scholarly journals Comparison of Two Efficient Methods for Calculating Partition Functions

Entropy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 1050 ◽  
Author(s):  
Le-Cheng Gong ◽  
Bo-Yuan Ning ◽  
Tsu-Chien Weng ◽  
Xi-Jing Ning
Keyword(s):  
Sampling Method ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Condensed Matter ◽  
Dynamics Simulation ◽  
Integral Approach ◽  
Partition Functions ◽  
Direct Integral ◽  
Nested Sampling ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Solid Argon

In the long-time pursuit of the solution to calculating the partition function (or free energy) of condensed matter, Monte-Carlo-based nested sampling should be the state-of-the-art method, and very recently, we established a direct integral approach that works at least four orders faster. In present work, the above two methods were applied to solid argon at temperatures up to 300 K. The derived internal energy and pressure were compared with the molecular dynamics simulation as well as experimental measurements, showing that the calculation precision of our approach is about 10 times higher than that of the nested sampling method.

scholarly journals Plant-Based Alternatives to Yogurt: State-of-the-Art and Perspectives of New Biotechnological Challenges

Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 316
Author(s):  
Marco Montemurro ◽  
Erica Pontonio ◽  
Rossana Coda ◽  
Carlo Giuseppe Rizzello
Keyword(s):  
Lactic Acid ◽  
Lactic Acid Bacteria ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Protein Digestibility ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sensory Features ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Biotechnological Processes ◽  
Nutritional Compounds ◽  
Increasing Demand

Due to the increasing demand for milk alternatives, related to both health and ethical needs, plant-based yogurt-like products have been widely explored in recent years. With the main goal to obtain snacks similar to the conventional yogurt in terms of textural and sensory properties and ability to host viable lactic acid bacteria for a long-time storage, several plant-derived ingredients (e.g., cereals, pseudocereals, legumes, and fruits) as well as technological solutions (e.g., enzymatic and thermal treatments) have been investigated. The central role of fermentation in yogurt-like production led to specific selections of lactic acid bacteria strains to be used as starters to guarantee optimal textural (e.g., through the synthesis of exo-polysaccharydes), nutritional (high protein digestibility and low content of anti-nutritional compounds), and functional (synthesis of bioactive compounds) features of the products. This review provides an overview of the novel insights on fermented yogurt-like products. The state-of-the-art on the use of unconventional ingredients, traditional and innovative biotechnological processes, and the effects of fermentation on the textural, nutritional, functional, and sensory features, and the shelf life are described. The supplementation of prebiotics and probiotics and the related health effects are also reviewed.

scholarly journals Low-Rank and Sparse Based Deep-Fusion Convolutional Neural Network for Crowd Counting

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siqi Tang ◽  
Zhisong Pan ◽  
Xingyu Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Convolutional Neural Network ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Regression Method ◽  
Low Rank ◽  
Counting Method ◽  
Direct Integral ◽  
Crowd Counting ◽  
Counting Methods ◽  
Density Map

This paper proposes an accurate crowd counting method based on convolutional neural network and low-rank and sparse structure. To this end, we firstly propose an effective deep-fusion convolutional neural network to promote the density map regression accuracy. Furthermore, we figure out that most of the existing CNN based crowd counting methods obtain overall counting by direct integral of estimated density map, which limits the accuracy of counting. Instead of direct integral, we adopt a regression method based on low-rank and sparse penalty to promote accuracy of the projection from density map to global counting. Experiments demonstrate the importance of such regression process on promoting the crowd counting performance. The proposed low-rank and sparse based deep-fusion convolutional neural network (LFCNN) outperforms existing crowd counting methods and achieves the state-of-the-art performance.

scholarly journals Research on Bogie Frame Lateral Instability of High-Speed Railway Vehicle

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Chen Wang ◽  
Shihui Luo ◽  
Ziqiang Xu ◽  
Chang Gao ◽  
Weihua Ma
Keyword(s):  
High Speed ◽  
Dynamics Simulation ◽  
Lateral Acceleration ◽  
Railway Vehicle ◽  
Lateral Instability ◽  
Bogie Frame ◽  
High Speed Railway ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Line Test ◽  
Equivalent Conicity

In order to find out the reason for the bogie frame instability alarm in the high-speed railway vehicle, the influence of wheel tread profile of the unstable vehicle was investigated. By means of wheel-rail contact analysis and dynamics simulation, the effect of tread wear on the bogie frame lateral stability was studied. The result indicates that the concave wear of tread is gradually aggravated with the increase of operation mileage; meanwhile the wheel-rail equivalent conicity also increases. For the rail which has not been grinded for a long time, the wear of gauge corner and wide-worn zone is relatively severe; the matching equivalent conicity is 0.31-0.4 between the worn rail and the concave-worn-tread wheel set. The equivalent conicity between the grinded rail and the concave-worn tread is below 0.25; the equivalent conicities are always below 0.1 between the reprofiled wheel set and various rails. The result of the line test indicates that the lateral acceleration of bogie frame corresponding to the worn wheel-rail can reach 8.5m/s2, and the acceleration after the grinding is reduced below 4.5m/s2. By dynamics simulation, it turns out that the unreasonable wheel-rail matching relationship is the major cause of the bogie frame lateral alarm. With the tread-concave wear being aggravated, the equivalent conicity of wheel-rail matching constantly increases, which leads to the bogie frame lateral instability and then the frame instability alarm.

scholarly journals Career Complexity No Longer on the Rise: Comparing Early- and Mid-Career Complexity Across the 1930s thru 1980s Birth Cohorts in Sweden

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Westerman ◽  
Dirk Witteveen ◽  
Erik Bihagen ◽  
Roujman Shahbazian
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Initial Increase ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Work Lives ◽  
Average Complexity ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Gender Convergence

There is a wide-spread idea that contemporary careers continue to become ever more complex. Pioneering research of full-career complexity has shown that work lives have indeed become more complex, yet at modest increasing pace. This paper examines whether career complexity continues to increase using Swedish registry data across an exceptionally long time period, including younger cohorts than in previous research: up to those born in 1983. The full early- and midcareers of selected birth cohorts cover several macroeconomic booms and downturns, a long period of upskilling of the Swedish labor force, as well as the convergence of working hours of women and men. The following conclusions are drawn using state-of-the-art methods of measuring career complexity. For early-careers, an increasing complexity trend is evident between the 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts, yet complexity fluctuates around a stable trend for the 1970s birth cohorts and onward. For mid-careers, which are considerably more stable on average, complexity has decreased among women born between the 1930s and the early-1950s. However, the opposite trend holds true for men, resulting in gender convergence of complexity. We observe a standstill of the mid-career complexity trend across both genders, followed by a modest decline for the last observed cohorts. Subsequent analyses point to educational expansion as an important driver of the initial increase of early-career complexity. Taken together, our analysis affirms an initial shift to more career complexity in the 20th century, yet we find no unidirectional trend toward more career complexity over the last decades.

scholarly journals Towards High-Level Intrinsic Exploration in Reinforcement Learning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bougie ◽  
Ryutaro Ichise
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Time Horizon ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Extrinsic Rewards ◽  
Intrinsic Reward ◽  
Long Time ◽  
End To End ◽  
High Level

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) methods traditionally struggle with tasks where environment rewards are sparse or delayed, which entails that exploration remains one of the key challenges of DRL. Instead of solely relying on extrinsic rewards, many state-of-the-art methods use intrinsic curiosity as exploration signal. While they hold promise of better local exploration, discovering global exploration strategies is beyond the reach of current methods. We propose a novel end-to-end intrinsic reward formulation that introduces high-level exploration in reinforcement learning. Our curiosity signal is driven by a fast reward that deals with local exploration and a slow reward that incentivizes long-time horizon exploration strategies. We formulate curiosity as the error in an agent’s ability to reconstruct the observations given their contexts. Experimental results show that this high-level exploration enables our agents to outperform prior work in several Atari games.

scholarly journals Education à l'image and Medienkompetenz : On the discourses and practices of film education in France and Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Henzler
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
German Film ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Film Education ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Media

This article compares the discourses, practices and politics of film education in France and Germany, and outlines their historical development. The discourses on film education in the two countries are fundamentally different: whereas German film education is anchored in the global politics of media education and around notions of Medienkompetenz (media competence), cinema in France is a field of art education centred on the transmission du cinéma (film mediation) or l'éducation artistique (art mediation). While the first initiatives in film education in both countries date back to the beginning of the twentieth century, this article explores how they developed in significantly different ways. In France, the establishment of film education was promoted and influenced by the culture of cinephilia, which imposed the notion of film as an art form. In Germany, film education – after having been pushed by the Nazi regime – suffered for a long time from sceptical attitudes towards the media and their ideological impact, and was formed by the critical approach of the Frankfurt School. This article details how history and the 'state of the art' of film education are interlinked with the different discourses and cultures of cinema in both countries, as well as the extent to which present political and educational practices draw upon long-standing historical and cultural traditions. In doing so, this article contributes to reflections upon film education at a wider European or international level, where similar debates around film or media literacy are taking place.

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