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At least 1,225 records · Page 68

DOES THE VARIATION OF THE SOLAR INTRA-NETWORK HORIZONTAL FIELD FOLLOW THE SUNSPOT CYCLE?

The ubiquitousness of the solar inter-network horizontal magnetic field has been revealed by space-borne observations with high spatial resolution and polarization sensitivity. However, no consensus has been achieved on the origin of the horizontal field among solar physicists. For a better understanding, in this study, we analyze the cyclic variation of the inter-network horizontal field by using the spectro-polarimeter observations provided by the Solar Optical Telescope on board Hinode, covering the interval from 2008 April to 2015 February. The method of wavelength integration is adopted to achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio. It is found that from 2008 to 2015 the inter-network horizontal field does not vary when solar activity increases, and the average flux density of the inter-network horizontal field is 87 ± 1 G, In addition, the imbalance between horizontal and vertical fields also keeps invariant within the scope of deviation, i.e., 8.7 ± 0.5, from the solar minimum to maximum of solar cycle 24. This result confirms that the inter-network horizontal field is independent of the sunspot cycle. The revelation favors the idea that a local dynamo is creating and maintaining the solar inter-network horizontal field.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Characterizing gravitational wave detector networks: from A # to cosmic explorer

Gravitational-wave observations by the laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory (LIGO) and Virgo have provided us a new tool to explore the Universe on all scales from nuclear physics to the cosmos and have the massive potential to further impact fundamental physics, astrophysics, and cosmology for decades to come. In this paper we have studied the science capabilities of a network of LIGO detectors when they reach their best possible sensitivity, called A # , given the infrastructure in which they exist and a new generation of observatories that are factor of 10 to 100 times more sensitive (depending on the frequency), in particular a pair of L-shaped cosmic explorer (CE) observatories (one 40 km and one 20 km arm length) in the US and the triangular Einstein telescope with 10 km arms in Europe. We use a set of science metrics derived from the top priorities of several funding agencies to characterize the science capabilities of different networks. The presence of one or two A # observatories in a network containing two or one next generation observatories, respectively, will provide good localization capabilities for facilitating multimessenger astronomy (MMA) and precision measurement of the Hubble parameter. Two CE observatories are indispensable for achieving precise localization of binary neutron star events, facilitating detection of electromagnetic counterparts and transforming MMA. Their combined operation is even more important in the detection and localization of high-redshift sources, such as binary neutron stars, beyond the star-formation peak, and primordial black hole mergers, which may occur roughly 100 million years after the Big Bang. The addition of the Einstein Telescope to a network of two CE observatories is critical for accomplishing all the identified science metrics including the nuclear equation of state, cosmological parameters, the growth of black holes through cosmic history, but also make new discoveries such as the presence of dark matter within or around neutron stars and black holes, continuous gravitational waves from rotating neutron stars, transient signals from supernovae, and the production of stellar-mass black holes in the early Universe. For most metrics the triple network of next generation terrestrial observatories are a factor 100 better than what can be accomplished by a network of three A # observatories.

Einstein telescope↗

NuGraph2 with explainability: post-hoc explanations for geometric neural network predictions

With the growing popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) used for scientific applications, the ability of attribute a result to a reasoning process from the network is in high demand for robust scientific generalizations to hold. In this work we aim to motivate the need for and demonstrate the use of post-hoc explainability methods when applied to AI methods used in scientific applications. To this end, we introduce explainability add-ons to the existing graph neural network (GNN) for neutrino tagging, NuGraph2. The explanations take the form of a suite of techniques examining the output of the network (node classifications) and the edge connections between them, and probing of the latent space using novel general-purpose tools applied to this network. We show how none of these methods are singularly sufficient to show network ‘understanding’, but together can give insights into the processes used in classification. While these methods are tested on the NuGraph2 application, they can be applied to a broad range of networks, not limited to GNNs. The code for this work is publicly available on GitHub at https://github.com/voetberg/XNuGraph.

Voetberg, Margaret [Fermilab] (ORCID:0009000527154↗

Efficient Sampling of Complex Interdependent and Multiplex Networks

Efficient sampling of interdependent and multiplex infrastructure networks is critical for effectively applying failure and recovery algorithms in real-world settings, as well as to generate property-preserving reduced-order graph-based ensembles that address topological uncertainties. In this paper, we first explore the performance, i.e. the success in preserving graph properties, of graph sampling algorithms for interdependent and multiplex networks with synthetic and real-world graphs. We simulate sampling algorithms under different parameter settings. These settings include probabilistic graph generators, coupling patterns, and various performance metrics. Our results show that while Random Node and Random Walk sampling algorithms perform best for interdependent networks, Random Edge and Forest Fire sampling algorithms perform best for multiplex networks. Second, we propose and implement a novel similarity-based sampling algorithm for multiplex networks that samples only log(N) number of layers of an N-layer multiplex network while yielding computational savings with performance guarantees. Experimental results show that similarity sampling outperforms complete sampling of all layers while decreasing performance costs from a linear scale to a logarithmic one. Our results also indicate that similarity-based sampling outperforms complete sampling and random selection in nearly all scenarios when tested with real-world data.

Subasi, Omer↗

Analysis and optimization of seismic monitoring networks with Bayesian optimal experimental design

SUMMARY Monitoring networks increasingly aim to assimilate data from a large number of diverse sensors covering many sensing modalities. Bayesian optimal experimental design (OED) seeks to identify data, sensor configurations or experiments which can optimally reduce uncertainty and hence increase the performance of a monitoring network. Information theory guides OED by formulating the choice of experiment or sensor placement as an optimization problem that maximizes the expected information gain (EIG) about quantities of interest given prior knowledge and models of expected observation data. Therefore, within the context of seismo-acoustic monitoring, we can use Bayesian OED to configure sensor networks by choosing sensor locations, types and fidelity in order to improve our ability to identify and locate seismic sources. In this work, we develop the framework necessary to use Bayesian OED to optimize a sensor network’s ability to locate seismic events from arrival time data of detected seismic phases at the regional-scale. This framework requires five elements: (i) A likelihood function that describes the distribution of detection and traveltime data from the sensor network, (ii) A prior distribution that describes a priori belief about seismic events, (iii) A Bayesian solver that uses a prior and likelihood to identify the posterior distribution of seismic events given the data, (iv) An algorithm to compute EIG about seismic events over a data set of hypothetical prior events, (v) An optimizer that finds a sensor network which maximizes EIG. Once we have developed this framework, we explore many relevant questions to monitoring such as: how to trade off sensor fidelity and earth model uncertainty; how sensor types, number and locations influence uncertainty; and how prior models and constraints influence sensor placement.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Random walks on jammed networks: Spectral properties

Using random walk analyses we explore diffusive transport on networks obtained from contacts between isotropically compressed, monodisperse, frictionless sphere packings generated over a range of pressures in the vicinity of the jamming transition p → 0 . For conductive particles in an insulating medium, conduction is determined by the particle contact network with nodes representing particle centers and edges contacts between particles. The transition rate is not homogeneous, but is distributed inhomogeneously due to the randomness of packing and concomitant disorder of the contact network, e.g., the distribution of the coordination number. A narrow escape time scale is used to write a Markov process for random walks on the particle contact network. This stochastic process is analyzed in terms of spectral density of the random, sparse, Euclidean and real, symmetric, positive, semidefinite transition rate matrix. Findings reveal network structures derived from jammed particles have properties similar to ordered, euclidean lattices but also some unique properties that distinguish them from other structures that are in some sense more homogeneous. Specifically, the distribution of eigenvalues of the transition rate matrix follow a power law with spectral dimension 3. Yet, quantitative details of the statistics of the eigenvectors show subtle differences with homogeneous lattices and allow us to distinguish between topological and geometric sources of disorder in the network.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Community detection robustness of graph neural networks

Graph neural networks (GNNs) are increasingly widely used for community detection in attributed networks. They combine structural topology with node attributes through message passing and pooling. However, their robustness or lack thereof with respect to different perturbations and targeted attacks in conjunction with community detection tasks is not well understood. To shed light on latent mechanisms behind GNN sensitivity on community detection tasks, we conduct a systematic computational evaluation of six widely adopted GNN architectures graph convolutional network, graph attention network, graph sample and aggregate (GraphSAGE), differentiable pooling (DiffPool), minimum cut pooling (MinCUT), and deep modularity networks (DMoN). The analysis covers three perturbation categories: node attribute manipulations, edge topology distortions, and adversarial attacks. We use element-centric similarity as the evaluation metric on synthetic benchmarks and real-world citation networks. Our findings indicate that supervised GNNs tend to achieve higher baseline accuracy, while unsupervised methods, particularly DMoN, maintain stronger resilience under targeted and adversarial perturbations. Furthermore, robustness appears to be strongly influenced by community strength, with well-defined communities reducing performance loss. Across all models, node attribute perturbations associated with targeted edge deletions and shifts in attribute distributions tend to cause the largest degradation in community recovery. These findings highlight important trade-offs between accuracy and robustness in GNN-based community detection and offer insights into selecting architectures resilient to noise and adversarial attacks.

Goel, Jaidev [Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State↗

Loop series expansions for tensor networks

Belief propagation (BP) can be a useful tool to approximately contract a tensor network, provided that the contributions from any closed loops in the network are sufficiently weak. In this article, we describe how a loop series expansion can be applied to systematically improve the accuracy of a BP approximation to a tensor network contraction, in principle converging arbitrarily close to the exact result. More generally, our result provides a framework for expanding a tensor network as a sum of component networks in a hierarchy of increasing complexity. We benchmark this proposal for the contraction of infinite projected entangled pair states, either representing the ground state of an Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) model or with randomly defined tensors, where it is shown to improve in accuracy over standard BP by several orders of magnitude while incurring only a minor increase in computational cost. These results indicate that the proposed series expansions could be a useful tool to accurately evaluate tensor networks in cases that otherwise exceed the limits of established contraction routines.

Evenbly, Glen [AWS Center for Quantum Computing, P↗

Deformable complex network for refining low-resolution X-ray structures

A new refinement algorithm called the deformable complex network that combines a novel angular network-based restraint with a deformable elastic network model in the target function has been developed to aid in structural refinement in macromolecular X-ray crystallography. In macromolecular X-ray crystallography, building more accurate atomic models based on lower resolution experimental diffraction data remains a great challenge. Previous studies have used a deformable elastic network (DEN) model to aid in low-resolution structural refinement. In this study, the development of a new refinement algorithm called the deformable complex network (DCN) is reported that combines a novel angular network-based restraint with the DEN model in the target function. Testing of DCN on a wide range of low-resolution structures demonstrated that it constantly leads to significantly improved structural models as judged by multiple refinement criteria, thus representing a new effective refinement tool for low-resolution structural determination.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Synchronization of Lienard-Type Oscillators in Uniform Electrical Networks

This paper presents a condition for global asymptotic synchronization of Lienard-type nonlinear oscillators in uniform LTI electrical networks with series R-L circuits modeling interconnections. By uniform electrical networks, we mean that the per-unit-length impedances are identical for the interconnecting lines. We derive conditions for global asymptotic synchronization for a particular feedback architecture where the derivative of the oscillator output current supplements the innate current feedback induced by simply interconnecting the oscillator to the network. Our proof leverages a coordinate transformation to a set of differential coordinates that emphasizes signal differences and the particular form of feedback permits the formulation of a quadratic Lyapunov function for this class of networks. This approach is particularly interesting since synchronization conditions are difficult to obtain by means of quadratic Lyapunov functions when only current feedback is used and for networks composed of series R-L circuits. Our synchronization condition depends on the algebraic connectivity of the underlying network, and reiterates the conventional wisdom from Lyapunov- and passivity-based arguments that strong coupling is required to ensure synchronization.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Efficient Contingency Analysis in Power Systems via Network Trigger Nodes

Modeling failure dynamics within a power system is a complex and challenging process due to multiple inter-dependencies and convoluted inter-domain relationships. Subject matter experts (SMEs) are interested in understanding these failure dynamics for reducing the impact from future disasters (i.e., losses or failures of power system components, such as transmission lines). Contingency analysis (CA) tools enable such ’what-if’ scenario analyses to evaluate the impacts on the power system. Analyzing all possible contingencies among N system components can be computationally expensive. An important step for performing CA is identifying a set of k ‘trigger’ components, which when failed initially can significantly impact the overall system by causing multiple failures. Currently SMEs focus on identifying these trigger components by running expensive simulations on all possible subsets, which quickly becomes infeasible. Hence finding a relevant set of trigger components (contingencies) rapidly to enable efficient and useful CA is crucial.In a collaboration between computer scientists and power system experts, we propose an efficient method for performing CA by exploiting network inter-dependencies in power system components. First, we construct a network with multiple electric grid infrastructure components and dependencies as connections among them. We reformulate the problem of finding a set of trigger components as a problem of identifying critical nodes in the network, which can cascade power failures through connected nodes and cause significant damage to the network. To guide the practical CA tools, we develop a network-based model with a probabilistic edge-weights setup using intricate domain rules. Then we conduct an empirical study on real power system data in the US for both regional and national levels. Firstly, we use power system datasets for the US to create a national-scale domain-driven model. Secondly, we demonstrate that network-based model outperforms the outputs from a real CA tool and show on average 25 × improved selection of contingencies, thereby showcasing practical benefits to the power experts.

Tabassum, Anika↗

UCX: An Open Source Framework for HPC Network APIs and Beyond, In: 2015 IEEE 23rd Annual Symposium on High-Performance Interconnects

This paper presents Unified Communication X (UCX), a set of network APIs and their implementations for high throughput computing. UCX comes from the combined effort of national laboratories, industry, and academia to design and implement a high-performing and highly-scalable network stack for next generation applications and systems. UCX design provides the ability to tailor its APIs and network functionality to suit a wide variety of application domains and hardware. We envision these APIs to satisfy the networking needs of many programming models such as Message Passing Interface (MPI), OpenSHMEM, Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) languages, task-based paradigms and I/O bound applications. To evaluate the design we implement the APIs and protocols, and measure the performance of overhead-critical network primitives fundamental for implementing many parallel programming models and system libraries. Our results show that the latency, bandwidth, and message rate achieved by the portable UCX prototype is very close to that of the underlying driver. With UCX, we achieved a message exchange latency of 0.89 us, a bandwidth of 6138.5 MB/s, and a message rate of 14 million messages per second. As far as we know, this is the highest bandwidth and message rate achieved by any network stack (publicly known) on this hardware.

Computer Science↗

Effectiveness and predictability of in-network storage cache for Scientific Workflows

Large scientific collaborations often have multiple scientists accessing the same set of files while doing different analyses, which create repeated accesses to the large amounts of shared data located far away. These data accesses have long latency due to distance and occupy the limited bandwidth available over the wide-area network. To reduce the wide-area network traffic and the data access latency, regional data storage caches have been installed as a new networking service. To study the effectiveness of such a cache system in scientific applications, we examine the Southern California Petabyte Scale Cache for a high-energy physics experiment. By examining about 3TB of operational logs, we show that this cache removed 67.6% of file requests from the wide-area network and reduced the traffic volume on wide-area network by 12. 3TB (or 35.4%) an average day. The reduction in the traffic volume (35.4%) is less than the reduction in file counts (67.6%) because the larger files are less likely to be reused. Due to this difference in data access patterns, the cache system has implemented a policy to avoid evicting smaller files when processing larger files. We also build a machine learning model to study the predictability of the cache behavior. Tests show that this model is able to accurately predict the cache accesses, cache misses, and network throughput, making the model useful for future studies on resource provisioning and planning.

Sim, Caitlin↗

Flowzilla: A Methodology for Detecting Data Transfer Anomalies in Research Networks

© 2018 IEEE. Research networks are designed to support high volume scientific data transfers that span multiple network links. Like any other network, research networks experience anomalies. Anomalies are deviations from profiles of normality in a research network's traffic levels. Diagnosing anomalies is critical both for network operators and users (e.g., scientists). In this paper we present Flowzilla, a general framework for detecting and quantifying anomalies on scientific data transfers of arbitrary size. Flowzilla incorporates Random Forest Regression(RFR) for predicting the size of data transfers and utilizes an adaptive threshold mechanism for detecting outliers. Our results demonstrate that our framework achieves up to 92.5% detection accuracy. Furthermore, we are able to predict data transfer sizes up to 10 weeks after training with accuracy above 90%.

Giannakou, Anna↗

User Role Identification in Software Vulnerability Discussions over Social Networks

Understanding and early awareness of software vulnerabilities is vital for preventing and mitigating potential impacts from cybersecurity events. One step toward early characterization of software vulnerabilities may involve analyzing discussion and spread of information in online social networks. Prior work has used information from such discussions over multiple online forums to develop dynamic networks among users followed by analysis of structure, spread, and information evolution. In this work, we advance the state-of-the-art by focusing on data-driven learning of types, roles, and transition of roles exhibited by users over time. In social networks, users take on particular roles based on their actions and structure of the network. Identifying “meaningful” roles can help separate potential users of interest from the larger community, and identify patterns in a network. We will identify and compare roles found in online forums (e.g., Twitter) using techniques such as feature-based Non-negative Matrix Factorization coupled with topological and influence-based measures of centrality. Since users’ activities change over time, we also analyze role evolution in dynamic networks.

Jones, Rebecca D.↗

Self-Supervised and Interpretable Anomaly Detection Using Network Transformers

Machine learning and deep neural networks (DNNs) have been proposed as a tool to identify anomalies in computer network communications. However, due the obfuscated nature of off-the-shelf machine learning models, their output often does not provide enough information to isolate the source of the anomaly to take corrective measures. In this article, we introduce the network transformer (NeT), a DNN model for anomaly detection that incorporates the graph structure of the communication network in order to improve interpretability. Further, the presented approach has the following advantages: first, enhanced interpretability by incorporating the graph structure of computer networks; second, provides a hierarchical set of features that enables analysis at different levels of granularity; second, self-supervised training that does not require labeled data. The NeT model was evaluated on a set of anomalous scenarios executed in a real industrial control system. The presented approach successfully identified the anomalies, the devices affected, and the specific connections causing the anomalies, providing a data-driven hierarchical approach to analyze the behavior of a cyber network.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Distributed Link Removal Using Local Estimation of Network Topology

In this paper, we consider the problem of network structure manipulation in the absence of information on the global network topology. In particular, the problem of removing some of links is investigated in order to slow or stop the spread of disease in a network while preserving its connectivity. Existing methods solve this combinatorial problem in a centralized manner and they require the global information of network structure. In this paper, we propose a distributed design algorithm to compute a suboptimal solution to this problem efficiently by mimicking gradient based method, namely by iteratively removing one or multiple links at a time from the network. Specifically, using matrix perturbation analysis we formulate an optimization problem involving the eigenvector associated with the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix and whose solution is equal to a suboptimal solution to the original problem. This strategy also enables us to overcome the combinatorial issue of the problem. Distributed algorithms to estimate the eigenvector and to verify network’s connectivity are then proposed which facilitate us to solve the new optimization problem. In addition, topological insights into the proposed algorithm and optimality of its solution are also discussed. Lastly, the proposed distributed design method is demonstrated and evaluated via several numerical examples.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

InterQnet: A Heterogeneous Full-Stack Approach to Co-Designing Scalable Quantum Networks

Quantum communications have progressed significantly, moving from a theoretical concept to small-scale experiments to recent metropolitan-scale demonstrations. As the technology matures, it is expected to revolutionize quantum computing in much the same way that classical networks revolutionized classical computing. Quantum communications will also enable breakthroughs in quantum sensing, metrology, and other areas. However, scalability has emerged as a major challenge, particularly in terms of the number and heterogeneity of nodes, the distances between nodes, the diversity of applications, and the scale of user demand. This article describes InterQnet, a multidisciplinary project that advances scalable quantum communications through a comprehensive approach that improves devices, error handling, and network architecture. InterQnet has a two-pronged strategy to address scalability challenges: InterQnet-Achieve focuses on practical realizations of heterogeneous quantum networks by building and then integrating first-generation quantum repeaters with error mitigation schemes and centralized automated network control systems. The resulting system will enable quantum communications between two heterogeneous quantum platforms through a third type of platform operating as a repeater node. InterQnet-Scale focuses on a systems study of architectural choices for scalable quantum networks by developing forward-looking models of quantum network devices, advanced error correction schemes, and entanglement protocols. Here, we report our current progress toward achieving our scalability goals.

Chung, Joaquin [Argonne] (ORCID:0000000173833810)↗