Coordinated drift of receptive fields during noisy representation learning

Long-term memories and learned behavior are conventionally associated with stable neuronal representations. However, recent experiments showed that neural population codes in many brain areas continuously change even when animals have fully learned and stably perform their tasks. This representational "drift" naturally leads to questions about its causes, dynamics, and functions. Here, we explore the hypothesis that neural representations optimize a representational objective with a degenerate solution space, and noisy synaptic updates drive the network to explore this (near-)optimal space causing representational drift. We illustrate this idea in simple, biologically plausible Hebbian/anti-Hebbian network models of representation learning, which optimize similarity matching objectives, and, when neural outputs are constrained to be nonnegative, learn localized receptive fields (RFs) that tile the stimulus manifold. We find that the drifting RFs of individual neurons can be characterized by a coordinated random walk, with the effective diffusion constants depending on various parameters such as learning rate, noise amplitude, and input statistics. Despite such drift, the representational similarity of population codes is stable over time. Our model recapitulates recent experimental observations in hippocampus and posterior parietal cortex, and makes testable predictions that can be probed in future experiments.

The Peregrine Breather on the Zero-Background Limit as the Two-Soliton Degenerate Solution: An Experimental Study

Solitons are coherent structures that describe the nonlinear evolution of wave localizations in hydrodynamics, optics, plasma and Bose-Einstein condensates. While the Peregrine breather is known to amplify a single localized perturbation of a carrier wave of finite amplitude by a factor of three, there is a counterpart solution on zero background known as the degenerate two-soliton which also leads to high amplitude maxima. In this study, we report several observations of such multi-soliton with doubly-localized peaks in a water wave flume. The data collected in this experiment confirm the distinctive attainment of wave amplification by a factor of two in good agreement with the dynamics of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation solution. Advanced numerical simulations solving the problem of nonlinear free water surface boundary conditions of an ideal fluid quantify the physical limitations of the degenerate two-soliton in hydrodynamics.

Regularized Asymptotic Solutions of Integro-Differential Equations with Fast and Slow Variables

The article considers a nonlinear integro-differential system of equations with fast and slow variables. Such systems were not considered previously from the point of view of constructing regularized (according to Lomov) asymptotic solutions. The known studies were mainly devoted to construction of the asymptotics of the Butuzov-Vasil'eva boundary layer type, which, as is known, can be applied only if the spectrum of the first variation matrix (on the degenerate solution) is located strictly in the open left-half plane of a complex variable. If the spectrum of this matrix falls on the imaginary axis, the S.A. Lomov regularization method is commonly used. However, this method was mainly developed for singularly perturbed differential systems that do not contain integral terms, or for integro-differential problems without slow variables. In this article, the regularization method is generalized for two-dimensional integro-differential equations with fast and slow variables.

Set-theoretic solutions to the Yang–Baxter equation, skew-braces, and related near-rings

Skew-braces have been introduced recently by Guarnieri and Vendramin. The structure group of a non-degenerate solution to the Yang–Baxter equation is a skew-brace, and every skew-brace gives a set-theoretic solution to the Yang–Baxter equation. It is proved that skew-braces arise from near-rings with a distinguished exponential map. For a fixed skew-brace, the corresponding near-rings with exponential form a category. The terminal object is a near-ring of self-maps, while the initial object is a near-ring which gives a complete invariant of the skew-brace. The radicals of split local near-rings with a central residue field [Formula: see text] are characterized as [Formula: see text]-braces with a compatible near-ring structure. Under this correspondence, [Formula: see text]-braces are radicals of local near-rings with radical square zero.

Disentangling degenerate solutions from primary transit and secondary eclipse spectroscopy of exoplanets

Infrared transmission and emission spectroscopy of exoplanets, recorded from primary transit and secondary eclipse measurements, indicate the presence of the most abundant carbon and oxygen molecular species (H 2 O, CH 4 , CO and CO 2 ) in a few exoplanets. However, efforts to constrain the molecular abundances to within several orders of magnitude are thwarted by the broad range of degenerate solutions that fit the data. Here, we explore, with radiative transfer models and analytical approximations, the nature of the degenerate solution sets resulting from the sparse measurements of ‘hot Jupiter’ exoplanets. As demonstrated with simple analytical expressions, primary transit measurements probe roughly four atmospheric scale heights at each wavelength band. Derived mixing ratios from these data are highly sensitive to errors in the radius of the planet at a reference pressure. For example, an uncertainty of 1% in the radius of a 1000 K and H 2 -based exoplanet with Jupiter's radius and mass causes an uncertainty of a factor of approximately 100–10 000 in the derived gas mixing ratios. The degree of sensitivity depends on how the line strength increases with the optical depth (i.e. the curve of growth) and the atmospheric scale height. Temperature degeneracies in the solutions of the primary transit data, which manifest their effects through the scale height and absorption coefficients, are smaller. We argue that these challenges can be partially surmounted by a combination of selected wavelength sampling of optical and infrared measurements and, when possible, the joint analysis of transit and secondary eclipse data of exoplanets. However, additional work is needed to constrain other effects, such as those owing to planetary clouds and star spots. Given the current range of open questions in the field, both observations and theory, there is a need for detailed measurements with space-based large mirror platforms (e.g. James web space telescope) and smaller broad survey telescopes as well as ground-based efforts.

DEGENERACY IN FUZZY LINEAR PROGRAMMING AND ITS APPLICATION

In this paper, by a definite linear function for ranking symmetric triangular fuzzy numbers, in a Fuzzy Linear Programming problem (FLP) model, we introduced a Fuzzy Degenerate Solution (FDS). In the physical meaning, occurrence of degeneracy in a Fuzzy Minimal Cost Flow Network is investigated. To prevent of falling into Cycling phenomenon in optimization process, we defined two new techniques of Cycling prevention proper to fuzzy environment.