Graph OLAP: a multi-dimensional framework for graph data analysis

Databases and data warehouse systems have been evolving from handling normalized spreadsheets stored in relational databases, to managing and analyzing diverse application-oriented data with complex interconnecting structures. Responding to this emerging trend, graphs have been growing rapidly and showing their critical importance in many applications, such as the analysis of XML, social networks, Web, biological data, multimedia data and spatiotemporal data. Can we extend useful functions of databases and data warehouse systems to handle graph structured data? In particular, OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) has been a popular tool for fast and user-friendly multi-dimensional analysis of data warehouses. Can we OLAP graphs? Unfortunately, to our best knowledge, there are no OLAP tools available that can interactively view and analyze graph data from different perspectives and with multiple granularities. In this paper, we argue that it is critically important to OLAP graph structured data and propose a novel Graph OLAP framework. According to this framework, given a graph dataset with its nodes and edges associated with respective attributes, a multi-dimensional model can be built to enable efficient on-line analytical processing so that any portions of the graphs can be generalized/specialized dynamically, offering multiple, versatile views of the data. The contributions of this work are three-fold. First, starting from basic definitions, i.e., what are dimensions and measures in the Graph OLAP scenario, we develop a conceptual framework for data cubes on graphs. We also look into different semantics of OLAP operations, and classify the framework into two major subcases: informational OLAP and topological OLAP. Second, we show how a graph cube can be materialized by calculating a special kind of measure called aggregated graph and how to implement it efficiently. This includes both full materialization and partial materialization where constraints are enforced to obtain an iceberg cube. As we can see, due to the increased structural complexity of data, aggregated graphs that depend on the underlying “network” properties of the graph dataset are much harder to compute than their traditional OLAP counterparts. Third, to provide more flexible, interesting and informative OLAP of graphs, we further propose a discovery-driven multi-dimensional analysis model to ensure that OLAP is performed in an intelligent manner, guided by expert rules and knowledge discovery processes. We outline such a framework and discuss some challenging research issues for discovery-driven Graph OLAP.     

模糊相关机会规划的蚁群优化算法及收敛性分析

模糊相关机会规划(Fuzzy dependent-chance programming, FDCP)因其非线性、非凸性及模糊性,对经典的优化理论提出了极大的挑战. 本文为解决复杂的模糊相关机会规划问题设计了一种基于模糊模拟的蚁群优化算法, 证明了该算法的收敛性,并通过估算期望收敛时间以分析蚁群优化算法的收敛速度. 数值案例研究验证了该算法的有效性、稳定性及准确性.     

State complexity of basic operations on suffix-free regular languages

We investigate the state complexity of basic operations for suffix-free regular languages. The state complexity of an operation for regular languages is the number of states that are necessary and sufficient in the worst-case for the minimal deterministic finite-state automaton that accepts the language obtained from the operation. We establish the precise state complexity of catenation, Kleene star, reversal and the Boolean operations for suffix-free regular languages.     

User utility discovery for priority-based network resource pricing

While equilibrium analysis has been commonly used for network pricing under the assumption that user utility functions are precisely known, many researchers have criticized the validity of the assumption. In this paper, we propose a solution for bridging the gap between the existing theoretical work on optimal pricing and the unavailability of precise user utility information in real networks. In the proposed method, the service provider obtains increasingly more accurate estimates of user utility functions by iteratively changing the prices of service levels and observing the users’ service-level choices under various prices. Our study’s contribution is twofold. First, we have developed a general principle for estimating user utility functions. Especially, we present the utility estimation for dynamic user population. Second, we have developed a method for setting prices that can optimize the extraction of information about user utility functions. The extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.     

Sliding mode control for polytopic differential inclusion systems

The stabilization problem of polytopic differential inclusion (PDI) systems is investigated by using sliding mode control. Sliding surface is designed and sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability of sliding mode dynamics are derived. A novel feedback law is established to make the state of system reach the sliding surface in a finite time. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the validity of the proposed design.     

一种基于ECB模式的NSL协议改进方案

安全协议形式化方法大都在一个很高的抽象层次建立协议模型。但是协议的许多安全问题是在很低的抽象层次产生。本文分析了ECB工作模式下的NSL协议的安全问题,并通过破坏同态性的方法给出一种改进方案。通过扩展规则的BAN逻辑对NSL协议建模和分析,验证结果表明协议中存在着安全漏洞,新的改进方案可以避免这种攻击。     

A note on on-line broadcast scheduling with deadlines

In this paper, we study an on-line broadcast scheduling problem with deadlines, in which the requests asking for the same page can be satisfied simultaneously by broadcasting this page, and every request is associated with a release time, deadline and a required page with a unit size. The objective is to maximize the number of requests satisfied by the schedule. In this paper, we focus on an important special case where all the requests have their spans (the difference between release time and deadline) less than 2. We give an optimal online algorithm, i.e., its competitive ratio matches the lower bound of the problem.     

APS-FeW: Improving TCP throughput over multihop adhoc networks

TCP is a reliable transport protocol tuned to perform well over traditional wired networks. Although it performs well for wired networks, TCP’s implicit assumption that any packet loss is due to congestion is not valid any longer in mobile ad hoc networks. It is observed that TCP induces the over-action of routing protocol and reduces the performance of the connection. Fraction window increment (FeW) scheme for TCP improves the connection performance by limiting TCP’s aggressiveness. But to some extent, this limitation is too strict in that it eliminates the possibility to deliver more bytes under the same congestion window. To solve this problem, we propose an adaptive packet size (APS) scheme to work on top of FeW for TCP. The proposed scheme utilizes the advantages of both legacy TCP and FeW to achieve high performance over multihop 802.11 networks. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that APS over FeW outperforms FeW alone by 10–25% according to different scenarios, e.g., chain-topology, grid-topology, and random-topology with mobility.     

Visual Tracking by Continuous Density Propagation in Sequential Bayesian Filtering Framework

Particle filtering is frequently used for visual tracking problems since it provides a general framework for estimating and propagating probability density functions for nonlinear and non-Gaussian dynamic systems. However, this algorithm is based on a Monte Carlo approach and the cost of sampling and measurement is a problematic issue, especially for high-dimensional problems. We describe an alternative to the classical particle filter in which the underlying density function has an analytic representation for better approximation and effective propagation. The techniques of density interpolation and density approximation are introduced to represent the likelihood and the posterior densities with Gaussian mixtures, where all relevant parameters are automatically determined. The proposed analytic approach is shown to perform more efficiently in sampling in high-dimensional space. We apply the algorithm to real-time tracking problems and demonstrate its performance on real video sequences as well as synthetic examples.