OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
TinyAKE: A More Practicable and Trustable Scheme for Authenticated Key Establishment in WSNs
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

The characteristics of high loss rate, resource constraint, being eager for good security haven't been fully considered in the existing key establishment protocols of wireless sensor networks. Analyzing the key establishing problem from the MAC and physical layers, existing protocols are not practicable enough due to their overlong agreement packets and single round key establishment. To mitigate the impact of these problems, a group of design principles for secure sensor networks has been presented and TinyAKE, an authenticated key transport protocol based on lightweight certificate, is proposed in this paper. The security of TinyAKE are proved with the theory of indistinguishability, meanwhile, the correctness is also proved, the performance is analyzed and compared with the existing similar protocols. Finally TinyAKE is implemented in the TinyOS with TinyECC. Our evaluation shows that TinyAKE is a more practicable and trustable authenticated key establishment protocol than existing protocols. The experimental result shows that the key transport with certificate mechanism is feasible in WSNs. Moreover, the simulation results show that the optimal number of repeated negotiation is one when the secure connectivity rate of TinyAKE is improved by using the repeated key negotiation.
Multi-RIS-aided Wireless Systems: Statistical Characterization and Performance Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2021
Year: 2021

In this paper, we study the statistical characterization and modeling of distributed multi-reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided wireless systems. Specifically, we consider a practical system model where the RISs with different geometric sizes are distributively deployed, and wireless channels associated to different RISs are assumed to be independent but not identically distributed (i.n.i.d.). We propose two purpose-oriented multi-RIS-aided schemes, namely, the exhaustive RIS-aided (ERA) and opportunistic RIS-aided (ORA) schemes. A mathematical framework, which relies on the method of moments, is proposed to statistically characterize the end-to-end (e2e) channels of these schemes. It is shown that either a Gamma distribution or a Log-Normal distribution can be used to approximate the distribution of the magnitude of the e2e channel coefficients in both schemes. With these findings, we evaluate the performance of the two schemes in terms of outage probability (OP) and ergodic capacity (EC), where tight approximate closed-form expressions for the OP and EC are derived. Representative results show that the ERA scheme outperforms the ORA scheme in terms of OP and EC. In addition, under i.n.i.d. fading channels, the reflecting element settings and location settings of RISs have a significant impact on the system performance of both the ERA or ORA schemes.
Machine Learning Applications in the Routing in Computer Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2021
Year: 2021

Development of routing algorithms is of clear importance as the volume of Internet traffic continues to increase. In this survey, there is much research into how Machine Learning techniques can be employed to improve the performance and scalability of routing algorithms. We surveyed both centralized and decentralized ML routing architectures and using a variety of ML techniques broadly divided into supervised learning and reinforcement learning. Many of the papers showed promise in their ability to optimize some aspect of network routing. We also implemented two routing protocols within 14 surveyed routing algorithms and verified the efficacy of their results. While the results of most of the papers showed promise, many of them are based on simulations of potentially unrealistic network configurations. To provide further efficacy to the results, more real-world results are necessary.
Multi-Atlas Based Pathological Stratification of d-TGA Congenital Heart Disease
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

One of the main sources of error in multi-atlas segmentation propagation approaches comes from the use of atlas databases that are morphologically dissimilar to the target image. In this work, we exploit the segmentation errors associated with poor atlas selection to build a computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system for pathological classification in post-operative dextro-transposition of the great arteries (d-TGA). The proposed approach extracts a set of features, which describe the quality of a segmentation, and introduces them into a logical decision tree that provides the final diagnosis. We have validated our method on a set of 60 whole heart MR images containing healthy cases and two different forms of post-operative d-TGA. The reported overall CAD system accuracy was of 93.33%.
Older Adults and Brain-Computer Interface: An Exploratory Study
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2021
Year: 2021

In this exploratory study, we examine the possibilities of non-invasive Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) in the context of Smart Home Technology (SHT) targeted at older adults. During two workshops, one stationary, and one online via Zoom, we researched the insights of the end users concerning the potential of the BCI in the SHT setting. We explored its advantages and drawbacks, and the features older adults see as vital as well as the ones that they would benefit from. Apart from evaluating the participants' perception of such devices during the two workshops we also analyzed some key considerations resulting from the insights gathered during the workshops, such as potential barriers, ways to mitigate them, strengths and opportunities connected to BCI. These may be useful for designing BCI interaction paradigms and pinpointing areas of interest to pursue in further studies.
Generating Furry Cars: Disentangling Object Shape & Appearance across Multiple Domains
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

We consider the novel task of learning disentangled representations of object shape and appearance across multiple domains (e.g., dogs and cars). The goal is to learn a generative model that learns an intermediate distribution, which borrows a subset of properties from each domain, enabling the generation of images that did not exist in any domain exclusively. This challenging problem requires an accurate disentanglement of object shape, appearance, and background from each domain, so that the appearance and shape factors from the two domains can be interchanged. We augment an existing approach that can disentangle factors within a single domain but struggles to do so across domains. Our key technical contribution is to represent object appearance with a differentiable histogram of visual features, and to optimize the generator so that two images with the same latent appearance factor but different latent shape factors produce similar histograms. On multiple multi-domain datasets, we demonstrate our method leads to accurate and consistent appearance and shape transfer across domains.
Dopamine Transporter SPECT Image Classification for Neurodegenerative Parkinsonism via Diffusion Maps and Machine Learning Classifiers
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Neurodegenerative parkinsonism can be assessed by dopamine transporter single photon emission computed tomography (DaT-SPECT). Although generating images is time consuming, these images can show interobserver variability and they have been visually interpreted by nuclear medicine physicians to date. Accordingly, this study aims to provide an automatic and robust method based on Diffusion Maps and machine learning classifiers to classify the SPECT images into two types, namely Normal and Abnormal DaT-SPECT image groups. In the proposed method, the 3D images of N patients are mapped to an N by N pairwise distance matrix and are visualized in Diffusion Maps coordinates. The images of the training set are embedded into a low-dimensional space by using diffusion maps. Moreover, we use Nyström's out-of-sample extension, which embeds new sample points as the testing set in the reduced space. Testing samples in the embedded space are then classified into two types through the ensemble classifier with Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and voting procedure through twenty-five-fold cross-validation results. The feasibility of the method is demonstrated via Parkinsonism Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) dataset of 1097 subjects and a clinical cohort from Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (KCGMH-TW) of 630 patients. We compare performances using Diffusion Maps with those of three alternative manifold methods for dimension reduction, namely Locally Linear Embedding (LLE), Isomorphic Mapping Algorithm (Isomap), and Kernel Principal Component Analysis (Kernel PCA). We also compare results using 2D and 3D CNN methods. The diffusion maps method has an average accuracy of 98% for the PPMI and 90% for the KCGMH-TW dataset with twenty-five fold cross-validation results. It outperforms the other three methods concerning the overall accuracy and the robustness in the training and testing samples.
Jekyll: Attacking Medical Image Diagnostics using Deep Generative Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

Advances in deep neural networks (DNNs) have shown tremendous promise in the medical domain. However, the deep learning tools that are helping the domain, can also be used against it. Given the prevalence of fraud in the healthcare domain, it is important to consider the adversarial use of DNNs in manipulating sensitive data that is crucial to patient healthcare. In this work, we present the design and implementation of a DNN-based image translation attack on biomedical imagery. More specifically, we propose Jekyll, a neural style transfer framework that takes as input a biomedical image of a patient and translates it to a new image that indicates an attacker-chosen disease condition. The potential for fraudulent claims based on such generated 'fake' medical images is significant, and we demonstrate successful attacks on both X-rays and retinal fundus image modalities. We show that these attacks manage to mislead both medical professionals and algorithmic detection schemes. Lastly, we also investigate defensive measures based on machine learning to detect images generated by Jekyll.
Discrete Reasoning Templates for Natural Language Understanding
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

Reasoning about information from multiple parts of a passage to derive an answer is an open challenge for reading-comprehension models. In this paper, we present an approach that reasons about complex questions by decomposing them to simpler subquestions that can take advantage of single-span extraction reading-comprehension models, and derives the final answer according to instructions in a predefined reasoning template. We focus on subtraction-based arithmetic questions and evaluate our approach on a subset of the DROP dataset. We show that our approach is competitive with the state-of-the-art while being interpretable and requires little supervision
Semi-Supervised Clustering with Inaccurate Pairwise Annotations
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Pairwise relational information is a useful way of providing partial supervision in domains where class labels are difficult to acquire. This work presents a clustering model that incorporates pairwise annotations in the form of must-link and cannot-link relations and considers possible annotation inaccuracies (i.e., a common setting when experts provide pairwise supervision). We propose a generative model that assumes Gaussian-distributed data samples along with must-link and cannot-link relations generated by stochastic block models. We adopt a maximum-likelihood approach and demonstrate that, even when supervision is weak and inaccurate, accounting for relational information significantly improves clustering performance. Relational information also helps to detect meaningful groups in real-world datasets that do not fit the original data-distribution assumptions. Additionally, we extend the model to integrate prior knowledge of experts' accuracy and discuss circumstances in which the use of this knowledge is beneficial.
Distributed Learning in Wireless Networks: Recent Progress and Future Challenges
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

The next-generation of wireless networks will enable many machine learning (ML) tools and applications to efficiently analyze various types of data collected by edge devices for inference, autonomy, and decision making purposes. However, due to resource constraints, delay limitations, and privacy challenges, edge devices cannot offload their entire collected datasets to a cloud server for centrally training their ML models or inference purposes. To overcome these challenges, distributed learning and inference techniques have been proposed as a means to enable edge devices to collaboratively train ML models without raw data exchanges, thus reducing the communication overhead and latency as well as improving data privacy. However, deploying distributed learning over wireless networks faces several challenges including the uncertain wireless environment, limited wireless resources (e.g., transmit power and radio spectrum), and hardware resources. This paper provides a comprehensive study of how distributed learning can be efficiently and effectively deployed over wireless edge networks. We present a detailed overview of several emerging distributed learning paradigms, including federated learning, federated distillation, distributed inference, and multi-agent reinforcement learning. For each learning framework, we first introduce the motivation for deploying it over wireless networks. Then, we present a detailed literature review on the use of communication techniques for its efficient deployment. We then introduce an illustrative example to show how to optimize wireless networks to improve its performance. Finally, we introduce future research opportunities. In a nutshell, this paper provides a holistic set of guidelines on how to deploy a broad range of distributed learning frameworks over real-world wireless communication networks.
GPU Domain Specialization via Composable On-Package Architecture
Venue: arXiv cs.AR 2021
Year: 2021

As GPUs scale their low precision matrix math throughput to boost deep learning (DL) performance, they upset the balance between math throughput and memory system capabilities. We demonstrate that converged GPU design trying to address diverging architectural requirements between FP32 (or larger) based HPC and FP16 (or smaller) based DL workloads results in sub-optimal configuration for either of the application domains. We argue that a Composable On-PAckage GPU (COPAGPU) architecture to provide domain-specialized GPU products is the most practical solution to these diverging requirements. A COPA-GPU leverages multi-chip-module disaggregation to support maximal design reuse, along with memory system specialization per application domain. We show how a COPA-GPU enables DL-specialized products by modular augmentation of the baseline GPU architecture with up to 4x higher off-die bandwidth, 32x larger on-package cache, 2.3x higher DRAM bandwidth and capacity, while conveniently supporting scaled-down HPC-oriented designs. This work explores the microarchitectural design necessary to enable composable GPUs and evaluates the benefits composability can provide to HPC, DL training, and DL inference. We show that when compared to a converged GPU design, a DL-optimized COPA-GPU featuring a combination of 16x larger cache capacity and 1.6x higher DRAM bandwidth scales per-GPU training and inference performance by 31% and 35% respectively and reduces the number of GPU instances by 50% in scale-out training scenarios.
TENT: Efficient Quantization of Neural Networks on the tiny Edge with Tapered FixEd PoiNT
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

In this research, we propose a new low-precision framework, TENT, to leverage the benefits of a tapered fixed-point numerical format in TinyML models. We introduce a tapered fixed-point quantization algorithm that matches the numerical format's dynamic range and distribution to that of the deep neural network model's parameter distribution at each layer. An accelerator architecture for the tapered fixed-point with TENT framework is proposed. Results show that the accuracy on classification tasks improves up to ~31 % with an energy overhead of ~17-30 % as compared to fixed-point, for ConvNet and ResNet-18 models.
Hey Robot, Which Way Are You Going? Nonverbal Motion Legibility Cues for Human-Robot Spatial Interaction
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2021
Year: 2021

Mobile robots have recently been deployed in public spaces such as shopping malls, airports, and urban sidewalks. Most of these robots are designed with human-aware motion planning capabilities but are not designed to communicate with pedestrians. Pedestrians that encounter these robots without prior understanding of the robots' behaviour can experience discomfort, confusion, and delayed social acceptance. In this work we designed and evaluated nonverbal robot motion legibility cues, which communicate a mobile robot's motion intention to pedestrians. We compared a motion legibility cue using Projected Arrows to one using Flashing Lights. We designed the cues to communicate path information, goal information, or both, and explored different Robot Movement Scenarios. We conducted an online user study with 229 participants using videos of the motion legibility cues. Our results show that the absence of cues was not socially acceptable, and that Projected Arrows were the more socially acceptable cue in most experimental conditions. We conclude that the presence and choice of motion legibility cues can positively influence robots' acceptance and successful deployment in public spaces.
A novel activity pattern generation incorporating deep learning for transport demand models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Activity generation plays an important role in activity-based demand modelling systems. While machine learning, especially deep learning, has been increasingly used for mode choice and traffic flow prediction, much less research exploiting the advantage of deep learning for activity generation tasks. This paper proposes a novel activity pattern generation framework by incorporating deep learning with travel domain knowledge. We model each activity schedule as one primary activity tour and several secondary activity tours. We then develop different deep neural networks with entity embedding and random forest models to classify activity type, as well as to predict activity times. The proposed framework can capture the activity patterns for individuals in both training and validation sets. Results show high accuracy for the start time and end time of work and school activities. The framework also replicates the start time patterns of stop-before and stop-after primary work activity well. This provides a promising direction to deploy advanced machine learning methods to generate more reliable activity-travel patterns for transport demand systems and their applications.
Text-guided Legal Knowledge Graph Reasoning
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2021
Year: 2021

Recent years have witnessed the prosperity of legal artificial intelligence with the development of technologies. In this paper, we propose a novel legal application of legal provision prediction (LPP), which aims to predict the related legal provisions of affairs. We formulate this task as a challenging knowledge graph completion problem, which requires not only text understanding but also graph reasoning. To this end, we propose a novel text-guided graph reasoning approach. We collect amounts of real-world legal provision data from the Guangdong government service website and construct a legal dataset called LegalLPP. Extensive experimental results on the dataset show that our approach achieves better performance compared with baselines. The code and dataset are available in \url{https://github.com/zxlzr/LegalPP} for reproducibility.
Framework for Inferring Leadership Dynamics of Complex Movement from Time Series
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2021
Year: 2021

Leadership plays a key role in social animals, including humans, decision-making and coalescence in coordinated activities such as hunting, migration, sport, diplomatic negotiation etc. In these coordinated activities, leadership is a process that organizes interactions among members to make a group achieve collective goals. Understanding initiation of coordinated activities allows scientists to gain more insight into social species behaviors. However, by using only time series of activities data, inferring leadership as manifested by the initiation of coordinated activities faces many challenging issues. First, coordinated activities are dynamic and are changing over time. Second, several different coordinated activities might occur simultaneously among subgroups. Third, there is no fundamental concept to describe these activities computationally. In this paper, we formalize Faction Initiator Inference Problem and propose a leadership inference framework as a solution of this problem. The framework makes no assumption about the characteristics of a leader or the parameters of the coordination process. The framework performs better than our non-trivial baseline in both simulated and biological datasets (schools of fish). Moreover, we demonstrate the application of our framework as a tool to study group merging and splitting dynamics on another biological dataset of trajectories of wild baboons. In addition, our problem formalization and framework enable opportunities for scientists to analyze coordinated activities and generate scientific hypotheses about collective behaviors that can be tested statistically and in the field.
Shapley Explanation Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Shapley values have become one of the most popular feature attribution explanation methods. However, most prior work has focused on post-hoc Shapley explanations, which can be computationally demanding due to its exponential time complexity and preclude model regularization based on Shapley explanations during training. Thus, we propose to incorporate Shapley values themselves as latent representations in deep models thereby making Shapley explanations first-class citizens in the modeling paradigm. This intrinsic explanation approach enables layer-wise explanations, explanation regularization of the model during training, and fast explanation computation at test time. We define the Shapley transform that transforms the input into a Shapley representation given a specific function. We operationalize the Shapley transform as a neural network module and construct both shallow and deep networks, called ShapNets, by composing Shapley modules. We prove that our Shallow ShapNets compute the exact Shapley values and our Deep ShapNets maintain the missingness and accuracy properties of Shapley values. We demonstrate on synthetic and real-world datasets that our ShapNets enable layer-wise Shapley explanations, novel Shapley regularizations during training, and fast computation while maintaining reasonable performance. Code is available at https://github.com/inouye-lab/ShapleyExplanationNetworks.