Influence-Optimistic Local Values for Multiagent Planning --- Extended Version

Recent years have seen the development of methods for multiagent planning under uncertainty that scale to tens or even hundreds of agents. However, most of these methods either make restrictive assumptions on the problem domain, or provide approximate solutions without any guarantees on quality. Methods in the former category typically build on heuristic search using upper bounds on the value function. Unfortunately, no techniques exist to compute such upper bounds for problems with non-factored value functions. To allow for meaningful benchmarking through measurable quality guarantees on a very general class of problems, this paper introduces a family of influence-optimistic upper bounds for factored decentralized partially observable Markov decision processes (Dec-POMDPs) that do not have factored value functions. Intuitively, we derive bounds on very large multiagent planning problems by subdividing them in sub-problems, and at each of these sub-problems making optimistic assumptions with respect to the influence that will be exerted by the rest of the system. We numerically compare the different upper bounds and demonstrate how we can achieve a non-trivial guarantee that a heuristic solution for problems with hundreds of agents is close to optimal. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the upper bounds may improve the effectiveness of heuristic influence search, and discuss further potential applications to multiagent planning.Comment: Long version of IJCAI 2015 paper (and extended abstract at AAMAS 2015

Adaptive interference cancelation techniques for multicarrier modulated systems

Current wireline systems and wireless broadcasting systems employ multicarrier modulation (MCM). This includes the high-rate digital subscriber line (HDSL), digital audio broadcasting system (DAB) and the digital terrestrial television broadcasting system (dTTb). Multicarrier modulation is also envisioned for high-speed indoor wireless local area networks (WLAN). Additionally, multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA), a hybrid of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and CDMA, is proposed for the downlink (base-to-mobile) of a 3rd generation wireless system as part of the IMT-2000 standardization process. The performance of an MC-CDMA system--similar to a direct sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA) system--is limited by the presence of multiple access interference (MAI) . Downlink communications also suffers from MAI as a result of the multipath channel effect, even if it implements orthogonal code multiplexing. Additionally, transmissions aimed at different mobile users may be assigned different powers in order to increase the system capacity, essentially creating a near-far problem for some users. Due to the MC-CDMA signal structure the conventional decorrelator (based on the inverse of the correlation matrix) is dependent on the channel coefficients, suggesting the use of an adaptive multiuser detector, which can track a time-variant channel. The performance of a blind adaptive multiuser detector for MC-CDMA, based on the bootstrap algorithm, is investigated and compared to the performance of the conventional decorrelator. Additionally, the performance is investigated for different channel conditions. First, for a non-faded flat additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Second, for a frequency selective channel with and without correlation between the channel coefficients at the different subcarriers. In general, the mobile terminal suffers from limited available resources such as computing power or battery life and, therefore, cannot accommodate the same level of receiver complexity as the base station. For the downlink, however, the received signal structure is less complex due to the assumed synchronized transmission. Moreover, the mobile receiver is merely required to detect the desired user\u27s data stream. To reduce the complexity, detectors are proposed that do not require knowledge of the active users nor their respective codes, but rather use a combined code to represent all the interfering users at once. The performance of the reduced complexity conventional decorrelator is compared to the performance of an adaptive reduced complexity detector using the bootstrap algorithm. The performance of these detectors is also investigated for the aforementioned channel types. For spectral-efficiency, closely spaced subcarriers are used in a multicarrier modulated system. A resulting drawback is a high sensitivity of the performance to a frequency offset. This results from a Doppler shift, due to mobile movement, as well as from a mismatch between the carrier frequencies at the transmitter and receiver. To mitigate this problem an adaptive decorrelator based frequency offset correction scheme is developed for OFDM and its performance is investigated. Additionally, a blind frequency offset estimation and correction structure is proposed based on a stochastic gradient method. The convergence and statistical properties of this estimator are investigated. A blind adaptive joint multiuser detection and frequency offset correction structure for downlink MC-CDMA is developed. This detector is a combination of the structures for multiuser detection for MC-CDMA and frequency offset correction for OFDM. Moreover, the performance of this detector is investigated and compared to a joint detector based on a minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion

Gas signatures of Herbig Ae/Be disks probed with Herschel SPIRE spectroscopy

Herbig Ae/Be objects, like their lower mass counterparts T Tauri stars, are seen to form a stable circumstellar disk which is initially gas-rich and could ultimately form a planetary system. We present Herschel SPIRE 460-1540 GHz spectra of five targets out of a sample of 13 young disk sources, showing line detections mainly due to warm CO gas.Comment: to be published in proceedings of IAU symposium 299 (Victoria, BC, Canada, June 2013

Evolution: Selection For Positive Illusions

Everybody knows that overconfidence can be foolhardy. But a study reveals that having an overly positive self-image might confer an evolutionary advantage if the rewards outweigh the risks.MathematicsOrganismic and Evolutionary Biolog

Automatic Pulmonary Nodule Detection in CT Scans Using Convolutional Neural Networks Based on Maximum Intensity Projection

Accurate pulmonary nodule detection is a crucial step in lung cancer screening. Computer-aided detection (CAD) systems are not routinely used by radiologists for pulmonary nodule detection in clinical practice despite their potential benefits. Maximum intensity projection (MIP) images improve the detection of pulmonary nodules in radiological evaluation with computed tomography (CT) scans. Inspired by the clinical methodology of radiologists, we aim to explore the feasibility of applying MIP images to improve the effectiveness of automatic lung nodule detection using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). We propose a CNN-based approach that takes MIP images of different slab thicknesses (5 mm, 10 mm, 15 mm) and 1 mm axial section slices as input. Such an approach augments the two-dimensional (2-D) CT slice images with more representative spatial information that helps discriminate nodules from vessels through their morphologies. Our proposed method achieves sensitivity of 92.67% with 1 false positive per scan and sensitivity of 94.19% with 2 false positives per scan for lung nodule detection on 888 scans in the LIDC-IDRI dataset. The use of thick MIP images helps the detection of small pulmonary nodules (3 mm-10 mm) and results in fewer false positives. Experimental results show that utilizing MIP images can increase the sensitivity and lower the number of false positives, which demonstrates the effectiveness and significance of the proposed MIP-based CNNs framework for automatic pulmonary nodule detection in CT scans. The proposed method also shows the potential that CNNs could gain benefits for nodule detection by combining the clinical procedure.Comment: Submitted to IEEE TM