OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
A Multilingual Entity Linking System for Wikipedia with a Machine-in-the-Loop Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2021
Year: 2021

Hyperlinks constitute the backbone of the Web; they enable user navigation, information discovery, content ranking, and many other crucial services on the Internet. In particular, hyperlinks found within Wikipedia allow the readers to navigate from one page to another to expand their knowledge on a given subject of interest or to discover a new one. However, despite Wikipedia editors' efforts to add and maintain its content, the distribution of links remains sparse in many language editions. This paper introduces a machine-in-the-loop entity linking system that can comply with community guidelines for adding a link and aims at increasing link coverage in new pages and wiki-projects with low-resources. To tackle these challenges, we build a context and language agnostic entity linking model that combines data collected from millions of anchors found across wiki-projects, as well as billions of users' reading sessions. We develop an interactive recommendation interface that proposes candidate links to editors who can confirm, reject, or adapt the recommendation with the overall aim of providing a more accessible editing experience for newcomers through structured tasks. Our system's design choices were made in collaboration with members of several language communities. When the system is implemented as part of Wikipedia, its usage by volunteer editors will help us build a continuous evaluation dataset with active feedback. Our experimental results show that our link recommender can achieve a precision above 80% while ensuring a recall of at least 50% across 6 languages covering different sizes, continents, and families.
Students Programming Competitions as an Educational Tool and a Motivational Incentive to Students
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2021
Year: 2021

In this short paper we report on student programming competition results by students from the Computer Science Department (COSC) of Okanagan College (OC) and discuss the achieved results from an educational point of view. We found that some freshmen and sophomore students in diploma and degree programs are very capable and eager to be involved in applied research projects as early as the second semester, and into local and international programming competitions as well. Our observation is based on the last 2 educational years, beginning 2015 when we introduced programming competitions to COSC students. Students reported that participation in competitions give them motivation to effectively learn in their programming courses, inspire them to learn deeper and more thoroughly, and help them achieve better results in their classes.
Energy Efficiency Optimization for Multi-cell Massive MIMO: Centralized and Distributed Power Allocation Algorithms
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2021
Year: 2021

This paper investigates the energy efficiency (EE) optimization in downlink multi-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). In our research, the statistical channel state information (CSI) is exploited to reduce the signaling overhead. To maximize the minimum EE among the neighbouring cells, we design the transmit covariance matrices for each base station (BS). Specifically, optimization schemes for this max-min EE problem are developed, in the centralized and distributed ways, respectively. To obtain the transmit covariance matrices, we first find out the closed-form optimal transmit eigenmatrices for the BS in each cell, and convert the original transmit covariance matrices designing problem into a power allocation one. Then, to lower the computational complexity, we utilize an asymptotic approximation expression for the problem objective. Moreover, for the power allocation design, we adopt the minorization maximization method to address the non-convexity of the ergodic rate, and use Dinkelbach's transform to convert the max-min fractional problem into a series of convex optimization subproblems. To tackle the transformed subproblems, we propose a centralized iterative water-filling scheme. For reducing the backhaul burden, we further develop a distributed algorithm for the power allocation problem, which requires limited inter-cell information sharing. Finally, the performance of the proposed algorithms are demonstrated by extensive numerical results.
Multimodal Detection of Information Disorder from Social Media
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2021
Year: 2021

Social media is accompanied by an increasing proportion of content that provides fake information or misleading content, known as information disorder. In this paper, we study the problem of multimodal fake news detection on a largescale multimodal dataset. We propose a multimodal network architecture that enables different levels and types of information fusion. In addition to the textual and visual content of a posting, we further leverage secondary information, i.e. user comments and metadata. We fuse information at multiple levels to account for the specific intrinsic structure of the modalities. Our results show that multimodal analysis is highly effective for the task and all modalities contribute positively when fused properly.
DikpolaSat Mission: Improvement of Space Flight Performance and Optimal Control Using Trained Deep Neural Network -- Trajectory Controller for Space Objects Collision Avoidance
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2021
Year: 2021

This paper introduced the space mission DikpolaSat Mission, how this research fits into the mission, and the importance of having a trained DNN model instead of the usual GN&C functionality. This paper shows how the controller demonstration is carried out by having the spacecraft follow a desired path, specified in the referenced model. Increases can be made by examining the route used to construct a DNN and understanding the effects of various activating functions on system efficiency. The obstacle avoidance algorithm is built into the control features to respond spontaneously using inputs from the neural network for collision avoidance while optimizing the modified trajectory. The action of a neural network to control the adaptive nature of the nonlinear mechanisms in the controller will make the control system capable of handling multiple nonlinear events and also uncertainties that have not been induced in the control algorithm. Multiple algorithms for optimizing flight controls and fuel consumption can be implemented using knowledge of flight dynamics in trajectory and also in the event of obstacle avoidance. This paper also explains how a DNN can learn to control the flight path and make the system more reliable with each launch, thereby improving the chances of predicting collisions of space objects. The data released from this research is used to design more advanced DNN model capable of predicting other orbital events as well.
Robust discovery of partial differential equations in complex situations
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Data-driven discovery of partial differential equations (PDEs) has achieved considerable development in recent years. Several aspects of problems have been resolved by sparse regression-based and neural network-based methods. However, the performances of existing methods lack stability when dealing with complex situations, including sparse data with high noise, high-order derivatives and shock waves, which bring obstacles to calculating derivatives accurately. Therefore, a robust PDE discovery framework, called the robust deep learning-genetic algorithm (R-DLGA), that incorporates the physics-informed neural network (PINN), is proposed in this work. In the framework, a preliminary result of potential terms provided by the deep learning-genetic algorithm is added into the loss function of the PINN as physical constraints to improve the accuracy of derivative calculation. It assists to optimize the preliminary result and obtain the ultimately discovered PDE by eliminating the error compensation terms. The stability and accuracy of the proposed R-DLGA in several complex situations are examined for proof-and-concept, and the results prove that the proposed framework is able to calculate derivatives accurately with the optimization of PINN and possesses surprising robustness to complex situations, including sparse data with high noise, high-order derivatives, and shock waves.
Diffusion Self-Organizing Map on the Hypersphere
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2021
Year: 2021

We discuss a diffusion based implementation of the self-organizing map on the unit hypersphere. We show that this approach can be efficiently implemented using just linear algebra methods, we give a python numpy implementation, and we illustrate the approach using the well known MNIST dataset.
Living mycelium composites discern weights
Venue: arXiv cs.ET 2021
Year: 2021

Fungal construction materials -- substrates colonised by mycelium -- are getting increased recognition as viable ecologically friendly alternatives to conventional building materials. A functionality of the constructions made from fungal materials would be enriched if blocks with living mycelium, known for their ability to respond to chemical, optical and tactile stimuli, were inserted. We investigate how large blocks of substrates colonised with mycelium of \emph{Ganoderma resinaceum} respond to stimulation with heavy weights. We analyse details of the electrical responses to the stimulation with weights and show that ON and OFF stimuli can be discriminated by the living mycelium composites and that a habituation to the stimulation occurs.
Closer Look at the Uncertainty Estimation in Semantic Segmentation under Distributional Shift
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

While recent computer vision algorithms achieve impressive performance on many benchmarks, they lack robustness - presented with an image from a different distribution, (e.g. weather or lighting conditions not considered during training), they may produce an erroneous prediction. Therefore, it is desired that such a model will be able to reliably predict its confidence measure. In this work, uncertainty estimation for the task of semantic segmentation is evaluated under a varying level of domain shift: in a cross-dataset setting and when adapting a model trained on data from the simulation. It was shown that simple color transformations already provide a strong baseline, comparable to using more sophisticated style-transfer data augmentation. Further, by constructing an ensemble consisting of models using different backbones and/or augmentation methods, it was possible to improve significantly model performance in terms of overall accuracy and uncertainty estimation under the domain shift setting. The Expected Calibration Error (ECE) on challenging GTA to Cityscapes adaptation was reduced from 4.05 to the competitive value of 1.1. Further, an ensemble of models was utilized in the self-training setting to improve the pseudo-labels generation, which resulted in a significant gain in the final model accuracy, compared to the standard fine-tuning (without ensemble).
Generalized AdaGrad (G-AdaGrad) and Adam: A State-Space Perspective
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Accelerated gradient-based methods are being extensively used for solving non-convex machine learning problems, especially when the data points are abundant or the available data is distributed across several agents. Two of the prominent accelerated gradient algorithms are AdaGrad and Adam. AdaGrad is the simplest accelerated gradient method, which is particularly effective for sparse data. Adam has been shown to perform favorably in deep learning problems compared to other methods. In this paper, we propose a new fast optimizer, Generalized AdaGrad (G-AdaGrad), for accelerating the solution of potentially non-convex machine learning problems. Specifically, we adopt a state-space perspective for analyzing the convergence of gradient acceleration algorithms, namely G-AdaGrad and Adam, in machine learning. Our proposed state-space models are governed by ordinary differential equations. We present simple convergence proofs of these two algorithms in the deterministic settings with minimal assumptions. Our analysis also provides intuition behind improving upon AdaGrad's convergence rate. We provide empirical results on MNIST dataset to reinforce our claims on the convergence and performance of G-AdaGrad and Adam.
A Methodology for Exploring Deep Convolutional Features in Relation to Hand-Crafted Features with an Application to Music Audio Modeling
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2021
Year: 2021

Understanding the features learned by deep models is important from a model trust perspective, especially as deep systems are deployed in the real world. Most recent approaches for deep feature understanding or model explanation focus on highlighting input data features that are relevant for classification decisions. In this work, we instead take the perspective of relating deep features to well-studied, hand-crafted features that are meaningful for the application of interest. We propose a methodology and set of systematic experiments for exploring deep features in this setting, where input feature importance approaches for deep feature understanding do not apply. Our experiments focus on understanding which hand-crafted and deep features are useful for the classification task of interest, how robust these features are for related tasks and how similar the deep features are to the meaningful hand-crafted features. Our proposed method is general to many application areas and we demonstrate its utility on orchestral music audio data.
Probabilistic Deep Learning with Probabilistic Neural Networks and Deep Probabilistic Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Probabilistic deep learning is deep learning that accounts for uncertainty, both model uncertainty and data uncertainty. It is based on the use of probabilistic models and deep neural networks. We distinguish two approaches to probabilistic deep learning: probabilistic neural networks and deep probabilistic models. The former employs deep neural networks that utilize probabilistic layers which can represent and process uncertainty; the latter uses probabilistic models that incorporate deep neural network components which capture complex non-linear stochastic relationships between the random variables. We discuss some major examples of each approach including Bayesian neural networks and mixture density networks (for probabilistic neural networks), and variational autoencoders, deep Gaussian processes and deep mixed effects models (for deep probabilistic models). TensorFlow Probability is a library for probabilistic modeling and inference which can be used for both approaches of probabilistic deep learning. We include its code examples for illustration.
Deep Reinforcement Learning in Quantitative Algorithmic Trading: A Review
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Algorithmic stock trading has become a staple in today's financial market, the majority of trades being now fully automated. Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agents proved to be to a force to be reckon with in many complex games like Chess and Go. We can look at the stock market historical price series and movements as a complex imperfect information environment in which we try to maximize return - profit and minimize risk. This paper reviews the progress made so far with deep reinforcement learning in the subdomain of AI in finance, more precisely, automated low-frequency quantitative stock trading. Many of the reviewed studies had only proof-of-concept ideals with experiments conducted in unrealistic settings and no real-time trading applications. For the majority of the works, despite all showing statistically significant improvements in performance compared to established baseline strategies, no decent profitability level was obtained. Furthermore, there is a lack of experimental testing in real-time, online trading platforms and a lack of meaningful comparisons between agents built on different types of DRL or human traders. We conclude that DRL in stock trading has showed huge applicability potential rivalling professional traders under strong assumptions, but the research is still in the very early stages of development.
On Fast Sampling of Diffusion Probabilistic Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

In this work, we propose FastDPM, a unified framework for fast sampling in diffusion probabilistic models. FastDPM generalizes previous methods and gives rise to new algorithms with improved sample quality. We systematically investigate the fast sampling methods under this framework across different domains, on different datasets, and with different amount of conditional information provided for generation. We find the performance of a particular method depends on data domains (e.g., image or audio), the trade-off between sampling speed and sample quality, and the amount of conditional information. We further provide insights and recipes on the choice of methods for practitioners.
Detecting a single fault in a deterministic finite automaton
Venue: arXiv cs.FL 2021
Year: 2021

Given a deterministic finite automaton and its implementation with at most one single fault, that we can test on a set of inputs, we provide an algorithm to find a test set that guarantees finding whether the fault exists.
Scalar Field Comparison with Topological Descriptors: Properties and Applications for Scientific Visualization
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2021
Year: 2021

In topological data analysis and visualization, topological descriptors such as persistence diagrams, merge trees, contour trees, Reeb graphs, and Morse-Smale complexes play an essential role in capturing the shape of scalar field data. We present a state-of-the-art report on scalar field comparison using topological descriptors. We provide a taxonomy of existing approaches based on visualization tasks associated with three categories of data: single fields, time-varying fields, and ensembles. These tasks include symmetry detection, periodicity detection, key event/feature detection, feature tracking, clustering, and structure statistics. Our main contributions include the formulation of a set of desirable mathematical and computational properties of comparative measures, and the classification of visualization tasks and applications that are enabled by these measures.
A Road-map to Robot Task Execution with the Functional Object-Oriented Network
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2021
Year: 2021

Following work on joint object-action representations, the functional object-oriented network (FOON) was introduced as a knowledge graph representation for robots. Taking the form of a bipartite graph, a FOON contains symbolic or high-level information that would be pertinent to a robot's understanding of its environment and tasks in a way that mirrors human understanding of actions. In this work, we outline a road-map for future development of FOON and its application in robotic systems for task planning as well as knowledge acquisition from demonstration. We propose preliminary ideas to show how a FOON can be created in a real-world scenario with a robot and human teacher in a way that can jointly augment existing knowledge in a FOON and teach a robot the skills it needs to replicate the demonstrated actions and solve a given manipulation problem.
"Why wouldn't someone think of democracy as a target?": Security practices & challenges of people involved with U.S. political campaigns
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2021
Year: 2021

People who are involved with political campaigns face increased digital security threats from well-funded, sophisticated attackers, especially nation-states. Improving political campaign security is a vital part of protecting democracy. To identify campaign security issues, we conducted qualitative research with 28 participants across the U.S. political spectrum to understand the digital security practices, challenges, and perceptions of people involved in campaigns. A main, overarching finding is that a unique combination of threats, constraints, and work culture lead people involved with political campaigns to use technologies from across platforms and domains in ways that leave them--and democracy--vulnerable to security attacks. Sensitive data was kept in a plethora of personal and work accounts, with ad hoc adoption of strong passwords, two-factor authentication, encryption, and access controls. No individual company, committee, organization, campaign, or academic institution can solve the identified problems on their own. To this end, we provide an initial understanding of this complex problem space and recommendations for how a diverse group of experts can begin working together to improve security for political campaigns.
Watching Smartly from the Bottom: Intrusion Detection revamped through Programmable Networks and Artificial Intelligence
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2021
Year: 2021

The advent of Programmable Data Planes represents an outstanding evolution and complete revolution of the Software- Defined Networking paradigm. The capacity to define the entire behavior of forwarding devices by controlling the packet parsing procedures and executing custom operations enables offloading functionalities traditionally performed at the control plane. A recent research line has explored the possibility of even offloading to the data plane part of Artificial Intelligence algorithms, and more specifically, Machine Learning ones, to increase their accuracy and responsiveness (by having more detailed visibility of the traffic). This introduces a significant opportunity for evolution in the critical field of Intrusion Detection. However, offloading functionalities to the data plane is not a straightforward task. In this paper, we discuss how Programmable Data Planes might complement different stages of an Intrusion Detection System based on Machine Learning. We present two use cases that make evident the feasibility of this approach and highlight aspects that must be considered when addressing the challenge of deploying solutions leveraging data-plane functionalities.
Classes in Object-Oriented Modeling (UML): Further Understanding and Abstraction
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2021
Year: 2021

Object orientation has become the predominant paradigm for conceptual modeling (e.g., UML), where the notions of class and object form the primitive building blocks of thought. Classes act as templates for objects that have attributes and methods (actions). The modeled systems are not even necessarily software systems: They can be human and artificial systems of many different kinds (e.g., teaching and learning systems). The UML class diagram is described as a central component of model-driven software development. It is the most common diagram in object-oriented models and used to model the static design view of a system. Objects both carry data and execute actions. According to some authorities in modeling, a certain degree of difficulty exists in understanding the semantics of these notions in UML class diagrams. Some researchers claim class diagrams have limited use for conceptual analysis and that they are best used for logical design. Performing conceptual analysis should not concern the ways facts are grouped into structures. Whether a fact will end up in the design as an attribute is not a conceptual issue. UML leads to drilling down into physical design details (e.g., private/public attributes, encapsulated operations, and navigating direction of an association). This paper is a venture to further the understanding of object-orientated concepts as exemplified in UML with the aim of developing a broad comprehension of conceptual modeling fundamentals. Thinging machine (TM) modeling is a new modeling language employed in such an undertaking. TM modeling interlaces structure (components) and actionality where actions infiltrate the attributes as much as the classes. Although space limitations affect some aspects of the class diagram, the concluding assessment of this study reveals the class description is a kind of shorthand for a richer sematic TM construct.