Coded Caching for Delay-Sensitive Content

Coded caching is a recently proposed technique that achieves significant performance gains for cache networks compared to uncoded caching schemes. However, this substantial coding gain is attained at the cost of large delivery delay, which is not tolerable in delay-sensitive applications such as video streaming. In this paper, we identify and investigate the tradeoff between the performance gain of coded caching and the delivery delay. We propose a computationally efficient caching algorithm that provides the gains of coding and respects delay constraints. The proposed algorithm achieves the optimum performance for large delay, but still offers major gains for small delay. These gains are demonstrated in a practical setting with a video-streaming prototype.Comment: 9 page

SOTXTSTREAM: Density-based self-organizing clustering of text streams

A streaming data clustering algorithm is presented building upon the density-based selforganizing stream clustering algorithm SOSTREAM. Many density-based clustering algorithms are limited by their inability to identify clusters with heterogeneous density. SOSTREAM addresses this limitation through the use of local (nearest neighbor-based) density determinations. Additionally, many stream clustering algorithms use a two-phase clustering approach. In the first phase, a micro-clustering solution is maintained online, while in the second phase, the micro-clustering solution is clustered offline to produce a macro solution. By performing self-organization techniques on micro-clusters in the online phase, SOSTREAM is able to maintain a macro clustering solution in a single phase. Leveraging concepts from SOSTREAM, a new density-based self-organizing text stream clustering algorithm, SOTXTSTREAM, is presented that addresses several shortcomings of SOSTREAM. Gains in clustering performance of this new algorithm are demonstrated on several real-world text stream datasets

United we fall, divided we stand: A study of query segmentation and PRF for patent prior art search

Previous research in patent search has shown that reducing queries by extracting a few key terms is ineffective primarily because of the vocabulary mismatch between patent applications used as queries and existing patent documents. This finding has led to the use of full patent applications as queries in patent prior art search. In addition, standard information retrieval (IR) techniques such as query expansion (QE) do not work effectively with patent queries, principally because of the presence of noise terms in the massive queries. In this study, we take a new approach to QE for patent search. Text segmentation is used to decompose a patent query into selfcoherent sub-topic blocks. Each of these much shorted sub-topic blocks which is representative of a specific aspect or facet of the invention, is then used as a query to retrieve documents. Documents retrieved using the different resulting sub-queries or query streams are interleaved to construct a final ranked list. This technique can exploit the potential benefit of QE since the segmented queries are generally more focused and less ambiguous than the full patent query. Experiments on the CLEF-2010 IP prior-art search task show that the proposed method outperforms the retrieval effectiveness achieved when using a single full patent application text as the query, and also demonstrates the potential benefits of QE to alleviate the vocabulary mismatch problem in patent search

Shared Arrangements: practical inter-query sharing for streaming dataflows

Current systems for data-parallel, incremental processing and view maintenance over high-rate streams isolate the execution of independent queries. This creates unwanted redundancy and overhead in the presence of concurrent incrementally maintained queries: each query must independently maintain the same indexed state over the same input streams, and new queries must build this state from scratch before they can begin to emit their first results. This paper introduces shared arrangements: indexed views of maintained state that allow concurrent queries to reuse the same in-memory state without compromising data-parallel performance and scaling. We implement shared arrangements in a modern stream processor and show order-of-magnitude improvements in query response time and resource consumption for interactive queries against high-throughput streams, while also significantly improving performance in other domains including business analytics, graph processing, and program analysis

Abridged Petri Nets

A new graphical framework, Abridged Petri Nets (APNs) is introduced for bottom-up modeling of complex stochastic systems. APNs are similar to Stochastic Petri Nets (SPNs) in as much as they both rely on component-based representation of system state space, in contrast to Markov chains that explicitly model the states of an entire system. In both frameworks, so-called tokens (denoted as small circles) represent individual entities comprising the system; however, SPN graphs contain two distinct types of nodes (called places and transitions) with transitions serving the purpose of routing tokens among places. As a result, a pair of place nodes in SPNs can be linked to each other only via a transient stop, a transition node. In contrast, APN graphs link place nodes directly by arcs (transitions), similar to state space diagrams for Markov chains, and separate transition nodes are not needed. Tokens in APN are distinct and have labels that can assume both discrete values ("colors") and continuous values ("ages"), both of which can change during simulation. Component interactions are modeled in APNs using triggers, which are either inhibitors or enablers (the inhibitors' opposites). Hierarchical construction of APNs rely on using stacks (layers) of submodels with automatically matching color policies. As a result, APNs provide at least the same modeling power as SPNs, but, as demonstrated by means of several examples, the resulting models are often more compact and transparent, therefore facilitating more efficient performance evaluation of complex systems.Comment: 17 figure