1,306 research outputs found
Application of new probabilistic graphical models in the genetic regulatory networks studies
This paper introduces two new probabilistic graphical models for
reconstruction of genetic regulatory networks using DNA microarray data. One is
an Independence Graph (IG) model with either a forward or a backward search
algorithm and the other one is a Gaussian Network (GN) model with a novel
greedy search method. The performances of both models were evaluated on four
MAPK pathways in yeast and three simulated data sets. Generally, an IG model
provides a sparse graph but a GN model produces a dense graph where more
information about gene-gene interactions is preserved. Additionally, we found
two key limitations in the prediction of genetic regulatory networks using DNA
microarray data, the first is the sufficiency of sample size and the second is
the complexity of network structures may not be captured without additional
data at the protein level. Those limitations are present in all prediction
methods which used only DNA microarray data.Comment: 38 pages, 3 figure
Theoretically Efficient Parallel Graph Algorithms Can Be Fast and Scalable
There has been significant recent interest in parallel graph processing due
to the need to quickly analyze the large graphs available today. Many graph
codes have been designed for distributed memory or external memory. However,
today even the largest publicly-available real-world graph (the Hyperlink Web
graph with over 3.5 billion vertices and 128 billion edges) can fit in the
memory of a single commodity multicore server. Nevertheless, most experimental
work in the literature report results on much smaller graphs, and the ones for
the Hyperlink graph use distributed or external memory. Therefore, it is
natural to ask whether we can efficiently solve a broad class of graph problems
on this graph in memory.
This paper shows that theoretically-efficient parallel graph algorithms can
scale to the largest publicly-available graphs using a single machine with a
terabyte of RAM, processing them in minutes. We give implementations of
theoretically-efficient parallel algorithms for 20 important graph problems. We
also present the optimizations and techniques that we used in our
implementations, which were crucial in enabling us to process these large
graphs quickly. We show that the running times of our implementations
outperform existing state-of-the-art implementations on the largest real-world
graphs. For many of the problems that we consider, this is the first time they
have been solved on graphs at this scale. We have made the implementations
developed in this work publicly-available as the Graph-Based Benchmark Suite
(GBBS).Comment: This is the full version of the paper appearing in the ACM Symposium
on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), 201
Free energy landscapes, dynamics and the edge of chaos in mean-field models of spin glasses
Metastable states in Ising spin-glass models are studied by finding iterative
solutions of mean-field equations for the local magnetizations. Two different
equations are studied: the TAP equations which are exact for the SK model, and
the simpler `naive-mean-field' (NMF) equations. The free-energy landscapes that
emerge are very different. For the TAP equations, the numerical studies confirm
the analytical results of Aspelmeier et al., which predict that TAP states
consist of close pairs of minima and index-one (one unstable direction) saddle
points, while for the NMF equations saddle points with large indices are found.
For TAP the barrier height between a minimum and its nearby saddle point scales
as (f-f_0)^{-1/3} where f is the free energy per spin of the solution and f_0
is the equilibrium free energy per spin. This means that for `pure states', for
which f-f_0 is of order 1/N, the barriers scale as N^{1/3}, but between states
for which f-f_0 is of order one the barriers are finite and also small so such
metastable states will be of limited physical significance. For the NMF
equations there are saddles of index K and we can demonstrate that their
complexity Sigma_K scales as a function of K/N. We have also employed an
iterative scheme with a free parameter that can be adjusted to bring the system
of equations close to the `edge of chaos'. Both for the TAP and NME equations
it is possible with this approach to find metastable states whose free energy
per spin is close to f_0. As N increases, it becomes harder and harder to find
solutions near the edge of chaos, but nevertheless the results which can be
obtained are competitive with those achieved by more time-consuming computing
methods and suggest that this method may be of general utility.Comment: 13 page
Assessing Simulations of Imperial Dynamics and Conflict in the Ancient World
The development of models to capture large-scale dynamics in human history is
one of the core contributions of cliodynamics. Most often, these models are
assessed by their predictive capability on some macro-scale and aggregated
measure and compared to manually curated historical data. In this report, we
consider the model from Turchin et al. (2013), where the evaluation is done on
the prediction of "imperial density": the relative frequency with which a
geographical area belonged to large-scale polities over a certain time window.
We implement the model and release both code and data for reproducibility. We
then assess its behaviour against three historical data sets: the relative size
of simulated polities vs historical ones; the spatial correlation of simulated
imperial density with historical population density; the spatial correlation of
simulated conflict vs historical conflict. At the global level, we show good
agreement with population density (), and some agreement with
historical conflict in Europe (). The model instead fails to
reproduce the historical shape of individual polities. Finally, we tweak the
model to behave greedily by having polities preferentially attacking weaker
neighbours. Results significantly degrade, suggesting that random attacks are a
key trait of the original model. We conclude by proposing a way forward by
matching the probabilistic imperial strength from simulations to inferred
networked communities from real settlement data
A Framework for Reinforcement Learning and Planning
Sequential decision making, commonly formalized as Markov Decision Process
optimization, is a key challenge in artificial intelligence. Two successful
approaches to MDP optimization are planning and reinforcement learning. Both
research fields largely have their own research communities. However, if both
research fields solve the same problem, then we should be able to disentangle
the common factors in their solution approaches. Therefore, this paper presents
a unifying framework for reinforcement learning and planning (FRAP), which
identifies the underlying dimensions on which any planning or learning
algorithm has to decide. At the end of the paper, we compare - in a single
table - a variety of well-known planning, model-free and model-based RL
algorithms along the dimensions of our framework, illustrating the validity of
the framework. Altogether, FRAP provides deeper insight into the algorithmic
space of planning and reinforcement learning, and also suggests new approaches
to integration of both fields
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