OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
On the Privacy of the Opal Data Release: A Response
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2017
Year: 2017

This document is a response to a report from the University of Melbourne on the privacy of the Opal dataset release. The Opal dataset was released by Data61 (CSIRO) in conjunction with the Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW). The data consists of two separate weeks of "tap-on/tap-off" data of individuals who used any of the four different modes of public transport from TfNSW: buses, light rail, train and ferries. These taps are recorded through the smart ticketing system, known as Opal, available in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
Democracy Models and Civic Technologies: Tensions, Trilemmas, and Trade-offs
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2017
Year: 2017

This paper aims at connecting democratic theory with civic technologies in order to highlight the links between some theoretical tensions and trilemmas and design trade-offs. First, it reviews some tensions and trilemmas raised by political philosophers and democratic theorists. Second, it considers both the role and the limitations of civic technologies in mitigating these tensions and trilemmas. Third, it proposes to adopt a meso-level approach, in between the macro-level of democratic theories and the micro-level of tools, to situate the interplay between people, digital technologies, and data.
Full-Duplex Massive MIMO Multi-Pair Two-Way AF Relaying: Energy Efficiency Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

We consider two-way amplify and forward relaying, where multiple full-duplex user pairs exchange information via a shared full-duplex massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay. Most of the previous massive MIMO relaying works maximize the spectral efficiency (SE). By contrast, we maximize the non-convex energy efficiency (EE) metric by approximating it as a pseudo-concave problem, which is then solved using the classic Dinkelbach approach. We also maximize the EE of the least energy-efficient user {relying} on the max-min approach. For solving these optimization problems, we derive closed-form lower bounds for the ergodic achievable rate both for maximal-ratio combining and zero-forcing processing at the relay, by using minimum mean squared error channel estimation. We numerically characterize the accuracy of the lower bounds derived. We also compare the SE and EE of the proposed design to those of the existing full-duplex systems and quantify the significant improvement achieved by the proposed algorithm. We also compare the EE of the proposed full-duplex system to that of its half-duplex counterparts, and characterize the self-loop and inter-user interference regimes, for which the proposed full-duplex system succeeds in outperforming the half-duplex ones.
A Clustering-based Consistency Adaptation Strategy for Distributed SDN Controllers
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2017
Year: 2017

Distributed controllers are oftentimes used in large-scale SDN deployments where they run a myriad of network applications simultaneously. Such applications could have different consistency and availability preferences. These controllers need to communicate via east/west interfaces in order to synchronize their state information. The consistency and the availability of the distributed state information are governed by an underlying consistency model. Earlier, we suggested the use of adaptively-consistent controllers that can autonomously tune their consistency parameters in order to meet the performance requirements of a certain application. In this paper, we examine the feasibility of employing adaptive controllers that are built on-top of tunable consistency models similar to that of Apache Cassandra. We present an adaptation strategy that uses clustering techniques (sequential k-means and incremental k-means) in order to map a given application performance indicator into a feasible consistency level that can be used with the underlying tunable consistency model. In the cases that we modeled and tested, our results show that in the case of sequential k-means, with a reasonable number of clusters (>= 50), a plausible mapping (low RMSE) could be estimated between the application performance indicators and the consistency level indicator. In the case of incremental k-means, the results also showed that a plausible mapping (low RMSE) could be estimated using a similar number of clusters (>= 50) by using a small threshold (~$ 0.01).
Who Will Share My Image? Predicting the Content Diffusion Path in Online Social Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

Content popularity prediction has been extensively studied due to its importance and interest for both users and hosts of social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. However, existing work mainly focuses on modeling popularity using a single metric such as the total number of likes or shares. In this work, we propose Diffusion-LSTM, a memory-based deep recurrent network that learns to recursively predict the entire diffusion path of an image through a social network. By combining user social features and image features, and encoding the diffusion path taken thus far with an explicit memory cell, our model predicts the diffusion path of an image more accurately compared to alternate baselines that either encode only image or social features, or lack memory. By mapping individual users to user prototypes, our model can generalize to new users not seen during training. Finally, we demonstrate our model's capability of generating diffusion trees, and show that the generated trees closely resemble ground-truth trees.
Diagonal Rescaling For Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2017
Year: 2017

We define a second-order neural network stochastic gradient training algorithm whose block-diagonal structure effectively amounts to normalizing the unit activations. Investigating why this algorithm lacks in robustness then reveals two interesting insights. The first insight suggests a new way to scale the stepsizes, clarifying popular algorithms such as RMSProp as well as old neural network tricks such as fanin stepsize scaling. The second insight stresses the practical importance of dealing with fast changes of the curvature of the cost.
Shared Memory Parallel Subgraph Enumeration
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2017
Year: 2017

The subgraph enumeration problem asks us to find all subgraphs of a target graph that are isomorphic to a given pattern graph. Determining whether even one such isomorphic subgraph exists is NP-complete---and therefore finding all such subgraphs (if they exist) is a time-consuming task. Subgraph enumeration has applications in many fields, including biochemistry and social networks, and interestingly the fastest algorithms for solving the problem for biochemical inputs are sequential. Since they depend on depth-first tree traversal, an efficient parallelization is far from trivial. Nevertheless, since important applications produce data sets with increasing difficulty, parallelism seems beneficial. We thus present here a shared-memory parallelization of the state-of-the-art subgraph enumeration algorithms RI and RI-DS (a variant of RI for dense graphs) by Bonnici et al. [BMC Bioinformatics, 2013]. Our strategy uses work stealing and our implementation demonstrates a significant speedup on real-world biochemical data---despite a highly irregular data access pattern. We also improve RI-DS by pruning the search space better; this further improves the empirical running times compared to the already highly tuned RI-DS.
Analog Beam Tracking in Linear Antenna Arrays: Convergence, Optimality, and Performance
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

The directionality of millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications creates a significant challenge in serving fast-moving mobile terminals on, e.g., high-speed vehicles, trains, and UAVs. This challenge is exacerbated in mmWave systems using analog antenna arrays, because of the inherent non-convexity in the control of the phase shifters. In this paper, we develop a recursive beam tracking algorithm which can simultaneously achieve fast tracking speed, high tracking accuracy, low complexity, and low pilot overhead. In static scenarios, this algorithm converges to the minimum Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of beam tracking with high probability. In dynamic scenarios, even at SNRs as low as 0dB, our algorithm is capable of tracking a mobile moving randomly at an absolute angular velocity of 10-20 degrees per second, using only 5 pilot symbols per second. If combining with a simple TDMA pilot pattern, this algorithm can track hundreds of high-speed mobiles in 5G configurations. Our simulations show that the tracking performance of this algorithm is much better than several state-of-the-art algorithms.
Quantum entropy and complexity
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

We study the relations between the recently proposed machine-independent quantum complexity of P. Gacs~\cite{Gacs} and the entropy of classical and quantum systems. On one hand, by restricting Gacs complexity to ergodic classical dynamical systems, we retrieve the equality between the Kolmogorov complexity rate and the Shannon entropy rate derived by A.A. Brudno~\cite{Brudno}. On the other hand, using the quantum Shannon-Mc Millan theorem~\cite{BSM}, we show that such an equality holds densely in the case of ergodic quantum spin chains.
DROPWAT: an Invisible Network Flow Watermark for Data Exfiltration Traceback
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2017
Year: 2017

Watermarking techniques have been proposed during the last 10 years as an approach to trace network flows for intrusion detection purposes. These techniques aim to impress a hidden signature on a traffic flow. A central property of network flow watermarking is invisibility, i.e., the ability to go unidentified by an unauthorized third party. Although widely sought after, the development of an invisible watermark is a challenging task that has not yet been accomplished. In this paper we take a step forward in addressing the invisibility problem with DROPWAT, an active network flow watermarking technique developed for tracing Internet flows directed to the staging server that is the final destination in a data exfiltration attack, even in the presence of several intermediate stepping stones or an anonymous network. DROPWAT is a timing-based technique that indirectly modifies interpacket delays by exploiting network reaction to packet loss. We empirically demonstrate that the watermark embedded by means of DROPWAT is invisible to a third party observing the watermarked traffic. We also validate DROPWAT and analyze its performance in a controlled experimental framework involving the execution of a series of experiments on the Internet, using Web proxy servers as stepping stones executed on several instances in Amazon Web Services, as well as the TOR anonymous network in the place of the stepping stones. Our results show that the detection algorithm is able to identify an embedded watermark achieving over 95% accuracy while being invisible.
A refined and asymptotic analysis of optimal stopping problems of Bruss and Weber
Venue: arXiv cs.PF 2017
Year: 2017

The classical secretary problem has been generalized over the years into several directions. In this paper we confine our interest to those generalizations which have to do with the more general problem of stopping on a last observation of a specific kind. We follow Dendievel, (where a bibliography can be found) who studies several types of such problems, mainly initiated by Bruss and Weber. Whether in discrete time or continuous time, whether all parameters are known or must be sequentially estimated, we shall call such problems simply "Bruss-Weber problems". Our contribution in the present paper is a refined analysis of several problems in this class and a study of the asymptotic behaviour of solutions. The problems we consider center around the following model. Let $X_1,X_2,\ldots,X_n$ be a sequence of independent random variables which can take three values: $\{+1,-1,0\}.$ Let $p:=¶(X_i=1), p':=¶(X_i=-1), \qt:=¶(X_i=0), p\geq p'$, where $p+p'+\qt=1$. The goal is to maximize the probability of stopping on a value $+1$ or $-1$ appearing for the last time in the sequence. Following a suggestion by Bruss, we have also analyzed an x-strategy with incomplete information: the cases $p$ known, $n$ unknown, then $n$ known, $p$ unknown and finally $n,p$ unknown are considered. We also present simulations of the corresponding complete selection algorithm.
Choreographies for Automatic Recovery
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2017
Year: 2017

We propose a choreographic model of reversible computations based on a conservative extension of global graphs and communicating finite-state machines. The main advantage of our approach is that does not require to instrument models in order to control reversibility but for a minor decoration of branches. We show that our models are conservative extensions of existing ones and that the reversible semantics guarantees causal consistency.
Fully Automatic Segmentation and Objective Assessment of Atrial Scars for Longstanding Persistent Atrial Fibrillation Patients Using Late Gadolinium-Enhanced MRI
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

Purpose: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia and is correlated with increased morbidity and mortality. It is associated with atrial fibrosis, which may be assessed non-invasively using late gadolinium-enhanced (LGE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) where scar tissue is visualised as a region of signal enhancement. In this study, we proposed a novel fully automatic pipeline to achieve an accurate and objective atrial scarring segmentation and assessment of LGE MRI scans for the AF patients. Methods: Our fully automatic pipeline uniquely combined: (1) a multi-atlas based whole heart segmentation (MA-WHS) to determine the cardiac anatomy from an MRI Roadmap acquisition which is then mapped to LGE MRI, and (2) a super-pixel and supervised learning based approach to delineate the distribution and extent of atrial scarring in LGE MRI. Results: Both our MA-WHS and atrial scarring segmentation showed accurate delineations of cardiac anatomy (mean Dice = 89%) and atrial scarring (mean Dice =79%) respectively compared to the established ground truth from manual segmentation. Compared with previously studied methods with manual interventions, our innovative pipeline demonstrated comparable results, but was computed fully automatically. Conclusion: The proposed segmentation methods allow LGE MRI to be used as an objective assessment tool for localisation, visualisation and quantification of atrial scarring.
Detecting and Explaining Crisis
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2017
Year: 2017

Individuals on social media may reveal themselves to be in various states of crisis (e.g. suicide, self-harm, abuse, or eating disorders). Detecting crisis from social media text automatically and accurately can have profound consequences. However, detecting a general state of crisis without explaining why has limited applications. An explanation in this context is a coherent, concise subset of the text that rationalizes the crisis detection. We explore several methods to detect and explain crisis using a combination of neural and non-neural techniques. We evaluate these techniques on a unique data set obtained from Koko, an anonymous emotional support network available through various messaging applications. We annotate a small subset of the samples labeled with crisis with corresponding explanations. Our best technique significantly outperforms the baseline for detection and explanation.
Extracting 3D Vascular Structures from Microscopy Images using Convolutional Recurrent Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

Vasculature is known to be of key biological significance, especially in the study of cancer. As such, considerable effort has been focused on the automated measurement and analysis of vasculature in medical and pre-clinical images. In tumors in particular, the vascular networks may be extremely irregular and the appearance of the individual vessels may not conform to classical descriptions of vascular appearance. Typically, vessels are extracted by either a segmentation and thinning pipeline, or by direct tracking. Neither of these methods are well suited to microscopy images of tumor vasculature. In order to address this we propose a method to directly extract a medial representation of the vessels using Convolutional Neural Networks. We then show that these two-dimensional centerlines can be meaningfully extended into 3D in anisotropic and complex microscopy images using the recently popularized Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory units (ConvLSTM). We demonstrate the effectiveness of this hybrid convolutional-recurrent architecture over both 2D and 3D convolutional comparators.
On The Continuous Coverage Problem for a Swarm of UAVs
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used to provide wireless network and remote surveillance coverage for disaster-affected areas. During such a situation, the UAVs need to return periodically to a charging station for recharging, due to their limited battery capacity. We study the problem of minimizing the number of UAVs required for a continuous coverage of a given area, given the recharging requirement. We prove that this problem is NP-complete. Due to its intractability, we study partitioning the coverage graph into cycles that start at the charging station. We first characterize the minimum number of UAVs to cover such a cycle based on the charging time, the traveling time, and the number of subareas to be covered by the cycle. Based on this analysis, we then develop an efficient algorithm, the cycles with limited energy algorithm. The straightforward method to continuously cover a given area is to split it into N subareas and cover it by N cycles using N additional UAVs. Our simulation results examine the importance of critical system parameters: the energy capacity of the UAVs, the number of subareas in the covered area, and the UAV charging and traveling times.We demonstrate that the cycles with limited energy algorithm requires 69%-94% fewer additional UAVs relative to the straightforward method, as the energy capacity of the UAVs is increased, and 67%-71% fewer additional UAVs, as the number of subareas is increased.
Maximizing Indoor Wireless Coverage Using UAVs Equipped with Directional Antennas
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used to provide wireless coverage during emergency cases where each UAV serves as an aerial wireless base station when the cellular network goes down. They can also be used to supplement the ground base station in order to provide better coverage and higher data rates for the users. In this paper, we aim to maximize the indoor wireless coverage using UAVs equipped with directional antennas. We study the case that the UAVs are using one channel, thus in order to maximize the total indoor wireless coverage, we avoid any overlapping in their coverage volumes. We present two methods to place the UAVs; providing wireless coverage from one building side and from two building sides. In the first method, we utilize circle packing theory to determine the 3-D locations of the UAVs in a way that the total coverage area is maximized. In the second method, we place the UAVs in front of two building sides and efficiently arrange the UAVs in alternating upsidedown arrangements. We show that the upside-down arrangements problem can be transformed from 3D to 2D and based on that we present an efficient algorithm to solve the problem. Our results show that the upside-down arrangements of UAVs, can improve the maximum total coverage by 100% compared to providing wireless coverage from one building side.
Linear-size CDAWG: new repetition-aware indexing and grammar compression
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2017
Year: 2017

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to combine \emph{compact directed acyclic word graphs} (CDAWGs) and grammar-based compression. This leads us to an efficient self-index, called Linear-size CDAWGs (L-CDAWGs), which can be represented with $O(\tilde e_T \log n)$ bits of space allowing for $O(\log n)$-time random and $O(1)$-time sequential accesses to edge labels, and $O(m \log σ+ occ)$-time pattern matching. Here, $\tilde e_T$ is the number of all extensions of maximal repeats in $T$, $n$ and $m$ are respectively the lengths of the text $T$ and a given pattern, $σ$ is the alphabet size, and $occ$ is the number of occurrences of the pattern in $T$. The repetitiveness measure $\tilde e_T$ is known to be much smaller than the text length $n$ for highly repetitive text. For constant alphabets, our L-CDAWGs achieve $O(m + occ)$ pattern matching time with $O(e_T^r \log n)$ bits of space, which improves the pattern matching time of Belazzougui et al.'s run-length BWT-CDAWGs by a factor of $\log \log n$, with the same space complexity. Here, $e_T^r$ is the number of right extensions of maximal repeats in $T$. As a byproduct, our result gives a way of constructing an SLP of size $O(\tilde e_T)$ for a given text $T$ in $O(n + \tilde e_T \log σ)$ time.
Studiu de caz privind utilizarea modelelor IEC 61499 in controlul holonic de nivel inalt
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2017
Year: 2017

This paper presents various solutions for applying the specifications of the IEC 61499 standard in order to modeling and implementing applications of holons control.
Defending against Phishing Attacks: Taxonomy of Methods, Current Issues and Future Directions
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2017
Year: 2017

Internet technology is so pervasive today, for example, from online social networking to online banking, it has made people's lives more comfortable. Due the growth of Internet technology, security threats to systems and networks are relentlessly inventive. One such a serious threat is "phishing", in which, attackers attempt to steal the user's credentials using fake emails or websites or both. It is true that both industry and academia are working hard to develop solutions to combat against phishing threats. It is therefore very important that organisations to pay attention to end-user awareness in phishing threat prevention. Therefore, the aim of our paper is twofold. First, we will discuss the history of phishing attacks and the attackers' motivation in details. Then, we will provide taxonomy of various types of phishing attacks. Second, we will provide taxonomy of various solutions proposed in literature to protect users from phishing based on the attacks identified in our taxonomy. Moreover, we have also discussed impact of phishing attacks in Internet of Things (IoTs). We conclude our paper discussing various issues and challenges that still exist in the literature, which are important to fight against with phishing threats.
Applying Artificial Intelligence and Internet Techniques in Rural Tourism Domain
Venue: arXiv cs.MA 2017
Year: 2017

Society has become more dependent on automated intelligent systems, at the same time, these systems have become more and more complicated. Society's expectation regarding the capabilities and intelligence of such systems has also grown. We have become a more complicated society with more complicated problems. As the expectation of intelligent systems rises, we discover many more applications for artificial intelligence. Additionally, as the difficulty level and computational requirements of such problems rise, there is a need to distribute the problem solving. Although the field of multiagent systems (MAS) and distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) is relatively young, the importance and applicability of this technology for solving today's problems continue to grow. In multiagent systems, the main goal is to provide fruitful cooperation among agents in order to enrich the support given to all user activities. This paper deals with the development of a multiagent system aimed at solving the reservation problems encountered in rural tourism. Due to their benefits over the last few years, online travel agencies have become a very useful instrument in planning vacations. A MAS concept (which is based on the Internet exploitation) can improve this activity and provide clients with a new, rapid and efficient way of making accommodation arrangements.