58,008 research outputs found
Adaptive Processing of Spatial-Keyword Data Over a Distributed Streaming Cluster
The widespread use of GPS-enabled smartphones along with the popularity of
micro-blogging and social networking applications, e.g., Twitter and Facebook,
has resulted in the generation of huge streams of geo-tagged textual data. Many
applications require real-time processing of these streams. For example,
location-based e-coupon and ad-targeting systems enable advertisers to register
millions of ads to millions of users. The number of users is typically very
high and they are continuously moving, and the ads change frequently as well.
Hence sending the right ad to the matching users is very challenging. Existing
streaming systems are either centralized or are not spatial-keyword aware, and
cannot efficiently support the processing of rapidly arriving spatial-keyword
data streams. This paper presents Tornado, a distributed spatial-keyword stream
processing system. Tornado features routing units to fairly distribute the
workload, and furthermore, co-locate the data objects and the corresponding
queries at the same processing units. The routing units use the Augmented-Grid,
a novel structure that is equipped with an efficient search algorithm for
distributing the data objects and queries. Tornado uses evaluators to process
the data objects against the queries. The routing units minimize the redundant
communication by not sending data updates for processing when these updates do
not match any query. By applying dynamically evaluated cost formulae that
continuously represent the processing overhead at each evaluator, Tornado is
adaptive to changes in the workload. Extensive experimental evaluation using
spatio-textual range queries over real Twitter data indicates that Tornado
outperforms the non-spatio-textually aware approaches by up to two orders of
magnitude in terms of the overall system throughput
Using 3D Voronoi grids in radiative transfer simulations
Probing the structure of complex astrophysical objects requires effective
three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulation of the relevant radiative transfer
(RT) processes. As with any numerical simulation code, the choice of an
appropriate discretization is crucial. Adaptive grids with cuboidal cells such
as octrees have proven very popular, however several recently introduced
hydrodynamical and RT codes are based on a Voronoi tessellation of the spatial
domain. Such an unstructured grid poses new challenges in laying down the rays
(straight paths) needed in RT codes. We show that it is straightforward to
implement accurate and efficient RT on 3D Voronoi grids. We present a method
for computing straight paths between two arbitrary points through a 3D Voronoi
grid in the context of a RT code. We implement such a grid in our RT code
SKIRT, using the open source library Voro++ to obtain the relevant properties
of the Voronoi grid cells based solely on the generating points. We compare the
results obtained through the Voronoi grid with those generated by an octree
grid for two synthetic models, and we perform the well-known Pascucci RT
benchmark using the Voronoi grid. The presented algorithm produces correct
results for our test models. Shooting photon packages through the geometrically
much more complex 3D Voronoi grid is only about three times slower than the
equivalent process in an octree grid with the same number of cells, while in
fact the total number of Voronoi grid cells may be lower for an equally good
representation of the density field. We conclude that the benefits of using a
Voronoi grid in RT simulation codes will often outweigh the somewhat slower
performance.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, accepted by A
A Neural Model of How the Brain Computes Heading from Optic Flow in Realistic Scenes
Animals avoid obstacles and approach goals in novel cluttered environments using visual information, notably optic flow, to compute heading, or direction of travel, with respect to objects in the environment. We present a neural model of how heading is computed that describes interactions among neurons in several visual areas of the primate magnocellular pathway, from retina through V1, MT+, and MSTd. The model produces outputs which are qualitatively and quantitatively similar to human heading estimation data in response to complex natural scenes. The model estimates heading to within 1.5Ā° in random dot or photo-realistically rendered scenes and within 3Ā° in video streams from driving in real-world environments. Simulated rotations of less than 1 degree per second do not affect model performance, but faster simulated rotation rates deteriorate performance, as in humans. The model is part of a larger navigational system that identifies and tracks objects while navigating in cluttered environments.National Science Foundation (SBE-0354378, BCS-0235398); Office of Naval Research (N00014-01-1-0624); National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NMA201-01-1-2016
Spatiotemporal adaptation through corticothalamic loops: A hypothesis
The thalamus is the major gate to the cortex and its control over cortical responses is well established. Cortical feedback to the thalamus is, in turn, the anatomically dominant input to relay cells, yet its influence on thalamic processing has been difficult to interpret. For an understanding of complex sensory processing, detailed concepts of the corticothalamic interplay need yet to be established. Drawing on various physiological and anatomical data, we elaborate the novel hypothesis that the visual cortex controls the spatiotemporal structure of cortical receptive fields via feedback to the lateral geniculate nucleus. Furthermore, we present and analyze a model of corticogeniculate loops that implements this control, and exhibit its ability of object segmentation by statistical motion analysis in the visual field
Efficient Spatial Keyword Search in Trajectory Databases
An increasing amount of trajectory data is being annotated with text
descriptions to better capture the semantics associated with locations. The
fusion of spatial locations and text descriptions in trajectories engenders a
new type of top- queries that take into account both aspects. Each
trajectory in consideration consists of a sequence of geo-spatial locations
associated with text descriptions. Given a user location and a
keyword set , a top- query returns trajectories whose text
descriptions cover the keywords and that have the shortest match
distance. To the best of our knowledge, previous research on querying
trajectory databases has focused on trajectory data without any text
description, and no existing work has studied such kind of top- queries on
trajectories. This paper proposes one novel method for efficiently computing
top- trajectories. The method is developed based on a new hybrid index,
cell-keyword conscious B-tree, denoted by \cellbtree, which enables us to
exploit both text relevance and location proximity to facilitate efficient and
effective query processing. The results of our extensive empirical studies with
an implementation of the proposed algorithms on BerkeleyDB demonstrate that our
proposed methods are capable of achieving excellent performance and good
scalability.Comment: 12 page
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