Energy-efficient spikformer has been proposed by integrating the biologically plausible spiking neural network (SNN) and artificial Transformer, whereby the Spiking Self-Attention (SSA) is used to achieve both higher accuracy and lower computational cost. However, it seems that self-attention is not always necessary, especially in sparse spike-form calculation manners. In this paper, we innovatively replace vanilla SSA (using dynamic bases calculating from Query and Key) with spike-form Fourier Transform, Wavelet Transform, and their combinations (using fixed triangular or wavelets bases), based on a key hypothesis that both of them use a set of basis functions for information transformation. Hence, the Fourier-or-Wavelet-based spikformer (FWformer) is proposed and verified in visual classification tasks, including both static image and event-based video datasets. The FWformer can achieve comparable or even higher accuracies ($0.4\%$-$1.5\%$), higher running speed ($9\%$-$51\%$ for training and $19\%$-$70\%$ for inference), reduced theoretical energy consumption ($20\%$-$25\%$), and reduced GPU memory usage ($4\%$-$26\%$), compared to the standard spikformer. Our result indicates the continuous refinement of new Transformers, that are inspired either by biological discovery (spike-form), or information theory (Fourier or Wavelet Transform), is promising.
This paper contributes to the study of optimal experimental design for Bayesian inverse problems governed by partial differential equations (PDEs). We derive estimates for the parametric regularity of multivariate double integration problems over high-dimensional parameter and data domains arising in Bayesian optimal design problems. We provide a detailed analysis for these double integration problems using two approaches: a full tensor product and a sparse tensor product combination of quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) cubature rules over the parameter and data domains. Specifically, we show that the latter approach significantly improves the convergence rate, exhibiting performance comparable to that of QMC integration of a single high-dimensional integral. Furthermore, we numerically verify the predicted convergence rates for an elliptic PDE problem with an unknown diffusion coefficient in two spatial dimensions, offering empirical evidence supporting the theoretical results and highlighting practical applicability.
We study the connection between mixing properties for bipartite graphs and materialization of the mutual information in one-shot settings. We show that mixing properties of a graph imply impossibility to extract the mutual information shared by the ends of an edge randomly sampled in the graph. We apply these impossibility results to some questions motivated by information-theoretic cryptography. In particular, we show that communication complexity of a secret key agreement in one-shot setting is inherently uneven: for some inputs, almost all communication complexity inevitably falls on only one party.
This paper presents an analysis of properties of two hybrid discretization methods for Gaussian derivatives, based on convolutions with either the normalized sampled Gaussian kernel or the integrated Gaussian kernel followed by central differences. The motivation for studying these discretization methods is that in situations when multiple spatial derivatives of different order are needed at the same scale level, they can be computed significantly more efficiently compared to more direct derivative approximations based on explicit convolutions with either sampled Gaussian kernels or integrated Gaussian kernels. While these computational benefits do also hold for the genuinely discrete approach for computing discrete analogues of Gaussian derivatives, based on convolution with the discrete analogue of the Gaussian kernel followed by central differences, the underlying mathematical primitives for the discrete analogue of the Gaussian kernel, in terms of modified Bessel functions of integer order, may not be available in certain frameworks for image processing, such as when performing deep learning based on scale-parameterized filters in terms of Gaussian derivatives, with learning of the scale levels. In this paper, we present a characterization of the properties of these hybrid discretization methods, in terms of quantitative performance measures concerning the amount of spatial smoothing that they imply, as well as the relative consistency of scale estimates obtained from scale-invariant feature detectors with automatic scale selection, with an emphasis on the behaviour for very small values of the scale parameter, which may differ significantly from corresponding results obtained from the fully continuous scale-space theory, as well as between different types of discretization methods.
Adaptive finite elements combined with geometric multigrid solvers are one of the most efficient numerical methods for problems such as the instationary Navier-Stokes equations. Yet despite their efficiency, computations remain expensive and the simulation of, for example, complex flow problems can take many hours or days. GPUs provide an interesting avenue to speed up the calculations due to their very large theoretical peak performance. However, the large degree of parallelism and non-standard API make the use of GPUs in scientific computing challenging. In this work, we develop a GPU acceleration for the adaptive finite element library Gascoigne and study its effectiveness for different systems of partial differential equations. Through the systematic formulation of all computations as linear algebra operations, we can employ GPU-accelerated linear algebra libraries, which simplifies the implementation and ensures the maintainability of the code while achieving very efficient GPU utilizations. Our results for a transport-diffusion equation, linear elasticity, and the instationary Navier-Stokes equations show substantial speedups of up to 20X compared to multi-core CPU implementations.
We present novel Monte Carlo (MC) and multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) methods to determine the unbiased covariance of random variables using h-statistics. The advantage of this procedure lies in the unbiased construction of the estimator's mean square error in a closed form. This is in contrast to conventional MC and MLMC covariance estimators, which are based on biased mean square errors defined solely by upper bounds, particularly within the MLMC. The numerical results of the algorithms are demonstrated by estimating the covariance of the stochastic response of a simple 1D stochastic elliptic PDE such as Poisson's model.
The high dimensional nature of genomics data complicates feature selection, in particular in low sample size studies - not uncommon in clinical prediction settings. It is widely recognized that complementary data on the features, `co-data', may improve results. Examples are prior feature groups or p-values from a related study. Such co-data are ubiquitous in genomics settings due to the availability of public repositories. Yet, the uptake of learning methods that structurally use such co-data is limited. We review guided adaptive shrinkage methods: a class of regression-based learners that use co-data to adapt the shrinkage parameters, crucial for the performance of those learners. We discuss technical aspects, but also the applicability in terms of types of co-data that can be handled. This class of methods is contrasted with several others. In particular, group-adaptive shrinkage is compared with the better-known sparse group-lasso by evaluating feature selection. Finally, we demonstrate the versatility of the guided shrinkage methodology by showing how to `do-it-yourself': we integrate implementations of a co-data learner and the spike-and-slab prior for the purpose of improving feature selection in genetics studies.
In this study, explainable machine learning techniques are applied to predict the toxicity of mussels in the Gulf of Trieste (Adriatic Sea) caused by harmful algal blooms. By analysing a newly created 28-year dataset containing records of toxic phytoplankton in mussel farming areas and toxin concentrations in mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis), we train and evaluate the performance of ML models to accurately predict diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) events. The random forest model provided the best prediction of positive toxicity results based on the F1 score. Explainability methods such as permutation importance and SHAP identified key species (Dinophysis fortii and D. caudata) and environmental factors (salinity, river discharge and precipitation) as the best predictors of DSP outbreaks. These findings are important for improving early warning systems and supporting sustainable aquaculture practices.
Partial differential equations (PDEs) are crucial in modelling diverse phenomena across scientific disciplines, including seismic and medical imaging, computational fluid dynamics, image processing, and neural networks. Solving these PDEs on a large scale is an intricate and time-intensive process that demands careful tuning. This paper introduces automated code-generation techniques specifically tailored for distributed memory parallelism (DMP) to solve explicit finite-difference (FD) stencils at scale, a fundamental challenge in numerous scientific applications. These techniques are implemented and integrated into the Devito DSL and compiler framework, a well-established solution for automating the generation of FD solvers based on a high-level symbolic math input. Users benefit from modelling simulations at a high-level symbolic abstraction and effortlessly harnessing HPC-ready distributed-memory parallelism without altering their source code. This results in drastic reductions both in execution time and developer effort. While the contributions of this work are implemented and integrated within the Devito framework, the DMP concepts and the techniques applied are generally applicable to any FD solvers. A comprehensive performance evaluation of Devito's DMP via MPI demonstrates highly competitive weak and strong scaling on the Archer2 supercomputer, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed approach in meeting the demands of large-scale scientific simulations.
This paper presents a regularized recursive identification algorithm with simultaneous on-line estimation of both the model parameters and the algorithms hyperparameters. A new kernel is proposed to facilitate the algorithm development. The performance of this novel scheme is compared with that of the recursive least squares algorithm in simulation.
Artificial neural networks thrive in solving the classification problem for a particular rigid task, acquiring knowledge through generalized learning behaviour from a distinct training phase. The resulting network resembles a static entity of knowledge, with endeavours to extend this knowledge without targeting the original task resulting in a catastrophic forgetting. Continual learning shifts this paradigm towards networks that can continually accumulate knowledge over different tasks without the need to retrain from scratch. We focus on task incremental classification, where tasks arrive sequentially and are delineated by clear boundaries. Our main contributions concern 1) a taxonomy and extensive overview of the state-of-the-art, 2) a novel framework to continually determine the stability-plasticity trade-off of the continual learner, 3) a comprehensive experimental comparison of 11 state-of-the-art continual learning methods and 4 baselines. We empirically scrutinize method strengths and weaknesses on three benchmarks, considering Tiny Imagenet and large-scale unbalanced iNaturalist and a sequence of recognition datasets. We study the influence of model capacity, weight decay and dropout regularization, and the order in which the tasks are presented, and qualitatively compare methods in terms of required memory, computation time, and storage.