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Observations of the synchrotron and inverse Compton emissions from ultrarelativistic electrons in astrophysical sources can reveal a great deal about the energy-momentum relations of those electrons. They can thus be used to place bounds on the possibility of Lorentz violation in the electron sector. Recent $\gamma$-ray telescope data allow the Lorentz-violating electron $c^{\nu\mu}$ parameters to be constrained extremely well, so that all bounds are at the level of $7\times 10^{-16}$ or better.
We define a renormalized volume for a region in an asymptotically hyperbolic Einstein manifold that is bounded by a Graham-Witten minimal surface and the conformal infinity. We prove a Gauss-Bonnet theorem for the renormalized volume, and compute its derivative under variations of the minimal hypersurface.
We present a symmetry-based scheme to create 0D second-order topological modes in continuous 2D systems. We show that a metamaterial with a \textit{p6m}-symmetric pattern exhibits two Dirac cones, which can be gapped in two distinct ways by deforming the pattern. Combining the deformations in a single system then emulates the 2D Jackiw-Rossi model of a topological vortex, where 0D in-gap bound modes are guaranteed to exist. We exemplify our approach with simple hexagonal, Kagome and honeycomb lattices. We furthermore formulate a quantitative method to extract the topological properties from finite-element simulations, which facilitates further optimization of the bound mode characteristics. Our scheme enables the realization of second-order topology in a wide range of experimental systems.
A superdiagonal composition is one in which the $i$-th part or summand is of size greater than or equal to $i$. In this paper, we study the number of palindromic superdiagonal compositions and colored superdiagonal compositions. In particular, we give generating functions and explicit combinatorial formulas involving binomial coefficients and Stirling numbers of the first kind.
Relativistic AGN jets exhibit multi-timescale variability and a broadband non-thermal spectrum extending from radio to gamma-rays. These highly magnetized jets are prone to undergo several Magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities during their propagation in space and could trigger jet radiation and particle acceleration. This work aims to study the implications of relativistic kink mode instability on the observed long-term variability in the context of the twisting in-homogeneous jet model. To achieve this, we investigate the physical configurations preferable for forming kink mode instability by performing high-resolution 3D relativistic MHD simulations of a portion of highly magnetized jets. In particular, we perform simulations of cylindrical plasma column with Lorentz factor $\geq 5$ and study the effects of magnetization values and axial wave-numbers with decreasing pitch on the onset and growth of kink instability. We have confirmed the impact of axial wave-number on the dynamics of the plasma column including the growth of the instability. In this work, we have further investigated the connection between the dynamics of the plasma column with its time-varying emission features. From our analysis, we find a correlated trend between the growth rate of kink mode instability and the flux variability obtained from the simulated light curve.
Virtually anything can be and is ranked; people and animals, universities and countries, words and genes. Rankings reduce the components of highly complex systems into ordered lists, aiming to capture the fitness or ability of each element to perform relevant functions, and are being used from socioeconomic policy to knowledge extraction. A century of research has found regularities in ranking lists across nature and society when data is aggregated over time. Far less is known, however, about ranking dynamics, when the elements change their rank in time. To bridge this gap, here we explore the dynamics of 30 ranking lists in natural, social, economic, and infrastructural systems, comprising millions of elements, whose temporal scales span from minutes to centuries. We find that the flux governing the arrival of new elements into a ranking list reveals systems with identifiable patterns of stability: in high-flux systems only the top of the list is stable, while in low-flux systems the top and bottom are equally stable. We show that two basic mechanisms - displacement and replacement of elements - are sufficient to understand and quantify ranking dynamics. The model uncovers two regimes in the dynamics of ranking lists: a fast regime dominated by long-range rank changes, and a slow regime driven by diffusion. Our results indicate that the balance between robustness and adaptability characterizing the dynamics of complex systems might be governed by random processes irrespective of the details of each system.
Recent years have seen considerable research activities devoted to video enhancement that simultaneously increases temporal frame rate and spatial resolution. However, the existing methods either fail to explore the intrinsic relationship between temporal and spatial information or lack flexibility in the choice of final temporal/spatial resolution. In this work, we propose an unconstrained space-time video super-resolution network, which can effectively exploit space-time correlation to boost performance. Moreover, it has complete freedom in adjusting the temporal frame rate and spatial resolution through the use of the optical flow technique and a generalized pixelshuffle operation. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method not only outperforms the state-of-the-art, but also requires far fewer parameters and less running time.
In Zero-shot learning (ZSL), we classify unseen categories using textual descriptions about their expected appearance when observed (class embeddings) and a disjoint pool of seen classes, for which annotated visual data are accessible. We tackle ZSL by casting a "vanilla" convolutional neural network (e.g. AlexNet, ResNet-101, DenseNet-201 or DarkNet-53) into a zero-shot learner. We do so by crafting the softmax classifier: we freeze its weights using fixed seen classification rules, either semantic (seen class embeddings) or visual (seen class prototypes). Then, we learn a data-driven and ZSL-tailored feature representation on seen classes only to match these fixed classification rules. Given that the latter seamlessly generalize towards unseen classes, while requiring not actual unseen data to be computed, we can perform ZSL inference by augmenting the pool of classification rules at test time while keeping the very same representation we learnt: nowhere re-training or fine-tuning on unseen data is performed. The combination of semantic and visual crafting (by simply averaging softmax scores) improves prior state-of-the-art methods in benchmark datasets for standard, inductive ZSL. After rebalancing predictions to better handle the joint inference over seen and unseen classes, we outperform prior generalized, inductive ZSL methods as well. Also, we gain interpretability at no additional cost, by using neural attention methods (e.g., grad-CAM) as they are. Code will be made publicly available.
Learning from implicit feedback is one of the most common cases in the application of recommender systems. Generally speaking, interacted examples are considered as positive while negative examples are sampled from uninteracted ones. However, noisy examples are prevalent in real-world implicit feedback. A noisy positive example could be interacted but it actually leads to negative user preference. A noisy negative example which is uninteracted because of unawareness of the user could also denote potential positive user preference. Conventional training methods overlook these noisy examples, leading to sub-optimal recommendations. In this work, we propose a novel framework to learn robust recommenders from implicit feedback. Through an empirical study, we find that different models make relatively similar predictions on clean examples which denote the real user preference, while the predictions on noisy examples vary much more across different models. Motivated by this observation, we propose denoising with cross-model agreement(DeCA) which aims to minimize the KL-divergence between the real user preference distributions parameterized by two recommendation models while maximizing the likelihood of data observation. We employ the proposed DeCA on four state-of-the-art recommendation models and conduct experiments on four datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that DeCA significantly improves recommendation performance compared with normal training and other denoising methods. Codes will be open-sourced.
Meta-learning, or learning to learn, is a technique that can help to overcome resource scarcity in cross-lingual NLP problems, by enabling fast adaptation to new tasks. We apply model-agnostic meta-learning (MAML) to the task of cross-lingual dependency parsing. We train our model on a diverse set of languages to learn a parameter initialization that can adapt quickly to new languages. We find that meta-learning with pre-training can significantly improve upon the performance of language transfer and standard supervised learning baselines for a variety of unseen, typologically diverse, and low-resource languages, in a few-shot learning setup.
This manuscript presents an algorithm for obtaining an approximation of nonlinear high order control affine dynamical systems, that leverages the controlled trajectories as the central unit of information. As the fundamental basis elements leveraged in approximation, higher order control occupation kernels represent iterated integration after multiplication by a given controller in a vector valued reproducing kernel Hilbert space. In a regularized regression setting, the unique optimizer for a particular optimization problem is expressed as a linear combination of these occupation kernels, which converts an infinite dimensional optimization problem to a finite dimensional optimization problem through the representer theorem. Interestingly, the vector valued structure of the Hilbert space allows for simultaneous approximation of the drift and control effectiveness components of the control affine system. Several experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.
In 1930, Wilhelm Magnus introduced the so-called Freiheitssatz: Let $F$ be a free group with basis $\mathcal{X}$ and let $r$ be a cyclically reduced element of $F$ which contains a basis element $x \in \mathcal{X}$, then every non-trivial element of the normal closure of $r$ in $F$ contains the basis element $x$. Equivalently, the subgroup freely generated by $\mathcal{X} \backslash \{x\}$ embeds canonically into the quotient group $F / \langle \! \langle r \rangle \! \rangle_{F}$. In this article, we want to introduce a Freiheitssatz for amalgamated products $G=A \ast_{U} B$ of free groups $A$ and $B$, where $U$ is a maximal cyclic subgroup in $A$ and $B$: If an element $r$ of $G$ is neither conjugate to an element of $A$ nor $B$, then the factors $A$, $B$ embed canonically into $G / \langle \! \langle r \rangle \! \rangle_{G}$.
In this article, we prove a $p$-adic analogue of the local invariant cycle theorem for $H^2$ in mixed characteristics. As a result, for a smooth projective variety $X$ over a $p$-adic local field $K$ with a proper flat regular model $\mathcal{X}$ over $O_K$, we show that the natural map $Br(\mathcal{X})\rightarrow Br(X_{\bar{K}})^{G_K}$ has a finite kernel and a finite cokernel. And we prove that the natural map $Hom(Br(X)/Br(K)+Br(\mathcal{X}), \mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z}) \rightarrow Alb_X(K)$ has a finite kernel and a finite cokernel, generalizing Lichtenbaum's duality between Brauer groups and Jacobians for curves to arbitrary dimensions.
Quasiparticles and analog models are ubiquitous in the study of physical systems. Little has been written about quasiparticles on manifolds with anticommuting co-ordinates, yet they are capable of emulating a surprising range of physical phenomena. This paper introduces a classical model of free fields on a manifold with anticommuting co-ordinates, identifies the region of superspace which the model inhabits, and shows that the model emulates the behaviour of a five-species interacting quantum field theory on $\mathbb{R}^{1,3}$. The Lagrangian of this model arises entirely from the anticommutation property of the manifold co-ordinates.
We study the problem of controlling oscillations in closed loop by combining positive and negative feedback in a mixed configuration. We develop a complete design procedure to set the relative strength of the two feedback loops to achieve steady oscillations. The proposed design takes advantage of dominance theory and adopts classical harmonic balance and fast/slow analysis to regulate the frequency of oscillations. The design is illustrated on a simple two-mass system, a setting that reveals the potential of the approach for locomotion, mimicking approaches based on central pattern generators.
On-device training for personalized learning is a challenging research problem. Being able to quickly adapt deep prediction models at the edge is necessary to better suit personal user needs. However, adaptation on the edge poses some questions on both the efficiency and sustainability of the learning process and on the ability to work under shifting data distributions. Indeed, naively fine-tuning a prediction model only on the newly available data results in catastrophic forgetting, a sudden erasure of previously acquired knowledge. In this paper, we detail the implementation and deployment of a hybrid continual learning strategy (AR1*) on a native Android application for real-time on-device personalization without forgetting. Our benchmark, based on an extension of the CORe50 dataset, shows the efficiency and effectiveness of our solution.
Deep learning based methods hold state-of-the-art results in image denoising, but remain difficult to interpret due to their construction from poorly understood building blocks such as batch-normalization, residual learning, and feature domain processing. Unrolled optimization networks propose an interpretable alternative to constructing deep neural networks by deriving their architecture from classical iterative optimization methods, without use of tricks from the standard deep learning tool-box. So far, such methods have demonstrated performance close to that of state-of-the-art models while using their interpretable construction to achieve a comparably low learned parameter count. In this work, we propose an unrolled convolutional dictionary learning network (CDLNet) and demonstrate its competitive denoising performance in both low and high parameter count regimes. Specifically, we show that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art denoising models when scaled to similar parameter count. In addition, we leverage the model's interpretable construction to propose an augmentation of the network's thresholds that enables state-of-the-art blind denoising performance and near-perfect generalization on noise-levels unseen during training.
Differentially private (DP) stochastic convex optimization (SCO) is a fundamental problem, where the goal is to approximately minimize the population risk with respect to a convex loss function, given a dataset of i.i.d. samples from a distribution, while satisfying differential privacy with respect to the dataset. Most of the existing works in the literature of private convex optimization focus on the Euclidean (i.e., $\ell_2$) setting, where the loss is assumed to be Lipschitz (and possibly smooth) w.r.t. the $\ell_2$ norm over a constraint set with bounded $\ell_2$ diameter. Algorithms based on noisy stochastic gradient descent (SGD) are known to attain the optimal excess risk in this setting. In this work, we conduct a systematic study of DP-SCO for $\ell_p$-setups. For $p=1$, under a standard smoothness assumption, we give a new algorithm with nearly optimal excess risk. This result also extends to general polyhedral norms and feasible sets. For $p\in(1, 2)$, we give two new algorithms, whose central building block is a novel privacy mechanism, which generalizes the Gaussian mechanism. Moreover, we establish a lower bound on the excess risk for this range of $p$, showing a necessary dependence on $\sqrt{d}$, where $d$ is the dimension of the space. Our lower bound implies a sudden transition of the excess risk at $p=1$, where the dependence on $d$ changes from logarithmic to polynomial, resolving an open question in prior work [TTZ15] . For $p\in (2, \infty)$, noisy SGD attains optimal excess risk in the low-dimensional regime; in particular, this proves the optimality of noisy SGD for $p=\infty$. Our work draws upon concepts from the geometry of normed spaces, such as the notions of regularity, uniform convexity, and uniform smoothness.
Biological muscles have always attracted robotics researchers due to their efficient capabilities in compliance, force generation, and mechanical work. Many groups are working on the development of artificial muscles, however, state-of-the-art methods still fall short in performance when compared with their biological counterpart. Muscles with high force output are mostly rigid, whereas traditional soft actuators take much space and are limited in strength and producing displacement. In this work, we aim to find a reasonable trade-off between these features by mimicking the striated structure of skeletal muscles. For that, we designed an artificial pneumatic myofibril composed of multiple contraction units that combine stretchable and inextensible materials. Varying the geometric parameters and the number of units in series provides flexible adjustment of the desired muscle operation. We derived a mathematical model that predicts the relationship between the input pneumatic pressure and the generated output force. A detailed experimental study is conducted to validate the performance of the proposed bio-inspired muscle.
Finding information about tourist places to visit is a challenging problem that people face while visiting different countries. This problem is accentuated when people are coming from different countries, speak different languages, and are from all segments of society. In this context, visitors and pilgrims face important problems to find the appropriate doaas when visiting holy places. In this paper, we propose a mobile application that helps the user find the appropriate doaas for a given holy place in an easy and intuitive manner. Three different options are developed to achieve this goal: 1) manual search, 2) GPS location to identify the holy places and therefore their corresponding doaas, and 3) deep learning (DL) based method to determine the holy place by analyzing an image taken by the visitor. Experiments show good performance of the proposed mobile application in providing the appropriate doaas for visited holy places.
So far, topological band theory is discussed mainly for systems described by eigenvalue problems. Here, we develop a topological band theory described by a generalized eigenvalue problem (GEVP). Our analysis elucidates that non-Hermitian topological band structures may emerge for systems described by a GEVP with Hermitian matrices. The above result is verified by analyzing a two-dimensional toy model where symmetry-protected exceptional rings (SPERs) emerge although the matrices involved are Hermitian. Remarkably, these SPERs are protected by emergent symmetry, which is unique to the systems described by the GEVP. Furthermore, these SPERs elucidate the origin of the characteristic dispersion of hyperbolic metamaterials which is observed in experiments.
We provide a framework for proving convergence to the directed landscape, the central object in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class. For last passage models, we show that compact convergence to the Airy line ensemble implies convergence to the Airy sheet. In i.i.d. environments, we show that Airy sheet convergence implies convergence of distances and geodesics to their counterparts in the directed landscape. Our results imply convergence of classical last passage models and interacting particle systems. Our framework is built on the notion of a directed metric, a generalization of metrics which behaves better under limits. As a consequence of our results, we present a solution to an old problem: the scaled longest increasing subsequence in a uniform permutation converges to the directed geodesic.
It is known that an ideal triangulation of a compact $3$-manifold with nonempty boundary is minimal if and only if it contains the minimum number of edges among all ideal triangulations of the manifold. Therefore, any ideal one-edge triangulation (i.e., an ideal singular triangulation with exactly one edge) is minimal. Vesnin, Turaev, and the first author showed that an ideal two-edge triangulation is minimal if no $3$-$2$ Pachner move can be applied. In this paper we show that any of the so-called poor ideal three-edge triangulations is minimal. We exploit this property to construct minimal ideal triangulations for an infinite family of hyperbolic $3$-manifolds with totally geodesic boundary.
Virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMD) appear to be effective research tools, which may address the problem of ecological validity in neuropsychological testing. However, their widespread implementation is hindered by VR induced symptoms and effects (VRISE) and the lack of skills in VR software development. This study offers guidelines for the development of VR software in cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, by describing and discussing the stages of the development of Virtual Reality Everyday Assessment Lab (VR-EAL), the first neuropsychological battery in immersive VR. Techniques for evaluating cognitive functions within a realistic storyline are discussed. The utility of various assets in Unity, software development kits, and other software are described so that cognitive scientists can overcome challenges pertinent to VRISE and the quality of the VR software. In addition, this pilot study attempts to evaluate VR-EAL in accordance with the necessary criteria for VR software for research purposes. The VR neuroscience questionnaire (VRNQ; Kourtesis et al., 2019b) was implemented to appraise the quality of the three versions of VR-EAL in terms of user experience, game mechanics, in-game assistance, and VRISE. Twenty-five participants aged between 20 and 45 years with 12-16 years of full-time education evaluated various versions of VR-EAL. The final version of VR-EAL achieved high scores in every sub-score of the VRNQ and exceeded its parsimonious cut-offs. It also appeared to have better in-game assistance and game mechanics, while its improved graphics substantially increased the quality of the user experience and almost eradicated VRISE. The results substantially support the feasibility of the development of effective VR research and clinical software without the presence of VRISE during a 60-minute VR session.
We consider collisions between stars moving near the speed of light around supermassive black holes (SMBHs), with mass $M_{\bullet}\gtrsim10^8\,M_{\odot}$, without being tidally disrupted. The overall rate for collisions taking place in the inner $\sim1$ pc of galaxies with $M_{\bullet}=10^8,10^9,10^{10}\,M_{\odot}$ are $\Gamma\sim5,0.07,0.02$ yr$^{-1}$, respectively. We further calculate the differential collision rate as a function of total energy released, energy released per unit mass lost, and galactocentric radius. The most common collisions will release energies on the order of $\sim10^{49}-10^{51}$ erg, with the energy distribution peaking at higher energies in galaxies with more massive SMBHs. Depending on the host galaxy mass and the depletion timescale, the overall rate of collisions in a galaxy ranges from a small percentage to several times larger than that of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) for the same host galaxy. In addition, we show example light curves for collisions with varying parameters, and find that the peak luminosity could reach or even exceed that of superluminous supernovae (SLSNe), although with light curves with much shorter duration. Weaker events could initially be mistaken for low-luminosity supernovae. In addition, we note that these events will likely create streams of debris that will accrete onto the SMBH and create accretion flares that may resemble tidal disruption events (TDEs).
Custom currencies (ERC-20) on Ethereum are wildly popular, but they are second class to the primary currency Ether. Custom currencies are more complex and more expensive to handle than the primary currency as their accounting is not natively performed by the underlying ledger, but instead in user-defined contract code. Furthermore, and quite importantly, transaction fees can only be paid in Ether. In this paper, we focus on being able to pay transaction fees in custom currencies. We achieve this by way of a mechanism permitting short term liabilities to pay transaction fees in conjunction with offers of custom currencies to compensate for those liabilities. This enables block producers to accept custom currencies in exchange for settling liabilities of transactions that they process. We present formal ledger rules to handle liabilities together with the concept of babel fees to pay transaction fees in custom currencies. We also discuss how clients can determine what fees they have to pay, and we present a solution to the knapsack problem variant that block producers have to solve in the presence of babel fees to optimise their profits.
Control systems of interest are often invariant under Lie groups of transformations. Given such a control system, assumed to not be static feedback linearizable, a verifiable geometric condition is described and proven to guarantee its dynamic feedback linearizability. Additionally, a systematic procedure for obtaining all the system trajectories is shown to follow from this condition. Besides smoothness and the existence of symmetry, no further assumption is made on the local form of a control system, which is therefore permitted to be fully nonlinear and time varying. Likewise, no constraints are imposed on the local form of the dynamic compensator. Particular attention is given to those systems requiring non-trivial dynamic extensions; that is, beyond augmentation by chains of integrators. Nevertheless, the results are illustrated by an example of each type. Firstly, a control system that can be dynamically linearized by a chain of integrators, and secondly, one which does not possess any linearizing chains of integrators and for which a dynamic feedback linearization is nevertheless derived. These systems are discussed in some detail. The constructions have been automated in the Maple package DifferentialGeometry.
Learning embedding spaces of suitable geometry is critical for representation learning. In order for learned representations to be effective and efficient, it is ideal that the geometric inductive bias aligns well with the underlying structure of the data. In this paper, we propose Switch Spaces, a data-driven approach for learning representations in product space. Specifically, product spaces (or manifolds) are spaces of mixed curvature, i.e., a combination of multiple euclidean and non-euclidean (hyperbolic, spherical) manifolds. To this end, we introduce sparse gating mechanisms that learn to choose, combine and switch spaces, allowing them to be switchable depending on the input data with specialization. Additionally, the proposed method is also efficient and has a constant computational complexity regardless of the model size. Experiments on knowledge graph completion and item recommendations show that the proposed switch space achieves new state-of-the-art performances, outperforming pure product spaces and recently proposed task-specific models.
Stellar parameters of 25 planet-hosting stars and abundances of Li, C, O, Na, Mg, Al, S, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Zn, Y, Zr, Ba, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm and Eu, were studied based on homogeneous high resolution spectra and uniform techniques. The iron abundance [Fe/H] and key elements (Li, C, O, Mg, Si) indicative of the planet formation, as well as the dependencies of [El/Fe] on $T_{cond}$, were analyzed. The iron abundances determined in our sample stars with detected massive planets range within -0.3<[Fe/H]<0.4. The behaviour of [C/Fe], [O/Fe], [Mg/Fe] and [Si/Fe] relative to [Fe/H] is consistent with the Galactic Chemical Evolution trends. The mean values of C/O and [C/O] are <C/O>= 0.48 +/-0.07 and <[C/O]>=-0.07 +/-0.07, which are slightly lower than solar ones. The Mg/Si ratios range from 0.83 to 0.95 for four stars in our sample and from 1.0 to 1.86 for the remaining 21 stars. Various slopes of [El/Fe] vs. Tcond were found. The dependencies of the planetary mass on metallicity, the lithium abundance, the C/O and Mg/Si ratios, and also on the [El/Fe]-Tcond slopes were considered.
A digital quantum simulation of the Agassi model from nuclear physics with a trapped-ion quantum platform is proposed and analyzed. The proposal is worked out for the case with four different sites, to be implemented in a four-ion system. Numerical simulations and analytical estimations are presented to illustrate the feasibility of this proposal with current technology. The proposed approach is fully scalable to a larger number of sites. The use of a quantum correlation function as a probe to explore the quantum phases by quantum simulating the time dynamics, with no need of computing the ground state, is also studied. Evidence that the amplitude of the quantum Rabi oscillations in this quantum simulation is correlated with the different quantum phases of the system is given. This approach establishes an avenue for the digital quantum simulation of useful models in nuclear physics with trapped-ion systems.
Coordination and cooperation between humans and autonomous agents in cooperative games raises interesting questions of human decision making and behaviour changes. Here we report our findings from a group formation game in a small-world network of different mixes of human and agent players, aiming to achieve connected clusters of the same colour by swapping places with neighbouring players using non-overlapping information. In the experiments the human players are incentivized by rewarding to prioritize their own cluster while the model of agents' decision making is derived from our previous experiment of purely cooperative game between human players. The experiments were performed by grouping the players in three different setups to investigate the overall effect of having cooperative autonomous agents within teams. We observe that the change in the behavior of human subjects adjusts to playing with autonomous agents by being less risk averse, while keeping the overall performance efficient by splitting the behaviour into selfish and cooperative in the two actions performed during the rounds of the game. Moreover, results from two hybrid human-agent setups suggest that the group composition affects the evolution of clusters. Our findings indicate that in purely or lesser cooperative settings, providing more control to humans could help in maximizing the overall performance of hybrid systems.
In this paper, we construct high order energy dissipative and conservative local discontinuous Galerkin methods for the Fornberg-Whitham type equations. We give the proofs for the dissipation and conservation for related conservative quantities. The corresponding error estimates are proved for the proposed schemes. The capability of our schemes for different types of solutions is shown via several numerical experiments. The dissipative schemes have good behavior for shock solutions, while for a long time approximation, the conservative schemes can reduce the shape error and the decay of amplitude significantly
Electromagnetic observations have provided strong evidence for the existence of massive black holes in the center of galaxies, but their origin is still poorly known. Different scenarios for the formation and evolution of massive black holes lead to different predictions for their properties and merger rates. LISA observations of coalescing massive black hole binaries could be used to reverse engineer the problem and shed light on these mechanisms. In this paper, we introduce a pipeline based on hierarchical Bayesian inference to infer the mixing fraction between different theoretical models by comparing them to LISA observations of massive black hole mergers. By testing this pipeline against simulated LISA data, we show that it allows us to accurately infer the properties of the massive black hole population as long as our theoretical models provide a reliable description of the Universe. We also show that measurement errors, including both instrumental noise and weak lensing errors, have little impact on the inference.
Active solids consume energy to allow for actuation, shape change, and wave propagation not possible in equilibrium. Whereas active interfaces have been realized across many experimental systems, control of three-dimensional (3D) bulk materials remains a challenge. Here, we develop continuum theory and microscopic simulations that describe a 3D soft solid whose boundary experiences active surface stresses. The competition between active boundary and elastic bulk yields a broad range of previously unexplored phenomena, which are demonstrations of so-called active elastocapillarity. In contrast to thin shells and vesicles, we discover that bulk 3D elasticity controls snap-through transitions between different anisotropic shapes. These transitions meet at a critical point, allowing a universal classification via Landau theory. The active surface modifies elastic wave propagation to allow zero, or even negative, group velocities. These phenomena offer robust principles for programming shape change and functionality into active solids, from robotic metamaterials down to shape-shifting nanoparticles.
The validity of the Riemann Hypothesis (RH) on the location of the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann $\zeta$-function is directly related to the growth of the Mertens function $M(x) \,=\,\sum_{k=1}^x \mu(k)$, where $\mu(k)$ is the M\"{o}bius coefficient of the integer $k$: the RH is indeed true if the Mertens function goes asymptotically as $M(x) \sim x^{1/2 + \epsilon}$, where $\epsilon$ is an arbitrary strictly positive quantity. This behavior can be established on the basis of a new probabilistic approach based on the global properties of Mertens function. To this aim we derive a series of probabilistic results concerning the prime number distribution along the series of square-free numbers which shows that the Mertens function is subject to a normal distribution. We also show that the validity of the RH also implies the validity of the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis for the Dirichlet $L$-functions. Next we study the local properties of the Mertens function, i.e. its variation induced by each M\"{o}bius coefficient restricted to the square-free numbers. We perform a massive statistical analysis on these coefficients, applying to them a series of randomness tests of increasing precision and complexity, for a total number of eighteen different tests. The successful outputs of all these tests (each of them with a level of confidence of $99\%$ that all the sub-sequences analyzed are indeed random) can be seen as impressive "experimental" confirmations of the brownian nature of the restricted M\"{o}bius coefficients and the probabilistic normal law distribution of the Mertens function analytically established earlier. In view of the theoretical probabilistic argument and the large battery of statistical tests, we can conclude that while a violation of the RH is strictly speaking not impossible, it is however extremely improbable.
Tracking humans in crowded video sequences is an important constituent of visual scene understanding. Increasing crowd density challenges visibility of humans, limiting the scalability of existing pedestrian trackers to higher crowd densities. For that reason, we propose to revitalize head tracking with Crowd of Heads Dataset (CroHD), consisting of 9 sequences of 11,463 frames with over 2,276,838 heads and 5,230 tracks annotated in diverse scenes. For evaluation, we proposed a new metric, IDEucl, to measure an algorithm's efficacy in preserving a unique identity for the longest stretch in image coordinate space, thus building a correspondence between pedestrian crowd motion and the performance of a tracking algorithm. Moreover, we also propose a new head detector, HeadHunter, which is designed for small head detection in crowded scenes. We extend HeadHunter with a Particle Filter and a color histogram based re-identification module for head tracking. To establish this as a strong baseline, we compare our tracker with existing state-of-the-art pedestrian trackers on CroHD and demonstrate superiority, especially in identity preserving tracking metrics. With a light-weight head detector and a tracker which is efficient at identity preservation, we believe our contributions will serve useful in advancement of pedestrian tracking in dense crowds.
Physical isolation, so called air-gapping, is an effective method for protecting security-critical computers and networks. While it might be possible to introduce malicious code through the supply chain, insider attacks, or social engineering, communicating with the outside world is prevented. Different approaches to breach this essential line of defense have been developed based on electromagnetic, acoustic, and optical communication channels. However, all of these approaches are limited in either data rate or distance, and frequently offer only exfiltration of data. We present a novel approach to infiltrate data to and exfiltrate data from air-gapped systems without any additional hardware on-site. By aiming lasers at already built-in LEDs and recording their response, we are the first to enable a long-distance (25m), bidirectional, and fast (18.2kbps in & 100kbps out) covert communication channel. The approach can be used against any office device that operates LEDs at the CPU's GPIO interface.
Neural architecture search (NAS) is a hot topic in the field of automated machine learning and outperforms humans in designing neural architectures on quite a few machine learning tasks. Motivated by the natural representation form of neural networks by the Cartesian genetic programming (CGP), we propose an evolutionary approach of NAS based on CGP, called CGPNAS, to solve sentence classification task. To evolve the architectures under the framework of CGP, the operations such as convolution are identified as the types of function nodes of CGP, and the evolutionary operations are designed based on Evolutionary Strategy. The experimental results show that the searched architectures are comparable with the performance of human-designed architectures. We verify the ability of domain transfer of our evolved architectures. The transfer experimental results show that the accuracy deterioration is lower than 2-5%. Finally, the ablation study identifies the Attention function as the single key function node and the linear transformations along could keep the accuracy similar with the full evolved architectures, which is worthy of investigation in the future.
We formulate a theory of shape valid for objects of arbitrary dimension whose contours are path connected. We apply this theory to the design and modeling of viable trajectories of complex dynamical systems. Infinite families of qualitatively similar shapes are constructed giving as input a finite ordered set of characteristic points (landmarks) and the value of a continuous parameter $\kappa \in (0,\infty)$. We prove that all shapes belonging to the same family are located within the convex hull of the landmarks. The theory is constructive in the sense that it provides a systematic means to build a mathematical model for any shape taken from the physical world. We illustrate this with a variety of examples: (chaotic) time series, plane curves, space filling curves, knots and strange attractors.
A longstanding issue in the study of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is its behavior at nonzero baryon density, which has implications for many areas of physics. The path integral has a complex integrand when the quark chemical potential is nonzero and therefore has a sign problem, but it also has a generalized $\mathcal PT$ symmetry. We review some new approaches to $\mathcal PT$-symmetric field theories, including both analytical techniques and methods for lattice simulation. We show that $\mathcal PT$-symmetric field theories with more than one field generally have a much richer phase structure than their Hermitian counterparts, including stable phases with patterning behavior. The case of a $\mathcal PT$-symmetric extension of a $\phi^4$ model is explained in detail. The relevance of these results to finite density QCD is explained, and we show that a simple model of finite density QCD exhibits a patterned phase in its critical region.
In the mean field regime, neural networks are appropriately scaled so that as the width tends to infinity, the learning dynamics tends to a nonlinear and nontrivial dynamical limit, known as the mean field limit. This lends a way to study large-width neural networks via analyzing the mean field limit. Recent works have successfully applied such analysis to two-layer networks and provided global convergence guarantees. The extension to multilayer ones however has been a highly challenging puzzle, and little is known about the optimization efficiency in the mean field regime when there are more than two layers. In this work, we prove a global convergence result for unregularized feedforward three-layer networks in the mean field regime. We first develop a rigorous framework to establish the mean field limit of three-layer networks under stochastic gradient descent training. To that end, we propose the idea of a \textit{neuronal embedding}, which comprises of a fixed probability space that encapsulates neural networks of arbitrary sizes. The identified mean field limit is then used to prove a global convergence guarantee under suitable regularity and convergence mode assumptions, which -- unlike previous works on two-layer networks -- does not rely critically on convexity. Underlying the result is a universal approximation property, natural of neural networks, which importantly is shown to hold at \textit{any} finite training time (not necessarily at convergence) via an algebraic topology argument.
The topic of my research is "Learning and Upgrading in Global Value Chains: An Analysis of India's Manufacturing Sector". To analyse India's learning and upgrading through position, functions, specialisation & value addition of manufacturing GVCs, it is required to quantify the extent, drivers, and impacts of India's Manufacturing links in GVCs. I have transformed this overall broad objective into three fundamental questions: (1) What is the extent of India's Manufacturing Links in GVCs? (2) What are the determinants of India's Manufacturing Links in GVCs? (3) What are the impacts of India's Manufacturing Links in GVCs? These three objectives represent my three chapters in my PhD thesis.
We calculate single-logarithmic corrections to the small-$x$ flavor-singlet helicity evolution equations derived recently in the double-logarithmic approximation. The new single-logarithmic part of the evolution kernel sums up powers of $\alpha_s \, \ln (1/x)$, which are an important correction to the dominant powers of $\alpha_s \, \ln^2 (1/x)$ summed up by the double-logarithmic kernel at small values of Bjorken $x$ and with $\alpha_s$ the strong coupling constant. The single-logarithmic terms arise separately from either the longitudinal or transverse momentum integrals. Consequently, the evolution equations we derive simultaneously include the small-$x$ evolution kernel and the leading-order polarized DGLAP splitting functions. We further enhance the equations by calculating the running coupling corrections to the kernel.
In this note we prove that almost cap sets $A \subset \mathbb{F}_q^n$, i.e., the subsets of $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ that do not contain too many arithmetic progressions of length three, satisfy that $|A| < c_q^n$ for some $c_q < q$. As a corollary we prove a multivariable analogue of Ellenberg-Gijswijt theorem.
Given a graph $G$, a dominating set of $G$ is a set $S$ of vertices such that each vertex not in $S$ has a neighbor in $S$. The domination number of $G$, denoted $\gamma(G)$, is the minimum size of a dominating set of $G$. The independent domination number of $G$, denoted $i(G)$, is the minimum size of a dominating set of $G$ that is also independent. Note that every graph has an independent dominating set, as a maximal independent set is equivalent to an independent dominating set. Let $G$ be a connected $k$-regular graph that is not $K_{k, k}$ where $k\geq 4$. Generalizing a result by Lam, Shiu, and Sun, we prove that $i(G)\le \frac{k-1}{2k-1}|V(G)|$, which is tight for $k = 4$. This answers a question by Goddard et al. in the affirmative. We also show that $\frac{i(G)}{\gamma(G)} \le \frac{k^3-3k^2+2}{2k^2-6k+2}$, strengthening upon a result of Knor, \v{S}krekovski, and Tepeh. In addition, we prove that a graph $G'$ with maximum degree at most $4$ satisfies $i(G') \le \frac{5}{9}|V(G')|$, which is also tight.
Sunquakes are helioseismic power enhancements initiated by solar flares, but not all flares generate sunquakes. It is curious why some flares cause sunquakes while others do not. Here we propose a hypothesis to explain the disproportionate occurrence of sunquakes: during a flare's impulsive phase when the flare's impulse acts upon the photosphere, delivered by shock waves, energetic particles from higher atmosphere, or by downward Lorentz Force, a sunquake tends to occur if the background oscillation at the flare footpoint happens to oscillate downward in the same direction with the impulse from above. To verify this hypothesis, we select 60 strong flares in Solar Cycle 24, and examine the background oscillatory velocity at the sunquake sources during the flares' impulsive phases. Since the Doppler velocity observations at sunquake sources are usually corrupted during the flares, we reconstruct the oscillatory velocity in the flare sites using helioseismic holography method with an observation-based Green's function. A total of 24 flares are found to be sunquake active, giving a total of 41 sunquakes. It is also found that in 3-5 mHz frequency band, 25 out of 31 sunquakes show net downward oscillatory velocities during the flares' impulsive phases, and in 5-7 mHz frequency band, 33 out of 38 sunquakes show net downward velocities. These results support the hypothesis that a sunquake more likely occurs when a flare impacts a photospheric area with a downward background oscillation.
Multivariate max-stable processes are important for both theoretical investigations and various statistical applications motivated by the fact that these are limiting processes, for instance of stationary multivariate regularly varying time series, [1]. In this contribution we explore the relation between homogeneous functionals and multivariate max-stable processes and discuss the connections between multivariate max-stable process and zonoid / max-zonoid equivalence. We illustrate our results considering Brown-Resnick and Smith processes.
Radiation therapy treatment planning is a complex process, as the target dose prescription and normal tissue sparing are conflicting objectives. Automated and accurate dose prediction for radiation therapy planning is in high demand. In this study, we propose a novel learning-based ensemble approach, named LE-NAS, which integrates neural architecture search (NAS) with knowledge distillation for 3D radiotherapy dose prediction. Specifically, the prediction network first exhaustively searches each block from enormous architecture space. Then, multiple architectures are selected with promising performance and diversity. To reduce the inference time, we adopt the teacher-student paradigm by treating the combination of diverse outputs from multiple searched networks as supervisions to guide the student network training. In addition, we apply adversarial learning to optimize the student network to recover the knowledge in teacher networks. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to investigate the combination of NAS and knowledge distillation. The proposed method has been evaluated on the public OpenKBP dataset, and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method and its superior performance to the state-of-the-art method.
We analyze the dynamics of a single spiral galaxy from a general relativistic viewpoint. We employ the known family of stationary axially-symmetric solutions to Einstein gravity coupled with dust in order to model the halo external to the bulge. In particular, we generalize the known results of Balasin and Grumiller, relaxing the condition of co-rotation, thus including non co-rotating dust. This further highlights the discrepancy between Newtonian theory of gravity and general relativity at low velocities and energy densities. We investigate the role of dragging in simulating dark matter effects. In particular, we show that non co-rotance further reduce the amount of energy density required to explain the rotation curves for spiral galaxies.
A biopsy is the only diagnostic procedure for accurate histological confirmation of breast cancer. When sonographic placement is not feasible, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging(MRI)-guided biopsy is often preferred. The lack of real-time imaging information and the deformations of the breast make it challenging to bring the needle precisely towards the tumour detected in pre-interventional Magnetic Resonance (MR) images. The current manual MRI-guided biopsy workflow is inaccurate and would benefit from a technique that allows real-time tracking and localisation of the tumour lesion during needle insertion. This paper proposes a robotic setup and software architecture to assist the radiologist in targeting MR-detected suspicious tumours. The approach benefits from image fusion of preoperative images with intraoperative optical tracking of markers attached to the patient's skin. A hand-mounted biopsy device has been constructed with an actuated needle base to drive the tip toward the desired direction. The steering commands may be provided both by user input and by computer guidance. The workflow is validated through phantom experiments. On average, the suspicious breast lesion is targeted with a radius down to 2.3 mm. The results suggest that robotic systems taking into account breast deformations have the potentials to tackle this clinical challenge.
This paper develops \emph{iterative Covariance Regulation} (iCR), a novel method for active exploration and mapping for a mobile robot equipped with on-board sensors. The problem is posed as optimal control over the $SE(3)$ pose kinematics of the robot to minimize the differential entropy of the map conditioned the potential sensor observations. We introduce a differentiable field of view formulation, and derive iCR via the gradient descent method to iteratively update an open-loop control sequence in continuous space so that the covariance of the map estimate is minimized. We demonstrate autonomous exploration and uncertainty reduction in simulated occupancy grid environments.
Blockchain was mainly introduced for secure transactions in connection with the mining of cryptocurrency Bitcoin. This article discusses the fundamental concepts of blockchain technology and its components, such as block header, transaction, smart contracts, etc. Blockchain uses the distributed databases, so this article also explains the advantages of distributed Blockchain over a centrally located database. Depending on the application, Blockchain is broadly categorized into two categories; Permissionless and Permissioned. This article elaborates on these two categories as well. Further, it covers the consensus mechanism and its working along with an overview of the Ethereum platform. Blockchain technology has been proved to be one of the remarkable techniques to provide security to IoT devices. An illustration of how Blockchain will be useful for IoT devices has been given. A few applications are also illustrated to explain the working of Blockchain with IoT.
In this paper, we propose a novel learning-based polygonal point set tracking method. Compared to existing video object segmentation~(VOS) methods that propagate pixel-wise object mask information, we propagate a polygonal point set over frames. Specifically, the set is defined as a subset of points in the target contour, and our goal is to track corresponding points on the target contour. Those outputs enable us to apply various visual effects such as motion tracking, part deformation, and texture mapping. To this end, we propose a new method to track the corresponding points between frames by the global-local alignment with delicately designed losses and regularization terms. We also introduce a novel learning strategy using synthetic and VOS datasets that makes it possible to tackle the problem without developing the point correspondence dataset. Since the existing datasets are not suitable to validate our method, we build a new polygonal point set tracking dataset and demonstrate the superior performance of our method over the baselines and existing contour-based VOS methods. In addition, we present visual-effects applications of our method on part distortion and text mapping.
We investigate the predictive performance of two novel CNN-DNN machine learning ensemble models in predicting county-level corn yields across the US Corn Belt (12 states). The developed data set is a combination of management, environment, and historical corn yields from 1980-2019. Two scenarios for ensemble creation are considered: homogenous and heterogeneous ensembles. In homogenous ensembles, the base CNN-DNN models are all the same, but they are generated with a bagging procedure to ensure they exhibit a certain level of diversity. Heterogenous ensembles are created from different base CNN-DNN models which share the same architecture but have different levels of depth. Three types of ensemble creation methods were used to create several ensembles for either of the scenarios: Basic Ensemble Method (BEM), Generalized Ensemble Method (GEM), and stacked generalized ensembles. Results indicated that both designed ensemble types (heterogenous and homogenous) outperform the ensembles created from five individual ML models (linear regression, LASSO, random forest, XGBoost, and LightGBM). Furthermore, by introducing improvements over the heterogeneous ensembles, the homogenous ensembles provide the most accurate yield predictions across US Corn Belt states. This model could make 2019 yield predictions with a root mean square error of 866 kg/ha, equivalent to 8.5% relative root mean square, and could successfully explain about 77% of the spatio-temporal variation in the corn grain yields. The significant predictive power of this model can be leveraged for designing a reliable tool for corn yield prediction which will, in turn, assist agronomic decision-makers.
Annotating the right set of data amongst all available data points is a key challenge in many machine learning applications. Batch active learning is a popular approach to address this, in which batches of unlabeled data points are selected for annotation, while an underlying learning algorithm gets subsequently updated. Increasingly larger batches are particularly appealing in settings where data can be annotated in parallel, and model training is computationally expensive. A key challenge here is scale - typical active learning methods rely on diversity techniques, which select a diverse set of data points to annotate, from an unlabeled pool. In this work, we introduce Active Data Shapley (ADS) -- a filtering layer for batch active learning that significantly increases the efficiency of active learning by pre-selecting, using a linear time computation, the highest-value points from an unlabeled dataset. Using the notion of the Shapley value of data, our method estimates the value of unlabeled data points with regards to the prediction task at hand. We show that ADS is particularly effective when the pool of unlabeled data exhibits real-world caveats: noise, heterogeneity, and domain shift. We run experiments demonstrating that when ADS is used to pre-select the highest-ranking portion of an unlabeled dataset, the efficiency of state-of-the-art batch active learning methods increases by an average factor of 6x, while preserving performance effectiveness.
In this work we address the problem of solving ill-posed inverse problems in imaging where the prior is a variational autoencoder (VAE). Specifically we consider the decoupled case where the prior is trained once and can be reused for many different log-concave degradation models without retraining. Whereas previous MAP-based approaches to this problem lead to highly non-convex optimization algorithms, our approach computes the joint (space-latent) MAP that naturally leads to alternate optimization algorithms and to the use of a stochastic encoder to accelerate computations. The resulting technique (JPMAP) performs Joint Posterior Maximization using an Autoencoding Prior. We show theoretical and experimental evidence that the proposed objective function is quite close to bi-convex. Indeed it satisfies a weak bi-convexity property which is sufficient to guarantee that our optimization scheme converges to a stationary point. We also highlight the importance of correctly training the VAE using a denoising criterion, in order to ensure that the encoder generalizes well to out-of-distribution images, without affecting the quality of the generative model. This simple modification is key to providing robustness to the whole procedure. Finally we show how our joint MAP methodology relates to more common MAP approaches, and we propose a continuation scheme that makes use of our JPMAP algorithm to provide more robust MAP estimates. Experimental results also show the higher quality of the solutions obtained by our JPMAP approach with respect to other non-convex MAP approaches which more often get stuck in spurious local optima.
In this paper, we introduce and test our algorithm to create a road network representation for city-scale active transportation simulation models. The algorithm relies on open and universal data to ensure applicability for different cities around the world. In addition to the major roads, their geometries and the road attributes typically used in transport modelling (e.g., speed limit, number of lanes, permitted travel modes), the algorithm also captures minor roads usually favoured by pedestrians and cyclists, along with road attributes such as bicycle-specific infrastructure, traffic signals, and road gradient. Furthermore, it simplifies the network's complex geometries and merges parallel roads if applicable to make it suitable for large-scale simulations. To examine the utility and performance of the algorithm, we used it to create a network representation for Greater Melbourne, Australia and compared the output with a network created using an existing transport simulation toolkit along with another network from an existing city-scale transport model from the Victorian government. Through simulation experiments with these networks, we illustrated that our algorithm achieves a very good balance between simulation accuracy and run-time. For routed trips on our network for walking and cycling it is of comparable accuracy to the common network conversion tools in terms of travel distances of the shortest paths while being more than two times faster when used for simulating different sample sizes. Therefore, our algorithm offers a flexible solution for building accurate and efficient road networks for city-scale active transport models for different cities around the world.
We show that the space of anti-symplectic involutions of a monotone $S^2\times S^2$ whose fixed points set is a Lagrangian sphere is connected. This follows from a stronger result, namely that any two anti-symplectic involutions in that space are Hamiltonian isotopic.
High purity iron is obtained from vanadium-titanium magnetite (VTM) by one-step coal-based direct reduction-smelting process with coal as reductant and sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) as additives. Industrial experiments show that the process of treating molten iron with a large amount of Na2CO3 is effective in removing titanium from molten iron. However, the studies are rarely conducted in thermodynamic relationship between titanium and other components of molten iron, under the condition of a large amount of Na2CO3 additives. In this study, through the thermodynamic database software Factsage8.0, the effects of melting temperature, sodium content and oxygen content on the removal of titanium from molten iron are studied. The results of thermodynamic calculation show that the removal of titanium from molten iron needs to be under the condition of oxidation, and the temperature should be below the critical temperature of titanium removal (the highest temperature at which titanium can be removed). Relatively low temperature and high oxygen content contribute to the removal of titanium from molten iron. The high oxygen content is conducive to the simultaneous removal of titanium and phosphorus from molten iron. In addition, from a thermodynamic point of view, excessive sodium addition inhibits the removal of titanium from molten iron.
We present the first formal verification of approximation algorithms for NP-complete optimization problems: vertex cover, independent set, set cover, center selection, load balancing, and bin packing. We uncover incompletenesses in existing proofs and improve the approximation ratio in one case. All proofs are uniformly invariant based.
We generalize the classical shadow tomography scheme to a broad class of finite-depth or finite-time local unitary ensembles, known as locally scrambled quantum dynamics, where the unitary ensemble is invariant under local basis transformations. In this case, the reconstruction map for the classical shadow tomography depends only on the average entanglement feature of classical snapshots. We provide an unbiased estimator of the quantum state as a linear combination of reduced classical snapshots in all subsystems, where the combination coefficients are solely determined by the entanglement feature. We also bound the number of experimental measurements required for the tomography scheme, so-called sample complexity, by formulating the operator shadow norm in the entanglement feature formalism. We numerically demonstrate our approach for finite-depth local unitary circuits and finite-time local-Hamiltonian generated evolutions. The shallow-circuit measurement can achieve a lower tomography complexity compared to the existing method based on Pauli or Clifford measurements. Our approach is also applicable to approximately locally scrambled unitary ensembles with a controllable bias that vanishes quickly. Surprisingly, we find a single instance of time-dependent local Hamiltonian evolution is sufficient to perform an approximate tomography as we numerically demonstrate it using a paradigmatic spin chain Hamiltonian modeled after trapped ion or Rydberg atom quantum simulators. Our approach significantly broadens the application of classical shadow tomography on near-term quantum devices.
We consider the inverse scattering on the quantum graph associated with the hexagonal lattice. Assuming that the potentials on the edges are compactly supported and symmetric, we show that the S-matrix for all energies in any given open set in the continuous spectrum determines the potentials.
We introduce a framework that abstracts Reinforcement Learning (RL) as a sequence modeling problem. This allows us to draw upon the simplicity and scalability of the Transformer architecture, and associated advances in language modeling such as GPT-x and BERT. In particular, we present Decision Transformer, an architecture that casts the problem of RL as conditional sequence modeling. Unlike prior approaches to RL that fit value functions or compute policy gradients, Decision Transformer simply outputs the optimal actions by leveraging a causally masked Transformer. By conditioning an autoregressive model on the desired return (reward), past states, and actions, our Decision Transformer model can generate future actions that achieve the desired return. Despite its simplicity, Decision Transformer matches or exceeds the performance of state-of-the-art model-free offline RL baselines on Atari, OpenAI Gym, and Key-to-Door tasks.
Recently, moir\'{e} superlattices have attracted considerable attentions because they are found to exhibit intriguing electronic phenomena of tunable Mott insulators and unconventional superconductivity. These phenomena are highly related to the physical mechanism of the interlayer coupling. However, up to now, there has not existed any theory that can completely interpret the experimental results of the interlayer conductance of moir\'{e} superlattice. In order to solve this problem, the superposition of periods and the corresponding coherence, which are the essential characteristics of moir\'{e} superlattice, should be considered more sufficiently. Therefore, it is quite necessary to introduce optical methods to study moir\'{e} superlattices. Here, we develop a theory for moir\'{e} superlattices which are founded on traditional optical scattering theory. The theory can interpret both the continuously decreasing background and the peak of the interlayer conductance observed in the experiments by a unified mechanism. We show that, the decreasing background of the interlayer conductance arises from the increasing strength of the interface potential, and the peak roots from the scattering resonance of the interface potential. The present work is crucial for understanding the interlayer coupling of the moir\'{e} superlattice, and provide a solid theoretical foundation for the application of moir\'{e} superlattice.
While deep learning has enabled great advances in many areas of music, labeled music datasets remain especially hard, expensive, and time-consuming to create. In this work, we introduce SimCLR to the music domain and contribute a large chain of audio data augmentations to form a simple framework for self-supervised, contrastive learning of musical representations: CLMR. This approach works on raw time-domain music data and requires no labels to learn useful representations. We evaluate CLMR in the downstream task of music classification on the MagnaTagATune and Million Song datasets and present an ablation study to test which of our music-related innovations over SimCLR are most effective. A linear classifier trained on the proposed representations achieves a higher average precision than supervised models on the MagnaTagATune dataset, and performs comparably on the Million Song dataset. Moreover, we show that CLMR's representations are transferable using out-of-domain datasets, indicating that our method has strong generalisability in music classification. Lastly, we show that the proposed method allows data-efficient learning on smaller labeled datasets: we achieve an average precision of 33.1% despite using only 259 labeled songs in the MagnaTagATune dataset (1% of the full dataset) during linear evaluation. To foster reproducibility and future research on self-supervised learning in music, we publicly release the pre-trained models and the source code of all experiments of this paper.
Current observations present unprecedented opportunities to probe the true nature of black holes, which must harbor new physics beyond General Relativity to provide singularity-free descriptions. To test paradigms for this new physics, it is necessary to bridge the gap all the way from theoretical developments of new-physics models to phenomenological developments such as simulated images of black holes embedded in astrophysical disk environments. In this paper, we construct several steps along this bridge. We construct a novel family of regular black-hole spacetimes based on a locality principle which ties new physics to local curvature scales. We then characterize these spacetimes in terms of a complete set of curvature invariants and analyze the ergosphere and both the outer event as well as distinct Killing horizon. Our comprehensive study of the shadow shape at various spins and inclinations reveals characteristic image features linked to the locality principle. We also explore the photon rings as an additional probe of the new-physics effects. A simple analytical disk model enables us to generate simulated images of the regular spinning black hole and test whether the characteristic image-features are visible in the intensity map.
It is well known that the K\"ahler-Ricci flow on a K\"ahler manifold $X$ admits a long-time solution if and only if $X$ is a minimal model, i.e., the canonical line bundle $K_X$ is nef. The abundance conjecture in algebraic geometry predicts that $K_X$ must be semi-ample when $X$ is a projective minimal model. We prove that if $K_X$ is semi-ample, then the diameter is uniformly bounded for long-time solutions of the normalized K\"ahler-Ricci flow. Our diameter estimate combined with the scalar curvature estimate in [34] for long-time solutions of the K\"ahler-Ricci flow are natural extensions of Perelman's diameter and scalar curvature estimates for short-time solutions on Fano manifolds. We further prove that along the normalized K\"ahler-Ricci flow, the Ricci curvature is uniformly bounded away from singular fibres of $X$ over its unique algebraic canonical model $X_{can}$ if the Kodaira dimension of $X$ is one. As an application, the normalized K\"ahler-Ricci flow on a minimal threefold $X$ always converges sequentially in Gromov-Hausdorff topology to a compact metric space homeomorphic to its canonical model $X_{can}$, with uniformly bounded Ricci curvature away from the critical set of the pluricanonical map from $X$ to $X_{can}$.
A general overview of the existing difference ring theory for symbolic summation is given. Special emphasis is put on the user interface: the translation and back translation of the corresponding representations within the term algebra and the formal difference ring setting. In particular, canonical (unique) representations and their refinements in the introduced term algebra are explored by utilizing the available difference ring theory. Based on that, precise input-output specifications of the available tools of the summation package Sigma are provided.
It is believed that the $\pm J$ Ising spin-glass does not order at finite temperatures in dimension $d=2$. However, using a graphical representation and a contour argument, we prove rigorously the existence of a finite-temperature phase transition in $d\geq 2$ with $T_c \geq 0.4$. In the graphical representation, the low-temperature phase allows for the coexistence of multiple infinite clusters each with a rigidly aligned spin-overlap state. These clusters correlate negatively with each other, and are entropically stable without breaking any global symmetry. They can emerge in most graph structures and disorder measures.
We survey a number of different methods for computing $L(\chi,1-k)$ for a Dirichlet character $\chi$, with particular emphasis on quadratic characters. The main conclusion is that when $k$ is not too large (for instance $k\le100$) the best method comes from the use of Eisenstein series of half-integral weight, while when $k$ is large the best method is the use of the complete functional equation, unless the conductor of $\chi$ is really large, in which case the previous method again prevails.
Hydrogen bonding liquids, typically water and alcohols, are known to form labile structures (network, chains, etc...), hence the lifetime of such structures is an important microscopic parameter, which can be calculated in computer simulations. Since these cluster entities are mostly statistical in nature, one would expect that, in the short time regime, their lifetime distribution would be a broad Gaussian-like function of time, with a single maximum representing their mean lifetime, and weakly dependent on criteria such as the bonding distance and angle, much similarly to non-hydrogen bonding simple liquids, while the long time part is known to have some power law dependence. Unexpectedly, all the hydrogen bonding liquids studied herein, namely water and alcohols, display highly hierarchic three types of specific lifetimes, in the sub-picosecond range 0-0.5ps The dominant lifetime very strongly depends on the bonding distance criterion and is related to hydrogen bonded pairs. This mode is absent in non-H-bonding simple liquids. The secondary and tertiary mean lifetimes are related to clusters, and are nearly independent on the bonding criterion. Of these two lifetimes, only the first one can be related to that of simple liquids, which poses the question of the nature of the third life time. The study of acohols reveals that this 3rd lifetime is related to the topology of H-bonded clusters, and that its distribution may be also affected by the alkyl tail surrounding "bath". This study reveals that hydrogen bonding liquids have a universal hierarchy of hydrogen bonding lifetimes with a timescale regularity across very different types, and which depend on the topology of the cluster structures
Scattering by an isolated defect embedded in a dielectric medium of two dimensional periodicity is of interest in many sub-fields of electrodynamics. Present approaches to compute this scattering rely either on the Born approximation and its quasi-analytic extensions, or on \emph{ab-initio} computation that requires large domain sizes to reduce the effects of boundary conditions. The Born approximation and its extensions are limited in scope, while the ab-initio approach suffers from its high numerical cost. In this paper, I introduce a hybrid scheme in which an effective local electric susceptibility tensor of a defect is estimated by solving an inverse problem efficiently. The estimated tensor is embedded into an S-matrix formula based on the reciprocity theorem. With this embedding, the computation of the S-matrix of the defect requires field solutions only in the unit cell of the background. In practice, this scheme reduces the computational cost by almost two orders of magnitude, while sacrificing little in accuracy. The scheme demonstrates that statistical estimation can capture sufficient information from cheap calculations to compute quantities in the far field. I outline the fundamental theory and algorithms to carry out the computations in high dielectric contrast materials, including metals. I demonstrate the capabilities of this approach with examples from optical inspection of nano-electronic circuitry where the Born approximation fails and the existing methods for its extension are also inapplicable.
A nonlinear Markov chain is a discrete time stochastic process whose transitions depend on both the current state and the current distribution of the process. The nonlinear Markov chain over a infinite state space can be identified by a continuous mapping (the so-called nonlinear Markov operator) defined on a set of all probability distributions (which is a simplex). In the present paper, we consider a continuous analogue of the mentioned mapping acting on $L^1$-spaces. Main aim of the current paper is to investigate projective surjectivity of quadratic stochastic operators (QSO) acting on the set of all probability measures. To prove the main result, we study the surjectivity of infinite dimensional nonlinear Markov operators and apply them to the projective surjectivity of a QSO. Furthermore, the obtained result has been applied for the existence of positive solution of some Hammerstein integral equations.
Coherent gate errors are a concern in many proposed quantum computing architectures. These errors can be effectively handled through composite pulse sequences for single-qubit gates, however, such techniques are less feasible for entangling operations. In this work, we benchmark our coherent errors by comparing the actual performance of composite single-qubit gates to the predicted performance based on characterization of individual single-qubit rotations. We then propose a compilation technique, which we refer to as hidden inverses, that creates circuits robust to these coherent errors. We present experimental data showing that these circuits suppress both overrotation and phase misalignment errors in our trapped ion system.
We reformulate Euclidean general relativity without cosmological constant as an action governing the complex structure of twistor space. Extending Penrose's non-linear graviton construction, we find a correspondence between twistor spaces with partially integrable almost complex structures and four-dimensional space-times with off-shell metrics. Using this, we prove that our twistor action reduces to Plebanski's action for general relativity via the Penrose transform. This should lead to new insights into the geometry of graviton scattering as well as to the derivation of computational tools like gravitational MHV rules.
Real-time PCR, or Real-time Quantitative PCR (qPCR) is an effective approach to quantify nucleic acid samples. Given the complicated reaction system along with thermal cycles, there has been long-term confusion on accurately calculating the initial nucleic acid amounts from the fluorescence signals. Although many improved algorithms had been proposed, the classical threshold method is still the primary choice in the routine application. In this study, we will first illustrate the origin of the linear relationship between the threshold value and logarithm of the initial nucleic acid amount by reconstructing the PCR reaction process with stochastic simulations. We then develop a new method for the absolute quantification of nucleic acid samples with qPCR. By monitoring the fluorescence signal changes in every stage of the thermal cycle, we are able to calculate a representation of the step-wise efficiency change. This is the first work calculated PCR efficiency change directly from the fluorescence signal, without fitting or sophisticated analysis. Our results revealed that the efficiency change during the PCR process is complicated and can not be modeled simply by monotone function model. Based on the calculated efficiency, we illustrate a new absolute qPCR analysis method for accurately determining nucleic acid amount. The efficiency problem is completely avoided in this new method.
The prior independent framework for algorithm design considers how well an algorithm that does not know the distribution of its inputs approximates the expected performance of the optimal algorithm for this distribution. This paper gives a method that is agnostic to problem setting for proving lower bounds on the prior independent approximation factor of any algorithm. The method constructs a correlated distribution over inputs that can be generated both as a distribution over i.i.d. good-for-algorithms distributions and as a distribution over i.i.d. bad-for-algorithms distributions. Prior independent algorithms are upper-bounded by the optimal algorithm for the latter distribution even when the true distribution is the former. Thus, the ratio of the expected performances of the Bayesian optimal algorithms for these two decompositions is a lower bound on the prior independent approximation ratio. The techniques of the paper connect prior independent algorithm design, Yao's Minimax Principle, and information design. We apply this framework to give new lower bounds on several canonical prior independent mechanism design problems.
In the t-U-V Hubbard model on the square lattice we found self-consistent analytic solution for the ground state with coexisting d-wave symmetric bond ordered pair density wave (PDW) and spin (SDW) or charge (CDW) density waves, as observed in some high-temperature superconductors. In particular, the solution gives the same periodicity for CDW and PDW, and a pseudogap in the fermi-excitation spectrum.
The paper deals with cubic 1-variable polynomials whose Julia sets are connected. Fixing a bounded type rotation number, we obtain a slice of such polynomials with the origin being a fixed Siegel point of the specified rotation number. Such slices as parameter spaces were studied by S. Zakeri, so we call them Zakeri slices. We give a model of the central part of a slice (the subset of the slice that can be approximated by hyperbolic polynomials with Jordan curve Julia sets), and a continuous projection from the central part to the model. The projection is defined dynamically and agrees with the dynamical-analytic parameterization of the Principal Hyperbolic Domain by Petersen and Tan Lei.
The partial Latin square extension problem is to fill as many as possible empty cells of a partially filled Latin square. This problem is a useful model for a wide range of relevant applications in diverse domains. This paper presents the first massively parallel hybrid search algorithm for this computationally challenging problem based on a transformation of the problem to partial graph coloring. The algorithm features the following original elements. Based on a very large population (with more than $10^4$ individuals) and modern graphical processing units, the algorithm performs many local searches in parallel to ensure an intensified exploitation of the search space. It employs a dedicated crossover with a specific parent matching strategy to create a large number of diversified and information-preserving offspring at each generation. Extensive experiments on 1800 benchmark instances show a high competitiveness of the algorithm compared with the current best performing methods. Competitive results are also reported on the related Latin square completion problem. Analyses are performed to shed lights on the understanding of the main algorithmic components. The code of the algorithm will be made publicly available.
In this study, we formulate a mathematical model incorporating age specific transmission dynamics of COVID-19 to evaluate the role of vaccination and treatment strategies in reducing the size of COVID-19 burden. Initially, we establish the positivity and boundedness of the solutions of the model and calculate the basic reproduction number. We then formulate an optimal control problem with vaccination and treatment as control variables. Optimal vaccination and treatment policies are analysed for different values of the weight constant associated with the cost of vaccination and different transmissibility levels. Findings from these suggested that the combined strategies(vaccination and treatment) worked best in minimizing the infection and disease induced mortality. In order to reduce COVID-19 infection and COVID-19 induced deaths to maximum, it was observed that optimal control strategy should be prioritized to population with age greater than 40 years. Not much difference was found between individual strategies and combined strategies in case of mild epidemic ($R_0 \in (0, 2)$). For higher values of $R_0 (R_0 \in (2, 10))$ the combined strategies was found to be best in terms of minimizing the overall infection. The infection curves varying the efficacies of the vaccines were also analysed and it was found that higher efficacy of the vaccine resulted in lesser number of infection and COVID induced death.
The chiral hinge modes are the key feature of a second order topological insulator in three dimensions. Here we propose a quadrupole index in combination of a slab Chern number in the bulk to characterize the flowing pattern of chiral hinge modes along the hinges at the intersection of the surfaces of a sample. We further utilize the topological field theory to demonstrate the correspondent connection of the chiral hinge modes to the quadrupole index and the slab Chern number, and present a picture of three-dimensional quantum anomalous Hall effect as a consequence of chiral hinge modes. The two bulk topological invariants can be measured in electric transport and magneto-optical experiments. In this way we establish the bulk-hinge correspondence in a three-dimensional second order topological insulator.
In the near future, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment and the European Spallation Source aim to reach unprecedented sensitivity in the search for neutron-antineutron ($n\text{-}\bar{n}$) oscillations, whose observation would directly imply $|\Delta B| = 2$ violation and hence might hint towards a close link to the mechanism behind the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe. In this work, we explore the consequences of such a discovery for baryogenesis first within a model-independent effective field theory approach. We then refine our analysis by including a source of CP violation and different hierarchies between the scales of new physics using a simplified model. We analyse the implication for baryogenesis in different scenarios and confront our results with complementary experimental constraints from dinucleon decay, LHC, and meson oscillations. We find that for a small mass hierarchy between the new degrees of freedom, an observable rate for $n\text{-}\bar{n}$ oscillation would imply that the washout processes are too strong to generate any sizeable baryon asymmetry, even if the CP violation is maximal. On the other hand, for a large hierarchy between the new degrees of freedom, our analysis shows that successful baryogenesis can occur over a large part of the parameter space, opening the window to be probed by current and future colliders and upcoming $n\text{-}\bar{n}$ oscillation searches.
We study a precise and computationally tractable notion of operator complexity in holographic quantum theories, including the ensemble dual of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity and two-dimensional holographic conformal field theories. This is a refined, "microcanonical" version of K-complexity that applies to theories with infinite or continuous spectra (including quantum field theories), and in the holographic theories we study exhibits exponential growth for a scrambling time, followed by linear growth until saturation at a time exponential in the entropy $\unicode{x2014}$a behavior that is characteristic of chaos. We show that the linear growth regime implies a universal random matrix description of the operator dynamics after scrambling. Our main tool for establishing this connection is a "complexity renormalization group" framework we develop that allows us to study the effective operator dynamics for different timescales by "integrating out" large K-complexities. In the dual gravity setting, we comment on the empirical match between our version of K-complexity and the maximal volume proposal, and speculate on a connection between the universal random matrix theory dynamics of operator growth after scrambling and the spatial translation symmetry of smooth black hole interiors.
In reliability analysis, methods used to estimate failure probability are often limited by the costs associated with model evaluations. Many of these methods, such as multifidelity importance sampling (MFIS), rely upon a computationally efficient, surrogate model like a Gaussian process (GP) to quickly generate predictions. The quality of the GP fit, particularly in the vicinity of the failure region(s), is instrumental in supplying accurately predicted failures for such strategies. We introduce an entropy-based GP adaptive design that, when paired with MFIS, provides more accurate failure probability estimates and with higher confidence. We show that our greedy data acquisition strategy better identifies multiple failure regions compared to existing contour-finding schemes. We then extend the method to batch selection, without sacrificing accuracy. Illustrative examples are provided on benchmark data as well as an application to an impact damage simulator for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spacesuits.
Recent literature has underscored the importance of dataset documentation work for machine learning, and part of this work involves addressing "documentation debt" for datasets that have been used widely but documented sparsely. This paper aims to help address documentation debt for BookCorpus, a popular text dataset for training large language models. Notably, researchers have used BookCorpus to train OpenAI's GPT-N models and Google's BERT models, even though little to no documentation exists about the dataset's motivation, composition, collection process, etc. We offer a preliminary datasheet that provides key context and information about BookCorpus, highlighting several notable deficiencies. In particular, we find evidence that (1) BookCorpus likely violates copyright restrictions for many books, (2) BookCorpus contains thousands of duplicated books, and (3) BookCorpus exhibits significant skews in genre representation. We also find hints of other potential deficiencies that call for future research, including problematic content, potential skews in religious representation, and lopsided author contributions. While more work remains, this initial effort to provide a datasheet for BookCorpus adds to growing literature that urges more careful and systematic documentation for machine learning datasets.
Session-based recommendation (SBR) learns users' preferences by capturing the short-term and sequential patterns from the evolution of user behaviors. Among the studies in the SBR field, graph-based approaches are a relatively powerful kind of way, which generally extract item information by message aggregation under Euclidean space. However, such methods can't effectively extract the hierarchical information contained among consecutive items in a session, which is critical to represent users' preferences. In this paper, we present a hyperbolic contrastive graph recommender (HCGR), a principled session-based recommendation framework involving Lorentz hyperbolic space to adequately capture the coherence and hierarchical representations of the items. Within this framework, we design a novel adaptive hyperbolic attention computation to aggregate the graph message of each user's preference in a session-based behavior sequence. In addition, contrastive learning is leveraged to optimize the item representation by considering the geodesic distance between positive and negative samples in hyperbolic space. Extensive experiments on four real-world datasets demonstrate that HCGR consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines by 0.43$\%$-28.84$\%$ in terms of $HitRate$, $NDCG$ and $MRR$.
In this note we show a simple formula for the coefficients of the polynomial associated with the sums of powers of the terms of an arbitrary arithmetic progression. This formula consists of a double sum involving only ordinary binomial coefficients and binomial powers. Arguably, this is the simplest formula that can probably be found for the said coefficients. Furthermore, as a by-product, we give an explicit formula for the Bernoulli polynomials involving the Stirling numbers of the first and second kind.
As Stefan Kopp and Nicole Kramer say in their recent paper[Frontiers in Psychology 12 (2021) 597], despite some very impressive demonstrations over the last decade or so, we still don't know how how to make a computer have a half decent conversation with a human. They argue that the capabilities required to do this include incremental joint co-construction and mentalizing. Although agreeing whole heartedly with their statement of the problem, this paper argues for a different approach to the solution based on the "new" AI of situated action.
Cell proliferation, apoptosis, and myosin-dependent contraction can generate elastic stress and strain in living tissues, which may be dissipated by internal rearrangement through cell topological transition and cytoskeletal reorganization. Moreover, cells and tissues can change their sizes in response to mechanical cues. The present work demonstrates the role of tissue compressibility and internal rearranging activities on its size and mechanics regulation in the context of differential growth induced by a field of growth-promoting chemical factors. We develop a mathematical model based on finite elasticity and growth theory and the reference map techniques to describe the coupled tissue growth and mechanics in the Eulerian frame. We incorporate the tissue rearrangement by introducing a rearranging rate to the reference map evolution, leading to elastic-energy dissipation when tissue growth and deformation are in radial symmetry. By linearizing the model, we show that the stress follows the Maxwell-type viscoelastic relaxation. The rearrangement rate, which we call tissue fluidity, sets the stress relaxation time, and the ratio between the shear modulus and the fluidity sets the tissue viscosity. By nonlinear simulation of growing tissue spheroids and discs with graded growth rates along the radius, we find that the tissue compressibility and fluidity influence their equilibrium size. By comparing the nonlinear simulations with the linear analytical solutions, we show the size change as a nonlinear effect due to the advection of the tissue density flow, which only occurs when both tissue compressibility and fluidity are small. We apply the model to study tumor spheroid growth and epithelial disc growth when a reaction-diffusion process determines the growth-promoting factor field.
It has been recently claimed that primordial magnetic fields could relieve the cosmological Hubble tension. We consider the impact of such fields on the formation of the first cosmological objects, mini-halos forming stars, for present-day field strengths in the range of $2\times 10^{-12}$ - $2\times 10^{-10}$ G. These values correspond to initial ratios of Alv\'en velocity to the speed of sound of $v_a/c_s\approx 0.03 - 3$. We find that when $v_a/c_s\ll 1$, the effects are modest. However, when $v_a\sim c_s$, the starting time of the gravitational collapse is delayed and the duration extended as much as by $\Delta$z = 2.5 in redshift. When $v_a > c_s$, the collapse is completely suppressed and the mini-halos continue to grow and are unlikely to collapse until reaching the atomic cooling limit. Employing current observational limits on primordial magnetic fields we conclude that inflationary produced primordial magnetic fields could have a significant impact on first star formation, whereas post-inflationary produced fields do not.
This is the second part of a paper describing a new concept of separation of variables applied to the classical Clebsch integrable case. The quadratures obtained in Part I (also uploaded in arXiv.org) lead to a new type of the Abel map which contains Abelian integrals on two different algebraic curves. Here we interprete it as from the product of the two curves to the Prym variety of one of them, show that the map is well defined although not a bijection. We analyse its properties and formulate a new extention of the Riemann vanishing theorem, which allows to invert the map in terms of theta-functions of higher order. Lastly, we describe how to express the original variables of the Clebsch system in terms of the preimages of the map. This enables one to obtain theta-function solution whose structure is different from that found long time ago by F. K\"otter.
To improve the security and robustness of autonomous driving models, this paper presents SMET, a scenariobased metamorphic testing tool for autonomous driving models. The metamorphic relationship is divided into three dimensions (time, space, and event) and demonstrates its effectiveness through case studies in two types of autonomous driving models with different outputs.Experimental results show that this tool can well detect potential defects of the autonomous driving model, and complex scenes are more effective than simple scenes.
B-mode ultrasound imaging is a popular medical imaging technique. Like other image processing tasks, deep learning has been used for analysis of B-mode ultrasound images in the last few years. However, training deep learning models requires large labeled datasets, which is often unavailable for ultrasound images. The lack of large labeled data is a bottleneck for the use of deep learning in ultrasound image analysis. To overcome this challenge, in this work we exploit Auxiliary Classifier Generative Adversarial Network (ACGAN) that combines the benefits of data augmentation and transfer learning in the same framework. We conduct experiment on a dataset of breast ultrasound images that shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
In the last three decades, several constructions of quantum error-correcting codes were presented in the literature. Among these codes, there are the asymmetric ones, i.e., quantum codes whose $Z$-distance $d_z$ is different from its $X$-distance $d_x$. The topological quantum codes form an important class of quantum codes, where the toric code, introduced by Kitaev, was the first family of this type. After Kitaev's toric code, several authors focused attention on investigating its structure and the constructions of new families of topological quantum codes over Euclidean and hyperbolic surfaces. As a consequence of establishing the existence and the construction of asymmetric topological quantum codes in Theorem \ref{main}, the main result of this paper, we introduce the class of hyperbolic asymmetric codes. Hence, families of Euclidean and hyperbolic asymmetric topological quantum codes are presented. An analysis regarding the asymptotic behavior of their distances $d_x$ and $d_z$ and encoding rates $k/n$ versus the compact orientable surface's genus is provided due to the significant difference between the asymmetric distances $d_x$ and $d_z$ when compared with the corresponding parameters of topological codes generated by other tessellations. This inherent unequal error-protection is associated with the nontrivial homological cycle of the $\{p,q\}$ tessellation and its dual, which may be appropriately explored depending on the application, where $p\neq q$ and $(p-2)(q-2)\ge 4$. Three families of codes derived from the $\{7,3\}$, $\{5,4\}$, and $\{10,5\}$ tessellations are highlighted.
Since the 1970s, most airlines have incorporated computerized support for managing disruptions during flight schedule execution. However, existing platforms for airline disruption management (ADM) employ monolithic system design methods that rely on the creation of specific rules and requirements through explicit optimization routines, before a system that meets the specifications is designed. Thus, current platforms for ADM are unable to readily accommodate additional system complexities resulting from the introduction of new capabilities, such as the introduction of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), operations and infrastructure, to the system. To this end, we use historical data on airline scheduling and operations recovery to develop a system of artificial neural networks (ANNs), which describe a predictive transfer function model (PTFM) for promptly estimating the recovery impact of disruption resolutions at separate phases of flight schedule execution during ADM. Furthermore, we provide a modular approach for assessing and executing the PTFM by employing a parallel ensemble method to develop generative routines that amalgamate the system of ANNs. Our modular approach ensures that current industry standards for tardiness in flight schedule execution during ADM are satisfied, while accurately estimating appropriate time-based performance metrics for the separate phases of flight schedule execution.
Multi-step effects between bound, resonant, and non-resonant states have been investigated by the continuum-discretized coupled-channels method (CDCC). In the CDCC, a resonant state is treated as multiple states fragmented in a resonance energy region, although it is described as a single state in usual coupled-channel calculations. For such the fragmented resonant states, one-step and multi-step contributions to the cross sections should be carefully discussed because the cross sections obtained by the one-step calculation depend on the number of those states, which corresponds to the size of the model space. To clarify the role of the multi-step effects, we propose the one-step calculation without model-space dependence for the fragmented resonant states. Furthermore, we also discuss the multi-step effects between the ground, $2^{+}_{1}$ resonant, and non-resonant states in $^6$He for proton inelastic scattering.
Coherent control of interfering one- and two-photon processes has for decades been the subject of research to achieve the redirection of photocurrent. The present study develops two-pathway coherent control of ground state helium atom above-threshold photoionization for energies up to the $N=2$ threshold, based on a multichannel quantum defect and R-matrix calculation. Three parameters are controlled in our treatment: the optical interference phase $\Delta\Phi$, the reduced electric field strength $\chi=\mathcal{E}_{\omega}^2/{\mathcal{E}_{2\omega}}$, and the final state energy $\epsilon$. A small energy change near a resonance is shown to flip the emission direction of photoelectrons with high efficiency, through an example where $90\%$ of photoelectrons whose energy is near the $2p^2\ ^1S^e$ resonance flip their emission direction. However, the large fraction of photoelectrons ionized at the intermediate state energy, which are not influenced by the optical control, make this control scheme challenging to realize experimentally.
This paper describes the most efficient way to manage operations on ranges of elements within an ordered set. The goal is to improve existing solutions, by optimizing the average-case time complexity and getting rid of heavy multiplicative constants in the worst-case, without sacrificing space complexity. This is a high-impact operation in practical applications, performed by introducing a new data structure called Wise Red-Black Tree, an augmented version of the Red-Black Tree.
For any integer $m\ge 2$ and a set $V\subset \{1,\dots,m\}$, let $(m,V)$ denote the union of congruence classes of the elements in $V$ modulo $m$. We study the Hankel determinants for the number of Dyck paths with peaks avoiding the heights in the set $(m,V)$. For any set $V$ of even elements of an even modulo $m$, we give an explicit description of the sequence of Hankel determinants in terms of subsequences of arithmetic progression of integers. There are numerous instances for varied $(m,V)$ with periodic sequences of Hankel determinants. We present a sufficient condition for the set $(m,V)$ such that the sequence of Hankel determinants is periodic, including even and odd modulus $m$.