Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Iterative Training: Finding Binary Weight Deep Neural Networks with  Layer Binarization

In low-latency or mobile applications, lower computation complexity, lower memory footprint and better energy efficiency are desired. Many prior works address this need by removing redundant parameters. Parameter quantization replaces floating-point arithmetic with lower precision fixed-point arithmetic, further reducing complexity. Typical training of quantized weight neural networks starts from fully quantized weights. Quantization creates random noise. As a way to compensate for this noise, during training, we propose to quantize some weights while keeping others in floating-point precision. A deep neural network has many layers. To arrive at a fully quantized weight network, we start from one quantized layer and then quantize more and more layers. We show that the order of layer quantization affects accuracies. Order count is large for deep neural networks. A sensitivity pre-training is proposed to guide the layer quantization order. Recent work in weight binarization replaces weight-input matrix multiplication with additions. We apply the proposed iterative training to weight binarization. Our experiments cover fully connected and convolutional networks on MNIST, CIFAR-10 and ImageNet datasets. We show empirically that, starting from partial binary weights instead of from fully binary ones, training reaches fully binary weight networks with better accuracies for larger and deeper networks. Layer binarization in the forward order results in better accuracies. Guided layer binarization can further improve that. The improvements come at a cost of longer training time.
A quantum model of lasing without inversion

Starting from a quantum description of multiple Lambda-type 3-level atoms driven with a coherent microwave field and incoherent optical pumping, we derive a microscopic model of lasing from which we move towards a consistent macroscopic picture. Our analysis applies across the range of system sizes from nanolasers to the thermodynamic limit of conventional lasing. We explore the necessary conditions to achieve lasing without inversion by calculating the non-equilibrium steady state solutions of the model at, and between, its microscopic and macroscopic limits. For the macroscopic picture, we use mean-field theory to present a thorough analysis of the lasing phase transition. In the microscopic case, we exploit the underlying permutation symmetry of the density matrix to calculate exact solutions for N 3-level systems. This allows us to show that the steady state solutions approach the thermodynamic limit as N increases, restoring the sharp non-equilibrium phase transition in this limit. We demonstrate how the lasing phase transition and degree of population inversion can be adjusted by simply varying the phase of the coherent driving field. The high level of quantum control presented by this microscopic model and the framework outlined here have applications to further understanding and developing nanophotonic technology.
Federated Learning for Privacy Preservation in Smart Healthcare Systems: A Comprehensive Survey

Recent advances in electronic devices and communication infrastructure have revolutionized the traditional healthcare system into a smart healthcare system by using IoMT devices. However, due to the centralized training approach of artificial intelligence (AI), the use of mobile and wearable IoMT devices raises privacy concerns with respect to the information that has been communicated between hospitals and end users. The information conveyed by the IoMT devices is highly confidential and can be exposed to adversaries. In this regard, federated learning (FL), a distributive AI paradigm has opened up new opportunities for privacy-preservation in IoMT without accessing the confidential data of the participants. Further, FL provides privacy to end users as only gradients are shared during training. For these specific properties of FL, in this paper we present privacy related issues in IoMT. Afterwards, we present the role of FL in IoMT networks for privacy preservation and introduce some advanced FL architectures incorporating deep reinforcement learning (DRL), digital twin, and generative adversarial networks (GANs) for detecting privacy threats. Subsequently, we present some practical opportunities of FL in smart healthcare systems. At the end, we conclude this survey by providing open research challenges for FL that can be used in future smart healthcare systems
Common Sense Knowledge Learning for Open Vocabulary Neural Reasoning: A  First View into Chronic Disease Literature

In this paper, we address reasoning tasks from open vocabulary Knowledge Bases (openKBs) using state-of-the-art Neural Language Models (NLMs) with applications in scientific literature. For this purpose, self-attention based NLMs are trained using a common sense KB as a source task. The NLMs are then tested on a target KB for open vocabulary reasoning tasks involving scientific knowledge related to the most prevalent chronic diseases (also known as non-communicable diseases, NCDs). Our results identified NLMs that performed consistently and with significance in knowledge inference for both source and target tasks. Furthermore, in our analysis by inspection we discussed the semantic regularities and reasoning capabilities learned by the models, while showing a first insight into the potential benefits of our approach to aid NCD research.
Efficient Quantum Voting with Information-Theoretic Security

Ensuring security and integrity of elections constitutes an important challenge with wide-ranging societal implications. Classically, security guarantees can be ensured based on computational complexity, which may be challenged by quantum computers. We show that the use of quantum networks can enable information-theoretic security for the desirable aspects of a distributed voting scheme in a resource-efficient manner. In our approach, ballot information is encoded in quantum states that enable an exponential reduction in communication complexity compared to classical communication. In addition, we provide an efficient and secure anonymous queuing protocol. As a result, our scheme only requires modest quantum memories with size scaling logarithmically with the number of voters. This intrinsic efficiency together with certain noise-robustness of our protocol paves the way for its physical implementation in realistic quantum networks.
Gaussian Zonoids, Gaussian determinants and Gaussian random fields

We study the Vitale zonoid (a convex body associated to a probability distribution) associated to a non--centered Gaussian vector. We compute an ellipsoid that contains such zonoid and show that it remains close to it. We use this result to give new estimates for the expectation of the absolute determinant of a non--centered Gaussian matrix in terms of mixed volume of ellipsoids. Finally, exploiting a recent link between random fields and zonoids uncovered by Stecconi and the author, we apply our results to the study of the zero set of non--centered Gaussian random fields. We show how these can be approximated by a suitable centered Gaussian random field. We also give an explicit asymptotic formula for the concentration of measure in the limit where the variance goes to zero.
Exploring Sub-skeleton Trajectories for Interpretable Recognition of Sign Language

Recent advances in tracking sensors and pose estimation software enable smart systems to use trajectories of skeleton joint locations for supervised learning. We study the problem of accurately recognizing sign language words, which is key to narrowing the communication gap between hard and non-hard of hearing people. Our method explores a geometric feature space that we call `sub-skeleton' aspects of movement. We assess similarity of feature space trajectories using natural, speed invariant distance measures, which enables clear and insightful nearest neighbor classification. The simplicity and scalability of our basic method allows for immediate application in different data domains with little to no parameter tuning. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our basic method, and a boosted variation, with experiments on data from different application domains and tracking technologies. Surprisingly, our simple methods improve sign recognition over recent, state-of-the-art approaches.
Signal Strength and Noise Drive Feature Preference in CNN Image Classifiers

Feature preference in Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) image classifiers is integral to their decision making process, and while the topic has been well studied, it is still not understood at a fundamental level. We test a range of task relevant feature attributes (including shape, texture, and color) with varying degrees of signal and noise in highly controlled CNN image classification experiments using synthetic datasets to determine feature preferences. We find that CNNs will prefer features with stronger signal strength and lower noise irrespective of whether the feature is texture, shape, or color. This provides guidance for a predictive model for task relevant feature preferences, demonstrates pathways for bias in machine models that can be avoided with careful controls on experimental setup, and suggests that comparisons between how humans and machines prefer task relevant features in vision classification tasks should be revisited. Code to reproduce experiments in this paper can be found at \url{https://github.com/mwolff31/signal_preference}.
A Dynamic Fast Gaussian Transform

The \emph{Fast Gaussian Transform} (FGT) enables subquadratic-time multiplication of an $n\times n$ Gaussian kernel matrix $\mathsf{K}_{i,j}= \exp ( - \| x_i - x_j \|_2^2 ) $ with an arbitrary vector $h \in \mathbb{R}^n$, where $x_1,\dots, x_n \in \mathbb{R}^d$ are a set of \emph{fixed} source points. This kernel plays a central role in machine learning and random feature maps. Nevertheless, in most modern data analysis applications, datasets are dynamically changing (yet often have low rank), and recomputing the FGT from scratch in (kernel-based) algorithms incurs a major computational overhead ($\gtrsim n$ time for a single source update $\in \mathbb{R}^d$). These applications motivate a \emph{dynamic FGT} algorithm, which maintains a dynamic set of sources under \emph{kernel-density estimation} (KDE) queries in \emph{sublinear time} while retaining Mat-Vec multiplication accuracy and speed. Assuming the dynamic data-points $x_i$ lie in a (possibly changing) $k$-dimensional subspace ($k\leq d$), our main result is an efficient dynamic FGT algorithm, supporting the following operations in $\log^{O(k)}(n/\varepsilon)$ time: (1) Adding or deleting a source point, and (2) Estimating the ``kernel-density'' of a query point with respect to sources with $\varepsilon$ additive accuracy. The core of the algorithm is a dynamic data structure for maintaining the \emph{projected} ``interaction rank'' between source and target boxes, decoupled into finite truncation of Taylor and Hermite expansions.
von Mises-Fisher distributions and their statistical divergence

The von Mises-Fisher family is a parametric family of distributions on the surface of the unit ball, summarised by a concentration parameter and a mean direction. As a quasi-Bayesian prior, the von Mises-Fisher distribution is a convenient and parsimonious choice when parameter spaces are isomorphic to the hypersphere (e.g., maximum score estimation in semi-parametric discrete choice, estimation of single-index treatment assignment rules via empirical welfare maximisation, under-identifying linear simultaneous equation models). Despite a long history of application, measures of statistical divergence have not been analytically characterised for von Mises-Fisher distributions. This paper provides analytical expressions for the $f$-divergence of a von Mises-Fisher distribution from another, distinct, von Mises-Fisher distribution in $\mathbb{R}^p$ and the uniform distribution over the hypersphere. This paper also collect several other results pertaining to the von Mises-Fisher family of distributions, and characterises the limiting behaviour of the measures of divergence that we consider.
Collaborative driving tools for traffic problems: a design anthropological approach to car commuting

People use applications daily to meet some of their needs. Geo location, memory, communication, entertainment and learning are some examples, but it is well known that not every moment is suitable for the use of certain technologies, and sometimes its use is even illegal. While driving a car, a person tends to keep using their phones, even though it is distracting and dangerous, but the reasons behind this use are related to trying to make travel less unproductive and unpredictable. This problem leads this work to investigate the relationship between driving and the driver’s continuous interactions with technologies, focusing on a common identified activity: the informational collaboration, made from Geo location apps and instant messaging. For this, the Design Anthropology approach and the Design Ethnography method were used, seeking to understand how improvisations and contingencies can provide a deep understanding of the user's real needs. The results show that, by applying this methodology, it was possible to understand how and why people collaborate on traffic, including which applications they use and how they trust the information while adding their own personal knowledge.
Emotions are Subtle: Learning Sentiment Based Text Representations Using Contrastive Learning

Contrastive learning techniques have been widely used in the field of computer vision as a means of augmenting datasets. In this paper, we extend the use of these contrastive learning embeddings to sentiment analysis tasks and demonstrate that fine-tuning on these embeddings provides an improvement over fine-tuning on BERT-based embeddings to achieve higher benchmarks on the task of sentiment analysis when evaluated on the DynaSent dataset. We also explore how our fine-tuned models perform on cross-domain benchmark datasets. Additionally, we explore upsampling techniques to achieve a more balanced class distribution to make further improvements on our benchmark tasks.
SYNCHRONOUS-ASYNCHRONOUS INTERACTION OF THE TEACHER AND STUDENTS OF EXTRAMURAL DEPARTMENT ON EDUCATIONAL PORTAL OF THE UNIVERSITY IN DISTANCE LEARNING

The article provides an analysis of the educational performance of teaching students of the extramural department with synchronous-asynchronous interaction in the environment of the educational portal of the university. The effectiveness of training was assessed according to the following criteria: academic performance, quality of knowledge, training. The main difficulties of interaction between students and teachers in synchronous and asynchronous learning formats, identified by the analysis of the results of the questionnaire of students, are shown.
Two Sequential Squaring Verifiable Delay Function

A Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) is a function that takes a specified sequential time to be evaluated, but can be efficiently verified. VDFs are useful in several applications ranging from randomness beacons to sustainable blockchains but are really rare in practice. Most of the VDFs are based on algebraic assumptions like time-lock puzzle in unknown group orders [6, 8] and isogenies over pairing groups [4]. The number of modulo squaring required for verification in the time-lock puzzle based VDFs are proportional to their security parameter. This paper proposes a verifiable delay function that requires only 2- modulo squaring for verification. So the sequential effort required for verification is independent of the security parameter.
Does Time exist? -- catchphrases and concepts

This paper lends perspective to the media catchphrase that <time does not exist>. To show how phrases such as this should be interpreted, we formulate some of the most important questions that arise in discussions about time in physics. We start by analyzing Newton's objective view on time and explain how entropy gives it a direction. After that, we discuss how relativity distances us from Newton's views, while quantum theory brings us closer to the Newtonian view. The arguments are presented in such a way that they can be followed and checked by anyone who studies the theories involved - be they undergraduate physics students or otherwise.
Fair Wrapping for Black-box Predictions

We introduce a new family of techniques to post-process ("wrap") a black-box classifier in order to reduce its bias. Our technique builds on the recent analysis of improper loss functions whose optimization can correct any twist in prediction, unfairness being treated as a twist. In the post-processing, we learn a wrapper function which we define as an $α$-tree, which modifies the prediction. We provide two generic boosting algorithms to learn $α$-trees. We show that our modification has appealing properties in terms of composition of $α$-trees, generalization, interpretability, and KL divergence between modified and original predictions. We exemplify the use of our technique in three fairness notions: conditional value-at-risk, equality of opportunity, and statistical parity; and provide experiments on several readily available datasets.
Iterative Activation-based Structured Pruning

Deploying complex deep learning models on edge devices is challenging because they have substantial compute and memory resource requirements, whereas edge devices' resource budget is limited. To solve this problem, extensive pruning techniques have been proposed for compressing networks. Recent advances based on the Lottery Ticket Hypothesis (LTH) show that iterative model pruning tends to produce smaller and more accurate models. However, LTH research focuses on unstructured pruning, which is hardware-inefficient and difficult to accelerate on hardware platforms. In this paper, we investigate iterative pruning in the context of structured pruning because structurally pruned models map well on commodity hardware. We find that directly applying a structured weight-based pruning technique iteratively, called iterative L1-norm based pruning (ILP), does not produce accurate pruned models. To solve this problem, we propose two activation-based pruning methods, Iterative Activation-based Pruning (IAP) and Adaptive Iterative Activation-based Pruning (AIAP). We observe that, with only 1% accuracy loss, IAP and AIAP achieve 7.75X and 15.88$X compression on LeNet-5, and 1.25X and 1.71X compression on ResNet-50, whereas ILP achieves 4.77X and 1.13X, respectively.
Investigating transactions in cryptocurrencies

This thesis presents techniques to investigate transactions in uncharted cryptocurrencies and services. Cryptocurrencies are used to securely send payments online. Payments via the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, use pseudonymous addresses that have limited privacy and anonymity guarantees. Research has shown that this pseudonymity can be broken, allowing users to be tracked using clustering and tagging heuristics. Such tracking allows crimes to be investigated. If a user has coins stolen, investigators can track addresses to identify the destination of the coins. This, combined with an explosion in the popularity of blockchain, has led to a vast increase in new coins and services. These offer new features ranging from coins focused on increased anonymity to scams shrouded as smart contracts. In this study, we investigated the extent to which transaction privacy has improved and whether users can still be tracked in these new ecosystems. We began by analysing the privacy-focused coin Zcash, a Bitcoin-forked cryptocurrency, that is considered to have strong anonymity properties due to its background in cryptographic research. We revealed that the user anonymity set can be considerably reduced using heuristics based on usage patterns. Next, we analysed cross-chain transactions collected from the exchange ShapeShift, revealing that users can be tracked as they move across different ledgers. Finally, we present a measurement study on the smart-contract pyramid scheme Forsage, a scam that cycled $267 million USD (of Ethereum) within its first year, showing that at least 88% of the participants in the scheme suffered a loss. The significance of this study is the revelation that users can be tracked in newer cryptocurrencies and services by using our new heuristics, which informs those conducting investigations and developing these technologies.
Reducing the impact of out of vocabulary words in the translation of natural language questions into SPARQL queries

Accessing the large volumes of information available in public knowledge bases might be complicated for those users unfamiliar with the SPARQL query language. Automatic translation of questions posed in natural language in SPARQL has the potential of overcoming this problem. Existing systems based on neural-machine translation are very effective but easily fail in recognizing words that are Out Of the Vocabulary (OOV) of the training set. This is a serious issue while querying large ontologies. In this paper, we combine Named Entity Linking, Named Entity Recognition, and Neural Machine Translation to perform automatic translation of natural language questions into SPARQL queries. We demonstrate empirically that our approach is more effective and resilient to OOV words than existing approaches by running the experiments on Monument, QALD-9, and LC-QuAD v1, which are well-known datasets for Question Answering over DBpedia.
Gate-based Quantum Computing for Protein Design

Protein design is a technique to engineer proteins by modifying their sequence to obtain novel functionalities. In this method, amino acids in the sequence are permutated to find the low energy states satisfying the configuration. However, exploring all possible combinations of amino acids is generally impossible to achieve on conventional computers due to the exponential growth of possibilities with the number of designable sites. Thus, sampling methods are currently used as a conventional approach to address the protein design problems. Recently, quantum computation methods have shown the potential to solve similar types of problems. In the present work, we use the general idea of Grover's algorithm, a pure quantum computation method, to design circuits at the gate-based level and address the protein design problem. In our quantum algorithms, we use custom pair-wise energy tables consisting of eight different amino acids. Also, the distance reciprocals between designable sites are included in calculating energies in the circuits. Due to the noisy state of current quantum computers, we mainly use quantum computer simulators for this study. However, a very simple version of our circuits is implemented on real quantum devices to examine their capabilities to run these algorithms. Our results show that using $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt N)$ iterations, the circuits find the correct results among all $N$ possibilities, providing the expected quadratic speed up of Grover's algorithm over classical methods.