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Complex systems, such as economic, social, biological, and ecological systems, usually feature interactions not only between pairwise entities but also among three or more entities. These multi-entity interactions are known as higher-order interactions. Hypergraph, as a mathematical tool, can effectively characterize higher-order interactions, where nodes denote entities and hyperedges represent interactions among multiple entities. Meanwhile, all higher-order interactions can also be projected into a number of lower-order interactions or even some pairwise interactions. Whether it is necessary to consider all higher-order interactions, and whether it is with little loss to replace them by lower-order or even pairwise interactions, remain a controversial issue. If the role of higher-order interactions is insignificant, the complexity of computation and the difficulty of analysis can be drastically reduced by projecting higher-order interactions into lower-order or pairwise interactions. We use link prediction, a fundamental problem in network science, as the entry point. Specifically, we evaluate the impact of higher-order interactions on link predictive accuracy to explore the necessity of these structures. We propose a method to decompose the higher-order structures in a stepwise way, thereby allowing to systematically explore the impacts of structures at different orders on link prediction. The results indicate that in some networks, incorporating higher-order interactions significantly enhances the accuracy of link prediction, while in others, the effect is insignificant. Therefore, we think that the role of higher-order interactions varies in different types of networks. Overall, since the improvement in predictive accuracy provided by higher-order interactions is significant in some networks, we believe that the study of higher-order interactions is both necessary and valuable., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures

World models and video generation are pivotal technologies in the domain of autonomous driving, each playing a critical role in enhancing the robustness and reliability of autonomous systems. World models, which simulate the dynamics of real-world environments, and video generation models, which produce realistic video sequences, are increasingly being integrated to improve situational awareness and decision-making capabilities in autonomous vehicles. This paper investigates the relationship between these two technologies, focusing on how their structural parallels, particularly in diffusion-based models, contribute to more accurate and coherent simulations of driving scenarios. We examine leading works such as JEPA, Genie, and Sora, which exemplify different approaches to world model design, thereby highlighting the lack of a universally accepted definition of world models. These diverse interpretations underscore the field's evolving understanding of how world models can be optimized for various autonomous driving tasks. Furthermore, this paper discusses the key evaluation metrics employed in this domain, such as Chamfer distance for 3D scene reconstruction and Fr\'echet Inception Distance (FID) for assessing the quality of generated video content. By analyzing the interplay between video generation and world models, this survey identifies critical challenges and future research directions, emphasizing the potential of these technologies to jointly advance the performance of autonomous driving systems. The findings presented in this paper aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of how the integration of video generation and world models can drive innovation in the development of safer and more reliable autonomous vehicles.

This paper aims to devise an adaptive neural network basis method for numerically solving a second-order semilinear partial differential equation (PDE) with low-regular solutions in two/three dimensions. The method is obtained by combining basis functions from a class of shallow neural networks and the resulting multi-scale analogues, a residual strategy in adaptive methods and the non-overlapping domain decomposition method. At the beginning, in view of the solution residual, we partition the total domain $\Omega$ into $K+1$ non-overlapping subdomains, denoted respectively as $\{\Omega_k\}_{k=0}^K$, where the exact solution is smooth on subdomain $\Omega_{0}$ and low-regular on subdomain $\Omega_{k}$ ($1\le k\le K$). Secondly, the low-regular solutions on different subdomains \(\Omega_{k}\)~($1\le k\le K$) are approximated by neural networks with different scales, while the smooth solution on subdomain \(\Omega_0\) is approximated by the initialized neural network. Thirdly, we determine the undetermined coefficients by solving the linear least squares problems directly or the nonlinear least squares problem via the Gauss-Newton method. The proposed method can be extended to multi-level case naturally. Finally, we use this adaptive method for several peak problems in two/three dimensions to show its high-efficient computational performance.

Bilevel optimization problems are characterized by an interactive hierarchical structure, where the upper level seeks to optimize its strategy while simultaneously considering the response of the lower level. Evolutionary algorithms are commonly used to solve complex bilevel problems in practical scenarios, but they face significant resource consumption challenges due to the nested structure imposed by the implicit lower-level optimality condition. This challenge becomes even more pronounced as problem dimensions increase. Although recent methods have enhanced bilevel convergence through task-level knowledge sharing, further efficiency improvements are still hindered by redundant lower-level iterations that consume excessive resources while generating unpromising solutions. To overcome this challenge, this paper proposes an efficient dynamic resource allocation framework for evolutionary bilevel optimization, named DRC-BLEA. Compared to existing approaches, DRC-BLEA introduces a novel competitive quasi-parallel paradigm, in which multiple lower-level optimization tasks, derived from different upper-level individuals, compete for resources. A continuously updated selection probability is used to prioritize execution opportunities to promising tasks. Additionally, a cooperation mechanism is integrated within the competitive framework to further enhance efficiency and prevent premature convergence. Experimental results compared with chosen state-of-the-art algorithms demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Specifically, DRC-BLEA achieves competitive accuracy across diverse problem sets and real-world scenarios, while significantly reducing the number of function evaluations and overall running time., Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication

Light-matter interface is an important building block for long-distance quantum networks. Towards a scalable quantum network with high-rate quantum information processing, it requires to develop integrated light-matter interfaces with broadband and multiplexing capacities. Here we demonstrate a light-matter interface at telecom band in an integrated system. A five-spectral-channel atomic-frequency-comb photonic memory is prepared on a laser-written Er3+:LiNbO3 chip. The bandwidth of each channel is 4 GHz with a channel spacing of 15 GHz. The signal photons from time-bin entangled photon pairs at telecom band are sent into the on-chip memory and recalled after a storage time of 152 ns. The entanglement-preserving nature of our integrated quantum interface is assessed by an input/output fidelity of >92% for all the five spectral channels. Our light-matter interfaces constitute a notable step forward toward a high-rate quantum network involving integrated device.

In the realm of condensed matter physics, higher-order topological insulators and superconductors have become a focal point of research due to their unique gapless boundary states at lower-dimensional boundaries such as corners and edges. This paper delves into the effects of a $d$-density wave (DDW) on first-order topological insulators and the competitive dynamics between DDW and $d$-wave superconductivity (DSC) within these systems. We demonstrate that a pure DDW state can instigate a transition to a higher-order topological phase, distinct from DSC behavior, as it is influenced by boundary shape and can generate corner flat bands without additional potentials. Furthermore, we investigate the competitive effects between DSC and DDW, which lead to the transfer of partial corner states. The interplay between these states results in the generation of partial corner states with different symmetries by proximity-induced DSC, while DDW disrupts these and creates new corner states at alternative locations. This study provides valuable insights into the manipulation of topological states through the competition of different order parameters, which could be pivotal for future research and applications in the field., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

Rank aggregation through crowdsourcing has recently gained significant attention, particularly in the context of listwise ranking annotations. However, existing methods primarily focus on a single problem and partial ranks, while the aggregation of listwise full ranks across numerous problems remains largely unexplored. This scenario finds relevance in various applications, such as model quality assessment and reinforcement learning with human feedback. In light of practical needs, we propose LAC, a Listwise rank Aggregation method in Crowdsourcing, where the global position information is carefully measured and included. In our design, an especially proposed annotation quality indicator is employed to measure the discrepancy between the annotated rank and the true rank. We also take the difficulty of the ranking problem itself into consideration, as it directly impacts the performance of annotators and consequently influences the final results. To our knowledge, LAC is the first work to directly deal with the full rank aggregation problem in listwise crowdsourcing, and simultaneously infer the difficulty of problems, the ability of annotators, and the ground-truth ranks in an unsupervised way. To evaluate our method, we collect a real-world business-oriented dataset for paragraph ranking. Experimental results on both synthetic and real-world benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed LAC method., Comment: 19 pages

Link prediction is one of the most productive branches in network science, aiming to predict links that would have existed but have not yet been observed, or links that will appear during the evolution of the network. Over nearly two decades, the field of link prediction has amassed a substantial body of research, encompassing a plethora of algorithms and diverse applications. For any algorithm, one or more evaluation metrics are required to assess its performance. Because using different evaluation metrics can provide different assessments of the algorithm performance, how to select appropriate evaluation metrics is a fundamental issue in link prediction. To address this issue, we propose a novel measure that quantifiers the discriminability of any evaluation metric given a real network and an algorithm. Based on 131 real networks and 20 representative algorithms, we systematically compare the discriminabilities of eight evaluation metrics, and demonstrate that H-measure and Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) exhibit the strongest discriminabilities, followed by Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (NDCG). Our finding is robust for networks in different domains and algorithms of different types. This study provides insights into the selection of evaluation metrics, which may further contribute to standardizing the evaluating process of link prediction algorithms., Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures

Multi-scale deep neural networks (MscaleDNNs) with downing-scaling mapping have demonstrated superiority over traditional DNNs in approximating target functions characterized by high frequency features. However, the performance of MscaleDNNs heavily depends on the parameters in the downing-scaling mapping, which limits their broader application. In this work, we establish a fitting error bound to explain why MscaleDNNs are advantageous for approximating high frequency functions. Building on this insight, we construct a hybrid feature embedding to enhance the accuracy and robustness of the downing-scaling mapping. To reduce the dependency of MscaleDNNs on parameters in the downing-scaling mapping, we propose frequency-adaptive MscaleDNNs, which adaptively adjust these parameters based on a posterior error estimate that captures the frequency information of the fitted functions. Numerical examples, including wave propagation and the propagation of a localized solution of the schr$\ddot{\text{o}}$dinger equation with a smooth potential near the semi-classical limit, are presented. These examples demonstrate that the frequency-adaptive MscaleDNNs improve accuracy by two to three orders of magnitude compared to standard MscaleDNNs.

We explore the feasibility and potential of building a ground-truth-free evaluation model to assess the quality of segmentations generated by the Segment Anything Model (SAM) and its variants in medical imaging. This evaluation model estimates segmentation quality scores by analyzing the coherence and consistency between the input images and their corresponding segmentation predictions. Based on prior research, we frame the task of training this model as a regression problem within a supervised learning framework, using Dice scores (and optionally other metrics) along with mean squared error to compute the training loss. The model is trained utilizing a large collection of public datasets of medical images with segmentation predictions from SAM and its variants. We name this model EvanySeg (Evaluation of Any Segmentation in Medical Images). Our exploration of convolution-based models (e.g., ResNet) and transformer-based models (e.g., ViT) suggested that ViT yields better performance for this task. EvanySeg can be employed for various tasks, including: (1) identifying poorly segmented samples by detecting low-percentile segmentation quality scores; (2) benchmarking segmentation models without ground truth by averaging quality scores across test samples; (3) alerting human experts to poor-quality segmentation predictions during human-AI collaboration by applying a threshold within the score space; and (4) selecting the best segmentation prediction for each test sample at test time when multiple segmentation models are available, by choosing the prediction with the highest quality score. Models and code will be made available at https://github.com/ahjolsenbics/EvanySeg., Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures

In this work, we present a hybrid numerical method for solving evolution partial differential equations (PDEs) by merging the time finite element method with deep neural networks. In contrast to the conventional deep learning-based formulation where the neural network is defined on a spatiotemporal domain, our methodology utilizes finite element basis functions in the time direction where the space-dependent coefficients are defined as the output of a neural network. We then apply the Galerkin or collocation projection in the time direction to obtain a system of PDEs for the space-dependent coefficients which is approximated in the framework of PINN. The advantages of such a hybrid formulation are twofold: statistical errors are avoided for the integral in the time direction, and the neural network's output can be regarded as a set of reduced spatial basis functions. To further alleviate the difficulties from high dimensionality and low regularity, we have developed an adaptive sampling strategy that refines the training set. More specifically, we use an explicit density model to approximate the distribution induced by the PDE residual and then augment the training set with new time-dependent random samples given by the learned density model. The effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed method have been demonstrated through a series of numerical experiments., Comment: 25pages

Sequential propagation of chaos (SPoC) is a recently developed tool to solve mean-field stochastic differential equations and their related nonlinear Fokker-Planck equations. Based on the theory of SPoC, we present a new method (deepSPoC) that combines the interacting particle system of SPoC and deep learning. Under the framework of deepSPoC, two classes of frequently used deep models include fully connected neural networks and normalizing flows are considered. For high-dimensional problems, spatial adaptive method are designed to further improve the accuracy and efficiency of deepSPoC. We analysis the convergence of the framework of deepSPoC under some simplified conditions and also provide a posterior error estimation for the algorithm. Finally, we test our methods on a wide range of different types of mean-field equations.

In this paper, we propose an efficient derivative-free version of a martingale neural network SOC-MartNet proposed in Cai et al. [2] for solving high-dimensional Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations and stochastic optimal control problems (SOCPs) with controls on both drift and volatility. The solution of the HJB equation consists of two steps: (1) finding the optimal control from the value function, and (2) deriving the value function from a linear PDE characterized by the optimal control. The linear PDE is reformulated into a weak form of a new martingale formulation from the original SOC-MartNet where all temporal and spatial derivatives are replaced by an univariate, first-order random finite difference operator approximation, giving the derivative free version of the SOC-MartNet. Then, the optimal feedback control is identified by minimizing the mean of the value function, thereby avoiding the need for pointwise minimization on the Hamiltonian. Finally, the optimal control and value function are approximated by neural networks trained via adversarial learning using the derivative-free formulation. This method eliminates the reliance on automatic differentiation for computing temporal and spatial derivatives, offering significant efficiency in solving high-dimensional HJB equations and SOCPs.

Prompted by the recent discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ under pressure, this study delves into a theoretical investigation of spin excitations within this intriguing material. Employing self-consistent mean-field calculations, we find that superconductivity in this compound is predominantly governed by interlayer pairing mechanisms. In the superconducting state, our analysis uncovers a notable absence of a spin resonance mode, a finding that deviates from conventional expectations. Furthermore, we reveal a spectrum of energy-dependent incommensurate spin excitations. The observed incommensurate structures are elegantly explained by the nesting effect of energy contours, providing a coherent and comprehensive account of experimental observations. The implications of these spin excitations in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ are profound, offering critical insights into the superconducting mechanism at play. Our results not only contribute to the understanding of this novel superconductor but also pave the way for further research into the interplay between spin dynamics and unconventional superconductivity in layered materials., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

Link prediction has become a critical problem in network science and has thus attracted increasing research interest. Popularity and similarity are two primary mechanisms in the formation of real networks. However, the roles of popularity and similarity mechanisms in link prediction across various domain networks remain poorly understood. Accordingly, this study used orbit degrees of graphlets to construct multi-order popularity- and similarity-based network link predictors, demonstrating that traditional popularity- and similarity-based indices can be efficiently represented in terms of orbit degrees. Moreover, we designed a supervised learning model that fuses multiple orbit-degree-based features and validated its link prediction performance. We also evaluated the mean absolute Shapley additive explanations of each feature within this model across 550 real-world networks from six domains. We observed that the homophily mechanism, which is a similarity-based feature, dominated social networks, with its win rate being 91\%. Moreover, a different similarity-based feature was prominent in economic, technological, and information networks. Finally, no single feature dominated the biological and transportation networks. The proposed approach improves the accuracy and interpretability of link prediction, thus facilitating the analysis of complex networks., Comment: 40 pages, 9 figures

We calculate the exact values of the quasinormal frequencies for massless perturbations with spin $s\leq2$ moving in pure accelerating spacetime. We use two different methods to transfer the perturbation equations into the form of hypergeometric differential equations and obtain the same quasinormal frequencies. These purely imaginary spectra are shown to be independent of the spin of the perturbation and match those of the so-called acceleration modes of accelerating black holes after taking the Minkowski limit. This implies that the acceleration modes actually originate from the pure accelerating spacetime and the appearance of black holes would deform the spectra. In addition, we calculate the quasinormal frequencies of scalar, electromagnetic and gravitational perturbations of $D$-dimensional de Sitter spacetime and compare them with previous results to verify the validity of our method., Comment: 12 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:gr-qc/0605027 by other authors

The construction of highly coherent x-ray sources has enabled new research opportunities across the scientific landscape. The maximum raw data rate per beamline now exceeds 40 GB/s, posing unprecedented challenges for the online processing and offline storage of the big data. Such challenge is particularly prominent for x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), where real time analyses require simultaneous calculation on all the previously acquired data in the time series. We present a homomorphic compression scheme to effectively reduce the computational time and memory space required for XPCS analysis. Leveraging similarities in the mathematical expression between a matrix-based compression algorithm and the correlation calculation, our approach allows direct operation on the compressed data without their decompression. The lossy compression reduces the computational time by a factor of 10,000, enabling real time calculation of the correlation functions at kHz framerate. Our demonstration of a homomorphic compression of scientific data provides an effective solution to the big data challenge at coherent light sources. Beyond the example shown in this work, the framework can be extended to facilitate real-time operations directly on a compressed data stream for other techniques.

Weakly-supervised medical image segmentation is a challenging task that aims to reduce the annotation cost while keep the segmentation performance. In this paper, we present a novel framework, SimTxtSeg, that leverages simple text cues to generate high-quality pseudo-labels and study the cross-modal fusion in training segmentation models, simultaneously. Our contribution consists of two key components: an effective Textual-to-Visual Cue Converter that produces visual prompts from text prompts on medical images, and a text-guided segmentation model with Text-Vision Hybrid Attention that fuses text and image features. We evaluate our framework on two medical image segmentation tasks: colonic polyp segmentation and MRI brain tumor segmentation, and achieve consistent state-of-the-art performance. Source code is available at: https://github.com/xyx1024/SimTxtSeg., Comment: accepted by MICCAI 2024

The $A$V$_3$Sb$_5$ ($A=$ K, Rb, Cs) family of Kagome metals hosts unconventional charge density wave order whose nature is still an open puzzle. Accumulated evidences point to a time-reversal symmetry breaking orbital flux phase that carries loop currents. Such an order may support anomalous Hall effect. However, the polar Kerr effect measurements that probe the a.c. anomalous Hall conductivity seems to have yielded contradictory results. We first argue on symmetry grounds that some previously proposed orbital flux order, most notably the one with Star-of-David distortion, shall not give rise to anomalous Hall or polar Kerr effects. We further take the tri-hexagonal orbital flux phase as an exemplary Kagome flux order that does exhibit anomalous Hall response, and show that the Kerr rotation angle at two relevant experimental optical frequencies generally reaches microradians to sub-milliradians levels. A particularly sharp resonance enhancement is observed at around $\hbar \omega =1$ eV, suggesting exceedingly large Kerr rotation at the corresponding probing frequencies not yet accessed by previous experiments. Our study can help to interpret the Kerr measurements on $A$V$_3$Sb$_5$ and to eventually resolve the nature of their CDW order., Comment: 7+1 pages

Adaptive networks can sense and adjust to dynamic environments to optimize their performance. Understanding their nanoscale responses to external stimuli is essential for applications in nanodevices and neuromorphic computing. However, it is challenging to image such responses on the nanoscale with crystallographic sensitivity. Here, the evolution of nanodomain networks in (PbTiO3)n/(SrTiO3)n superlattices was directly visualized in real space as the system adapts to ultrafast repetitive optical excitations that emulate controlled neural inputs. The adaptive response allows the system to explore a wealth of metastable states that were previously inaccessible. Their reconfiguration and competition were quantitatively measured by scanning x-ray nanodiffraction as a function of the number of applied pulses, in which crystallographic characteristics were quantitatively assessed by assorted diffraction patterns using unsupervised machine-learning methods. The corresponding domain boundaries and their connectivity were drastically altered by light, holding promise for light-programmable nanocircuits in analogy to neuroplasticity. Phase-field simulations elucidate that the reconfiguration of the domain networks is a result of the interplay between photocarriers and transient lattice temperature. The demonstrated optical control scheme and the uncovered nanoscopic insights open opportunities for remote control of adaptive nanoscale domain networks.

We investigates the electronic structure and superconducting gaps in the charge density wave (CDW) states of vanadium-based Kagome superconductors AV$_3$Sb$_5$, focusing on the concurrent presence of CDW and superconducting orders. Two predominant CDW configurations are explored: the trihexagonal (TrH) and star-of-David (SoD) patterns, involving charge bond order (CBO) and chiral flux phase (CFP), corresponding to real and imaginary bond orders. In the isotropic $s$-wave superconducting state, the presence of CBO alone maintains an isotropic superconducting gap, whereas the introduction of CFP induces anisotropy in the gap, manifesting time-reversal symmetry breaking due to the CFP. Our analysis extends to the topological properties of these states, revealing a marked topological phase transition in the TrH configuration from a trivial to a non-trivial state with increasing CFP intensity. This transition suggests that the introduction of CFP could catalyze the emergence of topological superconductivity, potentially leading to the presence of Majorana excitations. The results contribute significantly to understanding the complex interplay between various CDW patterns and superconductivity in Kagome superconductors. They provide a theoretical framework for the diverse experimental observations of energy gaps and open new avenues for research into topological superconductivity and its potential applications. This study underscores the necessity for further experimental and theoretical exploration to unveil novel interwinded quantum states and functionalities in these intriguing materials., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

Scanning X-ray nanodiffraction microscopy is a powerful technique for spatially resolving nanoscale structural morphologies by diffraction contrast. One of the critical challenges in experimental nanodiffraction data analysis is posed by the convergence angle of nanoscale focusing optics which creates simultaneous dependency of the far-field scattering data on three independent components of the local strain tensor - corresponding to dilation and two potential rigid body rotations of the unit cell. All three components are in principle resolvable through a spatially mapped sample tilt series however traditional data analysis is computationally expensive and prone to artifacts. In this study, we implement NanobeamNN, a convolutional neural network specifically tailored to the analysis of scanning probe X-ray microscopy data. NanobeamNN learns lattice strain and rotation angles from simulated diffraction of a focused X-ray nanobeam by an epitaxial thin film and can directly make reasonable predictions on experimental data without the need for additional fine-tuning. We demonstrate that this approach represents a significant advancement in computational speed over conventional methods, as well as a potential improvement in accuracy over the current standard.

Long-standing anomalous experimental results from short-baseline neutrino experiments have persisted for decades. These results, when interpreted with one or more light sterile neutrinos, are inconsistent with numerous null results experimentally. However, if the sterile neutrino decays en route to the detector, this can mimic $\nu_\mu \to \nu_e$ oscillation signals while avoiding many of these external constraints. We revisit this solution to the MiniBooNE and LSND puzzles in view of new data from the MicroBooNE experiment at Fermilab. Using MicroBooNE's liquid-argon time-projection chamber search for an excess of $\nu_e$ in the Booster beam, we derive new limits in two models' parameter spaces of interest: where the sterile neutrino decays (I) via mixing with the active neutrinos, or (II) via higher-dimensional operators. We also provide an updated, comprehensive fit to the MiniBooNE neutrino- and antineutrino-beam data, including appearance ($\nu_e$) and disappearance ($\nu_\mu$) channels. Despite alleviating the tension with muon neutrino disappearance experiments, we find that the latest MicroBooNE analysis rules out the decaying sterile neutrino solution in a large portion of the parameter space at more than $99\%$ CL., Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, 1 table

The current variants of the Segment Anything Model (SAM), which include the original SAM and Medical SAM, still lack the capability to produce sufficiently accurate segmentation for medical images. In medical imaging contexts, it is not uncommon for human experts to rectify segmentations of specific test samples after SAM generates its segmentation predictions. These rectifications typically entail manual or semi-manual corrections employing state-of-the-art annotation tools. Motivated by this process, we introduce a novel approach that leverages the advantages of online machine learning to enhance Segment Anything (SA) during test time. We employ rectified annotations to perform online learning, with the aim of improving the segmentation quality of SA on medical images. To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of online learning when integrated with large-scale vision models like SAM, we propose a new method called Auxiliary Online Learning (AuxOL). AuxOL creates and applies a small auxiliary model (specialist) in conjunction with SAM (generalist), entails adaptive online-batch and adaptive segmentation fusion. Experiments conducted on eight datasets covering four medical imaging modalities validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Our work proposes and validates a new, practical, and effective approach for enhancing SA on downstream segmentation tasks (e.g., medical image segmentation)., Comment: Project Link: https://sam-auxol.github.io/AuxOL/

Ptychography is a powerful imaging technique that is used in a variety of fields, including materials science, biology, and nanotechnology. However, the accuracy of the reconstructed ptychography image is highly dependent on the accuracy of the recorded probe positions which often contain errors. These errors are typically corrected jointly with phase retrieval through numerical optimization approaches. When the error accumulates along the scan path or when the error magnitude is large, these approaches may not converge with satisfactory result. We propose a fundamentally new approach for ptychography probe position prediction for data with large position errors, where a neural network is used to make single-shot phase retrieval on individual diffraction patterns, yielding the object image at each scan point. The pairwise offsets among these images are then found using a robust image registration method, and the results are combined to yield the complete scan path by constructing and solving a linear equation. We show that our method can achieve good position prediction accuracy for data with large and accumulating errors on the order of $10^2$ pixels, a magnitude that often makes optimization-based algorithms fail to converge. For ptychography instruments without sophisticated position control equipment such as interferometers, our method is of significant practical potential.

Understanding how student peers influence learning outcomes is crucial for effective education management in complex social systems. The complexities of peer selection and evolving peer relationships, however, pose challenges for identifying peer effects using static observational data. Here we use both null-model and regression approaches to examine peer effects using longitudinal data from 5,272 undergraduates, where roommate assignments are plausibly random upon enrollment and roommate relationships persist until graduation. Specifically, we construct a roommate null model by randomly shuffling students among dorm rooms and introduce an assimilation metric to quantify similarities in roommate academic performance. We find significantly larger assimilation in actual data than in the roommate null model, suggesting roommate peer effects, whereby roommates have more similar performance than expected by chance alone. Moreover, assimilation exhibits an overall increasing trend over time, suggesting that peer effects become stronger the longer roommates live together. Our regression analysis further reveals the moderating role of peer heterogeneity. In particular, when roommates perform similarly, the positive relationship between a student's future performance and their roommates' average prior performance is more pronounced, and their ordinal rank in the dorm room has an independent effect. Our findings contribute to understanding the role of college roommates in influencing student academic performance., Comment: 56 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, with Supplementary Information

Current fundus image analysis models are predominantly built for specific tasks relying on individual datasets. The learning process is usually based on data-driven paradigm without prior knowledge, resulting in poor transferability and generalizability. To address this issue, we propose MM-Retinal, a multi-modal dataset that encompasses high-quality image-text pairs collected from professional fundus diagram books. Moreover, enabled by MM-Retinal, we present a novel Knowledge-enhanced foundational pretraining model which incorporates Fundus Image-Text expertise, called KeepFIT. It is designed with image similarity-guided text revision and mixed training strategy to infuse expert knowledge. Our proposed fundus foundation model achieves state-of-the-art performance across six unseen downstream tasks and holds excellent generalization ability in zero-shot and few-shot scenarios. MM-Retinal and KeepFIT are available at https://github.com/lxirich/MM-Retinal., Comment: Early Accepted by The International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention(MICCAI)2024

Fluxonium qubits are recognized for their high coherence times and high operation fidelities, attributed to their unique design incorporating over 100 Josephson junctions per superconducting loop. However, this complexity poses significant fabrication challenges, particularly in achieving high yield and junction uniformity with traditional methods. Here, we introduce an overlap process for Josephson junction fabrication that achieves nearly 100% yield and maintains uniformity across a 2-inch wafer with less than 5% variation for the phase slip junction and less than 2% for the junction array. Our compact junction array design facilitates fluxonium qubits with energy relaxation times exceeding 1 millisecond at the flux frustration point, demonstrating consistency with state-of-the-art dielectric loss tangents and flux noise across multiple devices. This work suggests the scalability of high coherence fluxonium processors using CMOS-compatible processes, marking a significant step towards practical quantum computing.

The community plays a crucial role in understanding user behavior and network characteristics in social networks. Some users can use multiple social networks at once for a variety of objectives. These users are called overlapping users who bridge different social networks. Detecting communities across multiple social networks is vital for interaction mining, information diffusion, and behavior migration analysis among networks. This paper presents a community detection method based on nonnegative matrix tri-factorization for multiple heterogeneous social networks, which formulates a common consensus matrix to represent the global fused community. Specifically, the proposed method involves creating adjacency matrices based on network structure and content similarity, followed by alignment matrices which distinguish overlapping users in different social networks. With the generated alignment matrices, the method could enhance the fusion degree of the global community by detecting overlapping user communities across networks. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated with new metrics on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr datasets. The results of the experiments demonstrate its superior performance in terms of community quality and community fusion., Comment: This paper was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems(TCSS)

In this paper, we propose a martingale-based neural network, SOC-MartNet, for solving high-dimensional Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations where no explicit expression is needed for the infimum of the Hamiltonian, \inf_{u \in U} H(t,x,u, z,p), and stochastic optimal control problems (SOCPs) with controls on both drift and volatility. We reformulate the HJB equations for the value function by training two neural networks, one for the value function and one for the optimal control with the help of two stochastic processes - a Hamiltonian process and a cost process. The control and value networks are trained such that the associated Hamiltonian process is minimized to satisfy the minimum principle of a feedback SOCP, and the cost process becomes a martingale, thus, ensuring the value function network as the solution to the corresponding HJB equation. Moreover, to enforce the martingale property for the cost process, we employ an adversarial network and construct a loss function characterizing the projection property of the conditional expectation condition of the martingale. Numerical results show that the proposed SOC-MartNet is effective and efficient for solving HJB-type equations and SOCPs with a dimension up to 2000 in a small number of epochs (less than 20) or stochastic gradient method iterations (less than 2000) for the training.

Comprehending the association between social capabilities and individual psychological traits is paramount for educational administrators. Presently, many studies heavily depend on online questionnaires and self-reported data, while analysis of the connection between offline social networks and mental health status remains scarce. By leveraging a public dataset encompassing on-campus dining activities over 21 weeks, we establish student co-occurrence networks and closely observe the changes in network topology over time. Empirical analysis shows that the node centralities of the student co-occurrence networks exhibit significantly positive correlation with the enhancement of the flourishing trait within the field of mental well-being. Our findings offer potential guidance for assisting students in maintaining a positive mental health status., Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, 1 Table

While finite-time blowup solutions have been studied in depth for the Keller-Segel equation, a fundamental model describing chemotaxis, the existence of finite-time blowup solutions to chemotaxis-fluid models remains largely unexplored. To fill this gap in the literature, we use a quantitative method to directly construct a smooth finite-time blowup solution for the Keller-Segel-Navier-Stokes system with buoyancy in 3D. The heart of the proof is to establish the non-radial finite-codimensional stability of an explicit self-similar blowup solution to 3D Keller-Segel equation with the abstract semigroup tool from [Merle-Rapha\"el-Rodnianski-Szeftel, 2022], which partially generalizes the radial stability result [Glogi\'c-Sch\"orkhuber, 2024] to the non-radial setting. Additionally, we introduce a robust localization argument to find blowup solutions with non-negative density and finite mass., Comment: 32 pages

Surface acoustic wave devices are key components for processing radio frequency signals in wireless communication because these devices offer simultaneously high performance, compact size and low cost. The optimization of the device structure requires a quantitative understanding of energy conversion and loss mechanisms. Stroboscopic full-field diffraction x-ray microscopy studies of a prototypical one-port resonator device revealed the existence of unanticipated acoustic loss. A non-uniform acoustic excitation in the active area was responsible for the substantial end and side leakages observed at the design frequency. Quantitative analysis of the strain amplitude using a wave decomposition method allowed the determination of several key device parameters. This high-resolution spatiotemporal strain imaging technique is, more generally, suited for studying nanophononics, specifically when the feature size is smaller than optical wavelengths. The strain sensitivity allows precise measurement of acoustic waves with picometer-scale amplitude.

We explore the superconducting pairing mechanisms in the trilayer $\mathrm{La}_4\mathrm{Ni}_3\mathrm{O}_{10}$ material through self-consistent mean-field calculations. Our findings demonstrate that intralayer pairings are substantially weaker compared to interlayer ones. Remarkably, in the state characterized by interlayer pairing, we detect the presence of partially gapped Fermi surfaces, a fascinating occurrence attributable to the disparity between the inner and outer conducting layers of $\mathrm{La}_4\mathrm{Ni}_3\mathrm{O}_{10}$. Moreover, this study provides valuable insights into the lower superconducting transition temperatures observed in $\mathrm{La}_4\mathrm{Ni}_3\mathrm{O}_{10}$ compounds. This contributes to a deeper understanding of its distinct superconducting attributes., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

Controlling the Mott transition through strain engineering is crucial for advancing the development and application of memristive and neuromorphic computing devices. Yet, Mott insulators are heterogeneous due to intrinsic phase boundaries and extrinsic defects, posing significant challenges to fully understanding the impact of local microscopic distortions on the local Mott transition. Addressing these challenges demands structural characterizations at the relevant length scale. Here, using a synchrotron-based scanning X-ray nanoprobe, we studied the real-space structural heterogeneity during the structural phase transition in a V2O3 thin film. Through temperature-dependent metal-insulator phase coexistence mapping, we report a variation in the local transition temperature of up to 7 K across the film and the presence of the transition hysteresis at the nanoscale. Furthermore, a detailed quantitative analysis demonstrates that the spatial heterogeneity of the transition is closely tied to the tilting of crystallographic planes in the pure insulating phase. Our work highlights the impact of local heterogeneity on the Mott transition and lays the groundwork for future innovations in harnessing strain heterogeneity within Mott systems for the next-generation computational technologies.

Recently, promptable segmentation models, such as the Segment Anything Model (SAM), have demonstrated robust zero-shot generalization capabilities on static images. These promptable models exhibit denoising abilities for imprecise prompt inputs, such as imprecise bounding boxes. In this paper, we explore the potential of applying SAM to track and segment objects in videos where we recognize the tracking task as a prompt denoising task. Specifically, we iteratively propagate the bounding box of each object's mask in the preceding frame as the prompt for the next frame. Furthermore, to enhance SAM's denoising capability against position and size variations, we propose a multi-prompt strategy where we provide multiple jittered and scaled box prompts for each object and preserve the mask prediction with the highest semantic similarity to the template mask. We also introduce a point-based refinement stage to handle occlusions and reduce cumulative errors. Without involving tracking modules, our approach demonstrates comparable performance in video object/instance segmentation tasks on three datasets: DAVIS2017, YouTubeVOS2018, and UVO, serving as a concise baseline and endowing SAM-based downstream applications with tracking capabilities.