A Physics-Based Approach to Unsupervised Discovery of Coherent Structures in Spatiotemporal Systems

Given that observational and numerical climate data are being produced at ever more prodigious rates, increasingly sophisticated and automated analysis techniques have become essential. Deep learning is quickly becoming a standard approach for such analyses and, while great progress is being made, major challenges remain. Unlike commercial applications in which deep learning has led to surprising successes, scientific data is highly complex and typically unlabeled. Moreover, interpretability and detecting new mechanisms are key to scientific discovery. To enhance discovery we present a complementary physics-based, data-driven approach that exploits the causal nature of spatiotemporal data sets generated by local dynamics (e.g. hydrodynamic flows). We illustrate how novel patterns and coherent structures can be discovered in cellular automata and outline the path from them to climate data.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/ci2017_Rupe_et_al.ht

Classification methods for Hilbert data based on surrogate density

An unsupervised and a supervised classification approaches for Hilbert random curves are studied. Both rest on the use of a surrogate of the probability density which is defined, in a distribution-free mixture context, from an asymptotic factorization of the small-ball probability. That surrogate density is estimated by a kernel approach from the principal components of the data. The focus is on the illustration of the classification algorithms and the computational implications, with particular attention to the tuning of the parameters involved. Some asymptotic results are sketched. Applications on simulated and real datasets show how the proposed methods work.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, 6 table

An Overview on Application of Machine Learning Techniques in Optical Networks

Today's telecommunication networks have become sources of enormous amounts of widely heterogeneous data. This information can be retrieved from network traffic traces, network alarms, signal quality indicators, users' behavioral data, etc. Advanced mathematical tools are required to extract meaningful information from these data and take decisions pertaining to the proper functioning of the networks from the network-generated data. Among these mathematical tools, Machine Learning (ML) is regarded as one of the most promising methodological approaches to perform network-data analysis and enable automated network self-configuration and fault management. The adoption of ML techniques in the field of optical communication networks is motivated by the unprecedented growth of network complexity faced by optical networks in the last few years. Such complexity increase is due to the introduction of a huge number of adjustable and interdependent system parameters (e.g., routing configurations, modulation format, symbol rate, coding schemes, etc.) that are enabled by the usage of coherent transmission/reception technologies, advanced digital signal processing and compensation of nonlinear effects in optical fiber propagation. In this paper we provide an overview of the application of ML to optical communications and networking. We classify and survey relevant literature dealing with the topic, and we also provide an introductory tutorial on ML for researchers and practitioners interested in this field. Although a good number of research papers have recently appeared, the application of ML to optical networks is still in its infancy: to stimulate further work in this area, we conclude the paper proposing new possible research directions

Background modeling for video sequences by stacked denoising autoencoders

Nowadays, the analysis and extraction of relevant information in visual data flows is of paramount importance. These images sequences can last for hours, which implies that the model must adapt to all kinds of circumstances so that the performance of the system does not decay over time. In this paper we propose a methodology for background modeling and foreground detection, whose main characteristic is its robustness against stationary noise. Thus, stacked denoising autoencoders are applied to generate a set of robust characteristics for each region or patch of the image, which will be the input of a probabilistic model to determine if that region is background or foreground. The evaluation of a set of heterogeneous sequences results in that, although our proposal is similar to the classical methods existing in the literature, the inclusion of noise in these sequences causes drastic performance drops in the competing methods, while in our case the performance stays or falls slightly.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Modeling sequences and temporal networks with dynamic community structures

In evolving complex systems such as air traffic and social organizations, collective effects emerge from their many components' dynamic interactions. While the dynamic interactions can be represented by temporal networks with nodes and links that change over time, they remain highly complex. It is therefore often necessary to use methods that extract the temporal networks' large-scale dynamic community structure. However, such methods are subject to overfitting or suffer from effects of arbitrary, a priori imposed timescales, which should instead be extracted from data. Here we simultaneously address both problems and develop a principled data-driven method that determines relevant timescales and identifies patterns of dynamics that take place on networks as well as shape the networks themselves. We base our method on an arbitrary-order Markov chain model with community structure, and develop a nonparametric Bayesian inference framework that identifies the simplest such model that can explain temporal interaction data.Comment: 15 Pages, 6 figures, 2 table