Improved Tradeoffs for Leader Election

We consider leader election in clique networks, where $n$ nodes are connected by point-to-point communication links. For the synchronous clique under simultaneous wake-up, i.e., where all nodes start executing the algorithm in round $1$, we show a tradeoff between the number of messages and the amount of time. More specifically, we show that any deterministic algorithm with a message complexity of $n f(n)$ requires $\Omega\left(\frac{\log n}{\log f(n)+1}\right)$ rounds, for $f(n) = \Omega(\log n)$. Our result holds even if the node IDs are chosen from a relatively small set of size $\Theta(n\log n)$, as we are able to avoid using Ramsey's theorem. We also give an upper bound that improves over the previously-best tradeoff. Our second contribution for the synchronous clique under simultaneous wake-up is to show that $\Omega(n\log n)$ is in fact a lower bound on the message complexity that holds for any deterministic algorithm with a termination time $T(n)$. We complement this result by giving a simple deterministic algorithm that achieves leader election in sublinear time while sending only $o(n\log n)$ messages, if the ID space is of at most linear size. We also show that Las Vegas algorithms (that never fail) require $\Theta(n)$ messages. For the synchronous clique under adversarial wake-up, we show that $\Omega(n^{3/2})$ is a tight lower bound for randomized $2$-round algorithms. Finally, we turn our attention to the asynchronous clique: Assuming adversarial wake-up, we give a randomized algorithm that achieves a message complexity of $O(n^{1 + 1/k})$ and an asynchronous time complexity of $k+8$. For simultaneous wake-up, we translate the deterministic tradeoff algorithm of Afek and Gafni to the asynchronous model, thus partially answering an open problem they pose

Global parameter identification of stochastic reaction networks from single trajectories

We consider the problem of inferring the unknown parameters of a stochastic biochemical network model from a single measured time-course of the concentration of some of the involved species. Such measurements are available, e.g., from live-cell fluorescence microscopy in image-based systems biology. In addition, fluctuation time-courses from, e.g., fluorescence correlation spectroscopy provide additional information about the system dynamics that can be used to more robustly infer parameters than when considering only mean concentrations. Estimating model parameters from a single experimental trajectory enables single-cell measurements and quantification of cell--cell variability. We propose a novel combination of an adaptive Monte Carlo sampler, called Gaussian Adaptation, and efficient exact stochastic simulation algorithms that allows parameter identification from single stochastic trajectories. We benchmark the proposed method on a linear and a non-linear reaction network at steady state and during transient phases. In addition, we demonstrate that the present method also provides an ellipsoidal volume estimate of the viable part of parameter space and is able to estimate the physical volume of the compartment in which the observed reactions take place.Comment: Article in print as a book chapter in Springer's "Advances in Systems Biology

An introspective algorithm for the integer determinant

We present an algorithm computing the determinant of an integer matrix A. The algorithm is introspective in the sense that it uses several distinct algorithms that run in a concurrent manner. During the course of the algorithm partial results coming from distinct methods can be combined. Then, depending on the current running time of each method, the algorithm can emphasize a particular variant. With the use of very fast modular routines for linear algebra, our implementation is an order of magnitude faster than other existing implementations. Moreover, we prove that the expected complexity of our algorithm is only O(n^3 log^{2.5}(n ||A||)) bit operations in the dense case and O(Omega n^{1.5} log^2(n ||A||) + n^{2.5}log^3(n||A||)) in the sparse case, where ||A|| is the largest entry in absolute value of the matrix and Omega is the cost of matrix-vector multiplication in the case of a sparse matrix.Comment: Published in Transgressive Computing 2006, Grenade : Espagne (2006