OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
KCP: Kernel Cluster Pruning for Dense Labeling Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Pruning has become a promising technique used to compress and accelerate neural networks. Existing methods are mainly evaluated on spare labeling applications. However, dense labeling applications are those closer to real world problems that require real-time processing on resource-constrained mobile devices. Pruning for dense labeling applications is still a largely unexplored field. The prevailing filter channel pruning method removes the entire filter channel. Accordingly, the interaction between each kernel in one filter channel is ignored. In this study, we proposed kernel cluster pruning (KCP) to prune dense labeling networks. We developed a clustering technique to identify the least representational kernels in each layer. By iteratively removing those kernels, the parameter that can better represent the entire network is preserved; thus, we achieve better accuracy with a decent model size and computation reduction. When evaluated on stereo matching and semantic segmentation neural networks, our method can reduce more than 70% of FLOPs with less than 1% of accuracy drop. Moreover, for ResNet-50 on ILSVRC-2012, our KCP can reduce more than 50% of FLOPs reduction with 0.13% Top-1 accuracy gain. Therefore, KCP achieves state-of-the-art pruning results.
Deep Parametric Continuous Convolutional Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Standard convolutional neural networks assume a grid structured input is available and exploit discrete convolutions as their fundamental building blocks. This limits their applicability to many real-world applications. In this paper we propose Parametric Continuous Convolution, a new learnable operator that operates over non-grid structured data. The key idea is to exploit parameterized kernel functions that span the full continuous vector space. This generalization allows us to learn over arbitrary data structures as long as their support relationship is computable. Our experiments show significant improvement over the state-of-the-art in point cloud segmentation of indoor and outdoor scenes, and lidar motion estimation of driving scenes.
A System for Efficiently Hunting for Cyber Threats in Computer Systems Using Threat Intelligence
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

Log-based cyber threat hunting has emerged as an important solution to counter sophisticated cyber attacks. However, existing approaches require non-trivial efforts of manual query construction and have overlooked the rich external knowledge about threat behaviors provided by open-source Cyber Threat Intelligence (OSCTI). To bridge the gap, we build ThreatRaptor, a system that facilitates cyber threat hunting in computer systems using OSCTI. Built upon mature system auditing frameworks, ThreatRaptor provides (1) an unsupervised, light-weight, and accurate NLP pipeline that extracts structured threat behaviors from unstructured OSCTI text, (2) a concise and expressive domain-specific query language, TBQL, to hunt for malicious system activities, (3) a query synthesis mechanism that automatically synthesizes a TBQL query from the extracted threat behaviors, and (4) an efficient query execution engine to search the big system audit logging data.
Temporal Spatial-Adaptive Interpolation with Deformable Refinement for Electron Microscopic Images
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Recently, flow-based methods have achieved promising success in video frame interpolation. However, electron microscopic (EM) images suffer from unstable image quality, low PSNR, and disorderly deformation. Existing flow-based interpolation methods cannot precisely compute optical flow for EM images since only predicting each position's unique offset. To overcome these problems, we propose a novel interpolation framework for EM images that progressively synthesizes interpolated features in a coarse-to-fine manner. First, we extract missing intermediate features by the proposed temporal spatial-adaptive (TSA) interpolation module. The TSA interpolation module aggregates temporal contexts and then adaptively samples the spatial-related features with the proposed residual spatial adaptive block. Second, we introduce a stacked deformable refinement block (SDRB) further enhance the reconstruction quality, which is aware of the matching positions and relevant features from input frames with the feedback mechanism. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our approach compared to previous works, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Abstractive Opinion Tagging
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

In e-commerce, opinion tags refer to a ranked list of tags provided by the e-commerce platform that reflect characteristics of reviews of an item. To assist consumers to quickly grasp a large number of reviews about an item, opinion tags are increasingly being applied by e-commerce platforms. Current mechanisms for generating opinion tags rely on either manual labelling or heuristic methods, which is time-consuming and ineffective. In this paper, we propose the abstractive opinion tagging task, where systems have to automatically generate a ranked list of opinion tags that are based on, but need not occur in, a given set of user-generated reviews. The abstractive opinion tagging task comes with three main challenges: (1) the noisy nature of reviews; (2) the formal nature of opinion tags vs. the colloquial language usage in reviews; and (3) the need to distinguish between different items with very similar aspects. To address these challenges, we propose an abstractive opinion tagging framework, named AOT-Net, to generate a ranked list of opinion tags given a large number of reviews. First, a sentence-level salience estimation component estimates each review's salience score. Next, a review clustering and ranking component ranks reviews in two steps: first, reviews are grouped into clusters and ranked by cluster size; then, reviews within each cluster are ranked by their distance to the cluster center. Finally, given the ranked reviews, a rank-aware opinion tagging component incorporates an alignment feature and alignment loss to generate a ranked list of opinion tags. To facilitate the study of this task, we create and release a large-scale dataset, called eComTag, crawled from real-world e-commerce websites. Extensive experiments conducted on the eComTag dataset verify the effectiveness of the proposed AOT-Net in terms of various evaluation metrics.
CaEGCN: Cross-Attention Fusion based Enhanced Graph Convolutional Network for Clustering
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2021
Year: 2021

With the powerful learning ability of deep convolutional networks, deep clustering methods can extract the most discriminative information from individual data and produce more satisfactory clustering results. However, existing deep clustering methods usually ignore the relationship between the data. Fortunately, the graph convolutional network can handle such relationship, opening up a new research direction for deep clustering. In this paper, we propose a cross-attention based deep clustering framework, named Cross-Attention Fusion based Enhanced Graph Convolutional Network (CaEGCN), which contains four main modules: the cross-attention fusion module which innovatively concatenates the Content Auto-encoder module (CAE) relating to the individual data and Graph Convolutional Auto-encoder module (GAE) relating to the relationship between the data in a layer-by-layer manner, and the self-supervised model that highlights the discriminative information for clustering tasks. While the cross-attention fusion module fuses two kinds of heterogeneous representation, the CAE module supplements the content information for the GAE module, which avoids the over-smoothing problem of GCN. In the GAE module, two novel loss functions are proposed that reconstruct the content and relationship between the data, respectively. Finally, the self-supervised module constrains the distributions of the middle layer representations of CAE and GAE to be consistent. Experimental results on different types of datasets prove the superiority and robustness of the proposed CaEGCN.
Generative Counterfactuals for Neural Networks via Attribute-Informed Perturbation
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

With the wide use of deep neural networks (DNN), model interpretability has become a critical concern, since explainable decisions are preferred in high-stake scenarios. Current interpretation techniques mainly focus on the feature attribution perspective, which are limited in indicating why and how particular explanations are related to the prediction. To this end, an intriguing class of explanations, named counterfactuals, has been developed to further explore the "what-if" circumstances for interpretation, and enables the reasoning capability on black-box models. However, generating counterfactuals for raw data instances (i.e., text and image) is still in the early stage due to its challenges on high data dimensionality and unsemantic raw features. In this paper, we design a framework to generate counterfactuals specifically for raw data instances with the proposed Attribute-Informed Perturbation (AIP). By utilizing generative models conditioned with different attributes, counterfactuals with desired labels can be obtained effectively and efficiently. Instead of directly modifying instances in the data space, we iteratively optimize the constructed attribute-informed latent space, where features are more robust and semantic. Experimental results on real-world texts and images demonstrate the effectiveness, sample quality as well as efficiency of our designed framework, and show the superiority over other alternatives. Besides, we also introduce some practical applications based on our framework, indicating its potential beyond the model interpretability aspect.
Optical Flow Method for Measuring Deformation of Soil Specimen Subjected to Torsional Shearing
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2021
Year: 2021

In this study optical flow method was used for soil small deformation measurement in laboratory tests. The main objective was to observe how the deformation distributes along the whole height of cylindrical soil specimen subjected to torsional shearing (TS test). The experiments were conducted on dry non-cohesive soil specimens under two values of isotropic pressure. Specimens were loaded with low-amplitude cyclic torque to analyze the deformation within the small strain range (0.001-0.01%). Optical flow method variant by Ce Liu (2009) was used for motion estimation from series of images. This algorithm uses scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) for image feature extraction and coarse-to-fine matching scheme for faster calculations. The results were validated with the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The results show that the displacement distribution deviates from commonly assumed linearity. Moreover, the observed deformation mechanisms analysis suggest that the shear modulus $G$ commonly determined through TS tests can be considerably overestimated.
Deadeye: A Novel Preattentive Visualization Technique Based on Dichoptic Presentation
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2021
Year: 2021

Preattentive visual features such as hue or flickering can effectively draw attention to an object of interest -- for instance, an important feature in a scientific visualization. These features appear to pop out and can be recognized by our visual system, independently from the number of distractors. Most cues do not take advantage of the fact that most humans have two eyes. In cases where binocular vision is applied, it is almost exclusively used to convey depth by exposing stereo pairs. We present Deadeye, a novel preattentive visualization technique based on presenting different stimuli to each eye. The target object is rendered for one eye only and is instantly detected by our visual system. In contrast to existing cues, Deadeye does not modify any visual properties of the target and, thus, is particularly suited for visualization applications. Our evaluation confirms that Deadeye is indeed perceived preattentively. We also explore a conjunction search based on our technique and show that, in contrast to 3D depth, the task cannot be processed in parallel.
A Distributed Chunk Calculation Approach for Self-scheduling of Parallel Applications on Distributed-memory Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2021
Year: 2021

Loop scheduling techniques aim to achieve load-balanced executions of scientific applications. Dynamic loop self-scheduling (DLS) libraries for distributed-memory systems are typically MPI-based and employ a centralized chunk calculation approach (CCA) to assign variably-sized chunks of loop iterations. We present a distributed chunk calculation approach (DCA) that supports various types of DLS techniques. Using both CCA and DCA, twelve DLS techniques are implemented and evaluated in different CPU slowdown scenarios. The results show that the DLS techniques implemented using DCA outperform their corresponding ones implemented with CCA, especially in extreme system slowdown scenarios.
Deep Inertial Odometry with Accurate IMU Preintegration
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) are interceptive modalities that provide ego-motion measurements independent of the environmental factors. They are widely adopted in various autonomous systems. Motivated by the limitations in processing the noisy measurements from these sensors using their mathematical models, researchers have recently proposed various deep learning architectures to estimate inertial odometry in an end-to-end manner. Nevertheless, the high-frequency and redundant measurements from IMUs lead to long raw sequences to be processed. In this study, we aim to investigate the efficacy of accurate preintegration as a more realistic solution to the IMU motion model for deep inertial odometry (DIO) and the resultant DIO is a fusion of model-driven and data-driven approaches. The accurate IMU preintegration has the potential to outperform numerical approximation of the continuous IMU model used in the existing DIOs. Experimental results validate the proposed DIO.
Emotional EEG Classification using Connectivity Features and Convolutional Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are widely used to recognize the user's state through electroencephalography (EEG) signals. In the previous studies, the EEG signals are usually fed into the CNNs in the form of high-dimensional raw data. However, this approach makes it difficult to exploit the brain connectivity information that can be effective in describing the functional brain network and estimating the perceptual state of the user. We introduce a new classification system that utilizes brain connectivity with a CNN and validate its effectiveness via the emotional video classification by using three different types of connectivity measures. Furthermore, two data-driven methods to construct the connectivity matrix are proposed to maximize classification performance. Further analysis reveals that the level of concentration of the brain connectivity related to the emotional property of the target video is correlated with classification performance.
Tip of the Tongue Known-Item Retrieval: A Case Study in Movie Identification
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2021
Year: 2021

While current information retrieval systems are effective for known-item retrieval where the searcher provides a precise name or identifier for the item being sought, systems tend to be much less effective for cases where the searcher is unable to express a precise name or identifier. We refer to this as tip of the tongue (TOT) known-item retrieval, named after the cognitive state of not being able to retrieve an item from memory. Using movie search as a case study, we explore the characteristics of questions posed by searchers in TOT states in a community question answering website. We analyze how searchers express their information needs during TOT states in the movie domain. Specifically, what information do searchers remember about the item being sought and how do they convey this information? Our results suggest that searchers use a combination of information about: (1) the content of the item sought, (2) the context in which they previously engaged with the item, and (3) previous attempts to find the item using other resources (e.g., search engines). Additionally, searchers convey information by sometimes expressing uncertainty (i.e., hedging), opinions, emotions, and by performing relative (vs. absolute) comparisons with attributes of the item. As a result of our analysis, we believe that searchers in TOT states may require specialized query understanding methods or document representations. Finally, our preliminary retrieval experiments show the impact of each information type presented in information requests on retrieval performance.
Classification of fNIRS Data Under Uncertainty: A Bayesian Neural Network Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a non-invasive form of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). It is used for the imaging of brain hemodynamics and has gained popularity due to the certain pros it poses over other similar technologies. The overall functionalities encompass the capture, processing and classification of brain signals. Since hemodynamic responses are contaminated by physiological noises, several methods have been implemented in the past literature to classify the responses in focus from the unwanted ones. However, the methods, thus far does not take into consideration the uncertainty in the data or model parameters. In this paper, we use a Bayesian Neural Network (BNN) to carry out a binary classification on an open-access dataset, consisting of unilateral finger tapping (left- and right-hand finger tapping). A BNN uses Bayesian statistics to assign a probability distribution to the network weights instead of a point estimate. In this way, it takes data and model uncertainty into consideration while carrying out the classification. We used Variational Inference (VI) to train our model. Our model produced an overall classification accuracy of 86.44% over 30 volunteers. We illustrated how the evidence lower bound (ELBO) function of the model converges over iterations. We further illustrated the uncertainty that is inherent during the sampling of the posterior distribution of the weights. We also generated a ROC curve for our BNN classifier using test data from a single volunteer and our model has an AUC score of 0.855.
Provably Constant-time Planning and Replanning for Real-time Grasping Objects off a Conveyor Belt
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2021
Year: 2021

In warehouse and manufacturing environments, manipulation platforms are frequently deployed at conveyor belts to perform pick and place tasks. Because objects on the conveyor belts are moving, robots have limited time to pick them up. This brings the requirement for fast and reliable motion planners that could provide provable real-time planning guarantees, which the existing algorithms do not provide. Besides the planning efficiency, the success of manipulation tasks relies heavily on the accuracy of the perception system which is often noisy, especially if the target objects are perceived from a distance. For fast moving conveyor belts, the robot cannot wait for a perfect estimate before it starts executing its motion. In order to be able to reach the object in time, it must start moving early on (relying on the initial noisy estimates) and adjust its motion on-the-fly in response to the pose updates from perception. We propose a planning framework that meets these requirements by providing provable constant-time planning and replanning guarantees. To this end, we first introduce and formalize a new class of algorithms called Constant-Time Motion Planning algorithms (CTMP) that guarantee to plan in constant time and within a user-defined time bound. We then present our planning framework for grasping objects off a conveyor belt as an instance of the CTMP class of algorithms.
Challenges in the application of a mortality prediction model for COVID-19 patients on an Indian cohort
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Many countries are now experiencing the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic straining the healthcare resources with an acute shortage of hospital beds and ventilators for the critically ill patients. This situation is especially worse in India with the second largest load of COVID-19 cases and a relatively resource-scarce medical infrastructure. Therefore, it becomes essential to triage the patients based on the severity of their disease and devote resources towards critically ill patients. Yan et al. 1 have published a very pertinent research that uses Machine learning (ML) methods to predict the outcome of COVID-19 patients based on their clinical parameters at the day of admission. They used the XGBoost algorithm, a type of ensemble model, to build the mortality prediction model. The final classifier is built through the sequential addition of multiple weak classifiers. The clinically operable decision rule was obtained from a 'single-tree XGBoost' and used lactic dehydrogenase (LDH), lymphocyte and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) values. This decision tree achieved a 100% survival prediction and 81% mortality prediction. However, these models have several technical challenges and do not provide an out of the box solution that can be deployed for other populations as has been reported in the "Matters Arising" section of Yan et al. Here, we show the limitations of this model by deploying it on one of the largest datasets of COVID-19 patients containing detailed clinical parameters collected from India.
Leveraging AI to optimize website structure discovery during Penetration Testing
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

Dirbusting is a technique used to brute force directories and file names on web servers while monitoring HTTP responses, in order to enumerate server contents. Such a technique uses lists of common words to discover the hidden structure of the target website. Dirbusting typically relies on response codes as discovery conditions to find new pages. It is widely used in web application penetration testing, an activity that allows companies to detect websites vulnerabilities. Dirbusting techniques are both time and resource consuming and innovative approaches have never been explored in this field. We hence propose an advanced technique to optimize the dirbusting process by leveraging Artificial Intelligence. More specifically, we use semantic clustering techniques in order to organize wordlist items in different groups according to their semantic meaning. The created clusters are used in an ad-hoc implemented next-word intelligent strategy. This paper demonstrates that the usage of clustering techniques outperforms the commonly used brute force methods. Performance is evaluated by testing eight different web applications. Results show a performance increase that is up to 50% for each of the conducted experiments.