Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Mixed Multi-Chaos Quantum Image Encryption Scheme Based on Quantum Cellular Automata (QCA)

The advent of quantum computers could enable the resolution of complex computational problems that conventional cryptographic protocols find challenging. As a result, the formidable computing capabilities of quantum computers may render all present-day cryptographic schemes that rely on computational complexity ineffectual. Inspired by these possibilities, the primary purpose of this paper is to suggest a quantum image encryption scheme based on quantum cellular automata with mixed multi-chaos hybrid maps and a hyperchaotic system with quantum operations. To achieve desirable encryption outcomes, we designed an encryption scheme involving two main operations: (1) pixel-level diffusion and (2) pixel-level permutation. Initially, the secret keys generated using the hyperchaotic system were closely tied to the original image. During the first phase, the establishment of correlations among the image pixels, in addition to the three chaotic sequences obtained from the hyperchaotic system, was achieved with the application of a quantum-state superposition and measurement principle, wherein the color information of a pixel is described using a single qubit. Therefore, the three channels of the plain image were subjected to quantum operations, which involve Hadamard transformation and the quantum-controlled NOT gate, before the diffusion of each color channel with the hyperchaotic system. Subsequently, a quantum ternary Toffoli gate was used to perform the diffusion operation. Next, the appropriate measurement was performed on the three diffused channels. To attain the confusion phase, a blend of mixed multi-chaos hybrid maps and a two-dimensional quantum cellular automaton was used to produce random and chaotic sequence keys. Subsequently, the circular shift was utilized to additionally shuffle the rows and columns of the three diffused components, in order to alter the positions of their pixel values, which significantly contributes to the permutation process. Lastly, the three encoding channels, R, G, and B, were merged to acquire the encrypted image. The experimental findings and security analyses established that the designed quantum image encryption scheme possesses excellent encryption efficiency, a high degree of security, and the ability to effectively withstand a diverse variety of statistical attacks.
UAV Path Planning for Target Coverage Task in Dynamic Environment

Exploiting the possibility of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as a powerful tool for the Internet of Things applications, such as intelligent agricultural monitoring, intelligent transportation monitoring, etc., has gradually become a hot research topic at home and abroad. While some optimization algorithms have been devised to plan the flight route of UAVs, there are still some problems with the feasibility and effectiveness of these algorithms. This article presents a solution to the UAV path planning problem for target coverage task in a dynamic environment. The methodology applies a greedy allocation strategy for task assignment and an improved ant colony optimization algorithm based on variable pheromone (ACO-VP) for path planning. First, we specify the optimal number of UAVs for the task and allocate target points to each UAV, through the greedy allocation strategy. Then, to improve the efficiency of path planning, we adjust the pheromone update rule by introducing a variable pheromone enhancement factor and a variable pheromone evaporation coefficient into the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm. Moreover, paths are replanned when the coverage task changes due to the increase of new target points. This method is verified through simulations and compared with other algorithms. The results show that the ACO-VP algorithm is more efficient and effective for UAV path planning than others.
Computer image analysis with artificial intelligence: a practical introduction to convolutional neural networks for medical professionals

Artificial intelligence tools, particularly convolutional neural networks (CNNs), are transforming healthcare by enhancing predictive, diagnostic, and decision-making capabilities. This review provides an accessible and practical explanation of CNNs for clinicians and highlights their relevance in medical image analysis. CNNs have shown themselves to be exceptionally useful in computer vision, a field that enables machines to 'see' and interpret visual data. Understanding how these models work can help clinicians leverage their full potential, especially as artificial intelligence continues to evolve and integrate into healthcare. CNNs have already demonstrated their efficacy in diverse medical fields, including radiology, histopathology, and medical photography. In radiology, CNNs have been used to automate the assessment of conditions such as pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, and rectal cancer. In histopathology, CNNs have been used to assess and classify colorectal polyps, gastric epithelial tumours, as well as assist in the assessment of multiple malignancies. In medical photography, CNNs have been used to assess retinal diseases and skin conditions, and to detect gastric and colorectal polyps during endoscopic procedures. In surgical laparoscopy, they may provide intraoperative assistance to surgeons, helping interpret surgical anatomy and demonstrate safe dissection zones. The integration of CNNs into medical image analysis promises to enhance diagnostic accuracy, streamline workflow efficiency, and expand access to expert-level image analysis, contributing to the ultimate goal of delivering further improvements in patient and healthcare outcomes.
Information reconciliation of continuous-variables quantum key distribution: principles, implementations and applications

Abstract Quantum key distribution (QKD) can provide information-theoretically secure keys for two parties of legitimate communication, and information reconciliation, as an indispensable component of QKD systems, can correct errors present in raw keys based on error-correcting codes. In this paper, we first describe the basic knowledge of information reconciliation and its impact on continuous variable QKD. Then we introduce the information schemes and the corresponding error correction codes employed. Next, we introduce the rate-compatible codes, the hardware acceleration of the reconciliation algorithm, the research progress of information reconciliation, and its application in continuous variable QKD. Finally, we discuss the future challenges and conclude.
The impact of imputation quality on machine learning classifiers for datasets with missing values

Classifying samples in incomplete datasets is a common aim for machine learning practitioners, but is non-trivial. Missing data is found in most real-world datasets and these missing values are typically imputed using established methods, followed by classification of the now complete samples. The focus of the machine learning researcher is to optimise the classifier's performance.We utilise three simulated and three real-world clinical datasets with different feature types and missingness patterns. Initially, we evaluate how the downstream classifier performance depends on the choice of classifier and imputation methods. We employ ANOVA to quantitatively evaluate how the choice of missingness rate, imputation method, and classifier method influences the performance. Additionally, we compare commonly used methods for assessing imputation quality and introduce a class of discrepancy scores based on the sliced Wasserstein distance. We also assess the stability of the imputations and the interpretability of model built on the imputed data.The performance of the classifier is most affected by the percentage of missingness in the test data, with a considerable performance decline observed as the test missingness rate increases. We also show that the commonly used measures for assessing imputation quality tend to lead to imputed data which poorly matches the underlying data distribution, whereas our new class of discrepancy scores performs much better on this measure. Furthermore, we show that the interpretability of classifier models trained using poorly imputed data is compromised.It is imperative to consider the quality of the imputation when performing downstream classification as the effects on the classifier can be considerable.Many artificial intelligence (AI) methods aim to classify samples of data into groups, e.g., patients with disease vs. those without. This often requires datasets to be complete, i.e., that all data has been collected for all samples. However, in clinical practice this is often not the case and some data can be missing. One solution is to ‘complete’ the dataset using a technique called imputation to replace those missing values. However, assessing how well the imputation method performs is challenging. In this work, we demonstrate why people should care about imputation, develop a new method for assessing imputation quality, and demonstrate that if we build AI models on poorly imputed data, the model can give different results to those we would hope for. Our findings may improve the utility and quality of AI models in the clinic.
Problem-Dependent Power of Quantum Neural Networks on Multiclass Classification

Quantum neural networks (QNNs) have become an important tool for understanding the physical world, but their advantages and limitations are not fully understood. Some QNNs with specific encoding methods can be efficiently simulated by classical surrogates, while others with quantum memory may perform better than classical classifiers. Here we systematically investigate the problem-dependent power of quantum neural classifiers (QCs) on multiclass classification tasks. Through the analysis of expected risk, a measure that weighs the training loss and the generalization error of a classifier jointly, we identify two key findings: first, the training loss dominates the power rather than the generalization ability; second, QCs undergo a U-shaped risk curve, in contrast to the double-descent risk curve of deep neural classifiers. We also reveal the intrinsic connection between optimal QCs and the Helstrom bound and the equiangular tight frame. Using these findings, we propose a method that exploits loss dynamics of QCs to estimate the optimal hyperparameter settings yielding the minimal risk. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach to explain the superiority of QCs over multilayer Perceptron on parity datasets and their limitations over convolutional neural networks on image datasets. Our work sheds light on the problem-dependent power of QNNs and offers a practical tool for evaluating their potential merit.
FaceXHuBERT: Text-less Speech-driven E(X)pressive 3D Facial Animation Synthesis Using Self-Supervised Speech Representation Learning

This paper presents FaceXHuBERT, a text-less speech-driven 3D facial animation generation method that generates facial cues driven by an emotional expressiveness condition. In addition, it can handle audio recorded in a variety of situations (e.g. background noise, multiple people speaking). Recent approaches employ end-to-end deep learning taking into account both audio and text as input to generate 3D facial animation. However, scarcity of publicly available expressive audio-3D facial animation datasets poses a major bottleneck. The resulting animations still have issues regarding accurate lip-syncing, emotional expressivity, person-specific facial cues and generalizability. In this work, we first achieve better results than state-of-the-art on the speech-driven 3D facial animation generation task by effectively employing the self-supervised pretrained HuBERT speech model that allows to incorporate both lexical and non-lexical information in the audio without using a large lexicon. Second, we incorporate emotional expressiveness modality by guiding the network with a binary emotion condition. We carried out extensive objective and subjective evaluations in comparison to ground-truth and state-of-the-art. A perceptual user study demonstrates that expressively generated facial animations using our approach are indeed perceived more realistic and are preferred over the non-expressive ones. In addition, we show that having a strong audio encoder alone eliminates the need of a complex decoder for the network architecture, reducing the network complexity and training time significantly. We provide the code1 publicly and recommend watching the video.
SFMR-SH: Secure Framework for Mitigating Ransomware Attacks in Smart Healthcare Using Blockchain Technology

As the healthcare industry increasingly relies on digital technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve patient care and streamline operations, the vulnerability to ransomware attacks has become a significant concern. In response to this pressing issue, we present SFMR-SH (Secure Framework for Mitigating Ransomware Attacks in Smart Healthcare), a groundbreaking approach that integrates IoT devices with blockchain technology to fortify healthcare data security. SFMR-SH leverages blockchain's inherent properties, including immutability and transparency, to create an impervious fortress for sensitive patient data. Through comprehensive simulations employing machine learning algorithms (KNN, SVM, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, and XGB), we assess the framework's ability to detect and mitigate ransomware attacks. Results underscore the framework's effectiveness, achieving an impressive detection accuracy of 99.33%. This research represents a significant stride in fortifying smart healthcare systems, providing a secure environment amid the escalating threat landscape, and ensuring the uninterrupted delivery of vital healthcare services. Our findings highlight the exceptional promise of SFMR-SH in revolutionizing healthcare data security, safeguarding patient privacy, and fortifying the future of smart healthcare systems in an increasingly digitalized healthcare landscape.
Contrastive Self-supervised Learning in Recommender Systems: A Survey

Deep learning-based recommender systems have achieved remarkable success in recent years. However, these methods usually heavily rely on labeled data (i.e., user-item interactions), suffering from problems such as data sparsity and cold-start. Self-supervised learning, an emerging paradigm that extracts information from unlabeled data, provides insights into addressing these problems. Specifically, contrastive self-supervised learning, due to its flexibility and promising performance, has attracted considerable interest and recently become a dominant branch in self-supervised learning-based recommendation methods. In this survey, we provide an up-to-date and comprehensive review of current contrastive self-supervised learning-based recommendation methods. Firstly, we propose a unified framework for these methods. We then introduce a taxonomy based on the key components of the framework, including view generation strategy, contrastive task, and contrastive objective. For each component, we provide detailed descriptions and discussions to guide the choice of the appropriate method. Finally, we outline open issues and promising directions for future research.
<scp>PLANTdataHUB</scp>: a collaborative platform for continuous <scp>FAIR</scp> data sharing in plant research

In modern reproducible, hypothesis-driven plant research, scientists are increasingly relying on research data management (RDM) services and infrastructures to streamline the processes of collecting, processing, sharing, and archiving research data. FAIR (i.e., findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) research data play a pivotal role in enabling the integration of interdisciplinary knowledge and facilitating the comparison and synthesis of a wide range of analytical findings. The PLANTdataHUB offers a solution that realizes RDM of scientific (meta)data as evolving collections of files in a directory - yielding FAIR digital objects called ARCs - with tools that enable scientists to plan, communicate, collaborate, publish, and reuse data on the same platform while gaining continuous quality control insights. The centralized platform is scalable from personal use to global communities and provides advanced federation capabilities for institutions that prefer to host their own satellite instances. This approach borrows many concepts from software development and adapts them to fit the challenges of the field of modern plant science undergoing digital transformation. The PLANTdataHUB supports researchers in each stage of a scientific project with adaptable continuous quality control insights, from the early planning phase to data publication. The central live instance of PLANTdataHUB is accessible at (https://git.nfdi4plants.org), and it will continue to evolve as a community-driven and dynamic resource that serves the needs of contemporary plant science.
GERNERMED++: Semantic annotation in German medical NLP through transfer-learning, translation and word alignment

We present a statistical model, GERNERMED++, for German medical natural language processing trained for named entity recognition (NER) as an open, publicly available model. We demonstrate the effectiveness of combining multiple techniques in order to achieve strong results in entity recognition performance by the means of transfer-learning on pre-trained deep language models (LM), word-alignment and neural machine translation, outperforming a pre-existing baseline model on several datasets. Due to the sparse situation of open, public medical entity recognition models for German texts, this work offers benefits to the German research community on medical NLP as a baseline model. The work serves as a refined successor to our first GERNERMED model. Similar to our previous work, our trained model is publicly available to other researchers. The sample code and the statistical model is available at: https://github.com/frankkramer-lab/GERNERMED-pp.
Exploring Blockchain Research in Supply Chain Management: A Latent Dirichlet Allocation-Driven Systematic Review

Blockchain technology has emerged as a tool with the potential to enhance transparency, trust, security, and decentralization in supply chain management (SCM). This study presents a comprehensive review of the interplay between blockchain technology and SCM. By analyzing an extensive dataset of 943 articles, our exploration utilizes the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) method to delve deep into the thematic structure of the discourse. This investigation revealed ten central topics ranging from blockchain’s transformative role in supply chain finance and e-commerce operations to its application in specialized areas, such as the halal food supply chain and humanitarian contexts. Particularly pronounced were discussions on the challenges and transformations of blockchain integration in supply chains and its impact on pricing strategies and decision-making. Visualization tools, including PyLDAvis, further illuminated the interconnectedness of these themes, highlighting the intertwined nature of blockchain adoption challenges with aspects such as traceability and pricing. Despite the breadth of topics covered, the paper acknowledges its limitations due to the fast-evolving nature of blockchain developments during and after our analysis period. Ultimately, this review provides a holistic academic snapshot, emphasizing both well-developed and nascent research areas and guiding future research in the evolving domain of blockchain in SCM.
A universal programmable Gaussian boson sampler for drug discovery

Abstract Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) has the potential to solve complex graph problems, such as clique finding, which is relevant to drug discovery tasks. However, realizing the full benefits of quantum enhancements requires large-scale quantum hardware with universal programmability. Here we have developed a time-bin-encoded GBS photonic quantum processor that is universal, programmable and software-scalable. Our processor features freely adjustable squeezing parameters and can implement arbitrary unitary operations with a programmable interferometer. Leveraging our processor, we successfully executed clique finding on a 32-node graph, achieving approximately twice the success probability compared to classical sampling. As proof of concept, we implemented a versatile quantum drug discovery platform using this GBS processor, enabling molecular docking and RNA-folding prediction tasks. Our work achieves GBS circuitry with its universal and programmable architecture, advancing GBS toward use in real-world applications.
Prediction of dragon king extreme events using machine learning approaches and its characterizations

In this study, we employ a machine learning approach to infer the complex dynamics of dragon king extreme events. Specifically, we utilize two distinct machine learning techniques: Echo State Network and Gated Recurrent Unit. To do so, we consider three distinct systems for predicting dragon kings behavior: a pair of electronic circuits, coupled logistic maps, and Hindmarsh-Rose neurons. We discover that a few actual time series data points, accompanied by their corresponding system parameters, are adequate to capture dragon kings nature. Initially, we demonstrate that systems under consideration possess characteristics of extreme events, with signal amplitudes greater than the critical amplitude threshold. The presence of dragon kings within these observed extreme events is discerned by the emergence of hump-like behavior in the tail distribution of the probability density function and the statistical measures. Finally, we calculate the root mean square error to determine the accuracy of the predicted dynamics.
Quantum algorithms for grid-based variational time evolution

The simulation of quantum dynamics calls for quantum algorithms working in first quantized grid encodings. Here, we propose a variational quantum algorithm for performing quantum dynamics in first quantization. In addition to the usual reduction in circuit depth conferred by variational approaches, this algorithm also enjoys several advantages compared to previously proposed ones. For instance, variational approaches suffer from the need for a large number of measurements. However, the grid encoding of first quantized Hamiltonians only requires measuring in position and momentum bases, irrespective of the system size. Their combination with variational approaches is therefore particularly attractive. Moreover, heuristic variational forms can be employed to overcome the limitation of the hard decomposition of Trotterized first quantized Hamiltonians into quantum gates. We apply this quantum algorithm to the dynamics of several systems in one and two dimensions. Our simulations exhibit the previously observed numerical instabilities of variational time propagation approaches. We show how they can be significantly attenuated through subspace diagonalization at a cost of an additional <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mml:mi class="MJX-tex-caligraphic" mathvariant="script">O</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mi>M</mml:mi><mml:msup><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msup><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo></mml:math> 2-qubit gates where <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>M</mml:mi></mml:math> is the number of dimensions and <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msup><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mi>M</mml:mi></mml:msup></mml:math> is the total number of grid points.