@inproceedings{948, abstract = {Experience constantly shapes neural circuits through a variety of plasticity mechanisms. While the functional roles of some plasticity mechanisms are well-understood, it remains unclear how changes in neural excitability contribute to learning. Here, we develop a normative interpretation of intrinsic plasticity (IP) as a key component of unsupervised learning. We introduce a novel generative mixture model that accounts for the class-specific statistics of stimulus intensities, and we derive a neural circuit that learns the input classes and their intensities. We will analytically show that inference and learning for our generative model can be achieved by a neural circuit with intensity-sensitive neurons equipped with a specific form of IP. Numerical experiments verify our analytical derivations and show robust behavior for artificial and natural stimuli. Our results link IP to non-trivial input statistics, in particular the statistics of stimulus intensities for classes to which a neuron is sensitive. More generally, our work paves the way toward new classification algorithms that are robust to intensity variations.}, author = {Monk, Travis and Savin, Cristina and Lücke, Jörg}, location = {Barcelona, Spain}, pages = {4285 -- 4293}, publisher = {Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation}, title = {{Neurons equipped with intrinsic plasticity learn stimulus intensity statistics}}, volume = {29}, year = {2016}, } @inproceedings{12903, author = {Schlögl, Alois and Stadlbauer, Stephan}, booktitle = {AHPC16 - Austrian HPC Meeting 2016}, location = {Grundlsee, Austria}, pages = {37}, publisher = {VSC - Vienna Scientific Cluster}, title = {{High performance computing at IST Austria: Modelling the human hippocampus}}, year = {2016}, } @article{1100, abstract = {During metazoan development, the temporal pattern of morphogen signaling is critical for organizing cell fates in space and time. Yet, tools for temporally controlling morphogen signaling within the embryo are still scarce. Here, we developed a photoactivatable Nodal receptor to determine how the temporal pattern of Nodal signaling affects cell fate specification during zebrafish gastrulation. By using this receptor to manipulate the duration of Nodal signaling in vivo by light, we show that extended Nodal signaling within the organizer promotes prechordal plate specification and suppresses endoderm differentiation. Endoderm differentiation is suppressed by extended Nodal signaling inducing expression of the transcriptional repressor goosecoid (gsc) in prechordal plate progenitors, which in turn restrains Nodal signaling from upregulating the endoderm differentiation gene sox17 within these cells. Thus, optogenetic manipulation of Nodal signaling identifies a critical role of Nodal signaling duration for organizer cell fate specification during gastrulation.}, author = {Sako, Keisuke and Pradhan, Saurabh and Barone, Vanessa and Inglés Prieto, Álvaro and Mueller, Patrick and Ruprecht, Verena and Capek, Daniel and Galande, Sanjeev and Janovjak, Harald L and Heisenberg, Carl-Philipp J}, journal = {Cell Reports}, number = {3}, pages = {866 -- 877}, publisher = {Cell Press}, title = {{Optogenetic control of nodal signaling reveals a temporal pattern of nodal signaling regulating cell fate specification during gastrulation}}, doi = {10.1016/j.celrep.2016.06.036}, volume = {16}, year = {2016}, } @article{1321, abstract = {Most migrating cells extrude their front by the force of actin polymerization. Polymerization requires an initial nucleation step, which is mediated by factors establishing either parallel filaments in the case of filopodia or branched filaments that form the branched lamellipodial network. Branches are considered essential for regular cell motility and are initiated by the Arp2/3 complex, which in turn is activated by nucleation-promoting factors of the WASP and WAVE families. Here we employed rapid amoeboid crawling leukocytes and found that deletion of the WAVE complex eliminated actin branching and thus lamellipodia formation. The cells were left with parallel filaments at the leading edge, which translated, depending on the differentiation status of the cell, into a unipolar pointed cell shape or cells with multiple filopodia. Remarkably, unipolar cells migrated with increased speed and enormous directional persistence, while they were unable to turn towards chemotactic gradients. Cells with multiple filopodia retained chemotactic activity but their migration was progressively impaired with increasing geometrical complexity of the extracellular environment. These findings establish that diversified leading edge protrusions serve as explorative structures while they slow down actual locomotion.}, author = {Leithner, Alexander F and Eichner, Alexander and Müller, Jan and Reversat, Anne and Brown, Markus and Schwarz, Jan and Merrin, Jack and De Gorter, David and Schur, Florian and Bayerl, Jonathan and De Vries, Ingrid and Wieser, Stefan and Hauschild, Robert and Lai, Frank and Moser, Markus and Kerjaschki, Dontscho and Rottner, Klemens and Small, Victor and Stradal, Theresia and Sixt, Michael K}, journal = {Nature Cell Biology}, pages = {1253 -- 1259}, publisher = {Nature Publishing Group}, title = {{Diversified actin protrusions promote environmental exploration but are dispensable for locomotion of leukocytes}}, doi = {10.1038/ncb3426}, volume = {18}, year = {2016}, } @article{1183, abstract = {Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a group of genetic disorders often overlapping with other neurological conditions. We previously described abnormalities in the branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) catabolic pathway as a cause of ASD. Here, we show that the solute carrier transporter 7a5 (SLC7A5), a large neutral amino acid transporter localized at the blood brain barrier (BBB), has an essential role in maintaining normal levels of brain BCAAs. In mice, deletion of Slc7a5 from the endothelial cells of the BBB leads to atypical brain amino acid profile, abnormal mRNA translation, and severe neurological abnormalities. Furthermore, we identified several patients with autistic traits and motor delay carrying deleterious homozygous mutations in the SLC7A5 gene. Finally, we demonstrate that BCAA intracerebroventricular administration ameliorates abnormal behaviors in adult mutant mice. Our data elucidate a neurological syndrome defined by SLC7A5 mutations and support an essential role for the BCAA in human brain function.}, author = {Tarlungeanu, Dora-Clara and Deliu, Elena and Dotter, Christoph and Kara, Majdi and Janiesch, Philipp and Scalise, Mariafrancesca and Galluccio, Michele and Tesulov, Mateja and Morelli, Emanuela and Sönmez, Fatma and Bilgüvar, Kaya and Ohgaki, Ryuichi and Kanai, Yoshikatsu and Johansen, Anide and Esharif, Seham and Ben Omran, Tawfeg and Topcu, Meral and Schlessinger, Avner and Indiveri, Cesare and Duncan, Kent and Caglayan, Ahmet and Günel, Murat and Gleeson, Joseph and Novarino, Gaia}, journal = {Cell}, number = {6}, pages = {1481 -- 1494}, publisher = {Cell Press}, title = {{Impaired amino acid transport at the blood brain barrier is a cause of autism spectrum disorder}}, doi = {10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.013}, volume = {167}, year = {2016}, } @inproceedings{1437, abstract = {We study algorithmic questions for concurrent systems where the transitions are labeled from a complete, closed semiring, and path properties are algebraic with semiring operations. The algebraic path properties can model dataflow analysis problems, the shortest path problem, and many other natural problems that arise in program analysis. We consider that each component of the concurrent system is a graph with constant treewidth, a property satisfied by the controlflow graphs of most programs. We allow for multiple possible queries, which arise naturally in demand driven dataflow analysis. The study of multiple queries allows us to consider the tradeoff between the resource usage of the one-time preprocessing and for each individual query. The traditional approach constructs the product graph of all components and applies the best-known graph algorithm on the product. In this approach, even the answer to a single query requires the transitive closure (i.e., the results of all possible queries), which provides no room for tradeoff between preprocessing and query time. Our main contributions are algorithms that significantly improve the worst-case running time of the traditional approach, and provide various tradeoffs depending on the number of queries. For example, in a concurrent system of two components, the traditional approach requires hexic time in the worst case for answering one query as well as computing the transitive closure, whereas we show that with one-time preprocessing in almost cubic time, each subsequent query can be answered in at most linear time, and even the transitive closure can be computed in almost quartic time. Furthermore, we establish conditional optimality results showing that the worst-case running time of our algorithms cannot be improved without achieving major breakthroughs in graph algorithms (i.e., improving the worst-case bound for the shortest path problem in general graphs). Preliminary experimental results show that our algorithms perform favorably on several benchmarks.}, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Goharshady, Amir and Ibsen-Jensen, Rasmus and Pavlogiannis, Andreas}, location = {St. Petersburg, FL, USA}, pages = {733 -- 747}, publisher = {ACM}, title = {{Algorithms for algebraic path properties in concurrent systems of constant treewidth components}}, doi = {10.1145/2837614.2837624}, volume = {20-22}, year = {2016}, } @inproceedings{1386, abstract = {We consider nondeterministic probabilistic programs with the most basic liveness property of termination. We present efficient methods for termination analysis of nondeterministic probabilistic programs with polynomial guards and assignments. Our approach is through synthesis of polynomial ranking supermartingales, that on one hand significantly generalizes linear ranking supermartingales and on the other hand is a counterpart of polynomial ranking-functions for proving termination of nonprobabilistic programs. The approach synthesizes polynomial ranking-supermartingales through Positivstellensatz's, yielding an efficient method which is not only sound, but also semi-complete over a large subclass of programs. We show experimental results to demonstrate that our approach can handle several classical programs with complex polynomial guards and assignments, and can synthesize efficient quadratic ranking-supermartingales when a linear one does not exist even for simple affine programs.}, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Fu, Hongfei and Goharshady, Amir}, location = {Toronto, Canada}, pages = {3 -- 22}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Termination analysis of probabilistic programs through Positivstellensatz's}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-41528-4_1}, volume = {9779}, year = {2016}, } @article{2271, abstract = {A class of valued constraint satisfaction problems (VCSPs) is characterised by a valued constraint language, a fixed set of cost functions on a finite domain. Finite-valued constraint languages contain functions that take on rational costs and general-valued constraint languages contain functions that take on rational or infinite costs. An instance of the problem is specified by a sum of functions from the language with the goal to minimise the sum. This framework includes and generalises well-studied constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) and maximum constraint satisfaction problems (Max-CSPs). Our main result is a precise algebraic characterisation of valued constraint languages whose instances can be solved exactly by the basic linear programming relaxation (BLP). For a general-valued constraint language Γ, BLP is a decision procedure for Γ if and only if Γ admits a symmetric fractional polymorphism of every arity. For a finite-valued constraint language Γ, BLP is a decision procedure if and only if Γ admits a symmetric fractional polymorphism of some arity, or equivalently, if Γ admits a symmetric fractional polymorphism of arity 2. Using these results, we obtain tractability of several novel and previously widely-open classes of VCSPs, including problems over valued constraint languages that are: (1) submodular on arbitrary lattices; (2) bisubmodular (also known as k-submodular) on arbitrary finite domains; (3) weakly (and hence strongly) tree-submodular on arbitrary trees. }, author = {Kolmogorov, Vladimir and Thapper, Johan and Živný, Stanislav}, journal = {SIAM Journal on Computing}, number = {1}, pages = {1 -- 36}, publisher = {SIAM}, title = {{The power of linear programming for general-valued CSPs}}, doi = {10.1137/130945648}, volume = {44}, year = {2015}, } @article{12196, abstract = {SNC1 (SUPPRESSOR OF NPR1, CONSTITUTIVE 1) is one of a suite of intracellular Arabidopsis NOD-like receptor (NLR) proteins which, upon activation, result in the induction of defense responses. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying NLR activation and the subsequent provocation of immune responses are only partially characterized. To identify negative regulators of NLR-mediated immunity, a forward genetic screen was undertaken to search for enhancers of the dwarf, autoimmune gain-of-function snc1 mutant. To avoid lethality resulting from severe dwarfism, the screen was conducted using mos4 (modifier of snc1, 4) snc1 plants, which display wild-type-like morphology and resistance. M2 progeny were screened for mutant, snc1-enhancing (muse) mutants displaying a reversion to snc1-like phenotypes. The muse9 mos4 snc1 triple mutant was found to exhibit dwarf morphology, elevated expression of the pPR2-GUS defense marker reporter gene and enhanced resistance to the oomycete pathogen Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis Noco2. Via map-based cloning and Illumina sequencing, it was determined that the muse9 mutation is in the gene encoding the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeler SYD (SPLAYED), and was thus renamed syd-10. The syd-10 single mutant has no observable alteration from wild-type-like resistance, although the syd-4 T-DNA insertion allele displays enhanced resistance to the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. maculicola ES4326. Transcription of SNC1 is increased in both syd-4 and syd-10. These data suggest that SYD plays a subtle, specific role in the regulation of SNC1 expression and SNC1-mediated immunity. SYD may work with other proteins at the chromatin level to repress SNC1 transcription; such regulation is important for fine-tuning the expression of NLR-encoding genes to prevent unpropitious autoimmunity.}, author = {Johnson, Kaeli C.M. and Xia, Shitou and Feng, Xiaoqi and Li, Xin}, issn = {0032-0781}, journal = {Plant and Cell Physiology}, keywords = {Cell Biology, Plant Science, Physiology, General Medicine}, number = {8}, pages = {1616--1623}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, title = {{The chromatin remodeler SPLAYED negatively regulates SNC1-mediated immunity}}, doi = {10.1093/pcp/pcv087}, volume = {56}, year = {2015}, } @inproceedings{12881, author = {Martius, Georg S and Olbrich, Eckehard}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Artificial Life}, isbn = {9780262330275}, location = {York, United Kingdom}, pages = {78}, publisher = {MIT Press}, title = {{Quantifying self-organizing behavior of autonomous robots}}, doi = {10.7551/978-0-262-33027-5-ch018}, year = {2015}, } @article{2085, abstract = {We study the spectrum of a large system of N identical bosons interacting via a two-body potential with strength 1/N. In this mean-field regime, Bogoliubov's theory predicts that the spectrum of the N-particle Hamiltonian can be approximated by that of an effective quadratic Hamiltonian acting on Fock space, which describes the fluctuations around a condensed state. Recently, Bogoliubov's theory has been justified rigorously in the case that the low-energy eigenvectors of the N-particle Hamiltonian display complete condensation in the unique minimizer of the corresponding Hartree functional. In this paper, we shall justify Bogoliubov's theory for the high-energy part of the spectrum of the N-particle Hamiltonian corresponding to (non-linear) excited states of the Hartree functional. Moreover, we shall extend the existing results on the excitation spectrum to the case of non-uniqueness and/or degeneracy of the Hartree minimizer. In particular, the latter covers the case of rotating Bose gases, when the rotation speed is large enough to break the symmetry and to produce multiple quantized vortices in the Hartree minimizer. }, author = {Nam, Phan and Seiringer, Robert}, journal = {Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis}, number = {2}, pages = {381 -- 417}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Collective excitations of Bose gases in the mean-field regime}}, doi = {10.1007/s00205-014-0781-6}, volume = {215}, year = {2015}, } @article{2166, abstract = {We consider the spectral statistics of large random band matrices on mesoscopic energy scales. We show that the correlation function of the local eigenvalue density exhibits a universal power law behaviour that differs from the Wigner-Dyson- Mehta statistics. This law had been predicted in the physics literature by Altshuler and Shklovskii in (Zh Eksp Teor Fiz (Sov Phys JETP) 91(64):220(127), 1986); it describes the correlations of the eigenvalue density in general metallic sampleswith weak disorder. Our result rigorously establishes the Altshuler-Shklovskii formulas for band matrices. In two dimensions, where the leading term vanishes owing to an algebraic cancellation, we identify the first non-vanishing term and show that it differs substantially from the prediction of Kravtsov and Lerner in (Phys Rev Lett 74:2563-2566, 1995). The proof is given in the current paper and its companion (Ann. H. Poincaré. arXiv:1309.5107, 2014). }, author = {Erdös, László and Knowles, Antti}, journal = {Communications in Mathematical Physics}, number = {3}, pages = {1365 -- 1416}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{The Altshuler-Shklovskii formulas for random band matrices I: the unimodular case}}, doi = {10.1007/s00220-014-2119-5}, volume = {333}, year = {2015}, } @article{1383, abstract = {In plants, vacuolar H+-ATPase (V-ATPase) activity acidifies both the trans-Golgi network/early endosome (TGN/EE) and the vacuole. This dual V-ATPase function has impeded our understanding of how the pH homeostasis within the plant TGN/EE controls exo- and endocytosis. Here, we show that the weak V-ATPase mutant deetiolated3 (det3) displayed a pH increase in the TGN/EE, but not in the vacuole, strongly impairing secretion and recycling of the brassinosteroid receptor and the cellulose synthase complexes to the plasma membrane, in contrast to mutants lacking tonoplast-localized V-ATPase activity only. The brassinosteroid insensitivity and the cellulose deficiency defects in det3 were tightly correlated with reduced Golgi and TGN/EE motility. Thus, our results provide strong evidence that acidification of the TGN/EE, but not of the vacuole, is indispensable for functional secretion and recycling in plants.}, author = {Yu, Luo and Scholl, Stefan and Doering, Anett and Yi, Zhang and Irani, Niloufer and Di Rubbo, Simone and Neumetzler, Lutz and Krishnamoorthy, Praveen and Van Houtte, Isabelle and Mylle, Evelien and Bischoff, Volker and Vernhettes, Samantha and Winne, Johan and Friml, Jirí and Stierhof, York and Schumacher, Karin and Persson, Staffan and Russinova, Eugenia}, journal = {Nature Plants}, number = {7}, publisher = {Nature Publishing Group}, title = {{V-ATPase activity in the TGN/EE is required for exocytosis and recycling in Arabidopsis}}, doi = {10.1038/nplants.2015.94}, volume = {1}, year = {2015}, } @phdthesis{1401, abstract = {The human ability to recognize objects in complex scenes has driven research in the computer vision field over couple of decades. This thesis focuses on the object recognition task in images. That is, given the image, we want the computer system to be able to predict the class of the object that appears in the image. A recent successful attempt to bridge semantic understanding of the image perceived by humans and by computers uses attribute-based models. Attributes are semantic properties of the objects shared across different categories, which humans and computers can decide on. To explore the attribute-based models we take a statistical machine learning approach, and address two key learning challenges in view of object recognition task: learning augmented attributes as mid-level discriminative feature representation, and learning with attributes as privileged information. Our main contributions are parametric and non-parametric models and algorithms to solve these frameworks. In the parametric approach, we explore an autoencoder model combined with the large margin nearest neighbor principle for mid-level feature learning, and linear support vector machines for learning with privileged information. In the non-parametric approach, we propose a supervised Indian Buffet Process for automatic augmentation of semantic attributes, and explore the Gaussian Processes classification framework for learning with privileged information. A thorough experimental analysis shows the effectiveness of the proposed models in both parametric and non-parametric views.}, author = {Sharmanska, Viktoriia}, issn = {2663-337X}, pages = {144}, publisher = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria}, title = {{Learning with attributes for object recognition: Parametric and non-parametrics views}}, doi = {10.15479/at:ista:1401}, year = {2015}, } @inproceedings{1424, abstract = {We consider the problem of statistical computations with persistence diagrams, a summary representation of topological features in data. These diagrams encode persistent homology, a widely used invariant in topological data analysis. While several avenues towards a statistical treatment of the diagrams have been explored recently, we follow an alternative route that is motivated by the success of methods based on the embedding of probability measures into reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. In fact, a positive definite kernel on persistence diagrams has recently been proposed, connecting persistent homology to popular kernel-based learning techniques such as support vector machines. However, important properties of that kernel enabling a principled use in the context of probability measure embeddings remain to be explored. Our contribution is to close this gap by proving universality of a variant of the original kernel, and to demonstrate its effective use in twosample hypothesis testing on synthetic as well as real-world data.}, author = {Kwitt, Roland and Huber, Stefan and Niethammer, Marc and Lin, Weili and Bauer, Ulrich}, location = {Montreal, Canada}, pages = {3070 -- 3078}, publisher = {Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation}, title = {{Statistical topological data analysis-A kernel perspective}}, volume = {28}, year = {2015}, } @inproceedings{1425, abstract = {In this work we aim at extending the theoretical foundations of lifelong learning. Previous work analyzing this scenario is based on the assumption that learning tasks are sampled i.i.d. from a task environment or limited to strongly constrained data distributions. Instead, we study two scenarios when lifelong learning is possible, even though the observed tasks do not form an i.i.d. sample: first, when they are sampled from the same environment, but possibly with dependencies, and second, when the task environment is allowed to change over time in a consistent way. In the first case we prove a PAC-Bayesian theorem that can be seen as a direct generalization of the analogous previous result for the i.i.d. case. For the second scenario we propose to learn an inductive bias in form of a transfer procedure. We present a generalization bound and show on a toy example how it can be used to identify a beneficial transfer algorithm.}, author = {Pentina, Anastasia and Lampert, Christoph}, location = {Montreal, Canada}, pages = {1540 -- 1548}, publisher = {Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation}, title = {{Lifelong learning with non-i.i.d. tasks}}, volume = {2015}, year = {2015}, } @inproceedings{1430, abstract = {Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) form a popular optimisation paradigm inspired by natural evolution. In recent years the field of evolutionary computation has developed a rigorous analytical theory to analyse their runtime on many illustrative problems. Here we apply this theory to a simple model of natural evolution. In the Strong Selection Weak Mutation (SSWM) evolutionary regime the time between occurrence of new mutations is much longer than the time it takes for a new beneficial mutation to take over the population. In this situation, the population only contains copies of one genotype and evolution can be modelled as a (1+1)-type process where the probability of accepting a new genotype (improvements or worsenings) depends on the change in fitness. We present an initial runtime analysis of SSWM, quantifying its performance for various parameters and investigating differences to the (1+1) EA. We show that SSWM can have a moderate advantage over the (1+1) EA at crossing fitness valleys and study an example where SSWM outperforms the (1+1) EA by taking advantage of information on the fitness gradient.}, author = {Paixao, Tiago and Sudholt, Dirk and Heredia, Jorge and Trubenova, Barbora}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation}, location = {Madrid, Spain}, pages = {1455 -- 1462}, publisher = {ACM}, title = {{First steps towards a runtime comparison of natural and artificial evolution}}, doi = {10.1145/2739480.2754758}, year = {2015}, } @inproceedings{1474, abstract = {Cryptographic access control offers selective access to encrypted data via a combination of key management and functionality-rich cryptographic schemes, such as attribute-based encryption. Using this approach, publicly available meta-data may inadvertently leak information on the access policy that is enforced by cryptography, which renders cryptographic access control unusable in settings where this information is highly sensitive. We begin to address this problem by presenting rigorous definitions for policy privacy in cryptographic access control. For concreteness we set our results in the model of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), where we identify and formalize several different flavors of privacy, however, our framework should serve as inspiration for other models of access control. Based on our insights we propose a new system which significantly improves on the privacy properties of state-of-the-art constructions. Our design is based on a novel type of privacy-preserving attribute-based encryption, which we introduce and show how to instantiate. We present our results in the context of a cryptographic RBAC system by Ferrara et al. (CSF'13), which uses cryptography to control read access to files, while write access is still delegated to trusted monitors. We give an extension of the construction that permits cryptographic control over write access. Our construction assumes that key management uses out-of-band channels between the policy enforcer and the users but eliminates completely the need for monitoring read/write access to the data.}, author = {Ferrara, Anna and Fuchsbauer, Georg and Liu, Bin and Warinschi, Bogdan}, location = {Verona, Italy}, pages = {46--60}, publisher = {IEEE}, title = {{Policy privacy in cryptographic access control}}, doi = {10.1109/CSF.2015.11}, year = {2015}, } @inproceedings{1481, abstract = {Simple board games, like Tic-Tac-Toe and CONNECT-4, play an important role not only in the development of mathematical and logical skills, but also in the emotional and social development. In this paper, we address the problem of generating targeted starting positions for such games. This can facilitate new approaches for bringing novice players to mastery, and also leads to discovery of interesting game variants. We present an approach that generates starting states of varying hardness levels for player 1 in a two-player board game, given rules of the board game, the desired number of steps required for player 1 to win, and the expertise levels of the two players. Our approach leverages symbolic methods and iterative simulation to efficiently search the extremely large state space. We present experimental results that include discovery of states of varying hardness levels for several simple grid-based board games. The presence of such states for standard game variants like 4×4 Tic-Tac-Toe opens up new games to be played that have never been played as the default start state is heavily biased. }, author = {Ahmed, Umair and Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Gulwani, Sumit}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, location = {Austin, TX, USA}, pages = {745 -- 752}, publisher = {AAAI Press}, title = {{Automatic generation of alternative starting positions for simple traditional board games}}, volume = {2}, year = {2015}, } @inproceedings{1483, abstract = {Topological data analysis offers a rich source of valuable information to study vision problems. Yet, so far we lack a theoretically sound connection to popular kernel-based learning techniques, such as kernel SVMs or kernel PCA. In this work, we establish such a connection by designing a multi-scale kernel for persistence diagrams, a stable summary representation of topological features in data. We show that this kernel is positive definite and prove its stability with respect to the 1-Wasserstein distance. Experiments on two benchmark datasets for 3D shape classification/retrieval and texture recognition show considerable performance gains of the proposed method compared to an alternative approach that is based on the recently introduced persistence landscapes.}, author = {Reininghaus, Jan and Huber, Stefan and Bauer, Ulrich and Kwitt, Roland}, location = {Boston, MA, USA}, pages = {4741 -- 4748}, publisher = {IEEE}, title = {{A stable multi-scale kernel for topological machine learning}}, doi = {10.1109/CVPR.2015.7299106}, year = {2015}, }