Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rate Splitting Multiple Access in C-RAN: A Scalable and Robust Design

Cloud radio access networks (C-RAN) enable a network platform for beyond the fifth generation of communication networks (B5G), which incorporates the advances in cloud computing technologies to modern radio access networks. Recently, rate splitting multiple access (RSMA), relying on multi-antenna rate splitting (RS) at the transmitter and successive interference cancellation (SIC) at the receivers, has been shown to manage the interference in multi-antenna communication networks efficiently. This paper considers applying RSMA in C-RAN. We address the practical challenge of a transmitter that only knows the statistical channel state information (CSI) of the users. To this end, the paper investigates the problem of stochastic coordinated beamforming (SCB) optimization to maximize the ergodic sum-rate (ESR) in the network. Furthermore, we propose a scalable and robust RS scheme where the number of the common streams to be decoded at each user scales linearly with the number of users, and the common stream selection only depends on the statistical CSI. The setup leads to a challenging stochastic and non-convex optimization problem. A sample average approximation (SAA) and weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE) based algorithm is adopted to tackle the intractable stochastic non-convex optimization and guarantee convergence to a stationary point asymptotically. The numerical simulations demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed RS strategy and show a gain up to 27% in the achievable ESR compared with state-of-the-art schemes, namely treating interference as noise (TIN) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes.
Semiclassical corrections to the photon orbits of a non-rotating black hole

In this brief article we discuss the corrections to the photon orbits of a non-rotating black hole due to semiclassical fluctuations of the metric. It is found that the photon orbit impact parameter differences become of the order of the semiclassical fluctuations. We calculate the effect of the semi-classical fluctuations on the photon orbits and we expect these to be detected in future images of the event horizon obtained with greater resolution.
Real-Time Text Detection and Recognition

Inrecentyears,ConvolutionalNeuralNet-work(CNN) is quite a popular topic, as it is a powerful andintelligent technique that can be applied in various fields.The YOLO is a technique that uses the algorithms for real-time text detection tasks. However, issues like, photometricdistortion and geometric distortion, could affect the systemYOLO accuracy and cause system failure. Therefore, thereare improvements that can make the system work better. Inthis paper, we are going to present our solution - a potentialsolution of a fast and accurate real-time text direction andrecognition system. The paper covers the topic of Real-TimeText detection and recognition in three major areas: 1. videoand image preprocess, 2. Text detection, 3. Text recognition. Asa mature technique, there are many existing methods that canpotentially improve the solution. We will go through some ofthose existing methods in the literature review session. In thisway, we are presenting an industrial strength, high-accuracy,Real-Time Text Detection and recognition tool.
Using a Bi-directional LSTM Model with Attention Mechanism trained on MIDI Data for Generating Unique Music

Generating music is an interesting and challenging problem in the field of machine learning. Mimicking human creativity has been popular in recent years, especially in the field of computer vision and image processing. With the advent of GANs, it is possible to generate new similar images, based on trained data. But this cannot be done for music similarly, as music has an extra temporal dimension. So it is necessary to understand how music is represented in digital form. When building models that perform this generative task, the learning and generation part is done in some high-level representation such as MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) or scores. This paper proposes a bi-directional LSTM (Long short-term memory) model with attention mechanism capable of generating similar type of music based on MIDI data. The music generated by the model follows the theme/style of the music the model is trained on. Also, due to the nature of MIDI, the tempo, instrument, and other parameters can be defined, and changed, post generation.
A Privacy-Preserving Content-Based Image Retrieval Scheme Allowing Mixed Use Of Encrypted And Plain Images

In this paper, we propose a novel content basedimage retrieval scheme allowing the mixed use of encrypted and plain images for the first time. In the proposed scheme, images are encrypted by a block-scrambling method developed for encryption-then-compression (EtC) systems. The encrypted images, referred to as EtC images, can be compressed with JPEG, as well as for plain images. Image descriptors used for the proposed retrieval is designed to avoid the effect of image encryption. As a result, the use of EtC images and the descriptors allows us to carry out retrieval of both encrypted images and plain ones. In an experiment, the proposed scheme is demonstrated to have the same performance as conventional retrieval methods with plain images, even under the mixed use of plain images and EtC ones.
Sound Event Detection and Separation: A Benchmark on Desed Synthetic Soundscapes

We propose a benchmark of state-of-the-art sound event detection systems (SED). We design synthetic evaluation sets to focus on specific sound event detection challenges. We analyze the performance of the submissions to DCASE 2020 Task 4 as a function of time-related modifications (time position of an event and length of clips) and study the impact of non-target sound events and reverberation. We show that temporal localization of sound events remains a challenge for SED systems. We also show that reverberation and non-target sound events severely degrade system performance. In the latter case, sound separation seems like a promising solution.
BERT-Based Semantic Model for Rescoring N-Best Speech Recognition List

This work aims to improve automatic speech recognition (ASR) by modeling long-term semantic relations. We propose to perform this through rescoring the ASR N-best hypotheses list. To achieve this, we propose two deep neural network (DNN) models and combine semantic, acoustic, and linguistic information. Our DNN rescoring models are aimed at selecting hypotheses that have better semantic consistency and therefore lower WER. We investigate a powerful representation as part of input features to our DNN model: dynamic contextual embeddings from Transformer-based BERT. Acoustic and linguistic features are also included. We perform experiments on the publicly available dataset TED-LIUM. We evaluate in clean and in noisy conditions, with n-gram and Recurrent Neural Network Language Model (RNNLM), more precisely Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model. The proposed rescoring approaches give significant WER improvements over the ASR system without rescoring models. Furthermore, the combination of rescoring methods based on BERT and GPT-2 scores achieves the best results. Compared to [13][14], we use a more powerful model with several transformer layers. Compared to [19], where masked word prediction is performed for BERT , we use the sentence prediction capability of the BERT model. Compared to our previous work we hypotheses at and hypotheses representations by In experiments using publicly available speech we systematically explore the effectiveness of the proposed features and their combinations. proposed ASR approaches competitive This
Active Structure Learning of Causal DAGs via Directed Clique Tree

A growing body of work has begun to study intervention design for efficient structure learning of causal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). A typical setting is a causally sufficient setting, i.e. a system with no latent confounders, selection bias, or feedback, when the essential graph of the observational equivalence class (EC) is given as an input and interventions are assumed to be noiseless. Most existing works focus on worst-case or average-case lower bounds for the number of interventions required to orient a DAG. These worst-case lower bounds only establish that the largest clique in the essential graph could make it difficult to learn the true DAG. In this work, we develop a universal lower bound for single-node interventions that establishes that the largest clique is always a fundamental impediment to structure learning. Specifically, we present a decomposition of a DAG into independently orientable components through directed clique trees and use it to prove that the number of single-node interventions necessary to orient any DAG in an EC is at least the sum of half the size of the largest cliques in each chain component of the essential graph. Moreover, we present a two-phase intervention design algorithm that, under certain conditions on the chordal skeleton, matches the optimal number of interventions up to a multiplicative logarithmic factor in the number of maximal cliques. We show via synthetic experiments that our algorithm can scale to much larger graphs than most of the related work and achieves better worst-case performance than other scalable approaches. A code base to recreate these results can be found at this https URL
Waymo Public Road Safety Performance Data

Waymo's mission to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities and improve mobility for all has led us to expand deployment of automated vehicles on public roads without a human driver behind the wheel. As part of this process, Waymo is committed to providing the public with informative and relevant data regarding the demonstrated safety of Waymo's automated driving system, which we call the Waymo Driver. The data presented in this paper represents more than 6.1 million miles of automated driving in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area, including operations with a trained operator behind the steering wheel from calendar year 2019 and 65,000 miles of driverless operation without a human behind the steering wheel from 2019 and the first nine months of 2020. The paper includes every collision and minor contact experienced during these operations as well as every predicted contact identified using Waymo's counterfactual, what if, simulation of events had the vehicle's trained operator not disengaged automated driving. There were 47 contact events that occurred over this time period, consisting of 18 actual and 29 simulated contact events, none of which would be expected to result in severe or life threatening injuries. This paper presents the collision typology and severity for each actual and simulated event, along with diagrams depicting each of the most significant events. Nearly all the events involved one or more road rule violations or other errors by a human driver or road user, including all eight of the most severe events, which we define as involving actual or expected airbag deployment in any involved vehicle. When compared to national collision statistics, the Waymo Driver completely avoided certain collision modes that human driven vehicles are frequently involved in, including road departure and collisions with fixed objects.
HM$^4$: Hidden Markov Model With Memory Management for Visual Place Recognition

Visual placerecognition needs to be robust against appearance variability due to natural and man-made causes. Training data collection should thus be an ongoing process to allow continuous appearance changes to be recorded. However, this creates an unboundedly-growing database that poses time and memory scalability challenges for place recognition methods. To tackle the scalability issue for visual place recognition in autonomous driving, we develop a Hidden Markov Model approach with a two-tiered memory management. Our algorithm, dubbed HM$^4$, exploits temporal look-ahead to transfer promising candidate images between passive storage and active memory when needed. The inference process takes into account both promising images and a coarse representations of the full database. We show that this allows constant time and space inference for a fixed coverage area. The coarse representations can also be updated incrementally to absorb new data. To further reduce the memory requirements, we derive a compact image representation inspired by Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH). Through experiments on real world data, we demonstrate the excellent scalability and accuracy of the approach under appearance changes and provide comparisons against state-of-the-art techniques.
CNN-Driven Quasiconformal Model for Large Deformation Image Registration

We present a novel way to perform image registration, which is not limited to a specific kind, between image pairs with very large deformation, while preserving Quasiconformal property without tedious manual landmark labeling that conventional mathematical registration methods require. Alongside the practical function of our algorithm, one just-as-important underlying message is that the integration between typical CNN and existing Mathematical model is successful as will be pointed out by our paper, meaning that machine learning and mathematical model could coexist, cover for each other and significantly improve registration result. This paper will demonstrate an unprecedented idea of making use of both robustness of CNNs and rigorousness of mathematical model to obtain meaningful registration maps between 2D images under the aforementioned strict constraints for the sake of well-posedness.
Measure Theoretic Approach to Nonuniform Learnability

An earlier introduced characterization of nonuniform learnability that allows the sample size to depend on the hypothesis to which the learner is compared has been redefined using the measure theoretic approach. Where nonuniform learnability is a strict relaxation of the Probably Approximately Correct framework. Introduction of a new algorithm, Generalize Measure Learnability framework, to implement this approach with the study of its sample and computational complexity bounds. Like the Minimum Description Length principle, this approach can be regarded as an explication of Occam razor. Furthermore, many situations were presented, Hypothesis Classes that are countable where we can apply the GML framework, which we can learn to use the GML scheme and can achieve statistical consistency.
Correlation of Quantitative Measurements with Diabetic Disease Severity utilizing Multiple En Face OCTA Image Averaging

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of averaging en-face optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) images on quantitative measurements of the retinal microvasculature and their correlation to diabetic retinopathy (DR) disease severity. Design: Cross-sectional cohort study Participants: 105 eyes (65 patients) with 28 eyes from 19 healthy, aged-matched controls, 14 eyes from 9 diabetics without DR and 63 eyes from 37 diabetics with varying levels of DR. Methods: Spectral-domain OCTA images with uniform illumination, good foveal centration, and no macular edema or significant motion artifact were acquired 5 times with the 3×3 mm scan pattern on the CIRRUS™ 5000 HD-OCT with AngioPlex (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Dublin, CA) software. En-face images of the superficial retinal layer (SRL) and deep retinal layer (DRL) were registered and averaged. Included eyes had a signal strength ≥7. Vessel length density (VLD), perfusion density (PD) and foveal avascular zone (FAZ) parameters were measured on averaged versus single OCTA images. Pearson correlation coefficient compared the two groups. Univariate and multivariate linear regression correlated quantitative metrics to DR severity and best corrected visual acuity (BCVA). Results: 84 eyes (55 patients) met the inclusion criteria. Almost uniformly, lower VLD and PD parameters were significantly associated with worse DR severity and BCVA. Multivariable linear regression for DR severity resulted in an R 2 value of 0.82 and 0.77 for single and averaged groups, respectively. No variables remained significantly associated with DR severity in multivariate analysis with single images but in averaged images, increased superior SRL PD significantly predicted worse DR severity (coefficient 52.7, p=0.026). Multivariate linear regression for BCVA had an R 2 value of 0.42 and 0.47 for single and averaged groups, respectively. FAZ size was not associated with DR severity when single OCTA images (p=0.98) were considered, but was highly associated when using averaged images (coefficient 6.18, p<0.001). FAZ size was predictive for logMAR BCVA with averaged images (0.21, p=0.004), but not with single images (p=0.31). Conclusions: Averaging of en-face OCTA images improves the visualization of capillaries, particularly increasing the clarity of the FAZ borders, and therefore improves the correlation of vessel density and FAZ-specific parameters to DR severity and BCVA. Precis Averaging of en-face SD-OCTA improves the visualization of capillaries compared to single images, and lower overall vessel length density is associated with worsening visual acuity and severity of diabetic retinopathy.
Pose Estimation of Specular and Symmetrical Objects

In the robotic industry, specular and textureless metallic components are ubiquitous. The 6D pose estimation of such objects with only a monocular RGB camera is difficult because of the absence of rich texture features. Furthermore, the appearance of specularity heavily depends on the camera viewpoint and environmental light conditions making traditional methods, like template matching, fail. In the last 30 years, pose estimation of the specular object has been a consistent challenge, and most related works require massive knowledge modeling effort for light setups, environment, or the object surface. On the other hand, recent works exhibit the feasibility of 6D pose estimation on a monocular camera with convolutional neural networks(CNNs) however they mostly use opaque objects for evaluation. This paper provides a data-driven solution to estimate the 6D pose of specular objects for grasping them, proposes a cost function for handling symmetry, and demonstrates experimental results showing the system's feasibility.
Convolutional Neural Networks Based System for Urban Sound Tagging with Spatiotemporal Context

Noise pollution has a significant impact on the quality of life of citizens and urban development, and its prevention and control has been widely valued. In order to better protect the environment, the analysis and monitoring technology of urban noise pollution needs to be further optimized. Urban Sound Tagging (UST) can help to map the distribution of noise pollution and therefore attracts more attentions. The goal of UST is to tag a recording, which is collected by the sensors from urban environment, and returns whether noise pollution is audible or not. In previous works, only sound signal is provided and used. However, the spatiotemporal context can offer more information. In this paper, we proposed convolutional neural networks (CNNs) based system for UST with spatiotemporal context. In our system, multiple features and spatiotemporal context are combined, and fed into a residual CNN to predict whether noise of pollution is present in a 10-second recording. To eliminate the imbalance problem of the dataset, a data augmentation method is applied during the training. Finally, a fusion strategy is adopted to further improve the performance of UST. We evaluated the proposed system on the DCASE2020 task5 dataset. The experimental results show that the proposed system significantly outperform the baseline system on the evaluation metrics.
Long-Term IaaS Selection Using Performance Discovery

We propose a novel framework to select IaaS providers according to a consumer’s long-term performance requirements. The proposed framework leverages free short-term trials to discover the unknown QoS performance of IaaS providers. We design a temporal skyline-based filtering method to select candidate IaaS providers for the short-term trials. A novel cooperative long-term QoS prediction approach is developed that utilizes past trial experiences of similar consumers using a workload replay technique. We propose a new trial workload generation model that estimates a provider’s long-term performance in the absence of past trial experiences. The confidence of the prediction is measured based on the trial experience of the consumer. A set of experiments are conducted based on real-world datasets to evaluate the proposed framework.
Cross-Lingual Document Retrieval with Smooth Learning

Cross-lingual document search is an information retrieval task in which the queries’ language and the documents’ language are different. In this paper, we study the instability of neural document search models and propose a novel end-to-end robust framework that achieves improved performance in cross-lingual search with different documents’ languages. This framework includes a novel measure of the relevance, smooth cosine similarity, between queries and documents, and a novel loss function, Smooth Ordinal Search Loss, as the objective function. We further provide theoretical guarantee on the generalization error bound for the proposed framework. We conduct experiments to compare our approach with other document search models, and observe significant gains under commonly used ranking metrics on the cross-lingual document retrieval task in a variety of languages.
Memory Group Sampling Based Online Action Recognition Using Kinetic Skeleton Features

Online action recognition is an important task for human centered intelligent services, which is still difficult to achieve due to the varieties and uncertainties of spatial and temporal scales of human actions. In this paper, we propose two core ideas to handle the online action recognition problem. First, we combine the spatial and temporal skeleton features to depict the actions, which include not only the geometrical features, but also multi-scale motion features, such that both the spatial and temporal information of the action are covered. Second, we propose a memory group sampling method to combine the previous action frames and current action frames, which is based on the truth that the neighbouring frames are largely redundant, and the sampling mechanism ensures that the long-term contextual information is also considered. Finally, an improved 1D CNN network is employed for training and testing using the features from sampled frames. The comparison results to the state of the art methods using the public datasets show that the proposed method is fast and efficient, and has competitive performance
Measure inducing classification and regression trees for functional data

We propose a tree‐based algorithm (μCART) for classification and regression problems in the context of functional data analysis, which allows to leverage measure learning and multiple splitting rules at the node level, with the objective of reducing error while retaining the interpretability of a tree. For each internal node, our main contribution is the idea of learning a weighted functional L2 space by means of constrained convex optimization, which is then used to extract multiple weighted integral features from the functional predictors, in order to determine the binary split. The approach is designed to manage multiple functional predictors and/or responses, by defining suitable splitting rules and loss functions that can depend on the specific problem and can also be combined with additional scalar and categorical predictors, as the tree is grown with the original greedy CART algorithm. We focus on the case of scalar‐valued functional predictors defined on unidimensional domains and illustrate the effectiveness of our method in both classification and regression tasks, through a simulation study and four real‐world applications.