14748203
A history sensitive cascade model in diffusion networks
Diffusion is a process by which information, viruses, ideas and new behavior spread over social networks. The traditional independent cascade model gives activated nodes a one-time chance to activate each of its neighboring nodes with some probability. This paper extends the traditional cascade model to be history dependent. We propose a new model called the History Sensitive Cascade Model (HSCM) that allows activated nodes to receive more than a one-time chance to activate their neighbors. HSCM provides 1) a polynomial algorithm for calculating the probability of activity for any arbitrary node at any arbitrary time in tree structure graphs, and 2) a Markov model for calculating the probability in general graphs. Finally, we perform an empirical study on HSCM under different network settings. These simulations have showed its power to observe and explain the emergent phenomena in the macro level when changing parameters in the micro level.
40423470
Proactive Communication in Observation-Based Agent Team Corporation
1229519
A decision-theoretic approach for designing proactive communication in multi-agent teamwork
Techniques that support effective communication during teamwork processes are of particular importance. Psychological study shows that an effective team often can anticipate information exchange among the team and communicate relevant information proactively. Proactive communication is crucial for understanding and sharing common goals and for cooperative actions. Communication can be valuable if it assists agents with new and timely information; it also has cost because it consumes network resources such as bandwidth. To address these issues, we present a new model that uses information production and need to capture the complex multi-agent communication process and a dynamic decision-theoretic determination of communication strategies. We also introduce a generic utility function and an algorithm, DTPC (Decision-Theoretic Proactive Communication), that focuses on representing information production and need of team members and resolving decision interactions among them for making decisions.
5679790
Proactive Information Exchange During Team Cooperation
We are concerned, ultimately, with multi-agent teams involving both software and human agents in which the software agents assist in training the humans, e.g., as virtual team members. The software agents must be capable of utilizing the teamwork mechanisms used by humans. In this paper, we describe how to give agents the same implicit communication capabilities, i.e., observation, that humans use. We show how agents can use observations of the environment and teammates' actions to estimate other agents beliefs without bothering them with unnecessary messages; we also show how agents can anticipate information needs among the team and proactively exchange information, reducing the total communication volume. To achieve these goals, we add sensing capabilities to agents and present algorithms that infer teammates' mental state from the observation. Experimental data is presented that shows that the advantage of observation in proactive information exchange as well as enhanced team performance.
35439746
Role-Based and Agent-Oriental Teamwork Modeling
2679883
Observation-based proactive communication in team cooperation
Observation and communication are important aspects of agent teamwork. We employ the agent's observability as the major means for individual agents to reason about the environment and other team members. We focus on how to represent agents' observability and how to include it into the basic reasoning for proactive communication. The syntax and the operational semantics of observability are given. Preliminary experiments are carried out to study the effectiveness of different aspects of observability.
18767986
Applying Hypothetical Queries to E-Commerce Systems to Support Reservation and Personal Preferences
Online travel continues to be one of the most successful e-commerce categories on the Internet. As increasing number of people book online, existing e-ticket systems can not satisfy customers' growing demand. Customers complain about most of the current e-ticket systems for the lack of "reservation" functionality. They also complain that these systems are not "intelligent" enough as a traditional travel agent who can deal with more complicated personal preferences. In this paper, we propose a transaction model for e-commerce system to support reservation functionality while balancing the benefits and risks of both customers and airlines. We introduce the theory of hypothetical query to avoid unnecessary transactions and rollbacks on underlying database. Hypothetical queries can be generated automatically and transformed into relational algebra queries which can be optimized with conventional techniques. We extend the lazy approach for evaluating hypothetical queries with integrity constraints to deal with customers' personal preferences. We also provide the "watch" and "remind" mechanism to help customers to purchase their most desirable tickets. Although we have chosen ticket booking system as our target application, the framework presented in this paper is also applicable to other e-commerce systems.
11500894
Using Reactive Deliberation for Real-Time Control of Soccer-Playing Robots
Soccer meets the requirements of the Situated Agent approach and as a task domain is sufficiently rich to support research integrating many branches of Al. Reactive deliberation is a robot architecture that combines responsiveness to the environment with intelligent decision making. Under Reactive Deliberation, the robot controller is partitioned into a deliberator and an executor; the distinction is primarily based on the different time scales of interaction. A controller for our team entry in the Robocup97 Simulation League, UBC Dynamo97, has been developed using the Reactive Deliberation architecture.
35901095
The Computational SLR: A Logic for Reasoning about Computational Indistinguishability
Computational indistinguishability is a notion in complexity-theoretic cryptography and is used to define many security criteria. However, in traditional cryptography, proving computational indistinguishability is usually informal and becomes error-prone when cryptographic constructions are complex. This paper presents a formal proof system based on an extension of Hofmann's SLR language, which can capture probabilistic polynomial-time computations through typing and is sufficient for expressing cryptographic constructions. We in particular define rules that justify directly the computational indistinguishability between programs and prove that these rules are sound with respect to the set-theoretic semantics, hence the standard definition of security. We also show that it is applicable in cryptography by verifying, in our proof system, Goldreich and Micali's construction of pseudorandom generator.
1131898
A Novel Spatial Autocorrelation Model of Shadow Fading in Urban Macro Environments
In this paper, we propose a novel spatial autocorrelation model of the shadow fading process in urban macro environments. The proposed model is based on the empirical results obtained from extensive wideband radio channel measurement campaigns at 2.35 GHz in an urban area of a typical medium-sized Chinese city. The shadow fading component was extracted assuming a single-slope log-distance path loss model. The consistency with the level crossing theory of Gaussian processes is achieved by an implicit constraint on the parameters of the model. The proposed model gives a better fit to the empirical results in individual measurement routes than the widely reported exponential and double exponential models. An heuristic explanation of the proposed autocorrelation property is also presented.
16395245
Hierarchical face modeling and fast 3D facial expression synthesis
This paper presents a new hierarchical facial model that conforms to the human anatomy for realistic and fast 3D facial expression synthesis. The facial model has a skin/muscle/skull structure. The deformable skin model uses a kind of nonlinear spring to directly simulate the nonlinear visco-elastic behavior of soft tissue, and a new kind of edge repulsion spring is developed to prevent model collapse. The incorporation of the skull extends the scope of facial motion and facilitates facial muscle construction. The construction of facial muscles is achieved by using an efficient muscle mapping approach that ensures different muscles to be located at the anatomically correct positions. For computational efficiency, we devise an adaptive simulation algorithm which uses either a semi-implicit integration scheme or a quasi-static solver to compute the relaxation by traversing the designed data structures in a breadth-first order. The algorithm runs in real-time and has successfully synthesized realistic facial expressions.