OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Feedback Coding Schemes for the Broadcast Channel with Mutual Secrecy Requirement
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2018
Year: 2018

Recently, the physical layer security (PLS) of the communication systems has been shown to be enhanced by using legal receiver's feedback. The present secret key based feedback scheme mainly focuses on producing key from the feedback and using this key to protect part of the transmitted message. However, this feedback scheme has been proved only optimal for several degraded cases. The broadcast channel with mutual secrecy requirement (BC-MSR) is important as it constitutes the essence of physical layer security (PLS) in the down-link of the wireless communication systems. In this paper, we investigate the feedback effects on the BC-MSR, and propose two inner bounds and one outer bound on the secrecy capacity region of the BC-MSR with noiseless feedback. One inner bound is constructed according to the already existing secret key based feedback coding scheme for the wiretap channel, and the other is constructed by a hybrid coding scheme using feedback to generate not only keys protecting the transmitted messages but also cooperative messages helping the receivers to improve their decoding performance. The performance of the proposed feedback schemes and the gap between the inner and outer bounds are further explained via two examples.
A Performance and Resource Consumption Assessment of Secure Multiparty Computation
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2018
Year: 2018

In recent years, secure multiparty computation (SMC) advanced from a theoretical technique to a practically applicable technology. Several frameworks were proposed of which some are still actively developed. We perform a first comprehensive study of performance characteristics of SMC protocols using a promising implementation based on secret sharing, a common and state-of-the-art foundation. Therefor, we analyze its scalability with respect to environmental parameters as the number of peers, network properties -- namely transmission rate, packet loss, network latency -- and parallelization of computations as parameters and execution time, CPU cycles, memory consumption and amount of transmitted data as variables. Our insights on the resource consumption show that such a solution is practically applicable in intranet environments and -- with limitations -- in Internet settings.
Some parametrized dynamic priority policies for 2-class M/G/1 queues: completeness and applications
Venue: arXiv cs.PF 2018
Year: 2018

Completeness of a dynamic priority scheduling scheme is of fundamental importance for the optimal control of queues in areas as diverse as computer communications, communication networks, supply chains and manufacturing systems. Our first main contribution is to identify the mean waiting time completeness as a unifying aspect for four different dynamic priority scheduling schemes by proving their completeness and equivalence in 2-class M/G/1 queue. These dynamic priority schemes are earliest due date based, head of line priority jump, relative priority, and probabilistic priority. In our second main contribution, we characterize the optimal scheduling policies for the case studies in different domains by exploiting the completeness of above dynamic priority schemes. The major theme of second main contribution is resource allocation/optimal control in revenue management problems for contemporary systems such as cloud computing, high-performance computing, etc., where congestion is inherent. Using completeness and theoretically tractable nature of relative priority policy, we study the impact of approximation in a fairly generic data network utility framework. We introduce the notion of min-max fairness in multi-class queues and show that a simple global FCFS policy is min-max fair. Next, we re-derive the celebrated $c/ρ$ rule for 2-class M/G/1 queues by an elegant argument and also simplify a complex joint pricing and scheduling problem for a wider class of scheduling policies.
Predicting Gross Movie Revenue
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2018
Year: 2018

'There is no terror in the bang, only is the anticipation of it' - Alfred Hitchcock. Yet there is everything in correctly anticipating the bang a movie would make in the box-office. Movies make a high profile, billion dollar industry and prediction of movie revenue can be very lucrative. Predicted revenues can be used for planning both the production and distribution stages. For example, projected gross revenue can be used to plan the remuneration of the actors and crew members as well as other parts of the budget [1]. Success or failure of a movie can depend on many factors: star-power, release date, budget, MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) rating, plot and the highly unpredictable human reactions. The enormity of the number of exogenous variables makes manual revenue prediction process extremely difficult. However, in the era of computer and data sciences, volumes of data can be efficiently processed and modelled. Hence the tough job of predicting gross revenue of a movie can be simplified with the help of modern computing power and the historical data available as movie databases [2].
Geometrical analysis of polynomial lens distortion models
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

Polynomial functions are a usual choice to model the nonlinearity of lenses. Typically, these models are obtained through physical analysis of the lens system or on purely empirical grounds. The aim of this work is to facilitate an alternative approach to the selection or design of these models based on establishing a priori the desired geometrical properties of the distortion functions. With this purpose we obtain all the possible isotropic linear models and also those that are formed by functions with symmetry with respect to some axis. In this way, the classical models (decentering, thin prism distortion) are found to be particular instances of the family of models found by geometric considerations. These results allow to find generalizations of the most usually employed models while preserving the desired geometrical properties. Our results also provide a better understanding of the geometric properties of the models employed in the most usual computer vision software libraries.
Automatic Recognition of Space-Time Constellations by Learning on the Grassmann Manifold (Extended Version)
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2018
Year: 2018

Recent breakthroughs in machine learning especially artificial intelligence shift the paradigm of wireless communication towards intelligence radios. One of their core operations is automatic modulation recognition (AMR). Existing research focuses on coherent modulation schemes such as QAM, PSK and FSK. The AMR of (non-coherent) space-time modulation remains an uncharted area despite its wide deployment in modern multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The scheme using a so called Grassmann constellation enables rate-enhancement using multi-antennas and blind detection. In this work, we propose an AMR approach for Grassmann constellation based on data clustering, which differs from traditional AMR based on classification using a modulation database. The approach allows algorithms for clustering on the Grassmann manifold, such as Grassmann K-means and depth-first search, originally developed for computer vision to be applied to AMR. We further develop an analytical framework for studying and designing these algorithms in the context of AMR. First, the maximum-likelihood Grassmann constellation detection is proved to be equivalent to clustering on the Grassmannian. Thereby, a well-known machine-learning result that was originally established only for the Euclidean space is rediscovered for the Grassmannian. Next, despite a rich literature on algorithmic design, theoretical analysis of data clustering is largely overlooked due to the lack of tractable techniques. We tackle the challenge by introducing probabilistic metrics for measuring the inter-cluster separability and intra-cluster connectivity of received space-time symbols and deriving them using tools from differential geometry and Grassmannian packing. The results provide useful insights into the effects of various parameters ranging from the signal-to-noise ratio to constellation size, facilitating algorithmic design.
Approximating multiobjective combinatorial optimization problems with the OWA criterion
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2018
Year: 2018

The paper deals with a multiobjective combinatorial optimization problem with $K$ linear cost functions. The popular Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) criterion is used to aggregate the cost functions and compute a solution. It is well known that minimizing OWA for most basic combinatorial problems is weakly NP-hard even if the number of objectives $K$ equals two, and strongly NP-hard when $K$ is a part of the input. In this paper, the problem with nonincreasing weights in the OWA criterion and a large $K$ is considered. A method of reducing the number of objectives by appropriately aggregating the objective costs before solving the problem is proposed. It is shown that an optimal solution to the reduced problem has a guaranteed worst-case approximation ratio. Some new approximation results for the Hurwicz criterion, which is a special case of OWA, are also presented.
A Deep Information Sharing Network for Multi-contrast Compressed Sensing MRI Reconstruction
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

In multi-contrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), compressed sensing theory can accelerate imaging by sampling fewer measurements within each contrast. The conventional optimization-based models suffer several limitations: strict assumption of shared sparse support, time-consuming optimization and "shallow" models with difficulties in encoding the rich patterns hiding in massive MRI data. In this paper, we propose the first deep learning model for multi-contrast MRI reconstruction. We achieve information sharing through feature sharing units, which significantly reduces the number of parameters. The feature sharing unit is combined with a data fidelity unit to comprise an inference block. These inference blocks are cascaded with dense connections, which allows for information transmission across different depths of the network efficiently. Our extensive experiments on various multi-contrast MRI datasets show that proposed model outperforms both state-of-the-art single-contrast and multi-contrast MRI methods in accuracy and efficiency. We show the improved reconstruction quality can bring great benefits for the later medical image analysis stage. Furthermore, the robustness of the proposed model to the non-registration environment shows its potential in real MRI applications.
POR for Security Protocol Equivalences: Beyond Action-Determinism
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2018
Year: 2018

Formal methods have proved effective to automatically analyze protocols. Over the past years, much research has focused on verifying trace equivalence on protocols, which is notably used to model many interesting privacy properties, e.g., anonymity or unlinkability. Many tools for checking trace equivalence rely on a naive and expensive exploration of all interleavings of concurrent actions, which calls for partial-order reduction (POR) techniques. In this paper, we present the first POR technique for protocol equivalences that does not rely on an action-determinism assumption: we recast the trace equivalence problem as a reachability problem, to which persistent and sleep set techniques can be applied, and we show how to effectively apply these results in the context of symbolic executions. We report on a prototype implementation, improving the tool DeepSec.
Stationarity in the Realizations of the Causal Rate-Distortion Function for One-Sided Stationary Sources
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2018
Year: 2018

This paper derives novel results on the characterization of the the causal information rate-distortion function (IRDF) $R_{c}^{it}(D)$ for arbitrarily-distributed one-sided stationary $κ$-th order Markov source x(1),x(2),.... It is first shown that Gorbunov and Pinsker's results on the stationarity of the realizations to the causal IRDF (stated for two-sided stationary sources) do not apply to the commonly used family of asymptotic average single-letter (AASL) distortion criteria. Moreover, we show that, in general, a reconstruction sequence cannot be both jointly stationary with a one-sided stationary source sequence and causally related to it. This implies that, in general, the causal IRDF for one-sided stationary sources cannot be realized by a stationary distribution. However, we prove that for an arbitrarily distributed one-sided stationary source and a large class of distortion criteria (including AASL), the search for $R_{c}^{it}(D)$ can be restricted to distributions which yield the output sequence y(1), y(2),... jointly stationary with the source after $κ$ samples. Finally, we improve the definition of the stationary causal IRDF $\overline{R}_{c}^{it}(D)$ previously introduced by Derpich and Østergaard for two-sided Markovian stationary sources and show that $\overline{R}_{c}^{it}(D)$ for a two-sided source ...,x(-1),x(0),x(1),... equals $R_{c}^{it}(D)$ for the associated one-sided source x(1), x(2),.... This implies that, for the Gaussian quadratic case, the practical zero-delay encoder-decoder pairs proposed by Derpich and Østergaard for approaching $R_{c}^{it}(D)$ achieve an operational data rate which exceeds $R_{c}^{it}(D)$ by less than $1+0.5 \log_2(2 πe /12) \simeq 1.254$ bits per sample.
Achieving Fluency and Coherency in Task-oriented Dialog
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2018
Year: 2018

We consider real world task-oriented dialog settings, where agents need to generate both fluent natural language responses and correct external actions like database queries and updates. We demonstrate that, when applied to customer support chat transcripts, Sequence to Sequence (Seq2Seq) models often generate short, incoherent and ungrammatical natural language responses that are dominated by words that occur with high frequency in the training data. These phenomena do not arise in synthetic datasets such as bAbI, where we show Seq2Seq models are nearly perfect. We develop techniques to learn embeddings that succinctly capture relevant information from the dialog history, and demonstrate that nearest neighbor based approaches in this learned neural embedding space generate more fluent responses. However, we see that these methods are not able to accurately predict when to execute an external action. We show how to combine nearest neighbor and Seq2Seq methods in a hybrid model, where nearest neighbor is used to generate fluent responses and Seq2Seq type models ensure dialog coherency and generate accurate external actions. We show that this approach is well suited for customer support scenarios, where agents' responses are typically script-driven, and correct external actions are critically important. The hybrid model on the customer support data achieves a 78% relative improvement in fluency scores, and a 130% improvement in accuracy of external calls.
Unsupervised Pathology Image Segmentation Using Representation Learning with Spherical K-means
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

This paper presents a novel method for unsupervised segmentation of pathology images. Staging of lung cancer is a major factor of prognosis. Measuring the maximum dimensions of the invasive component in a pathology images is an essential task. Therefore, image segmentation methods for visualizing the extent of invasive and noninvasive components on pathology images could support pathological examination. However, it is challenging for most of the recent segmentation methods that rely on supervised learning to cope with unlabeled pathology images. In this paper, we propose a unified approach to unsupervised representation learning and clustering for pathology image segmentation. Our method consists of two phases. In the first phase, we learn feature representations of training patches from a target image using the spherical k-means. The purpose of this phase is to obtain cluster centroids which could be used as filters for feature extraction. In the second phase, we apply conventional k-means to the representations extracted by the centroids and then project cluster labels to the target images. We evaluated our methods on pathology images of lung cancer specimen. Our experiments showed that the proposed method outperforms traditional k-means segmentation and the multithreshold Otsu method both quantitatively and qualitatively with an improved normalized mutual information (NMI) score of 0.626 compared to 0.168 and 0.167, respectively. Furthermore, we found that the centroids can be applied to the segmentation of other slices from the same sample.
Generating Clues for Gender based Occupation De-biasing in Text
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2018
Year: 2018

Vast availability of text data has enabled widespread training and use of AI systems that not only learn and predict attributes from the text but also generate text automatically. However, these AI models also learn gender, racial and ethnic biases present in the training data. In this paper, we present the first system that discovers the possibility that a given text portrays a gender stereotype associated with an occupation. If the possibility exists, the system offers counter-evidences of opposite gender also being associated with the same occupation in the context of user-provided geography and timespan. The system thus enables text de-biasing by assisting a human-in-the-loop. The system can not only act as a text pre-processor before training any AI model but also help human story writers write stories free of occupation-level gender bias in the geographical and temporal context of their choice.
Weighted simplicial complex reconstruction from mobile laser scanning using sensor topology
Venue: arXiv cs.CG 2018
Year: 2018

We propose a new method for the reconstruction of simplicial complexes (combining points, edges and triangles) from 3D point clouds from Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS). Our method uses the inherent topology of the MLS sensor to define a spatial adjacency relationship between points. We then investigate each possible connexion between adjacent points, weighted according to its distance to the sensor, and filter them by searching collinear structures in the scene, or structures perpendicular to the laser beams. Next, we create and filter triangles for each triplet of self-connected edges and according to their local planarity. We compare our results to an unweighted simplicial complex reconstruction.
PowerHammer: Exfiltrating Data from Air-Gapped Computers through Power Lines
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2018
Year: 2018

In this paper we provide an implementation, evaluation, and analysis of PowerHammer, a malware (bridgeware [1]) that uses power lines to exfiltrate data from air-gapped computers. In this case, a malicious code running on a compromised computer can control the power consumption of the system by intentionally regulating the CPU utilization. Data is modulated, encoded, and transmitted on top of the current flow fluctuations, and then it is conducted and propagated through the power lines. This phenomena is known as a 'conducted emission'. We present two versions of the attack. Line level powerhammering: In this attack, the attacker taps the in-home power lines1 that are directly attached to the electrical outlet. Phase level power-hammering: In this attack, the attacker taps the power lines at the phase level, in the main electrical service panel. In both versions of the attack, the attacker measures the emission conducted and then decodes the exfiltrated data. We describe the adversarial attack model and present modulations and encoding schemes along with a transmission protocol. We evaluate the covert channel in different scenarios and discuss signal-to-noise (SNR), signal processing, and forms of interference. We also present a set of defensive countermeasures. Our results show that binary data can be covertly exfiltrated from air-gapped computers through the power lines at bit rates of 1000 bit/sec for the line level power-hammering attack and 10 bit/sec for the phase level power-hammering attack.
Fast Feasible and Unfeasible Matrix Multiplication
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2018
Year: 2018

Fast matrix-by-matrix multiplication (hereafter MM) is a highly recognized research subject. The record upper bound 3 of 1968 on the exponent of the complexity MM decreased below 2.38 by 1987, applies to celebrated problems in many areas of computing, and is extensively cited in the Theory of Computing. Further decrease of the exponent remains a celebrated challenge. Acceleration of MM in the Practice of Computing is a distinct challenge, because all known algorithms supporting the exponents below 2.7733 improve straightforward MM only for unfeasible MM of immense size, greatly exceeding the sizes of interest nowadays and in any foreseeable future. We first survey the mainstream study of the acceleration of MM of unbounded sizes, cover the progress in decreasing the exponents of MM, comment on its impact on the theory and practice of computing, and recall various fundamental concepts and techniques supporting fast MM and naturally introduced in that study by 1980. Then we demonstrate how the curse of recursion naturally entered the game of decreasing the record exponents. Finally we cover the State of the Art of efficient feasible MM, including some most efficient known techniques and algorithms as well as various issues of numerical and symbolic implementation. We hope that our review will help motivate and properly focus further effort in this highly important area.
Influence Estimation on Social Media Networks Using Causal Inference
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2018
Year: 2018

Estimating influence on social media networks is an important practical and theoretical problem, especially because this new medium is widely exploited as a platform for disinformation and propaganda. This paper introduces a novel approach to influence estimation on social media networks and applies it to the real-world problem of characterizing active influence operations on Twitter during the 2017 French presidential elections. The new influence estimation approach attributes impact by accounting for narrative propagation over the network using a network causal inference framework applied to data arising from graph sampling and filtering. This causal framework infers the difference in outcome as a function of exposure, in contrast to existing approaches that attribute impact to activity volume or topological features, which do not explicitly measure nor necessarily indicate actual network influence. Cramér-Rao estimation bounds are derived for parameter estimation as a step in the causal analysis, and used to achieve geometrical insight on the causal inference problem. The ability to infer high causal influence is demonstrated on real-world social media accounts that are later independently confirmed to be either directly affiliated or correlated with foreign influence operations using evidence supplied by the U.S. Congress and journalistic reports.