3,718 research outputs found
Prochlo: Strong Privacy for Analytics in the Crowd
The large-scale monitoring of computer users' software activities has become
commonplace, e.g., for application telemetry, error reporting, or demographic
profiling. This paper describes a principled systems architecture---Encode,
Shuffle, Analyze (ESA)---for performing such monitoring with high utility while
also protecting user privacy. The ESA design, and its Prochlo implementation,
are informed by our practical experiences with an existing, large deployment of
privacy-preserving software monitoring.
(cont.; see the paper
Source Coding in Networks with Covariance Distortion Constraints
We consider a source coding problem with a network scenario in mind, and
formulate it as a remote vector Gaussian Wyner-Ziv problem under covariance
matrix distortions. We define a notion of minimum for two positive-definite
matrices based on which we derive an explicit formula for the rate-distortion
function (RDF). We then study the special cases and applications of this
result. We show that two well-studied source coding problems, i.e. remote
vector Gaussian Wyner-Ziv problems with mean-squared error and mutual
information constraints are in fact special cases of our results. Finally, we
apply our results to a joint source coding and denoising problem. We consider a
network with a centralized topology and a given weighted sum-rate constraint,
where the received signals at the center are to be fused to maximize the output
SNR while enforcing no linear distortion. We show that one can design the
distortion matrices at the nodes in order to maximize the output SNR at the
fusion center. We thereby bridge between denoising and source coding within
this setup
Coherent Transport of Quantum States by Deep Reinforcement Learning
Some problems in physics can be handled only after a suitable \textit{ansatz
}solution has been guessed. Such method is therefore resilient to
generalization, resulting of limited scope. The coherent transport by adiabatic
passage of a quantum state through an array of semiconductor quantum dots
provides a par excellence example of such approach, where it is necessary to
introduce its so called counter-intuitive control gate ansatz pulse sequence.
Instead, deep reinforcement learning technique has proven to be able to solve
very complex sequential decision-making problems involving competition between
short-term and long-term rewards, despite a lack of prior knowledge. We show
that in the above problem deep reinforcement learning discovers control
sequences outperforming the \textit{ansatz} counter-intuitive sequence. Even
more interesting, it discovers novel strategies when realistic disturbances
affect the ideal system, with better speed and fidelity when energy detuning
between the ground states of quantum dots or dephasing are added to the master
equation, also mitigating the effects of losses. This method enables online
update of realistic systems as the policy convergence is boosted by exploiting
the prior knowledge when available. Deep reinforcement learning proves
effective to control dynamics of quantum states, and more generally it applies
whenever an ansatz solution is unknown or insufficient to effectively treat the
problem.Comment: 5 figure
The SOS Platform: Designing, Tuning and Statistically Benchmarking Optimisation Algorithms
open access articleWe present Stochastic Optimisation Software (SOS), a Java platform facilitating the algorithmic design process and the evaluation of metaheuristic optimisation algorithms. SOS reduces the burden of coding miscellaneous methods for dealing with several bothersome and time-demanding tasks such as parameter tuning, implementation of comparison algorithms and testbed problems, collecting and processing data to display results, measuring algorithmic overhead, etc. SOS provides numerous off-the-shelf methods including: (1) customised implementations of statistical tests, such as the Wilcoxon rank-sum test and the Holm–Bonferroni procedure, for comparing the performances of optimisation algorithms and automatically generating result tables in PDF and formats; (2) the implementation of an original advanced statistical routine for accurately comparing couples of stochastic optimisation algorithms; (3) the implementation of a novel testbed suite for continuous optimisation, derived from the IEEE CEC 2014 benchmark, allowing for controlled activation of the rotation on each testbed function. Moreover, we briefly comment on the current state of the literature in stochastic optimisation and highlight similarities shared by modern metaheuristics inspired by nature. We argue that the vast majority of these algorithms are simply a reformulation of the same methods and that metaheuristics for optimisation should be simply treated as stochastic processes with less emphasis on the inspiring metaphor behind them
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