Probabilistic models for discovering e-communities
The increasing amount of communication between individuals in e-formats (e.g. email, Instant messaging and the Web) has motivated computational research in social network analysis (SNA). Previous work in SNA has emphasized the social network (SN) topology measured by communication frequencies while ignoring the semantic information in SNs. In this paper, we propose two generative Bayesian models for semantic community discovery in SNs, combining probabilistic modeling with community detection in SNs. To simulate the generative models, an EnF-Gibbs sampling algorithm is proposed to address the efficiency and performance problems of traditional methods. Experimental studies on Enron email corpus show that our approach successfully detects the communities of individuals and in addition provides semantic topic descriptions of these communities.

title: Asymptotic Performance of Vector Quantizers with a Perceptual Distortion Measure
abstract: Gersho's (1979) bounds on the asymptotic performance of vector quantizers are valid for vector distortions which are powers of the Euclidean norm. Yamada, Tazaki, and Gray (1980) generalized the results to distortion measures that are increasing functions of the norm of their argument. In both cases, the distortion is uniquely determined by the vector quantization error, i.e., the Euclidean difference between the original vector and the codeword into which it is quantized. We generalize these asymptotic bounds to input-weighted quadratic distortion measures and measures that are approximately output-weighted-quadratic when the distortion is small, a class of distortion measures often claimed to be perceptually meaningful. An approximation of the asymptotic distortion based on Gersho's conjecture is derived as well. We also consider the problem of source mismatch, where the quantizer is designed using a probability density different from the true source density. The resulting asymptotic performance in terms of distortion increase in decibels is shown to be linear in the relative entropy between the true and estimated probability densities.

title: Real-Time Computerized Annotation of Pictures
abstract: Developing effective methods for automated annotation of digital pictures continues to challenge computer scientists. The capability of annotating pictures by computers can lead to breakthroughs in a wide range of applications, including Web image search, online picture-sharing communities, and scientific experiments. In this work, the authors developed new optimization and estimation techniques to address two fundamental problems in machine learning. These new techniques serve as the basis for the automatic linguistic indexing of pictures - real time (ALIPR) system of fully automatic and high-speed annotation for online pictures. In particular, the D2-clustering method, in the same spirit as K-Means for vectors, is developed to group objects represented by bags of weighted vectors. Moreover, a generalized mixture modeling technique (kernel smoothing as a special case) for nonvector data is developed using the novel concept of hypothetical local mapping (HLM). ALIPR has been tested by thousands of pictures from an Internet photo-sharing site, unrelated to the source of those pictures used in the training process. Its performance has also been studied at an online demonstration site, where arbitrary users provide pictures of their choices and indicate the correctness of each annotation word. The experimental results show that a single computer processor can suggest annotation terms in real time and with good accuracy.

title: A source coding approach to classification by vector quantization and the principle of minimum description length
abstract: An algorithm for supervised classification using vector quantization and entropy coding is presented. The classification rule is formed from a set of training data {(X/sub i/, Y/sub i/)}/sub i=1//sup n/, which are independent samples from a joint distribution P/sub XY/. Based on the principle of minimum description length (MDL), a statistical model that approximates the distribution P/sub XY/ ought to enable efficient coding of X and Y. On the other hand, we expect a system that encodes (X, Y) efficiently to provide ample information on the distribution P/sub XY/. This information can then be used to classify X, i.e., to predict the corresponding Y based on X. To encode both X and Y, a two-stage vector quantizer is applied to X and a Huffman code is formed for Y conditioned on each quantized value of X. The optimization of the encoder is equivalent to the design of a vector quantizer with an objective function reflecting the joint penalty of quantization error and misclassification rate. This vector quantizer provides an estimation of the conditional distribution of Y given X, which in turn yields an approximation to the Bayes classification rule. This algorithm, namely discriminant vector quantization (DVQ), is compared with learning vector quantization (LVQ) and CART/sup R/ on a number of data sets. DVQ outperforms the other two on several data sets. The relation between DVQ, density estimation, and regression is also discussed.

title: On Zador's entropy-constrained quantization theorem
abstract: Zador's classic result for the asymptotic high-rate behavior of entropy-constrained vector quantization is recast in a Lagrangian form which better matches the Lloyd algorithm used to optimize such quantizers. A proof that the result holds for a general class of distributions is sketched.

title: Unsupervised Multiresolution Segmentation for Images with Low Depth of Field
abstract: Unsupervised segmentation of images with low depth of field (DOF) is highly useful in various applications. This paper describes a novel multiresolution image segmentation algorithm for low DOF images. The algorithm is designed to separate a sharply focused object-of-interest from other foreground or background objects. The algorithm is fully automatic in that all parameters are image independent. A multi-scale approach based on high frequency wavelet coefficients and their statistics is used to perform context-dependent classification of individual blocks of the image. Unlike other edge-based approaches, our algorithm does not rely on the process of connecting object boundaries. The algorithm has achieved high accuracy when tested on more than 100 low DOF images, many with inhomogeneous foreground or background distractions. Compared with he state of the art algorithms, this new algorithm provides better accuracy at higher speed.

title: Automatic patent classification using citation network information: an experimental study in nanotechnology
abstract: Classifying and organizing documents in repositories is an active research topic in digital library studies. Manually classifying the large volume of patents and patent applications managed by patent offices is a labor-intensive task. Many previous studies have employed patent contents for patent classification with the aim of automating this process. In this research we propose to use patent citation information, especially the citation network structure information, to address the patent classification problem. We adopt a kernel-based approach and design kernel functions to capture content information and various citation-related information in patents. These kernels. performances are evaluated on a testbed of patents related to nanotechnology. Evaluation results show that our proposed labeled citation graph kernel, which utilized citation network structures, significantly outperforms the kernels that use no citation information or only direct citation information.

title: On optimal rule discovery
abstract: In machine learning and data mining, heuristic and association rules are two dominant schemes for rule discovery. Heuristic rule discovery usually produces a small set of accurate rules, but fails to find many globally optimal rules. Association rule discovery generates all rules satisfying some constraints, but yields too many rules and is infeasible when the minimum support is small. Here, we present a unified framework for the discovery of a family of optimal rule sets and characterize the relationships with other rule-discovery schemes such as nonredundant association rule discovery. We theoretically and empirically show that optimal rule discovery is significantly more efficient than association rule discovery independent of data structure and implementation. Optimal rule discovery is an efficient alternative to association rule discovery, especially when the minimum support is low.

title: On neighborhood condition for graphs to have [a, b]-factors
abstract: Let G be a graph of order n, and let a and b be integers such that 1 ≤ a > b. Let δ(G) be the minimum degree of G. Then we prove that if δ(G) ≥ (k - 1) a, n ≥ (a + b)(k(a + b) - 2)/b, and |NG(x1) ∪ NG(x2) ∪..∪ NG(xk)| ≥ an/(a + b) for any independent subset {x1,x2 ..... xk} of V(G), where k ≥ 2, then G has an [a,b]-factor. This result is best possible in some sense.

title: A fuzzy genetic algorithm for driver scheduling
abstract: This paper presents a hybrid genetic algorithm (GA) for the bi-objective public transport driver scheduling problem. A greedy heuristic is used, which constructs a schedule by sequentially selecting shifts, from a very large set of pre-generated legal potential shifts, to cover the remaining work. Individual shifts and the schedule as a whole have to be evaluated in the process. Fuzzy set theory is applied on such evaluations. For individual shifts, their structural efficiency is assessed by fuzzified criteria identified from practical knowledge of the problem domain. A GA is used to derive a near-optimal weight distribution amongst the fuzzified criteria, so that a single-valued weighted evaluation can be computed for each shift. The corresponding schedule constructed utilising the weight distribution is evaluated by the GA’s fitness function, in which the two objectives of minimising the number of shifts and minimising the total cost are formulated as a fuzzy goal. Comparative results on real-world problems are presented.

title: Grid Resource Discovery Using Semantic Communities
abstract: Grid technologies enable the sharing and collaborating of a wide variety of resources. To fully utilize these resources, effective resource discovery mechanisms are necessities. However, the complicated and dynamic characteristics of the grid resources make sharing and discovering them a challenging issue. In this paper, we propose a semantic community approach to assisting the efficient resource discovery and query in grids. Semantic community is a natural arrangement of distributed systems. It prunes the searching space and reduces the cost of searching. Moreover, it exhibits many desirable properties, including being fully decentralized and supporting complex queries. Our simulation results show how searching the girds can take advantage of semantic communities to reduce the searching cost and improve the quality of search results.