OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Impact of Physical Activity on Quality of Life During Pregnancy: A Causal ML Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The concept of Quality of Life (QoL) refers to a holistic measurement of an individual's well-being, incorporating psychological and social aspects. Pregnant women, especially those with obesity and stress, often experience lower QoL. Physical activity (PA) has shown the potential to enhance the QoL. However, pregnant women who are overweight and obese rarely meet the recommended level of PA. Studies have investigated the relationship between PA and QoL during pregnancy using correlation-based approaches. These methods aim to discover spurious correlations between variables rather than causal relationships. Besides, the existing methods mainly rely on physical activity parameters and neglect the use of different factors such as maternal (medical) history and context data, leading to biased estimates. Furthermore, the estimations lack an understanding of mediators and counterfactual scenarios that might affect them. In this paper, we investigate the causal relationship between being physically active (treatment variable) and the QoL (outcome) during pregnancy and postpartum. To estimate the causal effect, we develop a Causal Machine Learning method, integrating causal discovery and causal inference components. The data for our investigation is derived from a long-term wearable-based health monitoring study focusing on overweight and obese pregnant women. The machine learning (meta-learner) estimation technique is used to estimate the causal effect. Our result shows that performing adequate physical activity during pregnancy and postpartum improves the QoL by units of 7.3 and 3.4 on average in physical health and psychological domains, respectively. In the final step, four refutation analysis techniques are employed to validate our estimation.
PromptSet: A Programmer's Prompting Dataset
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

The rise of capabilities expressed by large language models has been quickly followed by the integration of the same complex systems into application level logic. Algorithms, programs, systems, and companies are built around structured prompting to black box models where the majority of the design and implementation lies in capturing and quantifying the `agent mode'. The standard way to shape a closed language model is to prime it for a specific task with a tailored prompt, often initially handwritten by a human. The textual prompts co-evolve with the codebase, taking shape over the course of project life as artifacts which must be reviewed and maintained, just as the traditional code files might be. Unlike traditional code, we find that prompts do not receive effective static testing and linting to prevent runtime issues. In this work, we present a novel dataset called PromptSet, with more than 61,000 unique developer prompts used in open source Python programs. We perform analysis on this dataset and introduce the notion of a static linter for prompts. Released with this publication is a HuggingFace dataset and a Github repository to recreate collection and processing efforts, both under the name \texttt{pisterlabs/promptset}.
A Survey of Large Language Models in Cybersecurity
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Large Language Models (LLMs) have quickly risen to prominence due to their ability to perform at or close to the state-of-the-art in a variety of fields while handling natural language. An important field of research is the application of such models at the cybersecurity context. This survey aims to identify where in the field of cybersecurity LLMs have already been applied, the ways in which they are being used and their limitations in the field. Finally, suggestions are made on how to improve such limitations and what can be expected from these systems once these limitations are overcome.
An Investigation into the Performances of the State-of-the-art Machine Learning Approaches for Various Cyber-attack Detection: A Survey
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

In this research, we analyzed the suitability of each of the current state-of-the-art machine learning models for various cyberattack detection from the past 5 years with a major emphasis on the most recent works for comparative study to identify the knowledge gap where work is still needed to be done with regard to detection of each category of cyberattack. We also reviewed the suitability, effeciency and limitations of recent research on state-of-the-art classifiers and novel frameworks in the detection of differnet cyberattacks. Our result shows the need for; further research and exploration on machine learning approach for the detection of drive-by download attacks, an investigation into the mix performance of Naive Bayes to identify possible research direction on improvement to existing state-of-the-art Naive Bayes classifier, we also identify that current machine learning approach to the detection of SQLi attack cannot detect an already compromised database with SQLi attack signifying another possible future research direction.
Asphalt Concrete Characterization Using Digital Image Correlation: A Systematic Review of Best Practices, Applications, and Future Vision
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Digital Image Correlation (DIC) is an optical technique that measures displacement and strain by tracking pattern movement in a sequence of captured images during testing. DIC has gained recognition in asphalt pavement engineering since the early 2000s. However, users often perceive the DIC technique as an out-of-box tool and lack a thorough understanding of its operational and measurement principles. This article presents a state-of-art review of DIC as a crucial tool for laboratory testing of asphalt concrete (AC), primarily focusing on the widely utilized 2D-DIC and 3D-DIC techniques. To address frequently asked questions from users, the review thoroughly examines the optimal methods for preparing speckle patterns, configuring single-camera or dual-camera imaging systems, conducting DIC analyses, and exploring various applications. Furthermore, emerging DIC methodologies such as Digital Volume Correlation and deep-learning-based DIC are introduced, highlighting their potential for future applications in pavement engineering. The article also provides a comprehensive and reliable flowchart for implementing DIC in AC characterization. Finally, critical directions for future research are presented.
Repeated Contracting with Multiple Non-Myopic Agents: Policy Regret and Limited Liability
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2024
Year: 2024

We study a repeated contracting setting in which a Principal adaptively chooses amongst $k$ Agents at each of $T$ rounds. The Agents are non-myopic, and so a mechanism for the Principal induces a $T$-round extensive form game amongst the Agents. We give several results aimed at understanding an under-explored aspect of contract theory -- the game induced when choosing an Agent to contract with. First, we show that this game admits a pure-strategy \emph{non-responsive} equilibrium amongst the Agents -- informally an equilibrium in which the Agent's actions depend on the history of realized states of nature, but not on the history of each other's actions, and so avoids the complexities of collusion and threats. Next, we show that if the Principal selects Agents using a \emph{monotone} bandit algorithm, then for any concave contract, in any such equilibrium, the Principal obtains no regret to contracting with the best Agent in hindsight -- not just given their realized actions, but also to the counterfactual world in which they had offered a guaranteed $T$-round contract to the best Agent in hindsight, which would have induced a different sequence of actions. Finally, we show that if the Principal selects Agents using a monotone bandit algorithm which guarantees no swap-regret, then the Principal can additionally offer only limited liability contracts (in which the Agent never needs to pay the Principal) while getting no-regret to the counterfactual world in which she offered a linear contract to the best Agent in hindsight -- despite the fact that linear contracts are not limited liability. We instantiate this theorem by demonstrating the existence of a monotone no swap-regret bandit algorithm, which to our knowledge has not previously appeared in the literature.
CharNeRF: 3D Character Generation from Concept Art
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

3D modeling holds significant importance in the realms of AR/VR and gaming, allowing for both artistic creativity and practical applications. However, the process is often time-consuming and demands a high level of skill. In this paper, we present a novel approach to create volumetric representations of 3D characters from consistent turnaround concept art, which serves as the standard input in the 3D modeling industry. While Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) has been a game-changer in image-based 3D reconstruction, to the best of our knowledge, there is no known research that optimizes the pipeline for concept art. To harness the potential of concept art, with its defined body poses and specific view angles, we propose encoding it as priors for our model. We train the network to make use of these priors for various 3D points through a learnable view-direction-attended multi-head self-attention layer. Additionally, we demonstrate that a combination of ray sampling and surface sampling enhances the inference capabilities of our network. Our model is able to generate high-quality 360-degree views of characters. Subsequently, we provide a simple guideline to better leverage our model to extract the 3D mesh. It is important to note that our model's inferencing capabilities are influenced by the training data's characteristics, primarily focusing on characters with a single head, two arms, and two legs. Nevertheless, our methodology remains versatile and adaptable to concept art from diverse subject matters, without imposing any specific assumptions on the data.
TaxDiff: Taxonomic-Guided Diffusion Model for Protein Sequence Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Designing protein sequences with specific biological functions and structural stability is crucial in biology and chemistry. Generative models already demonstrated their capabilities for reliable protein design. However, previous models are limited to the unconditional generation of protein sequences and lack the controllable generation ability that is vital to biological tasks. In this work, we propose TaxDiff, a taxonomic-guided diffusion model for controllable protein sequence generation that combines biological species information with the generative capabilities of diffusion models to generate structurally stable proteins within the sequence space. Specifically, taxonomic control information is inserted into each layer of the transformer block to achieve fine-grained control. The combination of global and local attention ensures the sequence consistency and structural foldability of taxonomic-specific proteins. Extensive experiments demonstrate that TaxDiff can consistently achieve better performance on multiple protein sequence generation benchmarks in both taxonomic-guided controllable generation and unconditional generation. Remarkably, the sequences generated by TaxDiff even surpass those produced by direct-structure-generation models in terms of confidence based on predicted structures and require only a quarter of the time of models based on the diffusion model. The code for generating proteins and training new versions of TaxDiff is available at:https://github.com/Linzy19/TaxDiff.
NeuralSI: Neural Design of Semantic Interaction for Interactive Deep Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

An increasing number of studies have utilized interactive deep learning as the analytic model of visual analytics systems for complex sensemaking tasks. In these systems, traditional interactive dimensionality reduction (DR) models are commonly utilized to build a bi-directional bridge between high-dimensional deep learning representations and low-dimensional visualizations. While these systems better capture analysts' intents in the context of human-in-the-loop interactive deep learning, traditional DR cannot support several desired properties for visual analytics, including out-of-sample extensions, stability, and real-time inference. To avoid this issue, we propose the neural design framework of semantic interaction for interactive deep learning. In our framework, we replace the traditional DR with a neural projection network and append it to the deep learning model as the task-specific output layer. Therefore, the analytic model (deep learning) and visualization method (interactive DR) form one integrated end-to-end trainable deep neural network. In order to understand the performance of the neural design in comparison to the state-of-the-art, we systematically performed two complementary studies, a human-centered qualitative case study and an algorithm-centered simulation-based quantitative experiment. The results of these studies indicate that the neural design can give semantic interaction systems substantial advantages while still keeping comparable inference ability compared to the state-of-the-art model.
FedBRB: An Effective Solution to the Small-to-Large Scenario in Device-Heterogeneity Federated Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Recently, the success of large models has demonstrated the importance of scaling up model size. This has spurred interest in exploring collaborative training of large-scale models from federated learning perspective. Due to computational constraints, many institutions struggle to train a large-scale model locally. Thus, training a larger global model using only smaller local models has become an important scenario (i.e., the \textbf{small-to-large scenario}). Although recent device-heterogeneity federated learning approaches have started to explore this area, they face limitations in fully covering the parameter space of the global model. In this paper, we propose a method called \textbf{FedBRB} (\underline{B}lock-wise \underline{R}olling and weighted \underline{B}roadcast) based on the block concept. FedBRB can uses small local models to train all blocks of the large global model, and broadcasts the trained parameters to the entire space for faster information interaction. Experiments demonstrate FedBRB yields substantial performance gains, achieving state-of-the-art results in this scenario. Moreover, FedBRB using only minimal local models can even surpass baselines using larger local models.
Viblio: Introducing Credibility Signals and Citations to Video-Sharing Platforms
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

As more users turn to video-sharing platforms like YouTube as an information source, they may consume misinformation despite their best efforts. In this work, we investigate ways that users can better assess the credibility of videos by first exploring how users currently determine credibility using existing signals on platforms and then by introducing and evaluating new credibility-based signals. We conducted 12 contextual inquiry interviews with YouTube users, determining that participants used a combination of existing signals, such as the channel name, the production quality, and prior knowledge, to evaluate credibility, yet sometimes stumbled in their efforts to do so. We then developed Viblio, a prototype system that enables YouTube users to view and add citations and related information while watching a video based on our participants' needs. From an evaluation with 12 people, all participants found Viblio to be intuitive and useful in the process of evaluating a video's credibility and could see themselves using Viblio in the future.
LocalGCL: Local-aware Contrastive Learning for Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Graph representation learning (GRL) makes considerable progress recently, which encodes graphs with topological structures into low-dimensional embeddings. Meanwhile, the time-consuming and costly process of annotating graph labels manually prompts the growth of self-supervised learning (SSL) techniques. As a dominant approach of SSL, Contrastive learning (CL) learns discriminative representations by differentiating between positive and negative samples. However, when applied to graph data, it overemphasizes global patterns while neglecting local structures. To tackle the above issue, we propose \underline{Local}-aware \underline{G}raph \underline{C}ontrastive \underline{L}earning (\textbf{\methnametrim}), a self-supervised learning framework that supplementarily captures local graph information with masking-based modeling compared with vanilla contrastive learning. Extensive experiments validate the superiority of \methname against state-of-the-art methods, demonstrating its promise as a comprehensive graph representation learner.
FairBelief -- Assessing Harmful Beliefs in Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Language Models (LMs) have been shown to inherit undesired biases that might hurt minorities and underrepresented groups if such systems were integrated into real-world applications without careful fairness auditing. This paper proposes FairBelief, an analytical approach to capture and assess beliefs, i.e., propositions that an LM may embed with different degrees of confidence and that covertly influence its predictions. With FairBelief, we leverage prompting to study the behavior of several state-of-the-art LMs across different previously neglected axes, such as model scale and likelihood, assessing predictions on a fairness dataset specifically designed to quantify LMs' outputs' hurtfulness. Finally, we conclude with an in-depth qualitative assessment of the beliefs emitted by the models. We apply FairBelief to English LMs, revealing that, although these architectures enable high performances on diverse natural language processing tasks, they show hurtful beliefs about specific genders. Interestingly, training procedure and dataset, model scale, and architecture induce beliefs of different degrees of hurtfulness.
LSPT: Long-term Spatial Prompt Tuning for Visual Representation Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Visual Prompt Tuning (VPT) techniques have gained prominence for their capacity to adapt pre-trained Vision Transformers (ViTs) to downstream visual tasks using specialized learnable tokens termed as prompts. Contemporary VPT methodologies, especially when employed with self-supervised vision transformers, often default to the introduction of new learnable prompts or gated prompt tokens predominantly sourced from the model's previous block. A pivotal oversight in such approaches is their failure to harness the potential of long-range previous blocks as sources of prompts within each self-supervised ViT. To bridge this crucial gap, we introduce Long-term Spatial Prompt Tuning (LSPT) - a revolutionary approach to visual representation learning. Drawing inspiration from the intricacies of the human brain, LSPT ingeniously incorporates long-term gated prompts. This feature serves as temporal coding, curbing the risk of forgetting parameters acquired from earlier blocks. Further enhancing its prowess, LSPT brings into play patch tokens, serving as spatial coding. This is strategically designed to perpetually amass class-conscious features, thereby fortifying the model's prowess in distinguishing and identifying visual categories. To validate the efficacy of our proposed method, we engaged in rigorous experimentation across 5 FGVC and 19 VTAB-1K benchmarks. Our empirical findings underscore the superiority of LSPT, showcasing its ability to set new benchmarks in visual prompt tuning performance.
Reinforced In-Context Black-Box Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Black-Box Optimization (BBO) has found successful applications in many fields of science and engineering. Recently, there has been a growing interest in meta-learning particular components of BBO algorithms to speed up optimization and get rid of tedious hand-crafted heuristics. As an extension, learning the entire algorithm from data requires the least labor from experts and can provide the most flexibility. In this paper, we propose RIBBO, a method to reinforce-learn a BBO algorithm from offline data in an end-to-end fashion. RIBBO employs expressive sequence models to learn the optimization histories produced by multiple behavior algorithms and tasks, leveraging the in-context learning ability of large models to extract task information and make decisions accordingly. Central to our method is to augment the optimization histories with \textit{regret-to-go} tokens, which are designed to represent the performance of an algorithm based on cumulative regret over the future part of the histories. The integration of regret-to-go tokens enables RIBBO to automatically generate sequences of query points that satisfy the user-desired regret, which is verified by its universally good empirical performance on diverse problems, including BBO benchmark functions, hyper-parameter optimization and robot control problems.
Shortest cover after edit
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2024
Year: 2024

This paper investigates the (quasi-)periodicity of a string when the string is edited. A string $C$ is called a cover (as known as a quasi-period) of a string $T$ if each character of $T$ lies within some occurrence of $C$. By definition, a cover of $T$ must be a border of $T$; that is, it occurs both as a prefix and as a suffix of $T$. In this paper, we focus on the changes in the longest border and the shortest cover of a string when the string is edited only once. We propose a data structure of size $O(n)$ that computes the longest border and the shortest cover of the string in $O(\ell \log n)$ time after an edit operation (either insertion, deletion, or substitution of some string) is applied to the input string $T$ of length $n$, where $\ell$ is the length of the string being inserted or substituted. The data structure can be constructed in $O(n)$ time given string $T$.
Model X-ray:Detecting Backdoored Models via Decision Boundary
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Backdoor attacks pose a significant security vulnerability for deep neural networks (DNNs), enabling them to operate normally on clean inputs but manipulate predictions when specific trigger patterns occur. Currently, post-training backdoor detection approaches often operate under the assumption that the defender has knowledge of the attack information, logit output from the model, and knowledge of the model parameters. In contrast, our approach functions as a lightweight diagnostic scanning tool offering interpretability and visualization. By accessing the model to obtain hard labels, we construct decision boundaries within the convex combination of three samples. We present an intriguing observation of two phenomena in backdoored models: a noticeable shrinking of areas dominated by clean samples and a significant increase in the surrounding areas dominated by target labels. Leveraging this observation, we propose Model X-ray, a novel backdoor detection approach based on the analysis of illustrated two-dimensional (2D) decision boundaries. Our approach includes two strategies focused on the decision areas dominated by clean samples and the concentration of label distribution, and it can not only identify whether the target model is infected but also determine the target attacked label under the all-to-one attack strategy. Importantly, it accomplishes this solely by the predicted hard labels of clean inputs, regardless of any assumptions about attacks and prior knowledge of the training details of the model. Extensive experiments demonstrated that Model X-ray has outstanding effectiveness and efficiency across diverse backdoor attacks, datasets, and architectures. Besides, ablation studies on hyperparameters and more attack strategies and discussions are also provided.