Formal concept analysis based user model for distributed systems

User profile has contributed to customize user access and adjusts applications to its needs. In this respect, automatically building of user profiles issue is an important research area. Nevertheless, standardizing these profiles in terms of representation and acquisition schemes, more especially in large scale systems like Peer-to-Peer systems (P2P), is a complex task. In this paper, we introduce a distributed user profile modelling approach based on user search topics history without the need of any external knowledge resource (e.g., ontology). This model learns from past interests to guess correlations between user requests, associated topics, relevant documents and nodes (i.e., peers) to enhance any information retrieval process. The solution is based on an extension of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) theory. We also study, the integration of our model in query routing (i.e., content discovery) and results aggregation processes for P2P systems. Carried out experiments, performed under a P2P simulator environment, showed that our model outperforms its competitors in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.     

AVCOL: Availability-aware information aggregation in large distributed systems under uncollaborative behavior

Aggregation of system-wide information in large-scale distributed systems, such as p2p systems and Grids, can be unfairly influenced by nodes that are selfish, colluding with each other, or are offline most of the time. We present AVCOL, which uses probabilistic and gossip-style techniques to provide availability-aware aggregation. Concretely, AVCOL is the first aggregation system that: (1) implements any (arbitrary) global predicate that explicitly specifies any node’s probability of inclusion in the global aggregate, as a mathematical function of that node’s availability (i.e., percentage time online); (2) probabilistically tolerates large numbers of selfish nodes and large groups of colluders; and (3) scales well with hundreds to thousands of nodes. AVCOL uses several unique design decisions: per-aggregation tree construction where nodes are allowed a limited but flexible probabilistic choice of parents or children, probabilistic aggregation along trees, and auditing of nodes both during aggregation as well as in gossip-style (i.e., periodically). We have implemented AVCOL, and we experimentally evaluated it using real-life churn traces. Our evaluation and our mathematical analysis show that AVCOL satisfies arbitrary predicates, scales well, and withstands a variety of selfish and colluding attacks.     

Efficient and Scalable Consistency Maintenance for Heterogeneous Peer-to-Peer Systems

Consistency maintenance mechanism is necessary for the emerging Peer-to-Peer applications due to their frequent data updates. Centralized approaches suffer single point of failure, while previous decentralized approaches incur too many duplicate update messages because of locality-ignorant structures. To address this issue, we propose a scalable and efficient consistency maintenance scheme for heterogeneous P2P systems. Our scheme takes the heterogeneity nature into account and forms the replica nodes of a key into a locality-aware hierarchical structure, in which the upper layer is DHT-based and consists of powerful and stable replica nodes, while a replica node at the lower layer attaches to a physically close upper layer node. A d-ary update message propagation tree (UMPT) is dynamically built upon the upper layer for propagating the updated contents. As a result, the tree structure does not need to be maintained all the time, sav-ing a lot of cost. Through theoretical analyses and comprehensive simulations, we examine the efficiency and scalability of this design. The results show that, compared with previous designs, especially locality-ignorant ones, our approach is able to reduce the cost by about 25-67 percent.     

Automatic Animation for Time‐Varying Data Visualization

This paper presents a digital storytelling approach that generates automatic animations for time‐varying data visualization. Our approach simulates the composition and transition of storytelling techniques and synthesizes animations to describe various event features. Specifically, we analyze information related to a given event and abstract it as an event graph, which represents data features as nodes and event relationships as links. This graph embeds a tree‐like hierarchical structure which encodes data features at different scales. Next, narrative structures are built by exploring starting nodes and suitable search strategies in this graph. Different stages of narrative structures are considered in our automatic rendering parameter decision process to generate animations as digital stories. We integrate this animation generation approach into an interactive exploration process of time‐varying data, so that more comprehensive information can be provided in a timely fashion. We demonstrate with a storm surge application that our approach allows semantic visualization of time‐varying data and easy animation generation for users without special knowledge about the underlying visualization techniques.     

Hierarchical edge bundles: visualization of adjacency relations in hierarchical data

A compound graph is a frequently encountered type of data set. Relations are given between items, and a hierarchy is defined on the items as well. We present a new method for visualizing such compound graphs. Our approach is based on visually bundling the adjacency edges, i.e., non-hierarchical edges, together. We realize this as follows. We assume that the hierarchy is shown via a standard tree visualization method. Next, we bend each adjacency edge, modeled as a B-spline curve, toward the polyline defined by the path via the inclusion edges from one node to another. This hierarchical bundling reduces visual clutter and also visualizes implicit adjacency edges between parent nodes that are the result of explicit adjacency edges between their respective child nodes. Furthermore, hierarchical edge bundling is a generic method which can be used in conjunction with existing tree visualization techniques. We illustrate our technique by providing example visualizations and discuss the results based on an informal evaluation provided by potential users of such visualizations     

无线传感器网络中基于最小延时的数据汇集树构建与传输调度算法

无线传感器网络的数据通信模式问题是目前的研究热点,针对现有的无线传感器网络数据汇集算法延时较大这一不足,对最小延时数据汇集树和传输调度问题进行了研究。提出一种基于度约束的汇集树构建算法(DCAT)。该算法按照 BFS 方式遍历图,当遍历到每个节点时,通过确定哪些节点与汇点更近来确定潜在母节点集合。然后,选择图中度数最小的潜在母节点作为当前被遍历节点的母节点。此外,为了在给定的汇集树上进行高效地数据汇集,还提出两种新的基于贪婪的TDMA传输调度算法：WIRES-G 和 DCAT-Greedy。利用随机生成的不同规模的传感器网络,参照当前最新算法,对文中方法的性能进行了全面评估。结果表明,与当前最优算法相比,文中调度算法与文中汇集树构建算法结合起来,可显著降低数据汇集的延时。     

Approximation algorithm for constructing data aggregation trees for wireless sensor networks

This paper considers the problem of constructing data aggregation trees in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for a group of sensor nodes to send collected information to a single sink node. The data aggregation tree contains the sink node, all the source nodes, and some other non-source nodes. Our goal of constructing such a data aggregation tree is to minimize the number of non-source nodes to be included in the tree so as to save energies. We prove that the data aggregation tree problem is NP-hard and then propose an approximation algorithm with a performance ratio of four and a greedy algorithm. We also give a distributed version of the approximation algorithm. Extensive simulations are performed to study the performance of the proposed algorithms. The results show that the proposed algorithms can find a tree of a good approximation to the optimal tree and has a high degree of scalability.     

Approximation algorithm for constructing data aggregation trees for wireless sensor networks

This paper considers the problem of constructing data aggregation trees in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for a group of sensor nodes to send collected information to a single sink node. The data aggregation tree contains the sink node, all the source nodes, and some other non-source nodes. Our goal of constructing such a data aggregation tree is to minimize the number of non-source nodes to be included in the tree so as to save energies. We prove that the data aggregation tree problem is NP-hard and then propose an approximation algorithm with a performance ratio of four and a greedy algorithm. We also give a distributed version of the approximation algorithm. Extensive simulations are performed to study the performance of the proposed algorithms. The results show that the proposed algorithms can find a tree of a good approximation to the optimal tree and has a high degree of scalability.     

多QoS约束的层次多播路由算法框架

为了解决网络路由的扩展性问题。大型网络通常被划分成若干个不同的域。拓扑聚集是对这些域的拓扑状态信息进行汇总的过程。在拓扑聚集的基础上,QoS层次多播路由算法用来构造满足QoS要求的域闻多播树。现有的QoS层次多播路由算法在其拓扑聚集和路径计算的过程中都只考虑了存在两个QoS特征值的情况。本文提出了一种具有多QoS约束的层次多播路由算法框架HMRMQ（Hierarchical Multicast Routing with Multiple QoS constraints）,此算法框架不仅为基于多QoS特征值的拓扑状态聚集和状态信息表示提供了新的方法,而且提出了一种适应于多QoS约束的层次多播路由新算法。我们提出的状态信息表示法和拓扑聚集算法都具有很好的扩展性,分布式的路由算法也便于某些安全性策略的实施。理论分析和实验结果不仅证明了HMRMQ的正确性和有效性,同时也表明了HMRMQ在网络路由的扩展性、路由成功率、网络代价以及报文负载等方面都具有良好的性能。     

Peer-to-peer systems for discovering resources in a dynamic grid

The convergence of the Grid and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) worlds has led to many solutions that try to efficiently solve the problem of resource discovery on Grids. Some of these solutions are extensions of P2P DHT-based networks. We believe that these systems are not flexible enough when the indexed data are very dynamic, i.e., the values of the resource attributes change very frequently over time. This is a common case for Grid metadata, like CPU loads, queue occupation, etc. Moreover, since common requests for Grid resources may be expressed as multi-attribute range queries, we think that the DHT-based P2P solutions are poorly flexible and efficient in handling them.In this paper we present two P2P systems. Both are based on Routing Indexes, which are used to efficiently route queries and update messages in the presence of highly variable data. The first system uses a tree-shaped overlay network. The second one is an evolution of the first, and is based on a two-level hierarchical network topology, where tree topologies must only be maintained at the lower level of the hierarchy, i.e., within the various node groups making up the network. The main goal of the second organization is to achieve a simpler maintenance of the overall P2P graph topology, by preserving the good properties of the tree-shaped topology.We discuss the results of extensive simulation studies aimed at assessing the performance and scalability of the proposed approaches. We also analyze how the network topologies affect the propagation of query and update messages.     

Hierarchical Fusion of Multiple Classifiers for Hyperspectral Data Analysis

Many classification problems involve high dimensional inputs and a large number of classes. Multiclassifier fusion approaches to such difficult problems typically centre around smart feature extraction, input resampling methods, or input space partitioning to exploit modular learning. In this paper, we investigate how partitioning of the output space (i.e. the set of class labels) can be exploited in a multiclassifier fusion framework to simplify such problems and to yield better solutions. Specifically, we introduce a hierarchical technique to recursively decompose a C-class problem into C_1 two-(meta) class problems. A generalised modular learning framework is used to partition a set of classes into two disjoint groups called meta-classes. The coupled problems of finding a good partition and of searching for a linear feature extractor that best discriminates the resulting two meta-classes are solved simultaneously at each stage of the recursive algorithm. This results in a binary tree whose leaf nodes represent the original C classes. The proposed hierarchical multiclassifier framework is particularly effective for difficult classification problems involving a moderately large number of classes. The proposed method is illustrated on a problem related to classification of landcover using hyperspectral data: a 12-class AVIRIS subset with 180 bands. For this problem, the classification accuracies obtained were superior to most other techniques developed for hyperspectral classification. Moreover, the class hierarchies that were automatically discovered conformed very well with human domain experts’ opinions, which demonstrates the potential of using such a modular learning approach for discovering domain knowledge automatically from data. Received: 21 November 2000, Received in revised form: 02 November 2001, Accepted: 13 December 2001     

Transitive node similarity: predicting and recommending links in signed social networks

Online social networks (OSNs) like Facebook, Myspace, and Hi5 have become popular, because they allow users to easily share content. OSNs recommend new friends to registered users based on local features of the graph (i.e., based on the number of common friends that two users share). However, OSNs do not exploit the whole structure of the network. Instead, they consider only pathways of maximum length 2 between a user and his candidate friends. On the other hand, there are global approaches, which detect the overall path structure in a network, being computationally prohibitive for huge-size social networks. In this paper, we define a basic node similarity measure that captures effectively local graph features (i.e., by measuring proximity between nodes). We exploit global graph features (i.e., by weighting paths that connect two nodes) introducing transitive node similarity. We also derive variants of our method that apply to different types of networks (directed/undirected and signed/unsigned). We perform extensive experimental comparison of the proposed method against existing recommendation algorithms using synthetic and real data sets (Facebook, Hi5 and Epinions). Our experimental results show that our FriendTNS algorithm outperforms other approaches in terms of accuracy and it is also time efficient. Finally, we show that a significant accuracy improvement can be gained by using information about both positive and negative edges.     

基于结点分裂优化的R-树索引结构

针对R-树索引空间查询效率低下的问题,提出一种基于结点分裂优化的R-树索引结构：SR-树索引。SR-树索引在结点分裂过程中,通过增加叶子结点的空间数据聚集性来减少叶子结点最小外接矩形的覆盖面积。为了有效降低磁盘读写消耗,SR-树结点在写入索引时,首先将索引树在内存中建好,然后在文件中写入树信息,最后通过递归的方式写入结点。实验结果表明,与R-树索引相比,SR-树索引可以在减少最小外接矩形重叠面积的同时,有效降低查询响应时间,从而达到提高查询效率的目的。     

Building semantic trees from XML documents

The distributed nature of the Web, as a decentralized system exchanging information between heterogeneous sources, has underlined the need to manage interoperability, i.e., the ability to automatically interpret information in Web documents exchanged between different sources, necessary for efficient information management and search applications. In this context, XML was introduced as a data representation standard that simplifies the tasks of interoperation and integration among heterogeneous data sources, allowing to represent data in (semi-) structured documents consisting of hierarchically nested elements and atomic attributes. However, while XML was shown most effective in exchanging data, i.e., in syntactic interoperability, it has been proven limited when it comes to handling semantics, i.e.,  semantic interoperability, since it only specifies the syntactic and structural properties of the data without any further semantic meaning. As a result, XML semantic-aware processing has become a motivating challenge in Web data management, requiring dedicated semantic analysis and disambiguation methods to assign well-defined meaning to XML elements and attributes. In this context, most existing approaches: (i) ignore the problem of identifying ambiguous XML elements/nodes, (ii) only partially consider their structural relationships/context, (iii) use syntactic information in processing XML data regardless of the semantics involved, and (iv) are static in adopting fixed disambiguation constraints thus limiting user involvement. In this paper, we provide a new XML Semantic Disambiguation Framework titled XSDFdesigned to address each of the above limitations, taking as input: an XML document, and then producing as output a semantically augmented XML tree made of unambiguous semantic concepts extracted from a reference machine-readable semantic network. XSDF consists of four main modules for: (i) linguistic pre-processing of simple/compound XML node labels and values, (ii) selecting ambiguous XML nodes as targets for disambiguation, (iii) representing target nodes as special sphere neighborhood vectors including all XML structural relationships within a (user-chosen) range, and (iv) running context vectors through a hybrid disambiguation process, combining two approaches: concept-basedand context-based disambiguation, allowing the user to tune disambiguation parameters following her needs. Conducted experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach in comparison with alternative methods. We also discuss some practical applications of our method, ranging over semantic-aware query rewriting, semantic document clustering and classification, Mobile and Web services search and discovery, as well as blog analysis and event detection in social networks and tweets.     

An energy-efficient data gathering method based on compressive sensing for pervasive sensor networks

This paper proposes an energy-efficient data gathering method called CN-MSTP (Combining Minimum Spanning Tree with Interest Nodes) for pervasive wireless sensor networks, basing on Compressive sensing (CS) and data aggregation. The proposed CN-MSTP protocol selects different nodes at random as projection nodes, and sets each projection node as a root to construct a minimum spanning tree by combining with interest nodes. Projection node aggregates sensor reading from sensor nodes using compressive sensing. We extend our method by letting the sink node participate in the process of building a minimum tree and introduce eCN-MSTP. We compare our methods with the other methods. Simulation results indicate that our two methods outperform the other methods in overall energy consumption saving and load balance and hence prolong the lifetime of the network.     

DEFIDNET: A framework for optimal allocation of cyberdefenses in Intrusion Detection Networks

Intrusion Detection Networks (IDN) are distributed cyberdefense systems composed of different nodes performing local detection and filtering functions, as well as sharing information with other nodes in the IDN. The security and resilience of such cyberdefense systems are paramount, since an attacker will try to evade them or render them unusable before attacking the end systems. In this paper, we introduce a system model for IDN nodes in terms of their logical components, functions, and communication channels. This allows us to model different IDN node roles (e.g., detectors, filters, aggregators, correlators, etc.) and architectures (e.g., hierarchical, centralized, fully distributed, etc.). We then introduce a threat model that considers adversarial actions executed against particular IDN nodes, and also the propagation of such actions throughout connected nodes. Based on such models, we finally introduce a countermeasure allocation model based on a multi-objective optimization algorithm to obtain optimal allocation strategies that minimize both risk and cost. Our experimental results obtained through simulation with different IDN architectures illustrate the benefit of our framework to design and reconfigure cyberdefense systems optimally.     

Randomized gossip algorithms under attack

Recently, gossip-based algorithms have received significant attention for data aggregation in distributed environments. The main advantage of gossip-based algorithms is their robustness in dynamic and fault-prone environments with unintentional faults such as link failure and channel noise. However, the robustness of such algorithms in hostile environments with intentional faults has remained unexplored. In this paper, we call attention to the risks which may be caused by the use of gossip algorithms in hostile environments, i.e., when some malicious nodes collude to skew aggregation results by violating the normal execution of the protocol. We first introduce a model of hostile environment and then examine the behavior of randomized gossip algorithms in this model using probabilistic analysis. Our model of hostile environment is general enough to cover a wide range of attacks. However, to achieve stronger results, we focus our analysis on fully connected networks and some powerful attacks. Our analysis shows that in the presence of malicious nodes, after some initial steps, randomized gossip algorithms reach a point at which the lengthening of gossiping is harmful, i.e., the average accuracy of the estimates of the aggregate value begins to decrease strictly.     

A theory of interfaces and modules I-composition theorem

We model a system as a directed acyclic graph where nodes represent modules and arcs represent interfaces. At the heart of our theory is a definition of what it means for a module to satisfy a set of interfaces as a service provider for some and as a service consumer for others. Our definition of interface satisfaction is designed to be separable; i.e., interfaces encode adequate information such that each module in a system can be designed and verified separately, and composable; i.e., we have proved a composition theorem for the system model in general     

WSN中基于最小延时的数据汇集树构建与传输调度算法

针对现有的无线传感器网络数据汇集算法延时较大的不足,对最小延时数据汇集树和传输调度问题进行了研究。提出一种基于度约束的汇集树构建算法(DCAT)。该算法按照BFS方式遍历图,当遍历到每个节点时,通过确定哪些节点与汇点更近来确定潜在母节点集合。然后,选择图中度数最小的潜在母节点作为当前被遍历节点的母节点。此外,为了在给定的汇集树上进行高效的数据汇集,还提出两种新的基于贪婪的TDMA传输调度算法:WIRES-G和DCAT-Greedy。利用随机生成的不同规模的传感器网络,参照当前最新算法,对所提方法的性能进行了全面评估。结果表明,与当前最优算法相比,将所提调度算法与所提汇集树构建算法结合起来,可显著降低数据汇集的延时。     

Enabling scalable and accurate clustering of distributed ligand geometries on supercomputers

We present an efficient and accurate clustering method for the analysis of protein-ligand docking datasets on large distributed-memory systems. For each ligand conformation in the dataset, our clustering algorithm first extracts relevant geometrical properties and transforms the properties into a single metadata point in the N-dimensional (N-D) space. Then, it performs an N-D clustering on the metadata to search for predominant clusters. Our method avoids the need to move ligand conformations among nodes, because it extracts relevant data properties locally and concurrently. By doing so, we transform the analysis problem (e.g., clustering or classification) into a search for property aggregates. Our analysis shows that when using small computer systems of up to 64 nodes, the performance is not sensitive to data content and distribution. When using larger computer systems of up to 256 nodes the scalability of simulations with strong convergence toward specific geometries is less sensitive to overheads due to the shuffling of metadata information. We also demonstrate that our method of metadata extraction captures the geometrical properties of ligand conformations more effectively and clusters and predicts near-native ligand conformations more accurately than do traditional methods, including the hierarchical clustering and energy-based scoring methods.