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1012.0452
Average Minimum Transmit Power to achieve SINR Targets: Performance Comparison of Various User Selection Algorithms
cs.IT math.IT
In multi-user communication from one base station (BS) to multiple users, the problem of minimizing the transmit power to achieve some target guaranteed performance (rates) at users has been well investigated in the literature. Similarly various user selection algorithms have been proposed and analyzed when the BS has to transmit to a subset of the users in the system, mostly for the objective of the sum rate maximization. We study the joint problem of minimizing the transmit power at the BS to achieve specific signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) targets at users in conjunction with user scheduling. The general analytical results for the average transmit power required to meet guaranteed performance at the users' side are difficult to obtain even without user selection due to joint optimization required over beamforming vectors and power allocation scalars. We study the transmit power minimization problem with various user selection algorithms, namely semi-orthogonal user selection (SUS), norm-based user selection (NUS) and angle-based user selection (AUS). When the SINR targets to achieve are relatively large, the average minimum transmit power expressions are derived for NUS and SUS for any number of users. For the special case when only two users are selected, similar expressions are further derived for AUS and a performance upper bound which serves to benchmark the performance of other selection schemes. Simulation results performed under various settings indicate that SUS is by far the better user selection criterion.
1012.0490
Testing of information condensation in a model reverberating spiking neural network
q-bio.NC cs.NE
Information about external world is delivered to the brain in the form of structured in time spike trains. During further processing in higher areas, information is subjected to a certain condensation process, which results in formation of abstract conceptual images of external world, apparently, represented as certain uniform spiking activity partially independent on the input spike trains details. Possible physical mechanism of condensation at the level of individual neuron was discussed recently. In a reverberating spiking neural network, due to this mechanism the dynamics should settle down to the same uniform/periodic activity in response to a set of various inputs. Since the same periodic activity may correspond to different input spike trains, we interpret this as possible candidate for information condensation mechanism in a network. Our purpose is to test this possibility in a network model consisting of five fully connected neurons, particularly, the influence of geometric size of the network, on its ability to condense information. Dynamics of 20 spiking neural networks of different geometric sizes are modelled by means of computer simulation. Each network was propelled into reverberating dynamics by applying various initial input spike trains. We run the dynamics until it becomes periodic. The Shannon's formula is used to calculate the amount of information in any input spike train and in any periodic state found. As a result, we obtain explicit estimate of the degree of information condensation in the networks, and conclude that it depends strongly on the net's geometric size.
1012.0498
Estimating Probabilities in Recommendation Systems
cs.LG
Recommendation systems are emerging as an important business application with significant economic impact. Currently popular systems include Amazon's book recommendations, Netflix's movie recommendations, and Pandora's music recommendations. In this paper we address the problem of estimating probabilities associated with recommendation system data using non-parametric kernel smoothing. In our estimation we interpret missing items as randomly censored observations and obtain efficient computation schemes using combinatorial properties of generating functions. We demonstrate our approach with several case studies involving real world movie recommendation data. The results are comparable with state-of-the-art techniques while also providing probabilistic preference estimates outside the scope of traditional recommender systems.
1012.0529
Spectra of Modular and Small-World Matrices
cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We compute spectra of symmetric random matrices describing graphs with general modular structure and arbitrary inter- and intra-module degree distributions, subject only to the constraint of finite mean connectivities. We also evaluate spectra of a certain class of small-world matrices generated from random graphs by introducing short-cuts via additional random connectivity components. Both adjacency matrices and the associated graph Laplacians are investigated. For the Laplacians, we find Lifshitz type singular behaviour of the spectral density in a localised region of small $|\lambda|$ values. In the case of modular networks, we can identify contributions local densities of state from individual modules. For small-world networks, we find that the introduction of short cuts can lead to the creation of satellite bands outside the central band of extended states, exhibiting only localised states in the band-gaps. Results for the ensemble in the thermodynamic limit are in excellent agreement with those obtained via a cavity approach for large finite single instances, and with direct diagonalisation results.
1012.0599
Towards a Low-Complexity Dynamic Decode-and-Forward Relay Protocol
cs.IT math.IT
The dynamic decode-and-forward (DDF) relaying protocol is a relatively new cooperative scheme which has been shown to achieve promising theoretical results in terms of diversity-multiplexing gain tradeoff and error rates. The case of a single relay has been extensively studied in the literature and several techniques to approach the optimum performance have been proposed. Until recently, however, a practical implementation for the case of several relays had been considered to be much more challenging. A rotation-based DDF technique, suitable for any number of relays, has been recently proposed which promises to overcome important implementation hurdles. This article provides an overview of the DDF protocol, describes different implementation techniques and compares their performance.
1012.0602
LDPC Codes for Compressed Sensing
cs.IT math.IT math.NA
We present a mathematical connection between channel coding and compressed sensing. In particular, we link, on the one hand, \emph{channel coding linear programming decoding (CC-LPD)}, which is a well-known relaxation o maximum-likelihood channel decoding for binary linear codes, and, on the other hand, \emph{compressed sensing linear programming decoding (CS-LPD)}, also known as basis pursuit, which is a widely used linear programming relaxation for the problem of finding the sparsest solution of an under-determined system of linear equations. More specifically, we establis a tight connection between CS-LPD based on a zero-one measurement matrix over the reals and CC-LPD of the binary linear channel code that is obtained by viewing this measurement matrix as a binary parity-check matrix. This connection allows the translation of performance guarantees from one setup to the other. The main message of this paper is that parity-check matrices of "good" channel codes can be used as provably "good" measurement matrices under basis pursuit. In particular, we provide the first deterministic construction of compressed sensing measurement matrices with an order-optimal number of rows using high-girth low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes constructed by Gallager.
1012.0606
Quantification and Minimization of Crosstalk Sensitivity in Networks
q-bio.MN cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Crosstalk is defined as the set of unwanted interactions among the different entities of a network. Crosstalk is present in various degrees in every system where information is transmitted through a means that is accessible by all the individual units of the network. Using concepts from graph theory, we introduce a quantifiable measure for sensitivity to crosstalk, and analytically derive the structure of the networks in which it is minimized. It is shown that networks with an inhomogeneous degree distribution are more robust to crosstalk than corresponding homogeneous networks. We provide a method to construct the graph with the minimum possible sensitivity to crosstalk, given its order and size. Finally, for networks with a fixed degree sequence, we present an algorithm to find the optimal interconnection structure among their vertices.
1012.0663
An Effective Clustering Approach to Web Query Log Anonymization
cs.DB cs.CR
Web query log data contain information useful to research; however, release of such data can re-identify the search engine users issuing the queries. These privacy concerns go far beyond removing explicitly identifying information such as name and address, since non-identifying personal data can be combined with publicly available information to pinpoint to an individual. In this work we model web query logs as unstructured transaction data and present a novel transaction anonymization technique based on clustering and generalization techniques to achieve the k-anonymity privacy. We conduct extensive experiments on the AOL query log data. Our results show that this method results in a higher data utility compared to the state of-the-art transaction anonymization methods.
1012.0684
Adaptive Set Observers Design for Nonlinear Continuous-Time Systems: Application to Fault Detection and Diagnosis
cs.SY math.OC nlin.AO
The paper deals with joint state and parameter estimation for nonlinear continuous-time systems. Based on a guaranteed LPV approximation, the set adaptive observers design problem is solved avoiding the exponential complexity obstruction usually met in the set-membership parameter estimation. Potential application to fault diagnosis is considered. The efficacy of the proposed set adaptive observers is demonstrated on several examples.
1012.0729
Agnostic Learning of Monomials by Halfspaces is Hard
cs.CC cs.AI cs.LG
We prove the following strong hardness result for learning: Given a distribution of labeled examples from the hypercube such that there exists a monomial consistent with $(1-\eps)$ of the examples, it is NP-hard to find a halfspace that is correct on $(1/2+\eps)$ of the examples, for arbitrary constants $\eps > 0$. In learning theory terms, weak agnostic learning of monomials is hard, even if one is allowed to output a hypothesis from the much bigger concept class of halfspaces. This hardness result subsumes a long line of previous results, including two recent hardness results for the proper learning of monomials and halfspaces. As an immediate corollary of our result we show that weak agnostic learning of decision lists is NP-hard. Our techniques are quite different from previous hardness proofs for learning. We define distributions on positive and negative examples for monomials whose first few moments match. We use the invariance principle to argue that regular halfspaces (all of whose coefficients have small absolute value relative to the total $\ell_2$ norm) cannot distinguish between distributions whose first few moments match. For highly non-regular subspaces, we use a structural lemma from recent work on fooling halfspaces to argue that they are ``junta-like'' and one can zero out all but the top few coefficients without affecting the performance of the halfspace. The top few coefficients form the natural list decoding of a halfspace in the context of dictatorship tests/Label Cover reductions. We note that unlike previous invariance principle based proofs which are only known to give Unique-Games hardness, we are able to reduce from a version of Label Cover problem that is known to be NP-hard. This has inspired follow-up work on bypassing the Unique Games conjecture in some optimal geometric inapproximability results.
1012.0735
Closed-set-based Discovery of Bases of Association Rules
cs.LG cs.AI cs.LO math.LO
The output of an association rule miner is often huge in practice. This is why several concise lossless representations have been proposed, such as the "essential" or "representative" rules. We revisit the algorithm given by Kryszkiewicz (Int. Symp. Intelligent Data Analysis 2001, Springer-Verlag LNCS 2189, 350-359) for mining representative rules. We show that its output is sometimes incomplete, due to an oversight in its mathematical validation. We propose alternative complete generators and we extend the approach to an existing closure-aware basis similar to, and often smaller than, the representative rules, namely the basis B*.
1012.0742
Border Algorithms for Computing Hasse Diagrams of Arbitrary Lattices
cs.AI cs.LG math.LO
The Border algorithm and the iPred algorithm find the Hasse diagrams of FCA lattices. We show that they can be generalized to arbitrary lattices. In the case of iPred, this requires the identification of a join-semilattice homomorphism into a distributive lattice.
1012.0759
Handling Confidential Data on the Untrusted Cloud: An Agent-based Approach
cs.CR cs.DC cs.MA
Cloud computing allows shared computer and storage facilities to be used by a multitude of clients. While cloud management is centralized, the information resides in the cloud and information sharing can be implemented via off-the-shelf techniques for multiuser databases. Users, however, are very diffident for not having full control over their sensitive data. Untrusted database-as-a-server techniques are neither readily extendable to the cloud environment nor easily understandable by non-technical users. To solve this problem, we present an approach where agents share reserved data in a secure manner by the use of simple grant-and-revoke permissions on shared data.
1012.0774
An Inverse Power Method for Nonlinear Eigenproblems with Applications in 1-Spectral Clustering and Sparse PCA
cs.LG math.OC stat.ML
Many problems in machine learning and statistics can be formulated as (generalized) eigenproblems. In terms of the associated optimization problem, computing linear eigenvectors amounts to finding critical points of a quadratic function subject to quadratic constraints. In this paper we show that a certain class of constrained optimization problems with nonquadratic objective and constraints can be understood as nonlinear eigenproblems. We derive a generalization of the inverse power method which is guaranteed to converge to a nonlinear eigenvector. We apply the inverse power method to 1-spectral clustering and sparse PCA which can naturally be formulated as nonlinear eigenproblems. In both applications we achieve state-of-the-art results in terms of solution quality and runtime. Moving beyond the standard eigenproblem should be useful also in many other applications and our inverse power method can be easily adapted to new problems.
1012.0830
Using ASP with recent extensions for causal explanations
cs.AI
We examine the practicality for a user of using Answer Set Programming (ASP) for representing logical formalisms. We choose as an example a formalism aiming at capturing causal explanations from causal information. We provide an implementation, showing the naturalness and relative efficiency of this translation job. We are interested in the ease for writing an ASP program, in accordance with the claimed ``declarative'' aspect of ASP. Limitations of the earlier systems (poor data structure and difficulty in reusing pieces of programs) made that in practice, the ``declarative aspect'' was more theoretical than practical. We show how recent improvements in working ASP systems facilitate a lot the translation, even if a few improvements could still be useful.
1012.0841
Automated Query Learning with Wikipedia and Genetic Programming
cs.AI cs.IR cs.LG cs.NE
Most of the existing information retrieval systems are based on bag of words model and are not equipped with common world knowledge. Work has been done towards improving the efficiency of such systems by using intelligent algorithms to generate search queries, however, not much research has been done in the direction of incorporating human-and-society level knowledge in the queries. This paper is one of the first attempts where such information is incorporated into the search queries using Wikipedia semantics. The paper presents an essential shift from conventional token based queries to concept based queries, leading to an enhanced efficiency of information retrieval systems. To efficiently handle the automated query learning problem, we propose Wikipedia-based Evolutionary Semantics (Wiki-ES) framework where concept based queries are learnt using a co-evolving evolutionary procedure. Learning concept based queries using an intelligent evolutionary procedure yields significant improvement in performance which is shown through an extensive study using Reuters newswire documents. Comparison of the proposed framework is performed with other information retrieval systems. Concept based approach has also been implemented on other information retrieval systems to justify the effectiveness of a transition from token based queries to concept based queries.
1012.0854
Semantic Content Filtering with Wikipedia and Ontologies
cs.IR
The use of domain knowledge is generally found to improve query efficiency in content filtering applications. In particular, tangible benefits have been achieved when using knowledge-based approaches within more specialized fields, such as medical free texts or legal documents. However, the problem is that sources of domain knowledge are time-consuming to build and equally costly to maintain. As a potential remedy, recent studies on Wikipedia suggest that this large body of socially constructed knowledge can be effectively harnessed to provide not only facts but also accurate information about semantic concept-similarities. This paper describes a framework for document filtering, where Wikipedia's concept-relatedness information is combined with a domain ontology to produce semantic content classifiers. The approach is evaluated using Reuters RCV1 corpus and TREC-11 filtering task definitions. In a comparative study, the approach shows robust performance and appears to outperform content classifiers based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) and C4.5 algorithm.
1012.0866
Generalized Species Sampling Priors with Latent Beta reinforcements
math.ST cs.LG stat.ME stat.TH
Many popular Bayesian nonparametric priors can be characterized in terms of exchangeable species sampling sequences. However, in some applications, exchangeability may not be appropriate. We introduce a {novel and probabilistically coherent family of non-exchangeable species sampling sequences characterized by a tractable predictive probability function with weights driven by a sequence of independent Beta random variables. We compare their theoretical clustering properties with those of the Dirichlet Process and the two parameters Poisson-Dirichlet process. The proposed construction provides a complete characterization of the joint process, differently from existing work. We then propose the use of such process as prior distribution in a hierarchical Bayes modeling framework, and we describe a Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampler for posterior inference. We evaluate the performance of the prior and the robustness of the resulting inference in a simulation study, providing a comparison with popular Dirichlet Processes mixtures and Hidden Markov Models. Finally, we develop an application to the detection of chromosomal aberrations in breast cancer by leveraging array CGH data.
1012.0898
Classification of quaternary Hermitian self-dual codes of length 20
math.CO cs.IT math.IT
A classification of quaternary Hermitian self-dual codes of length 20 is given. Using this classification, a classification of extremal quaternary Hermitian self-dual codes of length 22 is also given.
1012.0900
DNA Sequencing via Quantum Mechanics and Machine Learning
physics.bio-ph cs.CE q-bio.QM
Rapid sequencing of individual human genome is prerequisite to genomic medicine, where diseases will be prevented by preemptive cures. Quantum-mechanical tunneling through single-stranded DNA in a solid-state nanopore has been proposed for rapid DNA sequencing, but unfortunately the tunneling current alone cannot distinguish the four nucleotides due to large fluctuations in molecular conformation and solvent. Here, we propose a machine-learning approach applied to the tunneling current-voltage (I-V) characteristic for efficient discrimination between the four nucleotides. We first combine principal component analysis (PCA) and fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering to learn the "fingerprints" of the electronic density-of-states (DOS) of the four nucleotides, which can be derived from the I-V data. We then apply the hidden Markov model and the Viterbi algorithm to sequence a time series of DOS data (i.e., to solve the sequencing problem). Numerical experiments show that the PCA-FCM approach can classify unlabeled DOS data with 91% accuracy. Furthermore, the classification is found to be robust against moderate levels of noise, i.e., 70% accuracy is retained with a signal-to-noise ratio of 26 dB. The PCA-FCM-Viterbi approach provides a 4-fold increase in accuracy for the sequencing problem compared with PCA alone. In conjunction with recent developments in nanotechnology, this machine-learning method may pave the way to the much-awaited rapid, low-cost genome sequencer.
1012.0930
Efficient Optimization of Performance Measures by Classifier Adaptation
cs.LG cs.AI
In practical applications, machine learning algorithms are often needed to learn classifiers that optimize domain specific performance measures. Previously, the research has focused on learning the needed classifier in isolation, yet learning nonlinear classifier for nonlinear and nonsmooth performance measures is still hard. In this paper, rather than learning the needed classifier by optimizing specific performance measure directly, we circumvent this problem by proposing a novel two-step approach called as CAPO, namely to first train nonlinear auxiliary classifiers with existing learning methods, and then to adapt auxiliary classifiers for specific performance measures. In the first step, auxiliary classifiers can be obtained efficiently by taking off-the-shelf learning algorithms. For the second step, we show that the classifier adaptation problem can be reduced to a quadratic program problem, which is similar to linear SVMperf and can be efficiently solved. By exploiting nonlinear auxiliary classifiers, CAPO can generate nonlinear classifier which optimizes a large variety of performance measures including all the performance measure based on the contingency table and AUC, whilst keeping high computational efficiency. Empirical studies show that CAPO is effective and of high computational efficiency, and even it is more efficient than linear SVMperf.
1012.0952
Faster Black-Box Algorithms Through Higher Arity Operators
cs.NE
We extend the work of Lehre and Witt (GECCO 2010) on the unbiased black-box model by considering higher arity variation operators. In particular, we show that already for binary operators the black-box complexity of \leadingones drops from $\Theta(n^2)$ for unary operators to $O(n \log n)$. For \onemax, the $\Omega(n \log n)$ unary black-box complexity drops to O(n) in the binary case. For $k$-ary operators, $k \leq n$, the \onemax-complexity further decreases to $O(n/\log k)$.
1012.0955
Compressive Sensing Over Networks
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we demonstrate some applications of compressive sensing over networks. We make a connection between compressive sensing and traditional information theoretic techniques in source coding and channel coding. Our results provide an explicit trade-off between the rate and the decoding complexity. The key difference of compressive sensing and traditional information theoretic approaches is at their decoding side. Although optimal decoders to recover the original signal, compressed by source coding have high complexity, the compressive sensing decoder is a linear or convex optimization. First, we investigate applications of compressive sensing on distributed compression of correlated sources. Here, by using compressive sensing, we propose a compression scheme for a family of correlated sources with a modularized decoder, providing a trade-off between the compression rate and the decoding complexity. We call this scheme Sparse Distributed Compression. We use this compression scheme for a general multicast network with correlated sources. Here, we first decode some of the sources by a network decoding technique and then, we use a compressive sensing decoder to obtain the whole sources. Then, we investigate applications of compressive sensing on channel coding. We propose a coding scheme that combines compressive sensing and random channel coding for a high-SNR point-to-point Gaussian channel. We call this scheme Sparse Channel Coding. We propose a modularized decoder providing a trade-off between the capacity loss and the decoding complexity. At the receiver side, first, we use a compressive sensing decoder on a noisy signal to obtain a noisy estimate of the original signal and then, we apply a traditional channel coding decoder to find the original signal.
1012.0975
Split Bregman Method for Sparse Inverse Covariance Estimation with Matrix Iteration Acceleration
stat.ML cs.LG
We consider the problem of estimating the inverse covariance matrix by maximizing the likelihood function with a penalty added to encourage the sparsity of the resulting matrix. We propose a new approach based on the split Bregman method to solve the regularized maximum likelihood estimation problem. We show that our method is significantly faster than the widely used graphical lasso method, which is based on blockwise coordinate descent, on both artificial and real-world data. More importantly, different from the graphical lasso, the split Bregman based method is much more general, and can be applied to a class of regularization terms other than the $\ell_1$ norm
1012.1007
Neighbor Discovery for Wireless Networks via Compressed Sensing
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
This paper studies the problem of neighbor discovery in wireless networks, namely, each node wishes to discover and identify the network interface addresses (NIAs) of those nodes within a single hop. A novel paradigm, called compressed neighbor discovery is proposed, which enables all nodes to simultaneously discover their respective neighborhoods with a single frame of transmission, which is typically of a few thousand symbol epochs. The key technique is to assign each node a unique on-off signature and let all nodes simultaneously transmit their signatures. Despite that the radios are half-duplex, each node observes a superposition of its neighbors' signatures (partially) through its own off-slots. To identify its neighbors out of a large network address space, each node solves a compressed sensing (or sparse recovery) problem. Two practical schemes are studied. The first employs random on-off signatures, and each node discovers its neighbors using a noncoherent detection algorithm based on group testing. The second scheme uses on-off signatures based on a deterministic second-order Reed-Muller code, and applies a chirp decoding algorithm. The second scheme needs much lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to achieve the same error performance. The complexity of the chirp decoding algorithm is sub-linear, so that it is in principle scalable to networks with billions of nodes with 48-bit IEEE 802.11 MAC addresses. The compressed neighbor discovery schemes are much more efficient than conventional random-access discovery, where nodes have to retransmit over many frames with random delays to be successfully discovered.
1012.1099
Heterogeneity, quality, and reputation in an adaptive recommendation model
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
Recommender systems help people cope with the problem of information overload. A recently proposed adaptive news recommender model [Medo et al., 2009] is based on epidemic-like spreading of news in a social network. By means of agent-based simulations we study a "good get richer" feature of the model and determine which attributes are necessary for a user to play a leading role in the network. We further investigate the filtering efficiency of the model as well as its robustness against malicious and spamming behaviour. We show that incorporating user reputation in the recommendation process can substantially improve the outcome.
1012.1184
Image Deblurring and Super-resolution by Adaptive Sparse Domain Selection and Adaptive Regularization
cs.CV cs.MM
As a powerful statistical image modeling technique, sparse representation has been successfully used in various image restoration applications. The success of sparse representation owes to the development of l1-norm optimization techniques, and the fact that natural images are intrinsically sparse in some domain. The image restoration quality largely depends on whether the employed sparse domain can represent well the underlying image. Considering that the contents can vary significantly across different images or different patches in a single image, we propose to learn various sets of bases from a pre-collected dataset of example image patches, and then for a given patch to be processed, one set of bases are adaptively selected to characterize the local sparse domain. We further introduce two adaptive regularization terms into the sparse representation framework. First, a set of autoregressive (AR) models are learned from the dataset of example image patches. The best fitted AR models to a given patch are adaptively selected to regularize the image local structures. Second, the image non-local self-similarity is introduced as another regularization term. In addition, the sparsity regularization parameter is adaptively estimated for better image restoration performance. Extensive experiments on image deblurring and super-resolution validate that by using adaptive sparse domain selection and adaptive regularization, the proposed method achieves much better results than many state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of both PSNR and visual perception.
1012.1193
Automatic Image Segmentation by Dynamic Region Merging
cs.CV cs.RO
This paper addresses the automatic image segmentation problem in a region merging style. With an initially over-segmented image, in which the many regions (or super-pixels) with homogeneous color are detected, image segmentation is performed by iteratively merging the regions according to a statistical test. There are two essential issues in a region merging algorithm: order of merging and the stopping criterion. In the proposed algorithm, these two issues are solved by a novel predicate, which is defined by the sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) and the maximum likelihood criterion. Starting from an over-segmented image, neighboring regions are progressively merged if there is an evidence for merging according to this predicate. We show that the merging order follows the principle of dynamic programming. This formulates image segmentation as an inference problem, where the final segmentation is established based on the observed image. We also prove that the produced segmentation satisfies certain global properties. In addition, a faster algorithm is developed to accelerate the region merging process, which maintains a nearest neighbor graph in each iteration. Experiments on real natural images are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed dynamic region merging algorithm.
1012.1211
Flow graphs: interweaving dynamics and structure
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
The behavior of complex systems is determined not only by the topological organization of their interconnections but also by the dynamical processes taking place among their constituents. A faithful modeling of the dynamics is essential because different dynamical processes may be affected very differently by network topology. A full characterization of such systems thus requires a formalization that encompasses both aspects simultaneously, rather than relying only on the topological adjacency matrix. To achieve this, we introduce the concept of flow graphs, namely weighted networks where dynamical flows are embedded into the link weights. Flow graphs provide an integrated representation of the structure and dynamics of the system, which can then be analyzed with standard tools from network theory. Conversely, a structural network feature of our choice can also be used as the basis for the construction of a flow graph that will then encompass a dynamics biased by such a feature. We illustrate the ideas by focusing on the mathematical properties of generic linear processes on complex networks that can be represented as biased random walks and also explore their dual consensus dynamics.
1012.1213
Analytical calculation of fragmentation transitions in adaptive networks
nlin.AO cond-mat.dis-nn cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In adaptive networks fragmentation transitions have been observed in which the network breaks into disconnected components. We present an analytical approach for calculating the transition point in general adaptive network models. Using the example of an adaptive voter model, we demonstrate that the proposed approach yields good agreement with numerical results.
1012.1255
URSA: A System for Uniform Reduction to SAT
cs.AI
There are a huge number of problems, from various areas, being solved by reducing them to SAT. However, for many applications, translation into SAT is performed by specialized, problem-specific tools. In this paper we describe a new system for uniform solving of a wide class of problems by reducing them to SAT. The system uses a new specification language URSA that combines imperative and declarative programming paradigms. The reduction to SAT is defined precisely by the semantics of the specification language. The domain of the approach is wide (e.g., many NP-complete problems can be simply specified and then solved by the system) and there are problems easily solvable by the proposed system, while they can be hardly solved by using other programming languages or constraint programming systems. So, the system can be seen not only as a tool for solving problems by reducing them to SAT, but also as a general-purpose constraint solving system (for finite domains). In this paper, we also describe an open-source implementation of the described approach. The performed experiments suggest that the system is competitive to state-of-the-art related modelling systems.
1012.1256
Computation of Polytopic Invariants for Polynomial Dynamical Systems using Linear Programming
math.OC cs.SY math.DS
This paper deals with the computation of polytopic invariant sets for polynomial dynamical systems. An invariant set of a dynamical system is a subset of the state space such that if the state of the system belongs to the set at a given instant, it will remain in the set forever in the future. Polytopic invariants for polynomial systems can be verified by solving a set of optimization problems involving multivariate polynomials on bounded polytopes. Using the blossoming principle together with properties of multi-affine functions on rectangles and Lagrangian duality, we show that certified lower bounds of the optimal values of such optimization problems can be computed effectively using linear programs. This allows us to propose a method based on linear programming for verifying polytopic invariant sets of polynomial dynamical systems. Additionally, using sensitivity analysis of linear programs, one can iteratively compute a polytopic invariant set. Finally, we show using a set of examples borrowed from biological applications, that our approach is effective in practice.
1012.1258
Simultaneous Sequential Detection of Multiple Interacting Faults
cs.IT cs.SY math.IT math.ST stat.TH
Single fault sequential change point problems have become important in modeling for various phenomena in large distributed systems, such as sensor networks. But such systems in many situations present multiple interacting faults. For example, individual sensors in a network may fail and detection is performed by comparing measurements between sensors, resulting in statistical dependency among faults. We present a new formulation for multiple interacting faults in a distributed system. The formulation includes specifications of how individual subsystems composing the large system may fail, the information that can be shared among these subsystems and the interaction pattern between faults. We then specify a new sequential algorithm for detecting these faults. The main feature of the algorithm is that it uses composite stopping rules for a subsystem that depend on the decision of other subsystems. We provide asymptotic false alarm and detection delay analysis for this algorithm in the Bayesian setting and show that under certain conditions the algorithm is optimal. The analysis methodology relies on novel detailed comparison techniques between stopping times. We validate the approach with some simulations.
1012.1269
Identification of overlapping communities and their hierarchy by locally calculating community-changing resolution levels
physics.data-an cs.SI physics.soc-ph
We propose a new local, deterministic and parameter-free algorithm that detects fuzzy and crisp overlapping communities in a weighted network and simultaneously reveals their hierarchy. Using a local fitness function, the algorithm greedily expands natural communities of seeds until the whole graph is covered. The hierarchy of communities is obtained analytically by calculating resolution levels at which communities grow rather than numerically by testing different resolution levels. This analytic procedure is not only more exact than its numerical alternatives such as LFM and GCE but also much faster. Critical resolution levels can be identified by searching for intervals in which large changes of the resolution do not lead to growth of communities. We tested our algorithm on benchmark graphs and on a network of 492 papers in information science. Combined with a specific post-processing, the algorithm gives much more precise results on LFR benchmarks with high overlap compared to other algorithms and performs very similar to GCE.
1012.1272
A statistical mechanics approach to Granovetter theory
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
In this paper we try to bridge breakthroughs in quantitative sociology/econometrics pioneered during the last decades by Mac Fadden, Brock-Durlauf, Granovetter and Watts-Strogats through introducing a minimal model able to reproduce essentially all the features of social behavior highlighted by these authors. Our model relies on a pairwise Hamiltonian for decision maker interactions which naturally extends the multi-populations approaches by shifting and biasing the pattern definitions of an Hopfield model of neural networks. Once introduced, the model is investigated trough graph theory (to recover Granovetter and Watts-Strogats results) and statistical mechanics (to recover Mac-Fadden and Brock-Durlauf results). Due to internal symmetries of our model, the latter is obtained as the relaxation of a proper Markov process, allowing even to study its out of equilibrium properties. The method used to solve its equilibrium is an adaptation of the Hamilton-Jacobi technique recently introduced by Guerra in the spin glass scenario and the picture obtained is the following: just by assuming that the larger the amount of similarities among decision makers, the stronger their relative influence, this is enough to explain both the different role of strong and weak ties in the social network as well as its small world properties. As a result, imitative interaction strengths seem essentially a robust request (enough to break the gauge symmetry in the couplings), furthermore, this naturally leads to a discrete choice modelization when dealing with the external influences and to imitative behavior a la Curie-Weiss as the one introduced by Brock and Durlauf.
1012.1295
On the Spectral Efficiency of Links with Multi-antenna Receivers in Non-homogenous Wireless Networks
cs.IT math.IT
An asymptotic technique is developed to find the Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise-Ratio (SINR) and spectral efficiency of a link with N receiver antennas in wireless networks with non-homogeneous distributions of nodes. It is found that with appropriate normalization, the SINR and spectral efficiency converge with probability 1 to asymptotic limits as N increases. This technique is applied to networks with power-law node intensities, which includes homogeneous networks as a special case, to find a simple approximation for the spectral efficiency. It is found that for receivers in dense clusters, the SINR grows with N at rates higher than that of homogeneous networks and that constant spectral efficiencies can be maintained if the ratio of N to node density is constant. This result also enables the analysis of a new scaling regime where the distribution of nodes in the network flattens rather than increases uniformly. It is found that in many cases in this regime, N needs to grow approximately exponentially to maintain a constant spectral efficiency. In addition to strengthening previously known results for homogeneous networks, these results provide insight into the benefit of using antenna arrays in non-homogeneous wireless networks, for which few results are available in the literature.
1012.1358
Trust transitivity in social networks
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
Non-centralized recommendation-based decision making is a central feature of several social and technological processes, such as market dynamics, peer-to-peer file-sharing and the web of trust of digital certification. We investigate the properties of trust propagation on networks, based on a simple metric of trust transitivity. We investigate analytically the percolation properties of trust transitivity in random networks with arbitrary degree distribution, and compare with numerical realizations. We find that the existence of a non-zero fraction of absolute trust (i.e. entirely confident trust) is a requirement for the viability of global trust propagation in large systems: The average pair-wise trust is marked by a discontinuous transition at a specific fraction of absolute trust, below which it vanishes. Furthermore, we perform an extensive analysis of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) web of trust, in view of the concepts introduced. We compare different scenarios of trust distribution: community- and authority-centered. We find that these scenarios lead to sharply different patterns of trust propagation, due to the segregation of authority hubs and densely-connected communities. While the authority-centered scenario is more efficient, and leads to higher average trust values, it favours weakly-connected "fringe" nodes, which are directly trusted by authorities. The community-centered scheme, on the other hand, favours nodes with intermediate degrees, in detriment of the authorities and its "fringe" peers.
1012.1367
Optimal Distributed Online Prediction using Mini-Batches
cs.LG cs.DC math.OC
Online prediction methods are typically presented as serial algorithms running on a single processor. However, in the age of web-scale prediction problems, it is increasingly common to encounter situations where a single processor cannot keep up with the high rate at which inputs arrive. In this work, we present the \emph{distributed mini-batch} algorithm, a method of converting many serial gradient-based online prediction algorithms into distributed algorithms. We prove a regret bound for this method that is asymptotically optimal for smooth convex loss functions and stochastic inputs. Moreover, our analysis explicitly takes into account communication latencies between nodes in the distributed environment. We show how our method can be used to solve the closely-related distributed stochastic optimization problem, achieving an asymptotically linear speed-up over multiple processors. Finally, we demonstrate the merits of our approach on a web-scale online prediction problem.
1012.1370
Robust Distributed Online Prediction
cs.LG math.OC
The standard model of online prediction deals with serial processing of inputs by a single processor. However, in large-scale online prediction problems, where inputs arrive at a high rate, an increasingly common necessity is to distribute the computation across several processors. A non-trivial challenge is to design distributed algorithms for online prediction, which maintain good regret guarantees. In \cite{DMB}, we presented the DMB algorithm, which is a generic framework to convert any serial gradient-based online prediction algorithm into a distributed algorithm. Moreover, its regret guarantee is asymptotically optimal for smooth convex loss functions and stochastic inputs. On the flip side, it is fragile to many types of failures that are common in distributed environments. In this companion paper, we present variants of the DMB algorithm, which are resilient to many types of network failures, and tolerant to varying performance of the computing nodes.
1012.1375
A mathematical model of social group competition with application to the growth of religious non-affiliation
physics.soc-ph cs.SI math.DS nlin.AO
When groups compete for members, the resulting dynamics of human social activity may be understandable with simple mathematical models. Here, we apply techniques from dynamical systems and perturbation theory to analyze a theoretical framework for the growth and decline of competing social groups. We present a new treatment of the competition for adherents between religious and irreligious segments of modern secular societies and compile a new international data set tracking the growth of religious non-affiliation. Data suggest a particular case of our general growth law, leading to clear predictions about possible future trends in society.
1012.1403
Negative frequency communication
cs.IT math.IT physics.pop-ph
Spectrum is the most valuable resource in communication system, but unfortunately, so far, a half of the spectrum has been wasted. In this paper, we will see that the negative frequency not only has a physical meaning but also can be used in communication. In fact, the complete description of a frequency signal is a rotating complex-frequency signal, in a complete description, positive and negative frequency signals are two distinguishable and independent frequency signals, they can carry different information. But the current carrier modulation and demodulation do not distinguish positive and negative frequencies, so half of the spectrum resources and signal energy are wasted. The complex-carrier modulation and demodulation, proposed by this paper, use the complex-frequency signal as a carrier signal, the negative and positive frequency can carry different information, so the spectrum resources are fully used, the signal energy carried by complex-carrier modulation is focused on a certain band, so the signal energy will not be lost by the complex-carrier demodulation.
1012.1425
Improved linear programming decoding of LDPC codes and bounds on the minimum and fractional distance
cs.IT math.IT
We examine LDPC codes decoded using linear programming (LP). Four contributions to the LP framework are presented. First, a new method of tightening the LP relaxation, and thus improving the LP decoder, is proposed. Second, we present an algorithm which calculates a lower bound on the minimum distance of a specific code. This algorithm exhibits complexity which scales quadratically with the block length. Third, we propose a method to obtain a tight lower bound on the fractional distance, also with quadratic complexity, and thus less than previously-existing methods. Finally, we show how the fundamental LP polytope for generalized LDPC codes and nonbinary LDPC codes can be obtained.
1012.1501
Shaping Level Sets with Submodular Functions
cs.LG stat.ML
We consider a class of sparsity-inducing regularization terms based on submodular functions. While previous work has focused on non-decreasing functions, we explore symmetric submodular functions and their \lova extensions. We show that the Lovasz extension may be seen as the convex envelope of a function that depends on level sets (i.e., the set of indices whose corresponding components of the underlying predictor are greater than a given constant): this leads to a class of convex structured regularization terms that impose prior knowledge on the level sets, and not only on the supports of the underlying predictors. We provide a unified set of optimization algorithms, such as proximal operators, and theoretical guarantees (allowed level sets and recovery conditions). By selecting specific submodular functions, we give a new interpretation to known norms, such as the total variation; we also define new norms, in particular ones that are based on order statistics with application to clustering and outlier detection, and on noisy cuts in graphs with application to change point detection in the presence of outliers.
1012.1539
A General Framework for Transmission with Transceiver Distortion and Some Applications
cs.IT math.IT
A general theoretical framework is presented for analyzing information transmission over Gaussian channels with memoryless transceiver distortion, which encompasses various nonlinear distortion models including transmit-side clipping, receive-side analog-to-digital conversion, and others. The framework is based on the so-called generalized mutual information (GMI), and the analysis in particular benefits from the setup of Gaussian codebook ensemble and nearest-neighbor decoding, for which it is established that the GMI takes a general form analogous to the channel capacity of undistorted Gaussian channels, with a reduced "effective" signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) that depends on the nominal SNR and the distortion model. When applied to specific distortion models, an array of results of engineering relevance is obtained. For channels with transmit-side distortion only, it is shown that a conventional approach, which treats the distorted signal as the sum of the original signal part and a uncorrelated distortion part, achieves the GMI. For channels with output quantization, closed-form expressions are obtained for the effective SNR and the GMI, and related optimization problems are formulated and solved for quantizer design. Finally, super-Nyquist sampling is analyzed within the general framework, and it is shown that sampling beyond the Nyquist rate increases the GMI for all SNR. For example, with a binary symmetric output quantization, information rates exceeding one bit per channel use are achievable by sampling the output at four times the Nyquist rate.
1012.1547
Considerate Equilibrium
cs.GT cs.DS cs.MA
We consider the existence and computational complexity of coalitional stability concepts based on social networks. Our concepts represent a natural and rich combinatorial generalization of a recent approach termed partition equilibrium. We assume that players in a strategic game are embedded in a social network, and there are coordination constraints that restrict the potential coalitions that can jointly deviate in the game to the set of cliques in the social network. In addition, players act in a "considerate" fashion to ignore potentially profitable (group) deviations if the change in their strategy may cause a decrease of utility to their neighbors. We study the properties of such considerate equilibria in application to the class of resource selection games (RSG). Our main result proves existence of a considerate equilibrium in all symmetric RSG with strictly increasing delays, for any social network among the players. The existence proof is constructive and yields an efficient algorithm. In fact, the computed considerate equilibrium is a Nash equilibrium for the standard RSG showing that there exists a state that is stable against selfish and considerate behavior simultaneously. In addition, we show results on convergence of considerate dynamics.
1012.1552
Bridging the Gap between Reinforcement Learning and Knowledge Representation: A Logical Off- and On-Policy Framework
cs.AI cs.LG cs.LO
Knowledge Representation is important issue in reinforcement learning. In this paper, we bridge the gap between reinforcement learning and knowledge representation, by providing a rich knowledge representation framework, based on normal logic programs with answer set semantics, that is capable of solving model-free reinforcement learning problems for more complex do-mains and exploits the domain-specific knowledge. We prove the correctness of our approach. We show that the complexity of finding an offline and online policy for a model-free reinforcement learning problem in our approach is NP-complete. Moreover, we show that any model-free reinforcement learning problem in MDP environment can be encoded as a SAT problem. The importance of that is model-free reinforcement
1012.1565
A Survey on Data Warehouse Evolution
cs.DB
The data warehouse (DW) technology was developed to integrate heterogeneous information sources for analysis purposes. Information sources are more and more autonomous and they often change their content due to perpetual transactions (data changes) and may change their structure due to continual users' requirements evolving (schema changes). Handling properly all type of changes is a must. In fact, the DW which is considered as the core component of the modern decision support systems has to be update according to different type of evolution of information sources to reflect the real world subject to analysis. The goal of this paper is to propose an overview and a comparative study between different works related to the DW evolution problem.
1012.1577
Sparser Johnson-Lindenstrauss Transforms
cs.DS cs.CG cs.DM cs.IT math.IT math.PR
We give two different and simple constructions for dimensionality reduction in $\ell_2$ via linear mappings that are sparse: only an $O(\varepsilon)$-fraction of entries in each column of our embedding matrices are non-zero to achieve distortion $1+\varepsilon$ with high probability, while still achieving the asymptotically optimal number of rows. These are the first constructions to provide subconstant sparsity for all values of parameters, improving upon previous works of Achlioptas (JCSS 2003) and Dasgupta, Kumar, and Sarl\'{o}s (STOC 2010). Such distributions can be used to speed up applications where $\ell_2$ dimensionality reduction is used.
1012.1581
Dynamics of Majority Rule with Differential Latencies
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
We investigate the dynamics of the majority-rule opinion formation model when voters experience differential latencies. With this extension, voters that just adopted an opinion go into a latent state during which they are excluded from the opinion formation process. The duration of the latent state depends on the opinion adopted by the voter. The net result is a bias towards consensus on the opinion that is associated with the shorter latency. We determine the exit probability and time to consensus for systems of $N$ voters. Additionally, we derive an asymptotic characterisation of the time to consensus by means of a continuum model.
1012.1609
Building conceptual spaces for exploring and linking biomedical resources
cs.IR
The establishment of links between data (e.g., patient records) and Web resources (e.g., literature) and the proper visualization of such discovered knowledge is still a challenge in most Life Science domains (e.g., biomedicine). In this paper we present our contribution to the community in the form of an infrastructure to annotate information resources, to discover relationships among them, and to represent and visualize the new discovered knowledge. Furthermore, we have also implemented a Web-based prototype tool which integrates the proposed infrastructure.
1012.1615
Argudas: arguing with gene expression information
cs.CE cs.AI
In situ hybridisation gene expression information helps biologists identify where a gene is expressed. However, the databases that republish the experimental information are often both incomplete and inconsistent. This paper examines a system, Argudas, designed to help tackle these issues. Argudas is an evolution of an existing system, and so that system is reviewed as a means of both explaining and justifying the behaviour of Argudas. Throughout the discussion of Argudas a number of issues will be raised including the appropriateness of argumentation in biology and the challenges faced when integrating apparently similar online biological databases.
1012.1617
User Centered and Ontology Based Information Retrieval System for Life Sciences
cs.IR
Because of the increasing number of electronic data, designing efficient tools to retrieve and exploit documents is a major challenge. Current search engines suffer from two main drawbacks: there is limited interaction with the list of retrieved documents and no explanation for their adequacy to the query. Users may thus be confused by the selection and have no idea how to adapt their query so that the results match their expectations. This paper describes a request method and an environment based on aggregating models to assess the relevance of documents annotated by concepts of ontology. The selection of documents is then displayed in a semantic map to provide graphical indications that make explicit to what extent they match the user's query; this man/machine interface favors a more interactive exploration of data corpus.
1012.1619
Are SNOMED CT Browsers Ready for Institutions? Introducing MySNOM
cs.AI
SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) is one of the most widespread ontologies in the life sciences, with more than 300,000 concepts and relationships, but is distributed with no associated software tools. In this paper we present MySNOM, a web-based SNOMED CT browser. MySNOM allows organizations to browse their own distribution of SNOMED CT under a controlled environment, focuses on navigating using the structure of SNOMED CT, and has diagramming capabilities.
1012.1621
YeastMed: an XML-Based System for Biological Data Integration of Yeast
cs.DB
A key goal of bioinformatics is to create database systems and software platforms capable of storing and analysing large sets of biological data. Hundreds of biological databases are now available and provide access to huge amount of biological data. SGD, Yeastract, CYGD-MIPS, BioGrid and PhosphoGrid are five of the most visited databases by the yeast community. These sources provide complementary data on biological entities. Biologists are brought systematically to query these data sources in order to analyse the results of their experiments. Because of the heterogeneity of these sources, querying them separately and then manually combining the returned result is a complex and laborious task. To provide transparent and simultaneous access to these sources, we have developed a mediator-based system called YeastMed. In this paper, we present YeastMed focusing on its architecture.
1012.1632
Benchmarking triple stores with biological data
cs.DB
We have compared the performance of five non-commercial triple stores, Virtuoso-open source, Jena SDB, Jena TDB, SWIFT-OWLIM and 4Store. We examined three performance aspects: the query execution time, scalability and run-to-run reproducibility. The queries we chose addressed different ontological or biological topics, and we obtained evidence that individual store performance was quite query specific. We identified three groups of queries displaying similar behavior across the different stores: 1) relatively short response time, 2) moderate response time and 3) relatively long response time. OWLIM proved to be a winner in the first group, 4Store in the second and Virtuoso in the third. Our benchmarking showed Virtuoso to be a very balanced performer - its response time was better than average for all the 24 queries; it showed a very good scalability and a reasonable run-to-run reproducibility.
1012.1635
A study on the relation between linguistics-oriented and domain-specific semantics
cs.AI
In this paper we dealt with the comparison and linking between lexical resources with domain knowledge provided by ontologies. It is one of the issues for the combination of the Semantic Web Ontologies and Text Mining. We investigated the relations between the linguistics oriented and domain-specific semantics, by associating the GO biological process concepts to the FrameNet semantic frames. The result shows the gaps between the linguistics-oriented and domain-specific semantics on the classification of events and the grouping of target words. The result provides valuable information for the improvement of domain ontologies supporting for text mining systems. And also, it will result in benefits to language understanding technology.
1012.1643
Process Makna - A Semantic Wiki for Scientific Workflows
cs.AI
Virtual e-Science infrastructures supporting Web-based scientific workflows are an example for knowledge-intensive collaborative and weakly-structured processes where the interaction with the human scientists during process execution plays a central role. In this paper we propose the lightweight dynamic user-friendly interaction with humans during execution of scientific workflows via the low-barrier approach of Semantic Wikis as an intuitive interface for non-technical scientists. Our Process Makna Semantic Wiki system is a novel combination of an business process management system adapted for scientific workflows with a Corporate Semantic Web Wiki user interface supporting knowledge intensive human interaction tasks during scientific workflow execution.
1012.1645
ChemCloud: Chemical e-Science Information Cloud
cs.DB
Our Chemical e-Science Information Cloud (ChemCloud) - a Semantic Web based eScience infrastructure - integrates and automates a multitude of databases, tools and services in the domain of chemistry, pharmacy and bio-chemistry available at the Fachinformationszentrum Chemie (FIZ Chemie), at the Freie Universitaet Berlin (FUB), and on the public Web. Based on the approach of the W3C Linked Open Data initiative and the W3C Semantic Web technologies for ontologies and rules it semantically links and integrates knowledge from our W3C HCLS knowledge base hosted at the FUB, our multi-domain knowledge base DBpedia (Deutschland) implemented at FUB, which is extracted from Wikipedia (De) providing a public semantic resource for chemistry, and our well-established databases at FIZ Chemie such as ChemInform for organic reaction data, InfoTherm the leading source for thermophysical data, Chemisches Zentralblatt, the complete chemistry knowledge from 1830 to 1969, and ChemgaPedia the largest and most frequented e-Learning platform for Chemistry and related sciences in German language.
1012.1646
Use of semantic technologies for the development of a dynamic trajectories generator in a Semantic Chemistry eLearning platform
cs.AI
ChemgaPedia is a multimedia, webbased eLearning service platform that currently contains about 18.000 pages organized in 1.700 chapters covering the complete bachelor studies in chemistry and related topics of chemistry, pharmacy, and life sciences. The eLearning encyclopedia contains some 25.000 media objects and the eLearning platform provides services such as virtual and remote labs for experiments. With up to 350.000 users per month the platform is the most frequently used scientific educational service in the German spoken Internet. In this demo we show the benefit of mapping the static eLearning contents of ChemgaPedia to a Linked Data representation for Semantic Chemistry which allows for generating dynamic eLearning paths tailored to the semantic profiles of the users.
1012.1648
Analysis Of Cancer Omics Data In A Semantic Web Framework
cs.AI cs.CE
Our work concerns the elucidation of the cancer (epi)genome, transcriptome and proteome to better understand the complex interplay between a cancer cell's molecular state and its response to anti-cancer therapy. To study the problem, we have previously focused on data warehousing technologies and statistical data integration. In this paper, we present recent work on extending our analytical capabilities using Semantic Web technology. A key new component presented here is a SPARQL endpoint to our existing data warehouse. This endpoint allows the merging of observed quantitative data with existing data from semantic knowledge sources such as Gene Ontology (GO). We show how such variegated quantitative and functional data can be integrated and accessed in a universal manner using Semantic Web tools. We also demonstrate how Description Logic (DL) reasoning can be used to infer previously unstated conclusions from existing knowledge bases. As proof of concept, we illustrate the ability of our setup to answer complex queries on resistance of cancer cells to Decitabine, a demethylating agent.
1012.1650
The CALBC RDF Triple Store: retrieval over large literature content
cs.DL cs.DB
Integration of the scientific literature into a biomedical research infrastructure requires the processing of the literature, identification of the contained named entities (NEs) and concepts, and to represent the content in a standardised way. The CALBC project partners (PPs) have produced a large-scale annotated biomedical corpus with four different semantic groups through the harmonisation of annotations from automatic text mining solutions (Silver Standard Corpus, SSC). The four semantic groups were chemical entities and drugs (CHED), genes and proteins (PRGE), diseases and disorders (DISO) and species (SPE). The content of the SSC has been fully integrated into RDF Triple Store (4,568,678 triples) and has been aligned with content from the GeneAtlas (182,840 triples), UniProtKb (12,552,239 triples for human) and the lexical resource LexEBI (BioLexicon). RDF Triple Store enables querying the scientific literature and bioinformatics resources at the same time for evidence of genetic causes, such as drug targets and disease involvement.
1012.1651
The Rule Responder eScience Infrastructure
cs.MA
To a large degree information and services for chemical e-Science have become accessible - anytime, anywhere - but not necessarily useful. The Rule Responder eScience middleware is about providing information consumers with rule-based agents to transform existing information into relevant information of practical consequences, hence providing control to the end-users to express in a declarative rule-based way how to turn existing information into personally relevant information and how to react or make automated decisions on top of it.
1012.1654
Using Semantic Wikis for Structured Argument in Medical Domain
cs.AI
This research applies ideas from argumentation theory in the context of semantic wikis, aiming to provide support for structured-large scale argumentation between human agents. The implemented prototype is exemplified by modelling the MMR vaccine controversy.
1012.1658
Creating a new Ontology: a Modular Approach
cs.AI
Creating a new Ontology: a Modular Approach
1012.1659
First steps in the logic-based assessment of post-composed phenotypic descriptions
cs.AI cs.LO
In this paper we present a preliminary logic-based evaluation of the integration of post-composed phenotypic descriptions with domain ontologies. The evaluation has been performed using a description logic reasoner together with scalable techniques: ontology modularization and approximations of the logical difference between ontologies.
1012.1660
Provenance and evidence in UniProtKB
cs.DB
The primary mission of UniProt is to support biological research by maintaining a stable, comprehensive, fully classified, richly and accurately annotated protein sequence knowledgebase, with extensive cross-references to external resources, that is freely available to the scientific community. To enable users of the knowledgebase to accurately assess the reliability of the information contained in this resource, the evidence for and provenance of the information must be recorded. This paper discusses the user requirements for this kind of metadata and the manner in which UniProtKB records it.
1012.1661
Analysis and visualisation of RDF resources in Ondex
cs.AI cs.CE
Ondex is a data integration and visualization platform developed to support Systems Biology Research. At its core is a data model based on two main principles: first, all information can be represented as a graph and, second, all elements of the graph can be annotated with ontologies. This data model is conformant to the Semantic Web framework, in particular to RDF, and therefore Ondex is ideally positioned as a platform that can exploit the semantic web.
1012.1663
A Concept Annotation System for Clinical Records
cs.IR
Unstructured information comprises a valuable source of data in clinical records. For text mining in clinical records, concept extraction is the first step in finding assertions and relationships. This study presents a system developed for the annotation of medical concepts, including medical problems, tests, and treatments, mentioned in clinical records. The system combines six publicly available named entity recognition system into one framework, and uses a simple voting scheme that allows to tune precision and recall of the system to specific needs. The system provides both a web service interface and a UIMA interface which can be easily used by other systems. The system was tested in the fourth i2b2 challenge and achieved an F-score of 82.1% for the concept exact match task, a score which is among the top-ranking systems. To our knowledge, this is the first publicly available clinical record concept annotation system.
1012.1666
SPARQL Assist Language-Neutral Query Composer
cs.IR
SPARQL query composition is difficult for the lay-person or even the experienced bioinformatician in cases where the data model is unfamiliar. Established best-practices and internationalization concerns dictate that semantic web ontologies should use terms with opaque identifiers, further complicating the task. We present SPARQL Assist: a web application that addresses these issues by providing context-sensitive type-ahead completion to existing web forms. Ontological terms are suggested using their labels and descriptions, leveraging existing XML support for internationalization and language-neutrality.
1012.1667
A semantic approach for the requirement-driven discovery of web services in the Life Sciences
cs.AI
Research in the Life Sciences depends on the integration of large, distributed and heterogeneous data sources and web services. The discovery of which of these resources are the most appropriate to solve a given task is a complex research question, since there is a large amount of plausible candidates and there is little, mostly unstructured, metadata to be able to decide among them.We contribute a semi-automatic approach,based on semantic techniques, to assist researchers in the discovery of the most appropriate web services to full a set of given requirements.
1012.1672
Designing Incentive Schemes Based on Intervention: The Case of Imperfect Monitoring
cs.GT cs.SY
We propose an incentive scheme based on intervention to sustain cooperation among self-interested users. In the proposed scheme, an intervention device collects imperfect signals about the actions of the users for a test period, and then chooses the level of intervention that degrades the performance of the network for the remaining time period. We analyze the problems of designing an optimal intervention rule given a test period and choosing an optimal length of the test period. The intervention device can provide the incentive for cooperation by exerting intervention following signals that involve a high likelihood of deviation. Increasing the length of the test period has two counteracting effects on the performance: It improves the quality of signals, but at the same time it weakens the incentive for cooperation due to increased delay.
1012.1743
Scientific Collaborations: principles of WikiBridge Design
cs.AI
Semantic wikis, wikis enhanced with Semantic Web technologies, are appropriate systems for community-authored knowledge models. They are particularly suitable for scientific collaboration. This paper details the design principles ofWikiBridge, a semantic wiki.
1012.1745
Populous: A tool for populating ontology templates
cs.AI
We present Populous, a tool for gathering content with which to populate an ontology. Domain experts need to add content, that is often repetitive in its form, but without having to tackle the underlying ontological representation. Populous presents users with a table based form in which columns are constrained to take values from particular ontologies; the user can select a concept from an ontology via its meaningful label to give a value for a given entity attribute. Populated tables are mapped to patterns that can then be used to automatically generate the ontology's content. Populous's contribution is in the knowledge gathering stage of ontology development. It separates knowledge gathering from the conceptualisation and also separates the user from the standard ontology authoring environments. As a result, Populous can allow knowledge to be gathered in a straight-forward manner that can then be used to do mass production of ontology content.
1012.1776
Examples of the Generalized Quantum Permanent Compromise Attack to the Blum-Micali Construction
cs.IT cs.CR math.IT
This paper presents examples of the quantum permanent compromise attack to the Blum-Micali construction. Such attacks illustrate how a previous attack to the Blum-Micali generator can be extended to the whole Blum-Micali construction, including the Blum-Blum-Shub and Kaliski generators.
1012.1799
Towards Fully Optimized BICM Transceivers
cs.IT math.IT
Bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) transceivers often use equally spaced constellations and a random interleaver. In this paper, we propose a new BICM design, which considers hierarchical (nonequally spaced) constellations, a bit-level multiplexer, and multiple interleavers. It is shown that this new scheme increases the degrees of freedom that can be exploited in order to improve its performance. Analytical bounds on the bit error rate (BER) of the system in terms of the constellation parameters and the multiplexing rules are developed for the additive white Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and Nakagami-$m$ fading channels. These bounds are then used to design the BICM transceiver. Numerical results show that, compared to conventional BICM designs, and for a target BER of $10^{-6}$, gains up to 3 dB in the AWGN channel are obtained. For fading channels, the gains depend on the fading parameter, and reach 2 dB for a target BER of $10^{-7}$ and $m=5$.
1012.1890
A measure of statistical complexity based on predictive information
math.ST cs.IT math.IT physics.data-an stat.TH
We introduce an information theoretic measure of statistical structure, called 'binding information', for sets of random variables, and compare it with several previously proposed measures including excess entropy, Bialek et al.'s predictive information, and the multi-information. We derive some of the properties of the binding information, particularly in relation to the multi-information, and show that, for finite sets of binary random variables, the processes which maximises binding information are the 'parity' processes. Finally we discuss some of the implications this has for the use of the binding information as a measure of complexity.
1012.1895
Coding for High-Density Recording on a 1-D Granular Magnetic Medium
cs.IT math.IT
In terabit-density magnetic recording, several bits of data can be replaced by the values of their neighbors in the storage medium. As a result, errors in the medium are dependent on each other and also on the data written. We consider a simple one-dimensional combinatorial model of this medium. In our model, we assume a setting where binary data is sequentially written on the medium and a bit can erroneously change to the immediately preceding value. We derive several properties of codes that correct this type of errors, focusing on bounds on their cardinality. We also define a probabilistic finite-state channel model of the storage medium, and derive lower and upper estimates of its capacity. A lower bound is derived by evaluating the symmetric capacity of the channel, i.e., the maximum transmission rate under the assumption of the uniform input distribution of the channel. An upper bound is found by showing that the original channel is a stochastic degradation of another, related channel model whose capacity we can compute explicitly.
1012.1898
Ontology Usage at ZFIN
cs.DB
The Zebrafish Model Organism Database (ZFIN) provides a Web resource of zebrafish genomic, genetic, developmental, and phenotypic data. Four different ontologies are currently used to annotate data to the most specific term available facilitating a better comparison between inter-species data. In addition, ontologies are used to help users find and cluster data more quickly without the need of knowing the exact technical name for a term.
1012.1899
Querying Biomedical Ontologies in Natural Language using Answer Set
cs.AI
In this work, we develop an intelligent user interface that allows users to enter biomedical queries in a natural language, and that presents the answers (possibly with explanations if requested) in a natural language. We develop a rule layer over biomedical ontologies and databases, and use automated reasoners to answer queries considering relevant parts of the rule layer.
1012.1909
On Transmit Antenna Selection for Multiuser MIMO Systems with Dirty Paper Coding
cs.IT math.IT
In this paper, we address the transmit antenna selection in multi-user MIMO systems with precoding. The optimum and reduced complexity sub-optimum antenna selection algorithms are introduced. QR-decomposition (QRD) based antenna selection is investigated and the reason behind its sub-optimality is analytically derived. We introduce the conventional QRD-based algorithm and propose an efficient QRD-based transmit antenna scheme (maxR) that is both implementation and performance efficient. Moreover, we derive explicit formulae for the computational complexities of the aforementioned algorithms. Simulation results and analysis demonstrate that the proposed maxR algorithm requires only 1% of the computational efforts required by the optimal algorithm for a degradation of 1dB and 0.1dB in the case of linear zero-forcing and Tomlinson-Harashima precoding schemes, respectively.
1012.1912
On the Capacity of Memoryless Finite-State Multiple-Access Channels with Asymmetric State Information at the Encoders
cs.IT math.IT
A single-letter characterization is provided for the capacity region of finite-state multiple-access channels, when the channel state process is an independent and identically distributed sequence, the transmitters have access to partial (quantized) state information, and complete channel state information is available at the receiver. The partial channel state information is assumed to be asymmetric at the encoders. As a main contribution, a tight converse coding theorem is presented. The difficulties associated with the case when the channel state has memory are discussed and connections to decentralized stochastic control theory are presented.
1012.1919
Low-Rank Structure Learning via Log-Sum Heuristic Recovery
cs.NA cs.IT cs.LG math.IT
Recovering intrinsic data structure from corrupted observations plays an important role in various tasks in the communities of machine learning and signal processing. In this paper, we propose a novel model, named log-sum heuristic recovery (LHR), to learn the essential low-rank structure from corrupted data. Different from traditional approaches, which directly utilize $\ell_1$ norm to measure the sparseness, LHR introduces a more reasonable log-sum measurement to enhance the sparsity in both the intrinsic low-rank structure and in the sparse corruptions. Although the proposed LHR optimization is no longer convex, it still can be effectively solved by a majorization-minimization (MM) type algorithm, with which the non-convex objective function is iteratively replaced by its convex surrogate and LHR finally falls into the general framework of reweighed approaches. We prove that the MM-type algorithm can converge to a stationary point after successive iteration. We test the performance of our proposed model by applying it to solve two typical problems: robust principal component analysis (RPCA) and low-rank representation (LRR). For RPCA, we compare LHR with the benchmark Principal Component Pursuit (PCP) method from both the perspectives of simulations and practical applications. For LRR, we apply LHR to compute the low-rank representation matrix for motion segmentation and stock clustering. Experimental results on low rank structure learning demonstrate that the proposed Log-sum based model performs much better than the $\ell_1$-based method on for data with higher rank and with denser corruptions.
1012.1943
Stiffness Analysis of Parallel Manipulators with Preloaded Passive Joints
cs.RO
The paper presents a methodology for the enhanced stiffness analysis of parallel manipulators with internal preloading in passive joints. It also takes into account influence of the external loading and allows computing both the non-linear "load-deflection" relation and the stiffness matrices for any given location of the end-platform or actuating drives. Using this methodology, it is proposed the kinetostatic control algorithm that allows to improve accuracy of the classical kinematic control and to compensate position errors caused by elastic deformations in links/joints due to the external/internal loading. The results are illustrated by an example that deals with a parallel manipulator of the Orthoglide family where the internal preloading allows to eliminate the undesired buckling phenomena and to improve the stiffness in the neighborhood of its kinematic singularities.
1012.1948
Performance evaluation of parallel manipulators for milling application
cs.RO
This paper focuses on the performance evaluation of the parallel manipulators for milling of composite materials. For this application the most significant performance measurements, which denote the ability of the manipulator for the machining are defined. In this case, optimal synthesis task is solved as a multicriterion optimization problem with respect to the geometric, kinematic, kinetostatic, elastostostatic, dynamic properties. It is shown that stiffness is an important performance factor. Previous models operate with links approximation and calculate stiffness matrix in the neighborhood of initial point. This is a reason why a new way for stiffness matrix calculation is proposed. This method is illustrated in a concrete industrial problem.
1012.2003
Irrelevance of information outflow in opinion dynamics models
physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mech cs.SI
The Sznajd model for opinion dynamics has attracted a large interest as a simple realization of the psychological principle of social validation. As its most salient feature, it has been claimed that the Sznajd model is qualitatively different from other ordering processes, because it is the only one featuring outflow of information as opposed to inflow. We show that this claim is unfounded by presenting a generalized zero-temperature Glauber-type of dynamics which yields results indistinguishable from those of the Sznajd model. In one-dimension we also derive an exact expression for the exit probability of the Sznajd model, that turns out to coincide with the result of an analytical approach based on the Kirkwood approximation. This observation raises interesting questions about the applicability and limitations of this approach.
1012.2042
MUDOS-NG: Multi-document Summaries Using N-gram Graphs (Tech Report)
cs.CL cs.AI
This report describes the MUDOS-NG summarization system, which applies a set of language-independent and generic methods for generating extractive summaries. The proposed methods are mostly combinations of simple operators on a generic character n-gram graph representation of texts. This work defines the set of used operators upon n-gram graphs and proposes using these operators within the multi-document summarization process in such subtasks as document analysis, salient sentence selection, query expansion and redundancy control. Furthermore, a novel chunking methodology is used, together with a novel way to assign concepts to sentences for query expansion. The experimental results of the summarization system, performed upon widely used corpora from the Document Understanding and the Text Analysis Conferences, are promising and provide evidence for the potential of the generic methods introduced. This work aims to designate core methods exploiting the n-gram graph representation, providing the basis for more advanced summarization systems.
1012.2057
De retibus socialibus et legibus momenti
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Online Social Networks (OSNs) are a cutting edge topic. Almost everybody --users, marketers, brands, companies, and researchers-- is approaching OSNs to better understand them and take advantage of their benefits. Maybe one of the key concepts underlying OSNs is that of influence which is highly related, although not entirely identical, to those of popularity and centrality. Influence is, according to Merriam-Webster, "the capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways". Hence, in the context of OSNs, it has been proposed to analyze the clicks received by promoted URLs in order to check for any positive correlation between the number of visits and different "influence" scores. Such an evaluation methodology is used in this paper to compare a number of those techniques with a new method firstly described here. That new method is a simple and rather elegant solution which tackles with influence in OSNs by applying a physical metaphor.
1012.2062
Diffusion and Cascading Behavior in Random Networks
math.PR cs.DM cs.GT cs.SI physics.soc-ph
The spread of new ideas, behaviors or technologies has been extensively studied using epidemic models. Here we consider a model of diffusion where the individuals' behavior is the result of a strategic choice. We study a simple coordination game with binary choice and give a condition for a new action to become widespread in a random network. We also analyze the possible equilibria of this game and identify conditions for the coexistence of both strategies in large connected sets. Finally we look at how can firms use social networks to promote their goals with limited information. Our results differ strongly from the one derived with epidemic models and show that connectivity plays an ambiguous role: while it allows the diffusion to spread, when the network is highly connected, the diffusion is also limited by high-degree nodes which are very stable.
1012.2073
Almost-Optimum Signature Matrices in Binary-Input Synchronous Overloaded CDMA
cs.IT math.IT
The everlasting bandwidth limitations in wireless communication networks has directed the researchers' thrust toward analyzing the prospect of overloaded Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). In this paper, we have proposed a Genetic Algorithm in search of optimum signature matrices for binary-input synchronous CDMA. The main measure of optimality considered in this paper, is the per-user channel capacity of the overall multiple access system. Our resulting matrices differ from the renowned Welch Bound Equality (WBE) codes, regarding the fact that our attention is specifically aimed at binary, rather than Gaussian, input distributions. Since design based on channel capacity is computationally expensive, we have focused on introducing a set of alternative criteria that not only speed up the matrix formation procedure, but also maintain optimality. The Bit Error Rate (BER) and Constellation measures are our main criteria propositions. Simulation results also verify our analytical justifications.
1012.2086
Entropy Rate for Hidden Markov Chains with rare transitions
cs.IT math.IT math.PR
We consider Hidden Markov Chains obtained by passing a Markov Chain with rare transitions through a noisy memoryless channel. We obtain asymptotic estimates for the entropy of the resulting Hidden Markov Chain as the transition rate is reduced to zero.
1012.2138
Sparse motion segmentation using multiple six-point consistencies
cs.CV
We present a method for segmenting an arbitrary number of moving objects in image sequences using the geometry of 6 points in 2D to infer motion consistency. The method has been evaluated on the Hopkins 155 database and surpasses current state-of-the-art methods such as SSC, both in terms of overall performance on two and three motions but also in terms of maximum errors. The method works by finding initial clusters in the spatial domain, and then classifying each remaining point as belonging to the cluster that minimizes a motion consistency score. In contrast to most other motion segmentation methods that are based on an affine camera model, the proposed method is fully projective.
1012.2148
Bisimulations for fuzzy transition systems
cs.AI
There has been a long history of using fuzzy language equivalence to compare the behavior of fuzzy systems, but the comparison at this level is too coarse. Recently, a finer behavioral measure, bisimulation, has been introduced to fuzzy finite automata. However, the results obtained are applicable only to finite-state systems. In this paper, we consider bisimulation for general fuzzy systems which may be infinite-state or infinite-event, by modeling them as fuzzy transition systems. To help understand and check bisimulation, we characterize it in three ways by enumerating whole transitions, comparing individual transitions, and using a monotonic function. In addition, we address composition operations, subsystems, quotients, and homomorphisms of fuzzy transition systems and discuss their properties connected with bisimulation. The results presented here are useful for comparing the behavior of general fuzzy systems. In particular, this makes it possible to relate an infinite fuzzy system to a finite one, which is easier to analyze, with the same behavior.
1012.2162
Nondeterministic fuzzy automata
cs.AI
Fuzzy automata have long been accepted as a generalization of nondeterministic finite automata. A closer examination, however, shows that the fundamental property---nondeterminism---in nondeterministic finite automata has not been well embodied in the generalization. In this paper, we introduce nondeterministic fuzzy automata with or without $\el$-moves and fuzzy languages recognized by them. Furthermore, we prove that (deterministic) fuzzy automata, nondeterministic fuzzy automata, and nondeterministic fuzzy automata with $\el$-moves are all equivalent in the sense that they recognize the same class of fuzzy languages.
1012.2164
On Two-way Communications for Cooperative Multiple Source Pairs Through a Multi-antenna Relay
cs.IT math.IT
We study amplified-and-forward (AF)-based two-way relaying (TWR) with multiple source pairs, which are exchanging information through the relay. Each source has single antenna and the relay has multi-antenna. The optimal beamforming matrix structure that achieves maximum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for TWR with multiple source pairs is derived. We then present two new non-zero-forcing based beamforming schemes for TWR, which take into consideration the tradeoff between preserving the desired signals and suppressing inter-pair interference between different source pairs. Joint grouping and beamforming scheme is proposed to achieve a better signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) when the total number of source pairs is large and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the relay is low.
1012.2197
Integrating digital human modeling into virtual environment for ergonomic oriented design
cs.RO
Virtual human simulation integrated into virtual reality applications is mainly used for virtual representation of the user in virtual environment or for interactions between the user and the virtual avatar for cognitive tasks. In this paper, in order to prevent musculoskeletal disorders, the integration of virtual human simulation and VR application is presented to facilitate physical ergonomic evaluation, especially for physical fatigue evaluation of a given population. Immersive working environments are created to avoid expensive physical mock-up in conventional evaluation methods. Peripheral motion capture systems are used to capture natural movements and then to simulate the physical operations in virtual human simulation. Physical aspects of human's movement are then analyzed to determine the effort level of each key joint using inverse kinematics. The physical fatigue level of each joint is further analyzed by integrating a fatigue and recovery model on the basis of physical task parameters. All the process has been realized based on VRHIT platform and a case study is presented to demonstrate the function of the physical fatigue for a given population and its usefulness for worker selection.
1012.2199
Stiffness modelling of parallelogram-based parallel manipulators
cs.RO
The paper presents a methodology to enhance the stiffness analysis of parallel manipulators with parallelogram-based linkage. It directly takes into account the influence of the external loading and allows computing both the non-linear ``load-deflection" relation and relevant rank-deficient stiffness matrix. An equivalent bar-type pseudo-rigid model is also proposed to describe the parallelogram stiffness by means of five mutually coupled virtual springs. The contributions of this paper are highlighted with a parallelogram-type linkage used in a manipulator from the Orthoglide family.
1012.2283
Artifacts of opinion dynamics at one dimension
physics.soc-ph cs.SI
The dynamics of a one dimensional Ising spin system is investigated using three families of local update rules, the Galam majority rules, Glauber inflow influences and Sznadj outflow drives. Given an initial density p of up spins the probability to reach a final state with all spins up is calculated exactly for each choice. The various formulas are compared to a series of previous calculations obtained analytically using the Kirkwood approximation. They turn out to be identical. The apparent discrepancy with the Galam unifying frame is addressed. The difference in the results seems to stem directly from the implementation of the local update rule used to perform the associated numerical simulations. The findings lead to view the non stepwise exit probability as an artifact of the one dimensional finite size system with fixed spins. The suitability and the significance to perform numerical simulations to model social behavior without solid constraints is discussed and the question of what it means to have a mean field result in this context is addressed.
1012.2299
A Simple Correctness Proof for Magic Transformation
cs.LO cs.DB cs.PL
The paper presents a simple and concise proof of correctness of the magic transformation. We believe it may provide a useful example of formal reasoning about logic programs. The correctness property concerns the declarative semantics. The proof, however, refers to the operational semantics (LD-resolution) of the source programs. Its conciseness is due to applying a suitable proof method.
1012.2350
Aligned Interference Neutralization and the Degrees of Freedom of the 2x2x2 Interference Channel
cs.IT math.IT
We show that the 2x2x2 interference channel, i.e., the multihop interference channel formed by concatenation of two 2-user interference channels achieves the min-cut outer bound value of 2 DoF, for almost all values of channel coefficients, for both time-varying or fixed channel coefficients. The key to this result is a new idea, called aligned interference neutralization, that provides a way to align interference terms over each hop in a manner that allows them to be cancelled over the air at the last hop.
1012.2363
Finding statistically significant communities in networks
physics.soc-ph cs.IR cs.SI q-bio.QM
Community structure is one of the main structural features of networks, revealing both their internal organization and the similarity of their elementary units. Despite the large variety of methods proposed to detect communities in graphs, there is a big need for multi-purpose techniques, able to handle different types of datasets and the subtleties of community structure. In this paper we present OSLOM (Order Statistics Local Optimization Method), the first method capable to detect clusters in networks accounting for edge directions, edge weights, overlapping communities, hierarchies and community dynamics. It is based on the local optimization of a fitness function expressing the statistical significance of clusters with respect to random fluctuations, which is estimated with tools of Extreme and Order Statistics. OSLOM can be used alone or as a refinement procedure of partitions/covers delivered by other techniques. We have also implemented sequential algorithms combining OSLOM with other fast techniques, so that the community structure of very large networks can be uncovered. Our method has a comparable performance as the best existing algorithms on artificial benchmark graphs. Several applications on real networks are shown as well. OSLOM is implemented in a freely available software (http://www.oslom.org), and we believe it will be a valuable tool in the analysis of networks.