Murilo S. Baptista

Jingdong Zhang, Luan Yang, Murilo S. Baptista et al.

Oscillatory dynamics arise ubiquitously in nonlinear systems, yet identifying a physically interpretable phase and phase dynamics in nonlinear, high-dimensional oscillations remains a central unresolved problem. Here we establish the principle of a universal dynamical clock, a physical perspective in which oscillations of arbitrary dimensionality and geometry are equivalently represented as uniform rotation through an equant-induced nonlinear viewing coordinate, inspired by Ptolemy's equant and formalised through an areal-uniformity principle reminiscent of Kepler's second law. Using a machine-learning framework, we demonstrate the existence of such an equant for a broad class of oscillatory dynamics and construct the associated dynamical clock and phase dynamics under additive forces, including noise, periodic perturbations, and coupling. Its value in uncovering new physical rules and phenomena is demonstrated by four findings: (i) collective oscillations in Escherichia coli populations obey a previously unexplained superlinear scaling law, resolving a long-standing open problem posed in 2004; (ii) the response mechanisms of engineered genetic circuits to changes in gene expression and environmental conditions; (iii) a classical-mechanics counterpart of the Berry geometric phase emerges naturally from the phase of the dynamical clock; and (iv) optimal equant non-uniformity provides a geometric early-warning signal for critical transitions and enables prediction of critical parameters. By providing operational and system-agnostic phase dynamics that can be constructed directly from data, the dynamical clock enables principled classification, comparison, and control of oscillatory systems, and offers a new route to understanding how specific dynamical regimes support distinct functional behaviours in networked systems.

Nir Oren, Bruno Yun, Srdjan Vesic et al.

Gradual semantics with abstract argumentation provide each argument with a score reflecting its acceptability, i.e. how "much" it is attacked by other arguments. Many different gradual semantics have been proposed in the literature, each following different principles and producing different argument rankings. A sub-class of such semantics, the so-called weighted semantics, takes, in addition to the graph structure, an initial set of weights over the arguments as input, with these weights affecting the resultant argument ranking. In this work, we consider the inverse problem over such weighted semantics. That is, given an argumentation framework and a desired argument ranking, we ask whether there exist initial weights such that a particular semantics produces the given ranking. The contribution of this paper are: (1) an algorithm to answer this problem, (2) a characterisation of the properties that a gradual semantics must satisfy for the algorithm to operate, and (3) an empirical evaluation of the proposed algorithm.

Jeaneth Machicao, Odemir M. Bruno, Murilo S. Baptista

In previous work, the $k$-logistic map [Machicao and Bruno, Chaos, vol. 27, 053116 (2017)] was introduced as a transformation operating in the $k$ less significant digits of the Logistic map. It exploited the map's pseudo-randomness character that is present in its less significant digits. In this work, we comprehensively analyze the dynamical and ergodic aspects of this transformation, show its applicability to generic chaotic maps or sets, and its potential impact on enabling the creation of a cryptosystem that is fast, light and reliable.

Juan Afanador, Nir Oren, Murilo S. Baptista

Delegation allows an agent to request that another agent completes a task. In many situations the task may be delegated onwards, and this process can repeat until it is eventually, successfully or unsuccessfully, performed. We consider policies to guide an agent in choosing who to delegate to when such recursive interactions are possible. These policies, based on quitting games and multi-armed bandits, were empirically tested for effectiveness. Our results indicate that the quitting game based policies outperform those which do not explicitly account for the recursive nature of delegation.

Gerard Vidal, Murilo Baptista, Hector Mancini

We present a stream cipher based on a chaotic dynamical system. Using a chaotic trajectory sampled under certain rules in order to avoid any attempt to reconstruct the original one, we create a binary pseudo-random keystream that can only be exactly reproduced by someone that has fully knowledge of the communication system parameters formed by a transmitter and a receiver and sharing the same initial conditions. The plaintext is XORed with the keystream creating the ciphertext, the encrypted message. This keystream passes the NISTs randomness test and has been implemented in a videoconference App for smartphones, in order to show the fast and light nature of the proposed encryption system.