Bits Of Information Research Articles

Improved Metric Distortion via Threshold Approvals

We consider a social choice setting in which agents and alternatives are represented by points in a metric space, and the cost of an agent for an alternative is the distance between the corresponding points in the space. The goal is to choose a single alternative to (approximately) minimize the social cost (cost of all agents) or the maximum cost of any agent, when only limited information about the preferences of the agents is given. Previous work has shown that the best possible distortion one can hope to achieve is 3 when access to the ordinal preferences of the agents is given, even when the distances between alternatives in the metric space are known. We improve upon this bound of 3 by designing deterministic mechanisms that exploit a bit of cardinal information. We show that it is possible to achieve distortion 1+sqrt(2) by using the ordinal preferences of the agents, the distances between alternatives, and a threshold approval set per agent that contains all alternatives for whom her cost is within an appropriately chosen factor of her cost for her most-preferred alternative. We show that this bound is the best possible for any deterministic mechanism in general metric spaces, and also provide improved bounds for the fundamental case of a line metric.

Four-party quantum secure direct communication based on hyperentangled bell states

Quantum Secure Direct Communication (QSDC) is a promising approach for secure information exchange. This paper proposes an efficient and secure four-party QSDC scheme utilizing hyperentangled Bell states in the polarization degree of freedom, the first longitudinal momentum degree of freedom and the second longitudinal momentum degree of freedom. The four participants can perform different unitary operations to independently encode their secret messages onto photons in three degrees of freedom, subsequently transmitting them directly through the quantum channel. In this proposed protocol, each degree of freedom of the photon can effectively carry two bits of information. Each round of transmission by a photon enables the four legitimate participants to obtain six classical bits of information. Notably, when compared to other photons based single-degree-of-freedom QSDC network protocols, the capacity of proposed QSDC protocol is tripled. Therefore, it significantly enhances the information transmission capability. Furthermore, comprehensive security analysis shows that our QSDC network protocol can withstand various attacks from external eavesdroppers.

Solvable Model of Quantum-Darwinism-Encoding Transitions.

We propose a solvable model of quantum Darwinism to encoding transitions-abrupt changes in how quantum information spreads in a many-body system under unitary dynamics. We consider a random Clifford circuit on an expanding tree, whose input qubit is entangled with a reference. The model has a quantum Darwinism phase, where one classical bit of information about the reference can be retrieved from an arbitrarily small fraction of the output qubits, and an encoding phase where such retrieval is impossible. The two phases are separated by a mixed phase and two continuous transitions. We compare the exact result to a two-replica calculation. The latter yields a similar "annealed" phase diagram, which applies also to a model with Haar random unitaries. We relate our approach to measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs), by solving a modified model where an environment eavesdrops on an encoding system. It has a sharp MIPT only with full access to the environment.

Fostering student engagement with criticism feedback: importance, contrasting perspectives and key provisions

Criticism, or critical feedback, is considered rich bits of information about the student’s weaknesses, thinking, and learning. Despite its importance as part of formative assessment processes, this type of feedback is especially challenging for teachers to communicate as well as for students to uptake. The current conceptual analysis therefore highlights the substantial role that criticism plays in advancing students’ learning and progress. It presents a wide range of contrasting perspectives toward criticism to show how it is perceived differently. Lastly, the article identifies key provisions that are necessary for critical feedback to be constructed, presented, interpreted, and utilized in constructive and nonthreatening ways, which subsequently help trigger learner’s positive reactions and engagement with the received information. These provisions help create a community of practice where objective, informative, transparent, and engaging criticism can be given, respected, negotiated, and benefited from. The implications of these provisions for practice are discussed.

A Novel Scalable Quantum Protocol for the Dining Cryptographers Problem

This paper presents an innovative entanglement-based protocol to address the Dining Cryptographers problem, utilizing maximally entangled |GHZn⟩ tuples as its core. This protocol aims to provide scalability in terms of both the number of cryptographers n and the amount of anonymous information conveyed, represented by the number of qubits m within each quantum register. The protocol supports an arbitrary number of cryptographers n, enabling scalability in both participant count and the volume of anonymous information transmitted. While the original Dining Cryptographers problem focused on a single bit of information—whether a cryptographer paid for dinner—the proposed protocol allows m, the number of qubits in each register, to be any arbitrarily large positive integer. This flexibility allows the transmission of additional information, such as the cost of the dinner or the timing of the arrangement. Another noteworthy aspect of the introduced protocol is its versatility in accommodating both localized and distributed versions of the Dining Cryptographers problem. The localized scenario involves all cryptographers gathering physically at the same location, such as a local restaurant, simultaneously. In contrast, the distributed scenario accommodates cryptographers situated in different places, engaging in a virtual dinner at the same time. Finally, in terms of implementation, the protocol accomplishes uniformity by requiring that all cryptographers utilize identical private quantum circuits. This design establishes a completely modular quantum system where all modules are identical. Furthermore, each private quantum circuit exclusively employs the widely used Hadamard and CNOT quantum gates, facilitating straightforward implementation on contemporary quantum computers.

The Shortest Distance Problem: An Elementary Solution

Summary We offer an elementary solution to the shortest distance problem. In addition to being accessible to freshman Calculus students, our approach also provides a bit of extra information, namely a way quantify the “length excess” in terms of how much the path deviates from being a straight line.

Пропускная способность и информационная емкость ресурса: пространство, частота, время

Studies of the bandwidth of the resource: space, frequency, time during spatial multiplexing in information transmission, storage and processing systems have been carried out. Bandwidth estimation is relevant in the development of communication systems with spatial multiplexing, as well as in problems of information theory. Limitations in spatial multiplexing are investigated. Theorems for estimating the amount of information passing through a given linear and flat area of space at certain values of the time interval and frequency band are formulated and proved. A theorem for estimating the amount of information passing through a rectangular parallelepiped due to three beams of electromagnetic radiation through three mutually perpendicular faces of a rectangular parallelepiped is formulated and proved. As an example, the amount of information contained in one cubic meter of space filled with electromagnetic radiation of a certain type is estimated. Thus, for frequencies in the range from 3 •108 Hz to 6•1019 Hz, one cubic meter of space contains 3,207•1034 bits of information, which is equivalent to the amount of information contained due to quantum states in a substance weighing 1,444 g at 20 °C. Practical significance: the research results can be useful for the development of information theory and the practice of developing communication systems with spatial multiplexing.

Large Angular Momentum States in a Graphene Film

At energy lower than 2 eV, the dispersion law of the electrons in a graphene sheet presents a linear dependence of the energy on the kinetic momentum, which is typical of photons and permits the description of the electrons as massless particles by means of the Dirac equation and the study of massless particles acted upon by forces. We analytically solve the Dirac equation of an electron in a graphene disk with radius of 10,000 atomic units pierced by a magnetic field and find the eigenenergies and eigenstates of the particles for spin up and down. The magnetic field ranges within three orders of magnitude and is found to confine the electron in the disk. States with a relatively large total angular momentum exist and can be considered in a vorticose condition; these states are seen to peak at different distances from the disk centre and can be used to store few bit of information.

Application of machine learning to experimental design in quantum mechanics

The recent advances in Machine Learning hold great promises for the field of quantum sensing and metrology. With the help of reinforcement learning, we can tame the complexity of quantum systems and solve the problem of optimal experimental design. Reinforcement learning is a powerful model-free technique that allows an agent, which is typically a neural network, to learn the best strategy to reach a certain goal in a completely a priori unknown environment. However, in general, we know something about the quantum system the agent is interacting with, at least that it follows the rules of quantum mechanics. In quantum metrology, we typically have a model for the system and only some parameters of the evolution or of the initial state are unknown. We present here a general Machine Learning technique that can optimize the precision of quantum sensors, and in doing so it exploits the knowledge we have on the system. We have developed a Python package to automate a broad class of optimizations that can be found in the tasks of quantum parameter estimation, quantum metrology and quantum hypothesis testing. What the agent is learning here is an optimal adaptive strategy, that, on the basis of the previous outcomes, decides the next measurements to perform. It works both for Bayesian estimation and for frequentist estimation. The user is required to implement the physics of the system to be studied and state which parameters in the experiment are controllable and which are unknowns. The functions of the library allow then to easily train a neural network agent for optimizing the precision of the sensor, by simulating the experiment. We have explored some applications of this technique to magnetometry on NV centers (both DC and AC), to state discrimination in quantum optics and to phase estimation. So far, we were able to certify better results than the current state-of-the-art controls for many examples. The Machine Learning technique developed here can be applied in all those scenarios where the quantum system is well characterized and relatively simple and small. In these cases, we can squeeze every last bit of information from a quantum sensor by controlling it with a neural network appropriately trained.

A quantum blind signature scheme based on dense coding for non-entangled states

Abstract Some schemes where quantum blind signatures require the use of difficult-to-prepare multiparticle entangled states. Considering the communication overhead, quantum operation complexity, verification efficiency and other relevant factors in practical situations, this article proposes a non entangled quantum blind signature scheme based on dense encoding.The information owner utilizes dense encoding and hash functions to blind the information while reducing the use of quantum resources.After receiving particles,the signer encrypts the message using a one-way function and performs a Hadamard gate operation on the selected single photon to generate the signature, and the verifier performs a Hadamard gate inverse operation on the signature and combines it with the encoding rules to restore the message and complete the verification. Compared with some typical quantum blind signature protocols, this protocol has strong blindness in privacy protection, higher flexibility in scalability and application. The signer can adjust the signature operation according to the actual situation, which greatly simplifies the complexity of the signature.Simultaneously utilizing the secondary distribution and rearrangement of non entangled quantum states, a non entangled quantum state representation of three bits of classical information was achieved,reducing the use of a large amount of quantum resources and lowering implementation costs. This improves both signature verification efficiency and communication efficiency, while at the same time, this scheme meets the requirements of unforgeability, non repudiation, and prevention of information leakage.

A novel technique for image steganography based on maximum energy seam

AbstractImage steganography is the art of hiding information in a cover image in such a way that a third party does not notice the hidden information. This paper presents a novel technique for image steganography in the spatial domain. The new method hides and recovers hidden information of substantial length within digital imagery while maintaining the size and quality of the original image. The image gradient is used to generate a saliency image, which represents the energy of each pixel in the image. Pixels with higher energy are more salient and they are valuable for hiding data since their visual impairment is low. From the saliency image, a cumulative maximum energy matrix is created; this matrix is used to generate horizontal seams that pass over the maximum energy path. By embedding the secret bits of information along the seams, a stego-image is created which contains the hidden message. In the stego-image, we ensure that the hidden data is invisible, with very small perceived image quality degradation. The same algorithms are used to reconstruct the hidden message from the stego-image. Experiments have been conducted using two types of images and two types of hidden data to evaluate the proposed technique. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has a high capacity and good invisibility, with a Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) of about 70, and a Structural SIMilarity index (SSIM) of about 1.

Theoretical Possibility of Quantum Stabilization of Traversable Wormholes

In this article, we argue that we can explain quantum stabilization of Morris-Thorne traversable wormholes through quantum mechanics. We suggest that the utilization of dark matter and dark energy, conceptualized as negative mass and negative energy tied to the universe's information content, can stabilize these wormholes. This approach diverges from the original Morris-Thorne model by incorporating quantum effects, offering a credible and adequate source of the exotic matter needed to prevent wormhole collapse. We reassess the wormholes' stability and information content considering the new calculated revised vacuum energy based on the mass of bit of information. This new calculation makes the wormholes more viable within our universe's limits. Furthermore, we explore the connection between dark energy and the vacuum energy of space, highlighting the broader cosmological significance of traversable wormholes, particularly in relation to the universe's expansion. The quantum stabilization of Morris-Thorne traversable wormholes marks a pivotal advancement in the field of physics.

Review of: "This allows them to contain a single bit of information (zero or one), as is customary in machine computing"

Review of: "This allows them to contain a single bit of information (zero or one), as is customary in machine computing"

One-Bit Supervision for Image Classification: Problem, Solution, and Beyond

This article presents one-bit supervision, a novel setting of learning with fewer labels, for image classification. Instead of the training model using the accurate label of each sample, our setting requires the model to interact with the system by predicting the class label of each sample and learn from the answer whether the guess is correct, which provides one bit (yes or no) of information. An intriguing property of the setting is that the burden of annotation largely is alleviated in comparison to offering the accurate label. There are two keys to one-bit supervision: (i) improving the guess accuracy and (ii) making good use of the incorrect guesses. To achieve these goals, we propose a multi-stage training paradigm and incorporate negative label suppression into an off-the-shelf semi-supervised learning algorithm. Theoretical analysis shows that one-bit annotation is more efficient than full-bit annotation in most cases and gives the conditions of combining our approach with active learning. Inspired by this, we further integrate the one-bit supervision framework into the self-supervised learning algorithm, which yields an even more efficient training schedule. Different from training from scratch, when self-supervised learning is used for initialization, both hard example mining and class balance are verified to be effective in boosting the learning performance. However, these two frameworks still need full-bit labels in the initial stage. To cast off this burden, we utilize unsupervised domain adaptation to train the initial model and conduct pure one-bit annotations on the target dataset. In multiple benchmarks, the learning efficiency of the proposed approach surpasses that using full-bit, semi-supervised supervision.

Jessica Wongso's Cyanide Coffee Case

The death of Wayan Mirna Salihin in 2016 shook Indonesia in its time. The Netflix documentary entitled "Ice Cold" has again brought Indonesian citizens to start talking again about this seven year old case. Indeed, the documentary is more inclined towards the coffee that Mirna drank not being proven to contain chemicals (cyanide). Which means the defendant, Jessica Wongso, cannot be completely blamed. This article includes analysis starting from the background, research methods, to the results and discussion. It may be noted that this article draws quite a bit of information from the Netflix documentary. Others were obtained from various official legal and scientific sources. This discussion will refer to the evidence collected, according to the methodology used. It will be discussed here that the Jessica Wongso Cyanide Coffee Case, even though it has passed, is still worthy of discussion in this nation.

Are Brazilian innovation systems innovative? Regional and sectorial decompositions of triple-helix synergies

A knowledge-based economy adds innovation as another dynamic to a political economy. Whereas a political economy is institutionalized -for example, in a nation state- the knowledge base is volatile although it leaves footprints behind by transforming the institutional layers. This transformation into new options can be measured as redundancy using the Triple-Helix indicator. The balance between historical entropy generation and the knowledge-based generation of options can be measured in terms of positive and negative contributions to the prevailing uncertainty. At what scale and in which sectors is synergy among geographical, technological, and organizational distributions of firms evident? Using mutual information in the three dimensions as an indicator, we analyse a dataset of more than 16 million firms in Brazil and compute synergy within and across states and sectors in this country in terms of bits of information. The results suggest that no synergy is generated at the national level. The political economy of the country has not (yet) been transformed into a national innovation system. At state level, synergies vary according to geographical levels and sectors due to the specifics of the states. Above-average values were found for some states in the South and Southeast Regions. Also, the political capital, Brasilia, has resulted to have no impact in the innovation system of Brazil.

INFORMATION CULTURE AS A KEY ASPECT OF PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE OF FUTURE TRANSLATORS

The article deals with the place and importance of information culture in the acquisition of professional competence of future translators. The concept of «professional competence of a translator» is also revealed, and its structure is analyzed, indicating that in order to acquire all components of professional competence, a future specialist in the field of translation needs to master the ability to receive, systematize and use different bits of information, as well as to evaluate and determine its reliability and expediency in the context of professional activity, which requires him/her to have a high level of information culture.
 In the process of writing the publication, we also analyzed different views of domestic and foreign researchers regarding the concept of «information culture» and given own definition of the term «translator's information culture». It was proved that information culture can be interpreted as a professional and personal characteristic, which includes the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the future translator to apply information and communication technologies in professional activities, as well as part of his professional culture, which means compliance with all norms and requirements (moral, legal, etc.) when working with information.
 The formation of the information culture of a future specialist in the field of translation takes place in three stages: the first is designed to form an idea of the spectrum, content and operational forms of information processes and the basic skills of their implementation; the second is related to the acquisition of skills of effective application of all components of information technologies in translation activities; the third one consists in the formation of a system developed information culture of the individual. All these stages are interconnected and mutually dependent.
 In addition, we named the main functions of information culture, among which cognitive, communicative, valuable, educational, creative, worldview and regulatory functions are distinguished.

Informational Nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy and the Cosmological Constant

In this article, realistic quantitative estimation of dark matter and dark energy considered as informational phenomena have been computed, thereby explaining certain anomalies and effects within the universe. Moreover, by the same conceptual approach, the cosmological constant problem has been reduced by almost 120 orders of magnitude in the prediction of the vacuum energy from a quantum point of view. We argue that dark matter is an informational field with finite and quantifiable negative mass, distinct from the conventional fields of matter of quantum field theory and associated with the number of bits of information in the observable universe, while dark energy is negative energy, calculated as the energy associated with dark matter. Since dark energy is vacuum energy, it emerges from dark matter as a collective potential of all particles with their individual zero-point energy via Landauer's principle.

Clinical and methodological implications for research elements in systematic reviews on COVID-19 treatment were often unstructured and under-reported: a metaresearch study

ObjectivesNumerous systematic reviews (SRs) have been published in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic and clinical trials were designed rapidly highlighting the importance of informative implications for research (IfRs) sections in SRs. IfR is one item of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses 2020 checklist and the Cochrane Handbook suggests considering population, intervention, control, outcome (PICO) and Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) domains when developing IfR. We aimed (1) to assess whether SRs on COVID-19 treatments included any IfR statements and, for SRs with an IfR statement, (2) to examine which elements informed the IfR statement. Study Design and SettingWe conducted a metaresearch study based on SRs on COVID-19 treatment identified in the Living OVerview of the Evidence COVID-19 database in May 2021 as part of another research project (CRD42021240423). We defined an IfR statement as at least one sentence that contained at least one bit of information that could be informative for planning future research. We extracted any IfR statements anywhere in the SRs on predefined IfR variables, in particular PICO elements, study design, and concepts underlying GRADE domains. Three authors extracted data independently after piloting the data extraction form. We resolved discrepancies in weekly discussions to ensure a high-quality data extraction. ResultsWe included 326 SRs, of which 284 SRs (87.1%) stated IfR. Of these 284 SRs, 201 (70.8%) reported using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and 66 (23.2%) using GRADE. IfR statements (n = 284) addressing PICO were unstructured and commonly reported ‘population’ (n = 195, 68.7%), ‘intervention’ (n = 242, 85.2%), and ‘outcome’ (n = 127, 44.7%) but not ‘control’ (n = 29, 10.2%). Concepts underlying GRADE domains were infrequently reported in IfR statements of SRs (n = 284): ‘risk of bias’ (n = 14, 4.9%), ‘imprecision’ (n = 8, 2.8%), ‘inconsistency’ (n = 7, 2.5%), ‘publication bias’ (n = 3, 1.1%), and ‘indirectness’ (n = 1, 0.4%). Additional IfR elements mentioned in IfR were ‘better reporting’ of future studies (n = 17, 6.0%) and ‘standardization of procedures in clinical trials’ (n = 12, 4.2%). ConclusionAlmost 90% of SRs on COVID-19 treatments reported IfR. IfR statements addressing PICO were unstructured across SRs and concepts underlying GRADE were rarely reported to inform IfR. Further work is needed to assess generalizability beyond COVID-19 and to define more precisely which IfR elements should be considered, and how they should be reported in SRs of interventions. Until then, considering PICO elements and concepts underlying GRADE to derive IfR seems to be a sensible starting point.

Selective chronic recording in small nerve fascicles of sciatic nerve with carbon nanotube yarns in rats

Objective. The primary challenge faced in the field of neural rehabilitation engineering is the limited advancement in nerve interface technology, which currently fails to match the mechanical properties of small-diameter nerve fascicles. Novel developments are necessary to enable long-term, chronic recording from a multitude of small fascicles, allowing for the recovery of motor intent and sensory signals. Approach. In this study, we analyze the chronic recording capabilities of carbon nanotube yarn electrodes in the peripheral somatic nervous system. The electrodes were surgically implanted in the sciatic nerve’s three individual fascicles in rats, enabling the recording of neural activity during gait. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and information theory were employed to analyze the data, demonstrating the superior recording capabilities of the electrodes. Flat interface nerve electrode and thin-film longitudinal intrafascicular electrode electrodes were used as a references to assess the results from SNR and information theory analysis. Main results. The electrodes exhibited the ability to record chronic signals with SNRs reaching as high as 15 dB, providing 12 bits of information for the sciatic nerve, a significant improvement over previous methods. Furthermore, the study revealed that the SNR and information content of the neural signals remained consistent over a period of 12 weeks across three different fascicles, indicating the stability of the interface. The signals recorded from these electrodes were also analyzed for selectivity using information theory metrics, which showed an information sharing of approximately 1.4 bits across the fascicles. Significance. The ability to safely and reliably record from multiple fascicles of different nerves simultaneously over extended periods of time holds substantial implications for the field of neural and rehabilitation engineering. This advancement addresses the limitation of current nerve interface technologies and opens up new possibilities for enhancing neural rehabilitation and control.