@article{1529, abstract = {We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with a set of target states and an integer cost associated with every transition. The optimization objective we study asks to minimize the expected total cost of reaching a state in the target set, while ensuring that the target set is reached almost surely (with probability 1). We show that for integer costs approximating the optimal cost is undecidable. For positive costs, our results are as follows: (i) we establish matching lower and upper bounds for the optimal cost, both double exponential in the POMDP state space size; (ii) we show that the problem of approximating the optimal cost is decidable and present approximation algorithms developing on the existing algorithms for POMDPs with finite-horizon objectives. While the worst-case running time of our algorithm is double exponential, we also present efficient stopping criteria for the algorithm and show experimentally that it performs well in many examples of interest.}, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Chmelik, Martin and Gupta, Raghav and Kanodia, Ayush}, journal = {Artificial Intelligence}, pages = {26 -- 48}, publisher = {Elsevier}, title = {{Optimal cost almost-sure reachability in POMDPs}}, doi = {10.1016/j.artint.2016.01.007}, volume = {234}, year = {2016}, } @article{1545, abstract = {We provide general conditions for which bosonic quadratic Hamiltonians on Fock spaces can be diagonalized by Bogoliubov transformations. Our results cover the case when quantum systems have infinite degrees of freedom and the associated one-body kinetic and paring operators are unbounded. Our sufficient conditions are optimal in the sense that they become necessary when the relevant one-body operators commute.}, author = {Nam, Phan and Napiórkowski, Marcin M and Solovej, Jan}, journal = {Journal of Functional Analysis}, number = {11}, pages = {4340 -- 4368}, publisher = {Academic Press}, title = {{Diagonalization of bosonic quadratic Hamiltonians by Bogoliubov transformations}}, doi = {10.1016/j.jfa.2015.12.007}, volume = {270}, year = {2016}, } @article{1552, abstract = {Antibiotic resistance carries a fitness cost that must be overcome in order for resistance to persist over the long term. Compensatory mutations that recover the functional defects associated with resistance mutations have been argued to play a key role in overcoming the cost of resistance, but compensatory mutations are expected to be rare relative to generally beneficial mutations that increase fitness, irrespective of antibiotic resistance. Given this asymmetry, population genetics theory predicts that populations should adapt by compensatory mutations when the cost of resistance is large, whereas generally beneficial mutations should drive adaptation when the cost of resistance is small. We tested this prediction by determining the genomic mechanisms underpinning adaptation to antibiotic-free conditions in populations of the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa that carry costly antibiotic resistance mutations. Whole-genome sequencing revealed that populations founded by high-cost rifampicin-resistant mutants adapted via compensatory mutations in three genes of the RNA polymerase core enzyme, whereas populations founded by low-cost mutants adapted by generally beneficial mutations, predominantly in the quorum-sensing transcriptional regulator gene lasR. Even though the importance of compensatory evolution in maintaining resistance has been widely recognized, our study shows that the roles of general adaptation in maintaining resistance should not be underestimated and highlights the need to understand how selection at other sites in the genome influences the dynamics of resistance alleles in clinical settings.}, author = {Qi, Qin and Toll Riera, Macarena and Heilbron, Karl and Preston, Gail and Maclean, R Craig}, journal = {Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences}, number = {1822}, publisher = {Royal Society, The}, title = {{The genomic basis of adaptation to the fitness cost of rifampicin resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa}}, doi = {10.1098/rspb.2015.2452}, volume = {283}, year = {2016}, } @article{1592, abstract = {A modular approach to constructing cryptographic protocols leads to simple designs but often inefficient instantiations. On the other hand, ad hoc constructions may yield efficient protocols at the cost of losing conceptual simplicity. We suggest a new design paradigm, structure-preserving cryptography, that provides a way to construct modular protocols with reasonable efficiency while retaining conceptual simplicity. A cryptographic scheme over a bilinear group is called structure-preserving if its public inputs and outputs consist of elements from the bilinear groups and their consistency can be verified by evaluating pairing-product equations. As structure-preserving schemes smoothly interoperate with each other, they are useful as building blocks in modular design of cryptographic applications. This paper introduces structure-preserving commitment and signature schemes over bilinear groups with several desirable properties. The commitment schemes include homomorphic, trapdoor and length-reducing commitments to group elements, and the structure-preserving signature schemes are the first ones that yield constant-size signatures on multiple group elements. A structure-preserving signature scheme is called automorphic if the public keys lie in the message space, which cannot be achieved by compressing inputs via a cryptographic hash function, as this would destroy the mathematical structure we are trying to preserve. Automorphic signatures can be used for building certification chains underlying privacy-preserving protocols. Among a vast number of applications of structure-preserving protocols, we present an efficient round-optimal blind-signature scheme and a group signature scheme with an efficient and concurrently secure protocol for enrolling new members.}, author = {Abe, Masayuki and Fuchsbauer, Georg and Groth, Jens and Haralambiev, Kristiyan and Ohkubo, Miyako}, journal = {Journal of Cryptology}, number = {2}, pages = {363 -- 421}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Structure preserving signatures and commitments to group elements}}, doi = {10.1007/s00145-014-9196-7}, volume = {29}, year = {2016}, } @article{1597, abstract = {Chemokines are the main guidance cues directing leukocyte migration. Opposed to early assumptions, chemokines do not necessarily act as soluble cues but are often immobilized within tissues, e.g., dendritic cell migration toward lymphatic vessels is guided by a haptotactic gradient of the chemokine CCL21. Controlled assay systems to quantitatively study haptotaxis in vitro are still missing. In this chapter, we describe an in vitro haptotaxis assay optimized for the unique properties of dendritic cells. The chemokine CCL21 is immobilized in a bioactive state, using laser-assisted protein adsorption by photobleaching. The cells follow this immobilized CCL21 gradient in a haptotaxis chamber, which provides three dimensionally confined migration conditions.}, author = {Schwarz, Jan and Sixt, Michael K}, journal = {Methods in Enzymology}, pages = {567 -- 581}, publisher = {Elsevier}, title = {{Quantitative analysis of dendritic cell haptotaxis}}, doi = {10.1016/bs.mie.2015.11.004}, volume = {570}, year = {2016}, } @article{1599, abstract = {The addition of polysialic acid to N- and/or O-linked glycans, referred to as polysialylation, is a rare posttranslational modification that is mainly known to control the developmental plasticity of the nervous system. Here we show that CCR7, the central chemokine receptor controlling immune cell trafficking to secondary lymphatic organs, carries polysialic acid. This modification is essential for the recognition of the CCR7 ligand CCL21. As a consequence, dendritic cell trafficking is abrogated in polysialyltransferase-deficient mice, manifesting as disturbed lymph node homeostasis and unresponsiveness to inflammatory stimuli. Structure-function analysis of chemokine-receptor interactions reveals that CCL21 adopts an autoinhibited conformation, which is released upon interaction with polysialic acid. Thus, we describe a glycosylation-mediated immune cell trafficking disorder and its mechanistic basis. }, author = {Kiermaier, Eva and Moussion, Christine and Veldkamp, Christopher and Gerardy Schahn, Rita and De Vries, Ingrid and Williams, Larry and Chaffee, Gary and Phillips, Andrew and Freiberger, Friedrich and Imre, Richard and Taleski, Deni and Payne, Richard and Braun, Asolina and Förster, Reinhold and Mechtler, Karl and Mühlenhoff, Martina and Volkman, Brian and Sixt, Michael K}, journal = {Science}, number = {6269}, pages = {186 -- 190}, publisher = {American Association for the Advancement of Science}, title = {{Polysialylation controls dendritic cell trafficking by regulating chemokine recognition}}, doi = {10.1126/science.aad0512}, volume = {351}, year = {2016}, } @article{1608, abstract = {We show that the Anderson model has a transition from localization to delocalization at exactly 2 dimensional growth rate on antitrees with normalized edge weights which are certain discrete graphs. The kinetic part has a one-dimensional structure allowing a description through transfer matrices which involve some Schur complement. For such operators we introduce the notion of having one propagating channel and extend theorems from the theory of one-dimensional Jacobi operators that relate the behavior of transfer matrices with the spectrum. These theorems are then applied to the considered model. In essence, in a certain energy region the kinetic part averages the random potentials along shells and the transfer matrices behave similar as for a one-dimensional operator with random potential of decaying variance. At d dimensional growth for d>2 this effective decay is strong enough to obtain absolutely continuous spectrum, whereas for some uniform d dimensional growth with d<2 one has pure point spectrum in this energy region. At exactly uniform 2 dimensional growth also some singular continuous spectrum appears, at least at small disorder. As a corollary we also obtain a change from singular spectrum (d≤2) to absolutely continuous spectrum (d≥3) for random operators of the type rΔdr+λ on ℤd, where r is an orthogonal radial projection, Δd the discrete adjacency operator (Laplacian) on ℤd and λ a random potential. }, author = {Sadel, Christian}, journal = {Annales Henri Poincare}, number = {7}, pages = {1631 -- 1675}, publisher = {Birkhäuser}, title = {{Anderson transition at 2 dimensional growth rate on antitrees and spectral theory for operators with one propagating channel}}, doi = {10.1007/s00023-015-0456-3}, volume = {17}, year = {2016}, } @article{1612, abstract = {We prove that whenever A is a 3-conservative relational structure with only binary and unary relations,then the algebra of polymorphisms of A either has no Taylor operation (i.e.,CSP(A)is NP-complete),or it generates an SD(∧) variety (i.e.,CSP(A)has bounded width).}, author = {Kazda, Alexandr}, journal = {Algebra Universalis}, number = {1}, pages = {75 -- 84}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{CSP for binary conservative relational structures}}, doi = {10.1007/s00012-015-0358-8}, volume = {75}, year = {2016}, } @article{1616, abstract = {The hippocampus plays a key role in learning and memory. Previous studies suggested that the main types of principal neurons, dentate gyrus granule cells (GCs), CA3 pyramidal neurons, and CA1 pyramidal neurons, differ in their activity pattern, with sparse firing in GCs and more frequent firing in CA3 and CA1 pyramidal neurons. It has been assumed but never shown that such different activity may be caused by differential synaptic excitation. To test this hypothesis, we performed high-resolution whole-cell patch-clamp recordings in anesthetized rats in vivo. In contrast to previous in vitro data, both CA3 and CA1 pyramidal neurons fired action potentials spontaneously, with a frequency of ∼3–6 Hz, whereas GCs were silent. Furthermore, both CA3 and CA1 cells primarily fired in bursts. To determine the underlying mechanisms, we quantitatively assessed the frequency of spontaneous excitatory synaptic input, the passive membrane properties, and the active membrane characteristics. Surprisingly, GCs showed comparable synaptic excitation to CA3 and CA1 cells and the highest ratio of excitation versus hyperpolarizing inhibition. Thus, differential synaptic excitation is not responsible for differences in firing. Moreover, the three types of hippocampal neurons markedly differed in their passive properties. While GCs showed the most negative membrane potential, CA3 pyramidal neurons had the highest input resistance and the slowest membrane time constant. The three types of neurons also differed in the active membrane characteristics. GCs showed the highest action potential threshold, but displayed the largest gain of the input-output curves. In conclusion, our results reveal that differential firing of the three main types of hippocampal principal neurons in vivo is not primarily caused by differences in the characteristics of the synaptic input, but by the distinct properties of synaptic integration and input-output transformation.}, author = {Kowalski, Janina and Gan, Jian and Jonas, Peter M and Pernia-Andrade, Alejandro}, issn = {1098-1063}, journal = {Hippocampus}, number = {5}, pages = {668 -- 682}, publisher = {Wiley}, title = {{Intrinsic membrane properties determine hippocampal differential firing pattern in vivo in anesthetized rats}}, doi = {10.1002/hipo.22550}, volume = {26}, year = {2016}, } @article{1617, abstract = {We study the discrepancy of jittered sampling sets: such a set P⊂ [0,1]d is generated for fixed m∈ℕ by partitioning [0,1]d into md axis aligned cubes of equal measure and placing a random point inside each of the N=md cubes. We prove that, for N sufficiently large, 1/10 d/N1/2+1/2d ≤EDN∗(P)≤ √d(log N) 1/2/N1/2+1/2d, where the upper bound with an unspecified constant Cd was proven earlier by Beck. Our proof makes crucial use of the sharp Dvoretzky-Kiefer-Wolfowitz inequality and a suitably taylored Bernstein inequality; we have reasons to believe that the upper bound has the sharp scaling in N. Additional heuristics suggest that jittered sampling should be able to improve known bounds on the inverse of the star-discrepancy in the regime N≳dd. We also prove a partition principle showing that every partition of [0,1]d combined with a jittered sampling construction gives rise to a set whose expected squared L2-discrepancy is smaller than that of purely random points.}, author = {Pausinger, Florian and Steinerberger, Stefan}, journal = {Journal of Complexity}, pages = {199 -- 216}, publisher = {Academic Press}, title = {{On the discrepancy of jittered sampling}}, doi = {10.1016/j.jco.2015.11.003}, volume = {33}, year = {2016}, } @article{1620, abstract = {We consider the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer free energy functional for particles interacting via a two-body potential on a microscopic scale and in the presence of weak external fields varying on a macroscopic scale. We study the influence of the external fields on the critical temperature. We show that in the limit where the ratio between the microscopic and macroscopic scale tends to zero, the next to leading order of the critical temperature is determined by the lowest eigenvalue of the linearization of the Ginzburg–Landau equation.}, author = {Frank, Rupert and Hainzl, Christian and Seiringer, Robert and Solovej, Jan}, journal = {Communications in Mathematical Physics}, number = {1}, pages = {189 -- 216}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{The external field dependence of the BCS critical temperature}}, doi = {10.1007/s00220-015-2526-2}, volume = {342}, year = {2016}, } @article{1622, abstract = {We prove analogues of the Lieb–Thirring and Hardy–Lieb–Thirring inequalities for many-body quantum systems with fractional kinetic operators and homogeneous interaction potentials, where no anti-symmetry on the wave functions is assumed. These many-body inequalities imply interesting one-body interpolation inequalities, and we show that the corresponding one- and many-body inequalities are actually equivalent in certain cases.}, author = {Lundholm, Douglas and Nam, Phan and Portmann, Fabian}, journal = {Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis}, number = {3}, pages = {1343 -- 1382}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Fractional Hardy–Lieb–Thirring and related Inequalities for interacting systems}}, doi = {10.1007/s00205-015-0923-5}, volume = {219}, year = {2016}, } @article{1631, abstract = {Ancestral processes are fundamental to modern population genetics and spatial structure has been the subject of intense interest for many years. Despite this interest, almost nothing is known about the distribution of the locations of pedigree or genetic ancestors. Using both spatially continuous and stepping-stone models, we show that the distribution of pedigree ancestors approaches a travelling wave, for which we develop two alternative approximations. The speed and width of the wave are sensitive to the local details of the model. After a short time, genetic ancestors spread far more slowly than pedigree ancestors, ultimately diffusing out with radius ## rather than spreading at constant speed. In contrast to the wave of pedigree ancestors, the spread of genetic ancestry is insensitive to the local details of the models.}, author = {Kelleher, Jerome and Etheridge, Alison and Véber, Amandine and Barton, Nicholas H}, journal = {Theoretical Population Biology}, pages = {1 -- 12}, publisher = {Academic Press}, title = {{Spread of pedigree versus genetic ancestry in spatially distributed populations}}, doi = {10.1016/j.tpb.2015.10.008}, volume = {108}, year = {2016}, } @article{1641, abstract = {The plant hormone auxin (indole-3-acetic acid) is a major regulator of plant growth and development including embryo and root patterning, lateral organ formation and growth responses to environmental stimuli. Auxin is directionally transported from cell to cell by the action of specific auxin influx [AUXIN-RESISTANT1 (AUX1)] and efflux [PIN-FORMED (PIN)] transport regulators, whose polar, subcellular localizations are aligned with the direction of the auxin flow. Auxin itself regulates its own transport by modulation of the expression and subcellular localization of the auxin transporters. Increased auxin levels promote the transcription of PIN2 and AUX1 genes as well as stabilize PIN proteins at the plasma membrane, whereas prolonged auxin exposure increases the turnover of PIN proteins and their degradation in the vacuole. In this study, we applied a forward genetic approach, to identify molecular components playing a role in the auxin-mediated degradation. We generated EMS-mutagenized Arabidopsis PIN2::PIN2:GFP, AUX1::AUX1:YFP eir1aux1 populations and designed a screen for mutants with persistently strong fluorescent signals of the tagged PIN2 and AUX1 after prolonged treatment with the synthetic auxin 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D). This approach yielded novel auxin degradation mutants defective in trafficking and degradation of PIN2 and AUX1 proteins and established a role for auxin-mediated degradation in plant development.}, author = {Zemová, Radka and Zwiewka, Marta and Bielach, Agnieszka and Robert, Hélène and Friml, Jirí}, journal = {Journal of Plant Growth Regulation}, number = {2}, pages = {465 -- 476}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{A forward genetic screen for new regulators of auxin mediated degradation of auxin transport proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana}}, doi = {10.1007/s00344-015-9553-2}, volume = {35}, year = {2016}, } @inproceedings{1653, abstract = {A somewhere statistically binding (SSB) hash, introduced by Hubáček and Wichs (ITCS ’15), can be used to hash a long string x to a short digest y = H hk (x) using a public hashing-key hk. Furthermore, there is a way to set up the hash key hk to make it statistically binding on some arbitrary hidden position i, meaning that: (1) the digest y completely determines the i’th bit (or symbol) of x so that all pre-images of y have the same value in the i’th position, (2) it is computationally infeasible to distinguish the position i on which hk is statistically binding from any other position i’. Lastly, the hash should have a local opening property analogous to Merkle-Tree hashing, meaning that given x and y = H hk (x) it should be possible to create a short proof π that certifies the value of the i’th bit (or symbol) of x without having to provide the entire input x. A similar primitive called a positional accumulator, introduced by Koppula, Lewko and Waters (STOC ’15) further supports dynamic updates of the hashed value. These tools, which are interesting in their own right, also serve as one of the main technical components in several recent works building advanced applications from indistinguishability obfuscation (iO). The prior constructions of SSB hashing and positional accumulators required fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and iO respectively. In this work, we give new constructions of these tools based on well studied number-theoretic assumptions such as DDH, Phi-Hiding and DCR, as well as a general construction from lossy/injective functions.}, author = {Okamoto, Tatsuaki and Pietrzak, Krzysztof Z and Waters, Brent and Wichs, Daniel}, location = {Auckland, New Zealand}, pages = {121 -- 145}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{New realizations of somewhere statistically binding hashing and positional accumulators}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-662-48797-6_6}, volume = {9452}, year = {2016}, } @article{1662, abstract = {We introduce a modification of the classic notion of intrinsic volume using persistence moments of height functions. Evaluating the modified first intrinsic volume on digital approximations of a compact body with smoothly embedded boundary in Rn, we prove convergence to the first intrinsic volume of the body as the resolution of the approximation improves. We have weaker results for the other modified intrinsic volumes, proving they converge to the corresponding intrinsic volumes of the n-dimensional unit ball.}, author = {Edelsbrunner, Herbert and Pausinger, Florian}, journal = {Advances in Mathematics}, pages = {674 -- 703}, publisher = {Academic Press}, title = {{Approximation and convergence of the intrinsic volume}}, doi = {10.1016/j.aim.2015.10.004}, volume = {287}, year = {2016}, } @article{1705, abstract = {Hybrid systems represent an important and powerful formalism for modeling real-world applications such as embedded systems. A verification tool like SpaceEx is based on the exploration of a symbolic search space (the region space). As a verification tool, it is typically optimized towards proving the absence of errors. In some settings, e.g., when the verification tool is employed in a feedback-directed design cycle, one would like to have the option to call a version that is optimized towards finding an error trajectory in the region space. A recent approach in this direction is based on guided search. Guided search relies on a cost function that indicates which states are promising to be explored, and preferably explores more promising states first. In this paper, we propose an abstraction-based cost function based on coarse-grained space abstractions for guiding the reachability analysis. For this purpose, a suitable abstraction technique that exploits the flexible granularity of modern reachability analysis algorithms is introduced. The new cost function is an effective extension of pattern database approaches that have been successfully applied in other areas. The approach has been implemented in the SpaceEx model checker. The evaluation shows its practical potential.}, author = {Bogomolov, Sergiy and Donzé, Alexandre and Frehse, Goran and Grosu, Radu and Johnson, Taylor and Ladan, Hamed and Podelski, Andreas and Wehrle, Martin}, journal = {International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer}, number = {4}, pages = {449 -- 467}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Guided search for hybrid systems based on coarse-grained space abstractions}}, doi = {10.1007/s10009-015-0393-y}, volume = {18}, year = {2016}, } @inproceedings{1707, abstract = {Volunteer supporters play an important role in modern crisis and disaster management. In the times of mobile Internet devices, help from thousands of volunteers can be requested within a short time span, thus relieving professional helpers from minor chores or geographically spread-out tasks. However, the simultaneous availability of many volunteers also poses new problems. In particular, the volunteer efforts must be well coordinated, or otherwise situations might emerge in which too many idle volunteers at one location become more of a burden than a relief to the professionals. In this work, we study the task of optimally assigning volunteers to selected locations, e.g. in order to perform regular measurements, to report on damage, or to distribute information or resources to the population in a crisis situation. We formulate the assignment tasks as an optimization problem and propose an effective and efficient solution procedure. Experiments on real data of the Team Österreich, consisting of over 36,000 Austrian volunteers, show the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.}, author = {Pielorz, Jasmin and Lampert, Christoph}, location = {Rennes, France}, publisher = {IEEE}, title = {{Optimal geospatial allocation of volunteers for crisis management}}, doi = {10.1109/ICT-DM.2015.7402041}, year = {2016}, } @article{1794, abstract = {We consider Conditional random fields (CRFs) with pattern-based potentials defined on a chain. In this model the energy of a string (labeling) (Formula presented.) is the sum of terms over intervals [i, j] where each term is non-zero only if the substring (Formula presented.) equals a prespecified pattern w. Such CRFs can be naturally applied to many sequence tagging problems. We present efficient algorithms for the three standard inference tasks in a CRF, namely computing (i) the partition function, (ii) marginals, and (iii) computing the MAP. Their complexities are respectively (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) where L is the combined length of input patterns, (Formula presented.) is the maximum length of a pattern, and D is the input alphabet. This improves on the previous algorithms of Ye et al. (NIPS, 2009) whose complexities are respectively (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.), where (Formula presented.) is the number of input patterns. In addition, we give an efficient algorithm for sampling, and revisit the case of MAP with non-positive weights.}, author = {Kolmogorov, Vladimir and Takhanov, Rustem}, journal = {Algorithmica}, number = {1}, pages = {17 -- 46}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Inference algorithms for pattern-based CRFs on sequence data}}, doi = {10.1007/s00453-015-0017-7}, volume = {76}, year = {2016}, } @article{1833, abstract = {Relational models for contingency tables are generalizations of log-linear models, allowing effects associated with arbitrary subsets of cells in the table, and not necessarily containing the overall effect, that is, a common parameter in every cell. Similarly to log-linear models, relational models can be extended to non-negative distributions, but the extension requires more complex methods. An extended relational model is defined as an algebraic variety, and it turns out to be the closure of the original model with respect to the Bregman divergence. In the extended relational model, the MLE of the cell parameters always exists and is unique, but some of its properties may be different from those of the MLE under log-linear models. The MLE can be computed using a generalized iterative scaling procedure based on Bregman projections. }, author = {Klimova, Anna and Rudas, Tamás}, journal = {Journal of Multivariate Analysis}, pages = {440 -- 452}, publisher = {Elsevier}, title = {{On the closure of relational models}}, doi = {10.1016/j.jmva.2015.10.005}, volume = {143}, year = {2016}, }