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Given a set of facilities and a set of users, a reverse nearest neighbors (RNN) query retrieves every user $u$ for which the query facility $q$ is its closest facility. Since $q$ is the closest facility to $u$ , the user $u$ is said to be influenced by $q$ . In this paper, we propose a relaxed definition of influence where a user $u$ is said to be influenced by not only its closest facility but also every other facility that is almost as close to $u$ as its closest facility is. Based on this definition of influence, we propose reverse approximate nearest neighbors (RANN) queries. Formally, given a value $x>1$ , an RANN query $q$ returns every user $u$ for which $dist(u,q) \leq x\times NNDist(u)$ where $NNDist(u)$ denotes the distance between a user $u$ and its nearest facility, i.e., $q$ is an approximate nearest neighbor of $u$ . In this paper, we study both snapshot and continuous versions of RANN queries. In a snapshot RANN query, the underlying data sets do not change and the results of a query are to be computed only once. In the continuous version, the users continuously change their locations and the results of RANN queries are to be continuously monitored. Based on effective pruning techniques and several non-trivial observations, we propose efficient RANN query processing algorithms for both the snapshot and continuous RANN queries. We conduct extensive experiments on both real and synthetic data sets and demonstrate that our algorithm for both snapshot and continuous queries are significantly better than the competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Video-based human action recognition is currently one of the most active research areas in computer vision. Various research studies indicate that the performance of action recognition is highly dependent on the type of features being extracted and how the actions are represented. Since the release of the Kinect camera, a large number of Kinect-based human action recognition techniques have been proposed in the literature. However, there still does not exist a thorough comparison of these Kinect-based techniques under the grouping of feature types, such as handcrafted versus deep learning features and depth-based versus skeleton-based features. In this paper, we analyze and compare 10 recent Kinect-based algorithms for both cross-subject action recognition and cross-view action recognition using six benchmark datasets. In addition, we have implemented and improved some of these techniques and included their variants in the comparison. Our experiments show that the majority of methods perform better on cross-subject action recognition than cross-view action recognition, that the skeleton-based features are more robust for cross-view recognition than the depth-based features, and that the deep learning features are suitable for large datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Core decomposition is a fundamental graph problem with a large number of applications. Most existing approaches for core decomposition assume that the graph is kept in memory of a machine. Nevertheless, many real-world graphs are too big to reside in memory. In this paper, we study I/O efficient core decomposition following a semi-external model, which only allows node information to be loaded in memory. We propose a semi-external algorithm and an optimized algorithm for I/O efficient core decomposition. To handle dynamic graph updates, we firstly show that our algorithm can be naturally extended to handle edge deletion. Then, we propose an I/O efficient core maintenance algorithm to handle edge insertion, and an improved algorithm to further reduce I/O and CPU cost. In addition, based on our core decomposition algorithms, we further propose an I/O efficient semi-external algorithm for degeneracy ordering, which is an important graph problem that is highly related to core decomposition. We also consider how to maintain the degeneracy order. We conduct extensive experiments on 12 real large graphs. Our optimal core decomposition algorithm significantly outperforms the existing I/O efficient algorithm in terms of both processing time and memory consumption. They are very scalable to handle web-scale graphs. As an example, we are the first to handle a web graph with 978.5 million nodes and 42.6 billion edges using less than 4.2 GB memory. We also show that our proposed algorithms for degeneracy order computation and maintenance can handle big graphs efficiently with small memory overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with other applications in computer vision, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have underperformed on pedestrian detection. A breakthrough was made very recently using sophisticated deep CNN (DCNN) models, with a number of handcrafted features or explicit occlusion handling mechanism. In this paper, we show that by reusing the convolutional feature maps of a DCNN model as image features to train an ensemble of boosted decision models, we are able to achieve the best reported accuracy without using specially designed learning algorithms. We empirically identify and disclose important implementation details. We also show that pixel labeling may be simply combined with a detector to boost the detection performance. By adding complementary handcrafted features such as optical flow, the DCNN-based detector can be further improved. We advance the state-of-the-art results by lowering the log-average miss rate from 11.7% to 8.9% on the Caltech data set and from 11.2% to 8.6% on the Inria data set. We also achieve a comparable result to state-of-the-art approaches on the KITTI data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a response to the challenge of data traffic explosion in wireless networks, content caching in device-to-device (D2D) communication networks has emerged as a promising solution. However, in practical deployment, D2D content caching has its own problems. In particular, not all of the user devices are willing to share the content with others due to numerous concerns, such as security, battery life, and social relationship. In this paper, we consider the factor of social relationship in the deployment of D2D content caching. First, we apply stochastic geometry theory to derive an analytical expression of downloading performance for the D2D caching network. Specifically, a social relationship model with respect to the physical distance is adopted in our analysis to obtain the average download delay performance using random and deterministic caching strategies. Second, to achieve a better performance in more practical and specific scenarios, we develop a socially aware distributed caching strategy based on a decentralized learning automaton, to optimize the cache placement operation in D2D networks. Different from the existing caching schemes, the proposed algorithm not only considers the file request probability and the closeness of devices as measured by their physical distance but also takes into account the social relationship between D2D users. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can converge quickly and outperforms the random and deterministic caching strategies. With these results, our work sheds insights on the design of D2D caching in the practical deployment of 5G networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent studies show that individuals in a social network can be divided into different groups of densely connected communities, and these individuals who bridge different communities, referred to as structural hole spanners, have great potential to acquire resources/information from communities and thus benefit from the access. Structural hole spanners are crucial in many real applications such as community detections, diffusion controls, viral marketing, etc. In spite of their importance, little attention has been paid to them. Particularly, how to accurately characterize the structural hole spanners and how to devise efficient yet scalable algorithms to find them in a large social network are fundamental issues. In this paper, we study the top-$k$ structural hole spanner problem. We first provide a novel model to measure the quality of structural hole spanners through exploiting the structural hole spanner properties. Due to its NP-hardness, we then devise two efficient yet scalable algorithms, by developing innovative filtering techniques that can filter out unlikely solutions as quickly as possible, while the proposed techniques are built up on fast estimations of the upper and lower bounds on the cost of an optimal solution and make use of articulation points in real social networks. We finally conduct extensive experiments to validate the effectiveness of the proposed model, and to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms using real world datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model can capture the characteristics of structural hole spanners accurately, and the structural hole spanners found by the proposed algorithms are much better than those by existing algorithms in all considered social networks, while the running times of the proposed algorithms are very fast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given a social network \mathcal G and a positive integer $k$ , the influence maximization problem aims to identify a set of $k$ nodes in \mathcal G that can maximize the influence spread under a certain propagation model. As the proliferation of geo-social networks, location-aware promotion is becoming more necessary in real applications. In this paper, we study the distance-aware influence maximization (DAIM) problem, which advocates the importance of the distance between users and the promoted location. Unlike the traditional influence maximization problem, DAIM treats users differently based on their distances from the promoted location. In this situation, the $k$ nodes selected are different when the promoted location varies. In order to handle the large number of queries and meet the online requirement, we develop two novel index-based approaches, MIA-DA and RIS-DA, by utilizing the information over some pre-sampled query locations. MIA-DA is a heuristic method which adopts the maximum influence arborescence (MIA) model to approximate the influence calculation. In addition, different pruning strategies as well as a priority-based algorithm are proposed to significantly reduce the searching space. To improve the effectiveness, in RIS-DA, we extend the reverse influence sampling (RIS) model and come up with an unbiased estimator for the DAIM problem. Through carefully analyzing the sample size needed for indexing, RIS-DA is able to return a $1 - 1/e -\epsilon$ approximate solution with at least $1 - \delta$ probability for any given query. Finally, we demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of proposed methods over real geo-social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Performance evaluation of multi-target tracking algorithms is of great practical importance in the design, parameter optimization and comparison of tracking systems. The goal of performance evaluation is to measure the distance between two sets of tracks: the ground truth tracks and the set of estimated tracks. This paper proposes a mathematically rigorous metric for this purpose. The basis of the proposed distance measure is the recently formulated consistent metric for performance evaluation of multi-target filters, referred to as the OSPA metric. Multi-target filters sequentially estimate the number of targets and their position in the state space. The OSPA metric is therefore defined on the space of finite sets of vectors. The distinction between filtering and tracking is that tracking algorithms output tracks and a track represents a labeled temporal sequence of state estimates, associated with the same target. The metric proposed in this paper is therefore defined on the space of finite sets of tracks and incorporates the labeling error. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed metric behaves in a manner consistent with our expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we present a low-cost wireless sensor network platform, called wireless ad hoc system for positioning (WASP), that has been developed for high-accuracy localization and tracking. This platform uses the time of arrival (TOA) of beacon signals periodically transmitted by the nodes at known times for localization. The system was designed to have a unique tradeoff between hardware complexity and processing complexity to provide high accuracy at minimal cost in complex radio propagation environments. To enable the system to perform well in realistic environments, it was also necessary to develop novel extensions to existing algorithms for the measurement of TOA, localization, and tracking. In this paper, we describe the architecture, hardware, and algorithms of WASP and present results based on field trials conducted in different radio propagation environments. The results show that WASP achieves a ranging accuracy of 0.15 m outdoors and 0.5 m indoors when around 12 anchor nodes are used. These accuracies are achieved with operating range of up to 200 m outdoors and 30 m indoors. This compares favorably to other published results for systems operating in realistic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In contrast to the recent proliferation of studies incorporating ordinal methods to generate health state values from adults, to date relatively few studies have utilised ordinal methods to generate health state values from adolescents. This paper reports upon a study to apply profile case best worst scaling methods to derive a new adolescent specific scoring algorithm for the Child Health Utility 9D (CHU9D), a generic preference based instrument that has been specifically designed for the estimation of quality adjusted life years for the economic evaluation of health care treatment and preventive programs targeted at young people. A survey was developed for administration in an on-line format in which consenting community based Australian adolescents aged 11–17 years (N = 1982) indicated the best and worst features of a series of 10 health states derived from the CHU9D descriptive system. The data were analyzed using latent class conditional logit models to estimate values (part worth utilities) for each level of the nine attributes relating to the CHU9D. A marginal utility matrix was then estimated to generate an adolescent-specific scoring algorithm on the full health = 1 and dead = 0 scale required for the calculation of QALYs. It was evident that different decision processes were being used in the best and worst choices. Whilst respondents appeared readily able to choose ‘best’ attribute levels for the CHU9D health states, a large amount of random variability and indeed different decision rules were evident for the choice of ‘worst’ attribute levels, to the extent that the best and worst data should not be pooled from the statistical perspective. The optimal adolescent-specific scoring algorithm was therefore derived using data obtained from the best choices only. The study provides important insights into the use of profile case best worst scaling methods to generate health state values with adolescent populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents abstracts of papers on city planning published from 2007 to 2008, including "Streets, Sounds and Identity in Inter-war Harlem," by Clare Corbould, "(Re)making the Other, Heterosexualising Everyday Space," by Kath Browne, and "Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds," by Wendy Nelson Espeland and Michael Sauder.

Memoryless online routing (MOR) algorithms are suitable for the applications only using local information to find paths, and Delaunay triangulations (DTs) are the class of geometric graphs widely proposed as network topologies. Motivated by these two facts, this paper reports a variety of new MOR algorithms that work for Delaunay triangulations, thus greatly enriching the family of such algorithms. This paper also evaluates and compares these new algorithms with three existing MOR algorithms. The experimental results shed light on their performance in terms of both Euclidean and link metrics, and also reveal certain properties of Delaunay triangulations. Finally, this paper poses three open problems, with their importance explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]