2,969 research outputs found
Building Machines That Learn and Think Like People
Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has renewed interest in
building systems that learn and think like people. Many advances have come from
using deep neural networks trained end-to-end in tasks such as object
recognition, video games, and board games, achieving performance that equals or
even beats humans in some respects. Despite their biological inspiration and
performance achievements, these systems differ from human intelligence in
crucial ways. We review progress in cognitive science suggesting that truly
human-like learning and thinking machines will have to reach beyond current
engineering trends in both what they learn, and how they learn it.
Specifically, we argue that these machines should (a) build causal models of
the world that support explanation and understanding, rather than merely
solving pattern recognition problems; (b) ground learning in intuitive theories
of physics and psychology, to support and enrich the knowledge that is learned;
and (c) harness compositionality and learning-to-learn to rapidly acquire and
generalize knowledge to new tasks and situations. We suggest concrete
challenges and promising routes towards these goals that can combine the
strengths of recent neural network advances with more structured cognitive
models.Comment: In press at Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Open call for commentary
proposals (until Nov. 22, 2016).
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/information/calls-for-commentary/open-calls-for-commentar
Towards More Data-Aware Application Integration (extended version)
Although most business application data is stored in relational databases,
programming languages and wire formats in integration middleware systems are
not table-centric. Due to costly format conversions, data-shipments and faster
computation, the trend is to "push-down" the integration operations closer to
the storage representation.
We address the alternative case of defining declarative, table-centric
integration semantics within standard integration systems. For that, we replace
the current operator implementations for the well-known Enterprise Integration
Patterns by equivalent "in-memory" table processing, and show a practical
realization in a conventional integration system for a non-reliable,
"data-intensive" messaging example. The results of the runtime analysis show
that table-centric processing is promising already in standard, "single-record"
message routing and transformations, and can potentially excel the message
throughput for "multi-record" table messages.Comment: 18 Pages, extended version of the contribution to British
International Conference on Databases (BICOD), 2015, Edinburgh, Scotlan
Private Multiplicative Weights Beyond Linear Queries
A wide variety of fundamental data analyses in machine learning, such as
linear and logistic regression, require minimizing a convex function defined by
the data. Since the data may contain sensitive information about individuals,
and these analyses can leak that sensitive information, it is important to be
able to solve convex minimization in a privacy-preserving way.
A series of recent results show how to accurately solve a single convex
minimization problem in a differentially private manner. However, the same data
is often analyzed repeatedly, and little is known about solving multiple convex
minimization problems with differential privacy. For simpler data analyses,
such as linear queries, there are remarkable differentially private algorithms
such as the private multiplicative weights mechanism (Hardt and Rothblum, FOCS
2010) that accurately answer exponentially many distinct queries. In this work,
we extend these results to the case of convex minimization and show how to give
accurate and differentially private solutions to *exponentially many* convex
minimization problems on a sensitive dataset
Network-wide Configuration Synthesis
Computer networks are hard to manage. Given a set of high-level requirements
(e.g., reachability, security), operators have to manually figure out the
individual configuration of potentially hundreds of devices running complex
distributed protocols so that they, collectively, compute a compatible
forwarding state. Not surprisingly, operators often make mistakes which lead to
downtimes. To address this problem, we present a novel synthesis approach that
automatically computes correct network configurations that comply with the
operator's requirements. We capture the behavior of existing routers along with
the distributed protocols they run in stratified Datalog. Our key insight is to
reduce the problem of finding correct input configurations to the task of
synthesizing inputs for a stratified Datalog program. To solve this synthesis
task, we introduce a new algorithm that synthesizes inputs for stratified
Datalog programs. This algorithm is applicable beyond the domain of networks.
We leverage our synthesis algorithm to construct the first network-wide
configuration synthesis system, called SyNET, that support multiple interacting
routing protocols (OSPF and BGP) and static routes. We show that our system is
practical and can infer correct input configurations, in a reasonable amount
time, for networks of realistic size (> 50 routers) that forward packets for
multiple traffic classes.Comment: 24 Pages, short version published in CAV 201
Observed Variability at 1um and 4um in the Y0 Brown Dwarf WISEP J173835.52+273258.9
We have monitored photometrically the Y0 brown dwarf WISEP
J173835.52+273258.9 (W1738) at both near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. This ~1
Gyr-old 400K dwarf is at a distance of 8pc and has a mass around 5 M_Jupiter.
We observed W1738 using two near-infrared filters at lambda~1um, Y and J, on
Gemini observatory, and two mid-infrared filters at lambda~4um, [3.6] and
[4.5], on the Spitzer observatory. Twenty-four hours were spent on the source
by Spitzer on each of June 30 and October 30 2013 UT. Between these
observations, around 5 hours were spent on the source by Gemini on each of July
17 and August 23 2013 UT. The mid-infrared light curves show significant
evolution between the two observations separated by four months. We find that a
double sinusoid can be fit to the [4.5] data, where one sinusoid has a period
of 6.0 +/- 0.1 hours and the other a period of 3.0 +/- 0.1 hours. The
near-infrared observations suggest variability with a ~3.0 hour period,
although only at a <~2 sigma confidence level. We interpret our results as
showing that the Y dwarf has a 6.0 +/- 0.1 hour rotation period, with one or
more large-scale surface features being the source of variability. The
peak-to-peak amplitude of the light curve at [4.5] is 3%. The amplitude of the
near-infrared variability, if real, may be as high as 5 to 30%. Intriguingly,
this size of variability and the wavelength dependence can be reproduced by
atmospheric models that include patchy KCl and Na_2S clouds and associated
small changes in surface temperature. The small number of large features, and
the timescale for evolution of the features, is very similar to what is seen in
the atmospheres of the solar system gas giants.Comment: Accepted by ApJ July 26 2016. Twenty-six pages include 8 Figures and
5 Table
The impact of sound field systems on learning and attention in elementary school classrooms
Purpose: An evaluation of the installation and use of sound field systems (SFS) was carried out to investigate their impact on teaching and learning in elementary school classrooms. Methods: The evaluation included acoustic surveys of classrooms, questionnaire surveys of students and teachers and experimental testing of students with and without the use of SFS. Students â perceptions of classroom environments and objective data evaluating change in performance on cognitive and academic assessments with amplification over a six month period are reported. Results: Teachers were positive about the use of SFS in improving childrenâs listening and attention to verbal instructions. Over time students in amplified classrooms did not differ from those in nonamplified classrooms in their reports of listening conditions, nor did their performance differ in measures of numeracy, reading or spelling. Use of SFS in the classrooms resulted in significantly larger gains in performance in the number of correct items on the nonverbal measure of speed of processing and the measure of listening comprehension. Analysis controlling for classroom acoustics indicated that students â listening comprehension score
Assessing the impact of Laurentide Ice Sheet topography on glacial climate
Simulations of past climates require altered boundary conditions to account
for known shifts in the Earth system. For the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and
subsequent deglaciation, the existence of large Northern Hemisphere ice
sheets caused profound changes in surface topography and albedo. While
ice-sheet extent is fairly well known, numerous conflicting reconstructions
of ice-sheet topography suggest that precision in this boundary condition is
lacking. Here we use a high-resolution and oxygen-isotope-enabled
fully coupled global circulation model (GCM) (GISS ModelE2-R), along with
two different reconstructions of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) that provide
maximum and minimum estimates of LIS elevation, to assess the range of
climate variability in response to uncertainty in this boundary condition.
We present this comparison at two equilibrium time slices: the LGM, when
differences in ice-sheet topography are maximized, and 14 ka, when
differences in maximum ice-sheet height are smaller but still exist.
Overall, we find significant differences in the climate response to LIS
topography, with the larger LIS resulting in enhanced Atlantic Meridional
Overturning Circulation and warmer surface air temperatures, particularly
over northeastern Asia and the North Pacific. These up- and downstream effects
are associated with differences in the development of planetary waves in the
upper atmosphere, with the larger LIS resulting in a weaker trough over
northeastern Asia that leads to the warmer temperatures and decreased albedo
from snow and sea-ice cover. Differences between the 14 ka simulations are
similar in spatial extent but smaller in magnitude, suggesting that climate
is responding primarily to the larger difference in maximum LIS elevation in
the LGM simulations. These results suggest that such uncertainty in
ice-sheet boundary conditions alone may significantly impact the results of
paleoclimate simulations and their ability to successfully simulate past
climates, with implications for estimating climate sensitivity to greenhouse
gas forcing utilizing past climate states
Medium-separation binaries do not affect the first steps of planet formation
The first steps of planet formation are marked by the growth and
crystallization of sub-micrometer-sized dust grains accompanied by dust
settling toward the disk midplane. In this paper we explore whether the first
steps of planet formation are affected by the presence of medium-separation
stellar companions. We selected two large samples of disks around single and
binary T Tauri stars in Taurus that are thought to have only a modest age
spread of a few Myr. The companions of our binary sample are at projected
separations between 10 and 450 AU with masses down to about 0.1 solar masses.
We used the strength and shape of the 10 micron silicate emission feature as a
proxy for grain growth and for crystallization respectively. The degree of dust
settling was evaluated from the ratio of fluxes at two different mid-infrared
wavelengths. We find no statistically significant difference between the
distribution of 10 micron silicate emission features from single and binary
systems. In addition, the distribution of disk flaring is indistinguishable
between the single and binary system samples. These results show that the first
steps of planet formation are not affected by the presence of a companion at
tens of AU.Comment: To appear in the Astrophysical Journa
The Hardness of Embedding Grids and Walls
The dichotomy conjecture for the parameterized embedding problem states that
the problem of deciding whether a given graph from some class of
"pattern graphs" can be embedded into a given graph (that is, is isomorphic
to a subgraph of ) is fixed-parameter tractable if is a class of graphs
of bounded tree width and -complete otherwise.
Towards this conjecture, we prove that the embedding problem is
-complete if is the class of all grids or the class of all walls
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