Impact of exponential long range and Gaussian short range lateral connectivity on the distributed simulation of neural networks including up to 30 billion synapses

Recent experimental neuroscience studies are pointing out the role oflong-range intra-areal connectivity that can be modeled by a distance dependentexponential decay of the synaptic probability distribution. This short reportprovides a preliminary measure of the impact of exponentially decaying lateralconnectivity compared to that of shorter-range Gaussian decays on the scalingbehaviour and memory occupation of a distributed spiking neural networksimulator (DPSNN). Two-dimensional grids of cortical columns composed bypoint-like spiking neurons have been connected by up to 30 billion synapsesusing exponential and Gaussian connectivity models. Up to 1024 hardware cores,hosted on a 64 nodes server platform, executed the MPI processes composing thedistributed simulator. The hardware platform was a cluster of IBM NX360 M516-core compute nodes, each one containing two Intel Xeon Haswell 8-coreE5-2630 v3 processors, with a clock of 2.40GHz, interconnected through anInfiniBand network. This study is conducted in the framework of the CORTICONICFET project, also in view of the next -to-start activities foreseen as part ofthe Human Brain Project (HBP), SubProject 3 Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience,WaveScalES work-package.

Quantum simulator for many-body electron-electron Coulomb interaction with ion traps

We propose an analog quantum simulator that uses ion traps to realize themany-body electron-electron Coulomb interaction of an electron gas. Thisproposal maps a system that is difficult to solve and control to anexperimentally-feasible setup that can be realized with current technologies.Using a dilatation transform, we show that ion traps can efficiently simulateelectronic Coulomb interactions. No complexity overhead is added if only theenergy spectrum is desired, and only a simple unitary transform is needed onthe initial state otherwise. The runtime of the simulation is found to be muchshorter than the timescale of the corresponding electronic system, minimizingsusceptibility of the proposed quantum simulator to external noise anddecoherence. This proposal works in any number of dimensions, and could be usedto simulate different topological phases of electrons in graphene-likestructures, by using ions trapped in honeycomb lattices.

Quantifying Orphaned Annotations in Hypothes.is

Web annotation has been receiving increased attention recently with theorganization of the Open Annotation Collaboration and new tools for openannotation, such as Hypothes.is. We investigate the prevalence of orphanedannotations, where neither the live Web page nor an archived copy of the Webpage contains the text that had previously been annotated in the Hypothes.isannotation system (containing 20,953 highlighted text annotations). We foundthat about 22% of highlighted text annotations can no longer be attached totheir live Web pages. Unfortunately, only about 12% of these annotations can bereattached using the holdings of current public web archives, leaving theremaining 88% of these annotations orphaned. For those annotations that arestill attached, 53% are in danger of becoming orphans if the live Web pagechanges. This points to the need for archiving the target of an annotation atthe time the annotation is created.

Smooth attractors for weak solutions of the SQG equation with critical dissipation

We consider the evolution of weak vanishing viscosity solutions to thecritically dissipative surface quasi-geostrophic equation. Due to the possiblenon-uniqueness of solutions, we rephrase the problem as a set-valued dynamicalsystem and prove the existence of a global attractor of optimal Sobolevregularity. To achieve this, we derive a new Sobolev estimate involvingH\"older norms, which complement the existing estimates based on commutatoranalysis.

Ancora sui goûts réunis: Michele Mascitti, Giovanni Antonio Guido e l’eredità di Corelli e Vivaldi in Francia nella prima metà del Settecento

Hα3: an Hα imaging survey of HI selected galaxies from ALFALFA - VI. The role of bars in quenching star formation from z = 3 to the present epoch

North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, Volume 2

By the twentieth century, North Carolina’s progressive streak had strengthened, thanks in large part to a growing number of women who engaged in and influenced state and national policies and politics. These women included Gertrude Weil who fought tirelessly for the Nineteenth Amendment, which extended suffrage to women, and founded the state chapter of the League of Women Voters once the amendment was ratified in 1920. Gladys Avery Tillett, an ardent Democrat and supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal, became a major presence in her party at both the state and national levels. Guion Griffis Johnson turned to volunteer work in the postwar years, becoming one of the state's most prominent female civic leaders. Through her excellent education, keen legal mind, and family prominence, Susie Sharp in 1949 became the first woman judge in North Carolina and in 1974 the first woman in the nation to be elected and serve as chief justice of a state supreme court. Throughout her life, the Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray charted a religious, literary, and political path to racial reconciliation on both a national stage and in North Carolina. This is the second of two volumes that together explore the diverse and changing patterns of North Carolina women's lives. The essays in this volume cover the period beginning with women born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but who made their greatest contributions to the social, political, cultural, legal, and economic life of the state during the late progressive era through the late twentieth century.

Spaces of Danger: Culture and Power in the Everyday

These twelve original essays by geographers and anthropologists offer a deep critical understanding of Allan Pred’s pathbreaking and eclectic cultural Marxist approach, with a focus on his concept of “situated ignorance”: the production and reproduction of power and inequality by regimes of truth through strategically deployed misinformation, diversions, and silences. As the essays expose the cultural and material circumstances in which situated ignorance persists, they also add a previously underexplored spatial dimension to Walter Benjamin’s idea of “moments of danger.” The volume invokes the aftermath of the July 2011 attacks by far-right activist Anders Breivik in Norway, who ambushed a Labor Party youth gathering and bombed a government building, killing and injuring many. Breivik had publicly and forthrightly declared war against an array of liberal attitudes he saw threatening Western civilization. However, as politicians and journalists interpreted these events for mass consumption, a narrative quickly emerged that painted Breivik as a lone madman and steered the discourse away from analysis of the resurgent right-wing racisms and nationalisms in which he was immersed. The Breivik case is merely one of the most visible recent examples, say editors Heather Merrill and Lisa Hoffman, of the unchallenged production of knowledge in the public sphere. In essays that range widely in topic and setting—for example, brownfield development in China, a Holocaust memorial in Germany, an art gallery exhibit in South Africa—this volume peels back layers of “situated practices and their associated meaning and power relations.” Spaces of Danger offers analytical and conceptual tools of a Predian approach to interrogate the taken-for-granted and make visible and legible that which is silenced.

As Time Goes By in Argentina: Economic Opportunities and Challenges of the Demographic Transition

Argentina is passing through a demographic transition that constitutes a window of economic and socialopportunities and challenges. Argentina’s working-age population represents the largest proportion of itstotal population. The country just began a 30-year period with the most advantageous age structure of itspopulation, which could favor greater economic growth. This situation, known as the demographic window ofopportunity, will last until the 2040s. The dynamics of the fertility and mortality rates signify a gradual agingof the population, with implications for various dimensions of the economy, the social protection system,public policies, and society in general.As Time Goes By in Argentina: Economic Opportunities and Challenges of the Demographic Transition exploresthe opportunities and challenges that the demographic transition poses for the Argentine economy, its mostimportant social sectors such as the healthcare, education, and social protection systems, and the potentialfiscal trade-offs. Although Argentina is moving through its demographic transition, it only recently began toenjoy the window of opportunity; this constitutes a great opportunity to achieve an accumulation of capitaland future economic growth.Once the window of opportunity passes, population aging will have a significant impact on the level ofexpenditure, especially on spending in the social protection system. This signifies a challenge from a fiscalpolicy point of view, because if long-term reforms are not undertaken to mediate these effects, thedemographic transition will put pressure on the reallocation of fiscal resources among social sectors.Population aging poses concerns related to sustaining the rate of economic growth with a smallerworking-age population. Taking advantage of the current window of opportunities, increasing savingsthat will finance the accumulation of capital, and increasing future labor force productivity in this way is achallenge for the Argentine economy.As Time Goes By in Argentina will be of importance to both academia, establishing a new research field,and policymakers, given that the potential impact that a slow but constant phenomenon, such as thedemographic transition, will have on the Argentine economy, suggests the importance of the currentdebate on future reforms to mitigate the potential negative effects of aging.

Moving the trillions a debate on positive pricing of mitigation actions