposed technique could be considered as a methodology to integrate neural networks, fuzzy inference systems and evolutionary search procedures. We present the theoretical frameworks and some experimental results to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed technique.
cs/0405033
Optimization of Evolutionary Neural Networks Using Hybrid Learning Algorithms
cs.AI
Evolutionary artificial neural networks (EANNs) refer to a special class of artificial neural networks (ANNs) in which evolution is another fundamental form of adaptation in addition to learning. Evolutionary algorithms are used to adapt the connection weights, network architecture and learning algorithms according to the problem environment. Even though evolutionary algorithms are well known as efficient global search algorithms, very often they miss the best local solutions in the complex solution space. In this paper, we propose a hybrid meta-heuristic learning approach combining evolutionary learning and local search methods (using 1st and 2nd order error information) to improve the learning and faster convergence obtained using a direct evolutionary approach. The proposed technique is tested on three different chaotic time series and the test results are compared with some popular neuro-fuzzy systems and a recently developed cutting angle method of global optimization. Empirical results reveal that the proposed technique is efficient in spite of the computational complexity.
cs/0405037
A Probabilistic Model of Machine Translation
cs.CL
A probabilistic model for computer-based generation of a machine translation system on the basis of English-Russian parallel text corpora is suggested. The model is trained using parallel text corpora with pre-aligned source and target sentences. The training of the model results in a bilingual dictionary of words and "word blocks" with relevant translation probability.
cs/0405038
Deductive Algorithmic Knowledge
cs.AI cs.LO
The framework of algorithmic knowledge assumes that agents use algorithms to compute the facts they explicitly know. In many cases of interest, a deductive system, rather than a particular algorithm, captures the formal reasoning used by the agents to compute what they explicitly know. We introduce a logic for reasoning about both implicit and explicit knowledge with the latter defined with respect to a deductive system formalizing a logical theory for agents. The highly structured nature of deductive systems leads to very natural axiomatizations of the resulting logic when interpreted over any fixed deductive system. The decision problem for the logic, in the presence of a single agent, is NP-complete in general, no harder than propositional logic. It remains NP-complete when we fix a deductive system that is decidable in nondeterministic polynomial time. These results extend in a straightforward way to multiple agents.
cs/0405039
Catching the Drift: Probabilistic Content Models, with Applications to Generation and Summarization
cs.CL
We consider the problem of modeling the content structure of texts within a specific domain, in terms of the topics the texts address and the order in which these topics appear. We first present an effective knowledge-lean method for learning content models from un-annotated documents, utilizing a novel adaptation of algorithms for Hidden Markov Models. We then apply our method to two complementary tasks: information ordering and extractive summarization. Our experiments show that incorporating content models in these applications yields substantial improvement over previously-proposed methods.
cs/0405041
The modulus in the CAD system drawings as a base of developing of the problem-oriented extensions
cs.CE cs.DS
The concept of the "modulus" in the CAD system drawings is characterized, being a base of developing of the problem-oriented extensions. The modulus consists of visible geometric elements of the drawing and invisible parametric representation of the modelling object. The technological advantages of moduluss in a complex CAD system developing are described.
cs/0405043
Prediction with Expert Advice by Following the Perturbed Leader for General Weights
cs.LG cs.AI
When applying aggregating strategies to Prediction with Expert Advice, the learning rate must be adaptively tuned. The natural choice of sqrt(complexity/current loss) renders the analysis of Weighted Majority derivatives quite complicated. In particular, for arbitrary weights there have been no results proven so far. The analysis of the alternative "Follow the Perturbed Leader" (FPL) algorithm from Kalai (2003} (based on Hannan's algorithm) is easier. We derive loss bounds for adaptive learning rate and both finite expert classes with uniform weights and countable expert classes with arbitrary weights. For the former setup, our loss bounds match the best known results so far, while for the latter our results are (to our knowledge) new.
cs/0405044
Corpus structure, language models, and ad hoc information retrieval
cs.IR cs.CL
Most previous work on the recently developed language-modeling approach to information retrieval focuses on document-specific characteristics, and therefore does not take into account the structure of the surrounding corpus. We propose a novel algorithmic framework in which information provided by document-based language models is enhanced by the incorporation of information drawn from clusters of similar documents. Using this framework, we develop a suite of new algorithms. Even the simplest typically outperforms the standard language-modeling approach in precision and recall, and our new interpolation algorithm posts statistically significant improvements for both metrics over all three corpora tested.
cs/0405047
Modular technology of developing of the problem-oriented extensions of a CAD system of reconstruction of the plant
cs.CE cs.DS
The modular technology of creation of the problem-oriented extensions of a CAD system is described, which was realised in a system TechnoCAD GlassX for designing of reconstruction of the plants. The modularity of the technology is expressed in storage of all parameters of the design in one element of the drawing - modulus, with automatic generation of a geometrical part of the modulus from these parameters. The common principles of the system organization of extensions developing are described: separation of the part of the design to automize in this extension, architecture of parameters in the form of the lists of objects with their properties and links to another objects, separation of common and special operations, stages of the developing, boundaries of applicability of technology.
cs/0405049
Export Behaviour Modeling Using EvoNF Approach
cs.AI
The academic literature suggests that the extent of exporting by multinational corporation subsidiaries (MCS) depends on their product manufactured, resources, tax protection, customers and markets, involvement strategy, financial independence and suppliers' relationship with a multinational corporation (MNC). The aim of this paper is to model the complex export pattern behaviour using a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy inference system in order to determine the actual volume of MCS export output (sales exported). The proposed fuzzy inference system is optimised by using neural network learning and evolutionary computation. Empirical results clearly show that the proposed approach could model the export behaviour reasonable well compared to a direct neural network approach.