Helsinki Institute for Information Technology

About: Helsinki Institute for Information Technology is a facility organization based out in Espoo, Finland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Bayesian network. The organization has 630 authors who have published 1962 publications receiving 63426 citations.

AWESOM: automatic discrete partitioning of indoor spaces for wifi fingerprinting

Abstract: WiFi fingerprinting is currently one of the most popular techniques for indoor localization as it provides reasonable positioning accuracy while at the same time being able to exploit existing wireless infrastructure. To facilitate calibration efforts and to overcome fluctuations in location measurements, many indoor WiFi positioning systems utilize a discrete partitioning, e.g., a grid or a topological map, of the space where the positioning is being deployed. A major limitation of this approach, however, is that instead of considering spatial similarities in the signal environment, the partitioning is typically based on an uniform division of the space or topological constraints (e.g., rooms and walls). This can significantly decrease positioning accuracy when the signal environment is not sufficiently stable across all partitions. Moreover, current solutions provide no support for identifying partitions that are not compatible with the current wireless deployment. To overcome these limitations, we propose AWESOM (Activations Weighted by the Euclidean-distance using Self-Organizing Maps), a novel measure for automatically creating a discrete partitioning of the space where the WiFi positioning is being deployed. In addition to enabling automatic construction of a discrete partitioning, AWESOM provides a measure for evaluating the goodness of a given partitioning for a particular access point deployment. AWESOM also enables identifying partitions where additional access points should be deployed. We demonstrate the usefulness of AWESOM using data collected from two large scale deployments of a proprietary wireless positioning system in a hypermarket environment.

Machine Learning of Protein Interactions in Fungal Secretory Pathways.

Abstract: In this paper we apply machine learning methods for predicting protein interactions in fungal secretion pathways. We assume an inter-species transfer setting, where training data is obtained from a single species and the objective is to predict protein interactions in other, related species. In our methodology, we combine several state of the art machine learning approaches, namely, multiple kernel learning (MKL), pairwise kernels and kernelized structured output prediction in the supervised graph inference framework. For MKL, we apply recently proposed centered kernel alignment and p-norm path following approaches to integrate several feature sets describing the proteins, demonstrating improved performance. For graph inference, we apply input-output kernel regression (IOKR) in supervised and semi-supervised modes as well as output kernel trees (OK3). In our experiments simulating increasing genetic distance, Input-Output Kernel Regression proved to be the most robust prediction approach. We also show that the MKL approaches improve the predictions compared to uniform combination of the kernels. We evaluate the methods on the task of predicting protein-protein-interactions in the secretion pathways in fungi, S.cerevisiae, baker's yeast, being the source, T. reesei being the target of the inter-species transfer learning. We identify completely novel candidate secretion proteins conserved in filamentous fungi. These proteins could contribute to their unique secretion capabilities.

Breakthrough percepts of famous faces

Abstract: Recently, we showed that presenting salient names (i.e., a participant's first name) on the fringe of awareness (in rapid serial visual presentation, RSVP) breaks through into awareness, resulting in the generation of a P3, which (if concealed information is presented) could be used to differentiate between deceivers and nondeceivers. The aim of the present study was to explore whether face stimuli can be used in an ERP‐based RSVP paradigm to infer recognition of broadly familiar faces. To do this, we explored whether famous faces differentially break into awareness when presented in RSVP and, importantly, whether ERPs can be used to detect these breakthrough events on an individual basis. Our findings provide evidence that famous faces are differentially perceived and processed by participants' brains as compared to novel (or unfamiliar) faces. EEG data revealed large differences in brain responses between these conditions.

Creative personal projects of the elderly as active engagements with interactive media technology

Abstract: Interactive media technologies are increasingly designed to support an active life among senior citizens and not solely to diminish the effects of physical and cognitive decline. One aspect of active life in one's old age is engagement in creative "personal projects," such as new hobbies and reflection on past events. To our knowledge, research has not yet explicitly focused on the role of creative personal projects in senior citizens' media use. In our analysis of media diaries and contextual interviews with seven seniors, we focus on how interactive media technologies are involved in these projects. Proceeding from our findings, we provide suggestions on how to enhance creative personal projects with interactive media technology design.

Tiers for peers: a practical algorithm for discovering hierarchy in weighted networks

Abstract: Interactions in many real-world phenomena can be explained by a strong hierarchical structure. Typically, this structure or ranking is not known; instead we only have observed outcomes of the interactions, and the goal is to infer the hierarchy from these observations. Discovering a hierarchy in the context of directed networks can be formulated as follows: given a graph, partition vertices into levels such that, ideally, there are only edges from upper levels to lower levels. The ideal case can only happen if the graph is acyclic. Consequently, in practice we have to introduce a penalty function that penalizes edges violating the hierarchy. A practical variant for such penalty is agony, where each violating edge is penalized based on the severity of the violation. Hierarchy minimizing agony can be discovered in [InlineEquation not available: see fulltext.] time, and much faster in practice. In this paper we introduce several extensions to agony. We extend the definition for weighted graphs and allow a cardinality constraint that limits the number of levels. While, these are conceptually trivial extensions, current algorithms cannot handle them, nor they can be easily extended. We solve the problem by showing the connection to the capacitated circulation problem, and we demonstrate that we can compute the exact solution fast in practice for large datasets. We also introduce a provably fast heuristic algorithm that produces rankings with competitive scores. In addition, we show that we can compute agony in polynomial time for any convex penalty, and, to complete the picture, we show that minimizing hierarchy with any concave penalty is an NP-hard problem.