Improved Neural Relation Detection for Knowledge Base Question Answering

Relation detection is a core component for many NLP applications including Knowledge Base Question Answering (KBQA). In this paper, we propose a hierarchical recurrent neural network enhanced by residual learning that detects KB relations given an input question. Our method uses deep residual bidirectional LSTMs to compare questions and relation names via different hierarchies of abstraction. Additionally, we propose a simple KBQA system that integrates entity linking and our proposed relation detector to enable one enhance another. Experimental results evidence that our approach achieves not only outstanding relation detection performance, but more importantly, it helps our KBQA system to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy for both single-relation (SimpleQuestions) and multi-relation (WebQSP) QA benchmarks.Comment: Accepted by ACL 2017 (updated for camera-ready

Where can we really find the First Stars' Remnants today?

A number of recent numerical investigations concluded that the remnants of rare structures formed at very high redshift, such as the very first stars and bright redshift z~6 QSOs, are preferentially located at the center of the most massive galaxy clusters at redshift z=0. In this paper we readdress this question using a combination of cosmological simulations of structure formation and extended Press-Schechter formalism and we show that the typical remnants of Population III stars are instead more likely to be found in a group environment, that is in dark matter halos of mass ~2x10^{13} h^{-1}M_sun. Similarly, the descendants of the brightest z~6 QSOs are expected to be in medium-sized clusters (mass of a few 10^{14} h^{-1}M_sun), rather than in the most massive superclusters (M>10^{15} h^{-1}M_sun) found within the typical 1 Gpc^3 cosmic volume where a bright z~6 QSO lives. The origin of past claims that the most massive clusters preferentially host these remnants is rooted in the numerical method used to initialize their numerical simulations: Only a small region of the cosmological volume of interest was simulated with sufficient resolution to identify low-mass halos at early times, and this region was chosen to host the most massive halo in the cosmological volume at late times. The conclusion that the earliest structures formed in the entire cosmological volume evolve into the most massive halo at late times was thus arrived at by construction. We demonstrate that, to the contrary, the first structures to form in a cosmological region evolve into relatively typical objects at later times. We propose alternative numerical methods for simulating the earliest structures in cosmological volumes.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, ApJ accepted, high resolution version of the paper available at http://www.stsci.edu/~trenti/papers/halo_evolution.pd

Small-scale CMB Temperature and Polarization Anisotropies due to Patchy Reionization

We study contributions from inhomogeneous (patchy) reionization to arcminute scale ($1000 < \ell < 10,000$) cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. We show that inhomogeneities in the ionization fraction, rather than in the mean density, dominate both the temperature and the polarization power spectra. Depending on the ionization history and the clustering bias of the ionizing sources, we find that rms temperature fluctuations range from 2 $\mu$K to 8 $\mu$K and the corresponding values for polarization are over two orders of magnitude smaller. Reionization can significantly bias cosmological parameter estimates and degrade gravitational lensing potential reconstruction from temperature maps but not from polarization maps. We demonstrate that a simple modeling of the reionization temperature power spectrum may be sufficient to remove the parameter bias. The high-$\ell$ temperature power spectrum will contain some limited information about the sources of reionization.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures. Minor changes to match version accepted by Ap

Fast Large Volume Simulations of the 21 cm Signal from the Reionization and pre-Reionization Epochs

While limited to low spatial resolution, the next generation low-frequency radio interferometers that target 21 cm observations during the era of reionization and prior will have instantaneous fields-of-view that are many tens of square degrees on the sky. Predictions related to various statistical measurements of the 21 cm brightness temperature must then be pursued with numerical simulations of reionization with correspondingly large volume box sizes, of order 1000 Mpc on one side. We pursue a semi-numerical scheme to simulate the 21 cm signal during and prior to Reionization by extending a hybrid approach where simulations are performed by first laying down the linear dark matter density field, accounting for the non-linear evolution of the density field based on second-order linear perturbation theory as specified by the Zel'dovich approximation, and then specifying the location and mass of collapsed dark matter halos using the excursion-set formalism. The location of ionizing sources and the time evolving distribution of ionization field is also specified using an excursion-set algorithm. We account for the brightness temperature evolution through the coupling between spin and gas temperature due to collisions, radiative coupling in the presence of Lyman-alpha photons and heating of the intergalactic medium, such as due to a background of X-ray photons. The hybrid simulation method we present is capable of producing the required large volume simulations with adequate resolution in a reasonable time so a large number of realizations can be obtained with variations in assumptions related to astrophysics and background cosmology that govern the 21 cm signal.Comment: 14 pages and 15 figures. New version to match accepted version for MNRAS. Code available in: http://www.SimFast21.or

Probing the first galaxies with the SKA

Observations of anisotropies in the brightness temperature of the 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen from the period before reionization would shed light on the dawn of the first stars and galaxies. In this paper, we use large-scale semi-numerical simulations to analyse the imprint on the 21 cm signal of spatial fluctuations in the Lyman-alpha flux arising from the clustering of the first galaxies. We show that an experiment such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) can probe this signal at the onset of reionization, giving us important information about the UV emission spectra of the first stars and characterizing their host galaxies. SKA-pathfinders with ~ 10% of the full collecting area should be capable of making a statistical detection of the 21 cm power spectrum at redshifts z 67 MHz). We then show that the SKA should be able to measure the three dimensional power spectrum as a function of the angle with the line of sight and discuss the use of the redshift space distortions as a way to separate out the different components of the 21 cm power spectrum. We demonstrate that, at least on large scales where the Lyman-alpha fluctuations are linear, they can be used as a model independent way to extract the power spectra due to these Lyman-alpha fluctuations.Comment: 13 pages, 17 figures. New version to match version accepted by A&A. Improved discussions on the Lyman-alpha simulation, adiabatic cooling fluctuations, the Fisher matrix approach and the Poisson term calculation. New version of the code available at: http://www.SimFast21.or

Contribution of Cross-Correlations to the 21cm Angular Power Spectrum in the Epoch of Reionization

Measurement of the 21cm hyperfine transition of neutral hydrogen provides a unique probe of the epoch of reionization and the Dark Ages. Three major mechanisms are believed to dominate the radiation process: emission from neutral hydrogen surrounding the ionized bubbles of first galaxies and/or quasars, emission from neutral hydrogen inside minihalos, and absorption of diffuse neutral hydrogen against the cosmic microwave background. In the present work, by simply combining the existing analytic models for the three mechanisms, we investigate the contribution of cross-correlation between these three components to the total 21cm angular power spectrum, in the sense that neutral hydrogen associated with different radiation processes traces the large-scale structures of underlying density perturbations. While the overall 21cm power spectrum remains almost unchanged with the inclusion of the cross-correlations, the cross-correlation may play a key role in the determination of the 21cm power spectrum during the transition of 21cm radiation from emission-dominated phase to absorption-dominated phase at redshift z~20. A significant suppression in the 21cm angular power spectrum during this transition is anticipated as the result of negative contribution of the cross-correlation between the absorption of diffuse neutral hydrogen and the emission components. Therefore, an accurate prediction of the cosmic 21cm power spectrum should take the cross-correlation into account especially at the transition phase.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Counterfactual thinking in cooperation dynamics

Counterfactual Thinking is a human cognitive ability studied in a wide variety of domains. It captures the process of reasoning about a past event that did not occur, namely what would have happened had this event occurred, or, otherwise, to reason about an event that did occur but what would ensue had it not. Given the wide cognitive empowerment of counterfactual reasoning in the human individual, the question arises of how the presence of individuals with this capability may improve cooperation in populations of self-regarding individuals. Here we propose a mathematical model, grounded on Evolutionary Game Theory, to examine the population dynamics emerging from the interplay between counterfactual thinking and social learning (i.e., individuals that learn from the actions and success of others) whenever the individuals in the population face a collective dilemma. Our results suggest that counterfactual reasoning fosters coordination in collective action problems occurring in large populations, and has a limited impact on cooperation dilemmas in which coordination is not required. Moreover, we show that a small prevalence of individuals resorting to counterfactual thinking is enough to nudge an entire population towards highly cooperative standards.Comment: 18 page

Signatures of reionization on Lyman alpha emitters

We use a semi-analytic model of Lyman alpha emitters (LAEs) to constrain the reionization history. By considering two physically motivated scenarios in which reionization ends either early (ERM, z_i ~ 7) or late (LRM, z_i ~ 6), we fix the global value of the IGM neutral fraction (e.g. chi_{HI}=3 times 10^{-4}, 0.15 at z=6.56 for the ERM and LRM, respectively) leaving only the star formation efficiency and the effective escape fraction of Lya photons as free parameters. The ERM fits the observed LAE luminosity function (LF) at z=5.7 and 6.56 requiring no redshift evolution or mass dependence of the star formation efficiency, and LAE star formation rates (SFR) of 3-103 solar masses/year, contributing approximately 8% of the cosmic SFR density at z=5.7. The LRM requires a physically uncomfortable drop of approximately 4.5 times in the SFR of the emitters from z=6.5 to 5.7. Thus, the data seem to imply that the Universe was already highly ionized at z=6.56. The mass-dependent Lya transmissivity is between 0.36-0.51 (ERM) and less than 0.26 (LRM) at z=6.56. The LF data at z=4.5 imply an extra Lya line damping factor of approximately 0.25 possibly due to dust; the presence of a (clumpy) dust component with E(B-V) ~ 0.28 is also required to reproduce the observed large Lya equivalent widths at the same redshift. Additional useful information can be extracted from the line profile (weighted) skewness, found to be S_W=10-17 Angstrom for the two reionization models, which shows an interesting L_alpha-chi_{HI} anti-correlation, holding under the model assumptions. The shortcomings of the model and strategies to overcome them are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, Accepted to MNRA

Measurements of the diffuse Galactic synchrotron spectral index and curvature from MeerKLASS pilot data

21cm intensity mapping experiments are bringing an influx of high spectral resolution observational data in the $\sim100$ MHz $- 1$ GHz regime. We use pilot $971-1075$ MHz data from MeerKAT in single-dish mode, recently used to test the calibration and data reduction scheme of the upcoming MeerKLASS survey, to probe the spectral index of diffuse synchrotron emission below 1 GHz within $145^{\circ} < \alpha < 180^{\circ}$, $-1^{\circ} < \delta < 8^{\circ}$. Through comparisons with data from the OVRO Long Wavelength Array and the Maipu and MU surveys, we find an average spectral index of $-2.75 < \beta < -2.71$ between 45 and 1055 MHz. By fitting for spectral curvature with a spectral index of the form $\beta + c \, {\rm{ln}}(\nu / 73~{\rm MHz})$, we measure $\beta = -2.55 \pm 0.13$ and $c = -0.12 \pm 0.05$ within our target field. Our results are in good agreement (within $1\sigma$) with existing measurements from experiments such as ARCADE2 and EDGES. These results show the calibration accuracy of current data and demonstrate that MeerKLASS will also be capable of achieving a secondary science goal of probing the interstellar medium.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Updated to match published paper (additional references and acknowledgements