Cellular Automata

Modelling and simulation are disciplines of major importance for science and engineering. There is no science without models, and simulation has nowadays become a very useful tool, sometimes unavoidable, for development of both science and engineering. The main attractive feature of cellular automata is that, in spite of their conceptual simplicity which allows an easiness of implementation for computer simulation, as a detailed and complete mathematical analysis in principle, they are able to exhibit a wide variety of amazingly complex behaviour. This feature of cellular automata has attracted the researchers' attention from a wide variety of divergent fields of the exact disciplines of science and engineering, but also of the social sciences, and sometimes beyond. The collective complex behaviour of numerous systems, which emerge from the interaction of a multitude of simple individuals, is being conveniently modelled and simulated with cellular automata for very different purposes. In this book, a number of innovative applications of cellular automata models in the fields of Quantum Computing, Materials Science, Cryptography and Coding, and Robotics and Image Processing are presented

Towards the First Practical Applications of Quantum Computers

Noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers are coming online. The lack of error-correction in these devices prevents them from realizing the full potential of fault-tolerant quantum computation, a technology that is known to have significant practical applications, but which is years, if not decades, away. A major open question is whether NISQ devices will have practical applications. In this thesis, we explore and implement proposals for using NISQ devices to achieve practical applications. In particular, we develop and execute variational quantum algorithms for solving problems in combinatorial optimization and quantum chemistry. We also execute a prototype of a protocol for generating certified random numbers. We perform our experiments on a superconducting qubit processor developed at Google. While we do not perform any quantum computations that are beyond the capabilities of classical computers, we address many implementation challenges that must be overcome to succeed in such an endeavor, including optimization, efficient compilation, and error mitigation. In addressing these challenges, we push the limits of what can currently be done with NISQ technology, going beyond previous quantum computing demonstrations in terms of the scale of our experiments and the types of problems we tackle. While our experiments demonstrate progress in the utilization of quantum computers, the limits that we reached underscore the fundamental challenges in scaling up towards the classically intractable regime. Nevertheless, our results are a promising indication that NISQ devices may indeed deliver practical applications.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163016/1/kevjsung_1.pd

Parallel Algorithms and Generalized Frameworks for Learning Large-Scale Bayesian Networks

Bayesian networks (BNs) are an important subclass of probabilistic graphical models that employ directed acyclic graphs to compactly represent exponential-sized joint probability distributions over a set of random variables. Since BNs enable probabilistic reasoning about interactions between the variables of interest, they have been successfully applied in a wide range of applications in the fields of medical diagnosis, gene networks, cybersecurity, epidemiology, etc. Furthermore, the recent focus on the need for explainability in human-impact decisions made by machine learning (ML) models has led to a push for replacing the prevalent black-box models with inherently interpretable models like BNs for making high-stakes decisions in hitherto unexplored areas. Learning the exact structure of BNs from observational data is an NP-hard problem and therefore a wide range of heuristic algorithms have been developed for this purpose. However, even the heuristic algorithms are computationally intensive. The existing software packages for BN structure learning with implementations of multiple algorithms are either completely sequential or support limited parallelism and can take days to learn BNs with even a few thousand variables. Previous parallelization efforts have focused on one or two algorithms for specific applications and have not resulted in broadly applicable parallel software. This has prevented BNs from becoming a viable alternative to other ML models. In this dissertation, we develop efficient parallel versions of a variety of BN learning algorithms from two categories: six different constraint-based methods and a score-based method for constructing a specialization of BNs known as module networks. We also propose optimizations for the implementations of these parallel algorithms to achieve maximum performance in practice. Our proposed algorithms are scalable to thousands of cores and outperform the previous state-of-the-art by a large margin. We have made the implementations available as open-source software packages that can be used by ML and application-domain researchers for expeditious learning of large-scale BNs.Ph.D

Entropy in Image Analysis II

Image analysis is a fundamental task for any application where extracting information from images is required. The analysis requires highly sophisticated numerical and analytical methods, particularly for those applications in medicine, security, and other fields where the results of the processing consist of data of vital importance. This fact is evident from all the articles composing the Special Issue "Entropy in Image Analysis II", in which the authors used widely tested methods to verify their results. In the process of reading the present volume, the reader will appreciate the richness of their methods and applications, in particular for medical imaging and image security, and a remarkable cross-fertilization among the proposed research areas

Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Reconfigurable Communication-centric Systems on Chip 2010 - ReCoSoC\u2710 - May 17-19, 2010 Karlsruhe, Germany. (KIT Scientific Reports ; 7551)

ReCoSoC is intended to be a periodic annual meeting to expose and discuss gathered expertise as well as state of the art research around SoC related topics through plenary invited papers and posters. The workshop aims to provide a prospective view of tomorrow\u27s challenges in the multibillion transistor era, taking into account the emerging techniques and architectures exploring the synergy between flexible on-chip communication and system reconfigurability

Development of New Approaches to ATLAS Detector Simulation and Dark Matter Searches with Trigger Level Analysis

Elementary particles and their interactions are successfully described by the Standard Model of particle physics (SM). However, it has been observed that extensions Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) are required to account for a large part of yet undiscovered particles and interactions, such as Dark Matter (DM).To advance the knowledge of the SM and to pursue DM discoveries, CERN has the ambitious plan of further increasing the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) energy and luminosity, thus reaching unprecedented event rates in the field of collider physics.This thesis is divided in three parts, dealing with some of the most challenging aspects of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC present and future activities. After a thorough review of the SM, BSM physics is outlined, with particular attention to DM searches. The second part of this work addresses the issue of coping with the foreseen event rates of the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) phase. Indeed, optimizations of the existing Geant4 simulation codes are a crucial step to alleviate the need for new and expensive hardware resources. With the objective of improving the efficiency of the simulation tools, an extensive study on different compilers, different optimization levels and different build types is presented. In addition, a preliminary investigation on the geometry description of the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) modules is discussed. The last part of the thesis covers the DM searches carried out by the ATLAS Trigger-object Level Analysis (TLA) group. These searches are based on the analysis of the invariant mass spectrum of di-jet events and, during LHC Run 2, have been performed at energies in the 450-1800 GeV range (integrated luminosity up to 29.3 fb-1 and center of mass energy of 13 TeV). After a review of the TLA studies, a preliminary investigation on the performance of Bayesian and Frequentist statistical tools is presented. In particular, the attention is focused on the interpretation and handling of systematic uncertainties both on background and DM signals. This is of particular importance in the process of finding localized excesses, which can indicate the existence of DM signals, and setting limits on the DM event cross sections

Security Technologies and Methods for Advanced Cyber Threat Intelligence, Detection and Mitigation

The rapid growth of the Internet interconnectivity and complexity of communication systems has led us to a significant growth of cyberattacks globally often with severe and disastrous consequences. The swift development of more innovative and effective (cyber)security solutions and approaches are vital which can detect, mitigate and prevent from these serious consequences. Cybersecurity is gaining momentum and is scaling up in very many areas. This book builds on the experience of the Cyber-Trust EU project’s methods, use cases, technology development, testing and validation and extends into a broader science, lead IT industry market and applied research with practical cases. It offers new perspectives on advanced (cyber) security innovation (eco) systems covering key different perspectives. The book provides insights on new security technologies and methods for advanced cyber threat intelligence, detection and mitigation. We cover topics such as cyber-security and AI, cyber-threat intelligence, digital forensics, moving target defense, intrusion detection systems, post-quantum security, privacy and data protection, security visualization, smart contracts security, software security, blockchain, security architectures, system and data integrity, trust management systems, distributed systems security, dynamic risk management, privacy and ethics

Introductory Computer Forensics

INTERPOL (International Police) built cybercrime programs to keep up with emerging cyber threats, and aims to coordinate and assist international operations for ?ghting crimes involving computers. Although signi?cant international efforts are being made in dealing with cybercrime and cyber-terrorism, ?nding effective, cooperative, and collaborative ways to deal with complicated cases that span multiple jurisdictions has proven dif?cult in practic

Proceedings /5th International Symposium on Industrial Engineering – SIE2012, June 14-15, 2012., Belgrade

editors Dragan D. Milanović, Vesna Spasojević-Brkić, Mirjana Misit