AI Chatbot Interface

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  • Geometric hashing

    Geometric hashing

    In computer science, geometric hashing is a method for efficiently finding two-dimensional objects represented by discrete points that have undergone an affine transformation, though extensions exist to other object representations and transformations. In an off-line step, the objects are encoded by treating each pair of points as a geometric basis. The remaining points can be represented in an invariant fashion with respect to this basis using two parameters. For each point, its quantized transformed coordinates are stored in the hash table as a key, and indices of the basis points as a value. Then a new pair of basis points is selected, and the process is repeated. In the on-line (recognition) step, randomly selected pairs of data points are considered as candidate bases. For each candidate basis, the remaining data points are encoded according to the basis and possible correspondences from the object are found in the previously constructed table. The candidate basis is accepted if a sufficiently large number of the data points index a consistent object basis. Geometric hashing was originally suggested in computer vision for object recognition in 2D and 3D, but later was applied to different problems such as structural alignment of proteins. == Geometric hashing in computer vision == Geometric hashing is a method used for object recognition. Let’s say that we want to check if a model image can be seen in an input image. This can be accomplished with geometric hashing. The method could be used to recognize one of the multiple objects in a base, in this case the hash table should store not only the pose information but also the index of object model in the base. === Example === For simplicity, this example will not use too many point features and assume that their descriptors are given by their coordinates only (in practice local descriptors such as SIFT could be used for indexing). ==== Training Phase ==== Find the model's feature points. Assume that 5 feature points are found in the model image with the coordinates ( 12 , 17 ) ; {\displaystyle (12,17);} ( 45 , 13 ) ; {\displaystyle (45,13);} ( 40 , 46 ) ; {\displaystyle (40,46);} ( 20 , 35 ) ; {\displaystyle (20,35);} ( 35 , 25 ) {\displaystyle (35,25)} , see the picture. Introduce a basis to describe the locations of the feature points. For 2D space and similarity transformation the basis is defined by a pair of points. The point of origin is placed in the middle of the segment connecting the two points (P2, P4 in our example), the x ′ {\displaystyle x'} axis is directed towards one of them, the y ′ {\displaystyle y'} is orthogonal and goes through the origin. The scale is selected such that absolute value of x ′ {\displaystyle x'} for both basis points is 1. Describe feature locations with respect to that basis, i.e. compute the projections to the new coordinate axes. The coordinates should be discretised to make recognition robust to noise, we take the bin size 0.25. We thus get the coordinates ( − 0.75 , − 1.25 ) ; {\displaystyle (-0.75,-1.25);} ( 1.00 , 0.00 ) ; {\displaystyle (1.00,0.00);} ( − 0.50 , 1.25 ) ; {\displaystyle (-0.50,1.25);} ( − 1.00 , 0.00 ) ; {\displaystyle (-1.00,0.00);} ( 0.00 , 0.25 ) {\displaystyle (0.00,0.25)} Store the basis in a hash table indexed by the features (only transformed coordinates in this case). If there were more objects to match with, we should also store the object number along with the basis pair. Repeat the process for a different basis pair (Step 2). It is needed to handle occlusions. Ideally, all the non-colinear pairs should be enumerated. We provide the hash table after two iterations, the pair (P1, P3) is selected for the second one. Hash Table: Most hash tables cannot have identical keys mapped to different values. So in real life one won’t encode basis keys (1.0, 0.0) and (-1.0, 0.0) in a hash table. ==== Recognition Phase ==== Find interesting feature points in the input image. Choose an arbitrary basis. If there isn't a suitable arbitrary basis, then it is likely that the input image does not contain the target object. Describe coordinates of the feature points in the new basis. Quantize obtained coordinates as it was done before. Compare all the transformed point features in the input image with the hash table. If the point features are identical or similar, then increase the count for the corresponding basis (and the type of object, if any). For each basis such that the count exceeds a certain threshold, verify the hypothesis that it corresponds to an image basis chosen in Step 2. Transfer the image coordinate system to the model one (for the supposed object) and try to match them. If successful, the object is found. Otherwise, go back to Step 2. === Finding mirrored pattern === It seems that this method is only capable of handling scaling, translation, and rotation. However, the input image may contain the object in mirror transform. Therefore, geometric hashing should be able to find the object, too. There are two ways to detect mirrored objects. For the vector graph, make the left side positive, and the right side negative. Multiplying the x position by -1 will give the same result. Use 3 points for the basis. This allows detecting mirror images (or objects). Actually, using 3 points for the basis is another approach for geometric hashing. === Geometric hashing in higher-dimensions === Similar to the example above, hashing applies to higher-dimensional data. For three-dimensional data points, three points are also needed for the basis. The first two points define the x-axis, and the third point defines the y-axis (with the first point). The z-axis is perpendicular to the created axis using the right-hand rule. Notice that the order of the points affects the resulting basis

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  • BioCreative

    BioCreative

    BioCreAtIvE (A critical assessment of text mining methods in molecular biology) consists in a community-wide effort for evaluating information extraction and text mining developments in the biological domain. It was preceded by the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) Challenge Cup for detection of gene mentions. == Community Challenges == === First edition (2004-2005) === Three main tasks were posed at the first BioCreAtIvE challenge: the entity extraction task, the gene name normalization task, and the functional annotation of gene products task. The data sets produced by this contest serve as a Gold Standard training and test set to evaluate and train Bio-NER tools and annotation extraction tools. === Second edition (2006-2007) === The second BioCreAtIvE challenge (2006-2007) had also 3 tasks: detection of gene mentions, extraction of unique idenfiers for genes and extraction information related to physical protein-protein interactions. It counted with participation of 44 teams from 13 countries. === Third edition (2011-2012) === The third edition of BioCreative included for the first time the InterActive Task (IAT), designed to evaluate the practical usability of text mining tools in real-world biocuration tasks. === Fifth edition (2016) === BioCreative V had 5 different tracks, including an interactive task (IAT) for usability of text mining systems and a track using the BioC format for curating information for BioGRID.

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  • Documentation science

    Documentation science

    Documentation science is the study of the recording and retrieval of information. It includes methods for storing, retrieving, and sharing of information captured on physical as well as digital documents. This field is closely linked to the fields of library science and information science but has its own theories and practices. The term documentation science was coined by Belgian lawyer and peace activist Paul Otlet. He is considered to be the forefather of information science. He along with Henri La Fontaine laid the foundations of documentation science as a field of study. Professionals in this field are called documentalists. Over the years, documentation science has grown to become a large and important field of study. Evolving from traditional practices like archiving and retrieval to modern theories about the nature of documents, novel methods for organizing digital information, and applications in libraries, research, healthcare, business, and technology and more. This field continues to evolve in the digital age. == Developments in documentation science == 1895: The International Institute of Bibliography (originally Institut International de Bibliographie, IIB) was established on 12 September 1895, in Brussels, Belgium by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. It aimed to catalog all recorded knowledge using a universal classification system now known as the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC). 1931: International Institute of Bibliography (originally Institut International de Bibliographie, IIB) was renamed The International Institute for Documentation, (Institut International de Documentation, IID). 1934: Paul Otlet envisioned a “radiated library,” a global network of interconnected documents accessible from anywhere via telecommunication. This early idea is now seen as a forerunner of the internet. 1937: American Documentation Institute was founded (1968 nameshift to American Society for Information Science). 1951: Suzanne Briet published Qu'est-ce que la documentation? where she proposed that “a document is evidence in support of a fact,” expanding the definition to include objects such as animals in zoos when they are part of a scientific study. This was a significant theoretical shift in defining documents. 1965-1990: Documentation departments were established, for example, large research libraries, online computer retrieval systems and more. The persons doing the searches were called documentalists. But with the appearance of first CD-ROM databases in the mid-1980s and later the internet in 1990s, these intermediary searches decreased and most such departments closed or merged with other departments. 1996: "Dokvit", Documentation Studies, was established in 1996 at the University of Tromsø in Norway. 2001: The Document Academy was established. It is an international network that celebrates documentation. It was conducted by The Program of Documentation Studies, University of Tromsø, Norway and The School of Information Management and Systems, UC Berkeley. 2003: The first Document Research Conference (DOCAM), a series of conferences made by the Document Academy. DOCAM '03 (2003) was held 13–15 August 2003 at The School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) at the University of California, Berkeley. 2007: Michael Buckland, Ronald Day, and Birger Hjørland expanded the theoretical foundations of documentation science. They researched and explored documents to be social artifacts, the role of ideology in classification, and how documents influenced knowledge systems. 2010s: The concept of post-documentation or “documentality” began in the 2010s, which focused on how digital traces (e.g., tweets, logs) function as documents without traditional physical form. This led to new thinking in document theory. 2016–present: The Document Academy's DOCAM conferences have continued, offering ongoing developments in the theory and practice of documentation. Themes include affect, memory, activism, and born-digital records. 2017: The journal Information Research published special issues addressing “document theory,” including views on documentation in virtual environments and digital archives. 2020–present: The growth of research data management (RDM) and open science has made documentation practices central to data sharing, metadata standards, and reproducibility in scientific work. == Theoretical foundations == Documentation science has some deep theories that explain what a document is, how people use documents, and how they are organized. These concepts were introduced by scholars who have not only studied libraries, but also philosophy, language, and social sciences. Suzanne Briet described a document as “any material form of evidence” that is made to be used as proof or to share information. An antelope in a zoo, for example, can be a document because it is being studied, classified, and described. Documents are not just things or materials but are also shaped by society. Michael Buckland noted that documents have meaning only when people agree they are useful or valid as information. He explained a document becomes a document when someone decides to use it as evidence. Ronald Day wrote about how documentation is not neutral, it can be influenced by power, ideology, and politics. He claimed that classification systems, like how libraries organize books, are not just technical tools. They also show what kinds of knowledge are seen as more important than others. In recent years, new theories have been introduced, like “documentality” by Maurizio Ferraris. He proposed that a document does not have to be a paper or file, it can also be something digital like a tweet, a database entry, or a log file, as long as it leaves a trace that can be looked at later. This theory helps explain modern digital documents. == Methodologies and practice == Documentation science includes many methods that help people collect, organize, store, and find information. These practices are used in libraries, archives, research labs, companies, and now also in online systems. === Collecting and creating documents === In the past, documentation work included gathering books, articles, reports, and other printed materials. People created records of these materials manually, using catalog cards, indexes, or bibliographies. Paul Otlet’s work with the Universal Bibliographic Repertory is one example. He created millions of card entries to organize knowledge from around the world. Today, documents are not only created by humans. Computers and machines also generate documents, like log files, metadata, and sensor data. These need new tools and methods for collection and management. === Organizing information === Organizing documents has always been a foundational element of documentation science. Methods like classification (dividing things into groups) and indexing (making lists of topics or keywords) help individuals find what they need. A widely used system is the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) developed by Otlet and La Fontaine. Another is the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) used in the majority of U.S. libraries. Indexing can be performed by humans or by software programs that read the text and add tags to documents. Metadata is also used to describe documents. Metadata is “data about data” like the title, author, date, and subject of a document. Standards like Dublin Core are used in digital libraries to keep metadata consistent. === Retrieval and access === One of the main objectives of documentation is helping users find the right document. This is called information retrieval. In the past, this meant using catalog drawers or printed indexes. Today, people use search engines, databases, and digital libraries. Modern retrieval tools use Boolean logic, ranking algorithms, and sometimes machine learning to show the most useful results first. This is part of what is studied in both documentation science and information retrieval. === Preservation and archiving === Documents require long-term storage. This is called preservation of documents. Printed documents can be damaged by light, pests, or even time on the other hand digital documents can be deemed worthless if formats become outdated or storage facilities fail. Archivists use methods like migration, which includes moving files to new formats, and emulation, which replicates obsolete systems, to preserve materials. These methods and tools are ever changing as new technologies develop. But the main objective of documentation has remained the same, which is to keep information safe, organized, and easy to find. == Documentation in the digital age == With the expansion of the internet, computers, and cloud storage, documents are no longer just books, papers, or reports. They can now be emails, tweets, videos, websites, databases, or even log files created by machines. === Born-digital documents === Many documents today are created directly in digital form. These are called born-digit

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  • MaPS S.A.

    MaPS S.A.

    MaPS S.A. is a software editor founded in 2011 by Thierry Muller. The company is headquartered in Luxembourg. Its platform, called MaPS System, provides Data Management software for Multichannel Marketing. == History and funding == The first version of MaPS System was released under the agency Prem1um S.A. in 2005 in the partnership with Pingroom agency. In combination with MaPS System, Prem1um also provided various consulting services in Marketing, Publishing and Sales. This is where MaPS System takes its names (M stands for Marketing, P for Publishing and S for Sales). In 2011, after being successful, Prem1um S.A. decided to enable the software MaPS System to operate independently under MaPS S.A., as a separate company and editor of the software. The first financial supports were provided by Malta ICI, a Venture Capital firm, and the local partner Chameleon Invest, a seed-capital fund led by Business Angels, who invested €900,000. In a second investment round in 2014 led by Newion Investments, a Venture Capital firm, €1.4 Million were raised, thus amounting to total assets of €2.2 Million. In 2016, the company was taken over by three private investors. In 2018, after two years of continuous growth and European expansion in Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, MaPS S.A acquired Awevo, an e-commerce web agency. == Products == The services included in MaPS System range from the data centralization, Data Governance to an optimized Multichannel Marketing. The software currently includes more than 35 modules for Master Data Management, Product Information Management, Digital Asset Management, Business Process Management including catalogue Publishing features. == Certifications == In 2019, MaPS System and Awevo received "Made in Luxembourg" label, given to the companies whose services are entirely designed in Luxembourg, without any production or development offshoring. MaPS System is a member of ICT Cluster by Luxinnovation.

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  • Jordan Antiquities Database and Information System

    Jordan Antiquities Database and Information System

    The Jordan Antiquities Database and Information System (JADIS) was a computer database of antiquities in Jordan, the first of its kind in the Arab world. It was established by the Department of Antiquities in 1990, in cooperation with the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman and sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development. JADIS was in use until 2002, when it was superseded by a new system, MEGA-J. Over 10,841 antiquities were registered in the database. An introduction and printed summary of the database was published by the Department of Antiquities in 1994, edited by Gaetano Palumbo.

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  • Physical schema

    Physical schema

    A physical data model (or database design) is a representation of a data design as implemented, or intended to be implemented, in a database management system. In the lifecycle of a project it typically derives from a logical data model, though it may be reverse-engineered from a given database implementation. A complete physical data model will include all the database artifacts required to create relationships between tables or to achieve performance goals, such as indexes, constraint definitions, linking tables, partitioned tables or clusters. Analysts can usually use a physical data model to calculate storage estimates; it may include specific storage allocation details for a given database system. As of 2012 seven main databases dominate the commercial marketplace: Informix, Oracle, Postgres, SQL Server, Sybase, IBM Db2 and MySQL. Other RDBMS systems tend either to be legacy databases or used within academia such as universities or further education colleges. Physical data models for each implementation would differ significantly, not least due to underlying operating-system requirements that may sit underneath them. For example: SQL Server runs only on Microsoft Windows operating-systems (Starting with SQL Server 2017, SQL Server runs on Linux. It's the same SQL Server database engine, with many similar features and services regardless of your operating system), while Oracle and MySQL can run on Solaris, Linux and other UNIX-based operating-systems as well as on Windows. This means that the disk requirements, security requirements and many other aspects of a physical data model will be influenced by the RDBMS that a database administrator (or an organization) chooses to use. == Physical schema == Physical schema is a term used in data management to describe how data is to be represented and stored (files, indices, etc.) in secondary storage using a particular database management system (DBMS) (e.g., Oracle RDBMS, Sybase SQL Server, etc.). In the ANSI/SPARC Architecture three schema approach, the internal schema is the view of data that involved data management technology. This is as opposed to an external schema that reflects an individual's view of the data, or the conceptual schema that is the integration of a set of external schemas. The logical schema was the way data were represented to conform to the constraints of a particular approach to database management. At that time the choices were hierarchical and network. Describing the logical schema, however, still did not describe how physically data would be stored on disk drives. That is the domain of the physical schema. Now logical schemas describe data in terms of relational tables and columns, object-oriented classes, and XML tags. A single set of tables, for example, can be implemented in numerous ways, up to and including an architecture where table rows are maintained on computers in different countries.

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  • Subject (documents)

    Subject (documents)

    In library and information science documents (such as books, articles and pictures) are classified and searched by subject – as well as by other attributes such as author, genre and document type. This makes "subject" a fundamental term in this field. Library and information specialists assign subject labels to documents to make them findable. There are many ways to do this and in general there is not always consensus about which subject should be assigned to a given document. To optimize subject indexing and searching, we need to have a deeper understanding of what a subject is. The question: "what is to be understood by the statement 'document A belongs to subject category X'?" has been debated in the field for more than 100 years (see below) == Theoretical view == === Charles Ammi Cutter (1837–1903) === For Cutter the stability of subjects depends on a social process in which their meaning is stabilized in a name or a designation. A subject "referred [...] to those intellections [...] that had received a name that itself represented a distinct consensus in usage" (Miksa, 1983a, p. 60) and: the "systematic structure of established subjects" is "resident in the public realm" (Miksa, 1983a, p. 69); "[s]ubjects are by their very nature locations in a classificatory structure of publicly accumulated knowledge (Miksa, 1983a, p. 61). Bernd Frohmann adds: "The stability of the public realm in turn relies upon natural and objective mental structures which, with proper education, govern a natural progression from particular to general concepts. Since for Cutter, mind, society, and SKO [Systems of Knowledge Organization] stand one behind the other, each supporting each, all manifesting the same structure, his discursive construction of subjects invites connections with discourses of mind, education, and society. The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), by contrast, severs those connections. Melvil Dewey emphasized more than once that his system maps no structure beyond its own; there is neither a "transcendental deduction" of its categories nor any reference to Cutter's objective structure of social consensus. It is content-free: Dewey disdained any philosophical excogitation of the meaning of his class symbols, leaving the job of finding verbal equivalents to others. His innovation and the essence of the system lay in the notation. The DDC is a poorly semiotic system of expanding nests of ten digits, lacking any referent beyond itself. In it, a subject is wholly constituted in terms of its position in the system. The essential characteristic of a subject is a class symbol which refers only to other symbols. Its verbal equivalent is accidental, a merely pragmatic characteristic... .... The conflict of interpretations over "subjects" became explicit in the battles between "bibliography" (an approach to subjects having much in common with Cutter's) and Dewey's "close classification". William Fletcher spoke for the scholarly bibliographer.... Fletcher's "subjects", like Cutter's, referred to the categories of a fantasized, stable social order, whereas Dewey's subjects were elements of a semiological system of standardized, techno-bureaucratic administrative software for the library in its corporate, rather than high culture, incarnation". (Frohmann, 1994, 112–113). Cutter's early view on what a subject is, is probably wiser than most understandings that dominated the 20th century – and also the understanding reflected in the ISO-standard quoted below. The early statements quoted by Frohmann indicate that subjects are somehow shaped in social processes. When that is said, it should be added that they are not particularly detailed or clear. We only get a vague idea of the social nature of subjects. === S. R. Ranganathan (1892–1972) === A classification system with an explicit theoretical foundation is Ranganathan's Colon Classification. Ranganathan provided an explicit definition of the concept of "subject": Subject – an organized body of ideas, whose extension and intension are likely to fall coherently within the field of interests and comfortably within the intellectual competence and the field of inevitable specialization of a normal person. A related definition is given by one of Ranganathan's students: A subject is an organized and systematized body of ideas. It may consist of one idea or a combination of several... Ranganathan's definition of "subject" is strongly influenced by his Colon Classification system. The colon system is based on the combination of single elements from facets to subject designation. This is the reason why the combined nature of subjects are emphasized so strongly. It leads, however, to absurdities such as the claim that gold cannot be a subject (but is alternatively termed "an isolate"). This aspect of the theory has been criticized by Metcalfe (1973, p. 318). Metcalfe's skepticism regarding Ranganathan's theory is formulated in hard words (op. cit., p. 317): "This pseudo-science imposed itself on British disciples from about 1950 on...". It seems unacceptable that Ranganathan defines the word subject in a way that favors his own system. A scientific concept like "subject" should make it possible to compare different ways of establishing access to information. Whether or not subjects are combined or not should be examined once their definition has been given, it should not determined a priori, in the definition. Besides the emphasis on the combined, organizing and systematizing nature of subjects contains Ranganathan's definition of subject the pragmatic demand, that a subject should be determined in a way that suits a normal person's competency or specialization. Again we see a strange kind of wishful thinking mixing a general understanding of a concept with demands put by his own specific system. One thing is what the word subject means, quite another issue is how to provide subject descriptions that fulfill demands such as the specificity of a given information retrieval language which fulfill demands put on the system, such as precision and recall. If researchers too often define terms in ways that favor specific kinds of systems, that are such definitions not useful to provide more general theories about subjects, subject analysis and IR. Among other things are comparative studies of different kinds of systems made difficult. Based on these arguments, as well as additional arguments which have been used in the literature, we may conclude that Ranganathan's definition of the concept "subject" is not suited for scientific use. Like the definition of "subject" given by the ISO-standard for topic maps, may Ranganathan's definition be useful within his own closed system. The purpose of a scientific and scholarly field is, however, to examine the relative fruitfulness of systems such as topic maps and Colon Classification. For such purpose is another understanding of "subject" necessary. === Patrick Wilson (1927–2003) === In his book Wilson (1968) examined – in particular by thought experiments – the suitability of different methods of examining the subject of a document. The methods were: identifying the author's purpose for writing the document, weighing the relative dominance and subordination of different elements in the picture, which the reading imposes on the reader, grouping or count the document's use of concepts and references, construing a set of rules for selecting elements deemed necessary (as opposed to unnecessary) for the work as a whole. Patrick Wilson shows convincingly that each of these methods are insufficient to determine the subject of a document and is led to conclude ( p. 89): "The notion of the subject of a writing is indeterminate..." or, on p. 92 (about what users may expect to find using a particular position in a library classification system): "For nothing definite can be expected of the things found at any given position". In connection to the last quote has Wilson an interesting footnote in which he writes that authors of documents often use terms in ambiguous ways ("hostility" is used as an example). Even if the librarian could personally develop a very precise understanding of a concept, he would be unable to use it in his classification, because none of the documents use the term in the same precise way. Based on this argumentation is Wilson led to conclude: "If people write on what are for them ill-defined phenomena, a correct description of their subjects must reflect the ill-definedness". Wilson's concept of subject was discussed by Hjørland (1992) who found that it is problematic to give up the precise understanding of such a basic term in LIS. Wilson's arguments led him to an agnostic position which Hjørland found unacceptable and unnecessary. Concerning the authors' use of ambiguous terms, the role of the subject analysis is to determine which documents would be fruitful for users to identify whether or not the documents use one or another term or whether a given term i

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  • Leiden algorithm

    Leiden algorithm

    The Leiden algorithm is a community detection algorithm developed by Traag et al at Leiden University. It was developed as a modification of the Louvain method. Like the Louvain method, the Leiden algorithm attempts to optimize modularity in extracting communities from networks; however, it addresses key issues present in the Louvain method, namely poorly connected communities and the resolution limit of modularity. == Improvement over Louvain method == Broadly, the Leiden algorithm uses the same two primary phases as the Louvain algorithm: a local node moving step (though, the method by which nodes are considered in Leiden is more efficient) and a graph aggregation step. However, to address the issues with poorly-connected communities and the merging of smaller communities into larger communities (the resolution limit of modularity), the Leiden algorithm employs an intermediate refinement phase in which communities may be split to guarantee that all communities are well-connected. Consider, for example, the following graph: Three communities are present in this graph (each color represents a community). Additionally, the center "bridge" node (represented with an extra circle) is a member of the community represented by blue nodes. Now consider the result of a node-moving step which merges the communities denoted by red and green nodes into a single community (as the two communities are highly connected): Notably, the center "bridge" node is now a member of the larger red community after node moving occurs (due to the greedy nature of the local node moving algorithm). In the Louvain method, such a merging would be followed immediately by the graph aggregation phase. However, this causes a disconnection between two different sections of the community represented by blue nodes. In the Leiden algorithm, the graph is instead refined: The Leiden algorithm's refinement step ensures that the center "bridge" node is kept in the blue community to ensure that it remains intact and connected, despite the potential improvement in modularity from adding the center "bridge" node to the red community. == Graph components == Before defining the Leiden algorithm, it will be helpful to define some of the components of a graph. === Vertices and edges === A graph is composed of vertices (nodes) and edges. Each edge is connected to two vertices, and each vertex may be connected to zero or more edges. Edges are typically represented by straight lines, while nodes are represented by circles or points. In set notation, let V {\displaystyle V} be the set of vertices, and E {\displaystyle E} be the set of edges: V := { v 1 , v 2 , … , v n } E := { e i j , e i k , … , e k l } {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}V&:=\{v_{1},v_{2},\dots ,v_{n}\}\\E&:=\{e_{ij},e_{ik},\dots ,e_{kl}\}\end{aligned}}} where e i j {\displaystyle e_{ij}} is the directed edge from vertex v i {\displaystyle v_{i}} to vertex v j {\displaystyle v_{j}} . We can also write this as an ordered pair: e i j := ( v i , v j ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}e_{ij}&:=(v_{i},v_{j})\end{aligned}}} === Community === A community is a unique set of nodes: C i ⊆ V C i ⋂ C j = ∅ ∀ i ≠ j {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}C_{i}&\subseteq V\\C_{i}&\bigcap C_{j}=\emptyset ~\forall ~i\neq j\end{aligned}}} and the union of all communities must be the total set of vertices: V = ⋃ i = 1 C i {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}V&=\bigcup _{i=1}C_{i}\end{aligned}}} === Partition === A partition is the set of all communities: P = { C 1 , C 2 , … , C n } {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}{\mathcal {P}}&=\{C_{1},C_{2},\dots ,C_{n}\}\end{aligned}}} == Partition quality == How communities are partitioned is an integral part on the Leiden algorithm. How partitions are decided can depend on how their quality is measured. Additionally, many of these metrics contain parameters of their own that can change the outcome of their communities. === Modularity === Modularity is a highly used quality metric for assessing how well a set of communities partition a graph. The equation for this metric is defined for an adjacency matrix, A, as: Q = 1 2 m ∑ i j ( A i j − k i k j 2 m ) δ ( c i , c j ) {\displaystyle Q={\frac {1}{2m}}\sum _{ij}(A_{ij}-{\frac {k_{i}k_{j}}{2m}})\delta (c_{i},c_{j})} where: A i j {\displaystyle A_{ij}} represents the edge weight between nodes i {\displaystyle i} and j {\displaystyle j} ; see Adjacency matrix; k i {\displaystyle k_{i}} and k j {\displaystyle k_{j}} are the sum of the weights of the edges attached to nodes i {\displaystyle i} and j {\displaystyle j} , respectively; m {\displaystyle m} is the sum of all of the edge weights in the graph; c i {\displaystyle c_{i}} and c j {\displaystyle c_{j}} are the communities to which the nodes i {\displaystyle i} and j {\displaystyle j} belong; and δ {\displaystyle \delta } is Kronecker delta function: δ ( c i , c j ) = { 1 if c i and c j are the same community 0 otherwise {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}\delta (c_{i},c_{j})&={\begin{cases}1&{\text{if }}c_{i}{\text{ and }}c_{j}{\text{ are the same community}}\\0&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}\end{aligned}}} === Reichardt Bornholdt Potts Model (RB) === One of the most well used metrics for the Leiden algorithm is the Reichardt Bornholdt Potts Model (RB). This model is used by default in most mainstream Leiden algorithm libraries under the name RBConfigurationVertexPartition. This model introduces a resolution parameter γ {\displaystyle \gamma } and is highly similar to the equation for modularity. This model is defined by the following quality function for an adjacency matrix, A, as: Q = ∑ i j ( A i j − γ k i k j 2 m ) δ ( c i , c j ) {\displaystyle Q=\sum _{ij}(A_{ij}-\gamma {\frac {k_{i}k_{j}}{2m}})\delta (c_{i},c_{j})} where: γ {\displaystyle \gamma } represents a linear resolution parameter === Constant Potts Model (CPM) === Another metric similar to RB is the Constant Potts Model (CPM). This metric also relies on a resolution parameter γ {\displaystyle \gamma } The quality function is defined as: H = − ∑ i j ( A i j w i j − γ ) δ ( c i , c j ) {\displaystyle H=-\sum _{ij}(A_{ij}w_{ij}-\gamma )\delta (c_{i},c_{j})} === Understanding Potts Model resolution parameters/Resolution limit === Typically Potts models such as RB or CPM include a resolution parameter in their calculation. Potts models are introduced as a response to the resolution limit problem that is present in modularity maximization based community detection. The resolution limit problem is that, for some graphs, maximizing modularity may cause substructures of a graph to merge and become a single community and thus smaller structures are lost. These resolution parameters allow modularity adjacent methods to be modified to suit the requirements of the user applying the Leiden algorithm to account for small substructures at a certain granularity. The figure on the right illustrates why resolution can be a helpful parameter when using modularity based quality metrics. In the first graph, modularity only captures the large scale structures of the graph; however, in the second example, a more granular quality metric could potentially detect all substructures in a graph. == Algorithm == The Leiden algorithm starts with a graph of disorganized nodes (a) and sorts it by partitioning them to maximize modularity (the difference in quality between the generated partition and a hypothetical randomized partition of communities). The method it uses is similar to the Louvain algorithm, except that after moving each node it also considers that node's neighbors that are not already in the community it was placed in. This process results in our first partition (b), also referred to as P {\displaystyle {\mathcal {P}}} . Then the algorithm refines this partition by first placing each node into its own individual community and then moving them from one community to another to maximize modularity. It does this iteratively until each node has been visited and moved, and each community has been refined - this creates partition (c), which is the initial partition of P refined {\displaystyle {\mathcal {P}}_{\text{refined}}} . Then an aggregate network (d) is created by turning each community into a node. P refined {\displaystyle {\mathcal {P}}_{\text{refined}}} is used as the basis for the aggregate network while P {\displaystyle {\mathcal {P}}} is used to create its initial partition. Because we use the original partition P {\displaystyle {\mathcal {P}}} in this step, we must retain it so that it can be used in future iterations. These steps together form the first iteration of the algorithm. In subsequent iterations, the nodes of the aggregate network (which each represent a community) are once again placed into their own individual communities and then sorted according to modularity to form a new P refined {\displaystyle {\mathcal {P}}_{\text{refined}}} , forming (e) in the above graphic. In the case depicted by the graph, the nodes were already sorted optimally, so no change too

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  • Vision transformer

    Vision transformer

    A vision transformer (ViT) is a transformer designed for computer vision. A ViT decomposes an input image into a series of patches (rather than text into tokens), serializes each patch into a vector, and maps it to a smaller dimension with a single matrix multiplication. These vector embeddings are then processed by a transformer encoder as if they were token embeddings. ViTs were designed as alternatives to convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in computer vision applications. They have different inductive biases, training stability, and data efficiency. Compared to CNNs, ViTs are less data efficient, but have higher capacity. Some of the largest modern computer vision models are ViTs, such as one with 22B parameters. Subsequent to its publication, many variants were proposed, with hybrid architectures with both features of ViTs and CNNs. ViTs have found application in image recognition, image segmentation, weather prediction, and autonomous driving. == History == Transformers were introduced in Attention Is All You Need (2017), and have found widespread use in natural language processing. A 2019 paper applied ideas from the Transformer to computer vision. Specifically, they started with a ResNet, a standard convolutional neural network used for computer vision, and replaced all convolutional kernels by the self-attention mechanism found in a Transformer. It resulted in superior performance. However, it is not a Vision Transformer. In 2020, an encoder-only Transformer was adapted for computer vision, yielding the ViT, which reached state of the art in image classification, overcoming the previous dominance of CNN. The masked autoencoder (2022) extended ViT to work with unsupervised training. The vision transformer and the masked autoencoder, in turn, stimulated new developments in convolutional neural networks. Subsequently, there was cross-fertilization between the previous CNN approach and the ViT approach. In 2021, some important variants of the Vision Transformers were proposed. These variants are mainly intended to be more efficient, more accurate or better suited to a specific domain. Two studies improved efficiency and robustness of ViT by adding a CNN as a preprocessor. The Swin Transformer achieved state-of-the-art results on some object detection datasets such as COCO, by using convolution-like sliding windows of attention mechanism, and the pyramid process in classical computer vision. == Overview == The basic architecture, used by the original 2020 paper, is as follows. In summary, it is a BERT-like encoder-only Transformer. The input image is of type R H × W × C {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{H\times W\times C}} , where H , W , C {\displaystyle H,W,C} are height, width, channel (RGB). It is then split into square-shaped patches of type R P × P × C {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{P\times P\times C}} . For each patch, the patch is pushed through a linear operator, to obtain a vector ("patch embedding"). The position of the patch is also transformed into a vector by "position encoding" (the paper tried no embedding, 1D embedding, 2D embedding, and relative embedding: 1D was adopted). The two vectors are added, then pushed through several Transformer encoders. The attention mechanism in a ViT repeatedly transforms representation vectors of image patches, incorporating more and more semantic relations between image patches in an image. This is analogous to how in natural language processing, as representation vectors flow through a transformer, they incorporate more and more semantic relations between words, from syntax to semantics. The above architecture turns an image into a sequence of vector representations. To use these for downstream applications, an additional head needs to be trained to interpret them. For example, to use it for classification, one can add a shallow MLP on top of it that outputs a probability distribution over classes. The original paper uses a linear-GeLU-linear-softmax network. == Variants == === Original ViT === The original ViT was an encoder-only Transformer supervise-trained to predict the image label from the patches of the image. As in the case of BERT, it uses a special token in the input side, and the corresponding output vector is used as the only input of the final output MLP head. The special token is an architectural hack to allow the model to compress all information relevant for predicting the image label into one vector. Transformers found their initial applications in natural language processing tasks, as demonstrated by language models such as BERT and GPT-3. By contrast the typical image processing system uses a convolutional neural network (CNN). Well-known projects include Xception, ResNet, EfficientNet, DenseNet, and Inception. Transformers measure the relationships between pairs of input tokens (words in the case of text strings), termed attention. The cost is quadratic in the number of tokens. For images, the basic unit of analysis is the pixel. However, computing relationships for every pixel pair in a typical image is prohibitive in terms of memory and computation. Instead, ViT computes relationships among pixels in various small sections of the image (e.g., 16x16 pixels), at a drastically reduced cost. The sections (with positional embeddings) are placed in a sequence. The embeddings are learnable vectors. Each section is arranged into a linear sequence and multiplied by the embedding matrix. The result, with the position embedding is fed to the transformer. === Architectural improvements === ==== Pooling ==== After the ViT processes an image, it produces some embedding vectors. These must be converted to a single class probability prediction by some kind of network. In the original ViT and Masked Autoencoder, they used a dummy [CLS] token, in emulation of the BERT language model. The output at [CLS] is the classification token, which is then processed by a LayerNorm-feedforward-softmax module into a probability distribution. Global average pooling (GAP) does not use the dummy token, but simply takes the average of all output tokens as the classification token. It was mentioned in the original ViT as being equally good. Multihead attention pooling (MAP) applies a multiheaded attention block to pooling. Specifically, it takes as input a list of vectors x 1 , x 2 , … , x n {\displaystyle x_{1},x_{2},\dots ,x_{n}} , which might be thought of as the output vectors of a layer of a ViT. The output from MAP is M u l t i h e a d e d A t t e n t i o n ( Q , V , V ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {MultiheadedAttention} (Q,V,V)} , where q {\displaystyle q} is a trainable query vector, and V {\displaystyle V} is the matrix with rows being x 1 , x 2 , … , x n {\displaystyle x_{1},x_{2},\dots ,x_{n}} . This was first proposed in the Set Transformer architecture. Later papers demonstrated that GAP and MAP both perform better than BERT-like pooling. A variant of MAP was proposed as class attention, which applies MAP, then feedforward, then MAP again. Re-attention was proposed to allow training deep ViT. It changes the multiheaded attention module. === Masked Autoencoder === The Masked Autoencoder took inspiration from denoising autoencoders and context encoders. It has two ViTs put end-to-end. The first one ("encoder") takes in image patches with positional encoding, and outputs vectors representing each patch. The second one (called "decoder", even though it is still an encoder-only Transformer) takes in vectors with positional encoding and outputs image patches again. ==== Training ==== During training, input images (224px x 224 px in the original implementation) are split along a designated number of lines on each axis, producing image patches. A certain percentage of patches are selected to be masked out by mask tokens, while all others are retained in the image. The network is tasked with reconstructing the image from the remaining unmasked patches. Mask tokens in the original implementation are learnable vector quantities. A linear projection with positional embeddings is then applied to the vector of unmasked patches. Experiments varying mask ratio on networks trained on the ImageNet-1K dataset found 75% mask ratios achieved high performance on both finetuning and linear-probing of the encoder's latent space. The MAE processes only unmasked patches during training, increasing the efficiency of data processing in the encoder and lowering the memory usage of the transformer. A less computationally-intensive ViT is used for the decoder in the original implementation of the MAE. Masked patches are added back to the output of the encoder block as mask tokens and both are fed into the decoder. A reconstruction loss is computed for the masked patches to assess network performance. ==== Prediction ==== In prediction, the decoder architecture is discarded entirely. The input image is split into patches by the same algorithm as in training, but no patches are masked out. A linear projection wi

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  • Bibliographic database

    Bibliographic database

    A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records. This is an organised online collection of references to published written works like journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, patents and books. In contrast to library catalogue entries, a majority of the records in bibliographic databases describe articles and conference papers rather than complete monographs, and they generally contain very rich subject descriptions in the form of keywords, subject classification terms, or abstracts. A bibliographic database may cover a wide range of topics or one academic field like computer science. A significant number of bibliographic databases are marketed under a trade name by licensing agreement from vendors, or directly from their makers: the indexing and abstracting services. Many bibliographic databases have evolved into digital libraries, providing the full text of the organised contents:for instance CORE also organises and mirrors scholarly articles and OurResearch develops a search engine for open access content in Unpaywall. Others merge with non-bibliographic and scholarly databases to create more complete disciplinary search engine systems, such as Chemical Abstracts or Entrez. == History == Prior to the mid-20th century, individuals searching for published literature had to rely on printed bibliographic indexes, generated manually from index cards. During the early 1960s computers were used to digitize text for the first time; the purpose was to reduce the cost and time required to publish two American abstracting journals, the Index Medicus of the National Library of Medicine and the Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). By the late 1960s, such bodies of digitized alphanumeric information, known as bibliographic and numeric databases, constituted a new type of information resource. Online interactive retrieval became commercially viable in the early 1970s over private telecommunications networks. The first services offered a few databases of indexes and abstracts of scholarly literature. These databases contained bibliographic descriptions of journal articles that were searchable by keywords in author and title, and sometimes by journal name or subject heading. The user interfaces were crude, the access was expensive, and searching was done by librarians on behalf of "end users".

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  • Grid-oriented storage

    Grid-oriented storage

    Grid-oriented Storage (GOS) was a term used for data storage by a university project during the era when the term grid computing was popular. == Description == GOS was a successor of the term network-attached storage (NAS). GOS systems contained hard disks, often RAIDs (redundant arrays of independent disks), like traditional file servers. GOS was designed to deal with long-distance, cross-domain and single-image file operations, which is typical in Grid environments. GOS behaves like a file server via the file-based GOS-FS protocol to any entity on the grid. Similar to GridFTP, GOS-FS integrates a parallel stream engine and Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI). Conforming to the universal VFS (Virtual Filesystem Switch), GOS-FS can be pervasively used as an underlying platform to best utilize the increased transfer bandwidth and accelerate the NFS/CIFS-based applications. GOS can also run over SCSI, Fibre Channel or iSCSI, which does not affect the acceleration performance, offering both file level protocols and block level protocols for storage area network (SAN) from the same system. In a grid infrastructure, resources may be geographically distant from each other, produced by differing manufacturers, and have differing access control policies. This makes access to grid resources dynamic and conditional upon local constraints. Centralized management techniques for these resources are limited in their scalability both in terms of execution efficiency and fault tolerance. Provision of services across such platforms requires a distributed resource management mechanism and the peer-to-peer clustered GOS appliances allow a single storage image to continue to expand, even if a single GOS appliance reaches its capacity limitations. The cluster shares a common, aggregate presentation of the data stored on all participating GOS appliances. Each GOS appliance manages its own internal storage space. The major benefit of this aggregation is that clustered GOS storage can be accessed by users as a single mount point. GOS products fit the thin-server categorization. Compared with traditional “fat server”-based storage architectures, thin-server GOS appliances deliver numerous advantages, such as the alleviation of potential network/grid bottle-necks, CPU and OS optimized for I/O only, ease of installation, remote management and minimal maintenance, low cost and Plug and Play, etc. Examples of similar innovations include NAS, printers, fax machines, routers and switches. An Apache server has been installed in the GOS operating system, ensuring an HTTPS-based communication between the GOS server and an administrator via a Web browser. Remote management and monitoring makes it easy to set up, manage, and monitor GOS systems. == History == Frank Zhigang Wang and Na Helian proposed a funding proposal to the UK government titled “Grid-Oriented Storage (GOS): Next Generation Data Storage System Architecture for the Grid Computing Era” in 2003. The proposal was approved and granted one million pounds in 2004. The first prototype was constructed in 2005 at Centre for Grid Computing, Cambridge-Cranfield High Performance Computing Facility. The first conference presentation was at IEEE Symposium on Cluster Computing and Grid (CCGrid), 9–12 May 2005, Cardiff, UK. As one of the five best work-in-progress, it was included in the IEEE Distributed Systems Online. In 2006, the GOS architecture and its implementations was published in IEEE Transactions on Computers, titled “Grid-oriented Storage: A Single-Image, Cross-Domain, High-Bandwidth Architecture”. Starting in January 2007, demonstrations were presented at Princeton University, Cambridge University Computer Lab and others. By 2013, the Cranfield Centre still used future tense for the project. Peer-to-peer file sharings use similar techniques.

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  • Sparse identification of non-linear dynamics

    Sparse identification of non-linear dynamics

    Sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) is a data-driven algorithm for obtaining dynamical systems from data. Given a series of snapshots of a dynamical system and its corresponding time derivatives, SINDy performs a sparsity-promoting regression (such as LASSO and sparse Bayesian inference) on a library of nonlinear candidate functions of the snapshots against the derivatives to find the governing equations. This procedure relies on the assumption that most physical systems only have a few dominant terms which dictate the dynamics, given an appropriately selected coordinate system and quality training data. It has been applied to identify the dynamics of fluids, based on proper orthogonal decomposition, as well as other complex dynamical systems, such as biological networks. == Mathematical Overview == First, consider a dynamical system of the form x ˙ = d d t x ( t ) = f ( x ( t ) ) , {\displaystyle {\dot {\textbf {x}}}={\frac {d}{dt}}{\textbf {x}}(t)={\textbf {f}}({\textbf {x}}(t)),} where x ( t ) ∈ R n {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}(t)\in \mathbb {R} ^{n}} is a state vector (snapshot) of the system at time t {\displaystyle t} and the function f ( x ( t ) ) {\displaystyle {\textbf {f}}({\textbf {x}}(t))} defines the equations of motion and constraints of the system. The time derivative may be either prescribed or numerically approximated from the snapshots. With x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} and x ˙ {\displaystyle {\dot {\textbf {x}}}} sampled at m {\displaystyle m} equidistant points in time ( t 1 , t 2 , ⋯ , t m {\displaystyle t_{1},t_{2},\cdots ,t_{m}} ), these can be arranged into matrices of the form X = [ x T ( t 1 ) x T ( t 2 ) ⋮ x T ( t m ) ] = [ x 1 ( t 1 ) x 2 ( t 1 ) ⋯ x n ( t 1 ) x 1 ( t 2 ) x 2 ( t 2 ) ⋯ x n ( t 2 ) ⋮ ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ x 1 ( t m ) x 2 ( t m ) ⋯ x n ( t m ) ] , {\displaystyle {\bf {{X}={\begin{bmatrix}\mathbf {x} ^{\mathsf {T}}(t_{1})\\\mathbf {x} ^{\mathsf {T}}(t_{2})\\\vdots \\\mathbf {x} ^{\mathsf {T}}(t_{m})\end{bmatrix}}={\begin{bmatrix}x_{1}(t_{1})&x_{2}(t_{1})&\cdots &x_{n}(t_{1})\\x_{1}(t_{2})&x_{2}(t_{2})&\cdots &x_{n}(t_{2})\\\vdots &\vdots &\ddots &\vdots \\x_{1}(t_{m})&x_{2}(t_{m})&\cdots &x_{n}(t_{m})\end{bmatrix}},}}} and similarly for X ˙ {\displaystyle {\dot {\mathbf {X} }}} . Next, a library Θ ( X ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {\Theta } (\mathbf {X} )} of nonlinear candidate functions of the columns of X {\displaystyle {\textbf {X}}} is constructed, which may be constant, polynomial, or more exotic functions (like trigonometric and rational terms, and so on): Θ ( X ) = [ | | | | | | 1 X X 2 X 3 ⋯ sin ⁡ ( X ) cos ⁡ ( X ) ⋯ | | | | | | ] {\displaystyle \ \ \ {\bf {{\Theta }({\bf {{X})={\begin{bmatrix}\vline &\vline &\vline &\vline &&\vline &\vline &\\1&{\bf {X}}&{\bf {{X}^{2}}}&{\bf {{X}^{3}}}&\cdots &\sin({\bf {{X})}}&\cos({\bf {{X})}}&\cdots \\\vline &\vline &\vline &\vline &&\vline &\vline &\end{bmatrix}}}}}}} The number of possible model structures from this library is combinatorially high. f ( x ( t ) ) {\displaystyle {\textbf {f}}({\textbf {x}}(t))} is then substituted by Θ ( X ) {\displaystyle {\bf {{\Theta }({\textbf {X}})}}} and a vector of coefficients Ξ = [ ξ 1 ξ 2 ⋯ ξ n ] {\displaystyle {\bf {{\Xi }=\left[{\bf {{\xi }_{1}{\bf {{\xi }_{2}\cdots {\bf {{\xi }_{n}}}}}}}\right]}}} determining the active terms in f ( x ( t ) ) {\displaystyle {\textbf {f}}({\textbf {x}}(t))} : X ˙ = Θ ( X ) Ξ {\displaystyle {\dot {\bf {X}}}={\bf {{\Theta }({\bf {{X}){\bf {\Xi }}}}}}} Because only a few terms are expected to be active at each point in time, an assumption is made that f ( x ( t ) ) {\displaystyle {\textbf {f}}({\textbf {x}}(t))} admits a sparse representation in Θ ( X ) {\displaystyle {\bf {{\Theta }({\textbf {X}})}}} . This then becomes an optimization problem in finding a sparse Ξ {\displaystyle {\bf {\Xi }}} which optimally embeds X ˙ {\displaystyle {\dot {\textbf {X}}}} . In other words, a parsimonious model is obtained by performing least squares regression on the system (4) with sparsity-promoting ( L 1 {\displaystyle L_{1}} ) regularization ξ k = arg ⁡ min ξ k ′ | | X ˙ k − Θ ( X ) ξ k ′ | | 2 + λ | | ξ k ′ | | 1 , {\displaystyle {\bf {{\xi }_{k}={\underset {\bf {{\xi }'_{k}}}{\arg \min }}\left|\left|{\dot {\bf {X}}}_{k}-{\bf {{\Theta }({\bf {{X}){\bf {{\xi }'_{k}}}}}}}\right|\right|_{2}+\lambda \left|\left|{\bf {{\xi }'_{k}}}\right|\right|_{1},}}} where λ {\displaystyle \lambda } is a regularization parameter. Finally, the sparse set of ξ k {\displaystyle {\bf {{\xi }_{k}}}} can be used to reconstruct the dynamical system: x ˙ k = Θ ( x ) ξ k {\displaystyle {\dot {x}}_{k}={\bf {{\Theta }({\bf {{x}){\bf {{\xi }_{k}}}}}}}}

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  • Huroof

    Huroof

    Huroof (Arabic: حروف, lit. 'letters') is an Android kids application produced by the Islamic State, specifically the Islamic States' Al-Himmah Library, which is targeted towards kids in order to teach kids the Arabic alphabet, and to also get kids to support the Islamic State and its practices. == Application == Huroof uses child-like appearances on the main menu, and throughout multiple of Huroof's in-game games for learning the alphabet, a lot of the games reference jihadist concepts, including imagery of weapons (such as missile, tank, cannon, sword,...), 'violent' images, as well as Islamic State imagery, including the flag of the Islamic State, Huroof uses nasheeds from Ajnad Media Foundation for audio production in the app. Reportedly, Huroof was released via Telegram channels of the Islamic State, as well as other file sharing websites. It is not the first moblie app released by Islamic State, but it is the first time they released a moblie application targeting children. === Nasheed game === In the Huroof app, there's a game where you listen to a radio, with the Al-Bayan logo on it, and learn the Arabic alphabet while the nasheed plays. === Writing game === In Huroof, there's a game where you can write out letters of the Arabic alphabet, as well as numbers while a small child tells you what they are. === Letter choosing game === In the app, there's a game they shows you images, and you choose which letter that image/item starts with.

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  • Reverse data management

    Reverse data management

    Reverse data management describes a branch and set of research questions in relational database theory that aim to reverse the common focus of standard data management. Instead of focusing on the "forward" transformation of an input databases (a set of relational tables) to an output table, which is the main focus of standard query evaluation, reverse data management reverses that focus and studies the possible input database transformations that would achieve a desired output. Usually the objective is to find an intervention (a deletion, addition, or change of tuples) of minimal size, in order to achieve a particular change in the output. The problem has been studied at least since the 1980s, but has received renewed attention due to an influential paper in the early 2000s that made a connection between provenance and view propagation. The term was coined in a VLDB 2011 vision paper. The problem has been receiving significant attention in recent years due to its connection to computational fairness. == Topics in reverse data management problems == Example topics in reverse data management include: Deletion propagation with source side-effects: Find a minimal number of tuples to delete in the database in order to delete a particular tuple in the output. Deletion propagation with view side-effects: Find a set of tuples to delete in the database in order to delete a particular tuple in the output, while removing the minimal number of other output tuples. Causal responsibility: Find a minimal number of tuples to delete in the database in order to make a particular input tuple counterfactual. This notion is inspired by the notions of actual cause and causal responsibility from the work of Halpern and Pearl. Resilience: Find a minimal number of tuples to delete in the database in order to make a Boolean query false. The complexity of this problem is identical to the problem of deletion propagation with source-side effects over a different database. Smallest witness problem: Find a minimal number of tuples to keep in the a database (or equivalently, delete a maximal number of tuples) while keeping a particular tuple in the output. Minimum repair: Given a database that violates certain integrity constraints, find a minimal number of tuples to delete in the database in order to fulfill all constraints (also called to "repair" the database).

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  • Skyline operator

    Skyline operator

    The skyline operator is the subject of an optimization problem and computes the Pareto optimum on tuples with multiple dimensions. This operator is an extension to SQL proposed by Börzsönyi et al. to filter results from a database to keep only those objects that are not dominated by any other point on all dimensions. The name skyline comes from the view on Manhattan from the Hudson River, where those buildings can be seen that are not hidden by any other. A building is visible if it is not dominated by a building that is taller or closer to the river (two dimensions, distance to the river minimized, height maximized). Another application of the skyline operator involves selecting a hotel for a holiday. The user wants the hotel to be both cheap and close to the beach. However, hotels that are close to the beach may also be expensive. In this case, the skyline operator would only present those hotels that are not worse than any other hotel in both price and distance to the beach. == Formal specification == The skyline operator returns tuples that are not dominated by any other tuple. A tuple dominates another if it is at least as good in all dimensions and better in at least one dimension. Formally, we can think of each tuple as a vector p , q ∈ R n {\displaystyle p,q\in \mathbb {R} ^{n}} . p {\displaystyle p} dominates q {\displaystyle q} (written: p ≻ q {\displaystyle p\succ q} ) if p {\displaystyle p} is at least as good as q {\displaystyle q} in every dimension, and superior in at least one: p ≻ q ⇔ ∀ i ∈ [ n ] . p [ i ] ⪰ q [ i ] ∧ ∃ j ∈ [ n ] . p [ j ] ≻ q [ j ] . {\displaystyle p\succ q\Leftrightarrow \forall i\in [n].p[i]\succeq q[i]\wedge \exists j\in [n].p[j]\succ q[j].} Dominance ( p ≻ q {\displaystyle p\succ q} ) can be defined as any strict partial ordering, for example greater (with ≻:=> {\displaystyle \succ :=>} and ⪰:=≥ {\displaystyle \succeq :=\geq } ) or less (with ≻:=< {\displaystyle \succ :=<} and ⪰:=≤ {\displaystyle \succeq :=\leq } ). Assuming two dimensions and defining dominance in both dimensions as greater, we can compute the skyline in SQL-92 as follows: == Proposed syntax == As an extension to SQL, Börzsönyi et al. proposed the following syntax for the skyline operator: where d1, ... dm denote the dimensions of the skyline and MIN, MAX and DIFF specify whether the value in that dimension should be minimised, maximised or simply be different. Without an SQL extension, the SQL query requires an antijoin with not exists: == Implementation == The skyline operator can be implemented directly in SQL using current SQL constructs, but this has been shown to be very slow in disk-based database systems. Other algorithms have been proposed that make use of divide and conquer, indices, MapReduce and general-purpose computing on graphics cards. Skyline queries on data streams (i.e. continuous skyline queries) have been studied in the context of parallel query processing on multicores, owing to their wide diffusion in real-time decision making problems and data streaming analytics. Exasol features a native implementation.

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