OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Is it morally acceptable for a system to lie to persuade me?
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2014
Year: 2014

Given the fast rise of increasingly autonomous artificial agents and robots, a key acceptability criterion will be the possible moral implications of their actions. In particular, intelligent persuasive systems (systems designed to influence humans via communication) constitute a highly sensitive topic because of their intrinsically social nature. Still, ethical studies in this area are rare and tend to focus on the output of the required action. Instead, this work focuses on the persuasive acts themselves (e.g. "is it morally acceptable that a machine lies or appeals to the emotions of a person to persuade her, even if for a good end?"). Exploiting a behavioral approach, based on human assessment of moral dilemmas -- i.e. without any prior assumption of underlying ethical theories -- this paper reports on a set of experiments. These experiments address the type of persuader (human or machine), the strategies adopted (purely argumentative, appeal to positive emotions, appeal to negative emotions, lie) and the circumstances. Findings display no differences due to the agent, mild acceptability for persuasion and reveal that truth-conditional reasoning (i.e. argument validity) is a significant dimension affecting subjects' judgment. Some implications for the design of intelligent persuasive systems are discussed.
Assessing the Quality of MT Systems for Hindi to English Translation
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2014
Year: 2014

Evaluation plays a vital role in checking the quality of MT output. It is done either manually or automatically. Manual evaluation is very time consuming and subjective, hence use of automatic metrics is done most of the times. This paper evaluates the translation quality of different MT Engines for Hindi-English (Hindi data is provided as input and English is obtained as output) using various automatic metrics like BLEU, METEOR etc. Further the comparison automatic evaluation results with Human ranking have also been given.
The Complexity of Counting Edge Colorings and a Dichotomy for Some Higher Domain Holant Problems
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2014
Year: 2014

We show that an effective version of Siegel's Theorem on finiteness of integer solutions and an application of elementary Galois theory are key ingredients in a complexity classification of some Holant problems. These Holant problems, denoted by Holant(f), are defined by a symmetric ternary function f that is invariant under any permutation of the k >= 3 domain elements. We prove that Holant(f) exhibits a complexity dichotomy. This dichotomy holds even when restricted to planar graphs. A special case of this result is that counting edge k-colorings is #P-hard over planar 3-regular graphs for k >= 3. In fact, we prove that counting edge k-colorings is #P-hard over planar r-regular graphs for all k >= r >= 3. The problem is polynomial-time computable in all other parameter settings. The proof of the dichotomy theorem for Holant(f) depends on the fact that a specific polynomial p(x,y) has an explicitly listed finite set of integer solutions, and the determination of the Galois groups of some specific polynomials. In the process, we also encounter the Tutte polynomial, medial graphs, Eulerian partitions, Puiseux series, and a certain lattice condition on the (logarithm of) the roots of polynomials.
A d-dimensional extension of Christoffel words
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2014
Year: 2014

In this article, we extend the definition of Christoffel words to directed subgraphs of the hypercubic lattice in arbitrary dimension that we call Christoffel graphs. Christoffel graphs when $d=2$ correspond to well-known Christoffel words. Due to periodicity, the $d$-dimensional Christoffel graph can be embedded in a $(d-1)$-torus (a parallelogram when $d=3$). We show that Christoffel graphs have similar properties to those of Christoffel words: symmetry of their central part and conjugation with their reversal. Our main result extends Pirillo's theorem (characterization of Christoffel words which asserts that a word $amb$ is a Christoffel word if and only if it is conjugate to $bma$) in arbitrary dimension. In the generalization, the map $amb\mapsto bma$ is seen as a flip operation on graphs embedded in $\mathbb{Z}^d$ and the conjugation is a translation. We show that a fully periodic subgraph of the hypercubic lattice is a translate of its flip if and only if it is a Christoffel graph.
Invisibility System Using Image Processing and Optical Camouflage Technology
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2014
Year: 2014

Invisible persons are seen in fiction stories only, but in the real world it is proved that invisibility is possible. This paper describes the creation of invisibility with the help of technologies like Optical camouflage; Image based rendering and Retro reflective projection. The object that needs to be made transparent or invisible is painted or covered with retro reflective material. Then a projector projects the background image on it making the masking object virtually transparent. Capturing the background image requires a video camera, which sits behind the person wearing the cloak. The video from the camera must be in a digital format so it can be sent to a computer for image processing using image based rendering technical. There are some useful applications for this simple but astonishing technology.
Journey from Data Mining to Web Mining to Big Data
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2014
Year: 2014

This paper describes the journey of big data starting from data mining to web mining to big data. It discusses each of this method in brief and also provides their applications. It states the importance of mining big data today using fast and novel approaches.
An Optimized and Scalable Eigensolver for Sequences of Eigenvalue Problems
Venue: arXiv cs.MS 2014
Year: 2014

In many scientific applications the solution of non-linear differential equations are obtained through the set-up and solution of a number of successive eigenproblems. These eigenproblems can be regarded as a sequence whenever the solution of one problem fosters the initialization of the next. In addition, in some eigenproblem sequences there is a connection between the solutions of adjacent eigenproblems. Whenever it is possible to unravel the existence of such a connection, the eigenproblem sequence is said to be correlated. When facing with a sequence of correlated eigenproblems the current strategy amounts to solving each eigenproblem in isolation. We propose a alternative approach which exploits such correlation through the use of an eigensolver based on subspace iteration and accelerated with Chebyshev polynomials (ChFSI). The resulting eigensolver is optimized by minimizing the number of matrix-vector multiplications and parallelized using the Elemental library framework. Numerical results show that ChFSI achieves excellent scalability and is competitive with current dense linear algebra parallel eigensolvers.
Faculty Attitudes Towards Integrating Technology and Innovation
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2014
Year: 2014

Technological innovation is an important aspect of teaching and learning in the 21st century. This article examines faculty attitudes toward technology use in the classroom at one regional public university in the United States. Building on a faculty-led initiative to develop a Community of Practice for improving education, this study used a mixed-method approach of a faculty-developed, electronic survey to assess this topic. Findings from 72 faculty members revealed an overall positive stance toward technology in the classroom and the average faculty member utilized about six technology tools in their courses. The opportunities, barriers and future uses for technologies in the higher education classroom emerged from the open-ended questions on the survey. One finding of particular concern is that faculty are fearful that technology causes a loss of the humanistic perspective in education. The university is redesigning ten of its most popular courses to increase flexibility, accessibility and student success.
On the Tree Search Problem with Non-uniform Costs
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2014
Year: 2014

Searching in partially ordered structures has been considered in the context of information retrieval and efficient tree-like indexes, as well as in hierarchy based knowledge representation. In this paper we focus on tree-like partial orders and consider the problem of identifying an initially unknown vertex in a tree by asking edge queries: an edge query $e$ returns the component of $T-e$ containing the vertex sought for, while incurring some known cost $c(e)$. The Tree Search Problem with Non-Uniform Cost is: given a tree $T$ where each edge has an associated cost, construct a strategy that minimizes the total cost of the identification in the worst case. Finding the strategy guaranteeing the minimum possible cost is an NP-complete problem already for input tree of degree 3 or diameter 6. The best known approximation guarantee is the $O(\log n/\log \log \log n)$-approximation algorithm of [Cicalese et al. TCS 2012]. We improve upon the above results both from the algorithmic and the computational complexity point of view: We provide a novel algorithm that provides an $O(\frac{\log n}{\log \log n})$-approximation of the cost of the optimal strategy. In addition, we show that finding an optimal strategy is NP-complete even when the input tree is a spider, i.e., at most one vertex has degree larger than 2.
Trust Evaluation using an Improved Context Similarity Measurement
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2014
Year: 2014

In context-aware trust evaluation, using ontology tree is a popular approach to represent the relation between contexts. Usually, similarity between two contexts is computed using these trees. Therefore, the performance of trust evaluation highly depends on the quality of ontology trees. Fairness or granularity consistency is one of the major limitations affecting the quality of ontology tree. This limitation refers to inequality of semantic similarity in the most ontology trees. In other words, semantic similarity of every two adjacent nodes is unequal in these trees. It deteriorates the performance of contexts similarity computation. We overcome this limitation by weighting tree edges based on their semantic similarity. Weight of each edge is computed using Normalized Similarity Score (NSS) method. This method is based on frequencies of concepts (words) co-occurrences in the pages indexed by search engines. Our experiments represent the better performance of the proposed approach in comparison with established trust evaluation approaches. The suggested approach can enhance efficiency of any solution which models semantic relations by ontology tree.
Object-Oriented Parallel Programming
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2014
Year: 2014

We introduce an object-oriented framework for parallel programming, which is based on the observation that programming objects can be naturally interpreted as processes. A parallel program consists of a collection of persistent processes that communicate by executing remote methods. We discuss code parallelization and process persistence, and explain the main ideas in the context of computations with very large data objects.
A Local-Dominance Theory of Voting Equilibria
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2014
Year: 2014

It is well known that no reasonable voting rule is strategyproof. Moreover, the common Plurality rule is particularly prone to strategic behavior of the voters and empirical studies show that people often vote strategically in practice. Multiple game-theoretic models have been proposed to better understand and predict such behavior and the outcomes it induces. However, these models often make unrealistic assumptions regarding voters' behavior and the information on which they base their vote. We suggest a new model for strategic voting that takes into account voters' bounded rationality, as well as their limited access to reliable information. We introduce a simple behavioral heuristic based on \emph{local dominance}, where each voter considers a set of possible world states without assigning probabilities to them. This set is constructed based on prospective candidates' scores (e.g., available from an inaccurate poll). In a \emph{voting equilibrium}, all voters vote for candidates not dominated within the set of possible states. We prove that these voting equilibria exist in the Plurality rule for a broad class of local dominance relations (that is, different ways to decide which states are possible). Furthermore, we show that in an iterative setting where voters may repeatedly change their vote, local dominance-based dynamics quickly converge to an equilibrium if voters start from the truthful state. Weaker convergence guarantees in more general settings are also provided. Using extensive simulations of strategic voting on generated and real preference profiles, we show that convergence is fast and robust, that emerging equilibria are consistent across various starting conditions, and that they replicate widely known patterns of human voting behavior such as Duverger's law. Further, strategic voting generally improves the quality of the winner compared to truthful voting.
Resource Allocation for Power Minimization in the Downlink of THP-based Spatial Multiplexing MIMO-OFDMA Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2014
Year: 2014

In this work, we deal with resource allocation in the downlink of spatial multiplexing MIMO-OFDMA systems. In particular, we concentrate on the problem of jointly optimizing the transmit and receive processing matrices, the channel assignment and the power allocation with the objective of minimizing the total power consumption while satisfying different quality-of-service requirements. A layered architecture is used in which users are first partitioned in different groups on the basis of their channel quality and then channel assignment and transceiver design are sequentially addressed starting from the group of users with most adverse channel conditions. The multi-user interference among users belonging to different groups is removed at the base station using a Tomlinson-Harashima pre-coder operating at user level. Numerical results are used to highlight the effectiveness of the proposed solution and to make comparisons with existing alternatives.
Three-monotone interpolation
Venue: arXiv cs.CG 2014
Year: 2014

A function $f\colon\mathbb R\to\mathbb R$ is called \emph{$k$-monotone} if it is $(k-2)$-times differentiable and its $(k-2)$nd derivative is convex. A point set $P\subset\mathbb R^2$ is \emph{$k$-monotone interpolable} if it lies on a graph of a $k$-monotone function. These notions have been studied in analysis, approximation theory etc. since the 1940s. We show that 3-monotone interpolability is very non-local: we exhibit an arbitrarily large finite $P$ for which every proper subset is $3$-monotone interpolable but $P$ itself is not. On the other hand, we prove a Ramsey-type result: for every $n$ there exists $N$ such that every $N$-point $P$ with distinct $x$-coordinates contains an $n$-point $Q$ such that $Q$ or its vertical mirror reflection are $3$-monotone interpolable. The analogs for $k$-monotone interpolability with $k=1$ and $k=2$ are classical theorems of Erdős and Szekeres, while the cases with $k\ge4$ remain open. We also investigate the computational complexity of deciding $3$-monotone interpolability of a given point set. Using a known characterization, this decision problem can be stated as an instance of polynomial optimization and reformulated as a semidefinite program. We exhibit an example for which this semidefinite program has only doubly exponentially large feasible solutions, and thus known algorithms cannot solve it in polynomial time. While such phenomena have been well known for semidefinite programming in general, ours seems to be the first such example in polynomial optimization, and it involves only univariate quadratic polynomials.
On the Deployment of Cognitive Relay as Underlay Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2014
Year: 2014

The objective of this paper is to extend the idea of Cognitive Relay (CR). CR, as a secondary user, follows an underlay paradigm to endorse secondary usage of the spectrum to the indoor devices. To seek a spatial opportunity, i.e., deciding its transmission over the primary user channels, CR models its deployment scenario and the movements of the primary receivers and indoor devices. Modeling is beneficial for theoretical analysis, however it is also important to ensure the performance of CR in a real scenario. We consider briefly, the challenges involved while deploying a hardware prototype of such a system.
Online Group Feature Selection
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2014
Year: 2014

Online feature selection with dynamic features has become an active research area in recent years. However, in some real-world applications such as image analysis and email spam filtering, features may arrive by groups. Existing online feature selection methods evaluate features individually, while existing group feature selection methods cannot handle online processing. Motivated by this, we formulate the online group feature selection problem, and propose a novel selection approach for this problem. Our proposed approach consists of two stages: online intra-group selection and online inter-group selection. In the intra-group selection, we use spectral analysis to select discriminative features in each group when it arrives. In the inter-group selection, we use Lasso to select a globally optimal subset of features. This 2-stage procedure continues until there are no more features to come or some predefined stopping conditions are met. Extensive experiments conducted on benchmark and real-world data sets demonstrate that our proposed approach outperforms other state-of-the-art online feature selection methods.
Kinetic Voronoi Diagrams and Delaunay Triangulations under Polygonal Distance Functions
Venue: arXiv cs.CG 2014
Year: 2014

Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points and $Q$ a convex $k$-gon in ${\mathbb R}^2$. We analyze in detail the topological (or discrete) changes in the structure of the Voronoi diagram and the Delaunay triangulation of $P$, under the convex distance function defined by $Q$, as the points of $P$ move along prespecified continuous trajectories. Assuming that each point of $P$ moves along an algebraic trajectory of bounded degree, we establish an upper bound of $O(k^4nλ_r(n))$ on the number of topological changes experienced by the diagrams throughout the motion; here $λ_r(n)$ is the maximum length of an $(n,r)$-Davenport-Schinzel sequence, and $r$ is a constant depending on the algebraic degree of the motion of the points. Finally, we describe an algorithm for efficiently maintaining the above structures, using the kinetic data structure (KDS) framework.
Quantitative games with interval objectives
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2014
Year: 2014

Traditionally quantitative games such as mean-payoff games and discount sum games have two players -- one trying to maximize the payoff, the other trying to minimize it. The associated decision problem, "Can Eve (the maximizer) achieve, for example, a positive payoff?" can be thought of as one player trying to attain a payoff in the interval $(0,\infty)$. In this paper we consider the more general problem of determining if a player can attain a payoff in a finite union of arbitrary intervals for various payoff functions (liminf, mean-payoff, discount sum, total sum). In particular this includes the interesting exact-value problem, "Can Eve achieve a payoff of exactly (e.g.) 0?"
On Time-Sensitive Revenue Management and Energy Scheduling in Green Data Centers
Venue: arXiv cs.PF 2014
Year: 2014

In this paper, we design an analytically and experimentally better online energy and job scheduling algorithm with the objective of maximizing net profit for a service provider in green data centers. We first study the previously known algorithms and conclude that these online algorithms have provable poor performance against their worst-case scenarios. To guarantee an online algorithm's performance in hindsight, we design a randomized algorithm to schedule energy and jobs in the data centers and prove the algorithm's expected competitive ratio in various settings. Our algorithm is theoretical-sound and it outperforms the previously known algorithms in many settings using both real traces and simulated data. An optimal offline algorithm is also implemented as an empirical benchmark.
Shiva++: An Enhanced Graph based Ontology Matcher
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2014
Year: 2014

With the web getting bigger and assimilating knowledge about different concepts and domains, it is becoming very difficult for simple database driven applications to capture the data for a domain. Thus developers have come out with ontology based systems which can store large amount of information and can apply reasoning and produce timely information. Thus facilitating effective knowledge management. Though this approach has made our lives easier, but at the same time has given rise to another problem. Two different ontologies assimilating same knowledge tend to use different terms for the same concepts. This creates confusion among knowledge engineers and workers, as they do not know which is a better term then the other. Thus we need to merge ontologies working on same domain so that the engineers can develop a better application over it. This paper shows the development of one such matcher which merges the concepts available in two ontologies at two levels; 1) at string level and 2) at semantic level; thus producing better merged ontologies. We have used a graph matching technique which works at the core of the system. We have also evaluated the system and have tested its performance with its predecessor which works only on string matching. Thus current approach produces better results.
Information Theoretic Analysis of Concurrent Information Transfer and Power Gain
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2014
Year: 2014

In this paper, we analyze the fundamental trade-off between information transfer and power gain by means of an information-theoretic framework in communications circuits. This analysis is of interest as many of today's applications require that maximum information and maximum signal power are extracted (or transferred) through the circuit at the same time for further processing so that a compromise concerning the signal spectral shape as well as the matching network has to be found. To this end, the optimization framework is applied to a two-port circuit, which is used as an abstraction for a broadband amplifier. Thereby, we characterize the involved Pareto bound by considering different optimization problems. The first one aims at optimizing the input power spectral density (PSD) as well as the source and load admittances, whereas the second approach assumes the PSD to be fixed and uniformly distributed within a fixed bandwidth and optimizes the source and load admittances only. Moreover, we will show that additional matching networks may help to improve the trade-off.