Today I watched “The Hunger Games”
Paper – I, Quantum Robot: Quantum Mind control on a Quantum Computer
Today I read a paper titled “I, Quantum Robot: Quantum Mind control on a Quantum Computer”
The abstract is:
The logic which describes quantum robots is not orthodox quantum logic, but a deductive calculus which reproduces the quantum tasks (computational processes, and actions) taking into account quantum superposition and quantum entanglement.
A way toward the realization of intelligent quantum robots is to adopt a quantum metalanguage to control quantum robots.
A physical implementation of a quantum metalanguage might be the use of coherent states in brain signals.
Paper – Implementation of an Onboard Visual Tracking System with Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)
Today I read a paper titled “Implementation of an Onboard Visual Tracking System with Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)”
The abstract is:
This paper presents a visual tracking system that is capable or running real time on-board a small UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle).
The tracking system is computationally efficient and invariant to lighting changes and rotation of the object or the camera.
Detection and tracking is autonomously carried out on the payload computer and there are two different methods for creation of the image patches.
The first method starts detecting and tracking using a stored image patch created prior to flight with previous flight data.
The second method allows the operator on the ground to select the interest object for the UAV to track.
The tracking system is capable of re-detecting the object of interest in the events of tracking failure.
Performance of the tracking system was verified both in the lab and during actual flights of the UAV.
Results show that the system can run on-board and track a diverse set of objects in real time.
Read – CUDA by Example
Today I finished reading “CUDA by Example: An Introduction to General-Purpose GPU Programming” by Jason Sanders
Read – The Notebook
Today I finished reading “The Notebook” by Nicholas Sparks
Studying – Lens reversal macro photography
This month I am studying “Lens reversal macro photography”
I want to spend a month playing around with my new point and shoot camera and this looks like a great class to actually try that out in. I can always pull out one of my Canon DSLRs if I need to do anything super-fancy.
It’s a non-credit community college course one night a week for four weeks.
Update: Logged 18 hours of study time between the eight hours of class time (2 hours per evening for 4 weeks) and an extra 10 hours of practice.
Listening – Kill For Love
This week I am listening to “Kill For Love” by Chromatics
Read – Give and Take
Today I finished reading “Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success” by Adam M. Grant
Read – Innovations in Intelligent Machines 3
Today I finished reading “Innovations in Intelligent Machines 3: Contemporary Achievements in Intelligent Systems” by Ivan Jordanov
Read – The Leadership Pill
Today I finished reading “The Leadership Pill: The Missing Ingredient in Motivating People Today” by Kenneth H. Blanchard
Paper – Preferential attachment in growing spatial networks
Today I read a paper titled “Preferential attachment in growing spatial networks”
The abstract is:
We obtain the degree distribution for a class of growing network models on flat and curved spaces.
These models evolve by preferential attachment weighted by a function of the distance between nodes.
The degree distribution of these models is similar to the one of the fitness model of Bianconi and Barabasi, with a fitness distribution dependent on the metric and the density of nodes.
We show that curvature singularities in these spaces can give rise to asymptotic Bose-Einstein condensation, but transient condensation can be observed also in smooth hyperbolic spaces with strong curvature.
We provide numerical results for spaces of constant curvature (sphere, flat and hyperbolic space) and we discuss the conditions for the breakdown of this approach and the critical points of the transition to distance-dominated attachment.
Finally we discuss the distribution of link lengths.
Paper – Fast B-spline Curve Fitting by L-BFGS
Today I read a paper titled “Fast B-spline Curve Fitting by L-BFGS”
The abstract is:
We propose a novel method for fitting planar B-spline curves to unorganized data points.
In traditional methods, optimization of control points and foot points are performed in two very time-consuming steps in each iteration: 1) control points are updated by setting up and solving a linear system of equations; and 2) foot points are computed by projecting each data point onto a B-spline curve.
Our method uses the L-BFGS optimization method to optimize control points and foot points simultaneously and therefore it does not need to perform either matrix computation or foot point projection in every iteration.
As a result, our method is much faster than existing methods.
Read – Ben-Hur
Today I finished reading “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ” by Lew Wallace
Listening – Battle Born
This week I am listening to “Battle Born” by The Killers
Read – A.I. Love You #08
Today I finished reading “A.I. Love You #08” by Ken Akamatsu
Paper – Suppressing Epidemics with a Limited Amount of Immunization Units
Today I read a paper titled “Suppressing Epidemics with a Limited Amount of Immunization Units”
The abstract is:
The way diseases spread through schools, epidemics through countries, and viruses through the Internet is crucial in determining their risk.
Although each of these threats has its own characteristics, its underlying network determines the spreading.
To restrain the spreading, a widely used approach is the fragmentation of these networks through immunization, so that epidemics cannot spread.
Here we develop an immunization approach based on optimizing the susceptible size, which outperforms the best known strategy based on immunizing the highest-betweenness links or nodes.
We find that the network’s vulnerability can be significantly reduced, demonstrating this on three different real networks: the global flight network, a school friendship network, and the internet.
In all cases, we find that not only is the average infection probability significantly suppressed, but also for the most relevant case of a small and limited number of immunization units the infection probability can be reduced by up to 55%.
Paper – Information tracking approach to segmentation of ultrasound imagery of prostate
Today I read a paper titled “Information tracking approach to segmentation of ultrasound imagery of prostate”
The abstract is:
The size and geometry of the prostate are known to be pivotal quantities used by clinicians to assess the condition of the gland during prostate cancer screening.
As an alternative to palpation, an increasing number of methods for estimation of the above-mentioned quantities are based on using imagery data of prostate.
The necessity to process large volumes of such data creates a need for automatic segmentation tools which would allow the estimation to be carried out with maximum accuracy and efficiency.
In particular, the use of transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) imaging in prostate cancer screening seems to be becoming a standard clinical practice due to the high benefit-to-cost ratio of this imaging modality.
Unfortunately, the segmentation of TRUS images is still hampered by relatively low contrast and reduced SNR of the images, thereby requiring the segmentation algorithms to incorporate prior knowledge about the geometry of the gland.
In this paper, a novel approach to the problem of segmenting the TRUS images is described.
The proposed approach is based on the concept of distribution tracking, which provides a unified framework for modeling and fusing image-related and morphological features of the prostate.
Moreover, the same framework allows the segmentation to be regularized via using a new type of “weak” shape priors, which minimally bias the estimation procedure, while rendering the latter stable and robust.
Paper – Diffusion of Information in Robot Swarms
Today I read a paper titled “Diffusion of Information in Robot Swarms”
The abstract is:
This work is devoted to communication approaches, which spread information in robot swarms.
These mechanisms are useful for large-scale systems and also for such cases when a limited communication equipment does not allow routing of information packages.
We focus on two approaches such as virtual fields and epidemic algorithms, discuss several aspects of hardware implementation and demonstrate experiments performed with microrobots “Jasmine”.
Read – A.I. Love You #07
Today I finished reading “A.I. Love You #07” by Ken Akamatsu
Read – Perfect Phrases for Cover Letters
Today I finished reading “Perfect Phrases for Cover Letters” by Michael Betrus
Read – The Grand Inquisitor
Today I finished reading “The Grand Inquisitor” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Read – A.I. Love You #06
Today I finished reading “A.I. Love You #06” by Ken Akamatsu
Paper – Haptic Science and Technology
Today I read a paper titled “Haptic Science and Technology”
The abstract is:
Haptic technology, or haptics, is a tactile feedback technology which takes advantage of a user’s sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions upon the user.
This mechanical stimulation may be used to assist in the creation of virtual objects (objects existing only in a computer simulation), for control of such virtual objects, and for the enhancement of the remote control of machines and devices.
It has been described as for the sense of touch what computer graphics does for vision.
Although haptic devices are capable of measuring bulk or reactive forces that are applied by the user, it should not be confused with touch or tactile sensors that measure the pressure or force exerted by the user to the interface.
Read – A.I. Love You #05
Today I finished reading “A.I. Love You #05” by Ken Akamatsu
Read – A.I. Love You #04
Today I finished reading “A.I. Love You #04” by Ken Akamatsu
Read – A.I. Love You #03
Today I finished reading “A.I. Love You #03” by Ken Akamatsu
Read – A.I. Love You #02
Today I finished reading “A.I. Love You #02” by Ken Akamatsu
Listening – TRST
This week I am listening to “TRST” by Trust
Read – A.I. Love You #01
Today I finished reading “A.I. Love You #01” by Ken Akamatsu
Read – Unleash the Power of Social Media Marketing
Today I finished reading “Unleash the Power of Social Media Marketing: Explosive Proven Strategies to Boost Your Social Media Marketing Campaign” by Joe Praveen Sequeira
Paper – Design-on-demand or how to create a target-oriented social web-site
Today I read a paper titled “Design-on-demand or how to create a target-oriented social web-site”
The abstract is:
We describe an informal methodology for developing on-line applications, which is, to some extent, complementary to the Web 2.0 aspects of web development.
The presented methodology is suitable for developing low-cost and non-cost web sites targeted at medium-sized communities.
We present basic building blocks used in the described strategy.
To achieve a better understanding of the discussed concepts we comment on their application during the realization of two web projects.
We focus on the role of community-driven development, which is crucial for projects of the discussed type.
Read – Robin Hood, The Prince of Thieves
Today I finished reading “Robin Hood, The Prince of Thieves” by Alexandre Dumas
Read – Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #12
Today I finished reading “Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #12” by Ken Akamatsu
Read – Soft Computing Applications and Intelligent Systems
Today I finished reading “Soft Computing Applications and Intelligent Systems: Second International Multi-Conference on Artificial Intelligence Technology, August 28-29, 2013. Proceedings” by Shahrul Azman Noah
Read – Barnaby Rudge
Today I finished reading “Barnaby Rudge” by Charles Dickens
Paper – Assessing the Value of 3D Reconstruction in Building Construction
Today I read a paper titled “Assessing the Value of 3D Reconstruction in Building Construction”
The abstract is:
3-dimensional (3D) reconstruction is an emerging field in image processing and computer vision that aims to create 3D visualizations/ models of objects/ scenes from image sets.
However, its commercial applications and benefits are yet to be fully explored.
In this paper, we describe ongoing work towards assessing the value of 3D reconstruction in the building construction domain.
We present preliminary results from a user study, where our objective is to understand the use of visual information in building construction in order to determine problems with the use of visual information and identify potential benefits and scenarios for the use of 3D reconstruction.
Read – Little Bets
Today I finished reading “Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries” by Peter Sims
Read – Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #11
Today I finished reading “Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #11” by Ken Akamatsu
Read – Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #10
Today I finished reading “Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #10” by Ken Akamatsu
Paper – Augmented reality usage for prototyping speed up
Today I read a paper titled “Augmented reality usage for prototyping speed up”
The abstract is:
The first part of the article describes our approach for solution of this problem by means of Augmented Reality.
The merging of the real world model and digital objects allows streamline the work with the model and speed up the whole production phase significantly.
The main advantage of augmented reality is the possibility of direct manipulation with the scene using a portable digital camera.
Also adding digital objects into the scene could be done using identification markers placed on the surface of the model.
Therefore it is not necessary to work with special input devices and lose the contact with the real world model.
Adjustments are done directly on the model.
The key problem of outlined solution is the ability of identification of an object within the camera picture and its replacement with the digital object.
The second part of the article is focused especially on the identification of exact position and orientation of the marker within the picture.
The identification marker is generalized into the triple of points which represents a general plane in space.
There is discussed the space identification of these points and the description of representation of their position and orientation be means of transformation matrix.
This matrix is used for rendering of the graphical objects (e.
g.
in OpenGL and Direct3D).
Read – Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #9
Today I finished reading “Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #9” by Ken Akamatsu
Read – The Startup Owner’s Manual Strategy Guide
Today I finished reading “The Startup Owner’s Manual Strategy Guide” by Steven Gary Blank
Paper – On-Board Visual Tracking with Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)
Today I read a paper titled “On-Board Visual Tracking with Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)”
The abstract is:
This paper presents the development of a real time tracking algorithm that runs on a 1.2 GHz PC/104 computer on-board a small UAV.
The algorithm uses zero mean normalized cross correlation to detect and locate an object in the image.
A kalman filter is used to make the tracking algorithm computationally efficient.
Object position in an image frame is predicted using the motion model and a search window, centered at the predicted position is generated.
Object position is updated with the measurement from object detection.
The detected position is sent to the motion controller to move the gimbal so that the object stays at the center of the image frame.
Detection and tracking is autonomously carried out on the payload computer and the system is able to work in two different methods.
The first method starts detecting and tracking using a stored image patch.
The second method allows the operator on the ground to select the interest object for the UAV to track.
The system is capable of re-detecting an object, in the event of tracking failure.
Performance of the tracking system was verified both in the lab and on the field by mounting the payload on a vehicle and simulating a flight.
Tests show that the system can detect and track a diverse set of objects in real time.
Flight testing of the system will be conducted at the next available opportunity.
Read – Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #8
Today I finished reading “Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #8” by Ken Akamatsu
Paper – Toward the Graphics Turing Scale on a Blue Gene Supercomputer
Today I read a paper titled “Toward the Graphics Turing Scale on a Blue Gene Supercomputer”
The abstract is:
We investigate raytracing performance that can be achieved on a class of Blue Gene supercomputers.
We measure a 822 times speedup over a Pentium IV on a 6144 processor Blue Gene/L.
We measure the computational performance as a function of number of processors and problem size to determine the scaling performance of the raytracing calculation on the Blue Gene.
We find nontrivial scaling behavior at large number of processors.
We discuss applications of this technology to scientific visualization with advanced lighting and high resolution.
We utilize three racks of a Blue Gene/L in our calculations which is less than three percent of the the capacity of the worlds largest Blue Gene computer.
Paper – The interplay of microscopic and mesoscopic structure in complex networks
Today I read a paper titled “The interplay of microscopic and mesoscopic structure in complex networks”
The abstract is:
Not all nodes in a network are created equal.
Differences and similarities exist at both individual node and group levels.
Disentangling single node from group properties is crucial for network modeling and structural inference.
Based on unbiased generative probabilistic exponential random graph models and employing distributive message passing techniques, we present an efficient algorithm that allows one to separate the contributions of individual nodes and groups of nodes to the network structure.
This leads to improved detection accuracy of latent class structure in real world data sets compared to models that focus on group structure alone.
Furthermore, the inclusion of hitherto neglected group specific effects in models used to assess the statistical significance of small subgraph (motif) distributions in networks may be sufficient to explain most of the observed statistics.
We show the predictive power of such generative models in forecasting putative gene-disease associations in the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database.
The approach is suitable for both directed and undirected uni-partite as well as for bipartite networks.
Paper – Supervised Random Walks: Predicting and Recommending Links in Social Networks
Today I read a paper titled “Supervised Random Walks: Predicting and Recommending Links in Social Networks”
The abstract is:
Predicting the occurrence of links is a fundamental problem in networks.
In the link prediction problem we are given a snapshot of a network and would like to infer which interactions among existing members are likely to occur in the near future or which existing interactions are we missing.
Although this problem has been extensively studied, the challenge of how to effectively combine the information from the network structure with rich node and edge attribute data remains largely open.
We develop an algorithm based on Supervised Random Walks that naturally combines the information from the network structure with node and edge level attributes.
We achieve this by using these attributes to guide a random walk on the graph.
We formulate a supervised learning task where the goal is to learn a function that assigns strengths to edges in the network such that a random walker is more likely to visit the nodes to which new links will be created in the future.
We develop an efficient training algorithm to directly learn the edge strength estimation function.
Our experiments on the Facebook social graph and large collaboration networks show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art unsupervised approaches as well as approaches that are based on feature extraction.
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Paper – Cycles of cooperation and defection in imperfect learning
Today I read a paper titled “Cycles of cooperation and defection in imperfect learning”
The abstract is:
When people play a repeated game they usually try to anticipate their opponents’ moves based on past observations, and then decide what action to take next.
Behavioural economics studies the mechanisms by which strategic decisions are taken in these adaptive learning processes.
We here investigate a model of learning the iterated prisoner’s dilemma game.
Players have the choice between three strategies, always defect (ALLD), always cooperate (ALLC) and tit-for-tat (TFT).
The only strict Nash equilibrium in this situation is ALLD.
When players learn to play this game convergence to the equilibrium is not guaranteed, for example we find cooperative behaviour if players discount observations in the distant past.
When agents use small samples of observed moves to estimate their opponent’s strategy the learning process is stochastic, and sustained oscillations between cooperation and defection can emerge.
These cycles are similar to those found in stochastic evolutionary processes, but the origin of the noise sustaining the oscillations is different and lies in the imperfect sampling of the opponent’s strategy.
Based on a systematic expansion technique, we are able to predict the properties of these learning cycles, providing an analytical tool with which the outcome of more general stochastic adaptation processes can be characterised.
Listening – R.A.P. Music
This week I am listening to “R.A.P. Music” by Killer Mike
Read – Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #7
Today I finished reading “Negima!: Magister Negi Magi #7” by Ken Akamatsu