OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Ultrahyperbolic Representation Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

In machine learning, data is usually represented in a (flat) Euclidean space where distances between points are along straight lines. Researchers have recently considered more exotic (non-Euclidean) Riemannian manifolds such as hyperbolic space which is well suited for tree-like data. In this paper, we propose a representation living on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold of constant nonzero curvature. It is a generalization of hyperbolic and spherical geometries where the nondegenerate metric tensor need not be positive definite. We provide the necessary learning tools in this geometry and extend gradient-based optimization techniques. More specifically, we provide closed-form expressions for distances via geodesics and define a descent direction to minimize some objective function. Our novel framework is applied to graph representations.
Private Speech Classification with Secure Multiparty Computation
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

Deep learning in audio signal processing, such as human voice audio signal classification, is a rich application area of machine learning. Legitimate use cases include voice authentication, gunfire detection, and emotion recognition. While there are clear advantages to automated human speech classification, application developers can gain knowledge beyond the professed scope from unprotected audio signal processing. In this paper we propose the first privacy-preserving solution for deep learning-based audio classification that is provably secure. Our approach, which is based on Secure Multiparty Computation, allows to classify a speech signal of one party (Alice) with a deep neural network of another party (Bob) without Bob ever seeing Alice's speech signal in an unencrypted manner. As threat models, we consider both passive security, i.e. with semi-honest parties who follow the instructions of the cryptographic protocols, as well as active security, i.e. with malicious parties who deviate from the protocols. We evaluate the efficiency-security-accuracy trade-off of the proposed solution in a use case for privacy-preserving emotion detection from speech with a convolutional neural network. In the semi-honest case we can classify a speech signal in under 0.3 sec; in the malicious case it takes $\sim$1.6 sec. In both cases there is no leakage of information, and we achieve classification accuracies that are the same as when computations are done on unencrypted data.
Emulation of Astrocyte Induced Neural Phase Synchrony in Spin-Orbit Torque Oscillator Neurons
Venue: arXiv cs.ET 2021
Year: 2021

Astrocytes play a central role in inducing concerted phase synchronized neural-wave patterns inside the brain. In this article, we demonstrate that injected radio-frequency signal in underlying heavy metal layer of spin-orbit torque oscillator neurons mimic the neuron phase synchronization effect realized by glial cells. Potential application of such phase coupling effects is illustrated in the context of a temporal "binding problem". We also present the design of a coupled neuron-synapse-astrocyte network enabled by compact neuromimetic devices by combining the concepts of local spike-timing dependent plasticity and astrocyte induced neural phase synchrony.
Noticing Motion Patterns: Temporal CNN with a Novel Convolution Operator for Human Trajectory Prediction
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

We propose a Convolutional Neural Network-based approach to learn, detect,and extract patterns in sequential trajectory data, known here as Social Pattern Extraction Convolution (Social-PEC). A set of experiments carried out on the human trajectory prediction problem shows that our model performs comparably to the state of the art and outperforms in some cases. More importantly,the proposed approach unveils the obscurity in the previous use of pooling layer, presenting a way to intuitively explain the decision-making process.
A deep primal-dual proximal network for image restoration
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Image restoration remains a challenging task in image processing. Numerous methods tackle this problem, often solved by minimizing a non-smooth penalized co-log-likelihood function. Although the solution is easily interpretable with theoretic guarantees, its estimation relies on an optimization process that can take time. Considering the research effort in deep learning for image classification and segmentation, this class of methods offers a serious alternative to perform image restoration but stays challenging to solve inverse problems. In this work, we design a deep network, named DeepPDNet, built from primal-dual proximal iterations associated with the minimization of a standard penalized likelihood with an analysis prior, allowing us to take advantage of both worlds. We reformulate a specific instance of the Condat-Vu primal-dual hybrid gradient (PDHG) algorithm as a deep network with fixed layers. The learned parameters are both the PDHG algorithm step-sizes and the analysis linear operator involved in the penalization (including the regularization parameter). These parameters are allowed to vary from a layer to another one. Two different learning strategies: "Full learning" and "Partial learning" are proposed, the first one is the most efficient numerically while the second one relies on standard constraints ensuring convergence in the standard PDHG iterations. Moreover, global and local sparse analysis prior are studied to seek a better feature representation. We apply the proposed methods to image restoration on the MNIST and BSD68 datasets and to single image super-resolution on the BSD100 and SET14 datasets. Extensive results show that the proposed DeepPDNet demonstrates excellent performance on the MNIST and the more complex BSD68, BSD100, and SET14 datasets for image restoration and single image super-resolution task.
Multiple Instance-Based Video Anomaly Detection using Deep Temporal Encoding-Decoding
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

In this paper, we propose a weakly supervised deep temporal encoding-decoding solution for anomaly detection in surveillance videos using multiple instance learning. The proposed approach uses both abnormal and normal video clips during the training phase which is developed in the multiple instance framework where we treat video as a bag and video clips as instances in the bag. Our main contribution lies in the proposed novel approach to consider temporal relations between video instances. We deal with video instances (clips) as a sequential visual data rather than independent instances. We employ a deep temporal and encoder network that is designed to capture spatial-temporal evolution of video instances over time. We also propose a new loss function that is smoother than similar loss functions recently presented in the computer vision literature, and therefore; enjoys faster convergence and improved tolerance to local minima during the training phase. The proposed temporal encoding-decoding approach with modified loss is benchmarked against the state-of-the-art in simulation studies. The results show that the proposed method performs similar to or better than the state-of-the-art solutions for anomaly detection in video surveillance applications.
Optimizing Information Freshness in Two-Hop Status Update Systems under a Resource Constraint
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2021
Year: 2021

In this paper, we investigate the age minimization problem for a two-hop relay system, under a resource constraint on the average number of forwarding operations at the relay. We first design an optimal policy by modelling the considered scheduling problem as a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problem. Based on the observed multi-threshold structure of the optimal policy, we then devise a low-complexity double threshold relaying (DTR) policy with only two thresholds, one for relay's AoI and the other one for the age gain between destination and relay. We derive approximate closed-form expressions of the average AoI at the destination, and the average number of forwarding operations at the relay for the DTR policy, by modelling the tangled evolution of age at relay and destination as a Markov chain (MC). Numerical results validate all the theoretical analysis, and show that the low-complexity DTR policy can achieve near optimal performance compared with the optimal CMDP-based policy. Moreover, the relay should always consider the threshold for its local age to maintain a low age at the destination. When the resource constraint is relatively tight, it further needs to consider the threshold on the age gain to ensure that only those packets that can decrease destination's age dramatically will be forwarded.
Over-The-Air Computation in Correlated Channels
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2021
Year: 2021

Over-the-Air (OTA) computation is the problem of computing functions of distributed data without transmitting the entirety of the data to a central point. By avoiding such costly transmissions, OTA computation schemes can achieve a better-than-linear (depending on the function, often logarithmic or even constant) scaling of the communication cost as the number of transmitters grows. Among the most common functions computed OTA are linear functions such as weighted sums. In this work, we propose and analyze an analog OTA computation scheme for a class of functions that contains linear functions as well as some nonlinear functions such as $p$-norms of vectors. We prove error bound guarantees that are valid for fast-fading channels and all distributions of fading and noise contained in the class of sub-Gaussian distributions. This class includes Gaussian distributions, but also many other practically relevant cases such as Class A Middleton noise and fading with dominant line-of-sight components. In addition, there can be correlations in the fading and noise so that the presented results also apply to, for example, block fading channels and channels with bursty interference. We do not rely on any stochastic characterization of the distributed arguments of the OTA computed function; in particular, there is no assumption that these arguments are drawn from identical or independent probability distributions. Our analysis is nonasymptotic and therefore provides error bounds that are valid for a finite number of channel uses. OTA computation has a huge potential for reducing communication cost in applications such as Machine Learning (ML)-based distributed anomaly detection in large wireless sensor networks. We illustrate this potential through extensive numerical simulations.
Revisiting Representation Learning for Singing Voice Separation with Sinkhorn Distances
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2021
Year: 2021

In this work we present a method for unsupervised learning of audio representations, focused on the task of singing voice separation. We build upon a previously proposed method for learning representations of time-domain music signals with a re-parameterized denoising autoencoder, extending it by using the family of Sinkhorn distances with entropic regularization. We evaluate our method on the freely available MUSDB18 dataset of professionally produced music recordings, and our results show that Sinkhorn distances with small strength of entropic regularization are marginally improving the performance of informed singing voice separation. By increasing the strength of the entropic regularization, the learned representations of the mixture signal consists of almost perfectly additive and distinctly structured sources.
Learning to Generate Novel Domains for Domain Generalization
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

This paper focuses on domain generalization (DG), the task of learning from multiple source domains a model that generalizes well to unseen domains. A main challenge for DG is that the available source domains often exhibit limited diversity, hampering the model's ability to learn to generalize. We therefore employ a data generator to synthesize data from pseudo-novel domains to augment the source domains. This explicitly increases the diversity of available training domains and leads to a more generalizable model. To train the generator, we model the distribution divergence between source and synthesized pseudo-novel domains using optimal transport, and maximize the divergence. To ensure that semantics are preserved in the synthesized data, we further impose cycle-consistency and classification losses on the generator. Our method, L2A-OT (Learning to Augment by Optimal Transport) outperforms current state-of-the-art DG methods on four benchmark datasets.
5G Network Slicing with QKD and Quantum-Safe Security
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2021
Year: 2021

We demonstrate how the 5G network slicing model can be extended to address data security requirements. In this work we demonstrate two different slice configurations, with different encryption requirements, representing two diverse use-cases for 5G networking: namely, an enterprise application hosted at a metro network site, and a content delivery network. We create a modified software-defined networking (SDN) orchestrator which calculates and provisions network slices according to the requirements, including encryption backed by quantum key distribution (QKD), or other methods. Slices are automatically provisioned by SDN orchestration of network resources, allowing selection of encrypted links as appropriate, including those which use standard Diffie-Hellman key exchange, QKD and quantum-resistant algorithms (QRAs), as well as no encryption at all. We show that the set-up and tear-down times of the network slices takes of the order of 1-2 minutes, which is an order of magnitude improvement over manually provisioning a link today.
A Generative Model for Texture Synthesis based on Optimal Transport between Feature Distributions
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

We propose GOTEX, a general framework for texture synthesis by optimization that constrains the statistical distribution of local features. While our model encompasses several existing texture models, we focus on the case where the comparison between feature distributions relies on optimal transport distances. We show that the semi-dual formulation of optimal transport allows to control the distribution of various possible features, even if these features live in a high-dimensional space. We then study the resulting minimax optimization problem, which corresponds to a Wasserstein generative model, for which the inner concave maximization problem can be solved with standard stochastic gradient methods. The alternate optimization algorithm is shown to be versatile in terms of applications, features and architecture; in particular it allows to produce high-quality synthesized textures with different sets of features. We analyze the results obtained by constraining the distribution of patches or the distribution of responses to a pre-learned VGG neural network. We show that the patch representation can retrieve the desired textural aspect in a more precise manner. We also provide a detailed comparison with state-of-the-art texture synthesis methods. The GOTEX model based on patch features is also adapted to texture inpainting and texture interpolation. Finally, we show how to use our framework to learn a feed-forward neural network that can synthesize on-the-fly new textures of arbitrary size in a very fast manner. Experimental results and comparisons with the mainstream methods from the literature illustrate the relevance of the generative models learned with GOTEX.
Distance-Geometric Graph Convolutional Network (DG-GCN) for Three-Dimensional (3D) Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

The distance-geometric graph representation adopts a unified scheme (distance) for representing the geometry of three-dimensional(3D) graphs. It is invariant to rotation and translation of the graph and it reflects pair-wise node interactions and their generally local nature. To facilitate the incorporation of geometry in deep learning on 3D graphs, we propose a message-passing graph convolutional network based on the distance-geometric graph representation: DG-GCN (distance-geometric graph convolution network). It utilizes continuous-filter convolutional layers, with filter-generating networks, that enable learning of filter weights from distances, thereby incorporating the geometry of 3D graphs in graph convolutions. Our results for the ESOL and FreeSolv datasets show major improvement over those of standard graph convolutions. They also show significant improvement over those of geometric graph convolutions employing edge weight / edge distance power laws. Our work demonstrates the utility and value of DG-GCN for end-to-end deep learning on 3D graphs, particularly molecular graphs.
Offline Runtime Verification of Safety Requirements using CSP
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2021
Year: 2021

Dynamic formal verification is a key tool for providing ongoing confidence that a system is meeting its requirements while in use, especially when paired with static formal verification before the system is in use. This paper presents a workflow and Runtime Verification (RV) toolchain, Varanus, and their application to an industrial case study. Using the workflow we manually derive a Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) model from natural-language safety requirements documents, which Varanus uses as the monitor oracle. This reuse of the model means that the monitor oracle does not have to be developed separately, risking inconsistencies between it and the model for static verification. The approach is demonstrated by the offline RV of a teleoperated manipulation system, called MASCOT, which enables remote operations inside the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor. We describe our model of the MASCOT safety design documents (including how the modelling process revealed an underspecification in the design) and evaluate the Varanus toolchain's utility. The workflow and tool provide validation of the safety documents, traceability of the safety properties from the documentation to the system, and a verified oracle for RV.
STADB: A Self-Thresholding Attention Guided ADB Network for Person Re-identification
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Recently, Batch DropBlock network (BDB) has demonstrated its effectiveness on person image representation and re-identification task via feature erasing. However, BDB drops the features \textbf{randomly} which may lead to sub-optimal results. In this paper, we propose a novel Self-Thresholding attention guided Adaptive DropBlock network (STADB) for person re-ID which can \textbf{adaptively} erase the most discriminative regions. Specifically, STADB first obtains an attention map by channel-wise pooling and returns a drop mask by thresholding the attention map. Then, the input features and self-thresholding attention guided drop mask are multiplied to generate the dropped feature maps. In addition, STADB utilizes the spatial and channel attention to learn a better feature map and iteratively trains the feature dropping module for person re-ID. Experiments on several benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed STADB outperforms many other related methods for person re-ID. The source code of this paper is released at: \textcolor{red}{\url{https://github.com/wangxiao5791509/STADB_ReID}}.
SofGAN: A Portrait Image Generator with Dynamic Styling
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Recently, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)} have been widely used for portrait image generation. However, in the latent space learned by GANs, different attributes, such as pose, shape, and texture style, are generally entangled, making the explicit control of specific attributes difficult. To address this issue, we propose a SofGAN image generator to decouple the latent space of portraits into two subspaces: a geometry space and a texture space. The latent codes sampled from the two subspaces are fed to two network branches separately, one to generate the 3D geometry of portraits with canonical pose, and the other to generate textures. The aligned 3D geometries also come with semantic part segmentation, encoded as a semantic occupancy field (SOF). The SOF allows the rendering of consistent 2D semantic segmentation maps at arbitrary views, which are then fused with the generated texture maps and stylized to a portrait photo using our semantic instance-wise (SIW) module. Through extensive experiments, we show that our system can generate high quality portrait images with independently controllable geometry and texture attributes. The method also generalizes well in various applications such as appearance-consistent facial animation and dynamic styling.
Fixed-Treewidth-Efficient Algorithms for Edge-Deletion to Intersection Graph Classes
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2021
Year: 2021

For a graph class $\mathcal{C}$, the $\mathcal{C}$-Edge-Deletion problem asks for a given graph $G$ to delete the minimum number of edges from $G$ in order to obtain a graph in $\mathcal{C}$. We study the $\mathcal{C}$-Edge-Deletion problem for $\mathcal{C}$ the permutation graphs, interval graphs, and other related graph classes. It follows from Courcelle's Theorem that these problems are fixed parameter tractable when parameterized by treewidth. In this paper, we present concrete FPT algorithms for these problems. By giving explicit algorithms and analyzing these in detail, we obtain algorithms that are significantly faster than the algorithms obtained by using Courcelle's theorem.
Understanding the effect of hyperparameter optimization on machine learning models for structure design problems
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

To relieve the computational cost of design evaluations using expensive finite element simulations, surrogate models have been widely applied in computer-aided engineering design. Machine learning algorithms (MLAs) have been implemented as surrogate models due to their capability of learning the complex interrelations between the design variables and the response from big datasets. Typically, an MLA regression model contains model parameters and hyperparameters. The model parameters are obtained by fitting the training data. Hyperparameters, which govern the model structures and the training processes, are assigned by users before training. There is a lack of systematic studies on the effect of hyperparameters on the accuracy and robustness of the surrogate model. In this work, we proposed to establish a hyperparameter optimization (HOpt) framework to deepen our understanding of the effect. Four frequently used MLAs, namely Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest Regression (RFR), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), are tested on four benchmark examples. For each MLA model, the model accuracy and robustness before and after the HOpt are compared. The results show that HOpt can generally improve the performance of the MLA models in general. HOpt leads to few improvements in the MLAs accuracy and robustness for complex problems, which are featured by high-dimensional mixed-variable design space. The HOpt is recommended for the design problems with intermediate complexity. We also investigated the additional computational costs incurred by HOpt. The training cost is closely related to the MLA architecture. After HOpt, the training cost of ANN and RFR is increased more than that of the GPR and SVM. To sum up, this study benefits the selection of HOpt method for the different types of design problems based on their complexity.
Online probabilistic label trees
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

We introduce online probabilistic label trees (OPLTs), an algorithm that trains a label tree classifier in a fully online manner without any prior knowledge about the number of training instances, their features and labels. OPLTs are characterized by low time and space complexity as well as strong theoretical guarantees. They can be used for online multi-label and multi-class classification, including the very challenging scenarios of one- or few-shot learning. We demonstrate the attractiveness of OPLTs in a wide empirical study on several instances of the tasks mentioned above.