Expectile Matrix Factorization for Skewed Data Analysis

Matrix factorization is a popular approach to solving matrix estimation problems based on partial observations. Existing matrix factorization is based on least squares and aims to yield a low-rank matrix to interpret the conditional sample means given the observations. However, in many real applications with skewed and extreme data, least squares cannot explain their central tendency or tail distributions, yielding undesired estimates. In this paper, we propose \emph{expectile matrix factorization} by introducing asymmetric least squares, a key concept in expectile regression analysis, into the matrix factorization framework. We propose an efficient algorithm to solve the new problem based on alternating minimization and quadratic programming. We prove that our algorithm converges to a global optimum and exactly recovers the true underlying low-rank matrices when noise is zero. For synthetic data with skewed noise and a real-world dataset containing web service response times, the proposed scheme achieves lower recovery errors than the existing matrix factorization method based on least squares in a wide range of settings.Comment: 8 page main text with 5 page supplementary documents, published in AAAI 201

A tight linear chromatic bound for (P3∪P2,W4P_3\cup P_2, W_4)-free graphs

For two vertex disjoint graphs $H$ and $F$, we use $H\cup F$ to denote the graph with vertex set $V(H)\cup V(F)$ and edge set $E(H)\cup E(F)$, and use $H+F$ to denote the graph with vertex set $V(H)\cup V(F)$ and edge set $E(H)\cup E(F)\cup\{xy\;|\; x\in V(H), y\in V(F)$$\}$. A $W_4$ is the graph $K_1+C_4$. In this paper, we prove that $\chi(G)\le 2\omega(G)$ if $G$ is a ($P_3\cup P_2, W_4$)-free graph. This bound is tight when $\omega =2$ and $3$, and improves the main result of Wang and Zhang. Also, this bound partially generalizes some results of Prashant {\em et al.}.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2308.05442, arXiv:2307.1194

Improving thermoelectric properties of p-type Bi2Te3-based alloys by spark plasma sintering

AbstractHigh-performance (Bi2Te3)x(Sb2Te3)1−x bulk materials were prepared by combining fusion technique with spark plasma sintering, and their thermoelectric properties were investigated. The electrical resistivity and Seebeck coefficient increase greatly and the thermal conductivity decreases significantly with the increase of Bi2Te3 content, which leads to a great improvement in the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT. The maximum ZT value reaches 1.33 at 398 K for the composition of 20%Bi2Te3-80%Sb2Te3 with 3% (mass fraction) excess Te

Effects of polymer additives in the bulk of turbulent thermal convection

We present experimental evidence that a minute amount of polymer additives can significantly enhance heat transport in the bulk region of turbulent thermal convection. The effects of polymer additives are found to be the \textit{suppression} of turbulent background fluctuations that give rise to incoherent heat fluxes that make no net contribution to heat transport, and at the same time to \textit{increase} the coherency of temperature and velocity fields. The suppression of small-scale turbulent fluctuations leads to more coherent thermal plumes that result in the heat transport enhancement. The fact that polymer additives can increase the coherency of thermal plumes is supported by the measurements of a number of local quantities, such as the extracted plume amplitude and width, the velocity autocorrelation functions and the velocity-temperature cross-correlation coefficient. The results from local measurements also suggest the existence of a threshold value for the polymer concentration, only above which can significant modification of the plume coherent properties and enhancement of the local heat flux be observed. Estimation of the plume emission rate suggests that the second effect of polymer additives is to stabilize the thermal boundary layers.Comment: 8 figures, 11 page

Nonlocal coherence harvesting from quantum vacuum

It is well known that nonlocal coherence reflects nonclassical correlations better than quantum entan-glement. Here, we analyze nonlocal coherence harvesting from the quantum vacuum to particle detectors adiabatically interacting with a quantum scalar field in Minkowski spacetime. We find that the harvesting-achievable separation range of nonlocal coherence is larger than that of quantum entanglement. As the energy gap grows sufficiently large, the detectors harvest less quantum coherence, while the detectors could extract more quantum entanglement from the vacuum state. Compared with the linear configuration and the scalene configuration, the equilateral triangle configuration is the best model to harvest tripartite coherence. Finally, we find a monogamous relationship, which means that tripartite l1-norm of coherence is essentially bipartite types.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure