2,952 research outputs found
Order-of-magnitude differences in computational performance of analog Ising machines induced by the choice of nonlinearity
Ising machines based on nonlinear analog systems are a promising method to
accelerate computation of NP-hard optimization problems. Yet, their analog
nature is also causing amplitude inhomogeneity which can deteriorate the
ability to find optimal solutions. Here, we investigate how the system's
nonlinear transfer function can mitigate amplitude inhomogeneity and improve
computational performance. By simulating Ising machines with polynomial,
periodic, sigmoid and clipped transfer functions and benchmarking them with
MaxCut optimization problems, we find the choice of transfer function to have a
significant influence on the calculation time and solution quality. For
periodic, sigmoid and clipped transfer functions, we report order-of-magnitude
improvements in the time-to-solution compared to conventional polynomial
models, which we link to the suppression of amplitude inhomogeneity induced by
saturation of the transfer function. This provides insights into the
suitability of systems for building Ising machines and presents an efficient
way for overcoming performance limitations
Block Crossings in Storyline Visualizations
Storyline visualizations help visualize encounters of the characters in a
story over time. Each character is represented by an x-monotone curve that goes
from left to right. A meeting is represented by having the characters that
participate in the meeting run close together for some time. In order to keep
the visual complexity low, rather than just minimizing pairwise crossings of
curves, we propose to count block crossings, that is, pairs of intersecting
bundles of lines.
Our main results are as follows. We show that minimizing the number of block
crossings is NP-hard, and we develop, for meetings of bounded size, a
constant-factor approximation. We also present two fixed-parameter algorithms
and, for meetings of size 2, a greedy heuristic that we evaluate
experimentally.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on
Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2016
From Equilibrium to Steady-State Dynamics after Switch-On of Shear
A relation between equilibrium, steady-state, and waiting-time dependent
dynamical two-time correlation functions in dense glass-forming liquids subject
to homogeneous steady shear flow is discussed. The systems under study show
pronounced shear thinning, i.e., a significant speedup in their steady-state
slow relaxation as compared to equilibrium. An approximate relation that
recovers the exact limit for small waiting times is derived following the
integration through transients (ITT) approach for the nonequilibrium
Smoluchowski dynamics, and is exemplified within a schematic model in the
framework of the mode-coupling theory of the glass transition (MCT). Computer
simulation results for the tagged-particle density correlation functions
corresponding to wave vectors in the shear-gradient directions from both
event-driven stochastic dynamics of a two-dimensional hard-disk system and from
previously published Newtonian-dynamics simulations of a three-dimensional
soft-sphere mixture are analyzed and compared with the predictions of the
ITT-based approximation. Good qualitative and semi-quantitative agreement is
found. Furthermore, for short waiting times, the theoretical description of the
waiting time dependence shows excellent quantitative agreement to the
simulations. This confirms the accuracy of the central approximation used
earlier to derive fluctuation dissipation ratios (Phys. Rev. Lett. 102,
135701). For intermediate waiting times, the correlation functions decay faster
at long times than the stationary ones. This behavior is predicted by our
theory and observed in simulations.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Phys Rev
Automated detection and classification of nuclei in immunohistochemical stainings for Fuchs' endothelial corneal dystrophy
Fuchs’ endothelial corneal dystrophy (FECD) is a degenerative disease that affects the elderly population, and which lacks a unifying pathogenic theory and tangible drug targets. Immunohistochemical stainings can be used to identify proteins involved in the pathogenesis of FECD. We introduce a method for the automatic quantification of the ratio of stained cells starting from full high-resolution cornea images. First, the endothelium is extracted using entropy information in a low-resolution resampling. Then, within the endothelium, we heuristically detect and classify nuclei based on their size, color, and the color of the surrounding cytoplasm. This method achieves comparable results to manual evaluation in a set of corneas of patients with and without FECD.status: publishe
Recent X-ray Observations and the Evolution of Hot Gas in Elliptical Galaxies: Evidence for Circumgalactic Gas
X-ray emitting gaseous halos, such as that in elliptical galaxies like NGC
4472, cannot have been produced solely from gas expelled from galactic stars.
In traditional models for the evolution of hot interstellar gas (cooling flows)
in ellipticals, the galaxies are assumed to have been cleared of gas by
SNII-driven winds at some early time then gas is subsequently replenished by
mass loss from an evolving population of old stars. To test this, we accurately
determine the stellar and dark halo mass of NGC 4472 using hydrostatic
equilibrium, then solve the standard time-dependent cooling flow equations to
recover the observed hot gas temperature and density distributions when evolved
to the present time. This procedure fails: the computed gas density gradient is
too steep, the total gas mass is too low, and the gas temperatures are much too
low. All variants on this basic procedure also fail: increasing the SNIa rate,
using the mass dropout assumption, arbitrarily adjusting uncertain
coefficients, etc. However, agreement is achieved if the galaxy is supplied
with additional, spatially-extended hot gas early in its evolution. This old
``circumgalactic'' gas can be retained to the present time and may be related
to cosmological ``secondary infall''.Comment: 15 pages in two-column AASTEX LaTeX including 1 table and 8 figures;
abstract corrected in replacement; accepted by Astrophysical Journa
Automated detection and classification of nuclei in immunohistochemical stainings for Fuchs\u27 endothelial corneal dystrophy
Fuchs’ endothelial corneal dystrophy (FECD) is a degenerative disease that affects the elderly population, and which lacks a unifying pathogenic theory and tangible drug targets. Immunohistochemical stainings can be used to identify proteins involved in the pathogenesis of FECD. We introduce a method for the automatic quantification of the ratio of stained cells starting from full high-resolution cornea images. First, the endothelium is extracted using entropy information in a low-resolution resampling. Then, within the endothelium, we heuristically detect and classify nuclei based on their size, color, and the color of the surrounding cytoplasm. This method achieves comparable results to manual evaluation in a set of corneas of patients with and without FECD
X-Ray Emission from Rotating Elliptical Galaxies
The slow inward flow of the hot gas in elliptical galaxy cooling flows is
nearly impossible to detect directly due to instrumental limitations. However,
in rotating galaxies, if the inflowing gas conserves angular momentum, it will
eventually form a disk. The X-ray signature of this phenomenon is a flattening
of the X-ray isophotes in the inner 1-10 kpc region. This effect is observable,
so we have searched for it in X-ray observations of six rotating and
non-rotating early-type galaxies, obtained mainly with the ROSAT PSPC and HRI
imagers. The ellipticities of the X-ray emission never increase toward the
central region, nor are the X-ray ellipticities significantly greater than the
ellipticities for the optical stellar emission. Central ellipticities in excess
of 0.5 were expected in rotating ellipticals whereas values of 0-0.2 are
measured. The failure to detect the expected signature requires a modification
to the standard cooling flow picture, possibly including partial galactic
winds, rapid mass drop-out, or turbulent redistribution of angular momentum.Comment: 34 postscript pages; ApJ, in press (Feb 10,2000
An explanation for metallicity effects on X-ray Binary properties
We show that irradiation induced stellar winds can explain two important
metallicity effects in X-ray binaries - the higher numbers and the softer
spectra of the X-ray binaries in metal rich globular clusters compared to the
metal poor ones. As has been previously noted by Iben, Tutukov and Fedorova,
the winds should be stronger at lower metallicity due to less efficient line
cooling. This will speed up the evolution of the LMXBs in metal poor clusters,
hence reducing their numbers. These winds can also provide extra material near
the accreting object which may create an intrinsic absorber to harden the X-ray
spectra of the metal poor cluster systems relative to the metal rich ones, as
suggested by observations. We outline some additional observational predictions
of the model.Comment: 6 pages, no figures, accepted to Ap
- …