Query: Spatio-temporal avalanche forecasting with Support Vector Machines

Relevant passages:
Environmental Sensor Networks : A revolution in the earth system science ? <=SEP=> Environmental Sensor Networks (ESNs) facilitate the study of fundamental processes and the development of hazard response systems. They have evolved from passive logging systems that require manual downloading, into ‘intelligent’ sensor networks that comprise a network of automatic sensor nodes and communications systems which actively communicate their data to a Sensor Network Server (SNS) where these data can be integrated with other environmental datasets. The sensor nodes can be fixed or mobile and range in scale appropriate to the environment being sensed. ESNs range in scale and function and we have reviewed over 50 representative examples. Large Scale Single Function Networks tend to use large single purpose nodes to cover a wide geographical area. Localised Multifunction Sensor Networks typically monitor a small area in more detail, often with wireless adhoc systems. Biosensor Networks use emerging biotechnologies to monitor environmental processes as well as developing proxies for immediate use. In the future, sensor networks will integrate these three elements (Heterogeneous Sensor Networks). The communications system and data storage and integration (cyberinfrastructure) aspects of ESNs are discussed, along with current challenges which need to be addressed. We argue that Environmental Sensor Networks will become a standard research tool for future Earth System and Environmental Science. Not only do they provide a ‘virtual’ connection with the environment, they allow new field and conceptual approaches to the study of environmental processes to be developed. We suggest that although technological advances have facilitated these changes, it is vital that Earth Systems and Environmental Scientists utilise them. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A Practical Bayesian Framework for Backpropagation Networks <=SEP=> A quantitative and practical Bayesian framework is described for learning of mappings in feedforward networks. The framework makes possible (1) objective comparisons between solutions using alternative network architectures, (2) objective stopping rules for network pruning or growing procedures, (3) objective choice of magnitude and type of weight decay terms or additive regularizers (for penalizing large weights, etc.), (4) a measure of the effective number of well-determined parameters in a model, (5) quantified estimates of the error bars on network parameters and on network output, and (6) objective comparisons with alternative learning and interpolation models such as splines and radial basis functions. The Bayesian "evidence" automatically embodies "Occam's razor," penalizing overflexible and overcomplex models. The Bayesian approach helps detect poor underlying assumptions in learning models. For learning models well matched to a problem, a good correlation between generalization ability and the Bayesian evidence is obtained.

Optimal Brain Damage <=SEP=> We have used information-theoretic ideas to derive a class of practical and nearly optimal schemes for adapting the size of a neural network. By removing unimportant weights from a network, several improvements can be expected: better generalization, fewer training examples required, and improved speed of learning and/or classification. The basic idea is to use second-derivative information to make a tradeoff between network complexity and training set error. Experiments confirm the usefulness of the methods on a real-world application.

The Evidence Framework Applied to Classification Networks <=SEP=> Three Bayesian ideas are presented for supervised adaptive classifiers. First, it is argued that the output of a classifier should be obtained by marginalizing over the posterior distribution of the parameters; a simple approximation to this integral is proposed and demonstrated. This involves a "moderation" of the most probable classifier's outputs, and yields improved performance. Second, it is demonstrated that the Bayesian framework for model comparison described for regression models in MacKay (1992a,b) can also be applied to classification problems. This framework successfully chooses the magnitude of weight decay terms, and ranks solutions found using different numbers of hidden units. Third, an information-based data selection criterion is derived and demonstrated within this framework.

Sensor networks: evolution, opportunities, and challenges <=SEP=> Wireless microsensor networks have been identified as one of the most important technologies for the 21st century. This paper traces the history of research in sensor networks over the past three decades, including two important programs of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spanning this period: the Distributed Sensor Networks (DSN) and the Sensor Information Technology (SensIT) programs. Technology trends that impact the development of sensor networks are reviewed, and new applications such as infrastructure security, habitat monitoring, and traffic control are presented. Technical challenges in sensor network development include network discovery, control and routing, collaborative signal and information processing, tasking and querying, and security. The paper concludes by presenting some recent research results in sensor network algorithms, including localized algorithms and directed diffusion, distributed tracking in wireless ad hoc networks, and distributed classification using local agents.

Constraint Propagation Algorithms for Temporal Reasoning <=SEP=> This paper considers computational aspects of several temporal representation languages. It investigates an interval-based representation, and a point-based one. Computing the consequences of temporal assertions is shown to be computational/y intractable in the interval-based representation, but not in the poinfbased one. However, a fragment of the interval language can be expressed using the point language and benefits from the tractability of the latter.’ The representation of time has been a recurring concern of Artificial Intelligence researchers. Many representation schemes have been proposed for temporal reasoning; of these, one of the most attractive is James Allen’s algebra of temporal intervals [Allen 831. This representation scheme is particularly appealing for its simplicity and for its ease of implementation with constraint propagation algorithms. Reasoners based on this algebra have been put to use in several ways. For example, the planning system of Allen and Koomen [1983] relies heavily on the temporal algebra to perform reasoning about the ordering of actions. Elegant approaches such as this one may be compromised, however, by computational characteristics of the interval algebra. This paper concerns itself with these computational aspects of Allen’s algebra, and of a simpler algebra of time points. Our perspective here is primarily computation-theoretic. We approach the problem of temporal representation by asking questions of complexity and tractability. In this light, this paper examines Allen’s interval algebra, and the simpler algebra of time points. The bulk of the paper establishes some formal results about the temporal algebras. In brief these results are: l Determining consistency of statements in the interval algebra is NP-hard, as is determining all consequences of these statements. Allen’s polynomial-time constraint propagation algorithm is sound but not complete for these tasks. l In contrast, constraint propagation is sound and complete for computing consistency and consequences of assertions in the time point algebra. It operates in O(n3) time and O(n2) space. l A restricted form of the interval algebra can be formulated in terms of the time point algebra. Constraint propagation is sound and complete for this fragment. Throughout the paper, we consider how these formal results affect practical Artificial Intelligence programs. ‘This research was supported in part by the Defense Advanced Research Agency, under contracts NOOOl4-85-C-0079 and N-0001 4-77-C-0378. Projects The Interval Algebra Allen’s interval algebra has been described in detail in [Allen 831. In brief, the elements of the algebra are relations that may exist between intervals of time. Because the algebra allows for indefiniteness in temporal relations, it admits many possible relations between intervals (213 in fact). But all of these relations can be expressed as vectors of definite simple relations, of which there are only thirteen, 2 The thirteen simple relations, whose definitions appear in Figure 1, precisely characterize the relative starting and ending points of two temporal intervals. If the relation between two intervals is completely defined, then it can be exactly described with a simple relation. Alternatively, vectors of simple relations introduce indefiniteness in the description of how two temporal intervals relate. Vectors are interpreted as the disjunction of their constituent simple relations. A BEFORE B B AFTER A G--v* A MEETS B B MET-BY A A ,B /

Structured low-rank approximation and its applications <=SEP=> Fitting data by a bounded complexity linear model is equivalent to low-rank approximation of a matrix constructed from the data. The data matrix being Hankel structured is equivalent to the existence of a linear time-invariant system that fits the data and the rank constraint is related to a bound on the model complexity. In the special case of fitting by a static model, the data matrix and its low-rank approximation are unstructured. We outline applications in system theory (approximate realization, model reduction, output error, and errors-in-variables identification), signal processing (harmonic retrieval, sum-of-damped exponentials, and finite impulse response modeling), and computer algebra (approximate common divisor). Algorithms based on heuristics and local optimization methods are presented. Generalizations of the low-rank approximation problem result from different approximation criteria (e.g., weighted norm) and constraints on the data matrix (e.g., nonnegativity). Related problems are rank minimization and structured pseudospectra. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A novel ripple-based constant on-time control with virtual inductance and offset cancellation for DC power converters <=SEP=> In recent years, there has been a growing trend of mandating high power conversion efficiency, for both the heavy-load and the light-load conditions. To achieve this purpose, a ripple-based constant on-time (RBCOT) control for DC-DC converters has received wide attentions because of its natural characteristic of switching frequency reduction under light-load condition. However, a RBCOT converter suffers from output-voltage offset problem and sub-harmonic instability problem. In this paper, a modified RBCOT buck converter circuit will be proposed to solve both problems using the concept of virtual inductor current to stabilize the feedback and an offset cancellation circuit to cancel out the output DC offset. A control model based on describing function is also developed for the modified converter. From the model, it's found out that it's much easier to accomplish adaptive-voltage-positioning (AVP) using the proposed modified RBCOT scheme compared to a conventional constant-frequency controller. Simulation and experimental results are also given to verify the proposed scheme.

Unbiased scalable softmax optimization <=SEP=> Recent neural network and language models rely on softmax distributions with an extremely large number of categories. Since calculating the softmax normalizing constant in this context is prohibitively expensive, there is a growing literature of efficiently computable but biased estimates of the softmax. In this paper we propose the first unbiased algorithms for maximizing the softmax likelihood whose work per iteration is independent of the number of classes and datapoints (and no extra work is required at the end of each epoch). We show that our proposed unbiased methods comprehensively outperform the state-of-the-art on seven real world datasets.

Position sensing in brake-by-wire callipers using resolvers <=SEP=> Recent designs for brake-by-wire systems use "resolvers" to provide accurate and continuous measurements for the absolute position and speed of the rotor of the electric actuators in brake callipers (permanent magnet DC motors). Resolvers are absolute-angle transducers that are integrated with estimator modules called "angle tracking observer" and together they provide position and speed measurements. Current designs for angle-tracking observers are unstable in applications with high acceleration and/or speed. In this paper, we introduce a new angle-tracking observer in which a closed-loop linear time-invariant (LTI) observer is integrated with a quadrature encoder. Finite-gain stability of the proposed design and its robustness to three different kinds of parameter variations are proven based on theorems of input-output stability in nonlinear control theory. In our experiments, we examined the performance of our observer and two other methods (a well-known LTI observer and an extended Kalman filter) to estimate the position and speed of a brake-by-wire actuator. The results show that because of the very high speed and acceleration of the actuator in this application, the LTI observer and Kalman filter cannot track the rotor position and diverge. In contrast, with a properly designed open-loop transfer function and selecting a suitable switching threshold, our proposed angle-tracking observer is stable and highly accurate in a brake-by-wire application

Identifying the Information Structure of Scientific Abstracts: An Investigation of Three Different Schemes <=SEP=> Many practical tasks require accessing specific types of information in scientific literature; e.g. information about the objective, methods, results or conclusions of the study in question. Several schemes have been developed to characterize such information in full journal papers. Yet many tasks focus on abstracts instead. We take three schemes of different type and granularity (those based on section names, argumentative zones and conceptual structure of documents) and investigate their applicability to biomedical abstracts. We show that even for the finest-grained of these schemes, the majority of categories appear in abstracts and can be identified relatively reliably using machine learning. We discuss the impact of our results and the need for subsequent task-based evaluation of the schemes.

Derive: a tool that automatically reverse-engineers instruction encodings <=SEP=> Many binary tools, such as disassemblers, dynamic code generation systems, and executable code rewriters, need to understand how machine instructions are encoded. Unfortunately, specifying such encodings is tedious and error-prone. Users must typically specify thousands of details of instruction layout, such as opcode and field locations values, legal operands, and jump offset encodings. We have built a tool called DERIVE that extracts these details from existing software: the system assembler. Users need only provide the assembly syntax for the instructions for which they want encodings. DERIVE automatically reverse-engineers instruction encoding knowledge from the assembler by feeding it permutations of instructions and doing equation solving on the output.
DERIVE is robust and general. It derives instruction encodings for SPARC, MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, and x86. In the last case, it handles variable-sized instructions, large instructions, instruction encodings determined by operand size, and other CISC features. DERIVE is also remarkably simple: it is a factor of 6 smaller than equivalent, more traditional systems. Finally, its declarative specifications eliminate the mis-specification errors that plague previous approaches, such as illegal registers used as operands or incorrect field offsets and sizes. This paper discusses our current DERIVE prototype, explains how it computes instruction encodings, and also discusses the more general implications of the ability to extract functionality from installed software.

Multi-user lax communications: A multi-armed bandit approach <=SEP=> Inspired by cognitive radio networks, we consider a setting where multiple users share several channels modeled as a multi-user multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem. The characteristics of each channel are unknown and are different for each user. Each user can choose between the channels, but her success depends on the particular channel chosen as well as on the selections of other users: if two users select the same channel their messages collide and none of them manages to send any data. Our setting is fully distributed, so there is no central control. As in many communication systems, the users cannot set up a direct communication protocol, so information exchange must be limited to a minimum. We develop an algorithm for learning a stable configuration for the multi-user MAB problem. We further offer both convergence guarantees and experiments inspired by real communication networks, including comparison to state-of-the-art algorithms.

A Deep Learning Approach to Human Activity Recognition Based on Single Accelerometer <=SEP=> In this paper, we propose an acceleration-based human activity recognition method using popular deep architecture, Convolution Neural Network (CNN). In particular, we construct a CNN model and modify the convolution kernel to adapt the characteristics of tri-axial acceleration signals. Also, for comparison, we use some widely used methods to accomplish the recognition task on the same dataset. The large dataset we constructed consists of 31688 samples from eight typical activities. The experiment results show that the CNN works well, which can reach an average accuracy of 93.8% without any feature extraction methods.

SketchInsight: Natural data exploration on interactive whiteboards leveraging pen and touch interaction <=SEP=> In this work, we advance research efforts in combining the casual sketching approach of whiteboards with the machine's computing power. We present SketchInsight, a system that applies the familiar and collaborative features of a whiteboard interface to the accurate data exploration capabilities of interactive visualizations. SketchInsight enables data analysis with more fluid interaction, allowing people to visually explore their data by drawing simple charts and directly manipulating them. In addition, we report results from a qualitative study conducted to evaluate user experience in exploring data with SketchInsight, expanding our understanding on how people use a pen- and touch-enabled digital whiteboard for data exploration. We also discuss the challenges in building a working system that supports data analytic capabilities with pen and touch interaction and freeform annotation.

Spare parts inventory control : a literature review <=SEP=> Spare parts inventory are needed for maintenance and repair of final products, vehicles, industrial machines and equipments, frequently requiring high investments and significantly affecting customer satisfaction. Inventory management is complex due to the large number of different items and low demands. This article presents a literature review on single location spare parts inventory control, embracing both demand forecasting techniques and inventory control decisions on the different life cycle stages. Overall, the literature review identified the following research opportunities on inventory management: criteria to decide to stock or not an item, how much to order in the first and the last batch, demand forecasting and inventory control models integration and case studies on real applications.

Towards Deviceless Edge Computing: Challenges, Design Aspects, and Models for Serverless Paradigm at the Edge <=SEP=> Recently, Cloud Computing, Edge Computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have been converging ever stronger, sparking creation of very large-scale, geographically distributed systems [1, 2]. Such systems intensively exploit Cloud Computing models and technologies, predominantly by utilizing large and remote data centers, but also nearby Cloudlets [3, 4] to enhance resource-constrained Edge devices (e.g., in terms of computation offloading [5–7] and data staging [8]) or to provide an execution environment for cloud-centric IoT/Edge applications [9, 10]. Serverless computing is an emerging paradigm, typically referring to a software architecture where application is decomposed into “triggers” and “actions” (or functions), and there is a platform that provides seamless hosting and execution of developer-defined functions (FaaS), making it easy to develop, manage, scale, and operate them. This complexity mitigation is mainly achieved by incorporating sophisticated runtime mechanisms into serverless or FaaS platforms. Hence, such platforms are usually characterized by fully automating many of the management and operations processes. Therefore, serverless computing can be considered as the next step in the evolution of Cloud platforms, such as PaaS, or more generally of the utility computing. While originally designed for centralized cloud deployments, the benefits of serverless paradigm become especially evident in the context of Edge Computing [11]. This is mainly because in such systems, traditional infrastructure and application management solutions are tedious, ineffective, error-prone, and ultimately very costly. Luckily, some of the existing serverless techniques, such

Tensor-based approach to accelerate deformable part models <=SEP=> This article provides next step towards solving speed bottleneck of any system that intensively uses convolutions operations (e.g. CNN). Method described in the article is applied on deformable part models (DPM) algorithm. Method described here is based on multidimensional tensors and provides efficient tradeoff between DPM performance and accuracy. Experiments on various databases, including Pascal VOC, show that the proposed method allows decreasing a number of convolutions up to 4.5 times compared with DPM v.5, while maintaining similar accuracy. If insignificant accuracy degradation is allowable, higher computational gain can be achieved. The method consists of filters tensor decomposition and convolutions shortening using the decomposed filter. Mathematical overview of the proposed method as well as simulation results are provided.

New cardinality estimation algorithms for HyperLogLog sketches <=SEP=> This paper presents new methods to estimate the cardinalities of data sets recorded by HyperLogLog sketches. A theoretically motivated extension to the original estimator is presented that eliminates the bias for small and large cardinalities. Based on the maximum likelihood principle a second unbiased method is derived together with a robust and efficient numerical algorithm to calculate the estimate. The maximum likelihood approach can also be applied to more than a single HyperLogLog sketch. In particular, it is shown that it gives more precise cardinality estimates for union, intersection, or relative complements of two sets that are both represented by HyperLogLog sketches compared to the conventional technique using the inclusion-exclusion principle. All the new methods are demonstrated and verified by extensive simulations.

User activities outlier detection system using principal component analysis and fuzzy rule-based system <=SEP=> In this paper, a user activities outlier detection system is introduced. The proposed system is implemented in a smart home environment equipped with appropriate sensory devices. An activity outlier detection system consist of a two-stage integration of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Fuzzy Rule-Based System (FRBS). In the first stage, the Hamming distance is used to measure the distances between the activities. PCA is then applied to the distance measures to find two indices of Hotelling's T2 and Squared Prediction Error (SPE). In the second stage of the process, the calculated indices are provided as inputs to FRBSs to model them heuristically. They are used to identify the outliers and classify them. Three case studies are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system. The proposed system successfully identifies the outliers and helps in distinguishing between the normal and abnormal behaviour patterns of the Activities of Daily Living (ADL).

World ocean simulation system (WOSS): a simulation tool for underwater networks with realistic propagation modeling <=SEP=> Network simulators are a fundamental tool for the performance evaluation of protocols and applications in complex scenarios, which would be too expensive or infeasible to realize in practice.
 With the aim to provide a shared environment for the simulation of underwater networks we have adapted the ns2 network simulator to provide a detailed reproduction of the propagation of sound in water (i.e., by means of ray tracing instead of empirical relations). This has been tied to formerly available simulation frameworks (such as the MIRACLE extensions to ns2) to provide a completely customizable tool, including acoustic propagation, physical layer modeling, and cross-layer specification of networking protocols. In this paper, we describe our tool, and use it for a case study involving the comparison of three MAC protocols for underwater networks over different kinds of physical layers. Our results compare the transmission coordination approach chosen by each protocol, and show when it is better to rely on random access, as opposed to loose or tight coordination.

Dialectic Perspective on Innovation 1 A Dialectic Perspective on Innovation : Conflicting Demands , Multiple Pathways , and Ambidexterity <=SEP=> Innovation, the development and intentional introduction of new and useful ideas by individuals, teams, and organizations, lies at the heart of human adaptation. Decades of research in different disciplines and at different organizational levels have produced a wealth of knowledge about how innovation emerges and the factors that facilitate and inhibit innovation. We propose that this knowledge needs integration. In an initial step toward this goal, we apply a dialectic perspective on innovation to overcome limitations of dichotomous reasoning and to gain a more valid account of innovation. We point out that individuals, teams, and organizations need to self-regulate and manage conflicting demands of innovation and that multiple pathways can lead to idea generation and innovation. By scrutinizing the current use of the concept of organizational ambidexterity and extending it to individuals and teams, we develop a framework to help guide and facilitate future research and practice. Readers expecting specific and universal prescriptions of how to innovate will be disappointed as current research does not allow such inferences. Rather, we think innovation research should focus on developing and testing principles of innovation management in addition to developing decision aids for organizational practice. To this end, we put forward key propositions and action principles of innovation management. Dialectic Perspective on Innovation 3 A Dialectic Perspective on Innovation: Conflicting Demands, Multiple Pathways, and Ambidexterity Throughout this paper we use the term creativity for the generation of new and useful ideas and that of innovation to include both creative ideas and their implementation. Innovation can take different forms, including technological innovation, product and service innovation, and process innovation. The importance of innovation is widely acknowledged by organizational scholars, practitioners, and the wider society in an economic environment characterized by fierce competition, rapid change, and the global challenges of climate change and economic booms and busts. Decades of research have produced a wealth of knowledge about the characteristics of individuals, teams, and organizations that are related to outcomes of innovation (e.g., Anderson, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2004; Damanpour, 1991). Some of these findings converge around factors that have been reliably found to influence innovation, such as a shared vision, innovative organizational culture (Miron, Erez, & Naveh, 2004; Naveh & Erez, 2004), emphasis on exploration rather than exploitation, and investment in R&D (Zahra & George, 2002; Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). Findings with respect to other factors, such as team diversity (Gibson & Gibbs, 2006), task related conflict, monetary rewards (Amabile, 2000; Eisenberger & Rhoades, 2001) remain contradictory. While we think that the scientific understanding of innovation is an important endeavor in its own right, we also suggest that the impact of scientific knowledge about innovation can be improved in organizational practice. While many reasons may account for a lack of transfer of scientific knowledge to management practices, one reason may be that the scientific findings do not readily or easily produce actionable knowledge. On the other hand, simplistically inferring practical implications or trying to be overly prescriptive can do harm, particularly if the context of an individual, team, or organization is not Dialectic Perspective on Innovation 4 taken into account. We, therefore, chose to integrate empirical findings of the extant literature with an attempt to develop a set of broad principles of innovation management that can guide decision making and action in organizations. We base this integration on a perspective on innovation which we term “dialectic”; we present and develop this perspective below. Toward this goal we offer three contributions to the literature: • By developing and applying a dialectic perspective on innovation, we aim to gain a more valid account of innovation in organizations that can enrich research and practice. • By reviewing core findings about innovation we illustrate how multiple pathways can lead to idea generation and innovation. • By redefining and extending the concept of ambidexterity, we propose a cross-level framework for the successful management of inherently conflicting demands of innovation. Tensions of Innovation: Theoretical Perspectives A pervasive theme in research on organizational innovation is that innovation is characterized by tensions (Lewis, Welsh, Dehler, & Green, 2002), paradoxes (Miron et al., 2004), contradictions (King, Anderson, & West, 1991), dilemmas (Benner & Tushman, 2003), and the so-called “dark side” of innovation processes (Anderson & Gasteiger, 2007). Table 1 presents a number of examples of tensions related to innovation that have been noted in the published literature. We organize Table 1 by the referent level of the tension (individual, team, or organizational) and by whether the tension is primarily focused on antecedents of innovation or on innovative processes and outcomes. That tensions have been described frequently at all levels of analysis and with regard to antecedents, processes, and consequences of innovation provides Dialectic Perspective on Innovation 5 what we think is compelling evidence for their pervasiveness within organizations attempting to innovate. -----------------------------Insert Table 1 about here -----------------------------We propose with others that understanding and managing these tensions is central to successful innovation and use the terms conflicting demands and conflicting activities to refer to the origins of tensions, paradoxes, contradictions and dilemmas. In the following we contrast two theoretical perspectives and the strategies they imply for dealing with these tensions. One strategy deals with tensions by emphasizing the separation of conflicting activities to different sub-organizations or even different organizations altogether (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2004). The top management of the organization is responsible for the necessary integration of activities that produce the tensions. In a way, this strategy deals with tensions by reducing them as much as possible. This strategy derives from a dichotomous theory perspective (March, Sproull, & Tamuz, 1991). We contrast the dichotomous approach with a second theoretical perspective which argues that a strict separation of conflicting activities to sub-organizations leads to disadvantages. Given that a system has sufficient levels of internal complexity (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997), the tensions should be kept within the system to be managed rather than organized “out” of the system. Both the dichotomous (“keep separate”) and dialectic (“integrate and manage”) perspectives concur that the innovation process poses potentially conflicting task demands on individuals, teams, and organizations. By task demands we refer to the patterns of requisite Dialectic Perspective on Innovation 6 activity an individual, team, or organization must engage in to achieve an outcome. Innovation confronts individuals, teams, and organizations with fundamentally different demands in several important and unavoidable ways: First, the demands of innovation differ from the demands of routine performance. Whereas routine performance is based on the exploitation of knowledge, skills, and abilities that emphasize quality and efficiency criteria, innovation requires exploratory action and creative thinking. People and teams who need to be creative and innovative must crave newness and be curious, while people and teams who are supposed to produce efficiently must be able to close their minds to new ideas that just interrupt the clear pattern of existing routines and hinder the further development of those routines into ever more efficient production. Second, the innovation process itself encompasses different sets of activities, such as those related to idea generation and innovation implementation: These sets of activities are linked to different or conflicting antecedents. For instance, granting autonomy is linked to the generation of new ideas (Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004), while initiating structure is related to the success of implementing incremental innovation (Keller, 2006). Maximizing the conditions fostering creativity is unlikely to translate directly into innovation because innovation encompasses much more than idea generation. Indeed, the maximization of factors that facilitate the development of new ideas is likely to simultaneously cause conditions that may inhibit idea implementation, and thus innovation overall. For example, Xerox Parc developed many innovations in software design, PC hardware and PC connectivity. The creativity of this group was enormous. And these innovations were often implemented in products. However, Xerox made little economic use of these enormously creative new products that essentially were fed into innovations marketed by Apple and Microsoft (Bergin, 2006; Miller & Steinberg, 2006). Dialectic Perspective on Innovation 7 Third, in addition, there are different types of innovation: An innovation is incremental when it builds on and exploits existing products and processes; an innovation is radical or disruptive if it departs strongly from the status quo (Benner & Tushman, 2003). Incremental innovation leads to expected increases in mean levels of performance, while radical innovation creates variability in performance (potential for high losses or high returns). The expected level of returns is lower for radical than for incremental innovation (Taylor & Greve, 2006). We assume with others that for radical innovation the problem of conflicting task demands of innovation is more pronounced than for incremental innovation and the management of tensions is particularly challenging (Christensen, 1997). But even incremental inn

Mining Road Traffic Accident Data to Improve Safety: Role of Road-Related Factors on Accident Severity in Ethiopia <=SEP=> Road traffic accidents (RTAs) are a major public health concern, resulting in an estimated 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries worldwide each year. In the developing world, RTAs are among the leading cause of death and injury; Ethiopia in particular experiences the highest rate of such accidents. Thus, methods to reduce accident severity are of great interest to traffic agencies and the public at large. In this work, we applied data mining technologies to link recorded road characteristics to accident severity in Ethiopia, and developed a set of rules that could be used by the Ethiopian Traffic Agency to improve safety. Problem Statement The costs of fatalities and injuries due to road traffic accidents (RTAs) have a tremendous impact on societal well-being and socioeconomic development. RTAs are among the leading causes of death and injury worldwide, causing an estimated 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries each year (World Health Organization, 2004). Ethiopia has the highest rate of RTAs, owing to the fact that road transport is the major transportation system in the country. The Ethiopian traffic control system archives data on various aspects of the traffic system, such as traffic volume, concentration, and vehicle accidents. With more vehicles and traffic, the capital city of Addis Ababa takes the lion’s share of the risk, with an average of 20 accidents being recorded every day and even more going unreported. The basic hypothesis of this research is that accidents are not randomly scattered along the road network, and that drivers are not involved in accidents at random. There are complex circumstantial relationships between several characteristics (driver, road, car, etc.) and the accident occurrence. As such, one cannot improve safety without successfully relating accident frequency and severity to the causative variables (Kononov and Janson 2002). We will attempt to extend the authors’ previous work in this area by generating additional attributes and focusing on the contribution of road-related factors to accident severity in Ethiopia. This will help to identify the parts of a road that are risky, thus supporting traffic accident data analysis in decision-making processes. The general objective of the research is to investigate the role of road-related factors in accident severity, using RTA data from Ethiopia and predictive models. Our three specific objectives include: 1) exploring the underlying variables (especially road-related ones) that impact car accident severity, 2) predicting accident severity using different data mining techniques, and 3) comparing standard classification models for this task. Literature Review Various studies have addressed the different aspects of RTAs, with most focusing on predicting or establishing the critical factors influencing injury severity (Chong, A. et al. 2005). Numerous data mining-related studies have been undertaken to analyze RTA data locally and globally, with results frequently varying depending on the socio-economic conditions and infrastructure of a given location. Ossenbruggen, Pendharkar et al. (2001) used a logistic regression model to identify the prediction factors of crashes and crash-related injuries, using models to perform a risk assessment of a given region. These models included attributes describing a site by its land use activity, roadside design, use of traffic control devices, and traffic exposure. Their study illustrated that village sites were less hazardous than residential or shopping sites. Abdalla et al. (1997) also studied the relationship between casualty frequency and the distance of an accident from residential zones. Not surprisingly, casualty frequencies were higher in accidents that occurred nearer to residential zones, possibly due to higher exposure. The

A knowledge-based approach for duplicate elimination in data cleaning <=SEP=> Existing duplicate elimination methods for data cleaning work on the basis of computing the degree of similarity between nearby records in a sorted database. High recall can be achieved by accepting records with low degrees of similarity as duplicates, at the cost of lower precision. High precision can be achieved analogously at the cost of lower recall. This is the recall–precision dilemma. We develop a generic knowledge-based framework for effective data cleaning that can implement any existing data cleaning strategies and more. We propose a new method for computing transitive closure under uncertainty for dealing with the merging of groups of inexact duplicate records and explain why small changes to window sizes has little effect on the results of the sorted neighborhood method. Experimental study with two real-world datasets show that this approach can accurately identify duplicates and anomalies with high recall and precision, thus effectively resolving the recall–precision dilemma. r 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

Identifying Exoplanets with Deep Learning : A Five-planet Resonant Chain around Kepler-80 and an Eighth Planet around Kepler-90 <=SEP=> NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope was designed to determine the frequency of Earth-sized planets orbiting Sun-like stars, but these planets are on the very edge of the mission’s detection sensitivity. Accurately determining the occurrence rate of these planets will require automatically and accurately assessing the likelihood that individual candidates are indeed planets, even at low signal-to-noise ratios. We present a method for classifying potential planet signals using deep learning, a class of machine learning algorithms that have recently become state-of-theart in a wide variety of tasks. We train a deep convolutional neural network to predict whether a given signal is a transiting exoplanet or a false positive caused by astrophysical or instrumental phenomena. Our model is highly effective at ranking individual candidates by the likelihood that they are indeed planets: 98.8% of the time it ranks plausible planet signals higher than false-positive signals in our test set. We apply our model to a new set of candidate signals that we identified in a search of known Kepler multi-planet systems. We statistically validate two new planets that are identified with high confidence by our model. One of these planets is part of a five-planet resonant chain around Kepler-80, with an orbital period closely matching the prediction by three-body Laplace relations. The other planet orbits Kepler-90, a star that was previously known to host seven transiting planets. Our discovery of an eighth planet brings Kepler-90 into a tie with our Sun as the star known to host the most planets.

Fraud : The Affinity of Classification Techniques to Insurance Fraud Detection <=SEP=> Quite a large number of data mining techniques employed in financial fraud detection (FFD) are seen to be classification techniques. In this paper, we developed an algorithm to find the features of classification techniques (or method) that so much place it (classification techniques) in the heart of researchers in their various efforts in the study of insurance frauds detection. We also got to know the characteristics of insurance frauds data that made data mining classification techniques so much attracted to it (insurance data).

An Introduction to Restricted Boltzmann Machines <=SEP=> Restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs) are probabilistic graphical models that can be interpreted as stochastic neural networks. The increase in computational power and the development of faster learning algorithms have made them applicable to relevant machine learning problems. They attracted much attention recently after being proposed as building blocks of multi-layer learning systems called deep belief networks. This tutorial introduces RBMs as undirected graphical models. The basic concepts of graphical models are introduced first, however, basic knowledge in statistics is presumed. Different learning algorithms for RBMs are discussed. As most of them are based on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, an introduction to Markov chains and the required MCMC techniques is provided.

Automatic generation of buffer overflow attack signatures: an approach based on program behavior models <=SEP=> Buffer overflows have become the most common target for network-based attacks. They are also the primary mechanism used by worms and other forms of automated attacks. Although many techniques have been developed to prevent server compromises due to buffer overflows, these defenses still lead to server crashes. When attacks occur repeatedly, as is common with automated attacks, these protection mechanisms lead to repeated restarts of the victim application, rendering its service unavailable. To overcome this problem, we develop a new approach that can learn the characteristics of a particular attack, and filter out future instances of the same attack or its variants. By doing so, our approach significantly increases the availability of servers subjected to repeated attacks. The approach is fully automatic, does not require source code, and has low runtime overheads. In our experiments, it was effective against most attacks, and did not produce any false positives

Human detection in surveillance videos and its applications - a review <=SEP=> Detecting human beings accurately in a visual surveillance system is crucial for diverse application areas including abnormal event detection, human gait characterization, congestion analysis, person identification, gender classification and fall detection for elderly people. The first step of the detection process is to detect an object which is in motion. Object detection could be performed using background subtraction, optical flow and spatio-temporal filtering techniques. Once detected, a moving object could be classified as a human being using shape-based, texture-based or motion-based features. A comprehensive review with comparisons on available techniques for detecting human beings in surveillance videos is presented in this paper. The characteristics of few benchmark datasets as well as the future research directions on human detection have also been discussed.

Survey on Independent Component Analysis <=SEP=> A common problem encountered in such disciplines as statistics, data analysis, signal processing, and neural network research, is nding a suitable representation of multivariate data. For computational and conceptual simplicity, such a representation is often sought as a linear transformation of the original data. Well-known linear transformation methods include, for example, principal component analysis, factor analysis, and projection pursuit. A recently developed linear transformation method is independent component analysis (ICA), in which the desired representation is the one that minimizes the statistical dependence of the components of the representation. Such a representation seems to capture the essential structure of the data in many applications. In this paper, we survey the existing theory and methods for ICA.