Contextual Outlier Interpretation

Outlier detection plays an essential role in many data-driven applications to identify isolated instances that are different from the majority. While many statistical learning and data mining techniques have been used for developing more effective outlier detection algorithms, the interpretation of detected outliers does not receive much attention. Interpretation is becoming increasingly important to help people trust and evaluate the developed models through providing intrinsic reasons why the certain outliers are chosen. It is difficult, if not impossible, to simply apply feature selection for explaining outliers due to the distinct characteristics of various detection models, complicated structures of data in certain applications, and imbalanced distribution of outliers and normal instances. In addition, the role of contrastive contexts where outliers locate, as well as the relation between outliers and contexts, are usually overlooked in interpretation. To tackle the issues above, in this paper, we propose a novel Contextual Outlier INterpretation (COIN) method to explain the abnormality of existing outliers spotted by detectors. The interpretability for an outlier is achieved from three aspects: outlierness score, attributes that contribute to the abnormality, and contextual description of its neighborhoods. Experimental results on various types of datasets demonstrate the flexibility and effectiveness of the proposed framework compared with existing interpretation approaches

Thermal And Mechanical Analysis of High-power Light-emitting Diodes with Ceramic Packages

In this paper we present the thermal and mechanical analysis of high-power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with ceramic packages. Transient thermal measurements and thermo-mechanical simulation were performed to study the thermal and mechanical characteristics of ceramic packages. Thermal resistance from the junction to the ambient was decreased from 76.1 oC/W to 45.3 oC/W by replacing plastic mould to ceramic mould for LED packages. Higher level of thermo-mechanical stresses in the chip were found for LEDs with ceramic packages despite of less mismatching coefficients of thermal expansion comparing with plastic packages. The results suggest that the thermal performance of LEDs can be improved by using ceramic packages, but the mounting process of the high power LEDs with ceramic packages is critically important and should be in charge of delaminating interface layers in the packages.Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions (http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions

Spin relaxation in mesoscopic superconducting Al wires

We studied the diffusion and the relaxation of the polarized quasiparticle spins in superconductors. To that end, quasiparticles of polarized spins were injected through an interface of a mesoscopic superconducting Al wire in proximity contact with an overlaid ferromagnetic Co wire in the single-domain state. The superconductivity was observed to be suppressed near the spin-injecting interface, as evidenced by the occurrence of a finite voltage for a bias current below the onset of the superconducting transition. The spin diffusion length, estimated from finite voltages over a certain length of Al wire near the interface, was almost temperature independent in the temperature range sufficiently below the superconducting transition but grew as the transition temperature was approached. This temperature dependence suggests that the relaxation of the spin polarization in the superconducting state is governed by the condensation of quasiparticles to the paired state. The spin relaxation in the superconducting state turned out to be more effective than in the normal state.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Attack-Tolerant Time-Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract—Achieving secure time-synchronization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a challenging, but very important problem that has not yet been addressed effectively. This pa-per proposes an Attack-tolerant Time-Synchronization Protocol (ATSP) in which sensor nodes cooperate to safeguard the time-synchronization service against malicious attacks. ATSP exploits the high temporal correlation existing among adjacent nodes in a WSN to achieve (1) adaptive management of the profile of each sensor’s normal behavior, (2) distributed, cooperative detection of falsified clock values advertised by attackers or compromised nodes, and (3) significant improvement of syn-chronization accuracy and stability by effectively compensating the clock drifts with the calibrated clock. To reduce the risk of losing time-synchronization due to attacks on the reference node, ATSP utilizes distributed, mutual synchronization and confines the impact of attacks to a local area (where attacks took place). Furthermore, by maintaining an accurate profile of sensors’ normal synchronization behaviors, ATSP detects various critical attacks while incurring only reasonable communication and computation overheads, making ATSP attack-tolerant and ideal for resource-constrained WSNs. I

Origins of Common Neural Inputs to Different Compartments of the Extensor Digitorum Communis Muscle

The extensor digitorum communis (EDC) is a multi-compartment muscle that allows dexterous extension of the four digits. However, the level of common input shared across different compartments of this muscle is not well understood. We seek to systematically characterize the common and independent neural input, originated from different levels of the central nervous system, to the different compartments. A motor unit (MU) coherence analysis was used to capture the different sources of common and independent input, by quantifying the coherence of MU discharge between different compartments. The MU activities were obtained from decomposition of surface electromyogram recordings. Our results showed that the MU coherence across different muscle compartments accounted for only a small proportion (60%) in the delta (1-4 Hz) band. Additionally, cross-compartment coherence between the middle and ring-little fingers tended to be higher as compared with other finger combinations. Overall, the common input shared across different fingers are found to be at low to moderate levels, in comparison with the total input, which allows dexterous control of individual digits with some degree of coordinated control of multiple digits

Toxic effects of ammonia exposure on growth performance, hematological parameters, and plasma components in rockfish, Sebastes schlegelii, during thermal stress

Abstract Rockfish, Sebastes schlegelii (mean length 14.53 ± 1.14 cm and mean weight 38.36 ± 3.45 g), were exposed for 4 weeks with the different levels of ammonia in the concentrations of 0, 0.1, 0.5, and 1.0 mg/L at 19 and 24 °C. The indicators of growth performance such as daily length gain, daily weight gain, condition factor, and hematosomatic index were significantly reduced by the ammonia exposure and high temperature. The ammonia exposure induced a significant decrease in hematological parameters, such as red blood cell (RBC) count, white blood cell (WBC) count, hemoglobin (Hb), and hematocrit (Ht), whose trend was more remarkable at 24 °C. Mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) were also notably decreased by the ammonia exposure. Blood ammonia concentration was considerably increased by the ammonia concentration exposure. In the serum components, the glucose, glutamic oxalate transaminase (GOT), and glutamic pyruvate transaminase (GPT) were substantially increased by the ammonia exposure, whereas total protein was significantly decreased. But, the calcium and magnesium were not considerably changed

Subvacuum effects of the quantum field on the dynamics of a test particle

We study the effects of the electromagnetic subvacuum fluctuations on the dynamics of a nonrelativistic charged particle in a wavepacket. The influence from the quantum field is expected to give an additional effect to the velocity uncertainty of the particle. In the case of a static wavepacket, the observed velocity dispersion is smaller in the electromagnetic squeezed vacuum background than in the normal vacuum background. This leads to the subvacuum effect. The extent of reduction in velocity dispersion associated with this subvacuum effect is further studied by introducing a switching function. It is shown that the slow switching process may make this subvacuum effect insignificant. We also point out that when the center of the wavepacket undergoes non-inertial motion, reduction in the velocity dispersion becomes less effective with its evolution, no matter how we manipulate the nonstationary quantum noise via the choice of the squeeze parameters. The role of the underlying fluctuation-dissipation relation is discussed.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figure