Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
"Make Them Change it Every Week!": A Qualitative Exploration of Online Developer Advice on Usable and Secure Authentication

Usable and secure authentication on the web and beyond is mission-critical. While password-based authentication is still widespread, users have trouble dealing with potentially hundreds of online accounts and their passwords. Alternatives or extensions such as multi-factor authentication have their own challenges and find only limited adoption. Finding the right balance between security and usability is challenging for developers. Previous work found that developers use online resources to inform security decisions when writing code. Similar to other areas, lots of authentication advice for developers is available online, including blog posts, discussions on Stack Overflow, research papers, or guidelines by institutions like OWASP or NIST. We are the first to explore developer advice on authentication that affects usable security for end-users. Based on a survey with 18 professional web developers, we obtained 406 documents and qualitatively analyzed 272 contained pieces of advice in depth. We aim to understand the accessibility and quality of online advice and provide insights into how online advice might contribute to (in)secure and (un)usable authentication. We find that advice is scattered and that finding recommendable, consistent advice is a challenge for developers, among others. The most common advice is for password-based authentication, but little for more modern alternatives. Unfortunately, many pieces of advice are debatable (e.g., complex password policies), outdated (e.g., enforcing regular password changes), or contradicting and might lead to unusable or insecure authentication. Based on our findings, we make recommendations for developers, advice providers, official institutions, and academia on how to improve online advice for developers.
Gated recurrent neural networks discover attention

Recent architectural developments have enabled recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to reach and even surpass the performance of Transformers on certain sequence modeling tasks. These modern RNNs feature a prominent design pattern: linear recurrent layers interconnected by feedforward paths with multiplicative gating. Here, we show how RNNs equipped with these two design elements can exactly implement (linear) self-attention, the main building block of Transformers. By reverse-engineering a set of trained RNNs, we find that gradient descent in practice discovers our construction. In particular, we examine RNNs trained to solve simple in-context learning tasks on which Transformers are known to excel and find that gradient descent instills in our RNNs the same attention-based in-context learning algorithm used by Transformers. Our findings highlight the importance of multiplicative interactions in neural networks and suggest that certain RNNs might be unexpectedly implementing attention under the hood.
A fourth-order kernel for improving numerical accuracy and stability in Eulerian and total Lagrangian SPH

The error of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) using kernel for particle-based approximation mainly comes from smoothing and integration errors. The choice of kernels has a significant impact on the numerical accuracy, stability and computational efficiency. At present, the most popular kernels such as B-spline, truncated Gaussian (for compact support), Wendland kernels have 2nd-order smoothing error and Wendland kernel becomes mainstream in SPH community as its stability and accuracy. Due to the fact that the particle distribution after relaxation can achieve fast convergence of integration error respected to support radius, it is logical to choose kernels with higher-order smoothing error to improve the numerical accuracy. In this paper, the error of 4th-order Laguerre-Wendland kernel proposed by Litvinov et al. \cite{litvinov2015towards} is revisited and another 4th-order truncated Laguerre-Gauss kernel is further analyzed and considered to replace the widely used Wendland kernel. The proposed kernel has following three properties: One is that it avoids the pair-instability problem during the relaxation process, unlike the original truncated Gaussian kernel, and achieves much less relaxation residue than Wendland and Laguerre-Wendland kernels; One is the truncated compact support size is the same as the non-truncated compact support of Wendland kernel, which leads to both kernels' computational efficiency at the same level; Another is that the truncation error of this kernel is much less than that of Wendland kernel. Furthermore, a comprehensive set of $2D$ and $3D$ benchmark cases on Eulerian SPH for fluid dynamics and total Lagrangian SPH for solid dynamics validate the considerably improved numerical accuracy by using truncated Laguerre-Gauss kernel without introducing extra computational effort.
Diffusion Models with Deterministic Normalizing Flow Priors

For faster sampling and higher sample quality, we propose DiNof ($\textbf{Di}$ffusion with $\textbf{No}$rmalizing $\textbf{f}$low priors), a technique that makes use of normalizing flows and diffusion models. We use normalizing flows to parameterize the noisy data at any arbitrary step of the diffusion process and utilize it as the prior in the reverse diffusion process. More specifically, the forward noising process turns a data distribution into partially noisy data, which are subsequently transformed into a Gaussian distribution by a nonlinear process. The backward denoising procedure begins with a prior created by sampling from the Gaussian distribution and applying the invertible normalizing flow transformations deterministically. To generate the data distribution, the prior then undergoes the remaining diffusion stochastic denoising procedure. Through the reduction of the number of total diffusion steps, we are able to speed up both the forward and backward processes. More importantly, we improve the expressive power of diffusion models by employing both deterministic and stochastic mappings. Experiments on standard image generation datasets demonstrate the advantage of the proposed method over existing approaches. On the unconditional CIFAR10 dataset, for example, we achieve an FID of 2.01 and an Inception score of 9.96. Our method also demonstrates competitive performance on CelebA-HQ-256 dataset as it obtains an FID score of 7.11. Code is available at https://github.com/MohsenZand/DiNof.
Phase Transitions for Binomial Sets Under Linear Forms

We generalize the study of the sum and difference sets of a subset of $\mathbb{N}$ drawn from a binomial model to the following setting. Given $A \subseteq \{0, 1, \dots, N\}$, an integer $h \geq 2$, and a linear form $L: \mathbb{Z}^h \to \mathbb{Z}$ given by $$L(x_1, \dots, x_h) = u_1x_1 + \cdots + u_hx_h, \quad u_i \in \mathbb{Z}_{\neq 0} \text{ for all } i \in [h],$$ we study the size of $$L(A) = \left\{u_1a_1 + \cdots + u_ha_h : a_i \in A \right\}$$ and its complement $L(A)^c$ when each element of $\{0, 1, \dots, N\}$ is independently included in $A$ with probability $p(N)$. We identify two phase transition phenomena. The first ``global"phase transition concerns the relative sizes of $L(A)$ and $L(A)^c$, with $p(N) = N^{-\frac{h-1}{h}}$ as the threshold. Asymptotically almost surely, it holds below the threshold that almost all sums generated in $L(A)$ are distinct and almost all possible sums are in $L(A)^c$, and above the threshold that almost all possible sums are in $L(A)$. Our asymptotic formulae substantially extend work of Hegarty and Miller and completely settle, with appropriate corrections made to its statement, their conjecture from 2009. The second ``local"phase transition concerns the asymptotic behavior of the number of distinct realizations in $L(A)$ of a given value, with $p(N) = N^{-\frac{h-2}{h-1}}$ as the threshold. Specifically, it identifies (in a sharp sense) when the number of such realizations obeys a Poisson limit. Our main tools are recent results concerning the asymptotic enumeration of partitions and weak compositions, classical theorems on Poisson approximation, and the martingale machinery of Kim and Vu.
Suppression of small-scale dynamo in time irreversible turbulence

The conventional theory of small-scale magnetic field generation in a turbulent flow considers time-reversible random flows. However, real turbulent flows are known to be time irreversible: the presence of energy cascade is an intrinsic property of turbulence. We generalize the 'standard' model to account for the irreversibility. We show that even small time asymmetry leads to significant suppression of the dynamo effect at low magnetic Prandtl numbers, increases the generation threshold and may even make generation impossible for any magnetic Reynolds number. We calculate the magnetic energy growth rate as a function of the parameters of the flow.
A Unifying Variational Framework for Gaussian Process Motion Planning

To control how a robot moves, motion planning algorithms must compute paths in high-dimensional state spaces while accounting for physical constraints related to motors and joints, generating smooth and stable motions, avoiding obstacles, and preventing collisions. A motion planning algorithm must therefore balance competing demands, and should ideally incorporate uncertainty to handle noise, model errors, and facilitate deployment in complex environments. To address these issues, we introduce a framework for robot motion planning based on variational Gaussian processes, which unifies and generalizes various probabilistic-inference-based motion planning algorithms, and connects them with optimization-based planners. Our framework provides a principled and flexible way to incorporate equality-based, inequality-based, and soft motion-planning constraints during end-to-end training, is straightforward to implement, and provides both interval-based and Monte-Carlo-based uncertainty estimates. We conduct experiments using different environments and robots, comparing against baseline approaches based on the feasibility of the planned paths, and obstacle avoidance quality. Results show that our proposed approach yields a good balance between success rates and path quality.
Gravitational Lensing by Transparent Janis-Newman-Winicour Naked Singularities

The Janis-Newman-Winicour (JNW) spacetime can describe a naked singularity with a photon sphere that smoothly transforms into a Schwarzschild black hole. Our analysis reveals that photons, upon entering the photon sphere, converge to the singularity in a finite coordinate time. Furthermore, if the singularity is subjected to some regularization, these photons can traverse the regularized singularity. Subsequently, we investigate the gravitational lensing of distant sources and show that new images emerge within the critical curve formed by light rays escaping from the photon sphere. These newfound images offer a powerful tool for the detection and study of JNW naked singularities.
Geometric Deep Learning: a Temperature Based Analysis of Graph Neural Networks

We examine a Geometric Deep Learning model as a thermodynamic system treating the weights as non-quantum and non-relativistic particles. We employ the notion of temperature previously defined in [7] and study it in the various layers for GCN and GAT models. Potential future applications of our findings are discussed.
Real-time pedestrian recognition on low computational resources

Pedestrian recognition has successfully been applied to security, autonomous cars, Aerial photographs. For most applications, pedestrian recognition on small mobile devices is important. However, the limitations of the computing hardware make this a challenging task. In this work, we investigate real-time pedestrian recognition on small physical-size computers with low computational resources for faster speed. This paper presents three methods that work on the small physical size CPUs system. First, we improved the Local Binary Pattern (LBP) features and Adaboost classifier. Second, we optimized the Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) and Support Vector Machine. Third, We implemented fast Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The results demonstrate that the three methods achieved real-time pedestrian recognition at an accuracy of more than 95% and a speed of more than 5 fps on a small physical size computational platform with a 1.8 GHz Intel i5 CPU. Our methods can be easily applied to small mobile devices with high compatibility and generality.
A linearly convergent method for solving high-order proximal operator

Recently, various high-order methods have been developed to solve the convex optimization problem. The auxiliary problem of these methods shares the general form that is the same as the high-order proximal operator proposed by Nesterov. In this paper, we present a linearly convergent method to solve the high-order proximal operator based on the classical proximal operator. In addition, some experiments are performed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.
Generative AI for End-to-End Limit Order Book Modelling: A Token-Level Autoregressive Generative Model of Message Flow Using a Deep State Space Network

Developing a generative model of realistic order flow in financial markets is a challenging open problem, with numerous applications for market participants. Addressing this, we propose the first end-to-end autoregressive generative model that generates tokenized limit order book (LOB) messages. These messages are interpreted by the JAX-LOB simulator, which updates the LOB state. To handle long sequences efficiently, the model employs simplified structured state-space layers to process sequences of order book states and tokenized messages. Using LOBSTER data of NASDAQ equity LOBs, we develop a custom tokenizer for message data, converting groups of successive digits to tokens, similar to tokenization in large language models. Out-of-sample results show promising performance in approximating the data distribution, as evidenced by low model perplexity. Furthermore, the mid-price returns calculated from the generated order flow exhibit a significant correlation with the data, indicating impressive conditional forecast performance. Due to the granularity of generated data, and the accuracy of the model, it offers new application areas for future work beyond forecasting, e.g. acting as a world model in high-frequency financial reinforcement learning applications. Overall, our results invite the use and extension of the model in the direction of autoregressive large financial models for the generation of high-frequency financial data. 1
Business Process Text Sketch Automation Generation Using Large Language Model

Business Process Management (BPM) is gaining increasing attention as it has the potential to cut costs while boosting output and quality. Business process document generation is a crucial stage in BPM. However, due to a shortage of datasets, data-driven deep learning techniques struggle to deliver the expected results. We propose an approach to transform Conditional Process Trees (CPTs) into Business Process Text Sketches (BPTSs) using Large Language Models (LLMs). The traditional prompting approach (Few-shot In-Context Learning) tries to get the correct answer in one go, and it can find the pattern of transforming simple CPTs into BPTSs, but for close-domain and CPTs with complex hierarchy, the traditional prompts perform weakly and with low correctness. We suggest using this technique to break down a difficult CPT into a number of basic CPTs and then solve each one in turn, drawing inspiration from the divide-and-conquer strategy. We chose 100 process trees with depths ranging from 2 to 5 at random, as well as CPTs with many nodes, many degrees of selection, and cyclic nesting. Experiments show that our method can achieve a correct rate of 93.42%, which is 45.17% better than traditional prompting methods. Our proposed method provides a solution for business process document generation in the absence of datasets, and secondly, it becomes potentially possible to provide a large number of datasets for the process model extraction (PME) domain.
A Human-Centric Metaverse Enabled by Brain-Computer Interface: A Survey

The growing interest in the Metaverse has generated momentum for members of academia and industry to innovate toward realizing the Metaverse world. The Metaverse is a unique, continuous, and shared virtual world where humans embody a digital form within an online platform. Through a digital avatar, Metaverse users should have a perceptual presence within the environment and can interact and control the virtual world around them. Thus, a human-centric design is a crucial element of the Metaverse. The human users are not only the central entity but also the source of multi-sensory data that can be used to enrich the Metaverse ecosystem. In this survey, we study the potential applications of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technologies that can enhance the experience of Metaverse users. By directly communicating with the human brain, the most complex organ in the human body, BCI technologies hold the potential for the most intuitive human-machine system operating at the speed of thought. BCI technologies can enable various innovative applications for the Metaverse through this neural pathway, such as user cognitive state monitoring, digital avatar control, virtual interactions, and imagined speech communications. This survey first outlines the fundamental background of the Metaverse and BCI technologies. We then discuss the current challenges of the Metaverse that can potentially be addressed by BCI, such as motion sickness when users experience virtual environments or the negative emotional states of users in immersive virtual applications. After that, we propose and discuss a new research direction called Human Digital Twin, in which digital twins can create an intelligent and interactable avatar from the user's brain signals. We also present the challenges and potential solutions in synchronizing and communicating between virtual and physical entities in the Metaverse.
The Impacts of the Interannual Variability of Vegetation on the Interannual Variability of Global Evapotranspiration: A Modeling Study

Abstract The impact of the interannual variability (IAV) of vegetation on the I AV of evapotranspiration is investigated with the Community Land Model (CLM3.0) and modified Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM). Two sets of 50-year off-line simulations are used in this study. The simulations begin with the same initial surface-water and heat states and are driven by the same atmospheric forcing data. The vegetation exhibits interannual variability in one simulation but not in the other simulation. However, the climatological means for the vegetation are the same. The IAV of the 50-year annual total evapotranspiration and its three partitions (ground evaporation, canopy evaporation, and transpiration) are analyzed. The global distribution of the evapotranspiration I AV and the statistics of evapotranspiration and its components in different ecosystems show that the IAV of ground evaporation is generally large in areas dominated by grass and deciduous trees, whereas the IAV of canopy evaporation and transpiration is large in areas dominated by bare soil and shrubs. For ground evaporation, canopy evaporation, and transpiration, the changes in I AV are larger than the mean state over most grasslands and shrublands. The study of two sites with the same I AV in the leaf area index (LAI) shows that the component with the smaller contribution to the total evapotranspiration is more sensitive to the IAV of vegetation. The IAV of the three components of evapotranspiration increases with the IAV of the fractional coverage (FC) and the LAI. The ground evaporation I AV shows the greatest increase, whereas the canopy evaporation shows the smallest in-crease.
On Penalty Methods for Nonconvex Bilevel Optimization and First-Order Stochastic Approximation

In this work, we study first-order algorithms for solving Bilevel Optimization (BO) where the objective functions are smooth but possibly nonconvex in both levels and the variables are restricted to closed convex sets. As a first step, we study the landscape of BO through the lens of penalty methods, in which the upper- and lower-level objectives are combined in a weighted sum with penalty parameter $\sigma>0$. In particular, we establish a strong connection between the penalty function and the hyper-objective by explicitly characterizing the conditions under which the values and derivatives of the two must be $O(\sigma)$-close. A by-product of our analysis is the explicit formula for the gradient of hyper-objective when the lower-level problem has multiple solutions under minimal conditions, which could be of independent interest. Next, viewing the penalty formulation as $O(\sigma)$-approximation of the original BO, we propose first-order algorithms that find an $\epsilon$-stationary solution by optimizing the penalty formulation with $\sigma = O(\epsilon)$. When the perturbed lower-level problem uniformly satisfies the small-error proximal error-bound (EB) condition, we propose a first-order algorithm that converges to an $\epsilon$-stationary point of the penalty function, using in total $O(\epsilon^{-3})$ and $O(\epsilon^{-7})$ accesses to first-order (stochastic) gradient oracles when the oracle is deterministic and oracles are noisy, respectively. Under an additional assumption on stochastic oracles, we show that the algorithm can be implemented in a fully {\it single-loop} manner, i.e., with $O(1)$ samples per iteration, and achieves the improved oracle-complexity of $O(\epsilon^{-3})$ and $O(\epsilon^{-5})$, respectively.
Bilevel Scheduled Sampling for Dialogue Generation

Exposure bias poses a common challenge in numerous natural language processing tasks, particularly in the dialog generation. In response to this issue, researchers have devised various techniques, among which scheduled sampling has proven to be an effective method for mitigating exposure bias. However, the existing state-of-the-art scheduled sampling methods solely consider the current sampling words' quality for threshold truncation sampling, which overlooks the importance of sentence-level information and the method of threshold truncation warrants further discussion. In this paper, we propose a bilevel scheduled sampling model that takes the sentence-level information into account and incorporates it with word-level quality. To enhance sampling diversity and improve the model's adaptability, we propose a smooth function that maps the combined result of sentence-level and word-level information to an appropriate range, and employ probabilistic sampling based on the mapped values instead of threshold truncation. Experiments conducted on the DailyDialog and PersonaChat datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods, which significantly alleviate the exposure bias problem and outperform state-of-the-art scheduled sampling methods.