OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Consensus in the presence of interference
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2013
Year: 2013

This paper studies distributed strategies for average-consensus of arbitrary vectors in the presence of network interference. We assume that the underlying communication on any \emph{link} suffers from \emph{additive interference} caused due to the communication by other agents following their own consensus protocol. Additionally, no agent knows how many or which agents are interfering with its communication. Clearly, the standard consensus protocol does not remain applicable in such scenarios. In this paper, we cast an algebraic structure over the interference and show that the standard protocol can be modified such that the average is reachable in a subspace whose dimension is complimentary to the maximal dimension of the interference subspaces (over all of the communication links). To develop the results, we use \emph{information alignment} to align the intended transmission (over each link) to the null-space of the interference (on that link). We show that this alignment is indeed invertible, i.e. the intended transmission can be recovered over which, subsequently, consensus protocol is implemented. That \emph{local} protocols exist even when the collection of the interference subspaces span the entire vector space is somewhat surprising.
Students' Perceptions and Attitude towards the effectiveness of Prezi Uses in learning Islamic Subject
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2013
Year: 2013

Prezi is a Hungarian software company, producing a cloud-based presentation software and storytelling tool for presenting ideas on a virtual canvas (Prezi.com). Prezi is one of the teaching materials that help students in learning process. This study aims to explore the effectiveness of using Prezi in Islamic education subject among secondary schools under the topic of marriage in Islam: polygamy. Specifically its aims to identify students interest and second examine their attitude towards the uses of Prezi in learning Islamic educations. A total of 22 students participated in the survey, employing a 22-item questionnaire. The data was analyzed quantitatively using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Result from this study revealed that student shows their interest in learning Islamic Educations when teachers uses Prezi. In additions students also show positive attitude towards uses of Prezi in Classroom. As conclusions, the uses of Prezi presentation is easy and its technique for developing a more creative and innovative approach in teaching strategies among Islamic educators.
Conservative, Proportional and Optimistic Contextual Discounting in the Belief Functions Theory
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2013
Year: 2013

Information discounting plays an important role in the theory of belief functions and, generally, in information fusion. Nevertheless, neither classical uniform discounting nor contextual cannot model certain use cases, notably temporal discounting. In this article, new contextual discounting schemes, conservative, proportional and optimistic, are proposed. Some properties of these discounting operations are examined. Classical discounting is shown to be a special case of these schemes. Two motivating cases are discussed: modelling of source reliability and application to temporal discounting.
Using Web Co-occurrence Statistics for Improving Image Categorization
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2013
Year: 2013

Object recognition and localization are important tasks in computer vision. The focus of this work is the incorporation of contextual information in order to improve object recognition and localization. For instance, it is natural to expect not to see an elephant to appear in the middle of an ocean. We consider a simple approach to encapsulate such common sense knowledge using co-occurrence statistics from web documents. By merely counting the number of times nouns (such as elephants, sharks, oceans, etc.) co-occur in web documents, we obtain a good estimate of expected co-occurrences in visual data. We then cast the problem of combining textual co-occurrence statistics with the predictions of image-based classifiers as an optimization problem. The resulting optimization problem serves as a surrogate for our inference procedure. Albeit the simplicity of the resulting optimization problem, it is effective in improving both recognition and localization accuracy. Concretely, we observe significant improvements in recognition and localization rates for both ImageNet Detection 2012 and Sun 2012 datasets.
Heuristics for Routing and Spiral Run-time Task Mapping in NoC-based Heterogeneous MPSOCs
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2013
Year: 2013

This paper describes a new Spiral Dynamic Task Mapping heuristic for mapping applications onto NoC-based Heterogeneous MPSoC. The heuristic proposed in this paper attempts to map the tasks of an applications that are most related to each other in spiral manner and to find the best possible path load that minimizes the communication overhead. In this context, we have realized a simulation environment for experimental evaluations to map applications with varying number of tasks onto an 8x8 NoC-based Heterogeneous MPSoCs platform, we demonstrate that the new mapping heuristics with the new modified dijkstra routing algorithm proposed are capable of reducing the total execution time and energy consumption of applications when compared to state-of the-art run-time mapping heuristics reported in the literature.
Network Coded Rate Scheduling for Two-way Relay Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2013
Year: 2013

We investigate a scheduling scheme incorporating network coding and channel varying information for the two-way relay networks. Our scheduler aims at minimizing the time span needed to send all the data of each source of the network. We consider three channel models, time invariant channels, time varying channels with finite states and time varying Rayleigh fading channels. We formulate the problem into a manageable optimization problem, and get a closed form scheduler under time invariant channels and time varying channel with finite channel states. For Rayleigh fading channels, we focus on the relay node operation and propose heuristic power allocation algorithm resemblant to water filling algorithm. By simulations, we find that even if the channel fluctuates randomly, the average time span is minimized when the relay node transmits/schedules network coded data as much as possible.
An Iterative Algorithm for Optimal Carrier Sensing Threshold in Random CSMA/CA Wireless Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2013
Year: 2013

We investigate the optimal carrier sensing threshold in random CSMA/CA networks considering the effect of binary exponential backoff. We propose an iterative algorithm for optimizing the carrier sensing threshold and hence maximizing the area spectral efficiency. We verify that simulations are consistent with our analytical results.
Optimal parameter selection for unsupervised neural network using genetic algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2013
Year: 2013

K-means Fast Learning Artificial Neural Network (K-FLANN) is an unsupervised neural network requires two parameters: tolerance and vigilance. Best Clustering results are feasible only by finest parameters specified to the neural network. Selecting optimal values for these parameters is a major problem. To solve this issue, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to determine optimal parameters of K-FLANN for finding groups in multidimensional data. K-FLANN is a simple topological network, in which output nodes grows dynamically during the clustering process on receiving input patterns. Original K-FLANN is enhanced to select winner unit out of the matched nodes so that stable clusters are formed with in a less number of epochs. The experimental results show that the GA is efficient in finding optimal values of parameters from the large search space and is tested using artificial and synthetic data sets.
Containment of Schema Mappings for Data Exchange (Preliminary Report)
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2013
Year: 2013

In data exchange, data are materialised from a source schema to a target schema, according to suitable source-to-target constraints. Constraints are also expressed on the target schema to represent the domain of interest. A schema mapping is the union of the source-to-target and of the target constraints. In this paper, we address the problem of containment of schema mappings for data exchange, which has been recently proposed in this framework as a step towards the optimization of data exchange settings. We refer to a natural notion of containment that relies on the behaviour of schema mappings with respect to conjunctive query answering, in the presence of so-called LAV TGDs as target constraints. Our contribution is a practical technique for testing the containment based on the existence of a homomorphism between special "dummy" instances, which can be easily built from schema mappings. We argue that containment of schema mappings is decidable for most practical cases, and we set the basis for further investigations in the topic. This paper extends our preliminary results.
An Improved Outer Bound on the Storage-Repair-Bandwidth Tradeoff of Exact-Repair Regenerating Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2013
Year: 2013

In this paper we establish an improved outer bound on the storage-repair-bandwidth tradeoff of regenerating codes under exact repair. The result shows that in particular, it is not possible to construct exact-repair regenerating codes that asymptotically achieve the tradeoff that holds for functional repair. While this had been shown earlier by Tian for the special case of $[n,k,d]=[4,3,3]$ the present result holds for general $[n,k,d]$. The new outer bound is obtained by building on the framework established earlier by Shah et al.
Graph-based representation for multiview image coding
Venue: arXiv cs.MM 2013
Year: 2013

In this paper, we propose a new representation for multiview image sets. Our approach relies on graphs to describe geometry information in a compact and controllable way. The links of the graph connect pixels in different images and describe the proximity between pixels in the 3D space. These connections are dependent on the geometry of the scene and provide the right amount of information that is necessary for coding and reconstructing multiple views. This multiview image representation is very compact and adapts the transmitted geometry information as a function of the complexity of the prediction performed at the decoder side. To achieve this, our GBR adapts the accuracy of the geometry representation, in contrast with depth coding, which directly compresses with losses the original geometry signal. We present the principles of this graph-based representation (GBR) and we build a complete prototype coding scheme for multiview images. Experimental results demonstrate the potential of this new representation as compared to a depth-based approach. GBR can achieve a gain of 2 dB in reconstructed quality over depth-based schemes operating at similar rates.
Concatenated Raptor Codes in NAND Flash Memory
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2013
Year: 2013

Two concatenated coding schemes based on fixed-rate Raptor codes are proposed for error control in NAND flash memory. One is geared for off-line recovery of uncorrectable pages and the other is designed for page error correction during the normal read mode. Both proposed coding strategies assume hard-decision decoding of the inner code with inner decoding failure generating erasure symbols for the outer Raptor code. Raptor codes allow low-complexity decoding of very long codewords while providing capacity- approaching performance for erasure channels. For the off-line page recovery scheme, one whole NAND block forms a Raptor codeword with each inner codeword typically made up of several Raptor symbols. An efficient look-up-table strategy is devised for Raptor encoding and decoding which avoids using large buffers in the controller despite the substantial size of the Raptor code employed. The potential performance benefit of the proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of the probability of block recovery conditioned on the presence of uncorrectable pages. In the suggested page-error-correction strategy, on the other hand, a hard-decision-iterating product code is used as the inner code. The specific product code employed in this work is based on row-column concatenation with multiple intersecting bits allowing the use of longer component codes. In this setting the collection of bits captured within each intersection of the row-column codes acts as the Raptor symbol(s), and the intersections of failed row codes and column codes are declared as erasures. The error rate analysis indicates that the proposed concatenation provides a considerable performance boost relative to the existing error correcting system based on long Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes.
The DIAMOND System for Argumentation: Preliminary Report
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2013
Year: 2013

Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) are a powerful generalisation of Dung's abstract argumentation frameworks. In this paper we present an answer set programming based software system, called DIAMOND (DIAlectical MOdels eNcoDing). It translates ADFs into answer set programs whose stable models correspond to models of the ADF with respect to several semantics (i.e. admissible, complete, stable, grounded).
Negation in the Head of CP-logic Rules
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2013
Year: 2013

CP-logic is a probabilistic extension of the logic FO(ID). Unlike ASP, both of these logics adhere to a Tarskian informal semantics, in which interpretations represent objective states-of-affairs. In other words, these logics lack the epistemic component of ASP, in which interpretations represent the beliefs or knowledge of a rational agent. Consequently, neither CP-logic nor FO(ID) have the need for two kinds of negations: there is only one negation, and its meaning is that of objective falsehood. Nevertheless, the formal semantics of this objective negation is mathematically more similar to ASP's negation-as-failure than to its classical negation. The reason is that both CP-logic and FO(ID) have a constructive semantics in which all atoms start out as false, and may only become true as the result of a rule application. This paper investigates the possibility of adding the well-known ASP feature of allowing negation in the head of rules to CP-logic. Because CP-logic only has one kind of negation, it is of necessity this ''negation-as-failure like'' negation that will be allowed in the head. We investigate the intuitive meaning of such a construct and the benefits that arise from it.
PRIMEBALL: a Parallel Processing Framework Benchmark for Big Data Applications in the Cloud
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2013
Year: 2013

In this paper, we draw the specifications of a novel benchmark for comparing parallel processing frameworks in the context of big data applications hosted in the cloud. We aim at filling several gaps in already existing cloud data processing benchmarks, which lack a real-life context for their processes, thus losing relevance when trying to assess performance for real applications. Hence, we propose a fictitious news site hosted in the cloud that is to be managed by the framework under analysis, together with several objective use case scenarios and measures for evaluating system performance. The main strengths of our benchmark are parallelization capabilities supporting cloud features and big data properties.
On-Demand WebRTC Tunneling in Restricted Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2013
Year: 2013

In this paper we present the implementation of a WebRTC gateway service that can forward ad-hoc RTP data plane traffic from a browser on one local network to a browser on another local network. The advantage compared to the existing IETF STUN (RFC 5389), TURN (RFC 5766) and ICE (RFC 5245) protocols is that it does not require a public host and port mapping for each participating local host, and it works with more restrictive firewall policies. WebRTC implements ICE which combines STUN and TURN probes to automatically find the best connection between two peers who want to communicate. In corporate networks, simple hole punching and NAT traversal techniques typically do not work, e.g. because of symmetric NATs. Dynamic allocation of ports on an external 3rd party relay service is also typically blocked on restricted hosts. In our use case, doctors at hospitals can only access port 80 through the hospital firewall on external machines, and they need to communicate with patients who are typically behind a NAT in a local WiFi network. VPN solutions only work for staff but not between patients and staff. Our solution solves this problem by redirecting all WebRTC traffic through a gateway service on the local network that has a secure tunnel established with a public gateway. The public gateway redirects traffic from multiple concurrent streams securely between local gateway services that connect to it. The local gateways also communicate with browsers on their local network to mimic a direct browser-to-browser connection without having to change the browser runtime. We have demonstrated that this technique works well within the hospital network and arbitrary patient networks, without the need for any individual host configuration. In our evaluation we show that the latency overhead is 18-20 ms for each concurrent stream added to the same gateway service.
Guiding a General-Purpose C Verifier to Prove Cryptographic Protocols
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2013
Year: 2013

We describe how to verify security properties of C code for cryptographic protocols by using a general-purpose verifier. We prove security theorems in the symbolic model of cryptography. Our techniques include: use of ghost state to attach formal algebraic terms to concrete byte arrays and to detect collisions when two distinct terms map to the same byte array; decoration of a crypto API with contracts based on symbolic terms; and expression of the attacker model in terms of C programs. We rely on the general-purpose verifier VCC; we guide VCC to prove security simply by writing suitable header files and annotations in implementation files, rather than by changing VCC itself. We formalize the symbolic model in Coq in order to justify the addition of axioms to VCC.
Image Processing based Systems and Techniques for the Recognition of Ancient and Modern Coins
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2013
Year: 2013

Coins are frequently used in everyday life at various places like in banks, grocery stores, supermarkets, automated weighing machines, vending machines etc. So, there is a basic need to automate the counting and sorting of coins. For this machines need to recognize the coins very fast and accurately, as further transaction processing depends on this recognition. Three types of systems are available in the market: Mechanical method based systems, Electromagnetic method based systems and Image processing based systems. This paper presents an overview of available systems and techniques based on image processing to recognize ancient and modern coins.
A comprehensive review of firefly algorithms
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2013
Year: 2013

The firefly algorithm has become an increasingly important tool of Swarm Intelligence that has been applied in almost all areas of optimization, as well as engineering practice. Many problems from various areas have been successfully solved using the firefly algorithm and its variants. In order to use the algorithm to solve diverse problems, the original firefly algorithm needs to be modified or hybridized. This paper carries out a comprehensive review of this living and evolving discipline of Swarm Intelligence, in order to show that the firefly algorithm could be applied to every problem arising in practice. On the other hand, it encourages new researchers and algorithm developers to use this simple and yet very efficient algorithm for problem solving. It often guarantees that the obtained results will meet the expectations.
The Power of Smartphones
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2013
Year: 2013

Smartphones have been shipped with multiple wireless network interfaces in order to meet their diverse communication and networking demands. However, as smartphones increasingly rely on wireless network connections to realize more functions, the demand of energy has been significantly increased, which has become the limit for people to explore smartphones' real power. In this paper, we first review typical smartphone computing systems, energy consumption of smartphone, and state-of-the-art techniques of energy saving for smartphones. Then we propose a location-assisted Wi-Fi discovery scheme, which discovers the nearest Wi-Fi network access points (APs) by using the user's location information. This allows the user to switch to the Wi-Fi interface in an intelligent manner when he/she arrives at the nearest Wi-Fi network AP. Thus we can meet the user's bandwidth needs and provide the best connectivity. Additionally, it avoids the long periods in idle state and greatly reduces the number of unnecessary Wi-Fi scans on the mobile device. Our experiments and simulations demonstrate that our scheme effectively saves energy for smartphones integrated with Wi-Fi and cellular interfaces.
Bounded Recursive Self-Improvement
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2013
Year: 2013

We have designed a machine that becomes increasingly better at behaving in underspecified circumstances, in a goal-directed way, on the job, by modeling itself and its environment as experience accumulates. Based on principles of autocatalysis, endogeny, and reflectivity, the work provides an architectural blueprint for constructing systems with high levels of operational autonomy in underspecified circumstances, starting from a small seed. Through value-driven dynamic priority scheduling controlling the parallel execution of a vast number of reasoning threads, the system achieves recursive self-improvement after it leaves the lab, within the boundaries imposed by its designers. A prototype system has been implemented and demonstrated to learn a complex real-world task, real-time multimodal dialogue with humans, by on-line observation. Our work presents solutions to several challenges that must be solved for achieving artificial general intelligence.
Iterated LD-Problem in non-associative key establishment
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2013
Year: 2013

We construct new non-associative key establishment protocols for all left self-distributive (LD), multi-LD-, and mutual LD-systems. The hardness of these protocols relies on variations of the (simultaneous) iterated LD-problem and its generalizations. We discuss instantiations of these protocols using generalized shifted conjugacy in braid groups and their quotients, LD-conjugacy and $f$-symmetric conjugacy in groups. We suggest parameter choices for instantiations in braid groups, symmetric groups and several matrix groups.
Suffix Stripping Problem as an Optimization Problem
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2013
Year: 2013

Stemming or suffix stripping, an important part of the modern Information Retrieval systems, is to find the root word (stem) out of a given cluster of words. Existing algorithms targeting this problem have been developed in a haphazard manner. In this work, we model this problem as an optimization problem. An Integer Program is being developed to overcome the shortcomings of the existing approaches. The sample results of the proposed method are also being compared with an established technique in the field for English language. An AMPL code for the same IP has also been given.
A Fast Greedy Algorithm for Generalized Column Subset Selection
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2013
Year: 2013

This paper defines a generalized column subset selection problem which is concerned with the selection of a few columns from a source matrix A that best approximate the span of a target matrix B. The paper then proposes a fast greedy algorithm for solving this problem and draws connections to different problems that can be efficiently solved using the proposed algorithm.