Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
A Multi-Objective Coverage Path Planning Algorithm for UAVs to Cover Spatially Distributed Regions in Urban Environments

This paper presents a multi-objective coverage flight path planning algorithm that finds minimum length, collision-free, and flyable paths for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in three-dimensional (3D) urban environments inhabiting multiple obstacles for covering spatially distributed regions. In many practical applications, UAVs are often required to fully cover multiple spatially distributed regions located in the 3D urban environments while avoiding obstacles. This problem is relatively complex since it requires the optimization of both inter (e.g., traveling from one region/city to another) and intra-regional (e.g., within a region/city) paths. To solve this complex problem, we find the traversal order of each area of interest (AOI) in the form of a coarse tour (i.e., graph) with the help of an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm by formulating it as a traveling salesman problem (TSP) from the center of each AOI, which is subsequently optimized. The intra-regional path finding problem is solved with the integration of fitting sensors’ footprints sweeps (SFS) and sparse waypoint graphs (SWG) in the AOI. To find a path that covers all accessible points of an AOI, we fit fewer, longest, and smooth SFSs in such a way that most parts of an AOI can be covered with fewer sweeps. Furthermore, the low-cost traversal order of each SFS is computed, and SWG is constructed by connecting the SFSs while respecting the global and local constraints. It finds a global solution (i.e., inter + intra-regional path) without sacrificing the guarantees on computing time, number of turning maneuvers, perfect coverage, path overlapping, and path length. The results obtained from various representative scenarios show that proposed algorithm is able to compute low-cost coverage paths for UAV navigation in urban environments.
What to Pre-Train on? Efficient Intermediate Task Selection

Intermediate task fine-tuning has been shown to culminate in large transfer gains across many NLP tasks.With an abundance of candidate datasets as well as pre-trained language models, it has become infeasible to experiment with all combinations to find the best transfer setting.In this work, we provide a comprehensive comparison of different methods for efficiently identifying beneficial tasks for intermediate transfer learning.We focus on parameter and computationally efficient adapter settings, highlight different data-availability scenarios, and provide expense estimates for each method.We experiment with a diverse set of 42 intermediate and 11 target English classification, multiple choice, question answering, and sequence tagging tasks.Our results demonstrate that efficient embedding based methods, which rely solely on the respective datasets, outperform computational expensive few-shot fine-tuning approaches.Our best methods achieve an average Regret@3 of 1% across all target tasks, demonstrating that we are able to efficiently identify the best datasets for intermediate training.
Nonlinear Correction for Fringe Projection Profilometry With Shifted-Phase Histogram Equalization

Fringe projection profilometry has been widely used for 3-D measurement, but the gamma nonlinearity severely affects the accuracy. Ideally, the histogram of the undistorted phase is uniform, but that of the distorted phase becomes nonuniform. In practice, adequate sampling pixels are required to calculate the phase histogram from modulated fringe patterns. Therefore, this article proposes an effective shifted-phase histogram equalization (SHE) method for nonlinear correction. Based on the finding that the distorted histogram contains three symmetric valleys in theory, if we shift the wrapped phase by <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm 2\pi $ </tex-math></inline-formula> /3, the shifted phases will share the same histogram as the original phase. Without additional patterns, we can easily obtain two shifted phases. Combining the original and two shifted phases, the number of sampling pixels will increase by three times, and we can obtain more accurate histogram than the original phase. To make the histogram of the distorted phase be uniform as that of the undistorted phase, we directly apply histogram equalization on the distorted phase to estimate the undistorted phase. Moreover, this article proposes a spline interpolation optimization (SIO) method to eliminate the discretization error caused by histogram equalization. Simulations and experiments have been carried out, and their results indicate that the proposed SHE method performs better than the conventional phase histogram equalization (PHE) method, and the proposed SIO method can further reduce the discretization error.
A hydrologist's guide to open science

Abstract. Open, accessible, reusable, and reproducible hydrologic research can have a significant positive impact on the scientific community and broader society. While more individuals and organizations within the hydrology community are embracing open science practices, technical (e.g., limited coding experience), resource (e.g., open access fees), and social (e.g., fear of weaknesses being exposed or ideas being scooped) challenges remain. Furthermore, there are a growing number of constantly evolving open science tools, resources, and initiatives that can be overwhelming. These challenges and the ever-evolving nature of the open science landscape may seem insurmountable for hydrologists interested in pursuing open science. Therefore, we propose the general “Open Hydrology Principles” to guide individual and community progress toward open science for research and education and the “Open Hydrology Practical Guide” to improve the accessibility of currently available tools and approaches. We aim to inform and empower hydrologists as they transition to open, accessible, reusable, and reproducible research. We discuss the benefits as well as common open science challenges and how hydrologists can overcome them. The Open Hydrology Principles and Open Hydrology Practical Guide reflect our knowledge of the current state of open hydrology; we recognize that recommendations and suggestions will evolve and expand with emerging open science infrastructures, workflows, and research experiences. Therefore, we encourage hydrologists all over the globe to join in and help advance open science by contributing to the living version of this document and by sharing open hydrology resources in the community-supported repository (https://open-hydrology.github.io, last access: 1 February 2022).
Hierarchical Blockchain-Based Multi-Chaincode Access Control for Securing IoT Systems

The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its attributes of constrained devices and a distributed environment make it difficult to manage such a huge and growing network of devices on a global scale. Existing traditional access-control systems provide security and management to the IoT system. However, these mechanisms are based on central authority management, which introduces issues such as a single point of failure, low scalability, and a lack of privacy. In order to address these problems, many researchers have proposed using blockchain technology to achieve decentralized access control. However, such models are still faced with problems such as a lack of scalability and high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a light-weight hierarchical blockchain-based multi-chaincode access control to protect the security and privacy of IoT systems. A clustering concept with BC managers enables the extended scalability of the proposed system. The architecture of the proposed solution contains three main components: an Edge Blockchain Manager (EBCM), which is responsible for authenticating and authorizing constrained devices locally; an Aggregated Edge Blockchain Manager (AEBCM), which contains various EBCMs to control different clusters and manage ABAC policies, and a Cloud Consortium Blockchain Manager (CCBCM), which ensures that only authorized users access the resources. In our solution, smart contracts are used to self-enforce decentralized AC policies. We implement a proof of concept for our proposed system using the permissioned Hyperledger Fabric. The simulation results and the security analysis show the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed solution.
Motion Estimation and Hand Gesture Recognition-Based Human–UAV Interaction Approach in Real Time

As an alternative to traditional remote controller, research on vision-based hand gesture recognition is being actively conducted in the field of interaction between human and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). However, vision-based gesture system has a challenging problem in recognizing the motion of dynamic gesture because it is difficult to estimate the pose of multi-dimensional hand gestures in 2D images. This leads to complex algorithms, including tracking in addition to detection, to recognize dynamic gestures, but they are not suitable for human-UAV interaction (HUI) systems that require safe design with high real-time performance. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a hybrid hand gesture system that combines an inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based motion capture system and a vision-based gesture system to increase real-time performance. First, IMU-based commands and vision-based commands are divided according to whether drone operation commands are continuously input. Second, IMU-based control commands are intuitively mapped to allow the UAV to move in the same direction by utilizing estimated orientation sensed by a thumb-mounted micro-IMU, and vision-based control commands are mapped with hand's appearance through real-time object detection. The proposed system is verified in a simulation environment through efficiency evaluation with dynamic gestures of the existing vision-based system in addition to usability comparison with traditional joystick controller conducted for applicants with no experience in manipulation. As a result, it proves that it is a safer and more intuitive HUI design with a 0.089 ms processing speed and average lap time that takes about 19 s less than the joystick controller. In other words, it shows that it is viable as an alternative to existing HUI.
Fast Multi-UAV Path Planning for Optimal Area Coverage in Aerial Sensing Applications

This paper deals with the problems and the solutions of fast coverage path planning (CPP) for multiple UAVs. Through this research, the problem is solved and analyzed with both a software framework and algorithm. The implemented algorithm generates a back-and-forth path based on the onboard sensor footprint. In addition, three methods are proposed for the individual path assignment: simple bin packing trajectory planner (SIMPLE-BINPAT); bin packing trajectory planner (BINPAT); and Powell optimized bin packing trajectory planner (POWELL-BINPAT). The three methods use heuristic algorithms, linear sum assignment, and minimization techniques to optimize the planning task. Furthermore, this approach is implemented with applicable software to be easily used by first responders such as police and firefighters. In addition, simulation and real-world experiments were performed using UAVs with RGB and thermal cameras. The results show that POWELL-BINPAT generates optimal UAV paths to complete the entire mission in minimum time. Furthermore, the computation time for the trajectory generation task decreases compared to other techniques in the literature. This research is part of a real project funded by the H2020 FASTER Project, with grant ID: 833507.
Differential Private Knowledge Transfer for Privacy-Preserving Cross-Domain Recommendation

Cross Domain Recommendation (CDR) has been popularly studied to alleviate the cold-start and data sparsity problem commonly existed in recommender systems. CDR models can improve the recommendation performance of a target domain by leveraging the data of other source domains. However, most existing CDR models assume information can directly 'transfer across the bridge', ignoring the privacy issues. To solve the privacy concern in CDR, in this paper, we propose a novel two stage based privacy-preserving CDR framework (PriCDR). In the first stage, we propose two methods, i.e., Johnson-Lindenstrauss Transform (JLT) based and Sparse-awareJLT (SJLT) based, to publish the rating matrix of the source domain using differential privacy. We theoretically analyze the privacy and utility of our proposed differential privacy based rating publishing methods. In the second stage, we propose a novel heterogeneous CDR model (HeteroCDR), which uses deep auto-encoder and deep neural network to model the published source rating matrix and target rating matrix respectively. To this end, PriCDR can not only protect the data privacy of the source domain, but also alleviate the data sparsity of the source domain. We conduct experiments on two benchmark datasets and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed PriCDR and HeteroCDR.
A Deep Learning Framework Performance Evaluation to Use YOLO in Nvidia Jetson Platform

Deep learning-based object detection technology can efficiently infer results by utilizing graphics processing units (GPU). However, when using general deep learning frameworks in embedded systems and mobile devices, processing functionality is limited. This allows deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow-Lite (TF-Lite) and TensorRT (TRT) to be optimized for different hardware. Therefore, this paper introduces a performance inference method that fuses the Jetson monitoring tool with TensorFlow and TRT source code on the Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier platform. In addition, central processing unit (CPU) utilization, GPU utilization, object accuracy, latency, and power consumption of the deep learning framework were compared and analyzed. The model is You Look Only Once Version4 (YOLOv4), and the dataset uses Common Objects in Context (COCO) and PASCAL Visual Object Classes (VOC). We confirmed that using TensorFlow results in high latency. We also confirmed that TensorFlow-TensorRT (TF-TRT) and TRT using Tensor Cores provide the most efficiency. However, it was confirmed that TF-Lite showed the lowest performance because it utilizes a GPU limited to mobile devices. Through this paper, we think that when developing deep learning-related object detection technology on the Nvidia Jetson platform or desktop environment, services and research can be efficiently conducted through measurement results.
Predicting Breast Tumor Malignancy Using Deep ConvNeXt Radiomics and Quality-Based Score Pooling in Ultrasound Sequences

Breast cancer needs to be detected early to reduce mortality rate. Ultrasound imaging (US) could significantly enhance diagnosing cases with dense breasts. Most of the existing computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems employ a single ultrasound image for the breast tumor to extract features to classify it as benign or malignant. However, the accuracy of such CAD system is limited due to the large tumor size and shape variation, irregular and ambiguous tumor boundaries, and low signal-to-noise ratio in ultrasound images due to their noisy nature and the significant similarity between normal and abnormal tissues. To handle these issues, we propose a deep-learning-based radiomics method based on breast US sequences in this paper. The proposed approach involves three main components: radiomic features extraction based on a deep learning network, so-called ConvNeXt, a malignancy score pooling mechanism, and visual interpretations. Specifically, we employ the ConvNeXt network, a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) trained using the vision transformer style. We also propose an efficient pooling mechanism to fuse the malignancy scores of each breast US sequence frame based on image-quality statistics. The ablation study and experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves competitive results compared to other CNN-based methods.
Carrying Out CNN Channel Pruning in a White Box

Channel pruning has been long studied to compress convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which significantly reduces the overall computation. Prior works implement channel pruning in an unexplainable manner, which tends to reduce the final classification errors while failing to consider the internal influence of each channel. In this article, we conduct channel pruning in a white box. Through deep visualization of feature maps activated by different channels, we observe that different channels have a varying contribution to different categories in image classification. Inspired by this, we choose to preserve channels contributing to most categories. Specifically, to model the contribution of each channel to differentiating categories, we develop a class-wise mask for each channel, implemented in a dynamic training manner with respect to the input image's category. On the basis of the learned class-wise mask, we perform a global voting mechanism to remove channels with less category discrimination. Lastly, a fine-tuning process is conducted to recover the performance of the pruned model. To our best knowledge, it is the first time that CNN interpretability theory is considered to guide channel pruning. Extensive experiments on representative image classification tasks demonstrate the superiority of our White-Box over many state-of-the-arts (SOTAs). For instance, on CIFAR-10, it reduces 65.23% floating point operations per seconds (FLOPs) with even 0.62% accuracy improvement for ResNet-110. On ILSVRC-2012, White-Box achieves a 45.6% FLOP reduction with only a small loss of 0.83% in the top-1 accuracy for ResNet-50. Code is available at https://github.com/zyxxmu/White-Box.
E-Myscéal: Embedding-based Interactive Lifelog Retrieval System for LSC'22

Developing interactive lifelog retrieval systems is a growing research area. There are many international competitions for lifelog retrieval that encourage researchers to build effective systems that can address the multimodal retrieval challenge of lifelogs. The Lifelog Search Challenge (LSC) was first organised in 2018 and is currently the only interactive benchmarking evaluation for lifelog retrieval systems. Participating systems should have an accurate search engine and a user-friendly interface that can help users to retrieve relevant content. In this paper, we upgrade our previous MyScéal, which was the top performing system in LSC'20 and LSC'21, and present E-MyScéal for LSC'22, which includes a completely different search engine. Instead of using visual concepts for retrieval such as MyScéal, the new E-MyScéal employs an embedding technique that facilitates novice users who are not familiar with the concepts. Our experiments show that the new search engine can find relevant images in the first place in the ranked list, four a quarter of the LSC'21 queries (26%) by using just the first hint from the textual information need. Regarding the user interface, we still keep the simple non-faceted design as in the previous version but improve the event view browsing in order to better support novice users.
An analysis of energy consumption and carbon footprints of cryptocurrencies and possible solutions

There is an urgent need to control global warming caused by humans to achieve a sustainable future. CO2 levels are rising steadily, and while countries worldwide are actively moving toward the sustainability goals proposed during the Paris Agreement in 2015, we are still a long way to go from achieving a sustainable mode of global operation. The increased popularity of cryptocurrencies since the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009 has been accompanied by an increasing trend in greenhouse gas emissions and high electrical energy consumption. Popular energy tracking studies (e.g., Digiconomist and the Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index (CBECI)) have estimated energy consumption ranges from 29.96 ​TWh to 135.12 ​TWh and 26.41 ​TWh to 176.98 ​TWh, respectively for Bitcoin as of July 2021, which are equivalent to the energy consumption of countries such as Sweden and Thailand. The latest estimate by Digiconomist on carbon footprints shows a 64.18 MtCO2 emission by Bitcoin as of July 2021, close to the emissions by Greece and Oman. This review compiles estimates made by various studies from 2018 to 2021. We compare the energy consumption and carbon footprints of these cryptocurrencies with countries around the world and centralized transaction methods such as Visa. We identify the problems associated with cryptocurrencies and propose solutions that can help reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprints. Finally, we present case studies on cryptocurrency networks, namely, Ethereum 2.0 and Pi Network, with a discussion on how they can solve some of the challenges we have identified.
Underwater Image Enhancement via Adaptive Group Attention-Based Multiscale Cascade Transformer

The absorption and scattering caused by the underwater medium degrade the quality of underwater optical imaging, which limits the further development of underwater tasks. Recently, Transformer-based methods have shown the same excellent performance as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in various vision tasks, but the huge parameters of such networks hinder their application deployment. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive group attention (AGA), which can dynamically select visually complementary channels based on the dependencies, reducing the number of further attention parameters. The AGA is applied in the Swin Transformer module and used to design an end-to-end underwater image enhancement network. The network also introduces the multiscale cascade module and the channel attention mechanism. This paper conducted ablation study, qualitative and quantitative comparisons on public datasets, and the results show that the application of AGA significantly compresses the model size while ensuring performance, and other application components have significant gain on the network. Compared with other advanced methods, the network in this paper has outstanding performance.
Unleashing the potential of digital pathology data by training computer-aided diagnosis models without human annotations

The digitalization of clinical workflows and the increasing performance of deep learning algorithms are paving the way towards new methods for tackling cancer diagnosis. However, the availability of medical specialists to annotate digitized images and free-text diagnostic reports does not scale with the need for large datasets required to train robust computer-aided diagnosis methods that can target the high variability of clinical cases and data produced. This work proposes and evaluates an approach to eliminate the need for manual annotations to train computer-aided diagnosis tools in digital pathology. The approach includes two components, to automatically extract semantically meaningful concepts from diagnostic reports and use them as weak labels to train convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for histopathology diagnosis. The approach is trained (through 10-fold cross-validation) on 3'769 clinical images and reports, provided by two hospitals and tested on over 11'000 images from private and publicly available datasets. The CNN, trained with automatically generated labels, is compared with the same architecture trained with manual labels. Results show that combining text analysis and end-to-end deep neural networks allows building computer-aided diagnosis tools that reach solid performance (micro-accuracy = 0.908 at image-level) based only on existing clinical data without the need for manual annotations.