Iterant recombination with one-norm minimization for multilevel Markov chain algorithms via the ellipsoid method

Recently, it was shown how the convergence of a class of multigrid methods for computing the stationary distribution of sparse, irreducible Markov chains can be accelerated by the addition of an outer iteration based on iterant recombination. The acceleration was performed by selecting a linear combination of previous fine-level iterates with probability constraints to minimize the two-norm of the residual using a quadratic programming method. In this paper we investigate the alternative of minimizing the one-norm of the residual. This gives rise to a nonlinear convex program which must be solved at each acceleration step. To solve this minimization problem we propose to use a deep-cuts ellipsoid method for nonlinear convex programs. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether an iterant recombination approach can be obtained in this way that is competitive in terms of execution time and robustness. We derive formulas for subgradients of the one-norm objective function and the constraint functions, and show how an initial ellipsoid can be constructed that is guaranteed to contain the exact solution and give conditions for its existence. We also investigate using the ellipsoid method to minimize the two-norm. Numerical tests show that the one-norm and two-norm acceleration procedures yield a similar reduction in the number of multigrid cycles. The tests also indicate that one-norm ellipsoid acceleration is competitive with two-norm quadratic programming acceleration in terms of running time with improved robustness.     

IRIS: illustrative rendering for integral surfaces

Integral surfaces are ideal tools to illustrate vector fields and fluid flow structures. However, these surfaces can be visually complex and exhibit difficult geometric properties, owing to strong stretching, shearing and folding of the flow from which they are derived. Many techniques for non-photorealistic rendering have been presented previously. It is, however, unclear how these techniques can be applied to integral surfaces. In this paper, we examine how transparency and texturing techniques can be used with integral surfaces to convey both shape and directional information. We present a rendering pipeline that combines these techniques aimed at faithfully and accurately representing integral surfaces while improving visualization insight. The presented pipeline is implemented directly on the GPU, providing real-time interaction for all rendering modes, and does not require expensive preprocessing of integral surfaces after computation.     

Understanding cost drivers of software evolution: a quantitative and qualitative investigation of change effort in two evolving software systems

Making changes to software systems can prove costly and it remains a challenge to understand the factors that affect the costs of software evolution. This study sought to identify such factors by investigating the effort expended by developers to perform 336 change tasks in two different software organizations. We quantitatively analyzed data from version control systems and change trackers to identify factors that correlated with change effort. In-depth interviews with the developers about a subset of the change tasks further refined the analysis. Two central quantitative results found that dispersion of changed code and volatility of the requirements for the change task correlated with change effort. The analysis of the qualitative interviews pointed to two important, underlying cost drivers: Difficulties in comprehending dispersed code and difficulties in anticipating side effects of changes. This study demonstrates a novel method for combining qualitative and quantitative analysis to assess cost drivers of software evolution. Given our findings, we propose improvements to practices and development tools to manage and reduce the costs.     

Protected subspaces in quantum information

In certain situations the state of a quantum system, after transmission through a quantum channel, can be perfectly restored. This can be done by “coding” the state space of the system before transmission into a “protected” part of a larger state space, and by applying a proper “decoding” map afterwards. By a version of the Heisenberg Principle, which we prove, such a protected space must be “dark” in the sense that no information leaks out during the transmission. We explain the role of the Knill–Laflamme condition in relation to protection and darkness, and we analyze several degrees of protection, whether related to error correction, or to state restauration after a measurement. Recent results on higher rank numerical ranges of operators are used to construct examples. In particular, dark spaces are constructed for any map of rank 2, for a biased permutations channel and for certain separable maps acting on multipartite systems. Furthermore, error correction subspaces are provided for a class of tri-unitary noise models.     

Nano-structured solid oxide fuel cell design with superior power output at high and intermediate operation temperatures

A solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) with a thin-film yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) electrolyte was developed and tested. This novel SOFC shows a similar multilayer set-up as other current anode-supported SOFCs and is composed of a Ni/8YSZ anode, a gas-tight 8YSZ electrolyte layer, a dense Sr-diffusion barrier layer and a LSCF cathode. To increase the power density and lower the SOFC operating temperature, the thickness of the electrolyte layer was reduced from around 10 μm in current cells to 1 μm, using a nanoparticle deposition method. By using the novel 1 μm electrolyte layer, the current density of our SOFC progressed to 2.7, 2.1 and 1.6 A/cm² at operation temperatures of 800, 700 and 650°C, respectively, and out-performs all similar cells reported to date in the literature. An important consideration is also that cost-effective dip-coating and spin-coating methods are applied for the fabrication of the thin-film electrolyte. Processing of 1 μm layers on the very porous anode substrate material was initially experienced as very difficult and therefore 8YSZ nanoparticle coatings were developed and optimized on porous 8YSZ model substrates and transferred afterwards to regular anode substrates. In this paper, the preparation of the novel SOFC is shown and its morphology is illustrated with high resolution SEM pictures. Further, the performance in a standard SOFC test is demonstrated.     

Preface

Natural Language Processing(NLP) is a field of computer science and linguistics concerning the interactions between computers and human(natural) languages.There have been sufficient successes in the past decades in this area,which suggest that NLP is now and will continue to be a major area of computer sciences and information technologies. The goal of this special section is to present high-quality contributions that explicate reasoning involved in different areas of NLP both at theoretical and practical levels.The special section has received enthusiastic     

FracMAP: A user-interactive package for performing simulation and orientation-specific morphology analysis of fractal-like solid nano-agglomerates

Computer simulation techniques have found extensive use in establishing empirical relationships between three-dimensional (3d) and two-dimensional (2d) projected properties of particles produced by the process of growth through the agglomeration of smaller particles (monomers). In this paper, we describe a package, FracMAP, that has been written to simulate 3d quasi-fractal agglomerates and create their 2d pixelated projection images by restricting them to stable orientations as commonly encountered for quasi-fractal agglomerates collected on filter media for electron microscopy. Resulting 2d images are analyzed for their projected morphological properties.

Program summary

Program title: FracMAPCatalogue identifier: AEDD_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEDD_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: Standard CPC licence, http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/licence/licence.htmlNo. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 4722No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 27 229Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: C++Computer: PCOperating system: Windows, LinuxRAM: 2.0 MegabytesClassification: 7.7Nature of problem: Solving for a suitable fractal agglomerate construction under constraints of typical morphological parameters.Solution method: Monte Carlo approximation.Restrictions: Problem complexity is not representative of run-time, since Monte Carlo iterations are of a constant complexity.Additional comments: The distribution file contains two versions of the FracMAP code, one for Windows and one for Linux.Running time: 1 hour for a fractal agglomerate of size 25 on a single processor.     

Classifying species of individual trees by intensity and structure features derived from airborne laser scanner data

The objective of this study was to identify candidate features derived from airborne laser scanner (ALS) data suitable to discriminate between coniferous and deciduous tree species. Both features related to structure and intensity were considered. The study was conducted on 197 Norway spruce and 180 birch trees (leaves on conditions) in a boreal forest reserve in Norway. The ALS sensor used was capable of recording multiple echoes. The point density was 6.6 m^− 2. Laser echoes located within the vertical projection of the tree crowns, which were assumed to be circular and defined according to field measurements, were attributed to three categories: “first echoes of many”, “single echoes”, or “last echoes of many echoes”. They were denoted FIRST, SINGLE, and LAST, respectively. In tree species classification using ALS data features should be independent of tree heights. We found that many features were dependent on tree height and that this dependency influenced selection of candidate features. When we accounted for this dependency, it was revealed that FIRST and SINGLE echoes were located higher and LAST echoes lower in the birch crowns than in spruce crowns. The intensity features of the FIRST echoes differed more between species than corresponding features of the other echo categories. For the FIRST echoes the intensity values tended to be higher for birch than spruce. When using the various features for species classification, maximum overall classification accuracies of 77% and 73% were obtained for structural and intensity features, respectively. Combining candidate features related to structure and intensity resulted in an overall classification accuracy of 88%.     

Estimating aboveground carbon in a catchment of the Siberian forest tundra: Combining satellite imagery and field inventory

This study was part of an interdisciplinary research project on soil carbon and phytomass dynamics of boreal and arctic permafrost landscapes. The 45 ha study area was a catchment located in the forest tundra in northern Siberia, approximately 100 km north of the Arctic Circle.The objective of this study was to estimate aboveground carbon (AGC) and assess and model its spatial variability. We combined multi-spectral high resolution remote sensing imagery and sample based field inventory data by means of the k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) technique and linear regression.Field data was collected by stratified systematic sampling in August 2006 with a total sample size of n = 31 circular nested sample plots of 154 m² for trees and shrubs and 1 m² for ground vegetation. Destructive biomass samples were taken on a sub-sample for fresh weight and moisture content. Species-specific allometric biomass models were constructed to predict dry biomass from diameter at breast height (dbh) for trees and from elliptic projection areas for shrubs.Quickbird data (standard imagery product), acquired shortly before the field campaign and archived ASTER data (Level-1B product) of 2001 were geo-referenced, converted to calibrated radiances at sensor and used as carrier data. Spectral information of the pixels which were located in the inventory plots were extracted and analyzed as reference set. Stepwise multiple linear regression was applied to identify suitable predictors from the set of variables of the original satellite bands, vegetation indices and texture metrics. To produce thematic carbon maps, carbon values were predicted for all pixels of the investigated satellite scenes. For this prediction, we compared the kNN distance-weighted classifier and multiple linear regression with respect to their predictions.The estimated mean value of aboveground carbon from stratified sampling in the field is 15.3 t/ha (standard error SE = 1.50 t/ha, SE% = 9.8%). Zonal prediction from the k-NN method for the Quickbird image as carrier is 14.7 t/ha with a root mean square error RMSE = 6.42 t/ha, RMSE_r = 44%) resulting from leave-one-out cross-validation. The k-NN-approach allows mapping and analysis of the spatial variability of AGC. The results show high spatial variability with AGC predictions ranging from 4.3 t/ha to 28.8 t/ha, reflecting the highly heterogeneous conditions in those permafrost-influenced landscapes. The means and totals of linear regression and k-NN predictions revealed only small differences but some regional distinctions were recognized in the maps.