Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distilling Object Detectors with Feature Richness

In recent years, large-scale deep models have achieved great success, but the huge computational complexity and massive storage requirements make it a great challenge to deploy them in resource-limited devices. As a model compression and acceleration method, knowledge distillation effectively improves the performance of small models by transferring the dark knowledge from the teacher detector. However, most of the existing distillation-based detection methods mainly imitating features near bounding boxes, which suffer from two limitations. First, they ignore the beneficial features outside the bounding boxes. Second, these methods imitate some features which are mistakenly regarded as the background by the teacher detector. To address the above issues, we propose a novel Feature-Richness Score (FRS) method to choose important features that improve generalized detectability during distilling. The proposed method effectively retrieves the important features outside the bounding boxes and removes the detrimental features within the bounding boxes. Extensive experiments show that our methods achieve excellent performance on both anchor-based and anchor-free detectors. For example, RetinaNet with ResNet-50 achieves 39.7% in mAP on the COCO2017 dataset, which even surpasses the ResNet-101 based teacher detector 38.9% by 0.8%. Our implementation is available at https://github.com/duzhixing/FRS.
Autoencoder-based Anomaly Detection in Smart Farming Ecosystem

The inclusion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices is growing rapidly in all application domains. Smart Farming uses IoT devices to increase efficiency and optimize farming operations. These devices can be used in a cloud or edge computing infrastructure which can provide remote control of watering and fertilization, real time monitoring of farm conditions, and provide solutions for more sustainable practices. These improvements to efficiency and ease of use come with added risks to security and privacy. Combining vulnerable IoT devices with the critical infrastructure of the agriculture domain broadens the attack surface for adversaries. Cyberattacks in a large coordinated manner could disrupt the economy of agriculture-dependent nations. To the sensors in a system, an attack may appear as anomalous behaviour. Additionally, there are possibilities of anomalies generated due to faulty hardware, issues in network connectivity (if present), or simply abrupt changes to the environment due to weather, human error, or other unforeseen circumstances. To make these systems more secure, it is imperative to detect such data discrepancies and trigger appropriate mitigation mechanisms. In this paper, we propose an anomaly detection model for Smart Farming using an unsupervised Autoencoder machine learning model. We chose to use an Autoencoder as our method of anomaly detection because it attempts to reconstruct normal data with a low reconstruction loss and anomalous data with a high loss. The high reconstruction loss value for a data point indicates that the data is not like the rest. Our model was trained and tested on data collected from our greenhouse test-bed. Our proposed Autoencoder based anomaly detection method achieved 98.98% and took 262 seconds to train and has a detection time of . 0585 seconds.
Meson thermal masses at different temperatures

Sergio Chaves García-Mascaraque,a,∗ Gert Aarts, Chris Allton, Timothy Burns, Simon Hands and Benjamin Jäger Department of Physics, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP, United Kingdom European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT*) & Fondazione Bruno Kessler Strada delle Tabarelle 286, 38123 Villazzano (TN), Italy Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, United Kingdom CP3-Origins & Danish IAS, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Southern Denmark, 5230, Odense M, Denmark
Fast Newton Iterative Method for Local Steric Poisson-Boltzmann Theories in Biomolecular Solvation

This work proposes a fast iterative method for local steric Poisson–Boltzmann (PB) theories, in which the electrostatic potential is governed by the Poisson’s equation and ionic concentrations satisfy equilibrium conditions. To present the method, we focus on a local steric PB theory derived from a lattice-gas model, as an example. The advantages of the proposed method in eﬃciency are achieved by treating ionic concentrations as scalar implicit functions of the electrostatic potential, though such functions are only numerically achievable. The existence, uniqueness, boundness, and smoothness of such functions are rigorously established. A Newton iteration method with truncation is proposed to solve a nonlinear system discretized from the generalized PB equations. The existence and uniqueness of the solution to the discretized nonlinear system are established by showing that it is a unique minimizer of a constructed convex energy. Thanks to the boundness of ionic concentrations, truncation bounds for the potential are obtained by using the extremum principle. The truncation step in iterations is shown to be energy and error decreasing. To further speed-up computations, we propose a novel precomputing-interpolation strategy, which is applicable to other local steric PB theories and makes the proposed methods for solving steric PB theories as eﬃcient as for solving the classical PB theory. Analysis on the Newton iteration method with truncation shows local quadratic convergence for the proposed numerical methods. Applications to realistic biomolecular solvation systems reveal that counterions with steric hindrance stratify in an order prescribed by the parameter of ionic valence-to-volume ratio. Finally, we remark that the proposed iterative methods for local steric PB theories can be readily incorporated in well-known classical PB solvers.
A Novel Linear Power Flow Model

Linear power flow (LPF) models are important for the solution of large-scale problems in power system analysis. This paper proposes a novel LPF method named data-based LPF (DBLPF). The DB-LPF is distinct from the data-driven LPF (DD-LPF) model because the DB-LPF formulates the definition set first and then discretizes the set into representative data samples, while the DD-LPF directly mines the variable mappings from historical or measurement data. In this paper, the concept of LPF definition set (i.e., the set where the LPF performs well) is proposed and an analytical algorithm is provided to get the set. Meanwhile, a novel form of AC-PF models is provided, which is helpful in deriving the analytical algorithm and directing the formulations of LPF models. The definition set is discretized by a grid sampling approach and the obtained samples are processed by the least-squares method to formulate the DB-LPF model. Moreover, the model for obtaining the error bound of the DB-LPF is proposed, and the network losses of the DB-LPF is also analyzed. Finally, the DB-LPF model is tested on enormous cases, whose branch parameters are also analyzed. The test results verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.
R-BERT-CNN: Drug-target interactions extraction from biomedical literature

In this research, we present our work participation for the DrugProt task of BioCreative VII challenge. Drug-target interactions (DTIs) are critical for drug discovery and repurposing, which are often manually extracted from the experimental articles. There are >32M biomedical articles on PubMed and manually extracting DTIs from such a huge knowledge base is challenging. To solve this issue, we provide a solution for Track 1, which aims to extract 10 types of interactions between drug and protein entities. We applied an Ensemble Classifier model that combines BioMed-RoBERTa, a state of art language model, with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to extract these relations. Despite the class imbalances in the BioCreative VII DrugProt test corpus, our model achieves a good performance compared to the average of other submissions in the challenge, with the micro F1 score of 55.67% (and 63% on BioCreative VI ChemProt test corpus). The results show the potential of deep learning in extracting various types of DTIs. Keywords—Drug-target interaction; RoBERTa; BERT; Drug discovery; drug repurposing; CNN; relation extraction; text mining
Revisiting joint decoding based multi-talker speech recognition with DNN acoustic model

In typical multi-talker speech recognition systems, a neural network-based acoustic model predicts senone state posteriors for each speaker. These are later used by a single-talker decoder which is applied on each speaker-speciﬁc output stream separately. In this work, we argue that such a scheme is sub-optimal and propose a principled solution that decodes all speakers jointly. We modify the acoustic model to predict joint state posteriors for all speakers, enabling the network to express uncertainty about the attribution of parts of the speech signal to the speakers. We employ a joint decoder that can make use of this uncertainty together with higher-level language information. For this, we revisit decoding algorithms used in factorial generative models in early multi-talker speech recognition systems. In contrast with these early works, we replace the GMM acoustic model with DNN, which provides greater modeling power and simpliﬁes part of the inference. We demonstrate the advantage of joint decoding in proof of concept experiments on a mixed-TIDIGITS dataset.
Characteristic Cracking Pattern Generated on Tissue Slice as a Useful Index for Medical Diagnosis

Although biopsy is one of the most important methods for diagnosis in diseases, there exists undesired ambiguity judged through the information obtained from the visual inspection of tissue slices. Here, we report that, with a simple treatment by use of a urethane sheet, characteristic cracking pattern is generated for tissue slices depending on the difference of disease state. We used the tissue slices obtained from mouse liver with different stages of disease: Healthy normal state, Simple steatosis, Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and Hepatocellular carcinoma. It is suggested that the cracking pattern of a tissue slice caused by absorbing provides useful information for distinguishing among the disease states.
OctField: Hierarchical Implicit Functions for 3D Modeling

Recent advances in localized implicit functions have enabled neural implicit representation to be scalable to large scenes. However, the regular subdivision of 3D space employed by these approaches fails to take into account the sparsity of the surface occupancy and the varying granularities of geometric details. As a result, its memory footprint grows cubically with the input volume, leading to a prohibitive computational cost even at a moderately dense decomposition. In this work, we present a learnable hierarchical implicit representation for 3D surfaces, coded OctField, that allows high-precision encoding of intricate surfaces with low memory and computational budget. The key to our approach is an adaptive decomposition of 3D scenes that only distributes local implicit functions around the surface of interest. We achieve this goal by introducing a hierarchical octree structure to adaptively subdivide the 3D space according to the surface occupancy and the richness of part geometry. As octree is discrete and non-differentiable, we further propose a novel hierarchical network that models the subdivision of octree cells as a probabilistic process and recursively encodes and decodes both octree structure and surface geometry in a differentiable manner. We demonstrate the value of OctField for a range of shape modeling and reconstruction tasks, showing superiority over alternative approaches.
Statistical Inference in Parametric Preferential Attachment Trees

The preferential attachment (PA) model is a popular way of modeling dynamic social networks, such as collaboration networks. Assuming that the PA function takes a parametric form, we propose and study the maximum likelihood estimator of the parameter. Using a supercritical continuous-time branching process framework, we prove the almost sure consistency and asymptotic normality of this estimator. We also provide an estimator that only depends on the final snapshot of the network and prove its consistency, and its asymptotic normality under general conditions. We compare the performance of the estimators to a nonparametric estimator in a small simulation study.
Characterization of pedestal burst instabilities during I-mode to H-mode transition in the EAST tokamak

Quasi-periodic pedestal burst instabilities (PBIs), featuring alternative turbulence suppression and bursts, have been clearly identified by various edge diagnostics during I-mode to H-mode transition in the EAST Tokamak. The radial distribution of the phase perturbation caused by PBI shows that PBI is localized in the pedestal. Prior to each PBI, a significant increase of density gradient close to the pedestal top can be clearly distinguished, then the turbulence burst is generated, accompanied by the relaxation of the density profile, and then induces an outward particle flux. The relative density perturbation caused by PBIs is about 6%–8%. Statistic analyses show that the pedestal normalized density gradient R/L n triggering the first PBI has a threshold value, mostly in the range of 22–24, suggesting that a PBI triggering instability could be driven by the density gradient. And R/L n triggering the last PBI is about 30–40 and seems to increase with the loss power and the chord-averaged density. In addition, the frequency of PBI is likely to be inversely proportional to the chord-averaged density and the loss power. These results suggest that PBIs and the density gradient prompt increase prior to PBIs can be considered as the precursor for controlling I–H transition.
Multi-User Augmented Reality with Infrastructure-free Collaborative Localization

Multi-user augmented reality (AR) could someday empower first responders with the ability to see team members around corners and through walls. For this vision of people tracking in dynamic environments to be practical, we need a relative localization system that is nearly instantly available across wide-areas without any existing infrastructure or manual setup. In this paper, we present LocAR, an infrastructure-free 6-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) localization system for AR applications that uses motion estimates and range measurements between users to establish an accurate relative coordinate system. We show that not only is it possible to perform collaborative localization without infrastructure or global coordinates, but that our approach provides nearly the same level of accuracy as fixed infrastructure approaches for AR teaming applications. LocAR uses visual-inertial odometry (VIO) in conjunction with ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging radios to estimate the relative position of each device in an ad-hoc manner. The system leverages a collaborative 6DoF particle filtering formulation that operates on sporadic messages exchanged between nearby users. Unlike map or landmark sharing approaches, this allows for collaborative AR sessions even if users do not overlap the same spaces. LocAR consists of an open-source UWB firmware and reference mobile phone application that can display the location of team members in real-time using mobile AR. We evaluate LocAR across multiple buildings under a wide-variety of conditions including a contiguous 30,000 square foot region spanning multiple floors and find that it achieves median geometric error in 3D of less than 1 meter between five users freely walking across 3 floors.
Artificial Intelligence in the Low-Level Realm - A Survey

Resource-aware machine learning has been a trending topic in recent years, focusing on making ML computational aspects more exploitable by the edge devices in the Internet of Things. This paper attempts to review a conceptually and practically related area concentrated on efforts and challenges for applying ML in the operating systems' main tasks in a low-resource environment. Artificial Intelligence has been integrated into the operating system with applications such as voice or image recognition. However, this integration is only in user space. Here, we seek methods and efforts that exploit AI approaches, specifically machine learning, in the OSes' primary responsibilities. We provide the improvements that ML can bring to OS to make them more trustworthy. In other words, the main question to be answered is how AI has played/can play a role directly in improving the traditional OS kernel main tasks. Also, the challenges and limitations in the way of this combination are provided.
Analyzing behavioral changes of Twitter users after exposure to misinformation

Social media platforms have been exploited to disseminate misinformation in recent years. The widespread online misinformation has been shown to affect users' beliefs and is connected to social impact such as polarization. In this work, we focus on misinformation's impact on specific user behavior and aim to understand whether general Twitter users changed their behavior after being exposed to misinformation. We compare the before and after behavior of exposed users to determine whether the frequency of the tweets they posted, or the sentiment of their tweets underwent any significant change. Our results indicate that users overall exhibited statistically significant changes in behavior across some of these metrics. Through language distance analysis, we show that exposed users were already different from baseline users before the exposure. We also study the characteristics of two specific user groups, multi-exposure and extreme change groups, which were potentially highly impacted. Finally, we study if the changes in the behavior of the users after exposure to misinformation tweets vary based on the number of their followers or the number of followers of the tweet authors, and find that their behavioral changes are all similar.
In-layer Thermal Control of a Multi-layer Selective Laser Melting Process

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing technology that builds three dimensional parts by melting layers of metal powder together with a laser that traces out a desired geometry. SLM is popular in industry, however the inherent melting and re-solidification of the metal during the process can, if left uncontrolled, cause excessive residual stress, porosity, and other defects in the final printed parts. This paper presents a control-oriented thermal model of a multi-layer SLM process and proposes a structured model reduction methodology with an associated reduced order model based in-layer controller to track temperature references. Simulation studies demonstrate that the controller is able to prevent layer-to-layer heat buildup and that good closed-loop performance is possible using relatively low-order models.
Uncovering IP Address Hosting Types Behind Malicious Websites

Hundreds of thousands of malicious domains are created everyday. These malicious domains are hosted on a wide variety of network infrastructures. Traditionally, attackers utilize bullet proof hosting services (e.g. MaxiDed, Cyber Bunker) to take advantage of relatively lenient policies on what content they can host. However, these IP ranges are increasingly being blocked or the services are taken down by law enforcement. Hence, attackers are moving towards utilizing IPs from regular hosting providers while staying under the radar of these hosting providers. There are several practical advantages of accurately knowing the type of IP used to host malicious domains. If the IP is a dedicated IP (i.e. it is leased to a single entity), one may blacklist the IP to block domains hosted on those IPs as welll as use as a way to identify other malicious domains hosted the same IP. If the IP is a shared hosting IP, hosting providers may take measures to clean up such domains and maintain a high reputation for their users.
Latent Structure Mining With Contrastive Modality Fusion for Multimedia Recommendation

Multimedia contents are of predominance in the modern Web era. Recent years have witnessed growing research interests in multimedia recommendation, which aims to predict whether a user will interact with an item with multimodal contents. Most previous studies focus on modeling user-item interactions with multimodal features included as side information. However, this scheme is not well-designed for multimedia recommendation. First, only collaborative item-item relationships are implicitly modeled through high-order item-user-item co-occurrences. Considering that items are associated with rich contents in multiple modalities, we argue that the latent semantic item-item structures underlying these multimodal contents could be beneficial for learning better item representations and assist the recommender models to comprehensively discover candidate items. Second, although previous studies consider multiple modalities, their ways of fusing multiple modalities by linear combination or concatenation is insufficient to fully capture content information of items and item relationships. To address these deficiencies, we propose a latent structure MIning with ContRastive mOdality fusion model, which we term MICRO for brevity. To be specific, we devise a novel modality-aware structure learning module, which learns item-item relationships for each modality. Based on the learned modality-aware latent item relationships, we perform graph convolutions to explicitly inject item affinities into modality-aware item representations. Additionally, we design a novel multimodal contrastive framework to facilitate item-level multimodal fusion by mining both modality-shared and modality-specific information. Finally, the item representations are plugged into existing collaborative filtering methods to make accurate recommendation. Extensive experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of our method over state-of-arts and rationalize the design choice of our work.
Self-similar mechanisms in wall turbulence studied using resolvent analysis

Abstract Self-similarity of wall-attached coherent structures in a turbulent channel at $Re_\tau =543$ is explored by means of resolvent analysis. In this modelling framework, coherent structures are understood to arise as a response of the linearised mean-flow operator to generalised frequency-dependent Reynolds stresses, considered to act as an endogenous forcing. We assess the self-similarity of both the wall-attached flow structures and the associated forcing. The former are educed from direct numerical simulation data by finding the flow field correlated with the wall shear, whereas the latter is identified using a frequency space version of extended proper orthogonal decomposition (Borée, Exp. Fluids, vol. 35, issue 2, 2003, pp. 188–192). The forcing structures identified are compared to those obtained using the resolvent-based estimation introduced by Towne et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 883, 2020, A17). The analysis reveals self-similarity of both wall-attached structures – in quantitative agreement with Townsend's hypothesis of self-similar attached eddies – and the underlying forcing, at least in certain components.