Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Typicality of Heisenberg scaling precision in multimode quantum metrology

We propose a measurement setup reaching Heisenberg scaling precision for the estimation of any distributed parameter $\varphi$ (not necessarily a phase) encoded into a generic $M$-port linear network composed only of passive elements. The scheme proposed can be easily implemented from an experimental point of view since it employs only Gaussian states and Gaussian measurements. Due to the complete generality of the estimation problem considered, it was predicted that one would need to carry out an adaptive procedure which involves both the input states employed and the measurement performed at the output; we show that this is not necessary: Heisenberg scaling precision is still achievable by only adapting a single stage. The non-adapted stage only affects the value of a pre-factor multiplying the Heisenberg scaling precision: we show that, for large values of $M$ and a random (unbiased) choice of the non-adapted stage, this pre-factor takes a typical value which can be controlled through the encoding of the parameter $\varphi$ into the linear network.
From the Digital Data Revolution toward a Digital Society: Pervasiveness of Artificial Intelligence

Technological progress has led to powerful computers and communication technologies that penetrate nowadays all areas of science, industry and our private lives. As a consequence, all these areas are generating digital traces of data amounting to big data resources. This opens unprecedented opportunities but also challenges toward the analysis, management, interpretation and responsible usage of such data. In this paper, we discuss these developments and the fields that have been particularly effected by the digital revolution. Our discussion is AI-centered showing domain-specific prospects but also intricacies for the method development in artificial intelligence. For instance, we discuss recent breakthroughs in deep learning algorithms and artificial intelligence as well as advances in text mining and natural language processing, e.g., word-embedding methods that enable the processing of large amounts of text data from diverse sources such as governmental reports, blog entries in social media or clinical health records of patients. Furthermore, we discuss the necessity of further improving general artificial intelligence approaches and for utilizing advanced learning paradigms. This leads to arguments for the establishment of statistical artificial intelligence. Finally, we provide an outlook on important aspects of future challenges that are of crucial importance for the development of all fields, including ethical AI and the influence of bias on AI systems. As potential end-point of this development, we define digital society as the asymptotic limiting state of digital economy that emerges from fully connected information and communication technologies enabling the pervasiveness of AI. Overall, our discussion provides a perspective on the elaborate relatedness of digital data and AI systems.
Quantum stabilizer codes, lattices, and CFTs

There is a rich connection between classical error-correcting codes, Euclidean lattices, and chiral conformal field theories. Here we show that quantum error-correcting codes, those of the stabilizer type, are related to Lorentzian lattices and non-chiral CFTs. More specifically, real self-dual stabilizer codes can be associated with even self-dual Lorentzian lattices, and thus define Narain CFTs. We dub the resulting theories code CFTs and study their properties. T-duality transformations of a code CFT, at the level of the underlying code, reduce to code equivalences. By means of such equivalences, any stabilizer code can be reduced to a graph code. We can therefore represent code CFTs by graphs. We study code CFTs with small central charge $c=n\leq 12$, and find many interesting examples. Among them is a non-chiral $E_8$ theory, which is based on the root lattice of $E_8$ understood as an even self-dual Lorentzian lattice. By analyzing all graphs with $n\leq 8$ nodes we find many pairs and triples of physically distinct isospectral theories. We also construct numerous modular invariant functions satisfying all the basic properties expected of the CFT partition function, yet which are not partition functions of any known CFTs. We consider the ensemble average over all code theories, calculate the corresponding partition function, and discuss its possible holographic interpretation. The paper is written in a self-contained manner, and includes an extensive pedagogical introduction and many explicit examples.
WikiAsp: A Dataset for Multi-domain Aspect-based Summarization

Abstract Aspect-based summarization is the task of generating focused summaries based on specific points of interest. Such summaries aid efficient analysis of text, such as quickly understanding reviews or opinions from different angles. However, due to large differences in the type of aspects for different domains (e.g., sentiment, product features), the development of previous models has tended to be domain-specific. In this paper, we propose WikiAsp,1 a large-scale dataset for multi-domain aspect- based summarization that attempts to spur research in the direction of open-domain aspect-based summarization. Specifically, we build the dataset using Wikipedia articles from 20 different domains, using the section titles and boundaries of each article as a proxy for aspect annotation. We propose several straightforward baseline models for this task and conduct experiments on the dataset. Results highlight key challenges that existing summarization models face in this setting, such as proper pronoun handling of quoted sources and consistent explanation of time-sensitive events.
DynO: Dynamic Onloading of Deep Neural Networks from Cloud to Device

Recently, there has been an explosive growth of mobile and embedded applications using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). To alleviate their excessive computational demands, developers have traditionally resorted to cloud offloading, inducing high infrastructure costs and a strong dependence on networking conditions. On the other end, the emergence of powerful SoCs is gradually enabling on-device execution. Nonetheless, low- and mid-tier platforms still struggle to run state-of-the-art CNNs sufficiently. In this article, we present DynO, a distributed inference framework that combines the best of both worlds to address several challenges, such as device heterogeneity, varying bandwidth, and multi-objective requirements. Key components that enable this are its novel CNN-specific data packing method, which exploits the variability of precision needs in different parts of the CNN when onloading computation, and its novel scheduler, which jointly tunes the partition point and transferred data precision at runtime to adapt inference to its execution environment. Quantitative evaluation shows that DynO outperforms the current state of the art, improving throughput by over an order of magnitude over device-only execution and up to 7.9× over competing CNN offloading systems, with up to 60× less data transferred.
Probabilistic grammars for equation discovery

Equation discovery, also known as symbolic regression, is a type of automated modeling that discovers scientific laws, expressed in the form of equations, from observed data and expert knowledge. Deterministic grammars, such as context-free grammars, have been used to limit the search spaces in equation discovery by providing hard constraints that specify which equations to consider and which not. In this paper, we propose the use of probabilistic context-free grammars in equation discovery. Such grammars encode soft constraints, specifying a prior probability distribution on the space of possible equations. We show that probabilistic grammars can be used to elegantly and flexibly formulate the parsimony principle, that favors simpler equations, through probabilities attached to the rules in the grammars. We demonstrate that the use of probabilistic, rather than deterministic grammars, in the context of a Monte-Carlo algorithm for grammar-based equation discovery, leads to more efficient equation discovery. Finally, by specifying prior probability distributions over equation spaces, the foundations are laid for Bayesian approaches to equation discovery.
Successive Point-of-Interest Recommendation With Local Differential Privacy

A point-of-interest (POI) recommendation system performs an important role in location-based services because it can help people to explore new locations and promote advertisers to launch advertisements at appropriate locations. The existing POI recommendation systems require raw check-in history of users, which might cause location privacy violations. Although there have been several matrix factorization (MF) based privacy-preserving recommendation systems, they can only focus on user-POI relationships without considering the human movements in check-in history. To tackle this problem, we design a successive POI recommendation framework with local differential privacy, named SPIREL. SPIREL uses two types of information derived from the check-in history as input for the factorization: a transition pattern between two POIs and the visit counts of POIs. We propose a novel objective function for learning the user-POI and POI-POI relationships simultaneously. We further integrate local differential privacy mechanisms in our proposed framework to prevent potential location privacy breaches. Experiments using four public datasets demonstrate that SPIREL achieves better POI recommendation quality while accomplishing stronger privacy protection.
Nova: Recursive Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Folding Schemes

We introduce a new approach to realize incrementally verifiable computation (IVC), in which the prover recursively proves the correct execution of incremental computations of the form $$y=F^{(\ell )}(x)$$ , where F is a (potentially non-deterministic) computation, x is the input, y is the output, and $$\ell > 0$$ . Unlike prior approaches to realize IVC, our approach avoids succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (SNARKs) entirely and arguments of knowledge in general. Instead, we introduce and employ folding schemes, a weaker, simpler, and more efficiently-realizable primitive, which reduces the task of checking two instances in some relation to the task of checking a single instance. We construct a folding scheme for a characterization of NP and show that it implies an IVC scheme with improved efficiency characteristics: (1) the “recursion overhead” (i.e., the number of steps that the prover proves in addition to proving the execution of F) is a constant and it is dominated by two group scalar multiplications expressed as a circuit (this is the smallest recursion overhead in the literature), and (2) the prover’s work at each step is dominated by two multiexponentiations of size O(|F|), providing the fastest prover in the literature. The size of a proof is O(|F|) group elements, but we show that using a variant of an existing zkSNARK, the prover can prove the knowledge of a valid proof succinctly and in zero-knowledge with $$O(\log {|F|})$$ group elements. Finally, our approach neither requires a trusted setup nor FFTs, so it can be instantiated efficiently with any cycles of elliptic curves where DLOG is hard.
Learn Fine-Grained Adaptive Loss for Multiple Anatomical Landmark Detection in Medical Images

Automatic and accurate detection of anatomical landmarks is an essential operation in medical image analysis with a multitude of applications. Recent deep learning methods have improved results by directly encoding the appearance of the captured anatomy with the likelihood maps (i.e., heatmaps). However, most current solutions overlook another essence of heatmap regression, the objective metric for regressing target heatmaps and rely on hand-crafted heuristics to set the target precision, thus being usually cumbersome and task-specific. In this paper, we propose a novel learning-to-learn framework for landmark detection to optimize the neural network and the target precision simultaneously. The pivot of this work is to leverage the reinforcement learning (RL) framework to search objective metrics for regressing multiple heatmaps dynamically during the training process, thus avoiding setting problem-specific target precision. We also introduce an early-stop strategy for active termination of the RL agent's interaction that adapts the optimal precision for separate targets considering exploration-exploitation tradeoffs. This approach shows better stability in training and improved localization accuracy in inference. Extensive experimental results on two different applications of landmark localization: 1) our in-house prenatal ultrasound (US) dataset and 2) the publicly available dataset of cephalometric X-Ray landmark detection, demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. Our proposed framework is general and shows the potential to improve the efficiency of anatomical landmark detection.
Entanglement-assisted capacity regions and protocol designs for quantum multiple-access channels

We solve the entanglement-assisted (EA) classical capacity region of quantum multiple-access channels with an arbitrary number of senders. As an example, we consider the bosonic thermal-loss multiple-access channel and solve the one-shot capacity region enabled by an entanglement source composed of sender-receiver pairwise two-mode squeezed vacuum states. The EA capacity region is strictly larger than the capacity region without entanglement-assistance. With two-mode squeezed vacuum states as the source and phase modulation as the encoding, we also design practical receiver protocols to realize the entanglement advantages. Four practical receiver designs, based on optical parametric amplifiers, are given and analyzed. In the parameter region of a large noise background, the receivers can enable a simultaneous rate advantage of 82.0% for each sender. Due to teleportation and superdense coding, our results for EA classical communication can be directly extended to EA quantum communication at half of the rates. Our work provides a unique and practical network communication scenario where entanglement can be beneficial.
Detecting an Itinerant Optical Photon Twice without Destroying It

Nondestructive quantum measurements are central for quantum physics applications ranging from quantum sensing to quantum computing and quantum communication. Employing the toolbox of cavity quantum electrodynamics, we here concatenate two identical nondestructive photon detectors to repeatedly detect and track a single photon propagating through a $60\,\mathrm{m}$ long optical fiber. By demonstrating that the combined signal-to-noise ratio of the two detectors surpasses each single one by about two orders of magnitude, we experimentally verify a key practical benefit of cascaded non-demolition detectors compared to conventional absorbing devices.
Uplink vs. Downlink: Machine Learning-Based Quality Prediction for HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming

Streaming video is responsible for the bulk of Internet traffic these days. For this reason, Internet providers and network operators try to make predictions and assessments about the streaming quality for an end user. Current monitoring solutions are based on a variety of different machine learning approaches. The challenge for providers and operators nowadays is that existing approaches require large amounts of data. In this work, the most relevant quality of experience metrics, i.e., the initial playback delay, the video streaming quality, video quality changes, and video rebuffering events, are examined using a voluminous data set of more than 13,000 YouTube video streaming runs that were collected with the native YouTube mobile app. Three Machine Learning models are developed and compared to estimate playback behavior based on uplink request information. The main focus has been on developing a lightweight approach using as few features and as little data as possible, while maintaining state-of-the-art performance.
Scalable robust graph and feature extraction for arbitrary vessel networks in large volumetric datasets

Abstract Background Recent advances in 3D imaging technologies provide novel insights to researchers and reveal finer and more detail of examined specimen, especially in the biomedical domain, but also impose huge challenges regarding scalability for automated analysis algorithms due to rapidly increasing dataset sizes. In particular, existing research towards automated vessel network analysis does not always consider memory requirements of proposed algorithms and often generates a large number of spurious branches for structures consisting of many voxels. Additionally, very often these algorithms have further restrictions such as the limitation to tree topologies or relying on the properties of specific image modalities. Results We propose a scalable iterative pipeline (in terms of computational cost, required main memory and robustness) that extracts an annotated abstract graph representation from the foreground segmentation of vessel networks of arbitrary topology and vessel shape. The novel iterative refinement process is controlled by a single, dimensionless, a-priori determinable parameter. Conclusions We are able to, for the first time, analyze the topology of volumes of roughly 1 TB on commodity hardware, using the proposed pipeline. We demonstrate improved robustness in terms of surface noise, vessel shape deviation and anisotropic resolution compared to the state of the art. An implementation of the presented pipeline is publicly available in version 5.1 of the volume rendering and processing engine Voreen.
A News Big Data Analysis of Issues in Higher Education in Korea amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper examines the main issues regarding higher education in Korea—where college education experienced minimal interruptions—during the COVID-19 pandemic through a big data analysis of news articles. By analyzing policy responses from the government and colleges and examining prominent discourses on higher education, it provides a context for discussing the implications of COVID-19 on education policy and what the post-pandemic era would bring. To this end, we utilized BIgKinds, a big data research solution for news articles offered by the Korea Press Foundation, to select a total of 2636 media reports and conducted Topic Modelling based on LDA algorithms using NetMiner. The analyses are split into three distinct periods of COVID-19 spread in the country. Some notable topics from the first phase are remote class, tuition refund, returning Chinese international students, and normalization of college education. Preparations for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), contact and contactless classes, preparations for early admissions, and supporting job market candidates are extracted for the second phase. For the third phase, the extracted topics include CSAT and college-specific exams, quarantine on campus, social relations on campus, and support for job market candidates. The results confirmed widespread public attention to the relevant issues but also showed empirically that the measures taken by the government and college administrations to combat COVID-19 had limited visibility among media reports. It is important to note that timely and appropriate responses from the government and colleges have enabled continuation of higher education in some capacity during the pandemic. In addition to the media’s role in reporting issues of public interest, there is also a need for continued research and discussion on higher education amid COVID-19 to help effect actual results from various policy efforts.
GRASP: Generic Framework for Health Status Representation Learning Based on Incorporating Knowledge from Similar Patients

Deep learning models have been applied to many healthcare tasks based on electronic medical records (EMR) data and shown substantial performance. Existing methods commonly embed the records of a single patient into a representation for medical tasks. Such methods learn inadequate representations and lead to inferior performance, especially when the patient’s data is sparse or low-quality. Aiming at the above problem, we propose GRASP, a generic framework for healthcare models. For a given patient, GRASP first finds patients in the dataset who have similar conditions and similar results (i.e., the similar patients), and then enhances the representation learning and prognosis of the given patient by leveraging knowledge extracted from these similar patients. GRASP defines similarities with different meanings between patients for different clinical tasks, and finds similar patients with useful information accordingly, and then learns cohort representation to extract valuable knowledge contained in the similar patients. The cohort information is fused with the current patient’s representation to conduct final clinical tasks. Experimental evaluations on two real-world datasets show that GRASP can be seamlessly integrated into state-of-the-art models with consistent performance improvements. Besides, under the guidance of medical experts, we verified the findings extracted by GRASP, and the findings are consistent with the existing medical knowledge, indicating that GRASP can generate useful insights for relevant predictions.
PupilEXT: Flexible Open-Source Platform for High-Resolution Pupillometry in Vision Research

The human pupil behavior has gained increased attention due to the discovery of the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells and the afferent pupil control path’s role as a biomarker for cognitive processes. Diameter changes in the range of 10 –2 mm are of interest, requiring reliable and characterized measurement equipment to accurately detect neurocognitive effects on the pupil. Mostly commercial solutions are used as measurement devices in pupillometry which is associated with high investments. Moreover, commercial systems rely on closed software, restricting conclusions about the used pupil-tracking algorithms. Here, we developed an open-source pupillometry platform consisting of hardware and software competitive with high-end commercial stereo eye-tracking systems. Our goal was to make a professional remote pupil measurement pipeline for laboratory conditions accessible for everyone. This work’s core outcome is an integrated cross-platform (macOS, Windows and Linux) pupillometry software called PupilEXT, featuring a user-friendly graphical interface covering the relevant requirements of professional pupil response research. We offer a selection of six state-of-the-art open-source pupil detection algorithms (Starburst, Swirski, ExCuSe, ElSe, PuRe and PuReST) to perform the pupil measurement. A developed 120-fps pupillometry demo system was able to achieve a calibration accuracy of 0.003 mm and an averaged temporal pupil measurement detection accuracy of 0.0059 mm in stereo mode. The PupilEXT software has extended features in pupil detection, measurement validation, image acquisition, data acquisition, offline pupil measurement, camera calibration, stereo vision, data visualization and system independence, all combined in a single open-source interface, available at https://github.com/openPupil/Open-PupilEXT .