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It is well understood that when students are experiencing hunger, their ability to learn suffers. What is less understood is why this is the case and the role of the learning environment. Using Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 data, this brief examines how student hunger is correlated with how disorderly the classroom environment is during math lessons. Even though the data does not allow the unpacking of why students come to school hungry, the authors found a consistent relationship between hunger and disorderly classroom environment, without any exception, across 38 TIMSS 2019 participating countries. This relationship holds even after controlling differences in student and classroom socioeconomic status, class size, teacher experience, and educational attainment. These findings suggest that when students come to school hungry, they have a harder time paying attention and regulating their behavior. This can result in a disorderly and less effective learning environment for all students, even those not experiencing hunger.

Hampering the interpretation of benchmark scores, evaluation data contamination has become a growing concern in the evaluation of LLMs, and an active area of research studies its effects. While evaluation data contamination is easily understood intuitively, it is surprisingly difficult to define precisely which samples should be considered contaminated and, consequently, how it impacts benchmark scores. We propose that these questions should be addressed together and that contamination metrics can be assessed based on whether models benefit from the examples they mark contaminated. We propose a novel analysis method called ConTAM, and show with a large scale survey of existing and novel n-gram based contamination metrics across 13 benchmarks and 7 models from 2 different families that ConTAM can be used to better understand evaluation data contamination and its effects. We find that contamination may have a much larger effect than reported in recent LLM releases and benefits models differently at different scales. We also find that considering only the longest contaminated substring provides a better signal than considering a union of all contaminated substrings, and that doing model and benchmark specific threshold analysis greatly increases the specificity of the results. Lastly, we investigate the impact of hyperparameter choices, finding that, among other things, both using larger values of n and disregarding matches that are infrequent in the pre-training data lead to many false negatives. With ConTAM, we provide a method to empirically ground evaluation data contamination metrics in downstream effects. With our exploration, we shed light on how evaluation data contamination can impact LLMs and provide insight into the considerations important when doing contamination analysis. We end our paper by discussing these in more detail and providing concrete suggestions for future work.

Humanoids have the potential to be the ideal embodiment in environments designed for humans. Thanks to the structural similarity to the human body, they benefit from rich sources of demonstration data, e.g., collected via teleoperation, motion capture, or even using videos of humans performing tasks. However, distilling a policy from demonstrations is still a challenging problem. While Diffusion Policies (DPs) have shown impressive results in robotic manipulation, their applicability to locomotion and humanoid control remains underexplored. In this paper, we investigate how dataset diversity and size affect the performance of DPs for humanoid whole-body control. In a simulated IsaacGym environment, we generate synthetic demonstrations by training Adversarial Motion Prior (AMP) agents under various Domain Randomization (DR) conditions, and we compare DPs fitted to datasets of different size and diversity. Our findings show that, although DPs can achieve stable walking behavior, successful training of locomotion policies requires significantly larger and more diverse datasets compared to manipulation tasks, even in simple scenarios., Comment: Conference on Robot Learning, Workshop on Whole-Body Control and Bimanual Manipulation

Nature-inspired computation is receiving increasing attention. Various Ising machine implementations have recently been proven to be effective in solving numerous combinatorial optimization problems including maximum cut, low density parity check (LDPC) decoding, and Boolean satisfiability (SAT) problems. In this paper, a novel method is presented to solve SAT or MAX-SAT problems with a CMOS circuit implementation. The technique solves a SAT problem by mapping the SAT variables onto quantized capacitor voltages generated by an array of nodes that interact through a network of coupling units. The nodal interaction is achieved through coupling currents produced by the coupling units, which charge or discharge capacitor voltages, implementing a gradient descent along the SAT problem's cost function to minimize the number of unsatisfied clauses. The system also incorporates a unique low-complexity perturbation scheme to avoid settling in local minima, greatly enhancing the performance of the system. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SKI-SAT is a high-performance and low-energy alternative that surpasses existing solvers by significant margins, achieving more than 10 times faster solution and 300 times less power., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables

This paper investigates the relationships among key elements of scientific research network, namely articles, researchers, and journals. We introduce a novel approach to use semantic information through the HITS algorithm based propagation of topic information in the network. The topic information is derived by using the Named Entity Recognition and Entity Linkage. In our case, MedCAT is used to extract the topics from the CORD19 Dataset, which is a corpus of academic articles about COVID-19 and coronavirus scientific network. Our approach focuses on the COVID-19 domain, utilizing the CORD-19 dataset to demonstrate the efficacy of integrating topic-related information within the citation framework. Through the application of a hybrid HITS algorithm, we show that incorporating topic data significantly influences article rankings, revealing deeper insights into the structure of the academic community.

Spin gapless semiconductors based Heusler alloys are the special class of materials due to their unique band structure, high spin polarization and high Curie temperature. These materials exhibit a distinct electronic structure: a nonzero band gap in one spin channel while the other spin channel remains gapless, making them highly suitable for tunable spintronics. In this study, a comprehensive analysis of structural, magnetic, thermoelectric, and transport properties of the quaternary Heusler alloy CoFeMnSn is conducted. X-ray diffraction and Neutron diffraction analyses confirm a well ordered structure with partial antisite disorder between Co, Fe and Mn, Sn atoms. Magnetic studies show that the material exhibits room-temperature ferromagnetism, with a Curie temperature of around 660 K. Notably, we observe an anomalous Hall effect linked to intrinsic mechanisms driven by Berry curvature, underscoring the intricate relationship between structural disorder and electronic behavior. Transport measurements also highlight the impact of antisite disorder on the systems, with resistivity decreasing as temperature increases. These insights position CoFeMnSn as a promising material for future spintronic devices and advanced technological applications., Comment: 9 pages, 9 Figures

A biclique in a graph $G$ is a complete bipartite subgraph (not necessarily induced), and the least positive integer $k$ for which the vertex set of $G$ can be partitioned into at most $k$ bicliques is the biclique vertex partition number $bp(G)$ of $G$. We prove that the inequality $reg(S(G))\geq |G|-bp(G)$ holds for every graph $G$, where $S(G)$ is the $1$-subdivision graph of $G$ and $reg(S(G))$ denotes the (Castelnuovo-Mumford) regularity of the graph $S(G)$. In particular, we show that the equality $reg(S(B))=|B|-bp(B)$ holds provided that $B$ is a chordal bipartite graph. Furthermore, for every chordal bipartite graph $B$, we prove that the independence complex of $S(B)$ is either contractible or homotopy equivalent to a sphere, and provide a polynomial time checkable criteria for when it is contractible, and describe the dimension of the sphere when it is not.

The rapid growth of virtual reality (VR) has led to increased use of social VR platforms for interaction. However, these platforms lack adequate features to support blind and low vision (BLV) users, posing significant challenges in navigation, visual interpretation, and social interaction. One promising approach to these challenges is employing human guides in VR. However, this approach faces limitations with a lack of availability of humans to serve as guides, or the inability to customize the guidance a user receives from the human guide. We introduce an AI-powered guide to address these limitations. The AI guide features six personas, each offering unique behaviors and appearances to meet diverse user needs, along with visual interpretation and navigation assistance. We aim to use this AI guide in the future to help us understand BLV users' preferences for guide forms and functionalities.

In this article, we present a method to construct $e$-power $b$-happy numbers of any height. Using this method, we construct a tree that encodes these happy numbers, their heights, and their ancestry--relation to other happy numbers. For fixed power $e$ and base $b$, we consider happy numbers with at most $k$ digits and we give a formula for the cardinality of the preimage of a single iteration of the happy function. We show that these happy numbers arise naturally as children of a given vertex in the tree. We conclude by applying this technique to $e$-power $b$-unhappy numbers of a given height., Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures

A key component in developing atrial digital twins (ADT) - virtual representations of patients' atria - is the accurate prescription of myocardial fibers which are essential for the tissue characterization. Due to the difficulty of reconstructing atrial fibers from medical imaging, a widely used strategy for fiber generation in ADT relies on mathematical models. Existing methodologies utilze semi-automatic approaches, are tailored to specific morphologies, and lack rigorous validation against imaging fiber data. In this study, we introduce a novel atrial Laplace-Dirichlet-Rule-Based Method (LDRBM) for prescribing highly detailed myofiber orientations and providing robust regional annotation in bi-atrial morphologies of any complexity. The robustness of our approach is verified in eight extremely detailed bi-atrial geometries, derived from a sub-millimiter Diffusion-Tensor-Magnetic-Resonance Imaging (DTMRI) human atrial fiber dataset. We validate the LDRBM by quantitatively recreating each of the DTMRI fiber architectures: a comprehensive comparison with DTMRI ground truth data is conducted, investigating differences between electrophysiology (EP) simulations provided by either LDRBM and DTMRI fibers. Finally, we demonstrate that the novel LDRBM outperforms current state-of-the-art fiber models, confirming the exceptional accuracy of our methodology and the critical importance of incorporating detailed fiber orientations in EP simulations. Ultimately, this work represents a fundamental step toward the development of physics-based digital twins of the human atria, establishing a new standard for prescribing fibers in ADT.

Many neurodevelopmental disorders can be understood as divergent patterns of neural interactions during brain development. Advances in neuroimaging have illuminated these patterns by modeling the brain as a network structure using diffution MRI tractography. However, characterizing and quantifying individual heterogeneity in neurodevelopmental disorders within these highly complex brain networks remains a significant challenge. In this paper, we present for the first time, a framework that integrates deep generative models with graph-based normative modeling to characterize brain network development in the neurotypical population, which can then be used to quantify the individual-level neurodivergence associated with disorders. Our deep generative model incorporates bio-inspired wiring constraints to effectively capture the developmental trajectories of neurotypical brain networks. Neurodivergence is quantified by comparing individuals to this neurotypical trajectory, enabling the creation of region-wise divergence maps that reveal latent developmental differences at each brain regions, along with overall neurodivergence scores based on predicted brain age gaps. We demonstrate the clinical utility of this framework by applying it to a large sample of children with autism spectrum disorders, showing that the individualized region-wise maps help parse the heterogeneity in autism, and the neurodivergence scores correlate with clinical assessments. Together, we provide powerful tools for quantifying neurodevelopmental divergence in brain networks, paying the way for developing imaging markers that will support disorder stratification, monitor progression, and evaluate therapeutic effectiveness.

Following limb amputation, neural signals for limb functions persist in the residual peripheral nerves. Targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) allows to redirected these signals into spare muscles to recover the neural information through electromyography (EMG). However, a significant challenge arises in separating distinct neural commands redirected from the transferred nerves to the muscles. Disentangling overlapping signals from EMG recordings remains complex, as they can contain mixed neural information that complicates limb function interpretation. To address this challenge, Regenerative Peripheral Nerve Interfaces (RPNIs) surgically partition the nerve into individual fascicles that reinnervate specific muscle grafts, isolating distinct neural sources for more precise control and interpretation of EMG signals. We introduce a novel biointerface that combines TMR surgery of polyvalent nerves with a high-density micro-electrode array implanted at a single site within a reinnervated muscle. Instead of surgically identifying distinct nerve fascicles, our approach separates all neural signals that are re-directed into a single muscle, using the high spatio-temporal selectivity of the micro-electrode array and mathematical source separation methods. We recorded EMG signals from four reinnervated muscles while volunteers performed phantom limb tasks. The decomposition of these signals into motor unit activity revealed distinct clusters of motor neurons associated with diverse functional tasks. Notably, our method enabled the extraction of multiple neural commands within a single reinnervated muscle, eliminating the need for surgical nerve division. This approach not only has the potential of enhancing prosthesis control but also uncovers mechanisms of motor neuron synergies following TMR, providing valuable insights into how the central nervous system encodes movement after reinnervation.

In this paper, we present noise-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (ND-NOMA), an innovative communication scheme that utilizes the modulation of artificial noise mean and variance to convey information. Distinct from traditional methods such as power-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA) that heavily relies on successive interference cancellation (SIC), ND-NOMA utilizes the noise domain, considerably reducing power consumption and system complexity. Inspired by noise modulation, ND-NOMA enhances energy efficiency and provides lower bit error probability (BEP), making it highly suitable for next-generation Internet-of-things (IoT) networks. Our theoretical analyses and computer simulations reveal that ND-NOMA can achieve exceptionally low bit error rates in both uplink and downlink scenarios, in the presence of Rician fading channels. The proposed multi-user system is supported by a minimum distance detector for mean detection and a threshold-based detector for variance detection, ensuring robust communication in low-power environments. By leveraging the inherent properties of noise, ND-NOMA offers a promising platform for long-term deployments of low-cost and low-complexity devices., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, submitted for publication

Predicting time-dependent dynamics of complex systems governed by non-linear partial differential equations (PDEs) with varying parameters and domains is a challenging task motivated by applications across various fields. We introduce a novel family of neural operators based on our Graph Fourier Neural Kernels, designed to learn solution generators for nonlinear PDEs in which the highest-order term is diffusive, across multiple domains and parameters. G-FuNK combines components that are parameter- and domain-adapted with others that are not. The domain-adapted components are constructed using a weighted graph on the discretized domain, where the graph Laplacian approximates the highest-order diffusive term, ensuring boundary condition compliance and capturing the parameter and domain-specific behavior. Meanwhile, the learned components transfer across domains and parameters using our variant Fourier Neural Operators. This approach naturally embeds geometric and directional information, improving generalization to new test domains without need for retraining the network. To handle temporal dynamics, our method incorporates an integrated ODE solver to predict the evolution of the system. Experiments show G-FuNK's capability to accurately approximate heat, reaction diffusion, and cardiac electrophysiology equations across various geometries and anisotropic diffusivity fields. G-FuNK achieves low relative errors on unseen domains and fiber fields, significantly accelerating predictions compared to traditional finite-element solvers.

For humans and robots to form an effective human-robot team (HRT) there must be sufficient trust between team members throughout a mission. We analyze data from an HRT experiment focused on trust dynamics in teams of one human and two robots, where trust was manipulated by robots becoming temporarily unresponsive. Whole-body movement tracking was achieved using ultrasound beacons, alongside communications and performance logs from a human-robot interface. We find evidence that synchronization between time series of human-robot movement, within a certain spatial proximity, is correlated with changes in self-reported trust. This suggests that the interplay of proxemics and kinesics, i.e. moving together through space, where implicit communication via coordination can occur, could play a role in building and maintaining trust in human-robot teams. Thus, quantitative indicators of coordination dynamics between team members could be used to predict trust over time and also provide early warning signals of the need for timely trust repair if trust is damaged. Hence, we aim to develop the metrology of trust in mobile human-robot teams.

This paper addresses frequency crowding constraints in modular quantum architecture design, focusing on the SNAIL-based quantum modules. Two key objectives are explored. First, we present physics-informed design constraints by describing a physical model for realizable gates within a SNAIL module and building a fidelity model using error budgeting derived from device characteristics. Second, we tackle the allocation problem by analyzing the impact of frequency crowding on gate fidelity as the radix of the module increases. We explore whether the gate fidelity can be preserved with a discrete set of qubit frequencies while adhering to defined separation thresholds. This work offers insights into novel quantum architectures and coupled optimization techniques to mitigate the effects of unstable noise and improve overall gate performance., Comment: To appear in the 2nd StableQ Quantum System Stability and Reproducibility workshop (StableQ'24)

The generation of single photons using solid-state quantum emitters is pivotal for advancing photonic quantum technologies, particularly in quantum communication. As the field continuously advances towards practical use cases and beyond shielded laboratory environments, specific demands are placed on the robustness of quantum light sources during operation. In this context, the robustness of the quantum light generation process against intrinsic and extrinsic effects is a major challenge. Here, we present a robust scheme for the coherent generation of indistinguishable single-photon states with very low photon number coherence (PNC) using a three-level system in a semiconductor quantum dot. Our novel approach combines the advantages of adiabatic rapid passage (ARP) and stimulated two-photon excitation (sTPE). We demonstrate robust quantum light generation while maintaining the prime quantum-optical quality of the emitted light state. Moreover, we highlight the immediate advantages for the implementation of various quantum cryptographic protocols., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures

Virtual screening plays a pivotal role in early drug discovery, traditionally dominated by physics-based methods. While these approaches offer detailed insights, they are often hindered by high computational costs, limited sampling, and forcefield inaccuracies. Advances in Machine Learning (Ml)and Deep Learning (DL) present resource-efficient alternatives, with approaches like predictive geometric ML (EQUIBIND) and generative geometric ML (DIFFDOCK)showing promise in enhancing both efficiency and predictive capability. Here, we compare these two strategies, retrospectively and prospectively, for identifying novel agonists targeting the dopamine D2 receptor. To complement DIFFDOCK's dual functionality in protein-ligand conformer generation and confidence estimation, we adopted a complementary atom-type-based confidence model for EQUIBIND. This pipeline, termed the discriminative model, integrates a featurization step and an XGBoost classifier to differentiate between active and inactive ligands. The top-ranked compounds from both models were evaluated using an ultrafast dopaminergic biosensor assay, dLight. Our results demonstrate that the generative model achieved a higher hit rate, notably leading to the discovery of Compound 1, a nanomolar dopamine D2 receptor agonist with a novel scaffold.

The cell is arguably the most fundamental unit of life and is central to understanding biology. Accurate modeling of cells is important for this understanding as well as for determining the root causes of disease. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), combined with the ability to generate large-scale experimental data, present novel opportunities to model cells. Here we propose a vision of leveraging advances in AI to construct virtual cells, high-fidelity simulations of cells and cellular systems under different conditions that are directly learned from biological data across measurements and scales. We discuss desired capabilities of such AI Virtual Cells, including generating universal representations of biological entities across scales, and facilitating interpretable in silico experiments to predict and understand their behavior using virtual instruments. We further address the challenges, opportunities and requirements to realize this vision including data needs, evaluation strategies, and community standards and engagement to ensure biological accuracy and broad utility. We envision a future where AI Virtual Cells help identify new drug targets, predict cellular responses to perturbations, as well as scale hypothesis exploration. With open science collaborations across the biomedical ecosystem that includes academia, philanthropy, and the biopharma and AI industries, a comprehensive predictive understanding of cell mechanisms and interactions has come into reach.

The complex nature of disease mechanisms and the variability of patient symptoms present significant obstacles in developing effective diagnostic tools. Although machine learning has made considerable advances in medical diagnosis, its decision-making processes frequently lack transparency, which can jeopardize patient outcomes. This underscores the critical need for Explainable AI (XAI), which not only offers greater clarity but also has the potential to significantly improve patient care. In this literature review, we conduct a detailed analysis of analyzing XAI methods identified through searches across various databases, focusing on chronic conditions such as Parkinson's, stroke, depression, cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease. The literature search revealed the application of 9 trending XAI algorithms in the field of healthcare and highlighted the pros and cons of each of them. Thus, the article is concluded with a critical appraisal of the challenges and future research opportunities for XAI in human health monitoring.

This paper provides a comprehensive examination of the evolution of credit cards in the United States, tracing their historical development, causes, consequences, and impact on both individuals and the economy. It delves into the transformation of credit cards from specialized merchant cards to ubiquitous financial tools, driven by legal changes like the Marquette decision. Credit card debt has emerged as a significant financial challenge for many Americans due to economic factors, consumerism, high healthcare costs, and financial illiteracy. The consequences of this debt on individuals are extensive, affecting their financial well-being, credit scores, savings, and even their physical and mental health. On a larger scale, credit cards stimulate consumer spending, drive e-commerce growth, and generate revenue for financial institutions, but they can also contribute to economic instability if not managed responsibly. The paper emphasizes various strategies to prevent and manage credit card debt, including financial education, budgeting, responsible credit card uses, and professional counselling. Empirical studies support the relationship between credit card debt and factors such as financial literacy and consumer behavior. Regression analysis reveals that personal consumption and GDP positively impacts credit card debt indicating that responsible management is essential. The paper offers comprehensive recommendations for addressing credit card debt challenges and maximizing the benefits of credit card usage, encompassing financial education, policy reforms, and public awareness campaigns. These recommendations aim to transform credit cards into tools that empower individuals financially and contribute to economic stability, rather than sources of financial stress., Comment: 5th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Big Data (AIBD 2024), February 24 ~ 25, 2024, Vancouver, Canada Volume Editors : David C. Wyld, Dhinaharan Nagamalai (Eds) ISBN : 978-1-923107-19-9

In an era where digital threats are increasingly sophisticated, the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and cybersecurity presents both promising defenses and potent dangers. This paper delves into the escalating threat posed by the misuse of AI, specifically through the use of Large Language Models (LLMs). This study details various techniques like the switch method and character play method, which can be exploited by cybercriminals to generate and automate cyber attacks. Through a series of controlled experiments, the paper demonstrates how these models can be manipulated to bypass ethical and privacy safeguards to effectively generate cyber attacks such as social engineering, malicious code, payload generation, and spyware. By testing these AI generated attacks on live systems, the study assesses their effectiveness and the vulnerabilities they exploit, offering a practical perspective on the risks AI poses to critical infrastructure. We also introduce Occupy AI, a customized, finetuned LLM specifically engineered to automate and execute cyberattacks. This specialized AI driven tool is adept at crafting steps and generating executable code for a variety of cyber threats, including phishing, malware injection, and system exploitation. The results underscore the urgency for ethical AI practices, robust cybersecurity measures, and regulatory oversight to mitigate AI related threats. This paper aims to elevate awareness within the cybersecurity community about the evolving digital threat landscape, advocating for proactive defense strategies and responsible AI development to protect against emerging cyber threats., Comment: Journal Paper

A major, ongoing social transition is the inclusion of autonomous agents into human organizations. For example, in defence and security applications, robots may be used alongside human operatives to reduce risk or add capability. But a key barrier to the transition to successful human-autonomous agent collectives is the need for sufficient trust between team members. A critical enabling factor for this trust will be a suitably designed dynamic allocation of function (AoF). We consider AoF in terms of a 'ladder of trust' (from low to high) with individual team members adjusting trust in their teammates based on variation in 'score' over time. The score is derived by the ability of team member to perceive and understand its situation based on the gathered information and act to acheive team or self goals. Combining these trust scores gives a system-level perspective on how AoF might be adjusted during a mission. That is, the most suitable teammate for a function might have a low trust rating from its fellow teammates, so it might be preferable to choose the next most suitable teammate for the function at that point in time. Of course, this is only in the situation where the next most suitable teammate is also likely to perform within the set framework of moral, ethical, and legal constraints. The trade-offs between trust in the individual agent's capability and predictability need to be considered within the broader context of the agent's integrity and accountability. From this perspective, the Allocation Space is defined by more than ability of each agent to perform a function.

Integrating robots into teams of humans is anticipated to bring significant capability improvements for tasks such as searching potentially hazardous buildings. Trust between humans and robots is recognized as a key enabler for human-robot teaming (HRT) activity: if trust during a mission falls below sufficient levels for cooperative tasks to be completed, it could critically affect success. Changes in trust could be particularly problematic in teams that have formed on an ad hoc basis (as might be expected in emergency situations) where team members may not have previously worked together. In such ad hoc teams, a foundational level of 'swift trust' may be fragile and challenging to sustain in the face of inevitable setbacks. We present results of an experiment focused on understanding trust building, violation and repair processes in ad hoc teams (one human and two robots). Trust violation occurred through robots becoming unresponsive, with limited communication and feedback. We perform exploratory analysis of a variety of data, including communications and performance logs, trust surveys and post-experiment interviews, toward understanding how autonomous systems can be designed into interdependent ad hoc human-robot teams where swift trust can be sustained.

Behavior cloning is a common imitation learning paradigm. Under behavior cloning the robot collects expert demonstrations, and then trains a policy to match the actions taken by the expert. This works well when the robot learner visits states where the expert has already demonstrated the correct action; but inevitably the robot will also encounter new states outside of its training dataset. If the robot learner takes the wrong action at these new states it could move farther from the training data, which in turn leads to increasingly incorrect actions and compounding errors. Existing works try to address this fundamental challenge by augmenting or enhancing the training data. By contrast, in our paper we develop the control theoretic properties of behavior cloned policies. Specifically, we consider the error dynamics between the system's current state and the states in the expert dataset. From the error dynamics we derive model-based and model-free conditions for stability: under these conditions the robot shapes its policy so that its current behavior converges towards example behaviors in the expert dataset. In practice, this results in Stable-BC, an easy to implement extension of standard behavior cloning that is provably robust to covariate shift. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm in simulations with interactive, nonlinear, and visual environments. We also conduct experiments where a robot arm uses Stable-BC to play air hockey. See our website here: https://collab.me.vt.edu/Stable-BC/

The Intelligence Studies Network is a comprehensive resource database for publications, events, conferences, and calls for papers in the field of intelligence studies. It offers a novel solution for monitoring, indexing, and visualising resources. Sources are automatically monitored and added to a manually curated database, ensuring the relevance of items to intelligence studies. Curated outputs are stored in a group library on Zotero, an open-source reference management tool. The metadata of items in Zotero is enriched with OpenAlex, an open access bibliographic database. Finally, outputs are listed and visualised on a Streamlit app, an open-source Python framework for building apps. This paper aims to explain the Intelligence Studies Network database and provide a detailed guide on data sources and the workflow. This study demonstrates that it is possible to create a specialised academic database by using open source tools., Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures

Creation of new annotated public datasets is crucial in helping advances in 3D computer vision and machine learning meet their full potential for automatic interpretation of 3D plant models. In this paper, we introduce PLANesT-3D; a new annotated dataset of 3D color point clouds of plants. PLANesT-3D is composed of 34 point cloud models representing 34 real plants from three different plant species: \textit{Capsicum annuum}, \textit{Rosa kordana}, and \textit{Ribes rubrum}. Both semantic labels in terms of "leaf" and "stem", and organ instance labels were manually annotated for the full point clouds. As an additional contribution, SP-LSCnet, a novel semantic segmentation method that is a combination of unsupervised superpoint extraction and a 3D point-based deep learning approach is introduced and evaluated on the new dataset. Two existing deep neural network architectures, PointNet++ and RoseSegNet were also tested on the point clouds of PLANesT-3D for semantic segmentation.

Unlike the uncertainty relationships of two arbitrary incompatible observables represented by the product of variances in the past, representing them by the sum of variances is better as it guarantees to be nontrivial for two incompatible operators in some special cases. Although the uncertainty relation is formulated as the sum of variances for unitary operators has been confirmed, its general forms for arbitrary non-Hermitian operators have not been yet investigated in detail. Thus, this study develops four sum uncertainty relations for arbitrary non-Hermitian operators acting on system states by utilizing an appropriate Hilbert-space metric. The compatible forms of our sum inequalities with the conventional quantum mechanics are also provided via $G$-metric formalism. Concrete examples demonstrate the validity of the purposed sum uncertainty relations in both $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric and $\mathcal{PT}$-broken phases. The proposed methods and results can help the reader to understand in-depth the usefulness of $G$-metric formalism in non-Hermitian quantum mechanics and the sum uncertainty relations of incompatible operators within.

We introduce a dataset of annotations of temporal repetitions in videos. The dataset, OVR (pronounced as over), contains annotations for over 72K videos, with each annotation specifying the number of repetitions, the start and end time of the repetitions, and also a free-form description of what is repeating. The annotations are provided for videos sourced from Kinetics and Ego4D, and consequently cover both Exo and Ego viewing conditions, with a huge variety of actions and activities. Moreover, OVR is almost an order of magnitude larger than previous datasets for video repetition. We also propose a baseline transformer-based counting model, OVRCounter, that can localise and count repetitions in videos that are up to 320 frames long. The model is trained and evaluated on the OVR dataset, and its performance assessed with and without using text to specify the target class to count. The performance is also compared to a prior repetition counting model. The dataset is available for download at: https://sites.google.com/view/openvocabreps/

Simultaneous machine translation aims at solving the task of real-time translation by starting to translate before consuming the full input, which poses challenges in terms of balancing quality and latency of the translation. The wait-$k$ policy offers a solution by starting to translate after consuming $k$ words, where the choice of the number $k$ directly affects the latency and quality. In applications where we seek to keep the choice over latency and quality at inference, the wait-$k$ policy obliges us to train more than one model. In this paper, we address the challenge of building one model that can fulfil multiple latency levels and we achieve this by introducing lightweight adapter modules into the decoder. The adapters are trained to be specialized for different wait-$k$ values and compared to other techniques they offer more flexibility to allow for reaping the benefits of parameter sharing and minimizing interference. Additionally, we show that by combining with an adaptive strategy, we can further improve the results. Experiments on two language directions show that our method outperforms or competes with other strong baselines on most latency values., Comment: Accepted at IWSLT 2024

In the rapidly evolving landscape of 5G and beyond, cloud-native Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN) present a paradigm shift towards intelligent, flexible, and sustainable network operations. This study addresses the intricate challenge of energy efficient (EE) resource allocation that services both enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) users. We propose a novel distributed learning framework leveraging on-policy and off-policy transfer learning strategies within a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)--based model to facilitate online resource allocation decisions under different channel conditions. The simulation results explain the efficacy of the proposed method, which rapidly adapts to dynamic network states, thereby achieving a green resource allocation.

This work addresses resource allocation challenges in multi-cell wireless systems catering to enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) users. We present a distributed learning framework tailored to O-RAN network architectures. Leveraging a Thompson sampling-based Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithm, our approach provides real-time resource allocation decisions, aligning with evolving network structures. The proposed approach facilitates online decision-making for resource allocation by deploying trained execution agents at Near-Real Time Radio Access Network Intelligent Controllers (Near-RT RICs) located at network edges. Simulation results demonstrate the algorithm's effectiveness in meeting Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for both eMBB and URLLC users, offering insights into optimising resource utilisation in dynamic wireless environments.

We investigate the effects of weak value amplification on the nonclassical properties of two-mode squeezing vacuum state. To show the advantages of the two-mode squeezing vacuum state based post-selective weak measurements.

We present two methods for computing the dynamic structure factor for warm dense hydrogen without invoking either the Born-Oppenheimer approximation or the Chihara decomposition, by employing a wave packet description which resolves the electron dynamics during ion evolution. Firstly, a semiclassical method is discussed which is corrected based on known quantum constraints, and secondly, a direct computation of the density-density response function within the molecular dynamics. The wave packet models are compared to PIMC and DFT-MD for the static and low-frequency behaviour. For the high-frequency behaviour the models recover the expected behaviour in the limits of small and large momentum transfers and show the characteristic flattening of the plasmon dispersion for intermediate momentum transfers due to interactions, in agreement with commonly used models for X-ray Thomson scattering. By modelling the electrons and ions on an equal footing, both the ion and free electron part of the spectrum can now be treated within a single framework where we simultaneously resolve the ion-acoustic and plasmon mode, with a self-consistent description of collisions and screening., Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures