1,721,009 research outputs found

    How big is Big Data? A comprehensive survey of data production, storage, and streaming in science and industry

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    The contemporary surge in data production is fueled by diverse factors, with contributions from numerous stakeholders across various sectors. Comparing the volumes at play among different big data entities is challenging due to the scarcity of publicly available data. This survey aims to offer a comprehensive perspective on the orders of magnitude involved in yearly data generation by some public and private leading organizations, using an array of online sources for estimation. These estimates are based on meaningful, individual data production metrics and plausible per-unit sizes. The primary objective is to offer insights into the comparative scales of major big data players, their sources, and data production flows, rather than striving for precise measurements or incorporating the latest updates. The results are succinctly conveyed through a visual representation of the relative data generation volumes across these entities

    Quantum splines for non-linear approximations

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    Quantum Computing offers a new paradigm for efficient computing and many AI applications could benefit from its potential boost in performance. However, the main limitation is the constraint to linear operations that hampers the representation of complex relationships in data. In this work, we propose an efficient implementation of quantum splines for non-linear approximation. In particular, we first discuss possible parametrisations, and select the most convenient for exploiting the HHL algorithm to obtain the estimates of spline coefficients. Then, we investigate QSpline performance as an evaluation routine for some of the most popular activation functions adopted in ML. Finally, a detailed comparison with classical alternatives to the HHL is also presente

    A Variational Algorithm for Quantum Neural Networks

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    Quantum Computing leverages the laws of quantum mechanics to build computers endowed with tremendous computing power. The field is attracting ever-increasing attention from both academic and private sectors, as testified by the recent demonstration of quantum supremacy in practice. However, the intrinsic restriction to linear operations significantly limits the range of relevant use cases for the application of Quantum Computing. In this work, we introduce a novel variational algorithm for quantum Single Layer Perceptron. Thanks to the universal approximation theorem, and given that the number of hidden neurons scales exponentially with the number of qubits, our framework opens to the possibility of approximating any function on quantum computers. Thus, the proposed approach produces a model with substantial descriptive power, and widens the horizon of potential applications already in the NISQ era, especially the ones related to Quantum Artificial Intelligence. In particular, we design a quantum circuit to perform linear combinations in superposition and discuss adaptations to classification and regression tasks. After this theoretical investigation, we also provide practical implementations using various simulation environments. Finally, we test the proposed algorithm on synthetic data exploiting both simulators and real quantum devices

    An efficient quantum algorithm for ensemble classification using bagging

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    Ensemble methods aggregate predictions from multiple models, typically demonstrating improved accuracy and reduced variance compared to individual classifiers. However, they often come with significant memory usage and computational time requirements. A novel quantum algorithm that leverages quantum superposition, entanglement, and interference to construct an ensemble of classification models using bagging as an aggregation strategy is introduced. Through the generation of numerous quantum trajectories in superposition, the authors achieve B transformations of the training set with only logB log(B)\mathit{log}\left(B\right) operations, allowing an exponential enlargement of the ensemble size while linearly increasing the depth of the corresponding circuit. Moreover, when assessing the algorithm's overall cost, the authors demonstrate that the training of a single weak classifier contributes additively to the overall time complexity, as opposed to the multiplicative impact commonly observed in classical ensemble methods. To illustrate the efficacy of the authors' approach, experiments on reduced real-world datasets utilising the IBM qiskit environment to demonstrate the functionality and performance of the proposed algorithm are introduced.A new quantum algorithm that exploits quantum superposition, entanglement, and interference to build an ensemble of classification models is introduced. Thanks to the generation of several quantum trajectories in superposition, the authors obtain an exponentially large number of base models increasing only linearly the depth of the correspondent quantum circuit. The authors also present small-scale experiments, defining a quantum version of the cosine classifier and using the IBM qiskit environment to show how the algorithm works. imag

    Fluorescent Neuronal Cells v2

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    Fluorescent Neuronal Cells v2 is a collection of fluorescence microscopy images and the corresponding ground-truth annotations, designed to foster innovative research in the domains of Life Science and Deep Learning. This dataset encompasses three image collections wherein rodent neuronal cell nuclei and cytoplasm are stained with diverse markers to highlight their anatomical or functional characteristics. Specifically, we release 1874 high-resolution images alongside 750 corresponding ground-truth annotations for several learning tasks, including semantic segmentation, object detection and counting. The contribution is two-fold. First, thanks to the variety of annotations and their accessible formats, we envision our work would facilitate methodological advancements in computer vision approaches for segmentation, detection, feature learning, unsupervised and self-supervised learning, transfer learning, and related areas. Second, by enabling extensive exploration and benchmarking, we hope Fluorescent Neuronal Cells v2 would catalyze breakthroughs in fluorescence microscopy analysis and promote cutting-edge discoveries in life sciences. For more information, please refer to Clissa, L. et al., 2024. Fluorescent Neuronal Cells v2: Multi-Task, Multi-Format Annotations for Deep Learning in Microscopy. Scientific data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03005-9. This research was partly funded by PNRR - M4C2 - Investimento 1.3, Partenariato Esteso PE00000013 - “FAIR - Future Artificial Intelligence Research” - Spoke 8 “Pervasive AI” and the European Commission under the NextGeneration EU programme. The collection of original images was supported by funding from the University of Bologna and the European Space Agency (Research agreement collaboration 4000123556)

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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