Solving Set Cover with Pairs Problem using Quantum Annealing

Here we consider using quantum annealing to solve Set Cover with Pairs (SCP), an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem that plays an important role in networking, computational biology, and biochemistry. We show an explicit construction of Ising Hamiltonians whose ground states encode the solution of SCP instances. We numerically simulate the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in order to test the performance of quantum annealing for random instances and compare with that of simulated annealing. We also discuss explicit embedding strategies for realizing our Hamiltonian construction on the D-wave type restricted Ising Hamiltonian based on Chimera graphs. Our embedding on the Chimera graph preserves the structure of the original SCP instance and in particular, the embedding for general complete bipartite graphs and logical disjunctions may be of broader use than that the specific problem we deal with

Ultra wideband gigabit powerline communication

PhDPowerline Communication (PLC) has long been established for low data rate applications by the electric supply companies. Since 1991, the European CENELEC standard EN 50065 has ruled the use of 3 - 148.5KHz frequency range for narrow band PLC applications. Sim- ilar standard has been established by the IEEE in the US, where a frequency range of 50 - 450KHz is available. The fast growth of Internet since the 1990s accelerated the demands for digital communication services. Furthermore, with the develop- ment of in-home networking, there is a need to establish high speed data links between multiple household devices. This makes PLC sys- tems march rapidly into the high frequency range above 1MHz. Exist- ing broadband PLC system in the 1.6 - 30MHz frequency range only provides data rates smaller than 200Mbps. With the growing demand of multimedia services such as High De nition (HD) video streaming, much faster transmission speed up to Gigabits per second is required and this can be achieved by increasing the operating frequencies. Ultra Wideband (UWB) transmission in free space provides extremely broad bandwidth for short-range, high data rate applications. If UWB signals could be transmitted over the powerline channels in the high frequency range above 30MHz, data rates up to gigabits per second could be achieved. In this thesis, the possibility of implementing ultra wideband trans- mission over the low voltage indoor powerline is investigated. The starting point is to understand the signal propagation characteristics over powerline cables, in the UWB frequency range. Experimental re- sults indicate that the signal degrades at an acceptable rate over the mains cable in a scaled down UWB frequency band (50MHz - 1GHz), which provides a potential operation band for UWB over PLC ap- plications. Key component for the PLC system, a broadband Radio Frequency (RF) coupler is designed and developed, to introduce UWB signals to the transmission channel. With the channel properties and coupling unit, extensive experimental investigations are carried out to analyse the powerline network environment, including channel loss, noise and radiated emission. Furthermore, theoretical channel capac- ity and link budget are derived from measured parameters. It is shown that the indoor powerline is a suitable media for data transmission in the high frequency range from 50 to 550MHz in the home environment. Finally, system level performance is analysed by modelling the Phys- ical Layer (PHY) data transmission. The Multiband-OFDM UWB proposal for IEEE 802.15.3a standard is used to predict the transmis- sion performance under di erent propagation paths and data rates. The research work conducted in this project has proven that UWB over PLC is highly feasible for future in-home applications. With the global promotion of smart grid applications, UWB over PLC will play an important role in providing high speed data transmission over the power networks

Multifaceted effects of anti-inflammatory pectins in protecting β-cells and reducing responses against immunoisolating capsules for cell transplantation

The shortcomings of insulin therapy for Type 1 diabetes (T1D) can be improved by providing a new insulin-producing source to the patients, which regulates the glucose levels from minute-to-minute. Despite great successes have been achieved following the groundbreaking publication of the Edmonton protocol and infusion of islets into the portal vein, islet transplantation is not yet a widely applied treatment for T1D. The reasons for this are multifactorial, but the mandatory use of life-long immunosuppression to prevent graft rejection plays an important role. A promising approach to prevent the use of immunosuppression is the encapsulation of insulin-producing cells in semipermeable and immunoprotective membranes, also called immunoisolation. Although immunoisolation has shown to be effective in curing T1D, graft survival was limited to several months in most studies, which restricts its clinical application. Associated factors for the low survival rate are oxidative and inflammatory stress-induced graft loss and insufficient oxygen/nutrient supply caused by peri-capsular fibrotic overgrowth. The dietary fiber pectin might improve both limiting factors as it possesses the ability to support cell function and modulate immune responses. Here, we show that dietary pectin also has direct beneficial effects on islets, as well as the fermentation products of pectin. Addition of low DM-pectin to the intracapsular environment and on the surface of the capsule supports encapsulated islet graft survival and prevents fibrotic overgrowth. In this thesis, we present new insight in the pectin mechanism contributing to the management of diabetes and present novel applications of pectins as immunomodulatory and cell-protective biomaterial

Response Adaptive Design using Auxiliary and Primary Outcomes

Response adaptive designs intend to allocate more patients to better treatments without undermining the validity and the integrity of the trial. The immediacy of the primary response (e.g. deaths, remission) determines the efficiency of the response adaptive design, which often requires outcomes to be quickly or immediately observed. This presents difficulties for survival studies, which may require long durations to observe the primary endpoint. Therefore, we introduce auxiliary endpoints to assist the adaptation with the primary endpoint, where an auxiliary endpoint is generally defined as any measurement that is positively associated with the primary endpoint. Our proposed design (referred to as bivariate adaptive design) is based on the classical response adaptive design framework. The connection of auxiliary and primary endpoints is established through Bayesian method. We extend parameter space from one dimension to two dimensions, say primary and auxiliary efficacies, by implementing a conditional weigh function on the loss function of the design. The allocation ratio is updated at each stage by optimization of the loss function subject to the information provided for both the auxiliary and primary outcomes. We demonstrate several methods of joint modeling the auxiliary and primary outcomes. Through simulation studies, we show that the bivariate adaptive design is more effective in assigning patients to better treatments as compared with univariate optimal and balanced designs. As hoped, this joint-approach also reduces the expected number of patient failures and preserves the comparable power as compared with other designs

Time domain buffeting analysis of large-span cable-stayed bridge

Tese de mestrado. Estruturas de Engenharia Civil. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Multi-scale target detection based on morphological shared-weight neural network

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are a popular neural network structure for image based applications. This thesis discusses an alternative network, the morphological shared-weight neural network (MSNN) for object detection. In this thesis, three combined network structures are developed for multi-scale object detection. The dataset used for the experiments presented here were created by the author for this thesis study. The convolutional neural network is used as the baseline for judging the performance of the MSNN. Experiments suggest that when training data is limited, the MSNN has a more robust and precise performance as compared with the CNN

張賢亮《綠化樹》的心理分析

張賢亮〈綠化樹〉在1985年出版後，便吸引很多學者的注意，無論在內容及主題方面，學者們均不斷地進行反覆探討。但大部分的學者多採用社會歷史批評的角度出發，企圖發掘小說所反映的社會黑暗面知識分子不容於世、人慾橫流、政治迫害、人性被歪曲等。這方面的研究己相當廣泛及深入，本文若再從事這方面的研究，一來難有所突破，二來恐怕會被他人牽著鼻子走。 八十年代起，學者嘗試用西方文學理論來研究中國文學，希望從新的研究途徑，尋求突破，跳出社會歷史批評的規範。在眾多西方理論中，以心理分析最受學者垂青。心理分析主要是根據弗洛伊德(Sigmund Freud) 對人類心理結構中的無意識方面的強調。據弗洛伊德所說，個人的犬部分精神活動過程是無意識的，而且，人的一切行為根本上都是由我們所說的性慾促動的，弗洛伊德把這種根本 的精神力量稱作 力比多 (Libido) ，即性能量(Sexual Energy) 。換言之，心理分析運用在文學作品的研究上，可幫助我們深入了解作品主題和象徵意義，避免歷史批評方法過分著重歷史和社會背景，而忽略了文學作品本身的獨立性。 因此，本文嘗試用西方的心理分析法弗洛伊德理論，來對〈綠化樹〉進行分析，希望能從另一角度，探討作品中所流露的性心理，從而理解作品中男、女主角的行為。 但弗洛伊德的理論繁多，本論文只選取其中三個最主要的理論 一一 力比多、戀母情結、懷父情結，來分析〈綠化樹〉。 據弗洛伊德說，力比多慾望的滿足至少有三種途徑:用理智來克服 (壓抑) ; 投射到異性對象 (投射) ; 升華為藝術形象 (退卻)。章永磷及馬櫻花在故事中正正經歷力比多壓抑、投射、退卻。故選用力比多理論來分析此部作品是最適當的。 另外，章永磷在投射的過程中，由於受潛意誠的戀母原慾影響，才會愛上馬櫻花 ; 而馬縷花對章永琇的愛只限於精神上。由於他們的愛建基於精神上，才導致他們的愛無疾而終。所以在選取力比多理論的同時兼取弗洛伊德的戀母、懼父情結的理論作輔助。 整篇論文分為五部分，除引論外，先簡述作者生平和〈綠化樹〉 的內容大意 ; 後說 力比多 、 戀母情結 及 懼父情結 等理論 ; 接著用以上三個理論分析章永磷的心理變化及行為 ; 最後總結全文。 其實，本論文的研究目的，是希望通過心理分析，理解中國知識分子性慾被社會禁忌制約下，對他們的行為會有甚麼的影響

Spatial and Topological Analysis of Urban Land Cover Structure in New Orleans Using Multispectral Aerial Image and Lidar Data

Urban land use and land cover (LULC) mapping has been one of the major applications in remote sensing of the urban environment. Land cover refers to the biophysical materials at the surface of the earth (i.e. grass, trees, soils, concrete, water), while land use indicates the socio-economic function of the land (i.e., residential, industrial, commercial land uses). This study addresses the technical issue of how to computationally infer urban land use types based on the urban land cover structures from remote sensing data. In this research, a multispectral aerial image and high-resolution LiDAR topographic data have been integrated to investigate the urban land cover and land use in New Orleans, Louisiana. First, the LiDAR data are used to solve the problems associated with solar shadows of trees and buildings, building lean and occlusions in the multispectral aerial image. A two-stage rule-based classification approach has been developed, and the urban land cover of New Orleans has been classified into six categories: water, grass, trees, imperious ground, elevated bridges, and buildings with an overall classification accuracy of 94.2%, significantly higher than that of traditional per-pixel based classification method. The buildings are further classified into regular low-rising, multi-story, mid-rise, high-rise, and skyscrapers in terms of the height. Second, the land cover composition and structure in New Orleans have been quantitatively analyzed for the first time in terms of urban planning districts, and the information and knowledge about the characteristics of urban land cover components and structure for different types of land use functions have been discovered. Third, a graph-theoretic data model, known as relational attribute neighborhood graph (RANG), is adopted to comprehensively represent geometrical and thematic attributes, compositional and structural properties, spatial/topological relations between urban land cover patches (objects). Based on the evaluation of the importance of 26 spatial, thematic and topological variables in RANG, the random forest classification method is utilized to computationally infer and classify the urban land use in New Orleans into 7 types at the urban block level: single-family residential, two-family residential, multi-family residential, commercial, CBD, institutional, parks and open space, with an overall accuracy of 91.7%