Multiplicative LSTM for sequence modelling

We introduce multiplicative LSTM (mLSTM), a recurrent neural network architecture for sequence modelling that combines the long short-term memory (LSTM) and multiplicative recurrent neural network architectures. mLSTM is characterised by its ability to have different recurrent transition functions for each possible input, which we argue makes it more expressive for autoregressive density estimation. We demonstrate empirically that mLSTM outperforms standard LSTM and its deep variants for a range of character level language modelling tasks. In this version of the paper, we regularise mLSTM to achieve 1.27 bits/char on text8 and 1.24 bits/char on Hutter Prize. We also apply a purely byte-level mLSTM on the WikiText-2 dataset to achieve a character level entropy of 1.26 bits/char, corresponding to a word level perplexity of 88.8, which is comparable to word level LSTMs regularised in similar ways on the same task

Evaluation of the capability of the simulated dual energy X-ray absorptiometry-based two-dimensional finite element models for predicting vertebral failure loads

Prediction of the vertebral failure load is of great importance for the prevention and early treatment of bone fracture. However, an efficient and effective method for accurately predicting the failure load of vertebral bones is still lacking. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the capability of the simulated dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA)-based finite element (FE) model for predicting vertebral failure loads. Thirteen dissected spinal segments (T11/T12/L1) were scanned using a HR-pQCT scanner and then were mechanically tested until failure. The subject-specific three-dimensional (3D) and two-dimensional (2D) FE models of T12 were generated from the HR-pQCT scanner and the simulated DXA images, respectively. Additionally, the areal bone mineral density (aBMD) and areal bone mineral content (aBMC) of T12 were calculated. The failure loads predicted by the simulated DXA-based 2D FE models were more moderately correlated with the experimental failure loads (R  = 0.66) than the aBMC (R  = 0.61) and aBMD (R  = 0.56). The 2D FE models were slightly outperformed by the HR-pQCT-based 3D FE models (R  = 0.71). The present study demonstrated that the simulated DXA-based 2D FE model has better capability for predicting the vertebral failure loads than the densitometric measurements but is outperformed by the 3D FE model. The 2D FE model is more suitable for clinical use due to the low radiation dose and low cost, but it remains to be validated by further in vitro and in vivo studies. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

De Sitter Vacua from Heterotic M-Theory

It is shown how metastable de Sitter vacua might arise from heterotic M-theory. The balancing of its two non-perturbative effects, open membrane instantons against gaugino condensation on the hidden boundary, which act with opposing forces on the interval length, is used to stabilize the orbifold modulus (dilaton) and other moduli. The non-perturbative effects break supersymmetry spontaneously through F-terms which leads to a positive vacuum energy density. In contrast to the situation for the weakly coupled heterotic string, the charged scalar matter fields receive non-vanishing vacuum expectation values and therefore masses in a phenomenologically relevant regime. It is important that in order to obtain these de Sitter vacua we are not relying on exotic effects or fine-tuning of parameters. Vacua with more realistic supersymmetry breaking scales and gravitino masses are obtained by breaking the hidden $E_8$ gauge group down to groups of smaller rank. Also small values for the open membrane instanton Pfaffian are favored in this respect. Finally we outline how the incorporation of additional flux superpotentials can be used to stabilize the remaining moduli.Comment: 45 pages, 5 figures, typos correcte

Radio Continuum Jet in NGC 7479

The barred galaxy NGC 7479 hosts a remarkable jet-like radio continuum feature: bright, 12-kpc long in projection, and hosting an aligned magnetic field. The degree of polarization is 6%-8% along the jet, and remarkably constant, which is consistent with helical field models. The radio brightness of the jet suggests strong interaction with the ISM and hence a location near the disk plane. We observed NGC 7479 at four wavelengths with the VLA and Effelsberg radio telescopes. The equipartition strength is 35-40 micro-G for the total and >10 micro-G for the ordered magnetic field in the jet. The jet acts as a bright, polarized background. Faraday rotation between 3.5 and 6 cm and depolarization between 6 and 22 cm can be explained by magneto-ionic gas in front of the jet, with thermal electron densities of ~0.06 cm**(-3) in the bar and ~0.03 cm**(-3) outside the bar. The regular magnetic field along the bar points toward the nucleus on both sides. The regular field in the disk reveals multiple reversals, probably consisting of field loops stretched by a shearing gas flow in the bar. The projection of the jet bending in the sky plane is in the sense opposite to that of the underlying stellar and gaseous spiral structure. The bending in 3-D is most easily explained as a precessing jet, with an age less than 10**6 years. Our observations are consistent with very recent triggering, possibly by a minor merger. NGC 7479 provides a unique opportunity to study interaction-triggered 15-kpc scale radio jets within a spiral galaxy.Comment: 18 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

M-Theory Inflation from Multi M5-Brane Dynamics

We derive inflation from M-theory on S^1/Z_2 via the non-perturbative dynamics of N M5-branes. The open membrane instanton interactions between the M5-branes give rise to exponential potentials which are too steep for inflation individually but lead to inflation when combined together. The resulting type of inflation, known as assisted inflation, facilitates considerably the requirement of having all moduli, except the inflaton, stabilized at the beginning of inflation. During inflation the distances between the M5-branes, which correspond to the inflatons, grow until they reach the size of the S^1/Z_2 orbifold. At this stage the M5-branes will reheat the universe by dissolving into the boundaries through small instanton transitions. Further flux and non-perturbative contributions become important at this late stage, bringing inflation to an end and stabilizing the moduli. We find that with moderate values for N, one obtains both a sufficient amount of e-foldings and the right size for the spectral index.Comment: 30 pages, 3 figures; v3: one comment and refs adde

Reducing Annotation Need in Self-Explanatory Models for Lung Nodule Diagnosis

Feature-based self-explanatory methods explain their classification in terms of human-understandable features. In the medical imaging community, this semantic matching of clinical knowledge adds significantly to the trustworthiness of the AI. However, the cost of additional annotation of features remains a pressing issue. We address this problem by proposing cRedAnno, a data-/annotation-efficient self-explanatory approach for lung nodule diagnosis. cRedAnno considerably reduces the annotation need by introducing self-supervised contrastive learning to alleviate the burden of learning most parameters from annotation, replacing end-to-end training with two-stage training. When training with hundreds of nodule samples and only 1% of their annotations, cRedAnno achieves competitive accuracy in predicting malignancy, meanwhile significantly surpassing most previous works in predicting nodule attributes. Visualisation of the learned space further indicates that the correlation between the clustering of malignancy and nodule attributes coincides with clinical knowledge. Our complete code is open-source available: https://github.com/diku-dk/credanno.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Simulations of the Origin and Fate of the Galactic Center Cloud G2

We investigate the origin and fate of the recently discovered gas cloud G2 close to the Galactic Center. Our hydrodynamical simulations focussing on the dynamical evolution of the cloud in combination with currently available observations favor two scenarios: a Compact Cloud which started around the year 1995 and a Spherical Shell of gas, with an apocenter distance within the disk(s) of young stars and a radius of a few times the size of the Compact Cloud. The former is able to explain the detected signal of G2 in the position-velocity diagram of the Br gamma emission of the year 2008.5 and 2011.5 data. The latter can account for both, G2's signal as well as the fainter extended tail-like structure G2t seen at larger distances from the black hole and smaller velocities. In contrast, gas stripped from a compact cloud by hydrodynamical interactions is not able to explain the location of the detected G2t emission in the observed position-velocity diagrams. This favors the Spherical Shell Scenario and might be a severe problem for the Compact Cloud as well as the so-called Compact Source Scenario. From these first idealized simulations we expect a roughly constant feeding of the supermassive black hole through a nozzle-like structure over a long period, starting shortly after the closest approach in 2013.51 for the Compact Cloud. If the matter accretes in the hot accretion mode, we do not expect a significant boost of the current activity of Sgr A* for the Compact Cloud model, but a boost of the average infrared and X-ray luminosity by roughly a factor of 80 for the Spherical Shell scenario with order of magnitude variations on a timescale of a few months. The near-future evolution of the cloud will be a sensitive probe of the conditions of the gas distribution in the milli-parsec environment of the massive black hole in the Galactic Center.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, accepted by Ap

Yeast Protein Interactome Topology Provides Framework for Coordinated-Functionality

The architecture of the network of protein-protein physical interactions in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is exposed through the combination of two complementary theoretical network measures, betweenness centrality and `Q-modularity'. The yeast interactome is characterized by well-defined topological modules connected via a small number of inter-module protein interactions. Should such topological inter-module connections turn out to constitute a form of functional coordination between the modules, we speculate that this coordination is occurring typically in a pair-wise fashion, rather than by way of high-degree hub proteins responsible for coordinating multiple modules. The unique non-hub-centric hierarchical organization of the interactome is not reproduced by gene duplication-and-divergence stochastic growth models that disregard global selective pressures.Comment: Final, revised version. 13 pages. Please see Nucleic Acids open access article for higher resolution figure