We use the k-core decomposition to develop algorithms for the analysis of large scale complex networks. This decomposition, based on a recursive pruningof the least connected vertices, allows to disentangle the hierarchical structure of networks by progressively focusing on their central cores.By using this strategy we develop a general visualization algorithm thatcan be used to compare the structural properties of various networks andhighlight their hierarchical structure. The low computational complexity of the algorithm, O(n e), where n is the size of the network, ande is the number of edges, makes it suitable for the visualization of very large sparse networks. We show how the proposed visualization tool allows to find specific structural fingerprints of networks.

We use the k-core decomposition to develop algorithms for the analysis of large scale complex networks. This decomposition, based on a recursive pruning of the least connected vertices, allows to disentangle the hierarchical structure of networks by progressively focusing on their central cores. By using this strategy we develop a general visualization algorithm that can be used to compare the structural properties of various networks and highlight their hierarchical structure. The low computational complexity of the algorithm, O(n e), where n is the size of the network, and e is the number of edges, makes it suitable for the visualization of very large sparse networks. We show how the proposed visualization tool allows to find specific structural fingerprints of networks.

We use the k-core decomposition to develop algorithms for the analysis of large scale complex networks. This decomposition, based on a recursive pruning of the least connected vertices, allows to disentangle the hierarchical structure of networks by progressively focusing on their central cores. By using this strategy we develop a general visualization algorithm that can be used to compare the structural properties of various networks and highlight their hierarchical structure. The low computational complexity of the algorithm, O(n e), where n is the size of the network, and e is the number of edges, makes it suitable for the visualization of very large sparse networks. We show how the proposed visualization tool allows to find specific structural fingerprints of networks.

In this paper we propose a new receiver for digital communications. We focus on the application of Gaussian Processes (GPs) to the multiuser detection (MUD) in code division multiple access (CDMA) systems to solve the near-far problem. Hence, we aim to reduce the interference from other users sharing the same frequency band. While usual approaches minimize the mean square error (MMSE) to linearly retrieve the user of interest, we exploit the same criteria but in the design of a nonlinear MUD. Since the optimal solution is known to be nonlinear, the performance of this novel method clearly improves that of the MMSE detectors. Furthermore, the GP based MUD achieves excellent interference suppression even for short training sequences. We also include some experiments to illustrate that other nonlinear detectors such as those based on Support Vector Machines (SVMs) exhibit a worse performance.

Clustering is a fundamental problem in machine learning and has been approached in many ways. Two general and quite different approaches include iteratively fitting a mixture model (e.g., using EM) and linking together pairs of training cases that have high affinity (e.g., using spectral methods). Pairwise clustering algorithms need not compute sufficient statistics and avoid poor solutions by directly placing similar examples in the same cluster. However, many applications require that each cluster of data be accurately described by a prototype or model, so affinity-based clustering - and its benefits - cannot be directly realized. We describe a technique called "affinity propagation", which combines the advantages of both approaches. The method learns a mixture model of the data by recursively propagating affinity messages. We demonstrate affinity propagation on the problems of clustering image patches for image segmentation and learning mixtures of gene expression models from microarray data. We find that affinity propagation obtains better solutions than mixtures of Gaussians, the K-medoids algorithm, spectral clustering and hierarchical clustering, and is both able to find a pre-specified number of clusters and is able to automatically determine the number of clusters. Interestingly, affinity propagation can be viewed as belief propagation in a graphical model that accounts for pairwise training case likelihood functions and the identification of cluster centers.

This paper provides a system-level analysis of a scalable distributed sensing model for networked sensors. In our system model, a data center acquires data from a bunch of L sensors which each independently encode their noisy observations of an original binary sequence, and transmit their encoded data sequences to the data center at a combined rate R, which is limited. Supposing that the sensors use independent LDGM rate distortion codes, we show that the system performance can be evaluated for any given finite R when the number of sensors L goes to infinity . The analysis shows how the optimal strategy for the distributed sensing problem changes at critical values of the data rate R or the noise level.

Fusing multiple information sources can yield significant benefits to successfully accomplish learning tasks. Many studies have focussed on fusing information in supervised learning contexts. We present an approach to utilize multiple information sources in the form of similarity data for unsupervised learning. Based on similarity information, the clustering task is phrased as a nonnegative matrix factorization problem of a mixture of similarity measurements. The tradeoff between the informativeness of data sources and the sparseness of their mixture is controlled by an entropy-based weighting mechanism. For the purpose of model selection, a stability-based approach is employed to ensure the selection of the most self-consistent hypothesis. The experiments demonstrate the performance of the method on toy as well as real world data sets.

We propose a simple clustering framework on graphs encoding pairwise data similarities. Unlike usual similarity-based methods, the approach softly assigns data to clusters in a probabilistic way. More importantly, a hierarchical clustering is naturally derived in this framework to gradually merge lower-level clusters into higher-level ones. A random walk analysis indicates that the algorithm exposes clustering structures in various resolutions, i.e., a higher level statistically models a longer-term diffusion on graphs and thus discovers a more global clustering structure. Finally we provide very encouraging experimental results.

This makes Gaussian process regression too slow for large datasets. In this paper, we present a fast approximation method, based on kd-trees, that significantly reduces both the prediction and the training times of Gaussian process regression.

We address the problem of robust, computationally-efficient design of biological experiments. Classical optimal experiment design methods have not been widely adopted in biological practice, in part because the resulting designs can be very brittle if the nominal parameter estimates for the model are poor, and in part because of computational constraints. We present a method for robust experiment design based on a semidefinite programming relaxation. We present an application of this method to the design of experiments for a complex calcium signal transduction pathway, where we have found that the parameter estimates obtained from the robust design are better than those obtained from an "optimal" design.