Top arXiv papers

• Sep 26 2017 quant-ph gr-qc math-ph math.MP arXiv:1709.08370v1
Invariant tensors are states in the (local) SU(2) tensor product representation but invariant under global SU(2) action. They are of importance in the study of loop quantum gravity. A random tensor is an ensemble of tensor states. An average over the ensemble is carried out when computing any physical quantities. The random tensor exhibits a phenomenon of concentration of measure', saying that for any bipartition, the expected value of entanglement entropy of its reduced density matrix is asymptotically the maximal possible as the local dimension goes to infinity. This is also true even when the average is over the invariant subspace instead of the whole space for $4-$valent tensors, although its entropy deficit is divergent. One might expect that for $n\geq 5$, $n-$valent random invariant tensor would behavior similarly. However, we show that, the expected entropy deficit of reduced density matrix of such $n-$valent random invariant tensor from maximum, is not divergent but a finite number. Under some special situation, the number could be even smaller than half a bit, which is the deficit of random pure state over the whole Hilbert space from maximum.
• A major outstanding problem for many quantum clock synchronization protocols is the hidden assumption of the availability of synchronized clocks within the protocol. In general, quantum operations between two parties do not have consistent phase definitions of quantum states, which introduce an unknown systematic phase error. We show that despite prior arguments to the contrary, it is possible to remove this unknown phase via entanglement purification. This closes the loophole for entanglement based quantum clock synchronization protocols, which are most compatible with current photon based long-distance entanglement distribution schemes. Starting with noisy Bell pairs, we show that the scheme produces a singlet state for any combination of (i) differing basis conventions for Alice and Bob; (ii) an overall time offset in the execution of the purification algorithm; and (iii) the presence of a noisy channel. Error estimates reveal that better performance than existing classical Einstein synchronization protocols should be achievable using current technology.
• Online algorithm is a well-known computational model. We introduce quantum online algorithms and investigate them with respect to a competitive ratio in two points of view: space complexity and advice complexity. We start with exploring a model with restricted memory and show that quantum online algorithms can be better than classical ones (deterministic or randomized) for sublogarithmic space (memory), and they can be better than deterministic online algorithms without restriction for memory. Additionally, we consider polylogarithmic space case and show that in this case, quantum online algorithms can be better than deterministic ones as well.
• We study how much the efficiency of a solar cell as a quantum heat engine could be enhanced by quantum coherence. In contrast to the conventional approach that a quantum heat engine is in thermal equilibrium with both hot and cold reservoirs, we propose a new description that the quantum heat engine is in the cold reservoir and the thermal radiation from the hot reservoir is described by the pumping term in the master equation. This pumping term solves the problem of the incorrect mean photon number of the hot reservoir assumed by the previous studies. By solving the master equation, we obtain the current-voltage and the power-voltage curves of the photocell for different pumping rates. We find that, as the photon flux increases, the power output of the photocell increases linearly at first and then becomes saturated, but the efficiency decreases rapidly. It is demonstrated that while the power output is enhanced significantly by the quantum coherence via the dark state of the coupled donors, the improvement of the efficiency is not significant.
• Measurement based (MB) quantum computation allows for universal quantum computing by measuring individual qubits prepared in entangled multipartite states, known as graph states. Unless corrected for, the randomness of the measurements leads to the generation of ensembles of random unitaries, where each random unitary is identified with a string of possible measurement results. We show that repeating an MB scheme an efficient number of times, on a simple graph state, with measurements at fixed angles and no feed-forward corrections, produces a random unitary ensemble that is an \epsilon-approximate t-design on n-qubits. Unlike previous constructions, the graph is regular and is also a universal resource for measurement based quantum computing, closely related to the brickwork state
• We study the quantum synchronization between a pair of two-level systems inside two coupledcavities. Using a digital-analog decomposition of the master equation that rules the system dynamics, we show that this approach leads to quantum synchronization between both two-level systems. Moreover, we can identify in this digital-analog block decomposition the fundamental elements of a quantum machine learning protocol, in which the agent and the environment (learning units) interact through a mediating system, namely, the register. If we can additionally equip this algorithm with a classical feedback mechanism, which consists of projective measurements in the register, reinitialization of the register state and local conditional operations on the agent and register subspace, a powerful and flexible quantum machine learning protocol emerges. Indeed, numerical simulations show that this protocol enhances the synchronization process, even when every subsystem experience different loss/decoherence mechanisms, and give us flexibility to choose the synchronization state. Finally, we propose an implementation based on current technologies in superconducting circuits.
• An orientation of a grid is called unique sink orientation (USO) if each of its nonempty subgrids has a unique sink. Particularly, the original grid itself has a unique global sink. In this work we investigate the problem of how to find the global sink using minimum number of queries to an oracle. There are two different oracle models: the vertex query model where the orientation of all edges incident to the queried vertex are provided, and the edge query model where the orientation of the queried edge is provided. In the 2-dimensional case, we design an optimal linear deterministic algorithm for the vertex query model and an almost linear deterministic algorithm for the edge query model, previously the best known algorithms run in O(N logN) time for the vertex query model and O(N^1.404) time for the edge query model.
• Sep 26 2017 quant-ph arXiv:1709.08422v1
We extent the key notion of Martin-Löf randomness to the quantum setting. Classically, an infinite sequence of bits is Martin-Löf random if no algorithm can detect any structure. Instead, our definition is based on the intuition that random objects possess features which are hard to predict when we only have access to parts of it. More precisely, we define quantum Martin-Löf randomness as the property that we cannot predict the value of expectation values if the system is defined on many qubits and we only have access to the first few. We prove that our definition naturally extends the classical case. We also formalize the intuition that such states possess a high Kolmogorov complexity, i.e., they are hard to construct using a Quantum Turing machine. Mathematically, our results rely on a quantum version of Cantor space, and we develop a notion of algorithmic quantum tests.
• Sep 26 2017 math.CA arXiv:1709.08611v1
Let $D$ be a convex subset of a real vector space. It is shown that a radially lower semicontinuous function $f: D\to \mathbf{R}\cup \{+\infty\}$ is convex if and only if for all $x,y \in D$ there exists $\alpha=\alpha(x,y) \in (0,1)$ such that $f(\alpha x+(1-\alpha)y) \le \alpha f(x)+(1-\alpha)f(y)$.
• High-energy physics experiments rely on reconstruction of the trajectories of particles produced at the interaction point. This is a challenging task, especially in the high track multiplicity environment generated by p-p collisions at the LHC energies. A typical event includes hundreds of signal examples (interesting decays) and a significant amount of noise (uninteresting examples). This work describes a modification of the Artificial Retina algorithm for fast track finding: numerical optimization methods were adopted for fast local track search. This approach allows for considerable reduction of the total computational time per event. Test results on simplified simulated model of LHCb VELO (VErtex LOcator) detector are presented. Also this approach is well-suited for implementation of paralleled computations as GPGPU which look very attractive in the context of upcoming detector upgrades.
• The CRAYFIS experiment proposes to use privately owned mobile phones as a ground detector array for Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays. Upon interacting with Earth's atmosphere, these events produce extensive particle showers which can be detected by cameras on mobile phones. A typical shower contains minimally-ionizing particles such as muons. As these particles interact with CMOS image sensors, they may leave tracks of faintly-activated pixels that are sometimes hard to distinguish from random detector noise. Triggers that rely on the presence of very bright pixels within an image frame are not efficient in this case. We present a trigger algorithm based on Convolutional Neural Networks which selects images containing such tracks and are evaluated in a lazy manner: the response of each successive layer is computed only if activation of the current layer satisfies a continuation criterion. Usage of neural networks increases the sensitivity considerably comparable with image thresholding, while the lazy evaluation allows for execution of the trigger under the limited computational power of mobile phones.
• We propose Extreme Zero-shot Learning (EZLearn) for classifying data into potentially thousands of classes, with zero labeled examples. The key insight is to leverage the abundant unlabeled data together with two sources of organic supervision: a lexicon for the annotation classes, and text descriptions that often accompany unlabeled data. Such indirect supervision is readily available in science and other high-value applications. The classes represent the consensus conceptualization of a given domain, and their standard references can be easily obtained, often readily available in an existing domain ontology. Likewise, to facilitate reuse, public datasets typically include text descriptions, some of which mention the relevant classes. To exploit such organic supervision, EZLearn introduces an auxiliary natural language processing system, which uses the lexicon to generate initial noisy labels from the text descriptions, and then co-teaches the main classifier until convergence. Effectively, EZLearn combines distant supervision and co-training into a new learning paradigm for leveraging unlabeled data. Because no hand-labeled examples are required, EZLearn is naturally applicable to domains with a long tail of classes and/or frequent updates. We evaluated EZLearn on applications in functional genomics and scientific figure comprehension. In both cases, using text descriptions as the pivot, EZLearn learned to accurately annotate data samples without direct supervision, even substantially outperforming the state-of-the-art supervised methods trained on tens of thousands of annotated examples.
• We obtain the basic results concerning the problem of constructing operator realizations of the formal differential expression $\nabla \cdot a \cdot \nabla - b \cdot \nabla$ with measurable matrix $a$ and vector field $b$ having critical-order singularities as the generators of Markov semigroups in $L^p$ and $C_\infty$.
• The growing importance and utilization of measuring brain waves (e.g. EEG signals of eye state) in brain-computer interface (BCI) applications highlighted the need for suitable classification methods. In this paper, a comparison between three of well-known classification methods (i.e. support vector machine (SVM), hidden Markov map (HMM), and radial basis function (RBF)) for EEG based eye state classification was achieved. Furthermore, a suggested method that is based on ensemble model was tested. The suggested (ensemble system) method based on a voting algorithm with two kernels: random forest (RF) and Kstar classification methods. The performance was tested using three measurement parameters: accuracy, mean absolute error (MAE), and confusion matrix. Results showed that the proposed method outperforms the other tested methods. For instance, the suggested method's performance was 97.27% accuracy and 0.13 MAE.
• Sep 26 2017 astro-ph.HE gr-qc arXiv:1709.08584v1
In LIGO's O1 and O2 observational runs, the detectors were sensitive to stellar mass binary black hole coalescences with component masses up to $100\,M_\odot$, with binaries with primary masses above $40\,M_\odot$ representing $\gtrsim90\%$ of the total accessible sensitive volume. Nonetheless, of the first 3.9 LIGO detections (GW150914, GW151226, GW170104, and LVT151012), the most massive binary detected was GW150914 with a primary component mass of $\sim36\,M_\odot$, far below the detection mass limit. Furthermore, there are theoretical arguments in favor of an upper mass gap, predicting an absence of black holes in the mass range $50\lesssim M\lesssim135\,M_\odot$. We argue that the absence of detected binary systems with component masses heavier than $\sim40\,M_\odot$ may be preliminary evidence for this upper mass gap. By allowing for the presence of a mass gap, we find weaker constraints on the shape of the underlying mass distribution of LIGO's binary black holes. We fit a power-law distribution with an upper mass cutoff to real and simulated BBH mass measurements, finding that the first four detections favor shallow power law slopes $\alpha \lesssim 3$ and an upper mass cutoff $M_\mathrm{max} \sim 40\,M_\odot$. We show that with $\sim10$ additional LIGO BBH detections, fitting the BH mass distribution will provide strong evidence for an upper mass gap if one exists.
• Grid (or comb) states are an interesting class of bosonic states introduced by Gottesman, Kitaev and Preskill to encode a qubit into an oscillator. A method to generate or breed' a grid state from Schrödinger cat states using beam splitters and homodyne measurements is known, but this method requires post-selection. In this paper we show how post-processing of the measurement data can be used to entirely remove the need for post-selection, making the scheme much more viable. We bound the asymptotic behavior of the breeding procedure and demonstrate the efficacy of the method numerically.
• Sep 26 2017 cs.LG cs.AI stat.ML arXiv:1709.08568v1
A new prior is proposed for representation learning, which can be combined with other priors in order to help disentangling abstract factors from each other. It is inspired by the phenomenon of consciousness seen as the formation of a low-dimensional combination of a few concepts constituting a conscious thought, i.e., consciousness as awareness at a particular time instant. This provides a powerful constraint on the representation in that such low-dimensional thought vectors can correspond to statements about reality which are true, highly probable, or very useful for taking decisions. The fact that a few elements of the current state can be combined into such a predictive or useful statement is a strong constraint and deviates considerably from the maximum likelihood approaches to modelling data and how states unfold in the future based on an agent's actions. Instead of making predictions in the sensory (e.g. pixel) space, the consciousness prior allows the agent to make predictions in the abstract space, with only a few dimensions of that space being involved in each of these predictions. The consciousness prior also makes it natural to map conscious states to natural language utterances or to express classical AI knowledge in the form of facts and rules, although the conscious states may be richer than what can be expressed easily in the form of a sentence, a fact or a rule.
• Recognising semantic pedestrian attributes in surveillance images is a challenging task for computer vision, particularly when the imaging quality is poor with complex background clutter and uncontrolled viewing conditions, and the number of labelled training data is small. In this work, we formulate a Joint Recurrent Learning (JRL) model for exploring attribute context and correlation in order to improve attribute recognition given small sized training data with poor quality images. The JRL model learns jointly pedestrian attribute correlations in a pedestrian image and in particular their sequential ordering dependencies (latent high-order correlation) in an end-to-end encoder/decoder recurrent network. We demonstrate the performance advantage and robustness of the JRL model over a wide range of state-of-the-art deep models for pedestrian attribute recognition, multi-label image classification, and multi-person image annotation on two largest pedestrian attribute benchmarks PETA and RAP.
• We present a completely new structure theoretic approach to the dilation theory of linear operators. Our main result is the following theorem: if $X$ is a super-reflexive Banach space and $T$ is contained in the weakly closed convex hull of all invertible isometries on $X$, then $T$ admits a dilation to an invertible isometry on a Banach space $Y$ with the same regularity as $X$. The classical dilation theorems of Sz.-Nagy and Akcoglu-Sucheston are easy consequences of our general theory.
• Visualizations of tabular data are widely used; understanding their effectiveness in different task and data contexts is fundamental to scaling their impact. However, little is known about how basic tabular data visualizations perform across varying data analysis tasks and data attribute types. In this paper, we report results from a crowdsourced experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of five visualization types --- Table, Line Chart, Bar Chart, Scatterplot, and Pie Chart --- across ten common data analysis tasks and three data attribute types using two real world datasets. We found the effectiveness of these visualization types significantly varies across task and data attribute types, suggesting that visualization design would benefit from considering context dependent effectiveness. Based on our findings, we derive recommendations on which visualizations to choose based on different task and data contexts.
• The Internet of Things (IoT) is the science of connecting multiple devices that coordinate to provide the service in question. IoT environments are complex, dynamic, rapidly changing and resource constrained. Therefore, proactively adapting devices to align with context fluctuations becomes a concern. To propose suitable configurations, it should be possible to sense information from devices, analyze the data and reconfigure them accordingly. Applied in the service of the environment, a fleet of devices can monitor environment indicators and control it in order to propose best fit solutions or prevent risks like over consumption of resources (e.g., water and energy). This paper describes our methodology in designing a framework for the monitoring and multi-instantiation of fleets of connected objects. First by identifying the particularities of the fleet, then by specifying connected object as a Dynamic Software Product Line (DSPL), capable of readjusting while running.
• As roles for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) continue to diversify, the ability to sense and interact closely with the environment becomes increasingly important. Within this paper we report on the initial flight tests of a novel adaptive compliant actuator which will allow a UAV to carry out such tasks as the "pick and placement" of remote sensors, structural testing and contact-based inspection. Three key results are discussed and presented; the ability to physically compensate impact forces or apply interaction forces by the UAV through the use of the active compliant manipulator; to be able to tailor these forces through tuning of the manipulator controller gains; and the ability to apply a rapid series of physical pulses in order to excite remotely placed sensors, e.g. vibration sensors. The paper describes the overall system requirements and system modelling considerations which have driven the concept through to flight testing. A series of over sixty flight tests have been used to generate initial results which clearly demonstrate the potential of this new type of compliant aerial actuator. Results are discussed in line with potential applications; and a series of future flight tests are described which will enable us to refine and characterise the overall system.
• Regression shrinkage and variable selection are important concepts in high-dimensional statistics that allow the inference of robust models from large data sets. Bayesian methods achieve this by subjecting the model parameters to a prior distribution whose mass is centred around zero. In particular, the lasso and elastic net linear regression models employ a double-exponential distribution in their prior, which results in some maximum-likelihood regression coefficients being identically zero. Because of their ability to simultaneously perform parameter estimation and variable selection, these models have become enormously popular. However, there has been limited success in moving beyond maximum-likelihood estimation and deriving estimates for the posterior distribution of regression coefficients, due to a need for computationally expensive Gibbs sampling approaches to evaluate analytically intractable partition function integrals. Here, through the use of the Fourier transform, these integrals are expressed as complex-valued oscillatory integrals over "regression frequencies". This results in an analytic expansion and stationary phase approximation for the partition functions of the Bayesian lasso and elastic net, where the non-differentiability of the double-exponential prior distribution has so far eluded such an approach. Use of this approximation leads to highly accurate numerical estimates for the expectation values and marginal posterior distributions of the regression coefficients, thus allowing for Bayesian inference of much higher dimensional models than previously possible.
• This work is meant to be a step towards the formal definition of the notion of algorithm, in the sense of an equivalence class of programs working "in a similar way". But instead of defining equivalence transformations directly on programs, we look at the computation for each particular argument and give it a structure. This leads to the notion of constructed number: the result of the computation is a constructed number whose constructors (0, successor) carry a history condition (or trace) of their computation. There are equivalence relations on these conditions and on constructed numbers. Two programs are equivalent if they produce equivalent constructed numbers for each argument.
• This paper reports on a data-driven, interaction-aware motion prediction approach for pedestrians in environments cluttered with static obstacles. When navigating in such workspaces shared with humans, robots need accurate motion predictions of the surrounding pedestrians. Human navigation behavior is mostly influenced by their surrounding pedestrians and by the static obstacles in their vicinity. In this paper we introduce a new model based on Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks, which is able to learn human motion behavior from demonstrated data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach using LSTMs, that incorporates both static obstacles and surrounding pedestrians for trajectory forecasting. As part of the model, we introduce a new way of encoding surrounding pedestrians based on a 1d-grid in polar angle space. We evaluate the benefit of interaction-aware motion prediction and the added value of incorporating static obstacles on both simulation and real-world datasets by comparing with state-of-the-art approaches. The results show, that our new approach outperforms the other approaches while being very computationally efficient and that taking into account static obstacles for motion predictions significantly improves the prediction accuracy, especially in cluttered environments.
• We propose a new method for human pose estimation which leverages information from multiple views to impose a strong prior on articulated pose. The novelty of the method concerns the types of coherence modelled. Consistency is maximised over the different views through different terms modelling classical geometric information (coherence of the resulting poses) as well as appearance information which is modelled as latent variables in the global energy function. Moreover, adequacy of each view is assessed and their contributions are adjusted accordingly. Experiments on the HumanEva and UMPM datasets show that the proposed method significantly decreases the estimation error compared to single-view results.
• Cloud computing has permeated into the information technology industry in the last few years, and it is emerging nowadays in scientific environments. Science user communities are demanding a broad range of computing power to satisfy the needs of high-performance applications, such as local clusters, high-performance computing systems, and computing grids. Different workloads are needed from different computational models, and the cloud is already considered as a promising paradigm. The scheduling and allocation of resources is always a challenging matter in any form of computation and clouds are not an exception. Science applications have unique features that differentiate their workloads, hence, their requirements have to be taken into consideration to be fulfilled when building a Science Cloud. This paper will discuss what are the main scheduling and resource allocation challenges for any Infrastructure as a Service provider supporting scientific applications.
• Learning, taking into account full distribution of the data, referred to as generative, is not feasible with deep neural networks (DNNs) because they model only the conditional distribution of the outputs given the inputs. Current solutions are either based on joint probability models facing difficult estimation problems or learn two separate networks, mapping inputs to outputs (recognition) and vice-versa (generation). We propose an intermediate approach. First, we show that forward computation in DNNs with logistic sigmoid activations corresponds to a simplified approximate Bayesian inference in a directed probabilistic multi-layer model. This connection allows to interpret DNN as a probabilistic model of the output and all hidden units given the input. Second, we propose that in order for the recognition and generation networks to be more consistent with the joint model of the data, weights of the recognition and generator network should be related by transposition. We demonstrate in a tentative experiment that such a coupled pair can be learned generatively, modelling the full distribution of the data, and has enough capacity to perform well in both recognition and generation.
• One of the main difficulties in sentiment analysis of the Arabic language is the presence of the colloquialism. In this paper, we examine the effect of using objective words in conjunction with sentimental words on sentiment classification for the colloquial Arabic reviews, specifically Jordanian colloquial reviews. The reviews often include both sentimental and objective words, however, the most existing sentiment analysis models ignore the objective words as they are considered useless. In this work, we created two lexicons: the first includes the colloquial sentimental words and compound phrases, while the other contains the objective words associated with values of sentiment tendency based on a particular estimation method. We used these lexicons to extract sentiment features that would be training input to the Support Vector Machines (SVM) to classify the sentiment polarity of the reviews. The reviews dataset have been collected manually from JEERAN website. The results of the experiments show that the proposed approach improves the polarity classification in comparison to two baseline models, with accuracy 95.6%.
• Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are a vital modeling technique that rely on internal states learned indirectly by optimization of a supervised, unsupervised, or reinforcement training loss. RNNs are used to model dynamic processes that are characterized by underlying latent states whose form is often unknown, precluding its analytic representation inside an RNN. In the Predictive-State Representation (PSR) literature, latent state processes are modeled by an internal state representation that directly models the distribution of future observations, and most recent work in this area has relied on explicitly representing and targeting sufficient statistics of this probability distribution. We seek to combine the advantages of RNNs and PSRs by augmenting existing state-of-the-art recurrent neural networks with Predictive-State Decoders (PSDs), which add supervision to the network's internal state representation to target predicting future observations. Predictive-State Decoders are simple to implement and easily incorporated into existing training pipelines via additional loss regularization. We demonstrate the effectiveness of PSDs with experimental results in three different domains: probabilistic filtering, Imitation Learning, and Reinforcement Learning. In each, our method improves statistical performance of state-of-the-art recurrent baselines and does so with fewer iterations and less data.
• LADARs mounted on mobile platforms produce a wealth of precise range data on the surrounding objects and vehicles. The challenge we address is to infer from these raw LADAR data the location and orientation of nearby vehicles. We propose a novel view-dependent adaptive matched filter for obtaining fast and precise measurements of target vehicle pose. We derive an analytic expression for the matching function which we optimize to obtain target pose and size. Our algorithm is fast, robust and simple to implement compared to other methods. When used as the measurement component of a tracker on an autonomous ground vehicle, we are able to track in excess of 50 targets at 10 Hz. Once targets are aligned using our matched filter, we use a support vector-based discriminator to distinguish vehicles from other objects. This tracker provides a key sensing component for our autonomous ground vehicles which have accumulated hundreds of miles of on-road and off-road autonomous driving.
• Safe mobility for unmanned ground vehicles requires reliable detection of other vehicles, along with precise estimates of their locations and trajectories. Here we describe the algorithms and system we have developed for accurate trajectory estimation of nearby vehicles using an onboard scanning LADAR. We introduce a variable-axis Ackerman steering model and compare this to an independent steering model. Then for robust tracking we propose a multi-hypothesis tracker that combines these kinematic models to leverage the strengths of each. When trajectories estimated with our techniques are input into a planner, they enable an unmanned vehicle to negotiate traffic in urban environments. Results have been evaluated running in real time on a moving vehicle with a scanning LADAR.
• Detecting moving vehicles and people is crucial for safe operation of UGVs but is challenging in cluttered, real world environments. We propose a registration technique that enables objects to be robustly matched and tracked, and hence movers to be detected even in high clutter. Range data are acquired using a 2D scanning Ladar from a moving platform. These are automatically clustered into objects and modeled using a surface density function. A Bhattacharya similarity is optimized to register subsequent views of each object enabling good discrimination and tracking, and hence mover detection.
• Sep 26 2017 gr-qc arXiv:1709.08511v1
In the context of quantum gravity, we clarify entanglement calculations on spin networks: we distinguish the gauge-invariant entanglement between intertwiners located at the nodes and the entanglement between spin states located on the network's links. We compute explicitly these two notions of entanglement between neighboring nodes and show that they are always related to the typical $\ln(2j+1)$ term depending on the spin $j$ living on the link between them. This $\ln(2j+1)$ contribution comes from looking at non-gauge invariant states, thus we interpret it as gauge-breaking and unphysical. In particular, this confirms that pure spin network basis states do not carry any physical entanglement, so that true entanglement and correlations in loop quantum gravity comes from spin or intertwiner superpositions.
• We introduce a mixed-effects model to learn spatiotempo-ral patterns on a network by considering longitudinal measures distributed on a fixed graph. The data come from repeated observations of subjects at different time points which take the form of measurement maps distributed on a graph such as an image or a mesh. The model learns a typical group-average trajectory characterizing the propagation of measurement changes across the graph nodes. The subject-specific trajectories are defined via spatial and temporal transformations of the group-average scenario, thus estimating the variability of spatiotemporal patterns within the group. To estimate population and individual model parameters, we adapted a stochastic version of the Expectation-Maximization algorithm, the MCMC-SAEM. The model is used to describe the propagation of cortical atrophy during the course of Alzheimer's Disease. Model parameters show the variability of this average pattern of atrophy in terms of trajectories across brain regions, age at disease onset and pace of propagation. We show that the personalization of this model yields accurate prediction of maps of cortical thickness in patients.
• In this work, we give a new twist to monocular obstacle detection. Most of the existing approaches either rely on Visual SLAM systems or on depth estimation models to build 3D maps and detect obstacles. Despite their success, these methods are not specifically devised for monocular obstacle detection. In particular, they are not robust to appearance and camera intrinsics changes or texture-less scenarios. To overcome these limitations, we propose an end-to-end deep architecture that jointly learns to detect obstacle and estimate their depth. The multi task nature of this strategy strengthen both the obstacle detection task with more reliable bounding boxes and range measures and the depth estimation one with robustness to scenario changes. We call this architecture J-MOD$^{2}$ We prove the effectiveness of our approach with experiments on sequences with different appearance and focal lengths. Furthermore, we show its benefits on a set of simulated navigation experiments where a MAV explores an unknown scenario and plans safe trajectories by using our detection model.
• Feynman's sum-over-histories formulation of quantum mechanics has been considered a useful calculational tool in which virtual Feynman histories entering into a quantum superposition cannot be individually measured. Here we show that sequential weak values inferred by weak measurements allow direct experimental probing of individual virtual Feynman histories thereby revealing the exact nature of quantum interference of superposed histories. In view of the existing controversy over the meaning and interpretation of weak values, our analysis demonstrates that sequential weak values of quantum histories (multi-time projection operators) are not arbitrary, but reflect true physical properties of the quantum physical system under study. If weak values are interpreted for a complete set of orthogonal quantum histories, the total sum of weak values is unity and the analysis agrees with the standard quantum mechanical picture.
• We present the discovery of microlensing planet OGLE-2017-BLG-0173Lb, with planet-host mass ratio $q=6.5\times 10^{-5}$, among the lowest ever detected. The planetary perturbation is nevertheless quite strongly detected, with $\Delta\chi^2\sim 10,000$, because it arises from a bright (therefore, large) source passing over, and partially enveloping, the planetary caustic. We present a simple formalism that can be used to estimate the sensitivity of other giant-source ("Hollywood") events to planets and show that they can lead to detections close to, but perhaps not quite reaching, the Earth/Sun mass ratio of $3\times 10^{-6}$. The best estimated Bayesian parameters for this system are host-mass $M=0.42^{+0.40}_{-0.24}\,M_\odot$, planet mass, $m_p=9^{+11}_{-6}M_\oplus$, and projected separation $a_\perp \sim 4\,\au$. The measured lens-source relative proper motion $\mu=6\,\masyr$ will permit imaging of the lens in about 15 years or at first light on adaptive-optics imagers on next-generation ("30 meter") telescopes, whichever comes first.
• Recently there has been increasing interest in probabilistic solvers for ordinary differential equations (ODEs) that return full probability measures, instead of point estimates, over the solution and can incorporate uncertainty over the ODE at hand, e.g. if the vector field or the initial value is only approximately known or evaluable. The ODE filter proposed in recent work models the solution of the ODE by a Gauss-Markov process which serves as a prior in the sense of Bayesian statistics. While previous work employed a Wiener process prior on the (possibly multiple times) differentiated solution of the ODE and established equivalence of the corresponding solver with classical numerical methods, this paper raises the question whether other priors also yield practically useful solvers. To this end, we discuss a range of possible priors which enable fast filtering and propose a new prior--the Integrated Ornstein Uhlenbeck Process (IOUP)--that complements the existing Integrated Wiener process (IWP) filter by encoding the property that a derivative in time of the solution is bounded in the sense that it tends to drift back to zero. We provide experiments comparing IWP and IOUP filters which support the belief that IWP approximates better divergent ODE's solutions whereas IOUP is a better prior for trajectories with bounded derivatives.
• Electrification of transportation is critical for a low-carbon society. In particular, public vehicles (e.g., taxis) provide a crucial opportunity for electrification. Despite the benefits of eco-friendliness and energy efficiency, adoption of electric taxis faces several obstacles, including constrained driving range, long recharging duration, limited charging stations and low gas price, all of which impede taxi drivers' decisions to switch to electric taxis. On the other hand, the popularity of ride-hailing mobile apps facilitates the computerization and optimization of taxi service strategies, which provide computer-assisted decisions of navigation and roaming for taxi drivers to locate potential customers. This paper examines the viability of electric taxis with the assistance of taxi service strategy optimization, in comparison with conventional taxis with internal combustion engines. A big data analysis is provided using a large dataset of real-world taxi trips in New York City. Our methodology is to first model the computerized taxi service strategy by Markov Decision Process (MDP), and then devise the optimized taxi service strategy based on NYC taxi trip dataset. The profitability of electric taxi drivers is studied empirically under various battery capacity and charging conditions. Consequently, we shed light on the solutions that can improve viability of electric taxis.
• Authoring of OWL-DL ontologies is intellectually challenging and to make this process simpler, many systems accept natural language text as input. A text-based ontology authoring approach can be successful only when it is combined with an effective method for extracting ontological axioms from text. Extracting axioms from unrestricted English input is a substantially challenging task due to the richness of the language. Controlled natural languages (CNLs) have been proposed in this context and these tend to be highly restrictive. In this paper, we propose a new CNL called TEDEI (TExtual DEscription Identifier) whose grammar is inspired by the different ways OWL-DL constructs are expressed in English. We built a system that transforms TEDEI sentences into corresponding OWL-DL axioms. Now, ambiguity due to different possible lexicalizations of sentences and semantic ambiguity present in sentences are challenges in this context. We find that the best way to handle these challenges is to construct axioms corresponding to alternative formalizations of the sentence so that the end-user can make an appropriate choice. The output is compared against human-authored axioms and in substantial number of cases, human-authored axiom is indeed one of the alternatives given by the system. The proposed system substantially enhances the types of sentence structures that can be used for ontology authoring.
• Sep 26 2017 cs.LG stat.ML arXiv:1709.08432v1
In this paper, we use the house price data ranging from January 2004 to October 2016 to predict the average house price of November and December in 2016 for each district in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. We apply Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model to generate the baseline while LSTM networks to build prediction model. These algorithms are compared in terms of Mean Squared Error. The result shows that the LSTM model has excellent properties with respect to predict time series. Also, stateful LSTM networks and stack LSTM networks are employed to further study the improvement of accuracy of the house prediction model.
• In this paper we focus on developing a control algorithm for multi-terrain tracked robots with flippers using a reinforcement learning (RL) approach. The work is based on the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm, proven to be very successful in simple simulation environments. The algorithm works in an end-to-end fashion in order to control the continuous position of the flippers. This end-to-end approach makes it easy to apply the controller to a wide array of circumstances, but the huge flexibility comes to the cost of an increased difficulty of solution. The complexity of the task is enlarged even more by the fact that real multi-terrain robots move in partially observable environments. Notwithstanding these complications, being able to smoothly control a multi-terrain robot can produce huge benefits in impaired people daily lives or in search and rescue situations.
• This paper studies monocular visual odometry (VO) problem. Most of existing VO algorithms are developed under a standard pipeline including feature extraction, feature matching, motion estimation, local optimisation, etc. Although some of them have demonstrated superior performance, they usually need to be carefully designed and specifically fine-tuned to work well in different environments. Some prior knowledge is also required to recover an absolute scale for monocular VO. This paper presents a novel end-to-end framework for monocular VO by using deep Recurrent Convolutional Neural Networks (RCNNs). Since it is trained and deployed in an end-to-end manner, it infers poses directly from a sequence of raw RGB images (videos) without adopting any module in the conventional VO pipeline. Based on the RCNNs, it not only automatically learns effective feature representation for the VO problem through Convolutional Neural Networks, but also implicitly models sequential dynamics and relations using deep Recurrent Neural Networks. Extensive experiments on the KITTI VO dataset show competitive performance to state-of-the-art methods, verifying that the end-to-end Deep Learning technique can be a viable complement to the traditional VO systems.
• Automatically generating a summary of sports video poses the challenge of detecting interesting moments, or highlights, of a game. Traditional sports video summarization methods leverage editing conventions of broadcast sports video that facilitate the extraction of high-level semantics. However, user-generated videos are not edited, and thus traditional methods are not suitable to generate a summary. In order to solve this problem, this work proposes a novel video summarization method that uses players' actions as a cue to determine the highlights of the original video. A deep neural network-based approach is used to extract two types of action-related features and to classify video segments into interesting or uninteresting parts. The proposed method can be applied to any sports in which games consist of a succession of actions. Especially, this work considers the case of Kendo (Japanese fencing) as an example of a sport to evaluate the proposed method. The method is trained using Kendo videos with ground truth labels that indicate the video highlights. The labels are provided by annotators possessing different experience with respect to Kendo to demonstrate how the proposed method adapts to different needs. The performance of the proposed method is compared with several combinations of different features, and the results show that it outperforms previous summarization methods.
• Spin-1 hadrons have additional structure functions not present for spin 1/2 hadrons. These could probe novel aspects of hadron structure and QCD dynamics. For the deuteron, the tensor structure function $b_1$ inherently mixes quark and nuclear degrees of freedom. These proceedings discuss two standard convolution models applied to calculations of the deuteron $b_1$ structure functions. We find large differences with the existing HERMES data and other convolution model calculations. This leaves room for non-standard contributions to $b_1$ in the deuteron. We also discuss the influence of higher twist nuclear effects in the model calculations and data extraction at kinematics covered in HERMES and Jefferson Lab.
• The first goal of this paper is to study necessary and sufficient conditions to obtain the attainability of the \textitfractional Hardy inequality $$\Lambda_N≡\Lambda_N(\Omega):=\inf_{\phi∈\mathbbE^s(\Omega, D), \phi≠0} \dfrac\fraca_d,s2 \displaystyle\int_\mathbbR^d \int_\mathbbR^d \dfrac|\phi(x)-\phi(y)|^2|x-y|^d+2sdx dy \displaystyle\int_\Omega \frac\phi^2|x|^2s\u2009dx,$$ where $\Omega$ is a bounded domain of $\mathbb{R}^d$, $0<s<1$, $D\subset \mathbb{R}^d\setminus \Omega$ a nonempty open set and $$\mathbbE^s(\Omega,D)=\left{ u ∈H^s(\mathbbR^d):\,u=0 \text in D\right}.$$ The second aim of the paper is to study the \textitmixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary problem associated to the minimization problem and related properties; precisely, to study semilinear elliptic problem for the \textitfractional laplacian, that is, $$P_\lambda \u2009≡\left{ \beginarrayrcll (-∆)^s u &= & \lambda \dfracu|x|^2s +u^p & \text in \Omega, u & > & 0 &\text in \Omega, \mathcalB_su&:=&u\chi_D+\mathcalN_su\chi_N=0 &\text in \mathbbR^d\backslash \Omega, \\ \endarray\right.$$ with $N$ and $D$ open sets in $\mathbb{R}^d\backslash\Omega$ such that $N \cap D=\emptyset$ and $\overline{N}\cup \overline{D}= \mathbb{R}^d \backslash\Omega$, $d>2s$, $\lambda> 0$ and $0<p\le 2_s^*-1$, $2_s^*=\frac{2d}{d-2s}$. We emphasize that the nonlinear term can be critical. The operators $(-\Delta)^s$, fractional laplacian, and $\mathcal{N}_{s}$, nonlocal Neumann condition, are defined below in (1.5) and (1.6) respectively.
• In this paper, we present a novel open-source pipeline for face registration based on Gaussian processes as well as an application to face image analysis. Non-rigid registration of faces is significant for many applications in computer vision, such as the construction of 3D Morphable face models (3DMMs). Gaussian Process Morphable Models (GPMMs) unify a variety of non-rigid deformation models with B-splines and PCA models as examples. GPMM separate problem specific requirements from the registration algorithm by incorporating domain-specific adaptions as a prior model. The novelties of this paper are the following: (i) We present a strategy and modeling technique for face registration that considers symmetry, multi-scale and spatially-varying details. The registration is applied to neutral faces and facial expressions. (ii) We release an open-source software framework for registration model-building demonstrated on the publicly available BU3D-FE database. The released pipeline also contains an implementation of an Analysis-by-Synthesis model adaption of 2D face images, tested on the Multi-PIE and LFW database. This enables the community to reproduce, evaluate and compare the individual steps of registration to model-building and 3D/2D model fitting. (iii) Along with the framework release, we publish a new version of the Basel Face Model (BFM-2017) with an improved age distribution and an additional facial expression model.
• Cryptovirological augmentations present an immediate, incomparable threat. Over the last decade, the substantial proliferation of crypto-ransomware has had widespread consequences for consumers and organisations alike. Established preventive measures perform well, however, the problem has not ceased. Reverse engineering potentially malicious software is a cumbersome task due to platform eccentricities and obfuscated transmutation mechanisms, hence requiring smarter, more efficient detection strategies. The following manuscript presents a novel approach for the classification of cryptographic primitives in compiled binary executables using deep learning. The model blueprint, a DCNN, is fittingly configured to learn from variable-length control flow diagnostics output from a dynamic trace. To rival the size and variability of contemporary data compendiums, hence feeding the model cognition, a methodology for the procedural generation of synthetic cryptographic binaries is defined, utilising core primitives from OpenSSL with multivariate obfuscation, to draw a vastly scalable distribution. The library, CryptoKnight, rendered an algorithmic pool of AES, RC4, Blowfish, MD5 and RSA to synthesis combinable variants which are automatically fed in its core model. Converging at 91% accuracy, CryptoKnight is successfully able to classify the sample algorithms with minimal loss.

Bassam Helou Sep 22 2017 17:21 UTC

The initial version of the article does not adequately and clearly explain how certain equations demonstrate whether a particular interpretation of QM violates the no-signaling condition.
A revised and improved version is scheduled to appear on September 25.

James Wootton Sep 21 2017 05:41 UTC

What does this imply for https://scirate.com/arxiv/1608.00263? I'm guessing they still regard it as valid (it is ref [14]), but just too hard to implement for now.

Ben Criger Sep 08 2017 08:09 UTC

Oh look, there's another technique for decoding surface codes subject to X/Z correlated errors: https://scirate.com/arxiv/1709.02154

Aram Harrow Sep 06 2017 07:54 UTC

The paper only applies to conformal field theories, and such a result cannot hold for more general 1-D systems by 0705.4077 and other papers (assuming standard complexity theory conjectures).

Felix Leditzky Sep 05 2017 21:27 UTC

Thanks for the clarification, Philippe!

Philippe Faist Sep 05 2017 21:09 UTC

Hi Felix, thanks for the good question.

We've found it more convenient to consider trace-nonincreasing and $\Gamma$-sub-preserving maps (and this is justified by the fact that they can be dilated to fully trace-preserving and $\Gamma$-preserving maps on a larger system). The issue arises because

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Felix Leditzky Sep 05 2017 19:02 UTC

What is the reason/motivation to consider trace-non-increasing maps instead of trace-preserving maps in your framework and the definition of the coherent relative entropy?

Steve Flammia Aug 30 2017 22:30 UTC

Thanks for the reference Ashley. If I understand your paper, you are still measuring stabilizers of X- and Z-type at the top layer of the code. So it might be that we can improve on the factor of 2 that you found if we tailor the stabilizers to the noise bias at the base level.

Ashley Aug 30 2017 22:09 UTC

We followed Aliferis and Preskill's approach in [https://arxiv.org/abs/1308.4776][1] and found that the fault-tolerant threshold for the surface code was increased by approximately a factor of two, from around 0.75 per cent to 1.5 per cent for a bias of 10 to 100.

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1308.

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Stephen Bartlett Aug 30 2017 21:55 UTC

Following on from Steve's comments, it's possible to use the bias-preserving gate set in Aliferis and Preskill directly to do the syndrome extraction, as you build up a CNOT gadget, but such a direct application of your methods would be very complicated and involve a lot of gate teleportation. If y

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