40
votes
Why can't we mimic a dog's ability to smell COVID?
Addressing the hardware side of your question:
A dog's sense of smell was developed through millions of years of evolution. The dog's nose is powered by hundreds of millions of organic nanomachines (...
- 521
39
votes
Accepted
Why can't we mimic a dog's ability to smell COVID?
We can actually detect some diseases via smell, and the term to search for is olfaction. The general problem is known as breath analysis.
However, the research into olfaction and machine learning is ...
- 18k
14
votes
Usefulness of binary extension field GF(2^n)
$GF(2^n)$ is used in error correcting codes, in some elements of cryptography (e.g., message authentication with 2-universal hashing), and in the AES block cipher, which is very widely used.
D.W.♦
- 169k
5
votes
Accepted
Practical applications of the palindromic substring problem?
Lots of string-related algorithms have applications in the field of bioinformatics. Motivations for finding palindromic substrings in bioinformatics include
Finding secondary structures in RNA ...
- 1,039
5
votes
Accepted
What is the closest theory to "The theory of code refactoring"?
Basic code refactoring is not about symmetries but rather about equivalences. When code $C$ is transformed by refactoring to become code $C'$, we expect $C$ and $C'$ to "do the same thing". (...
- 31.8k
4
votes
Accepted
Usefulness of binary extension field GF(2^n)
There indeed aren't a lot of situations where any binary extension field would work but no other finite field would. In fact, I can't think of any off the top of my head. Usually, you either need a ...
- 2,205
3
votes
Accepted
Encoding a "not-k-out-of-n" constraint for SAT solvers
Assuming you work in CNF, construct "at least $k+1$-out-of-$n$" and add "or $p$" to each disjunction. Do the same for "at most $k-1$-out-of-$n$" and add "or $q$" to each disjunction.
Then add one ...
- 14k
3
votes
1
vote
Why can't we mimic a dog's ability to smell COVID?
One of the major players in this question is adaptation. The brain is a marvel of adaptation which software developers are still desperately trying to unlock. So from that perspective, it's a ...
- 3,562
1
vote
Examples of random deployment in wireless sensors networks
One scenario that I've heard discussed is the idea that an airplane flies over a remote area and drops wireless sensors. They fall somewhat randomly, and then need to establish a network amongst ...
D.W.♦
- 169k
1
vote
Accepted
Maximize area of light with 4 light sources on a diagram of a room
This is an optimization problem, where a function $f: \Bbb R^8 \rightarrow \Bbb R$ is defined as an area of the visibility polygon, corresponding to four points, situated inside a polygon with holes. ...
- 3,183
1
vote
Relation/use of irrational or transcedental numbers in computer science?
On the surface that does not strike me as a high-quality paper. I wouldn't recommend it.
I don't think irrational/transcendental numbers are a good approach to building PRNGs. Building PRNGs is ...
D.W.♦
- 169k
1
vote
What are some practical problems which require the use of Kadane's algorithm?
See the Wikipedia article on the maximum subarray problem for applications to genomic sequence analysis, computer vision, and data mining.
- 389
1
vote
Google's Deep Dreamer
Simply put, you:
Pick a layer
Forward propagate to that layer
Set the gradient at that layer to the activation at that layer.
Backpropagate to update the image
The general idea is that you want that ...
1
vote
Google's Deep Dreamer
So far nothing's been said about technical details of DeepDream. I'll fill the blank.
The procedure is the following: pick some layer from the network (usually a convolutional layer), pass the ...
- 640
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