OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Mechanism Design for Wireless Powered Spatial Crowdsourcing Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2020
Year: 2020

Wireless power transfer (WPT) is a promising technology to prolong the lifetime of the sensors and communication devices, i.e., workers, in completing crowdsourcing tasks by providing continuous and cost-effective energy supplies. In this paper, we propose a wireless powered spatial crowdsourcing framework which consists of two mutually dependent phases: task allocation phase and data crowdsourcing phase. In the task allocation phase, we propose a Stackelberg game based mechanism for the spatial crowdsourcing platform to efficiently allocate spatial tasks and wireless charging power to each worker. In the data crowdsourcing phase, the workers may have an incentive to misreport its real working location to improve its utility, which causes adverse effects to the spatial crowdsourcing platform. To address this issue, we present three strategyproof deployment mechanisms for the spatial crowdsourcing platform to place a mobile base station, e.g., vehicle or robot, which is responsible for transferring the wireless power and collecting the crowdsourced data. As the benchmark, we first apply the classical median mechanism and evaluate its worst-case performance. Then, we design a conventional strategyproof deployment mechanism to improve the expected utility of the spatial crowdsourcing platform under the condition that the workers' locations follow a known geographical distribution. For a more general case with only the historical location data available, we propose a deep learning based strategyproof deployment mechanism to maximize the spatial crowdsourcing platform's utility. Extensive experimental results based on synthetic and real-world datasets reveal the effectiveness of the proposed framework in allocating tasks and charging power to workers while avoiding the dishonest worker's manipulation.
COVID-19 on Social Media: Analyzing Misinformation in Twitter Conversations
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2020
Year: 2020

The ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the inter-connectedness of our present-day globalized world. With social distancing policies in place, virtual communication has become an important source of (mis)information. As increasing number of people rely on social media platforms for news, identifying misinformation and uncovering the nature of online discourse around COVID-19 has emerged as a critical task. To this end, we collected streaming data related to COVID-19 using the Twitter API, starting March 1, 2020. We identified unreliable and misleading contents based on fact-checking sources, and examined the narratives promoted in misinformation tweets, along with the distribution of engagements with these tweets. In addition, we provide examples of the spreading patterns of prominent misinformation tweets. The analysis is presented and updated on a publically accessible dashboard (https://usc-melady.github.io/COVID-19-Tweet-Analysis) to track the nature of online discourse and misinformation about COVID-19 on Twitter from March 1 - June 5, 2020. The dashboard provides a daily list of identified misinformation tweets, along with topics, sentiments, and emerging trends in the COVID-19 Twitter discourse. The dashboard is provided to improve visibility into the nature and quality of information shared online, and provide real-time access to insights and information extracted from the dataset.
Optimization of Genomic Classifiers for Clinical Deployment: Evaluation of Bayesian Optimization to Select Predictive Models of Acute Infection and In-Hospital Mortality
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

Acute infection, if not rapidly and accurately detected, can lead to sepsis, organ failure and even death. Current detection of acute infection as well as assessment of a patient's severity of illness are imperfect. Characterization of a patient's immune response by quantifying expression levels of specific genes from blood represents a potentially more timely and precise means of accomplishing both tasks. Machine learning methods provide a platform to leverage this 'host response' for development of deployment-ready classification models. Prioritization of promising classifiers is dependent, in part, on hyperparameter optimization for which a number of approaches including grid search, random sampling and Bayesian optimization have been shown to be effective. We compare HO approaches for the development of diagnostic classifiers of acute infection and in-hospital mortality from gene expression of 29 diagnostic markers. We take a deployment-centered approach to our comprehensive analysis, accounting for heterogeneity in our multi-study patient cohort with our choices of dataset partitioning and hyperparameter optimization objective as well as assessing selected classifiers in external (as well as internal) validation. We find that classifiers selected by Bayesian optimization for in-hospital mortality can outperform those selected by grid search or random sampling. However, in contrast to previous research: 1) Bayesian optimization is not more efficient in selecting classifiers in all instances compared to grid search or random sampling-based methods and 2) we note marginal gains in classifier performance in only specific circumstances when using a common variant of Bayesian optimization (i.e. automatic relevance determination). Our analysis highlights the need for further practical, deployment-centered benchmarking of HO approaches in the healthcare context.
Introducing Pose Consistency and Warp-Alignment for Self-Supervised 6D Object Pose Estimation in Color Images
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

Most successful approaches to estimate the 6D pose of an object typically train a neural network by supervising the learning with annotated poses in real world images. These annotations are generally expensive to obtain and a common workaround is to generate and train on synthetic scenes, with the drawback of limited generalisation when the model is deployed in the real world. In this work, a two-stage 6D object pose estimator framework that can be applied on top of existing neural-network-based approaches and that does not require pose annotations on real images is proposed. The first self-supervised stage enforces the pose consistency between rendered predictions and real input images, narrowing the gap between the two domains. The second stage fine-tunes the previously trained model by enforcing the photometric consistency between pairs of different object views, where one image is warped and aligned to match the view of the other and thus enabling their comparison. In the absence of both real image annotations and depth information, applying the proposed framework on top of two recent approaches results in state-of-the-art performance when compared to methods trained only on synthetic data, domain adaptation baselines and a concurrent self-supervised approach on LINEMOD, LINEMOD OCCLUSION and HomebrewedDB datasets.
A PHY Layer Security Analysis of a Hybrid High Throughput Satellite with an Optical Feeder Link
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2020
Year: 2020

Hybrid terrestrial-satellite (HTS) communication systems have gained a tremendous amount of interest recently due to the high demand for global high data rates. Conventional satellite communications operate in the conventional Ku (12 GHz) and Ka (26.5-40 GHz) radio-frequency bands for assessing the feeder link, between the ground gateway and the satellite. Nevertheless, with the aim to provide hundreds of Mbps of throughput per each user, free-space optical (FSO) feeder links have been proposed to fulfill these high data rates requirements. In this paper, we investigate the physical layer security performance for a hybrid very high throughput satellite communication system with an FSO feeder link. In particular, the satellite receives the incoming optical wave from an appropriate optical ground station, carrying the data symbols of $N$ users through various optical apertures and combines them using the selection combining technique. Henceforth, the decoded and regenerated information signals of the $N$ users are zero-forcing (ZF) precoded in order to cancel the interbeam interference at the end-users. The communication is performed under the presence of malicious eavesdroppers nodes at both hops. Statistical properties of the signal-to-noise ratio of the legitimate and wiretap links at each hop are derived, based on which the intercept probability metric is evaluated. The derived results show that above a certain number of optical apertures, the secrecy level is not improved further. Also, the system's secrecy is improved using ZF precoding compared to the no-precoding scenario for some specific nodes' positions. All the derived analytical expressions are validated through Monte Carlo simulations.
Unsupervised Fuzzy eIX: Evolving Internal-eXternal Fuzzy Clustering
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2020
Year: 2020

Time-varying classifiers, namely, evolving classifiers, play an important role in a scenario in which information is available as a never-ending online data stream. We present a new unsupervised learning method for numerical data called evolving Internal-eXternal Fuzzy clustering method (Fuzzy eIX). We develop the notion of double-boundary fuzzy granules and elaborate on its implications. Type 1 and type 2 fuzzy inference systems can be obtained from the projection of Fuzzy eIX granules. We perform the principle of the balanced information granularity within Fuzzy eIX classifiers to achieve a higher level of model understandability. Internal and external granules are updated from a numerical data stream at the same time that the global granular structure of the classifier is autonomously evolved. A synthetic nonstationary problem called Rotation of Twin Gaussians shows the behavior of the classifier. The Fuzzy eIX classifier could keep up with its accuracy in a scenario in which offline-trained classifiers would clearly have their accuracy drastically dropped.
Learning representations in Bayesian Confidence Propagation neural networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

Unsupervised learning of hierarchical representations has been one of the most vibrant research directions in deep learning during recent years. In this work we study biologically inspired unsupervised strategies in neural networks based on local Hebbian learning. We propose new mechanisms to extend the Bayesian Confidence Propagating Neural Network (BCPNN) architecture, and demonstrate their capability for unsupervised learning of salient hidden representations when tested on the MNIST dataset.
On a minimum enclosing ball of a collection of linear subspaces
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

This paper concerns the minimax center of a collection of linear subspaces. When the subspaces are $k$-dimensional subspaces of $\mathbb{R}^n$, this can be cast as finding the center of a minimum enclosing ball on a Grassmann manifold, Gr$(k,n)$. For subspaces of different dimension, the setting becomes a disjoint union of Grassmannians rather than a single manifold, and the problem is no longer well-defined. However, natural geometric maps exist between these manifolds with a well-defined notion of distance for the images of the subspaces under the mappings. Solving the initial problem in this context leads to a candidate minimax center on each of the constituent manifolds, but does not inherently provide intuition about which candidate is the best representation of the data. Additionally, the solutions of different rank are generally not nested so a deflationary approach will not suffice, and the problem must be solved independently on each manifold. We propose and solve an optimization problem parametrized by the rank of the minimax center. The solution is computed using a subgradient algorithm on the dual. By scaling the objective and penalizing the information lost by the rank-$k$ minimax center, we jointly recover an optimal dimension, $k^*$, and a central subspace, $U^* \in$ Gr$(k^*,n)$ at the center of the minimum enclosing ball, that best represents the data.
Generic bivariate multi-point evaluation, interpolation and modular composition with precomputation
Venue: arXiv cs.SC 2020
Year: 2020

Suppose $\mathbb{K}$ is a large enough field and $\mathcal{P} \subset \mathbb{K}^2$ is a fixed, generic set of points which is available for precomputation. We introduce a technique called \emph{reshaping} which allows us to design quasi-linear algorithms for both: computing the evaluations of an input polynomial $f \in \mathbb{K}[x,y]$ at all points of $\mathcal{P}$; and computing an interpolant $f \in \mathbb{K}[x,y]$ which takes prescribed values on $\mathcal{P}$ and satisfies an input $y$-degree bound. Our genericity assumption is explicit and we prove that it holds for most point sets over a large enough field. If $\mathcal{P}$ violates the assumption, our algorithms still work and the performance degrades smoothly according to a distance from being generic. To show that the reshaping technique may have an impact on other related problems, we apply it to modular composition: suppose generic polynomials $M \in \mathbb{K}[x]$ and $A \in \mathbb{K}[x]$ are available for precomputation, then given an input $f \in \mathbb{K}[x,y]$ we show how to compute $f(x, A(x)) \operatorname{rem} M(x)$ in quasi-linear time.
IMAC: In-memory multi-bit Multiplication andACcumulation in 6T SRAM Array
Venue: arXiv cs.ET 2020
Year: 2020

`In-memory computing' is being widely explored as a novel computing paradigm to mitigate the well known memory bottleneck. This emerging paradigm aims at embedding some aspects of computations inside the memory array, thereby avoiding frequent and expensive movement of data between the compute unit and the storage memory. In-memory computing with respect to Silicon memories has been widely explored on various memory bit-cells. Embedding computation inside the 6 transistor (6T) SRAM array is of special interest since it is the most widely used on-chip memory. In this paper, we present a novel in-memory multiplication followed by accumulation operation capable of performing parallel dot products within 6T SRAM without any changes to the standard bitcell. We, further, study the effect of circuit non-idealities and process variations on the accuracy of the LeNet-5 and VGG neural network architectures against the MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets, respectively. The proposed in-memory dot-product mechanism achieves 88.8% and 99% accuracy for the CIFAR-10 and MNIST, respectively. Compared to the standard von Neumann system, the proposed system is 6.24x better in energy consumption and 9.42x better in delay.
The Influence of Reward on the Social Valence of Interactions
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2020
Year: 2020

Throughout the years, social norms have been promoted as an informal enforcement mechanism for achieving beneficial collective outcomes. Among the most used methods to foster interactions, framing the context of a situation or setting in-game rules have shown strong results as mediators on how an individual interacts with their peers. Nevertheless, we found that there is a lack of research regarding the use of incentives such as scores to promote social interactions differing in valence. Weighing how incentives influence in-game behavior, we propose the use of rewards to promote interactions varying in valence, i.e. positive or negative, in a two-player scenario. To do so, we defined social valence as a continuous scale with two poles represented by Complicate and Help. Then, we performed user tests where participants where asked to play a game with two reward-based systems to test on whether the scoring system influenced the social interaction valence. The results indicate that the developed reward-based systems were able to foster interactions diverging in social valence scores, providing insights on how factors such as incentives overlap individual's established social norms. These findings empower game developers and designers with a low-cost and effective policy tool that is able to promote in-game behavior changes.
Detection and Description of Change in Visual Streams
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

This paper presents a framework for the analysis of changes in visual streams: ordered sequences of images, possibly separated by significant time gaps. We propose a new approach to incorporating unlabeled data into training to generate natural language descriptions of change. We also develop a framework for estimating the time of change in visual stream. We use learned representations for change evidence and consistency of perceived change, and combine these in a regularized graph cut based change detector. Experimental evaluation on visual stream datasets, which we release as part of our contribution, shows that representation learning driven by natural language descriptions significantly improves change detection accuracy, compared to methods that do not rely on language.
Towards Supervised and Unsupervised Neural Machine Translation Baselines for Nigerian Pidgin
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2020
Year: 2020

Nigerian Pidgin is arguably the most widely spoken language in Nigeria. Variants of this language are also spoken across West and Central Africa, making it a very important language. This work aims to establish supervised and unsupervised neural machine translation (NMT) baselines between English and Nigerian Pidgin. We implement and compare NMT models with different tokenization methods, creating a solid foundation for future works.
Joint Computation Offloading, SFC Placement, and Resource Allocation for Multi-Site MEC Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2020
Year: 2020

Network function Virtualization (NFV) and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) are promising 5G technologies to support resource-demanding mobile applications. In NFV, one must process the service function chain (SFC) in which a set of network functions must be executed in a specific order. Moreover, the MEC technology enables computation offloading of service requests from mobile users to remote servers to potentially reduce energy consumption and processing delay for the mobile application. This paper considers the optimization of the computation offloading, resource allocation, and SFC placement in the multi-site MEC system. Our design objective is to minimize the weighted normalized energy consumption and computing cost subject to the maximum tolerable delay constraint. To solve the underlying mixed integer and non-linear optimization problem, we employ the decomposition approach where we iteratively optimize the computation offloading, SFC placement and computing resource allocation to obtain an efficient solution. Numerical results show the impacts of different parameters on the system performance and the superior performance of the proposed algorithm compared to benchmarking algorithms.
Real Entropy Can Also Predict Daily Voice Traffic for Wireless Network Users
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2020
Year: 2020

Voice traffic prediction is significant for network deployment optimization thus to improve the network efficiency. The real entropy based theorectical bound and corresponding prediction models have demonstrated their success in mobility prediction. In this paper, the real entropy based predictability analysis and prediction models are introduced into voice traffic prediction. For this adoption, the traffic quantification methods is proposed and discussed. Based on the real world voice traffic data, the prediction accuracy of N-order Markov models, diffusion based model and MF model are presented, among which, 25-order Markov models performs best and approach close to the maximum predictability. This work demonstrates that, the real entropy can also predict voice traffic well which broaden the understanding on the real entropy based prediction theory.
Real-Time Detection of Dictionary DGA Network Traffic using Deep Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2020
Year: 2020

Botnets and malware continue to avoid detection by static rules engines when using domain generation algorithms (DGAs) for callouts to unique, dynamically generated web addresses. Common DGA detection techniques fail to reliably detect DGA variants that combine random dictionary words to create domain names that closely mirror legitimate domains. To combat this, we created a novel hybrid neural network, Bilbo the `bagging` model, that analyses domains and scores the likelihood they are generated by such algorithms and therefore are potentially malicious. Bilbo is the first parallel usage of a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a long short-term memory (LSTM) network for DGA detection. Our unique architecture is found to be the most consistent in performance in terms of AUC, F1 score, and accuracy when generalising across different dictionary DGA classification tasks compared to current state-of-the-art deep learning architectures. We validate using reverse-engineered dictionary DGA domains and detail our real-time implementation strategy for scoring real-world network logs within a large financial enterprise. In four hours of actual network traffic, the model discovered at least five potential command-and-control networks that commercial vendor tools did not flag.
Opioids for pain treatment of cancer: a knowledge maturity mapping
Venue: arXiv cs.DL 2020
Year: 2020

The conceptual structure of opioids, based on the bibliometric analysis of 4,935 articles of the Web of Science was constructed. The results were processed identifying the most cited articles to extract the main connections and frequencies of key words, authors, journals, countries, institutions, and their tendencies and their connection and degree of collaboration. The temporal tendencies, the word cloud, the keyword network, the evolution of words, author production and the scientific production by country are analyzed in terms of the increasing frequency in which opioids are employed to treat both cancerous and non-cancerous pain.
Orchestrating NLP Services for the Legal Domain
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2020
Year: 2020

Legal technology is currently receiving a lot of attention from various angles. In this contribution we describe the main technical components of a system that is currently under development in the European innovation project Lynx, which includes partners from industry and research. The key contribution of this paper is a workflow manager that enables the flexible orchestration of workflows based on a portfolio of Natural Language Processing and Content Curation services as well as a Multilingual Legal Knowledge Graph that contains semantic information and meaningful references to legal documents. We also describe different use cases with which we experiment and develop prototypical solutions.