3,178 research outputs found
Multi-Label Classifier Chains for Bird Sound
Bird sound data collected with unattended microphones for automatic surveys,
or mobile devices for citizen science, typically contain multiple
simultaneously vocalizing birds of different species. However, few works have
considered the multi-label structure in birdsong. We propose to use an ensemble
of classifier chains combined with a histogram-of-segments representation for
multi-label classification of birdsong. The proposed method is compared with
binary relevance and three multi-instance multi-label learning (MIML)
algorithms from prior work (which focus more on structure in the sound, and
less on structure in the label sets). Experiments are conducted on two
real-world birdsong datasets, and show that the proposed method usually
outperforms binary relevance (using the same features and base-classifier), and
is better in some cases and worse in others compared to the MIML algorithms.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, submission to ICML 2013 workshop on bioacoustics.
Note: this is a minor revision- the blind submission format has been replaced
with one that shows author names, and a few corrections have been mad
Detection of Dense Molecular Gas in Inter-Arm Spurs in M51
Spiral arm spurs are prominent features that have been observed in extinction
and 8m emission in nearby galaxies. In order to understand their molecular
gas properties, we used the Owens Valley Radio Observatory to map the
CO(J=1--0) emission in three spurs emanating from the inner northwestern spiral
arm of M51. We report CO detections from all three spurs. The molecular gas
mass and surface density are M M_{\sun} and
50 M_{\sun} pc. Thus, relative to the spiral arms,
the spurs are extremely weak features. However, since the spurs are extended
perpendicular to the spiral arms for 500 pc and contain adequate fuel for
star formation, they may be the birthplace for observed inter-arm HII regions.
This reduces the requirement for the significant time delay that would be
otherwise needed if the inter-arm star formation was initiated in the spiral
arms. Larger maps of galaxies at similar depth are required to further
understand the formation and evolution of these spurs and their role in star
formation - such data should be forthcoming with the new CARMA and future ALMA
telescopes and can be compared to several recent numerical simulations that
have been examining the evolution of spiral arm spurs.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, emulate-apj format, accepted in Ap
Inviscid dynamical structures near Couette flow
Consider inviscid fluids in a channel {-1<y<1}. For the Couette flow
v_0=(y,0), the vertical velocity of solutions to the linearized Euler equation
at v_0 decays in time. At the nonlinear level, such inviscid damping has not
been proved. First, we show that in any (vorticity) H^{s}(s<(3/2)) neighborhood
of Couette flow, there exist non-parallel steady flows with arbitrary minimal
horizontal period. This implies that nonlinear inviscid damping is not true in
any (vorticity) H^{s}(s<(3/2)) neighborhood of Couette flow and for any
horizontal period. Indeed, the long time behavior in such neighborhoods are
very rich, including nontrivial steady flows, stable and unstable manifolds of
nearby unstable shears. Second, in the (vorticity) H^{s}(s>(3/2)) neighborhood
of Couette, we show that there exist no non-parallel steadily travelling flows
v(x-ct,y), and no unstable shears. This suggests that the long time dynamics in
H^{s}(s>(3/2)) neighborhoods of Couette might be much simpler. Such contrasting
dynamics in H^{s} spaces with the critical power s=(3/2) is a truly nonlinear
phenomena, since the linear inviscid damping near Couette is true for any
initial vorticity in L^2
Absolute and convective instabilities of parallel propagating circularly polarized Alfven waves: Beat instability
Ruderman and Simpson [Phys. Plasmas 11, 4178 (2004)] studied the absolute and convective decay instabilities of parallel propagating circularly polarized Alfven waves in plasmas where the sound speed c(S) is smaller than the Alfven speed upsilon(A). We extend their analysis for the beat instability which occurs in plasmas with c(S)>upsilon(A). We assume that the dimensionless amplitude of the circularly polarized Alfven wave (pump wave), a, is small. Applying Briggs' method we study the problem analytically using expansions in power series with respect to a. It is shown that the pump wave is absolutely unstable in a reference frame moving with the velocity U with respect to the rest plasma if U-lU-r, the instability is convective. The signaling problem is studied in a reference frame where the pump wave is convectively unstable. It is shown that the spatially amplifying waves exist only when the signaling frequency is in two narrow symmetric frequency bands with the widths of the order of a(3). These results enable us to extend for the case when c(S)>upsilon(A) the conclusions, previously made for the case when c(S)<upsilon(A), that circularly polarized Alfven waves propagating in the solar wind are convectively unstable in a reference frame of any spacecraft moving with the velocity not exceeding a few tens of km/s in the solar reference frame. The characteristic scale of spatial amplification for these waves exceeds 1 a.u
Cooperative multivalent receptor binding promotes exposure of the SARS-CoV-2 fusion machinery core
The molecular events that permit the spike glycoprotein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to bind, fuse, and enter cells are important to understand for both fundamental and therapeutic reasons. Spike proteins consist of S1 and S2 domains, which recognize angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors and contain the viral fusion machinery, respectively. Ostensibly, the binding of spike trimers to ACE2 receptors promotes the preparation of the fusion machinery by dissociation of the S1 domains. We report the development of bottom-up coarse-grained (CG) models validated with cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) data, and the use of CG molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the dynamical mechanisms involved in viral binding and exposure of the S2 trimeric core. We show that spike trimers cooperatively bind to multiple ACE2 dimers at virion-cell interfaces. The multivalent interaction cyclically and processively induces S1 dissociation, thereby exposing the S2 core containing the fusion machinery. Our simulations thus reveal an important concerted interaction between spike trimers and ACE2 dimers that primes the virus for membrane fusion and entry
Successful cryopreservation of African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) spermatozoa: towards developing the frozen zoo
Sperm freezing and artificial insemination can aid species management and conservation of the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus). Freezing attempts have previously been unsuccessful with sperm motility dropping to nearly 0% within 2 h of thawing. We examined the quality of wild dog spermatozoa subjected to 2 routine canine cryopreservation protocols: 1) 1-step dilution in TRIS-egg yolk extender containing 8% glycerol and 20% egg yolk; and 2) 2-step dilution in TRIS-egg yolk extender to a final concentration of 5% glycerol, 20% egg yolk and 0.5% Equex STM. Protocol 2 showed a significantly higher post-thaw viability, acrosome integrity and longevity of spermatozoa with motility present for up to 8 h after thawing; making it suitable for sperm banking and downstream use in species management by artificial insemination for the first time
Federated learning with hierarchical clustering of local updates to improve training on non-IID data
Federated learning (FL) is a well established method for performing machine learning tasks over massively distributed data. However in settings where data is distributed in a non-iid (not independent and identically distributed) fashion -- as is typical in real world situations -- the joint model produced by FL suffers in terms of test set accuracy and/or communication costs compared to training on iid data. We show that learning a single joint model is often not optimal in the presence of certain types of non-iid data. In this work we present a modification to FL by introducing a hierarchical clustering step (FL+HC) to separate clusters of clients by the similarity of their local updates to the global joint model. Once separated, the clusters are trained independently and in parallel on specialised models. We present a robust empirical analysis of the hyperparameters for FL+HC for several iid and non-iid settings. We show how FL+HC allows model training to converge in fewer communication rounds (significantly so under some non-iid settings) compared to FL without clustering. Additionally, FL+HC allows for a greater percentage of clients to reach a target accuracy compared to standard FL. Finally we make suggestions for good default hyperparameters to promote superior performing specialised models without modifying the the underlying federated learning communication protocol
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