19868872
Management Assistance for Work First via a Dynamic Website
The purpose of the Work First project is to assist the state Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHHS) staff and each county Dept. of Social Services (DSS) across the state in the management of welfare reform initiatives. Work First is the cash assistance program in NC. One important objective is to encourage and support program managers to use data on outcomes to assess their performance. This is accomplished by providing them with easy to use and easy to understand comprehensive information on the experiences of families and individuals that have received assistance through their agency over time.
36057715
Guest Editors' Introduction: Special Issue on Mining Biological Data
MINING biological data is an emerging area of intersection between data mining and bioinformatics. Bioinformaticians have been working on the research and development of computational methodologies and tools for expanding the use of biological, medical, behavioral, or health-related data. Data mining researchers have been making substantial contribution to the development of models and algorithms to meet challenges posed by the bioinformatics research. Some successful examples are frequent pattern discovery on biological molecules, text mining in biomedical literature, information integration, probabilistic modeling of genome sequences, etc. This special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering features a collection of 11 papers, selected from 54 submissions, representing recent advances at the frontier of mining biological data. Mining frequent trees is very useful in bioinformatics applications. The first paper, “Efficiently Mining Frequent Trees in a Forest: Algorithms and Applications” by Mohammed J. Zaki, formulates the problem of mining (embedded) subtrees in a forest of rooted, labeled, and ordered trees. The author presents TreeMiner, a novel algorithm to discover all frequent subtrees in a forest, using a new data structure called scope-list. TreeMiner has been proven to be superior to previous methods such as PatternMatcher and has shown promising results in analyzing RNA structure and phylogenetics data sets. In the second paper, “Frequent Substructure-Based Approaches for Classifying Chemical Compounds” by Mukund Deshpande, Michihiro Kuramochi, Nikil Wale, and George Karypis, the authors devise a substructurebased classification algorithm that decouples the substructure discovery process from the classification model construction and uses frequent subgraph discovery algorithms to find all topological and geometric substructures present in the data set. The advantage of this approach is that, during classification model construction, all relevant substructures are available and thus allow the classifier to intelligently select the most discriminating ones. This approach is employed to build models to correctly assign chemical compounds to various classes of interests, which have many applications in pharmaceutical research and are used extensively at various phases during the drug development process. Glycans, or carbohydrate sugar chains, are regarded as the third class of biological molecules, subsequent to DNA and proteins, and the recent advent of glycome informatics has generated an increasing number of glycan structures and annotation data. Glycans play important roles in the development and functioning of multicellular organisms and their structures can be represented by labeled ordered trees. The third paper, “A Probabilistic Model for Mining Labeled Ordered Trees: Capturing Patterns in Carbohydrate Sugar Chains” byNobuhisaUeda, Kiyoko F. Aoki-Kinoshita, Atsuko Yamaguchi, Tatsuya Akustu, and Hiroshi Mamitsuka, proposes a probabilistic model for mining labeled ordered trees and an EM algorithm for efficient learning. Proteins are the machinery of life. A number of techniques have been developed to classify proteins according to important features in their sequences, secondary structures, or three-dimensional structures. The fourth paper, “Finding Patterns on Protein Surfaces: Algorithms and Applications to Protein Classification” by Xiong Wang, introduces a novel approach to protein classification based on significant geometric patterns on the surface of a protein. The binding in protein-protein interactions exhibits a kind of biochemical stability in cells, which can be described by the mathematical notion of the fixed points. In the fifth paper, “Using Fixed Point Theorems to Model the Binding in Protein-Protein Interactions” by Jinyan Li and Haiquan Li, the authors define a point as a protein motif pair consisting of two traditional protein motifs. They propose a method to discover stable motif pairs of a given function from a large protein interaction sequence data set. With the rapid growth of articles on genomics research, it has become a challenge for biomedical researchers to access this ever-increasing quantity of information to understand the newest discovery of functions of proteins they are studying. To facilitate functional annotation of proteins by utilizing the huge amounts of biomedical literature and transforming the knowledge into easily accessible database formats, the text mining technique thus becomes essential. The sixth paper, “Literature Extraction of Protein Functions Using Sentence Pattern Mining” by Jung-Hsien Chiang and Hsu-Chun Yu, proposes the method of sentence pattern mining to extract protein functions from biomedical literature. Identifying concepts that have already been patented is essential for undertaking new biomedical research. Traditional keyword-based search on patent databases may not be sufficient enough to retrieve all the relevant information, especially for the biomedical domain. The seventh paper, “Information Retrieval and Knowledge Discovery Utilizing a BioMedical Patent Semantic Web” by Sougata Mukherjea, Bhuvan Bamba, and Pankaj Kankar, presents BioPatentMiner, a system that facilitates information retrieval and knowledge discovery from biomedical patents. BioPatentMiner first identifies biological terms IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON KNOWLEDGE AND DATA ENGINEERING, VOL. 17, NO. 8, AUGUST 2005 1019
11841640
Accelerating Profile Queries in Elevation Maps
Elevation maps are a widely used spatial data representation in geographical information systems (GIS). Paths on elevation maps can be characterized by profiles, which describe relative elevation as a function of distance. In this research, we address the inverse of this mapping - given a profile, how to efficiently find paths that could have generated it. This is called the profile query problem. Profiles have a wide variety of uses that include registering tracking information, or even other maps, to a given map. We describe a probabilistic model to characterize the maximal likelihood that a point lying on a path matches the query profile. Propagation of such probabilities to neighboring points can effectively prune the search space. This model enables us to efficiently answer queries of arbitrary profiles with user-specified error tolerances. When compared to existing spatial index methods, our approach supports more flexible queries with orders of magnitude speedup.
28890
Extension of Lower Probabilities and Coherence of Belief Measures
Coherence is an important concept which is introduced and discussed in a new mathematics branch, Imprecise Probability Theory. By using the Choquet integral, belief measures can be extended to be coherent lower previsions on the linear space consisting of all bounded functions. As a special case, we establish that all belief measures are coherent imprecise probabilities.
62615149
Mining Asynchronous Periodic Patterns in Time Series Data
Periodicy detection in time series data is a challenging problem of great importance in many applications. Most previous work focused on mining synchronous periodic patterns and did not recognize the misaligned presence of a pattern due to the intervention of random noise. In this paper, we propose a more flexible model of asynchronous periodic pattern that may be present only within a subsequence and whose occurrences may be shifted due to disturbance. Two parameters min/spl I.bar/rep and max/spl I.bar/dis are employed to specify the minimum number of repetitions that is required within each segment of nondisrupted pattern occurrences and the maximum allowed disturbance between any two successive valid segments. Upon satisfying these two requirements, the longest valid subsequence of a pattern is returned. A two-phase algorithm is devised to first generate potential periods by distance-based pruning followed by an iterative procedure to derive and validate candidate patterns and locate the longest valid subsequence. We also show that this algorithm cannot only provide linear time complexity with respect to the length of the sequence but also achieve space efficiency.
14797393
A system for analyzing and indexing human-motion databases
We demonstrate a data-driven approach for representing, compressing, and indexing human-motion databases. Our modeling approach is based on piecewise-linear components that are determined via a divisive clustering method. Selection of the appropriate linear model is determined automatically via a classifier using a subspace of the most significant, or principle features (markers). We show that, after offline training, our model can accurately estimate and classify human motions. We can also construct indexing structures for motion sequences according to their transition trajectories through these linear components. Our method not only provides indices for whole and/or partial motion sequences, but also serves as a compressed representation for the entire motion database. Our method also tends to be immune to temporal variations, and thus avoids the expense of time-warping.
14240267
Multimedia-Based Interactive Advising Technology for Online Consumer Decision Support
This paper proposes a new method for online consumer decision support: Multimedia-based Interactive Advising (MIA). The method is based on current internet technologies, particularly multimedia, intelligent agent and advising technology. The discussion of the benefits and design of MIA will illuminate particular areas of research and development, with the goal of improving consumers’ choices in e-commerce environments.
18818332
Adaptive data broadcasting in asymmetric communication environments
We present a new adaptive broadcast dissemination model to support flexible responses to client requests. Several features distinguish our model. First, client queries do not target individual documents, but specify the required information by attributes. Second, clients are satisfied by responses that are sufficiently close to the desired information. Finally, the server in our model solicits randomized feedback from clients to adapt its broadcast program to client needs. Our simulation results show that our model captures the interest patterns of clients more efficiently and more accurately and scales very well with the number of clients, while reducing overall client average waiting times.
42677463
Heterogeneous software reliability modeling
A number of Markov-based software reliability models have been developed for measuring software reliability. However, the application of these models is strictly limited to software that satisfies the Markov properties. The objective of our work is to expand the application domain of the Markov-based models, so that most software can be modeled and software reliability can be measured at the architecture level. To overcome the limitations of Markov properties, our model takes execution history into account and addresses both deterministic and probabilistic software behaviors. Each state represents the executions of one or more components depending on the architectural styles. In addition, the executions of one component are depicted by using distinctive states, when such executions are influenced by past states. Furthermore, we construct loops to eliminate the likelihood of unlimited state expansion and utilize a binomial tree structure to account for all the different execution paths. We show that Markov models are applicable even to software that does not fully satisfy the Markov properties. Therefore, we significantly improve the state of the art in architecture-based software reliability modeling.
18108736
An Index Model for MPEG-2 Streams
The MPEG standards are playing a more and more important role in many multimedia applications now, and will continue in the future. An effective index model is presented for MPEG-1, 2 streams in this paper. Moreover, the algorithm of constructing the index for MPEG-1, 2 streams is designed, as well as the solution to access any frame in the streams rapidly based on the model. The experimental results have shown the index model can provide the power of precisely positioning a frame quickly and can be applied to randomly accessing a frame effectively.
13974173
An empirical investigation of intelligent agents for e-business customer relationship management: a knowledge management perspective
Izak Benbasat MIS Division, Faculty of Commerce and Business Admin. University of British Columbia 2053 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T1Z2, Canada Phone: (604)822-8396, Fax: (604)822-0045 Email: benbasat@commerce.ubc.ca Abstract: Using a knowledge management perspective, this paper investigates new and efficient ways of applying intelligent agents to e-business customer relationship management. Intelligent agents, as well as knowledge-based systems or expert systems, as a branch of applied artificial intelligence not only predate the recent surge of interest in knowledge management, but also stand out as a well-established means for implementing certain aspects of knowledge management. Intelligent agent technologies make it easier to codify, store, share, and transfer certain kinds of knowledge. Based on the IS literature on explanations and decisional guidance for knowledge-based systems, this paper argues that transferring appropriate knowledge from an organization’s staff to its partners and customers can facilitate efficient customer relationship management (e.g., improving customer trust). It is suggested that three types of knowledge – “How Explanations”, “Why Explanations”, and “Decisional Guidance” – be embedded in intelligent agents, and transferred to the agent’s users. A laboratory experiment is proposed to test if, in which aspects, and to what extent these types of knowledge will increase customer trust.