OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Spatial-Temporal Bearing Fault Detection Using Graph Attention Networks and LSTM
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Purpose: This paper aims to enhance bearing fault diagnosis in industrial machinery by introducing a novel method that combines Graph Attention Network (GAT) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks. This approach captures both spatial and temporal dependencies within sensor data, improving the accuracy of bearing fault detection under various conditions. Methodology: The proposed method converts time series sensor data into graph representations. GAT captures spatial relationships between components, while LSTM models temporal patterns. The model is validated using the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Bearing Dataset, which includes data under different horsepower levels and both normal and faulty conditions. Its performance is compared with methods such as K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Local Outlier Factor (LOF), Isolation Forest (IForest) and GNN-based method for bearing fault detection (GNNBFD). Findings: The model achieved outstanding results, with precision, recall, and F1-scores reaching 100\% across various testing conditions. It not only identifies faults accurately but also generalizes effectively across different operational scenarios, outperforming traditional methods. Originality: This research presents a unique combination of GAT and LSTM for fault detection, overcoming the limitations of traditional time series methods by capturing complex spatial-temporal dependencies. Its superior performance demonstrates significant potential for predictive maintenance in industrial applications.
Digital Accessibility Literacy: A Conceptual Framework for Training on Digital Accessibility
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

Developing digital accessibility expertise is critical to breaking down barriers and ensuring digital inclusion. However, a discourse on a pedagogical culture for teaching digital literacy is still lacking. This article, therefore, takes up the current discourse on the description of literacy and uses it to develop the concept of digital accessibility literacy as a fundamental element for promoting a pedagogical culture of digital accessibility. Digital accessibility literacy encompasses both the creation (encoding) and interpretation (decoding) of accessible digital content and technologies. By integrating awareness, technical standards, inclusive design practices, and continuous feedback into curricula, future professionals will be empowered to create digital environments that are accessible to all. This comprehensive approach improves technical skills and instills ethical and social responsibility. As a first draft of a digital accessibility literacy concept, the proposal will be used as a basis for discussion and further development.
A Learning Search Algorithm for the Restricted Longest Common Subsequence Problem
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

This paper addresses the Restricted Longest Common Subsequence (RLCS) problem, an extension of the well-known Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) problem. This problem has significant applications in bioinformatics, particularly for identifying similarities and discovering mutual patterns and important motifs among DNA, RNA, and protein sequences. Building on recent advancements in solving this problem through a general search framework, this paper introduces two novel heuristic approaches designed to enhance the search process by steering it towards promising regions in the search space. The first heuristic employs a probabilistic model to evaluate partial solutions during the search process. The second heuristic is based on a neural network model trained offline using a genetic algorithm. A key aspect of this approach is extracting problem-specific features of partial solutions and the complete problem instance. An effective hybrid method, referred to as the learning beam search, is developed by combining the trained neural network model with a beam search framework. An important contribution of this paper is found in the generation of real-world instances where scientific abstracts serve as input strings, and a set of frequently occurring academic words from the literature are used as restricted patterns. Comprehensive experimental evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches in solving the RLCS problem. Finally, an empirical explainability analysis is applied to the obtained results. In this way, key feature combinations and their respective contributions to the success or failure of the algorithms across different problem types are identified.
CrediRAG: Network-Augmented Credibility-Based Retrieval for Misinformation Detection in Reddit
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2024
Year: 2024

Fake news threatens democracy and exacerbates the polarization and divisions in society; therefore, accurately detecting online misinformation is the foundation of addressing this issue. We present CrediRAG, the first fake news detection model that combines language models with access to a rich external political knowledge base with a dense social network to detect fake news across social media at scale. CrediRAG uses a news retriever to initially assign a misinformation score to each post based on the source credibility of similar news articles to the post title content. CrediRAG then improves the initial retrieval estimations through a novel weighted post-to-post network connected based on shared commenters and weighted by the average stance of all shared commenters across every pair of posts. We achieve 11% increase in the F1-score in detecting misinformative posts over state-of-the-art methods. Extensive experiments conducted on curated real-world Reddit data of over 200,000 posts demonstrate the superior performance of CrediRAG on existing baselines. Thus, our approach offers a more accurate and scalable solution to combat the spread of fake news across social media platforms.
De-jargonizing Science for Journalists with GPT-4: A Pilot Study
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

This study offers an initial evaluation of a human-in-the-loop system leveraging GPT-4 (a large language model or LLM), and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to identify and define jargon terms in scientific abstracts, based on readers' self-reported knowledge. The system achieves fairly high recall in identifying jargon and preserves relative differences in readers' jargon identification, suggesting personalization as a feasible use-case for LLMs to support sense-making of complex information. Surprisingly, using only abstracts for context to generate definitions yields slightly more accurate and higher quality definitions than using RAG-based context from the fulltext of an article. The findings highlight the potential of generative AI for assisting science reporters, and can inform future work on developing tools to simplify dense documents.
Beyond the Comfort Zone: Emerging Solutions to Overcome Challenges in Integrating LLMs into Software Products
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly embedded into software products across diverse industries, enhancing user experiences, but at the same time introducing numerous challenges for developers. Unique characteristics of LLMs force developers, who are accustomed to traditional software development and evaluation, out of their comfort zones as the LLM components shatter standard assumptions about software systems. This study explores the emerging solutions that software developers are adopting to navigate the encountered challenges. Leveraging a mixed-method research, including 26 interviews and a survey with 332 responses, the study identifies 19 emerging solutions regarding quality assurance that practitioners across several product teams at Microsoft are exploring. The findings provide valuable insights that can guide the development and evaluation of LLM-based products more broadly in the face of these challenges.
nvTorchCam: An Open-source Library for Camera-Agnostic Differentiable Geometric Vision
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

We introduce nvTorchCam, an open-source library under the Apache 2.0 license, designed to make deep learning algorithms camera model-independent. nvTorchCam abstracts critical camera operations such as projection and unprojection, allowing developers to implement algorithms once and apply them across diverse camera models--including pinhole, fisheye, and 360 equirectangular panoramas, which are commonly used in automotive and real estate capture applications. Built on PyTorch, nvTorchCam is fully differentiable and supports GPU acceleration and batching for efficient computation. Furthermore, deep learning models trained for one camera type can be directly transferred to other camera types without requiring additional modification. In this paper, we provide an overview of nvTorchCam, its functionality, and present various code examples and diagrams to demonstrate its usage. Source code and installation instructions can be found on the nvTorchCam GitHub page at https://github.com/NVlabs/nvTorchCam.
WeatherDG: LLM-assisted Diffusion Model for Procedural Weather Generation in Domain-Generalized Semantic Segmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

In this work, we propose a novel approach, namely WeatherDG, that can generate realistic, weather-diverse, and driving-screen images based on the cooperation of two foundation models, i.e, Stable Diffusion (SD) and Large Language Model (LLM). Specifically, we first fine-tune the SD with source data, aligning the content and layout of generated samples with real-world driving scenarios. Then, we propose a procedural prompt generation method based on LLM, which can enrich scenario descriptions and help SD automatically generate more diverse, detailed images. In addition, we introduce a balanced generation strategy, which encourages the SD to generate high-quality objects of tailed classes under various weather conditions, such as riders and motorcycles. This segmentation-model-agnostic method can improve the generalization ability of existing models by additionally adapting them with the generated synthetic data. Experiments on three challenging datasets show that our method can significantly improve the segmentation performance of different state-of-the-art models on target domains. Notably, in the setting of ''Cityscapes to ACDC'', our method improves the baseline HRDA by 13.9% in mIoU.
Incremental computation of the set of period sets
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2024
Year: 2024

Overlaps between words are crucial in many areas of computer science, such as code design, stringology, and bioinformatics. A self overlapping word is characterized by its periods and borders. A period of a word $u$ is the starting position of a suffix of $u$ that is also a prefix $u$, and such a suffix is called a border. Each word of length, say $n>0$, has a set of periods, but not all combinations of integers are sets of periods. Computing the period set of a word $u$ takes linear time in the length of $u$. We address the question of computing, the set, denoted $Γ_n$, of all period sets of words of length $n$. Although period sets have been characterized, there is no formula to compute the cardinality of $Γ_n$ (which is exponential in $n$), and the known dynamic programming algorithm to enumerate $Γ_n$ suffers from its space complexity. We present an incremental approach to compute $Γ_n$ from $Γ_{n-1}$, which reduces the space complexity, and then a constructive certification algorithm useful for verification purposes. The incremental approach defines a parental relation between sets in $Γ_{n-1}$ and $Γ_n$, enabling one to investigate the dynamics of period sets, and their intriguing statistical properties. Moreover, the period set of a word $u$ is the key for computing the absence probability of $u$ in random texts. Thus, knowing $Γ_n$ is useful to assess the significance of word statistics, such as the number of missing words in a random text.
To Err is AI : A Case Study Informing LLM Flaw Reporting Practices
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

In August of 2024, 495 hackers generated evaluations in an open-ended bug bounty targeting the Open Language Model (OLMo) from The Allen Institute for AI. A vendor panel staffed by representatives of OLMo's safety program adjudicated changes to OLMo's documentation and awarded cash bounties to participants who successfully demonstrated a need for public disclosure clarifying the intent, capacities, and hazards of model deployment. This paper presents a collection of lessons learned, illustrative of flaw reporting best practices intended to reduce the likelihood of incidents and produce safer large language models (LLMs). These include best practices for safety reporting processes, their artifacts, and safety program staffing.
Just-In-Time Software Defect Prediction via Bi-modal Change Representation Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

For predicting software defects at an early stage, researchers have proposed just-in-time defect prediction (JIT-DP) to identify potential defects in code commits. The prevailing approaches train models to represent code changes in history commits and utilize the learned representations to predict the presence of defects in the latest commit. However, existing models merely learn editions in source code, without considering the natural language intentions behind the changes. This limitation hinders their ability to capture deeper semantics. To address this, we introduce a novel bi-modal change pre-training model called BiCC-BERT. BiCC-BERT is pre-trained on a code change corpus to learn bi-modal semantic representations. To incorporate commit messages from the corpus, we design a novel pre-training objective called Replaced Message Identification (RMI), which learns the semantic association between commit messages and code changes. Subsequently, we integrate BiCC-BERT into JIT-DP and propose a new defect prediction approach -- JIT-BiCC. By leveraging the bi-modal representations from BiCC-BERT, JIT-BiCC captures more profound change semantics. We train JIT-BiCC using 27,391 code changes and compare its performance with 8 state-of-the-art JIT-DP approaches. The results demonstrate that JIT-BiCC outperforms all baselines, achieving a 10.8% improvement in F1-score. This highlights its effectiveness in learning the bi-modal semantics for JIT-DP.
Sample-Efficient Reinforcement Learning with Temporal Logic Objectives: Leveraging the Task Specification to Guide Exploration
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

This paper addresses the problem of learning optimal control policies for systems with uncertain dynamics and high-level control objectives specified as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulas. Uncertainty is considered in the workspace structure and the outcomes of control decisions giving rise to an unknown Markov Decision Process (MDP). Existing reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for LTL tasks typically rely on exploring a product MDP state-space uniformly (using e.g., an $ε$-greedy policy) compromising sample-efficiency. This issue becomes more pronounced as the rewards get sparser and the MDP size or the task complexity increase. In this paper, we propose an accelerated RL algorithm that can learn control policies significantly faster than competitive approaches. Its sample-efficiency relies on a novel task-driven exploration strategy that biases exploration towards directions that may contribute to task satisfaction. We provide theoretical analysis and extensive comparative experiments demonstrating the sample-efficiency of the proposed method. The benefit of our method becomes more evident as the task complexity or the MDP size increases.
When researchers pay to publish: Results from a survey on APCs in four countries
Venue: arXiv cs.DL 2024
Year: 2024

This paper provides an empirical overview of the impact and practices of paying Article Processing Charges (APCs) by four nationally categorized groups of researchers in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa. The data was collected from 13,577 researchers through an online questionnaire. The analysis compares the practice of publishing in journals that charge APCs across different dimensions, including country, discipline, gender, and age of the researchers. The paper also focuses on the maximum amount APC paid and the methods and strategies researchers use to cover APC payments, such as waivers, research project funds, payment by coauthors, and the option to publish in closed access, where possible. Different tendencies were identified among the different disciplines and the national systems examined. Findings show that Argentine researchers apply for waivers most frequently and often use personal funds or international coauthors for APCs, with younger researchers less involved in APC payments. In contrast, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico have more older researchers, yet younger researchers still publish more in APC journals. South African researchers lead in APC publications, likely due to better funding access and read and publish agreements. This study lays the groundwork for further analysis of gender asymmetries, funding access, and views on the commercial Open Access model of scientific dissemination.
Facing Identity: The Formation and Performance of Identity via Face-Based Artificial Intelligence Technologies
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

How is identity constructed and performed in the digital via face-based artificial intelligence technologies? While questions of identity on the textual Internet have been thoroughly explored, the Internet has progressed to a multimedia form that not only centers the visual, but specifically the face. At the same time, a wealth of scholarship has and continues to center the topics of surveillance and control through facial recognition technologies (FRTs), which have extended the logics of the racist pseudoscience of physiognomy. Much less work has been devoted to understanding how such face-based artificial intelligence technologies have influenced the formation and performance of identity. This literature review considers how such technologies interact with faciality, which entails the construction of what a face may represent or signify, along axes of identity such as race, gender, and sexuality. In grappling with recent advances in AI such as image generation and deepfakes, I propose that we are now in an era of "post-facial" technologies that build off our existing culture of facility while eschewing the analog face, complicating our relationship with identity vis-a-vis the face. Drawing from previous frameworks of identity play in the digital, as well as trans practices that have historically played with or transgressed the boundaries of identity classification, we can develop concepts adequate for analyzing digital faciality and identity given the current landscape of post-facial artificial intelligence technologies that allow users to interface with the digital in an entirely novel manner. To ground this framework of transgression, I conclude by proposing an interview study with VTubers -- online streamers who perform using motion-captured avatars instead of their real-life faces -- to gain qualitative insight on how these sociotechnical experiences.
Accelerating high-order continuum kinetic plasma simulations using multiple GPUs
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

Kinetic plasma simulations solve the Vlasov-Poisson or Vlasov-Maxwell equations to evolve scalar-variable distribution functions in position-velocity phase space and vector-variable electromagnetic fields in physical space. The computational cost of evolving high-dimensional variables often limits the utility of continuum kinetic simulations and presents a challenge when it comes to accurately simulating real-world physical phenomena. To address this challenge, we developed techniques that accelerate and minimize the computational work required for a scalable Vlasov-Poisson solver. We present theoretical hardware compute and communication bounds required for solving a fourth-order finite-volume Vlasov-Poisson system. These bounds are then used to inform and evaluate the design of performance portable algorithms for a multiple graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated version of the Vlasov-Poisson solver VCK-CPU. We demonstrate that the multi-GPU Vlasov solver implementation VCK-GPU simultaneously minimizes required inter-process data transfer while also being bounded by the machine network performance limits, leaving minimal room for theoretical performance improvements. This resulted in an overall strong scaling speedup per timestep of up to 40x in three-dimensional phase space (one position, two velocity coordinates) and 54x in four dimensional phase space (two position, two velocity coordinates) and a 341x increase in simulation throughput of the GPU accelerated code over the existing CPU code. The GPU code is also able to weak scale up to 256 compute nodes and 1024 GPUs. We then demonstrate how the improved compute performance can be used to explore configurations which were previously computationally infeasible such as resolving fine-scale distribution function filamentation and multi-species dynamics with realistic electron-proton mass ratios.
Leveraging Large Vision Language Model For Better Automatic Web GUI Testing
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

With the rapid development of web technology, more and more software applications have become web-based in the past decades. To ensure software quality and user experience, various techniques have been proposed to automatically test web applications by interacting with their GUIs. To achieve high functional coverage, web GUI testing tools often need to generate high-quality text inputs and interact with the associated GUI elements (e.g., click submit buttons). However, developing a holistic approach that solves both subtasks is challenging because the web GUI context can be complicated and highly dynamic, which makes it hard to process programmatically. The recent development of large vision-language models (LVLM) provides new opportunities to handle these longstanding problems. This paper proposes VETL, the first LVLM-driven end-to-end web testing technique. With LVLM's scene understanding capabilities, VETL can generate valid and meaningful text inputs focusing on the local context, while avoiding the need to extract precise textual attributes. The selection of associated GUI elements is formulated as a visual question-answering problem, allowing LVLM to capture the logical connection between the input box and the relevant element based on visual instructions. Further, the GUI exploration is guided by a multi-armed bandit module employing a curiosity-oriented strategy. Experiments show that VETL effectively explores web state/action spaces and detects bugs. Compared with WebExplor, the state-of-the-art web testing technique, VETL can discover 25% more unique web actions on benchmark websites. Moreover, it can expose functional bugs in top-ranking commercial websites, which the website maintainers have confirmed. Our work makes the first attempt at leveraging LVLM in end-to-end GUI testing, demonstrating promising results in this research direction.