Reactive transport in porous media plays a pivotal role in subsurface reservoir processes, influencing fluid properties and geochemical characteristics. However, coupling fluid flow and transport with geochemical reactions is computationally intensive, requiring geochemical calculations at each grid cell and each time step within a discretized simulation domain. Although recent advancements have integrated machine learning techniques as surrogates for geochemical simulations, ensuring computational efficiency and accuracy remains a challenge. This chapter investigates machine learning models as replacements for a geochemical module in a reactive transport in porous media simulation. We test this approach on a well-documented cation exchange problem. While the surrogate models excel in isolated predictions, they fall short in rollout predictions over successive time steps. By introducing modifications, including physics-based constraints and tailored dataset generation strategies, we show that machine learning surrogates can achieve accurate rollout predictions. Our findings emphasize that, when judiciously designed, machine learning surrogates can substantially expedite the cation exchange problem without compromising accuracy, offering significant potential for a range of reactive transport applications.
Today, hate speech classification from Arabic tweets has drawn the attention of several researchers. Many systems and techniques have been developed to resolve this classification task. Nevertheless, two of the major challenges faced in this context are the limited performance and the problem of imbalanced data. In this study, we propose a novel approach that leverages ensemble learning and semi-supervised learning based on previously manually labeled. We conducted experiments on a benchmark dataset by classifying Arabic tweets into 5 distinct classes: non-hate, general hate, racial, religious, or sexism. Experimental results show that: (1) ensemble learning based on pre-trained language models outperforms existing related works; (2) Our proposed data augmentation improves the accuracy results of hate speech detection from Arabic tweets and outperforms existing related works. Our main contribution is the achievement of encouraging results in Arabic hate speech detection.
Generalized linear models (GLMs) arguably represent the standard approach for statistical regression beyond the Gaussian likelihood scenario. When Bayesian formulations are employed, the general absence of a tractable posterior distribution has motivated the development of deterministic approximations, which are generally more scalable than sampling techniques. Among them, expectation propagation (EP) showed extreme accuracy, usually higher than many variational Bayes solutions. However, the higher computational cost of EP posed concerns about its practical feasibility, especially in high-dimensional settings. We address these concerns by deriving a novel efficient formulation of EP for GLMs, whose cost scales linearly in the number of covariates p. This reduces the state-of-the-art O(p^2 n) per-iteration computational cost of the EP routine for GLMs to O(p n min{p,n}), with n being the sample size. We also show that, for binary models and log-linear GLMs approximate predictive means can be obtained at no additional cost. To preserve efficient moment matching for count data, we propose employing a combination of log-normal Laplace transform approximations, avoiding numerical integration. These novel results open the possibility of employing EP in settings that were believed to be practically impossible. Improvements over state-of-the-art approaches are illustrated both for simulated and real data. The efficient EP implementation is available at //github.com/niccoloanceschi/EPglm.
Compared to widely used likelihood-based approaches, the minimum contrast (MC) method offers a computationally efficient method for estimation and inference of spatial point processes. These relative gains in computing time become more pronounced when analyzing complicated multivariate point process models. Despite this, there has been little exploration of the MC method for multivariate spatial point processes. Therefore, this article introduces a new MC method for parametric multivariate spatial point processes. A contrast function is computed based on the trace of the power of the difference between the conjectured $K$-function matrix and its nonparametric unbiased edge-corrected estimator. Under standard assumptions, we derive the asymptotic normality of our MC estimator. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated through simulation studies of bivariate log-Gaussian Cox processes and five-variate product-shot-noise Cox processes.
While undulatory swimming of elongate limbless robots has been extensively studied in open hydrodynamic environments, less research has been focused on limbless locomotion in complex, cluttered aquatic environments. Motivated by the concept of mechanical intelligence, where controls for obstacle navigation can be offloaded to passive body mechanics in terrestrial limbless locomotion, we hypothesize that principles of mechanical intelligence can be extended to cluttered hydrodynamic regimes. To test this, we developed an untethered limbless robot capable of undulatory swimming on water surfaces, utilizing a bilateral cable-driven mechanism inspired by organismal muscle actuation morphology to achieve programmable anisotropic body compliance. We demonstrated through robophysical experiments that, similar to terrestrial locomotion, an appropriate level of body compliance can facilitate emergent swim through complex hydrodynamic environments under pure open-loop control. Moreover, we found that swimming performance depends on undulation frequency, with effective locomotion achieved only within a specific frequency range. This contrasts with highly damped terrestrial regimes, where inertial effects can often be neglected. Further, to enhance performance and address the challenges posed by nondeterministic obstacle distributions, we incorporated computational intelligence by developing a real-time body compliance tuning controller based on cable tension feedback. This controller improves the robot's robustness and overall speed in heterogeneous hydrodynamic environments.
The integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) method has become a popular approach for computationally efficient approximate Bayesian computation. In particular, by leveraging sparsity in random effect precision matrices, INLA is commonly used in spatial and spatio-temporal applications. However, the speed of INLA comes at the cost of restricting the user to the family of latent Gaussian models and the likelihoods currently implemented in {INLA}, the main software implementation of the INLA methodology. {inlabru} is a software package that extends the types of models that can be fitted using INLA by allowing the latent predictor to be non-linear in its parameters, moving beyond the additive linear predictor framework to allow more complex functional relationships. For inference it uses an approximate iterative method based on the first-order Taylor expansion of the non-linear predictor, fitting the model using INLA for each linearised model configuration. {inlabru} automates much of the workflow required to fit models using {R-INLA}, simplifying the process for users to specify, fit and predict from models. There is additional support for fitting joint likelihood models by building each likelihood individually. {inlabru} also supports the direct use of spatial data structures, such as those implemented in the {sf} and {terra} packages. In this paper we outline the statistical theory, model structure and basic syntax required for users to understand and develop their own models using {inlabru}. We evaluate the approximate inference method using a Bayesian method checking approach. We provide three examples modelling simulated spatial data that demonstrate the benefits of the additional flexibility provided by {inlabru}.
A functional nonlinear regression approach, incorporating time information in the covariates, is proposed for temporal strong correlated manifold map data sequence analysis. Specifically, the functional regression parameters are supported on a connected and compact two--point homogeneous space. The Generalized Least--Squares (GLS) parameter estimator is computed in the linearized model, having error term displaying manifold scale varying Long Range Dependence (LRD). The performance of the theoretical and plug--in nonlinear regression predictors is illustrated by simulations on sphere, in terms of the empirical mean of the computed spherical functional absolute errors. In the case where the second--order structure of the functional error term in the linearized model is unknown, its estimation is performed by minimum contrast in the functional spectral domain. The linear case is illustrated in the Supplementary Material, revealing the effect of the slow decay velocity in time of the trace norms of the covariance operator family of the regression LRD error term. The purely spatial statistical analysis of atmospheric pressure at high cloud bottom, and downward solar radiation flux in Alegria et al. (2021) is extended to the spatiotemporal context, illustrating the numerical results from a generated synthetic data set.
Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation (WSSS) employs weak supervision, such as image-level labels, to train the segmentation model. Despite the impressive achievement in recent WSSS methods, we identify that introducing weak labels with high mean Intersection of Union (mIoU) does not guarantee high segmentation performance. Existing studies have emphasized the importance of prioritizing precision and reducing noise to improve overall performance. In the same vein, we propose ORANDNet, an advanced ensemble approach tailored for WSSS. ORANDNet combines Class Activation Maps (CAMs) from two different classifiers to increase the precision of pseudo-masks (PMs). To further mitigate small noise in the PMs, we incorporate curriculum learning. This involves training the segmentation model initially with pairs of smaller-sized images and corresponding PMs, gradually transitioning to the original-sized pairs. By combining the original CAMs of ResNet-50 and ViT, we significantly improve the segmentation performance over the single-best model and the naive ensemble model, respectively. We further extend our ensemble method to CAMs from AMN (ResNet-like) and MCTformer (ViT-like) models, achieving performance benefits in advanced WSSS models. It highlights the potential of our ORANDNet as a final add-on module for WSSS models.
To analyze the topological properties of the given discrete data, one needs to consider a continuous transform called filtration. Persistent homology serves as a tool to track changes of homology in the filtration. The outcome of the topological analysis of data varies depending on the choice of filtration, making the selection of filtration crucial. Filtration learning is an attempt to find an optimal filtration that minimizes the loss function. Exact Multi-parameter Persistent Homology (EMPH) has been recently proposed, particularly for topological time-series analysis, that utilizes the exact formula of rank invariant instead of calculating it. In this paper, we propose a framework for filtration learning of EMPH. We formulate an optimization problem and propose an algorithm for solving the problem. We then apply the proposed algorithm to several classification problems. Particularly, we derive the exact formula of the gradient of the loss function with respect to the filtration parameter, which makes it possible to directly update the filtration without using automatic differentiation, significantly enhancing the learning process.
In the field of materials science and manufacturing, a vast amount of heterogeneous data exists, encompassing measurement and simulation data, machine data, publications, and more. This data serves as the bedrock of valuable knowledge that can be leveraged for various engineering applications. However, efficiently storing and handling such diverse data remain significantly challenging, often due to the lack of standardization and integration across different organizational units. Addressing these issues is crucial for fully utilizing the potential of data-driven approaches in these fields. In this paper, we present a novel technology stack named Dataspace Management System (DSMS) for powering dataspace solutions. The core of DSMS lies on its distinctive knowledge management approach tuned to meet the specific demands of the materials science and manufacturing domain, all while adhering to the FAIR principles. This includes data integration, linkage, exploration, visualization, processing, and enrichment, in order to support engineers in decision-making and in solving design and optimization problems. We provide an architectural overview and describe the core components of DSMS. Additionally, we demonstrate the applicability of DSMS to typical data processing tasks in materials science through use cases from two research projects, namely StahlDigital and KupferDigital, both part of the German MaterialDigital initiative.
Recent advances in 3D fully convolutional networks (FCN) have made it feasible to produce dense voxel-wise predictions of volumetric images. In this work, we show that a multi-class 3D FCN trained on manually labeled CT scans of several anatomical structures (ranging from the large organs to thin vessels) can achieve competitive segmentation results, while avoiding the need for handcrafting features or training class-specific models. To this end, we propose a two-stage, coarse-to-fine approach that will first use a 3D FCN to roughly define a candidate region, which will then be used as input to a second 3D FCN. This reduces the number of voxels the second FCN has to classify to ~10% and allows it to focus on more detailed segmentation of the organs and vessels. We utilize training and validation sets consisting of 331 clinical CT images and test our models on a completely unseen data collection acquired at a different hospital that includes 150 CT scans, targeting three anatomical organs (liver, spleen, and pancreas). In challenging organs such as the pancreas, our cascaded approach improves the mean Dice score from 68.5 to 82.2%, achieving the highest reported average score on this dataset. We compare with a 2D FCN method on a separate dataset of 240 CT scans with 18 classes and achieve a significantly higher performance in small organs and vessels. Furthermore, we explore fine-tuning our models to different datasets. Our experiments illustrate the promise and robustness of current 3D FCN based semantic segmentation of medical images, achieving state-of-the-art results. Our code and trained models are available for download: //github.com/holgerroth/3Dunet_abdomen_cascade.