The recursive neural network

This paper describes a special type of dynamic neural network called the Recursive Neural Network (RNN). The RNN is a single-input single-output nonlinear dynamical system with three subnets, a nonrecursive subnet and two recursive subnets. The nonrecursive subnet feeds current and previous input samples through a multi-layer perceptron with second order input units (SOMLP) [9]. In a similar fashion the two recursive subnets feed back previous output signals through SOMLPs. The outputs of the three subnets are summed to form the overall network output. The purpose of this paper is to describe the architecture of the RNN, to derive a learning algorithm for the network based on a gradient search, and to provide some examples of its use. The work in this paper is an extension of previous work on the RNN [10]. In previous work the RNN contained only two subnets, a nonrecursive subnet and a recursive subnet. Here we have added a second recursive subnet. In addition, both of the subnets in the previous RNN had linear input units. Here all three of the subnets have second order input units. In many cases this allows the RNN to solve problems more efficiently, that is with a smaller overall network. In addition, the use of the RNN for inverse modeling and control was never fully developed in the past. Here, for the first time, we derive the complete learning algorithm for the case where the RNN is used in the general model following configuration. This configuration includes the following as special cases: system modeling, nonlinear filtering, inverse modeling, nonlinear prediction and control

Using State-of-the-Art Speech Models to Evaluate Oral Reading Fluency in Ghana

This paper reports on a set of three recent experiments utilizing large-scale speech models to evaluate the oral reading fluency (ORF) of students in Ghana. While ORF is a well-established measure of foundational literacy, assessing it typically requires one-on-one sessions between a student and a trained evaluator, a process that is time-consuming and costly. Automating the evaluation of ORF could support better literacy instruction, particularly in education contexts where formative assessment is uncommon due to large class sizes and limited resources. To our knowledge, this research is among the first to examine the use of the most recent versions of large-scale speech models (Whisper V2 wav2vec2.0) for ORF assessment in the Global South. We find that Whisper V2 produces transcriptions of Ghanaian students reading aloud with a Word Error Rate of 13.5. This is close to the model's average WER on adult speech (12.8) and would have been considered state-of-the-art for children's speech transcription only a few years ago. We also find that when these transcriptions are used to produce fully automated ORF scores, they closely align with scores generated by expert human graders, with a correlation coefficient of 0.96. Importantly, these results were achieved on a representative dataset (i.e., students with regional accents, recordings taken in actual classrooms), using a free and publicly available speech model out of the box (i.e., no fine-tuning). This suggests that using large-scale speech models to assess ORF may be feasible to implement and scale in lower-resource, linguistically diverse educational contexts

NASA Near Earth Network (NEN), Deep Space Network (DSN) and Space Network (SN) Support of CubeSat Communications

There has been a historical trend to increase capability and drive down the Size, Weight and Power (SWAP) of satellites and that trend continues today. Small satellites, including systems conforming to the CubeSat specification, because of their low launch and development costs, are enabling new concepts and capabilities for science investigations across multiple fields of interest to NASA. NASA scientists and engineers across many of NASAs Mission Directorates and Centers are developing exciting CubeSat concepts and welcome potential partnerships for CubeSat endeavors. From a communications and tracking point of view, small satellites including CubeSats are a challenge to coordinate because of existing small spacecraft constraints, such as limited SWAP and attitude control, low power, and the potential for high numbers of operational spacecraft. The NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Programs Near Earth Network (NEN), Deep Space Network (DSN) and the Space Network (SN) are customer driven organizations that provide comprehensive communications services for space assets including data transport between a missions orbiting satellite and its Mission Operations Center (MOC). The NASA NEN consists of multiple ground antennas. The SN consists of a constellation of geosynchronous (Earth orbiting) relay satellites, named the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). The DSN currently makes available 13 antennas at its three tracking stations located around the world for interplanetary communication. The presentation will analyze how well these space communication networks are positioned to support the emerging small satellite and CubeSat market. Recognizing the potential support, the presentation will review the basic capabilities of the NEN, DSN and SN in the context of small satellites and will present information about NEN, DSN and SN-compatible flight radios and antenna development activities at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and across industry. The presentation will review concepts on how the SN multiple access capability could help locate CubeSats and provide a low-latency early warning system. The presentation will also present how the DSN is evolving to maximize use of its assets for interplanetary CubeSats. The critical spectrum-related topics of available and appropriate frequency bands, licensing, and coordination will be reviewed. Other key considerations, such as standardization of radio frequency interfaces and flight and ground communications hardware systems, will be addressed as such standardization may reduce the amount of time and cost required to obtain frequency authorization and perform compatibility and end-to-end testing. Examples of standardization that exist today are the NASA NEN, DSN and SN systems which have published users guides and defined frequency bands for high data rate communication, as well as conformance to CCSDS standards. The workshop session will also seek input from the workshop participants to better understand the needs of small satellite systems and to identify key development activities and operational approaches necessary to enhance communication and navigation support using NASA's NEN, DSN and SN

Fixed Points in Two--Neuron Discrete Time Recurrent Networks: Stability and Bifurcation Considerations

The position, number and stability types of fixed points of a two--neuron recurrent network with nonzero weights are investigated. Using simple geometrical arguments in the space of derivatives of the sigmoid transfer function with respect to the weighted sum of neuron inputs, we partition the network state space into several regions corresponding to stability types of the fixed points. If the neurons have the same mutual interaction pattern, i.e. they either mutually inhibit or mutually excite themselves, a lower bound on the rate of convergence of the attractive fixed points towards the saturation values, as the absolute values of weights on the self--loops grow, is given. The role of weights in location of fixed points is explored through an intuitively appealing characterization of neurons according to their inhibition/excitation performance in the network. In particular, each neuron can be of one of the four types: greedy, enthusiastic, altruistic or depressed. Both with and without the external inhibition/excitation sources, we investigate the position and number of fixed points according to character of the neurons. When both neurons self-excite (or self-inhibit) themselves and have the same mutual interaction pattern, the mechanism of creation of a new attractive fixed point is shown to be that of saddle node bifurcation. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-95-51

Learning a Class of Large Finite State Machines with a Recurrent Neural Network

One of the issues in any learning model is how it scales with problem size. Neural networks have not been immune to scaling issues. We show that a dynamically-driven discrete-time recurrent network (DRNN) can learn rather large grammatical inference problems when the strings of a finite memory machine (FMM) are encoded as temporal sequences. FMMs are a subclass of finite state machines which have a finite memory or a finite order of inputs and outputs. The DRNN that learns the FMM is a neural network that maps directly from the sequential machine implementation of the FMM. It has feedback only from the output and not from any hidden units; an example is the recurrent network of Narendra and Parthasarathy. (FMMs that have zero order in the feedback of outputs are called definite memory machines and are analogous to Time-delay or Finite Impulse Response neural networks.) Due to their topology these DRNNs are as least as powerful as any sequential machine implementation of a FMM and should be capable of representing any FMM. We choose to learn ``particular FMMs.\' Specifically, these FMMs have a large number of states (simulations are for $256$ and $512$ state FMMs) but have minimal order, relatively small depth and little logic when the FMM is implemented as a sequential machine. Simulations for the number of training examples versus generalization performance and FMM extraction size show that the number of training samples necessary for perfect generalization is less than that necessary to completely characterize the FMM to be learned. This is in a sense a best case learning problem since any arbitrarily chosen FMM with a minimal number of states would have much more order and string depth and most likely require more logic in its sequential machine implementation. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-94-94

Learning Long-Term Dependencies is Not as Difficult With NARX Recurrent Neural Networks

It has recently been shown that gradient descent learning algorithms for recurrent neural networks can perform poorly on tasks that involve long- term dependencies, i.e. those problems for which the desired output depends on inputs presented at times far in the past. In this paper we explore the long-term dependencies problem for a class of architectures called NARX recurrent neural networks, which have power ful representational capabilities. We have previously reported that gradient descent learning is more effective in NARX networks than in recurrent neural network architectures that have ``hidden states'' on problems includ ing grammatical inference and nonlinear system identification. Typically, the network converges much faster and generalizes better than other net works. The results in this paper are an attempt to explain this phenomenon. We present some experimental results which show that NARX networks can often retain information for two to three times as long as conventional recurrent neural networks. We show that although NARX networks do not circumvent the problem of long-term dependencies, they can greatly improve performance on long-term dependency problems. We also describe in detail some of the assumption regarding what it means to latch information robustly and suggest possible ways to loosen these assumptions. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-95-78

Product Unit Learning

Product units provide a method of automatically learning the higher-order input combinations required for the efficient synthesis of Boolean logic functions by neural networks. Product units also have a higher information capacity than sigmoidal networks. However, this activation function has not received much attention in the literature. A possible reason for this is that one encounters some problems when using standard backpropagation to train networks containing these units. This report examines these problems, and evaluates the performance of three training algorithms on networks of this type. Empirical results indicate that the error surface of networks containing product units have more local minima than corresponding networks with summation units. For this reason, a combination of local and global training algorithms were found to provide the most reliable convergence. We then investigate how `hints' can be added to the training algorithm. By extracting a common frequency from the input weights, and training this frequency separately, we show that convergence can be accelerated. A constructive algorithm is then introduced which adds product units to a network as required by the problem. Simulations show that for the same problems this method creates a network with significantly less neurons than those constructed by the tiling and upstart algorithms. In order to compare their performance with other transfer functions, product units were implemented as candidate units in the Cascade Correlation (CC) \cite{Fahlman90} system. Using these candidate units resulted in smaller networks which trained faster than when the any of the standard (three sigmoidal types and one Gaussian) transfer functions were used. This superiority was confirmed when a pool of candidate units of four different nonlinear activation functions were used, which have to compete for addition to the network. Extensive simulations showed that for the problem of implementing random Boolean logic functions, product units are always chosen above any of the other transfer functions. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-95-80

Performance of On-Line Learning Methods in Predicting Multiprocessor Memory Access Patterns

Shared memory multiprocessors require reconfigurable interconnection networks (INs) for scalability. These INs are reconfigured by an IN control unit. However, these INs are often plagued by undesirable reconfiguration time that is primarily due to control latency, the amount of time delay that the control unit takes to decide on a desired new IN configuration. To reduce control latency, a trainable prediction unit (PU) was devised and added to the IN controller. The PU's job is to anticipate and reduce control configuration time, the major component of the control latency. Three different on-line prediction techniques were tested to learn and predict repetitive memory access patterns for three typical parallel processing applications, the 2-D relaxation algorithm, matrix multiply and Fast Fourier Transform. The predictions were then used by a routing control algorithm to reduce control latency by configuring the IN to provide needed memory access paths before they were requested. Three prediction techniques were used and tested: 1). a Markov predictor, 2). a linear predictor and 3). a time delay neural network (TDNN) predictor. As expected, different predictors performed best on different applications, however, the TDNN produced the best overall results. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-96-59