Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
A Deep Cross-Modality Hashing Network for SAR and Optical Remote Sensing Images Retrieval

The content-based remote sensing image retrieval (CBRSIR) has recently become a hot topic due to its wide applications in analysis of remote sensing data. However, since conventional CBRSIR is unsuitable in harsh environments, this article focuses on the cross-modality CBRSIR (CM-CBRSIR) between synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and optical images. Besides the large interclass and small intraclass in CBRSIR, CM-CBRSIR is limited by prominent modality discrepancy caused by different imaging mechanisms. To address this limitation, this study proposes a deep cross-modality hashing network. First, we transform optical images with three channels into four different types of single-channel images to increase diversity of the training modalities. This helps the network to mainly focus on extracting the contour and texture shared features and makes it less sensitive to color information for images across modalities. Second, we combine any type of randomly selected transformed images and its corresponding SAR or optical images to form image pairs that are fed into the networks. The training strategy, with paired image data, eliminates the large cross-modality variations caused by different modalities. Finally, the triplet loss, in combination with the hash function, helps the modal to extract the discriminative features of images and upgrade the retrieval efficiency. To further evaluate the proposed modality, we construct a SAR-optical dual-modality remote sensing image dataset containing 12 categories. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method with regards to efficiency and generality.
Recognition of Different Types of Leukocytes Using YOLOv2 and Optimized Bag-of-Features

White blood cells (WBCs) protect human body against different types of infections including fungal, parasitic, viral, and bacterial. The detection of abnormal regions in WBCs is a difficult task. Therefore a method is proposed for the localization of WBCs based on YOLOv2-Nucleus-Cytoplasm, which contains darkNet-19 as a basenetwork of the YOLOv2 model. In this model features are extracted from LeakyReLU-18 of darkNet-19 and supplied as an input to the YOLOv2 model. The YOLOv2-Nucleus-Cytoplasm model localizes and classifies the WBCs with maximum score labels. It also localize the WBCs into the blast and non-blast cells. After localization, the bag-of-features are extracted and optimized by using particle swarm optimization(PSO). The improved feature vector is fed to classifiers i.e., optimized naïve Bayes (O-NB) & optimized discriminant analysis (O-DA) for WBCs classification. The experiments are performed on LISC, ALL-IDB1, and ALL-IDB2 datasets.
Use of mixed reality for surgery planning: Assessment and development workflow

Meticulous preoperative planning is an important part of any surgery to achieve high levels of precision and avoid complications. Conventional medical 2D images and their corresponding three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions are the main components of an efficient planning system. However, these systems still use flat screens for visualisation of 3D information, thus losing depth information which is crucial for 3D spatial understanding. Currently, cutting-edge mixed reality systems have shown to be a worthy alternative to provide 3D information to clinicians. In this work, we describe development details of the different steps in the workflow for the clinical use of mixed reality, including results from a qualitative user evaluation and clinical use-cases in laparoscopic liver surgery and heart surgery. Our findings indicate a very high general acceptance of mixed reality devices with our applications and they were consistently rated high for device, visualisation and interaction areas in our questionnaire. Furthermore, our clinical use-cases demonstrate that the surgeons perceived the HoloLens to be useful, recommendable to other surgeons and also provided a definitive answer at a multi-disciplinary team meeting.
Latency impact on Quality of Experience in a virtual reality simulator for remote control of machines

In this article, we have investigated a VR simulator of a forestry crane used for loading logs onto a truck. We have mainly studied the Quality of Experience (QoE) aspects that may be relevant for task completion, and whether there are any discomfort related symptoms experienced during the task execution. QoE experiments were designed to capture the general subjective experience of using the simulator, and to study task performance. The focus was to study the effects of latency on the subjective experience, with regards to delays in the crane control interface. Subjective studies were performed with controlled delays added to the display update and hand controller (joystick) signals. The added delays ranged from 0 to 30 ms for the display update, and from 0 to 800 ms for the hand controller. We found a strong effect on latency in the display update and a significant negative effect for 800 ms added delay on latency in the hand controller (in total approx. 880 ms latency including the system delay). The Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) gave significantly higher scores after the experiment compared to before the experiment, but a majority of the participants reported experiencing only minor symptoms. Some test subjects ceased the test before finishing due to their symptoms, particularly due to the added latency in the display update.
Betting on Bitcoin: How social collectives shape cryptocurrency markets

Market-shaping research assumes that firms are the primary actor to lead, manage, and respond to the formation of markets. This viewpoint is increasingly being challenged, but empirical insights explaining the roles, resources and actions of actors other than firms shaping markets remain limited. We address this gap in knowledge by drawing on insights from an in-depth ethnography of market-shaping in the context of cryptocurrency communities. Our theoretical and empirical contributions consist of a typology that highlights four distinct roles performed by individuals shaping cryptocurrency markets. We furthermore identify six micro-level market actions, and delineate a novel theoretical model and propositions outlining the pathways with which these actions impact market size, market offerings, as well as market functioning. This study thereby establishes an important avenue for future research, and offers managerial guidelines enabling practitioners attempting to benefit from cryptocurrencies.
When Blockchain Meets SGX: An Overview, Challenges, and Open Issues

As a decentralized, public, and digital ledger technology in Peer-to-Peer network, blockchain has received much attention from various fields, including finance, healthcare, supply chain, etc.However, some challenges (e.g., scalability, privacy, and security issues) severely affects the wide adoption of blockchain technology.Recently, Intel software guard extensions (SGX), as new trusted computing technologies, have provided a new solution to the above challenges in the blockchain area.Although many studies have focused on using SGX technology to enhance their schemes in the blockchain areas, no comprehensive survey has systematically analyzed and delineated these studies.This article is the first to systematically discuss the application status of SGX in the blockchain area.In this article, we study the scheme designs, advantages, and disadvantages of the existing works using a six-layer hierarchical structure of the blockchain.We also summarize the functions of SGX and formally analyze the advantages and disadvantages of SGX.Finally, we review the remaining challenges and present a list of possible directions for future research.
Quarantined! Examining the Effects of a Community-Wide Moderation Intervention on Reddit

Should social media platforms override a community’s self-policing when it repeatedly break rules? What actions can they consider? In light of this debate, platforms have begun experimenting with softer alternatives to outright bans. We examine one such intervention called quarantining, that impedes direct access to and promotion of controversial communities. Specifically, we present two case studies of what happened when Reddit quarantined the influential communities r/TheRedPill (TRP) and r/The_Donald (TD). Using over 85M Reddit posts, we apply causal inference methods to examine the quarantine’s effects on TRP and TD. We find that the quarantine made it more difficult to recruit new members: new user influx to TRP and TD decreased by 79.5% and 58%, respectively. Despite quarantining, existing users’ misogyny and racism levels remained unaffected. We conclude by reflecting on the effectiveness of this design friction in limiting the influence of toxic communities and discuss broader implications for content moderation.
A Common Method of Share Authentication in Image Secret Sharing

Because of the importance of digital images and their extensive application to digital watermarking, block chain, access control, identity authentication, distributive storage in the cloud and so on, image secret sharing (ISS) is attracting ever-increasing attention. Share authentication is an important issue in its practical application. However, most ISS schemes with share authentication ability require a dealer to participate in the authentication (namely, dealer participatory authentication). In this paper, we design an ISS for a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$(k,n)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -threshold with separate share authentication abilities of both dealer participatory authentication and dealer nonparticipatory authentication. The advantages of polynomial-based ISS and visual secret sharing (VSS) are skillfully fused to achieve these two authentication abilities without sending a share by using a screening operation. In addition, the designed scheme has the characteristics of low decryption (authentication) complexity, lossless decryption and no pixel expansion. Experiments and theoretical analyses are performed to show the effectiveness of the designed scheme.
Robust and Efficient High-Dimensional Quantum State Tomography

The exponential growth in Hilbert space with increasing size of a quantum system means that accurately characterising the system becomes significantly harder with system dimension d. We show that self-guided tomography is a practical, efficient, and robust technique of measuring higher-dimensional quantum states. The achieved fidelities are over 99.9% for qutrits (d=3) and ququints (d=5), and 99.1% for quvigints (d=20), the highest values ever realised for qudits. We demonstrate robustness against experimental sources of noise, both statistical and environmental. The technique is applicable to any higher-dimensional system, from a collection of qubits through to individual qudits, and any physical realisation, be it photonic, superconducting, ionic, or spin.
Construction and empirical research on acceptance model of service robots applied in hotel industry

Purpose Robots, as the crystallization of new artificial intelligence, are being applied in various fields, especially the hotel industry. They are seizing the opportunities, using technology to improve the overall quality and comprehensive competitiveness. However, they also cause many problems due to practical limitations. The purpose of this paper is to study customers' recognition and acceptance of hotel service robots to guide the successful promotion of this technology. Design/methodology/approach This paper proposed a comprehensive model based on the theory of planned behavior, the technology acceptance model and then the perceived value-based acceptance model. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, grouped regression analysis and path analysis was adopted to validate the impacts of each variable to obtain the final reliable model using data collected from hotel guests using a self-designed questionnaire. Findings The empirical research based on the theoretical model shows that the constructed conceptual model can thoroughly explain the influencing factors of hotel robot acceptance, enrich the acceptance theory and provide academic support for the use and popularization of hotel service robots. Among all variables, attitude, usefulness and perceived value are the factors that have the greatest impact on acceptance. They have significant differences in the effects of adjustment variables such as gender, educational level, whether hotel robots have been used, and whether other robot services have been experienced on different paths in the model. Practical implications This paper explored the customer acceptance of service robots in hotels, helped to understand the process of decision-making on service robot selection and contributed to the theoretical extension of the hospitality industry. The work guides hotel management to promote better-personalized products and services of robot technology in the hospitality industries. Originality/value The acceptance study on hotel service robots provides insight into the hotel industry to understand customers' attitudes and acceptance of emerging technology.
Earthquake Detection and P-Wave Arrival Time Picking Using Capsule Neural Network

Earthquake detection is an essential step in observational earthquake seismology. We propose to utilize a capsule neural network (CapsNet) to automatically identify and detect earthquakes. CapsNet is the new generation of deep learning architecture. It has the capability of learning with a great generalization performance from a small dataset. We train the CapsNet using 50% of the Southern California seismic data (2.25 million 4-s-three-component seismic windows) and use 222 395 waveforms from different seismic areas to evaluate the CpasNet performance, e.g., western United States, Europe, and Japan. As a result, the CapsNet misses 367 events and detects 217 305 events with an accuracy of 97.71%. Among these picked events, 210 498 events have an arrival time error below 0.2 s (96.86%) and 197968 waveforms with an arrival time error below 0.1 s (91.11%). The CapsNet precision, recall, and F1-score are 97.78%, 99.83%, and 98.79%, respectively. In addition, the CapsNet is tested using 100 000 60-s-three-component seismic noise waveforms. CapsNet shows a low false alarms rate of 1384, which gives the CapsNet an accuracy of 98.61%. In addition, CapsNet is tested using continuous seismic data associated with the 24-hours microearthquakes swarm that occurred in the Arkansas area. Accordingly, the CapsNet detects 221 earthquakes and releases 37 false alarms with a detection accuracy of 85.65%. CapsNet detects many microearthquakes with a small magnitude, as low as -1.3 Ml, and detects earthquakes that have a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), e.g., as low as -8.07 dB. The results of the CapsNet are compared to the benchmark methods, e.g., short-time average/long-time average (STA/LTA) and GPD methods. The CapsNet shows the highest picking accuracy and outperforms the benchmark methods.
Meta Reinforcement Learning for Sim-to-real Domain Adaptation

Modern reinforcement learning methods suffer from low sample efficiency and unsafe exploration, making it infeasible to train robotic policies entirely on real hardware. In this work, we propose to address the problem of sim-to-real domain transfer by using meta learning to train a policy that can adapt to a variety of dynamic conditions, and using a task-specific trajectory generation model to provide an action space that facilitates quick exploration. We evaluate the method by performing domain adaptation in simulation and analyzing the structure of the latent space during adaptation. We then deploy this policy on a KUKA LBR 4+ robot and evaluate its performance on a task of hitting a hockey puck to a target. Our method shows more consistent and stable domain adaptation than the baseline, resulting in better overall performance.
Dynamic Landing of an Autonomous Quadrotor on a Moving Platform in Turbulent Wind Conditions

Autonomous landing on a moving platform presents unique challenges for multirotor vehicles, including the need to accurately localize the platform, fast trajectory planning, and precise/robust control. Previous works studied this problem but most lack explicit consideration of the wind disturbance, which typically leads to slow descents onto the platform. This work presents a fully autonomous vision-based system that addresses these limitations by tightly coupling the localization, planning, and control, thereby enabling fast and accurate landing on a moving platform. The platform's position, orientation, and velocity are estimated by an extended Kalman filter using simulated GPS measurements when the quadrotor-platform distance is large, and by a visual fiducial system when the platform is nearby. The landing trajectory is computed online using receding horizon control and is followed by a boundary layer sliding controller that provides tracking performance guarantees in the presence of unknown, but bounded, disturbances. To improve the performance, the characteristics of the turbulent conditions are accounted for in the controller. The landing trajectory is fast, direct, and does not require hovering over the platform, as is typical of most stateof-the-art approaches. Simulations and hardware experiments are presented to validate the robustness of the approach.
Simulation-based lidar super-resolution for ground vehicles

We propose a methodology for lidar super-resolution with ground vehicles driving on roadways, which relies completely on a driving simulator to enhance, via deep learning, the apparent resolution of a physical lidar. To increase the resolution of the point cloud captured by a sparse 3D lidar, we convert this problem from 3D Euclidean space into an image super-resolution problem in 2D image space, which is solved using a deep convolutional neural network. By projecting a point cloud onto a range image, we are able to efficiently enhance the resolution of such an image using a deep neural network. Typically, the training of a deep neural network requires vast real-world data. Our approach does not require any real-world data, as we train the network purely using computer-generated data. Thus our method is applicable to the enhancement of any type of 3D lidar theoretically. By novelly applying Monte-Carlo dropout in the network and removing the predictions with high uncertainty, our method produces high accuracy point clouds comparable with the observations of a real high resolution lidar. We present experimental results applying our method to several simulated and real-world datasets. We argue for the method’s potential benefits in real-world robotics applications such as occupancy mapping and terrain modeling.
Learned Critical Probabilistic Roadmaps for Robotic Motion Planning

Sampling-based motion planning techniques have emerged as an efficient algorithmic paradigm for solving complex motion planning problems. These approaches use a set of probing samples to construct an implicit graph representation of the robot's state space, allowing arbitrarily accurate representations as the number of samples increases to infinity. In practice, however, solution trajectories only rely on a few critical states, often defined by structure in the state space (e.g., doorways). In this work we propose a general method to identify these critical states via graph-theoretic techniques (betweenness centrality) and learn to predict criticality from only local environment features. These states are then leveraged more heavily via global connections within a hierarchical graph, termed Critical Probabilistic Roadmaps. Critical PRMs are demonstrated to achieve up to three orders of magnitude improvement over uniform sampling, while preserving the guarantees and complexity of sampling-based motion planning. A video is available at https://youtu.be/AYoD-pGd9ms.
Online Camera-LiDAR Calibration with Sensor Semantic Information

As a crucial step of sensor data fusion, sensor calibration plays a vital role in many cutting-edge machine vision applications, such as autonomous vehicles and AR/VR. Existing techniques either require quite amount of manual work and complex settings, or are unrobust and prone to produce suboptimal results. In this paper, we investigate the extrinsic calibration of an RGB camera and a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor, which are two of the most widely used sensors in autonomous vehicles for perceiving the outdoor environment. Specifically, we introduce an online calibration technique that automatically computes the optimal rigid motion transformation between the aforementioned two sensors and maximizes their mutual information of perceived data, without the need of tuning environment settings. By formulating the calibration as an optimization problem with a novel calibration quality metric based on semantic features, we successfully and robustly align pairs of temporally synchronized camera and LiDAR frames in real time. Demonstrated on several autonomous driving tasks, our method outperforms state-of-the-art edge feature based auto-calibration approaches in terms of robustness and accuracy.
Automatic Data Augmentation for 3D Medical Image Segmentation

Data augmentation is an effective and universal technique for improving generalization performance of deep neural networks. It could enrich diversity of training samples that is essential in medical image segmentation tasks because 1) the scale of medical image dataset is typically smaller, which may increase the risk of overfitting; 2) the shape and modality of different objects such as organs or tumors are unique, thus requiring customized data augmentation policy. However, most data augmentation implementations are hand-crafted and suboptimal in medical image processing. To fully exploit the potential of data augmentation, we propose an efficient algorithm to automatically search for the optimal augmentation strategies. We formulate the coupled optimization w.r.t. network weights and augmentation parameters into a differentiable form by means of stochastic relaxation. This formulation allows us to apply alternative gradient-based methods to solve it, i.e. stochastic natural gradient method with adaptive step-size. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that differentiable automatic data augmentation is employed in medical image segmentation tasks. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly outperforms existing build-in data augmentation of state-of-the-art models.
STAN: A sequential transformation attention-based network for scene text recognition

Scene text with an irregular layout is difficult to recognize. To this end, a Sequential Transformation Attention-based Network (STAN), which comprises a sequential transformation network and an attention-based recognition network, is proposed for general scene text recognition. The sequential transformation network rectifies irregular text by decomposing the task into a series of patch-wise basic transformations, followed by a grid projection submodule to smooth the junction between neighboring patches. The entire rectification process is able to be trained in an end-to-end weakly supervised manner, requiring only images and their corresponding groundtruth text. Based on the rectified images, an attention-based recognition network is employed to predict a character sequence. Experiments on several benchmarks demonstrate the state-of-the-art performance of STAN on both regular and irregular text.