Atomized Deep Learning Models

Deep learning models often tackle the intra-sample structure, such as the order of words in a sentence and pixels in an image, but have not pay much attention to the inter-sample relationship. In this paper, we show that explicitly modeling the inter-sample structure to be more discretized can potentially help model's expressivity. We propose a novel method, Atom Modeling, that can discretize a continuous latent space by drawing an analogy between a data point and an atom, which is naturally spaced away from other atoms with distances depending on their intra structures. Specifically, we model each data point as an atom composed of electrons, protons, and neutrons and minimize the potential energy caused by the interatomic force among data points. Through experiments with qualitative analysis in our proposed Atom Modeling on synthetic and real datasets, we find that Atom Modeling can improve the performance by maintaining the inter-sample relation and can capture an interpretable intra-sample relation by mapping each component in a data point to electron/proton/neutron

Knowledge-Grounded Reinforcement Learning

Receiving knowledge, abiding by laws, and being aware of regulations are common behaviors in human society. Bearing in mind that reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms benefit from mimicking humanity, in this work, we propose that an RL agent can act on external guidance in both its learning process and model deployment, making the agent more socially acceptable. We introduce the concept, Knowledge-Grounded RL (KGRL), with a formal definition that an agent learns to follow external guidelines and develop its own policy. Moving towards the goal of KGRL, we propose a novel actor model with an embedding-based attention mechanism that can attend to either a learnable internal policy or external knowledge. The proposed method is orthogonal to training algorithms, and the external knowledge can be flexibly recomposed, rearranged, and reused in both training and inference stages. Through experiments on tasks with discrete and continuous action space, our KGRL agent is shown to be more sample efficient and generalizable, and it has flexibly rearrangeable knowledge embeddings and interpretable behaviors

Alcohol Use, Abuse, and Dependency in Shanghai

The use of alcohol for social and ceremonial occasions was recorded in Chinese history as early as 1760 B.C. during the Yin Dynasty (Ci-Hai Encyclopedia, 1979:936). The cultural tradition of ancient China placed alcoholic beverages at the center of social occasions, which presumably was the origin of the adage: Without wine, there is no li (or etiquette). Thus, the use of alcoholic beverages has always been accompanied by the concept of propriety and the discharging of one\u27s role obligations m social functions, rather than that of personal indulgence

Creep behaviors and microstructural stabilities of Co-Al-W-Ta-Ti-based Superalloys

In last decade, the discovery of high-temperature stable γ\u27-Co3(Al, W) phase in Co-Al-W-base alloys motivated plentiful interests in designing the next generation γ\u27-strengthened Co-based superalloys. Continued efforts have been focused on increasing the γ\u27 solvus temperature and enhancing the γ/γ\u27 microstructural stability as well as improving the creep resistance at elevated temperatures in this class of superalloys. In the present work, the effects of Ti and Ta additions on the creep properties and the microstructural stabilities of Co-Al-W-Ta-Ti-based superalloys are investigated by means of integrated the experimental and computational approaches. The chemistry design of Co-Al-W-Ta-Ti alloys was supported by the thermodynamic calculations of phase stability using the Co-base alloys database in PandatTMdeveloped by the CALPHAD method. The atomic and the electronic structures for solute-strengthened (001) anti-phase boundaries (APB) of Co3(Al, TM) are investigated by first-principles calculations based on the density functional theory (DFT), where TM denotes transition metals. It is observed that at 1000oC, the creep property of a Co-based single-crystal superalloy containing Ti and Ta is superior in comparison with the other reported Co-Al-W-base single crystal alloys and the 1st generation commercial Ni-base single-crystal superalloys. The different creep behaviors between Co-based and Ni-based superalloys indicate that the creep deformation mechanism of Co-based superalloys is mainly associated with the stacking faults and anti-phase boundaries. Moreover, Co-Al-W-Ta-Ti model alloys have been developed with the variation of alloying additions, recently. Our designed alloys show better microstructural stability at higher temperature as well as high γ\u27 solvus temperature. DFT-based first principles calculations further reveal the complex electron structures induced by the variation of the lattice distortion around the fault layers in the solute-containing (001) APB. It is observed that the formation of the (001) APB in Co3Al changes the Co-centered deformation electron density isosurface from the typical tetrahedral shape in the FCC lattice into the “S” shape. With the segregation of solute atoms at (001) APB, the bond strength around the fault layers are increased by the electron redistribution by forming chemical bonds with Co, providing fundamental insights on interactions among alloying elements and their effects on APB and creep properties. The current study is helpful for continuous efforts on alloy design and development to improve temperature capability of γ\u27-strengthened Co-base superalloys

SDSS J013127.34−-032100.1: A newly discovered radio-loud quasar at z=5.18z=5.18 with extremely high luminosity

Only very few z>5 quasars discovered to date are radio-loud, with a radio-to-optical flux ratio (radio-loudness parameter) higher than 10. Here we report the discovery of an optically luminous radio-loud quasar, SDSS J013127.34-032100.1 (J0131-0321 in short), at z=5.18+-0.01 using the Lijiang 2.4m and Magellan telescopes. J0131-0321 has a spectral energy distribution consistent with that of radio-loud quasars. With an i-band magnitude of 18.47 and radio flux density of 33 mJy, its radio-loudness parameter is ~100. The optical and near-infrared spectra taken by Magellan enable us to estimate its bolometric luminosity to be L_bol ~ 1.1E48 erg/s, approximately 4.5 times greater than that of the most distant quasar known to date. The black hole mass of J0131-0321 is estimated to be 2.7E9 solar masses, with an uncertainty up to 0.4 dex. Detailed physical properties of this high-redshift, radio-loud, potentially super-Eddington quasar can be probed in the future with more dedicated and intensive follow-up observations using multi-wavelength facilities.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted to ApJ