OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Deep Crisp Boundaries: From Boundaries to Higher-level Tasks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

Edge detection has made significant progress with the help of deep Convolutional Networks (ConvNet). These ConvNet based edge detectors have approached human level performance on standard benchmarks. We provide a systematical study of these detectors' outputs. We show that the detection results did not accurately localize edge pixels, which can be adversarial for tasks that require crisp edge inputs. As a remedy, we propose a novel refinement architecture to address the challenging problem of learning a crisp edge detector using ConvNet. Our method leverages a top-down backward refinement pathway, and progressively increases the resolution of feature maps to generate crisp edges. Our results achieve superior performance, surpassing human accuracy when using standard criteria on BSDS500, and largely outperforming state-of-the-art methods when using more strict criteria. More importantly, we demonstrate the benefit of crisp edge maps for several important applications in computer vision, including optical flow estimation, object proposal generation and semantic segmentation.
Facial Attributes: Accuracy and Adversarial Robustness
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

Facial attributes, emerging soft biometrics, must be automatically and reliably extracted from images in order to be usable in stand-alone systems. While recent methods extract facial attributes using deep neural networks (DNNs) trained on labeled facial attribute data, the robustness of deep attribute representations has not been evaluated. In this paper, we examine the representational stability of several approaches that recently advanced the state of the art on the CelebA benchmark by generating adversarial examples formed by adding small, non-random perturbations to inputs yielding altered classifications. We show that our fast flipping attribute (FFA) technique generates more adversarial examples than traditional algorithms, and that the adversarial robustness of DNNs varies highly between facial attributes. We also test the correlation of facial attributes and find that only for related attributes do the formed adversarial perturbations change the classification of others. Finally, we introduce the concept of natural adversarial samples, i.e., misclassified images where predictions can be corrected via small perturbations. We demonstrate that natural adversarial samples commonly occur and show that many of these images remain misclassified even with additional training epochs, even though their correct classification may require only a small adjustment to network parameters.
Blockchain Technology as a Regulatory Technology: From Code is Law to Law is Code
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2018
Year: 2018

"Code is law" refers to the idea that, with the advent of digital technology, code has progressively established itself as the predominant way to regulate the behavior of Internet users. Yet, while computer code can enforce rules more efficiently than legal code, it also comes with a series of limitations, mostly because it is difficult to transpose the ambiguity and flexibility of legal rules into a formalized language which can be interpreted by a machine. With the advent of blockchain technology and associated smart contracts, code is assuming an even stronger role in regulating people's interactions over the Internet, as many contractual transactions get transposed into smart contract code. In this paper, we describe the shift from the traditional notion of "code is law" (i.e. code having the effect of law) to the new conception of "law is code" (i.e. law being defined as code).
Optimizing TCP Loss Recovery Performance Over Mobile Data Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2018
Year: 2018

Recent advances in high-speed mobile networks have revealed new bottlenecks in ubiquitous TCP protocol deployed in the Internet. In addition to differentiating non-congestive loss from congestive loss, our experiments revealed two significant performance bottlenecks during the loss recovery phase: flow control bottleneck and application stall, resulting in degradation in QoS performance. To tackle these two problems we firstly develop a novel opportunistic retransmission algorithm to eliminate the flow control bottleneck, which enables TCP sender to transmit new packets even if receiver's receiving window is exhausted. Secondly, application stall can be significantly alleviated by carefully monitoring and tuning the TCP sending buffer growth mechanism. We implemented and modularized the proposed algorithms in the Linux kernel thus they can plug-and-play with the existing TCP loss recovery algorithms easily. Using emulated experiments we showed that, compared to the existing TCP loss recovery algorithms, the proposed optimization algorithms improve the bandwidth efficiency by up to 133% and completely mitigate RTT spikes, i.e., over 50% RTT reduction, over the loss recovery phase.
Quality Control in Crowdsourcing: A Survey of Quality Attributes, Assessment Techniques and Assurance Actions
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2018
Year: 2018

Crowdsourcing enables one to leverage on the intelligence and wisdom of potentially large groups of individuals toward solving problems. Common problems approached with crowdsourcing are labeling images, translating or transcribing text, providing opinions or ideas, and similar - all tasks that computers are not good at or where they may even fail altogether. The introduction of humans into computations and/or everyday work, however, also poses critical, novel challenges in terms of quality control, as the crowd is typically composed of people with unknown and very diverse abilities, skills, interests, personal objectives and technological resources. This survey studies quality in the context of crowdsourcing along several dimensions, so as to define and characterize it and to understand the current state of the art. Specifically, this survey derives a quality model for crowdsourcing tasks, identifies the methods and techniques that can be used to assess the attributes of the model, and the actions and strategies that help prevent and mitigate quality problems. An analysis of how these features are supported by the state of the art further identifies open issues and informs an outlook on hot future research directions.
Unsupervised Discovery of Toxoplasma gondii Motility Phenotypes
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

Toxoplasma gondii is a parasitic protozoan that causes dis- seminated toxoplasmosis, a disease that afflicts roughly a third of the worlds population. Its virulence is predicated on its motility and ability to enter and exit nucleated cells; therefore, studies elucidating its mechanism of motility and in particular, its motility patterns in the context of its lytic cycle, are critical to the eventual development of therapeutic strate- gies. Here, we present an end-to-end computational pipeline for identifying T. gondii motility phenotypes in a completely unsupervised, data-driven way. We track the parasites before and after addition of extracellular Ca2+ to study its effects on the parasite motility patterns and use this information to parameterize the motion and group it according to similarity of spatiotemporal dynamics.
Utility Optimal Scheduling for Coded Caching in General Topologies
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2018
Year: 2018

We consider coded caching over the fading broadcast channel, where the users, equipped with a memory of finite size, experience asymmetric fading statistics. It is known that a naive application of coded caching over the channel at hand performs poorly especially in the regime of a large number of users due to a vanishing multicast rate. We overcome this detrimental effect by a careful design of opportunistic scheduling policies such that some utility function of the long-term average rates should be maximized while balancing fairness among users. In particular, we propose a threshold-based scheduling that requires only statistical channel state information and one-bit feedback from each user. More specifically, each user indicates via feedback whenever its SNR is above a threshold determined solely by the fading statistics and the fairness requirement. Surprisingly, we prove that this simple scheme achieves the optimal utility in the regime of a large number of users. Numerical examples show that our proposed scheme performs closely to the scheduling with full channel state information, but at a significantly reduced complexity.
On strong alt-induced codes
Venue: arXiv cs.FL 2018
Year: 2018

Strong alt-induced codes, a particular case of alt-induced codes, has been introduced and considered by D. L. Van and the author in earlier papers. In this note, an algorithm to check whether a regular code is strong alt-induced or not is proposed, and the embedding problem for the classes of prefix (suffix, bifix) strong alt-induced codes in both the finite and regular case is also exhibited.
Enhancing Performance of Random Caching in Large-Scale Wireless Networks with Multiple Receive Antennas
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2018
Year: 2018

To improve signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) and make better use of file diversity provided by random caching, we consider two types of linear receivers, i.e., maximal ratio combining (MRC) receiver and partial zero forcing (PZF) receiver, at users in a large-scale cache-enabled single-input multi-output (SIMO) network. First, for each receiver, by utilizing tools from stochastic geometry, we derive a tractable expression and a tight upper bound for the successful transmission probability (STP). In the case of the MRC receiver, we also derive a closed-form expression for the asymptotic outage probability in the low SIR threshold regime. Then, for each receiver, we maximize the STP. In the case of the MRC receiver, we consider the maximization of the tight upper bound on the STP by optimizing the caching distribution, which is a non-convex problem. We obtain a stationary point, by solving an equivalent difference of convex (DC) programming problem using concave-convex procedure (CCCP). We also obtain a closed-form asymptotically optimal solution in the low SIR threshold regime. In the case of the PZF receiver, we consider the maximization of the tight upper bound on the STP by optimizing the caching distribution and the degrees of freedom (DoF) allocation (for boosting the signal power), which is a mixed discrete-continuous problem. Based on structural properties, we obtain a low-complexity near optimal solution by using an alternating optimization approach. The analysis and optimization results reveal the impact of antenna resource at users on random caching. Finally, by numerical results, we show that the random caching design with the PZF receiver achieves significant performance gains over the random caching design with the MRC receiver and some baseline caching designs.
Fake Colorized Image Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.MM 2018
Year: 2018

Image forensics aims to detect the manipulation of digital images. Currently, splicing detection, copy-move detection and image retouching detection are drawing much attentions from researchers. However, image editing techniques develop with time goes by. One emerging image editing technique is colorization, which can colorize grayscale images with realistic colors. Unfortunately, this technique may also be intentionally applied to certain images to confound object recognition algorithms. To the best of our knowledge, no forensic technique has yet been invented to identify whether an image is colorized. We observed that, compared to natural images, colorized images, which are generated by three state-of-the-art methods, possess statistical differences for the hue and saturation channels. Besides, we also observe statistical inconsistencies in the dark and bright channels, because the colorization process will inevitably affect the dark and bright channel values. Based on our observations, i.e., potential traces in the hue, saturation, dark and bright channels, we propose two simple yet effective detection methods for fake colorized images: Histogram based Fake Colorized Image Detection (FCID-HIST) and Feature Encoding based Fake Colorized Image Detection (FCID-FE). Experimental results demonstrate that both proposed methods exhibit a decent performance against multiple state-of-the-art colorization approaches.
Better and Simpler Error Analysis of the Sinkhorn-Knopp Algorithm for Matrix Scaling
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2018
Year: 2018

Given a non-negative $n \times m$ real matrix $A$, the {\em matrix scaling} problem is to determine if it is possible to scale the rows and columns so that each row and each column sums to a specified target value for it. This problem arises in many algorithmic applications, perhaps most notably as a preconditioning step in solving a linear system of equations. One of the most natural and by now classical approach to matrix scaling is the Sinkhorn-Knopp algorithm (also known as the RAS method) where one alternately scales either all rows or all columns to meet the target values. In addition to being extremely simple and natural, another appeal of this procedure is that it easily lends itself to parallelization. A central question is to understand the rate of convergence of the Sinkhorn-Knopp algorithm. In this paper, we present an elementary convergence analysis for the Sinkhorn-Knopp algorithm that improves upon the previous best bound. In a nutshell, our approach is to show a simple bound on the number of iterations needed so that the KL-divergence between the current row-sums and the target row-sums drops below a specified threshold $δ$, and then connect the KL-divergence with $\ell_1$ and $\ell_2$ distances. For $\ell_1$, we can use Pinsker's inequality. For $\ell_2$, we develop a strengthening of Pinsker's inequality, called (KL vs $\ell_1/\ell_2$) in the paper, which lower bounds the KL-divergence by a combination of $\ell_1$ and $\ell_2$ distance. This inequality may be of independent interest. The idea of studying Sinkhorn-Knopp convergence via KL-divergence is not new and has indeed been previously explored. Our contribution is an elementary, self-contained presentation of this approach and an interesting new inequality that yields a significantly stronger convergence guarantee for the extensively studied $\ell_2$-error.
Adaptive Boolean Monotonicity Testing in Total Influence Time
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2018
Year: 2018

The problem of testing monotonicity of a Boolean function $f:\{0,1\}^n \to \{0,1\}$ has received much attention recently. Denoting the proximity parameter by $\varepsilon$, the best tester is the non-adaptive $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{n}/\varepsilon^2)$ tester of Khot-Minzer-Safra (FOCS 2015). Let $I(f)$ denote the total influence of $f$. We give an adaptive tester whose running time is $I(f)poly(\varepsilon^{-1}\log n)$.
Beam domain secure transmission for massive MIMO communications
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2018
Year: 2018

We investigate the optimality and power allocation algorithm of beam domain transmission for single-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with a multi-antenna passive eavesdropper. Focusing on the secure massive MIMO downlink transmission with only statistical channel state information of legitimate users and the eavesdropper at base station, we introduce a lower bound on the achievable ergodic secrecy sum-rate, from which we derive the condition for eigenvectors of the optimal input covariance matrices. The result shows that beam domain transmission can achieve optimal performance in terms of secrecy sum-rate lower bound maximization. For the case of single-antenna legitimate users, we prove that it is optimal to allocate no power to the beams where the beam gains of the eavesdropper are stronger than those of legitimate users in order to maximize the secrecy sum-rate lower bound. Then, motivated by the concave-convex procedure and the large dimension random matrix theory, we develop an efficient iterative and convergent algorithm to optimize power allocation in the beam domain. Numerical simulations demonstrate the tightness of the secrecy sum-rate lower bound and the near-optimal performance of the proposed iterative algorithm.
Spatial Lattice Modulation for MIMO Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2018
Year: 2018

This paper proposes spatial lattice modulation (SLM), a spatial modulation method for multipleinput-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The key idea of SLM is to jointly exploit spatial, in-phase, and quadrature dimensions to modulate information bits into a multi-dimensional signal set that consists oflattice points. One major finding is that SLM achieves a higher spectral efficiency than the existing spatial modulation and spatial multiplexing methods for the MIMO channel under the constraint ofM-ary pulseamplitude-modulation (PAM) input signaling per dimension. In particular, it is shown that when the SLM signal set is constructed by using dense lattices, a significant signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) gain, i.e., a nominal coding gain, is attainable compared to the existing methods. In addition, closed-form expressions for both the average mutual information and average symbol-vector-error-probability (ASVEP) of generic SLM are derived under Rayleigh-fading environments. To reduce detection complexity, a low-complexity detection method for SLM, which is referred to as lattice sphere decoding, is developed by exploiting lattice theory. Simulation results verify the accuracy of the conducted analysis and demonstrate that the proposed SLM techniques achieve higher average mutual information and lower ASVEP than do existing methods.
The DMT classification of real and quaternionic lattice codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2018
Year: 2018

In this paper we consider space-time codes where the code-words are restricted to either real or quaternion matrices. We prove two separate diversity-multiplexing gain trade-off (DMT) upper bounds for such codes and provide a criterion for a lattice code to achieve these upper bounds. We also point out that lattice codes based on Q-central division algebras satisfy this optimality criterion. As a corollary this result provides a DMT classification for all Q-central division algebra codes that are based on standard embeddings.
Adversarial Deep Learning for Robust Detection of Binary Encoded Malware
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2018
Year: 2018

Malware is constantly adapting in order to avoid detection. Model based malware detectors, such as SVM and neural networks, are vulnerable to so-called adversarial examples which are modest changes to detectable malware that allows the resulting malware to evade detection. Continuous-valued methods that are robust to adversarial examples of images have been developed using saddle-point optimization formulations. We are inspired by them to develop similar methods for the discrete, e.g. binary, domain which characterizes the features of malware. A specific extra challenge of malware is that the adversarial examples must be generated in a way that preserves their malicious functionality. We introduce methods capable of generating functionally preserved adversarial malware examples in the binary domain. Using the saddle-point formulation, we incorporate the adversarial examples into the training of models that are robust to them. We evaluate the effectiveness of the methods and others in the literature on a set of Portable Execution~(PE) files. Comparison prompts our introduction of an online measure computed during training to assess general expectation of robustness.
Search on Secondary Attributes in Geo-Distributed Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2018
Year: 2018

In the age of big data, more and more applications need to query and analyse large volumes of continuously updated data in real-time. In response, cloud-scale storage systems can extend their interface that allows fast lookups on the primary key with the ability to retrieve data based on non-primary attributes. However, the need to ingest content rapidly and make it searchable immediately while supporting low-latency, high-throughput query evaluation, as well as the geo-distributed nature and weak consistency guarantees of modern storage systems pose several challenges to the implementation of indexing and search systems. We present our early-stage work on the design and implementation of an indexing and query processing system that enables realtime queries on secondary attributes of data stored in geo-distributed, weakly consistent storage systems.
Binary CEO Problem under Log-Loss with BSC Test-Channel Model
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2018
Year: 2018

In this paper, we propose an efficient coding scheme for the two-link binary Chief Executive Officer (CEO) problem under logarithmic loss criterion. The exact rate-distortion bound for a two-link binary CEO problem under the logarithmic loss has been obtained by Courtade and Weissman. We propose an encoding scheme based on compound LDGM-LDPC codes to achieve the theoretical bounds. In the proposed encoding, a binary quantizer using LDGM codes and a syndrome-coding employing LDPC codes are applied. An iterative joint decoding is also designed as a fusion center. The proposed CEO decoder is based on the sum-product algorithm and a soft estimator.
Chameleon: A Hybrid Secure Computation Framework for Machine Learning Applications
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2018
Year: 2018

We present Chameleon, a novel hybrid (mixed-protocol) framework for secure function evaluation (SFE) which enables two parties to jointly compute a function without disclosing their private inputs. Chameleon combines the best aspects of generic SFE protocols with the ones that are based upon additive secret sharing. In particular, the framework performs linear operations in the ring $\mathbb{Z}_{2^l}$ using additively secret shared values and nonlinear operations using Yao's Garbled Circuits or the Goldreich-Micali-Wigderson protocol. Chameleon departs from the common assumption of additive or linear secret sharing models where three or more parties need to communicate in the online phase: the framework allows two parties with private inputs to communicate in the online phase under the assumption of a third node generating correlated randomness in an offline phase. Almost all of the heavy cryptographic operations are precomputed in an offline phase which substantially reduces the communication overhead. Chameleon is both scalable and significantly more efficient than the ABY framework (NDSS'15) it is based on. Our framework supports signed fixed-point numbers. In particular, Chameleon's vector dot product of signed fixed-point numbers improves the efficiency of mining and classification of encrypted data for algorithms based upon heavy matrix multiplications. Our evaluation of Chameleon on a 5 layer convolutional deep neural network shows 133x and 4.2x faster executions than Microsoft CryptoNets (ICML'16) and MiniONN (CCS'17), respectively.
A Composition Theorem via Conflict Complexity
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2018
Year: 2018

Let $\R(\cdot)$ stand for the bounded-error randomized query complexity. We show that for any relation $f \subseteq \{0,1\}^n \times \mathcal{S}$ and partial Boolean function $g \subseteq \{0,1\}^n \times \{0,1\}$, $\R_{1/3}(f \circ g^n) = Ω(\R_{4/9}(f) \cdot \sqrt{\R_{1/3}(g)})$. Independently of us, Gavinsky, Lee and Santha \cite{newcomp} proved this result. By an example demonstrated in their work, this bound is optimal. We prove our result by introducing a novel complexity measure called the \emph{conflict complexity} of a partial Boolean function $g$, denoted by $χ(g)$, which may be of independent interest. We show that $χ(g) = Ω(\sqrt{\R(g)})$ and $\R(f \circ g^n) = Ω(\R(f) \cdot χ(g))$.