arXiv subjects

Jie Xu

Publications and source records attributed to Jie Xu.

At least 595 records · Page 33Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Computing optimal interfacial structure of modulated phases

We propose a general framework of computing interfacial structures between two modulated phases. Specifically we propose to use a computational box consisting of two half spaces, each occupied by a modulated phase with given position and orientation. The boundary conditions and basis functions are chosen to be commensurate with the bulk structures. It is observed that the ordered nature of modulated structures stabilizes the interface, which enables us to obtain optimal interfacial structures by searching local minima of the free energy landscape. The framework is applied to the Landau-Brazovskii model to investigate interfaces between modulated phases with different relative positions and orientations. Several types of novel complex interfacial structures are obtained from the calculations.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Personalized Course Sequence Recommendations

Given the variability in student learning it is becoming increasingly important to tailor courses as well as course sequences to student needs. This paper presents a systematic methodology for offering personalized course sequence recommendations to students. First, a forward-search backward-induction algorithm is developed that can optimally select course sequences to decrease the time required for a student to graduate. The algorithm accounts for prerequisite requirements (typically present in higher level education) and course availability. Second, using the tools of multi-armed bandits, an algorithm is developed that can optimally recommend a course sequence that both reduces the time to graduate while also increasing the overall GPA of the student. The algorithm dynamically learns how students with different contextual backgrounds perform for given course sequences and then recommends an optimal course sequence for new students. Using real-world student data from the UCLA Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department, we illustrate how the proposed algorithms outperform other methods that do not include student contextual information when making course sequence recommendations.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2016

Entry effects of droplet in a micro confinement: implications for deformation-based CTC microfiltration

Deformation based circulating tumor cell (CTC) microchips are a representative diagnostic device for early cancer detection. This type of device usually involves a process of CTC trapping in a confined microgeometry. Further understanding of the CTC flow regime, as well as the threshold passing-through pressure is key to the design of deformation based CTC filtration devices. In the present numerical study, we investigate the transitional deformation and pressure signature from surface tension dominated flow to viscous shear stress dominated flow using a droplet model. Regarding whether CTC fully blocks the channel inlet, we observe two flow regimes: CTC squeezing and shearing regime. By studying the relation of CTC deformation at the exact critical pressure point for increasing inlet velocity, three different types of cell deformation are observed: 1) hemispherical front, 2) parabolic front, and 3) elongated CTC co-flowing with carrier media. Focusing on the circular channel, we observe a first increasing and then decreasing critical pressure change with increasing flow rate. By pressure analysis, the concept of optimum velocity is proposed to explain the behavior of CTC filtration and design optimization of CTC filter. Similar behavior is also observed in channels with symmetrical cross sessions like square and triangular but not in rectangular channels which only results in decreasing critical pressure.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Deformability-based circulating tumor cell separation with conical-shaped microfilters: concept, optimization and design criteria

The ability of detecting and separating CTCs can play a key role in early cancer detection and treatment. In recent years, there has been growing interest in using deformability-based CTC separation microfilters due to their simplicity and low cost. Most of previous studies in this area are mainly based on experimental work. Although experimental research provides useful insights in designing CTC separation devices, there is still a lack of design guidelines based on fundamental understandings of the cell separation process in the filers. While experimental efforts face challenges especially microfabrication difficulties, we adopt numerical simulation here to study conical-shaped microfilters using deformability difference between CTCs and blood cells for separation process. We use liquid drop model for modeling a CTC passing through such microfilters. The accuracy of the model in predicting the pressure signature of the system is validated by comparing with previous experiments. Pressure-deformability analysis of the cell going through the channel is then carried out in detail in order to better understand how a CTC behaves throughout the filtration process. Different system design criteria such as system throughput and unclogging of the system are discussed. Specifically, pressure behavior under different system throughput is analyzed. Regarding the unclogging issue, we define pressure ratio as a key parameter representing the ability to overcome clogging in such CTC separation devices and investigate the effect of conical angle on the optimum pressure ratio. Finally, the effect of unclogging applied pressure on the system performance is examined. Our study provides detailed understandings of the cell separation process and its characteristics, which can be used for developing more efficient CTC separation devices.

q-bio.CB↗

arXiv2016

On the Quantification of Mixing in Microfluidics

Methods for quantifying mixing in microfluidics have varied largely in the past, and various indices have been employed to represent the extent of mixing. Mixing between two or more colored liquids is usually quantified using simple mathematical functions operated over a sequence of images. The function, usually termed mixing indices, involves a measure of standard deviation. Here, we first review some mixing indices and then experimentally verify the index most representative of a mixing event. It is observed that the relative mixing index is not affected by the lighting conditions, unlike other known mixing indices. Based on this finding, the use of a relative mixing index is advocated for further use in the lab-on-a-chip community for quantifying mixing events.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2015

Energy Group-Buying with Loading Sharing for Green Cellular Networks

In the emerging hybrid electricity market, mobile network operators (MNOs) of cellular networks can make day-ahead energy purchase commitments at low prices and real-time flexible energy purchase at high prices. To minimize electricity bills, it is essential for MNOs to jointly optimize the day-ahead and real-time energy purchase based on their time-varying wireless traffic load. In this paper, we consider two different MNOs coexisting in the same area, and exploit their collaboration in both energy purchase and wireless load sharing for energy cost saving. Specifically, we propose a new approach named energy group buying with load sharing, in which the two MNOs are aggregated as a single group to make the day-ahead and real-time energy purchase, and their base stations (BSs) share the wireless traffic to maximally turn lightly-loaded BSs into sleep mode. When the two MNOs belong to the same entity and aim to minimize their total energy cost, we use the two-stage stochastic programming to obtain the optimal day-ahead and real-time energy group buying jointly with wireless load sharing. When the two MNOs belong to different entities and are self-interested in minimizing their individual energy costs, we propose a novel repeated Nash bargaining scheme for them to negotiate and share their energy costs under energy group buying and load sharing. Our proposed repeated Nash bargaining scheme is shown to achieve Pareto-optimal and fair energy cost reductions for both MNOs.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2015

Computing optimal interfacial structure of ordered phases

We propose a general framework of computing interfacial structure. If an ordered phase is involved, the interfacial structure can be obtained by simply minimizing the free energy with compatible boundary conditions. The framework is applied to Landau- Brazovskii model and works efficiently.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2015

SCUT-FBP: A Benchmark Dataset for Facial Beauty Perception

In this paper, a novel face dataset with attractiveness ratings, namely, the SCUT-FBP dataset, is developed for automatic facial beauty perception. This dataset provides a benchmark to evaluate the performance of different methods for facial attractiveness prediction, including the state-of-the-art deep learning method. The SCUT-FBP dataset contains face portraits of 500 Asian female subjects with attractiveness ratings, all of which have been verified in terms of rating distribution, standard deviation, consistency, and self-consistency. Benchmark evaluations for facial attractiveness prediction were performed with different combinations of facial geometrical features and texture features using classical statistical learning methods and the deep learning method. The best Pearson correlation (0.8187) was achieved by the CNN model. Thus, the results of our experiments indicate that the SCUT-FBP dataset provides a reliable benchmark for facial beauty perception.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2015

A new humanlike facial attractiveness predictor with cascaded fine-tuning deep learning model

This paper proposes a deep leaning method to address the challenging facial attractiveness prediction problem. The method constructs a convolutional neural network of facial beauty prediction using a new deep cascaded fine-turning scheme with various face inputting channels, such as the original RGB face image, the detail layer image, and the lighting layer image. With a carefully designed CNN model of deep structure, large input size and small convolutional kernels, we have achieved a high prediction correlation of 0.88. This result convinces us that the problem of facial attractiveness prediction can be solved by deep learning approach, and it also shows the important roles of the facial smoothness, lightness, and color information that were involved in facial beauty perception, which is consistent with the result of recent psychology studies. Furthermore, we analyze the high-level features learnt by CNN through visualization of its hidden layers, and some interesting phenomena were observed. It is found that the contours and appearance of facial features, especially eyes and moth, are the most significant facial attributes for facial attractiveness prediction, which is also consistent with the visual perception intuition of human.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2015

Proactive Eavesdropping via Jamming for Rate Maximization over Rayleigh Fading Channels

Instead of against eavesdropping, this letter proposes a new paradigm in wireless security by studying how a legitimate monitor (e.g., government agencies) efficiently eavesdrops a suspicious wireless communication link. The suspicious transmitter controls its communication rate over Rayleigh fading channels to maintain a target outage probability at the receiver, and the legitimate monitor can successfully eavesdrop only when its achievable rate is no smaller than the suspicious communication rate. We propose a proactive eavesdropping via jamming approach to maximize the average eavesdropping rate, where the legitimate monitor sends jamming signals with optimized power control to moderate the suspicious communication rate.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2015

Multi-antenna Wireless Powered Communication with Co-channel Energy and Information Transfer

This letter studies a multi-antenna wireless powered communication (WPC) system with co-channel energy and information transfer, where a wireless device (WD), powered up by wireless energy transfer (WET) from an energy transmitter (ET), communicates to an information receiver (IR) over the same frequency band. We maximize the achievable data rate from the WD to the IR by jointly optimizing the energy beamforming at the ET and the information beamforming at the WD, subject to their individual transmit power constraints. We obtain the optimal solution to this problem in closed-form, where the optimal energy beamforming at the ET achieves a best energy/interference tradeoff between maximizing the energy transfer efficiency to the WD and minimizing the co-channel interference to the IR. Numerical results show that our proposed optimal co-channel design is superior to other reference schemes.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2015

The transmission of symmetry in liquid crystals

The existing experiments and simulations suggest that the molecular symmetry is always transmitted to homogeneous phases in liquid crystals. It has been proved for rod-like molecules. We conjecture that it holds for three other symmetries, and prove it for some molecules of these symmetries.

math-ph↗

arXiv2015

Exploratory Analysis of Quality Practices in Open Source Domain

Software quality assurance has been a heated topic for several decades, but relatively few analyses were performed on open source software (OSS). As OSS has become very popular in our daily life, many researchers have been keen on the quality practices in this area. Although quality management presents distinct patterns compared with those in closed-source software development, some widely used OSS products have been implemented. Therefore, quality assurance of OSS projects has attracted increased research focuses. In this paper, a survey is conducted to reveal the general quality practices in open source communities. Exploratory analysis has been carried out to disclose those quality related activities. The results are compared with those from closed-source environments and the distinguished features of the quality assurance in OSS projects have been confirmed. Moreover, this study suggests potential directions for OSS developers to follow.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2015

Building an OSS Quality Estimation Model with CATREG

Open Source Software (OSS) has been a popular form in software development. In this paper, we use statistical approaches to derive OSS quality estimation models. Our objective is to build estimation models for the number of defects with metrics at project levels. First CATREG (Categorical regression with optimal scaling) is used to obtain quantifications of the qualitative variables. Then the independent variables are validated using the stepwise linear regression. The process is repeated to acquire optimal quantifications and final regression formula. This modeling process is performed based on data from the OSS communities and is proved to be practically valuable.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2015

An Empirical Study on the Procedure to Derive Software Quality Estimation Models

Software quality assurance has been a heated topic for several decades. If factors that influence software quality can be identified, they may provide more insight for better software development management. More precise quality assurance can be achieved by employing resources according to accurate quality estimation at the early stages of a project. In this paper, a general procedure is proposed to derive software quality estimation models and various techniques are presented to accomplish the tasks in respective steps. Several statistical techniques together with machine learning method are utilized to verify the effectiveness of software metrics. Moreover, a neuro-fuzzy approach is adopted to improve the accuracy of the estimation model. This procedure is carried out based on data from the ISBSG repository to present its empirical value.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2015

Capacity Region of MISO Broadcast Channel for Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer

This paper studies a multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast channel (BC) featuring simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), where a multi-antenna access point (AP) delivers both information and energy via radio signals to multiple single-antenna receivers simultaneously, and each receiver implements either information decoding (ID) or energy harvesting (EH). In particular, pseudo-random sequences that are {\it a priori} known and therefore can be cancelled at each ID receiver is used as the energy signals, and the information-theoretically optimal dirty paper coding (DPC) is employed for the information transmission. We characterize the capacity region for ID receivers under given energy requirements for EH receivers, by solving a sequence of weighted sum-rate (WSR) maximization (WSRMax) problems subject to a maximum sum-power constraint for the AP, and a set of minimum harvested power constraints for individual EH receivers. The problem corresponds to a new form of WSRMax problem in MISO-BC with combined maximum and minimum linear transmit covariance constraints (MaxLTCCs and MinLTCCs), which differs from the celebrated capacity region characterization problem for MISO-BC under a set of MaxLTCCs only and is challenging to solve. By extending the general BC-multiple access channel (MAC) duality, which is only applicable to WSRMax problems with MaxLTCCs, and applying the ellipsoid method, we propose an efficient algorithm to solve this problem globally optimally. Furthermore, we also propose two suboptimal algorithms with lower complexity by assuming that the information and energy signals are designed separately. Finally, numerical results are provided to validate our proposed algorithms.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2015

Cooperative Energy Trading in CoMP Systems Powered by Smart Grids

This paper studies the energy management in the coordinated multi-point (CoMP) systems powered by smart grids, where each base station (BS) with local renewable energy generation is allowed to implement the two-way energy trading with the grid. Due to the uneven renewable energy supply and communication energy demand over distributed BSs as well as the difference in the prices for their buying/selling energy from/to the gird, it is beneficial for the cooperative BSs to jointly manage their energy trading with the grid and energy consumption in CoMP based communication for reducing the total energy cost. Specifically, we consider the downlink transmission in one CoMP cluster by jointly optimizing the BSs' purchased/sold energy units from/to the grid and their cooperative transmit precoding, so as to minimize the total energy cost subject to the given quality of service (QoS) constraints for the users. First, we obtain the optimal solution to this problem by developing an algorithm based on techniques from convex optimization and the uplink-downlink duality. Next, we propose a sub-optimal solution of lower complexity than the optimal solution, where zero-forcing (ZF) based precoding is implemented at the BSs. Finally, through extensive simulations, we show the performance gain achieved by our proposed joint energy trading and communication cooperation schemes in terms of energy cost reduction, as compared to conventional schemes that separately design communication cooperation and energy trading.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2015

Multiuser MIMO Wireless Energy Transfer With Coexisting Opportunistic Communication

This letter considers spectrum sharing between a primary multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless energy transfer (WET) system and a coexisting secondary point-to-point MIMO wireless information transmission (WIT) system, where WET generates interference to WIT and degrades its throughput performance. We show that due to the interference, the WIT system suffers from a loss of the degrees of freedom (DoF) proportional to the number of energy beams sent by the energy transmitter (ET), which, in general, needs to be larger than one in order to optimize the multiuser WET with user fairness consideration. To minimize the DoF loss in WIT, we further propose a new single-beam energy transmission scheme based on the principle of time sharing, where the ET transmits one of the optimal energy beams at each time. This new scheme achieves the same optimal performance for the WET system, and minimizes the impact of its interference to the WIT system.

cs.IT↗