Towards hierarchical affiliation resolution: framework, baselines, dataset

Author affiliations provide key information when attributing academic performance like publication counts. So far, such measures have been aggregated either manually or only to top-level institutions, such as universities. Supervised affiliation resolution requires a large number of annotated alignments between affiliation strings and known institutions, which are not readily available. We introduce the task of unsupervised hierarchical affiliation resolution, which assigns affiliations to institutions on all hierarchy levels (e.g. departments), discovering the institutions as well as their hierarchical ordering on the fly. From the corresponding requirements, we derive a simple conceptual framework based on the subset partial order that can be extended to account for the discrepancies evident in realistic affiliations from the Web of Science. We implement initial baselines and provide datasets and evaluation metrics for experimentation. Results show that mapping affiliations to known institutions and discovering lower-level institutions works well with simple baselines, whereas unsupervised top-level- and hierarchical resolution is more challenging. Our work provides structured guidance for further in-depth studies and improved methodology by identifying and discussing a number of observed difficulties and important challenges that future work needs to address

Optimizing I/O for Big Array Analytics

Big array analytics is becoming indispensable in answering important scientific and business questions. Most analysis tasks consist of multiple steps, each making one or multiple passes over the arrays to be analyzed and generating intermediate results. In the big data setting, I/O optimization is a key to efficient analytics. In this paper, we develop a framework and techniques for capturing a broad range of analysis tasks expressible in nested-loop forms, representing them in a declarative way, and optimizing their I/O by identifying sharing opportunities. Experiment results show that our optimizer is capable of finding execution plans that exploit nontrivial I/O sharing opportunities with significant savings.Comment: VLDB201

On the complexity of strongly connected components in directed hypergraphs

We study the complexity of some algorithmic problems on directed hypergraphs and their strongly connected components (SCCs). The main contribution is an almost linear time algorithm computing the terminal strongly connected components (i.e. SCCs which do not reach any components but themselves). "Almost linear" here means that the complexity of the algorithm is linear in the size of the hypergraph up to a factor alpha(n), where alpha is the inverse of Ackermann function, and n is the number of vertices. Our motivation to study this problem arises from a recent application of directed hypergraphs to computational tropical geometry. We also discuss the problem of computing all SCCs. We establish a superlinear lower bound on the size of the transitive reduction of the reachability relation in directed hypergraphs, showing that it is combinatorially more complex than in directed graphs. Besides, we prove a linear time reduction from the well-studied problem of finding all minimal sets among a given family to the problem of computing the SCCs. Only subquadratic time algorithms are known for the former problem. These results strongly suggest that the problem of computing the SCCs is harder in directed hypergraphs than in directed graphs.Comment: v1: 32 pages, 7 figures; v2: revised version, 34 pages, 7 figure

A quantitative methodology for evaluating and deploying security monitors

Despite advances in intrusion detection and prevention systems, attacks on networked computer systems continue to succeed. Intrusion tolerance and forensic analysis are required to adequately detect and defend against attacks that succeed. Intrusion tolerance and forensic analysis techniques depend on monitors to collect information about possible attacks. Since monitoring can be expensive, however, monitors must be selectively deployed to maximize their overall utility. We identify a need for a methodology for evaluating monitor deployment to determine a placement of monitors that meets both security goals and cost constraints. In this thesis, we introduce a methodology both to quantitatively evaluate monitor deployments in terms of security goals and to deploy monitors optimally based on cost constraints. First, we define a system and data model that describes the system we aim to protect, the monitors that can be deployed, and the relationship between intrusions and data generated by monitors. Second, we define a set of quantitative metrics that both quantify the utility and richness of monitor data with respect to intrusion detection, and quantify the cost associated with monitor deployment. We describe how a practitioner could characterize intrusion detection requirements in terms of target values of our metrics. Finally, we use our data model and metrics to formulate a method to determine the cost-optimal, maximum-utility placement of monitors. We illustrate our approach throughout the thesis with a working example, and demonstrate its practicality and expressiveness with a case study based on an enterprise Web service architecture. The value of our approach comes from its ability to determine optimal monitor placements, which can be counterintuitive or difficult to find, for nearly any set of cost and intrusion detection parameters

Spectrum sharing and management techniques in mobile networks

Το φάσμα συχνοτήτων αποδεικνύεται σπάνιο κομμάτι για τους πόρους ενός κινητού δικτύου το οποίο πρέπει να ληφθεί υπόψιν στη σχεδίαση τηλεπικοινωνιακών συστημάτων 5ης γενιάς. Επιπλέον οι πάροχοι κινητών δικτύων θα πρέπει να επαναπροσδιορίσουν επιχειρησιακά μοντέλα τα οποία μέχρι τώρα δεν θεωρούνταν αναγκαία (π.χ., γνωσιακά ραδιοδίκτυα), ή να εξετάσουν την υιοθέτηση νέων μοντέλων που αναδεικνύονται (π.χ., αδειοδοτούμενη από κοινού πρόσβαση) ώστε να καλύψουν τις ολοένα αυξανόμενες ανάγκες για εύρος ζώνης. Ο μερισμός φάσματος θεωρείται αναπόφευκτος για συστήματα 5G και η διατριβή παρέχει λύση για προσαρμοστικό μερισμό φάσματος με πολλαπλά καθεστώτα εξουσιοδότησης, βάσει ενός καινοτόμου αρχιτεκτονικού πλαισίου το οποίο επιτρέπει στα δικτυακά στοιχεία να λαμβάνουν αποφάσεις για απόκτηση φάσματος. Η προτεινόμενη διαδικασία λήψης αποφάσεων είναι μία καινοτόμα τεχνική προσαρμοστικού μερισμού φάσματος βασιζόμενη σε ελεγκτές ασαφούς λογικής που καθορίζονν το καταλληλότερο σχήμα μερισμού φάσματος και σε ενισχυμένη μάθηση που ρυθμίζει τους κανόνες ασαφούς λογικής, στοχεύοντας να βρει τη βέλτιστη πολιτική που πρέπει να ακολουθεί ο πάροχος ώστε να προσφέρει την επιθυμητή ποιότητα υπηρεσιών στους χρήστες, διατηρώντας πόρους (οικονομικούς ή ραδιοπόρους) όπου είναι εφικτό. Η τελευταία συνεισφορά της διατριβής είναι ένας μηχανισμός που εξασφαλίζει δίκαιη πρόσβαση σε φάσμα ανάμεσα σε χρήστες σε σενάρια στα οποία η εκχώρηση άδειας χρήσης φάσματος δεν είναι προαπαιτούμενη.Radio spectrum has loomed out to be a scarce resource that needs to be carefully considered when designing 5G communication systems and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) will need to revisit business models that were not of their prior interest (e.g. Cognitive Radio) or consider adopting new business models that emerge (e.g. Licensed Shared Access) so as to cover the extended capacity needs. Spectrum sharing is considered unavoidable for 5G systems and this thesis provides a solution for adaptive spectrum sharing under multiple authorization regimes based on a novel architecture framework that enables network elements to proceed in decisions for spectrum acquisition. The decision making process for spectrum acquisition proposed is a novel Adaptive Spectrum Sharing technique that uses Fuzzy Logic controllers to determine the most suitable spectrum sharing option and reinforcement learning to tune the fuzzy logic rules, aiming to find an optimal policy that MNO should follow in order to offer the desirable Quality of Service to its users, while preserving resources (either economical, or radio) when possible. The final contribution of this thesis is a mechanism that ensures fair access to spectrum among the users in scenarios in which conveying spectrum license is not prerequisite

Desktop theater : automatic generation of expressive animation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1991.Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-135).by Steven Henry Strassmann.Ph.D

The Sixth Annual Workshop on Space Operations Applications and Research (SOAR 1992)

This document contains papers presented at the Space Operations, Applications, and Research Symposium (SOAR) hosted by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) on 4-6 Aug. 1992 and held at the JSC Gilruth Recreation Center. The symposium was cosponsored by the Air Force Material Command and by NASA/JSC. Key technical areas covered during the symposium were robotic and telepresence, automation and intelligent systems, human factors, life sciences, and space maintenance and servicing. The SOAR differed from most other conferences in that it was concerned with Government-sponsored research and development relevant to aerospace operations. The symposium's proceedings include papers covering various disciplines presented by experts from NASA, the USAF, universities, and industry