Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coupled-Space Attacks against Random-Walk-based Anomaly Detection

Random Walks-based Anomaly Detection (RWAD) is commonly used to identify anomalous patterns in various applications. An intriguing characteristic of RWAD is that the input graph can either be pre-existing or constructed from raw features. Consequently, there are two potential attack surfaces against RWAD: graph-space attacks and feature-space attacks. In this paper, we explore this vulnerability by designing practical coupled-space attacks, investigating the interplay between graph-space and feature-space attacks. To this end, we conduct a thorough complexity analysis, proving that attacking RWAD is NP-hard. Then, we proceed to formulate the graph-space attack as a bi-level optimization problem and propose two strategies to solve it: alternative iteration (alterI-attack) or utilizing the closed-form solution of the random walk model (cf-attack). Finally, we utilize the results from the graph-space attacks as guidance to design more powerful feature-space attacks (i.e., graph-guided attacks). Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed attacks are effective in enabling the target nodes from RWAD with a limited attack budget. In addition, we conduct transfer attack experiments in a black-box setting, which show that our feature attack significantly decreases the anomaly scores of target nodes. Our study opens the door to studying the coupled-space attack against graph anomaly detection in which the graph space relies on the feature space.
Security Analysis of Smart Contract Migration from Ethereum to Arbitrum

When migrating smart contracts from one blockchain platform to another, there are potential security risks. This is because different blockchain platforms have different environments and characteristics for executing smart contracts. The focus of this paper is to study the security risks associated with the migration of smart contracts from Ethereum to Arbitrum. We collected relevant data and analyzed smart contract migration cases to explore the differences between Ethereum and Arbitrum in areas such as Arbitrum cross-chain messaging, block properties, contract address alias, and gas fees. From the 36 types of smart contract migration cases we identified, we selected 4 typical types of cases and summarized their security risks. The research shows that smart contracts deployed on Ethereum may face certain potential security risks during migration to Arbitrum, mainly due to issues inherent in public blockchain characteristics, such as outdated off-chain data obtained by the inactive sequencer, logic errors based on time, the permission check failed, Denial of Service(DOS) attacks. To mitigate these security risks, we proposed avoidance methods and provided considerations for users and developers to ensure a secure migration process. It's worth noting that this study is the first to conduct an in-depth analysis of the secure migration of smart contracts from Ethereum to Arbitrum.
Towards a New Interface for Music Listening: A User Experience Study on YouTube

In light of the enduring success of music streaming services, it is noteworthy that an increasing number of users are positively gravitating toward YouTube as their preferred platform for listening to music. YouTube differs from typical music streaming services in that they provide a diverse range of music-related videos as well as soundtracks. However, despite the increasing popularity of using YouTube as a platform for music consumption, there is still a lack of comprehensive research on this phenomenon. As independent researchers unaffiliated with YouTube, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 users who listen to music through YouTube more than three times a week to investigate its usability and interface satisfaction. Our qualitative analysis found that YouTube has five main meanings for users as a music streaming service: 1) exploring musical diversity, 2) sharing unique playlists, 3) providing visual satisfaction, 4) facilitating user interaction, and 5) allowing free and easy access. We also propose wireframes of a video streaming service for better audio-visual music listening in two stages: search and listening. By these wireframes, we offer practical solutions to enhance user satisfaction with YouTube for music listening. These findings have wider implications beyond YouTube and could inform enhancements in other music streaming services as well.
EdgeConvEns: Convolutional Ensemble Learning for Edge Intelligence

Deep edge intelligence aims to deploy deep learning models that demand computationally expensive training in the edge network with limited computational power. Moreover, many deep edge intelligence applications require handling distributed data that cannot be transferred to a central server due to privacy concerns. Decentralized learning methods, such as federated learning, offer solutions where models are learned collectively by exchanging learned weights. However, they often require complex models that edge devices may not handle and multiple rounds of network communication to achieve state-of-the-art performances. This study proposes a convolutional ensemble learning approach, coined EdgeConvEns, that facilitates training heterogeneous weak models on edge and learning to ensemble them where data on edge are heterogeneously distributed. Edge models are implemented and trained independently on Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices with various computational capacities. Learned data representations are transferred to a central server where the ensemble model is trained with the learned features received from the edge devices to boost the overall prediction performance. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the EdgeConvEns can outperform the state-of-the-art performance with fewer communications and less data in various training scenarios.
Sequential hypothesis testing for continuously-monitored quantum systems

We consider a quantum system that is being continuously monitored, giving rise to a measurement signal. From such a stream of data, information needs to be inferred about the underlying system's dynamics. Here we focus on hypothesis testing problems and put forward the usage of sequential strategies where the signal is analyzed in real time, allowing the experiment to be concluded as soon as the underlying hypothesis can be identified with a certified prescribed success probability. We analyze the performance of sequential tests by studying the stopping-time behavior, showing a considerable advantage over currently-used strategies based on a fixed predetermined measurement time.
Samplable Anonymous Aggregation for Private Federated Data Analysis

We revisit the problem of designing scalable protocols for private statistics and private federated learning when each device holds its private data. Our first contribution is to propose a simple primitive that allows for efficient implementation of several commonly used algorithms, and allows for privacy accounting that is close to that in the central setting without requiring the strong trust assumptions it entails. Second, we propose a system architecture that implements this primitive and perform a security analysis of the proposed system.
Causal rule ensemble method for estimating heterogeneous treatment effect with consideration of main effects

This study proposes a novel framework based on the RuleFit method to estimate Heterogeneous Treatment Effect (HTE) in a randomized clinical trial. To achieve this, we adopted S-learner of the metaalgorithm for our proposed framework. The proposed method incorporates a rule term for the main effect and treatment effect, which allows HTE to be interpretable form of rule. By including a main effect term in the proposed model, the selected rule is represented as an HTE that excludes other effects. We confirmed a performance equivalent to that of another ensemble learning methods through numerical simulation and demonstrated the interpretation of the proposed method from a real data application.
Words That Stick: Predicting Decision Making and Synonym Engagement Using Cognitive Biases and Computational Linguistics

This research draws upon cognitive psychology and information systems studies to anticipate user engagement and decision-making on digital platforms. By employing natural language processing (NLP) techniques and insights from cognitive bias research, we delve into user interactions with synonyms within digital content. Our methodology synthesizes four cognitive biasesRepresentativeness, Ease-of-use, Affect, and Distributioninto the READ model. Through a comprehensive user survey, we assess the model's ability to predict user engagement, discovering that synonyms that accurately represent core ideas, are easy to understand, elicit emotional responses, and are commonly encountered, promote greater user engagement. Crucially, our work offers a fresh lens on human-computer interaction, digital behaviors, and decision-making processes. Our results highlight the promise of cognitive biases as potent indicators of user engagement, underscoring their significance in designing effective digital content across fields like education and marketing.
Understanding the polaritonic ground state in cavity quantum electrodynamics

Molecular polaritons arise when molecules interact so strongly with light that they become entangled with each other. This light-matter hybridization alters the chemical and physical properties of the molecular system and allows chemical reactions to be controlled without the use of external fields. We investigate the impact of strong light-matter coupling on the electronic structure using perturbative approaches and demonstrate that Rayleigh-Schr\"odinger perturbation theory can reproduce the ground state energies in optical cavities to comparable accuracy as ab initio cavity quantum electrodynamics methodologies for currently relevant coupling strengths. The method is effective in both low and high cavity frequency regimes and straightforward to implement via response functions. Furthermore, we establish simple relations between cavity-induced intermolecular forces and van der Waals forces. These findings provide valuable insight into the manipulation of ground-state polaritonic energy landscapes, shedding light on the systems and conditions in which modifications can be achieved.
Real time object localization based on histogram of s-RGB

Object localization is the first task in pattern detection and recognition. This task is very important due to it reduces the searching time to the interest object. In this paper we introduce our novel method of object localization based on color feature. Our novel method is a histogram of s-RGB. This histogram is used in the training phase to determine the color dominant in the initial Region of Interest (ROI). Then this information is used to label the interest object. To reduce noise and localize the interest object, we apply the row and column density function of pixels. The comparison result with some processes, our system gives a best result and takes a short computation time of 26.56 ms, in the video rate of 15 frames per second (fps).
Educational data augmentation in physics education research using ChatGPT

Generative AI technologies such as large language models show novel potentials to enhance educational research. For example, generative large language models were shown to be capable to solve quantitative reasoning tasks in physics and concept tests such as the Force Concept Inventory. Given the importance of such concept inventories for physics education research, and the challenges in developing them such as field testing with representative populations, this study seeks to examine to what extent a generative large language model could be utilized to generate a synthetic data set for the FCI that exhibits content-related variability in responses. We use the recently introduced ChatGPT based on the GPT 4 generative large language model and investigate to what extent ChatGPT could solve the FCI accurately (RQ1) and could be prompted to solve the FCI as-if it were a student belonging to a different cohort (RQ2). Furthermore, we study, to what extent ChatGPT could be prompted to solve the FCI as-if it were a student having a different force- and mechanics-related misconception (RQ3). In alignment with other research, we found the ChatGPT could accurately solve the FCI. We furthermore found that prompting ChatGPT to respond to the inventory as-if it belonged to a different cohort yielded no variance in responses, however, responding as-if it had a certain misconception introduced much variance in responses that approximate real human responses on the FCI in some regards.
pCTFusion: Point Convolution-Transformer Fusion with Semantic Aware Loss for Outdoor LiDAR Point Cloud Segmentation

LiDAR-generated point clouds are crucial for perceiving outdoor environments. The segmentation of point clouds is also essential for many applications. Previous research has focused on using self-attention and convolution (local attention) mechanisms individually in semantic segmentation architectures. However, there is limited work on combining the learned representations of these attention mechanisms to improve performance. Additionally, existing research that combines convolution with self-attention relies on global attention, which is not practical for processing large point clouds. To address these challenges, this study proposes a new architecture, pCTFusion, which combines kernel-based convolutions and self-attention mechanisms for better feature learning and capturing local and global dependencies in segmentation. The proposed architecture employs two types of self-attention mechanisms, local and global, based on the hierarchical positions of the encoder blocks. Furthermore, the existing loss functions do not consider the semantic and position-wise importance of the points, resulting in reduced accuracy, particularly at sharp class boundaries. To overcome this, the study models a novel attention-based loss function called Pointwise Geometric Anisotropy (PGA), which assigns weights based on the semantic distribution of points in a neighborhood. The proposed architecture is evaluated on SemanticKITTI outdoor dataset and showed a 5-7% improvement in performance compared to the state-of-the-art architectures. The results are particularly encouraging for minor classes, often misclassified due to class imbalance, lack of space, and neighbor-aware feature encoding. These developed methods can be leveraged for the segmentation of complex datasets and can drive real-world applications of LiDAR point cloud.
A grid-overlay finite difference method for the fractional Laplacian on arbitrary bounded domains

A grid-overlay finite difference method is proposed for the numerical approximation of the fractional Laplacian on arbitrary bounded domains. The method uses an unstructured simplicial mesh and an overlay uniform grid for the underlying domain and constructs the approximation based on a uniform-grid finite difference approximation and a data transfer from the unstructured mesh to the uniform grid. The method takes full advantage of both uniform-grid finite difference approximation in efficient matrix-vector multiplication via the fast Fourier transform and unstructured meshes for complex geometries. It is shown that its stiffness matrix is similar to a symmetric and positive definite matrix and thus invertible if the data transfer has full column rank and positive column sums. Piecewise linear interpolation is studied as a special example for the data transfer. It is proved that the full column rank and positive column sums of linear interpolation is guaranteed if the spacing of the uniform grid is smaller than or equal to a positive bound proportional to the minimum element height of the unstructured mesh. Moreover, a sparse preconditioner is proposed for the iterative solution of the resulting linear system for the homogeneous Dirichlet problem of the fractional Laplacian. Numerical examples demonstrate that the new method has similar convergence behavior as existing finite difference and finite element methods and that the sparse preconditioning is effective. Furthermore, the new method can readily be incorporated with existing mesh adaptation strategies. Numerical results obtained by combining with the so-called MMPDE moving mesh method are also presented.
Impact of Black Swan Events on Ethereum Blockchain ERC20 Token Transaction Networks (preprint)

The Ethereum blockchain and its ERC20 token standard have revolutionized the landscape of digital assets and decentralized applications. ERC20 tokens developed on the Ethereum blockchain have gained significant attention since their introduction. They are programmable and interoperable tokens, enabling various applications and token economies. Transaction graphs, representing the flow of the value between wallets within the Ethereum network, have played a crucial role in understanding the system's dynamics, such as token transfers and the behavior of traders. Here, we explore the evolution of daily transaction graphs of ERC20 token transactions, which sheds light on the trader's behavior during the Black Swan Events -- 2018 crypto crash and the COVID-19 pandemic. By using the tools from network science and differential geometry, we analyze 0.98 billion of ERC20 token transaction data from November 2015 to January 2023. Our analysis reveals that ERC20 financial ecosystem has evolved from a localized wealth formation period to a more mature financial ecosystem where wealth has dispersed among the traders in the network after the crypto crash and during the pandemic period. Before the crash, most sellers only sell the tokens, and buyers only buy the tokens. However, after the crash and during the pandemic period, sellers and buyers both performed buying and selling activities. In addition, we observe no significant negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on user behavior in the financial ecosystem.
Global Robust Output Regulation of Nonlinear Systems with a Nonlinear Exosystem

The global robust output regulation problem for nonlinear plants subject to nonlinear exosystems has been a challenging problem and has not been well addressed. The main difficulty lies in finding a suitable internal model. In this paper, we first propose a new class of internal models which is guaranteed to exist under the generalized immersion condition [2]. An advantage of this internal model is that it is zero input globally asymptotically stable. This fact will facilitate the global stabilization of the augmented system associated with the given plant and the internal model. Then we will further utilize this class of internal models to solve the global robust output regulation problem for output feedback systems with a nonlinear exosystem.
Robust Detection, Association, and Localization of Vehicle Lights: A Context-Based Cascaded CNN Approach and Evaluations

Vehicle light detection, association, and localization are required for important downstream safe autonomous driving tasks, such as predicting a vehicle's light state to determine if the vehicle is making a lane change or turning. Currently, many vehicle light detectors use single-stage detectors which predict bounding boxes to identify a vehicle light, in a manner decoupled from vehicle instances. In this paper, we present a method for detecting a vehicle light given an upstream vehicle detection and approximation of a visible light's center. Our method predicts four approximate corners associated with each vehicle light. We experiment with CNN architectures, data augmentation, and contextual preprocessing methods designed to reduce surrounding-vehicle confusion. We achieve an average distance error from the ground truth corner of 4.77 pixels, about 16.33% of the size of the vehicle light on average. We train and evaluate our model on the LISA Lights Dataset, allowing us to thoroughly evaluate our vehicle light corner detection model on a large variety of vehicle light shapes and lighting conditions. We propose that this model can be integrated into a pipeline with vehicle detection and vehicle light center detection to make a fully-formed vehicle light detection network, valuable to identifying trajectory-informative signals in driving scenes.
Self-Supervised Visual Acoustic Matching

Acoustic matching aims to re-synthesize an audio clip to sound as if it were recorded in a target acoustic environment. Existing methods assume access to paired training data, where the audio is observed in both source and target environments, but this limits the diversity of training data or requires the use of simulated data or heuristics to create paired samples. We propose a self-supervised approach to visual acoustic matching where training samples include only the target scene image and audio -- without acoustically mismatched source audio for reference. Our approach jointly learns to disentangle room acoustics and re-synthesize audio into the target environment, via a conditional GAN framework and a novel metric that quantifies the level of residual acoustic information in the de-biased audio. Training with either in-the-wild web data or simulated data, we demonstrate it outperforms the state-of-the-art on multiple challenging datasets and a wide variety of real-world audio and environments.
SEV-Step: A Single-Stepping Framework for AMD-SEV

The ever increasing popularity and availability of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) had a stark influence on microarchitectural attack research in academia, as their strong attacker model both boosts existing attack vectors and introduces several new ones. While many works have focused on Intel SGX, other TEEs like AMD SEV have recently also started to receive more attention. A common technique when attacking SGX enclaves is single-stepping, where the system’s APIC timer is used to interrupt the enclave after every instruction. Single-stepping increases the temporal resolution of subsequent microarchitectural attacks to a maximum. A key driver in the proliferation of this complex attack technique was the SGX-Step framework, which offered a stable reference implementation for single-stepping and a relatively easy setup. In this paper, we demonstrate that SEV VMs can also be reliably single-stepped. To lay the foundation for further microarchitectural attack research against SEV, we introduce the reusable SEV-Step framework. Besides reliable single-stepping, SEV-Step provides easy access to common attack primitives like page fault tracking and cache attacks against SEV. All features can be used interactively from user space. We demonstrate SEV-Step’s capabilities by carrying out an end-toend cache attack against SEV that leaks the volume key of a LUKS2-encrypted disk. Finally, we show for the first time that SEV is vulnerable to Nemesis-style attacks, which allow to extract information about the type and operands of single-stepped instructions from SEV-protected VMs.
On Boolean reliability algebra

In this paper we consider systems which consist of binary components with known reliabilities. We discuss their algebraic properties and define the corresponding algebraic structure, which we call the reliability algebra. We prove that the reliability algebra is a Boolean algebra. The reliability algebra seems an appropriate context for defining fuzziness measure i.e. membership function with reliability values.