11635081
Cost-Aware Caching Algorithms for Distributed Storage Servers
We study replacement algorithms for non-uniform access caches that are used in distributed storage systems. Considering access latencies as major costs of data management in such a system, we show that the total cost of any replacement algorithm is bounded by the total costs of evicted blocks plus the total cost of the optimal off-line algorithm (OPT). We propose two off-line heuristics: MIN-d and MIN-cod, as well as an on-line algorithm: HD-cod, which can be run efficiently and perform well at the same time. 
 
Our simulation results with Storage Performance Council (SPC)'s storage server traces show that: (1) for off-line workloads, MIN-cod performs as well as OPT in some cases, all is atmost three times worse in all test case; (2) for on-line workloads, HD-cod performs closely to the best algorithms in all cases, and is the single algorithm that performs well in all test cases, including the optimal on-line algorithm (Landlord). Our study suggests that the essential issue to be considered be the trade-off between the costs of victim blocks and the total number of evictions in order to effectively optimize both efficiency and performance of distributed storage cache replacement algorithms.
14878951
The orienteering problem in the plane revisited
We consider the <i>orienteering problem</i>: Given a set <i>P</i> of <i>n</i> points in the plane, a starting point <i>r</i> ∈ <i>P</i>, and a length constraint <i>B</i>, one needs to find a tour starting at <i>r</i> that visits as many points of <i>P</i> as possible and of length not exceeding <i>B</i>. We present a (1−ε)-approximation algorithm for this problem that runs in <i>n</i><sup><i>O</i>(1/ε)</sup> time, and visits at least (1−ε)<i>k</i><sub>opt</sub> points of <i>P</i>, where <i>k</i><sub>opt</sub> is the number of points visited by the optimal solution. This is the first polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS) for this problem. The algorithm also works in higher dimensions.
618005
Online conflict-free coloring for halfplanes, congruent disks, and axis-parallel rectangles
We present randomized algorithms for online conflict-free coloring (CF in short) of points in the plane, with respect to halfplanes, congruent disks, and nearly-equal axis-parallel rectangles. In all three cases, the coloring algorithms use O(log n) colors, with high probability.
 We also present a deterministic algorithm for online CF coloring of points in the plane with respect to nearly-equal axis-parallel rectangles, using O(log3n) colors. This is the first efficient (i.e, using polylog(n) colors) deterministic online CF coloring algorithm for this problem.
16722943
The Euclidean Orienteering Problem Revisited
We consider the rooted orienteering problem: Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, a starting point $r \in P$, and a length constraint $B$, one needs to find a path starting from $r$ that visits as many points of $P$ as possible and of length not exceeding $B$. We present a $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm for this problem that runs in $n^{O(1/\varepsilon)}$ time; the computed path visits at least $ (1-\varepsilon)k_{\mathrm{opt}}$ points of $P$, where $k_{\mathrm{opt}}$ is the number of points visited by an optimal solution. This is the first polynomial time approximation scheme for this problem. The algorithm also works in higher dimensions.
6083596
Improved learning algorithms for mixture of experts in multiclass classification
Mixture of experts (ME) is a modular neural network architecture for supervised learning. A double-loop Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm has been introduced to the ME architecture for adjusting the parameters and the iteratively reweighted least squares (IRLS) algorithm is used to perform maximization in the inner loop [Jordan, M.I., Jacobs, R.A. (1994). Hierarchical mixture of experts and the EM algorithm, Neural Computation, 6(2), 181-214]. However, it is reported in literature that the IRLS algorithm is of instability and the ME architecture trained by the EM algorithm, where IRLS algorithm is used in the inner loop, often produces the poor performance in multiclass classification. In this paper, the reason of this instability is explored. We find out that due to an implicitly imposed incorrect assumption on parameter independence in multiclass classification, an incomplete Hessian matrix is used in that IRLS algorithm. Based on this finding, we apply the Newton-Raphson method to the inner loop of the EM algorithm in the case of multiclass classification, where the exact Hessian matrix is adopted. To tackle the expensive computation of the Hessian matrix and its inverse, we propose an approximation to the Newton-Raphson algorithm based on a so-called generalized Bernoulli density. The Newton-Raphson algorithm and its approximation have been applied to synthetic data, benchmark, and real-world multiclass classification tasks. For comparison, the IRLS algorithm and a quasi-Newton algorithm called BFGS have also been applied to the same tasks. Simulation results have shown that the use of the proposed learning algorithms avoids the instability problem and makes the ME architecture produce good performance in multiclass classification. In particular, our approximation algorithm leads to fast learning. In addition, the limitation of our approximation algorithm is also empirically investigated in this paper.
24158595
A Fractal Watermark Solution for Product Data
Copyright and integrity protection over product data is becoming an urgent requirement, because in a Distributed Networked Manufacturing environment, enterprises have to interact with each other to share product data. In this paper, we introduce a novel watermarking solution for product data based on the idea of fractal, which classifies product data watermarks into three tiers: fractal watermark, tree-structure watermark, and tree-node watermark. It embeds watermarks not only in value-carrying nodes but also in product structures that "glue" all the nodes together by embedding multiple structure watermarks in product data. Simulation results show that the proposed technique is robust against various forms of malicious attacks of product data, and naturally immune from structure transformation attacks and subtractive (sub-tree) attacks. Moreover, the solution can protect tree-structure data whose knowledge is mainly embodied in the tree structure efficiently. It is very easy to implement and popularize.
17327326
UBM-based incremental speaker adaptation
This paper addresses a novel algorithm of incremental speaker adaptation (ISA) based on universal background model (UBM) for saving storage and real-time processing. This algorithm can be seen as an extension of traditional speaker adaptation. It consists of two steps, adaptation and combination. It not only considers the speaker's characteristics in limited training data, but also prohibits over-fitting of the updated model. The incremental adaptation algorithm needs little storage and meets the requirement of real-time processing. In order to evaluate the efficiency and effectivity of the proposed approach, a real-time speaker segmentation system for broadcasting news is built. Experiment results demonstrate that our approach yields real time operation and achieves satisfactory performance.
2074142
Prediction of protein structural class using novel evolutionary collocation-based sequence representation
Knowledge of structural classes is useful in understanding of folding patterns in proteins. Although existing structural class prediction methods applied virtually all state-of-the-art classifiers, many of them use a relatively simple protein sequence representation that often includes amino acid (AA) composition. To this end, we propose a novel sequence representation that incorporates evolutionary information encoded using PSI-BLAST profile-based collocation of AA pairs. We used six benchmark datasets and five representative classifiers to quantify and compare the quality of the structural class prediction with the proposed representation. The best, classifier support vector machine achieved 61-96% accuracy on the six datasets. These predictions were comprehensively compared with a wide range of recently proposed methods for prediction of structural classes. Our comprehensive comparison shows superiority of the proposed representation, which results in error rate reductions that range between 14% and 26% when compared with predictions of the best-performing, previously published classifiers on the considered datasets. The study also shows that, for the benchmark dataset that includes sequences characterized by low identity (i.e., 25%, 30%, and 40%), the prediction accuracies are 20-35% lower than for the other three datasets that include sequences with a higher degree of similarity. In conclusion, the proposed representation is shown to substantially improve the accuracy of the structural class prediction. A web server that implements the presented prediction method is freely available at http://biomine.ece.ualberta.ca/Structural_Class/SCEC.html.
12408273
Multilevel algorithm for a Poisson noise removal model with total-variation regularization
Many commonly used models for the fundamental image processing task of noise removal can deal with Gaussian white noise. However, such Gaussian models are not effective in restoring images with Poisson noise, which is ubiquitous in certain applications. Recently, Le–Chartrand–Asaki derived a new data-fitting term in the variational model for Poisson noise. This paper proposes a multilevel algorithm for efficiently solving this variational model. As expected of a multilevel method, it delivers the same numerical solution many orders of magnitude faster than the standard single-level method of coordinate descent time-marching. Supporting numerical experiments on 2D gray scale images are presented.