OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
End-to-End Adversarial Learning for Intrusion Detection in Computer Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

This paper presents a simple yet efficient method for an anomaly-based Intrusion Detection System (IDS). In reality, IDSs can be defined as a one-class classification system, where the normal traffic is the target class. The high diversity of network attacks in addition to the need for generalization, motivate us to propose a semi-supervised method. Inspired by the successes of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for training deep models in semi-unsupervised setting, we have proposed an end-to-end deep architecture for IDS. The proposed architecture is composed of two deep networks, each of which trained by competing with each other to understand the underlying concept of the normal traffic class. The key idea of this paper is to compensate the lack of anomalous traffic by approximately obtain them from normal flows. In this case, our method is not biased towards the available intrusions in the training set leading to more accurate detection. The proposed method has been evaluated on NSL-KDD dataset. The results confirm that our method outperforms the other state-of-the-art approaches.
Appliance Event Detection -- A Multivariate, Supervised Classification Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2019
Year: 2019

Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) is a modern and still expanding technique, helping to understand fundamental energy consumption patterns and appliance characteristics. Appliance event detection is an elementary step in the NILM pipeline. Unfortunately, several types of appliances (e.g., switching mode power supply (SMPS) or multi-state) are known to challenge state-of-the-art event detection systems due to their noisy consumption profiles. Classical rule-based event detection system become infeasible and complex for these appliances. By stepping away from distinct event definitions, we can learn from a consumer-configured event model to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant event transients. We introduce a boosting oriented adaptive training, that uses false positives from the initial training area to reduce the number of false positives on the test area substantially. The results show a false positive decrease by more than a factor of eight on a dataset that has a strong focus on SMPS-driven appliances. To obtain a stable event detection system, we applied several experiments on different parameters to measure its performance. These experiments include the evaluation of six event features from the spectral and time domain, different types of feature space normalization to eliminate undesired feature weighting, the conventional and adaptive training, and two common classifiers with its optimal parameter settings. The evaluations are performed on two publicly available energy datasets with high sampling rates: BLUED and BLOND-50.
High-Resolution Network for Photorealistic Style Transfer
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Photorealistic style transfer aims to transfer the style of one image to another, but preserves the original structure and detail outline of the content image, which makes the content image still look like a real shot after the style transfer. Although some realistic image styling methods have been proposed, these methods are vulnerable to lose the details of the content image and produce some irregular distortion structures. In this paper, we use a high-resolution network as the image generation network. Compared to other methods, which reduce the resolution and then restore the high resolution, our generation network maintains high resolution throughout the process. By connecting high-resolution subnets to low-resolution subnets in parallel and repeatedly multi-scale fusion, high-resolution subnets can continuously receive information from low-resolution subnets. This allows our network to discard less information contained in the image, so the generated images may have a more elaborate structure and less distortion, which is crucial to the visual quality. We conducted extensive experiments and compared the results with existing methods. The experimental results show that our model is effective and produces better results than existing methods for photorealistic image stylization. Our source code with PyTorch framework will be publicly available at https://github.com/limingcv/Photorealistic-Style-Transfer
A Survey on Face Data Augmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

The quality and size of training set have great impact on the results of deep learning-based face related tasks. However, collecting and labeling adequate samples with high quality and balanced distributions still remains a laborious and expensive work, and various data augmentation techniques have thus been widely used to enrich the training dataset. In this paper, we systematically review the existing works of face data augmentation from the perspectives of the transformation types and methods, with the state-of-the-art approaches involved. Among all these approaches, we put the emphasis on the deep learning-based works, especially the generative adversarial networks which have been recognized as more powerful and effective tools in recent years. We present their principles, discuss the results and show their applications as well as limitations. Different evaluation metrics for evaluating these approaches are also introduced. We point out the challenges and opportunities in the field of face data augmentation, and provide brief yet insightful discussions.
Computing the volume of compact semi-algebraic sets
Venue: arXiv cs.SC 2019
Year: 2019

Let $S\subset R^n$ be a compact basic semi-algebraic set defined as the real solution set of multivariate polynomial inequalities with rational coefficients. We design an algorithm which takes as input a polynomial system defining $S$ and an integer $p\geq 0$ and returns the $n$-dimensional volume of $S$ at absolute precision $2^{-p}$.Our algorithm relies on the relationship between volumes of semi-algebraic sets and periods of rational integrals. It makes use of algorithms computing the Picard-Fuchs differential equation of appropriate periods, properties of critical points, and high-precision numerical integration of differential equations.The algorithm runs in essentially linear time with respect to~$p$. This improves upon the previous exponential bounds obtained by Monte-Carlo or moment-based methods. Assuming a conjecture of Dimca, the arithmetic cost of the algebraic subroutines for computing Picard-Fuchs equations and critical points is singly exponential in $n$ and polynomial in the maximum degree of the input.
Countably Infinite Multilevel Source Polarization for Non-Stationary Erasure Distributions
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

Polar transforms are central operations in the study of polar codes. This paper examines polar transforms for non-stationary memoryless sources on possibly infinite source alphabets. This is the first attempt of source polarization analysis over infinite alphabets. The source alphabet is defined to be a Polish group, and we handle the Arıkan-style two-by-two polar transform based on the group. Defining erasure distributions based on the normal subgroup structure, we give recursive formulas of the polar transform for our proposed erasure distributions. As a result, the recursive formulas lead to concrete examples of multilevel source polarization with countably infinite levels when the group is locally cyclic. We derive this result via elementary techniques in lattice theory.
Deep-IRT: Make Deep Learning Based Knowledge Tracing Explainable Using Item Response Theory
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Deep learning based knowledge tracing model has been shown to outperform traditional knowledge tracing model without the need for human-engineered features, yet its parameters and representations have long been criticized for not being explainable. In this paper, we propose Deep-IRT which is a synthesis of the item response theory (IRT) model and a knowledge tracing model that is based on the deep neural network architecture called dynamic key-value memory network (DKVMN) to make deep learning based knowledge tracing explainable. Specifically, we use the DKVMN model to process the student's learning trajectory and estimate the student ability level and the item difficulty level over time. Then, we use the IRT model to estimate the probability that a student will answer an item correctly using the estimated student ability and the item difficulty. Experiments show that the Deep-IRT model retains the performance of the DKVMN model, while it provides a direct psychological interpretation of both students and items.
Landmark-Based Approaches for Goal Recognition as Planning
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2019
Year: 2019

The task of recognizing goals and plans from missing and full observations can be done efficiently by using automated planning techniques. In many applications, it is important to recognize goals and plans not only accurately, but also quickly. To address this challenge, we develop novel goal recognition approaches based on planning techniques that rely on planning landmarks. In automated planning, landmarks are properties (or actions) that cannot be avoided to achieve a goal. We show the applicability of a number of planning techniques with an emphasis on landmarks for goal and plan recognition tasks in two settings: (1) we use the concept of landmarks to develop goal recognition heuristics; and (2) we develop a landmark-based filtering method to refine existing planning-based goal and plan recognition approaches. These recognition approaches are empirically evaluated in experiments over several classical planning domains. We show that our goal recognition approaches yield not only accuracy comparable to (and often higher than) other state-of-the-art techniques, but also substantially faster recognition time over such techniques.
Towards a Strategy for Supporting the Engineering of Contemporary Software Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2019
Year: 2019

Contemporary software systems, such as the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and Intelligent Cities, present challenges for their engineering, since they question our traditional form of software development. They represent a promising paradigm for the integration of communication devices and technologies. It is leading to a shift from the classical monolithic view of development where stakeholders receive a software product at the end, to materialized software systems through physical objects interconnected by networks and with embedded smartness to support activities. Therefore, it is necessary to revisit our way of developing software systems and begin to consider the particularities required by these new types of applications. This thesis aims to investigate the particularities of these new types of applications to support the definition of a framework to support decision-making in the engineering of this kind of applications and systems. To this end, we use IoT systems as surrogate for CSS, since they present the contemporaneity and multidisciplinarity that we aim to investigate.
Capacity per Unit-Energy of Gaussian Many-Access Channels
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

We consider a Gaussian multiple-access channel where the number of transmitters grows with the blocklength $n$. For this setup, the maximum number of bits that can be transmitted reliably per unit-energy is analyzed. We show that if the number of users is of an order strictly above $n/\log n$, then the users cannot achieve any positive rate per unit-energy. In contrast, if the number of users is of order strictly below $n/\log n$, then each user can achieve the single-user capacity per unit-energy $(\log e)/N_0$ (where $N_0/ 2$ is the noise power) by using an orthogonal access scheme such as time division multiple access. We further demonstrate that orthogonal codebooks, which achieve the capacity per unit-energy when the number of users is bounded, can be strictly suboptimal.
Optimal distance- and time-dependent area-based pricing with the Network Fundamental Diagram
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2019
Year: 2019

Given the efficiency and equity concerns of a cordon toll, this paper proposes a few alternative distance-dependent area-based pricing models for a large-scale dynamic traffic network. We use the Network Fundamental Diagram (NFD) to monitor the network traffic state over time and consider different trip lengths in the toll calculation. The first model is a distance toll that is linearly related to the distance traveled within the cordon. The second model is an improved joint distance and time toll (JDTT) whereby users are charged jointly in proportion to the distance traveled and time spent within the cordon. The third model is a further improved joint distance and delay toll (JDDT) which replaces the time toll in the JDTT with a delay toll component. To solve the optimal toll level problem, we develop a simulation-based optimization (SBO) framework. Specifically, we propose a simultaneous approach and a sequential approach, respectively, based on the proportional-integral (PI) feedback controller to iteratively adjust the JDTT and JDDT, and use a calibrated large-scale simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) model of Melbourne, Australia to evaluate the network performance under different pricing scenarios. While the framework is developed for static pricing, we show that it can be easily extended to solve time-dependent pricing by using multiple PI controllers. Results show that although the distance toll keeps the network from entering the congested regime of the NFD, it naturally drives users into the shortest paths within the cordon resulting in an uneven distribution of congestion. This is reflected by a large clockwise hysteresis loop in the NFD. In contrast, both the JDTT and JDDT reduce the size of the hysteresis loop while achieving the same control objective.
Factored Contextual Policy Search with Bayesian Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Scarce data is a major challenge to scaling robot learning to truly complex tasks, as we need to generalize locally learned policies over different task contexts. Contextual policy search offers data-efficient learning and generalization by explicitly conditioning the policy on a parametric context space. In this paper, we further structure the contextual policy representation. We propose to factor contexts into two components: target contexts that describe the task objectives, e.g. target position for throwing a ball; and environment contexts that characterize the environment, e.g. initial position or mass of the ball. Our key observation is that experience can be directly generalized over target contexts. We show that this can be easily exploited in contextual policy search algorithms. In particular, we apply factorization to a Bayesian optimization approach to contextual policy search both in sampling-based and active learning settings. Our simulation results show faster learning and better generalization in various robotic domains. See our supplementary video: https://youtu.be/MNTbBAOufDY.
Quantitative Logics for Equivalence of Effectful Programs
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2019
Year: 2019

In order to reason about effects, we can define quantitative formulas to describe behavioural aspects of effectful programs. These formulas can for example express probabilities that (or sets of correct starting states for which) a program satisfies a property. Fundamental to this approach is the notion of quantitative modality, which is used to lift a property on values to a property on computations. Taking all formulas together, we say that two terms are equivalent if they satisfy all formulas to the same quantitative degree. Under sufficient conditions on the quantitative modalities, this equivalence is equal to a notion of Abramsky's applicative bisimilarity, and is moreover a congruence. We investigate these results in the context of Levy's call-by-push-value with general recursion and algebraic effects. In particular, the results apply to (combinations of) nondeterministic choice, probabilistic choice, and global store.
Improving the complexity of Parys' recursive algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2019
Year: 2019

Parys has recently proposed a quasi-polynomial version of Zielonka's recursive algorithm for solving parity games. In this brief note we suggest a variation of his algorithm that improves the complexity to meet the state-of-the-art complexity of broadly $2^{O((\log n)(\log c))}$, while providing polynomial bounds when the number of colours is logarithmic.
On all things star-free
Venue: arXiv cs.FL 2019
Year: 2019

We investigate the star-free closure, which associates to a class of languages its closure under Boolean operations and marked concatenation. We prove that the star-free closure of any finite class and of any class of groups languages with decidable separation (plus mild additional properties) has decidable separation. We actually show decidability of a stronger property, called covering. This generalizes many results on the subject in a unified framework. A key ingredient is that star-free closure coincides with another closure operator where Kleene stars are also allowed in restricted contexts.
Learning to Prune: Speeding up Repeated Computations
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

It is common to encounter situations where one must solve a sequence of similar computational problems. Running a standard algorithm with worst-case runtime guarantees on each instance will fail to take advantage of valuable structure shared across the problem instances. For example, when a commuter drives from work to home, there are typically only a handful of routes that will ever be the shortest path. A naive algorithm that does not exploit this common structure may spend most of its time checking roads that will never be in the shortest path. More generally, we can often ignore large swaths of the search space that will likely never contain an optimal solution. We present an algorithm that learns to maximally prune the search space on repeated computations, thereby reducing runtime while provably outputting the correct solution each period with high probability. Our algorithm employs a simple explore-exploit technique resembling those used in online algorithms, though our setting is quite different. We prove that, with respect to our model of pruning search spaces, our approach is optimal up to constant factors. Finally, we illustrate the applicability of our model and algorithm to three classic problems: shortest-path routing, string search, and linear programming. We present experiments confirming that our simple algorithm is effective at significantly reducing the runtime of solving repeated computations.
PowerNet: Neural Power Demand Forecasting in Smart Grid
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2019
Year: 2019

Power demand forecasting is a critical task for achieving efficiency and reliability in power grid operation. Accurate forecasting allows grid operators to better maintain the balance of supply and demand as well as to optimize operational cost for generation and transmission. This article proposes a novel neural network architecture PowerNet, which can incorporate multiple heterogeneous features, such as historical energy consumption data, weather data, and calendar information, for the power demand forecasting task. Compared to two recent works based on Gradient Boosting Tree (GBT) and Support Vector Regression (SVR), PowerNet demonstrates a decrease of 33.3% and 14.3% in forecasting error, respectively. We further provide empirical results the two operational considerations that are crucial when using PowerNet in practice, i.e., how far in the future the model can forecast with a decent accuracy and how often we should re-train the forecasting model to retain its modeling capability. Finally, we briefly discuss a multilayer anomaly detection approach based on PowerNet.
A Distributed Method for Fitting Laplacian Regularized Stratified Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Stratified models are models that depend in an arbitrary way on a set of selected categorical features, and depend linearly on the other features. In a basic and traditional formulation a separate model is fit for each value of the categorical feature, using only the data that has the specific categorical value. To this formulation we add Laplacian regularization, which encourages the model parameters for neighboring categorical values to be similar. Laplacian regularization allows us to specify one or more weighted graphs on the stratification feature values. For example, stratifying over the days of the week, we can specify that the Sunday model parameter should be close to the Saturday and Monday model parameters. The regularization improves the performance of the model over the traditional stratified model, since the model for each value of the categorical `borrows strength' from its neighbors. In particular, it produces a model even for categorical values that did not appear in the training data set. We propose an efficient distributed method for fitting stratified models, based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). When the fitting loss functions are convex, the stratified model fitting problem is convex, and our method computes the global minimizer of the loss plus regularization; in other cases it computes a local minimizer. The method is very efficient, and naturally scales to large data sets or numbers of stratified feature values. We illustrate our method with a variety of examples.
Decision Procedure for the Existence of Two-Channel Prefix-Free Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

The Kraft inequality gives a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a single channel prefix-free code. However, the multichannel Kraft inequality does not imply the existence of a multichannel prefix-free code in general. It is natural to ask whatever there exists an efficient decision procedure for the existence of multichannel prefix-free codes. In this paper, we tackle the two-channel case of the above problem by relating it to a constrained rectangle packing problem. Although a general rectangle packing problem is NP-complete, the extra imposed constraints allow us to propose an algorithm which can solve the problem efficiently.