如今，混合云平台作为打算实施私人和公共云应用组合的组织的有吸引力的解决方案，以满足其盈利能力。但是，这只能通过在加速执行过程时利用可用资源来实现。因此，部署新应用程序需要将其中一些流程致力于私有云解决方案，同时将其他过程分配给公共云。在此上下文中，设置本工作以帮助最小化相关成本，并在最小的执行时间内为最佳服务放置解决方案提供有效的选择。已经应用了几种进化算法来解决服务放置问题，并且在处理复杂的解决方案空间以提供最佳放置并经常产生短的执行时间。除了在处理服务放置问题方面发明细缺乏鲁棒性之外，还发现标准BPSO算法显示出显着的缺点，即容易捕获到本地Optima之外。因此，为了克服与标准BPSO相关的关键缺点，提出了增强的二进制粒子群优化（E-BPSO）算法，由粒子位置更新方程的修改组成，最初从连续PSO激发。我们所提出的E-BPSO算法显示在成本和执行时间方面以实际基准测试优越最先进的方法。

我们提出了一个新的灵敏度分析模型，该模型结合了Copulas和在未观察到的混杂状态下的因果推断的标准化。我们将新模型称为$ \ rho $ -gnf（$ \ rho $ - graphical正常化流），其中$ \ rho {\ in} [ - 1，+1] $是一个有界灵敏度参数，表示后门非 - 由于未观察到的混杂而引起的因果关系，使用研究最丰富且广泛流行的高斯副群建模。具体而言，$ \ rho $ -gnf使我们能够估计和分析前门因果效应或平均因果效应（ACE）作为$ \ rho $的函数。我们将其称为$ \ rho_ {curve} $。 $ \ rho_ {curve} $使我们能够指定无王牌所需的混杂力量。我们将其称为$ \ rho_ {value} $。此外，$ \ rho_ {curve} $还使我们能够为$ \ rho $ values的间隔提供ACE的界限。我们说明了$ \ rho $ -gnf的好处，并通过对我们的经验王牌界限的实验比其他流行的王牌范围更狭窄。

深度学习模式在许多分类任务中取得了最先进的性能。但是，大多数人不能为其分类结果提供解释。可解释的机器学习模型通常是线性的或分段线性和产生较差的性能。非线性模型实现了更好的分类性能，但很难解释他们的分类结果。这可能已经通过提出的可解释的前馈神经网络（IFFNN）来改变，这提出了实现高分类性能和恶意软件检测的可解释性。如果IFFNN可以在提供有意义的解释的同时以更灵活和一般的形式表现良好，并且在提供有意义的解释时，它可能对所应用的机器学习界非常感兴趣。在本文中，我们提出了一种方式来概括可解释的前馈神经网络到多级分类场景和任何类型的前馈神经网络，并评估其在内部解释数据集上的分类性能和解释性。我们通过发现广义IFFNNS实现了与正常前馈神经网络对应物的可比分类性能并提供了有意义的解释。因此，这种神经网络架构具有很大的实用性。

随机平滑最近被出现为一种有效的工具，可以在尺度上进行深度神经网络分类器认证。随机平滑的所有现有技术都集中在各向同性$ \ ell_p $认证，这具有通过$ \ ell_p $ -norm半径在各向同性方法中可以轻松地进行证书的优势。然而，各向同性认证限制了可以通过输入到最坏情况对手的输入的区域，即，它不能推理其他“关闭”，潜在的大，恒定的预测安全区域。为了缓解这个问题，（i）我们在简化分析后理论上将各向同性随机平滑$ \ ell_1 $和$ \ ell_2 $证明延伸到其广泛的各向异性同行。此外，（ii）我们提出了评估指标，允许比较一般证书 - 如果它通过经过认证区域的卷定量每个证书的量化，证书优于另一个证书。我们介绍ACCER，是通过体积最大化获得给定测试集样本的各向异性证书的实际框架。我们的经验结果表明，ACCER在多个半径的CIFAR-10和ImageNet上实现最先进的$ \ ell_1 $和$ \ ell_2 $认证准确性，同时在体积方面认证大幅更大的地区，从而突出了益处远离各向同性分析。我们的代码可以在https://github.com/motasemalfarra/ancer中获得。

The recent increase in public and academic interest in preserving biodiversity has led to the growth of the field of conservation technology. This field involves designing and constructing tools that utilize technology to aid in the conservation of wildlife. In this article, we will use case studies to demonstrate the importance of designing conservation tools with human-wildlife interaction in mind and provide a framework for creating successful tools. These case studies include a range of complexities, from simple cat collars to machine learning and game theory methodologies. Our goal is to introduce and inform current and future researchers in the field of conservation technology and provide references for educating the next generation of conservation technologists. Conservation technology not only has the potential to benefit biodiversity but also has broader impacts on fields such as sustainability and environmental protection. By using innovative technologies to address conservation challenges, we can find more effective and efficient solutions to protect and preserve our planet's resources.

We present the interpretable meta neural ordinary differential equation (iMODE) method to rapidly learn generalizable (i.e., not parameter-specific) dynamics from trajectories of multiple dynamical systems that vary in their physical parameters. The iMODE method learns meta-knowledge, the functional variations of the force field of dynamical system instances without knowing the physical parameters, by adopting a bi-level optimization framework: an outer level capturing the common force field form among studied dynamical system instances and an inner level adapting to individual system instances. A priori physical knowledge can be conveniently embedded in the neural network architecture as inductive bias, such as conservative force field and Euclidean symmetry. With the learned meta-knowledge, iMODE can model an unseen system within seconds, and inversely reveal knowledge on the physical parameters of a system, or as a Neural Gauge to "measure" the physical parameters of an unseen system with observed trajectories. We test the validity of the iMODE method on bistable, double pendulum, Van der Pol, Slinky, and reaction-diffusion systems.

While the brain connectivity network can inform the understanding and diagnosis of developmental dyslexia, its cause-effect relationships have not yet enough been examined. Employing electroencephalography signals and band-limited white noise stimulus at 4.8 Hz (prosodic-syllabic frequency), we measure the phase Granger causalities among channels to identify differences between dyslexic learners and controls, thereby proposing a method to calculate directional connectivity. As causal relationships run in both directions, we explore three scenarios, namely channels' activity as sources, as sinks, and in total. Our proposed method can be used for both classification and exploratory analysis. In all scenarios, we find confirmation of the established right-lateralized Theta sampling network anomaly, in line with the temporal sampling framework's assumption of oscillatory differences in the Theta and Gamma bands. Further, we show that this anomaly primarily occurs in the causal relationships of channels acting as sinks, where it is significantly more pronounced than when only total activity is observed. In the sink scenario, our classifier obtains 0.84 and 0.88 accuracy and 0.87 and 0.93 AUC for the Theta and Gamma bands, respectively.

Variational autoencoders model high-dimensional data by positing low-dimensional latent variables that are mapped through a flexible distribution parametrized by a neural network. Unfortunately, variational autoencoders often suffer from posterior collapse: the posterior of the latent variables is equal to its prior, rendering the variational autoencoder useless as a means to produce meaningful representations. Existing approaches to posterior collapse often attribute it to the use of neural networks or optimization issues due to variational approximation. In this paper, we consider posterior collapse as a problem of latent variable non-identifiability. We prove that the posterior collapses if and only if the latent variables are non-identifiable in the generative model. This fact implies that posterior collapse is not a phenomenon specific to the use of flexible distributions or approximate inference. Rather, it can occur in classical probabilistic models even with exact inference, which we also demonstrate. Based on these results, we propose a class of latent-identifiable variational autoencoders, deep generative models which enforce identifiability without sacrificing flexibility. This model class resolves the problem of latent variable non-identifiability by leveraging bijective Brenier maps and parameterizing them with input convex neural networks, without special variational inference objectives or optimization tricks. Across synthetic and real datasets, latent-identifiable variational autoencoders outperform existing methods in mitigating posterior collapse and providing meaningful representations of the data.

There are multiple scales of abstraction from which we can describe the same image, depending on whether we are focusing on fine-grained details or a more global attribute of the image. In brain mapping, learning to automatically parse images to build representations of both small-scale features (e.g., the presence of cells or blood vessels) and global properties of an image (e.g., which brain region the image comes from) is a crucial and open challenge. However, most existing datasets and benchmarks for neuroanatomy consider only a single downstream task at a time. To bridge this gap, we introduce a new dataset, annotations, and multiple downstream tasks that provide diverse ways to readout information about brain structure and architecture from the same image. Our multi-task neuroimaging benchmark (MTNeuro) is built on volumetric, micrometer-resolution X-ray microtomography images spanning a large thalamocortical section of mouse brain, encompassing multiple cortical and subcortical regions. We generated a number of different prediction challenges and evaluated several supervised and self-supervised models for brain-region prediction and pixel-level semantic segmentation of microstructures. Our experiments not only highlight the rich heterogeneity of this dataset, but also provide insights into how self-supervised approaches can be used to learn representations that capture multiple attributes of a single image and perform well on a variety of downstream tasks. Datasets, code, and pre-trained baseline models are provided at: https://mtneuro.github.io/ .

We derive a set of causal deep neural networks whose architectures are a consequence of tensor (multilinear) factor analysis. Forward causal questions are addressed with a neural network architecture composed of causal capsules and a tensor transformer. The former estimate a set of latent variables that represent the causal factors, and the latter governs their interaction. Causal capsules and tensor transformers may be implemented using shallow autoencoders, but for a scalable architecture we employ block algebra and derive a deep neural network composed of a hierarchy of autoencoders. An interleaved kernel hierarchy preprocesses the data resulting in a hierarchy of kernel tensor factor models. Inverse causal questions are addressed with a neural network that implements multilinear projection and estimates the causes of effects. As an alternative to aggressive bottleneck dimension reduction or regularized regression that may camouflage an inherently underdetermined inverse problem, we prescribe modeling different aspects of the mechanism of data formation with piecewise tensor models whose multilinear projections are well-defined and produce multiple candidate solutions. Our forward and inverse neural network architectures are suitable for asynchronous parallel computation.