OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Converting Artificial Neural Networks to Spiking Neural Networks via Parameter Calibration
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2022
Year: 2022

Spiking Neural Network (SNN), originating from the neural behavior in biology, has been recognized as one of the next-generation neural networks. Conventionally, SNNs can be obtained by converting from pre-trained Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) by replacing the non-linear activation with spiking neurons without changing the parameters. In this work, we argue that simply copying and pasting the weights of ANN to SNN inevitably results in activation mismatch, especially for ANNs that are trained with batch normalization (BN) layers. To tackle the activation mismatch issue, we first provide a theoretical analysis by decomposing local conversion error to clipping error and flooring error, and then quantitatively measure how this error propagates throughout the layers using the second-order analysis. Motivated by the theoretical results, we propose a set of layer-wise parameter calibration algorithms, which adjusts the parameters to minimize the activation mismatch. Extensive experiments for the proposed algorithms are performed on modern architectures and large-scale tasks including ImageNet classification and MS COCO detection. We demonstrate that our method can handle the SNN conversion with batch normalization layers and effectively preserve the high accuracy even in 32 time steps. For example, our calibration algorithms can increase up to 65% accuracy when converting VGG-16 with BN layers.
Stochastic resonance neurons in artificial neural networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2022
Year: 2022

Many modern applications of the artificial neural networks ensue large number of layers making traditional digital implementations increasingly complex. Optical neural networks offer parallel processing at high bandwidth, but have the challenge of noise accumulation. We propose here a new type of neural networks using stochastic resonances as an inherent part of the architecture and demonstrate a possibility of significant reduction of the required number of neurons for a given performance accuracy. We also show that such a neural network is more robust against the impact of noise.
Spiking Neural Operators for Scientific Machine Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2022
Year: 2022

The main computational task of Scientific Machine Learning (SciML) is function regression, required both for inputs as well as outputs of a simulation. Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) and neural operators (such as DeepONet) have been very effective in solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs), but they tax computational resources heavily and cannot be readily adopted for edge computing. Here, we address this issue by considering Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), which have shown promise in reducing energy consumption by two orders of magnitude or more. We present a SNN-based method to perform regression, which has been a challenge due to the inherent difficulty in representing a function's input domain and continuous output values as spikes. We first propose a new method for encoding continuous values into spikes based on a triangular matrix in space and time, and demonstrate its better performance compared to the existing methods. Next, we demonstrate that using a simple SNN architecture consisting of Leaky Integrate and Fire (LIF) activation and two dense layers, we can achieve relatively accurate function regression results. Moreover, we can replace the LIF with a trained Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) network and obtain comparable results but three times faster. Then, we introduce the DeepONet, consisting of a branch (typically a Fully-connected Neural Network, FNN) for inputs and a trunk (also a FNN) for outputs. We can build a spiking DeepONet by either replacing the branch or the trunk by a SNN. We demonstrate this new approach for classification using the SNN in the branch, achieving results comparable to the literature. Finally, we design a spiking DeepONet for regression by replacing its trunk with a SNN, and achieve good accuracy for approximating functions as well as inferring solutions of differential equations.
Survey on Tools and Techniques Detecting Microservice API Patterns
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2022
Year: 2022

It is well recognized that design patterns improve system development and maintenance in many aspects. While we commonly recognize these patterns in monolithic systems, many patterns emerged for cloud computing, specifically microservices. Unfortunately, while various patterns have been proposed, available quality assessment tools often do not recognize many. This article performs a grey literature review to find and catalog available tools to detect microservice API patterns (MAP). It reasons about mechanisms that can be used to detect these patterns. Furthermore, the results indicate gaps and opportunities for improvements for quality assessment tools. Finally, the reader is provided with a route map to detection techniques that can be used to mine MAPs.
Swapping Semantic Contents for Mixing Images
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Deep architecture have proven capable of solving many tasks provided a sufficient amount of labeled data. In fact, the amount of available labeled data has become the principal bottleneck in low label settings such as Semi-Supervised Learning. Mixing Data Augmentations do not typically yield new labeled samples, as indiscriminately mixing contents creates between-class samples. In this work, we introduce the SciMix framework that can learn to generator to embed a semantic style code into image backgrounds, we obtain new mixing scheme for data augmentation. We then demonstrate that SciMix yields novel mixed samples that inherit many characteristics from their non-semantic parents. Afterwards, we verify those samples can be used to improve the performance semi-supervised frameworks like Mean Teacher or Fixmatch, and even fully supervised learning on a small labeled dataset.
E-Scooter Rider Detection and Classification in Dense Urban Environments
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Accurate detection and classification of vulnerable road users is a safety critical requirement for the deployment of autonomous vehicles in heterogeneous traffic. Although similar in physical appearance to pedestrians, e-scooter riders follow distinctly different characteristics of movement and can reach speeds of up to 45kmph. The challenge of detecting e-scooter riders is exacerbated in urban environments where the frequency of partial occlusion is increased as riders navigate between vehicles, traffic infrastructure and other road users. This can lead to the non-detection or mis-classification of e-scooter riders as pedestrians, providing inaccurate information for accident mitigation and path planning in autonomous vehicle applications. This research introduces a novel benchmark for partially occluded e-scooter rider detection to facilitate the objective characterization of detection models. A novel, occlusion-aware method of e-scooter rider detection is presented that achieves a 15.93% improvement in detection performance over the current state of the art.
Measuring algorithmic interpretability: A human-learning-based framework and the corresponding cognitive complexity score
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2022
Year: 2022

Algorithmic interpretability is necessary to build trust, ensure fairness, and track accountability. However, there is no existing formal measurement method for algorithmic interpretability. In this work, we build upon programming language theory and cognitive load theory to develop a framework for measuring algorithmic interpretability. The proposed measurement framework reflects the process of a human learning an algorithm. We show that the measurement framework and the resulting cognitive complexity score have the following desirable properties - universality, computability, uniqueness, and monotonicity. We illustrate the measurement framework through a toy example, describe the framework and its conceptual underpinnings, and demonstrate the benefits of the framework, in particular for managers considering tradeoffs when selecting algorithms.
Exploring the Trade-off between Plausibility, Change Intensity and Adversarial Power in Counterfactual Explanations using Multi-objective Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

There is a broad consensus on the importance of deep learning models in tasks involving complex data. Often, an adequate understanding of these models is required when focusing on the transparency of decisions in human-critical applications. Besides other explainability techniques, trustworthiness can be achieved by using counterfactuals, like the way a human becomes familiar with an unknown process: by understanding the hypothetical circumstances under which the output changes. In this work we argue that automated counterfactual generation should regard several aspects of the produced adversarial instances, not only their adversarial capability. To this end, we present a novel framework for the generation of counterfactual examples which formulates its goal as a multi-objective optimization problem balancing three different objectives: 1) plausibility, i.e., the likeliness of the counterfactual of being possible as per the distribution of the input data; 2) intensity of the changes to the original input; and 3) adversarial power, namely, the variability of the model's output induced by the counterfactual. The framework departs from a target model to be audited and uses a Generative Adversarial Network to model the distribution of input data, together with a multi-objective solver for the discovery of counterfactuals balancing among these objectives. The utility of the framework is showcased over six classification tasks comprising image and three-dimensional data. The experiments verify that the framework unveils counterfactuals that comply with intuition, increasing the trustworthiness of the user, and leading to further insights, such as the detection of bias and data misrepresentation.
An Efficient Methodology to Identify Missing Tags in Large-Scale RFID Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2022
Year: 2022

Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been widely has broad applications. One such application is to use RFID to track inventory in warehouses and retail stores. In this application, timely identifying the missing items is an ongoing engineering problem. A feasible solution to this problem is to map each tag to a time slot and verify the presence of a tag by comparing the status of the predicted time slot and the actual time slot. However, existing works are time inefficient because they only verify tags one by one in singleton slots but ignore the collision slots mapped by multiple tags. To accelerate the identification process, we use bit tracking to verify tags in collision slots and design two protocols accordingly. We first propose the Sequential String based Missing Tag Identification (SSMTI) protocol, which converts all time slots to collision slots and enables tags in each slot to reply to a designed string simultaneously. By using bit tracking to decode the combined string, the reader can verify multiple tags together. To improve the performance of SSMTI when most tags are missing, we further propose the Interactive String based Missing Tag Identification (ISMTI) protocol. ISMTI improves the strategies of designing strings for each collided tag so that the reader can verify more tags using shorter strings than SSMTI.Besides, ISMTI can dynamically adjust the verification mechanism according to the proportion of missing tags to maintain time efficiency. We also provide theoretical analysis for proposed protocols to minimize execution time and evaluate their performance through extensive simulations. Compared with state-of-the-art solutions, the proposed SSMTI and ISMTI can reduce the time cost by as much as 39.74% and 68.87%.
Invariant Extended Kalman Filtering for Human Motion Estimation with Imperfect Sensor Placement
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2022
Year: 2022

This paper introduces a new invariant extended Kalman filter design that produces real-time state estimates and rapid error convergence for the estimation of the human body movement even in the presence of sensor misalignment and initial state estimation errors. The filter fuses the data returned by an inertial measurement unit (IMU) attached to the body (e.g., pelvis or chest) and a virtual measurement of zero stance-foot velocity (i.e., leg odometry). The key novelty of the proposed filter lies in that its process model meets the group affine property while the filter explicitly addresses the IMU placement error by formulating its stochastic process model as Brownian motions and incorporating the error in the leg odometry. Although the measurement model is imperfect (i.e., it does not possess an invariant observation form) and thus its linearization relies on the state estimate, experimental results demonstrate fast convergence of the proposed filter (within 0.2 seconds) during squatting motions even under significant IMU placement inaccuracy and initial estimation errors.
EXODUS: Stable and Efficient Training of Spiking Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2022
Year: 2022

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are gaining significant traction in machine learning tasks where energy-efficiency is of utmost importance. Training such networks using the state-of-the-art back-propagation through time (BPTT) is, however, very time-consuming. Previous work by Shrestha and Orchard [2018] employs an efficient GPU-accelerated back-propagation algorithm called SLAYER, which speeds up training considerably. SLAYER, however, does not take into account the neuron reset mechanism while computing the gradients, which we argue to be the source of numerical instability. To counteract this, SLAYER introduces a gradient scale hyperparameter across layers, which needs manual tuning. In this paper, (i) we modify SLAYER and design an algorithm called EXODUS, that accounts for the neuron reset mechanism and applies the Implicit Function Theorem (IFT) to calculate the correct gradients (equivalent to those computed by BPTT), (ii) we eliminate the need for ad-hoc scaling of gradients, thus, reducing the training complexity tremendously, (iii) we demonstrate, via computer simulations, that EXODUS is numerically stable and achieves a comparable or better performance than SLAYER especially in various tasks with SNNs that rely on temporal features. Our code is available at https://github.com/synsense/sinabs-exodus.
SADAM: Stochastic Adam, A Stochastic Operator for First-Order Gradient-based Optimizer
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

In this work, to efficiently help escape the stationary and saddle points, we propose, analyze, and generalize a stochastic strategy performed as an operator for a first-order gradient descent algorithm in order to increase the target accuracy and reduce time consumption. Unlike existing algorithms, the proposed stochastic the strategy does not require any batches and sampling techniques, enabling efficient implementation and maintaining the initial first-order optimizer's convergence rate, but provides an incomparable improvement of target accuracy when optimizing the target functions. In short, the proposed strategy is generalized, applied to Adam, and validated via the decomposition of biomedical signals using Deep Matrix Fitting and another four peer optimizers. The validation results show that the proposed random strategy can be easily generalized for first-order optimizers and efficiently improve the target accuracy.
Tower: Data Structures in Quantum Superposition
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2022
Year: 2022

Emerging quantum algorithms for problems such as element distinctness, subset sum, and closest pair demonstrate computational advantages by relying on abstract data structures. Practically realizing such an algorithm as a program for a quantum computer requires an efficient implementation of the data structure whose operations correspond to unitary operators that manipulate quantum superpositions of data. To correctly operate in superposition, an implementation must satisfy three properties -- reversibility, history independence, and bounded-time execution. Standard implementations, such as the representation of an abstract set as a hash table, fail these properties, calling for tools to develop specialized implementations. In this work, we present Core Tower, the first language for quantum programming with random-access memory. Core Tower enables the developer to implement data structures as pointer-based, linked data. It features a reversible semantics enabling every valid program to be translated to a unitary quantum circuit. We present Boson, the first memory allocator that supports reversible, history-independent, and constant-time dynamic memory allocation in quantum superposition. We also present Tower, a language for quantum programming with recursively defined data structures. Tower features a type system that bounds all recursion using classical parameters as is necessary for a program to execute on a quantum computer. Using Tower, we implement Ground, the first quantum library of data structures, including lists, stacks, queues, strings, and sets. We provide the first executable implementation of sets that satisfies all three mandated properties of reversibility, history independence, and bounded-time execution.
Frontrunning Block Attack in PoA Clique: A Case Study
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2022
Year: 2022

As a fundamental technology of decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain's ability to maintain a distributed fair ledger is threatened by manipulation of block/transaction order. In this paper, we propose a frontrunning block attack against the Clique-based Proof of Authority (PoA) algorithms. Our attack can frontrun blocks from honest in-turn sealers by breaking the proper order of leader selection. By falsifying the priority parameters (both \textit{difficulty} and \textit{delay time}), a malicious out-of-turn sealer can always successfully occupy the leader position and produce advantageous blocks that may contain profitable transactions. As a typical instance, we apply our attack to a mature Clique-engined project, HPB (\$3,058,901, as of April 2022). Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility. Then, we further recommend fixes that make identity checks effective. Our investigation and suggestion have been submitted to its official team and got their approval. We believe this work can act as, at least, a warning case for Clique variants to avoid repeating these design mistakes.
DEMAND: Deep Matrix Approximately Nonlinear Decomposition to Identify Meta, Canonical, and Sub-Spatial Pattern of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Human Brain
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have already become a crucial computational approach to revealing the spatial patterns in the human brain; however, there are three major shortcomings in utilizing DNNs to detect the spatial patterns in functional Magnetic Resonance Signals: 1). It is a fully connected architecture that increases the complexity of network structures that is difficult to optimize and vulnerable to overfitting; 2). The requirement of large training samples results in erasing the individual/minor patterns in feature extraction; 3). The hyperparameters are required to be tuned manually, which is time-consuming. Therefore, we propose a novel deep nonlinear matrix factorization named Deep Matrix Approximately Nonlinear Decomposition (DEMAND) in this work to take advantage of the shallow linear model, e.g., Sparse Dictionary Learning (SDL) and DNNs. At first, the proposed DEMAND employs a non-fully connected and multilayer-stacked architecture that is easier to be optimized compared with canonical DNNs; furthermore, due to the efficient architecture, training DEMAND can avoid overfitting and enables the recognition of individual/minor features based on a small dataset such as an individual data; finally, a novel rank estimator technique is introduced to tune all hyperparameters of DEMAND automatically. Moreover, the proposed DEMAND is validated by four other peer methodologies via real functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging data in the human brain. In short, the validation results demonstrate that DEMAND can reveal the reproducible meta, canonical, and sub-spatial features of the human brain more efficiently than other peer methodologies.
Deep Quality Estimation: Creating Surrogate Models for Human Quality Ratings
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Human ratings are abstract representations of segmentation quality. To approximate human quality ratings on scarce expert data, we train surrogate quality estimation models. We evaluate on a complex multi-class segmentation problem, specifically glioma segmentation, following the BraTS annotation protocol. The training data features quality ratings from 15 expert neuroradiologists on a scale ranging from 1 to 6 stars for various computer-generated and manual 3D annotations. Even though the networks operate on 2D images and with scarce training data, we can approximate segmentation quality within a margin of error comparable to human intra-rater reliability. Segmentation quality prediction has broad applications. While an understanding of segmentation quality is imperative for successful clinical translation of automatic segmentation quality algorithms, it can play an essential role in training new segmentation models. Due to the split-second inference times, it can be directly applied within a loss function or as a fully-automatic dataset curation mechanism in a federated learning setting.
A Dynamic Weighted Tabular Method for Convolutional Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Traditional Machine Learning (ML) models like Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, and Logistic Regression are generally preferred for classification tasks on tabular datasets. Tabular data consists of rows and columns corresponding to instances and features, respectively. Past studies indicate that traditional classifiers often produce unsatisfactory results in complex tabular datasets. Hence, researchers attempt to use the powerful Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) for tabular datasets. Recent studies propose several techniques like SuperTML, Conditional GAN (CTGAN), and Tabular Convolution (TAC) for applying Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) on tabular data. These models outperform the traditional classifiers and substantially improve the performance on tabular data. This study introduces a novel technique, namely, Dynamic Weighted Tabular Method (DWTM), that uses feature weights dynamically based on statistical techniques to apply CNNs on tabular datasets. The method assigns weights dynamically to each feature based on their strength of associativity to the class labels. Each data point is converted into images and fed to a CNN model. The features are allocated image canvas space based on their weights. The DWTM is an improvement on the previously mentioned methods as it dynamically implements the entire experimental setting rather than using the static configuration provided in the previous methods. Furthermore, it uses the novel idea of using feature weights to create image canvas space. In this paper, the DWTM is applied to six benchmarked tabular datasets and it achieves outstanding performance (i.e., average accuracy = 95%) on all of them.