AI Data Poisoning

AI Data Poisoning — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture

    Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture

    SABSA (Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture) is a model and methodology for developing a risk-driven enterprise information security architecture and service management, to support critical business processes. It was developed independently from the Zachman Framework, but has a similar structure. The primary characteristic of the SABSA model is that everything must be derived from an analysis of the business requirements for security, especially those in which security has an enabling function through which new business opportunities can be developed and exploited. The process analyzes the business requirements at the outset, and creates a chain of traceability through the strategy and concept, design, implementation, and ongoing ‘manage and measure’ phases of the lifecycle to ensure that the business mandate is preserved. Framework tools created from practical experience further support the whole methodology. The model is layered, with the top layer being the business requirements definition stage. At each lower layer a new level of abstraction and detail is developed, going through the definition of the conceptual architecture, logical services architecture, physical infrastructure architecture and finally at the lowest layer, the selection of technologies and products (component architecture). The SABSA model itself is generic and can be the starting point for any organization, but by going through the process of analysis and decision-making implied by its structure, it becomes specific to the enterprise, and is finally highly customized to a unique business model. It becomes in reality the enterprise security architecture, and it is central to the success of a strategic program of information security management within the organization. SABSA is a particular example of a methodology that can be used both for IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology) environments. == SABSA matrix == Note: The above is the original SABSA Matrix, which is still valid today, but it has been expanded by a comprehensive service management matrix and updated in some detail and terminology areas. In the words of David Lynas, SABSA author, "The SABSA Matrix and the SABSA Service Management Matrix have not been updated since the late 90s. We have redesigned them to deliver the improvements your feedback has requested over the years. We have not fundamentally changed the structure or principles of the matrices (very few elements have changed position) but have focused on terminology update and consistency." The new versions can be downloaded (along with the 2009 revision of the SABSA White Paper and other important documents like the SABSA Certification Roadmap) at the SABSA Members' Web Site.

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  • Rectified linear unit

    Rectified linear unit

    In the context of artificial neural networks, the rectifier or ReLU (rectified linear unit) activation function is an activation function defined as the non-negative part of its argument, i.e., the ramp function: ReLU ⁡ ( x ) = x + = max ( 0 , x ) = x + | x | 2 = { x if x > 0 , 0 x ≤ 0 {\displaystyle \operatorname {ReLU} (x)=x^{+}=\max(0,x)={\frac {x+|x|}{2}}={\begin{cases}x&{\text{if }}x>0,\\0&x\leq 0\end{cases}}} where x {\displaystyle x} is the input to a neuron. This is analogous to half-wave rectification in electrical engineering. ReLU is one of the most popular activation functions for artificial neural networks, and finds application in computer vision and speech recognition using deep neural nets and computational neuroscience. == History == The ReLU was first used by Alston Householder in 1941 as a mathematical abstraction of biological neural networks. Kunihiko Fukushima in 1969 used ReLU in the context of visual feature extraction in hierarchical neural networks. In 1998, Gregory Woodbury demonstrated that the rectified linear function could account for a broad range of emergent properties in the visual cortex. His work showed that a single unified model could drive the joint development of refined retinotopic maps, ocular dominance columns, and orientation selectivity. By utilizing the rectifier's "cutoff" property, Woodbury achieved a close quantitative fit to biological data, matching the spatial periodicities and topographic refinement patterns observed in macaque and cat cortical maps. Furthermore, he extended this framework to adult plasticity, accurately replicating the spatial and temporal dynamics of lesion-induced cortical reorganization. This research established that the rectified linear response was a necessary mechanism for the stable self-organisation and maintenance of complex, multi-feature neural maps. In 2000, Hahnloser et al. argued that ReLU approximates the biological relationship between neural firing rates and input current, in addition to enabling recurrent neural network dynamics to stabilise under weaker criteria. Prior to 2010, most activation functions used were the logistic sigmoid (which is inspired by probability theory; see logistic regression) and its more numerically efficient counterpart, the hyperbolic tangent. Around 2010, the use of ReLU became common again. Jarrett et al. (2009) noted that rectification by either absolute or ReLU (which they called "positive part") was critical for object recognition in convolutional neural networks (CNNs), specifically because it allows average pooling without neighboring filter outputs cancelling each other out. They hypothesized that the use of sigmoid or tanh was responsible for poor performance in previous CNNs. Nair and Hinton (2010) made a theoretical argument that the softplus activation function should be used, in that the softplus function numerically approximates the sum of an exponential number of linear models that share parameters. They then proposed ReLU as a good approximation to it. Specifically, they began by considering a single binary neuron in a Boltzmann machine that takes x {\displaystyle x} as input, and produces 1 as output with probability σ ( x ) = 1 1 + e − x {\displaystyle \sigma (x)={\frac {1}{1+e^{-x}}}} . They then considered extending its range of output by making infinitely many copies of it X 1 , X 2 , X 3 , … {\displaystyle X_{1},X_{2},X_{3},\dots } , that all take the same input, offset by an amount 0.5 , 1.5 , 2.5 , … {\displaystyle 0.5,1.5,2.5,\dots } , then their outputs are added together as ∑ i = 1 ∞ X i {\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{\infty }X_{i}} . They then demonstrated that ∑ i = 1 ∞ X i {\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{\infty }X_{i}} is approximately equal to N ( log ⁡ ( 1 + e x ) , σ ( x ) ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {N}}(\log(1+e^{x}),\sigma (x))} , which is also approximately equal to ReLU ⁡ ( N ( x , σ ( x ) ) ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {ReLU} ({\mathcal {N}}(x,\sigma (x)))} , where N {\displaystyle {\mathcal {N}}} stands for the gaussian distribution. They also argued for another reason for using ReLU: that it allows "intensity equivariance" in image recognition. That is, multiplying input image by a constant k {\displaystyle k} multiplies the output also. In contrast, this is false for other activation functions like sigmoid or tanh. They found that ReLU activation allowed good empirical performance in restricted Boltzmann machines. Glorot et al (2011) argued that ReLU has the following advantages over sigmoid or tanh: ReLU is more similar to biological neurons' responses in their main operating regime. ReLU avoids vanishing gradients. ReLU is cheaper to compute. ReLU creates sparse representation naturally, because many hidden units output exactly zero for a given input. They also found empirically that deep networks trained with ReLU can achieve strong performance without unsupervised pre-training, especially on large, purely supervised tasks. In 2017, the rectified linear function became a central component of the transformer architecture introduced in the Vaswani et al paper "Attention Is All You Need". Within every transformer layer, ReLU is utilized in the position-wise feed-forward networks (FFN), defined by Equation 2 of their paper: FFN ⁡ ( x ) = max ( 0 , x W 1 + b 1 ) W 2 + b 2 {\displaystyle \operatorname {FFN} (x)=\max(0,xW_{1}+b_{1})W_{2}+b_{2}} This equation is foundational to the model's capacity; while the attention mechanism determines the relationships between tokens, the ReLU-based FFN performs the majority of the numerical computation and houses the bulk of the model's parameters. The efficiency and scalability of this rectified framework triggered a global technological revolution, enabling the development of Large Language Models that have had a profound economic impact. The industrial response to this architecture—including the massive expansion of AI-specific hardware and the birth of the generative AI sector—has positioned the Transformer as a cornerstone of 21st-century infrastructure. During the post 2017 period of rapid AI advancement, the rectified linear unit function has been key to achieving increased model performance and scaling due to the fact that it zeros out responses that are immaterial for a given stimuli, preventing them from accumulating in massive scale models. It is the complete silencing of the parts of the model found to be stimuli-irrelevant during learning that allows for scaling. As the stimuli-irrelevant proportion of the model becomes more massive, these highly numerous connections within the model would inevitably accumulate during scaling no matter how small each individual response is. Therefore, the rectified linear unit function, with its absolute zeroing property, enabled the scaling to hundred billion parameter models and beyond. Early Transformer scaling giants like GPT-3 (2020) and Falcon-180B (2023) relied on the rectified linear unit function explicitly, while successors such as GPT-4 (2023) and Llama 3 (2024) utilized smoother variants like GELU or SwiGLU. These variants were used to improve training stability while fundamentally preserving the rectified principle of zeroing low responses. At the centre of modern artificial intelligence ReLU and its variants maintain absolute zero response across the bulk of the model at any one time, while maintaining approximately linear reponses for stimuli-relevant connections enabling high performance on each specific cognitive task. This feature of activation sparsity has been critical for massive scaling and performance gains of AI models right up to the present day. == Advantages == Advantages of ReLU include: Sparse activation: for example, in a randomly initialized network, only about 50% of hidden units are activated (i.e. have a non-zero output). Better gradient propagation: fewer vanishing gradient problems compared to sigmoidal activation functions that saturate in both directions. Efficiency: only requires comparison and addition. Scale-invariant (homogeneous, or "intensity equivariance"): max ( 0 , a x ) = a max ( 0 , x ) for a ≥ 0 {\displaystyle \max(0,ax)=a\max(0,x){\text{ for }}a\geq 0} . == Potential problems == Possible downsides can include: Non-differentiability at zero (however, it is differentiable anywhere else, and the value of the derivative at zero can be chosen to be 0 or 1 arbitrarily). Not zero-centered: ReLU outputs are always non-negative. This can make it harder for the network to learn during backpropagation, because gradient updates tend to push weights in one direction (positive or negative). Batch normalization can help address this. ReLU is unbounded. Redundancy of the parametrization: Because ReLU is scale-invariant, the network computes the exact same function by scaling the weights and biases in front of a ReLU activation by k {\displaystyle k} , and the weights after by 1 / k {\displaystyle 1/k} . Dying ReLU: ReLU neurons can sometimes be pushed into states

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  • BrownBoost

    BrownBoost

    BrownBoost is a boosting algorithm that may be robust to noisy datasets. BrownBoost is an adaptive version of the boost by majority algorithm. As is the case for all boosting algorithms, BrownBoost is used in conjunction with other machine learning methods. BrownBoost was introduced by Yoav Freund in 2001. == Motivation == AdaBoost performs well on a variety of datasets; however, it can be shown that AdaBoost does not perform well on noisy data sets. This is a result of AdaBoost's focus on examples that are repeatedly misclassified. In contrast, BrownBoost effectively "gives up" on examples that are repeatedly misclassified. The core assumption of BrownBoost is that noisy examples will be repeatedly mislabeled by the weak hypotheses and non-noisy examples will be correctly labeled frequently enough to not be "given up on." Thus only noisy examples will be "given up on," whereas non-noisy examples will contribute to the final classifier. In turn, if the final classifier is learned from the non-noisy examples, the generalization error of the final classifier may be much better than if learned from noisy and non-noisy examples. The user of the algorithm can set the amount of error to be tolerated in the training set. Thus, if the training set is noisy (say 10% of all examples are assumed to be mislabeled), the booster can be told to accept a 10% error rate. Since the noisy examples may be ignored, only the true examples will contribute to the learning process. == Algorithm description == BrownBoost uses a non-convex potential loss function, thus it does not fit into the AdaBoost framework. The non-convex optimization provides a method to avoid overfitting noisy data sets. However, in contrast to boosting algorithms that analytically minimize a convex loss function (e.g. AdaBoost and LogitBoost), BrownBoost solves a system of two equations and two unknowns using standard numerical methods. The only parameter of BrownBoost ( c {\displaystyle c} in the algorithm) is the "time" the algorithm runs. The theory of BrownBoost states that each hypothesis takes a variable amount of time ( t {\displaystyle t} in the algorithm) which is directly related to the weight given to the hypothesis α {\displaystyle \alpha } . The time parameter in BrownBoost is analogous to the number of iterations T {\displaystyle T} in AdaBoost. A larger value of c {\displaystyle c} means that BrownBoost will treat the data as if it were less noisy and therefore will give up on fewer examples. Conversely, a smaller value of c {\displaystyle c} means that BrownBoost will treat the data as more noisy and give up on more examples. During each iteration of the algorithm, a hypothesis is selected with some advantage over random guessing. The weight of this hypothesis α {\displaystyle \alpha } and the "amount of time passed" t {\displaystyle t} during the iteration are simultaneously solved in a system of two non-linear equations ( 1. uncorrelated hypothesis w.r.t example weights and 2. hold the potential constant) with two unknowns (weight of hypothesis α {\displaystyle \alpha } and time passed t {\displaystyle t} ). This can be solved by bisection (as implemented in the JBoost software package) or Newton's method (as described in the original paper by Freund). Once these equations are solved, the margins of each example ( r i ( x j ) {\displaystyle r_{i}(x_{j})} in the algorithm) and the amount of time remaining s {\displaystyle s} are updated appropriately. This process is repeated until there is no time remaining. The initial potential is defined to be 1 m ∑ j = 1 m 1 − erf ( c ) = 1 − erf ( c ) {\displaystyle {\frac {1}{m}}\sum _{j=1}^{m}1-{\mbox{erf}}({\sqrt {c}})=1-{\mbox{erf}}({\sqrt {c}})} . Since a constraint of each iteration is that the potential be held constant, the final potential is 1 m ∑ j = 1 m 1 − erf ( r i ( x j ) / c ) = 1 − erf ( c ) {\displaystyle {\frac {1}{m}}\sum _{j=1}^{m}1-{\mbox{erf}}(r_{i}(x_{j})/{\sqrt {c}})=1-{\mbox{erf}}({\sqrt {c}})} . Thus the final error is likely to be near 1 − erf ( c ) {\displaystyle 1-{\mbox{erf}}({\sqrt {c}})} . However, the final potential function is not the 0–1 loss error function. For the final error to be exactly 1 − erf ( c ) {\displaystyle 1-{\mbox{erf}}({\sqrt {c}})} , the variance of the loss function must decrease linearly w.r.t. time to form the 0–1 loss function at the end of boosting iterations. This is not yet discussed in the literature and is not in the definition of the algorithm below. The final classifier is a linear combination of weak hypotheses and is evaluated in the same manner as most other boosting algorithms. == BrownBoost learning algorithm definition == Input: m {\displaystyle m} training examples ( x 1 , y 1 ) , … , ( x m , y m ) {\displaystyle (x_{1},y_{1}),\ldots ,(x_{m},y_{m})} where x j ∈ X , y j ∈ Y = { − 1 , + 1 } {\displaystyle x_{j}\in X,\,y_{j}\in Y=\{-1,+1\}} The parameter c {\displaystyle c} Initialise: s = c {\displaystyle s=c} . (The value of s {\displaystyle s} is the amount of time remaining in the game) r i ( x j ) = 0 {\displaystyle r_{i}(x_{j})=0} ∀ j {\displaystyle \forall j} . The value of r i ( x j ) {\displaystyle r_{i}(x_{j})} is the margin at iteration i {\displaystyle i} for example x j {\displaystyle x_{j}} . While s > 0 {\displaystyle s>0} : Set the weights of each example: W i ( x j ) = e − ( r i ( x j ) + s ) 2 c {\displaystyle W_{i}(x_{j})=e^{-{\frac {(r_{i}(x_{j})+s)^{2}}{c}}}} , where r i ( x j ) {\displaystyle r_{i}(x_{j})} is the margin of example x j {\displaystyle x_{j}} Find a classifier h i : X → { − 1 , + 1 } {\displaystyle h_{i}:X\to \{-1,+1\}} such that ∑ j W i ( x j ) h i ( x j ) y j > 0 {\displaystyle \sum _{j}W_{i}(x_{j})h_{i}(x_{j})y_{j}>0} Find values α , t {\displaystyle \alpha ,t} that satisfy the equation: ∑ j h i ( x j ) y j e − ( r i ( x j ) + α h i ( x j ) y j + s − t ) 2 c = 0 {\displaystyle \sum _{j}h_{i}(x_{j})y_{j}e^{-{\frac {(r_{i}(x_{j})+\alpha h_{i}(x_{j})y_{j}+s-t)^{2}}{c}}}=0} . (Note this is similar to the condition E W i + 1 [ h i ( x j ) y j ] = 0 {\displaystyle E_{W_{i+1}}[h_{i}(x_{j})y_{j}]=0} set forth by Schapire and Singer. In this setting, we are numerically finding the W i + 1 = exp ⁡ ( ⋯ ⋯ ) {\displaystyle W_{i+1}=\exp \left({\frac {\cdots }{\cdots }}\right)} such that E W i + 1 [ h i ( x j ) y j ] = 0 {\displaystyle E_{W_{i+1}}[h_{i}(x_{j})y_{j}]=0} .) This update is subject to the constraint ∑ ( Φ ( r i ( x j ) + α h ( x j ) y j + s − t ) − Φ ( r i ( x j ) + s ) ) = 0 {\displaystyle \sum \left(\Phi \left(r_{i}(x_{j})+\alpha h(x_{j})y_{j}+s-t\right)-\Phi \left(r_{i}(x_{j})+s\right)\right)=0} , where Φ ( z ) = 1 − erf ( z / c ) {\displaystyle \Phi (z)=1-{\mbox{erf}}(z/{\sqrt {c}})} is the potential loss for a point with margin r i ( x j ) {\displaystyle r_{i}(x_{j})} Update the margins for each example: r i + 1 ( x j ) = r i ( x j ) + α h ( x j ) y j {\displaystyle r_{i+1}(x_{j})=r_{i}(x_{j})+\alpha h(x_{j})y_{j}} Update the time remaining: s = s − t {\displaystyle s=s-t} Output: H ( x ) = sign ( ∑ i α i h i ( x ) ) {\displaystyle H(x)={\textrm {sign}}\left(\sum _{i}\alpha _{i}h_{i}(x)\right)} == Empirical results == In preliminary experimental results with noisy datasets, BrownBoost outperformed AdaBoost's generalization error; however, LogitBoost performed as well as BrownBoost. An implementation of BrownBoost can be found in the open source software JBoost.

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  • Charge based boundary element fast multipole method

    Charge based boundary element fast multipole method

    The charge-based formulation of the boundary element method (BEM) is a dimensionality reduction numerical technique that is used to model quasistatic electromagnetic phenomena in highly complex conducting media (targeting, e.g., the human brain) with a very large (up to approximately 1 billion) number of unknowns. The charge-based BEM solves an integral equation of the potential theory written in terms of the induced surface charge density. This formulation is naturally combined with fast multipole method (FMM) acceleration, and the entire method is known as charge-based BEM-FMM. The combination of BEM and FMM is a common technique in different areas of computational electromagnetics and, in the context of bioelectromagnetism, it provides improvements over the finite element method. == Historical development == Along with more common electric potential-based BEM, the quasistatic charge-based BEM, derived in terms of the single-layer (charge) density, for a single-compartment medium has been known in the potential theory since the beginning of the 20th century. For multi-compartment conducting media, the surface charge density formulation first appeared in discretized form (for faceted interfaces) in the 1964 paper by Gelernter and Swihart. A subsequent continuous form, including time-dependent and dielectric effects, appeared in the 1967 paper by Barnard, Duck, and Lynn. The charge-based BEM has also been formulated for conducting, dielectric, and magnetic media, and used in different applications. In 2009, Greengard et al. successfully applied the charge-based BEM with fast multipole acceleration to molecular electrostatics of dielectrics. A similar approach to realistic modeling of the human brain with multiple conducting compartments was first described by Makarov et al. in 2018. Along with this, the BEM-based multilevel fast multipole method has been widely used in radar and antenna studies at microwave frequencies as well as in acoustics. == Physical background - surface charges in biological media == The charge-based BEM is based on the concept of an impressed (or primary) electric field E i {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{i}} and a secondary electric field E s {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{s}} . The impressed field is usually known a priori or is trivial to find. For the human brain, the impressed electric field can be classified as one of the following: A conservative field E i {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{i}} derived from an impressed density of EEG or MEG current sources in a homogeneous infinite medium with the conductivity σ {\displaystyle \sigma } at the source location; An instantaneous solenoidal field E i {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{i}} of an induction coil obtained from Faraday's law of induction in a homogeneous infinite medium (air), when transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) problems are concerned; A surface field E i {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{i}} derived from an impressed surface current density J i = σ E i {\displaystyle \mathbf {J} ^{i}=\sigma \mathbf {E} ^{i}} of current electrodes injecting electric current at a boundary of a compartment with conductivity σ {\displaystyle \sigma } when transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) or deep brain stimulation (DBS) are concerned; A conservative field E i {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{i}} of charges deposited on voltage electrodes for tDCS or DBS. This specific problem requires a coupled treatment since these charges will depend on the environment; In application to multiscale modeling, a field E i {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{i}} obtained from any other macroscopic numerical solution in a small (mesoscale or microscale) spatial domain within the brain. For example, a constant field can be used. When the impressed field is "turned on", free charges located within a conducting volume D immediately begin to redistribute and accumulate at the boundaries (interfaces) of regions of different conductivity in D. A surface charge density ρ ( r ) {\displaystyle \rho (\mathbf {r} )} appears on the conductivity interfaces. This charge density induces a secondary conservative electric field E s {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{s}} following Coulomb's law. One example is a human under a direct current powerline with the known field E i {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{i}} directed down. The superior surface of the human's conducting body will be charged negatively while its inferior portion is charged positively. These surface charges create a secondary electric field that effectively cancels or blocks the primary field everywhere in the body so that no current will flow within the body under DC steady state conditions. Another example is a human head with electrodes attached. At any conductivity interface with a normal vector n {\displaystyle \mathbf {n} } pointing from an "inside" (-) compartment of conductivity σ − {\displaystyle \sigma ^{-}} to an "outside" (+) compartment of conductivity σ + {\displaystyle \sigma ^{+}} , Kirchhoff's current law requires continuity of the normal component of the electric current density. This leads to the interfacial boundary condition in the form for every facet at a triangulated interface. As long as σ ± {\displaystyle \sigma ^{\pm }} are different from each other, the two normal components of the electric field, E ± ⋅ n {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{\pm }\cdot \mathbf {n} } , must also be different. Such a jump across the interface is only possible when a sheet of surface charge exists at that interface. Thus, if an electric current or voltage is applied, the surface charge density follows. The goal of the numerical analysis is to find the unknown surface charge distribution and thus the total electric field E = E i + E s {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} =\mathbf {E} ^{i}+\mathbf {E} ^{s}} (and the total electric potential if required) anywhere in space. == System of equations for surface charges == Below, a derivation is given based on Gauss's law and Coulomb's law. All conductivity interfaces, denoted by S, are discretized into planar triangular facets t m {\displaystyle t_{m}} with centers r m {\displaystyle \mathbf {r} _{m}} . Assume that an m-th facet with the normal vector n m {\displaystyle \mathbf {n} _{m}} and area A m {\displaystyle A_{m}} carries a uniform surface charge density ρ m {\displaystyle \rho _{m}} . If a volumetric tetrahedral mesh were present, the charged facets would belong to tetrahedra with different conductivity values. We first compute the electric field E m + {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} _{m}^{+}} at the point r m + δ n m {\displaystyle \mathbf {r} _{m}+\delta \mathbf {n} _{m}} , for δ → 0 + {\displaystyle \delta \rightarrow 0^{+}} i.e., just outside facet 𝑚 at its center. This field contains three contributions: The continuous impressed electric field E i {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{i}} itself; An electric field of the m-th charged facet itself. Very close to the facet, it can be approximated as the electric field of an infinite sheet of uniform surface charge ρ m {\displaystyle \rho _{m}} . By Gauss's law, it is given by + ρ m / 2 ε 0 ⋅ n m {\displaystyle +\rho _{m}/2\varepsilon _{0}\cdot \mathbf {n} _{m}} where ε 0 {\displaystyle \varepsilon _{0}} is a background electrical permittivity; An electric field generated by all other facets t n {\displaystyle t_{n}} , which we approximate as point charges of charge A n ρ n {\displaystyle A_{n}\rho _{n}} at each center r n {\displaystyle \mathbf {r} _{n}} . A similar treatment holds for the electric field E m − {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} _{m}^{-}} just inside facet 𝑚, but the electric field of the flat sheet of charge changes its sign. Using Coulomb's law to calculate the contribution of facets different from t m {\displaystyle t_{m}} , we find From this equation, we see that the normal component of the electric field indeed undergoes a jump through the charged interface. This is equivalent to a jump relation of the potential theory. As a second step, the two expressions for E m ± {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} _{m}^{\pm }} are substituted into the interfacial boundary condition σ − E m − ⋅ n m = σ + E m + ⋅ n m {\displaystyle \sigma ^{-}\mathbf {E} _{m}^{-}\cdot \mathbf {n} _{m}=\sigma ^{+}\mathbf {E} _{m}^{+}\cdot \mathbf {n} _{m}} , applied to every facet 𝑚. This operation leads to a system of linear equations for unknown charge densities ρ m {\displaystyle \rho _{m}} which solves the problem: where K m = σ − − σ + σ − + σ + {\displaystyle K_{m}={\frac {\sigma ^{-}-\sigma ^{+}}{\sigma ^{-}+\sigma ^{+}}}} is the electric conductivity contrast at the m-th facet. The normalization constant ε 0 {\displaystyle \varepsilon _{0}} will cancel out after the solution is substituted in the expression for E s {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ^{s}} and becomes redundant. == Application of fast multipole method == For modern characterizations of brain topologies with ever-increasing levels of complexity, the above system of equations for ρ m {\displaystyle \rho _{m}} is very large; it is t

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  • ZygoteBody

    ZygoteBody

    ZygoteBody, formerly Google Body, is a web application by Zygote Media Group that renders manipulable 3D anatomical models of the human body. Several layers, from muscle tissues down to blood vessels, can be removed or made transparent to allow better study of individual body parts. Most of the body parts are labelled and are searchable. == Technology == The human models are based on data from the Zygote Media Group. The website uses JavaScript and WebGL technology to display 3D images inside the web browser without requiring the installation of external browser plug-ins. == History == ZygoteBody was launched as Google Body on December 15, 2010. On April Fools' Day 2011, users were greeted with the anatomy of a cow on the home page. The cow model is still available as part of the open-3d-viewer open source project. As part of the wind down on Google Labs, it was announced that Google Body will be shut down but will continue to be maintained by Zygote as ZygoteBody. On October 13, 2011, the Google Body site was shut down. Then, on January 9, 2012, ZygoteBody was launched and core code base (with the Google Cow model as a demo) was made available as an open source project called open-3d-viewer.

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  • Inverted pendulum

    Inverted pendulum

    An inverted pendulum is a pendulum that has its center of mass above its pivot point. It is unstable and falls over without additional help. It can be suspended stably in this inverted position by using a control system to monitor the angle of the pole and move the pivot point horizontally back under the center of mass when it starts to fall over, keeping it balanced. The inverted pendulum is a classic problem in dynamics and control theory and is used as a benchmark for testing control strategies. It is often implemented with the pivot point mounted on a cart that can move horizontally under control of an electronic servo system as shown in the photo; this is called a cart and pole apparatus. Most applications limit the pendulum to 1 degree of freedom by affixing the pole to an axis of rotation. Whereas a normal pendulum is stable when hanging downward, an inverted pendulum is inherently unstable, and must be actively balanced in order to remain upright; this can be done either by applying a torque at the pivot point, by moving the pivot point horizontally as part of a feedback system, changing the rate of rotation of a mass mounted on the pendulum on an axis parallel to the pivot axis and thereby generating a net torque on the pendulum, or by oscillating the pivot point vertically. A simple demonstration of moving the pivot point in a feedback system is achieved by balancing an upturned broomstick on the end of one's finger. A second type of inverted pendulum is a tiltmeter for tall structures, which consists of a wire anchored to the bottom of the foundation and attached to a float in a pool of oil at the top of the structure that has devices for measuring movement of the neutral position of the float away from its original position. == Overview == A pendulum with its bob hanging directly below the support pivot is at a stable equilibrium point, where it remains motionless because there is no torque on the pendulum. If displaced from this position, it experiences a restoring torque that returns it toward the equilibrium position. A pendulum with its bob in an inverted position, supported on a rigid rod directly above the pivot, 180° from its stable equilibrium position, is at an unstable equilibrium point. At this point again there is no torque on the pendulum, but the slightest displacement away from this position causes a gravitation torque on the pendulum that accelerates it away from equilibrium, causing it to fall over. In order to stabilize a pendulum in this inverted position, a feedback control system can be used, which monitors the pendulum's angle and moves the position of the pivot point sideways when the pendulum starts to fall over, to keep it balanced. The inverted pendulum is a classic problem in dynamics and control theory and is widely used as a benchmark for testing control algorithms (PID controllers, state-space representation, neural networks, fuzzy control, genetic algorithms, etc.). Variations on this problem include multiple links, allowing the motion of the cart to be commanded while maintaining the pendulum, and balancing the cart-pendulum system on a see-saw. The inverted pendulum is related to rocket or missile guidance, where the center of gravity is located behind the center of drag causing aerodynamic instability. The understanding of a similar problem can be shown by simple robotics in the form of a balancing cart. Balancing an upturned broomstick on the end of one's finger is a simple demonstration, and the problem is solved by self-balancing personal transporters such as the Segway PT, the self-balancing hoverboard and the self-balancing unicycle. Another way that an inverted pendulum may be stabilized, without any feedback or control mechanism, is by oscillating the pivot rapidly up and down. This is called Kapitza's pendulum. If the oscillation is sufficiently strong (in terms of its acceleration and amplitude) then the inverted pendulum can recover from perturbations in a strikingly counterintuitive manner. If the driving point moves in simple harmonic motion, the pendulum's motion is described by the Mathieu equation. == Equations of motion == The equations of motion of inverted pendulums are dependent on what constraints are placed on the motion of the pendulum. Inverted pendulums can be created in various configurations resulting in a number of Equations of Motion describing the behavior of the pendulum. === Stationary pivot point === In a configuration where the pivot point of the pendulum is fixed in space, the equation of motion is similar to that for an uninverted pendulum. The equation of motion below assumes no friction or any other resistance to movement, a rigid massless rod, and the restriction to 2-dimensional movement. θ ¨ − g ℓ sin ⁡ θ = 0 {\displaystyle {\ddot {\theta }}-{g \over \ell }\sin \theta =0} Where θ ¨ {\displaystyle {\ddot {\theta }}} is the angular acceleration of the pendulum, g {\displaystyle g} is the standard gravity on the surface of the Earth, ℓ {\displaystyle \ell } is the length of the pendulum, and θ {\displaystyle \theta } is the angular displacement measured from the equilibrium position. When θ ¨ {\displaystyle {\ddot {\theta }}} added to both sides, it has the same sign as the angular acceleration term: θ ¨ = g ℓ sin ⁡ θ {\displaystyle {\ddot {\theta }}={g \over \ell }\sin \theta } Thus, the inverted pendulum accelerates away from the vertical unstable equilibrium in the direction initially displaced, and the acceleration is inversely proportional to the length. Tall pendulums fall more slowly than short ones. Derivation using torque and moment of inertia: The pendulum is assumed to consist of a point mass, of mass m {\displaystyle m} , affixed to the end of a massless rigid rod, of length ℓ {\displaystyle \ell } , attached to a pivot point at the end opposite the point mass. The net torque of the system must equal the moment of inertia times the angular acceleration: τ n e t = I θ ¨ {\displaystyle {\boldsymbol {\tau }}_{\mathrm {net} }=I{\ddot {\theta }}} The torque due to gravity providing the net torque: τ n e t = m g ℓ sin ⁡ θ {\displaystyle {\boldsymbol {\tau }}_{\mathrm {net} }=mg\ell \sin \theta \,\!} Where θ {\displaystyle \theta \ } is the angle measured from the inverted equilibrium position. The resulting equation: I θ ¨ = m g ℓ sin ⁡ θ {\displaystyle I{\ddot {\theta }}=mg\ell \sin \theta \,\!} The moment of inertia for a point mass: I = m R 2 {\displaystyle I=mR^{2}} In the case of the inverted pendulum the radius is the length of the rod, ℓ {\displaystyle \ell } . Substituting in I = m ℓ 2 {\displaystyle I=m\ell ^{2}} m ℓ 2 θ ¨ = m g ℓ sin ⁡ θ {\displaystyle m\ell ^{2}{\ddot {\theta }}=mg\ell \sin \theta \,\!} Mass and ℓ 2 {\displaystyle \ell ^{2}} is divided from each side resulting in: θ ¨ = g ℓ sin ⁡ θ {\displaystyle {\ddot {\theta }}={g \over \ell }\sin \theta } === Inverted pendulum on a cart === An inverted pendulum on a cart consists of a mass m {\displaystyle m} at the top of a pole of length ℓ {\displaystyle \ell } pivoted on a horizontally moving base as shown in the adjacent image. The cart is restricted to linear motion and is subject to forces resulting in or hindering motion. === Essentials of stabilization === The essentials of stabilizing the inverted pendulum can be summarized qualitatively in three steps. 1. If the tilt angle θ {\displaystyle \theta } is to the right, the cart must accelerate to the right and vice versa. 2. The position of the cart x {\displaystyle x} relative to track center is stabilized by slightly modulating the null angle (the angle error that the control system tries to null) by the position of the cart, that is, null angle = θ + k x {\displaystyle =\theta +kx} where k {\displaystyle k} is small. This makes the pole want to lean slightly toward track center and stabilize at track center where the tilt angle is exactly vertical. Any offset in the tilt sensor or track slope that would otherwise cause instability translates into a stable position offset. A further added offset gives position control. 3. A normal pendulum subject to a moving pivot point such as a load lifted by a crane, has a peaked response at the pendulum radian frequency of ω p = g / ℓ {\displaystyle \omega _{p}={\sqrt {g/\ell }}} . To prevent uncontrolled swinging, the frequency spectrum of the pivot motion should be suppressed near ω p {\displaystyle \omega _{p}} . The inverted pendulum requires the same suppression filter to achieve stability. As a consequence of the null angle modulation strategy, the position feedback is positive, that is, a sudden command to move right produces an initial cart motion to the left followed by a move right to rebalance the pendulum. The interaction of the pendulum instability and the positive position feedback instability to produce a stable system is a feature that makes the mathematical analysis an interesting and challenging problem. === From Lagrange's equations === The equations of motion c

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  • Genetic programming

    Genetic programming

    Genetic programming (GP) is an evolutionary algorithm, an artificial intelligence technique mimicking natural evolution, which operates on a population of programs. It applies the genetic operators selection according to a predefined fitness measure, mutation and crossover. The crossover operation involves swapping specified parts of selected pairs (parents) to produce new and different offspring that become part of the new generation of programs. Some programs not selected for reproduction are copied from the current generation to the new generation. Mutation involves substitution of some random part of a program with some other random part of a program. Then the selection and other operations are recursively applied to the new generation of programs. Typically, members of each new generation are on average more fit than the members of the previous generation, and the best-of-generation program is often better than the best-of-generation programs from previous generations. Termination of the evolution usually occurs when some individual program reaches a predefined proficiency or fitness level. It may and often does happen that a particular run of the algorithm results in premature convergence to some local maximum that is not a globally optimal or even good solution. Multiple runs (dozens to hundreds) are usually necessary to produce a very good result. It may also be necessary to have a large starting population size and variability of the individuals to avoid pathologies. == History == The first record of the proposal to evolve programs is probably that of Alan Turing in 1950 in "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". There was a gap of 25 years before the publication of John Holland's 'Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems' laid out the theoretical and empirical foundations of the science. In 1981, Richard Forsyth demonstrated the successful evolution of small programs, represented as trees, to perform classification of crime scene evidence for the UK Home Office. Although the idea of evolving programs, initially in the computer language Lisp, was current amongst John Holland's students, it was not until they organised the first Genetic Algorithms (GA) conference in Pittsburgh that Nichael Cramer published evolved programs in two specially designed languages, which included the first statement of modern "tree-based" genetic programming (that is, procedural languages organized in tree-based structures and operated on by suitably defined GA-operators). In 1988, John Koza (also a PhD student of John Holland) patented his invention of a GA for program evolution. This was followed by publication in the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence IJCAI-89. Koza followed this with 205 publications on "genetic programming", a term coined by David Goldberg, also a PhD student of John Holland. However, it is the series of 4 books by Koza, starting in 1992 with accompanying videos, that really established GP. Subsequently, there was an enormous expansion of the number of publications with the Genetic Programming Bibliography, surpassing 10,000 entries. In 2010, Koza listed 77 results where genetic programming was human competitive. The departure of GP from the rigid, fixed-length representations typical of early GA models was not entirely without precedent. Early work on variable-length representations laid the groundwork. One notable example is messy genetic algorithms, which introduced irregular, variable-length chromosomes to address building block disruption and positional bias in standard GAs. Another precursor was robot trajectory programming, where genome representations encoded program instructions for robotic movements—structures inherently variable in length. Even earlier, unfixed-length representations were proposed in a doctoral dissertation by Cavicchio, who explored adaptive search using simulated evolution. His work provided foundational ideas for flexible program structures. In 1996, Koza started the annual Genetic Programming conference, which was followed in 1998 by the annual EuroGP conference, and the first book in a GP series edited by Koza. 1998 also saw the first GP textbook. GP continued to flourish, leading to the first specialist GP journal and three years later (2003) the annual Genetic Programming Theory and Practice (GPTP) workshop was established by Rick Riolo. Genetic programming papers continue to be published at a diversity of conferences and associated journals. Today there are nineteen GP books including several for students. === Foundational work in GP === Early work that set the stage for current genetic programming research topics and applications is diverse, and includes software synthesis and repair, predictive modeling, data mining, financial modeling, soft sensors, design, and image processing. Applications in some areas, such as design, often make use of intermediate representations, such as Fred Gruau's cellular encoding. Industrial uptake has been significant in several areas including finance, the chemical industry, bioinformatics and the steel industry. == Methods == === Program representation === GP evolves computer programs, traditionally represented in memory as tree structures. Trees can be easily evaluated in a recursive manner. Every internal node has an operator function and every terminal node has an operand, making mathematical expressions easy to evolve and evaluate. Thus traditionally GP favors the use of programming languages that naturally embody tree structures (for example, Lisp; other functional programming languages are also suitable). Non-tree representations have been suggested and successfully implemented, such as linear genetic programming, which perhaps suits the more traditional imperative languages. The commercial GP software Discipulus uses automatic induction of binary machine code ("AIM") to achieve better performance. μGP uses directed multigraphs to generate programs that fully exploit the syntax of a given assembly language. Multi expression programming uses three-address code for encoding solutions. Other program representations on which significant research and development have been conducted include programs for stack-based virtual machines, and sequences of integers that are mapped to arbitrary programming languages via grammars. Cartesian genetic programming is another form of GP, which uses a graph representation instead of the usual tree based representation to encode computer programs. Most representations have structurally noneffective code (introns). Such non-coding genes may seem to be useless because they have no effect on the performance of any one individual. However, they alter the probabilities of generating different offspring under the variation operators, and thus alter the individual's variational properties. Experiments seem to show faster convergence when using program representations that allow such non-coding genes, compared to program representations that do not have any non-coding genes. Instantiations may have both trees with introns and those without; the latter are called canonical trees. Special canonical crossover operators are introduced that maintain the canonical structure of parents in their children. === Initialisation === The methods for creation of the initial population include: Grow creates the individuals sequentially. Every GP tree is created starting from the root, creating functional nodes with children as well as terminal nodes up to a certain depth. Full is similar to the Grow. The difference is that all brunches in a tree are of same predetermined depth. Ramped half-and-half creates a population consisting of m d − 1 {\displaystyle md-1} parts and a maximum depth of m d {\displaystyle md} for its trees. The first part has a maximum depth of 2, second of 3 and so on up to the m d − 1 {\displaystyle md-1} -th part with maximum depth m d {\displaystyle md} . Half of every part is created by Grow, while the other part is created by Full. === Selection === Selection is a process whereby certain individuals are selected from the current generation that would serve as parents for the next generation. The individuals are selected probabilistically such that the better performing individuals have a higher chance of getting selected. The most commonly used selection method in GP is tournament selection, although other methods such as fitness proportionate selection, lexicase selection, and others have been demonstrated to perform better for many GP problems. Elitism, which involves seeding the next generation with the best individual (or best n individuals) from the current generation, is a technique sometimes employed to avoid regression. === Crossover === In genetic programming two fit individuals are chosen from the population to be parents for one or two children. In tree genetic programming, these parents are represented as inverted lisp like trees, with their root nodes at the top. In subtree cro

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  • Multilayer perceptron

    Multilayer perceptron

    In deep learning, a multilayer perceptron (MLP) is a kind of modern feedforward neural network consisting of fully connected neurons with nonlinear activation functions, organized in layers, notable for being able to distinguish data that is not linearly separable. Modern neural networks are trained using backpropagation and are colloquially referred to as "vanilla" networks. MLPs grew out of an effort to improve on single-layer perceptrons, which could only be applied to linearly separable data. A perceptron traditionally used a Heaviside step function as its nonlinear activation function. However, the backpropagation algorithm requires that modern MLPs use continuous activation functions such as sigmoid or ReLU. Multilayer perceptrons form the basis of deep learning, and are applicable across a vast set of diverse domains. == Timeline == In 1943, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts proposed the binary artificial neuron as a logical model of biological neural networks. In 1958, Frank Rosenblatt proposed the multilayered perceptron model, consisting of an input layer, a hidden layer with randomized weights that did not learn, and an output layer with learnable connections. In 1962, Rosenblatt published many variants and experiments on perceptrons in his book Principles of Neurodynamics, including up to 2 trainable layers by "back-propagating errors". However, it was not the backpropagation algorithm, and he did not have a general method for training multiple layers. In 1965, Alexey Grigorevich Ivakhnenko and Valentin Lapa published Group Method of Data Handling. It was one of the first deep learning methods, used to train an eight-layer neural net in 1971. In 1967, Shun'ichi Amari reported the first multilayered neural network trained by stochastic gradient descent, was able to classify non-linearily separable pattern classes. Amari's student Saito conducted the computer experiments, using a five-layered feedforward network with two learning layers. Backpropagation was independently developed multiple times in early 1970s. The earliest published instance was Seppo Linnainmaa's master thesis (1970). Paul Werbos developed it independently in 1971, but had difficulty publishing it until 1982. In 1986, David E. Rumelhart et al. popularized backpropagation. In 2003, interest in backpropagation networks returned due to the successes of deep learning being applied to language modelling by Yoshua Bengio with co-authors. In 2021, a very simple NN architecture combining two deep MLPs with skip connections and layer normalizations was designed and called MLP-Mixer; its realizations featuring 19 to 431 millions of parameters were shown to be comparable to vision transformers of similar size on ImageNet and similar image classification tasks. == Mathematical foundations == === Activation function === If a multilayer perceptron has a linear activation function in all neurons, that is, a linear function that maps the weighted inputs to the output of each neuron, then linear algebra shows that any number of layers can be reduced to a two-layer input-output model. In MLPs some neurons use a nonlinear activation function that was developed to model the frequency of action potentials, or firing, of biological neurons. The two historically common activation functions are both sigmoids, and are described by y ( v i ) = tanh ⁡ ( v i ) and y ( v i ) = ( 1 + e − v i ) − 1 {\displaystyle y(v_{i})=\tanh(v_{i})~~{\textrm {and}}~~y(v_{i})=(1+e^{-v_{i}})^{-1}} . The first is a hyperbolic tangent that ranges from −1 to 1, while the other is the logistic function, which is similar in shape but ranges from 0 to 1. Here y i {\displaystyle y_{i}} is the output of the i {\displaystyle i} th node (neuron) and v i {\displaystyle v_{i}} is the weighted sum of the input connections. Alternative activation functions have been proposed, including the rectifier and softplus functions. More specialized activation functions include radial basis functions (used in radial basis networks, another class of supervised neural network models). In recent developments of deep learning the rectified linear unit (ReLU) is more frequently used as one of the possible ways to overcome the numerical problems related to the sigmoids. === Layers === The MLP consists of three or more layers (an input and an output layer with one or more hidden layers) of nonlinearly-activating nodes. Since MLPs are fully connected, each node in one layer connects with a certain weight w i j {\displaystyle w_{ij}} to every node in the following layer. === Learning === Learning occurs in the perceptron by changing connection weights after each piece of data is processed, based on the amount of error in the output compared to the expected result. This is an example of supervised learning, and is carried out through backpropagation, a generalization of the least mean squares algorithm in the linear perceptron. We can represent the degree of error in an output node j {\displaystyle j} in the n {\displaystyle n} th data point (training example) by e j ( n ) = d j ( n ) − y j ( n ) {\displaystyle e_{j}(n)=d_{j}(n)-y_{j}(n)} , where d j ( n ) {\displaystyle d_{j}(n)} is the desired target value for n {\displaystyle n} th data point at node j {\displaystyle j} , and y j ( n ) {\displaystyle y_{j}(n)} is the value produced by the perceptron at node j {\displaystyle j} when the n {\displaystyle n} th data point is given as an input. The node weights can then be adjusted based on corrections that minimize the error in the entire output for the n {\displaystyle n} th data point, given by E ( n ) = 1 2 ∑ output node j e j 2 ( n ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {E}}(n)={\frac {1}{2}}\sum _{{\text{output node }}j}e_{j}^{2}(n)} . Using gradient descent, the change in each weight w i j {\displaystyle w_{ij}} is Δ w j i ( n ) = − η ∂ E ( n ) ∂ v j ( n ) y i ( n ) {\displaystyle \Delta w_{ji}(n)=-\eta {\frac {\partial {\mathcal {E}}(n)}{\partial v_{j}(n)}}y_{i}(n)} where y i ( n ) {\displaystyle y_{i}(n)} is the output of the previous neuron i {\displaystyle i} , and η {\displaystyle \eta } is the learning rate, which is selected to ensure that the weights quickly converge to a response, without oscillations. In the previous expression, ∂ E ( n ) ∂ v j ( n ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial {\mathcal {E}}(n)}{\partial v_{j}(n)}}} denotes the partial derivate of the error E ( n ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {E}}(n)} according to the weighted sum v j ( n ) {\displaystyle v_{j}(n)} of the input connections of neuron i {\displaystyle i} . The derivative to be calculated depends on the induced local field v j {\displaystyle v_{j}} , which itself varies. It is easy to prove that for an output node this derivative can be simplified to − ∂ E ( n ) ∂ v j ( n ) = e j ( n ) ϕ ′ ( v j ( n ) ) {\displaystyle -{\frac {\partial {\mathcal {E}}(n)}{\partial v_{j}(n)}}=e_{j}(n)\phi ^{\prime }(v_{j}(n))} where ϕ ′ {\displaystyle \phi ^{\prime }} is the derivative of the activation function described above, which itself does not vary. The analysis is more difficult for the change in weights to a hidden node, but it can be shown that the relevant derivative is − ∂ E ( n ) ∂ v j ( n ) = ϕ ′ ( v j ( n ) ) ∑ k − ∂ E ( n ) ∂ v k ( n ) w k j ( n ) {\displaystyle -{\frac {\partial {\mathcal {E}}(n)}{\partial v_{j}(n)}}=\phi ^{\prime }(v_{j}(n))\sum _{k}-{\frac {\partial {\mathcal {E}}(n)}{\partial v_{k}(n)}}w_{kj}(n)} . This depends on the change in weights of the k {\displaystyle k} th nodes, which represent the output layer. So to change the hidden layer weights, the output layer weights change according to the derivative of the activation function, and so this algorithm represents a backpropagation of the activation function.

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  • XRX (web application architecture)

    XRX (web application architecture)

    In software development XRX is a web application architecture based on XForms, REST and XQuery. XRX applications store data on both the web client and on the web server in XML format and do not require a translation between data formats. XRX is considered a simple and elegant application architecture due to the minimal number of translations needed to transport data between client and server systems. The XRX architecture is also tightly coupled to W3C standards (CSS, XHTML 2.0, XPath, XML Schema) to ensure XRX applications will be robust in the future. Because XRX applications leverage modern declarative languages on the client and functional languages on the server they are designed to empower non-developers who are not familiar with traditional imperative languages such as JavaScript, Java or .Net. == Overview of XRX == XRX is a zero translation application architecture that uses XML to store data in the client web browser, on the application server and in the database server. It is because each of these layers uses XML as the same structural data model that XRX applications do not have to translate data structures to and from both object and relational data structures. Because of the lack of need for translation, XRX is considered to have a clean and elegant design. The XRX web application architecture allows developers to focus on the business problem and not the translation problem. XRX benefits from several advances in software technology: === Client Architectural Features === A model–view–controller (MVC) architecture that separates the data from its presentation and business logic. A single element (xf:submission) for all server submissions. This replaces much of the JavaScript code required in most AJAX applications. An advanced event model (XML Events) consistent with W3C standards that frees applications from having to deal with vendor-specific and browser-specific event handling. A Dependency graph that is used to store the dependency structure of the client controllers. This frees the developer from having to manually update either the model or the views when data changes in an application. This allows spreadsheet-like applications to be created on the client with very little effort. A declarative programming style that allows most client XForms applications to be created using a small set of approximately 20 elements. This allows rich client applications to be created without knowledge of JavaScript or other procedural scripting languages. An easy-to-extend system for creating new user interface controls using the EXtensible Bindings Language. This allows developers to add new controls at any time without fear of incompatibilities with W3C standards. === Server Architecture Features === Many native XML databases have built-in REST interfaces making each XQuery inherently a RESTful web service. A functional programming model that promotes side-effect free systems that are easier to debug and easier to run on multiple processors. An easy-to-extend system using XQuery function and modules. === Both Client and Server === Both XRX client and server components support a wide range of XML related standards such as XPath, XML Schema and XML Namespaces. Consistent use of REST interfaces to exchange data between the client and server for all transfers of data including as-you-type data checking and suggest functions. Consistent integration of W3C standards including use of XPath and XML Schema data types. A large library of standard of functions used on both the client and server. == Overall Benefits of XRX == One of the principal benefits of the XRX architecture is that it avoids the requirement to "shred" complex data structures into relational structures and then reconstitute the data back into structures when a record is edited on the client. Another benefits of the XRX Web application architecture is that it avoids most of the problems around the object-relational impedance mismatch. Another advantage is that the client developer does not have to learn JavaScript on the client. == Comparison with Traditional Object/Relational Web Application Architectures == Many traditional web application architectures created in the late 1990 were based on middle object tiers and persistence layers that used tabular data streams and relational database systems. Because each of these layers used different structures to store the models the systems required much additional complexity to translate between layers. == History of XRX == Early examples of using a zero-translation architecture in multi-tier systems can be traced back to the rise of object-oriented databases in the 1990s. See OODBMS History Mark Birbeck suggested that the combination of XForms, XQuery with REST interfaces between the two had many advantages in a meeting to the UK XML User Group in September 2006 . His presentation was one of the first to specifically suggest that the combination of three technologies: XForms and XQuery with REST interfaces would have surprisingly beneficial effects. Mark termed this process "Skimming" but that term did not seem to be contagious. Erik Bruchez of Orbeon spoke at the XML 2007 conference on Boston in December 2007. In his presentation "XForms and the eXist XML database: a perfect couple", Bruchez showed that many people were discovering synergistic benefits of XForms on the client and XQuery on the server. The label for XRX was suggested by a blog posting by Dan McCreary on December 14, 2007. It was in this article that Dan suggested the need for a contagious meme for the ideas behind the XRX architecture. == Generalizations of XRX == Although XRX was originally intended to connote the use of XForms on the client, REST as an interface and XQuery on the server, other proponents of the symmetrical use of XML on the client and server have generalized the term to encompass any XML-centric web client and any server that can store and query XML documents. This use of XRX is generally referred to as "shallow XRX". These generalizations do benefit from a simplified zero-translation architecture but many do not benefit from REST interfaces, XPath for consistent data selection, declarative systems in the client, and functional languages on the server (one of the key aspects of XRX). Use of all three technologies (XForms, REST and XQuery) is referred to as "deep XRX". Although XRX architecture is centred on XForms and XQuery, it does not preclude the use of other technologies that manipulate XML natively, such as XSLT, XProc, and XSL-FO.

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  • Win–stay, lose–switch

    Win–stay, lose–switch

    In psychology, game theory, statistics, and machine learning, win–stay, lose–switch (also win–stay, lose–shift or Pavlov, named after Ivan Pavlov) is a heuristic learning strategy used to model learning in decision situations. It was first invented as an improvement over randomization in bandit problems. It was later applied to the prisoner's dilemma in order to model the evolution of altruism. In most versions, it starts either with a cooperate, then proceeds as always, or starts with a "probe" of cooperate-defect-cooperate to determine the other player's strategy. A mutual cooperation is regarded as a win. The learning rule bases its decision only on the outcome of the previous play. Outcomes are divided into successes (wins) and failures (losses). If the play on the previous round resulted in a success, then the agent plays the same strategy on the next round. Alternatively, if the play resulted in a failure the agent switches to another action. A large-scale empirical study of players of the game rock, paper, scissors shows that a variation of this strategy is adopted by real-world players of the game, instead of the Nash equilibrium strategy of choosing entirely at random between the three options.

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  • Generalized blockmodeling of binary networks

    Generalized blockmodeling of binary networks

    Generalized blockmodeling of binary networks (also relational blockmodeling) is an approach of generalized blockmodeling, analysing the binary network(s). As most network analyses deal with binary networks, this approach is also considered as the fundamental approach of blockmodeling. This is especially noted, as the set of ideal blocks, when used for interpretation of blockmodels, have binary link patterns, which precludes them to be compared with valued empirical blocks. When analysing the binary networks, the criterion function is measuring block inconsistencies, while also reporting the possible errors. The ideal block in binary blockmodeling has only three types of conditions: "a certain cell must be (at least) 1, a certain cell must be 0 and the f {\displaystyle f} over each row (or column) must be at least 1". It is also used as a basis for developing the generalized blockmodeling of valued networks.

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  • Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

    Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

    The Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition is an annual conference on computer vision and pattern recognition. == Affiliations == The conference was first held in 1983 in Washington, DC, organized by Takeo Kanade and Dana H. Ballard. From 1985 to 2010 it was sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. In 2011 it was also co-sponsored by University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Since 2012 it has been co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and the Computer Vision Foundation, which provides open access to the conference papers. == Scope == The conference considers a wide range of topics related to computer vision and pattern recognition—basically any topic that is extracting structures or answers from images or video or applying mathematical methods to data to extract or recognize patterns. Common topics include object recognition, image segmentation, motion estimation, 3D reconstruction, and deep learning. The conference generally has less than 30% acceptance rates for all papers and less than 5% for oral presentations. It is managed by a rotating group of volunteers who are chosen in a public election at the Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence-Technical Community (PAMI-TC) meeting four years before the meeting. The conference uses a multi-tier double-blind peer review process. The program chairs, who cannot submit papers, select area chairs who manage the reviewers for their subset of submissions. == Location and time == The conference is usually held in June in North America. == Awards == === Best Paper Award === These awards are picked by committees delegated by the program chairs of the conference. === Longuet-Higgins Prize === The Longuet-Higgins Prize recognizes papers from ten years ago that have made a significant impact on computer vision research. === PAMI Young Researcher Award === The Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Young Researcher Award is an award given by the Technical Committee on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence of the IEEE Computer Society to a researcher within 7 years of completing their Ph.D. for outstanding early career research contributions. Candidates are nominated by the computer vision community, with winners selected by a committee of senior researchers in the field. This award was originally instituted in 2012 by the journal Image and Vision Computing, also presented at the conference, and the journal continues to sponsor the award. === PAMI Thomas S. Huang Memorial Prize === The Thomas Huang Memorial Prize was established at the 2020 conference and is awarded annually starting from 2021 to honor researchers who are recognized as examples in research, teaching/mentoring, and service to the computer vision community.

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  • Database index

    Database index

    A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data without having to search every row in a database table every time said table is accessed. Indexes can be created using one or more columns of a database table, providing the basis for both rapid random lookups and efficient access of ordered records. An index is a copy of selected columns of data, from a table, that is designed to enable very efficient search. An index normally includes a "key" or direct link to the original row of data from which it was copied, to allow the complete row to be retrieved efficiently. Some databases extend the power of indexing by letting developers create indexes on column values that have been transformed by functions or expressions. For example, an index could be created on upper(last_name), which would only store the upper-case versions of the last_name field in the index. Another option sometimes supported is the use of partial index, where index entries are created only for those records that satisfy some conditional expression. A further aspect of flexibility is to permit indexing on user-defined functions, as well as expressions formed from an assortment of built-in functions. == Usage == === Support for fast lookup === Most database software includes indexing technology that enables sub-linear time lookup to improve performance, as linear search is inefficient for large databases. Suppose a database contains N data items and one must be retrieved based on the value of one of the fields. A simple implementation retrieves and examines each item according to the test. If there is only one matching item, this can stop when it finds that single item, but if there are multiple matches, it must test everything. This means that the number of operations in the average case is O(N) or linear time. Since databases may contain many objects, and since lookup is a common operation, it is often desirable to improve performance. An index is any data structure that improves the performance of lookup. There are many different data structures used for this purpose. There are complex design trade-offs involving lookup performance, index size, and index-update performance. Many index designs exhibit logarithmic (O(log(N))) lookup performance and in some applications it is possible to achieve flat (O(1)) performance. === Policing the database constraints === Indexes are used to police database constraints, such as UNIQUE, EXCLUSION, PRIMARY KEY and FOREIGN KEY. An index may be declared as UNIQUE, which creates an implicit constraint on the underlying table. Database systems usually implicitly create an index on a set of columns declared PRIMARY KEY, and some are capable of using an already-existing index to police this constraint. Many database systems require that both referencing and referenced sets of columns in a FOREIGN KEY constraint are indexed, thus improving performance of inserts, updates and deletes to the tables participating in the constraint. Some database systems support an EXCLUSION constraint that ensures that, for a newly inserted or updated record, a certain predicate holds for no other record. This can be used to implement a UNIQUE constraint (with equality predicate) or more complex constraints, like ensuring that no overlapping time ranges or no intersecting geometry objects would be stored in the table. An index supporting fast searching for records satisfying the predicate is required to police such a constraint. == Index architecture and indexing methods == === Non-clustered === The data is present in arbitrary order, but the logical ordering is specified by the index. The data rows may be spread throughout the table regardless of the value of the indexed column or expression. The non-clustered index tree contains the index keys in sorted order, with the leaf level of the index containing the pointer to the record (page and the row number in the data page in page-organized engines; row offset in file-organized engines). In a non-clustered index, The physical order of the rows is not the same as the index order. The indexed columns are typically non-primary key columns used in JOIN, WHERE, and ORDER BY clauses. There can be more than one non-clustered index on a database table. === Clustered === Clustering alters the data block into a certain distinct order to match the index, resulting in the row data being stored in order. Therefore, only one clustered index can be created on a given database table. Clustered indexes can greatly increase overall speed of retrieval, but usually only where the data is accessed sequentially in the same or reverse order of the clustered index, or when a range of items is selected. Since the physical records are in this sort order on disk, the next row item in the sequence is immediately before or after the last one, and so fewer data block reads are required. The primary feature of a clustered index is therefore the ordering of the physical data rows in accordance with the index blocks that point to them. Some databases separate the data and index blocks into separate files, others put two completely different data blocks within the same physical file(s). === Cluster === When multiple databases and multiple tables are joined, it is called a cluster (not to be confused with clustered index described previously). The records for the tables sharing the value of a cluster key shall be stored together in the same or nearby data blocks. This may improve the joins of these tables on the cluster key, since the matching records are stored together and less I/O is required to locate them. The cluster configuration defines the data layout in the tables that are parts of the cluster. A cluster can be keyed with a B-tree index or a hash table. The data block where the table record is stored is defined by the value of the cluster key. == Column order == The order that the index definition defines the columns in is important. It is possible to retrieve a set of row identifiers using only the first indexed column. However, it is not possible or efficient (on most databases) to retrieve the set of row identifiers using only the second or greater indexed column. For example, in a phone book organized by city first, then by last name, and then by first name, in a particular city, one can easily extract the list of all phone numbers. However, it would be very tedious to find all the phone numbers for a particular last name. One would have to look within each city's section for the entries with that last name. Some databases can do this, others just won't use the index. In the phone book example with a composite index created on the columns (city, last_name, first_name), if we search by giving exact values for all the three fields, search time is minimal—but if we provide the values for city and first_name only, the search uses only the city field to retrieve all matched records. Then a sequential lookup checks the matching with first_name. So, to improve the performance, one must ensure that the index is created on the order of search columns. == Applications and limitations == Indexes are useful for many applications but come with some limitations. Consider the following SQL statement: SELECT first_name FROM people WHERE last_name = 'Smith';. To process this statement without an index the database software must look at the last_name column on every row in the table (this is known as a full table scan). With an index the database simply follows the index data structure (typically a B-tree) until the Smith entry has been found; this is much less computationally expensive than a full table scan. Consider this SQL statement: SELECT email_address FROM customers WHERE email_address LIKE '%@wikipedia.org';. This query would yield an email address for every customer whose email address ends with "@wikipedia.org", but even if the email_address column has been indexed the database must perform a full index scan. This is because the index is built with the assumption that words go from left to right. With a wildcard at the beginning of the search-term, the database software is unable to use the underlying index data structure (in other words, the WHERE-clause is not sargable). This problem can be solved through the addition of another index created on reverse(email_address) and a SQL query like this: SELECT email_address FROM customers WHERE reverse(email_address) LIKE reverse('%@wikipedia.org');. This puts the wild-card at the right-most part of the query (now gro.aidepikiw@%), which the index on reverse(email_address) can satisfy. When the wildcard characters are used on both sides of the search word as %wikipedia.org%, the index available on this field is not used. Rather only a sequential search is performed, which takes ⁠ O ( N ) {\displaystyle

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  • Sufficient dimension reduction

    Sufficient dimension reduction

    In statistics, sufficient dimension reduction (SDR) is a paradigm for analyzing data that combines the ideas of dimension reduction with the concept of sufficiency. Dimension reduction has long been a primary goal of regression analysis. Given a response variable y and a p-dimensional predictor vector x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} , regression analysis aims to study the distribution of y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} , the conditional distribution of y {\displaystyle y} given x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} . A dimension reduction is a function R ( x ) {\displaystyle R({\textbf {x}})} that maps x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} to a subset of R k {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{k}} , k < p, thereby reducing the dimension of x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} . For example, R ( x ) {\displaystyle R({\textbf {x}})} may be one or more linear combinations of x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} . A dimension reduction R ( x ) {\displaystyle R({\textbf {x}})} is said to be sufficient if the distribution of y ∣ R ( x ) {\displaystyle y\mid R({\textbf {x}})} is the same as that of y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} . In other words, no information about the regression is lost in reducing the dimension of x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} if the reduction is sufficient. == Graphical motivation == In a regression setting, it is often useful to summarize the distribution of y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} graphically. For instance, one may consider a scatterplot of y {\displaystyle y} versus one or more of the predictors or a linear combination of the predictors. A scatterplot that contains all available regression information is called a sufficient summary plot. When x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} is high-dimensional, particularly when p ≥ 3 {\displaystyle p\geq 3} , it becomes increasingly challenging to construct and visually interpret sufficiency summary plots without reducing the data. Even three-dimensional scatter plots must be viewed via a computer program, and the third dimension can only be visualized by rotating the coordinate axes. However, if there exists a sufficient dimension reduction R ( x ) {\displaystyle R({\textbf {x}})} with small enough dimension, a sufficient summary plot of y {\displaystyle y} versus R ( x ) {\displaystyle R({\textbf {x}})} may be constructed and visually interpreted with relative ease. Hence sufficient dimension reduction allows for graphical intuition about the distribution of y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} , which might not have otherwise been available for high-dimensional data. Most graphical methodology focuses primarily on dimension reduction involving linear combinations of x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} . The rest of this article deals only with such reductions. == Dimension reduction subspace == Suppose R ( x ) = A T x {\displaystyle R({\textbf {x}})=A^{T}{\textbf {x}}} is a sufficient dimension reduction, where A {\displaystyle A} is a p × k {\displaystyle p\times k} matrix with rank k ≤ p {\displaystyle k\leq p} . Then the regression information for y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} can be inferred by studying the distribution of y ∣ A T x {\displaystyle y\mid A^{T}{\textbf {x}}} , and the plot of y {\displaystyle y} versus A T x {\displaystyle A^{T}{\textbf {x}}} is a sufficient summary plot. Without loss of generality, only the space spanned by the columns of A {\displaystyle A} need be considered. Let η {\displaystyle \eta } be a basis for the column space of A {\displaystyle A} , and let the space spanned by η {\displaystyle \eta } be denoted by S ( η ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}(\eta )} . It follows from the definition of a sufficient dimension reduction that F y ∣ x = F y ∣ η T x , {\displaystyle F_{y\mid x}=F_{y\mid \eta ^{T}x},} where F {\displaystyle F} denotes the appropriate distribution function. Another way to express this property is y ⊥ ⊥ x ∣ η T x , {\displaystyle y\perp \!\!\!\perp {\textbf {x}}\mid \eta ^{T}{\textbf {x}},} or y {\displaystyle y} is conditionally independent of x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} , given η T x {\displaystyle \eta ^{T}{\textbf {x}}} . Then the subspace S ( η ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}(\eta )} is defined to be a dimension reduction subspace (DRS). === Structural dimensionality === For a regression y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} , the structural dimension, d {\displaystyle d} , is the smallest number of distinct linear combinations of x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} necessary to preserve the conditional distribution of y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} . In other words, the smallest dimension reduction that is still sufficient maps x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} to a subset of R d {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{d}} . The corresponding DRS will be d-dimensional. === Minimum dimension reduction subspace === A subspace S {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}} is said to be a minimum DRS for y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} if it is a DRS and its dimension is less than or equal to that of all other DRSs for y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} . A minimum DRS S {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}} is not necessarily unique, but its dimension is equal to the structural dimension d {\displaystyle d} of y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} , by definition. If S {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}} has basis η {\displaystyle \eta } and is a minimum DRS, then a plot of y versus η T x {\displaystyle \eta ^{T}{\textbf {x}}} is a minimal sufficient summary plot, and it is (d + 1)-dimensional. == Central subspace == If a subspace S {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}} is a DRS for y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} , and if S ⊂ S drs {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}\subset {\mathcal {S}}_{\text{drs}}} for all other DRSs S drs {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{\text{drs}}} , then it is a central dimension reduction subspace, or simply a central subspace, and it is denoted by S y ∣ x {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{y\mid x}} . In other words, a central subspace for y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} exists if and only if the intersection ⋂ S drs {\textstyle \bigcap {\mathcal {S}}_{\text{drs}}} of all dimension reduction subspaces is also a dimension reduction subspace, and that intersection is the central subspace S y ∣ x {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{y\mid x}} . The central subspace S y ∣ x {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{y\mid x}} does not necessarily exist because the intersection ⋂ S drs {\textstyle \bigcap {\mathcal {S}}_{\text{drs}}} is not necessarily a DRS. However, if S y ∣ x {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{y\mid x}} does exist, then it is also the unique minimum dimension reduction subspace. === Existence of the central subspace === While the existence of the central subspace S y ∣ x {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{y\mid x}} is not guaranteed in every regression situation, there are some rather broad conditions under which its existence follows directly. For example, consider the following proposition from Cook (1998): Let S 1 {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{1}} and S 2 {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{2}} be dimension reduction subspaces for y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} . If x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} has density f ( a ) > 0 {\displaystyle f(a)>0} for all a ∈ Ω x {\displaystyle a\in \Omega _{x}} and f ( a ) = 0 {\displaystyle f(a)=0} everywhere else, where Ω x {\displaystyle \Omega _{x}} is convex, then the intersection S 1 ∩ S 2 {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{1}\cap {\mathcal {S}}_{2}} is also a dimension reduction subspace. It follows from this proposition that the central subspace S y ∣ x {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}_{y\mid x}} exists for such x {\displaystyle {\textbf {x}}} . == Methods for dimension reduction == There are many existing methods for dimension reduction, both graphical and numeric. For example, sliced inverse regression (SIR) and sliced average variance estimation (SAVE) were introduced in the 1990s and continue to be widely used. Although SIR was originally designed to estimate an effective dimension reducing subspace, it is now understood that it estimates only the central subspace, which is generally different. More recent methods for dimension reduction include likelihood-based sufficient dimension reduction, estimating the central subspace based on the inverse third moment (or kth moment), estimating the central solution space, graphical regression, envelope model, and the principal support vector machine. For more details on these and other methods, consult the statistical literature. Principal components analysis (PCA) and similar methods for dimension reduction are not based on the sufficiency principle. === Example: linear regression === Consider the regression model y = α + β T x + ε , where ε ⊥ ⊥ x . {\displaystyle y=\alpha +\beta ^{T}{\textbf {x}}+\varepsilon ,{\text{ where }}\varepsilon \perp \!\!\!\perp {\textbf {x}}.} Note that the distribution of y ∣ x {\displaystyle y\mid {\textbf {x}}} is the same as the distribution of y ∣ β T x {\displ

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  • Oscillatory neural network

    Oscillatory neural network

    An oscillatory neural network (ONN) is an artificial neural network that uses coupled oscillators as neurons. Oscillatory neural networks are closely linked to the Kuramoto model, and are inspired by the phenomenon of neural oscillations in the brain. Oscillatory neural networks have been trained to recognize images. Complex-Valued Oscillatory network has also been shown to store and retrieve multidimensional aperiodic signals. An oscillatory autoencoder has also been demonstrated, which uses a combination of oscillators and rate-coded neurons. A neuron made of two coupled oscillators, one having a fixed and the other having a tunable natural frequency, has been shown able to run logic gates such as XOR that conventional sigmoid neurons cannot.

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