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The aim of this paper is to address the challenge of gradual domain adaptation within a class of manifold-constrained data distributions. In particular, we consider a sequence of $T\ge2$ data distributions $P_1,\ldots,P_T$ undergoing a gradual shift, where each pair of consecutive measures $P_i,P_{i+1}$ are close to each other in Wasserstein distance. We have a supervised dataset of size $n$ sampled from $P_0$, while for the subsequent distributions in the sequence, only unlabeled i.i.d. samples are available. Moreover, we assume that all distributions exhibit a known favorable attribute, such as (but not limited to) having intra-class soft/hard margins. In this context, we propose a methodology rooted in Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO) with an adaptive Wasserstein radius. We theoretically show that this method guarantees the classification error across all $P_i$s can be suitably bounded. Our bounds rely on a newly introduced {\it {compatibility}} measure, which fully characterizes the error propagation dynamics along the sequence. Specifically, for inadequately constrained distributions, the error can exponentially escalate as we progress through the gradual shifts. Conversely, for appropriately constrained distributions, the error can be demonstrated to be linear or even entirely eradicated. We have substantiated our theoretical findings through several experimental results., Comment: Published at Proceedings of Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2024

Recent advances in deep learning for processing point clouds hold increased interest in Few-Shot Class Incremental Learning (FSCIL) for 3D computer vision. This paper introduces a new method to tackle the Few-Shot Continual Incremental Learning (FSCIL) problem in 3D point cloud environments. We leverage a foundational 3D model trained extensively on point cloud data. Drawing from recent improvements in foundation models, known for their ability to work well across different tasks, we propose a novel strategy that does not require additional training to adapt to new tasks. Our approach uses a dual cache system: first, it uses previous test samples based on how confident the model was in its predictions to prevent forgetting, and second, it includes a small number of new task samples to prevent overfitting. This dynamic adaptation ensures strong performance across different learning tasks without needing lots of fine-tuning. We tested our approach on datasets like ModelNet, ShapeNet, ScanObjectNN, and CO3D, showing that it outperforms other FSCIL methods and demonstrating its effectiveness and versatility. The code is available at \url{https://github.com/ahmadisahar/ACCV_FCIL3D}., Comment: ACCV 2024

Accurate bicycling volume estimation is crucial for making informed decisions about future investments in bicycling infrastructure. Traditional link-level volume estimation models are effective for motorised traffic but face significant challenges when applied to the bicycling context because of sparse data and the intricate nature of bicycling mobility patterns. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first study to utilize a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) architecture to model link-level bicycling volumes. We estimate the Annual Average Daily Bicycle (AADB) counts across the City of Melbourne, Australia using Strava Metro bicycling count data. To evaluate the effectiveness of the GCN model, we benchmark it against traditional machine learning models, such as linear regression, support vector machines, and random forest. Our results show that the GCN model performs better than these traditional models in predicting AADB counts, demonstrating its ability to capture the spatial dependencies inherent in bicycle traffic data. We further investigate how varying levels of data sparsity affect performance of the GCN architecture. The GCN architecture performs well and better up to 80% sparsity level, but its limitations become apparent as the data sparsity increases further, emphasizing the need for further research on handling extreme data sparsity in bicycling volume estimation. Our findings offer valuable insights for city planners aiming to improve bicycling infrastructure and promote sustainable transportation.

Given a supermanifold equipped with an odd distribution of maximal dimension and constant symbol, we construct the formal moduli problem of deformations of the distribution. This moduli problem is described by a local super dg Lie algebra that provides both a resolution of the structure-preserving vector fields on superspace and a derived enhancement of superconformal symmetry. Applying our construction in standard physical examples returns the conformal supergravity multiplet in every known example, in any dimension and with any amount of supersymmetry$\unicode{x2014}$whether or not a superconformal algebra exists. We discuss new examples related to twisted supergravity, higher Virasoro algebras, and exceptional super Lie algebras. The compatibility of our techniques with twisting also leads to a computation of every twist of the stress tensor multiplet of a superconformal theory, including universal operator product expansions. Our approach uses a derived model for the space of functions constant along the distribution, which is applicable even when the distribution is non-involutive; we construct other natural multiplets, such as K\"ahler differentials, that appear naturally through this lens on superspace geometry., Comment: 68 pages, 7 tables. Comments welcome! v2: updated funding information

Large Language Models (LLMs) and Code-LLMs (CLLMs) have significantly improved code generation, but, they frequently face difficulties when dealing with challenging and complex problems. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) addresses this issue by retrieving and integrating external knowledge at the inference time. However, retrieval models often fail to find most relevant context, and generation models, with limited context capacity, can hallucinate when given irrelevant data. We present a novel framework that leverages a Programming Knowledge Graph (PKG) to semantically represent and retrieve code. This approach enables fine-grained code retrieval by focusing on the most relevant segments while reducing irrelevant context through a tree-pruning technique. PKG is coupled with a re-ranking mechanism to reduce even more hallucinations by selectively integrating non-RAG solutions. We propose two retrieval approaches-block-wise and function-wise-based on the PKG, optimizing context granularity. Evaluations on the HumanEval and MBPP benchmarks show our method improves pass@1 accuracy by up to 20%, and outperforms state-of-the-art models by up to 34% on MBPP. Our contributions include PKG-based retrieval, tree pruning to enhance retrieval precision, a re-ranking method for robust solution selection and a Fill-in-the-Middle (FIM) enhancer module for automatic code augmentation with relevant comments and docstrings., Comment: 20 pages, Conference

In tackling the challenges of large language model (LLM) performance for Text-to-SQL tasks, we introduce CHASE-SQL, a new framework that employs innovative strategies, using test-time compute in multi-agent modeling to improve candidate generation and selection. CHASE-SQL leverages LLMs' intrinsic knowledge to generate diverse and high-quality SQL candidates using different LLM generators with: (1) a divide-and-conquer method that decomposes complex queries into manageable sub-queries in a single LLM call; (2) chain-of-thought reasoning based on query execution plans, reflecting the steps a database engine takes during execution; and (3) a unique instance-aware synthetic example generation technique, which offers specific few-shot demonstrations tailored to test questions.To identify the best candidate, a selection agent is employed to rank the candidates through pairwise comparisons with a fine-tuned binary-candidates selection LLM. This selection approach has been demonstrated to be more robust over alternatives. The proposed generators-selector framework not only enhances the quality and diversity of SQL queries but also outperforms previous methods. Overall, our proposed CHASE-SQL achieves the state-of-the-art execution accuracy of 73.0% and 73.01% on the test set and development set of the notable BIRD Text-to-SQL dataset benchmark, rendering CHASE-SQL the top submission of the leaderboard (at the time of paper submission).

Given a so called ''Sperner coloring'' of a triangulation of the $D$-dimensional simplex, Sperner's lemma guarantees the existence of a rainbow simplex, i.e. a simplex colored by all $D+1$ colors. However, finding a rainbow simplex was the first problem to be proven $\mathsf{PPAD}$-complete in Papadimitriou's classical paper introducing the class $\mathsf{PPAD}$ (1994). In this paper, we prove that the problem does not become easier if we relax ''all $D+1$ colors'' to allow some fraction of missing colors: in fact, for any constant $D$, finding even a simplex with just three colors remains $\mathsf{PPAD}$-complete! Our result has an interesting application for the envy-free cake cutting from fair division. It is known that if agents value pieces of cake using general continuous functions satisfying a simple boundary condition (''a non-empty piece is better than an empty piece of cake''), there exists an envy-free allocation with connected pieces. We show that for any constant number of agents it is $\mathsf{PPAD}$-complete to find an allocation -- even using any constant number of possibly disconnected pieces -- that makes just three agents envy-free. Our results extend to super-constant dimension, number of agents, and number of pieces, as long as they are asymptotically bounded by any $\log^{1-\Omega(1)}(\epsilon)$, where $\epsilon$ is the precision parameter (side length for Sperner and approximate envy-free for cake cutting)., Comment: To appear at FOCS 2024

We study the polynomial-time approximability of the optimal online stochastic bipartite matching algorithm, initiated by Papadimitriou et al. (EC'21). Here, nodes on one side of the graph are given upfront, while at each time $t$, an online node and its edge weights are drawn from a time-dependent distribution. The optimal algorithm is $\textsf{PSPACE}$-hard to approximate within some universal constant. We refer to this optimal algorithm, which requires time to think (compute), as a philosopher, and refer to polynomial-time online approximations of the above as philosopher inequalities. The best known philosopher inequality for online matching yields a $0.652$-approximation. In contrast, the best possible prophet inequality, or approximation of the optimum offline solution, is $0.5$. Our main results are a $0.678$-approximate algorithm and a $0.685$-approximation for a vertex-weighted special case. Notably, both bounds exceed the $0.666$-approximation of the offline optimum obtained by Tang, Wu, and Wu (STOC'22) for the vertex-weighted problem. Building on our algorithms and the recent black-box reduction of Banihashem et al. (SODA'24), we provide polytime (pricing-based) truthful mechanisms which $0.678$-approximate the social welfare of the optimal online allocation for bipartite matching markets. Our online allocation algorithm relies on the classic pivotal sampling algorithm (Srinivasan FOCS'01, Gandhi et al. J.ACM'06), along with careful discarding to obtain negative correlations between offline nodes. Consequently, the analysis boils down to examining the distribution of a weighted sum $X$ of negatively correlated Bernoulli variables, specifically lower bounding its mass below a threshold, $\mathbb{E}[\min(1,X)]$, of possible independent interest. Interestingly, our bound relies on an imaginary invocation of pivotal sampling.

We study the stochastic online metric matching problem. In this problem, $m$ servers and $n$ requests are located in a metric space, where all servers are available upfront and requests arrive one at a time. In particular, servers are adversarially chosen, and requests are independently drawn from a known distribution. Upon the arrival of a new request, it needs to be immediately and irrevocably matched to a free server, resulting in a cost of their distance. The objective is to minimize the total matching cost. In this paper, we show that the problem can be reduced to a more accessible setting where both servers and requests are drawn from the same distribution by incurring a moderate cost. Combining our reduction with previous techniques, for $[0, 1]^d$ with various choices of distributions, we achieve improved competitive ratios and nearly optimal regrets in both balanced and unbalanced markets. In particular, we give $O(1)$-competitive algorithms for $d \geq 3$ in both balanced and unbalanced markets with smooth distributions. Our algorithms improve on the $O((\log \log \log n)^2)$ competitive ratio of \cite{DBLP:conf/icalp/GuptaGPW19} for balanced markets in various regimes, and provide the first positive results for unbalanced markets.

Submillimeter and millimeter wavelengths provide a unique view of the Universe, from the gas and dust that fills and surrounds galaxies to the chromosphere of our own Sun. Current single-dish facilities have presented a tantalising view of the brightest (sub-)mm sources, and interferometers have provided the exquisite resolution necessary to analyse the details in small fields, but there are still many open questions that cannot be answered with current facilities. In this report we summarise the science that is guiding the design of the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST). We demonstrate how tranformational advances in topics including star formation in high redshift galaxies, the diffuse circumgalactic medium, Galactic ecology, cometary compositions and solar flares motivate the need for a 50m, single-dish telescope with a 1-2 degree field of view and a new generation of highly multiplexed continuum and spectral cameras. AtLAST will have the resolution to drastically lower the confusion limit compared to current single-dish facilities, whilst also being able to rapidly map large areas of the sky and detect extended, diffuse structures. Its high sensitivity and large field of view will open up the field of submillimeter transient science by increasing the probability of serendipitous detections. Finally, the science cases listed here motivate the need for a highly flexible operations model capable of short observations of individual targets, large surveys, monitoring programmes, target of opportunity observations and coordinated observations with other observatories. AtLAST aims to be a sustainable, upgradeable, multipurpose facility that will deliver orders of magnitude increases in sensitivity and mapping speeds over current and planned submillimeter observatories., Comment: 47 pages, 12 figures. For further details on AtLAST see https://atlast.uio.no

We study online capacitated resource allocation, a natural generalization of online stochastic max-weight bipartite matching. This problem is motivated by ride-sharing and Internet advertising applications, where online arrivals may have the capacity to serve multiple offline users. Our main result is a polynomial-time online algorithm which is $(1/2 + \kappa)$-approximate to the optimal online algorithm for $\kappa = 0.0115$. This can be contrasted to the (tight) $1/2$-competitive algorithms to the optimum offline benchmark from the prophet inequality literature. Optimum online is a recently popular benchmark for online Bayesian problems which can use unbounded computation, but not "prophetic" knowledge of future inputs. Our algorithm (which also works for the case of stochastic rewards) rounds a generalized LP relaxation from the unit-capacity case via a two-proposal algorithm, as in previous works in the online matching literature. A key technical challenge in deriving our guarantee is bounding the positive correlation among users introduced when rounding our LP relaxation online. Unlike in the case of unit capacities, this positive correlation is unavoidable for guarantees beyond $1/2$. Conceptually, our results show that the study of optimum online as a benchmark can reveal problem-specific insights that are irrelevant to competitive analysis., Comment: Full version of EC'24 paper

We report on a remarkable spectral phenomenon in a generic type of quantum lattice gas model. As the interaction strength increases, eigenstates spontaneously reorganize and lead to plateaus of the interaction energy, with gaps opening akin to continuous phase transitions. Perturbation theory identifies a hidden structure underlying eigenstates within each plateau, resulting in a statistical shift in the wavefunction amplitudes described by extreme value theory. The structured eigenstates manifest themselves naturally in far-from-equilibrium dynamics proceeding through multiple universal stages. Our findings reveal a profound connection between emergent properties in high-energy states and out-of-equilibrium dynamics, providing insights into the impact of interactions across the entire energy spectrum. The results are directly relevant to experiments probing equilibration in quantum spin and lattice gases., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures

Recent text-to-image diffusion-based generative models have the stunning ability to generate highly detailed and photo-realistic images and achieve state-of-the-art low FID scores on challenging image generation benchmarks. However, one of the primary failure modes of these text-to-image generative models is in composing attributes, objects, and their associated relationships accurately into an image. In our paper, we investigate this compositionality-based failure mode and highlight that imperfect text conditioning with CLIP text-encoder is one of the primary reasons behind the inability of these models to generate high-fidelity compositional scenes. In particular, we show that (i) there exists an optimal text-embedding space that can generate highly coherent compositional scenes which shows that the output space of the CLIP text-encoder is sub-optimal, and (ii) we observe that the final token embeddings in CLIP are erroneous as they often include attention contributions from unrelated tokens in compositional prompts. Our main finding shows that the best compositional improvements can be achieved (without harming the model's FID scores) by fine-tuning {\it only} a simple linear projection on CLIP's representation space in Stable-Diffusion variants using a small set of compositional image-text pairs. This result demonstrates that the sub-optimality of the CLIP's output space is a major error source. We also show that re-weighting the erroneous attention contributions in CLIP can also lead to improved compositional performances, however these improvements are often less significant than those achieved by solely learning a linear projection head, highlighting erroneous attentions to be only a minor error source.

Online Bayesian bipartite matching is a central problem in digital marketplaces and exchanges, including advertising, crowdsourcing, ridesharing, and kidney exchange. We introduce a graph neural network (GNN) approach that emulates the problem's combinatorially-complex optimal online algorithm, which selects actions (e.g., which nodes to match) by computing each action's value-to-go (VTG) -- the expected weight of the final matching if the algorithm takes that action, then acts optimally in the future. We train a GNN to estimate VTG and show empirically that this GNN returns high-weight matchings across a variety of tasks. Moreover, we identify a common family of graph distributions in spatial crowdsourcing applications, such as rideshare, under which VTG can be efficiently approximated by aggregating information within local neighborhoods in the graphs. This structure matches the local behavior of GNNs, providing theoretical justification for our approach., Comment: Accepted to ICML 2024; Hardness result from introduction made precise

Identifying the origin of data is crucial for data provenance, with applications including data ownership protection, media forensics, and detecting AI-generated content. A standard approach involves embedding-based retrieval techniques that match query data with entries in a reference dataset. However, this method is not robust against benign and malicious edits. To address this, we propose Data Retrieval with Error-corrected codes and Watermarking (DREW). DREW randomly clusters the reference dataset, injects unique error-controlled watermark keys into each cluster, and uses these keys at query time to identify the appropriate cluster for a given sample. After locating the relevant cluster, embedding vector similarity retrieval is performed within the cluster to find the most accurate matches. The integration of error control codes (ECC) ensures reliable cluster assignments, enabling the method to perform retrieval on the entire dataset in case the ECC algorithm cannot detect the correct cluster with high confidence. This makes DREW maintain baseline performance, while also providing opportunities for performance improvements due to the increased likelihood of correctly matching queries to their origin when performing retrieval on a smaller subset of the dataset. Depending on the watermark technique used, DREW can provide substantial improvements in retrieval accuracy (up to 40\% for some datasets and modification types) across multiple datasets and state-of-the-art embedding models (e.g., DinoV2, CLIP), making our method a promising solution for secure and reliable source identification. The code is available at https://github.com/mehrdadsaberi/DREW

NGC 5128 (Cen A) is the nearest giant elliptical galaxy and one of the brightest extragalactic radio sources in the sky, boasting a prominent dust lane and jets emanating from its nuclear supermassive black hole. In this paper, we construct the star formation history (SFH) of two small fields in the halo of NGC 5128: a northeastern field (Field 1) at a projected distance of $\sim 18.8$ kpc from the center, and a southern field (Field 2) $\sim 9.9$ kpc from the center. Our method is based on identifying long period variable (LPV) stars that trace their sibling stellar population and hence historical star formation due to their high luminosity and strong variability; we identified 395 LPVs in Field 1 and 671 LPVs in Field 2. Even though the two fields are $\sim 28$ kpc apart on opposite sides from the center, they show similar SFHs. In Field 1, star formation rates (SFRs) increased significantly around $t\sim 800$ Myr and $t\sim 3.8$ Gyr; and in Field 2, SFRs increased considerably around $t\sim 800$ Myr, $t\sim 3.8$ Gyr, and $t\sim 6.3$ Gyr, where $t$ is look--back time. The increase in SFR $\sim 800$ Myr ago agrees with previous suggestions that the galaxy experienced a merger around that time. The SFH reconstructed from LPVs supports a scenario in which multiple episodes of nuclear activity lead to episodic jet-induced star formation. While there is no catalog of LPVs for the central part of NGC 5128, applying our method to the outer regions (for the first time in a galaxy outside the Local Group) has enabled us to put constraints on the complex evolution of this cornerstone galaxy., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ

Utilizing large language models (LLMs) for transforming natural language questions into SQL queries (text-to-SQL) is a promising yet challenging approach, particularly when applied to real-world databases with complex and extensive schemas. In particular, effectively incorporating data catalogs and database values for SQL generation remains an obstacle, leading to suboptimal solutions. We address this problem by proposing a new pipeline that effectively retrieves relevant data and context, selects an efficient schema, and synthesizes correct and efficient SQL queries. To increase retrieval precision, our pipeline introduces a hierarchical retrieval method leveraging model-generated keywords, locality-sensitive hashing indexing, and vector databases. Additionally, we have developed an adaptive schema pruning technique that adjusts based on the complexity of the problem and the model's context size. Our approach generalizes to both frontier proprietary models like GPT-4 and open-source models such as Llama-3-70B. Through a series of ablation studies, we demonstrate the effectiveness of each component of our pipeline and its impact on the end-to-end performance. Our method achieves new state-of-the-art performance on the cross-domain challenging BIRD dataset.

The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) brings about transformative potential across sectors, but its dual-use nature also amplifies risks. Governments globally are grappling with the challenge of regulating GenAI, balancing innovation against safety. China, the United States (US), and the European Union (EU) are at the forefront with initiatives like the Management of Algorithmic Recommendations, the Executive Order, and the AI Act, respectively. However, the rapid evolution of GenAI capabilities often outpaces the development of comprehensive safety measures, creating a gap between regulatory needs and technical advancements. A workshop co-organized by Google, University of Wisconsin, Madison (UW-Madison), and Stanford University aimed to bridge this gap between GenAI policy and technology. The diverse stakeholders of the GenAI space -- from the public and governments to academia and industry -- make any safety measures under consideration more complex, as both technical feasibility and regulatory guidance must be realized. This paper summarizes the discussions during the workshop which addressed questions, such as: How regulation can be designed without hindering technological progress? How technology can evolve to meet regulatory standards? The interplay between legislation and technology is a very vast topic, and we don't claim that this paper is a comprehensive treatment on this topic. This paper is meant to capture findings based on the workshop, and hopefully, can guide discussion on this topic.

Dimensionality Reduction plays a pivotal role in improving feature learning accuracy and reducing training time by eliminating redundant features, noise, and irrelevant data. Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) has emerged as a popular and powerful method for dimensionality reduction. Despite its extensive use, there remains a need for a comprehensive analysis of NMF in the context of dimensionality reduction. To address this gap, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of NMF, focusing on its applications in both feature extraction and feature selection. We introduce a classification of dimensionality reduction, enhancing understanding of the underlying concepts. Subsequently, we delve into a thorough summary of diverse NMF approaches used for feature extraction and selection. Furthermore, we discuss the latest research trends and potential future directions of NMF in dimensionality reduction, aiming to highlight areas that need further exploration and development., Comment: 10 Paes, 2 figures, to be appear in acm computing survey

The long proton beams present at CERN have the potential to evolve into a train of microbunches through the self-modulation instability process. The resonant wakefield generated by a periodic train of proton microbunches can establish a high acceleration field within the plasma, facilitating electron acceleration. This paper investigates the impact of plasma density on resonant wakefield excitation, thus influencing acceleration of a witness electron bunch and its corresponding betatron radiation within the wakefield. Various scenarios involving different plasma densities are explored through particle-in-cell simulations. The peak wakefield in each scenario is calculated by considering a long pre-modulated proton driver with a fixed peak current. Subsequently, the study delves into the witness beam acceleration in the wakefield and its radiation emission. Elevated plasma density increases both the number of microbunches and the accelerating gradient of each microbunch, consequently resulting in heightened resonant wakefield. Nevertheless, the scaling is disrupted by the saturation of the resonant wakefield due to the nonlinearities. The simulation results reveal that at high plasma densities an intense and broadband radiation spectrum extending into the domain of the hard X-rays and gamma rays is generated. Furthermore, in such instances, the energy gain of the witness beam is significantly enhanced. The impact of wakefield on the witness energy gain and the corresponding radiation spectrum is clearly evident at extremely elevated densities.

Continuous-Flow Intersections (CFI), also known as Displaced Left-Turn (DLT) intersections, aim to improve the efficiency and safety of traffic junctions. A CFI introduces additional sub-intersections upstream of the main intersection to split the left-turn flow from the through movement before it arrives at the main intersection, decreasing the number of conflict points between left-turn and through movements. This study develops and examines a two-step optimization model for CFI traffic signal control design and demonstrates its performance across more than 300 different travel demand scenarios. The proposed model is compared against a benchmark state-of-practice CFI signal control model. Microsimulation results suggest that the proposed model reduces average delay by 17% and average queue length by 32% for a full CFI compared with the benchmark signal control model., Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables

Planning assessment of the urban walking infrastructure requires appropriate methodologies that can capture the time-dependent and unique microscopic characteristics of bidirectional pedestrian flow. In this paper, we develop a simulation-based dynamic pedestrian traffic assignment (DPTA) model specifically formulated for walking networks (e.g. sidewalks) with bidirectional links. The model consists of a dynamic user equilibrium (DUE) based route choice and a link transmission model (LTM) for network loading. The formulated DUE adopts a pedestrian volume delay function (pVDF) taking into account the properties of bidirectional pedestrian streams such as self-organization. The adopted LTM uses a three-dimensional triangular bidirectional fundamental diagram as well as a generalized first-order node model. The applicability and validity of the model is demonstrated in hypothetical small networks as well as a real-world large-scale network of sidewalks in Sydney. The model successfully replicates formation and propagation of shockwaves in walking corridors and networks due to bidirectional effects., Comment: 23 pages, 17 figures, 3 tables

Walking and cycling are known to bring substantial health, environmental, and economic advantages. However, the development of evidence-based active transportation planning and policies has been impeded by significant data limitations, such as biases in crowdsourced data and representativeness issues of mobile phone data. In this study, we develop and apply a machine learning based modeling approach for estimating daily walking and cycling volumes across a large-scale regional network in New South Wales, Australia that includes 188,999 walking links and 114,885 cycling links. The modeling methodology leverages crowdsourced and mobile phone data as well as a range of other datasets on population, land use, topography, climate, etc. The study discusses the unique challenges and limitations related to all three aspects of model training, testing, and inference given the large geographical extent of the modeled networks and relative scarcity of observed walking and cycling count data. The study also proposes a new technique to identify model estimate outliers and to mitigate their impact. Overall, the study provides a valuable resource for transportation modelers, policymakers and urban planners seeking to enhance active transportation infrastructure planning and policies with advanced emerging data-driven modeling methodologies., Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, 13 tables

Originally, protocols were designed for multi-agent systems (MAS) using information about the network which might not be available. Recently, there has been a focus on scale-free synchronization where the protocol is designed without any prior information about the network. As long as the network contains a directed spanning tree, a scale-free protocol guarantees that the network achieves synchronization. If there is no directed spanning tree then synchronization cannot be achieved. But what happens when these scale-free protocols are applied to such a network where the directed spanning tree no longer exists? This paper establishes that the network decomposes into a number of basic bicomponents which achieves synchronization among all nodes in this basic bicomponent. On the other hand, nodes which are not part of any basic bicomponent converge to a weighted average of the synchronized trajectories of the basic bicomponents. The weights are independent of the initial conditions and are independent of the designed protocol., Comment: The article was submitted to IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control at March 27th, 2024. Now, this updated version is the one re-submitted at October 7th, 2024 for second-round review

This study employs the Causal Machine Learning (CausalML) statistical method to analyze the influence of electricity pricing policies on carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the household sector. Investigating the causality between potential outcomes and treatment effects, where changes in pricing policies are the treatment, our analysis challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding incentive-based electricity pricing. The study's findings suggest that adopting such policies may inadvertently increase CO2 intensity. Additionally, we integrate a machine learning-based meta-algorithm, reflecting a contemporary statistical approach, to enhance the depth of our causal analysis. The study conducts a comparative analysis of learners X, T, S, and R to ascertain the optimal methods based on the defined question's specified goals and contextual nuances. This research contributes valuable insights to the ongoing dialogue on sustainable development practices, emphasizing the importance of considering unintended consequences in policy formulation.

In this work, we propose an adaptive geometric multigrid method for the solution of large-scale finite cell flow problems. The finite cell method seeks to circumvent the need for a boundary-conforming mesh through the embedding of the physical domain in a regular background mesh. As a result of the intersection between the physical domain and the background computational mesh, the resultant systems of equations are typically numerically ill-conditioned, rendering the appropriate treatment of cutcells a crucial aspect of the solver. To this end, we propose a smoother operator with favorable parallel properties and discuss its memory footprint and parallelization aspects. We propose three cache policies that offer a balance between cached and on-the-fly computation and discuss the optimization opportunities offered by the smoother operator. It is shown that the smoother operator, on account of its additive nature, can be replicated in parallel exactly with little communication overhead, which offers a major advantage in parallel settings as the geometric multigrid solver is consequently independent of the number of processes. The convergence and scalability of the geometric multigrid method is studied using numerical examples. It is shown that the iteration count of the solver remains bounded independent of the problem size and depth of the grid hierarchy. The solver is shown to obtain excellent weak and strong scaling using numerical benchmarks with more than 665 million degrees of freedom. The presented geometric multigrid solver is, therefore, an attractive option for the solution of large-scale finite cell problems in massively parallel high-performance computing environments.

The weak imposition of essential boundary conditions is an integral aspect of unfitted finite element methods, where the physical boundary does not in general coincide with the computational domain. In this regard, the symmetric Nitsche's method is a powerful technique that preserves the symmetry and variational consistency of the unmodified weak formulation. The stabilization parameter in Nitsche's method plays a crucial role in the stability of the resultant formulation, whose estimation is computationally intensive and dependent on the particular cut configuration using the conventional eigenvalue-based approach. In this work, we employ as model problem the finite cell method in which the need for the generation of a boundary-conforming mesh is circumvented by embedding the physical domain in a, typically regular, background mesh. We propose a data-driven estimate based on machine learning methods for the estimation of the stabilization parameter in Nitsche's method that offers an efficient constant-complexity alternative to the eigenvalue-based approach independent of the cut configuration. It is shown, using numerical benchmarks, that the proposed method can estimate the stabilization parameter accurately and is by far more computationally efficient. The data-driven estimate can be integrated into existing numerical codes with minimal modifications and thanks to the wide adoption of accelerators such as GPUs by machine learning frameworks, can be used with virtually no extra implementation cost on GPU devices, further increasing the potential for computational gains over the conventional eigenvalue-based estimate.

Recently, Large Langauge Models (LLMs) have gained a lot of attention in the Software Engineering (SE) community. LLMs or their variants pre-trained on code are used for many SE tasks. A main approach for adapting LLMs to the downstream task is to fine-tune the models. However, with having billions-parameters-LLMs, fine-tuning the models is not practical. An alternative approach is using Parameter Efficient Fine Tuning (PEFT), in which the model parameters are frozen and only a few added parameters are trained. Though the LLMs are used for programming languages such as Python and Java widely, their capability for low-resource languages is limited. In this work, we empirically study PEFT methods, LoRA and Compacter, on CodeT5 and CodeLlama. We will assess their performance compared to fully fine-tuned models, whether they can be used for knowledge transfer from natural language models to code (using T5 and Llama models), and their ability to adapt the learned knowledge to an unseen language. For the unseen language, we aim to study R, as it has a wide community. The adaptability with less computational costs makes LLMs accessible in scenarios where heavy computational resources are not available. Moreover, studying R opens new opportunities for using LLMs for other languages. We anticipate our findings to showcase the capabilities of PEFT for code LLMs for R and reveal the improvement areas.

Observations at (sub-)millimeter wavelengths offer a complementary perspective on our Sun and other stars, offering significant insights into both the thermal and magnetic composition of their chromospheres. Despite the fundamental progress in (sub-)millimeter observations of the Sun, some important aspects require diagnostic capabilities that are not offered by existing observatories. In particular, simultaneously observations of the radiation continuum across an extended frequency range would facilitate the mapping of different layers and thus ultimately the 3D structure of the solar atmosphere. Mapping large regions on the Sun or even the whole solar disk at a very high temporal cadence would be crucial for systematically detecting and following the temporal evolution of flares, while synoptic observations, i.e., daily maps, over periods of years would provide an unprecedented view of the solar activity cycle in this wavelength regime. As our Sun is a fundamental reference for studying the atmospheres of active main sequence stars, observing the Sun and other stars with the same instrument would unlock the enormous diagnostic potential for understanding stellar activity and its impact on exoplanets. The Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST), a single-dish telescope with 50\,m aperture proposed to be built in the Atacama desert in Chile, would be able to provide these observational capabilities. Equipped with a large number of detector elements for probing the radiation continuum across a wide frequency range, AtLAST would address a wide range of scientific topics including the thermal structure and heating of the solar chromosphere, flares and prominences, and the solar activity cycle. In this white paper, the key science cases and their technical requirements for AtLAST are discussed., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Open Research Europe as part of a collection on the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST)

The mass loss experienced on the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) at the end of the lives of low- and intermediate-mass stars is widely accepted to rely on radiation pressure acting on dust grains formed in the extended AGB atmospheres. The interaction of convection, stellar pulsation, and heating and cooling processes cause the density, velocity and temperature distributions in the inner regions of the envelope to be complex, making the dust-formation process difficult to calculate. Hence, characterising the extended atmospheres and inner outflow empirically is paramount to advance our understanding of the dust-formation and wind-driving processes. To this end, we observe the AGB star R Dor using ALMA and modelled the $^{12}$CO $v=0, J=2-1$, $v=1, J=2-1$ and $3-2$ and $^{13}$CO $v=0, J=3-2$ lines using the 3D radiative transfer code LIME up to a distance of $\sim 4$ times the radius of the star at sub-mm wavelengths. We find a complex velocity field with structure down to scales at least equal to the resolution of the observations. The observed maps are well reproduced assuming spherical symmetry for the gas temperature and density distributions. We find the radial profiles of these two quantities to be very steep close to the star and shallower for radii larger than $\sim 1.6$ times the stellar sub-mm radius. This change is consistent with the transition between extended atmosphere and outflow. We constrain the standard deviation of the stochastic velocity distribution in the large-scale outflow to be $\lesssim 0.4$ km/s. We observe two emission blobs in the CO $v=0, J=2-1$ line and find their gas densities and radial velocities to be substantially larger than those of the surrounding gas. Monitoring the evolution of these blobs will lead to a better understanding of the role of these structures in the mass-loss process of R Dor.

Attitude control of spacecraft during an impulsive orbital maneuver is a vital task. Many spacecraft and launchers use the gimbaled thrust vector control (TVC) in their attitude control system during an orbital maneuver. Mathematical modeling of the gimbal actuator is an important task because we should show the applicability of the gimbaled-TVC in a spacecraft. In this paper, a spin-stabilized spacecraft equipped with one degree of freedom (DoF) gimbaled-thruster and two reaction wheels (RWs) is considered. The control goals are disturbance rejection and thrust vector (spin-axis) stabilization based on one DoF gimbal actuator and two RWs. The gimbal is assumed to be equipped with a gearbox and a DC electric motor. This actuator must supply the gimbal torque to rotate the spacecraft nozzle. The mathematical model of the mentioned spacecraft is extended with respect to the DC motor equations. In order to investigate the applicability of the proposed method, an industrial DC electric motor is considered for the gimbal actuator. The simulation results prove that an industrial DC electric motor is able to be used for attitude control of the mentioned spacecraft. The simulation results indicate the applicability of the proposed control method in an impulsive orbital maneuver., Comment: Accepted in 5th National Conference on Application of Novel Technologies in Engineering Sciences

This paper derives statistical guarantees for the performance of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) in link prediction tasks on graphs generated by a graphon. We propose a linear GNN architecture (LG-GNN) that produces consistent estimators for the underlying edge probabilities. We establish a bound on the mean squared error and give guarantees on the ability of LG-GNN to detect high-probability edges. Our guarantees hold for both sparse and dense graphs. Finally, we demonstrate some of the shortcomings of the classical GCN architecture, as well as verify our results on real and synthetic datasets.

Deep Metric Learning (DML) models rely on strong representations and similarity-based measures with specific loss functions. Proxy-based losses have shown great performance compared to pair-based losses in terms of convergence speed. However, proxies that are assigned to different classes may end up being closely located in the embedding space and hence having a hard time to distinguish between positive and negative items. Alternatively, they may become highly correlated and hence provide redundant information with the model. To address these issues, we propose a novel approach that introduces Soft Orthogonality (SO) constraint on proxies. The constraint ensures the proxies to be as orthogonal as possible and hence control their positions in the embedding space. Our approach leverages Data-Efficient Image Transformer (DeiT) as an encoder to extract contextual features from images along with a DML objective. The objective is made of the Proxy Anchor loss along with the SO regularization. We evaluate our method on four public benchmarks for category-level image retrieval and demonstrate its effectiveness with comprehensive experimental results and ablation studies. Our evaluations demonstrate the superiority of our proposed approach over state-of-the-art methods by a significant margin.

The human genome encodes a family of editing enzymes known as APOBEC3 (apolipoprotein B mRNA editing enzyme, catalytic polypeptide-like 3). Several family members, such as APO-BEC3G, APOBEC3F, and APOBEC3H haplotype II, exhibit activity against viruses such as HIV. These enzymes induce C-to-U mutations in the negative strand of viral genomes, resulting in multiple G-to-A changes, commonly referred to as 'hypermutation.' Mutations catalyzed by these enzymes are sequence context-dependent in the HIV genome; for instance, APOBEC3G preferen-tially mutates G within GG, TGG, and TGGG contexts, while other members mutate G within GA, TGA, and TGAA contexts. However, the same sequence context has not been explored in relation to these enzymes and HBV. In this study, our objective is to identify the mutational footprint of APOBEC3 enzymes in the HBV genome. To achieve this, we employ a multivariable data analytics technique to investigate motif preferences and potential sequence hierarchies of mutation by APOBEC3 enzymes using full genome HBV sequences from a diverse range of naturally infected patients. This approach allows us to distinguish between normal and hypermutated sequences based on the representation of mono- to tetra-nucleotide motifs. Additionally, we aim to identify motifs associated with hypermutation induced by different APOBEC3 enzymes in HBV genomes. Our analyses reveal that either APOBEC3 enzymes are not active against HBV, or the induction of G-to-A mutations by these enzymes is not sequence context-dependent in the HBV genome.

Traffic congestion is a major problem in megacities which increases vehicle emissions and degrades ambient air quality. Various models have been developed to address the universal features of traffic jams. These models range from micro car-following models to macro collective dynamic models. Here, we study the macrostructure of congested traffic influenced by the complex geometry of the commute. Our main focus is on the dynamics of traffic patterns in Paris, and Los Angeles each with distinct urban structures. We analyze the complexity of the giant traffic clusters based on a percolation framework during rush hours in the mornings, evenings, and holidays. We uncover that the universality described by several critical exponents of traffic patterns is highly correlated with the geometry of commute and the underlying urban structure. Our findings might have broad implications for developing a greener, healthier, and more sustainable future city., Comment: 7 pages, 7 Figs, 1 Table (to appear in Phys. Rev. E)