当前的深度神经网络被高度参数化（多达数十亿个连接权重）和非线性。然而，它们几乎可以通过梯度下降算法的变体完美地拟合数据，并达到预测准确性的意外水平，而不会过度拟合。这些是巨大的结果，无视统计学习的预测，并对非凸优化构成概念性挑战。在本文中，我们使用来自无序系统的统计物理学的方法来分析非凸二进制二进制神经网络模型中过度参数化的计算后果，该模型对从结构上更简单但“隐藏”网络产生的数据进行了培训。随着连接权重的增加，我们遵循误差损失函数不同最小值的几何结构的变化，并将其与学习和概括性能相关联。当解决方案开始存在时，第一次过渡发生在所谓的插值点（完美拟合变得可能）。这种过渡反映了典型溶液的特性，但是它是尖锐的最小值，难以采样。差距后，发生了第二个过渡，并具有不同类型的“非典型”结构的不连续外观：重量空间的宽区域，这些区域特别是解决方案密度且具有良好的泛化特性。两种解决方案共存，典型的解决方案的呈指数数量，但是从经验上讲，我们发现有效的算法采样了非典型，稀有的算法。这表明非典型相变是学习的相关阶段。与该理论建议的可观察到的现实网络的数值测试结果与这种情况一致。

深度学习的成功揭示了神经网络对整个科学的应用潜力，并开辟了基本的理论问题。特别地，基于梯度方法的简单变体的学习算法能够找到高度非凸损函数的近最佳最佳最小值，是神经网络的意外特征。此外，这种算法即使在存在噪声的情况下也能够适合数据，但它们具有出色的预测能力。若干经验结果表明了通过算法实现的最小值的所谓平坦度与概括性性能之间的可再现相关性。同时，统计物理结果表明，在非透露网络中，多个窄的最小值可能与较少数量的宽扁平最小值共存，这概括了很好。在这里，我们表明，从“高边缘”（即局部稳健的）配置，从最小值的聚结会出现宽平坦的结构。尽管与零保证金相比具有呈指数稀有的稀有性，但高利润最小值倾向于集中在特定地区。这些最小值又被较小且较小的边距的其他解决方案包围，导致长距离的溶液区域密集。我们的分析还提供了一种替代分析方法，用于估计扁平最小值，当算法开始找到解决方案时，随着模型参数的数量变化。

关于参数化量子电路（PQC）的成本景观知之甚少。然而，PQC被用于量子神经网络和变异量子算法中，这可能允许近期量子优势。此类应用需要良好的优化器来培训PQC。最近的作品集中在专门针对PQC量身定制的量子意识优化器上。但是，对成本景观的无知可能会阻碍这种优化者的进步。在这项工作中，我们在分析上证明了PQC的两个结果：（1）我们在PQC中发现了指数较大的对称性，在成本景观中产生了最小值的呈指数较大的变性。或者，这可以作为相关超参数空间体积的指数减少。 （2）我们研究了噪声下对称性的弹性，并表明，尽管它在Unital噪声下是保守的，但非阴道通道可以打破这些对称性并提高最小值的变性，从而导致多个新的局部最小值。基于这些结果，我们引入了一种称为基于对称的最小跳跃（SYMH）的优化方法，该方法利用了PQC中的基础对称性。我们的数值模拟表明，在存在与当前硬件相当的水平上，SYMH在存在非阴性噪声的情况下提高了整体优化器性能。总体而言，这项工作从局部门转换中得出了大规模电路对称性，并使用它们来构建一种噪声吸引的优化方法。

变形量子算法（VQAS）可以是噪声中间级量子（NISQ）计算机上的量子优势的路径。自然问题是NISQ设备的噪声是否对VQA性能的基本限制。我们严格证明对嘈杂的VQAS进行严重限制，因为噪音导致训练景观具有贫瘠高原（即消失梯度）。具体而言，对于考虑的本地Pauli噪声，我们证明梯度在Qubits $ N $的数量中呈指数呈指数增长，如果Ansatz的深度以$ N $线性增长。这些噪声诱导的贫瘠强韧（NIBPS）在概念上不同于无辐射贫瘠强度，其与随机参数初始化相关联。我们的结果是为通用Ansatz制定的，该通用ansatz包括量子交替运算符ANSATZ和酉耦合簇Ansatz等特殊情况。对于前者来说，我们的数值启发式展示了用于现实硬件噪声模型的NIBP现象。

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.