Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Sequential Variational Autoencoders for Collaborative Filtering

Variational autoencoders were proven successful in domains such as computer vision and speech processing. Their adoption for modeling user preferences is still unexplored, although recently it is starting to gain attention in the current literature. In this work, we propose a model which extends variational autoencoders by exploiting the rich information present in the past preference history. We introduce a recurrent version of the VAE, where instead of passing a subset of the whole history regardless of temporal dependencies, we rather pass the consumption sequence subset through a recurrent neural network. At each time-step of the RNN, the sequence is fed through a series of fully-connected layers, the output of which models the probability distribution of the most likely future preferences. We show that handling temporal information is crucial for improving the accuracy of the VAE: In fact, our model beats the current state-of-the-art by valuable margins because of its ability to capture temporal dependencies among the user-consumption sequence using the recurrent encoder still keeping the fundamentals of variational autoencoders intact.
Artificial Intelligence, Smart Classrooms and Online Education in the 21st Century

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the education sector has largely taken over conventional classrooms and revolutionized the way education is conducted to the admiration of many. Other scholars however, believe that such early celebration of AI benefits is unfounded and inimical to the education sector since the adoption of modern AI teaching systems now raises long-term issues about the relevance of teachers and their classrooms in 21st Century AI education. The Marxian Alienation Theory was adopted for the article. The Ex-post factor method and Derrida's critical method of analysis was utilized for attaining the objectives of the article. The article faults recent attempts at eulogizing the impact of AI innovations in the education sector and on human development. Extensive research is proposed as necessary for contemporary scholars of AI and education technologist before proper appropriation can be made about its gains in education and on human development.
Supporting Story Synthesis: Bridging the Gap between Visual Analytics and Storytelling

Visual analytics usually deals with complex data and uses sophisticated algorithmic, visual, and interactive techniques supporting the analysis. Findings and results of the analysis often need to be communicated to an audience that lacks visual analytics expertise. This requires analysis outcomes to be presented in simpler ways than that are typically used in visual analytics systems. However, not only analytical visualizations may be too complex for target audiences but also the information that needs to be presented. Analysis results may consist of multiple components, which may involve multiple heterogeneous facets. Hence, there exists a gap on the path from obtaining analysis findings to communicating them, within which two main challenges lie: information complexity and display complexity. We address this problem by proposing a general framework where data analysis and result presentation are linked by story synthesis, in which the analyst creates and organises story contents. Unlike previous research, where analytic findings are represented by stored display states, we treat findings as data constructs. We focus on selecting, assembling and organizing findings for further presentation rather than on tracking analysis history and enabling dual (i.e., explorative and communicative) use of data displays. In story synthesis, findings are selected, assembled, and arranged in meaningful layouts that take into account the structure of information and inherent properties of its components. We propose a workflow for applying the proposed conceptual framework in designing visual analytics systems and demonstrate the generality of the approach by applying it to two diverse domains, social media and movement analysis.
Generalized Translation-Based Embedding of Knowledge Graph

Knowledge graphs are useful for many AI tasks but often have missing facts. To populate the graphs, knowledge graph embedding models have been developed. TransE is one of such models and the first translation-based method. TransE is well known because the principle of TransE can effectively capture the rules of a knowledge graph although it seems very simple. However, TransE has problems with its regularization and an unchangeable ratio of negative sampling. In this paper, we generalize TransE to solve these problems by proposing knowledge graph embedding on a Lie group (KGLG) and the Weighted Negative Part (WNP) method for the objective function of translation-based models. KGLG is the novel translation-based method which embeds entities and relations of a knowledge graph on any Lie group. It allows us not to employ regularization during training of the model if we choose a compact lie group for the embedding space. The WNP method is for changing the ratio of negative sampling, which enhances translation-based models. Our approach outperforms other state-of-the-art approaches such as TransE, DistMult, and ComplEx on a standard link prediction task. We show that TorusE, KGLG on a torus, is scalable to large-size knowledge graphs and faster than the original TransE.
Evolving Rule-Based Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In this paper, an explainable intelligence model that gives the logic behind the decisions unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) makes when it is on a predefined mission and chooses to deviate from its designated path is developed. The explainable model is on a visual platform in the format of if-then rules derived from the Sugeno-type fuzzy inference model. The model is tested using the data recorded from three different missions. In each mission, adverse weather, conditions and enemy locations are introduced at random locations along the path of the mission. There are two phases to the model development. In the first phase, the Mamdani fuzzy model is used to create rules to steer the UAV along the designated mission and the rules of engagement when it encounters weather and enemy locations along and near its chosen mission. The data are gathered as UAV traverses on each mission. In the second phase, the data gathered from these missions are used to create a reverse model using a Sugeno-type fuzzy inference system based on the subtractive clustering in the data. The model has seven inputs (time, x-coordinate, y-coordinate, heading direction, engage in attack, continue mission, and steer UAV) and two outputs (weather conditions and distance from the enemy). This model predicts the outputs regarding the weather conditions and enemy positions whenever UAV deviates from the predefined path. The model is optimized with respect to the number of rules and prediction accuracy by adjusting subtractive clustering parameters. The model is then fine-tuned with ANFIS. The final model has six rules and root mean square error value that is less than 0.05. Furthermore, to check the robustness of the model, the Gaussian random noise is added to a UAV path, and the prediction accuracy is validated.
Practical Enclave Malware with Intel SGX

Modern CPU architectures offer strong isolation guarantees towards user applications in the form of enclaves. However, Intel's threat model for SGX assumes fully trusted enclaves and there doubt about how realistic this is. In particular, it is unclear to what extent enclave malware could harm a system. In this work, we practically demonstrate the first enclave malware which fully and stealthily impersonates its host application. Together with poorly-deployed application isolation on personal computers, such malware can not only steal or encrypt documents for extortion but also act on the user's behalf, e.g., send phishing emails or mount denial-of-service attacks. Our SGX-ROP attack uses new TSX-based memory-disclosure primitive and a write-anything-anywhere primitive to construct a code-reuse attack from within an enclave which is then inadvertently executed by the host application. With SGX-ROP, we bypass ASLR, stack canaries, and address sanitizer. We demonstrate that instead of protecting users from harm, SGX currently poses a security threat, facilitating so-called super-malware with ready-to-hit exploits. With our results, we demystify the enclave malware threat and lay ground for future research on defenses against enclave malware.
Learning effectiveness of 360° video: experiences from a controlled experiment in healthcare education

Recent advances in virtual reality (VR) technologies provide new opportunities for e-learning by giving the students an increased sense of presence. One of the VR technologies recently introduced to the public is (360-degree) 360° video. Despite its limited empirical backing as an effective educational tool, this emerging technology could prove useful for e-learning and thus become a feasible IT-investment for education institutions. This paper reports on a controlled experiment with 360° video used in healthcare education. Eighty-one physiotherapy students participated in the experiment. Results show 360° video to be just as effective to enhance academic performance as regular video and traditional teaching. However, 360° video and regular video were less effective than traditional teaching in students’ learning satisfaction. Only on the student’s emotions about the learning climate did 360° video outperform regular video. Our results show that when comparing these educational technologies side-by-side with traditional teaching, traditional teaching is on most constructs equally or more effective. However, 360° video is a viable alternative to VR and regular video, because it is cost-effective and have a positive effect on the user’s emotional response to the learning climate. These factors may influence how 360° video is accepted by students and educational institutions.
Edge-preserving image denoising using a deep convolutional neural network

This paper introduces a novel denoising approach making use of a deep convolutional neural network to preserve image edges. The network is trained by using the edge map obtained from the well-known Canny algorithm and aims at determining if a noisy patch in non-subsampled shearlet domain corresponds to the location of an edge. In the first step of the proposed denoising algorithm, we use the non-subsampled shearlet transform to decompose the noisy image into a low-frequency subband and a series of high-frequency subbands. Subsequently, 3D blocks are formed by stacking 2D blocks of high-frequency subbands along a specific direction. Each 3D patch is then fed to the trained deep convolutional neural network to determine if it belongs to the edge-related class or not. Finally, the NSST (non-subsampled shearlet transform) coefficients belonging to the edge-related class remain unchanged, and those not belonging to the edge-related class are denoised by the shrinkage method using an adaptive threshold. Experimental results on various test images including benchmark grayscale images and medical ultrasound images demonstrate that the proposed method achieves better performance compared to some state-of-the-art denoising approaches.
Recommendation Based on Review Texts and Social Communities: A Hybrid Model

With the development of e-commerce, a large amount of personalized information is produced daily. To utilize diverse personalized information to improve recommendation accuracy, we propose a hybrid recommendation model based on users' ratings, reviews, and social data. Our model consists of six steps, review transformation, feature generation, community detection, model training, feature blending, and prediction and evaluation. Three groups of experiments are performed in this paper. Experiments A are used to identify the regression algorithm used in our model, Experiments B are used to identify the model to analyze review texts and the algorithm to detect social communities, and Experiments C compare our hybrid recommendation model with conventional recommendation models, such as probabilistic matrix factorization, UserKNN, ItemKNN, and social network-based models, such as socialMF and TrustSVD. The experiment results show that recommendation accuracy can be improved significantly with our hybrid model based on review texts and social communities.
Herding behavior in cryptocurrencies revisited: Novel evidence from a TVP model

In view of the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies, the purpose of the present study is to offer new insights on the herding behavior of cryptocurrencies. To this end, we employ market prices of the largest cryptocurrencies for a period extending from August of 2015 through February of 2018. Results derived from the standard testing procedure using ordinary least squares pointed to the existence of herding behavior in the cryptocurrencies’ market. Evidence on herding effects are further corroborated employing a quantile regression that accounts for the asymmetric nature of cryptocurrencies’ returns. However, herding behavior is no longer present when a more robust time-varying regression model is employed. Our results entail significant implications for researchers, investors and market authorities.
Neural Tensor Factorization for Temporal Interaction Learning

Neural collaborative filtering (NCF) and recurrent recommender systems (RRN) have been successful in modeling relational data (user-item interactions). However, they are also limited in their assumption of static or sequential modeling of relational data as they do not account for evolving users' preference over time as well as changes in the underlying factors that drive the change in user-item relationship over time. We address these limitations by proposing a Neural network based Tensor Factorization (NTF) model for predictive tasks on dynamic relational data. The NTF model generalizes conventional tensor factorization from two perspectives: First, it leverages the long short-term memory architecture to characterize the multi-dimensional temporal interactions on relational data. Second, it incorporates the multi-layer perceptron structure for learning the non-linearities between different latent factors. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the significant improvement in both the rating prediction and link prediction tasks on various dynamic relational data by our NTF model over both neural network based factorization models and other traditional methods.
Animal Scanner: Software for classifying humans, animals, and empty frames in camera trap images

Camera traps are a popular tool to sample animal populations because they are noninvasive, detect a variety of species, and can record many thousands of animal detections per deployment. Cameras are typically set to take bursts of multiple photographs for each detection and are deployed in arrays of dozens or hundreds of sites, often resulting in millions of photographs per study. The task of converting photographs to animal detection records from such large image collections is daunting, and made worse by situations that generate copious empty pictures from false triggers (e.g., camera malfunction or moving vegetation) or pictures of humans. We developed computer vision algorithms to detect and classify moving objects to aid the first step of camera trap image filtering-separating the animal detections from the empty frames and pictures of humans. Our new work couples foreground object segmentation through background subtraction with deep learning classification to provide a fast and accurate scheme for human-animal detection. We provide these programs as both Matlab GUI and command prompt developed with C++. The software reads folders of camera trap images and outputs images annotated with bounding boxes around moving objects and a text file summary of results. This software maintains high accuracy while reducing the execution time by 14 times. It takes about 6 seconds to process a sequence of ten frames (on a 2.6 GHZ CPU computer). For those cameras with excessive empty frames due to camera malfunction or blowing vegetation automatically removes 54% of the false-triggers sequences without influencing the human/animal sequences. We achieve 99.58% on image-level empty versus object classification of Serengeti dataset. We offer the first computer vision tool for processing camera trap images providing substantial time savings for processing large image datasets, thus improving our ability to monitor wildlife across large scales with camera traps.
A secure IoT cloud storage system with fine-grained access control and decryption key exposure resistance

Internet of Things (IoT) cloud provides a practical and scalable solution to accommodate the data management in large-scale IoT systems by migrating the data storage and management tasks to cloud service providers (CSPs). However, there also exist many data security and privacy issues that must be well addressed in order to allow the wide adoption of the approach. To protect data confidentiality, attribute-based cryptosystems have been proposed to provide fine-grained access control over encrypted data in IoT cloud. Unfortunately, the existing attributed-based solutions are still insufficient in addressing some challenging security problems, especially when dealing with compromised or leaked user secret keys due to different reasons. In this paper, we present a practical attribute-based access control system for IoT cloud by introducing an efficient revocable attribute-based encryption scheme that permits the data owner to efficiently manage the credentials of data users. Our proposed system can efficiently deal with both secret key revocation for corrupted users and accidental decryption key exposure for honest users. We analyze the security of our scheme with formal proofs, and demonstrate the high performance of the proposed system via experiments.
Confusion in Code Reviews: Reasons, Impacts, and Coping Strategies

Code review is a software quality assurance practice widely employed in both open source and commercial software projects to detect defects, transfer knowledge and encourage adherence to coding standards. Notwithstanding, code reviews can also delay the incorporation of a code change into a code base, thus slowing down the overall development process. Part of this delay is often a consequence of reviewers not understanding, becoming confused by, or being uncertain about the intention, behavior, or effect of a code change.We investigate the reasons and impacts of confusion in code reviews, as well as the strategies developers adopt to cope with confusion. We employ a concurrent triangulation strategy to combine the analyses of survey responses and of the code review comments, and build a comprehensive confusion framework structured along the dimensions of the review process, the artifact being reviewed, the developers themselves and the relation between the developer and the artifact. The most frequent reasons for confusion are the missing rationale, discussion of non-functional requirements of the solution, and lack of familiarity with existing code. Developers report that confusion delays the merge decision, decreases review quality, and results in additional discussions. To cope with confusion developers request information, improve familiarity with existing code, and discuss off-line. Based on the results, we provide a series of implications for tool builders, as well as insights and suggestions for researchers. The results of our work offer empirical justification for the need to improve code review tools to support developers facing confusion.
High-Throughput CNN Inference on Embedded ARM Big.LITTLE Multicore Processors

IoT Edge intelligence requires Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) inference to take place in the edge devices itself. ARM big.LITTLE architecture is at the heart of prevalent commercial edge devices. It comprises of single-ISA heterogeneous cores grouped into multiple homogeneous clusters that enable power and performance trade-offs. All cores are expected to be simultaneously employed in inference to attain maximal throughput. However, high communication overhead involved in parallelization of computations from convolution kernels across clusters is detrimental to throughput. We present an alternative framework called Pipe-it that employs pipelined design to split convolutional layers across clusters while limiting parallelization of their respective kernels to the assigned cluster. We develop a performance-prediction model that utilizes only the convolutional layer descriptors to predict the execution time of each layer individually on all permitted core configurations (type and count). Pipe-it then exploits the predictions to create a balanced pipeline using an efficient design space exploration algorithm. Pipe-it on average results in a 39% higher throughput than the highest antecedent throughput.
Determining relevant biomarkers for prediction of breast cancer using anthropometric and clinical features: A comparative investigation in machine learning paradigm

Early detection of breast cancer plays crucial role in planning and result of associated treatment. The purpose of this article is threefold: (i) to investigate whether or not clinical features obtained using routine blood analysis combined with anthropometric measurements can be utilized for envisaging breast cancer using predictive machine learning techniques; (ii) to explore the role of various machine learning components such as feature selection, data division protocols and classification to determine suitable biomarkers for breast cancer prediction; and (iii) to evaluate a recent database of clinical and anthropometric measurements acquired from normal individuals and individuals suffering from breast cancer. A database consisting of anthropometric and clinical attributes is used in the experiments. Various feature selection and statistical significance analysis methods are used to determine the relevance of various features. Furthermore, popular classifiers such as kernel based support vector machine (SVM), Naïve Bayesian, linear discriminant, quadratic discriminant, logistic regression, K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) and random forest were implemented and evaluated for breast cancer risk prediction using these features. Results of feature selection techniques indicate that among the nine features considered in this study, glucose, age and resistin are found to be most relevant and effective biomarkers for breast cancer prediction. Further, when these three features are used for classification, the medium K-NN classifier achieves the highest classification accuracy of 92.105% followed by medium Gaussian SVM which achieves classification accuracy of 83.684% under hold out data division protocol.