OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Unified 3D Mesh Recovery of Humans and Animals by Learning Animal Exercise
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

We propose an end-to-end unified 3D mesh recovery of humans and quadruped animals trained in a weakly-supervised way. Unlike recent work focusing on a single target class only, we aim to recover 3D mesh of broader classes with a single multi-task model. However, there exists no dataset that can directly enable multi-task learning due to the absence of both human and animal annotations for a single object, e.g., a human image does not have animal pose annotations; thus, we have to devise a new way to exploit heterogeneous datasets. To make the unstable disjoint multi-task learning jointly trainable, we propose to exploit the morphological similarity between humans and animals, motivated by animal exercise where humans imitate animal poses. We realize the morphological similarity by semantic correspondences, called sub-keypoint, which enables joint training of human and animal mesh regression branches. Besides, we propose class-sensitive regularization methods to avoid a mean-shape bias and to improve the distinctiveness across multi-classes. Our method performs favorably against recent uni-modal models on various human and animal datasets while being far more compact.
Shift Happens: Adjusting Classifiers
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Minimizing expected loss measured by a proper scoring rule, such as Brier score or log-loss (cross-entropy), is a common objective while training a probabilistic classifier. If the data have experienced dataset shift where the class distributions change post-training, then often the model's performance will decrease, over-estimating the probabilities of some classes while under-estimating the others on average. We propose unbounded and bounded general adjustment (UGA and BGA) methods that transform all predictions to (re-)equalize the average prediction and the class distribution. These methods act differently depending on which proper scoring rule is to be minimized, and we have a theoretical guarantee of reducing loss on test data, if the exact class distribution is known. We also demonstrate experimentally that, when in practice the class distribution is known only approximately, there is often still a reduction in loss depending on the amount of shift and the precision to which the class distribution is known.
Implementing augmented reality technology to measure structural changes across time
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2021
Year: 2021

In recent years, augmented reality (AR) technology has been increasingly employed in structural health monitoring (SHM). In the case of conditions following a seismic event, inspections are conducted to evaluate the progression of the damage pattern quantitatively and efficiently respond if the displacement pattern is determined to be unsafe. Additionally, quantification of nearby structural changes over short-term and long-term periods can provide building inspectors with information to improve safety. This paper proposes the Time Machine Measure (TMM) application on an Augmented Reality (AR) Head-Mounted-Device (HMD) platform. The main function of the TMM application is to restore the saved meshes of a past environment and overlay them onto the real environment so that inspectors can intuitively measure structural deformation and other movement across time. The proposed TMM application was verified by experiments meant to simulate a real-world inspection.
CLUES: Few-Shot Learning Evaluation in Natural Language Understanding
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

Most recent progress in natural language understanding (NLU) has been driven, in part, by benchmarks such as GLUE, SuperGLUE, SQuAD, etc. In fact, many NLU models have now matched or exceeded "human-level" performance on many tasks in these benchmarks. Most of these benchmarks, however, give models access to relatively large amounts of labeled data for training. As such, the models are provided far more data than required by humans to achieve strong performance. That has motivated a line of work that focuses on improving few-shot learning performance of NLU models. However, there is a lack of standardized evaluation benchmarks for few-shot NLU resulting in different experimental settings in different papers. To help accelerate this line of work, we introduce CLUES (Constrained Language Understanding Evaluation Standard), a benchmark for evaluating the few-shot learning capabilities of NLU models. We demonstrate that while recent models reach human performance when they have access to large amounts of labeled data, there is a huge gap in performance in the few-shot setting for most tasks. We also demonstrate differences between alternative model families and adaptation techniques in the few shot setting. Finally, we discuss several principles and choices in designing the experimental settings for evaluating the true few-shot learning performance and suggest a unified standardized approach to few-shot learning evaluation. We aim to encourage research on NLU models that can generalize to new tasks with a small number of examples. Code and data for CLUES are available at https://github.com/microsoft/CLUES.
Minimum-Complexity Graph Simplification under Fréchet-Like Distances
Venue: arXiv cs.CG 2021
Year: 2021

Simplifying graphs is a very applicable problem in numerous domains, especially in computational geometry. Given a geometric graph and a threshold, the minimum-complexity graph simplification asks for computing an alternative graph of minimum complexity so that the distance between the two graphs remains at most the threshold. In this paper, we propose several NP-hardness and algorithmic results depending on the type of input and simplified graphs, the vertex placement of the simplified graph, and the distance measures between them (graph and traversal distances [1,2]). In general, we show that for arbitrary input and output graphs, the problem is NP-hard under some specific vertex-placement of the simplified graph. When the input and output are trees, and the graph distance is applied from the simplified tree to the input tree, we give an $O(kn^5)$ time algorithm, where $k$ is the number of the leaves of the two trees that are identical and $n$ is the number of vertices of the input.
Response Generation with Context-Aware Prompt Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

Pre-trained language models (PLM) have marked a huge leap in neural dialogue modeling. While PLMs are pre-trained on large-scale text corpora, they are usually fine-tuned on scarce dialogue data with specific domain knowledge and dialogue styles. However, tailoring the language models while fully utilizing prior knowledge in large pre-trained models remains a challenge. In this paper, we present a novel approach for pre-trained dialogue modeling that casts the dialogue generation problem as a prompt-learning task. Instead of fine-tuning on limited dialogue data, our approach, DialogPrompt, learns continuous prompt embeddings optimized for dialogue contexts, which appropriately elicit knowledge from the large pre-trained model. To encourage the model to better utilize the prompt embeddings, the prompt encoders are designed to be dynamically generated based on the dialogue context. Experiments on popular conversation datasets show that our approach significantly outperforms the fine-tuning baseline and the generic prompt-learning methods. Furthermore, human evaluations strongly support the superiority of DialogPrompt in regard to response generation quality.
Temporal Fusion Based Mutli-scale Semantic Segmentation for Detecting Concealed Baggage Threats
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Detection of illegal and threatening items in baggage is one of the utmost security concern nowadays. Even for experienced security personnel, manual detection is a time-consuming and stressful task. Many academics have created automated frameworks for detecting suspicious and contraband data from X-ray scans of luggage. However, to our knowledge, no framework exists that utilizes temporal baggage X-ray imagery to effectively screen highly concealed and occluded objects which are barely visible even to the naked eye. To address this, we present a novel temporal fusion driven multi-scale residual fashioned encoder-decoder that takes series of consecutive scans as input and fuses them to generate distinct feature representations of the suspicious and non-suspicious baggage content, leading towards a more accurate extraction of the contraband data. The proposed methodology has been thoroughly tested using the publicly accessible GDXray dataset, which is the only dataset containing temporally linked grayscale X-ray scans showcasing extremely concealed contraband data. The proposed framework outperforms its competitors on the GDXray dataset on various metrics.
Towards Smart Monitored AM: Open Source in-Situ Layer-wise 3D Printing Image Anomaly Detection Using Histograms of Oriented Gradients and a Physics-Based Rendering Engine
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

This study presents an open source method for detecting 3D printing anomalies by comparing images of printed layers from a stationary monocular camera with G-code-based reference images of an ideal process generated with Blender, a physics rendering engine. Recognition of visual deviations was accomplished by analyzing the similarity of histograms of oriented gradients (HOG) of local image areas. The developed technique requires preliminary modeling of the working environment to achieve the best match for orientation, color rendering, lighting, and other parameters of the printed part. The output of the algorithm is a level of mismatch between printed and synthetic reference layers. Twelve similarity and distance measures were implemented and compared for their effectiveness at detecting 3D printing errors on six different representative failure types and their control error-free print images. The results show that although Kendall tau, Jaccard, and Sorensen similarities are the most sensitive, Pearson r, Spearman rho, cosine, and Dice similarities produce the more reliable results. This open source method allows the program to notice critical errors in the early stages of their occurrence and either pause manufacturing processes for further investigation by an operator or in the future AI-controlled automatic error correction. The implementation of this novel method does not require preliminary data for training, and the greatest efficiency can be achieved with the mass production of parts by either additive or subtractive manufacturing of the same geometric shape. It can be concluded this open source method is a promising means of enabling smart distributed recycling for additive manufacturing using complex feedstocks as well as other challenging manufacturing environments.
Effect of Miner Incentive on the Confirmation Time of Bitcoin Transactions
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

Blockchain is a technology that provides a distributed ledger that stores previous records while maintaining consistency and security. Bitcoin is the first and largest decentralized electronic cryptographic system that uses blockchain technology. It faces a challenge in making all the nodes synchronize and have the same overall view with the cost of scalability and performance. In addition, with miners' financial interest playing a significant role in choosing transactions from the backlog, small fee or small fee per byte value transactions will exhibit more delays. To study the issues related to the system's performance, we developed an $M(t)/M^N/1$ model. The backlog's arrival follows an inhomogeneous Poison process to the system that has infinite buffer capacity, and the service time is distributed exponentially, which removes $N$ transactions at time. Besides validating the model with measurement data, we have used the model to study the reward distribution when miners take transaction selection strategies like fee per byte, fee-based, and FIFO. The analysis shows that smaller fee transactions exhibit higher waiting times, even with increasing the block size. Moreover, the miner transaction selection strategy impacts the final gain.
Failure Aware Semi-Centralized Virtual Network Embedding in Cloud Computing Fat-Tree Data Center Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2021
Year: 2021

In Cloud Computing, the tenants opting for the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) send the resource requirements to the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) in the form of Virtual Network (VN) consisting of a set of inter-connected Virtual Machines (VM). Embedding the VN onto the existing physical network is known as Virtual Network Embedding (VNE) problem. One of the major research challenges is to allocate the physical resources such that the failure of the physical resources would bring less impact onto the users' service. Additionally, the major challenge is to handle the embedding process of growing number of incoming users' VNs from the algorithm design point-of-view. Considering both of the above-mentioned research issues, a novel Failure aware Semi-Centralized VNE (FSC-VNE) algorithm is proposed for the Fat-Tree data center network with the goal to reduce the impact of the resource failure onto the existing users. The impact of failure of the Physical Machines (PMs), physical links and network devices are taken into account while allocating the resources to the users. The beauty of the proposed algorithm is that the VMs are assigned to different PMs in a semi-centralized manner. In other words, the embedding algorithm is executed by multiple physical servers in order to concurrently embed the VMs of a VN and reduces the embedding time. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can outperform over other VNE algorithms.
MUVINE: Multi-stage Virtual Network Embedding in Cloud Data Centers using Reinforcement Learning based Predictions
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2021
Year: 2021

The recent advances in virtualization technology have enabled the sharing of computing and networking resources of cloud data centers among multiple users. Virtual Network Embedding (VNE) is highly important and is an integral part of the cloud resource management. The lack of historical knowledge on cloud functioning and inability to foresee the future resource demand are two fundamental shortcomings of the traditional VNE approaches. The consequence of those shortcomings is the inefficient embedding of virtual resources on Substrate Nodes (SNs). On the contrary, application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in VNE is still in the premature stage and needs further investigation. Considering the underlying complexity of VNE that includes numerous parameters, intelligent solutions are required to utilize the cloud resources efficiently via careful selection of appropriate SNs for the VNE. In this paper, Reinforcement Learning based prediction model is designed for the efficient Multi-stage Virtual Network Embedding (MUVINE) among the cloud data centers. The proposed MUVINE scheme is extensively simulated and evaluated against the recent state-of-the-art schemes. The simulation outcomes show that the proposed MUVINE scheme consistently outperforms over the existing schemes and provides the promising results.
FEAFA+: An Extended Well-Annotated Dataset for Facial Expression Analysis and 3D Facial Animation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Nearly all existing Facial Action Coding System-based datasets that include facial action unit (AU) intensity information annotate the intensity values hierarchically using A--E levels. However, facial expressions change continuously and shift smoothly from one state to another. Therefore, it is more effective to regress the intensity value of local facial AUs to represent whole facial expression changes, particularly in the fields of expression transfer and facial animation. We introduce an extension of FEAFA in combination with the relabeled DISFA database, which is available at https://www.iiplab.net/feafa+/ now. Extended FEAFA (FEAFA+) includes 150 video sequences from FEAFA and DISFA, with a total of 230,184 frames being manually annotated on floating-point intensity value of 24 redefined AUs using the Expression Quantitative Tool. We also list crude numerical results for posed and spontaneous subsets and provide a baseline comparison for the AU intensity regression task.
RLDS: an Ecosystem to Generate, Share and Use Datasets in Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

We introduce RLDS (Reinforcement Learning Datasets), an ecosystem for recording, replaying, manipulating, annotating and sharing data in the context of Sequential Decision Making (SDM) including Reinforcement Learning (RL), Learning from Demonstrations, Offline RL or Imitation Learning. RLDS enables not only reproducibility of existing research and easy generation of new datasets, but also accelerates novel research. By providing a standard and lossless format of datasets it enables to quickly test new algorithms on a wider range of tasks. The RLDS ecosystem makes it easy to share datasets without any loss of information and to be agnostic to the underlying original format when applying various data processing pipelines to large collections of datasets. Besides, RLDS provides tools for collecting data generated by either synthetic agents or humans, as well as for inspecting and manipulating the collected data. Ultimately, integration with TFDS facilitates the sharing of RL datasets with the research community.
A text autoencoder from transformer for fast encoding language representation
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

In recent years BERT shows apparent advantages and great potential in natural language processing tasks. However, both training and applying BERT requires intensive time and resources for computing contextual language representations, which hinders its universality and applicability. To overcome this bottleneck, we propose a deep bidirectional language model by using window masking mechanism at attention layer. This work computes contextual language representations without random masking as does in BERT and maintains the deep bidirectional architecture like BERT. To compute the same sentence representation, our method shows O(n) complexity less compared to other transformer-based models with O($n^2$). To further demonstrate its superiority, computing context language representations on CPU environments is conducted, by using the embeddings from the proposed method, logistic regression shows much higher accuracy in terms of SMS classification. Moverover, the proposed method also achieves significant higher performance in semantic similarity tasks.
Stable and Compact Face Recognition via Unlabeled Data Driven Sparse Representation-Based Classification
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Sparse representation-based classification (SRC) has attracted much attention by casting the recognition problem as simple linear regression problem. SRC methods, however, still is limited to enough labeled samples per category, insufficient use of unlabeled samples, and instability of representation. For tackling these problems, an unlabeled data driven inverse projection pseudo-full-space representation-based classification model is proposed with low-rank sparse constraints. The proposed model aims to mine the hidden semantic information and intrinsic structure information of all available data, which is suitable for few labeled samples and proportion imbalance between labeled samples and unlabeled samples problems in frontal face recognition. The mixed Gauss-Seidel and Jacobian ADMM algorithm is introduced to solve the model. The convergence, representation capability and stability of the model are analyzed. Experiments on three public datasets show that the proposed LR-S-PFSRC model achieves stable results, especially for proportion imbalance of samples.
Deep Artificial Intelligence for Fantasy Football Language Understanding
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2021
Year: 2021

Fantasy sports allow fans to manage a team of their favorite athletes and compete with friends. The fantasy platform aligns the real-world statistical performance of athletes to fantasy scoring and has steadily risen in popularity to an estimated 9.1 million players per month with 4.4 billion player card views on the ESPN Fantasy Football platform from 2018-2019. In parallel, the sports media community produces news stories, blogs, forum posts, tweets, videos, podcasts and opinion pieces that are both within and outside the context of fantasy sports. However, human fantasy football players can only analyze an average of 3.9 sources of information. Our work discusses the results of a machine learning pipeline to manage an ESPN Fantasy Football team. The use of trained statistical entity detectors and document2vector models applied to over 100,000 news sources and 2.3 million articles, videos and podcasts each day enables the system to comprehend natural language with an analogy test accuracy of 100% and keyword test accuracy of 80%. Deep learning feedforward neural networks provide player classifications such as if a player will be a bust, boom, play with a hidden injury or play meaningful touches with a cumulative 72% accuracy. Finally, a multiple regression ensemble uses the deep learning output and ESPN projection data to provide a point projection for each of the top 500+ fantasy football players in 2018. The point projection maintained a RMSE of 6.78 points. The best fit probability density function from a set of 24 is selected to visualize score spreads. Within the first 6 weeks of the product launch, the total number of users spent a cumulative time of over 4.6 years viewing our AI insights. The training data for our models was provided by a 2015 to 2016 web archive from Webhose, ESPN statistics, and Rotowire injury reports. We used 2017 fantasy football data as a test set.
An Empirical Comparison of the Quadratic Sieve Factoring Algorithm and the Pollard Rho Factoring Algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

One of the most significant challenges on cryptography today is the problem of factoring large integers since there are no algorithms that can factor in polynomial time, and factoring large numbers more than some limits(200 digits) remain difficult. The security of the current cryptosystems depends on the hardness of factoring large public keys. In this work, we want to implement two existing factoring algorithms - pollard-rho and quadratic sieve - and compare their performance. In addition, we want to analyze how close is the theoretical time complexity of both algorithms compared to their actual time complexity and how bit length of numbers can affect quadratic sieve's performance. Finally, we verify whether the quadratic sieve would do better than pollard-rho for factoring numbers smaller than 80 bits.