Query: Breaking the Barrier of Transactions: Mining Inter-Transaction Association Rules

Relevant passages:
Fast algorithms for mining association rules <=SEP=> 

Finding Interesting Rules from Large Sets of Discovered Association Rules <=SEP=> Association rules, introduced by Agrawal, Imielinski, and Swami, are rules of the form “for 90% of the rows of the relation, if the row has value 1 in the columns in set W, then it has 1 also in column B”. Efficient methods exist for discovering association rules from large collections of data. The number of discovered rules can, however, be so large that browsing the rule set and finding interesting rules from it can be quite difficult for the user. We show how a simple formalism of rule templates makes it possible to easily describe the structure of interesting rules. We also give examples of visualization of rules, and show how a visualization tool interfaces with rule templates.

Mining Sequential Patterns <=SEP=> We are given a large database of customer transactions, where each transaction consists of customer-id, transaction time, and the items bought in the transaction. We introduce the problem of mining sequential patterns over such databases. We present three algorithms to solve this problem, and empirically evaluate their performance using synthetic data. Two of the proposed algorithms, AprioriSome and AprioriAll, have comparable performance, albeit AprioriSome performs a little better when the minimum number of customers that must support a sequential pattern is low. Scale-up experiments show that both AprioriSome and AprioriAll scale linearly with the number of customer transactions. They also have excellent scale-up properties with respect to the number of transactions per customer and the number of items in a transaction.

Sampling Large Databases for Association Rules <=SEP=> Discovery of association rules is an important database mining problem. Current algorithms for nding association rules require several passes over the analyzed database, and obviously the role of I/O overhead is very signi cant for very large databases. We present new algorithms that reduce the database activity considerably. The idea is to pick a random sample, to nd using this sample all association rules that probably hold in the whole database, and then to verify the results with the rest of the database. The algorithms thus produce exact association rules, not approximations based on a sample. The approach is, however, probabilistic, and in those rare cases where our sampling method does not produce all association rules, the missing rules can be found in a second pass. Our experiments show that the proposed algorithms can nd association rules very e ciently in only one database pass.

Mining Quantitative Association Rules in Large Relational Tables <=SEP=> We introduce the problem of mining association rules in large relational tables containing both quantitative and categorical attributes. An example of such an association might be "10% of married people between age 50 and 60 have at least 2 cars". We deal with quantitative attributes by fine-partitioning the values of the attribute and then combining adjacent partitions as necessary. We introduce measures of partial completeness which quantify the information lost due to partitioning. A direct application of this technique can generate too many similar rules. We tackle this problem by using a "greater-than-expected-value" interest measure to identify the interesting rules in the output. We give an algorithm for mining such quantitative association rules. Finally, we describe the results of using this approach on a real-life dataset.

Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology <=SEP=> By reading, you can know the knowledge and things more, not only about what you get from people to people. Book will be more trusted. As this rethinking education in the age of technology review, it will really give you the good idea to be successful. It is not only for you to be success in certain life you can be successful in everything. The success can be started by knowing the basic knowledge and do actions.

Pathophysiological distortions in time perception and timed performance. <=SEP=> Distortions in time perception and timed performance are presented by a number of different neurological and psychiatric conditions (e.g. Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism). As a consequence, the primary focus of this review is on factors that define or produce systematic changes in the attention, clock, memory and decision stages of temporal processing as originally defined by Scalar Expectancy Theory. These findings are used to evaluate the Striatal Beat Frequency Theory, which is a neurobiological model of interval timing based upon the coincidence detection of oscillatory processes in corticostriatal circuits that can be mapped onto the stages of information processing proposed by Scalar Timing Theory.

User Traffic Profile for Traffic Reduction and Effective Bot C&C Detection <=SEP=> Bots are malicious software components used for generating spams, launching denial of service attacks, phishing, identity theft and information exfiltration and such other illegal activities. Bot detection is an area of active research in recent times. Here we propose a bot detection mechanism for a single host. A user traffic profile is used to filter out normal traffic generated by the host. The remaining suspicious traffic is subject to detailed analysis. The nature of detailed analysis is derived from a characterization of bot traffic. The detection system is tested using two real world bots. Performance evaluation results show that the proposed system achieves a high detection rate (100%) and a low false positive rate (0–8%). The traffic filtering yielded an average reduction in traffic by 70%.

PreCog: Improving Crowdsourced Data Quality Before Acquisition <=SEP=> Quality control in crowdsourcing systems is crucial. It is typically done after data collection, often using additional crowdsourced tasks to assess and improve the quality. These post-hoc methods can easily add cost and latency to the acquisition process—particularly if collecting high-quality data is important. In this paper, we argue for pre-hoc interface optimizations based on feedback that helps workers improve data quality before it is submitted and is well suited to complement post-hoc techniques. We propose the Precog system that explicitly supports such interface optimizations for common integrity constraints as well as more ambiguous text acquisition tasks where quality is ill-defined. We then develop the Segment-Predict-Explain pattern for detecting low-quality text segments and generating prescriptive explanations to help the worker improve their text input. Our unique combination of segmentation and prescriptive explanation are necessary for Precog to collect 2× more high-quality text data than non-Precog approaches on two real domains.

ZenCrowd: leveraging probabilistic reasoning and crowdsourcing techniques for large-scale entity linking <=SEP=> We tackle the problem of entity linking for large collections of online pages; Our system, ZenCrowd, identifies entities from natural language text using state of the art techniques and automatically connects them to the Linked Open Data cloud. We show how one can take advantage of human intelligence to improve the quality of the links by dynamically generating micro-tasks on an online crowdsourcing platform. We develop a probabilistic framework to make sensible decisions about candidate links and to identify unreliable human workers. We evaluate ZenCrowd in a real deployment and show how a combination of both probabilistic reasoning and crowdsourcing techniques can significantly improve the quality of the links, while limiting the amount of work performed by the crowd.

Nonspeech oral motor treatment issues related to children with developmental speech sound disorders. <=SEP=> PURPOSE
This article examines nonspeech oral motor treatments (NSOMTs) in the population of clients with developmental speech sound disorders. NSOMTs are a collection of nonspeech methods and procedures that claim to influence tongue, lip, and jaw resting postures; increase strength; improve muscle tone; facilitate range of motion; and develop muscle control. In the case of developmental speech sound disorders, NSOMTs are employed before or simultaneous with actual speech production treatment.


METHOD
First, NSOMTs are defined for the reader, and there is a discussion of NSOMTs under the categories of active muscle exercise, passive muscle exercise, and sensory stimulation. Second, different theories underlying NSOMTs along with the implications of the theories are discussed. Finally, a review of pertinent investigations is presented.


RESULTS
The application of NSOMTs is questionable due to a number of reservations that include (a) the implied cause of developmental speech sound disorders, (b) neurophysiologic differences between the limbs and oral musculature, (c) the development of new theories of movement and movement control, and (d) the paucity of research literature concerning NSOMTs.


CLINICAL IMPLICATION
There is no substantive evidence to support NSOMTs as interventions for children with developmental speech sound disorders.

Precise Flow-Insensitive May-Alias Analysis is NP-Hard <=SEP=> Determining aliases is one of the foundamental static analysis problems, in part because the precision with which this problem is solved can affect the precision of other analyses such as live variables, available expressions, and constant propagation. Previous work has investigated the complexity of flow-sensitive alias analysis. In this article we show that precise flow-insensitive may-alias analysis is NP-hard given arbitrary levels of pointers and arbitrary pointer dereferencing.

Automated Generation of Event-Oriented Exploits in Android Hybrid Apps <=SEP=> Recently more and more Android apps integrate the embedded browser, known as “WebView”, to render web pages and run JavaScript code without leaving these apps. WebView provides a powerful feature that allows event handlers defined in the native context (i.e., Java in Android) to handle web events that occur in WebView. However, as shown in prior work, this feature suffers from remote attacks, which we generalize as EventOriented Exploit (EOE) in this paper, such that adversaries may remotely access local critical functionalities through event handlers in WebView without any permission or authentication. In this paper, we propose a novel approach, EOEDroid, which can automatically vet event handlers in a given hybrid app using selective symbolic execution and static analysis. If a vulnerability is found, EOEDroid also automatically generates exploit code to help developers and analysts verify the vulnerability. To support exploit code generation, we also systematically study web events, event handlers and their trigger constraints. We evaluated our approach on 3,652 most popular apps. The result showed that our approach found 97 total vulnerabilities in 58 apps, including 2 cross-frame DOM manipulation, 53 phishing, 30 sensitive information leakage, 1 local resources access, and 11 Intent abuse vulnerabilities. We also found a potential backdoor in a high profile app that could be used to steal users’ sensitive information, such as IMEI. Even though developers attempted to close it, EOEDroid found that adversaries were still able to exploit it by triggering two events together and feeding event handlers with well designed input.

Encountering stronger password requirements: user attitudes and behaviors <=SEP=> Text-based passwords are still the most commonly used authentication mechanism in information systems. We took advantage of a unique opportunity presented by a significant change in the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) computing services password policy that required users to change their passwords. Through our survey of 470 CMU computer users, we collected data about behaviors and practices related to the use and creation of passwords. We also captured users' opinions about the new, stronger policy requirements. Our analysis shows that, although most of the users were annoyed by the need to create a complex password, they believe that they are now more secure. Furthermore, we perform an entropy analysis and discuss how our findings relate to NIST recommendations for creating a password policy. We also examine how users answer specific questions related to their passwords. Our results can be helpful in designing better password policies that consider not only technical aspects of specific policy rules, but also users' behavior in response to those rules.

A multiview 3D modeling system based on stereo vision techniques <=SEP=> This paper introduces a stereo vision system to automatically generate 3D models of real objects. 3D model generation is based on the merging of multiview range images obtained from a digital stereo camera. Stereo images obtained from the camera are rectified, and a correlation-based stereo matching technique reconstructs range images from them. A turntable stage is also employed to obtain multiple range images of the objects. To register range images into a common coordinate system automatically, we introduce and calibrate a turntable coordinate system with respect to the camera coordinate system. After the registration of multiview range images, a 3D model is reconstructed using a volumetric integration technique. Error analysis on turntable calibration and 3D model reconstruction shows the accuracy of our 3D modeling system.

On the compensation of dead time and zero-current crossing for a PWM-inverter-controlled AC servo drive <=SEP=> Conventional dead-time compensation methods, for pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) inverters, improve the current output waveforms; however, the zero-current crossing effect is still apparent. This letter proposes a new method, based on angle domain repetitive control, to reduce the distortions in the PWM inverters output waveforms caused by the dead time and the zero-crossing problem.

Design 13.56MHz 10 kW resonant inverter using GaN HEMT for wireless power transfer systems <=SEP=> This paper presents the design process of a 13.56 MHz 10 kW and high efficiency inverter for wireless power transfer systems. The new 650V E-mode GaN is used in multiphase resonant topology to obtain high output power. The optimized efficiency design and the driver design are presented in detail. The circuit simulation results show that the inverter achieves 10 kW output power with the efficiency of over 98%. The experiment system is tested at 4 kW output power with the efficiency of 96.5%.

Correspondence-free pose estimation for 3D objects from noisy depth data <=SEP=> Estimating the pose of objects from depth data is a problem of considerable practical importance for many vision applications. This paper presents an approach for accurate and efficient 3D pose estimation from noisy 2.5D depth images obtained from a consumer depth sensor. Initialized with a coarsely accurate pose, the proposed approach applies a hypothesize-and-test scheme that combines stochastic optimization and graphics-based rendering to refine the supplied initial pose, so that it accurately accounts for a sensed depth image. Pose refinement employs particle swarm optimization to minimize an objective function that quantifies the misalignment between the acquired depth image and a rendered one that is synthesized from a hypothesized pose with the aid of an object mesh model. No explicit correspondences between the depth data and the model need to be established, whereas pose hypothesis rendering and objective function evaluation are efficiently performed on the GPU. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed approach compared to the ICP algorithm, which is typically used for pose refinement in depth images. Furthermore, the experiments indicate the graceful degradation of its performance to limited computational resources and its robustness to noisy and reduced polygon count models, attesting its suitability for use with automatically scanned object models and common graphics hardware.

Techniques for the Automated Analysis of Musical Audio <=SEP=> This thesis presents work on automated analysis techniques for musical audio. A complete analysis of the content within an audio waveform is termed ‘transcription’ and can be used for intelligent, informed processing of the signal in a variety of applications. However, full transcription is beyond the ability of current methods and hence this thesis concerns subtasks of whole problem. A major part of musical analysis is the extraction of signal information from a time-frequency representation, often the short time Fourier transform or spectrogram. The ‘reassignment’ method is a technique for improving the clarity of these representations. It is comprehensively reviewed and its relationship to a number of classical instantaneous frequency measures is explicitly stated. Performance of reassignment as a sinusoidal frequency estimator is then assessed quantitatively for the first time. This is achieved in the framework of the Cramér-Rao bound. Reassignment is shown to be inferior to some other estimators for simple synthetic signals but achieves comparable results for real musical examples. Several extensions and uses of the reassignment method are then described. These include the derivation of reassignment measures extracted from the amplitude of the spectrogram, rather than the traditional phase-based method and the use of reassignment measures for signal classification. The second major area of musical analysis investigated in this thesis is beat tracking, where the aim is to extract both the tempo implied in the music and also its phase which is analagous to beat location. Three models for the beat in general music examples are described. These are cast in a state-space formulation within the Bayesian paradigm, which allows the use of Monte Carlo methods for inference of the model parameters. The first two models use pre-extracted note onsets and model tempo as either a linear Gaussian process or as Brownian motion. The third model also includes on-line detection of onsets, thus adding an extra layer of complexity. Sequential Monte Carlo algorithms, termed particle filters, are then used for the estimation of the data. The systems are tested on an extensive database, nearly three and a half hours in length and consisting of various styles of music. The results exceed the current published state of the art. The research presented here could form the early stages of a full transcription system, a proposal for which is also expounded. This would use a flow of contextual information from simpler, more global structures to aid the inference of more complex and detailed processes. The global structures present in the music (such as style, structure, tempo, etc.) still have their own uses, making this scheme instantly applicable to real problems.

A user's guide to tabu search <=SEP=> We describe the main features of tabu search, emphasizing a perspective for guiding a user to understand basic implementation principles for solving combinatorial or nonlinear problems. We also identify recent developments and extensions that have contributed to increasing the efficiency of the method. One of the useful aspects of tabu search is the ability to adapt a rudimentary prototype implementation to encompass additional model elements, such as new types of constraints and objective functions. Similarly, the method itself can be evolved to varying levels of sophistication. We provide several examples of discrete optimization problems to illustrate the strategic concerns of tabu search, and to show how they may be exploited in various contexts. Our presentation is motivated by the emergence of an extensive literature of computational results, which demonstrates that a well-tuned implementation makes it possible to obtain solutions of high quality for difficult problems, yielding outcomes in some settings that have not been matched by other known techniques.

A simple hybrid 3-level buck-boost DC-DC converter with efficient PWM regulation scheme <=SEP=> This paper describes a 3-level buck-boost converter with an output voltage range up to double the input voltage. The proposed converter can be used for applications that require stepping up/down the input voltage depending on the operating conditions like solar power harvesting. The converter has a hybrid structure between inductor-based converters and capacitor-based converters by utilizing a one flying capacitor and an inductor in the charge transfer process. The converter features smaller inductor size and current ripples as compared to the traditional buck-boost inductor-based converter while offering a high efficiency as compared to SC converters making it suitable for efficient on-chip integration. A prototype circuit has been designed on a 65nm technology using a 5-nH parasitic bondwire inductor. Simulation results show that the proposed converter features up to 20% improvement in the efficiency over a conventional 1:2 SC converter for a wide range of output voltage values.

Machine Learning and Inference Laboratory An Optimized Design of Finned-Tube Evaporators Using the Learnable Evolution Model <=SEP=> Optimizing the refrigerant circuitry for a finned-tube evaporator is a daunting task for traditional exhaustive search techniques due to the extremely large number of circuitry possibilities. For this reason, more intelligent search techniques are needed. This paper presents and evaluates a novel optimization system, called ISHED1 (Intelligent System for Heat Exchanger Design). This system uses a recently developed non-Darwinian evolutionary computation method to seek evaporator circuit designs that maximize the capacity of the evaporator under given technical and environmental constraints. Circuitries were developed for an evaporator with three depth rows of 12 tubes each, based on optimizing the performance with uniform and non-uniform airflow profiles. ISHED1 demonstrated the capability to design an optimized circuitry for a non-uniform air distribution so the capacity showed no degradation over the traditional balanced circuitry design working with a uniform airflow.

Developing a retrieval based diagnostic aid for automated melanoma recognition of dermoscopic images <=SEP=> Skin cancer is one of the most frequent cancers among human beings. Whereas, malignant melanoma is the most aggressive and deadly type of skin cancer, and its incidence has been quickly increasing over the last years. The detection of the malignant melanoma in its early stages with dermoscopic images reduces the mortality considerably, hence this a crucial issue for the dermatologists. However, their interpretation is time consuming and subjective, even for trained dermatologists. The current computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems are mainly noninteractive in nature and their prediction represents just a cue for the dermatologist, as the final decision regarding the likelihood of the presence of a melanoma is left exclusively to him/her. Recently, developing CAD schemes that use image retrieval approach to search for the clinically relevant and visually similar lesions has been attracting research interest. Although preliminary studies have suggested that using retrieval might improve dermatologists' performance and/or increase their confidence in the decision making, this technology is still in the early development stage with lack of benchmark evaluation in ground-truth datasets to compare retrieval effectiveness. A CAD system based on both classification and retrieval would be more effective and robust. This work is focusing on by addressing the various issues related to the development of such an integrated and interactive CAD system by performing automatic lesion segmentation with an adaptive thresholding and region growing approach, extracting invariant features from lesions and classifying and retrieving those using Extreme Learning Machines (ELM) and a similarity fusion approach. Finally, various methods are evaluated with promising results in a benchmark dataset of International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC).

A Framework for Using Hypothesis-Driven Approaches to Support Data-Driven Learning Analytics in Measuring Computational Thinking in Block-Based Programming Environments <=SEP=> Systematic endeavors to take computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT) to scale in middle and high school classrooms are underway with curricula that emphasize the enactment of authentic CT skills, especially in the context of programming in block-based programming environments. There is, therefore, a growing need to measure students’ learning of CT in the context of programming and also support all learners through this process of learning computational problem solving. The goal of this research is to explore hypothesis-driven approaches that can be combined with data-driven ones to better interpret student actions and processes in log data captured from block-based programming environments with the goal of measuring and assessing students’ CT skills. Informed by past literature and based on our empirical work examining a dataset from the use of the Fairy Assessment in the Alice programming environment in middle schools, we present a framework that formalizes a process where a hypothesis-driven approach informed by Evidence-Centered Design effectively complements data-driven learning analytics in interpreting students’ programming process and assessing CT in block-based programming environments. We apply the framework to the design of Alice tasks for high school CS to be used for measuring CT during programming.

Perception on the Usage of Mobile Assisted Language Learning ( MALL ) in English as a Second Language ( ESL ) Learning among Vocational College Students <=SEP=> Mobile phones are viewed as significant aids to English language learning. Numerous studies have been conducted in different contexts on mobile assisted language learning (MALL) that indicate the benefits of mobile devices for English language learning. Nevertheless, few studies on MALL had been conducted on among vocational college students in Malaysia. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the perception on the usage of MALL in English as a Second Language (ESL) among private vocational college students. Data were collected from a survey questionnaire adapted from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The results show the respondents have positive perception on the usage of MALL. Majority of the respondents showed overall agreement on both constructs perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEoU) of MALL. They believed the usage of MALL will enhance the teaching and learning process. This evidence of acceptance has implication for educators and curriculum designers to exploit the mobile phone for autonomous and interactive ESL learning beyond the classroom context. It is hoped that MALL will be used as one of the teaching aids that could assist educators to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) more effectively.

A probabilistic fuzzy logic system for modeling and control <=SEP=> In this paper, a probabilistic fuzzy logic system (PFLS) is proposed for the modeling and control problems. Similar to the ordinary fuzzy logic system (FLS), the PFLS consists of the fuzzification, inference engine and defuzzification operation to process the fuzzy information. Different to the FLS, it uses the probabilistic modeling method to improve the stochastic modeling capability. By using a three-dimensional membership function (MF), the PFLS is able to handle the effect of random noise and stochastic uncertainties existing in the process. A unique defuzzification method is proposed to simplify the complex operation. Finally, the proposed PFLS is applied to a function approximation problem and a robotic system. It shows a better performance than an ordinary FLS in stochastic circumstance.

Efficient and Robust Feature Selection via Joint ℓ2, 1-Norms Minimization <=SEP=> Feature selection is an important component of many machine learning applications. Especially in many bioinformatics tasks, efficient and robust feature selection methods are desired to extract meaningful features and eliminate noisy ones. In this paper, we propose a new robust feature selection method with emphasizing joint `2,1-norm minimization on both loss function and regularization. The `2,1-norm based loss function is robust to outliers in data points and the `2,1norm regularization selects features across all data points with joint sparsity. An efficient algorithm is introduced with proved convergence. Our regression based objective makes the feature selection process more efficient. Our method has been applied into both genomic and proteomic biomarkers discovery. Extensive empirical studies are performed on six data sets to demonstrate the performance of our feature selection method.

CIO and Business Executive Leadership Approaches to Establishing Company-wide Information Orientation <=SEP=> In the digital world, business executives have a heightened awareness of the strategic importance of information and information management to their companies’ value creation. This presents both leadership opportunities and challenges for CIOs. To prevent the CIO position from being marginalized and to enhance CIOs’ contribution to business value creation, they must move beyond being competent IT utility managers and play an active role in helping their companies build a strong information usage culture. The purpose of this article is to provide a better understanding of the leadership approaches that CIOs and business executives can adopt to improve their companies’ information orientation. Based on our findings from four case studies, we have created a four-quadrant leadership-positioning framework. This framework is constructed from the CIO’s perspective and indicates that a CIO may act as a leader, a follower or a nonplayer in developing the company’s information orientation to achieve its strategic focus. The article concludes with guidelines that CIOs can use to help position their leadership challenges in introducing or sustaining their companies’ information orientation initiatives and recommends specific leadership approaches depending on CIOs’ particular situations.

CloudSim: a toolkit for modeling and simulation of cloud computing environments and evaluation of resource provisioning algorithms <=SEP=> Cloud computing is a recent advancement wherein IT infrastructure and applications are provided as “services” to endusers under a usage-based payment model. They can leverage virtualized services even on the fly based on requirements (workload patterns and QoS) varying with time. The application services hosted under Cloud computing model have complex provisioning, composition, configuration, and deployment requirements. Evaluating the performance of Cloud provisioning policies, application workload models, and resources performance models in a repeatable manner under varying system and user configurations and requirements is difficult to achieve. To overcome this challenge, we propose CloudSim: an extensible simulation toolkit that enables modeling and simulation of Cloud computing systems and application provisioning environments. The CloudSim toolkit supports both system and behaviour modeling of Cloud system components such as data centers, virtual machines (VMs) and resource provisioning policies. It implements generic application provisioning techniques that can be extended with ease and limited efforts. Currently, it supports modeling and simulation of Cloud computing environments consisting of both single and inter-networked clouds (federation of clouds). Moreover, it exposes custom interfaces for implementing policies and provisioning techniques for allocation of VMs under inter-networked Cloud computing scenarios. Several researchers from organisations such as HP Labs in USA are using CloudSim in their investigation on Cloud resource provisioning and energy-efficient management of data center resources. The usefulness of CloudSim is demonstrated by a case study involving dynamic provisioning of application services in hybrid federated clouds environment. The result of this case study proves that the federated Cloud computing model significantly improves the application QoS requirements under fluctuating resource and service demand patterns.

IT Security Investments Through the Lens of the Resource-Based View: A new Theoretical Model and Literature Review <=SEP=> IT security has become a major issue for organizations as they need to protect their assets, including IT resources, intellectual property and business processes, against security attacks. Disruptions of ITbased business activities can easily lead to economic damage, such as loss of productivity, revenue and