Abstract: A social activity planning method includes the following operation. A database storing multiple candidate invitees with their geographical locations and interest scores towards a topic, and a social graph including vertices representing the candidate invitees and edges connecting two vertices representing mutual acquaintance of the associated candidate invitees is accessed. A social activity request including an invitation number, information about a social activity, and a familiarity condition for the social activity request is received. At least one feasible solution including the invitation number of the candidate invitees and meeting the familiarity condition is generated. A group of selected invitees are found based on the feasible solution and the information about the social activity.

Abstract: A social activity planning method includes the following operation. A database storing multiple candidate invitees with their geographical locations and interest scores towards a topic, and a social graph including vertices representing the candidate invitees and edges connecting two vertices representing mutual acquaintance of the associated candidate invitees is accessed. A social activity request including an invitation number, information about a social activity, and a familiarity condition for the social activity request is received. At least one feasible solution including the invitation number of the candidate invitees and meeting the familiarity condition is generated. A group of selected invitees are found based on the feasible solution and the information about the social activity.

Abstract: An asymmetric and asynchronous energy conservation protocol for vehicular networks is provided. In one aspect, an a-quorum may be defined for one or more members for the one or more members to establish asymmetric links to contact the cluster head. An s-quorum for the cluster head to establish symmetric link between the cluster heads and relays may be defined.

Abstract: An asymmetric and asynchronous energy conservation protocol for vehicular networks is provided. In one aspect, an a-quorum may be defined for one or more members for the one or more members to establish asymmetric links to contact the cluster head. An s-quorum for the cluster head to establish symmetric link between the cluster heads and relays may be defined.

Abstract: A method for discovering association rules in an electronic database commonly known as data mining. A database is divided into a plurality of sections, and each section is sequentially scanned, the results of the previous scan being taken into consideration in a current scanned partition. Three algorithms are further developed on this basis that deal with incremental mining, mining general temporal association rules, and weighted association rules in a time-variant database.

Abstract: A system and method for broadcasting data in accordance with predicted usage. In accordance with the method, the predicted usage of data records within a given set is determined. The broacast order is then determined based on the predicted usage and the data records are broadcast in the order determined. Two kinds of embodiments are considered: one in which variant index fanouts are not allowed (i.e., fixed fanout has to be used), and the other in which variant index fanouts are allowed. For the case of fixed index fanouts, a first method for the optimal index tree construction minimizes the average cost of index probes. For the case of variant index fanouts, a second method (method 2) builds index trees with variant fanouts. The first method uses access frequencies of data records to build a fixed fanout index tree. In the second method, the number of fanouts of each index is determined as a function of the access frequencies of those nodes (data or indexes) that the index node points to.

Abstract: The rate staggering technique for efficient storage and retrieval of video data is embodied in a data processing system including a disk array based video server, which includes a disk array for storing video data, a processor for processing data, a memory buffer for storing video data and a rate staggering controller. Data is transferred to a network from video server through a network interface and from the network to client stations employing devices having differing resolution capabilities. The processor executes tasks under control of the rate staggering controller. These tasks include a retrieval task which retrieves scalable video from the array of disks, a storage task which stores videos temporarily in the memory buffer, and a transmission task which transmits video to client stations through the network.

Abstract: A communications system and method include an efficient cache invalidation technique which allows a computer to relocate and to disconnect without informing the server. The server partitions the entire database into a number of groups. The server also dynamically identifies recently updated objects in a group and excludes them from the group when checking the validity of the group. If these objects have already been included in the most recent invalidation broadcast, the remote computer can invalidate them in its cache before checking the group validity with the server. With the recently updated objects excluded from a group, the server can conclude that the cold objects in the group can be retained in the cache, and validate the rest of the group.

Abstract: For mining causality rules in an event database, the rules are obtained by iteratively generating candidate rules and counting their occurrences in the event database. Newly identified causality rules are used to generate the next set of candidate rules to be evaluated, by increasing the size of the set of consequential events triggered by triggering events and/or the number of triggering events. The preferred embodiment uses an iterative approach to deriving the causality rules in order of the consequential set sizes and triggering set sizes. The detection of an occurrence of a causality rule in an event sequence is handled as a sub-sequence matching problem using a novel hierarchical matching method to improve efficiency.

Abstract: A method and system for mining data in a transaction database using a progressive approach is presented. A portion of the transaction database is initially scanned with a relaxed selection criterion to generate a candidate item set to count. The remainder of the transaction database is then scanned to determine a number of occurrences of the candidate item set.

Abstract: A content based method is used to download/record digital video from networks to client stations and home VCRs. In this manner, the disadvantages associated with conventional time-based downloading of programs to analog video is avoided. The method includes the steps of receiving each of the video programs, identifying one of the programs from those received based upon frame signature matching, pre-loaded pattern searching, annotation signal searching or program bar code searching and saving the desired video program based upon the performed identification. Alternately a storage apparatus is included for storing selected signals. Furthermore, content based filtering is included for identifying selected signals and for transferring the identified selected signals to the storage device.

Abstract: An efficient method and system of communicating and accumulating global information for parallel data mining. Since each database is partitioned, a single node in a parallel environment will be unable to make decisions based on global information. A novel technique of progressive thresholding is devised to accumulates global information as a function of a transaction support threshold while minimizing transmission overhead. The transaction support threshold is varied as a function of the number of nodes contributing to the global information progresses.

Abstract: A system and method of transforming the standard compressed media stream used for distribution to a local form for a client station. A media stream is downloaded from an input source to a device in the local station and then played out the video stream in the local station. During the playout, the stream is transformed to another storage format by altering the standard/original compression form to a local form.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for minimizing the time required to obtain results for a content based query in a data base. More specifically, with this invention, the data base is partitioned into a plurality of groups. Then, a schedule or sequence of groups is assigned to each of the operations of the query, where the schedule represents the order in which an operation of the query will be applied to the groups in the schedule. Each schedule is arranged so that each application of the operation operates on the group which will yield intermediate results that are closest to final results.

Abstract: A computer implemented system, two-step method and computer program product which improves the operations of multi-feature extraction and which efficiently develops classification rules from a large training database. Specifically, given a large training set of data tuples, the first phase, called the feature identification phase, identifies features, which have good power in separating data tuples, based on a subset of the training set. A feature that has a good power in correlating data tuples into groups is said to have a good discriminating power. Since the feature identification phase is performed on a subset of the training set, processing costs are minimized. Limiting this phase to the identification of features having good discriminating power ensures that the use of a subset of the training set does not adversely affect the validity of the conclusions drawn therefrom.

Abstract: An efficient computer implemented method of mining path traversal patterns in a communications network. The method of the present invention comprises two steps. A method, called MF (standing for maximal forward references), is first used to convert an original sequence of log data into a set of traversal subsequences. Each traversal subsequence represents a maximal forward reference from the starting point of a user access. This step of converting the original log sequence into a set of maximal forward references will filter out the effect of backward references which are mainly made for ease of traveling, and enable us to concentrate on mining meaningful user access sequences. Accordingly, when backward references occur, a forward reference path terminates. This resulting forward reference path is termed a maximal forward reference. After a maximal forward reference is obtained, we back track to the starting point of the forward reference and begin a new forward reference path.

Abstract: A method of distributing a set of data among a plurality of disks, which provides for load balancing in the event of a disk failure. In accordance with the method the total number of the disks in an array are divided into a number of clusters. The blocks of data are then stored in each cluster such that each cluster contains a complete set of the data and such that data block placement in each cluster is a unique permutation of the data block placement in the other clusters. In the event of a disk failure, data block accesses to the failed disk are redirected to a disk in the other cluster having a copy of the data block and further access to the disks that remain operational are rebalanced.

Abstract: A system and method for performing variable speed scanning or browsing, wherein a user controls the playout speed of a movie, which does not require additional disk or network bandwidth resources. In a preferred embodiment, the method provides for scanning operations for an Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) video stream. The method satisfies the constraints of the MPEG decoder (in the users set-top box) and require a minimum of additional system resources. The embodiments of the present invention include (a) a storage method, (b1) a segment sampling method, (b2) a segment placement method, and (c) a playout method, where (b1) and (b2) are two alternatives for segment selection. Thus, two sets of solutions are provided to support variable speed scanning in a disk-array-based video server: One using (a), (b1) and (c), and the other using (a), (b2) and (c).

Abstract: An access frequency is determined for each data unit in a data sharing environment employing a hashing scheme, either from an estimate or from a history of data accesses. The data units are then categorized into access frequency classes. Available hash entries are then allocated among the various access frequency classes, with more hash entries being allocated to relatively higher access frequency classes. Once the hash entries are allocated, the data units are allocated to the hash entries in a given access frequency class. In the simplest form, the data units are evenly allocated among the hash entries of a given access frequency class.

Abstract: A plurality of queries (jobs) which consist of sets of tasks with precedence constraints between them are optimally scheduled in two stages of scheduling for processing on a parallel processing system. In a first stage of scheduling, multiple optimum schedules are created for each job, one optimum schedule for each possible number of processors which might be used to execute each job, and an estimated job execution time is determined for each of the optimum schedules created for each job, thereby producing a set of estimated job execution times for each job which are a function of the number of processors used for the job execution. Precedence constraints between tasks in each job are respected in creating all of these optimum schedules. Any known optimum scheduling method for parallel processing tasks that have precedence constraints among tasks may be used but a novel preferred method is also disclosed.