A quantum Jensen–Shannon graph kernel for unattributed graphs

In this paper, we use the quantum Jensen–Shannon divergence as a means of measuring the information theoretic dissimilarity of graphs and thus develop a novel graph kernel. In quantum mechanics, the quantum Jensen–Shannon divergence can be used to measure the dissimilarity of quantum systems specified in terms of their density matrices. We commence by computing the density matrix associated with a continuous-time quantum walk over each graph being compared. In particular, we adopt the closed form solution of the density matrix introduced in Rossi et al. (2013) 27 and 28 to reduce the computational complexity and to avoid the cumbersome task of simulating the quantum walk evolution explicitly. Next, we compare the mixed states represented by the density matrices using the quantum Jensen–Shannon divergence. With the quantum states for a pair of graphs described by their density matrices to hand, the quantum graph kernel between the pair of graphs is defined using the quantum Jensen–Shannon divergence between the graph density matrices. We evaluate the performance of our kernel on several standard graph datasets from both bioinformatics and computer vision. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed quantum graph kernel.     

A new force-directed graph drawing method based on edge–edge repulsion

The conventional force-directed methods for drawing undirected graphs are based on either vertex–vertex repulsion or vertex–edge repulsion. In this paper, we propose a new force-directed method based on edge–edge repulsion to draw graphs. In our framework, edges are modelled as charged springs, and a final drawing can be generated by adjusting positions of vertices according to spring forces and the repulsive forces, derived from potential fields, among edges. Different from the previous methods, our new framework has the advantage of overcoming the problem of zero angular resolution, guaranteeing the absence of any overlapping of edges incident to the common vertex. Given graph layouts probably generated by previous algorithms as the inputs to our algorithm, experimental results reveal that our approach produces promising drawings not only preserving the original properties of a high degree of symmetry and uniform edge length, but also preventing zero angular resolution and usually having larger average angular resolution. However, it should be noted that exhibiting a higher degree of symmetry and larger average angular resolution does not come without a price, as the new approach might result in the increase in undesirable overlapping of vertices as some of our experimental results indicate. To ease the problem of node overlapping, we also consider a hybrid approach which takes into account both edge–edge and vertex–vertex repulsive forces in drawing a graph.     

A new model for slab and beam structures––comparison with other models

In this paper an optimized model for the analysis of plates reinforced with beams is presented as compared with other models used by various researchers. The adopted model contrary to the models used previously takes into account the resulting inplane forces and deformations of the plate as well as the axial forces and deformations of the beams, due to combined response of the system. According to this model the stiffening beams of the structure are isolated from the plate by sections parallel to the lower outer surface of the plate. The forces at the interface, which produce lateral deflection and inplane deformation to the plate and lateral deflection and axial deformation to the beam, are established using continuity conditions at the interface. The adopted model describes better the actual response of the plate-beams system and permits the evaluation of the shear forces at the interface, the knowledge of which is very important in the design of composite or prefabricated ribbed plates. Four additional models neglecting the shear forces at the interfaces are presented and used for comparison reasons, while a three-dimensional elasticity model is also employed for the verification of the accuracy of the results of the examined models. The findings from this investigation, using the adopted model, which approximates better the actual response of the plate-beams system, necessitate the consideration of the inplane forces and deformations.     

Rank–sparsity balanced representation for subspace clustering

Subspace learning has many applications such as motion segmentation and image recognition. The existing algorithms based on self-expressiveness of samples for subspace learning may suffer from the unsuitable balance between the rank and sparsity of the expressive matrix. In this paper, a new model is proposed that can balance the rank and sparsity well. This model adopts the log-determinant function to control the rank of solution. Meanwhile, the diagonals are penalized, rather than the strict zero-restriction on diagonals. This strategy makes the rank–sparsity balance more tunable. We furthermore give a new graph construction from the low-rank and sparse solution, which absorbs the advantages of the graph constructions in the sparse subspace clustering and the low-rank representation for further clustering. Numerical experiments show that the new method, named as RSBR, can significantly increase the accuracy of subspace clustering on the real-world data sets that we tested.     

A linearized input–output representation of flexible multibody systems for control synthesis

In this paper, a linearized input–output representation of flexible multibody systems is proposed in which an arbitrary combination of positions, velocities, accelerations, and forces can be taken as input variables and as output variables. The formulation is based on a nonlinear finite element approach in which a multibody system is modeled as an assembly of rigid body elements interconnected by joint elements such as flexible hinges and beams. The proposed formulation is general in nature and can be applied for prototype modeling and control system analysis of mechatronic systems. Application of the theory is illustrated through a detailed model development of an active vibration isolation system for a metrology frame of a lithography machine.     

A low molecular weight cut-off polymer–silicate membrane for microfluidic applications

In this article, we report a novel approach to fabricating a low molecular weight cut-off membrane that could readily be employed for several microfluidic applications. The reported structure was created by selectively retaining a precursor solution [5% (w/v) maleic anhydride, 21% (v/v) (37:1) acrylamide/bisacrylamide, and 0.2% (w/v) VA-086 photoinitiator] in a chosen location of a microfluidic network via capillary forces and then photo-polymerizing the mixture. The pores in the resulting membrane were subsequently filled with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane, heated, and then treated with sodium silicate solution and heated again, giving a structure having reduced porosity. The composite membrane thus created has been shown to have a molecular weight cut-off that is at least an order of magnitude smaller than other photo-polymerized microfluidic membranes reported in the literature. Moreover, this polymer–silicate structure was observed to be capable of blocking electroosmotic flow, thereby generating a pressure gradient around its interface with an open microchannel upon application of an electric field across the microchannel-membrane junction. In this study, a fraction of the resulting hydrodynamic flow was successfully guided to an electric field free analysis channel to implement a pressure-driven assay. With our current design pressure-driven velocities, up to 1.8 mm/s was generated in the electric field free analysis channel for an applied voltage of 2 kV in the pumping section. Finally, the functionality of this integrated microfluidic device was demonstrated by implementing a reverse phase chromatographic separation using the pressure-driven flow generated on-chip.     

A graph approach for the construction of high order divergence-free Raviart–Thomas finite elements

We propose and analyze an efficient algorithm for the computation of a basis of the space of divergence-free Raviart–Thomas finite elements. The algorithm is based on graph techniques. The key point is to realize that, with very natural degrees of freedom for fields in the space of Raviart–Thomas finite elements of degree \(r+1\) and for elements of the space of discontinuous piecewise polynomial functions of degree \(r \ge 0\), the matrix associated with the divergence operator is the incidence matrix of a particular graph. By choosing a spanning tree of this graph, it is possible to identify an invertible square submatrix of the divergence matrix and to compute easily the moments of a field in the space of Raviart–Thomas finite elements with assigned divergence. This approach extends to finite elements of high degree the method introduced by Alotto and Perugia (Calcolo 36:233–248, 1999) for finite elements of degree one. The analyzed approach is used to construct a basis of the space of divergence-free Raviart–Thomas finite elements. The numerical tests show that the performance of the algorithm depends neither on the topology of the domain nor or the polynomial degree r.     

A Neumann series of Bessel functions representation for solutions of Sturm–Liouville equations

A Neumann series of Bessel functions (NSBF) representation for solutions of Sturm–Liouville equations and for their derivatives is obtained. The representation possesses an attractive feature for applications: for all real values of the spectral parameter \(\omega \) the estimate of the difference between the exact solution and the approximate one (the truncated NSBF) depends on N (the truncation parameter) and the coefficients of the equation and does not depend on \(\omega \). A similar result is valid when \(\omega \in {\mathbb {C}}\) belongs to a strip \(\left| \hbox {Im }\omega \right| <C\). This feature makes the NSBF representation especially useful for applications requiring computation of solutions for large intervals of \(\omega \). Error and decay rate estimates are obtained. An algorithm for solving initial value, boundary value or spectral problems for the Sturm–Liouville equation is developed and illustrated on a test problem.     

A new model for the preemptive earliness–tardiness scheduling problem

This paper addresses a new model for the one-machine earliness–tardiness scheduling problem where jobs can be interrupted. Some dominance rules and a lower bound are derived. A new timing algorithm is also presented and a local search algorithm based on this timing algorithm permits the computation of good feasible solutions. We experimentally compare our timing algorithm with a previously published timing algorithm. The tests show that the execution time of the new timing algorithm is significantly faster, especially for large instances. The values of the solutions are compared to the lower bound.     

A microgrooved membrane based gas–liquid contactor

This research presents an approach for applying microgrooved membranes for improved gas–liquid contacting. The study involves analysis of the performance of the microdevice by quantifying the flux enhancement for different membrane configurations. Two kinds of configurations, continuous and non-continuous grooves, were investigated. The microgrooves provide shear-free gas–liquid interfaces, which result in local slip velocity at the gas–liquid interface. Exploiting this physical phenomenon, it is possible to reduce mass transport limitations in gas–liquid contacting. An experimental study using grooved membranes suggests enhancement in flux up to 20–30 %. The flux enhancement at higher liquid flow rates is observed due to a partial shear-free gas–liquid interface. The performance of the membrane devices decreased with wetted microgrooves due to the mass transport limitations. The flow visualization experiments reveal wetting of the microgrooves at higher liquid flow rates. According to the numerical and experimental study, we have shown that microgrooved membranes can be employed to improve gas–liquid contacting processes.     

Spatial–Temporal gated graph attention network for skeleton-based action recognition

Pattern Analysis and Applications - Human body skeleton, acting as a spatiotemporal graph, is the key inspiration for researchers to implement a GCN-based method for action recognition. Most...     

Span-based relational graph transformer network for aspect–opinion pair extraction

Knowledge and Information Systems - Aspect extraction and opinion extraction are two fundamental subtasks in aspect-based sentiment analysis. Many methods extract aspect terms or opinion terms but...     

A new hybrid method for time series forecasting: AR–ANFIS

In this study, a new hybrid forecasting method is proposed. The proposed method is called autoregressive adaptive network fuzzy inference system (AR–ANFIS). AR–ANFIS can be shown in a network structure. The architecture of the network has two parts. The first part is an ANFIS structure and the second part is a linear AR model structure. In the literature, AR models and ANFIS are widely used in time series forecasting. Linear AR models are used according to model-based strategy. A nonlinear model is employed by using ANFIS. Moreover, ANFIS is a kind of data-based modeling system like artificial neural network. In this study, a linear and nonlinear forecasting model is proposed by creating a hybrid method of AR and ANFIS. The new method has advantages of data-based and model-based approaches. AR–ANFIS is trained by using particle swarm optimization, and fuzzification is done by using fuzzy C-Means method. AR–ANFIS method is examined on some real-life time series data, and it is compared with the other time series forecasting methods. As a consequence of applications, it is shown that the proposed method can produce accurate forecasts.

     

A new higher order effective P–C methods for stiff systems

In this paper a special class of k-step methods of order k+1 with two free parameters up to order 9 are established. The stability analysis of the P–C scheme is investigated. The coefficients of our class and the values of the parameters for getting A₀-stable schemes are tabulated. The relation between the parameters for obtaining L(α)-stable formula is determined. A comparison between the stability region and the error estimation for the fourth-order of our scheme and Cash's scheme is carried on.     

A new computational method for solution of non-linear Volterra–Fredholm integro-differential equations

An approximation method is developed for the solution of high-order non-linear Volterra–Fredholm integro-differential (NVFID) equations under the mixed conditions. The approach is based on the orthogonal Chebyshev polynomials. The operational matrices of integration and product together with the derivative operational matrix are presented and are utilized to reduce the computation of Volterra–Fredholm integro-differential equations to a system of non-linear algebraic equations. Numerical examples illustrate the pertinent features of the method.     

Assessment of time–frequency representation techniques for thoracic sounds analysis

A step forward in the knowledge about the underlying physiological phenomena of thoracic sounds requires a reliable estimate of their time–frequency behavior that overcomes the disadvantages of the conventional spectrogram. A more detailed time–frequency representation could lead to a better feature extraction for diseases classification and stratification purposes, among others. In this respect, the aim of this study was to look for an omnibus technique to obtain the time–frequency representation (TFR) of thoracic sounds by comparing generic goodness-of-fit criteria in different simulated thoracic sounds scenarios. The performance of ten TFRs for heart, normal tracheal and adventitious lung sounds was assessed using time–frequency patterns obtained by mathematical functions of the thoracic sounds. To find the best TFR performance measures, such as the 2D local (ρ_mean) and global (ρ) central correlation, the normalized root-mean-square error (NRMSE), the cross-correlation coefficient (ρ_IF) and the time–frequency resolution (res_TF) were used. Simulation results pointed out that the Hilbert–Huang spectrum (HHS) had a superior performance as compared with other techniques and then, it can be considered as a reliable TFR for thoracic sounds. Furthermore, the goodness of HHS was assessed using noisy simulated signals. Additionally, HHS was applied to first and second heart sounds taken from a young healthy male subject, to tracheal sound from a middle-age healthy male subject, and to abnormal lung sounds acquired from a male patient with diffuse interstitial pneumonia. It is expected that the results of this research could be used to obtain a better signature of thoracic sounds for pattern recognition purpose, among other tasks.     

A new nonmonotone filter Barzilai–Borwein method for solving unconstrained optimization problems

In this paper, a finite filter is used in the structure of the Barzilai–Browein (BB) gradient method in order to propose a new modified BB algorithm for solving large-scale unconstrained optimization problems. Our algorithm is equipped with a relaxed nonmonotone line search technique which allows the algorithm to enjoy the nonmonotonicity properties from scratch. Under some suitable conditions, the global convergence property of the new proposed algorithm is established. Numerical results on some test problems in CUTEr library show the efficiency and effectiveness of the new algorithm in practice too.     

A new approach to design source–receptor relationships for air quality modelling

Air quality models are often used to simulate how emission scenarios influence the concentration of primary as well as secondary pollutants in the atmosphere. In some cases, it is necessary to replace these air quality models with source–receptor relationships, to mimic in a faster way the link between emissions and concentrations. Source–receptor relationships are therefore also used in Integrated Assessment Models, when scenario responses need to be known in very short time. The objective of this work is to present a novel approach to design a source–receptor relationship for air quality modeling. Overall the proposed approach is shown to significantly reduce the number of simulations required for the training step and to bring flexibility in terms of emission source definition. A regional domain application is also presented, to test the performances of the proposed approach.