OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
A Low-Complexity Soft-Output wMD Decoding for Uplink MIMO Systems with One-Bit ADCs
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

This paper considers an uplink multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system with one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), in which $K$ users with a single transmit antenna communicate with one base station (BS) with $N_{\rm r}$ receive antennas. In this system, a novel MU-MIMO detection method, named weighted minimum distance (wMD) decoding, was recently proposed by introducing an equivalent coding problem. Despite of its attractive performance, the wMD decoding has the two limitations to be used in practice: i) the hard-decision outputs can degrade the performance of a channel code; ii) the computational complexity grows exponentially with the $K$. To address those problems, we first present a soft-output wMD decoding that efficiently computes soft metrics (i.e., log-likelihood ratios) from one-bit quantized observations. We then construct a low-complexity (soft-output) wMD decoding by introducing {\em hierarchical code partitioning}. This method can be regarded as a sphere decoding in Hamming space, in that a search-spare is considerably reduced. Finally, we demonstrate that the proposed method significantly performs the state-of-the-art methods with a comparable complexity.
Beyond Massive-MIMO: The Potential of Data-Transmission with Large Intelligent Surfaces
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2017
Year: 2017

In this paper, we consider the potential of data-transmission in a system with a massive number of radiating and sensing elements, thought of as a contiguous surface of electromagnetically active material. We refer to this as a large intelligent surface (LIS). The "LIS" is a newly proposed concept, which conceptually goes beyond contemporary massive MIMO technology, that arises from our vision of a future where man-made structures are electronically active with integrated electronics and wireless communication making the entire environment "intelligent". We consider capacities of single-antenna autonomous terminals communicating to the LIS where the entire surface is used as a receiving antenna array. Under the condition that the surface-area is sufficiently large, the received signal after a matched-filtering (MF) operation can be closely approximated by a sinc-function-like intersymbol interference (ISI) channel. We analyze the capacity per square meter (m^2) deployed surface, \hat{C}, that is achievable for a fixed transmit power per volume-unit, \hat{P}. Moreover, we also show that the number of independent signal dimensions per m deployed surface is 2/λfor one-dimensional terminal-deployment, and π/λ^2 per m^2 for two and three dimensional terminal-deployments. Lastly, we consider implementations of the LIS in the form of a grid of conventional antenna elements and show that, the sampling lattice that minimizes the surface-area of the LIS and simultaneously obtains one signal space dimension for every spent antenna is the hexagonal lattice. We extensively discuss the design of the state-of-the-art low-complexity channel shortening (CS) demodulator for data-transmission with the LIS.
A System Framework for Smart Class System to Boost Education and Management
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2017
Year: 2017

The large number of reasonably priced computers, Internet broadband connectivity and rich education content has created a global phenomenon by which information and communication technology (ICT) has used to remodel education. E-learning can be explained as the use of available information, computational and communication technologies to assist learning practice. In the modern world, education has become more universal, and people are looking for learning with simplicity and interest. Students are looking for more interactive and attractive learning style rather than old traditional style. Using technological learning, we can enhance the education system. We can deliver quality education to students as well as we can ease and uniform the process of education by using the modern technologies and methods. In this paper, we propose a smart class model to manage the entire educational activities and hence to enhance the quality of education.
The Closer the Better: Similarity of Publication Pairs at Different Co-Citation Levels
Venue: arXiv cs.DL 2017
Year: 2017

We investigate the similarities of pairs of articles which are co-cited at the different co-citation levels of the journal, article, section, paragraph, sentence and bracket. Our results indicate that textual similarity, intellectual overlap (shared references), author overlap (shared authors), proximity in publication time all rise monotonically as the co-citation level gets lower (from journal to bracket). While the main gain in similarity happens when moving from journal to article co-citation, all level changes entail an increase in similarity, especially section to paragraph and paragraph to sentence/bracket levels. We compare results from four journals over the years 2010-2015: Cell, the European Journal of Operational Research, Physics Letters B and Research Policy, with consistent general outcomes and some interesting differences. Our findings motivate the use of granular co-citation information as defined by meaningful units of text, with implications for, among others, the elaboration of maps of science and the retrieval of scholarly literature.
Underwater object classification using scattering transform of sonar signals
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

In this paper, we apply the scattering transform (ST), a nonlinear map based off of a convolutional neural network (CNN), to classification of underwater objects using sonar signals. The ST formalizes the observation that the filters learned by a CNN have wavelet like structure. We achieve effective binary classification both on a real dataset of Unexploded Ordinance (UXOs), as well as synthetically generated examples. We also explore the effects on the waveforms with respect to changes in the object domain (e.g., translation, rotation, and acoustic impedance, etc.), and examine the consequences coming from theoretical results for the scattering transform. We show that the scattering transform is capable of excellent classification on both the synthetic and real problems, thanks to having more quasi-invariance properties that are well-suited to translation and rotation of the object.
Partitioning Patches into Test-equivalence Classes for Scaling Program Repair
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2017
Year: 2017

Automated program repair is a problem of finding a transformation (called a patch) of a given incorrect program that eliminates the observable failures. It has important applications such as providing debugging aids, automatically grading assignments and patching security vulnerabilities. A common challenge faced by all existing repair techniques is scalability to large patch spaces, since there are many candidate patches that these techniques explicitly or implicitly consider. The correctness criterion for program repair is often given as a suite of tests, since a formal specification of the intended program behavior may not be available. Current repair techniques do not scale due to the large number of test executions performed by the underlying search algorithms. We address this problem by introducing a methodology of patch generation based on a test-equivalence relation (if two programs are "test-equivalent" for a given test, they produce indistinguishable results on this test). We propose two test-equivalence relations based on runtime values and dependencies respectively and present an algorithm that performs on-the-fly partitioning of patches into test-equivalence classes. Our experiments on real-world programs reveal that the proposed methodology drastically reduces the number of test executions and therefore provides an order of magnitude efficiency improvement over existing repair techniques, without sacrificing patch quality.
A simple proof that the $(n^2-1)$-puzzle is hard
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2017
Year: 2017

The 15 puzzle is a classic reconfiguration puzzle with fifteen uniquely labeled unit squares within a $4 \times 4$ board in which the goal is to slide the squares (without ever overlapping) into a target configuration. By generalizing the puzzle to an $n \times n$ board with $n^2-1$ squares, we can study the computational complexity of problems related to the puzzle; in particular, we consider the problem of determining whether a given end configuration can be reached from a given start configuration via at most a given number of moves. This problem was shown NP-complete in Ratner and Warmuth (1990). We provide an alternative simpler proof of this fact by reduction from the rectilinear Steiner tree problem.
A Survey on Resilient Machine Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2017
Year: 2017

Machine learning based system are increasingly being used for sensitive tasks such as security surveillance, guiding autonomous vehicle, taking investment decisions, detecting and blocking network intrusion and malware etc. However, recent research has shown that machine learning models are venerable to attacks by adversaries at all phases of machine learning (eg, training data collection, training, operation). All model classes of machine learning systems can be misled by providing carefully crafted inputs making them wrongly classify inputs. Maliciously created input samples can affect the learning process of a ML system by either slowing down the learning process, or affecting the performance of the learned mode, or causing the system make error(s) only in attacker's planned scenario. Because of these developments, understanding security of machine learning algorithms and systems is emerging as an important research area among computer security and machine learning researchers and practitioners. We present a survey of this emerging area in machine learning.
The swiss army knife of job submission tools: grid-control
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2017
Year: 2017

Grid-control is a lightweight and highly portable open source submission tool that supports virtually all workflows in high energy physics (HEP). Since 2007 it has been used by a sizeable number of HEP analyses to process tasks that sometimes consist of up 100k jobs. grid-control is built around a powerful plugin and configuration system, that allows users to easily specify all aspects of the desired workflow. Job submission to a wide range of local or remote batch systems or grid middleware is supported. Tasks can be conveniently specified through the parameter space that will be processed, which can consist of any number of variables and data sources with complex dependencies on each other. Dataset information is processed through a configurable pipeline of dataset filters, partition plugins and partition filters. The partition plugins can take the number of files, size of the work units, metadata or combinations thereof into account. All changes to the input datasets or variables are propagated through the processing pipeline and can transparently trigger adjustments to the parameter space and the job submission. While the core functionality is completely experiment independent, integration with the CMS computing environment is provided by a small set of plugins.
Deductive and Analogical Reasoning on a Semantically Embedded Knowledge Graph
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2017
Year: 2017

Representing knowledge as high-dimensional vectors in a continuous semantic vector space can help overcome the brittleness and incompleteness of traditional knowledge bases. We present a method for performing deductive reasoning directly in such a vector space, combining analogy, association, and deduction in a straightforward way at each step in a chain of reasoning, drawing on knowledge from diverse sources and ontologies.
Generalised Dice overlap as a deep learning loss function for highly unbalanced segmentations
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

Deep-learning has proved in recent years to be a powerful tool for image analysis and is now widely used to segment both 2D and 3D medical images. Deep-learning segmentation frameworks rely not only on the choice of network architecture but also on the choice of loss function. When the segmentation process targets rare observations, a severe class imbalance is likely to occur between candidate labels, thus resulting in sub-optimal performance. In order to mitigate this issue, strategies such as the weighted cross-entropy function, the sensitivity function or the Dice loss function, have been proposed. In this work, we investigate the behavior of these loss functions and their sensitivity to learning rate tuning in the presence of different rates of label imbalance across 2D and 3D segmentation tasks. We also propose to use the class re-balancing properties of the Generalized Dice overlap, a known metric for segmentation assessment, as a robust and accurate deep-learning loss function for unbalanced tasks.
A region-growing approach for automatic outcrop fracture extraction from a three-dimensional point cloud
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

Conventional manual surveys of rock mass fractures usually require large amounts of time and labor; yet, they provide a relatively small set of data that cannot be considered representative of the study region. Terrestrial laser scanners are increasingly used for fracture surveys because they can efficiently acquire large area, high-resolution, three-dimensional (3D) point clouds from outcrops. However, extracting fractures and other planar surfaces from 3D outcrop point clouds is still a challenging task. No method has been reported that can be used to automatically extract the full extent of every individual fracture from a 3D outcrop point cloud. In this study, we propose a method using a region-growing approach to address this problem; the method also estimates the orientation of each fracture. In this method, criteria based on the local surface normal and curvature of the point cloud are used to initiate and control the growth of the fracture region. In tests using outcrop point cloud data, the proposed method identified and extracted the full extent of individual fractures with high accuracy. Compared with manually acquired field survey data, our method obtained better-quality fracture data, thereby demonstrating the high potential utility of the proposed method.
Mobile Quantification and Therapy Course Tracking for Gait Rehabilitation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

This paper presents a novel autonomous quality metric to quantify the rehabilitations progress of subjects with knee/hip operations. The presented method supports digital analysis of human gait patterns using smartphones. The algorithm related to the autonomous metric utilizes calibrated acceleration, gyroscope and magnetometer signals from seven Inertial Measurement Unit attached on the lower body in order to classify and generate the grading system values. The developed Android application connects the seven Inertial Measurement Units via Bluetooth and performs the data acquisition and processing in real-time. In total nine features per acceleration direction and lower body joint angle are calculated and extracted in real-time to achieve a fast feedback to the user. We compare the classification accuracy and quantification capabilities of Linear Discriminant Analysis, Principal Component Analysis and Naive Bayes algorithms. The presented system is able to classify patients and control subjects with an accuracy of up to 100\%. The outcomes can be saved on the device or transmitted to treating physicians for later control of the subject's improvements and the efficiency of physiotherapy treatments in motor rehabilitation. The proposed autonomous quality metric solution bears great potential to be used and deployed to support digital healthcare and therapy.
Use of Docker for deployment and testing of astronomy software
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2017
Year: 2017

We describe preliminary investigations of using Docker for the deployment and testing of astronomy software. Docker is a relatively new containerisation technology that is developing rapidly and being adopted across a range of domains. It is based upon virtualization at operating system level, which presents many advantages in comparison to the more traditional hardware virtualization that underpins most cloud computing infrastructure today. A particular strength of Docker is its simple format for describing and managing software containers, which has benefits for software developers, system administrators and end users. We report on our experiences from two projects -- a simple activity to demonstrate how Docker works, and a more elaborate set of services that demonstrates more of its capabilities and what they can achieve within an astronomical context -- and include an account of how we solved problems through interaction with Docker's very active open source development community, which is currently the key to the most effective use of this rapidly-changing technology.
MovePattern: Interactive Framework to Provide Scalable Visualization of Movement Patterns
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2017
Year: 2017

The rapid growth of movement data sources such as GPS traces, traffic networks and social media have provided analysts with the opportunity to explore collective patterns of geographical movements in a nearly real-time fashion. A fast and interactive visualization framework can help analysts to understand these massive and dynamically changing datasets. However, previous studies on movement visualization either ignore the unique properties of geographical movement or are unable to handle today's massive data. In this paper, we develop MovePattern, a novel framework to 1) efficiently construct a concise multi-level view of movements using a scalable and spatially-aware MapReduce-based approach and 2) present a fast and highly interactive webbased environment which engages vector-based visualization to include on-the-fly customization and the ability to enhance analytical functions by storing metadata for both places and movements. We evaluate the framework using the movements of Twitter users captured from geo-tagged tweets. The experiments confirmed that our framework is able to aggregate close to 180 million movements in a few minutes. In addition, we run series of stress tests on the front-end of the framework to ensure that simultaneous user queries do not lead to long latency in the user response.
Obstacle detection test in real-word traffic contexts for the purposes of motorcycle autonomous emergency braking (MAEB)
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2017
Year: 2017

Research suggests that a Motorcycle Autonomous Emergency Braking system (MAEB) could influence 25% of the crashes involving powered two wheelers (PTWs). By automatically slowing down a host PTW of up to 10 km/h in inevitable collision scenarios, MAEB could potentially mitigate the crash severity for the riders. The feasibility of automatic decelerations of motorcycles was shown via field trials in controlled environment. However, the feasibility of correct MAEB triggering in the real traffic context is still unclear. In particular, MAEB requires an accurate obstacle detection, the feasibility of which from a single track vehicle has not been confirmed yet. To address this issue, our study presents obstacle detection tests in a real-world MAEB-sensitive crash scenario.
Stacco: Differentially Analyzing Side-Channel Traces for Detecting SSL/TLS Vulnerabilities in Secure Enclaves
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2017
Year: 2017

Intel Software Guard Extension (SGX) offers software applications enclave to protect their confidentiality and integrity from malicious operating systems. The SSL/TLS protocol, which is the de facto standard for protecting transport-layer network communications, has been broadly deployed for a secure communication channel. However, in this paper, we show that the marriage between SGX and SSL may not be smooth sailing. Particularly, we consider a category of side-channel attacks against SSL/TLS implementations in secure enclaves, which we call the control-flow inference attacks. In these attacks, the malicious operating system kernel may perform a powerful man-in-the-kernel attack to collect execution traces of the enclave programs at page, cacheline, or branch level, while positioning itself in the middle of the two communicating parties. At the center of our work is a differential analysis framework, dubbed Stacco, to dynamically analyze the SSL/TLS implementations and detect vulnerabilities that can be exploited as decryption oracles. Surprisingly, we found exploitable vulnerabilities in the latest versions of all the SSL/TLS libraries we have examined. To validate the detected vulnerabilities, we developed a man-in-the-kernel adversary to demonstrate Bleichenbacher attacks against the latest OpenSSL library running in the SGX enclave (with the help of Graphene) and completely broke the PreMasterSecret encrypted by a 4096-bit RSA public key with only 57286 queries. We also conducted CBC padding oracle attacks against the latest GnuTLS running in Graphene-SGX and an open-source SGX-implementation of mbedTLS (i.e., mbedTLS-SGX) that runs directly inside the enclave, and showed that it only needs 48388 and 25717 queries, respectively, to break one block of AES ciphertext. Empirical evaluation suggests these man-in-the-kernel attacks can be completed within 1 or 2 hours.
Tunable Reactive Synthesis for Lipschitz-Bounded Systems with Temporal Logic Specifications
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2017
Year: 2017

We address the problem of synthesizing reactive controllers for cyber-physical systems subject to Signal Temporal Logic (STL) specifications in the presence of adversarial inputs. Given a finite horizon, we define a reactive hierarchy of control problems that differ in the degree of information available to the system about the adversary's actions over the horizon. We show how to construct reactive controllers at various levels of the hierarchy, leveraging the existence of Lipschitz bounds on system dynamics and the quantitative semantics of STL. Our approach, a counterexample-guided inductive synthesis (CEGIS) scheme based on optimization and satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solving, builds a strategy tree representing the interaction between the system and its environment. In every iteration of the CEGIS loop, we use a mix of optimization and SMT to maximally discard controllers falsified by a given counterexample. Our approach can be applied to any system with local Lipschitz-bounded dynamics, including linear, piecewise-linear and differentially-flat systems. Finally we show an application in the autonomous car domain.
Score-informed syllable segmentation for a cappella singing voice with convolutional neural networks
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2017
Year: 2017

This paper introduces a new score-informed method for the segmentation of jingju a cappella singing phrase into syllables. The proposed method estimates the most likely sequence of syllable boundaries given the estimated syllable onset detection function (ODF) and its score. Throughout the paper, we first examine the jingju syllables structure and propose a definition of the term "syllable onset". Then, we identify which are the challenges that jingju a cappella singing poses. Further, we investigate how to improve the syllable ODF estimation with convolutional neural networks (CNNs). We propose a novel CNN architecture that allows to efficiently capture different time-frequency scales for estimating syllable onsets. In addition, we propose using a score-informed Viterbi algorithm -instead of thresholding the onset function-, because the available musical knowledge we have (the score) can be used to inform the Viterbi algorithm in order to overcome the identified challenges. The proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art in syllable segmentation for jingju a cappella singing. We further provide an analysis of the segmentation errors which points possible research directions.