Deterministic Mechanism Research Articles

Impartial Selection with Additive Approximation Guarantees

Impartial selection has recently received much attention within the multi-agent systems community. The task is, given a directed graph representing nominations to the members of a community by other members, to select the member with the highest number of nominations. This seemingly trivial goal becomes challenging when there is an additional impartiality constraint, requiring that no single member can influence her chance of being selected. Recent progress has identified impartial selection rules with optimal approximation ratios. Moreover, it was noted that worst-case instances are graphs with few vertices. Motivated by this fact, we propose the study of additive approximation, the difference between the highest number of nominations and the number of nominations of the selected member, as an alternative measure of the quality of impartial selection. Our positive results include two randomized impartial selection mechanisms which have additive approximation guarantees of $\Theta(\sqrt{n})$ and $\Theta(n^{2/3}\ln^{1/3}n)$ for the two most studied models in the literature, where $n$ denotes the community size. We complement our positive results by providing negative results for various cases. First, we provide a characterization for the interesting class of strong sample mechanisms, which allows us to obtain lower bounds of $n-2$, and of $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$ for their deterministic and randomized variants respectively. Finally, we present a general lower bound of $2$ for all deterministic impartial mechanisms.

Phenotypic determinism and stochasticity in antibody repertoires of clonally expanded plasma cells

The capacity of humoral B cell-mediated immunity to effectively respond to and protect against pathogenic infections is largely driven by the presence of a diverse repertoire of polyclonal antibodies in the serum, which are produced by plasma cells (PCs). Recent studies have started to reveal the balance between deterministic mechanisms and stochasticity of antibody repertoires on a genotypic level (i.e., clonal diversity, somatic hypermutation, and germline gene usage). However, it remains unclear if clonal selection and expansion of PCs follow any deterministic rules or are stochastic with regards to phenotypic antibody properties (i.e., antigen-binding, affinity, and epitope specificity). Here, we report on the in-depth genotypic and phenotypic characterization of clonally expanded PC antibody repertoires following protein immunization. We find that clonal expansion drives antigen specificity of the most expanded clones (top ∼10), whereas among the rest of the clonal repertoire antigen specificity is stochastic. Furthermore, we report both on a polyclonal repertoire and clonal lineage level that antibody-antigen binding affinity does not correlate with clonal expansion or somatic hypermutation. Last, we provide evidence for convergence toward targeting dominant epitopes despite clonal sequence diversity among the most expanded clones. Our results highlight the extent to which clonal expansion can be ascribed to antigen binding, affinity, and epitope specificity, and they have implications for the assessment of effective vaccines.

A Socio-Inspired Methodology and Model for Advanced and Opportunistic Interactions between Industrial IoT Objects

The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) is widely discussed. IoT is one of the emerging technologies that have caught the attention of many researchers. The increase in the number of exchanges of services between heterogeneous or homogeneous connected objects with the integration of social networking concepts gives rise to the concept of the Social Internet of Things (SIoT). The SIoT concept contributes to the evolution of interactions between industrial objects by improving deterministic mechanisms towards intelligent interactions. The integration of the SIoT concept into the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) gives rise to the Social Internet of Industrial Things (SIoIT) and plays an important role in improving system performance in Industry 4.0. In this article, we propose an innovative methodology and a model of socio-inspired interaction between industrial communicating objects inspired by sociological approaches. Thanks to this model, socialized industrial communicating objects form a community of objects, autonomously and dynamically, by exchanging messages to know each other perfectly, and service requests between objects are executed adaptively according to the principles of social interaction governed by socio-inspired strategies and conditions. The model is implemented, tested and validated in a Netlogo multi-agent system simulation environment.

A Minimalist Model of Salt-Marsh Vegetation Dynamics Driven by Species Competition and Dispersal

We present a new bidimensional, spatially-explicit ecological model describing the dynamics of halophytic vegetation in tidal saline wetlands. Existing vegetation models employ relatively simple deterministic or stochastic mechanisms, and are driven by local environmental conditions. In the proposed model, in contrast, vegetation dynamics depend not only on the marsh local habitat, but also on spatially-explicit mechanisms of dispersal and competition among multiple interacting species. The role of habitat quality, here determined by the local elevation relative to the mean sea level as a proxy for environmental conditions, is mathematically modeled by a logistic function that represents the fundamental (theoretical) niche of each halophytic species. Hence, the model does not artificially impose any constraints to the ability of a species to colonize elevated areas where it is usually not observed: such limitations naturally arise through competition with fitter species across marsh topographic gradients. We qualitatively test our model against field data based on a suitable assemblage of focus species, and perform a sensitivity analysis aimed at determining how dynamic equilibria in vegetation distributions are affected by changes in model input parameters. Results indicate that the model is robust and can predict realistic vegetation distributions and species-richness patterns. More importantly, the model is also able to effectively reproduce the outcomes of classical ecological experiments, wherein a species is transplanted to an area outside its realized niche. A direct comparison shows that previous models not accounting for dispersal and interspecific competitions are unable to reproduce such dynamics. Our model can be easily integrated into virtually any existing morphodynamic model, thereby strengthening our ability to simulate the coupled biotic and abiotic evolution of salt marshes under changing climate forcings.

Floristic and functional diversity of ferns and lycophytes at three elevational zones in the eastern slopes of the northern Andes, Ecuador

ABSTRACT The northeastern slope of the Andes is an area of high diversity of ferns and lycophytes. In this study we assessed the diversity patterns of ferns and lycophytes in ten 250 m x 2 m plots installed at three elevational zones, from 418 to 3447 m.a.s.l., in the Napo province of Ecuador. Floristic diversity was measured using Hill numbers and by partitioning species diversity. Three functional diversity indices were calculated from a set of five leaf traits and weighted by species abundance: functional richness (FRic), evenness (FEve) and divergence (FDiv). To disentangle functional diversity from species richness, the standardized effect size (SES) of each index was also calculated. We recorded 148 species, Polypodiaceae and Dryopteridaceae being the most representative families. Species richness continuously decreased with elevation. Floristic composition was highly heterogeneous among elevation zones, with total species turnover found between 1500 and 2000 m.a.s.l. SES-FDiv and SES-FEve were higher than the null expectation for plots at mid-elevations, suggesting that deterministic mechanisms, such as biotic or abiotic filters, could explain assemblage composition at these sites. However, SES-FEve, SES-FRic and SES-FDiv did not differ from the null expectations at low and high elevation sites, suggesting the predominance of a stochastic process. By combining floristic and functional diversity, we were able to infer the observed community patterns with the resource-use strategies of fern and lycophytes in a mountain area, an approach that can be used to understand how assemblages might react to changing environmental conditions.

A Dynamic Distributed Deterministic Load-Balancer for Decentralized Hierarchical Infrastructures

In this work, we propose D3-Tree, a dynamic distributed deterministic structure for data management in decentralized networks, by engineering and extending an existing decentralized structure. Conducting an extensive experimental study, we verify that the implemented structure outperforms other well-known hierarchical tree-based structures since it provides better complexities regarding load-balancing operations. More specifically, the structure achieves an O(logN) amortized bound (N is the number of nodes present in the network), using an efficient deterministic load-balancing mechanism, which is general enough to be applied to other hierarchical tree-based structures. Moreover, our structure achieves O(logN) worst-case search performance. Last but not least, we investigate the structure’s fault tolerance, which hasn’t been sufficiently tackled in previous work, both theoretically and through rigorous experimentation. We prove that D3-Tree is highly fault-tolerant and achieves O(logN) amortized search cost under massive node failures, accompanied by a significant success rate. Afterwards, by incorporating this novel balancing scheme into the ART (Autonomous Range Tree) structure, we go one step further to achieve sub-logarithmic complexity and propose the ART+ structure. ART+ achieves an O(logb2logN) communication cost for query and update operations (b is a double-exponentially power of 2 and N is the total number of nodes). Moreover, ART+ is a fully dynamic and fault-tolerant structure, which supports the join/leave node operations in O(loglogN) expected WHP (with high proability) number of hops and performs load-balancing in O(loglogN) amortized cost.

On the complexity of dynamic mechanism design

We introduce a simple dynamic mechanism design problem in which the designer offers two items in two consecutive stages to a single buyer. The buyer's joint distribution of valuations for the two items is known, and the buyer knows the valuation for the current item, but not for the one in the future. The designer seeks to maximize expected revenue, and the mechanism must be deterministic, truthful, and ex-post individually rational. We show that finding the optimum deterministic mechanism in this situation — arguably one of the simplest meaningful dynamic mechanism design problems imaginable — is NP-hard. We also prove several positive results, including a polynomial-time linear programming-based algorithm for the revenue optimal randomized mechanism (even for many buyers and many stages). We prove strong separations in revenue between non-adaptive, adaptive, and randomized mechanisms, even when the valuations in the two stages are independent.

Fast and Portable Concurrent FIFO Queues With Deterministic Memory Reclamation

In this article we present an algorithm for a high performance, unbounded, portable, multi-producer/multi-consumer, lock-free FIFO (first-in first-out) queue. Aside from its competitive performance on current hardware, it is further characterized by its integrated memory reclamation mechanism, which is able to reliably and deterministically de-allocate nodes as soon as the final operation with a reference has concluded, similar to reference counting. This differentiates our approach from most other lock-free data structures, which usually require external (generic) memory reclamation or garbage collection mechanisms such as hazard pointers. Our deterministic memory reclamation mechanism completely prevents the build up of memory awaiting reclamation and is hence very memory efficient, yet it does not introduce any substantial performance overhead. By utilizing concrete knowledge about the internal structure and access patterns of our queue, we are able to construct and constrain the reclamation mechanism in such a way that keeps the overhead for memory management almost entirely out of the common fast path. The presented algorithm is portable to all modern 64-bit processor architectures, as it only relies on the commonly available and lock-free atomic synchronization primitives compare-and-swap and fetch-and-add.

Single nucleus transcriptome and chromatin accessibility of postmortem human pituitaries reveal diverse stem cell regulatory mechanisms.

SUMMARYDespite their importance in tissue homeostasis and renewal, human pituitary stem cells (PSCs) are incompletely characterized. We describe a human single nucleus RNA-seq and ATAC-seq resource from pediatric, adult, and aged postmortem pituitaries (snpituitaryatlas.princeton.edu) and characterize cell-type-specific gene expression and chromatin accessibility programs for all major pituitary cell lineages. We identify uncommitted PSCs, committing progenitor cells, and sex differences. Pseudotime trajectory analysis indicates that early-life PSCs are distinct from the other age groups. Linear modeling of same-cell multiome data identifies regulatory domain accessibility sites and transcription factors that are significantly associated with gene expression in PSCs compared with other cell types and within PSCs. We identify distinct deterministic mechanisms that contribute to heterogeneous marker expression within PSCs. These findings characterize human stem cell lineages and reveal diverse mechanisms regulating key PSC genes and cell type identity.

Human-induced loss of functional and phylogenetic diversity is mediated by concomitant deterministic processes in subtropical aquatic insect communities

Under a global change scenario, human-induced impacts alter multiple facets of river biodiversity (i.e., taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic). Hence, focusing on changes in community assembly and different diversity dimensions along anthropogenic impact gradients is of paramount importance for ecological research. Here, we classified stream sites into near-pristine (NP), moderately impacted (MI) and highly impacted (HI) categories based on a comprehensive anthropogenic impact score for the Hanjiang River Basin (China), and tested for differences in patterns of functional (FD) and phylogenetic diversity (PD). Our study suggests that NP sites showed higher FD and PD than impacted streams (MI and HI), with their communities being phylogenetically overdispersed and mostly shaped by random processes. Anthropogenically impacted sites mostly harbored closely related and functionally similar species, although the degree of clustering varied between NP, MI and HI streams, thereby confirming predictions that human activities contribute to the loss of evolutionary history and functional space in running waters. Importantly, we identified the influence of underlying deterministic mechanisms on the homogenization of both functional and phylogenetic facets of diversity. Similarly, NP sites exhibited the greatest proportion of evolutionarily distinct lineages, suggesting that anthropogenic impacts also threaten phylogenetically unique clades. Overall, this study contributed to a better understanding of multiple diversity patterns in aquatic insect communities by generating new empirical evidence of human-induced degradation of subtropical stream ecosystems in China.

Effect of Inclusion and Filtration on Grain Refinement Efficiency of Aluminum Alloy

It is well known that the filtration efficiency of ceramic foam filters (CFF) on aluminum melt can be significantly reduced by the addition of grain refiner particles under a high inclusion load. Also, it is usually considered that the filtration process has little impact on grain refinement efficiency. In this work, the influence of inclusions and filtration on the grain refinement effect of AA 6060 alloy has been studied. This was done through TP-1 type solidification experiments where the aluminum melt prior to and after the filter during a pilot-scale filtration test was investigated. In the experiments, 80 PPi CFFs were used to filtrate aluminum melt with an ultra-high inclusion load and two addition levels of Al–3Ti–1B master alloys. It is found that both inclusions and filtration significantly reduce the grain refinement efficiency of the grain refiner master alloys. A detailed characterization of the used filters shows that the reduction of grain refinement efficiency is due to the strong adherence of TiB2 particles to the oxide films, which are blocked by the CFF during filtration. A grain size prediction model based on deterministic nucleation mechanisms and dendritic growth kinetics has been applied to calculate the solidification grain size and estimate the loss of effective grain refiner particles during filtration. It is shown that due to the strong adherence between TiB2 particles and oxide films in the melt, the high addition level of aluminum chips also has an influence on reducing the grain refinement efficiency of aluminum melt without filtration. The results of this study extended our understanding of the behavior and performance of inoculant particles in CFF and their interactions with the inclusions.

The Joint Contributions of Environmental Filtering and Spatial Processes to Macroinvertebrate Metacommunity Dynamics in the Alpine Stream Environment of Baima Snow Mountain, Southwest China

While macroinvertebrates are extensively investigated in many river ecosystems, meta-community ecology perspectives in alpine streams are very limited. We assessed the role of ecological factors and temporal dynamics in the macroinvertebrate meta-community assembly of an alpine stream situated in a dry-hot valley of Baima Snow Mountain, China. We found that spatial structuring and environmental filtering jointly drive the structure of macroinvertebrate meta-community, with relative contributions to the variance in community composition changing over time. RDA ordination and variation partitioning indicate that environmental variables are the most important predictors of community organization in most scenarios, whereas spatial determinants also play a significant role. Moreover, the explanatory power, identity, and the relative significance of ecological factors change over time. Particularly, in the years 2018 and 2019, stronger environmental filtering was found shaping community assembly, suggesting that deterministic mechanisms predominated in driving community dynamics. However, spatial factors had a stronger predictive power on meta-community structures in 2017, implying conspicuous dispersal mechanisms which may be owing to increased connectivity amongst sites. Thereby, we inferred that the alpine stream macroinvertebrate metacommunity composition can be regulated by the interaction of both spatial processes and environmental filtering, with relative contributions varying over time. Based on these findings, we suggest that community ecology studies in aquatic systems should be designed beyond single snapshot investigations.

Deterministic Mechanisms Dominate Bacterial Communities Assembly and Functionality in Industrial Wastewater Treatment System

Deterministic Mechanisms Dominate Bacterial Communities Assembly and Functionality in Industrial Wastewater Treatment System

Selling two identical objects

It is well-known that optimal (i.e., revenue-maximizing) selling mechanisms in multidimensional type spaces may involve randomization. We obtain conditions under which deterministic mechanisms are optimal for selling two identical, indivisible objects to a single buyer. We analyze two settings: (i) decreasing marginal values (DMV) and (ii) increasing marginal values (IMV). Thus, the values of the buyer for the two units are not independent.We show that under a well-known condition on distributions (due to McAfee and McMillan (1988)), (a) it is optimal to sell the first unit deterministically in the DMV model and (b) it is optimal to bundle (which is a deterministic mechanism) in the IMV model. Under a stronger sufficient condition on distributions, a deterministic mechanism is optimal in the DMV model.Our results apply to heterogeneous objects when there is a specified sequence in which the two objects must be sold.

Sign Stability of Dual Switching Linear Continuous-Time Positive Systems

This paper investigates 1-moment exponential stability and exponential mean-square stability (EMS stability) under average dwell time (ADT) and the preset deterministic switching mechanism of dual switching linear continuous-time positive systems when a numerical realization does not exist. The signs of subsystem matrices, but not their structures of magnitude, are key information that causes a qualitative concept of stability called sign stability. Both 1-moment exponential stability and EMS stability, which are the traditional stability concepts, are generalized intrinsically. Hence, both 1-moment exponential sign stability and EMS sign stability are introduced and are proven based on sign equivalency. It is shown that they are symmetrically and qualitatively stable. Notably, the notion of stability can be checked quantitatively using some examples.

Toward a relativistic microscopic substantiation of thermodynamics: the equilibration mechanism

The microscopic deterministic mechanism of the irreversible equilibration process in a relativistic classical system of interacting particles has been established.

Strategyproof mechanisms for Friends and Enemies Games

We investigate strategyproof mechanisms for Friends and Enemies Games, a subclass of Hedonic Games in which every agent classifies any other one as a friend or as an enemy. In this setting, we consider the two classical scenarios proposed in the literature, called Friends Appreciation (FA) and Enemies Aversion (EA). Roughly speaking, in the former each agent gives priority to the number of friends in her coalition, while in the latter to the number of enemies.We focus on the objective of maximizing the sum of the utilities of the agents and provide strategyproof mechanisms for both settings. More precisely, for FA we first present a deterministic n-approximation mechanism, n being the number of agents, and then show that a much better approximation can be achieved by resorting to randomization. Namely, we provide a randomized mechanism whose expected approximation ratio is 4, and arbitrarily close to 4 with high probability. For EA, we give a simple (1+2)n-approximation mechanism, and show that its performance is asymptotically tight by proving that it is NP-hard to approximate the optimal solution within O(n1−ε) for any fixed ε>0. We also show that, if computational efficiency is not a concern, it is possible to achieve a (1+2)-approximation by means of a deterministic strategyproof mechanism with exponential runtime. Finally, we show how to extend our results in the presence of neutrals, i.e., when agents can also be indifferent about other agents.

Cell-to-cell mathematical modeling of arrhythmia phenomena in the heart

In this work, we investigate deterministic mechanisms that generate and perpetuate flutter and fibrillation in the right atrium of the human heart using mathematical models and high-performance computational simulations. Using a GPU, the solutions of systems of as much as 360 000 cells of 29 variables each were distributed among the available processors to simulate a cell-to-cell electric behavior of heart tissue.Moreover, in a smaller array of 462 cells, we showed that fibrillation, fluttering, and fibrillation-to-fluttering can be modeled even by using the simplest excitable cell models including only a few variables as well as with realistic models of heart cells, simply by implementing aperiodicity and fractality to the connections network.Micro-reentries which may be identified with fibrillation of the systems can be simulated in silico experiments where emerge several self-perpetuating, colliding waves associated with non-periodic and mathematically calculated pseudo-EG.

Functional Metabolic Diversity of Bacterioplankton in Maritime Antarctic Lakes.

A summer survey was conducted on the bacterioplankton communities of seven lakes from Byers Peninsula (Maritime Antarctica), differing in trophic and morphological characteristics. Predictions of the metabolic capabilities of these communities were performed with FAPROTAX using 16S rRNA sequencing data. The versatility for metabolizing carbon sources was also assessed in three of the lakes using Biolog Ecoplates. Relevant differences among lakes and within lake depths were observed. A total of 23 metabolic activities associated to the main biogeochemical cycles were foreseen, namely, carbon (11), nitrogen (4), sulfur (5), iron (2), and hydrogen (1). The aerobic metabolisms dominated, although anaerobic respiration was also relevant near the lakes’ bottom as well as in shallow eutrophic lakes with higher nutrient and organic matter contents. Capacity for using carbon sources further than those derived from the fresh autochthonous primary production was detected. Clustering of the lakes based on metabolic capabilities of their microbial communities was determined by their trophic status, with functional diversity increasing with trophic status. Data were also examined using a co-occurrence network approach, indicating that the lakes and their catchments have to be perceived as connected and interacting macrosystems, where either stochastic or deterministic mechanisms for the assembling of communities may occur depending on the lake’s isolation. The hydrological processes within catchments and the potential metabolic plasticity of these biological communities must be considered for future climate scenarios in the region, which may extend the growing season and increase biomass circulation.

Dynamic slot allocations with different patience levels

This study considers a mechanism design problem in which service slots are allocated over time to buyers arriving in different periods. Buyers have a multidimensional type representing their valuation and patience level. Some buyers can accept delayed service, whereas others cannot. The seller fully commits to a deterministic mechanism. We show that a mechanism is periodic ex-post incentive compatible if and only if the allocation rule is monotone in valuation and “price equivalence” holds. The dynamic pivot mechanism with reserve prices maximizes the seller's expected revenue if and only if the virtual valuation function is affine.